Miso Peanut Ramen, Pecan Crusted Trout, Saag Feta, Buffalo Tofu Salad, Apple Bars with Oats & Nuts & More

We had a bunch more very delicious meals this week and almost all of them doubled very well as meal prep/left overs for lunches! (The pan fried fish is the only one that needed extra love by reheating in a toaster oven versus a microwave).

And I also adapted a family recipe for apple bars into a real recipe at the end. It might become its own post eventually if and when I get a recipe plug-in, but for now it lives here!

Miso Peanut Ramen with Crispy Chicken, Bok Choy and Mushrooms

One of my favorite food bloggers, Pinch of Yum, put out a new Miso Peanut Ramen recipe a couple weeks ago and I had to make it right away!

I love her tofu recipes, but I used ground chicken here because I had just made crispy buffalo tofu for salads the day before and still had leftovers! (But at the end of the week, I did put some tofu in the last of the ramen leftovers when the ground chicken was running low and it was also really delicious).

I followed the recipe pretty closely for the sauce and soup base except I used homemade bone broth instead of bouillon and then amped up the veggies, added some marinated and then dehydrated and frozen oyster mushrooms and fresh bok choy to cook in the broth.

For the ground chicken, I seasoned with a little sea salt and garlic and onion powders and then added Bachan’s Japanese barbecue sauce like she suggests for the tofu.

It all came out so delicious and sometimes it’s funny how a last minute weeknight meal can be one of the best things you make all week!

Pecan Crusted Speckled Trout Piccata with Roasted Turnips

We have a fisherman friend with tons and tons of speckled trout, so we’re trading a bunch of pork and goat meat to load our freezer. This pecan crusted speckled trout piccata was the first of many trout meals in our future!

I started by drying off and then seasoning the fish with garlic powder, Green Goddess seasoning and smoked paprika and then pressing it into a mix of flour and Guidry’s pecan meal.

Then I pan fried it in our pastured pork lard and made a quick little piccata sauce with butter, capers and lemon juice. We had it with basmati rice, roasted hakurei turnips and a lovely salad with arugula, baby tatsoi, cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil vinaigrette and some crispy jalapeños.

Indian-Spiced Tomato Potato Egg Casserole and Saag Feta

Our Laughing Buddha staffers Blaire and Madison came up to the farm for brunch last weekend and I made a delicious sort of Indian version of shakshuka with eggs cooked on top of a ginger-spiked tomato sauce over roasted potatoes, along with saag feta made with Swiss chard and mustard greens!

I got some prep pictures of the sauce and casserole coming together but then once they arrived I was too busy chatting to remember to document the rest!

For the casserole, I used this Melissa Clark recipe in NYT Cooking. But I gotta say, this may be the last time I attempt any kind of egg baked in sauce recipe — it is just not my thing! Maybe if I had a reliable broiler or if I did it in a cast iron skillet that could withstand the heat of our outdoor pizza oven? I personally just do not like eggs that have any risk of not set whites and I find recipes like this hard to avoid runny whites. But then if cook enough that the whites deinfitely aren’t runny, the yolks often end up completely cooked through as well.

So for the leftovers, I just put fried eggs on top and that was way better!

For the Saag Feta, I used Priya Krishna’s recipe as I have in the past and Southern Maids’ marinated feta works great for it because even if you shake off the oil, the feta is still coated with oil and won’t stick to the pan as you’re sautéing it and folding it into the luscious green sauce. This whole meal felt someone decadent but was loaded with all kinds of different veggies and spices.

Buffalo Tofu Salads with Blue Cheese and Beet Kraut

I’ve already mentioned Pinch of Yum once in this round up, but I will mention every time I make tofu because I pretty much can’t make it another way now. I love the light batter from the cornstarch and nutritional yeast and I don’t have an air fryer and have always made in the oven and it still comes out crispy and delightful.

Here’s that Ridiculously Good Air Fryer Tofu recipe for the millionth time.

This time I didn’t have enough cornstarch left, so I tried it with tapioca starch and it worked well, too! I also added some buffalo sauce to the batter mix and lessened the soy sauce and oil a little. It added a little spicy and flavorful oomph without throwing off the batter ratios.

I made two pounds of tofu to have plenty for salads all week long. We did a base of greens and green onion microgreens and then piled on cucumbers, habanada peppers, beet caraway chili sauerkraut, blue cheese and topped with the crispy tofu. I dressed the greens in a little pecan oil and Meyer lemon vinegar, but used more buffalo sauce as the dressing on top of everything else. We also had some okra to use up, so roasted those whole and ate it on the side.

It was great the first night and just as great for meal prep salads.

Chipotle Lime Shrimp

I mostly made this shrimp for yet another pizza party with guests (didn’t even take pictures of those pizzas because how many pizza pictures do we/y’all really need?)

But as always, if I’m going to make a protein for pizza, I’m always going to make (a lot) extra for other meals.

The shrimp from Anna Marie Seafood is so easy — all the peeling and deveining work is done and to me that’s so worth it.

Here I used two pounds of the gumbo size shrimp and sautéed in a little pecan oil and butter, seasoned with chili lime seasoning, coriander and garlic powder and then added in some sliced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce at the end. It was great on pizza with corn chow chow and habanada peppers.

A couple of meals we ate it with salads with pickled radishes and leftover black beans and rice and I also threw some into a leftover pasta dish, too!

Apple Bars with Oats, Pecans & Walnuts

In recent apple seasons past, I have made a few bloggers’ versions of apple blondies and they just haven’t done it for me. Good, but the bottom layer was really more cakey and fluffy than a blondie or bar should be.

This year, I asked my mom for the family recipe I remember from childhood! She had it in a recipe book my aunt put together and she thinks it might originally be from a newspaper? It called for margarine and my mom must have crossed it out and written butter once it came back into vogue in the mid 1990s once we learned about trans fats in margarine!

The recipe calls for oats in the crust and chopped walnuts on top and the only changes I made were to add pecans in multiple ways — I subbed the some of the flour for pecan meal, subbed some of the butter for pecan oil and added both chopped glazed pecans and chopped walnuts to the topping.

The result made the bottom of the bars have the exact crispy yet chewiness I was looking for — they were not too cakey!

The other key about this recipe is making sort of a cinnamon syrup to pour over the apples. It’s not really a caramel because it has no butter or cream, just water, cornstarch (or tapioca), cinnamon and sugar. I think it works really well as the sugar and spice for the apples since apples don’t break down and get as juicy as fruits like berries do when you bake them.

Here’s the recipe!

Crust:

2 1/2 cups all purpose or pastry flour

1/2 cup pecan meal

3/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp cane sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/3 cup pecan oil

3/4 cup rolled oats

Apple Topping:

7-9 apples, depending on size, cored and diced (I left the peels on)

1 cup water

1 cup cane sugar

1 tbsp cornstarch or tapioca

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup pecans or walnuts or mix of both

Steps:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour, salt and 3 tbsp sugar. Melt butter and coconut melt together, add pecan oil and combine with dry ingredient and oats.

Set aside 3/4 of crust mixture for topping.

Press the rest of the mixture into a 9 x 13 inch pan.

Spread diced apples over crust.

In a saucepan, combine 1 cup sugar, water, cornstarch or tapioca, cinnamon and vanilla extract and cook on medium-high heat until it reaches a rolling boil and thickens, just a few minutes.

Drizzle the cinnamon syrup over the apples.

Sprinkle reserved crust over the top. Bake for 35-40 minutes, then add chopped nuts and bake for another 20-25 minutes.