Stromboli

This week's entry is brought to you by the Bloomington, IN visitors' bureau.

Welcome to dinner-and-a-movie night. Tonight's feature is Breaking Away accompanied by home-made stromboli in the style of Nick's English Hut in Bloomington.

As far as I can tell (by searching the internet and reading the Wikipedia article linked above) in most places stromboli is a delicate-looking Italian turnover sandwich. If you are in Bloomington, stromboli is a giant pizza sandwich on a hoagie roll whose only ambition is to drip tomato sauce on your pants (see above photo). We went with the second definition.

Preheat oven to 350

Slice rolls in half. We used hoagie sandwich bread, but anything in the Italian bread family should be fine. Slather on a thick coat of pizza sauce to the bottom half of your bread. Top with whatever pizza toppings you prefer; we used green pepper, tomato, and mushroom but in future I would like to add in onion (if you are non-vegetarian, Italian meats are more traditional). On the top half of your bread, pile as much cheese as you dare-- mozzarella is good.

Bake on a cookie sheet until cheese is bubbly and browning-- I think our sandwiches took in the area of 10 minutes. 

I think we'll be eating stromboli again in the near future. It's super easy and fast and we almost always have leftover pizza sauce and toppings after we make pizza. Stromboli is best paired with jelly donuts from Square Donuts on Walnut St. in Bloomington.

Black Bean Tacos and Mexican Rice

Hello Internet, it's good to see you again. Carolyn and I have been away, but not idle these past two weeks. Well, we've been mostly idle, but not completely idle. As proof, I'm here to tell you, Internet, about the wonderful taco night we had earlier this week. Before I get involved in explaining the new recipes, I should mention that "black bean tacos" just means a can of black beans instead of beef. So next time you're craving tacos but you have a vegetarian to please, just toss a can of black bean into the skillet instead of a pound of ground beef.

We tried out 2 new recipes for our dinner on Thursday. The first was a new method for seasoning the beans (or beef, if you like). Prior to this recipe, we just used the 50 cent packaged stuff you find at the grocery store. It works fine but is a little high in sodium and easy to forget when you're at the store, and we just felt like trying something new. So the following list is just a mixture of dry spices to be used in lieu of a purchased taco seasoning packet:


1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper


Carolyn and I both agree, this is an fine alternative for seasoning your beef (or beans), and an excellent starting point for further experimentation. On the whole, it tastes very close to what you'd buy at the store, perhaps a touch spicier. In the future, we'll use this as a base, then add other seasonings for varied flavors (for instance chipotle taco seasoning or lime taco seasoning).

Carolyn ate the gorgeous tacos pictured at the top of this post. I went for a taco salad:

Honestly though, taco night was just an excuse to try our hand at Mexican rice. The following recipe is very delicious, though it was by far too oily. Next time, we'll use 1/3 the oil, but keep basically everything else the same:

Blend together 12 oz can diced tomatoes and about 1/2 a diced onion. You'll only use 2 cups of this mixture, so have something in mind to do with the left-overs. We added our left-over tomato and onion in pizza sauce the next night.

Meanwhile heat up 1/3 cup canola oil (Carolyn eye-balled this and estimates she used a little less than 1/3 cup ((but still toooooo oily)))

Rinse 2 cups uncooked rice thoroughly in running water. Our recipe (which I think came from America's Test Kitchen originally, so I trust their advice) claims that this step is vital because it removes excess starch and makes the resulting rice fluffy.

Fry uncooked rice in oil for about 6 minutes (or until "translucent"). Reduce heat to medium and add 4 cloves diced garlic and 2 diced jalapeno peppers (remove seeds if you don't like your food too spicy). Cook a couple minutes. Add two cups vegetable broth and your two cups of pureed tomato and onion. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Next, transfer to an oven-safe pan (we used a glass baking dish, although the recipe recommends a dutch oven) and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven. Stir in as much cilantro as you can stand and liberally apply lime juice. Enjoy!

This was great. As I said above, much too oily, but even that didn't detract from the flavor. The only change I would consider is to add more cilantro, but I tend to go overboard with it. Today, we reheated the rice in a frying pan with a bunch of spinach, and that was fantastic too. Definitely making this recipe again soon.

Soup and Stew Sunday #6: Another Black Bean Soup

Seems like we keep doing soups in twos for our Soup and Stew Sundays. I guess it has something to do with our love of comparing things. Anyway, this week, we made a black bean soup adapted from this smitten kitchen recipe.

Future Ben and Carolyn, make this soup again. It was good, required few ingredients, and really easy to make. I know we usually save the review for after the recipe, so I'll leave it at that for now:

one large red onion, chopped
4 bell peppers, green, red, yellow, and orange, chopped
a tablespoon of oil

Saute for 5-8 minutes, until the vegetables are tender but well before onions begin to caramelize.

4 teaspoons of cumin
4 cloves of garlic

Add these and continue sauteing for 2-3 more minutes.

4 (15oz) cans of black beans
1 tablespoon of chipotle peppers in adobe sauce
1/2 teaspoon red pepper
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons of salt
2-3 cups of water

Chuck it all in there and stir it up a bit. Let it simmer on medium for at least 30 minutes. The longer you let it simmer, the thicker it will get (which is good).

Remove 2-3 cups to a blender and puree, then return and stir.

juice from 1/2 lime

squeeze this in at the end and give it a good stir. Taste, and adjust salt levels accordingly.

We ate this soup with tortilla chips on Sunday and a quesadilla today. It could go with just about any bread product. So there you have the recipe. We used a little too much water so the soup was a bit thin yesterday. It thickened up nicely overnight though. The lime juice was noticeable on Sunday, but it didn't come through tonight; Carolyn and I both agreed that we could add more next time. Other than that, it was a perfect black bean soup. The variety of bell peppers is necessary, I think, and their presence adds a little bit of refreshment that breaks up the black bean flavor.

Give this soup a try and let us know how it turns out.

Soup and Stew Sunday #5: Quinoa and Black Bean Chili

Quinoa? Don't worry, I didn't know what it was either. And, by the way, you're saying it wrong. It's not "qwin-noah," it's pronounced "keen-wha." My roommate, among her many other virtues, happens to be the sort of person who knows the sort of person who purchases quinoa in bulk from the co-op. Thus, this week for soup-or-stew-Sunday we were introduced to this delicious grain.

But enough preliminaries. I know you came here for the recipe. We adapted a chili recipe we found on allrecipes.com.

1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
2 cups water

Bring water and quinoa to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until quinoa has absorbed the water.

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin

Cook onion in oil. Add garlic and spices, cook a little more, about a minute (or until people walk into the room and say "sure smells good").

1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
2 (19 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1 green bell pepper, chopped (we also added another 1/2 pepper that happened to be in the fridge)
1 zucchini, chopped
2 tablespoons minced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (Roommate bravely used a knife and fork to cut the slimy, scary peppers)
1 teaspoon dried oregano


Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes (or until vegetables are soft). Add tomato juice or water if you think the stew looks too thick--we did.

salt and black pepper to taste
1 cup frozen corn 

Cook about 5 more minutes, or until corn is hot.
Serve with chopped fresh cilantro and shredded cheese on top.

Quinoa is really great! Ben thought that the small grain made the broth of the stew seem thick, reminiscent of a meat chili. I like the quinoa because when they are cooked and hanging out in the both they look like teeny-tiny shiny eyes. Sorry to get all creepy on you.