Cooking Simplicitea

I know what you’re thinking. Meatloaf in a mug? Can’t be all that tasty. But wait - there’s more! It’s even microwavable! And it is, in fact, delicious, as well as quick, easy, and cheap! I can’t think of a better combination of words to describe a recipe, especially one that I’m going to start taking for lunches in a ziploc bag. The only downside? One serving never quite feels like it’s enough.

Difficulty: Incredibly easy! (So easy that I had trouble knowing what to tkae pictures of!)

Ingredients:

1 slice white bread

1 tablespoon milk

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon brewed tea of choice, strong

1/4 lb ground beef

1 green onion, sliced (optional)

1 teaspoon tea leaves, ground

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Tear the bread up into pieces - and when I say pieces, my personal experience with this recipe tells me that I really mean itty bitty tiny crumbs, or as close to that as you can get. If I had an immersion blender, I might fool around with that to get it as torn up as possible. (I was making a double recipe in the following pictures,  if yours looks a lot smaller.)

Add the milk and the tea, and mix together until the liquids have been absorbed by the bread. Add the rest of the ingredients, and mix together well - it takes a while to properly mix together the beef with the bread, so work it with your hands until it’s mostly-uniform and looks almost like it’s just well-marbled.

Plop it in a mug, and throw it in the microwave at 70% power for 5 minutes, or until the centre is no longer pink.

Enjoy!

If you try this recipe, let us know! You can reblog us or add a picture of it to our Flickr stream for this recipe, just use the tag “csmeatealoaf”

Nutrition Facts:

Coming soon!

These tasty cinnamon rolls, made with DavidsTea’s Sencha Pear, are delicious - and ridiculously easy! And, to boot, I think the longest part of the preparation was waiting for the tea to cool. Delicious, especially with a glass of milk or tea on the side, these have definitely made their way into my dessert rotation.

Difficulty: Easy, but a little deceptively tricky. Make sure to follow the instructions closely!

Ingredients:

cold Sencha Pear, brewed strong (expect to use about 4-6 tablespoons)

1 c flour

dash salt

1/2 c shortning

butter or margarine

brown sugar

cinnamon

1 tsp Sencha Pear, ground in a mortar and pestle (or the back of a spoon and a bowl)

Directions:

If you’ve been following us for a while, you may recognize that particular concoction of the first few ingredients - that’s right, we’re using the pie crust from our Vanilla Oolong Blueberry Pie, which is doubly amazing because you can modify this recipe to make cinnamon rolls using leftover crust from that recipe - that’s actually how I was introduced to this by the lovely Rita!

First, steep your tea, and throw a cup in the freezer. Believe me, it takes forever for tea to cool, and I regretted it when I used still-warm tea. Be patient, or start early. ;) Preheat the oven to 425.

Mix the flour and salt together, then cut in the shortening with either a pastry cutter or two butter knives until it’s clumped together to the size of small peas:

Carefully mix in the cold (again, I stress, cold) Sencha Pear until the dough holds together properly, adding a tablespoon at a time.

Roll it out onto a heavily floured surface, trying to make it longer in one direction so that your cinnamon rolls are nice and tiny. Once it’s flattened, slather it in butter or margarine, then cover in brown sugar, the ground tea leaves, and cinnamon. Try to coat it evenly, though with the tea leaves just focus on keeping it even along the length of the dough.

Roll the dough to make a thin, long tube of deliciousness, then cut into about 1/2” thick slices; arrange on a very well-greased baking sheet (I use both butter and flour, and it works quite well) and pop ‘em in the oven, keeping an eye on them. They’re done when they’ve started to brown on top; this took 5 minutes the first time and 10 the second time I’ve made them, so I’ll average it out and say “approximately 7”.

Let them cool, and enjoy!

If you try this recipe, let us know! You can reblog us or add a picture of it to our Flickr stream for this recipe, just use the tag “cssenchammonrolls”.

Nutritional information to follow!

This was the middle recipe from our tea cooking day, together with the Forbidden Fruit Chicken and Vanilla Oolong Blueberry Pie. There weren’t really many photos of the process to make this, but that’s mostly because it’s ridiculously simple! Its simplicity hides complex flavours, though - the Cabernet Sauvignon and goat cheese that make this recipe fairly unique complement each other wonderfully.

Difficulty: Incredibly easy!

Ingredients:

1 cup Cabernet Sauvignon (or another strong black tea - I would also suggest their Lapsang Souchong)

1 package gravy mix (we used pork-based)

Grated marbled cheese (we didn’t measure how much we used - “lots” would be about as accurate as I’d like to get!)

Goat cheese (we used the remainder of the package from the Forbidden Fruit Chicken recipe)

French Fries (we used an entire package of McCain’s straight cut)

Directions:

In case you couldn’t tell from the ingredients list, this is only very loosely called a ‘recipe’.

First, start steeping a pot of your tea - make it nice and strong! While that’s steeping, make the fries according to the package’s directions.

Once they’re in the oven, prepare the gravy according to the directions on the package, using your tea in place of whatever liquid it calls for. Let it simmer while you’re waiting for the fries to cook.

Put the french fries in a large bowl or plate, then coat in grated cheese (and, if you have them, cheese curds would make this something closer to traditional poutine). Dollop on the goat cheese - try not to make the bits too large, and try to space them out fairly evenly. Once that’s done, it’s time to pour on the gravy!

And enjoy! Between the four of us, this was what the dish looked like five minutes later, according to the camera’s clock:

If you try this recipe, let us know! You can reblog us or add a picture of it to our Flickr stream for this recipe, just use the tag “cspouteane”.

Nutritional Info to come!

These pork chops go amazingly well with our Pumpkin Chai Applesauce - and were the cornerstone of the meal in the picture, in fact! Crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside, these lightly-spiced chops have a unique taste and texture.

Difficulty: Medium

Ingredients:

2 pork chops

1 egg

Pumpkin Chai

Regular potato chips

Directions:

In a small bowl, beat the egg with a splash of cooled pumpkin chai tea; on a separate plate, crush the potato chips as finely as possible, and spread them in a thin layer.

Pour some cooking oil in a pan and set it to warm to medium-high heat.

Take the pork chop and put in the bowl of egg mixture, then in the plate of chips - you may need to crush more, and your hands will get incredibly sticky and covered in goop. Try to press it into the meat so that you get a really good coating on there!

Fry the chops in the oil for a few minutes per side, until cooked through - use a knife and make sure that the inside is no longer pink. Enjoy immediately - they don’t take to cooling down particularly well.

Serve with Pumpkin Chai Applesauce for extra Pumpkin Chai warmth in your life. It’s something we could all use a little more of!

If you try this recipe, let us know! You can reblog us or add a picture of it to our Flickr stream for this recipe, just use the tag “cspumpkinchaiapplesauce”.

Nutrition info:

Serves 2

Per serving:

Calories: 349

Carbohydrates: 8 g

Fat: 8 g

Fiber: 1 g

Sodium: 169 mg

Cholesterol: 108 mg

This spiced applesauce carries over enough of the spices from DavidsTea’s Pumpkin Chai to be a step above your average applesauce. Delicious hot or cold!

Difficulty: Easy!

Ingredients: 

Pumpkin Chai tea

8 apples (this is approximate - I only used 7, but I intentionally grabbed big ones!)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

juice of 1/2 lemon

cinnamon (optional)

Directions:

First of all, brew your tea! Today we’re using Pumpkin Chai from DavidsTea, but any chai or chai-based tea should be an okay substitute. 

Cut up your apples, and put them in a pot.

As you can tell, they should be cut to impressively uniform standards.

There will be a lot of apples - I was amazed at the volume of apples in the pot! (I took pictures at a couple different points; you can check this recipe’s Flickr for the rest of the pictures.)

Once that’s done, pour both types of sugar, the juice from the lemon, and the tea into the pot. I used two mugs of tea, but I probably could have gotten away with a bit less.

Throw it on to boil. After about ten minutes, it should look something like mush.

All that you have to do now is mash it up with a fork, and it’s ready to be eaten! We served ours on some pork chops and potatoes.

If you try this recipe, let us know! You can reblog us or add a picture of it to our Flickr stream for this recipe, just use the tag “cspumpkinchaiapplesauce”.

Nutrition Facts

Serves 12

Per Serving:

Calories - 68

Carbohydrates - 18 g

Fat - 0 g

Sugars - 16 g

Sodium - 1 mg

Cholesterol - 0 mg