Lentil and Rice Balls

These are a vegan alternative to meatballs. Caroline lived in a remote area of Costa Rica for field research during graduate school, and this was one of the recipes her team would take turns making for the group.

Notes:

• Caroline usually made this without walnuts or oats since they were expensive and hard to source where she lived. If you have allergies to either, just leave them out.
• This recipe makes a large batch (a full serving for about 12 people). We cut it in half to serve at a party for 7 where there was a bunch of other food to eat, and we had a bunch left over. We served them with flatbread, hummus, and a chopped vegetable salad.
• For variation, you can try different herbs instead of the basil.
• I made these once with cooked wild rice instead of long grain white rice and they were tasty. I served them with egg noodles and a vegetarian mushroom gravy for a stroganoff-type dish.
• These can also be pan fried in oil on the stove, but for large batches I think baking them is much, much easier.

Verdict: I like them best when Caroline makes them, but if I make them a few times I'm sure I'll figure out how to make them how I like them.

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RECIPE:

Lentil and Rice Balls

Unknown source; serves 12-16

2 tbsp olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped finely

4 cloves garlic, chopped finely

2 cups cooked long grain white or brown rice
3 cups cooked brown lentils

2 cups walnut pieces, toasted and then ground OR 2 cups oats

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp basil

Salt and pepper to taste

Lemon or lime juice to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. When it is hot, add onions and garlic and saute until onion softens and becomes translucent, about 4-5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, place remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Add onions and garlic to the bowl with everything else. Mix well. With your hands, shape into small balls about 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter. Place on a foil or parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until heated through and outside is lightly crisped. Serve warm.

Tea Parties Vol. 3: An End of Summer Feast

This meal was heavily inspired by Sarah, Caroline, and me all finding our way to the Great British Baking Show / The Great British Bake-Off separately but around the same time and then raving about it (thanks Netflix). It's so refreshing to see a cooking show that focuses primarily on the creativity and growth of the participants and the beautiful food they make, rather than relying on manufactured cattiness, drama, and shock value for entertainment. The hosts are silly and own it. I love the dad jokes. I have also learned a lot about culinary traditions of cultures and countries other than my own and made mental notes of new flavor combinations I'd never heard of that sound amazing.

A lot of the savory part of the menu was inspired by this particular dish I saw, to which Sarah said we should deconstruct it a bit. All the elements are there in various configurations.

One of the first episodes of the Great British Baking Show I ever watched was the one where they made roll cakes, and I loved it so much I wanted to design my own! I came up with a caramel mocha roll cake. It turned out reasonably well for my first attempt, if a bit literally and figuratively rough around the edges.

I created a drink recipe especially for this party, inspired by a drink I had at adults summer camp with one of my best friends and with my own fancy addition of peach green tea.

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RECIPES

• Roasted Carrot and Curry Hummus (Kristin Donnelly, via Design Sponge) -- Sarah's pick. I loved the sweetness of the curry + carrot combination.
• Spiced Beef Meatballs -- Sarah's recipe. She may have made it up herself.
• Lentil and Rice Balls -- Caroline brought this recipe for a vegetarian meatball alternative.
• Hummus Heaped with Cucumbers and Tomatoes (Smitten Kitchen) -- straightforward and lovely. I picked this recipe because I'd seen it and could not forget it because it looked so good. We made only the salad part, and served it with store-bought white bean hummus.
• Crisp Rosemary Flatbread (Smitten Kitchen) -- Sarah's pick, to eat with the hummus. A total keeper. These were one of the first things to get completely eaten, and I promptly made more to eat with the rest of the leftovers.
• Goat Cheese Stuffed Dates with Spinach-Hazelnut Pesto
• Cheesy Potatoes (no link) -- Andrea made these and brought them! Not sure where her recipe came from but they were yummy.
• Caramel Mocha Swiss Roll Cake -- one of the most challenging cakes I've ever attempted to make, and I was pleased with the result. I think it's a great start but it needs some tweaking so as to not be so incredibly rich.
• Cheesecake Ice Cream with Strawberry Sauce
• Peach Rosemary Tea Collins
• Watermelon Lemonade (Smitten Kitchen)

Other things we served that were not made from scratch:

• White bean hummus (Lantana makes a great one)
• Various fancy cheeses
• Wine

THE TEA PARTIES

• Vol. 2: Spring Up Speed Up
• Vol. 1: A Birthday Party, and Being Unapologetically Yourself

Peach Rosemary Tea Collins

This is a recipe I developed for my third tea party, and it is inspired by a vacation earlier in the summer. I went to a weekend summer camp for adults for my best friend's bachelorette party. It included nice food and drinks. My very favorite adult beverage served during this weekend camp was called a Rishi Tea Collins, a Tom Collins made with vodka and brewed tea from Rishi (a company that sells excellent tea and you should check them out). They had a black tea version and green tea version, and while both were good, I thought the green tea one was incredible. It was served with a rosemary sprig in the top of the cup and this really elevated the whole thing.

I needed to learn to make it or at least try before it faded from memory, so I needed to give myself a goal time to have it done, and the tea party seemed like a good excuse. Also, since it was for a fancy summer tea party, I wanted to try to add a summer fruit flavor to the mix and decided on peach since it goes well with both lemon and rosemary.

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RECIPE:

Peach Rosemary Tea Collins

adapted from Liquor Control Board of Ontario (lol)

makes about 4 1/2 cups mix, enough for 6-8 servings

Tea concentrate:
1 1/8 cups water
4 bags peach flavored green tea (if loose leaf, about 3-4 tbsp leaves)

Rosemary simple syrup:
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
3 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 cups vodka (the bartenders at the camp recommend Tito's)
Sparkling water (plain or lemon flavor) to taste
Fresh rosemary sprigs for garnish

To make tea concentrate: Bring 1 ⅛ cups water to a boil. Remove from heat and add tea bags. Let steep for 12-15 minutes. Strain out and discard tea leaves/tea bags. Let cool to room temperature.

To make rosemary simple syrup: Place water and sugar in a saucepan on the stove and heat on medium-high, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Gently bruise the rosemary (roll gently between your fingers) and add to the hot sugar water mixture. Let stand until cooled to room temperature. Strain rosemary stems and leaves out of the mixture.

Mix together all ingredients except sparkling water and chill. (It can be stored in a glass jar in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.) Pour desired amount over ice into a glass. Top with a bit of sparkling water and stir briefly. Garnish with fresh rosemary sprig. Serve immediately.

Notes:

• Freshly squeezed lemon juice is an absolute must here. Sometimes I cut it with bottled juice since lemons can get expensive where I live, but make sure at least half of the lemon juice is freshly squeezed or it's just not right.
• Fresh rosemary sprigs for garnish are also a must. Being able to smell it while you drink heightens the experience considerably.
• Possibly unpopular opinion: the quality of the tea is not super important so long as you like the flavor. Bigelow's peach green tea (which I wouldn't buy to drink straight all by itself) happened to be what I was looking for in this case.
• Ideas for variations:
• I think you could make it with just about any kind of green (or other) tea you want, though my vote would be for a neutral or fruit flavored type.
• A standard Tom Collins is made with gin, so depending on the type of tea you choose (a particularly herbal flavored one perhaps), gin might taste nice instead. I also encourage you to experiment with other neutral flavored spirits; I've used Korean soju in this before and I think it works nicely with the tea.
• Varying the fresh herb used might also be interesting. For example, sage might be tasty with a blackberry or black currant flavored tea, or mint with a blueberry tea.

Rainbow Confetti Cake

I usually make my own birthday cake every year as an excuse to try something from my neverending list of Things I Could Make. Before I could check my list to pick something out, though, I happened to see this on Instagram and it was so colorful and nostalgic (and easy to make) that I needed it to be my birthday cake. Smitten Kitchen seemed to know it was my birthday, haha. I made this cake to share with my friends after my birthday outing, during which we bicycled to a nearby small town and spent the afternoon sitting outside and drinking beer and playing beanbags and lying in the grass. It was sunny and warm as July generally is but not unbearably hot.

I sought out clear imitation vanilla extract especially for this cake, and I sincerely believe this is the thing that I miss from boxed mixes. Literally the only thing. I know real vanilla is superior in basically every way, but it's hard to beat nostalgia.

I loved how the cake turned out and would gladly make it again. Indeed I will have to in order to use up more of this clear imitation vanilla! Oh no. Twist my arm.

Edit: I made this again for my birthday in July 2019, still as delicious as I remember. I made it into 12 cupcakes but the cups were not filled quite as much as I'd have liked; 10 or 11 would have worked a little bit better. They took about 23 minutes to bake. Frosting was enough for a thin layer over the top plus 6 little piped stars on each one.

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RECIPE: Confetti Party Cake

Garlic Scape Pesto

Verdict: Wonderfully garlicky and fresh tasting. Definitely keeping around for later.

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RECIPE: Garlic Scape Pesto (Dorie Greenspan)

Raw Kale and Apple Salad

This recipe was tried out of a necessity to use up fresh kale from our CSA haul (we get it nearly every week in the summer!) and a desire to not have to cook it to use it up. I recently had a raw kale salad at a work potluck that I liked so I thought I'd try to make a similar one. I liked this one so much that it's turned into a regular summer meal!

Notes/substitutions:

• I don't bother mixing the salad dressing ingredients together first, just pour the oil and lemon juice and salt into my bowl of chopped kale.
• I haven't ever eaten this with dates but I'm sure they're good. I usually use a dried fruit I'm more likely to have on hand (golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries).
• I've used sliced almonds instead of slivered. Walnuts are also good. Toasting them sounds a little tedious but adds a lot of extra flavor.
• Instead of just tossing to coat, I massage the ingredients into the kale for a couple of minutes. I find this softens the leaves and makes them easier to eat.
• I also have used other harder, sharp cheeses in place of Parmesan to good effect. Sartori MontAmore is particularly yummy.
• This salad keeps for several days in the refrigerator and travels well.
• It is gluten free and can be made vegan if you leave out the cheese.

RECIPE: Kale and Apple Salad

Spicy Ginger Kombucha Cocktail

It took me a long time to warm up to kombucha. I chalk this up to the gap between expectations and reality. Wikipedia says it is indeed a Japanese word for kelp tea that was adopted as a loanword but used incorrectly. Since Japanese cooking often uses kombu/kelp as an ingredient in savory broths, I was expecting it to be kind of salty and savory, and the first couple of times I tried it were pretty mentally jarring because it is sour and fizzy. Sometimes you end up getting a bad impression of a food because of what your expectations of it are rather than going in with no expectations and trying to appreciate it for what it is. I now remember that it's supposed to be sour and fizzy, and I drink it on purpose because I like it.

My favorite kind is a kind that's made in my city, and my favorite flavor that they make is lemongrass ginger. I first tried it in a cocktail at a local distillery. They had flights of different experimental cocktails made with different flavors of this company's kombucha, and the one with lemongrass ginger was exceptionally good. But they wouldn't make me a full sized drink. So I tried to make it myself a few days later. I'm not sure I got it completely right, but I think I ended up with something close and worth making again.

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RECIPE:

Spicy Ginger Kombucha Cocktail
inspired by the Spicy Ginger Cocktail at the Old Sugar Distillery
Makes 1 serving

1-2 tbsp ginger juice (from 1.5 oz unpeeled fresh ginger)
1.5 oz dark rum
1 tbsp honey or maple syrup
1 tbsp lime juice
4 oz NessAlla lemongrass ginger kombucha, or similarly flavored kombucha
Ice

To prepare ginger juice: Peel ginger with a paring knife. Grate ginger finely on a grater or microplane. Gather the grated ginger in your fingers and squeeze the liquid out (ideally into your shaker or the glass you will be drinking from). If there is any juice on your work surface, you can pick it up with the already-squeezed ginger like a sponge. Squeeze until the pulp is dry. Discard pulp.

Shake all ingredients except kombucha in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into rocks glass. Top with kombucha and stir gently to mix. Alternatively, place ice in a rocks glass with ginger juice. Add rum, honey or maple syrup, and lime juice and mix until sweetener is dissolved. Top with kombucha and stir gently to mix.