“Not to sound too much like Christopher Guest in ‘Waiting for Guffman,’ but on Thanksgiving you’re putting on a show!” – Ted Allen

October 10, 2012Leave a comment

I’ve been away for a while, working on two other sites which took my spare time away from my own. But just because I’ve been away from the keyboard doesn’t mean I’ve been out of the kitchen. This past weekend, Thanksgiving, I created a dish, somewhat by fluke, that has become a side dish staple.

We cooked our turkey two days in advance and were having people over for dinner on Friday night (you guessed it, our T-Day was Sunday), but since I have so many food issues I couldn’t eat what was being served. So I started to make a mini turkey dinner for myself, which meant I needed some veggies. Rather than dirty several pots, I put the potatoes in the bottom and tossed a veggie steamer on top for the carrots. Originally my plan was to do up a batch of Make Ahead Potatoes, but the carrots gave me a better idea.

Ingredients

4-5 small to medium sized potatoes (peel to preference)
3-4 good sized carrots peeled
curry (to preference)
Daiya Dairy Free Cheese
Tofutti Sour Cream
margarine

I made this twice over the weekend, once with steamed carrots, the second time was done with carrots that were sliced into dollars and cooked in a pot all their own. Both worked quite well, the steamed, of course, mashed better and the dollars kept their form. How you cook the carrots depends on whether you want to have a completely smooth consistency or a more chunked, rustic, feel. I do prefer the latter and, as such, leave the skin on the potato and mash rather than use a hand mixer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll give the recipe with dollared carrots and then, if you’d rather, all you need to do is steam the carrots and use a hand mixer to marry it all together before tossing it in the oven.

Peel the carrots, halve or quarter the potato according to size and slice the carrots into dollars. toss both in separate pots to cook. Once the veggies are done, put in a large bowl, add in some margarine to make the mashing easier and have at it. After you get a good mash on the potatoes and carrots, add a couple spoonfuls of the sour cream, your preferred amount of curry and a handful of the Daiya Cheese. When the mix is mashed to your desired consistency, transfer to an 8×8 pan, flatten it out, layer on some more Daiya, and put in the oven @ 350 for 25-30 minutes.

While it does LOOK like the Make Ahead Potatoes, it tastes completely different and an excellent addition to your dinner table.

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” – Mother Teresa

September 16, 20125 Comments

First off, I want to thank everyone who came to visit me last night at my booth during Afterglow. I had many great conversations with the lot of you and it was great to be able to share what I know about living dairy free, and very encouraging to have so many people excited to try my recipes.

Those who attended last night’s event got a bit of a preview that you folks have not yet been privy to, a few days ago I made Panko Crusted Stuffed Meatballs and posted a picture on both Facebook and Twitter. That resulted in several people asking for the recipe and I decided to include it in those featured at my booth.

Since some of you were geographically unable to attend, and others either couldn’t make it out or the rain killed their copy of the recipe, I’ve uploaded a PDF version of the pamphlet I handed out with all three recipes included. Simply click the link and you’ll have access to them in all their glory. Tony’s Recipes – Afterglow

I look forward to hearing feedback from those who give these recipes a go and, as always, if you’d like to send me an e-mail with pictures of your creation and a write up on what you did, I would love to post them on here. My goal for this blog is to replicate the atmosphere found when sitting with a group of friends in the kitchen, swapping recipes.

Happy Cooking!

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. – Bertolt Brecht

August 2, 2012September 14, 201215 Comments

As with any recipe, there are changes over time. Either you want to try some new twist or you are out of an ingredient, you sub something in and never look back. They are ever changing and, as such, some of the recipes from earlier posts aren’t made the same way anymore. This can only mean one thing……..

RECIPE REVAMP!!!!

First up we have the Lasagna Cupcakes, which have become a big hit in this house. As I mentioned with that recipe, Josh Lyons (@JoshLyonsPhotos) suggested a game changer. He suggested folding the corners in on top of it and making it a parcel almost. We went a step further and decided to add in another layer entirely. Start with the wonton wrapper, meat, sauce, cheese method same as always. then put another wonton wrapper on top and press down the middle. This gets meat and sauce, then fold the four corners in and stick them to the sauce. This keeps them in place and allows the cheese to cover the top. We tried it once and haven’t looked back, it kicked the recipe up to a whole new level. Also, even though I haven’t tried it yet, you can also switch out the meat for pan fried veggies just as easily and make this a vegetarian dish. I would suggest zucchini, mushroom, and peppers as they are what I use when making meat free lasagna.

This is what I love about cooking, there’s always a new way to do it, and it brings people together.

For those visual learners, this is what you’ll end up with

Yes, the cheese looks different than yours, I use Daiya Dairy Free Cheese. Honestly, even if dairy was tolerable, I think I’d still use it. I love the stuff.

Next on the docket is the Make Ahead Potatoes and that is as simple as taking the risk and leaving it in for a bit longer, or turning up the heat to 375. This does require a bit of a close eye, but the results are well worth it. We also added green onion and mixed it throughout. But, unlike the rest of the veggies, the green onion went in raw, which I believe yields a better and sharper flavor.

When I first made the Any Meal CasSurreal I said that it you can really put anything in it. It’s a culinary building block and a lot of fun to experiment with. My favorite tweak to date was when we have some of the Loaded Chicken Burgers in the fridge, so we broke them down and fried them up and used it as the base for the CasSurreal. Since all of the veggies we normally put in are already a part of the burgers it cut down on prep time. Everything else is done the same. We also made one with the shrimp that is in the same entry as the burgers, its a long entry, which turned out quite good too. My houseguests at the time preferred the shrimp version, whereas I really liked the chicken burger base, so enjoy experimenting with it!

To date, these are the tweaks and modifications that have been made to the recipes within the blog. As I make changes, I’ll post them here. As well as new recipes.

Also, there seems to be a small but loyal group of readers, so I thank you immensely as I would be the only one reading these otherwise & I already know what I do, I don’t need updates.

I would also like to ask you all to take a look at this blog and send me any questions/complaints/criticisms/suggestions that you may have.

Either e-mail me iam@tonylantz.com or simply leave a comment below.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Also, tattoo is fully healed.

“If I’m Not Back In Five Minutes, Just Wait Longer!” – Ace Ventura

July 7, 2012Leave a comment

I apologize right off the top, I’ve got a massive head cold so this post may become a bit loopy.

keeping up with Canadian content, another apology, this time for a lag in updates. Two friends from Vancouver arrived on Tuesday and as such I haven’t had much spare time to fill everyone in.

Yesterday my cousin Tim decided to take a trip up to visit, so we all spent the day sitting around, shooting the breeze. I tend to post photos of the things I cook, as they tend to be somewhat out of the ordinary, and Tim was looking forward to finally being able to TRY some of it. So, when it came time for Supper, I decided to step it up a notch and make Cordon Bleu Roll-Ups, but with a bit of a twist.

This is the recipe as I found it:

As I said before there are were deviations from the recipe, but I wanted to make sure everyone had the same starting points to allow you all to make your own tweaks.

Being lactose intolerant, I switched the milk for almond milk, and no one knew any different, just make sure that it’s unsweetened. The cheese was also switched out for the Daiya Dairy Free cheese I mentioned in the previous post.

I also found, not having panko crumbs on hand, that the amounts on the dry ingredients were a bit excessive and you really only need the 1/2 cup flour and the 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, panko or otherwise to suit your fancy.

The main difference between mine and the recipe above is that I didn’t use ham. I know what you’re thinking “Chicken cordon bleu is ham and swiss!” “It makes no sense!” “you’re a crazy person!” I look at it this way, my girlfriend doesn’t like ham, so I changed the recipe. Keeping her happy seems like the opposite of crazy, to me.

As an alternative, I fried up roughly 4-5 mushrooms, 1/2 a yellow pepper, & 1 medium onion and used that mixture in place of ham.

Everything else went according to recipe, apart from the fact that we used the BBQ. It was an incredibly hot day yesterday and using the oven would have been very stupid. So we used the pizza pans we have set aside for grilling, put a little bit of olive oil on them and loaded them up with the Roll-Ups (we doubled the recipe).

When all was said and done, this is what we ended up with:

Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and we were able to make them to suit everyone’s needs:

Sam doesn’t like ham? CHECK! we used veggies instead

Sara doesn’t like mushrooms? CHECK! we fried onions and peppers separately for her.

Mom can’t eat peppers? CHECK! she gets onions and mushrooms.

We found the best way to do it so that everyone got the most out of it was to do 4 with mushrooms and onion and 4 with pepper and onion. We also kept them together rather than slicing them up, but this is what they look like once they are opened.

obviously this is one of the mushroom ones.

Tonight we’re going to be making some lasagna cupcakes, which should be up sometime tomorrow.

Be sure to let me know how you like theses/any alterations you make to yours!

In closing, this is my kitten. She’s all tuckered out from being a moron all morning.

The Inner Musings Of An Outer Fool

from betwixt my ears to between the lines

Tag: experimenting