When in doubt, serve it on arugula!

I love my kitchen as much as the next food blogger. I feel very comfortable there. It’s normally very relaxing for me to cook.

But sometimes I just want dinner to be made. I want a dish that’s quick, flavorful, and simple.

I want a dish that I can make within the time it takes me to listen to one podcast of Car Talk.

This dish is that dish.

It can look a bit intimidating, especially if you aren’t use to cooking with a lot of Asian flavors. But really it’s dumb simple to make and utilizes one of my favorite kitchen tips!

Sesame Chicken Noodle Salad

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 red pepper, sliced
1 pound linguine
Vegetable oil
Arugula

Sesame Sauce:
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and diced
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1 tablespoon chili-garlic sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/2 cup pasta water (from linguine)

Directions:

1) Season chicken with salt and pepper. Add a drizzle of vegetable oil to a large skillet and heat over medium-high heat.

2) Sear chicken on both sides for about 4 minutes, then turn down heat and continue to cook chicken, flipping occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, about 12 minutes total cooking time.

3) Remove chicken from pan and slice into large chunks.

4) Start cooking pasta. When pasta is almost done, scoop out some pasta water.

5) Mix sauce ingredients in a bowl. Stir well. The sauce should be very smooth and silky. If it's very thick, add more pasta water.

6) Using same pan that you cooked the chicken in, add another drizzle of oil and add red peppers. Cook for just a few minutes over medium-high heat until veggies soften.

7) Add diced chicken back to skillet and stir in sesame sauce.

8) Drain pasta and add to skillet. Stir together to incorporate everything.

9) Serve sesame chicken salad on a bed of arugula.

Heavily adapted from a Cook's Country recipe.

The Sesame Sauce

When I say this meal can be intimidating, it’s mostly because I’m not sure a lot of people keep their pantries stocked with the stuff to make this sauce.

If you have to buy this stuff for the first time, it’ll involve lots of words you probably can’t pronounce and at least one panda bear.

Lots of jars...

Have no fear though. Once you hunt down all the jars that you need, the only actual work you need to do for the sauce besides measuring is peeling and dicing some ginger. Not rocket science!

There is one problem though. When you mix all these ingredients together, it will taste very good, but it’ll most likely be a bit on the lumpy side.

Don’t worry about this right now. We’ll fix it later!

A bit chunky...

The Chicken

The sauce is definitely the star of this show. You don’t have to use chicken for this dish if you wanted to make a vegetarian version. You could just toss the sauce with the noodles or use some seared tofu if you wanted.

I went the chicken route on this day though. Assuming you are using chicken, just season a few boneless skinless breasts with a good pinch of salt and pepper. I’m usually not a huge boneless skinless chicken fan, but it works well for this recipe.

Keep it simple.

In a large skillet, heat a drizzle of oil over medium high heat and once the pan is hot, add the chicken.

Sear the chicken for about 4 minutes per side. Then turn down the heat to medium and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through, probably another 6 minutes or so. That of course will depend on how big your chicken breasts are.

Mine were on the smaller side.

Make sure it's cooked through...

Once the chicken is cooked through, scoop it out of the pan and slice it into big chunks.

You want the chicken to be visible in the final dish!

Big chunks work great.

Finishing the Dish

There’s just a few other things you’ll need to finish off this recipe. While it’s kind of optional, I recommend dicing up a red pepper and also getting some arugula ready.

Two quick veggies.

When it comes to the pasta for the dish, you can use almost any thin pasta. Spaghetti, linguine, angel hair… it would all work fine.

Fantastic Kitchen Tip Alert

Anytime you are making a sauce to go with pasta, one of the best sauce helpers you can have is the actual water that you cook the pasta in. Pasta water is starchy and salty and will help smooth out sauces and give them some body.

If you ever find yourself with a lumpy or lackluster sauce, try adding some pasta water to it.

In this case, we will add about 1/2 cup to that lumpy sauce that we mixed together earlier.

Wonderful water.

This will completely smooth out the sauce and make it perfect.

In the same skillet that you used to cook the chicken (no need to wash it even), add another drizzle of oil and then toss in your red peppers.

Cook them for a few minutes until they are soft and then add in your chicken. Pour your sauce over the whole thing!

Sauce is really smooth now.

Assuming you are decent at timing, hopefully your pasta is done as well right around this time.

Almost any pasta will work.

Then just stir your pasta in with the chicken and sauce.

It’ll look like a lot of sauce, but it’s just enough to coat all the stuff.

If at any point, the sauce gets too thick, just add a bit more pasta water to it and it’ll thin out.

This was my finished version!

All tossed together!

Now, you could just serve this in a big bowl, but I tried something a bit unconventional.

I served mine on arugula. This might sound strange to serve a pasta dish on greens, but it worked really well actually. The arugula is nice and peppery and holds up well to the strong sesame flavors.

And it makes for a pretty plate!

Pretty plate!

So there ya go!

If you can master the sauce, this dish is really simple to throw together, but really delivers in the flavor department.

Give it a shot if you’re in the market for a quick and easy dinner. And let’s be real… who isn’t in the market for a quick and easy dinner?

Whoa. Cool.

Ever since I was experimenting with (read: eating a lot of) my PB & J sushi last week, I’ve been on a huge peanut butter and jelly kick. I’ve eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day of the week for the last ten days or so.

Call it sappy, but it really does remind me of my childhood. These days I leave the ends on, but other than that it’s the same old sandwich.

Of course, I can’t help myself when it comes to thinking of ways to ramp up something that I like that much.

So I figured it would be fun to make an actual bread loaf with peanut butter and jelly rolled right into it. Then any slice of toast is, like, an instant peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How could you not like that!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Loaf

Yield: 9 Inch Loaf

Prep Time: 15 minutes + 16 hour rise time

Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes

Ingredients:

2 1/4 Cups bread flour, plus some for dusting
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 Teaspoon instant yeast
1 Cup + 2 Tablespoons cool water
1/4 Cup unsalted smooth peanut butter
1 large egg
1/3 Cup seedless jam
1/2 Cup peanuts, chopped and divided

Egg Wash:
1 egg + 1 Tablespoon water

Helpful Equipment:
Loaf pan
Wire Rack

Directions:

1) Mix dry ingredients (flour yeast salt) together in a large bowl.

2) In a blender or food processor, pulse peanut butter together with water and egg until mixture is smooth.

3) Add wet mixture to dry stuff and stir to combine. It should be a pretty wet, sticky dough.

4) Cover dough loosely and let rise for 12-16 hours.

5) Dust dough with flour after it rises and dust a clean surface with flour as well. Turn out dough onto surface and shape it or roll it into a large rectangle (about 8x12).

6) Spread jam all over surface of dough, leaving about 1/2 inch around the edges.

7) Fold the bottom 1/3 of the dough over and then continue to roll the dough up to form a jelly roll of sorts.

8) To prep your loaf pan, butter it well and sprinkle the bottom with half of your peanuts.

9) When jelly roll is finished, tuck the ends under and place it seam-side down in your loaf pan. Cover it and let it rise for another hour.

10) Brush the loaf with egg wash and sprinkle the rest of the chopped peanuts on top.

11) Bake loaf at 450 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Remove from pan as soon as possible and let cool on a wire rack.

Adapted from My Bread.

Starting the bread

The nice thing about this loaf is that it’s based on a no knead bread recipe from Jim Lahey.

Which means that it takes almost no time to make, but it does require about 12-16 hours to rise.

Normal stuff plus awesome stuff.

Ingeniously, Jim recommends mixing the peanut butter in with the no knead dough which gives it a really nice peanut butter flavor and also a soft texture.

Unfortunately, it’s kind of tricky mixing peanut butter into flour. The easiest way to do it is to blend your peanut butter, water, and egg together to make a sort of slurry and then mix that together with your dry ingredients.

This will smell really peanuty which is good!

Dough is gonna rise.

Once your dough is mixed together, it should be pretty moist. Just stir it together until everything is mixed. No need to over-mix it.

Then cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 12-16 hours. It should double in volume.

Forming the Loaf

Once your dough has risen, dust it well with flour and also throw some flour down on a clean surface. Then scoop out your dough onto the floured surface and lightly roll it into a large rectangle.

You’re shooting for a rectangle that’s about 8×12 in size.

Then spread your jam all over the surface of the dough!

Needs a bit more jelly...

Try to leave about a 1/2 inch around the edge of the dough.

Fold the bottom third of the dough up and then continue to roll the dough away from you to form a tight jelly roll of dough.

Roll 'er up!

To prepare your loaf pan for baking, butter it liberally so the dough doesn’t stick and then sprinkle about 1/4 cup of roughly chopped peanuts right in the bottom of the pan.

See what I did there?

Once you have your loaf rolled up, fold under the ends to form a nice even loaf. Then just plop the roll right into your loaf pan with the seam-side down. That’ll prevent most of your jelly from exploding out of the loaf.

Loosely cover the loaf and let it rise for another hour or so. It should again double in size.

Then brush the loaf with a light egg wash (1 egg + 1 tablespoon water) and sprinkle on another 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts.

This guy is ready for the oven now!

Ready for the oven.

Bake the loaf in a pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 50 minutes. The loaf should be really nice and golden brown. If it isn’t, then bake for another 10 minutes.

Check the loaf halfway through and if the peanuts are browning really quickly (mine were) then cover the loaf pan loosely with foil which will keep them out of the direct heat.

The final loaf is a thing of beauty!

This will smell amazing.

Two things to note about this loaf:

1) It’s inevitable that some jelly will escape from the roll. When you pull your loaf pan out it might look as if a lot of jelly has cooked out of it. Have no fear. It’s probably fine as long as you rolled it tightly and cooked it with the seam side down.

2) When you pull the loaf out of the oven, immediately invert it on a pan or wire rack to get the loaf out of the pan. If you let it cool in the pan, it’ll turn really soggy. Ideally, you can cool it on a rack, but whatever you do, take it out of the pan as soon as possible.

This was my final loaf. As you can see, some jelly escaped, but it was still delicious.

Cool it down.

Getting Crazy

As soon as I cut open the loaf and saw the cool jelly swirl, I knew this was a keeper of a recipe.

Of course, I had to take it to the next level as soon as possible and make a double peanut butter and jelly!

Double PB & J Slam!

What do you think about that?!

There’s a very important caveat to note before I get started with this post:

I do not have children.

I have a cat and a dog and they are more than enough for me to handle at this point in my life. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t COOK stuff for kids right?

I’ve been watching the last season of Food Revolution (sound) on Hulu during my lunch breaks and it’s pretty devastating to see what is called “lunch” at some schools in the U.S. How we expect kids to learn and grow while feeding them bad food is a mystery to me.

What you put in is what you get out.

But, I understand that it must be hard to feed children. I wasn’t a picky eater when I was a kid, but my sister definitely was and I remember watching my mom struggle to get a vegetable into her mouth.

At the same time, I think kids eat first with their eyes. If something looks fun, they are a lot more likely to try it out. So I came up with three fun ways to spice up the normal packed lunch that might make your kid more likely to, say, try a carrot.

This is all about presentation. It’s all the same stuff in a normal sandwich, but if your kid will only eat peanut butter and jelly this might be a way to get them to try out some other things.

It’s a scientific fact that food is more fun when it’s on a stick. That applies to sandwiches also! This takes about the same amount of time to make as a sandwich and just looks fun to eat. You could include a few little containers of ketchup and mustard for dipping sauces. Also, almost anything would work on these sticks.

Note: Betsy made the very astute observation that kids might not be allowed to have pointy sticks at school. If that’s the case, I think you could break off the pointy ends and be okay.

This one is a leap of faith really. My hope is that it looks so fun, that kids will want to eat it. It has lots vegetables in it though, which I hear is like arsenic for most children.

All you need for the sandwich is a tiny cookie cutter and some green, orange or yellow, and red veggies. Then just strategically place them on the sandwich and you’re all set.

You can put other stuff on the sandwich also (cheese, turkey, etc.), but just make sure the veggies and the bread with holes in it line up.

Easy!

I got this idea from a site called Planning with Kids and I thought it was just really fun.

I would’ve loved to open my lunchbox as a kid and see this sandwich.

The right way.

OK. Let’s talk about dessert.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is one of my favorite treats to this day. I still frequently have one for dessert.

I like to think of them as dessert instead of as a meal though which is why this sushi recipe works so well. You can include four or five little bites along with something really healthy and hopefully convey to the little ones that they are supposed to eat them last.

These might look tricky, but they are pretty easy to make actually. There are three keys to making these work:

1) Cut off the ends on the bread. It just makes it roll easier. I’m sure your kids will like this.

As I always asked my Mom growing up, “Mom, why do they even make bread with ends on it?”

2) Roll the bread thin (Upper right photo below). It’ll be easier to roll if it isn’t all puffy.

3) Go light on the PB & J. Otherwise it’ll just be messy. A very thin layer of both is more than enough.

Be sure to roll up the rolls pretty tightly so they stay formed and, if you have one, cut the rolls with a serrated knife so they cut cleanly.

These are just super-fun.

From above!

I ate all of these for lunch as I made them and I liked all of them!

Of course, that’s not the test though. The test is children. I figured it would be kind of creepy for me to go handing out my lunches at the local elementary school so none of these have been officially tested.

If you have kids, leave a comment and let me know if you think your kids would actually EAT any of these! If you try one out, even better.

School lunch photo by Chidorian.

It's like dessert!

“Shut the front door! This tastes like a milkshake. It’s basically a dessert!”

That’s what I said in my best Stacey London impersonation when I tried this shake for the first time. Betsy and I had something similar to it in an airport and it was so good that we tried to re-create it when we got home.

Our version tasted even better. It tastes so delicious that you would think it has tons of bad stuff in it, but it’s completely healthy.

It’s a fantastic way to start the day.

If you’re not a fan of the fruit smoothie (or just want a change), this is an awesome weekday breakfast.

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

Yield: 2 large Smoothies

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

2 ripe bananas
1/2 cup peanut butter, creamy
1/3 Cup yogurt
1/3 Cup tofu
1/2 Cup milk
1 1/2 Cups ice
1/4 Cup chia seeds (optional)
1/4 Cup ground flax seeds (optional)
1/4 Cup agave syrup or honey (optional)

Helpful Equipment:
Blender!

Directions:

1) Add banana and peanut butter to a blender. Add ice on top.

2) Spoon in other ingredients.

3) Blend until smooth!

Smoothie Ingredients

The base of this smoothie is a good amount of ripe banana and creamy peanut butter. These blend together perfectly and make for a really delicious flavor base. Both ingredients have a lot of good stuff going on.

I also added some agave syrup for a bit of sweetness. You could use honey or just leave it out.

Nice ripe bananas are good.

This smoothie works best with creamy ingredients. To round out the smoothie, I added some yogurt, milk, and tofu.

Yes. Tofu. It might sound strange but you literally can’t taste it and it gives the smoothie some body and a ton of protein.

Other good stuff.

Two other add-ins that Betsy and I have been putting in our smoothie lately is flax seeds and chia seeds. The nutritional benefits of these seeds are pretty numerous and kind of unbelievable.

A quarter cup of each seed in this recipe (so 2 Tablespoons per smoothie), will provide you with almost half of your daily fiber needs and about 9 grams of protein.

That’s pretty amazing work for a handful of seeds. If you can, get the flax seed meal which is already ground. Humans can’t digest whole flax seeds so you’ll need to grind them if you get the whole ones. Chia seeds you can leave whole though.

Nutrition in a bowl!

Making the Smoothie

You can basically just toss everything in your blender if you want, but I find that it blends a lot better if you layer it in a specific way.

Start with the bananas and peanut butter which will blend really easily. Then add the ice on top.

Banana on bottom!

If you add the ice first, the blender might have a hard time getting started.

Once the ice is in you can scoop in all your other ingredients. The measurements in this recipe are pretty approximate. I usually just eyeball it.

Everybody in the party.

Put a lid on it and blend it until it’s nice and smooth!

The seeds will never blend smooth so you’ll have some texture to the smoothie which I like actually.

This is a spoonful of my finished version.

So good!

This recipe makes two really big smoothies, probably about 2 1/2 – 3 cups each. Betsy and I have this for breakfast and it keeps me plenty full until lunch!

Plus, did I mention that it tastes like a milkshake?

Great way to start the day.

Whether you’re a smoothie expert or a beginner, I have a hard time picturing how someone wouldn’t like this thing.

The only reason you shouldn’t try this is if you happen to be allergic to peanuts!

I have a bone to pick!

When I posted a request for dog treat recipes last week, I was pretty shocked at the number of emails and comments I got with cool ideas! I didn’t realize that people were so into making their own dog treats!

Of course, after a trip to Petco, I can see why. Most dog treats are really basic ingredients, cut into interesting shapes, and sold for a million times the cost it takes to make them.

Plus, guess what? Dogs aren’t picky. They will pretty much happily eat anything you put in front of them including shoes, cat litter, and their own vomit.

Surprisingly, this made me more nervous. Because if Porter didn’t like my treats, that means they were, in fact, worse than vomit.

Peanut Butter Dog Treats

Yield: 24 dog biscuits

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1/4 Cup peanut butter
1/2 Cup vegetable oil
1 Cup water
2 Eggs
2 Cups whole wheat flour (or all-purpose)
1 Cup oats
1 Cup cornmeal

Directions:

1) Mix peanut butter, water, and oil together. Then add in eggs and dry ingredients.

2) Stir until it forms a sturdy dough.

3) Roll dough out until it's 1/4 inch thick and cut it into various shapes. Feel free to re-roll it as many times as you want.

4) Bake biscuits at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

5) Turn off oven, but let biscuits cool in the oven as it cools which will make them very hard.

6) Give one to the pooch when he or she is a good boy or girl.

From a comment on my post Friday!

Making the Dough

This is basically the easiest cookie dough you’ll ever make. I like that it has cornmeal in it though instead of just all flour, because dogs aren’t really supposed to be eating a lot of grain.

Some people are very intense on this and won’t feed their dogs any grain at all. My take on it is that if the dog is just eating grain one once in a while, it’s not going to hurt him. I guarantee you that most dogs eat weirder things throughout the day, so I’m not going to stress it if he consumed a tablespoon of flour.

The basics

Start by mixing the peanut butter, oil, and water until it’s well combined. Stir it well to make sure the peanut butter is mixed in.

Then stir in the egg, oats, cornmeal, and flour. You should have what is basically a very firm cookie dough. Instead of sugar and butter though, there’s just water in this dough so it’ll become very hard.

Looks like cookie dough!

Roll this out until it’s about 1/4 inch thick and cut it out into whatever shapes you want. I tried to find a dog bone cookie cutter, but couldn’t find one anywhere!

So I kind of just free-formed a few. Again, I don’t think Porter cares.

Pain in the butt!

You can re-roll this dough as many times as you want to get maximum usage.

The second time around I went with circles because it was easier.

Easier!

Baking the Biscuits

Bake these guys at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Then turn off the oven, but leave them in the oven as they cool. This will make them really hard which dogs love.

When they are cool, feel free to try one!

I took a bite just to see what the big deal was.

Not bad!

They were a bit on the bland side, but they were rock-hard which I figured Porter would like. They had a faint peanut butter taste, but mostly they tasted like a brick.

The real test was if the dog would eat them.

No problem there!

Happy dog!

He munched this thing into pieces in a few seconds and then spent the next few minutes licking up every possible crumb he could find.

Then he looked at me like, “Hey. You got any more of those buddy?”

He licked all those up. Don't worry.

This would be a totally fun project for kids to do. They could cut them out into various shapes and then feed them to the dogs!

The recipe is pretty foolproof.

Even if you do mess it up, your dog will probably eat it anyway and still love you unconditionally.

That’s what they do after all: Eat and love.

These were a stunning success.

A few weeks ago I ran into a friend from high school and after chatting and catching up over some beers Betsy and I invited him and his wife over for dinner one night.

There was one catch though: The meal had to be gluten free and dairy free due to some dietary restrictions. Of course, I saw this as a challenge and thought long and hard about what to make for the dinner. I decided on an Asian theme.

I’ll be completely honest. The main part of the meal was anything but stellar. I grilled some chicken which was pretty good, but I somehow managed to completely botch a pot of rice. Like, our dinner guests were nice enough to eat it, but umm… it turned out to be more of some strange porridge mixture than rice. I’m still not sure how it happened exactly as I’ve made rice probably a million times and can normally do it without issues.

Oh well. Goes to show you that sometimes things go wrong in the kitchen and you can’t do much about it except laugh it off.

The good news about my venture into the gluten-free/dairy-free world was the appetizers I made: These freakin‘ fantastic grilled pork spring rolls. This was my first attempt at spring rolls actually and while they were a bit intimidating, they were completely doable and very worth the work.

Pork Spring Rolls

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes + marinade time

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 pound boneless pork chops, marinated
1 red pepper, sliced very thin
1 English cucumber, peeled and sliced thin
1 Handful of basil, julienned
Lettuce
Rice Papers for rolling
(Note: You could add tons of things to these rolls like other herbs, bean sprouts, etc.)

Marinade:
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
2 Thai chilies, diced (or a jalapeno)
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
2 Tablespoons soy sauce (gluten free)
1 Teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 Cup peanut or vegetable oil
2 Teaspoons fresh ground black pepper

Dipping sauce:
1 Cup hoisin sauce (gluten free)
1/4 Cup smooth peanut butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
Warm water until it reaches desired consistency, probably a few tablespoons
NOTE: If I were making a non-gluten-free version of this, I'd leave out the garlic and add a tablespoon of garlic chili sauce.

Directions:

1) For marinade, combine all ingredients in a bowl. Then add pork chops to a plastic bag with marinade and let sit for at least an hour.

2) To cook pork chops, grill on high heat or cook in a cast iron skillet or grill pan for 4-5 minutes per side depending on pork chop thickness. Let rest for 10 minutes before slicing into them. Slice them thinly.

3) Prep all over veggies for rolls. Be sure to spend time slicing thinly and evenly.

4) For dipping sauce, combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. If you don't have a food processor, just mix everything really well in a bowl.

5) To make rolls, start by pour some warm water on a large plate.

6) Add a spring roll wrapper to the plate. Flip it over once or twice until it relaxes and becomes flexible, probably about 15-20 seconds.

7) Move wrapper to a clean work surface. Add a few strips of pork along with a few strips of all other veggies to wrapper. Don't add the fillings to the middle of the wrapper. Add them about 2/3s down the wrapper, closer to you. Leave about 1/2 an inch around the filling.

8) Fold the wrapper over the filling, working away from you. Fold the edges in and continue to roll. As you roll, pull back on the filling to keep it snug and tight in the wrapper.

9) Once you have all the rolls wrapped, slice them in half and serve them with the sauce!

Adapted from a Rasa Malaysia recipe.

Prepping the Pork

The marinade for this pork is really flavorful and pretty important to the final taste. Luckily it’s easy to make. Just roughly dice up your garlic and chilies and stuff and add them to a bowl with all the other ingredients.

It’s a pretty dark marinade.

A quick marinade.

Add your boneless pork chops to a bag with the marinade and let them sit for at least an hour. Longer would be just fine.

Good flavors in there.

I cooked my pork on my grill on super-hot heat, but you could also cook them in a cast iron skillet if you wanted. The brown sugar in the marinade will create a great crust on the pork, but it might cause some smoking if you cook them indoors.

A grill would be best, but use what you have. Depending on the thickness of your pork, the chops will probably need 4-5 minutes per side on high heat.

Then let them rest for 10 minutes or so and slice them pretty thin.

I was proud of these guys and honestly, they would’ve been great just by themselves!

Grilled and sliced!

Making the sauce

The dipping sauce for these rolls couldn’t be easier. Just add all the ingredients to a food processor and give it a quick pulse to combine everything. Depending on your peanut butter and hoisin sauce, you might need to add a bit of warm water to thin it out some.

It shouldn’t be clumpy at all.

Quick hoisin sauce.

If you don’t have a food processor, you could easily just stir everything together in a bowl. Just make sure to mince your garlic really finely if you’re using it. You definitely don’t need a food processor to make this recipe.

Making the rolls

I’ll be honest. I was nervous about these guys.

I wanted to make sure that I had everything ready, which I recommend, so at some point before you start rolling, slice up your red peppers, cucumbers, and basil. You could use lots of veggies for these guys, but these were really good as a start.

Spend some time to make sure you get nice evenly sized sticks.

Thin is the key.

Ok. Now it’s time to tackle the beast.

Spring rolls wrappers.

These guys kind of scared me because they look impossibly thin and fragile.

Strange things.

To use them, pour some hot water on a plate and set a wrapper on the plate to soak up some of the water and soften up a bit. Flip it over once or twice and after maybe 15 seconds it should be loose and flexible.

I was pretty skeptical about my abilities here.

Here’s the thing that I wasn’t expecting about these wrappers that took me a minute to get used to: They are a lot stronger than they look. Once they’re wet, you can tug on them and really stuff them full and they are surprisingly strong.

So once your wrapper is wet, lay it out flat on your work surface, add a few strips of pork and veggies. I also ripped up some lettuce that I added to the rolls.

To key to making these work is where you put the filling. DON’T put it directly in the center of the wrapper. Put it about 2/3s toward the side closest to you and leave a good 1/2 inch to an inch around the sides of the filling.

This one is gonna be pretty stuffed.

You can pack in quite a bit.

Then fold over the end closest to you, tuck in the ends like you would a burrito and continue to roll the wrapper away from you.

Try to keep the filling as tight as possible during the rolling. As you roll, pull the filling toward you which will keep it nice and snug.

Get it?

If it’s your first time making spring rolls, it’ll take you one or two to get the hang of it, but it’s completely doable.

I decided to slice all my rolls in half which showed off the pretty fillings.

Will ya look at that?!

Once you roll them all, slice them up, and stack them on a plate, you’ll have a really beautiful presentation that’s healthy and very delicious.

It’s kind of a show stopper appetizer if you ask me.

So good and light.

Of course, my dinner guests were probably somewhat confused how the same person who managed this also managed to completely destroy a pot of rice, but hey. I like to keep people on their toes.

I would guess that with all the prep time and everything these guys took me about an hour to make (but you need to marinate the pork earlier) and they were completely worth it.

I think spring rolls are going to be my new thing and it isn’t even spring yet!

Are you a spring roll fan? Have you tried making them? Leave a comment!

There's a lot going on in there.

I’ll be completely honest, I’m not a huge milkshake maker. I mean I won’t turn down a milkshake, but I very rarely make them myself. I think that’s because I just love ice cream in its actual form much more. So I usually find that I don’t like shakes as much as just a bowl of the stuff.

But milkshake was a blow-out winner in last week’s poll so I tried to come up with something pretty simple and delicious for you all.

What’s cool about milkshakes is that you can obviously add almost anything you want to them. You can make ice cream with tons of add-ins also but it takes way more work to make customized ice cream than customized milkshakes.

For this version, I wanted to start with a chocolate milkshake and then add some really flavorful stuff like peanut butter and coconut milk. It turned out really great!

Cocoa-Coco-Peanut Shake

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

2-3 Cups vanilla ice cream (you could obviously use chocolate ice cream and start with that)
1 3.5 ounce bar dark chocolate, or 3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
2/3 Cup coconut milk
1 Cup peanut butter

Helpful Equipment:
- Blender. Pretty much a must-have for milkshakes. The link is to the blender I've been using for over a year now. I use it almost daily and love it.

Directions:

1) Put all the ingredients in a blender and pulse until smooth.

2) Taste and adjust the flavors to your liking. If it's too thin, add more ice cream or peanut butter. If it's too thick, add more coconut milk.

3) Eat it!

The Basics

Most milkshakes have, well, milk. But I decided that could be an opportunity to add some extra flavor to the party so I used coconut milk instead. I loved the switch.

Also, I used a whole chocolate bar which gives the shake some chunky texture. If you want a smoother shake you can use cocoa powder or chocolate sauce though.

The peanut butter I made was from my last homemade peanut butter batch, but you can obviously use whatever variety you like. Creamy works a bit better for milkshakes I think.

Homemade peanut butter is good.

This is the chocolate bar I picked out for this shake. Man was it good.

A good bar.

Making the shake

The key thing to remember about a shake is the balance of liquid, add-ins, and ice cream has to be just right. So start with what I list above (or half it if you’re making one) and then feel free to adjust based on how yours looks. You may need to add a bit more ice cream or coconut milk depending on consistency.

No matter what though, I think I always get the best results by putting the add-ins at the bottom of the blender. The coconut milk helps get the blending party started.

I had a good feeling about this.

Add the ice cream and blend it up! Depending on how thick your shake is, you might need to stir it a bit to get everything blended. If it’s too thin, you can add a bit more ice cream or peanut butter to thicken it up.

It takes maybe 30 seconds of solid blending to get a good consistency.

It blends!

Pour it up and serve it immediately! I’m not really big on garnishes for milkshakes but if you wanted you could use some whipped cream or maybe stick a peanut butter cup on the side of the glass.

Honestly though the shake is pretty rich so it doesn’t need much else.

No crazy garnish for me thank you.

I think this is my first milkshake on Macheesmo that isn’t made from snow. I actually really liked the flavor and it would’ve been a lot more work to make ice cream with the coconut flavor and everything.

Quick, refreshing, and rich. I guess maybe I’ve convinced myself that the milkshake needs to make a few more appearances in my dessert lineup!

Smart food!

Betsy heads off to Colorado today to take The Bar Exam and she asked me to make some energy bars that she could take into the test with her. As an aside, the people that administer the bar appear to be the most paranoid people in the world. A few of the things you can’t bring into the bar…

• Neckties
• Garments with hoods, pockets, or linings
• Digital watches
• Costume Jewelry

What’s funny about this list is that I’m sure the items on there are on there for a reason. Some genius student probably tried to cheat somehow by using costume jewelry and got caught. Given the ridiculous amount of information that you have to know for this test, I’m not even sure how you would cheat on it though.

I guess rather than actually study there might be people out there that will use the two months leading up to the bar to figure out how to print 1000 pages of material on the back of a Dr. Pepper label.

Anyway, so I decided to make these no-bake energy bars that are packed with peanut butter, nuts, coconut, and oats. For people that aren’t cheating, you’ll need some good brain food!

Bar Bars

Yield: 8x8 dish of bars.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes + chill time

Ingredients:

1 Cup pecans, chopped
1 Cup almonds, slivered or chopped
2/3 Cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
1 1/4 Cups rolled oats
1 1/2 Cups unsweetened crispy brown rice cereal (you could use rice krispies in a pinch)
1 Cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
1 Cup peanut butter
1 1/2 Cups water
1/2 Cup sugar
2 Tablespoons finely ground coffee
1 Teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of salt

Directions:

1) Roughly chop the pecans and almonds and toast them, along with the coconut, in a 350 degree oven for about 8 minutes. Toss the mixture a few times throughout just to make sure they aren't burning. The coconut should be a light tan color when it's done.

2) Once all of that is toasted, mix it with the oats, cereal, and chocolate if you're using it.

3) Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, mix the peanut butter, water, coffee, vanilla, sugar, and salt and stir over low heat until the sugar is melted and everything is combined, about 3 minutes.

4) Let the peanut butter mixture cool for a second and then pour it over the dry stuff. Stir everything together.

5) Pour the bar mix into a lightly greased (I used a non-stick spray) or lightly buttered 9x9 baking dish. You could use a 9x13 pan if you want thinner bars. Press them down to an even layer and let them chill in the fridge for a few hours.

6) Cut them up and serve!

Adapted from a 101 Cookbooks recipe.

Making the Bars

These are no-bake bars, so there’s not a huge amount of prep to them honestly. Even though they are no-bake, you still want to toast the nuts and coconut though. It’ll add a lot of flavor to the final product.

Just roughly chop the pecans and almonds and spread them and the coconut out on a baking sheet.

Ready to roast!

Bake this sheet of deliciousness at 350 degrees for 7-10 minutes. Stir it up once or twice during that time just to make sure the coconut isn’t burning. You’re looking for a lightly tan color on the coconut. When your coconut is done, everything is done.

This was my finished sheet.

After 10 minutes and a few mixes.

The Crispy Rice Cereal

The recipe I was sort of going off of, although I changed a lot of stuff, called for crispy brown rice cereal. I’d never even heard of this.

But I found some! At least I think this is the right stuff. After inspecting it closely, I’m fairly certain that you could use Rice Krispies, but these are somewhat healthier for you. The texture seemed to be about the same to me though.

Any rice cereal will do the trick.

Once your nuts and coconut are done toasting, mix the oats, cereal, chocolate, and toasted things in a large bowl!

All the dry stuff!

The Wet Stuff

The only thing that Betsy requested in these energy bars was peanut butter so I made sure to include a lot of that. I’ve been on a homemade peanut butter kick lately so I just whipped up a batch. Obviously, you can use anything you can buy in the store also.

I'm an overachiever.

In a small saucepan, mix your peanut butter, water, coffee, vanilla, salt, and sugar and bring it to a simmer. It turns into a kind of peanut, coffee, vanilla, syrup situation that is pretty out of this world.

This will only need to simmer for a minute or two. You just want to make sure everything is well-combined and the sugar is melted.

This will smell awesome.

Then pour the peanut butter mixture over the dry ingredients and stir everything together really well. Lightly grease a 9×9 baking pan (I used non-stick spray) and pour all the bar mixture into the pan and press it down to an even layer. They should be pretty thick. If you wanted them thinner, you could use a 9×13 inch pan.

In the pan!

If you don’t mind room temperature bars, these are good to go now! They’ll be best if you let them chill for a few hours in the fridge. The nice thing about these is that they don’t need to be refrigerated really. There’s not anything perishable in them so they can sit out for a few days without a problem. They might get a bit gooey, but gooey can be delicious.

But the most important thing about these energy bars is that they’re packed with lots of stuff that’ll help your brain recover from hard multiple choice questions and essays!

And that’s why homemade peanut butter rocks. Is it faster or healthier than buying peanut butter in the store? It’s probably not faster and probably equally healthy. Is it cheaper? Well, actually it is, but that’s kind of secondary to the fact that it’s a lot of fun!

Making peanut butter is one of those things you can do with your kids. It’s like a magic show. You start with, well, peanuts and you end up with this delicious stuff.

Umm... easy.

This is kind of comical, but I’ll list the ingredients to this meal just for fun.

Homemade Peanut Butter

Yield: 2 Cups

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups peanuts
1 Teaspoon neutral oil (opt.)

Directions:

1) Pulse peanuts in a food processor until they form a rough paste.

2) Depending on the peanuts, it might help to add a small drizzle of oil to get the peanuts to come together.

3) Once the peanut butter is made, serve it immediately or store it for up to a few weeks in the fridge.

You can make peanut butter with literally just peanuts, but it takes awhile. If you add just a few drops of neutral oil you can really speed up the process. It’s seriously magical.

You start with, well…

The ingredients...

I used roasted and salted peanuts but you don’t need to necessarily use those. If I didn’t use salted, I’d probably hit my peanut butter with just a pinch of salt near the end.

Anyway, add your peanuts to a food processor. I used my little mini processor. I added about two cups of peanuts to start.

Is this really going to work?

Then just start pulsing the peanuts! At first, it won’t seem like you’re getting anywhere other than making a lot of chopped peanuts. Stop here if you need nuts for a sundae. Otherwise keep going!

Ok... chopped peanuts.

Keep your finger on the trigger. At this point, I’ve pulsed my peanuts for probably 30-45 seconds.

Chopped even more!

I honestly think that if I would’ve kept at it, it would’ve formed peanut butter, but to speed up the process I added a very small amount of canola oil (1 teaspoon). After another few seconds of pulsing it started to get creamy.

This is when the kids would say, “WHOA!”

Now we're getting there.

After another few seconds of pulsing, you’ll have very legit peanut butter.

Awesome.

So I left my peanut butter pretty plain, but the obvious advantage of making your own is you could experiment with add-ins. Honey? Cinnamon? Cayenne? Who knows. Go crazy!

Very peanuty.

I’ll tell you one thing about this peanut butter that I loved: It tasted like peanuts! It was actually somewhere in between the creamy and chunky varieties that you’ll find in the store, but the flavor was really deep and intense.

I actually made this batch around lunch time over a weekend so I decided to use it for lunch!

For half the lunch, I made some toast and slathered one piece of toast with peanut butter and one with honey.

Jelly would be the obvious choice.

Slap those together and you’ll have a pretty tasty sandwich. I also couldn’t resist making some classic ants on a log!

Awesome lunch.

Start to finish, I’d say this took me 15 minutes to do and I’ll admit that it would definitely be faster to reach for the jar. But it was really cool.

If I had kids, I think it’d be fun to have a peanut butter party. Make a bunch of peanut butter with the kids and then provide a bunch of fun mix-ins. Everyone can make their own sandwiches out of their own peanut butter!

What do you think? What would you add in?

These days I’ve been experimenting a lot more with Asian flavors which, trust me, pack plenty of heat. A few weeks ago I made a soba noodle dish with a fairly standard spicy peanut sauce. I mixed the soba noodles with lots of fresh veggies and some seared tofu and tossed everything in the peanut sauce.

It doesn’t look spicy, but it’s got some kick to it.

Deceptively spicy!

I think one of my favorite things about this dish is that it was pretty good at every temperature. On day one I had it at room temperature. On day two I had it cold for lunch as kind of a noodle salad dish. On day three, I brought it back to life in a super-hot pan with a touch of oil and stir-fried it. It was great all three ways!

Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

Peanut Sauce: (I spiced up this version a bit from the original)
1/2 Cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 Cup soy sauce
1/3 Cup warm water
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and grated/chopped
1 medium garlic clove, grated/chopped
2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 Tablespoon chili oil (or sub sesame oil)
1 Tablespoon honey
1 Teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1 Teaspoon Sriracha (optional)

Helpful Equipment:
Microplane grater

Noodles: (just some ideas on the veggies. You don't have to use all of them.)
3/4 pound soba noodles or you could use spaghetti in a pinch
1 red pepper, diced
1 orange/yellow pepper, diced
1/2 seedless cucumber, diced
1 Cup Napa cabbage, diced (6-8 leaves)
1 package (16 ounces) extra firm tofu, seared and cubed
4 scallions, diced
Peanuts, chopped (for topping)

Directions:

1) Slice the tofu in half horizontally to make two sheets of tofu. Lay those two pieces on a few paper towels, add a few more paper towels to the top, and put something heavy on top to press out some of the liquid. Let sit for 15 minutes.

2) Prep all your veggies that you are using. Slice them thinly.

3) For the sauce, grate the ginger and garlic on a microplane zester. Then just whisk in all your other sauce ingredients.

4) To sear tofu, add a drizzle of chili oil to a pan over high heat. Then add the blocks of tofu and sear for about 3-4 minutes per side. Then cube them up after searing.

5) Cook soba according to package instructions. Drain the pasta in a colander.

6) Toss all the ingredients together with sauce and serve.

Adapted from a Gourmet 2002 recipe (RIP)

If When I make this again, I think I wouldn’t use all those veggies. It was almost too much going on with the tofu and the cabbage and the peppers. I think it may have been better to just pick a few of them and go with it.

Preparing the Tofu

I really loved the seared tofu in this, but you could definitely leave it out if you aren’t a fan or sub it for chicken or shrimp.

Assuming you are using tofu though, you need to first press it to get out some of the moisture. Just slice your block in half horizontally.

Press out the moisture...

Then lay those two pieces on a few paper towels. Add a few paper towels to the top and then stick a cutting board on top of the tofu. Add some weight to the cutting board (like a bowl of water or something). Let it sit for about 15 minutes. The weight will slowly press out a lot of extra water in your tofu.

Meanwhile, you can…

Prepare your veggies

Like I said, I think I overused some veggies in my version. It was a lot. Assuming you wanted to use napa cabbage though, you’d want to wash a few leaves and dice them up like so:

Sliced thin is good.

Regardless of what other veggies you decide to use though, I definitely recommend the peppers. They go great with the sauce. I kept my peppers in pretty big chunks for this recipe.

I pretty large dice here.

These are all my veggies chopped and tossed together. As you can see, it’s a lot. Especially once I added in the tofu and everything.

Colorful!

Preparing the Sauce

This sauce has a few ingredients in it, but they all add a lot. If you don’t want it so spicy, definitely leave out the sriracha and maybe cut back on the red pepper flakes. Also, if you don’t have rice vinegar, you could use red wine vinegar and nobody would be the wiser.

Not pictured: Sriracha

When it comes to sauces like this that have ginger and/or garlic in them, there’s one piece of equipment that is hands down the most useful thing you can have in your kitchen: A Microplane Zester!

Click the photo to go straight to my OpenSky Store!

You could of course chop it with a knife also, but it’s a lot more work. Trust me. It’s one of the best 12 bucks you’ll spend on a kitchen tool.

To finish the sauce, just whisk together all your ingredients in a large bowl. Easy enough.

Whisk it all together.

Cooking the Tofu

You could keep your tofu raw if you wanted for this recipe, but I decided to pan sear mine quickly. I just added 1 Tablespoon of chili oil (you could also use a neutral oil like canola) to a pan over high heat and add my sliced blocks of tofu. After about 3 or 4 minutes on each side, they were browned and delicious.

I sliced them into cubes after searing them.

Sear it then slice it.

Cooking the Soba

I’ve only cooked with soba once before, but I really like it. It’s got a great nutty flavor that’s very different from other pastas.

This is a lot of noodles.

Basically just cook the noodles according to the package. Drain them in a colander and you’re all set!

Drained.

The next part got a bit messy for me. I wanted to mix everything together in a big bowl and let me tell you where I went horribly wrong: I didn’t exactly follow the recipe!

You see, the recipe called for 3/4 lb of pasta and I just threw in two boxes of soba which was 1 pound. So the noodle to sauce ratio was a bit off in my case.

I ended up with too much pasta, an abundance of veggies, and not enough sauce to make it all happy.

Everybody in the pool!

Anyway, after I tossed everything together, I added my tofu, along with some chopped peanuts and scallions for texture. My version turned out good, but not great. I think I maybe tried to experiment a bit too much instead of just following the recipe.

The peanuts are key.

The good news is that the sauce is actually amazing. I think it would easily hold up to meats (chicken satay anyone?), but it works well in a noodle dish like this also… assuming of course that you use the right amount of noodles.

I’m being pretty picky with my criticisms. My version turned out more than edible. I think it could just be improved is all.

Do you have a go-to peanut sauce recipe? Leave a comment!