avocado & bravado : a blog

recipe: peanut butter & spinach smoothie

I’m still on a breakfast kick. Or rather, I was until I found a new favorite breakfast I love so much that I eat (drink?) it 5 times a week.

Yup, it’s a smoothie.

This smoothie is a twist on mowz bil-laban (banana milk), a drink consisting of just bananas blended with milk that I’d buy at juice stands on the streets of Cairo. Over the years, when making banana milk at home, I’d tweak the recipe here and there. I’d add a mango or handful of strawberries here and there. I’d top off the smoothie with a couple pinches of slivered almonds here and there just before serving. Then I started freezing bananas because I would purchase so many I’d have to freeze them before they went bad. What I then discovered was an accidental miracle, adding a frozen banana to a smoothie suddenly gave the drink a milkshake-like consistency. I haven’t looked back since.

The idea for a breakfast banana milk came when I was standing in line at my favorite work day lunch spot. They have a banana, kale, almond milk, and almond butter smoothie on the menu that I’ve never tried, but sounds delicious. I made my own adaption at home a couple days later, but with peanut butter. My poor little Oster beehive blender couldn’t quite blend the kale into the consistency I had hoped, so the next time I made the smoothie (and every time since!) I’ve used spinach. As much as I love kale, spinach is a much better candidate for smoothies because you can’t really taste it once it’s blended with fruit and milk. What really makes this smoothie a meal not a drink are the cacao nibs added at the very end. Cacao nibs are raw chocolate, with the crunchy consistency of macadamia nuts and deep bitter chocolate taste. I used to only make banana milk as an evening treat, so every morning I feel like I’m eating dessert and every night I can’t wait for breakfast.

Peanut Butter and Spinach Smoothie

2 handfuls spinach
1 cup milk of your choice (I use almond)
2 teaspoons peanut butter
1 banana, frozen and broken into 2-3 pieces
1 tablespoon cacao nibs

Add the spinach, milk, and peanut butter to your blender and blend until smooth. Once you have a smooth mixture, add the frozen banana. Blend again until completely smooth. Pour the drink into a glass and top it off with cacao nibs. Enjoy!

Serves 1

recipe: baked eggs with bacon & avocado

Lately, I’ve grown tired of my usual breakfast fare: a plain egg, some manner of citrus, yogurt with chia seeds and a dollop of jam on weekdays and oatmeal or fried eggs, bacon, and potatoes on weekends. Weekends are my time to experiment with new breakfasts, and I think I’ve found a new regular. This dish includes a combination of my three favorite ingredients: cheese, bacon, and avocado. Heavenly. And I’m super stoked that I finally have a reason to use those individual pie dishes from Crate&Barrel that I just had to have.

This is the first new recipe I’ve posted here in almost two years. I keep intending to returning to blogging on a regular basis, but something else always seems to pop up. I still cook regularly, not as much as I used to since I joined the 40+ hour a office job world. Perhaps now I that I’ve finally posted a new recipe, I’ll get back into the swing of blogging again. I certainly hope so!

Cheesy Baked Eggs with Bacon and Avocado
(adapted from Use Real Butter)

1 tablespoon olive oil or melted butter
4 eggs
3-4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, chopped
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes
1/3 cup steamed kale or spinach, chopped
a couple pinches of dried thyme
2 strips bacon, crumbled
salt and pepper, to taste

1 medium avocado, sliced

Pre-heat oven to 375F. Butter or oil ramekins or individual pie dishes. Add two eggs each to the ramekins. Season eggs with a few dashes of salt and pepper. Layer the ramekins with shredded mozzarella. Add the red pepper, tomatoes, and steamed kale to the ramekins. Bake for 10-15 mins, take the eggs out around 10 minutes if you prefer runnier eggs.

Once the eggs are done to your liking, set them aside for a few minutes to cool off. While the eggs are cooling off, slice an avocado. Sprinkle crumbled bacon over the eggs and top it off with the avocado. Serve immediately.

Serves 2

recipe: kale & cheddar gratin

March 1, 2013
rose
4 Comments
recipes

Do you eat kale because it’s a nutritional power house? That’s fine and dandy, but this probably isn’t the kale recipe you’re looking for.

For me, this dish is a lot like mac & cheese without the mac. It makes a delightful side dish.

Kale Gratin

1 pound kale, washed, stemmed, and cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour (I used all purpose)
1 1/5 cups milk (I used whole)
1 cup extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated
salt & pepper
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (optional, for color)
a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
a tablespoon of olive oil, for greasing the baking pan

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Wash, stem, and chop up the kale into small pieces. Add a couple tablespoons of water to a large stockpot and add the kale. Cook the kale over medium heat for about 2 or 3 minutes, or just until it’s started to wilt. Drain the kale through a colander and squeeze out a little bit of the liquid. Let the kale continue to drain as you grate the cheddar cheese.

In a skillet, melt the butter over medium low heat. Stir the flour into the butter, then add the milk a couple tablespoons at a time, stirring constantly until the mixture has formed a thick and smooth sauce. Add salt, pepper, turmeric (if using), and nutmeg. Add in the cheese, stirring constantly until melted.

Grease a baking pan (mine was 8″ x 8″) with olive oil and add the kale. Pour the cheese sauce over the kale and tip the baking pan back and forth to make sure all the kale is covered in cheese. Transfer to the oven and bake for 20 minutes, or until bubbling. If you’d like the gratin to have a nice brown top, add it to the broiler for 3-5 minutes.

Serves 6-8

–

Originally posted in January 2011

mujaddara (lentils & rice)

Mujaddara is a simple Levantine rice and lentil pilaf that is considered to be a “poor man’s dish”. It is also a dish that is very near and dear to my heart. Let’s rewind back to May 2008. I was 22, just a couple weeks shy of turning 23 and I was studying in Egypt for the third time. Living on my own for about a year and a half, I still struggled with feeding myself. I loved street food, but I wanted to cook for myself. At the time, my cooking skills hadn’t really evolved since the days my parents allowed me to stay home alone without a babysitter (macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, etc). There I was, living thousands of miles away from home and I still lacked the ability to feed myself. Cooking, I realized, was a basic life skill and it was something I was sorely lacking. I refused to believe that humans made it this far so we could subsist on Hot Pockets and Cocoa Puffs. I needed to change.

I went to my favorite bookstore and bought a cookbook with Egyptian and Levantine recipes. After skimming through the book, I settled on something that looked easy: mujaddara. So off I went to a nearby supermarket to purchase the ingredients. When I arrived home, I cut an onion for the first time in my life. Yes, at the age of 22. My first attempt at making mujaddara was merely OK, but that didn’t deter me. I made it constantly for the rest of the summer until I had perfected my own version. Now, I usually prefer to make more complex dishes but I still love to return to the simplicity of mujdaara. What sets it apart from just being lentils and rice are the caramelized onions. They’re so tangy and sweet. They should be a part of every cook’s repertoire. Even if you don’t have much of an interest in making mujaddara, caramelize some onions and eat them with some toast and butter.

Ingredients:

4 onions, sliced (watch out for onion tears)
3/4 cup lentils
3/4 cup rice
about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Heal oil and a dash of salt in a large non-stick skillet over medium low heat. When hot, add the onions. Stir the onions every few minutes, for 30 minutes. Turn the heat up a bit and continue cooking until the onions until they are a deep, golden brown, another 15-20 minutes or so. Set skillet aside.

In the meantime, prepare the lentils and rice according to their package directions. Some people prefer to cook the lentils and rice together in the same pot, but I find that this results in overcooked lentils, so I always cook them separately. When the lentils and rice are ready, pour them into a colander to get the water out.

Mix together the lentils and rice in a big pot. Add salt, pepper, a couple glugs of olive oil, and most of the caramelized onions. Heat until the mujaddara is warm, add more salt and pepper to taste.

Serve in bowls and garnish with the remaining caramelized onions. Serve warm.

–

Originally posted in March 2010

deconstructed hummus salad

If there’s one thing I could eat everyday it’s bread and hummus. Okay, I guess those are two things. I don’t make hummus as often as I’d like, since I like to eat it only with bread and I consider bread to be a “sometimes food”. Nothing in the world can compare to freshly baked bread. And I could eat a lot of it. Everyday. Probably even right now. I’ve had an itching to make hummus for awhile and came up with the idea to make a deconstructed hummus salad. All the ingredients of traditional hummus over a pile of greens. I made it on a whim as a small side dish just before dinner and ended up going back for seconds of the salad. And I ended up making the salad three more times throughout the week. Yeah, I think I have a new favorite hummus recipe now. No bread or taking out the pesky food processor out of storage.

Deconstructed Hummus Salad

1 garlic clove, minced
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons tahini
1-2 tablespoon lemon juice (start with a tablespoon, add more to taste if needed)
1 tablespoon water
salt, to taste
1 15-oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
5 oz package of mixed greens (note: I also had about 2 cups of leftover red kale and used that as well)
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
sumac or paprika (optional, for garnishing)

Mince garlic and toss in a large mixing bowl. Mix in olive oil, tahini, lemon juice, water, and salt. Stir until everything is mixed together and fold in the chickpeas. Serve the chickpeas over mixed greens tossed with chopped dill. Garnish with sumac or paprika, if desired.

Serves 4

–

Originally posted in March 2011

avocado & bravado : a blog

recipe: peanut butter & spinach smoothie

recipe: baked eggs with bacon & avocado

recipe: kale & cheddar gratin

mujaddara (lentils & rice)

deconstructed hummus salad

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