I've just been neglecting this blog for massive stomach viruses, trips to the zoo, efforts to get to the gym, etc.

So here's  a good long update of recipes/dinners past:

In what is quickly becoming a house favorite we made Wolfie's beet salad again with the correct dressing (though far less effort on presentation). Still yummy. Had it with barbeque Veat shishkabobs and roasted green beans (trim ends, place on cookie sheet or dish thinly, use 2 tbsp olive oil and roll them until coated, roast at 350 for 15-30 minutes until nicely browned).

Mother's Day brunch the men in the house made me peach pancakes with ripe fresh Fredricksburg Peaches, hashbrowns, bacon, and Peach Bellinis.

Here's another favorite pizza, bleu cheese and red onion. It looks super greasy, but it's... ok, this time it turned out a little greasy. Something went wonky. It's usually not that shiny. Saute red onion and garlic in some olive oil, put on pizza crust and sprinkle with 4 oz of bleu cheese. We also had stuffed mushrooms (we've found excellent mushrooms at the farmers market down south... they actually have flavor and taste good, proving that I just hate store mushrooms not all mushrooms). These were bases brushed with olive oil, cream cheese mixed with herbs and the chopped up stems, and then some bread crumbs on top (Ollie likes to sprinkle the bread crumbs).

There's always room for Vegan Wiggly Dessert Food Product! Found this on the shelf at Whole Foods while looking for Sugar Free Pectin. Raspberry flavored. We added the homemade whipped cream. SO GOOD.

Another pizza. We love pizza. This one was a new way to use up Raddichio. We liked this better than the pasta, partially because Eric grilled the raddichio first and direct heat is supposed to be a way to sweeten bitter greens.

Treviso, Sundried Tomato & Goat Cheese Pizza

(From the Royal Rose Raddichio website, Treviso is a type of Raddichio)

Marinade:
1/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes in oil plus 1 Tablespoon oil from tomatoes
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste

Pizza:
1 - 12 inch pizza crust
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1/4 cup yellow bell peppers, cut into strips
1/4 cup red bell peppers, cut into strips
2 tablespoons diced green peppers
6 to 8 Treviso leaves
10 cloves of garlic sautéed until golden
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese

Preheat oven to 400° F. Whisk first six ingredients in a bowl. Brush crust generously with marinade, sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and peppers. Bake until cheese bubbles, about 10 minutes. Remove pizza from oven. Brush leaves generously with remaining marinade. Fan treviso around pizza. (Jenny note: this looks good but is harder to eat than if you say, chopped the leaves up. Beauty or ease of stuffing in your mouth? You decide). Sprinkle with garlic, and goat cheese. Return pizza to oven and bake until treviso softens, about 10 minutes.

Another brunch. We do brunch on Sundays right around here. This time we had Spanish Tortilla, Apple Streusel muffins, and faux bacon.

Spanish Tortilla

3 tbsp olive oil

1 md potato

4 eggs (1 1/4 cup eggbeaters)

herbs

salt

pepper

whatever else you want to add

heat olive oil, add diced potatoes, salt and pepper and saute

remove potatoes, drain, stir into eggs. Saute anything else you're adding and add it to the eggs as well.

With your still well oiled pan, add everything to a hot pan and distribute evenly. Lower heat to medium and cook until the bottom of the tortilla is light gold.

Try to flip it without fucking it up. Fail. Do your best. Cook the other side.

Apple Nut Oatmeal Muffins (no nuts, nuts are bad for toddlers)

Streusel topping:

2 tbsp oats

2 tbsps flour

1 tbsp light brown sugar

1 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into bits

Muffins:

1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp flour

1/4 cup oats

3 tbsp light brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 cup applesauce

yolk of egg (I used some eggbeaters, 1/8 cup?)

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix streusel stuff with your fingers until it's all crumbly. They combine dry muffin ingredients in one bowl, then wet ingredients into another. Add wet to dry. Grease muffin cups, distribute muffin mix, put streusel stuff on top. Bake 18-20 minutes in oven pre-heated at 400.

Small Batch Brownie with Homemade Ice Cream

1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter

3/4 chopped chocolate (calls for unsweetened, we just used chocolate chips)

1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar (want to cut this down if you've just used chocolate chips)

1 tbsp plus 2 1/4 egg substitute

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 tbsp plus 2 tsp flour

1/8 salt

Put butter and chocolate chips in a bowl and microwave until it's all melted. Add egg and vanilla and stir. Then the flour and salt and stir more. Put in mini dishes and cook for 28-30 min in preheated oven at 350.

penne with grilled eggplant and radicchio sauce

Bon Appétit |  August 2007

Jimmy Bradley

Preparation

 

 

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you made salad into a dessert?

Well, guess what? Nothing good.

Tonight's failure was Apple Sorrel Sorbet. 2 cups peeled chopped up apples cooked to a boil in 2 cups apple juice until mushy. Puree in blender with 2 cups sorrel. Chill. Put in ice cream maker.

Get salad ice cream.

Throw away.

More success this time. This time we hid the fennel in a crockpot soup. Eric just threw the stuff in the crockpot in the morning, set it on low, and at five it was ready for dinner with some whole wheat bread reheated. Yummy, uncomplicated. Leftovers for lunch today. From recipezaar.com

1½ hours | 25 min prep | SERVES 6 -8

1. Saute the onion, celery and crumbles in 1 T of Olive Oil until the onion is transparent. Pour off grease.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients, (use less salt if the broth is not low sodium,) cover and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1-2 hours.

Another recipe that didn't really work. Much like the battle with fennel, we are having problems with the bitter greens we keep getting. We didn't like the escarole, and we didn't like the chicory we made tonight. Tonight we were tired and hadn't done enough prep work for the beet recipe (beets need pre-roasting), didn't pull out a pizza crust, didn't have time to let things rest for 60 minutes. So we made Caramlized chicory with rustic tomato sauce and put it over whole grain pasta. And then we all ate around the chicory.

Caramelized Chicory with Rustic Tomato Sauce
ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
230 g can chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp sugar
salt and freshly ground black pepper
25 g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
160 g pack chicory, cut into wedges
15 g soft brown sugar

method
For the rustic tomato sauce
1. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, then add the garlic and chilli and saute for 1 minute, add the remaining ingredients and heat for a further 2-3 mintues. Put to one side.

2. In the meantime prepare the caramelised chicory:

3. Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan then add the chicory and sugar, cooking for 4 - 5 minutes or until caramelised.
To serve
Pile the caramelised chicory into a serving dish, spoon over the rustic tomato sauce and serve immediately.

Yuck. To be fair the tomato sauce was quite tasty, just not the chicory. Oh, and we used a jalepeno instead of a red chile.

On the plus side, I made the soba soup again today and emended it a little. I cut up half a container of hard tofu and through it in the sesame oil after the garlic, ginger, and onion. With the addition of the tofu it was very filling. I also used veggie stock instead of no-chicken stock. It was fine to me, but Eric preferred the no-chicken stock, which I think was a litle lighter in taste.

Finally, in what will hopefully be the plus side, I made small batch chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. We didn't have some of the ingredients, so I substituted.

Chocolate Cocoa Cake

Mix:

1/4 cup boiling water

1 oz chocolate (I had chocolate chips on hand)

1 tbsp espresso powder (didn't have, used cocoa trio mix)

stir til all melted together

Mix:

1/4 cup eggbeaters

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp sour cream (didn't have so I used cream and just beat longer)

Add chocolate mix in with this mix.

Mix:

1/2 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar (I used less what with the sweet chocolate and the cocoa instead of coffee)

 1/8 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

Add liquids to dry. Mix.

Put in cake pans (I got a 4.5 and a 4 inch spring form at Sur La Table today for super cheap. It would have been better, however, if I'd gotten two 4 inch, as you will see from the pictures).

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1 tbsp softened butter

2 tbsp peanut butter

1/4 cup confectioner sugar

cream as needed

Mix first three ingredients together, start blending with mixer. Add cream as needed until it his spreadable fluffy texture.

Frost cake. As you can see, frosting a cake where the bottom is wider than the top layer is difficult and stupid. Get two pans of the same size. :)

Finally,

Whole Wheat Bread

No recipe for this, cause it wouldn't work without the breadmaker and it's in the cookbook that comes with the breadmaker. Thus, if you could use it, you would already have it. But... the new breadmaker made the most delicious loaf of whole wheat bread for us. It came out perfectly. We ate hot fresh bread with butter and honey for snack today. Yum. 

Last night we made red flannel hash. Which apparently is some classic New England dish. All I can say is... blech. The dish called for a RIDICULOUS amount of oil and butter. Even after we cut a bunch out, it was still too oily. We were speculating over how to make it tastier (more herbs? something green?), but finally we decided this was just not the kind of food we like to eat. I've listed the recipe the way we modified it. The original is too scary to contemplate. I can't figure out where I got it from any more. Epicurious?

Red flannel hash recipe
 
information
Thrifty New Englanders serve this dish as a way to ''stretch' the leftovers from their classic New England Boiled Dinner

 
ingredients
1/2 kg (1 lb) fake smoked turkey cut into pieces
4 Medium potatoes, cut into cubes
225 g (8 oz) Cooked beetroots (beets), cubed
1 Medium onion, chopped
175 ml (6 fl oz) 3/4 cup Double (heavy) cream
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper

method
1. Combine the corned beef, potatoes, beetroots (beets) and onion.

2. Combine the cream, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and cayenne together. Pour over the turkey mixture and toss well.

3. Since you roasted the veggies first, presumably in olive oil, you shouldn't need (or WANT) any more oil. Add the mixture to a big frying pan and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, pressing down on the mixture occasionally or until a crust has formed on the base. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully invert the hash so that the crust is now on the top. Cook for a further 10 minutes or until a crust has formed on the other side. Serve at once.

Tried another turnip recipe. This one was pretty good. Not as good as creamed, but not as bad as roasted. Turnips still have a bit too much "terroir" for me, which is wine speak for "I taste like dirt."

Sweet glazed turnips recipe
information
Turnips are a rather underrated vegetable, probably because they are often not cooked properly. This is a more unusual way to serve turnips.

ingredients
Approx. 3/4 kg. turnips, peeled and thickly sliced
Salt
25 g (1 oz) butter
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
8 tbsp spoons stock
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp. spoon freshly chopped parsley to finish

method
1. Put the turnips into boiling salted water and cook for 20 to 30 minutes or until they are almost tender.
Drain and refresh under cold running water.

2. Melt the butter in the rinsed-out pan. Add the sugar and stir gently with a wooden spoon until dissolved, then pour in the stock. Bring to the boil. Add the turnips, lower the heat and simmer gently for 8 to 10 minutes or until the stock is reduced and the turnips are glazed.

3. Transfer to a hot serving dish. Sprinkle with black pepper and parsley and serve immediately.

We had this with spinach with garlic and olive oil and Veat with herbs. Something went wonky with the Veat. Eric tried braising it in stock and spices and I'm not sure Veat braises well.  (Or I'm really bad at it -- Eric)

Last night's dinner was a very tasty, pasta dish. Radicchio, Spinach, and Orrichette (recipe calls for Penne, but we didn't have any).

1 whole head of garlic

6 tsp olive oil

1 pound pasta

2 tsp worcestshire sauce with hickory smoke (replacing 8 oz bacon)

1 large onion

1 cup veggie broth

6 cups radicchio

3 cups spinach

1 cup basil

1 cup parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp dried crushed red pepper

Preheat oven to 375. Cut off top 1/2 inch of garlic head exposing cloves. Place garlic head, cut side up, on sheet of foil and drizzle with 1/2 tsp olive oil. Wrap garlic in foil. Roast until garlic is soft, about 40 mins. Let stand, then squeeze roasted garlic into small bowl.

Cook pasta.

In a separate bowl, saute onion in some oil. Add broth, rest of olive oil, worcestshire sauce, and garlic. Simmer. Add radicchio, spinach, and basil and stir. Simmer until leaves wilt.

Drain pasta. Put it back its pot. Add leafy mixture. Add cheese and crushed red pepper, toss. Season and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve.

Yum! Radicchio was still a bit bitter, if I wasn't using it I would have used a lot more spinach, which was TASTY. Also, Eric didn't cook our pasta long enough. But it was really good, and the worcestshire sauce and oil mixture did a really good job or replacing bacon in the recipe. We will be using it more in the future, I think.

Today for lunch? Soba Noodle Soup from Complete Vegetarian (modified).

Cook and drain 8 oz soba. Put soba in two bowls.

Cut up a handful of shitake mushrooms.

Mince 2 cloves garlic.

Dice 1/4 an onion or so.

Julienne some snow peas,

carrots (2),

and 1 inch of peeled ginger.

Put some sesame oil in a saute pan, heat. Add garlic and onions and cook. Add ginger, peas, carrots, and mushrooms. Cook until everything looks done.

Add 5-6 cups veggie stock

1/4 cup mirin

1/3 soy sauce

Simmer for 15 min or so

Pour over soba in bowls.

This was very, very good. I would eat this for lunch almost any day.

Last night was fried green tomatoes with buttermilk dressing, barbeque veat shishkabobs with onions and peppers, and salad. Plus, Ollie and I made small batch chocolate cake with homemade jam filling and homemade whipped cream icing.

The night before that we had Truffle pizza and salad.

More details and recipes forth coming. But... tasty. Tasty, tasty.

For "FANCY SALAD."

Eric and I used to call Fancy Salad the mix of fancy salad mix, pear, bleu cheese dressing, and candied nuts. That, my friends, was child's play. Tonight Eric made Wolfgang Puck's Beet Salad (modified) and we learned what fancy salad is. This recipe is available all over the internet, so hopefully nobody will get pissed at me. I copied this one from Food Network:

1 1/2 pounds large yellow or red beets, washed and trimmed
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 recipe Herbed Goat Cheese recipe follows, cut into 8 round slices
1 to 1 1/2 cups mixed baby lettuces, washed and dried
1/4 cup Spago House Dressing, recipe follows
1/4 cup Citrus Hazelnut Vinaigrette, recipe follows
1 ounce toasted hazelnuts, recipe follows, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Place the beets in a small roasting pan and pour in enough cold water to reach about 1/4 of the way up the sides of the beets. Cover the pan with foil, and roast the beets until they are tender, 2 hours to 2 hours and 15 minutes. To check for doneness, gently insert a bamboo skewer into a beet. The skewer should slide through easily. Remove the beets from the pan, allow to cool, and then peel.
Cut each beet into 1/4-inch-thick round slices. Cut each slice with a 3-inch round cookie cutter. (You will need 10 rounds). Cut trimmings into 1/4-inch dice and reserve 1/2 cup for garnish.
In a saute pan, bring vinegar and sugar to a boil. Lower to a simmer and poach beets 1 minute on each side. With a slotted spatula, remove and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
When ready to assemble, heat the olive oil in a small saute pan. Arrange the slices of Herbed Goat Cheese in the pan and warm slightly, turning them with a small spatula just to warm both sides. This has to be done quickly, or the cheese will melt.
To assemble the napoleons, place 1 of the beet rounds on a firm, flat surface and begin to layer. Top with a slice of goat cheese, then another beet round, a second slice of cheese, another beet round, a third slice of cheese, and a beet round. (Continue until you have 5 layers of beets and 4 layers of cheese.) Carefully cut through layers, dividing into 3 wedges. Repeat with the remaining beets and cheese.
To serve, arrange 3 of the wedges, pointed ends facing out, in a circle in the center of each plate. Toss the baby lettuces with the Spago House Dressing and mound half of the lettuces on top of each arranged napoleon. Drizzle 1/2 of the Citrus Hazelnut Vinaigrette around each mound. Sprinkle toasted nuts and reserved diced beets on top of drizzled vinaigrette. Serve immediately.

Herbed Goat Cheese:
2 teaspoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 teaspoons chopped fresh chives
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 (7 or 8-ounce) log goat cheese

Combine the parsley, chives, thyme, and pepper and place on a flat surface. Roll the log of cheese in the mixture, coating all sides and retaining the shape of the log. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.
Yield: 1 (7 or 8-ounce) log
Recipe courtesy Wolfgang Puck, "Pizza, Pasta & More!," Random House, 2000

Spago House Salad Dressing:
2 large shallots, minced (1 heaping tablespoon)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons zinfandel vinegar
2 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper

In a small bowl, whisk together the shallots and the mustard. Whisk in the vinegars and then the olive and vegetable oil. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Transfer to a covered container and refrigerate until needed.
Yield: 1 1/4 cups
Recipe courtesy Wolfgang Puck, "Adventures in the Kitchen", Random House, 1991

Citrus Hazelnut Vinaigrette:
1 1/2 cups fresh orange juice
1 shallot, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1/3 cup hazelnut oil
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a medium saucepan, bring orange juice to a boil. Lower to a simmer and reduce until only 1/3 cup remains. Cool to room temperature.
In a medium bowl, combine orange juice, shallot, thyme, vinegar, and orange zest.
Slowly whisk in both oils until thick and emulsified. Season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until needed.
Yield: 1 1/3 cups
Recipe courtesy Wolfgang Puck, "Pizza, Pasta & More!," Random House, 2000

Toasted Hazelnuts:
1 cup hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Arrange the hazelnuts on a medium baking tray and toast for 10 to 12 minutes, turning after 5 minutes. (This can be done in a toaster oven). Remove to a clean towel and rub to remove as much of the skin as possible. Chop coarsely and use when needed.
Yield: 1 cup
Recipe courtesy Wolfgang Puck, 2000

As you can see, there are a LOT of damn steps. Here is what we changed: buy goat cheese with the herbs mixed in. We have lots of fabulous herbs, but good grief. We didn't include hazelnuts or the dressing because of the nut factor (and our toddler loves goat cheese and beets, so he would have been pissed if he couldn't have any). We didn't even make the house dressing because the recipe page was separated from the main page and Eric got burned out anyway. We just used a Balsamic dressing. It was good. The whole salad was good. Though in the end we decided you could probably use some escarole or arugala to cut the sweetness of the beet and cheese, and the crunch the hazelnuts would have provided was missed. Still, it was yummy, and Eric did a beautiful job creating it.

With the beets we had pirogies. I don't think Eric thought about it, but it just seems appropriate, no?

The last thing for today is the results of the carrot fennel bread. It was good! The new breadmaker makes a far superior loaf, not at all coarse grained.

The recipe was:

1 1/4 cup water

3 tbsp sunflour oil (we used safflower)

1 tbsp honey

2 cups grated carrot

6 cups unbleached flour

3 tbsp skim milk powder

2 tsp fennel seeds (I used about a cup of fresh fennel leaves instead, they look a lot like dill)

2 tsp salt

yeast

We used up everything this week successfully but the Escarole. Well, we used the center of it for the terrible salad, but we have the outsides left. Supposedly it works like greens, so I imagine we'll have stir fry with greens for dinner tomorrow night.

This week we're expecting:

*salad mix

*more beets (it's a really good thing we've learned to love them)

*spinach

*radicchio

*sugar loaf chicory

*kohlrabi

*yellow onions

*turnips

*carrots

Sadly it's the last of the kohlrabi. Less sadly it's the last of the turnips. I don't know what to do with chicory (other than NOT to put it in coffee weirdos in New Orleans). So more research and experimentation ahead!

Tomorrow is also the farmer's market, yum, yum, yum. 

...Anything is tasty.

Tonight's dinner was salad, barbeque veat, onion, and shitake mushroom shish-ka-bobs, and turnips in cream.

Creamy White Turnips from Cooks.com

So some things have NOT gone well and some have.

1) I am having issues with fennel. Fennel is a difficult vegetable for me. I am not finding ways to cook it that are enjoyable. We tried a fennel, bleu cheese, and tomato pizza. Eric didn't slice the fennel thin enough or cook it long enough, but even still, it was just overpowering and gross. I picked it off my pizza.

Then we tried a fennel, escarole, and orange salad. It was incredibly bitter and unpleasant. I couldn't even finish it, and I asked Eric to make me a regular salad. Yuck.

My latest is that today I am making carrot and fennel bread in my new breadmaker. It is mostly carrot and calls for fennel seed, but I am using the leaves instead (they look like dill). I am hoping that it will be tasty. If so, I will post the recipe.

2) We also had issues with the radish chips. So, radishes shrink up when they're cooked, so don't season them too heavily as the seasoning will concentrate. Also, they didn't cook to chip crispness and instead where weird radish soggy things. That didn't so much work either. I'm sure more radishes will come, so we will try again.

3) On the tasty front: today we made devonshire splits with Devon cream and homemade jam. Our new breadmaker also makes jam, so when we ran out we fished out some frozen berries, let them defrost, and then threw 2 cups of them in the breadmaker with 1 cup of sugar and a box of pectin. The jam was awesome, though very sweet. Next time I am buying no sugar pectin. The buns didn't work the first time, there wasn't enough liquid in the mix. When we upped the amounts they turned out perfect. It was 1 1/4 cup vanilla soymilk, 3 cups flour, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, and yeast. Honestly I might have added more sugar to the mix, which wasn't quite as sweet as I expected, and taken it out of the jam. But, all together, a lovely cream tea and a lovely Sunday brunch. 

4) We also had diet root beer and homemade vanilla ice cream floats to use up the last of the ice cream. That was a snack after my terrible and frustrating soccer game.

5) Tonight for dinner we are doing stuffed mushrooms, the red pepper pasta with tomato and basil sauce, and the ever present salad. If they turn out, recipes added.

Photos for the last few entries will get added tonight, I've just gotten lazy.

Yesterday we went to the Triangle Farmers market for mushrooms and ended up with a ridiculous amount of food: yellow roma tomatoes, red pepper linguini, feta cheese, goat cheese with Italian herbs, southwestern red leicester cheese, red potatoes, a mint plant, and gingerbread biscotti. Lots of good eating to do.

So far today we have had:

Tomato and goat cheese grilled sandwiches on rosemary sourdough bread

Salad (everything on the salad except for the cucumbers was CSA)

And I turned the radishes into chips:

thinly slice radishes

lay out on cookie sheet

(check out how pretty they were! like a flower!)

spray with cooking spray

top with seasoning (one tray of salt and cayanne, one of beef faijita seasoning- lemon pepper and salt, basically)

cook at 375 for 10 minutes, stir cook for another 5.  

Oh, and I had half a gingerbread biscotti with my coffee. No wonder I am still fat.