I'm Hungry

Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

2012-01-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

Holy smokes, it's been a long time since this blog has seen some action! Sorry blog! Here are some delicious carrot cake cookies with cream cheese frosting. We brought these guys to a little get together and they went over great! Honestly you can't go wrong when cream cheese frosting is involved! These little cookies are from Martha Stewart's Cookies, but you can also view the recipe online here

COOOKIES

2011-04-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

Despite Syracuse being a nice mid-size city I find it lacking sometimes in the retail department. I won't get into what clothing stores I wish we had (it's better for my wallet this way I suppose), but one store that we're lacking and we really shouldn't be is a Penzey's. The closest one to us is in Buffalo and although that's not too far, I can't justify a three hour trip for some spices. My grandparents however, were awesome enough to send me some goodies from there for Christmas.

I was most excited to receive a bottle of orange extract. I love fun extracts, they're a great way to jazz up any recipe. My first foray into non-vanilla extract was with a lemon one. It didn't take me long to use it up once I realized how great it is to add a hint of lemon to any recipe. I've had this bottle of orange extract now for a couple of months and have yet to do something outstanding with it. So, what better way to experiment with new flavors than with cookies, eh?!

I have two cookies to share with you. The first is not so exciting, but oh so delicious: Chocolate chip cookies with a hint of orange. I just used the recipe that was on the back of the chocolate chip bag, but substituted the vanilla extract with orange. It adds just enough orange flavor to the cookie without overwhelming it.

The second cookie I have to share is a little more creative and also delicious. I wanted to try a different pairing instead of the chocolate-orange combo so I pulled out my handy Flavor Bible to see what else goes well with orange and settled on cardamom.

I decided to adapt a shortbread recipe that I had used before to fit my needs. I replaced the lemon zest and extract with orange zest and orange extract and added 2 tsps of ground caradamom.

I didn't really know how much cardamon to add to make sure that the flavor came through, but also wasn't too overpowering and it seems like 2 tsp was perfect. Another tsp or so might still be pleasant and not too strong, though. Experiment and see!

These made a great afternoon cookie, perfect to eat with a nice cup of tea.

Eggs Bhona

2011-04-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

I should probably just become the official spokesperson for Mark Bittman and all of his cookbooks because today I have another recipe from one of them to share with you. It's not that his recipes are out of this world amazing that cause us to almost always look through his cookbooks first; but it's the fact that the recipes are almost always successful. That and they make a great base recipe that you can expand and grow into something that makes your mouth water.

Some of you may know that I've left my "9-5" job to pursue some of my other passions and in doing so I've found I have a lot more free time on my hands, especially in the mornings. It's great because breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and having to rush out the door at 6:30am meant I usually ended up at McDonalds (I know ick). Now I have the time to make delicious cooked breakfasts and enjoy them with a fresh brewed, hot cup of coffee while my little cats run around playfully and the sun shines through the window (this is how I'm imagining it in my head because in reality the cat's are being terrors and 99% of the time it's raining here).

So... my recent breakfast of choice comes from Mark Bittmans Kitchen Express. I think i've mentioned this before but this book is great because it's arranged seasonally and I can finally flip to the spring section! Yay! One of the first recipes in that section is for Eggs Bhona, which according to Mr. Bittman is a Bangladeshi take on eggs. It's delish. It's full of protein, veggies, and a little spicy hotness to make sure you're wide awake. AND it's fast, easy, and cheap, which are always important factors when making a meal.

Eggs Bhona
Ingredients:

Eggs (however many you want. Recipe calls for 8, we make 6)
Onion
Green pepper
Clove of garlic
Tumeric
Ground ginger
Red chili flakes
Salt
Bay leaf
Tomato Paste

Put a pot of water on the stove to boil. Once it starts boiling add your eggs and let cook for 6 minutes (or less if you like runny yolks).

While your eggs cook chop up an onion and green pepper and saute them in a large pan with some olive oil.

Once they're softened add all the spices to your tastes. I did a tsp of turmeric, ginger, salt, and a 1/2 tsp of chili flakes. Also add the tomato paste and a cup of boiling water.

At this point your eggs should be done, shell them and add them to the pan. Cover and let cook for 5 minutes. Voila! This would be great served with some french bread.

Enjoy :)

Ways to eat wimpies when you are a wimp -- A post by Steve

2011-04-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't love wimpies, more commonly known as sloppy joes? Unfortunately, upon seeing the commercials in Manwich's recently derided ad campaign "It's Called a Manwich" (http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-manwich-reminds-dudes-not-to-act-gay-or-else-get-a-sandwich-to-the-face/) I realized that I am not manly enough for the everyday sloppy joe. Plus, manwich is way sweet and kinda gross (http://www.fooducate.com/blog/2009/10/28/manwich-sloppy-joe-sauce-nutritious-inside-the-label/)

So, instead of making sloppyman musclesjoes, I must satisfy myself with wimpy tempeh wimpies:

Typically, to make these sandwiches, I mix up about a cup of barbecue sauce before hand. Just start with half a cup of ketchup, and then throw in whatever else you want: cayenne pepper, red wine vinegar, red wine, white wine, dijon mustard, black pepper, Worstershire sauce, stuff that tastes good.

Dice up your block of tempeh real small, throw it in the mix, and let it sit around for a while (15-20 minutes?). Get a pan hot, put a lil olive oil down, and then I forget the rest.

Good luck!

Gingerbread Cake

2011-02-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

Every time I go to a bookstore I plead with Steve to let me buy the latest issue of Cooks Illustrated, but at 6 bucks a pop it's a pricey magazine and usually I get "SIGH if you must" and so with a heavy hand I return the magazine to the rack. Last week though I was having none of that when I saw that the February edition had entries on chili, pizza, spanakopita, and keys to perfect cookies.

It also featured an article on gingerbread cake, but it was something I had glanced over. I'm of the school of thought that gingerbread is a Christmas good, not something to be made in February, the month of chocolate chocolate chocolate and so had Steve not said something about it I never would have given it a chance.

Now Steve is not a sweet loving kind of guy, 99% of the time he'll take savory over sweet, but he begged me to make the gingerbread cake and I'm not one to say no to dessert even if it is out of place. And so I woke up this morning and made the most. amazing. gingerbread cake. EVER.

The gingerbread is jam packed with spice, ginger, cinnamon, even black pepper, and they come together to create a wonderful mouth full of fluffy delicious cake.

I strongly urge everyone to check out the issue of Cook's Illustrated because they give a great explanation of how they got to the final recipe and it's really interesting.

Pancakes & Soup?!

2011-01-31T18:08:00.000-08:00

Despite a lack of posts lately, Steve and I have been cooking up some yummy meals in the kitchen. They've been tasty, just not too original, a lot of the time it's just good old standby recipes. In the last week though we've gotten THREE new cookbooks and they've inspired us to explore more recipes and try some new things. Technically we only have one of the three here now, but the other two will be here tomorrow (if the truck can plow through the snow) and I can't wait.

The cookbook that I got last week is great. I've only had it for a few days and I've already read through the whole thing ( yes I read cookbooks). It's Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys by David Tanis. I love the rustic feel about it. It's much different than a lot of the cookbooks that are out there today that focus on molecular gastronomy. This is all about sitting around the table with family and friends and eating delicious, whole foods.

Tonight we made one of the recipes from that book (and hopefully I'll have more to post in the future). Just a simple recipe but pretty good, Jalapeno Pancakes. We served it with a side of Cauliflower and Leek Soup from a recipe I found on the blog Green Kitchen Stories. Soup and pancakes?! Why not. It was delicious, warm, and filling; perfect for a super chilly night like this evening.

Cauliflower and Leek Soup from Green Kitchen Stories

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 pinch of chili powder
1 cauliflower
2 leeks
4 cups (1 l) water - I used vegetable broth
1/2 to 1 lemon, depends on the taste (juice and peel)
fresh thyme
sea salt & pepper
roasted almonds (roughly sliced)
Dollop of sour cream

Add olive oil to a pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the onion, garlic and chili and cook until the onions soften. Add cauliflower and leek and let it fry for a couple of minutes. Add water and let it boil and then lower the heat and let it simmer until the vegetables are soften. Pour half of the water into a bowl and set aside. Use a hand blender to puree the soup. Stir in lemon juice and peel, thyme, salt and pepper. If the soup is to thick add some of the water. I didn't remove any of the broth which is why mine came out more brothy than the recipe posted, I still thought it was very tasty though.
Pour into bowls or cups and serve with fresh thyme, lemon peel or juice and roasted almonds.

Jalapeno Pancakes from Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys by David Tanis

1 cup all -purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1 Tbsp melted butter or olive oil
1/2 cup thinly sliced onion or scallion
1 or 2 jalapeno chiles, sliced thin
1/2 tsp toasted coarsely ground cumin

Mix up the batter, and stir in the onion, jalapenos, and cumin. Heat up the griddle, and make your pancakes.

Enjoy :)

Pear Custard Pie

2010-12-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and stuffed their bellies full of delicious food. We spent ours in Clinton, NY with Steve's family and we had lots of fun visiting with everyone especially his adorable 14 month old nephew. We ate delicious food and even got to go home with some leftovers (which we ate that same night :). However, one turkey just wasn't enough for Steve. For months he's been talking about how he wanted to get a turkey from the lady we buy our meat from at the farmers market. So we put ourselves on the list and got a 12lb heritage bronze grass-fed and organic turkey.

Now a 12lb turkey probably pales in comparison to many of the turkeys that graced the tables of Thanksgiving eaters this year, but for two people it's still A LOT of turkey. Plus you can't just make turkey, you have to make sides, and desserts! So we invited people over and had a delicious second thanksgiving. Besides the turkey our menu included garlic mashed potatoes, roasted cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, sausage and cranberry stuffing, rolls, pear and Gorgonzola salad, and for dessert a pear custard pie and a delicious chocolate dome thing that Melissa brought.

As much as I wanted to document and blog the whole feast, it didn't happen. I did manage to snap a few pictures of the Pear Custard Pie I made which is another recipe from my Simply in Season cookbook.

This pie was pretty good. I have a hard time with custardy things cause I can never figure out when they've set, but I think this turned out okay. I definetly wished I had had better pears though, these just weren't ripe enough.

The recipe also didn't have any spices in it so I consulted my handy dandy Flavor Bible and decided to add some ground cloves and cinnamon. Ground ginger and nutmeg would also be acceptable spices to add.

Pear Custard Pie
Ingredients:

9 inch unbaked pastry shell (check out the recipe I use here)
4-5 cups peeled and sliced pears
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
various spices - ground cloves, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon etc.

Preheat oven to 450.

Peel and slice your pears and then throw them into your pie crust.

In a bowl mix together all the other ingredients and then pour over the pears.

Bake for 10 minutes then reduce the heat to 350 and bake until set, roughly 30 minutes. Mine took longer though.

It really can't get much easier than that!

Enjoy!

:)

Sweet Potato Black Bean Burritos

2010-11-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

The first time I ever had these was when Lizz made them for me when I went to her house to watch The Biggest Loser. They were so delicious that they became one of our Tuesday night staple foods.

Despite loving them so much, I had never made them for Steve and myself. Well now that I own the book that the recipe is in, Simply In Season, I really had no excuse. These are simple, easy, and most importantly delicious.

I strongly urge everybody to go and make these. The only thing that would make them better is topping them with some salsa and/or sour cream.

Black Bean Sweet Potato Burritos
Ingredients:

3 cups sweet potatoes (peeled and diced) - I used 1 large sweet potato and it was plenty
1/2 onion (chopped)
2 cups cooked black beans (I used 2 cans)
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
8 flour tortillas - I made mine big so I only got 5 out of it
1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese

This is definitely a recipe that you don't want to skimp on the spices with. If you don't have the cinnamon or cumin you need to get them, the combination of those two spices really takes this recipe over the top.

Chop up your onion, and sweet potato, if you have a food processor this will save you a lot of time.
Saute your veggies in a large saucepan with 1tbsp olive oil. You want to saute them just until they are tender. If they start to stick the book reccomends that you add water or apple juice, I just added more oil.

Meanwhile, heat your oven to 350 and grease a 9x13 baking dish.

Once your veggies are done add the black beans and the spices and cook for another minute or two.

Spoon the mixture onto the tortillas and top with some cheese. Bake for 25 minutes and then serve with salsa and sour cream. Enjoy!

Weeknight Dinner - Creamy Carbonara

2010-10-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

Quick and delicious - perfect for a Monday evening.

Introducing the I'm Hungry Monthly Competition "Rethinking Breakfast!"

2010-10-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

RETHINKING BREAKFAST!!!

Steve and I (we'll Steve is still in bed and doesn't actually know about this) are pleased to announce the first of what will become a monthly competition - Rethinking Breakfast

I love breakfast, I love it so so so much. It's my favorite meal of the day, and it includes my favorite foods. I love everything breakfast, omelets, pancakes, french toast, waffles, Eggs Benedict, you name it! The problem is, I have to get up very very very early for work and I've found that I'm just too lazy/tired to make myself get up early enough to prepare breakfast. So now my breakfast has to consist of something I can eat on the go or prepare at work. Here's the problem, I'm getting really tired of oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs! Because of this I find myself turning into the dreaded drive thru far more than I'd like to admit. Not only is fast-food extremely unhealthy, and ungreen, it's taking a major toll on my wallet!

So my fellow foodies here is where you come in! I want you to suggest me breakfasts. Each month I'll post an entry along these lines asking for your suggestions. Post all your recipe ideas in the comments of this blog entry. I will choose recipes that I think sound delicious and that I would want to make and at the end of the month I'll pick one which I feel is the best one for my breakfast needs. On the first Saturday or Sunday of each month (whichever day I happen to have off from work) I will post the winner and I will write up a blog post about the recipe.

So why should you help me think up breakfasts?! There will be prizes! This month, the person who gives me the best Rethought Breakfast recipe will receive a copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

So you want to help a poor gal out and suggest some breakfast recipes - here are some rules and general guidelines about what i'm looking for.

I'd like it to be healthy - Now this doesn't mean it needs to be like 50 calories, in fact I want a high calorie breakfast (300-400 cals) because I usually have to go 5-6 hours before I can eat lunch.
I don't like to eat processed foods so try to avoid those - I especially have an aversion to frozen potato products which I find in a lot of breakfast recipes. Also no fake egg products.
I must be able to eat it on the go or eat it at work - this doesn't mean it can't involve prep time IF i can do that prep the night before. If I can make something up in advance and then just reheat it at work that would be best! (I only have a microwave at work, no toaster).
In regards to the bullet above if I can make it in advance and it makes enough for multiple breakfasts that's even better. I don't mind putting something together at night, but I don't want to spend my whole evening working on it.
It shouldn't be too expensive to make.
It must include a good source of protein - this is very very important.
I don't like milk or seafood. (although i will eat milk in other things, just not on it's own). Besides those two things I'm pretty open to eating anything (seriously anything, you should see the stuff Steve's been making me try!)

Only one entry per person per month - this seems like a fair way to do things.
If I find that there is more than one recipe that is really awesome I may do runner up prizes.
If you win a prize you must skip a month before participating - again to be fair
If you win, you must be okay with me posting the recipe on my blog.

Charlie and Macie cut a goat’s legs off at the knee and put them in the slow cooker - A post by Steve

2010-10-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Recently, Charlie and Macie stole goats and brought them back to the apartment, where they slaughtered, skinned, and butchered them. Unfortunately, those guys are not allowed to cook, so I had to make up the goat for them. They wanted the shanks, so that’s what I made. I based my preparation off of this recipe: http://365daysfood.blogspot.com/2010/04/braised-goat-shanks.html

Here are the shanks sitting on a plate, waiting to be spiced and browned.

And here are some carrots, onions, and celery ready to go into the pot. I would have liked to add more carrots and celery, but that was all we had at the time.

I’m sorry I lied about where the goat came from. Charlie and Macie did not kill the goat, nor did they butcher it. The goat shanks came from the farmer’s market, where they were a super-good deal at $2.25 a shank. I don’t remember the name of the farm though. Maybe I’ll figure it out on Saturday.

Here is a picture of the finished shanks. I reduced the sauce on top from the braising liquid in the slow cooker, most of which consisted of some nice homemade chicken stock. Now I need to make some more stock up.

This is a good food to eat because it has a big bone sticking out of it which you can use as a handle. However, etiquette suggests that one should use a knife and fork to remove the meat from the bone like a decent person. Look in your heart. How do you feel?

I would have liked to make up a more interesting side than boiled potatoes, but here we are. For better results, roast some turnips, rutabaga, sweet potato, carrots, onions all together and eat that up. It is Fall after all.

Winter Squash Bars

2010-10-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Fall is finally here! Okay I'm a little late, it's actually been here for a few weeks, but nonetheless it's here! Even though fall means summer is really over and winter is just around the corner, I can't help but be excited by this beautiful season. The colors, smells, and flavors that this season produces is in my opinion the best. What can be better than a cool crisp day, chilly enough that you need a sweater, but still warm enough to enjoy the breeze on your skin? Or a delicious baked apple dish, or a warm hearty dinner exuding a multitude of flavors?

Fall makes me want to bake, bake, bake, and so what better to kick off the baking season than with something that incorporates squash, practically the spoke-vegetable for fall. I recently got a new cookbook for my birthday (thanks Lizz & Laurel!), Simply in Season, and it's great! Not only is it full of simple delicious recipes, but it's a cookbook for cooking seasonally. I'm excited to work my way through all the fall recipes using local ingredients from the farmers market.

As I flipped through the book the first fall recipe that caught my eye was one for Winter Squash Bars. They sounded pretty healthy, and like something that would make a nice snack, so on this beautiful fall morning I set in to making them.

I made a few changes to the recipe in lieu of white sugar I used brown to give it a deeper, richer flavor. I then reduced the amount of sugar by 1/2 cup. I also used applesauce instead of oil for a healthier yet deliciously moist version of these bars. I made a ton of applesauce last fall and it's come in handy for baking things such as this. I'll put my changes in parenthesis.

Winter Squash Bars - makes 24
Ingredients:

2 cups squash - cooked, and pureed
1 1/2 cups sugar - (1 cup brown sugar)
3/4 cup oil - (3/4 cup applesauce)
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 9x13 cake pan.

In a bowl mix together squash, sugar, oil(applesauce), eggs, vanilla, and salt.

Add flours, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon.

Pour into pan and bake for 25 minutes.

Voila! Could it be any easier?!

Nutrition (using my adaptations) - 1 Bar
Calories: 84
Fat: 0.9g
Protein: 2.1g
Carbs: 20.5g

:)

Week Night Meals - Curried Tofu w/ Tomatoes & Coconut Milk Rice

2010-09-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

We're constantly checking out cookbooks from the library which is great, but at the same...not so great. You can try out all the recipes, browse through the pictures, and decide whether the recipes work for you or not, all without having to shell out a ton of money (cookbooks are pricey). However, you have to to keep them clean (so hard in our kitchen), and when you find a cookbook you really like you incur a lot of late fines because you don't want to return it!

One such cookbook that we've been holding onto for far to long is the Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers cookbook. Steve and I are always trying to find delicious meals that don't revolve meat, which is hard to do when you live in a meat-centric country. We try whenever we can to eat at least 3 or 4 dinners a week without any meat, but that means we've had to be creative because beans can get tiring really fast. This book is great for that and what's even better is the recipes are quick and simple. The best feature though: it pairs things together for you, so when you look up curried tofu w/tomatoes, it tells you that coconut rice is a good side for it.

This is a great, filling, and quick weeknight meal.

Coconut Rice

1 1/2 cups white rice
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 cup coconut milk

In a sauce pan saute the rice, turmeric, and salt in the oil for a minute or tow. Add the water and coconut milk, bring it to a boil and cover. Reduce the heat and let simmer for about 20 minutes.

Curried Tofu w/ Tomatoes

2 cups chopped onions
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves
1 1/2 tbsp grated peeled ginger root
2 tbsp curry powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 28oz can diced tomatoes
1 cake firm tofu, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
black pepper

After everything is cut up this is super easy. In a pan cook the onions, peppers, salt, and oil on medium for about five minutes until the veggies are soft. Add everything else except the tomatoes and cover. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook, stirring frequently for five minutes. Add the tomatoes, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in some pepper. Serve with the rice and enjoy!

Flank Steak w/ Fresh Green Salad

2010-08-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

We'll it's been a bit since we've posted. It doesn't, however, mean we haven't been cooking some tasty dishes. The thing with the summer is that we tend to veer towards simplicity in our cooking. We don't always want to make something fancy, we just want to appreciate the fresh produce that we find at our local market.

Just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not delicious. Almost every night our table has been graced by a fresh green salad made up of dandelion greens, romaine lettuce, and endive. We top it with homemade vinaigrette that we shake up in our little masons jars, and if we're feeling fancy we toast some pine nuts to throw on top.

The vinaigrette is really simple to make and you can try your own variations. The key ratio to keep in mind is 3:1-oil:vinegar. You also need an emulsifier, we choose Dijon mustard, about 1tsp for 1 3:1 ratio. My secret ingredient to the vinaigrette is honey, it compliments the tanginess of the other ingredients so nicely.

The flank steak I made tonight is a free range, organic steak that we got from our local meat place at the farmers market. Although not the most tender of cuts, it was still delicious. I just sprinkled some salt and pepper on the steak and then seared it on each side for about five minutes.

I topped it with a chimichurri sauce I found in the Real Simple Magazine. Again another simple mixture that made all the difference.

Mix together 1/2 cup parsley with 1/3 cup olive oil. Add in 1tbsp red wine vinegar, a clove of garlic, a dash of salt, and if you have it some crushed red pepper.

I served the salad and the steak with a mix of some locally grown fingerling and new potatoes. It was a delicious simple meal that looked and tasted beautiful. The best part, it only took about thirty minutes to put it all together!

:) enjoy!

P.S check out my new blog: http://calypsoraephotography.com! If anyone needs an event photographer send them my way!

Jambalaya and Cherry Pie!

2010-07-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

Hello friends. Calypso is always yelling at me, "Steve you never post on the blog! I'm going to change the name of the blog and divorce you!" And we're not even married. But look at me now, writing a post. Recently, I made something like jambalaya based on a recipe for shrimp jambalaya in How to Cook Everything. But where is the shrimp in the picture? Nowhere, but rather little slices of andouille sausage. I don't have exact measurements for anything in it, but here's what to do.

Dice up onion, bell pepper (I wish we could afford fun color bell pepper but we used boring green), and fry it in some oil with half a pound of chopped up andouille, then add garlic and paprika and whatever herbs you have on hand that will work. When you feel it's ready, then some tomatoes, then some rice (2 cups), and then top with twice as much stock or water as the amount of rice you put in. Then just let it simmer uncovered until the rice is done and the liquid is at the consistency you want, adding more liquid if it evaporates too quickly. If you have nicer rice than we do the rice will be a nicer consistency.

-.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-. -.-.-.-

Thanks Steve for finally writing a blurb on a blog that shares half its name with you! Anywhoo...this was a fun night because while Steve sat at the table dicing up veggies for our yummy Jambalaya, I sat there with him and pitted a bunch of cherries for a delicious cherry pie.

It was fun just spending the evening around the table making good food and then of course eating it after.

Last weekend at the farmers market one of the stands had an awesome deal on cherries and I couldn't resist. The basket was huge and although they looked like they wouldn't last long, I knew they'd last long enough for a cherry pie.

When it comes to baking I always start with good old Betty Crocker, her recipes always come out good and solid. I also managed to make a decent crust this time by really following the directions about how to mix the shortening. All too often I forget and just throw all the shortening into the flour at once and get a big glob of unrollable dough. So it's key to cut the shortening in correctly.

I'm also super proud of my lattice work! It could have probably been tighter, and the strips thinner, but this is the first time I've actually gotten it to look like a real lattice topped pie and not some big mess. The only thing I need to do next time which you can see clearly in the photos is wrap the outside of the crust in foil so it doesn't get so dark. It wasn't the end of the world, the pie still tasted great, but it would be nice to not have burnt edges.

Steve wouldn't let me go buy any ice cream for the pie ( :( ), but lucky for me I had some cream in the fridge so I whipped it up and it made an excellent topping.

Everything ended up be delicious, filling, and fun to make (even pitting the cherries wasn't as bad as I thought it would be).

Enjoy
:)

Recipes from Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book
Ingredients for 9'' Two Crust Pie:

2 cups sifted flour
1tsp salt
2/3 cup shortening (ideally you should find a recipe that uses butter and not shortening or adapt this recipe to do so because shortening has trans fat in it, which is extremely bad for you. I however was out of butter.)
4-6 tbsp water

Sift your flour into a bowl and add the salt. This part is important: add HALF your shortening and cut it into the flour until it's very FINE and looks like MEAL. Then add the rest of the shortening and cut that in until the clumps are the size of GIANT PEAS. According to Betty, cutting the shortening in fine gives you the tenderness while the larger chunks of shortening lead to the flakiness.

Sprinkle the mixture with water, one tbsp at a time until the flour is all wet. Collect it into a ball and divide in half. If you are not using it right away refrigerate it. You should put it in the fridge for a while anyway if you have time because it will make working with it easier.

Roll out half the dough and press into the pie pan. For a handy little tutorial on lattice work check this out.

Cherry Filling
I adapted this slightly because the recipe calls for sour cherries and I had sweet ones so I cut the sugar back from 1 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup.
Ingredients:

1/2 cup
5 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 cups fresh cherries - pitted
4 drops almond extract ( I left this out)

Preheat oven to 425. Mix everything together throw into pie crust and dot with butter. Cover the pie and cook for 35-45 min. If you don't want burnt edges you can take it out partway through and cover the rim with foil or you can buy this nifty little gadget.

A Not So Lazy Sunday Morning

2010-06-27T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is how it usually works, I get onto baking kicks. All I want to do is bake, bake, bake. You might notice that when I blog I usually post multiple days in a row, and then nothing for a month. That's just the way it goes. I end up getting baked out and telling myself the next thing I make is coming from a box. Don't worry, it doesn't, but you get what I mean. So even after my foray into clafoutis yesterday I still wanted to do more baking.

I still had a lot of rhubarb that I needed to use up so my first order of business was to make a rhubarb bread. There were a lot fewer recipes out there for this than I thought there would be, but I was able to find one that looked good. I ended up going with this recipe from allrecipes.com.

I was worried at first that it was going to end up too sugary because people have a tendency to overcompensate for the tartness of the rhubarb, but I'm happy to announce it came out spectacular!

While that was still in the oven I decided I wanted to bake some cookies too. I hadn't made cookies for a long time and so the other day when I was at the library I picked up a copy of Martha Stewart's Cookies. I've never been a huge Martha fan, but I've heard countless times that her recipes very rarely disappoint. I ended up making Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread. Her original recipe calls for orange zest, but having no oranges on hand I went with lemon instead. I helped the lemon flavor along by replacing the vanilla extract with lemon extract.

I'm not sure what led me to pick these cookies out (probably the pretty picture in the book, or the short ingredient list), because shortbread type cookies are not usually my favorite, but I'm glad I made them because they came out great; rich and buttery with a hint of lemon.

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Citrus Cornmeal Shortbread:

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup confectioner's sugar
2 teaspoons pure lemon extract
The zest from 1 lemon
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
1 tsp coarse salt

Mix together butter and confectioners sugar. Add vanilla and zest and combine.

Add the flour, 2tbsp cornmeal and salt. Mix everything together until its combined

Divide the dough in half and shape into a log. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 300F. Place 1/4 cornmeal on a piece of parchment paper. Roll the logs in the cornmeal until evenly coated.

Cut the logs into 1/4 inch thick rounds. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.

The best part of my day of baking is that I discovered it is a friends birthday today (thank you facebook / Happy Birthday Laurel!) so I dropped her off a bag of cookies and a loaf of bread.

So far I don't feel baked out so who knows, maybe there will be more goodies to come shortly.

Cherry & Rhubarb Clafoutis

2010-06-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

Hello blog, I've been a bad blog mommy and neglected you so. Unfortunately sometimes we go through phases where nothing we eat is exciting or fun, or we get really lazy and eat out a lot. But...SUMMER'S HERE!!! and that means lots and lots of stands at the farmers market full of delicious produce and more.

I love, love, love the farmers market. We're lucky because we have a huge farmers market here in Syracuse with a wide variety of food. Not only can you fill your bags with fresh locally grown produce, but you can buy organic grass-fed meats, delicious cheeses, and now much to our delight, freshly roasted fair trade coffee beans.

Steve and I are working really hard to try and do as much of our shopping at the farmers market. After watching Food Inc , and reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan, I've really had to rethink my relationship with food and my duty as an inhabitant of this planet. It really is so important to try and eat locally and organic. The impact that industrialized food has on your body and on the earth is not worth the cheap prices or "delicious" taste that they supply. I know fast food is easy, so are microwave dinners and other prepacked meals. It's also certainly cheaper to buy industry food, but, BUT, think about it. The nutrients in industrialized are so lacking compared to naturally grown food that you have to eat so much more of it. So yes, organic food may cost more, but you will have to eat less, and you will probably enjoy it much much more. Okay I won't go on and on, but I urge you to read more about it and educate yourself about the food that goes into your body and the impact it may have on our planet.

Okay moving on, like I was saying about the farmers market, I LOVE IT. We got great stuff this week including cherries and rhubarb. It just so happens that its gloomy and rainy today which means it's perfect baking weather.

Soooo I was browsing around on tastespotting.com like I often do and I saw a post for Cherry Clafoutis. Well that particular recipe called for ingredients I didn't have, but after looking further I found this recipe from "Fork Spoon Knife" that seemed perfect. I wanted to include some rhubarb into it so I followed the recipe exactly except threw in about 3 stalks of rhubarb.

It turned out really good, but somewhat tart. I think next time to compensate for the rhubarb I added, I would maybe double the amount of sugar. Otherwise this was quick easy and delicious.

Oven Free Dinner

2010-05-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

Steve and I live on the second floor of a very old building, situated in such a way that we get no air flow through our apartment. Come summertime, we live in a sauna. The minute we turn the oven on it's like we've moved into the center of a volcano. So this summer we've decided to get smart about it and stop roasting giant pieces of meat when it's 90 degrees outside, and start eating things that are fresh, easy, and require zero use of the oven.

So last night we decided to make some things we've been wanting to make for a very long time: hummus and pesto. In fact last year when we bought a food processor, the main reason was so that we could make these two things; we hadn't yet. We also whipped up a tabbouleh salad which is something we've been making a lot lately cause it's sooo tasty.

We had also picked up a delicious loaf of bread at the farmers market on Saturday so we used that to dip into our hummus and pesto. Preparation was easy, no heat was created, and the results were spectacular. When it's really hot out and you just want something light and refreshing, this would be a meal I would highly recommend.

The Hummus recipe is from our friends Mike and Rachel and can be found at their blog here.

The pesto and the tabbouleh come from Mark Bittman's book How to Cook Everything

Pesto:
Ingredients:

2 loosely packed cups basil
salt to taste
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted on a dry skillet
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

In a food processor combine the basil, salt, garlic, nuts, and half the oil. Now Mr. Bittman suggests using 1/2 a cup of oil, I found this to be wayyyyy to much and had to go back in and add more basil and pine nuts to make up for it. So after you add your 1/4 cup olive oil I would check the consistency and flavor and then slowly adjust from there. I then added half the cheese and blended it in and then the 1/4 cup of cheese I just stirred in at the end.

Tabbouleh:
Ingredients:

1/2 cup fine grind or medium grind (#1 or #2) bulgur, you can use course ground but you will have to make that with hot water and wait for it to cool in the fridge.
2 cups minced parsley leaves
1 cup minced mint leaves
2 cups cored, seeded, and chopped tomatoes
1 small onion
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil - again I think Mark Bittman is a bit heavy handed with the oil and so we didn't end up adding the whole 1/2 cup. Start slowly and keep tasting until it's where you want it.
4 TBSP lemon juice
salt & pepper

Cover bulgur in water and let soak for about 30 minutes then drain. Try to get as much of the water out as possible. After that it's simple combine everything else into a bowl and serve!

:)

Rhubarb Pie

2010-05-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday marked the beginning of the farmers market here in Syracuse...kind of. Our farmers market is actually open year round, and Steve and I do try to go every Saturday, but during the winter it's definitely lacking. Not surprising considering nothing grows in upstate New York during the winter months. Saturday though, marked the 1st day of the summer season at the market and you could tell. Every building was open, every booth was occupied. You had to constantly watch where you were going lest you trip on a basket of flowers or stumble into a booth of produce. I love going to the farmers market and finding exciting new things to try, so it made me really happy to see it full and busy Saturday.

We ended up with lots of yummy things including a huge loaf of artisan bread, a bunch of artichokes (for $1!!), and some rhubarb. Rhubarb seems to be an overlooked piece of produce. You never see it in the grocery store, and you never hear people exclaiming about how they can't wait for rhubarb season, and I'm not sure why.

Growing up we had a rhubarb plant in our back yard, so rhubarb crisp made an appearance in our home every so often. As much as I like rhubarb crisp I decided to use this rhubarb to make a pie.

Rhubarb is a very tart fruit but as long as you pair it with just the right amount of sugar you will have a wonderful dessert. It's important to not overpower it with sugar and remove all it's tartness, so take the time to play around and find just the right ratio. I'm very happy with how this pie turned out, sweet yet you can still taste the tangy tartness of the rhubarb.

I encourage everyone to go out and try and some rhubarb if you've never done so, I think you'll be in for a very nice surprise.

The recipe comes from Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book

Crust ( makes 2 9'' crusts)

Ingredients:

2 cups sifted flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup shortening
4 tbsp water

Mix together flour and salt. Cut in shortening then sprinkle water on top. Gather the dough into a ball with your hands. Cut in half and roll out your dough.

I didn't have quite enough dough to cover the top of mine which is why I did the cut outs instead.

Filling

Ingredients:

1 1/3 to 2 cups sugar - This depends on the tartness of your rhubarb. I used 1 1/5 cups.
6 tbsp flour
4 cups cut up rhubarb
1 1/3 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 425.
Mix the sugar and flour together. Cover the bottom of the pie crust with this mixture and then set some aside. Add the rhubarb to the remaining mixture and toss until the rhubarb is coated. Sprinkle the mixture you set aside on top. Dot with butter and then cover with remaining pie crust. Cook 40 - 50 minutes until top is golden brown and juices are bubbling.

A Friday Night Feast

2010-05-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it's coming to the end of the semester, which for me means very little except there are lots of loud parties taking place around my neighborhood. For Steve though, the end of the semester means lot's and lot's and lot's AND LOT'S of work. For the next week or so we basically only see each other when he goes to bed and I'm getting up. Since he's been so busy and stressed I decided to treat him to a nice meal Friday night. I'm really lucky because 90% of the time Steve makes us dinner, so I wanted to say thank you for that. I also wanted him to be able to get some work done while I made dinner ( which means I probably shouldn't have supplied him with wine).

Since I had forgot to take any meat out of the freezer and I didn't want to buy more since we have an entire farm in our freezer I decided to do a vegetarian meal. I started off with Carrot and Tofu soup. I know this sounds kind of weird but trust me it's very good! Steve said it tasted like lobster bisque, which I've never had, but maybe that's a good thing? Not only is it very tasty, it's very filling since it's filled with tofu. This could easily be a meal on it's own.

For the main course I made a Turnip and Parsnip Gratin. Although this is probably not an ideal spring food (it'd be better suited for a cold winter night) it was very good; a definite comfort food.

I finished the night off with strawberry shortcakes (no pictures). I cheated though and bought the store brand spongecake things. I did make fresh whipped cream though!

All said I was really happy with how everything turned out. Nothing was really difficult so it was a mostly stress free meal (except for the minor fire in my broiler because Steve left a pan with food gunk in there! UGH!).

Tofu-Carrot Soup - Recipe copied From Better Homes and Gardens

Ingredients:

1 8-oz. pkg. sliced button mushrooms (2 1/2 cups)
2 stalks celery, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
4 cups sliced carrots
1 12.3-oz. pkg. silken-style firm tofu (fresh bean curd), cut up
3 14-oz. cans vegetable broth or chicken broth
1 5-oz. can evaporated milk
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
1/2 cup dairy sour cream
Fresh thyme (optional)
Cayenne pepper (optional)

In 4- to 6- quart Dutch oven cook mushrooms, celery, onion, and garlic in hot oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until softened. Add carrots and broth to mixture. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until tender.
Let soup cool slightly. Cut up tofu. Place the tofu and half of the broth mixture in a large food processor or blender. (If you don't have a large food processor or blender, process mixture in smaller batches.) Cover and process or blend until smooth. Repeat with remaining broth mixture and evaporated milk. (I just left it all in the pot and used an immersion blender.) Cover and process or blend until smooth. Return all blended soup to Dutch oven and heat through. Stir in the 1 teaspoon thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Top servings with sour cream thinned with 2 to 3 teaspoons water, snipped thyme, and pepper.

Turnip-Parsnip Gratin - Recipe copied from Cooking Light

Ingredients:

3 3/4 cups (1/8-inch-thick) slices peeled turnip
3 3/4 cups (1/8-inch-thick) slices peeled parsnip
6 cups water
Cooking spray
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Gruyère cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)

I used an 11x13 pan so I doubled the recipe and it worked out nicely. It also left lot's for leftovers!

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Combine first 3 ingredients in a large saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 7 minutes or until almost tender. Drain; let stand 5 minutes. Arrange about 1/2 cup vegetable mixture into each of 8 (5 1/2-inch) round gratin dishes coated with cooking spray.
3. Combine milk, broth, flour, salt, and pepper in a saucepan over medium-high heat; bring to a simmer. Cook 4 minutes, stirring constantly with a whisk until thick. Remove from heat; add cheese, stirring with a whisk until smooth. Spoon about 3 tablespoons sauce over each serving.
4. Melt butter in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add panko; toast 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Sprinkle breadcrumb mixture evenly over cheese mixture. Place dishes on a baking sheet. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until bubbly and golden brown on top. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Bridal Shower Goodies

2010-04-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I had a lovely time at a bridal shower/ bachelorette party for Lizz. There was lots of yummy food, fun games, and dancing downtown. For my contribution to the shower I provided the desserts. I decided to make a cheese cake with strawberry topping, honey infused truffles, and mini key lime pies. Although this was all a lot of fun to make, it took a looong time and I was very baked out after this. Unfortunately I don’t have a plated shot of the cheesecake, so you will just have to use your imagination.

You may also remember a previous post where I made a cheesecake but I couldn’t find the recipe and so I just posted a bunch of pictures. Well, I found the recipe and these pictures are better, so here you go!

Honey Infused Truffles – Recipe from the blog Food Makes Me Happy.

Ingredients (makes 12)

4 oz of 50% fine dark chocolate
1 teaspoon of honey
1/3 cup of heavy whipping cream
Pinch of salt
Unsweetened cocoa powder to roll them in at the end

These taste amazing, and yet are so simple to make. In a double boiler heat up the cream.

Chop up your chocolate and add it to the cream. Stir until the chocolate melts.

Add the salt and honey then cool, cover, and throw them in the fridge overnight.

If you do let them set as long as overnight it’s going to be pretty hard the next day so let it set on the counter for a few minutes to make it easier to scoop.

Scoop out balls ( you can use a melon baller if you have one, or a teaspoon works fine) and roll in cocoa powder.

Voila, simple, elegant, and delicious!

Mini Key Lime Pies – I used the Cook’s Illustrated Recipe for Key Lime Pie and then adapted it into 12 mini pies. I originally wanted to make more than 12, but I only had 12 molds. I was hoping I would be able to take the crusts out of the molds and fill them, but a graham cracker crust is too delicate. If you make this entire recipe you are going to have lots of leftovers, so I would recommend halving it if you want to make the 12 pies.

Ingredients – Crust

11 graham crackers, processed to fine crumbs ( 1 ¼ cups)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and grease your tins.

Put your graham crackers into a food processor and process until you create a very fine crumb.

Mix the crumbs with the sugar and then add the melted butter.

Press the mixture into your molds and then bake for about 15 minutes until you have a nice brown crust.

Let those cool while you make the filling.

Ingredients – Filling

4 teaspoons grated lime zest
½ cup lime juice from 3 to 4 limes
4 large egg yolks
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

Zest your lemons

Then juice them

Mix everything together and pour into cooled molds.

Bake at 325 for 15 minutes. Cool in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

Top them with whipped cream.

Another relatively easy, yet delicious treat.

New York-Style Cheesecake with Strawberry Topping – Recipe again from Cook’s Illustrated. I didn’t take pictures of the strawberry topping, but I’ll post the recipe for it.

Ingredients – Graham Cracker Crust – This is nearly identical to the crust of the key lime pies.

1 cup graham cracker crumbs ( 4 ounces, 8 whole crackers, broken into rough pieces and processed in food processor until uniformly fine)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus additional 1 tablespoon melted butter for greasing pan

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and grease your pan with 1 tbsp melted butter. Process your graham crackers in the food processor until fine then mix with sugar and butter. Press into pan and bake for 13 minutes. Let cool while you prepare the filling.

Ingredients – Filling

2 ½ pounds cream cheese, cut into rough 1-inch chunks and left to stand at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes
1/8 teaspoon table salt
1 ½ cups granulated sugar (10 ½ ounces)
1/3 cup sour cream ( 2 ½ ounces)
2 teaspoons lemon juice from 1 lemon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks
6 large eggs

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and brush the sides of the pan with butter.

Beat cream cheese for about a minute to break it up. Add salt and half the sugar and beat for another minute, then add the rest of the sugar and beat for another minute.

Add sour cream, lemon juice, and vanilla, beat for another minute.

Add egg yolks and mix until well combined. Then add the whole eggs two at a time beating in between each addition until well combined.

Pour filling into pan. Here is where I varied from the recipe. I wanted to try and do a water bath which this recipe does not do. Last time I made this recipe the top of my cheesecake cracked so I wanted to avoid that. However, despite wrapping the bottom of my pan in aluminum foil, water still managed to get into the pan. It didn’t ruin the cheesecake but it made it very soft. It also increased the baking time A LOT. Next time I think I’ll place a pan of water on the bottom rack and the cheesecake on one above it. The water will still keep the oven moist, but not make my cake soggy.

The following instructions assume you are NOT doing a water bath.

Bake cake for 10 minutes at 500 and without opening the oven reduce the temperature to 200 degrees and bake for about 1.5 hours or until the center of the cheesecake reads 150 degrees.

Let the cake cool for a bit then chill in the fridge. Serve with strawberry topping and enjoy.

Strawberry Topping – Recipe from Cook’s Illustrated

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh strawberries, cleaned, hulled, and cut lengthwise into ¼ - to 1/8 – inch slices
½ cup granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
1 cup strawberry jam ( about 11 ounces)
2 tablespoons lemon juice from 1 lemon

In a bowl combine your berries, salt, and sugar and let stand for about 30 minutes. The berries will release a lot of their juices and sugar will dissolve.

Meanwhile, in a food processor, process the jam just until it’s nice and smooth. Transfer the jam into a saucepan and bring to a simmer on medium heat. Stir it frequently for about 3 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and then pour mixture over the strawberries and stir. Let cool, then cover and let sit in the fridge overnight.

Enjoy!

Here are a few pictures of the decorations from the party.

Easter Cake

2010-04-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

Happy Belated Easter everyone! :)

Well I finished up course one of cake decorating. I missed a class due to a gross stomach bug, and the instructor canceled a class so I was somewhat rushing on the last day trying to learn how to make the roses. For only practicing for 30 minutes though I'm pretty happy with how they came out. Unfortunately I made the cake on a Wednesday and it didn't make it til Easter Sunday (I think Steve enjoyed most of it). I'm going to be making a birthday cake for Steve soon so I'll post that and hopefully we'll see some improvements.

Oven Roasted Yogurt-Marinated Chicken

2010-03-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago Steve and I (mostly Steve on this one) made a delicious Indian dinner from our favorite Indian cookbook, 1,000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra. We made an Oven-Roasted Yogurt-Marinated Chicken. Although it took a little bit of time to prep and make, it was very much worth the effort, the chicken was extremely moist and flavorful! The recipe says you can let the chicken marinate for 2-24 hours and I would have to say if you have the time let it go for the whole 24 hours for the best results. We kinda puttered out at the end of making dinner and ended up with non-Indian sides of boiled potatoes and broccoli, but it was still a very good meal.

Oven Roasted Yogurt-Marinated Chicken

Ingredients:
(Like most of the recipes we make from this book, we left out a few of the spices because we didn't have them on hand. I've put an asterisk next to the ones that were left out.)

1 1/2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
1 whole chicken ( 2 1/2 to 3 lbs)
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt, whisked until smooth
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp fennel seeds*
1 tsp green cardamon seeds
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp ground asafoetida*
1/2 tsp salt
3 cloves
2 sticks of cinnamon, broken lengthwise
2 tbsp minced fresh mint leaves*

First up, prepare your chicken by removing the skin and making deep cuts all over the chicken.

Next gather all of your ingredients for the marinade.

Start off by adding the yogurt to a bowl and whisking it until it's smooth.

Add the oil to the yogurt, then cut up the cilantro and add that as well.

Next throw in your ginger garlic paste. You can make your own or you can buy it in any Indian specialty store.

Next grind up your cardamon seeds, and any of the other spices you may need to. For instance instead of ground cumin we had cumin seeds so we had to grind those. If you have the fennel seeds you will need to grind those as well. Do not grind up the cloves or cinnamon sticks.

Add the spices you just ground ( cardamon seeds, fennel seeds) along along with all of the other ground spices (coriander, black pepper, cumin, cayenne pepper, asafoetida, salt)

Add the chicken to the bowl and cover well with the marinade. Make sure it really gets into all those slits you made on the chicken. Cover with plastic wrap and let marinate in the fridge for 2-24 hours.

A few hours later...

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the chicken into a roasting pan breast side down. Pour any remaining marinade over the chicken. Toss in the cloves, cinnamon sticks, and the mint.

Make a tent over your pan with aluminum foil and roast for 40 minutes. Reduce the oven to 375 and turn the chicken over. Continue to roast for an additional 25 minutes or until done per a food thermometer.

Serve up with any side you please and enjoy.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Steve and I sat down to a delicious meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage. We also had some yummy roasted root vegetables to go along with it. Hope everyone had a safe and happy St. Patrick's Day!

Spring Cookies

2010-03-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

With the weather being the way it's been (sunny and warm! ) the past few days it's hard to remember that winter isn't technically over, but I've decided to be done with it and move into spring ( a few days early). Every year around this time all I want to do it clean out my apartment and decorate everything I can in bright bright colors. Out with all the dreary winterness I say. In that spirit I invited Jessica over today to make these super pretty, delicious tasting spring cookies. Neither of us had ever worked with Royal Icing before so it was a fun adventure that ended up going very well. There are a few things we'd do differently if we made them again, one being we would flood the cookies with icing and then put the details on ( we did it the other way around). We'd also like to figure out how to make the icing nice and shiny. Overall though for the first time doing this I'm really pleased with the results.

We used the Royal Icing recipe from Annie Eats

And the cookie recipe also came from Annie Eats ( I added lemon extract instead of almond to give them a nice fresh lemony taste)

Hope everyone else can enjoy some pretty sunshine too! :)

Weeknight Meals

2010-03-04T17:33:00.000-08:00

I think I'm gonna do some picture posts of food we eat during the week because although it's usually really tasty, it's not very exciting and doesn't really need a lot of process photos. Then on the weekends when we tend to make fancier things I'll make the bigger posts. So here are a few of the meals we ate this week, all of them were very very delicious and very easy too! I've added a link at the bottom of the post that will show you the recipes.

Chicken Paprikash

Recipe from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express

Kale and White Bean Soup

Recipe from the blog F for Food

Avocado Chicken Pitas

Recipe from Taste of Home 2009 Quick Cooking

Chicken Paprikash

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter
1 lb
1 onion - chopped
2 cloves of garlic - crushed
1 tsp ginger - minced
1 bay leaf
3 tbsp Hungarian paprika ( if you don't have Hungarian paprika I would really recommend getting some, it makes the recipe much better)
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup sour cream

Sear the chicken in the butter, about 1 minute on each side. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, bay leaf, and paprika. Cook for about 3 minutes. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and continue cooking until the chicken is done. Remove from heat and stir in the sour cream.
This tastes really good served over bulgur wheat.

Kale and White Bean Soup:

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
butter
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 1/2 cups, loosely packed kale leaves, coarsely chopped
2 cloves chopped garlic
a small sprig of rosemary
3 cups (approx. 2 cans) of cannelloni beans
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 3/4 cups water

First heat up some butter in a soup pot, then add a little olive oil. Next throw in the onions, garlic, and rosemary and cook for five minutes or until onions are translucent.

Next add in your kale and let cook until it's wilted down a good amount. Add in your beans, stir, then add in the water and stock. Let cook for about 15 minutes or until beans are nice and soft and soup has thickend.

Use a blender or immersion blender to blend up the soup. Serve with a swirl of olive oil and garnish with basil.

Avocado Chicken Pitas

Ingredients:

4 whole pita breads
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium avocado, peeled and pitted
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt
garlic powder
hot pepper sauce
3/4 lbs cooked chicken - Steve roasted a chicken so we just used stuff from that
1 medium tomato
2 cups shredded cheese - we used Monterey Jack

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Brush one side of each pita with olive oil and bake in the oven for 12 minutes.

In a small bowl mash the avocado with lemon juice, garlic powder, and the hot sauce.

Spread the avocado mixture over the pitas once they are heated up. Add chicken and tomatoes then cover with cheese. Bake for another five minutes or until cheese is melted.

Lemon Custard Cakes

2010-02-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

Like most weekend mornings I started my day off today scrolling through all the delicious food on tastespotting.com. Usually it makes me really hungry and I end up bookmarking a ton of recipes that I'll probably never get around to actually making. However, I came across this recipe for Lemon Custard Cakes at Cathie Cooks Food and decided it seemed simple enough that I could whip it up tonight for a tasty dessert.

I basically followed the recipe on the blog except that I added lemon extract to give it an extra super lemon flavor. I also only have four ramekins so I had to adjust for that. I would make these again, especially due to the simplicity and ease of this recipe.

Lemon Custard Cakes

Ingredients:

3 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoon all purpose flour
2-3 tablespoons grated lemon zest ( try not to zest your fingers )
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup milk ( I used whole milk)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Lemon Extract (optional, but it will make sure that lemon flavor really stands out)

Start your oven preheating at 350 degrees and get your ramekins ready. Spray them down (or butter them) with oil and place them in a cake pan. Also get some water boiling to pour into the pan later.

First you need to separate your eggs, make sure to keep both the eggs and the whites.

In a bowl mix your egg yolks and sugar.

Add in the flour.

Zest your lemon, then add your zest and lemon juice to the bowl.

Finally whisk in your milk.

In a separate bowl mix your egg whites and salt together with and electric mixer until you get soft peaks.

Carefully fold your egg whites into your egg yolk mixture. Pour the mixture into your ramekins and then fill your pan half way up the sides of the ramekins with boiling water.

Put them in the oven and let them cook until the tops are golden brown. For my four ramekins I cooked them for 25 minutes.

Enjoy :)

Pizza Post!

2010-02-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

Slowly but steadily Steve and I have been working on our homemade pizzas. We've made huge strides since this past summer, most likely because we got ourselves a pizza stone. Our biggest problem has always been our crusts. Many times they came out too soggy despite our best efforts. One important factor besides having the pizza stone I think, is to make sure your oven is as hot as it will go. I think before we were cooking our pizzas at a much lower temperature, and to really get that crust crispy you have to crank the oven up as high as it will go.

Tonight we had a regular cheese one as well as a pineapple and green pepper. I will probably post our pizza creations often as they have become a weekly staple.

Enjoy :)

Braised Cabbage with Spanish Chorizo and Beans

2010-02-26T09:05:00.000-08:00

Hello! It's been a long time since I updated this blog. We had some camera problems (lack of one) that left us unable to document any of our tasty meals. However, we got a new camera, and not just a cellphone camera! A real awesome, knock your socks off kinda camera! We're still learning how to use it, and we clearly need to work on our lighting (difficult when limited to fluorescent kitchen lights) and our platting. I think you'll notice though that these pictures are far superior to previous ones. Now that I have a new camera I hope to update the blog at least once a week so prepare yourself for some tasty times!

Lately Steve and I have been looking for good healthy recipes that require minimal effort at least during the week. We got lucky at our local library and stumbled upon Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express. All the recipes in this book take 20 minutes to make which is helpful on those hectic nights. We've found some really good recipes so far in the book and this is one of them. I'm pretty sure we'll probably be making it again sometime.

Braised Cabbage with Spanish Chorizo and Beans

Ingredients:

Smoked Chorizo
Olive Oil
Head of Green Cabbage
2 Cans Cannellini or other White Beans

That's it! A very simple ingredient list. One thing about this book is he doesn't really list measurements a lot of times so it's easy to adapt the recipes to your liking. I believe we used a quarter pound of the chorizo, but you could use more or less depending on your tastes. Same with the beans, the recipe says a couple cups we just went ahead and threw in two cans.

So first thing first, slice the chorizo into 1/4 inch pieces and throw them in a pan with olive oil until the meat begins to crisp.

While the meat is cooking cut up your cabbage into wedges.

Add the cabbage to the pot then get
your beans ready by draining and rinsing them.

Add your beans to the pot, cover and let cook for 5ish minutes or until everything is warmed through.

That's it! Simple, easy, and good.

Enjoy :)

Christmas Capers!

2009-12-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas! I can't help it, once thanksgiving is done with I'm pretty sure I turn into a five year old! I love Christmas music, lights, decorations, tv specials, of course all the parties and gatherings with family and friends, AND Christmas food. Really what other time of the year produces such delightful scents from the kitchen? I decided this year for all our friends in the area I would make some little goodie boxes full of Christmas cheer (a.k.a candy!). Steve and I then went on a Christmas Caper across town delivering our boxes :), so I hope everyone enjoyed their treats.

I had four candies I included in the boxes:

Unfortunately I'm only going to be able to share the peanut butter cups and toffee. My phone broke, which had my pictures for the other two candies on it :(. If i somehow ever manage to retrieve these pictures I'll let you know. However, I've linked the candies to the blogs I got the recipes from so check them out!

Chocolate Covered Coffee Toffee

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter (a very heart healthy recipe)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup + 2tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp molasses
3tsp instant coffee
1/2 tsp salt
1lb chocolate of your choice ( I used half bittersweet and half semisweet, and I used chips as opposed to blocks of chocolate)

This stuff is actually really easy to make. Before you start it's best to prep your baking sheet with some wax or parchment paper.

In a large pot with your candy thermometer attached, add all the ingredients except the chocolate and bring to a boil over medium low heat. Stir fairly regularly until it reaches a temperature of 275. At this point you need to stir constantly until the temp reaches 315 degrees.

When it hits 315, remove the pan from the heat and stir a couple times so it's nice and smooth. Now you have to work quickly. Pour the toffee onto your baking sheet and spread out with a spatula to an even thickness.

While it's still warm you also want to score it so it will break off into nice pieces for you. I used a knife, the original recipe said a pizza cutter would work well too. Let your toffee sit until completely cooled at room temperature.

Once your toffee is cooled break it into pieces.

In a double boiler (or your little 2 pot contraption such as the one I use) melt your chocolate.

Once your chocolate is melted remove from heat and dip your toffee in to coat completely.

If your chocolate starts to harden just reheat it for a minute or two. ( You may have to because it takes quite a while to dip a billion little pieces of toffee). Once they are coated stick them in the fridge to harden. Once hardened you can either go ahead and eat them, or you can drizzle some pretty designs on top.

Voila!

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

Ingredients:

12oz bittersweet chocolate (again I used chips)
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 cup graham crackers
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

There's actually not a lot to these guys. On top of the ingredients you're also going to need those little paper candy cups that are meant for truffles and such.

On a tray distribute your paper candy cups. It helps to have a couple together to make them thicker and stronger.

In a bowl mix your sugar, peanut butter, and graham crackers. I wish I had put the graham crackers through the food processor to get a nicer, more fine grind. Instead I just crushed them up with a pastry cutter, which actually proved to be a very effective way to mix these three ingredients together. Set this bowl aside, we'll need it in a few minutes.

In your makeshift double boiler, melt your chocolate (I spent a lot of my holiday baking time, melting chocolate).

With a pastry brush, your just going to paint the insides of those cups with chocolate. You want a pretty thick coat in there because this creates your outer shell.

Once they're all painted, smoosh about a teaspoon of the peanut butter mixture into each cup.

Pour chocolate over top to cover it up. After every couple cups you top off, tap your baking sheet a few times on the counter to get a nice level top instead of a bumpy little mess.

I put these in the freezer to harden/store, but I would definitely recommend taking them out and letting them come to room temperature before eating. They taste much better that way!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!!!!

:)

Empanaditas and Spanish Rice

2009-12-20T08:41:00.001-08:00

Many moons ago, Steve won a Chili cook off and as a reward he got a new Mexican cookbook, Chef LaLa Presents Best Loved Mexican Cooking by Laura Diaz-Brown.

Mexican is something that we almost never eat, whether it be going out or making it ourselves. Not because we don't enjoy it, just for some reason it never comes up. Well, we decided to change our dinners up a bit and try something different. We choose to make Empanaditas and Spanish Rice. I have to admit, I was a little wary of following a recipe from someone named Chef LaLa, but I was actually very impressed with the recipe and thought it came out great overall. The only thing I would do different next time is just make regular sized Empanadas instead of mini Empanaditas.
Empanaditas Ingredients for Dough:

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup masa harinia (we found something in the Mexican section at Wegmans that seemed to be this, but Steve thinks maybe it wasn't exactly the right thing. Who knows.)
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup ice water
3tbsp butter
Wax or Parchment paper cut into 4x4 squares (12 squares)
Flour for dusting

In your food processor, combine flour, masa harinia, and salt. While pulsing add the water. Cut your butter into little pieces and then add to the mixture. Continue to pulse til a dough is formed.

Remove dough from processor and knead once or twice. Then on a floured surface, seperate the dough into 12 equal sections and roll out into a 3 inch circle. Place a piece of waxed paper between each one to prevent sticking. Place them in the fridge for an hour and start preparing your filling.

Ingredients for Filling:

1/2 cup zucchini (we did not use because it's out of season and we couldn't find)
1 pasilla chili (we used a jalapeno
1/2 cup cooked chicken, shredded (I was boring and just boiled it, I probably should have baked it or grilled it to give it a better flavor)
1/2 cup queso fresco, crumbled ( this is basically just a very soft farm cheese, or you could use a mild feta)
1tbsp green onion (we used regular onion)
salt
2 egg yolks
2 tsp water

As you can see we changed a lot of the ingredients, you really can stuff these with whatever you want. Basically chop up all your veggies and combine all the ingredients in a bowl. We also used red pepper and celery just because we had some on hand.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. While that's heating up, assemble your empanaditas. In the center of each dough circle put about 1 tsp of filling.

Wisk together your egg yolks and water and brush that along the edge. Fold the dough and half and seal by pressing a fork down along the edge. Then brush the top with the egg wash ( I accidentally skipped this step, which is why mine don't look as brown as they should).

Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile, while you are doing all this, set Steve to the task of making some Mexican Rice.

Mexican Rice Ingredients:

8oz canned tomato sauce (Steve actually made the tomato sauce for this)
1/2 medium onion
1 clove garlic
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup rice
2tbsp canola oil
1tsp salt
1/2 cup frozen peas and carrots (we just used peas cause we happened to already have some)

Steve makes the tomato sauce by squishin up a can of tomatoes and cooking it with some garlic for a while.

In your food processor, combine the tomato sauce, onion, garlic, and 1/4 cup chicken broth and processes til smooth. Don't use your dough blade on accident like I did and then wonder why it's still chunky at the end.

In your skillet heat up your oil over medium heat. Add the rice, then stir occasionally until golden brown. Add the tomato mixture that you blended earlier and cook for about 10 minutes.

Add the rest of the chicken stock and bring to a boil.

Add the peas, then cover, lower the heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes or until rice is tender.

Enjoy!

:)

Nutrition for 1 Serving of Rice (makes 6 servings): Calories: 141 Fat: 4.7g Protein: 1g Carbs: 24g

Nutrition for 1 Empanadita: Calories: 105 Fat: 4.1g Protein: 4.2g Carbs: 13.1g

An Abundance of Apples

2009-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago Steve and I made a nice little trip out to Abbott Farm. It was a pretty gloomy day, but I think that worked to our advantage as we had the whole orchard to ourselves. We wandered through the rows of apple trees sampling each kind and ended up walking away with 25lbs of apples! We also had some yummy hot apple cider and apple donuts. Needless to say we were very appled out at the end of our day.

There is no way to eat 25lbs of apples plain so we came up with lots of different things to do with them. This is just a showcase of the few of the things we did.

We haven't done a lot of cooking lately ( and if we have it hasn't been anything very exciting :( ) but we hope to get back into things and hopefully we'll make some yummy stuff this week. I do have a rather exciting menu planned for next weekend if I can convince someone to lend me their camera so stay tuned.

Without further ado......

Apple Pie

Tarte Tatin

Apple Stuffed Chicken Breasts
my phone lost some of the pictures of this, and all the pictures of the finished product, but I wanted to post it because it was sooooo goood. The apple breasts were stuffed with apples, Parmesan cheese, and bread crumbs. They were then cooked in apple cider and chicken broth. The liquid was then cooked down into a sauce with some Dijon mustard. Reallllly good.

I made some other stuff too such as a very tasty apple bundt cake but it fell apart as I was trying to unmold it :( so although it tastes delicious I have no pictures of it.

I also attempted to make apple butter, but in the end I think all I did was make applesauce. However, it does taste good and I successfully jarred it, so that was exciting.

:)

A Day of Good Eats Part III - Main Course

2009-09-21T17:30:00.000-07:00

We decided that instead of going out to eat we wanted to make a really fancy nice dinner, so we decided as a main course to make Beef Wellington, Baked Chard in a Bechamel sauce, and carrots. It was amazing. I've never had Beef Wellington and it was so delicious I would probably eat it every day if someone let me. Not only that, it was really fun to make all these dishes and really nice to sit down to a meal like this.

Beef Wellington

Ingredients:

2 pieces of beef tenderloin
1/2 cup mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 can beef broth
Puff Pastry dough
Wine
2tbsp butter softened
2tbsp butter
2 tbsp butter softened
egg yolk
2 tbsp wine
2 slices of prosciutto

First you put your meat in a oven safe dish and cover with 2tbsp of butter softened. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes then set aside and let cool completely.

While that's cooling get your onions and mushrooms all chopped up.

Cook those in some butter until nice and brown then set those aside as well and let cool.

Make sure you took out your puff pastry to thaw. Now roll it out til it's big enough to wrap up your meat in.

Rub 2 tbsp butter on tenderloin and then wrap in a slice of proscuitto

I took pictures of the next steps but they disappeared off my phone :(
Set on pastry dough and top with mushrooms and onions.

Fold up the dough and pinch it nice and tight. Brush with your egg yolk.

Put them back in the oven and cook at 450 for 10 minutes and then at 425 for 10 minutes. While thats cooking you have to make your sauce.

In a sauce pan take your beef broth and wine and reduce and simmer.

We served the sauce on the side so we could dip it.

Baked Chard with Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients:

1lbs Chard
1 cup whole milk
1tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
Salt
Pepper
Pinch of nutmeg
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 cup bread crumbs

Put your chard in an oven safe dish.

In a sauce sauce pan melt your butter

Add your flour and salt and mix well

Slowly a little bit at time add your milk.

Whisk constantly while doing this (not able to take pictures of this). Eventually you'll have a thin sauce. Turn up the heat a little and continue to whisk until it thickens up. About 3 minutes. Add in your pepper, chili powder, and nutmeg
Pour over your chard (we added mushrooms we had left over) then top with bread crumbs and bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes

This was all so tasty!

Enjoy!

:)

P.S

Dessert was Rootbeer Floats

:)

A Day of Good Eats Part II - Appetizer

2009-09-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

I've never had jicama before and I wasn't sure what to expect. It kind of tastes like an apple, potato, and onion...in a good way :) The orange in the salad though really makes all the flavors come out nicely. This was a tasty and refreshing appetizer. I think it will be a really good thing to make in the summer when it's too hot to do much. The only thing I would do differently is marinade the jicama longer.

Jicama and Orange Salad Ingredients

1 Jicama - roughly 1lb
3 Oranges
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp cilantro
Salt

Cut up the jicama in the small pieces.

Cut an orange in half and squeeze the juice of the orange over the jicama making sure you coat everything well.

Add a little salt and the lime juice and then marinade for as long as you'd like.

Right before you're going to eat it, cut up the other 2 oranges and add them to the bowl

Also add in your cilantro.

Mix together and enjoy!

:)

A Day of Good Eats Part I - Breakfast

2009-09-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Well today is an exciting day. Since Tuesdays are kinda lame and Steve and I don't see each other at all cause of our schedules we decided to celebrate my birthday/anniversary today. This means basically a day of laying around in my pajamas and making delicious food. I'm really excited for the menu we've planned and I'm gonna blog it all. Our first course is a breakfast/brunch thing that Steve made . He made baked eggs in tomatoes wrapped in Prosciutto. I came across this on the blog Almost Bourdain and decided I needed to eat these.

They are pretty easy to make, the biggest problem we encountered was that the blog we got the recipe from had their oven temp in Celsius and Steve didn't realize at first...thus we were wondering why nothing was happening with our oven set to 180 degrees. oops :) The only thing I would change was that there was no specifications on how much olive oil to use so I think we could have cut back on that a bit. Over all those these were amazing and we will be making these again.

Baked Eggs in Tomatoes

Ingredients:

4 tomatoes
4 eggs
Basil
Olive Oil
Prosciutto
Salt & Pepper

First you have to cut the tops off the tomatoes and scrape out the insides. Turn them upside down and let drain for 15 minutes.

While those are draining prepare your basil mixture. In a bowl (or preferably with a mortar and pestal) smush up the basil with salt and pepper. Add a little olive oil and smush some more.

Once tomatoes are drained rub your basil mixture on the inside of them.

Next take your slices of prosciutto and wrap around the outside of the tomato. Secure with toothpicks. Throw these into the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes until prosciutto starts to crisp up and the tomatoes are soft.

Remove from oven and crack your eggs into the tomato. Bake for another 5 or so minutes or until the egg is set.

Enjoy!!!!!

:)

Breakfast Risotto

2009-09-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe on the Worlds Healthiest Food website. I've decided this will be a great winter dish for cold mornings. It's tasty and filling while also being healthy. The recipe doesn't call for any spices and I definitely think they are needed. So far I've tried cinnamon and nutmeg but I'm still working on that aspect. This risotto is easy to make too because you are able to just pour the liquid all in instead of a ladle full at a time.

Breakfast Risotto

Ingredients:

1 cup risotto rice - i always just use whatever rice we have which is usually a medium grain white rice and it's come out fine
2 cups water
1 can coconut milk - the recipe specifically said do not use low/reduced fat because you will lose to much flavor
8oz can of pineapple - you are going to use the juice and the fruit
A couple bananas

In a medium sauce pan add the rice and water.

Stirring frequently bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Continue stirring regularly until liquid is absorbed. You gotta make sure you keep stirring it so you get a nice creamy risotto.

Once liquid is absorbed add your pineapple juice. Do the same thing as above, stir until absorbed.

Add coconut milk and repeat above. Make sure your heat is not too high because if the liquid gets absorbed before the rice is cooked it will not be tender enough.

When it's pretty much done throw in your pineapple and banana. Stir it in and let it cook for a minute or two. Add spices of your choice.

Enjoy!
Nutrition Info - assumes 1 banana and 4 servings
Calories: 384
Fat: 17g
Carbs: 53g
Protein: 4g

Gingered Squash and Pear Soup

2009-09-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe while browsing through a Woman's Day magazine and it sounded really yummy. I love butternut squash soups and even though you can make a really tasty soup with just the squash, I'm always up for fun variations on it. This was easy and pretty quick to make and tasted really good. The original recipe calls for topping it off with sour cream, but both Steve and I decided that it tasted much better without it.

Not only is it yummy, it's very healthy. We've been slacking off lately with our eating habits but we're getting back into things now so hopefully more of these posts will be not only delicious but good for you too!

Gingered Squash and Pear Soup

Ingredients:

1 Butternut Squash
2 Pears
3 tbsp oil
1 tbsp grated ginger
4 cups chicken broth
1 onion
salt and pepper
optional - sour cream

First assemble all of your ingredients

Peel, seed, and cut your squash

Dice up your onion

Grate your ginger

Peel, core, and cube your pears

In a pan heat up your oil. Add your onion and ginger and cook until soft

Next add squash

pears

and broth, salt, and pepper.

Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce to a simmer for about 15 minutes or until squash is tender.

Puree with a blender or stick blender.

Throw in some sour cream if you wish.

Enjoy!! :)

Nutrition - Makes 8 servings- these numbers do not include sour cream
Calories:133.3
Carbs: 21.6g
Fat: 5.8g
Protein: 2.1g

Bread Cones & Curry Chicken Salad

2009-09-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Months ago I found this recipe for bread cones and I've been dying to make them ever since. The opportunity finally arrived and we made them for the start of the year BBQ. I stuffed them with a Curry Chicken Salad (recipe from a Woman's Day magazine, I think.)

Of course I forgot to take pictures of the final thing stuffed, but oh well. They turned out really well and they were very tasty.

First up is the Chicken Salad - I made a double batch

Ingredients:

3 cups cubed chicken breast
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt
1/2 cup mayonnaise
4 tsp curry powder
2 pinches salt, sugar and pepper
1/2 cup diced red apples

First cut up your chicken

I wanted to cut it up nice and small since I was going to be stuffing it into the bread cones. Next put it in a pan, fill it up with water and bring to a simmer. Let cook for about 5 minutes or until chicken is done. I think mine was longer since I made so much.

Meanwhile, cut up your apples.

Here I have 4 apples, turns out half a cup of apples = 1/2 apple. Oh well more snacks for meeee!

Next up in a bowl mix your yogurt and mayo together. You can always use a light/low fat mayo if you'd like. I am also thinking of trying this without the mayo altogether and just having the yogurt be the base.

Into that mix your curry powder and your salt sugar and pepper. Look I actually have measuring spoons that are labled as a pinch.

Next stir in the apple and once the chicken is finished that as well.

This is best to make the night before because the flavors come together and the yogurt marinates and chicken.

Now make your bread cones! - again, I made a double batch so feel free to cut these numbers in half.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
1 cup water
6 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 beaten eggs
3 teaspoon salt
4 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
7 cups bread flour (I used only 3 1/2)

First thing you have to do is pour your milk and water into a sauce pan and let it scald. Once that's done, poor it into a bowl and let it cool off for a few minutes. You want it to be lukewarm.

Next beat up your eggs!

Add your eggs to the milk and water mixture along with 4 cups of flour.

Then add in your yeast.

Let your dough sit for about 10 minutes, then slowly start to add the rest of the flour. Once it becomes to hard to stir, dump it out onto a floured surface and knead for about 8 minutes. (Action Shots!)

Coat a bowl with oil and put your dough in there.

Cover with a cloth and let rise for about an hour or until doubled in size. Well the dough is rising, make your molds. I found the covers of magazines to be suitable. Rip them off and roll them into little cones. Tape them then cover them completely with aluminum foil.

Now punch that dough! knead it a couple times to get out the air bubbles. Now you have to break it up into smaller pieces, we did 32 of them.

At this point I had to go to bed and Steve took over. Roll the dough into a long thin strand and starting at the bottom of your mold, wrap it around like an ice cream cone. Works well if you grease your molds.

Put them on a greased baking sheet and brush them with an egg wash that is 2 eggs and 2tbsp milk. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Right before the event stuff them with your salad and some lettuce.
Enjoy! :)

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2009-08-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

About 2 weeks ago, Steve turned to me and said, "I want to start eating desserts." We'll i'm not gonna be one to argue with a statement like that, so we've been eating delicious cakes after our meals. You would think this would be bad news from the healthy eating dept, but actually having a set dessert, like a piece of cake, after dinner, reduces our snacking. However, I'm probably going to have to look into some more healthy desserts if we are to keep up with this.

This is a Zucchini Cake that I found from tastespotting.com (blog). It was a really delicious cake and extremely rich. It definitly doesn't fall into the healthy category (butter AND oil, cocoa powder AND chocolate chips.), but it's so rich you really can't eat to much at one time. I think this cake would be really good without any frosting because it's very moist and delicious or a good vanilla or buttercream frosting would be good. I can't believe i'm saying this but I think as I made it, it's a little tooo chocolately.

The zucchini also adds a nice touch, I think without the frosting it would be like a rich chocolate zucchini bread. I think it helps balance out all the sweet from the chocolate.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup yogurt
2 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) Flour
3/4 cup (2 1/4 ounce) Dutch-process cocoa
2 teaspoons espresso powder, optional but tasty - we didn't use
2 cups shredded zucchini (about one 10″ zucchini, about 12 ounces)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

For the frosting

6oz heavy cream
rest of chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 and grease a 9x13 cake pan. (One day i'll have nice bakeware that hasn't been burned to bits, until then I have to put foil down on mine...sigh)

Shred your zucchini and set aside.

In a mixing bowl cream together the butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Then beat in the eggs. (I forgot the eggs for a bit...oops so I added them later, seemed to work out fine though!)

Next mix in the flour and yogurt. Alternate 1/4 cup yogurt, stir, 1/2 cup flour, stir, until it's all mixed in.

Then add the cocoa, mixing till smooth.

Then fold in your chocolate chips and zucchini.

Bake the cake for about 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

While that's cooling whip up your frosting. This is a ganache, which I just had to look up, is a type of frosting made from chocolate and cream.

Pour your chocolate chips into a bowl. On the stove heat your cream in a pan til it begins to simmer. Pour the cream onto the chocolate chips and let sit for a few minutes.

After it's sat for a minute stir it for a bit and eventually a chocolate icing will form.

Pour this on your cake and let sit for a while.

Now in theory your ganache should harden up nicely and you're cake will be all ready to go. If however, it's 1000 degrees in your apartment, you're icing is not going to get firm so at this point I would suggest sticking it in the fridge :)

Enjoy!

Spicy Potatoes & Pan-Cooked Chili-Chicken

2009-08-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

We were sooo close to not cooking tonight despite having a menu made up for the week. We were tired and hungry and we didn't want to wait for anything to cook. I'm glad we did though (and so are our wallets) because this meal turned out wonderfully and we cooked together which was fun...awww.

So I made the potatoes and Steve made the chicken. The recipes come from 1,000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra.

Spicy Potatoes with Onions and Tomatoes Ingredients:

4 medium potatoes
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp ghee ( optional, we didn't use)
1 large onion
1 to 3 chili peppers ( I used 1 jalapeno and 1 other onion from the farmers market)
1 large tomato
1 tbsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp ground paprika
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cilantro (we didn't have)
1/4 tsp garam masala (I forgot to add this :( )

Boil the potatoes until tender. Let cool. While those are cooling prep your other things.

Cut your peppers

Onions

Tomato

and get your spices together

Once the potatoes are cooled, peel and cut into cubes.

In a wok heat the oil over medium high and cook the onion until nice and brown, about 8 minutes.

Add the peppers and tomato and cook for another couple minutes, about 4.

Add all the spices and cook for another minute then throw in the potatoes.

Reduce heat and cook for about 8 minutes until the potatoes are heated through and everything is mixed together nicely.

In the meantime, Steve is making the chicken

Pan-Cooked Chili-Chicken Thighs Ingredients:

2 tbsp peanut oil
1 tsp sesame oil
5-7 dried chili peppers ( I only let Steve use 5).
2 pieces peeled ginger, cut into thin matchsticks
2 medium onions
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp paprika
2 lbs chicken thighs
1 cup cilantro (not used)
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

First cut everything up - ginger

onions

Chicken

Garlic

Hot Peppers

In a big pan heat the oils and cook the peppers and ginger until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. (Action Shot!)

Add the onions and cook until browned 8-10 minutes.

Add the garlic, paprika and chicken and cook for 5 minutes.

Add the vinegar, water, salt, and black pepper. Cook over high until it boils then turn down to medium heat until chicken is done. About 20 minutes.

Serve and

Enjoy! :)

Corn Chowder & Broiled Polenta

2009-08-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

We got a great deal on corn on the cob at the farmers market and while flipping through cookbooks this recipe for corn chowder caught my eye. "Ohhh" i thought, this will be easy. Nope. Between this and the polenta I pretty much spent my entire Sunday cooking. and it was hot, not a great time to have the broiler on.

HOWEVER, it was soooo good and soooo worth it.

The corn chowder recipe comes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman and the polenta recipe comes from The Cooks Book.

Polenta Ingredients

6 Cups Water
1 3/4 cup Cornmeal
1/2 tbsp salt

Pour the water and salt into a big pot and bring to a boil.

Slowly sprinkle in the cornmeal, whisking constantly so you don't get clumps.

Reduce heat to as low as it goes and let cook for about 40 minutes or until pulling away from the edges. I found mine only had to go for about 30 minutes.

While this is doing it's thing grease up a cookie sheet.

Once the polenta is done, pour it onto the cookie sheet and let cool for a while. While that's in the fridge lets make the chowder shall we?

Corn Chowder Ingredients:

6 ears of corn
salt and pepper
4 tablespoons butter or oil
1/2 cup scallion ( I used an onion)
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 quart milk
1 potato

First I decided to roast the corn. Not a necessary step and maybe if I had thought about it longer in relation to the temperature of my kitchen I might have skipped it, but I think it helped the flavor. Rub oil on the corn and stick in the oven at 450 for a bit, turning often. Once they get brown they are done.

Once the corn is roasted get everything chopped up (onion, potato). Remove the kernels from the cob and set the kernels aside.

In a pan with 2 cups of water throw in the kerneless cobs. Add some salt and pepper. Bring to a boil reduce heat and cover. Let cook for about 30 minutes.

Once that is done remove the cobs and reserve the corn broth for later.

In a large stock pot melt the butter and add the onion and sugar. Let the onion soften for a minute then turn the heat down to medium and stir in the flour.

Stir the mixture constantly for about 5 minutes.

Next add the milk and corn broth, again stirring constantly. Turn the heat up to medium high and cook until flour has dissolved and mixture has thickened. Roughly 2 minutes.

Stir in the corn kernels and potato and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cover. Cook for about 15 minutes stirring occasionally.

While that's finishing up lets cook up the polenta.

Cut your polenta into whatever shapes you desire and brush them with olive oil. Stick under the broiler about 5 minutes per side depending on how thick your shapes are.

The polenta is excellent with the soup either thrown into it or used as a dipping implement.

Enjoy :)

Zucchini Curry

2009-08-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

With zucchini still in season, I knew I needed to do something more with it than just make zucchini bread. I looked at different ideas, but nothing was really jumping out at me until Mike and Rachel finally updated their blog ( :) ) and this was on it!

This was delicious and we have already decided to make it again this week but with different adaptations. (we are gonna use chicken, eggplant, basil, and maybe something else that I can't think of). I recommend everyone try this while zucchini is still in season.

The original recipe comes from Epicurious.com

Zucchini Curry

Ingredients:

1/2 teaspoon yellow or brown mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 to 2 teaspoons chopped fresh jalapeño chile including seeds
2 teaspoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
6 medium green or Cocozelle zucchini (3 lb), cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1 (13 1/2- to 14-oz) can unsweetened coconut milk, well stirred
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Adaptations we made:

1/2 cup roasted pecans, chopped
golden raisins

First thing you have to do is toast your mustard seeds and cumin (we used powder).

Next you have to make the curry paste. I never realized how simple this was, but this combination is perfect, it tastes just like the curry I get at Taste of Thai. I'm really excited to have discovered this and will be using it in many other curries to come.

Since we don't have a mortar and pestal we had to do this part kinda ghetto style. You have to pound/smush the garlic, jalapeno, and ginger into a paste with some salt. We used the handle of a big knife ( be very careful!).

Then add in curry powder, coriander, and mustard and cumin.

Next get some oil heating in your pan. Throw your onions in there for about 8 minutes or until nice and browned.

Turn the heat down to medium low heat and throw in your curry paste for about 2 minutes.

Next throw in your zucchini and cook for about 5 minutes. They say until it looks moist. hmm...I don't know it looked moist the whole time so....

Add coconut milk and some more salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let simmer covered for about 15 minutes or until zucchini is nice and tender. I cut my pieces bigger so it had to go longer.

Serve topped over rice with a handful of pecans or cashews and some raisins.

Enjoy :)

Stuffed Bell Peppers

2009-08-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

I'm somewhat backlogged with posts so I'm gonna try and get a few up today. The first one is stuffed bell peppers. This was an easy and tasty dinner. The great thing about stuffed bell peppers is you can pretty much take whatever you have on hand and throw it all together. I really enjoyed these.

I'm not gonna post the ingredients to this one because I kinda of just threw things together and I didn't measure things. Really though like I said, throw in whatever you want.

First I sauteed up some onions then browned my beef.

yay all ready. Drain grease.

Threw in some tomatoes and green peppers

Cooked until the tomatoes got nice and juicy and I smushed them up.

In the meantime while that's simmering away, cut your peppers in half and clean them out.

Mix your meat concoction with some rice that you already cooked and stuff those peppers.

grate up some cheese and throw that on top.

Now pour chicken broth into the pan so it comes up the sides a little bit and cover. Stick in oven for about 30-40 minutes until nice and hot. The tops will be all crispy.

Enjoy :)

Zucchini Bread!!

2009-07-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

I adore zucchini bread... a lot. As soon as I saw all the zucchini at the farmers market I knew that I had to make a loaf. I searched around on the internet and looked through cookbooks for the perfect recipe, but in the end I settled on good old reliable Betty Crocker. I did however make a couple changes in the recipe to make it healthier and I think in the end it made it much more moist and delicious.

If you looove zucchini bread, or even if you just like it, here is a great recipe. Also as a side note, zucchini bread is one of those breads that freezes well. I think I may make a few more loaves while zucchinis are still in season so I can continue to enjoy my bread throughout the year.

Adapted Betty Crocker Zucchini Bread:

Ingredients:

3 cups shredded zucchini
1 1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup non-sweetened applesauce
2 tsp vanilla
4 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose OR whole wheat flour ( I used all purpose because I needed my whole wheat for another recipe. I am gonna try using whole wheat flour next time I make this)
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat your oven to 350

Shred your zucchini.

Mix together zucchini, sugar, applesauce, vanilla, and eggs in a large bowl.

Add the rest of ingredients and mix together.

Pour into a loaf pan. I used a 9x5x3. This will make one loaf. If you use 8in loaf pans you will get 2 loaves. Make sure you grease the bottom only of the pan.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes if using a 9in pan. 60 minutes for 8in pans.

Remove and cool on rack. Enjoy!

:)

Burger Town

2009-07-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Our meals have been getting simpler lately but not any less tasty. Last night Steve whipped up some delicious onioney burgers with some corn on the cob on the side.

:)

Recipes from Farm Share # 2

2009-07-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

So, 2 tuesdays ago we got our second farmshare from Mike and Rachel. Again we got a great bundle of veggies. This time it included:

Summer Squash
Asparagus
Dillweed
Parsley
Lettuce (Red and Green Leaf)
Swiss Chard
Brocoli
Onions
Chinese Cabbage

Again it was a challenge to come up with different meals using these ingredients. A second challenge we gave ourselves was to use up ingredients we've had sitting around for a while.
Here are three different meals we came up with for that week.

#1: Feta and Dill Stuffed Pork Chops with Sauteed Swiss Chard and Corn on the Cob

This one doesn't require much of an explanation. It was very delicious. Steve cooked the chops for a few minutes in a pan then stuffed them with the feta and dill and baked them. The chard was sauteed in oil and the corn on the cob was boiled. A very yummy meal.

#2 Pork Stir Fry with Salad

o0OO0oThis meal was assembled out of a wh0le bunch of random things I had left on hand toward the end of the week. We had had some Japanese noodles in our cupboard leftover from a different meal from a long while ago, so I threw them in this to use them up. From the farmshare, I used up the Chinese cabbage that we had gotten. I poured some sauce over top made up of soy sauce and red wine vinegar and brown sugar and stuff. It was good. Some of it burned to the bottom of the wok because it was too big for the pan! Uh-0h.o0OO0o

#3 Some sort of Orzo-Feta Salad

This was very tasty,and the only time Caly has enjoyed 0rz0 so far. This used up a lot of the parsley and dill from the farmshare, which was good because I don't know many recipes with dill. Making it is pretty easy: Cook the orzo and then stir everything up into it. It had a bunch of olive oil too, which was yummy. ALSO, I just remembered, it had green olives in it. "Yumm-o!"--Rachel Ray

:)

Whole Wheat Bread

2009-06-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

Steve and I are always saying we ( ahem, I) should make homemade bread more often, so today I tried my hand at a whole wheat bread from our newest cook book, The Cook's Book. I really like this book because not only does it have great recipes it really takes the time to explain techniques and such. I've actually been reading it like a regular book :). I'm hoping to learn more about food, cooking, and techniques in general so that hopefully I'll be able to cook more creatively and come up with my own recipes.

Anyways back to the bread. This is just your basic whole wheat bread and I'm pretty happy with it. One thing that I think is holding this bread back is the yeast. The recipe calls for compressed fresh yeast, which I can't find so I have to use dry active yeast instead. However, I'm still happy with the way it turned out.

Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients

1 1/2 tsp (10g) compressed fresh yeast
1 1/2 cups (350g) water at 72 degrees
4 cups (500g) whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp (10g) fine sea salt
olive or sunflower oil for kneading

Now, two things to note: 1) you see that it also has grams as a measurements, this is a more precise way to measure the ingredients and is recomended for baking in general.

2) if you have to use active dry yeast things are a little different... here is what i did:

Part 1

5g active dry yeast
58g water at 92 degrees
7g flour

Part 2

292g water at 72 degrees
493g whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp (10g) fine sea salt
olive or sunflower oil for kneading

To make up for having the active yeast, put it in a bowl with your water and flour from part 1. Mix and let rest for 10 minutes. Then pour this into the other water and continue on with the recipe as follows.

In a seperate bowl mix the flour and salt with your hands. Add in the water and yeast and mix quickly with your hands making sure everything gets moist and mixed together.

Cover it with a dish towel and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Once the 10 mintues are up pour some olive oil onto your kneading station and set the bread there. Wash out your bowl and coat it in oil. Now you have to knead your dough.

Fold and knead the dough 10-12 times ( if you don't know how to knead I would recommend looking at a book that has pictures), then put back in the bowl and let rest for 10 minutes. Do this three times. After the third round of kneading let the dough sit for 30 minutes, knead one last time then place in your oiled/floured bread pan.

Cover with a towel and let rise for 90 minutes.

Once risen to double it's size, preheat the oven to 425. Cook at 425 for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375 for 30 minutes. It will be done when you tap it on the bottom and it sounds hollow.

enjoy!

Farm Share

2009-06-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

So for 10 days we are cat sitting for some friends. In return they are letting us have their farm share for 2 weeks! WOOT! This is really exciting, we've been on the fence about getting one of these and actually seeing what you get out of it is making me think we will be signing up for one next year.

The first week, this past Tuesday, we received the following:
-2 bunches of radishes
-daikon radishes
-arugula
-cilantro
-mizuna
-salad greens
-spinach
-kale
-asparagus
-garlic scapes (which our friends used to make us a yummy pesto dish!)

Since it's still early in the summer you can see we got lots of leafy greens. It's been interesting trying to come up with things to make with these ingredients because we don't really ever make Salad.

To use up the Kale we made a rice and white bean soup thing that turned out more like a porridge but still very tasty. We also made pizzas last night that we used the arugula on.

The other things that we've done so far are as follow:

First we decided we finally wanted to use our little grill that we bought last summer. We grilled up some chicken rubbed in spices and the asparagus. It was a yummy fresh meal. I made a home made vinaigrette to go with the asparagus and it came out very nicely.

The Vinaigrette recipe is from Cooks Illustrated

Lemon-Shallot Vinaigrette

1 tablespoon juice plus 1 teaspoon grated zest from 1 lemon ( I did not use zest as I used bottled lemon juice)
1 large shallot, minced (no shallots around so I used an onion)
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves ( we used dried)
1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
table salt and ground black pepper

Mix everything together and pour over asparagus

We also made a yummy salad with the salad greens, mizuna and other veggies we had around. I poured the left over vinaigrette on it and it turned out very well.

And finally, to use up those radishes we made some little open faced radish sandwiches. I cut 2 pieces of bread into fourths, grilled them for a few minutes til nice and crispy and brown then topped each piece with a little bit of butter and a slice of radish. Finish it off with some ground sea salt over it all and yum.

:)

Spanish Tortilla Take 2

2009-06-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

So a while back we posted a Spanish Tortilla. Steve and I both really enjoyed it, but it was somewhat disappointing in the healthiness arena. It had so much oil in it that we really could only eat one slice and that didn't really cut it in terms of dinner. I searched around and again found a recipe on Cooks Illustrated. This one used MUCH less oil (although still a good amount) and in general we were much more pleased with the way this one held together and turned out. We also just got a new fancy cookbook and after reading the section on sauces I decided to make a garlic mayonnaise which is a traditional accompianment to the Spanish Tortilla.

Spanish Tortilla with Roasted Red Peppers and Peas from Cooks Illustrated

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cut crosswise into 1/8th thick slices
1 small onion, halved and sliced thin
1 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
8 large eggs
1/2 cup jarred roasted red peppers ( we did not use this we just used a red bell pepper)
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed

Much like the last tortilla first you toss the potatoes and onions in oil and throw them in a skillet. Cook covered for about 30 minutes til potatoes are done.

In another bowl mix eggs and salt. When potatoes are done cooking, fold them into this egg bowl with the peppers and peas.

Throw this egg/potato mixture back into the same skillet and cook on medium heat for about 2 minutes. Shake the pan every 30 seconds or so.

Then the tricky part. Slide the tortilla onto a plate then flip it over back into the pan. At this point lots of problems will arise and you'll want to throw the tortilla on the floor because this is really hard to do. You will persevere and it will taste good. I promise.

Cook it for another minute or two, let it cool and serve with your garlic mayonnaise.

Garlic Mayonnaise from The Cook's Book

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp lemon juice
4 crushed garlic cloves

In a bowl place egg yolks, crushed cloves, mustard, a pinch of salt and pepper, and vinegar. We didn't have vinegar so I replaced this with extra lemon juice. This worked, but I would like to use the vinegar sometime because I think it would give it a slightly nicer flavor.

Now here is the tough part. Measure out your oil in a liquid measuring cup. Begin whisking your egg concoction while SLOWLY (drip by drip) adding the oil. After adding a bit of the oil you can begin to slowly drizzle it in. Make sure you are whisk constantly. Once all oil is in add the remaining lemon juice.

Enjoy

Cheesecake

2009-06-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

We haven't posted for a bit but that doesn't mean we haven't been cookin' up a storm. So here is a back log of some recipes. First off is a delicious Cheesecake I made for a BBQ a few weeks ago. I don't have any final plated pictures because I took it to the party and it got gobbled up. People seemed to be pleased with it and it's definetly a keeper recipe. I also made a nice strawberry topping to go with it. However, it's about as far from healthy is a food can get so be warned.

Cheesecake from Cooks Illustrated

It seems that I've misplaced the recipe for this one and my membership with Cooks Illustrated expired. I'll still give you the picture montage, but I don't think I can trust myself to remember the correct measurements and times. If I do come across the recipe I'll repost it because it's a very good one.

:)