What's Cooking: Meatball Coconut Curry, Red Snapper & Mashed Potatoes, Lentil Sausage Stew, Apple Cake & More!
Week 2 of still cooking in my tiny house while my stove has already been moved over to our new house!
Which means I’ve just got an Instant Pot and a Toaster Oven, but still managed to feed us all week!
Coconut Curry with Meatballs, Sweet Potatoes, Eggplant & Peppers
First, I made some really good meatballs with our ground beef, fresh bread crumbs and eggs and seasoned with garlic, ginger and curry powder. I baked them in two batches in the toaster oven. Once those were done, I roasted the Japanese eggplant on one of the meatball pans. I really like to roast eggplant before going into any soup or stir fry. I just find the texture ends up smooth and velvety versus spongy that way.
I had also made some beef broth in the Instant Pot and then made a round of Jasmine rice to go with the curry.
Once it was time to finish the curry, I sautéed some onions, ginger and garlic on the sauté setting of the Instant Pot, then added in red curry paste, then sweet potatoes, the beef broth, coconut aminos and soy sauce. I then added the cooked meatballs and eggplant and sliced Lesya peppers. Finished it off with lime juice, a cucumber basil salad, rice and chili crisp on the top!
Baked Red Snapper with Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes & Fall Salad
A very simple Instant Pot and toaster oven combination for this meal. I was going to do some kind of fish piccata with lots of lemon and capers, but I ended up just drizzling the red snapper strips with pecan oil and seasoning with Trader Joe’s Green Goddess seasoning, plus coriander and black pepper and it was so good like that, it didn’t need anything else.
I was almost out of butter, so I did some olive mashed potatoes with Texas Olive Oil in the Instant Pot and they were so delicious with the fish. I still love mashed potatoes with butter, but the olive oil brought this bright, almost citrus hint to them that was really good with the fish.
And we ate the fish and potatoes with heirloom tomatoes with smoked black garlic salad and a salad with arugula, apples, sweet corn chow chow, goat cheese and pistachios.
Lentil Stew with Sausage & Sun Dried Tomatoes
Haven’t made lentils in a while, but this was another easy big batch meal prep for the week in the Instant Pot. I soaked the lentils first for about 24 hours with a splash of vinegar, rinsing a few times. This helps with digestibility, for me, at least!
I sautéed some ground sausage in the Instant Pot, took that out and then sautéed onions and garlic. Then I added back the sausage, the lentils, sun dried tomatoes in oil and frozen diced tomatoes and seasoned with smoked paprika, garlic and onion powders and coriander.
Paired it with a salad with baby kale and arugula, apples, chow chow, goat cheese and crispy chickpeas.
I ended up eating some of the leftovers with mashed potatoes, which was so good together!
Apple Cake
This is another recipe from Pinch of Yum and totally hit the spot this week. As the description says, it’s something that’s very basic and regular but somehow extra and elevated at the same time.
I just noticed looking at the recipe now that she recommends cutting the apples super small, but I loved the larger pieces in it for texture variation and a big pop of apple, so do what you think you’d like.
The cinnamon sugar topping gets crunchy and crackly in the oven and makes the whole thing!