My latest obsession has been these homemade quinoa crackers. They are crunchy, naturally flavorful, super healthy, and really, really easy to make. They are pretty flexible too. You can add your own flavors, seasonings, and add-ins, such as seeds or nuts.

People are usually floored when I tell them what ingredients are in the crackers. It's really just three main ingredients: quinoa, chia seeds, and water! I add salt and pepper for flavor, of course, and you can add other seasonings to change the flavor of the cracker.

The most surprising thing is that there's no oil, no flour, no sugar . . . and it's honestly delicious and really flavorful, especially if you use red or black quinoa, which tends to have more flavor. Even better yet, quinoa is high in protein and chia seeds are rich in vitamins and minerals.

Although it is an easy recipe, it does take time and patience. You have to cook the quinoa, which takes 20+ minutes, and then bake for at least an hour. But the active time is really quite short, and the end result is oh-so-worth it.

Mixed ¾ cup cooked quinoa with hydrated chia seeds (roughly ⅓ cup chia seeds in ¾ cup room temperature water). If you've never used chia seeds before, they gelatinize when they come into contact with water (it only takes a few minutes of mixing them together).

I usually mix the chia seeds together with water in a cup and let it sit for a few minutes. Then, I just add the goopy chia seed mixture to the cooked quinoa and mix them well. I'll add salt and pepper to taste. The nice thing about this "batter" is that you can taste it and adjust the flavor. There's nothing raw in the "batter", so it's perfectly safe to eat.

Spread ⅛ inch layer on parchment/baking paper (preferred) or foil if you don't have parchment paper on hand (they both work fine). I've even used wax paper, which worked OK.

Bake for 30 minutes at 165° C (330° F). After 30 minutes, remove from oven. Move the paper with the cracker sheet on top over to a cutting board. The easiest way is to break up the cracker into pieces, flip them over one at a time with a spatula, and bake the other side for another 30 minutes.

If you want to keep the whole cracker sheet in one piece, then you have to flip the whole thing over, peel off the paper/foil, and bake it the other side. The easiest way I've found is to put another piece of parchment paper on top, put a plate on top, and then flip the entire "sandwich", including the cutting board, both pieces of paper, the cracker, and the plate.

Bake the other side for 30 minutes. And that's it!

It's surprisingly flavorful, delicious, and honestly doesn't taste like bland, "healthy" food at all. In fact, I find it quite addictive.

I made this for our Thanksgiving meal that we had with two other families, and everyone absolutely loved it. It was so popular, everyone wanted to take some home with them, leaving no leftovers for me.

The only downside of this is time. It really takes a full hour to "dry out" the wet batter. If you have a dehydrator you can make this in the dehydrator, and possibly even keep its "raw" status if you use lower heat (although it will take longer).

I can't wait to experiment by adding other seasonings, such as 老干妈 (Lao Gan Ma Old Godmother Chili Sauce), truffle salt, or Japanese furikake. I think the possibilities are endless for this delicious snack. I just wished my oven were bigger so that I could make multiple batches at once!

Ha ha, it's times like this I miss the 9-layer dehydrator that I left back in Boston.

Quinoa Crackers

Ingredients
¾ cup cooked quinoa (preferably red or black)
⅓ cup chia seeds
¾ cup water
Seasonings to taste (salt + pepper)

Cook quinoa according to the package instructions. I boiled in water for about 15-20 minutes and then drained off the water

Meanwhile, combine chia seeds and water in a cup, stir well, and let it gelatinize (3-5 min)

Combined cooked quinoa and chia seed/water mixture and mix well. Add seasonings to taste.

Spread a thin (⅛ inch or thinner) layer of the the mixture onto a piece of parchment paper (or foil).

Bake at 165° C (330° F) for 30 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven. Move the parchment paper together with the single "cracker" onto a cutting board.

If you want to make small crackers, cut the large cracker sheet into smaller crackers. Flip each over with a spatula and bake for another 30 minutes.

If you want to preserve the large cracker sheet, place another sheet of baking paper on top of the large cracker sheet. Put a plate over the other baking sheet. to "catch the cracker") once you flip it. Flip the cutting board and the plate over so that the plate is on the bottom and the cutting board on top. Remove the cutting board, peel off the paper, and bake the large cracker (which is now sitting on another piece of parchment paper).

Enjoy!

The post Healthy Quinoa Crackers appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

At my church there is a program called Meals for Moms. Whenever a new mom has a baby, church members sign up to provide a week's worth of food for the family. This allows the new family to have one less thing to worry about during those trying first few months of parenthood!

I've been signing up to cook for moms for over a decade. Through the years, I have settled on several dishes that are healthy, easy to make in bulk, and store well for a week  - dishes like Taiwanese meat sauce over rice, tea eggs, three cup chicken, bok choy, and Korean spinach salad.  Occasionally, I'll throw in something fun, like Totoro eggs for my Totoro-obsessed friend or fancy chocolate for someone with a sweet tooth.

One of my close friends in Boston has become my most trusted partner in executing all of this. Every time a new mom has a baby, she emails me and asks, "want to sign up? which week works for you?"

All packed up! A week's worth of food for my friend + a special treat for dessert! @burdickchocolat

A photo posted by Jennifer (@tinyurbankitchen) on Mar 15, 2015 at 12:56pm PDT

Throughout the past decade, we've worked out a great partnership. She's a great sous chef and is awesome at prepping the ingredients (and often helps me shop for them, since she has a car!). I do some prep but focus on executing latter steps, like stir frying, simmering, and, in general, overseeing the burners on the stove. We usually get together and spend 2-3 hours chatting, chopping, and cooking. It works out great, and we've been able to make food for so many moms.

Recently, my good friend had her first baby.

Of all the people at our church, she most definitely deserves having someone cook food for her, considering the countless meals she has prepared for others. I was the first to sign up, and I made many of the same dishes we had always made together. This time, however, I snuck in something new.

Ironically, she had given me a couple bag of raw peanuts several weeks back.

"I don't know what to do with them."

"You can make soy braised peanuts! Yummmmm . . . you know what I'm talking about, right? They give it as a free "snack" at places like Mulan and Little Q."

"Nahh . . I don't even like those peanuts that much. You can have them."

I do love aromatic soy braised 5-spice peanuts. It was always my mom's signature dish that she brought to potlucks back when I was a kid. I love snacking on them at restaurants, and I've always wanted to learn how to make them. Finally, because I was handed two bags of raw peanuts, I had no excuse NOT to try making my favorite peanut snack.

They turned out great!

I knew my friend had told me she didn't really like the boiled peanuts, but I snuck a small container-full of them in the big bag of food I had packed for her.

The next day she texted me a photo of her plate, piled high with the food I had made her.

"Dinner! Thanks! :-). I even like the peanuts . . ."

Yay! I was thrilled.

These peanuts are indeed delicious and downright addictive. Definitely monitor the texture of the peanuts and stop cooking them when they reach a consistency you like. I tried making them in a pressure cooker, but in the end I found those peanuts to be too mushy and that I preferred the stovetop version. Perhaps if I tweak the pressure cooker times, I'll come to some happy medium. For now, I know this method works, and it's fantastic!

Chinese Braised Peanuts
1 ½ - 2 lbs raw peanuts
2 star anise
2-3 dried chili peppers
5 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons rock sugar
2 teaspoon 5-spice powder
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
4 tablespoons light soy sauce
8 cups water

Combine all ingredients in a large pot or Dutch oven. Bring to a boil, and then bring down to a simmer. Cook for 2-3 hours, until peanuts are soft. Strain peanuts from the braising liquid, set aside, and let cool.

To serve, toss with chopped cilantro and optionally dress with a bit of sesame oil.

Enjoy!

This makes a pretty big portion. You can freeze peanuts in zipper bags and defrost them in portions for snacks. I found this to be a great way to keep them around for a much longer period of time without fearing that they would go bad.

The post Chinese Braised Peanuts appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

I have an awful weakness when it comes to a certain snack.

Chips.

I just can't say no to them.

Typically, I'm pretty disciplined when it comes to steering myself away from unhealthy food. I never, ever get any sort of candy bar from the vending machine at work. If there's leftover cake in the kitchen area  - no matter how delectable it looks - I won't be tempted by it. I can easily stay away from chocolate, and in general, most sweets.

But there's something about chips that I just can't resist. It's the fact that it's almost healthy. After all, it comes from a vegetable, right? You could argue it's not as processed as any of those cakes and cookies.

And for some reason, in the late afternoon when I'm starting to get just a little hungry (or "peckish" as my British colleagues would say), I always want chips.

I want something savory, something that feels like it could actually stave off those hunger pangs for just a few more hours. Plus, I just love chips for that satisfying crunch.

A few years ago, I was thrilled to discover you could make chips out of almost anything (a sneaky way to pack in those nutrients!). One of my favorites (and something I still make on a regular basis), is oven baked kale chips. I also tried baking all sorts of other chips in the oven, like taro chips, sweet potato chips, and even sunchoke chips.

Last week, I got my first shipment of these beautiful beets from my CSA with Siena Farms. As I was pondering how to use up the beets before the weekend (since I was leaving on a short trip), it dawned on me to try making chips out of these as well.

Oh my goodness, they were fantastic.

Even Bryan approved, and couldn't stop eating them at dinner. In fact we ended up polishing off the entire batch of chips (uhh, I guess that means we ate 10 beets between us (!)).
Making beet chips takes a bit of patience if you don't have a dehydrator (which I don't). If the heat in the oven is on too high, the chips will burn. If it's on too low, then it takes forever.

I found my happy medium around 295 °F with the convection fan on, though it still took quite some time.

First, slice beets to about 1/16 of an inch thick. I noticed that if I shaved the beets too thinly, the "chips" would stick to the pan like glue and I ended up destroying them while trying to scrape them off the pan.

Something just a tad thicker works better.

Aren't these chiogga beets just lovely?

I used a mandolin slicer to speed things up. You could hand slice with a knife too. I found that I actually had more control over the width of the slices with a knife. With the mandolin, I had trouble seeing what was going on, so sometimes my slices were uneven.

I tried my best to put slices of similar thicknesses on the same pan so that they would cook at roughly the same amount of time.

Bake chips in the oven for about 20 minutes or so, checking every so often to make sure they are not burning. When the edges start to brown and slightly curl up, rotate the pan and stick back in the oven. If you have the patience (and I had lots of time), you can flip each individual chip over to prevent it from sticking and to bake both sides evenly.

Note how much the beets shrink! In the above photo you can see the outline of how big the beet slice was when it started!

Eventually, possibly up to an hour later, the chips will be done. It's hard for me to tell you exactly how long it will take because a lot of this depends on how thick your slices are, how strong your oven is, how water-logged your beets are, and whether you use convection or not.

The best advice I can give is just to keep an eye on it. You can always use lower heat and just bake for longer if you want to avoid the possibility of burnt chips.

I left my finished chips out overnight. Because it's hot and humid in Boston right now, the chips were a bit limp by the next morning. This was easily fixed by a quick 3-4 minute "reheat" in the toaster oven.

They came out nice and crispy.

Enjoy!

Crispy Oven Baked Beet Chips
Raw beets, washed and with greens removed
vegetable oil
salt

1. Preheat oven to around 300° F (optionally use convection).
2. Thinly slice beets to 1/16 inch thick, using a mandolin if available.
3. Either toss beets in vegetable oil, or use an oil mister to coat both sides of the beet slice with oil
4. Lay the beet slices in a single layer on a baking sheet.
5. Sprinkle salt on the beets
6. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the edges of the beets begin to brown and curl up. Rotate the pan or optionally, flip the chips over.
7. Bake for another 20 minutes. Continue checking and rotating or flipping until the chips are dry and crispy, about 1 hour.
8. Store in an airtight container. If it still gets damp, you can easily "crisp" it back up by putting it in the oven for 3-4 minutes.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I received a discount from Siena Farms for my CSA. All opinions are my own.

The post Crispy Oven Baked Beet Chips appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

My church has a program called Meals for Moms where volunteers sign up to make food for parents who have just had a baby or adopted a child. I sign up pretty regularly. I enjoy cooking, and it's a nice way to help a sleep-deprived mom not have to worry about dinner as well!

Typically, I team up with another friend of mine who's the best prep chef you could ever have. She's super meticulous, enjoys prepping ingredients, and we have fun together. A typical menu I make often includes a subset of the following dishes: Taiwanese Meat Sauce over rice, Beef Noodle Soup, Three Cup Chicken, Tea Eggs, Chinese Chives + 5-spice Tofu, and stir fried Baby Bok Choy.

This past week, I signed up to cook for a friend, Christina, who absolutely loves Totoro. I knew I had to incorporate Totoro into the food that I made for her.

These Totoro eggs are a cinch to make. I basically made hard-boiled eggs, but you can soft boil them or even sous-vide them.  If you can find small circular white stickers, you are already halfway there. I didn't have any on hand, so I actually hand-cut the tiny circles out with scissors from some white stickers. A small hole puncher would also do the trick.

Once you've put on the eye stickers, use a food-safe marker to draw the eyes.

Draw the nose, taking care not to make it too big. I try to make it a tiny triangle slightly pointed at the top.

Draw the belly.

I thought Totoro looked bald but didn't want to cut the eggs to make ears to like I did when I made the Totoro Soy Sauce Eggs. Instead, I found some basil that I had left over from the Three Cup Chicken that I had also cooked for her.

I think these would be super cute for Easter, or for any time.

I leave you with a quote Christina sent me after I gave her the food. Note, her son Nathan is 4 years old.

-----------------------------
Nathan: I want Totoro!!!

-5 minutes later-

Nathan: More Totoro please!!!!

-10 minutes later-

Nathan: Mama, how did Auntie Jen get the Totoros?

Christina: Nathan, she drew them on the eggs.

Nathan: But how did she get the eggs?

Mom: From the farmer who had the chickens.

Nathan: But Mama, how did the chickens grow the Totoros?

Christina: ----some mumbling about how the Totoros aren't real Totoros and Auntie Jen had to make them out of eggs---

Nathan: How did the farmer get the leaf?

Christina: Auntie Jen put it on.

Nathan:  Oh.  Could I have more Totoros please????

Christina emailed me and said, "Thanks to you, I didn't have to worry about his protein intake the last three nights! :D"

Success! That statement totally made my day.

The post Totoro Eggs appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

I've been making a lot of chips lately.

It's the abundant crops from the Siena Farms CSA that are drowning me in potatoes, beets, and kale. I can hardly keep up, especially with the various weekend trips of late. It's no wonder I have to dry them out and make "chips" out of everyting in order to prevent them from going bad.

But potatoes?

OK, OK, you're right. Potatoes don't really go bad that fast. And potatoes are among the most versatile "vegetables" out there. You can boil them, mash them, roast them, fry them, smash them, and the list goes on and on.

I'd tried making "potato" chips once, by trying to bake thinly sliced sweet potatoes. It worked out *OK*, but I did burn a lot of them. Perhaps I didn't add enough oil? Or maybe my heat was on too high?

In any event, I decided to follow the advice of various other articles I'd read online more recently about how to make good chips. I used a Mandolin and sliced the potatoes to about 1/16 of an inch.

Many people suggested soaking the potato slices (even up to overnight!) in order to wash away some of the starch. Apparently this step leads to crispier chips.

I didn't have all day, so I just soaked them for twenty minutes or so in cold water before draining them. Ideally, if you have a salad spinner (or even paper towels?), use these tools to get the potato slices as dry as possible.

Lay the slices in a single layer on baking sheets.

For a fun flavor boost, I got out a jar of one of our favorite chili sauces that we get in Chinatown. Usually when I get Asian imported stuff, I try to buy things from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Japan. I make an exception for this tasty sauce from China, though. It's just so good, and I haven't found a suitable replacement quite yet.

Perhaps it's the MSG that makes it so good . . .hmmmmm

I baked at 350°F with the "auto convection" setting on (which basically reduces the temperature by 25 °F to 325°F). Ovens do vary, so keep an eye on your chips! I rotated the pan at least once, perhaps after 15 minutes or so. I tried to watch it carefully to make sure it didn't burn. It was easier to prevent burning since my oven wasn't set to a really high temperature.

And they turned out perfectly! I was pretty generous with the oil, so it's possible that these chips are no less fattening than a typical fried chip. Nevertheless, it was much easier to make at home, and everyone loved it.

They were crispy, spicy, and had that nice, fresh, potato flavor. They tasted real.

It's too bad that I only own three baking trays. It's hard to bake these in bulk, and they're so good that they seem to disappear more quickly than the rate at which I can make them.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

I'm so tempted to try other sauces next time. Maybe Sriracha potato chips? Or sesame oil? Maybe truffle salt??

The possibilities are endless.

*   *   *   *   *

Reminder - it's not too late to enter the Giveaway I'm currently hosting. There are just a couple days left to enter to win free hotel nights at the Radisson! Click here to enter!

Disclaimer. I received a discount on my CSA from Siena Farms. All opinions are my own.

The post Sichuan Chili Potato Chips appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.