Roasted Vegetables

I am amazed sometimes at what I discover. How have I missed out on roasted vegetables this long? Roasted carrots are almost my favorite thing ever! Last night, Husband and I were watching T.V. and didn't want to eat frozen foods, but at the same time we didn't want to be stuck in the kitchen with skillets and 10 minute times... because let's face it, sometimes being stuck in the kitchen while preparing a meal sucks. So thats when we decided to just throw some potatoes and carrots in the oven and let them cook for an hour, then we would work on meat.

This is something every college student (and newlywed!) should learn to do. It's not hard at all, just you have to think ahead.

Roasted Potatoes and Carrots

5 medium red potatoes

6 medium carrots 

Olive oil

2 tbsp dried oregano

1 tbsp dried parsley

1. Pre-heat oven to 375

2. Cut potatoes into 1 inch slices. 

3. Peel and cut carrots to 3-4 in pieces, remembering that thicker sections should be shorter than thinner for even cooking time. 

4. Toss all cut ingredients into a shallow roasting pan. Coat with olive oil and toss in the dried herbs. Make sure you toss everything so it's nice and coated before putting it in the over

5. Cook for about 1 hr - 1 hr 10 minutes. Around 35-40 minutes just make sure to take out the pan and shake up the potatoes and carrots so they don't stick.  

Now this isn't a hard dish at all. In fact you can add sweet onions as well (just quartering them) or even something fancy like fennel. It's a pretty standard roasting idea that gives you 10 minutes of prep and an hour to unwind before reheating left over meat or just sauteing some chicken, pork, beef, tofu, whatever your choice. The only thing I wouldn't deviate from is the dried herbs and olive oil.

College Tip

A wonderful way to enjoy fresh Corn on the cobb- microwave the corn IN IT'S HUSK for 4-5 minutes depending on your microwave.

My favorite Visitor :P

So my Fiance was in town this week, which meant some cooking in, eating out, and forgetting meals because we're busy catching up.

Monday night we made Jerked Chicken and Cucumber Salsa. It was alright, the Salsa was the best part for me. I have no pictures but I wanted to share this awesome recipe...

Mango Salsa:

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1 mango, diced
• 1 English cucumber, diced
• 2 green onions, diced

In a medium bowl, combine sugar, lime juice, hot sauce, and ginger. Mix thoroughly and add the remaining ingredients. Toss and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Orange Carrots

Orange Carrots
Tyler Florence

• 1 bunch young carrots, with tops (Baby carrots worked fine. I used enough so no carrots were overlapping. I was only cooking for one)
  
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 orange, zested and halved (I used1/4 cup Orange Juice because I didn't have any oranges!)
  
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions: Cut off all but 1-inch of the carrot tops, leaving a little green. Put the carrots in a large shallow pan, add the oil, and season with salt and pepper. Turn to coat the carrots. Stick them in the oven and bake for 30 minutes, until the carrots are fork-tender.
In the meantime, melt the butter in a skillet over medium-low heat. Swirl the pan around and cook until the butter begins to become brown and nutty. Squeeze in the juice from the orange halves, add the zest, brown sugar, cumin and cinnamon and continue to cook for 2 minutes or until syrupy.
Remove the carrots from the oven, drizzle the orange brown butter over the carrots and serve.


OVERALL: Damn these were good. I might have used a bit too much Orange Juice, but still I loved using the Cumin & Cinnamon together. These aren't too sweet. My only complain was that I might have used too much OJ & therefore the butter was a little on that watery (or OJ-y) side. I will definitely make this for friends and family. Plus the baby carrots are so damn cute!

Acorn Squash

Inspired by Tyler Florence's recipe for roasted Acorn Squash, I went out to try one. Believe it or not the store didn't have any, so instead i got Golden Acorn Squash- not REALLY sure of the difference...

Yesterday, I noticed this months food challenge was acorn squash, orange, and sage. So I decided to play along with that, as well as making the original recipe I saw. Funnily enough, we didn't have oranges.

Roasted (Golden) Acorn Squash

1/2 Acorn Squash
1/2 stick butter, melted
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar

1. I par boiled the squash for about 8 minutes so it softened up.
2. Melt the butter, adding in the sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
3. Heat the oven to 400. Paint the squash with the butter mixture.
4. Cook for 20 minutes, until tender.

Roasted Acorn Squash Version 2
1/2 Acorn squash
1/2 stick melted butter
2 cloves of chopped garlic
1 tbsp sage
I'm pretty sure you could add some orange zest/orange concentrate for flavor. About 1/2 orange zested or 2 tbsp orange concentrate. You might wanna 86 the garlic then.

1. Same procedure as above, only combine sage and orange zest/concentrate to the butter.


Overall: SO I've never had squash before and I probably won't have it again. The sage one was really bad. Never make that. The first one wasn't bad, but being that I never had squash, the texture really threw me off. Very stringy and the strings were hard. Maybe I didn't cook it enough? It seriously needs to be like pureed for me to try this again.

Chicken, Rice, Carrot Dinner

I haven't been making a lot of Desserts as of late (although I really want to). The main reason has been my insane poverty. I'm working a camp job 35 hours a week, or more, and yet have no money.

So I've been experimenting with whats in the house-- which is never sweets. We don't have any Flour for baking or other key ingredients (Baking powder!). So I've been experimenting with Dinners.

Tonight I used a new Rub that I found online.

Chicken Rub
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2 tbsp Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Peprika
1 tsp Chili Powder
1 tsp Salt
I added some Garlic salt to mine, just a sprinkle though!

Carrots
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Chop up 2 peeled carrots and Place into a microwavable bowl. Add Dried Sage Rub. I added quite a bit, maybe about a capful? Microwave until soft (5 minutes? I dunno I had the microwave do it lol). When they are fork tender, taste to see if there is enough flavor, if not add some Mrs. Dash seasoning. Unfortunatly I added WAY too much, thereby only being able to taste that seasoning.

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I really liked the Chicken rub. I can definetly seeing this made before hand. Sadly I had the pan on too high and seared the chicken more than intended. *Note to Self, Use medium heat instead of Medium-high* The sugar carmalizes nicely and creates a wonderful flavor, with a little heat from the chili powder.

The Carrots were amazing... until I overseasoned them. I'll admit I have a heavy hand with seasoning. For anyone who hasn't tried Carrots with Sage as a seasoning, it's really all you need. They are SO good.