2021: 52 Weeks, 52 New Recipes
Recipe 1: Chocolate Peanut Butter
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Think nutella but peanut butter (although, just read somewhere that nutella is primarily sugar and palm oil with hazelnuts coming in at a distant third ingredient-sad). I loosely "followed" this recipe. I chopped 2 cups of roasted peanuts in a food processor- luckily if you have a mom who just happened to send you back from the holidays with a giant tub of freshly roasted raw peanuts, you're in luck! Once the peanuts are chopped finely (might have to open up the processor and scrape some of the peanuts stuck to the side walls a few times) and have the consistency matching the crumbs leftover from a Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bar, add in oil, salt, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and use your food processor to blend it all together. I ended up adding more oil little by little to get the consistency just right for my liking. I also added a 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon because why not? I transferred the resulting chocolate peanut butter into a mason jar and stored it in the fridge.Recipe 2: Spicy Butternut Squash Pasta with Spinach
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First time cooking with butternut squash- came out pretty good too. The recipe I followed was from The New York Times. Instead of ground cumin, I substituted it with whole cumin seeds and because I like cumin seeds a lot, I doubled the amount to two tablespoons. For next time, I'd probably add more salt along the way and add some sliced pickled jalapeños right before baking the dish (I just used raw jalapeños this time) to help the flavor.Recipe 3: Simple Pasta with Minimal Ingredients
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Here's a really simple recipe to make pasta that does not taste like you put store bought pasta directly into a jar of pre-made pasta sauce. This recipe was adapted from a phone call I had with my mom about how she made the seafood pasta we had over winter break. Here are very loose and rather hand wavy instructions. For the pasta pictured above, I will admit that I spilled half a container of italian seasoning into my pasta and had to pick out as much as I could. With that being said, I don't think italian spices are necessary so I will opt out going forward. So without further ado, here are the ingredients:For a serving size to feed a village, you'll need:
- olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of a pan (I used a 14" diameter, 3" tall pan)
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 medium sized oninon, chopped
- 1/2 cup of White Zinfandel Wine (I used Beringer- doesn't break the bank and it also happens to be the one my mom used)
- 28 oz can of San Marzano Tomatoes, Crushed (I really like this brand)
- 1 lb of spaghetti
- parmesan cheese [optional]
- shrimp [optional] </ul>
So yeah- you only need 6 ingredients to make this pasta (of course, if you want to add shrimp, meat, or other vegetables, you can also tack that onto the ingredients).
So the general instructions are first, heat up the pan, add in the oil, add in the garlic. Saute for 1 minute and then add the diced onions. Saute the onion and garlic mixture for 5 minutes or until the onions have a semi-tranparent appearance. Reduce the heat a bit and add in the wine and mix for another few minutes. Afterwards, add in the tomato sauce. This is basically it for the sauce. If you want to dilute the sauce, you can also use some of boiled pasta water to dilute and thin the sauce a bit. Add in the pasta noodles and mix! Voila. Also, pour yourself a glass of some of that white zinfandel and enjoy! Note: Since I was making this for my apartmentmate (who also happens to be vegetarian) I cooked the shrimp separately and added it to my bowl. If you want to add the shrimp directly into the sauce, I would add it when you reduce the heat and add the wine, so that it can soak in the flavor that the wine imparts. If you want to add it in after like I did, I peeled the raw shrimp and had it sitting in a bowl with lemon juice and italian seasoning for 30 minutes prior to cooking. </details> ## Recipe 4: Roasted Salmon with Honey Glaze Paired with Purple Rice 