Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of dry white wine
• One small shallot
• 1 1/2 sticks or 12 oz of unsalted butter
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Any chopped fresh herbs such as tarragon, thyme, or sage

Instruction

1. First, start by cubing up your butter and putting it into the freezer for just a little bit. You don’t need your butter to be super frozen, you just want it to be cold so when it hits the pan later on it’ll emulsify more easily.
2. Then, chop up the shallot into a fine dice and put it into a skillet with the white wine.
3. Put the skillet on medium-low heat just so it comes to a simmer. You want the liquid to reduce and alcohol to cook out, so do it slowly.
4. Cook this until there are only about 2-3 tablespoons of liquid remaining in the skillet.
5. Turn the heat to low and start whisking in the cubed butter. Do only a few pieces at a time to bring the sauce together whisking constantly.
6. Once the sauce is glossy, season with salt, pepper, and the herb of your choice and you’re all set for dinner!

The post Everyone Should Know How to Make a Beurre Blanc appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 a bell pepper
• 1/2 an onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon of chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika
• 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs
• 2 eggs
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Start by chopping up your bell pepper, onion, and garlic cloves very finely.
2. In a large bowl, pour in the cans of black beans and mash them fairly well, still leaving some beans whole so it’s not a complete paste.
3. Then, add in the chopped veggies along with all of the spices and mix well.
4. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl to avoid getting any yolks in, and then add them to the bowl and mix as well.
5. Begin adding the bread crumbs slowly to see if you’ll need more or less than the 1/2 cup to bind everything together.
6. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper to your taste, mix and form into patties.
7. Put the patties on parchment or wax paper-lined baking sheets and freeze for 30 minutes.
8. Once they’ve frozen for a bit, cook them in a pan with oil, or bake them all at 350 F for about 15 minutes.
9. Enjoy!

The post Veggie Burgers are a Healthy and Fun Way to Eat More Plant-Based Protein! appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients:

• 8 slices of thick sourdough or country-style bread sliced to about 1/2 inch thick
• One stick of unsalted room temperature butter
• 2 tablespoons of Calabrian chiles
• 8 anchovy fillets
• Half a lemon
• 1/2 cup of parsley
• Olive oil

Instructions:

1. Start by toasting the bread either in the oven or in a pan with a little bit of olive oil or butter. You can also do this under the broiler in the oven.
2. Chop up the chiles so they’re pretty small.
3. In a small bowl, mix together the butter with the chopped up chiles.
4. Take the zest from half the lemon and put it into another small bowl. To that bowl, add the juice of the lemon as well as the parsley. You can chop up the parsley and you can add a touch of salt or pepper if you want, or you can just leave it as it is.
5. Let the bread cool slightly before putting the butter onto each of the slices.
6. Then, top each toast with 1 anchovy fillet, a little bit of the lemon parsley mixture, and dig in!

The post Don’t Knock This Anchovy Toast Recipe Until You Try It! appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

• 4 oz of ginger
• 1 cup of molasses
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 1 cup of vegetable oil
• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
• 1 cup of water
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 2 room temperature eggs

Instructions

1. Peel and grate the ginger or really finely dice it.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, sugar, and oil until they’re well incorporated.
3. In a separate medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper.
4. In a small saucepan, pour in the water and bring it to a boil. Once it’s boiled, stir in the baking soda, and then pour this into the molasses bowl and mix well. Add the ginger in as well.
5. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients slowly, along with the eggs one at a time.
6. Once everything is well mixed, pour the batter into a parchment-lined cake pan and bake at 350 F for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.
7. Cool the cake for 30 minutes before removing for the pan.

The post Warm Yourself Up with This Ginger Cake appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

• 6 gelatin leaves
• 1/2 cup of 100% fruit juice, not from concentrate, of your choice
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 2-3 tablespoons of sugar
• Optional: extra sugar and vegetable oil

Instructions

1. First, put plastic wrap into a baking dish. This will make it easier to remove the jellies once they’re set.
2. Then, soak the gelatin leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.
3. While the gelatin soaks, combine the fruit juice and lemon juice in a pan over medium heat. Stir in the sugar and then bring it up to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer.
4. Turn the heat off, squeeze the gelatin leaves so they’re no excess water, and dissolve them into the juice mixture.
5. Pour this into the lined baking dish and allow it to sit for 6-8 hours in the fridge until firm.
6. Once they have firmed up, you can cut them into whatever shapes you like!
7. You can also paint them with a little bit of oil and roll them in sugar for an extra sweet treat.

The post You Wouldn’t Believe How Easy Homemade Fruit Jellies Are to Make appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

If you want to know how to best utilize this ingredient since they’re usually so big you might not finish it off in one go, here are some great recipe ideas. 

Beans

You don’t have to go all out with making enchiladas to great the great taste of the sauce. Just drain and rinse some black beans, heat them up in the enchilada sauce, and watch them come to life with intense flavor. 

Casserole

Nothing says cozy like a big Mexican-inspired casserole. You can make it with chicken and rice, have it be vegetarian, and do whatever you like! Just use the enchilada sauce the way you would a tomato sauce in between each layer of the casserole and you’ll have a dish that no one will be able to resist. 

Pasta

Though it sounds strange, enchilada pasta is actually incredible. Just cook up your favorite pasta, toss it in the enchilada sauce, and add in your favorite Mexican-inspired fixings like beans, corn, chiles, and more!

The post You Can Do a Lot With Storebought Enchilada Sauce appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

But, if you feel like you’re not satisfied with the amount of sauce your lo mein order came with tonight, don’t fret. You can make your lo mein much more flavorful easily with this extra tip. All you have to do is make your own sauce super fast, heat everything together, and you have yourself the perfect lo mein.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of chicken broth, either regular or low sodium
• Four tablespoons of soy sauce, either regular or low sodium
• Two tablespoons of hoisin sauce
• Two tablespoons of oyster sauce
• Two teaspoons of sesame oil
• Three or four teaspoons of corn starch, start with three and check the consistency
• One green onion

Recipe

1. Whisk together all the ingredients in a medium-sized bowl with a whisk or a fork.
2. Add the already made lo mein into a wok or large skillet over medium or medium-high heat to start heating it up.
3. Pour over the sauce and cook for about 3-5 minutes until the sauce has gotten absorbed into the noodles.
4. Chop up the green onion to garnish.
5. Plate the noodles, top with the sliced green onion, and enjoy!

The post Get Your Takeout Lo Mein Even Saucier With This Tip appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

This soup only needs carrots, onions, garlic, and ginger. You can either boil everything in water or stock, whatever you have time to do. In terms of spices, you really can just use salt and pepper, but if you want something more exciting, add in cumin or curry powder.

Instructions

1. Roughly chop onions and saute them in oil for a few minutes until they start to become translucent.
2. Dice garlic and ginger and add that into the pot as well.
3. Slice up carrots any size you want, however, if you want them to cook faster, cut them thin and small.
4. Add the carrots to the pot for just a few minutes to get them cooking and then cover everything in about 1-2 inches of liquid and bring to a boil.
5. Once the carrots are fork-tender, blend it all with an immersion blender and serve!

The post This Carrot Ginger Soup Couldn’t Be Quicker to Put Together appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Money-Saving

Buying second-hand kitchen items is a great way to save money, especially when you move somewhere new or if you really want to load up on kitchen goodies.

Things like stand mixers, food processors, and blenders can really start to add up into the hundreds, or even close to thousands if you plan to buy new. However, if you decide to go the second-hand route, you’ll be slashing those prices in half or more!

Eco-Friendly

It’s always more eco-friendly to buy second-hand because the item already exists, which means you save yourself from purchasing something that has gone through a long physical journey in terms of materials and resources that it has wasted.

That all get’s avoided when you buy second-hand since it’s also most likely in driving range from your house, which cuts down on carbon emissions.

The post Why You Need to Buy Second-Hand Kitchen Tools appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Tapenade

Never fear surprise guests again if you have olives handy! All you need to do is blitz them in a food processor with capers, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and fresh herbs if you have them. Serve with bread or crackers and you’re ready to party!

Pasta Sauce

Don’t have enough time to whip up a tomato sauce from scratch? Olives are here to save the day. Simmer some store-bought tomato sauce or even just crushed tomatoes with some sliced olives and you will have a complex tasting sauce in no time. The best thing to do is to make sure you toss the pasta in the sauce while it’s on the heat so all the sauce is absorbed, and you have a gorgeous dish!

Salad

If you need a little salty bite to get you through seemingly boring salads, olives are here to save the day. Not only will they give you a bit of fat as well to keep you feeling full, but whenever you bite into one it feels like a little treat!

The post You Can Make Everything Taste Better With Olives appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of dry white wine
• One small shallot
• 1 1/2 sticks or 12 oz of unsalted butter
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Any chopped fresh herbs such as tarragon, thyme, or sage

Instruction

1. First, start by cubing up your butter and putting it into the freezer for just a little bit. You don’t need your butter to be super frozen, you just want it to be cold so when it hits the pan later on it’ll emulsify more easily.
2. Then, chop up the shallot into a fine dice and put it into a skillet with the white wine.
3. Put the skillet on medium-low heat just so it comes to a simmer. You want the liquid to reduce and alcohol to cook out, so do it slowly.
4. Cook this until there are only about 2-3 tablespoons of liquid remaining in the skillet.
5. Turn the heat to low and start whisking in the cubed butter. Do only a few pieces at a time to bring the sauce together whisking constantly.
6. Once the sauce is glossy, season with salt, pepper, and the herb of your choice and you’re all set for dinner!

The post Everyone Should Know How to Make a Beurre Blanc appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 a bell pepper
• 1/2 an onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon of chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika
• 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs
• 2 eggs
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Start by chopping up your bell pepper, onion, and garlic cloves very finely.
2. In a large bowl, pour in the cans of black beans and mash them fairly well, still leaving some beans whole so it’s not a complete paste.
3. Then, add in the chopped veggies along with all of the spices and mix well.
4. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl to avoid getting any yolks in, and then add them to the bowl and mix as well.
5. Begin adding the bread crumbs slowly to see if you’ll need more or less than the 1/2 cup to bind everything together.
6. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper to your taste, mix and form into patties.
7. Put the patties on parchment or wax paper-lined baking sheets and freeze for 30 minutes.
8. Once they’ve frozen for a bit, cook them in a pan with oil, or bake them all at 350 F for about 15 minutes.
9. Enjoy!

The post Veggie Burgers are a Healthy and Fun Way to Eat More Plant-Based Protein! appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients:

• 8 slices of thick sourdough or country-style bread sliced to about 1/2 inch thick
• One stick of unsalted room temperature butter
• 2 tablespoons of Calabrian chiles
• 8 anchovy fillets
• Half a lemon
• 1/2 cup of parsley
• Olive oil

Instructions:

1. Start by toasting the bread either in the oven or in a pan with a little bit of olive oil or butter. You can also do this under the broiler in the oven.
2. Chop up the chiles so they’re pretty small.
3. In a small bowl, mix together the butter with the chopped up chiles.
4. Take the zest from half the lemon and put it into another small bowl. To that bowl, add the juice of the lemon as well as the parsley. You can chop up the parsley and you can add a touch of salt or pepper if you want, or you can just leave it as it is.
5. Let the bread cool slightly before putting the butter onto each of the slices.
6. Then, top each toast with 1 anchovy fillet, a little bit of the lemon parsley mixture, and dig in!

The post Don’t Knock This Anchovy Toast Recipe Until You Try It! appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

• 4 oz of ginger
• 1 cup of molasses
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 1 cup of vegetable oil
• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
• 1 cup of water
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 2 room temperature eggs

Instructions

1. Peel and grate the ginger or really finely dice it.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, sugar, and oil until they’re well incorporated.
3. In a separate medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper.
4. In a small saucepan, pour in the water and bring it to a boil. Once it’s boiled, stir in the baking soda, and then pour this into the molasses bowl and mix well. Add the ginger in as well.
5. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients slowly, along with the eggs one at a time.
6. Once everything is well mixed, pour the batter into a parchment-lined cake pan and bake at 350 F for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.
7. Cool the cake for 30 minutes before removing for the pan.

The post Warm Yourself Up with This Ginger Cake appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

• 6 gelatin leaves
• 1/2 cup of 100% fruit juice, not from concentrate, of your choice
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 2-3 tablespoons of sugar
• Optional: extra sugar and vegetable oil

Instructions

1. First, put plastic wrap into a baking dish. This will make it easier to remove the jellies once they’re set.
2. Then, soak the gelatin leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.
3. While the gelatin soaks, combine the fruit juice and lemon juice in a pan over medium heat. Stir in the sugar and then bring it up to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer.
4. Turn the heat off, squeeze the gelatin leaves so they’re no excess water, and dissolve them into the juice mixture.
5. Pour this into the lined baking dish and allow it to sit for 6-8 hours in the fridge until firm.
6. Once they have firmed up, you can cut them into whatever shapes you like!
7. You can also paint them with a little bit of oil and roll them in sugar for an extra sweet treat.

The post You Wouldn’t Believe How Easy Homemade Fruit Jellies Are to Make appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

If you want to know how to best utilize this ingredient since they’re usually so big you might not finish it off in one go, here are some great recipe ideas. 

Beans

You don’t have to go all out with making enchiladas to great the great taste of the sauce. Just drain and rinse some black beans, heat them up in the enchilada sauce, and watch them come to life with intense flavor. 

Casserole

Nothing says cozy like a big Mexican-inspired casserole. You can make it with chicken and rice, have it be vegetarian, and do whatever you like! Just use the enchilada sauce the way you would a tomato sauce in between each layer of the casserole and you’ll have a dish that no one will be able to resist. 

Pasta

Though it sounds strange, enchilada pasta is actually incredible. Just cook up your favorite pasta, toss it in the enchilada sauce, and add in your favorite Mexican-inspired fixings like beans, corn, chiles, and more!

The post You Can Do a Lot With Storebought Enchilada Sauce appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

But, if you feel like you’re not satisfied with the amount of sauce your lo mein order came with tonight, don’t fret. You can make your lo mein much more flavorful easily with this extra tip. All you have to do is make your own sauce super fast, heat everything together, and you have yourself the perfect lo mein.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of chicken broth, either regular or low sodium
• Four tablespoons of soy sauce, either regular or low sodium
• Two tablespoons of hoisin sauce
• Two tablespoons of oyster sauce
• Two teaspoons of sesame oil
• Three or four teaspoons of corn starch, start with three and check the consistency
• One green onion

Recipe

1. Whisk together all the ingredients in a medium-sized bowl with a whisk or a fork.
2. Add the already made lo mein into a wok or large skillet over medium or medium-high heat to start heating it up.
3. Pour over the sauce and cook for about 3-5 minutes until the sauce has gotten absorbed into the noodles.
4. Chop up the green onion to garnish.
5. Plate the noodles, top with the sliced green onion, and enjoy!

The post Get Your Takeout Lo Mein Even Saucier With This Tip appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Ingredients

This soup only needs carrots, onions, garlic, and ginger. You can either boil everything in water or stock, whatever you have time to do. In terms of spices, you really can just use salt and pepper, but if you want something more exciting, add in cumin or curry powder.

Instructions

1. Roughly chop onions and saute them in oil for a few minutes until they start to become translucent.
2. Dice garlic and ginger and add that into the pot as well.
3. Slice up carrots any size you want, however, if you want them to cook faster, cut them thin and small.
4. Add the carrots to the pot for just a few minutes to get them cooking and then cover everything in about 1-2 inches of liquid and bring to a boil.
5. Once the carrots are fork-tender, blend it all with an immersion blender and serve!

The post This Carrot Ginger Soup Couldn’t Be Quicker to Put Together appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Money-Saving

Buying second-hand kitchen items is a great way to save money, especially when you move somewhere new or if you really want to load up on kitchen goodies.

Things like stand mixers, food processors, and blenders can really start to add up into the hundreds, or even close to thousands if you plan to buy new. However, if you decide to go the second-hand route, you’ll be slashing those prices in half or more!

Eco-Friendly

It’s always more eco-friendly to buy second-hand because the item already exists, which means you save yourself from purchasing something that has gone through a long physical journey in terms of materials and resources that it has wasted.

That all get’s avoided when you buy second-hand since it’s also most likely in driving range from your house, which cuts down on carbon emissions.

The post Why You Need to Buy Second-Hand Kitchen Tools appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.

Tapenade

Never fear surprise guests again if you have olives handy! All you need to do is blitz them in a food processor with capers, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and fresh herbs if you have them. Serve with bread or crackers and you’re ready to party!

Pasta Sauce

Don’t have enough time to whip up a tomato sauce from scratch? Olives are here to save the day. Simmer some store-bought tomato sauce or even just crushed tomatoes with some sliced olives and you will have a complex tasting sauce in no time. The best thing to do is to make sure you toss the pasta in the sauce while it’s on the heat so all the sauce is absorbed, and you have a gorgeous dish!

Salad

If you need a little salty bite to get you through seemingly boring salads, olives are here to save the day. Not only will they give you a bit of fat as well to keep you feeling full, but whenever you bite into one it feels like a little treat!

The post You Can Make Everything Taste Better With Olives appeared first on falafelandcaviar.com.