A Hungry Bear

slow cooker black beans

This is a great recipe that my BFF Morgan shared with me, and it couldn’t be easier. (You might also recognize Mo as the person who created every last little thing about AHB - she’s the world’s best graphic designer.) I took a pound of dried black beans - less than $1 - and turned it into 8 individually portioned servings of black beans, froze them, and have been reheating them for healthy lunches (stuffed in a little tortilla with sour cream, guacamole, and lots of salsa). The hours and hours I had to slave away in my kitchen to get these black beans to taste great was worth it though. Oh, wait - it only took me 3 minutes. 3 minutes + healthy + $1 = are you getting out your crock pot yet??

Update 5/11: And by the way, this post was selected by Alisa at Foodista for listing on their site. Thanks Alisa!

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asparagus & mushroom salad with parmesan dressing

I found this simple recipe for roasted asparagus with sauteed mushrooms and a Parmesan reduction dressing (described as a warm “salad”) in Food & Wine a couple of months ago. The torn-out page has been in my food ideas binder for a long time, until I made it, and I think I accidentally tossed it out. And after countless searches on F&W online, I can’t find it, to provide a link to the original. Sorry about that. But for now, if you’re looking for a way to mix up roasted asparagus, try this! (more…)

green goddess potato salad with pancetta

When you’ve got 2 cups of green goddess sitting around, it’s time to experiment. What about dressing up some potato salad? Sounds good, but how can I be sure A will like it? Easy: add bacon. (more…)

guacamole revisited

I’ve made guacamole on AHB before, and while I still stick to my original recipe of no-recipe-at-all, I’ve been making it more often recently and found a few new tricks that make it even better. So just in case you don’t have your own non-recipe down pat, let’s review this one. (more…)

cracked wheat bread

There’s no better way for me to show A that I really love him than by baking him homemade bread (okay, maybe Steelers tickets, or that fighter pilot for a day thing). I’ve been trying several recipes for classic white sandwich bread and variations of whole wheat, but by far, the most perfect loaf of bread that I’ve found is the Cracked Wheat Bread from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. In the recipe, she says she modeled this one after her favorite sandwich bread from Pepperidge Farm, which has since been discontinued. I’ll make up a double batch of this bread, slice it, then freeze the slices in large ziploc storage bags (the slices can be individually taken out as needed, thawed for a few seconds in the microwave or toasted). (more…)

tzatziki sauce

Tzatziki sauce, or the Greek yogurt-cucumber sauce, is really quite easy to make. I could have picked any number of simple recipes on Epicurious or in my “food ideas binder” that I’ve been saving. But when it came down to it - pita dough was rising, pork was marinating - I wanted to get this right. So I searched a little more and found this recipe on Kalyn’s Kitchen. This was given to the blog’s author by her Greek friend, and she claims it is the “world’s best” tzatziki sauce. While I don’t have anything to compare it to (and my mom, Yia-Yia herself, wasn’t here to taste mine for comparison to the real deal), I can’t imagine it being any tastier.

Note: assemble the sauce at least 2 hours prior to serving, so the flavors have a chance to come together. (more…)

pita bread

I was finally motivated to try cooking Greek food for my mom (Yia-Yia) not by the lamb & eggplant shepherd’s pie, but really by this post on Smitten Kitchen. She reviewed the recipe for homemade pita bread from my favorite bread book, Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. I couldn’t believe how easy it looked. I’ve tackled some of her other loaf bread recipes that are far more complicated, so I was sure I could handle this. And they actually came out puffy and soft, just like the one’s in Smitten Kitchen’s pictures. The hands-on time was less than an hour too.

I made these to go with a Greek-style braised pork and tzatziki sauce, for which I’ll be posting recipes over the next couple of days. (more…)

caprese couscous salad

I had planned on making a pizza last week, but things fell apart (meaning: jobs/school got stressful and we ordered a papa john’s pizza to cope - yes, really). That left me with some fresh basil and tomatoes to use up - why not throw them in couscous for a light side to roast chicken? (more…)

spinach simmered in yogurt

I made this spinach alongside my Indian-inspired yogurt marinated steak kebabs. It reminded me of one of my favorite dishes that I ate several times when I was actually visiting Mumbai, possibly called saag paneer (but I could be completely wrong about the name). It’s also a creamy yellow spinach dish, but with cubes of cheese simmering in the mix. We were already out a limb with using a new spice - which, by the way, will leave behind a yellow turmeric film on your pan requiring you to wash it at least 5 times - so I skipped cheese cubes. The slight spiciness from the red pepper flakes was offset by the creaminess of the yogurt; with the steak and rice it was a great first-time foray into “Indian” cooking.

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broccoli parmesan gratin

I make at least one vegetable side with every meal. A lot of the time, the effort goes into the main dish meat, and I have no time or inspiration leftover for the side. (We eat a lot of steamed asparagus and steamed broccoli around here.) I saw this recipe in February 2009 Gourmet and wanted to try it. I don’t know if it’s worth the extra calories for an everyday vegetable side, but it’s definitely a good choice for dinner parties. (more…)