Tomato Pepper Carrot Puree (Raw Spaghetti Sauce)

Staring down a pile of ripe tomatoes, I knew I wanted pasta sauce for my freezer.  I knew that I wanted to make a huge batch, eat some for dinner, and freeze the rest.  I knew that dinner was in 30 minutes.  So, I punted (which is a luxury I can afford, when I don't intend on preserving the final product in a jar, on the shelf.)

After finding this recipe and taking stock of what I had, I scoffed at the suggested three tomatoes, grabbed as many things from my fridge as I dared, and came up with this.

Technically, I'm going to call it a tomato-carrot-bell pepper puree.  Eat it cold and plain, it's gazpacho.  Warm it up and thin it down with some chicken stock, it's a nice warm soup base.  Cook it down thicker, and it would make an excellent spread for crackers or little toast points or crusty baguette rounds.  Use it as a pizza sauce.  Do what I did, and spoon some into a hot pot of drained pasta, add back some of the starchy pasta water, and stir it over low heat till the sauce is thick and clingy on the noodles.  The main thing to remember is it's raw, it's delicious, and it's fast.  Oh, and it's smooth.  Very, VERY important to my kids.

Tomato Pepper Carrot Puree
Makes about 5 Cups


1/4 cup olive oil
10 medium sized tomatoes, halved (I used Early Girls and very, very fat Romas from the garden)
3-4 cloves garlic
1 small onion, halved
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
2 Tbsp dried basil (use fresh if you have it- I made ALL of my basil into pesto yesterday)
2 Tbsp white vinegar (for a little kick, and to keep it bright looking)
2 red bell peppers, topped and seeded, then torn into quarters
2 good-sized carrots, chopped into 1" cubes
Pepper

Start with the first eight ingredients, but only put in two or three halved tomatoes.  Blend well- as you can, add the rest of the ingredients.  I have a workhorse of a vintage VitaMix, you might need to adjust things or use a food processor at home.  Grating the carrots would also help in smaller blenders.  Taste test, and add more basil or salt or pepper or garlic or red pepper, or whatever you fancy.

As a pasta sauce, I'd say this made enough for about 5 pounds of pasta.

White N' Wheat Bread

This is our every-day bread recipe. Since a loaf pan is small, it makes small sandwiches but the wheat is so filling that it's OK! The whole process takes me about 6 hours, but there are only about 10 minutes of hands-on time in the beginning, and then an occasional punch-down or roll-out. So if you have half an hour to watch this mix up in the Kitchen Aid in the morning, and plan on being around later for punching and rolling, you can have fresh bread!

I grind my own wheat flour, since we have so much of it from the cannery. I figure if I'm going to store the stuff, I should know how to use it for at least one or two recipes so we're not stuck eating boiled wheat! I use our Vita-Mix to grind the wheat berries- 2 cups of berries, grind for 1 minute and tap to get everything out that fell into the spigot, and then grind again for a minute. It's not a very "fine" flour, but it works well enough for bread.

I've posted a similar recipe before, for Simple Bread, but this recipe has my own changes. I added olive oil to make a smoother dough, and a softer/moister loaf. It's amazing what a glug of olive oil can do. I'm sure you could substitute almost any fat, but I like the olive oil with the nutty wheat. I've tried this with ALL wheat flour, and it turns out so dense that while everyone says it's good, I notice I'm the only one eating it. So, I scaled back to half and half white and wheat, and my whole family requests it- I figure ANY additional fiber is good, right?

The keys to making this really good:

• Let it mix a long time before you add more flour, and add flour a little at a time so as much flour can have a long mixing time as possible. When the dough gets stiffer, it just doesn't get as much kneading action in the machine, so mix a lot while it's thin.

• You want the dough as moist as possible. Add flour just until it's manageable.

• Let this rise! You could get by with 1 rising in the bowl, but two makes such a nice loaf. And if you don't have time to bake, just keep punching it down when it's doubled. An overnight rise in the refrigerator is even better. You won't believe what a soft, smooth, dough you'll get.
  

• Oil the dough well- I noticed that while my dough rises nicely in the bowl, the piece I gave my daughter to knead got left on the counter and NEVER rose. So make sure it has a thin coating all the way around. (I've never heard this anywhere else though, so maybe I'm just making things up...)

White N' Wheat Bread

Ingredients:
2 cups very hot water
1 heaping Tablespoon yeast
2 heaping Tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon olive oil (a "glug")
3 cups all-purpose white flour
2-3 cups wheat flour

• Put first three ingredients in mixer bowl, and let proof 10 minutes.
• Add salt, olive oil, and 3 cups white flour. Mix with dough hook 10 minutes on low-medium speed. You'll see dough start to pull away from side of bowl in strings that snap.
• Add wheat flour a half cup at a time, mixing a few minutes after each addition. Mix until dough completely pulls away from side of bowl. It should still be moist and slightly sticky when you turn off the mixer.
• On a well-floured board, knead dough just until it stops trying to stick to your hands. Keep pulling in flour from the board edge to just dust the kneading space.
• Drizzle mixer bowl with olive oil and use your hand to spread it around. Put the dough back in, and spin then flip and spin again to completely coat dough ball with oil. If it's not oiled, it won't rise properly!
  
• Cover bowl with a thin, damp, towel. I use a spray bottle to mist it.
  
• Let rise till doubled- when you poke your fingers in, the indent should stay and not spring back much at all. Punch down, and rise again.
• Punch down a second time and cut in half. Using your knuckles, push a dough half into a rectangle the width of your loaf pan, and then roll tightly jelly-roll style. Pinch end to seal, and place seal-side down on the counter. Pull dough on ends to cover the edges, and seal on the bottom. Repeat with the other half of the dough, and put in loaf pans. Cover with damp towel again and let rise until it reaches the top of the pan. I like to set them next to the my oven vent and set the oven to preheat- the heat helps it rise quickly, and makes sure that my oven is good and hot when the bread gets in there.
• Bake at 350 for 25 minutes- to test, tip a loaf out of its pan and tap the bottom. It should sound hollow.
  

Mochi

It's another Vitamix recipe! I'm in the final days of pregnancy, and craving sweets. It's fierce, I tell you! Luckily for me, we try not to keep too much prepared food around the house. It's better for us, but stinks when I go out of town and come back to...nothing, until I cook it. It's much easier to convince myself to NOT make that batch of cookies, than to tell myself to leave them in the cupboard. (Will you look at those hands? I've had the hands of an old women since I was 10. No joke. Oddly enough, they haven't GROWN since I was 12, either!)

The craving became too fierce the other day, and I wondered if it would be possible to make my own rice flour at home and create a passable mochi. For those who didn't grow up in a dense and vibrant Asian community, mochi is a rather traditional kind of Asian sweet- sweet sticky rice, mixed with a little water and sugar and pounded into a gummy dough. The dough can be rolled into balls and coated with various powders, or wrapped around fillings. My mom's favorite is mochi dough wrapped around mango ice cream. It seems that each country treats their mochi a little differently.

I started by grinding 2 cups of regular sticky rice in the Vitamix. All the recipes call for "Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour" (or glutinous rice flour.) I think Mochiko is the brand...but I was willing to give my rice flour a shot! The vitamix isn't the machine for making powder-fine flour- it left little bits and bobs behind.

The first recipe I tried is here. It was kind of a disaster- way too sticky to handle, and the larger bits of rice flour sunk to the bottom making a kind of crust. The top was yummy and smooth, though. It might have worked better with a finer flour.

My second recipe can be found here. It used about half the amount of water, so the dough was fairly pasty before being put in the microwave, rather than a liquid. I think this recipe is the keeper! I've included it below, with my changes. Basically, I've doubled the recipe, increased the sugar a tad, and changed the handling instructions slightly.

Mochi

Ingredients:
14 Tablespoons Rice Flour (1 cup less 2 Tbsp)
3 Tbsp sugar
10 Tbsp boiling water

1. In a glass dish (I used a 4 cup pyrex cup), mix rice flour and sugar.
   
2. Heat 11 Tbsp water in a pyrex cup in the microwave, and add 10 Tbsp boiling water to flour-sugar mixture. Stir two minutes.
   
3. Cover with saran wrap and microwave 2-4 minutes. I cooked mine 3.
4. Pour a small amount of oil into a large Ziploc bag, and coat inside thoroughly. Scoop hot dough into bag and start kneading. You might need to cover the bag with a towel, this is hot! Use the heel of your hand to push the dough out, then grab a bag corner and shake back into a ball. Eventually, dough will form a solid (and cool) enough lump where you can just mash it in your hands like play clay. Knead for 7-10 minutes, until kind of springy and chewy.
   
5. Grab off teaspoon-sized chunks and roll into balls. You can put filling inside (red bean paste, guava jelly, etc. were all suggested), and you can roll these in powdered peanutes, more rice flour, toasted sesame flour, etc. I left mine plain.

Here is my dough ball. It's only out of respect for YOU that this wasn't consumed as-is! It's much prettier rolled into balls, don't you think?

Three Kinds of Dip for your Next Party

All of my favorite food blogs (Smitten Kitchen, Paupered Chef, Wednesday Chef, etc.) have gorgeous pictures of the amazing dishes they make. They also all live in tiny apartments on the East Coast, but I digress. I think it's safe to say that I fall in neither category!

Rocket science these are not. Fine dining, these are not. But they're yummy, quick, and made from pantry staples! They also make my pregnant heart happy.

The first two recipes are from a Japanese friend in our last ward, and the last is from my sister (who blogged a gussied up version here) She can gussy up all she wants- I'm all about quick and simple. And cheap. I like that, too.

Wasabi Dip for Vegetables
Mayonnaise
Prepared Wasabi paste

I use about an "inch and a half" of wasabi paste, and 1/4 cup mayonnaise.

Miso Dip for Vegetables
Mayonnaise
Miso paste

Again, about a 1/4 cup of mayonnaise and a scant Tablespoon of miso. I use a dark paste, because we like the rich flavor. This is entirely to taste, so adjust accordingly.

Black Bean Dip
1 can black beans, undrained
jarred salsa

Whir together in a blender- I like about a cup of salsa (half a small jar) to one can black beans. If you want to gussy up a little I think this would be yummy with fresh cilantro and some lime juice blended in. But I had a very plain salsa on hand.

Hummus with the Vitamix

Our friend suggested (a few times!) that we really needed to try making hummus with our Vitamix. I've never really been interested in making hummus, not when a huge container can be had for $7 at Costco, but when poking aroundI found a long-forgotten bottle of sesame seeds...and I realized I had 2 cans of don't-know-what-to-do-with-them garbanzo beans at home...and I LOVE hummus. Yeah, it had to be done. And you know what, she was right! My recipe might be a little better with some added salt, or perhaps a bit more lemon juice or zest, but it's pretty good as is. Even Ernie adores it! This recipe is from the Vitamix website.

Hummus
Ingredients:
2 15 oz. cans garbanzo beans, one drained and one with liquid
1/2 cup raw sesame seeds
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon cumin

Add to canister in order listed, and blend for 1 minute or until smooth, starting on low and quickly turning to high speed. You can need to use the tamper to push this into the blades.

Serve drizzled with a good olive oil, and maybe some fresh cracked black pepper. We like it on tortilla chips, but it's also nice as a vegetable dip.

What to do with a Vita Mix

My parents recently lent us their 27-year-old Vitamix, to see what we could do with a machine capable of grinding wheat into dust in about 120 seconds. Turns out, we can do a lot! Time has done nothing but good things to this little beast.

1) Strawberry milkshake: Blend on high 1 cup milk, 1/3 cup milk powder, 2 cups frozen berries, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla. Add ice as it runs, until this is as frozen thick as you like. Cut way back on the sugar if your fruit is sweet. Still a sugary treat, but better for you than ice cream.

2) Wheat flour: Blend 2 cups wheat on high one minute. Stop to bash the canister against the counter to knock any stray berries from the spigot, and continue to blend for 1 more minute. Now proceed to make wheat bread! (And look- no extra dishes to wash!)

3) Chocolate milkshake: Use this recipe. Super yummy! (Stop rolling your eyes at the Pam- if you like Wendy's "Frosties", you'll LOVE this.)

4) Laundry Detergent

5) Vanilla Custard- it doesn't scorch!

6) Powdered milk- just a few taps on the "down" lever, and you have perfectly lump-free powdered milk, made with cold water even! Now THAT is a feat!

So basically, this little device has made sure that my sweet family gets a yummy dessert every family night, a loaf of fresh bread or two every week, and a happy Mama who doesn't have 18 dishes to wash from preparing one recipe! Pretty sweet.

So tell me, Blend-Tec folks, Casey and Ted & Co. : How does it compare? What do YOU do with your machine? Any favorite recipes to share?

Everyone else, what would you make with a machine capable of pulverizing any grain (or anything, really) into powder?