Vegetarian Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping

I got this recipe from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook. It seemed really interesting... I mean, pot pie in the crock pot? Interesting idea. So I thought I'd try it last September 6.

This recipe has a lot of prep that you have to do, but one of the great things about this cookbook, that I think I mentioned the last time I talked about it, is that it tells you what you can make ahead of time so that it doesn't take as long on the day of.  For example, this one says that you can "complete steps 1 and 2," then "cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days. When you're ready to cook, complete the recipe."

First, you take dried portobello mushrooms and crumble them into a bowl with your fingers.  Then add hot water to them to reconstitute the mushrooms and let them soak for about 30 minutes.  You strain the mushrooms but save the liquid for later.

On the stove, you cook chopped onion, celery, and carrots in some oil until soft. Then add most of the rest of the ingredients (garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper).  As per usual, I didn't use any salt.  Then you add some flour to the liquid and mix it in. The recipe says that you can add dry sherry or vodka if you want, but I didn't do this. You add the liquid from soaking the mushrooms and then pour it all in the slow cooker. At this point you turn the slow cooker on and cook it on low for 4 hours or high for 2 hours.

While you're cooking the pot pie "filling", you make the biscuits using flour, baking powder, salt, butter, and milk.  You form them into balls.  After the "filling" has cooked for 4 or 2 hours, depending on the temperature setting, you mix the final three ingredients into it: peas, cream, and parsley.  Then you drop the biscuits in and cook them on top of the "filling" mixture.  The biscuits are cooked on high for about an hour.

In the description for this dish, the recipe says, "This tasty dish has real robustness thanks to the dried portobello mushrooms. All you need to add is a tossed green salad," so I took their advice and that's how I served it.  Interestingly, this is one dish where the number of servings actually is the amount of servings that you get because you only make 4 biscuits. But you have to make the servings of the "filling" pretty big to get 4 out of it, so one of the many recommendations that I would make with this recipe is actually to make more biscuits than just four.  Maybe do 1 1/2 times the recipe so you get six biscuits.  Because, the issue is that this recipe is just okay and you really can't eat that much of the "filling" each time you sit down, so making smaller servings might make it better.

I would probably change a lot in making this recipe again, because it wasn't all that great as written.  First, the recipe has you chopping everything into tiny little pieces, which makes it more like a soup when you're eating it and you taste more of the cream sauce than the vegetables, which makes it difficult to eat a lot. So, I would not crumble the mushrooms and just reconstitute them whole so there are bigger chunks and you can taste them more.  I'd also make sure that the onion, celery and carrots are chopped into large pieces instead of the small ones that the recipe recommends.

Second, I would definitely add some more spices to it.  And probably use the sherry.  Definitely more pepper and thyme than they recommend. But I'd probably also add some more spices to make it more interesting.  Maybe marjoram? Basil? Oregano? If anyone has any suggestions about what spices might spruce this up a bit, I'd love to know.

Now in terms of cost, this one is a bit pricey per serving if you had to get everything. The big ticket item is the sherry, but the baking items all together would be around $9.00 or so. So the total would be $8.77 per serving for four servings and $5.85 per serving for six.  But, of course, I didn't use the sherry and already had most of the items for the recipe, which is part of the reason why I wanted to try it initially. I only bought the mushrooms, celery, peas, cream, parsley, and milk. So as I purchased it, I only paid $3.46 per serving (and if I had stretched it into six servings in would have only been $2.30).

The calories are high-ish for this recipe because of the heavy cream and biscuits. Counting the sherry it would be 425 calories per serving for four servings and 348 calories for six serving and since the recipe only calls for 2 tbsp sherry, it doesn't really add all that many calories.

I think overall my evaluation of this recipe is: meh.  I think that you could switch some stuff up and make it a bit more tasty, like I suggested above, but it was definitely not my favorite.  On the bright side, it wasn't like the soup I made back when I was doing my master's... for that one I wrote in the cookbook: "NOT GOOD. DO NOT MAKE AGAIN." This one wasn't that bad, but I've made better things in the crock pot. And because of the higher calories and the overall price, I probably wouldn't recommend it for the grad student lifestyle.

Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes

One of the many awesome cookbooks that my mother-in-law has given me is The Indian Slow Cooker: 50 Healthy, Easy, Authentic Recipes and the first recipe I tried out of this was the Spiced Cauliflower and Potatoes. Now one note about this cookbook: a lot of the recipes require some unique spices, but I've found that if your local grocery store doesn't have what is needed, try Amazon.com. You're definitely going to need to stock up on some standard Indian spices like garam masala, which is in almost every recipe. Also, a lot of the recipes call for saffron, which can be really expensive.  In the introduction, it says, "For decades, saffron was the world's most expensive spice by weight."  I found it prohibitively expensive in my local grocery store, but Trader Joe's has it at a much more reasonable price, so check there.  I actually have avoided the saffron recipes so far because I didn't get it until recently, so you'll have to wait for any of the recipes that use saffron.

The recipe is pretty easy to make once you've chopped all the ingredients.  You'll need to cut up the cauliflower, potato, onion, tomato, fresh ginger, garlic, and peppers (Thai, serrano, or cayenne). The spices in this recipe include cumin, red chile powder, garam masala, salt, and turmeric, with a little bit of vegetable or canola oil. As most people who read this blog regularly know, I didn't add the salt.

You mix the ingredients all together and then cook the cauliflower on low for three hours. The recipe recommends mixing it once during cooking: "Mix once or twice during cooking, especially in the beginning. Eventually the cauliflower will release enough liquid to prevent anything from sticking to the sides of the slow cooker."

This is what the dish looked like before I turned it on.

And this is what it looked like after cooking.

As you can see in the picture above, you mix in some chopped cilantro. The recipe suggests serving this dish "with roti or naan and a side of onion and cucumber salad."  As you can see from the picture to the left and below, I served it over basmati rice, the naan you can get from Trader Joe's, and a salad. This was a really good recipe, but I made it too spicy.  I didn't get all the seeds out of the peppers so it ended up super spicy. Obviously it wouldn't have been as spicy if I had taken all the seeds out.  But, I thought it was still good.

The good thing about this dish is that it makes a lot of servings.  This cookbook doesn't give you any approximation about the servings, but rather how many cups of food you make. This recipe makes 7 cups.  I ate it for a while, however, so I'm going to estimate that I got 8 servings out of it for the purposes of my calculation. In terms of calories, the cauliflower dish by itself is only about 122 calories per serving.  I'd estimate rice at between 100 and 150 calories (depending on how much you serve -- 1/2 cup is about 100 calories, but people often serve themselves more) and the Trader Joe's naan is 190 calories per piece. So the total (not counting the salad) is about 412 to 462 calories per meal.  This one really keeps the calories down for those days when you spend the entire day in the library and no time in the gym!

For cost per serving, the real bulk of the cost is getting some of the spices that you may not normally have on hand. My grocery receipt included cumin ($2.99), red chile powder ($7.99), garam masala ($4.49) and turmeric ($3.29) -- basically all the spices needed for this recipe. The first time you cook from this book you'll be spending a bit more to get the spices, but subsequent recipes will cost less per serving because you'll already have the spices on hand.  For everything you need for the recipe, I estimated about $4.34 per serving (I only paid $3.54 per serving, but I didn't have enough naan to serve every time). If you already have the spices it would only be $2.00 per serving (and keep in mind, I included the rice and naan in this calculation) and only $1.44 with the things that I already had on hand!  So basically, you could feed yourself for over a week with this meal at only $2.00 per meal!  Really helpful for those of us on a grad school budget!

Turkey and Spinach Loaf

I recently found out that I received a scholarship to go to France to take a language class and do research for my dissertation, so I'm not exactly sure what will happen with my blog while I'm there.  I may take a break from posting in July because of my trip -- but I might try to write the posts in advance and schedule them to post every two weeks because I recently discovered that blogger has that feature. The only reason I worry about taking a break is because I have such a back log of posts to make and it's really difficult to post about recipes that you made almost a year ago.  I do note in my cookbooks whether or not we liked the recipe and any tips I would want to remind myself abotu if/when I make it again, but as you've seen in my recent posts, I don't always remember how many servings we got out of it.  Also, in the case of the post I'm making for today, I had to look through all of my cookbooks until I finally figured out what the name of the recipe was that I had pictures for.

So, I made this recipe, the Turkey and Spinach Loaf, last August 4. (Part of the reason I couldn't find it is because I kept looking for "meatloaf" in the index of each book and it's not called a meatloaf even though that's exactly what it is.) This is from the Italian Slow Cooker cookbook and it's actually the first recipe that I made out of that cookbook.  And I know that because I just went through and re-tagged all of my posts based on what cookbook I got them out of, so if you want to read all of my reviews from one cookbook, you can now do that.

This recipe asks for either fresh or frozen spinach. In both cases you have to cook the spinach before you start, and I found it easy to use frozen and just cook it in the microwave. The recipe says that you should add salt, but I left that out.  The spinach is supposed to be chopped finely after you cook and drain it. Another benefit in this case to using frozen spinach is that you can get it already chopped.  So using frozen spinach cuts off time in both the cooking and the chopping, which is especially good for the busy grad student.

Then you take some Italian bread and soak it in water until it is soft and you can easily crumble it into a bowl.  You add chopped mushrooms, pancetta, and garlic and freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, as you can see in the image above.

You also add ground turkey, spinach, eggs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.  I did not add the salt.  Then you moisten your hands and mix everything together.  Watch out -- the mixing will make your hands quite cold if you just took the turkey out of the fridge!

This recipe also calls for you to make the foil cradle, like I did before with the salsa meatloaf (and as you can see in the picture below). Unlike the salsa meatloaf, however, this recipe also calls for the meatloaf to be cooked in chicken broth.  Now, when I went shopping for this recipe, I saw that I had enough leftover chicken broth in the freezer, so I didn't bother buying any.  Of course, I completely forgot to take the broth out of the freezer in advance so I had to melt it in the microwave, as you can see from the image to the right.  So, after mixing everything together, you shape the mixture into a loaf in the crock pot and add the chicken broth and chopped fresh or canned tomatoes. (I used canned tomatoes.)

The image to the left is what the meatloaf looks like before it is cooked on low for 3 hours.  Now, generally I trust these cookbooks, but I was really paranoid about the meat not being completely cooked after only 3 hours so I left it on longer than that.

The image to the right shows you what the meatloaf looked like after I took it out of the crock pot.  The cookbook recommends that you serve it with mashed potatoes with a little olive oil and I think that would be very delicious, but we just served it with some frozen mixed veggies that we had in the freezer, as you can see from the image below. I really liked this meatloaf.  The only complaint I have was that it all came out a little too mushy.  The recipe calls for a 1/2 cup chicken broth and some liquid was also added with the canned tomatoes.  I think if I were to make this again I would add less liquid in hopes that would make the loaf more solid (and in that way, easier to take out of the crock pot and serve).

Now this is a healthy meatloaf.  Using the 8 servings that the cookbook says you'll get, it's only 279 calories per slice. Even if you added a generous serving of the garlic mashed potatoes that I made with the Swiss steak, you'd still end up under 500 calories.   And obviously you could get more servings out of this depending on how thick you slice it. In terms of cost, this is stipend-friendly as well.  As I cooked it, I only paid $2.58 per serving.  If you had to buy everything, it'd be a little bit more, but not much: $3.31 per serving.  If you're trying to be healthy, I really recommend this as an alternative to beef meatloaf.

Rigatoni and Sausage

Some of you might be wondering why I'm posting so much recently and it's because although I've been trying to update every other week, I got a bit behind when I was finishing up my dissertation prospectus and so I'm trying to make up for those missed posts.  But by June I should be back on the every other week pattern.

Now, one of the things that you can do with the crock pot that I haven't done nearly enough is to make casseroles and pastas.  I did make the mac and cheese that I posted about back in 2010, but I haven't done much else with pasta since.  Of course, since I now have the Italian Slow Cooker cookbook, there are many more pasta dishes in there that I'll have to try.  But almost every non-specialized crock pot cookbook that I have has a recipe for some sort of pasta casserole. At the beginning of last July, I tried one of these recipes from the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook: Rigatoni and Sausage.

The best thing about this recipe is that there are only four ingredients so it's perfect for the grad student on a budget.  It calls for Italian turkey sausage, a jar of pasta sauce, rigatoni, and "freshly grated or shredded" Parmesan cheese.  And, for the latter, I normally have one of those store-brand shakers of Parmesan cheese in the fridge so I just used that.  Would it have been nicer with freshly shredded cheese?  Probably.  But if you're on your graduate-student-stipend budget, you've got to cut some corners (in terms of both time and money)  when necessary.

For this recipe, coat the crock pot with nonstick cooking spray first.  Then, and this was possibly the step that took the longest, you have to take the sausage out of the casings and crumble it up.  Now I couldn't find Italian-style turkey sausage at my local grocery store, so I used Italian-style pork sausage instead.  The sausage gets browned on the stove and while that is going on, you pour the pasta sauce, plus one extra jar full of water into the crock pot.  Add pasta and sausage, then stir.  The image below shows what it looked like right before I turned it on to cook.

This recipe cooks only for three and a half to four hours on low, but you have to be around to stir it once half way through (to make sure that all the pasta gets cooked), so it's not the best recipe to make on a day when you have to be out of the house all day.  It's definitely made for the weekend or a work-from-home day.  This is especially true because this is one of the only recipes I've seen that comes with a "do not overcook" warning: "Do not cook more than 4 hours because the sides will dry out and burn."

The dish is served sprinkled with the Parmesan cheese.  As you can see from the image below, it's not a casserole, just a way to cook pasta in the crock pot and to be completely honest, it might be just as easy to do this one on the stove.  However, the description of the recipe reports that the chef that invented it said that "the pasta and sauce cook up slightly dry as a casserole in the cooker," so you do get a different texture, at least, in making it with the crock pot.

This dish was amazing and it's so easy to make so it's one that I'd definitely recommend to the busy grad student.  The recipe says that it serves six and let me tell you, those six servings went really fast in our house.  It was so good that I think both my husband and I went up for seconds and I made a point of packing it for my lunch the next day.  As you can see in the picture below, garnishing the dish with fresh basil gives it a great added touch.

This recipe isn't too unhealthy for a pasta dish if you keep yourself to one serving unlike how we ate it.  It's about 557 calories per serving (so, yikes, the two servings made it over 1000 calories!).  You could be really strategic about this, actually, and make a giant salad for yourself and then serve yourself even smaller portions of pasta.  This recipe takes a whole box of rigatoni and the box (at least according to Barilla) has eight servings in it.  It you drag this recipe out into eight servings it's a not that different but slightly more manageable 424 calories per serving.  Of course, if I had been able to find the turkey sausage, it would have been 500 calories per serving for six servings and only 381 calories per serving for eight servings -- much better. In terms of cost, this recipe is perfect for the grad student budget because if you normally have Parmesan cheese on hand, it only costs about $1.50 per serving!  If you had to get the cheese too I'd calculate it at about $2.00 per serving, or a bit more if you get fresh Parmesan and shred it yourself.

Split Pea Soup with Corn and Carrots

In July I apparently was on a soup kick, because not only did I make the Chicken and Chile Pepper Stew that I posted about last week, but I used a soup mix that my mother had gotten for me and made that in the crock pot as well.  (I think that my mom got this mix at the store at the Wayside Inn actually.) The soup mix was for Split Pea Soup with Corn and Carrots.  Now, for a while I saved the bag from this because the directions and ingredients were on the back, but eventually I think I threw it out because I just looked everywhere I thought I might have put it and I cannot find it anywhere.  The soup mix, as you can kind of see from this image, has the split peas and spices already.

Even without the ingredient list, however, you can see what went into it from my pictures.  It's pretty easy, just the soup mix, chicken broth (or you could use vegetable broth), chopped up carrots, chopped up onion, and frozen corn.  Now, the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook has a recipe for making soup from a mix, suggesting certain additions, but I borrowed the cooking time from that.  That recipe actually says to cook it on high for one hour to quick soak the bean mix, then cook it low for eight to ten hours.  In all honesty, I probably just turned the crock pot on low before I left for the day and let it cook while I was at school (or, more likely, while my husband was at school and while I was sitting around the house reading for exams).

Now, the problem with making this soup recipe in the crock pot instead of on the stove is that the beans absorb all of the liquid while cooking for that long so I had to add some more broth after it had finished cooking.  Here's what I would recommend, after going through this experience: pour in enough broth -- from one of the cartons that has about four cups in it -- to just cover the soup mix and the added vegetables.  Then, after the soup cooks, pour the rest of the broth into a microwave-safe bowl, zap it in the microwave, and add it to the soup before serving.

This is what the soup looked like after I added some more broth.

Now, the unfortunate thing about having thrown away the bag is that I don't have the nutrition information that was on the mix or the number of servings that the recipe is supposed to make.  But to finish this post I will note that you can always use soup mixes in your crock pot.  And, yes, some of the soup mixes are easy enough to make on the stove, but if you don't even have the 30-40 minutes that it would take you to make one of these on the stove because you have your exams coming up as I did at the time, the crock pot is a good alternative that makes things easier.

Soup, salad, and a loaf of French bread.  Perfect.