My local grocery store sells raw sweet potato already cut into sticks, which is great to cut down on prep time.

The basic theory of these is to toss them in a little oil, season them, and spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet to bake at 425° for 15-18 minutes. I used olive oil, salt, cumin, and chili powder for a little bit of a kick. You could sprinkle the fries with cinnamon sugar, or finely minced rosemary, or garlic and parsley…the options are definitely there.

Have fun!

A good veggie burger is satisfying without being heavy. There are lots of varieties of veggie burgers, based on any number of main ingredients, including things like textured soy protein. This recipe results in a very soft patty with a really good flavor that makes no attempt to taste like beef. It’s also dark green and swampy looking, so be warned.

You’ll need:

• 2 cups cooked beans
• 8 oz raw mushrooms
• 1/2 lb fresh spinach
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 3 sprigs of fresh oregano
• 10 fresh sage leaves
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 3-4 tbsp sesame oil

The first six ingredients go into the food processor. I’d recommend doing the spinach first, and breaking it into two batches, then setting it aside once it’s pureed finely. Once everything is broken down, combine it thoroughly. You should be able to dump it all back into the food processor if you have a 7-cup model, if you don’t feel like doing a lot of hand mixing.

Blend in the flour gradually. You may need to adjust up or down. The texture you’re looking for is like thick oatmeal.

Pour the sesame oil into a pan and heat it up until it’s just starting to shimmer. Spread the batter (for lack of a better word) out 1/2″ thick in your desired patty size. Cook on medium-high heat until the bottom solidifies and browns – it will take several minutes. Don’t try to flip it too soon or it will break apart.

Once the patties are cooked on both sides, slide onto a bun and top with your favorite salsa, and you’re ready to go.

I served these with sweet potato fries, which I’ll post tomorrow.

I used my leftover cucumber cream cheese dip as the sauce. I put out a plate of tomato and shredded lettuce and let my family assemble their pitas to their own taste.

For the meat, I bought a leg of lamb and cut it into strips. I fed these into my grinder with the fine grind plate in place and set the meat aside.

Next, I assembled my lamb seasonings.

I used about 2 tsp of garlic and black pepper from one of those little grinder bottles, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp of marjoram, and 2 tsp of cumin. I also used fresh rosemary, Greek oregano, and mint, as well as 3/4 cup of chopped onion.

After mincing the herbs, I mixed all these ingredients into the ground lamb and then fed it back through the grinder. Lamb holds together better the more you knead it, so grinding it twice not only incorporated the seasonings but also helped it stay fairly solid after cooking.

I heated my oven to 400° and pressed the lamb mixture into a 10″ square baking dish. This cooked for about 15 minutes. I poured off the excess liquid (mostly rendered fat) and sliced the meat into 1/2″x1″ pieces. I put about three of these in each of my pita pockets, and it was perfect.

One piece of advice: buy thick pita or flatbread. The pita I bought was too thin and tended to fall apart when picked up. I wound up finishing my gyros with a fork, and that kind of defeats the purpose.

Enjoy!

Ingredients are as follows:

• 1 large seedless cucumber (about 2 cups of puree)
• 1 cup light sour cream
• 1 cup light cream cheese
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp dill
• Salt and pepper to taste

Blend the cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. This helps prevent big lumps of cream cheese in the finished dip.

In a blender or food processor, pulse the cucumber down to a loose puree. Some small chunks are fine. I left the skin on my cucumber, but you can peel it if you like. You can make the final product thicker or thinner based on the amount of water you leave in the cucumber puree – if you prefer a thicker dip, drain the cucumber for a few minutes before adding it in. Full-fat sour cream and cream cheese will also result in a thicker dip than the light stuff.

Stir the lemon juice and dill into the cucumber and then combine this mixture with the dairy mixture until well blended. Taste and add salt and pepper if desired.

I presented this in a bread bowl, which is a nice-looking way to serve dips or soups. Pick out a round loaf with a sturdy crust and cut the top off. Cut at an angle, so that your knife is tilted toward the center at a 45° angle. Pull the top apart into bite-sized pieces.

Carefully pour the dip into the bread bowl. You probably won’t fit all the dip into the bowl initially, but you can top it up later.

Gradually the dip will soften the bread bowl so it can be pulled apart and eaten, and in the meantime you and your guests can dip the pieces from the top of the loaf.

The finished product is kind of reminiscent of a tzatziki or cucumber raita, and in fact I used it as a substitute for tzatziki in lamb gyros, which I’ll post soon.

I made mine in individual disposable loaf pans, because I realized I didn’t have enough baking containers of the same size and shape.

This recipe fed three people, but if you need to scale up for four the only component you really need is more pie crust. You can also cut down on the amount of crust you need by not completely covering the top – it won’t hurt anything.

You’ll need:

• 1 lb sirloin, cut into 2″ cubes
• 16 oz sliced mushrooms
• Approx 1 cup beef gravy
• 2 9-inch pie crusts

Preheat your oven to 350°.

Line your baking dishes with pie crust. You’ll need to get a little creative if your dishes are rectangular like mine, but as long as you carefully press any seams together you’ll be fine.

Blind bake the bottom crust for about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, brown your beef in a pan and set aside. You want to leave the steak quite rare – you’re just getting a little bit of a crust on the outside. The actual cooking takes place in the oven.

Cook down the mushrooms on medium heat for 5-7 minutes.

Cut the steak chunks into quarters to get bite sized pieces. You don’t want to cut them too small before browning, because it’s easier to overcook them.

Fill your pans with beef and mushrooms.

You can see how rare the beef is here.

Now, spoon gravy over the top. I find that this allows it to gradually melt down into the rest of the filling, which keeps the bottom crust from getting too soggy.

Now, place a piece of pie crust over the top. You don’t need to connect the two crusts.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until the crust begins to brown.

Thanks for your patience while I rot my brain with video games

Easter candy was 75% off and my lovely assistant wanted to use it to make candy in our Han Solo in Carbonite ice cube molds.

High-quality silicone ice molds can be used for hot things as well – they’re the same material as silicone baking molds, just marketed for a different purpose. Don’t grab just any soft floppy ice mold, though. I learned this the hard way when one turned to goo after a few minutes in a 300° oven. This is really high-grade silicone, though. The temperature of chocolate melted on the stove is nowhere near the max temperature for the mold.

I also tried to make Space Invaders candies, but the fine details on the molds are so small that it’s difficult to pour something as thick as melted chocolate into them. I succeeded with some of my other wacky ice molds, though. Easter Island heads and flying saucers

Cheap Easter candy is great for this because it’s, well, cheap. It melts easily and at a low temperature (heck, it melts in your hands) and has a lot of smoothing ingredients added.

The photos were taken at ten second intervals. I didn’t get any pictures of the finished candies before they disappeared into my friends’ mouths at craft night, though.

There are three basic ingredients to poutine:

• French fries
• Brown gravy
• Cheese curds

That’s it. Combine and devour.

Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that.

I didn’t go so far as to make my own french fries, because that’s a fair amount of effort – cutting, drying, frying, refrying, seasoning – but instead used the frozen kind. If you go that route, prepare the fries according to the instructions on the bag and then set them aside while you prepare the other components.

If you don’t feel up to the task of making homemade gravy, the stuff in the jar will do just fine.

Here’s my recipe for brown gravy, though.

• 3 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp flour
• 4 cups beef stock

I made the stock over the weekend from a pile of bones I had been collecting in the freezer. It was actually a mixture of beef and pork bones, if you want to get specific.

Melt the butter in a deep-sided pan and whisk in the flour. Cook gently until the foaming stops. Turn up the heat to medium and gradually add the stock, whisking until smooth before each addition. Increase the heat to medium-high until it thickens.

Heat your oven to 350° (in my case I just had to let the oven cool down to this temp, since the fries cooked at a higher temperature).

Scatter your cheese curds over your fries and bake until melted. (If you can’t find cheese curds, mozzarella will work in a pinch, although it has a different texture entirely. Cheese curds are “squeaky” when melted.) Drizzle hot gravy over the top and serve.

However! One thing about my husband that makes me despair a bit is that he hates salmon. The kid and I love it, so I serve it whenever it’s just us.

Preheat your oven to 450°. In a bowl, combine:

• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp dill

Place two salmon fillets skin-side down in a lightly oiled baking dish. Brush all surfaces of the flesh with your sauce and bake for 15 minutes. This will leave your salmon fillets soft and very slightly rare. You can cook it for a few minutes longer if you prefer your fish a little more well done.

That’s it! Salmon is a fish that I don’t like to do too much to. The sauce is sweet and tangy, but not overwhelming at all.

Sorry for the crappy photo

One of my favorite classic Chinese takeout dishes is wonton soup. It’s simple stuff, although it does take a little bit of prep work.

This meal ended up being overwhelmingly brown. I served the wonton soup with crispy fried wonton strips, egg rolls (from a box, I didn’t make them), and green tea. Not a lot of color there, but tons of flavor!

The first thing you want to get out of the way is the crispy wonton strips. These are very similar to the fried tortilla strips I made to go with my tortilla soup, but they’re best fried a little darker. I used soybean oil with a dollop of sesame oil to fry them.

Now that these are done, you can set them aside and work on your soup.

These are the ingredients I used to make my wonton filling:

• 1/2 lb pork, minced or ground
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground white pepper
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 egg

Mix all ingredients until thoroughly combined.

Start your broth simmering while you build your wontons, so it will be ready to go. My broth was three ingredients:

• 6 cups chicken broth or stock
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

I used homemade chicken stock, so it’s a bit cloudier than what you’ve probably seen in your local eatery.

Take your wonton wrappers out one at a time, so they don’t dry out. Dampen one entire side of the wrapper with a little bit of water, then drop a spoonful of filling in the center. My wontons aren’t pretty, but they’re functional – I folded the corners up to get a little square pouch and then crimped the corners of that.

Gently drop the wontons into the broth and simmer on medium heat for 20-25 minutes, until the wontons float to the surface and the wrapper turns opaque. Pull out a wonton and cut into it to check the pork for doneness.

This served two pretty abundantly. You can eat the crispy wontons on their own or drop them into the soup.

Also, a word of warning: when you pull a batch of egg rolls out of the oven, they’re hot in the middle. I burned the crap out of my tongue tonight, and I don’t recommend it!