Taco-Stuffed Tomatoes

Meat!  Rice!  Cheese!  TOMATOES!  How can this go wrong?

The answer is, IT CAN'T!

This is a little more intensive than most of my meals.  Stuffed foods take a lot of prep work.  It's just sort of a fact of life.  But they are totally worth it.

Taco-Stuffed Tomatoes
Servings: 1 (with some extra filling to nosh on)

Ingredients

Also, beef and celery.  Side note:  Uncle Ben needs some oil-absorbing sheets to get rid of that shine.

• Tomato
• Onion (a 1/4 inch slice should be enough)
• Garlic (1 small clove; I used half a large clove)
• Cheddar Cheese
• Rice
• Ground Beef
• Celery
• Taco Seasoning, or if you don't have it (like me; stupid moving and my incomplete pantry!):
• Chili Powder
• Cumin
• Paprika
• Crushed Red Pepper
• Salt and Pepper

Directions

Brown your beef!  I used about 1/4 lb fully anticipating extra tastiness at the end while I waited for the whole thing to bake in the oven.  (Also, it seemed a little silly to only cooking, like, 1/16 lb for just one tomato.)

Beef.  Greatest.  Meat.  Ever.

While that's going, make some rice.

 
Now, this is a case where you should definitely make more than enough to stuff a tomato.  Rice is always good to have on hand.

But wait! you cry, forlornly raising up a Chinese take-out box of hardened, stale rice, You can't store rice!

Ah, my little reader.  What you have been missing is this trick culled from my Korean former-roommate:

...mmm, mushroom and spinach pizza...

Freeze it!  Seriously.  It retains its moisture and just needs a quick zap in the microwave to be just as fluffy and delicious again.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We chopped up some onion and minced some garlic.

(Yes, Mihwa, I used my onion goggles:

Victory against onions is mine!  P.S. Sorry for my own brand of Uncle Ben shininess.  Summer has this shocking ability to make you sweat.  Weird, I know.)

Add your onions and garlic to your almost-done beef and cook until almost clear.

Finally, we get to the TOMATO!

Slice off the top.

There's something innately mad scientist-y to cutting off the tops of things.  Like I'm going to replace its insides with chimpanzee brains.

Scoop out the inside pulp.

Try not to break the structural integrity of the skin; as you can plainly see, I caused a small tear in it.  There will be aesthetic ramifications later!

Save the pulp for later; it'll add moisture to our stuffing mixture.  (Save more than you think you'll need; I used too little of mine and my tomato's inside ended up a little dry.)

If you don't have enough juice to make the stuffing wet, add a little bit of salsa.

Back to the filling.  Chop up some celery; I used about 1/4 a stalk.  I know using celery sounds weird, but one of my favorite parts of tacos is the refreshing crispness of the lettuce.  I use celery in this because it retains its crunch, unlike lettuce which would wilt.

Now, we put everything together!  Add all the spices to taste; personally, I just added the heck out of the chili powder and cumin.

Mix it all together!

And now stuff your tomato!

Of course, no taco is complete without CHEESE!

Put this sucker in a 375F oven for 15-20 minutes or until tomato is tender and cheese is bubbly.

I know, I know.  You're hungry NOW.

Well good thing there's more stuffing for you to eat!

I suppose technically you could stuff another tomato...but who doesn't love taco salad?

When your tomato is done, take it out of the oven and admire its beauty.  Well, quickly, before you devour it.

See what I mean about structural integrity?  *sigh*

Pasta Risotto-Style with Spinach and Mushrooms

So this recipe is loosely based on one from the New York Times.  I love Mark Bittman's columns, and this one in particular really caught my eye.  As a college student on the run (thank you, stage managing/research assisting/class taking), I was always looking for quick and easy ways to make things flavorful.  Cooking pasta in broth?  GENIUS.  In no time at all, I was suddenly elevated from pasta with Prego to something just a little bit special.  I know it sounds melodramatic, but this idea truly changed my life.


This is the first recipe I'm sharing with you, and you'll notice that already I'm taking shortcuts.  That's kinda who I am because
1) I'm cheap and
2) I'm lazy.
As are most people, right?  And since I'm showing cooking from a real-world perspective, I'm not going to hide either of those traits from you.

So let's get started!

Pasta Risotto-Style with Spinach and Mushrooms
Servings: 2 (or 1, if you're like me and didn't eat lunch today)

Ingredients

Yes, I use store-brand products.  Coupon-cutter since age 6, babes!

• Olive Oil
• 1/2 Onion
• 1 Clove Garlic
• 3 Mushrooms
• Spinach, raw or frozen to taste (I used about a sixth of a frozen package)
• 1 1/2 Cups Chicken Bullion + Water (or Broth, if you're fancy)
• 1/8-1/4 of a box of Pasta (guesstimate depending on how hungry you are; I won't judge you) 

Directions:

Garlic:  Watch out, Onion!  She's out for you!

Onion:  THE AGONY!

Slice an onion in half and chop it up.  Chop, chop, chop.

Next, mince up a garlic clove.  Mine was rather big, so I used only one, but feel free to use more to taste.

Getting the papery shell off is my favorite part, mostly because

WHAM!  I get to unleash some of my inner rage/childhood trauma all over that little bad boy.

*evil laugh*

So now we have our onion chopped and our garlic minced:

Next, we put a bit of olive oil into a pot.

And once it's hot, drop in our little Allium buddies.

While those are getting all deliciously translucent, chop up some mushrooms.

Three should do, but again, add more or less to taste.

Right as the onions are getting clear like on a day during which you could see forever, add the mushrooms and cook for an extra minute or two.

Finally, we get to the pasta part of the recipe!  Pour your pasta into the pan and stir it up with the veggies so it gets coated in oil.  Add more olive oil if needed.

And now, the risotto part of the recipe.  First you need broth.  (You could also add white wine, but I usually just make it with broth given the oft-barren state of my kitchen.)  You can use homemade stock (delicious) or broth from the store (also tasty), but I prefer bullion cubes.  They don't go bad like broth and they're pre-measured, so they're super convenient.

My super-convenient secret weapon!

Add broth 1/2 cup at a time.  The pasta will absorb the broth, I promise.

Add broth...

The pasta absorbs it (told ya!)...

And add more broth!

I added about 1 1/2 cups broth total.  Right before the pasta is al dente, add your spinach.  If you're using fresh spinach, give it a good rough chop before adding.

Oh, frozen spinach. I like how it's so compact.

Mix it on in!

 And then once the pasta's ready, you're done!  Last step is to salt and pepper to taste (me, I'm mostly all pepper).

I am spasming with tastiness right now.

And if you happened to make more than you planned to, well, it's more deliciousness for you in the form of tomorrow's lunch (or tonight's midnight snack, as was the case for me).

Mmm...Leftovers...

Seriously, how easy was that?  And you can make tons of varieties of this.  Pick your own vegetables.  Add chicken.  If you're too lazy to add broth in 1/2 cup increments or you're too busy watching the latest episode of Doctor Who to bother (we've all been there), add it all at the start and the pasta will absorb it.  Most importantly, have fun with it!

My Life with Food: An Introduction

I finally decided that I would try my hand at food blogging (I want to call it flogging, but that might be insensitive to Paul Bettany in The DaVinci Code--not that I readily associate myself with anything Dan Brown related, but I can't resist Mr. Bettany's unrepentant awesomeness).  I've always loved food, but until about a year ago, I didn't have a lot of experience when it came to cooking.

I was raised in a household where frozen meals and Hamburger Helper were a way a life.  I remember I had a Mother's Day assignment where I had to write a paper about the my favorite meal my mother makes.  I picked Stouffer's mac and cheese (what, it's delicious!).  My teacher thought I was being snarky and asked me to redo the assignment, not believing that a child could be raised on oven-ready food alone.

When I eventually got to college, I stuck on the meal plan for as long as I could.  Most people hated it, since they were used to home-cooked meals drenched in love and more than 15 minutes of work.  I, on the other hand, loved it.  It was heads and shoulders above what I was used to, and, honestly?  I doubted I'd ever be able to make anything closer to edible.

Luckily, I had the pleasure of having two wonderful apartment-mates my senior year who openly embraced cooking--real cooking--as a way of feeding yourself.  They laughed at my many packages of ramen and encouraged me to just go for it:  get a recipe and make it!  It might not taste the best, but it's pretty hard to make food really inedible.  And even if I do massively screw up, there's always ramen, right?

This all comes down to my type of cooking, which I describe as splash-and-dash:  learning to cook well under a time crunch with a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Most importantly it's fun, loose, inexperienced, and especially enthusiastic.  It's about figuring out that cooking is not actually that hard if you keep practicing.  So this is me, practicing.  This stuff isn't gourmet; the photos are from a cheap Costco camera.  But I'd like to think it's a way to see how a young twenty-something can teach herself to cook confidently and eat well.