Have you tried these pancakes yet? I eat them probably 3 times a week for breakfast. If that’s wrong I don’t want to be right.
The thing is, they’re healthy, too. On account of the garbanzo bean flour and egg they have 10g of fiber and 18g of protein. Add a little something sweet and that’s a breakfast.
This fruit syrup is simple—no fuss—and only has a touch of honey for sweetness making it plenty healthy, too. So go ahead, pour it on, and pass it over.
Simple Fruit Syrup
Ingredients:
Cook the fruit in a small pot over a low heat until tender enough that a fork easily glides through.
Mash the fruit until smooth and jelly-like. Alternatively, you could puree the fruit in a food processor or blender for an even smoother puree.
Stir in the honey and salt.
Pour into a serving container and serve. Refrigerate leftover sauce for 2-3 days.
You could eat this on pancakes, ice cream, toast—anything! I like the sauce thicker so you get whole chunks of fruit in every bite. It thickens up as it cools to be more like jelly, so you might want to heat it up depending on how you’re using it. It would taste great warm on ice cream, though I think that goes without saying.
“Secret secrets are no fun, secret secrets hurt someone”
Secrets are never good. Someone always ends up crying alone on the swing set during recess. But enough about my childhood. This sauce has a secret: It’s actually healthy for you, and it’s healthy because there’s an extra serving of vegetables in it. You’d never guess from tasting it, but cauliflower—not cream—is what makes this sauce so thick. I won’t tell if you won’t tell.
Cauliflower Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup tomato paste
- 1/2 cup steamed cauliflower OR 1 cup raw cauliflower, steamed
- 3 Tablespoons white vinegar
- 2 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 teaspoons fresh chopped basil
If you’re working with raw cauliflower to begin with, chop it up and steam it until it’s soft and reduced to about half of its size.
Combine the tomato sauce, cauliflower, vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar in a food processor and process until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the processor as needed to make sure no clumps remain.
Fold in the fresh basil. Toss with pasta and season to taste.
Another secret: I don’t like pasta, so I took one taste and gave this away before making myself another dinner. But I could have drank the sauce, and pasta is nothing without sauce.
Apparently I get my love of cooking from my great grandmother. I say apparently because I never really knew her when she was active; I only ever heard stories of her cooking from my mother. And my grandmother never cooked; she comes over to my house and asks for freshly baked cookies. Is it just me or is there something wrong there?
From what I hear, my great grandmother was a great cook. She made her pasta, tomato sauce, and everything else by hand. A few nights ago my mom mentioned how she poached eggs in tomato sauce, and as soon as I heard that I knew I had to try it. Turns out it’s not so difficult and makes for some of the best tasting eggs I’ve ever had. I’ve already made this twice because I didn’t bother taking photos the first time. How could I mind having to eat this again?
Eggs Poached In Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
For this recipe, I used Trader Joe’s marinara sauce. You can make your own if you’re feeling ambitious, but this is a great tasting brand that’s cheap, too.
Bring the tomato sauce to a slight boil in a pan. Adjust the heat so that it’s boiling but not spattering over the sides.
Carefully crack the eggs into the sauce, making sure not to break the yolks.
Cover the pan with a fitted lid. Poaching the eggs this way takes slightly longer than normally. Leave them undisturbed keeping an eye on them.
The eggs will be done as soon as the albumen over the yolk turns white. Take the pan off the heat and plate and serve hot.
I served mine over a stack of savory Italian socca pancakes which soaked up the sauce and the yolks perfectly. Cooking the eggs this way added all the flavors of the sauce into them; regular poached eggs just can’t compare.
I have a new obsession. It’s tahini. I’ve heard a few other bloggers talk about how good this seed butter is but never picked it up at the store since the only brand I could find was majorly expensive. Luckily, they started carrying a new brand that’s much cheaper and I decided to give it a go.
I’m not looking back.
The flavor is very savory, almost bitter, just like you’d imagine sesame seeds to be in concentration. On its own it’s a bit much but paired with other flavors it’s excellent.
Lemon-Tahini Fish Sauce
Ingredients:
- 2 Tablespoons tahini
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 1/2 Tablespoons neutral oil
- 1/2 Tablespoon water
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon dill weed
Mix all of the ingredients together until smooth and silky. If the sauce is too thick, add an extra 1/2 a tablespoon of water to thin it out.
This sauce would be good with:
- Any white fish
- Tofu
- Tempeh
- Veggie burgers
- Chickpeas
- Diced potatoes
And much more. This recipe was a huge success; I can’t wait to try more with tahini.
Some foods I could eat at every meal. Peanut butter is one of them. My favorite peanut dish has always been Pad Thai with that rich, silky sweet sauce. As a rule, the best Pad Thai usually comes from the sketchiest restaurants where you’re not really sure what they’re cooking with and you’re not sure you want to know.
But this recipe wasn’t inspired from a Thai restaurant; it comes from Ina Garten. One episode, Ina was making a lunch for some couple that paid a God awful amount of money at a charity auction to have lunch with her. The worst part was the pants the husband(not Jeffrey) was wearing; they were turquoise with some yellow nautical pattern—God, I wanted to turn off the TV right there.
But I’m glad I didn’t because Ina made an Asian noodle salad that sounded too good to pass up. This weekend I grabbed some foreign ingredients I don’t normally keep around(tahini, roasted red chili paste) and tried to imitate the recipe as best I could from memory. If you can’t find roasted red chili paste, it’s basically just red chilis, fish sauce, garlic, and a heck of a lot of sodium. The unique flavor really helps add a lot of depth without much effort.
Thai Sesame Peanut Sauce
Ingredients
Combine all the ingredients together and whisk until emulsified. Add more salt to taste if necessary. If the sauce isn’t hot enough, continue adding chili powder until it reaches your desired spice level.
After that you can smother this on grilled chicken, or toss it with noodles and sprouts, or mix it into a salad like I did. In the mix were:
- Mixed greens
- Shredded carrots
- Mushrooms
- Firm tofu
I was really impressed with how quick and easy the sauce was to make. I will definitely be whipping it up again. You can make a big batch of this and refrigerate the extra sauce in a sealed container for up to a week. And if it’s good enough to serve in the Hamptons, it’s good enough to serve wherever you are.
One of my favorite cuisine’s to cook now is Asian. Maybe it’s because there’s something so good about take-out food that you make yourself; maybe it’s because it’s practically impossible to eat out at an Chinese restaurant and avoid gluten; or maybe it’s because I’m Italian/French/Polish and have no place cooking with these flavors and I like being a rebel. Whatever it is, I think fake-out take-out dishes are the bee’s knees right now, and this sauce is a great condiment to pour on anything to give it that flavor. I’ve used it on tofu, broccoli, chicken—you name it—and it hasn’t disappointed.
Sweet And Sour Sauce
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup rice vinegar
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice
Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pan and bring it to a slight boil. Continue boiling it until it has reduced half of its volume and the sauce has thickened.
You’ll know it’s done when it starts to coat the bottom of the pan like this as you tilt it.
Be careful not to over boil and turn this into a candy. In that case, remove it from the heat and stir in some hot water until it reaches the right consistency.
Store this in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
This doesn’t make that much sauce, so you might want to double the recipe if you’re going to use it a lot. On the other hand, it packs a lot of flavor so you only need about 1/2 a tablespoon for each serving. It’s sweet; it’s sour; it’s delicious. And there’s no scary ingredients, too, when you make it yourself.
