Pignoli Cookies

A couple weeks ago, I went up to the North End and had some awesome pine-nut-cookies from an Italian bakery up there. They were pretty great, but I figured I'd never make them. Then I got some almond extract for Christmas, and found a recipe online from King Arthur Flour, and figured, why not. The one problem with these cookies is that they are pretty expensive to make; you have to buy marzipan, pine nuts, almond flour, none of the generic cheap stuff that normally goes into cookies. I couldn't remember if I needed marzipan or almond paste, so I got some of both, and it seems that the difference is that almond paste is way more almond-y, a little too much for my liking. Despite the expensiveness, though, they were delicious!



Pignoli Cookies
1C (9oz) marzipan
1/4C sugar
1/8th tsp salt
1 tsp almond extract (don't use this if you don't like almond flavor, you could use vanilla instead)
1/4tsp lemon extract, or 1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/2C almond flour*
1 egg white
1-1/2C pine nuts

*I couldn't find almond flour, so I ground up a bunch of almonds in a food processor. They didn't get that ground up, but that didn't seem to affect the texture too much. I would imagine that you could just use regular flour, but I didn't test that.

Grease two cookie pans and preheat your oven to 325F.

Break up the marzipan either using the food processor or with your fingers. Add everything else except the pine nuts and use your fingers to mush it around until it is homogeneous. It will be really sticky and goopy. Roll the dough into little balls, and then roll those balls in the pine nuts. Flatten the cookies into cookie-shapes, and pop them in the oven for 22-24 minutes. Enjoy!



This is the texture of the almond "flour" that I ground up. Still pretty nutty, but the cookies didn't taste like they had nuts in them.


Marzipan vs almond paste?


The almond paste


The marzipan oozes out of a tube

California Rolls

Eating California rolls when I eat sushi is just about paramount to sacrilege. Sushi, for me, is about showcasing the freshest, most beautiful, best fish you can get your hands on. So what was I doing playing around with imitation crab?

I don't really know what I was doing. For some reason, I wanted to get some while I was at the store. And then I had it, and the only thing I could think of doing with it was to make sushi. There are two options for a California roll, you can either make a crab-mayo mixture, or you can just put the crabstick into the sushi straight up. I went with the crab-mayo mixture, but next time it'll be just crabstick. If there is a next time... It was still good, though. Rolls of bite-size rice and stuff is always good. So, if you want to try eating sushi but you don't want raw fish, or you happen to have some imitation (or real!) crab to get rid of, here is an excellent way to do it.

California rolls

1C sushi rice
1/4C rice wine vinegar
1/4C white sugar
3 pieces of dried seaweed (nori)
3/4C diced crab meat
2 tbs mayonnaise
sesame seeds
1 avocado
1 cucumber, peeled and seeded

First make the sushi rice. Rinse your rice under cold water a couple times, until the water runs clear, not cloudy. Cook it according to the directions on the package, my rice says to cook 1C of rice with 1-1/3C of water. Once the rice is done, let it cool. Meanwhile, mix the vinegar with the sugar. If you don't have rice vinegar, you can use regular white vinegar, but it is much stronger so don't use too much. Start adding the vinegar mixture to the rice, and fold it in gently, preferably using a wooden spoon. Don't do this in a metal bowl, as the vinegar can react with the metal. Keep adding vinegar and sugar until it tastes about right (you be the judge). I used just about all of it.

Dice the crab meat and mix with the mayo. Stir it up and set it aside. Peel and take the seeds out of the cucumber, then cut into long, thin, slices. Slice the avocado into long, thin, slices. Tear each sheet of nori into half-sheets.

Set up your sushi-rolling station. The rice should be in a big bowl. You need a sushi rolling mat, although a dish towel will work. Since California rolls have the rice on the outside, and it is sticky, line your mat (or towel) with plastic wrap. Have a bowl of cold water to dip your hands in. Have your fillings assembled nearby.

Dip your fingers in water, and use them to spread some rice evenly over the smooth side of the seaweed. It will probably take about a quarter of a cup of cooked rice to cover the seaweed. Sprinkle this with sesame seeds. Flip the seaweed over, so that the rice is now on the downward side. Begin to fill the roll. Start with some crab, add a little cucumber and avocado, and then roll it up. Use your fingers to press the fillings into the roll and get the roll as tight as you can.

Once it is rolled, use a very sharp knife to cut the slices. I generally get six pieces out of one roll. If you dip the knife blade in cold water, it will cut better.

I ended up using half of the avocado, half the cucumber, and made six rolls.


Use about this much filling. Experiment to see how much filling you can get in the roll without overstuffing it.

Kale and white beans

This meal felt like comfort food, which is strange, because I never ate cooked greens growing up, they were certainly not part of my life at least until the age of 20. Except to look at them and go ewwwwww. So why does boiled kale seem like comfort food to me? I have no idea. A while ago I was trying to figure out what to do with some leftover kale, I had made a kale, white bean, and sausage soup, which was delicious, but I had leftover kale. I could have made kale crunchies, but that seemed like too much work. Then I found this post, and she writes about her kale so poetically that I had to try it. I kind of did my own thing, since I had leftover beans, too, but this bowlful of glop was totally inspired by that recipe. If you aren't into fried eggs with runny yolks (and I know Ed doesn't like runny yolks, but thats how I love my eggs- crunchy on the bottom and goopy on top), you could cook your egg over easy or just leave it out, but, I really do think the yolk adds something to the overall dish. Ups the yum content...

So, this dish also goes really well with some sort of thick, whole-grain, toasted bread. I happened to have some of that leftover from the soup (because all soups go best with bread), but, like pretty much everything I make, its a flexible dish. You could leave out the bread. You could leave out the beans. You could leave out the egg. You could leave out the bacon. It all works, but, I like kale with all its accoutrements.

Boiled kale with stuff
Makes two servings, more or less. Maybe three if you don't eat much.

1/2C white beans (dry), or 1 can white beans (cooked)
1/2lb kale (those big bunches at the supermarket are about one pound)
3 pieces of bacon
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
two thick slices of whole wheat bread, toasted
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
2 eggs

The total cook time will be about half an hour, but its an easy half hour, you're just boiling things. If you forget to soak the beans, the cook time could be more like an hour and a half... so just stick the beans in a pot of cold water before you leave in the morning and they're ready to cook when you get home. Prep time is pretty short, too.

Soak the beans for 8 hours, or do a quick soak, where you bring the water to a boil and then let them sit for an hour. Or buy canned beans, but, its a lot cheaper (about eight times cheaper) to buy the dry ones. And then you can flavor them.

Bring your soaked beans to a boil, and then turn down the water to a simmer. Add a bay leaf. These will take 20-30 minutes to cook, I didn't time it, just keep checking them. Meanwhile, chop your bacon into little pieces, however big you want, you can leave the pieces all stuck together when you do this, they'll separate as they cook. Throw the bacon into a pot, and cook it until it is at a consistency at which you would eat it. In other words, no raw bacon. Instead of draining the grease into wherever you drain grease, drain it into the bean water. If you have lean bacon that doesn't drain, add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the bean water. I find the fat helps the skins get soft. At this point you can add salt to the beans, too, about a tablespoon or so.

Chop your onion and dice your garlic. Add the onion to the bacon in the pot, and cook until they're translucent. Add the garlic and cook until its toasty golden. Add 3-4 cups of water, and bring it to a boil. Take the leaves off the stems of the kale, chop them up, and add them to the water. Its probably a good idea to wash the kale first, but, I forgot, and it wasn't gritty. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook the kale for 15 minutes or so in boiling water. This is plenty of time to clean up the mess you just made prepping dinner.

Toast some bread. Fry an egg, I actually used olive oil, and it got really nice and crispy, just how I like it! Once the beans are done, layer a piece of bread in a big wide bowl, then stack some beans around it (throw out the bay leaf). Put a big ol' pile o' kale (and bacon) on top of the bread. If you want soup, pour in some broth, otherwise, just the kale. Put the egg on top. Break the yolk, and mix everything around until you have a delicious, yolk-soaked, pile of glop. Dig in!

Egg yolk sugar cookies

I made a chocolate truffle cake the other day. Because Ed asked for it. It was so-so, I thought I overcooked it and made it too dry but Ed liked it. Anyway, it used egg whites, so I had two egg yolks left over and remembered a really good egg yolk cookie I'd made a while ago. I decided to make those, but since I only had two egg yolks, I had to do some funky measuring things, and ended up sort of completely changing the recipe. Instead of being pretty moist, it was dry and stiff. Oh no! I was worried that I'd never be able to get these into balls, but, after tasting the batter (a necessary step, especially with cookie dough!), it was too good to not bake. So I rolled it out, which was the perfect thing to do with dry, stiff, cookie dough. This might have just become my go-to recipe for roll-out cookies, because they taste really good. It did make a pretty crunchy cookie, though, once it had cooled. But a yummy crunchy cookie.

Egg-yolk sugar cookies
1C flour
1 tsp baking soda
1C sugar (although if you are going to frost the cookies, I would use 3/4C)
1 stick butter
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon zest (or orange, or lime, or grapefruit... whatever)
2 egg yolks

Cream the butter and sugar until its pretty fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time and beat them in. It'll still be pretty dry. Add the vanilla and lemon zest. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this mixture to the butter, and combine until it looks like cookie dough. If its wet enough, you can roll it into balls, or if its dry, you can do what I did and roll it out.

The roll-out cookies took ~10 minutes at 350F. Start checking them after 6 minutes or so, because if you leave them in there a minute too long they go from perfect-slightly-chewy-golden to mildly burned.

This recipe made me 44 stars.

Eggplant parm

This is a little different than normal eggplant parm. For one, there is no slab of mushy, slimy eggplant coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. You may wonder how it is eggplant parm without that. Well, read on, hungry eggplantovores!


Sorry its not a great picture, rather unappetizing actually, but if you could smell it and taste it you wouldn't think as much. Actually, most of my pictures are pretty unappetizing, but thats because I'm hungry and want to eat the food I'd just made rather than photograph it.

This is sort of Alton Brown's recipes from Good Eats, I mean, it started out as his recipe but it becomes more and more of an eggplant stir-fry with Italian flavors the more we make it. I give to you the recipe the way we last made it, but it will probably morph some more next time. As it should. The basic premise is that when you cut the eggplant up and salt it, it oozes out all its water, and then when you cook it, it won't get mushy and slimy. Which is what I really don't like about eggplant, usually. So, what follows is a recipe, sort of, but you are encouraged to make it your own and change things. I think this time I even left out the parmesan, which totally negates the "eggplant parm" thing, doesn't it? Its a flexible recipe...

Eggplant Parmesan
This will make enough for just about three servings, two servings if you're feeding highschool boys and four servings if you're feeding highschool girls. We usually end up with three servings. One for me, one for Ed, and one for lunch.

1 eggplant
1 onion
olive oil for frying
2-5 cloves of garlic (depends on how you like your breath)
1 tomato
1/2C fresh parsley and basil or any other random fresh herbs you might have.
a couple mushrooms
1/4C panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
1/4-1/2C grated parmesan cheese, or grated mozzarella cheese for a goopier dish (pictured above)
salt and pepper to taste
other vegetables, depending on what you have in your fridge and want to use up or what your mood is telling you

Slice the eggplant into rounds 1/4" thick. Salt each side with kosher salt, or any coarsely-ground salt, and let them sit in a colander for 20-30 minutes. Once they've beaded up with water and there is water that has come out of the colander, you're good to go. Chop your vegetables however you like them chopped, I like my onions and garlic diced finely, everything else in pretty big chunks.

Once your eggplant has sweated, rinse the slices under cold water to rinse off the salt and squeeze them a little between your hands to squeeze out any extra water. If you're wondering why you didn't just squeeze the eggplant first and dispense with the salting, its because of chemistry. 'nuff said. Jess can elaborate. Slice the rounds into long pieces.

Put some olive oil in the pan, sweat the onions until they're a little translucent, add the garlic until its toasty golden. Add everything else except the eggplant, then as the tomato is starting to look not-raw (maybe a minute in), add the eggplant, and toss it around for one minute. Add the salt, pepper, panko, and cheese, toss it about to combine, and serve.

The eggplant is going to be not-mushy, and its going to taste delicious. You can eat it just as a pile o' eggplant, or you can serve it over pasta. Or you could serve it over some other random grain. Or as a side dish. It all works.

Vegetable-polenta stacks

This is by no means current, but I found the picture as I was organizing my computer and it was too pretty to not post. Over the summer, I had just gotten back from the farmer's market, not sure what I was going to make for dinner, and this creation sort of just took place. Its a layering of polenta rounds and zucchini and eggplant and heirloom tomato and hummus and basil, topped with some olives and sundried tomatoes. I might have had a dressing for this, I don't remember, but I bet the lemon-basil dressing from the Gazpacho salad stacks would go really well with it. It doesn't matter, in the end, because you'll just deconstruct this thing to eat it, but while it lasts, it sure looks pretty.



To make the polenta rounds, start with a cup of polenta, or corn meal, or any combination of the two. Polenta is a coarser grind, I think that is the only real difference. Add three cups of water to the polenta, about a teaspoon of salt, and any herbs you think might go well. Basil, oregano, rosemary, anything really. Stir the polenta as it cooks, because otherwise it'll stick to the bottom. Its kind of a high-maintenance sort of dish, because if you stop stirring, not only will it stick, it'll start exploding at you. So, be careful of little polenta volcanoes. Once it is starting to pull away from the sides as you stir, which shouldn't be too long, maybe 10-20 minutes, its done, so add a quarter cup or so of grated parmesan, stir it in, and spread it in a baking sheet to cool.



You don't need to grease the sheet, this stuff will pull right away from it. You want it to be pretty thin, so you might need two baking sheets. Spread it out as evenly as you can, and let it dry/congeal/cool/not sure what word goes there for 20-30 min. Once it isn't steaming, you can stick it in the fridge, which will accelerate things. Once you take it out of the fridge, use a glass or other round thing to cut circles out. Leave them on the baking sheet, and bake them at 400F until they are crispy, flipping them about halfway through (sorry no times, it really just depends on your oven, keep checking the rounds). You can eat them without crisping them up, they're delicious that way, but they're even more delicious with an outside crunch.



For layering, its up to you. I had eggplant and zucchini, so I roasted those, and spread the polenta with hummus and just sort of layered stuff on top. Depends what you have available, but this stack is hummus-polenta-tomato-zucchini-polenta-hummus-tomato-zucchini and onwards. You can make smaller stacks if you don't want something to topple off the plate, or if you're into majestic, tall food, make 'em sky-high. Or, just pile stuff on a plate and eat it.

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins

I can't leave you without a muffin recipe for too long. It is, after all, my primary source of sustenance after rollerskiing. I figured I'd go along the lines of the King Arthur Flour Mini Pumpkin Cakes, which had been a success as a cupcake, but I wanted something a little healthier and a little less fluffy and airy. Fluffy is a great quality in a cupcake, but I like something I can bite into when I eat muffins. Something that will support nuts, and fruit, and whatever else I feel like putting into it. I made two versions of these muffins, the first was with all white flour (I wanted to make it whole wheat but I forgot until it was too late), twice the nuts, and no cranberries. This was a good muffin, and I was going to just make it again, but I didn't have as many walnuts, so I added half a cup of cranberries. Random. But they're a delicious addition. I upped the sugar a little too, since cranberries are so sour, but I love how you get little sour pockets of redness inside the muffin. If you're not so into the cranberry-explosions in your mouth, skip the cranberries and just go with all nuts. Or you could add raisins or dried cranberries. Its a muffin, people, the possibilities are endless!

Having gone through two batches of these muffins by now, I have discovered - they freeze very well. It must be all that pumpkin goop in them, but they stay really moist in the freezer, and won't crumble to pieces like some low-fat muffins are wont to do. I think these have moved up to second place in the "freezer muffins" category, behind the carrot spice muffins, and they're probably in the top five of my overall "favorite muffin" category. They got a good Ed-rating, too, despite having pumpkin in them. He even knew that they were pumpkin muffins, and went back for a second one. I call that a success!

Pumpkin Cranberry-Walnut Muffins
Makes 12 muffins with pretty big tops

1C pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1/3C plain yogurt (skim is fine)
1C sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbs spices (cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in this case, heavy on the ginger)
3/4C whole wheat flour
1/2C white flour
2 tbs ground flaxseed
1/2C chopped walnuts
1/2C chopped fresh or frozen cranberries*

*If you use dried cranberries or raisins, reduce the sugar to 3/4C. You could also add some crystallized ginger.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the pumpkin, eggs, yogurt, sugar, baking powder, salt, spices, nuts, and fruit. Add the flours. Mix to combine, and then pour the batter into the muffin tins. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the muffins are starting to look pretty brown on top. Since these are so moist, they're ok with baking a little longer than normal, so that they don't start to taste gummy.

If you're in the mood for a cakier muffin, you can substitute parts or all of the yogurt for oil. It will make it lighter. No guarantees as to how it will work out with the nuts and fruit, though.

Sorry the picture is not great. Some things just deserve to be eaten instead of photographed...

Pumpkin gnocchi

I like gnocchi, and I've had pretty good success with both potato and ricotta gnocchi, so I figured I'd use some of my pumpkin glop to make pumpkin gnocchi. Success! Most of the recipes I was looking up online were using cinnamon and nutmeg and stuff in the gnocchi, but I decided that I wanted something more savory, that didn't necessarily taste like pumpkin. So I went with cumin, coriander, and mustard seeds. The flavor was good, the consistency was good, but Ed thought that I cut mine too big. I admit, I might have been lazy. Given that he doesn't like gnocchi but he ate these, I'll call it a success. I had pan fried them with some sausage, onions, parsley, and a little cream after they were cooked, and it was a pretty tasty meal. Its also really quick to make the little things, you can do it in the time it takes to boil the water. As with any recipe on here, you can substitute all sorts of things. Except the pumpkin and the flour, that part sort of is there to stay. But spices are fluid 'round here...

Ingredients
1C pumpkin puree, canned or fresh
1-2C flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp dried sage
2 links sausage
2 tbs chopped fresh parsley
2 tbs heavy cream

Put a lot of water on to boil. You want a big pot, with lots of water in it, because these things will float when they're done cooking, and if you don't have enough water, you can't tell if they're floating or not.

Heat 2 tsp of oil in a sauce pan, and once its warm, add the seeds of various things. If you have ground cumin, you can skip this step and just add the powder to your batter. Once the seeds pop open (you'll be able to hear them go POP), add the oil to a big bowl. I left the popped seeds in the oil. Add the pumpkin and the salt. Add a cup of flour, mix it around. If its still too wet to form into a dough, add more flour, until you can sort of knead it, like bread.

Once your dough is together, roll it into long ropes on a floured surface, and then cut the ropes into small pieces. Add the pieces in batches to the big pot of boiling water, removing them when they float. You can eat these as they are now, they'd be good with a light sauce, or pesto, or just plain with parmesan cheese...

Alternatively, chop up the sausage links, and cook them in a fry pan. When they're done, add the chopped onion, and cook that until its translucent. Add maybe a half tablespoon of butter, and then the gnocchi, and let them sit in place for a minute or two to brown the bottom. Flip them over, let them sit for another minute or two, and then add the parsley, sage, cooked sausage, and cream. I like just enough cream to get things coated, but thats just me. You can add more. Salt and pepper to taste and then eat it up! (this recipe served two of us, no leftovers).

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Its time for seasonal stuff. Linnea gave me a giant pumpkin, so I turned it into goo, and made cupcakes from that. I tried out King Arthur's pumpkin mini cakes, which were good, but I prefer to call them cupcakes. The recipe made 12 regular-sized cupcakes for me. Then I made it again and it made 32 mini cupcakes. A good recipe, moist, not too pumpkin-y, and just spicy enough to be quite yummy. The only change I made was that the second batch of cupcakes I only used 3/4C sugar instead of 1C, and I thought that was an improvement. They'd been a bit too sweet before. The frosting is an orange-dyed cream cheese frosting.



These were a big hit at work, but Ed wouldn't try one because it has pumpkin in it. Freakn biases... so no Ed rating.


For the swirl, I put a glob of orange frosting in a ziplock bag, then a glob of white, then orange, then white, and squeezed it out the cut corner. I don't have a pastry tip, so to get the ridges, I duct taped the corner I was planning to cut with 3-4 layers of duct tape. Then I cut out a star shape, and it worked well enough to get those pretty ridges.

Goat cheese, fig, and caramelized onion crostini

Sunday night, Tiffany and Mario came over for dinner, and since it would be a late dinner we figured we should have some appetizers out. After my impulse-buy of a whole box of figs at Russos, I decided to use them up on the appetizer. A little browsing of the google, epicurious, and random other blogs led to an amalgamation of figs and goat cheese on some toasted bread. We had gotten the cheapest loaf of french bread that Trader Joe's had, and it was kind of dense and not that interesting, but it made perfect little toasts! This was a good combination, the goat cheese mixture tasted faintly of cream cheese, but the herbs helped out a lot in that department, and the caramelized onions were a nice touch, If I do say so myself. I would have added some prosciutto if I'd had any, but then maybe we're putting too many things on a poor little piece of bread...

Ingredients

1/2 loaf of french bread, sliced on a slight diagonal in 1/4-1/2" slices, to make 30 slices
~2-4tbs olive oil
15 fresh figs
1 big onion (or two smaller ones)
~1tbs butter
6oz fresh goat cheese (it usually comes in a log)
1/4C heavy cream
1 tbs chopped dried herbs
1-2 tsp honey
salt and pepper to taste

Slice the onions so that you get long pieces, and cook them on medium-low heat for 30-45 minutes, adding butter as needed, until they are deep brown and taste sweet.

Preheat your oven to 350F. Slice up your bread, and lay it out on a cookie sheet (or two, if it won't fit on one). Drizzle it generously with olive oil, flip it over, and drizzle the other side. Put it in the oven for approximately 5-10 minutes (check after 5) until the bread is crispy and golden on the bottom. If you want it super crunchy, flip it over and bake for another 5 minutes.

Mix the goat cheese with the cream, honey, and herbs. Mix it up and add salt and pepper to taste.

Slice the figs into quarters.

Spread a good glob of the cheese mixture onto a piece of bread. Squish some onions into the cheese. Top with two fig quarters, pushing down on them so they stick there. Repeat with the rest of the bread slices. Serve!



And just for the drool-factor, I leave you with a picture of the meal that came after these crostini: herb-crusted ahi tuna on a bed of chantarelle risotto with snap peas. Yes, it was AMAZING.

Beet salad with a fig balsamic vinegrette

I love beets. This is a pretty straight-forward salad, but its very pretty. Much more so than the usual pile o' lettuce with dressing on top. The dressing was inspired by some fig vinegar that Ed picked up at Formaggio's the other day. Its yummy, but I'm sure you'll be fine without it. The salad was inspired by this beet carpaccio in the Boston Globe, although really the only shared characteristics are the thinly-sliced beets.



Beet-chevre salad with fig-balsamic vinegrette:
2 beets
1/2 an avocado
2-3 oz soft fresh crumbly goat cheese (not sure how else to describe it)
1/4 red onion
Mint (or basil or any fresh herb really. Or even any baby lettuce) leaves

Dressing: (amounts are approximate)
3 tbs Fig-balsamic vinegar
4 tbs Olive oil
1 tbs Dijon or other strong mustard
1 tbs Molasses
salt to taste

For the dressing: Mix everything together in a bowl with a fork. Taste it. Add other things until it tastes how you like it.

For the salad:
Scrub the beets pretty clean, but don't peel them, and wrap them in tin foil. Bake them in a 400F oven for 30-40 minutes until they can be poked easily with a fork. Take them out of the oven, hold them in a bowl of cold water, and rub the skins with your fingers (if you care about not having pink cuticles, wear gloves) until the skin comes off. Using a mandolin, cut very thin slices of the beets and arrange them prettily on a plate.

Using a super sharp knife, cut some really thin pieces of red onion. I like to quarter the onion, and then holding it on the flat edge, cut slices so that you get the curve of the onion in each piece. Really thin. Sprinkle the onion slices on top of the beets.

Crumble the goat cheese and sprinkle that on top of the beets and onions. Slice the avocado and arrange the slices around the edge of the plate. Sprinkle some mint leaves on top of the beets. Drizzle dressing all over the thing. Eat. Enjoy.

This serves two, as a very small salad. I could easily eat the whole thing myself... but I have quite the appetite.

Recipe Index

This is a kludge, but, ideally you'll be able to link to all the recipes on this blog!

Savoury
Appetizers
Goat cheese, fig, and caramelized onion crostini
Polenta wedges
Vietnamese spring rolls
Crab cakes
Mango-avocado salsa
Guacamole
Jiaozi
Made with love nuts
Scallion pancakes
Buckwheat Scallion Pancakes
Spicy roasted almonds
Spinach-Ricotta Pie
Roasted garlic
Sardines and Avocados
Pesto

Pizza
Pizza
Pesto Pizza
Clean-out-the-fridge Pizza
Ratatouille Pizza

Soups
Everything soup
Butternut Squash Soup
French Onion Soup
Watercress Soup
Potato-Leek Soup
Lentil Soup

Savory Breakfasts
Scromelette
Clean-out-the-fridge Fritatta
Chanterelle scromelette
Toasty Eggs

Beans
Black bean burgers with mango-avocado salsa
Chili
Moroccan couscous
Black bean-corn salsa
Tuscan style beans and chard
Crunchy chickpeas
Indian experiments
Bean Tacos
Bean Gratin

Grains/starches
Israeli couscous with tomato sauce
Pear-bacon-barley salad
Healthy cranberry pancakes
Muesli
Tabouleh
Risotto
Lo mein
Lasagna
Soft pretzels
Pumpkin Gnocchi
Pork Fried Rice
Pull-apart Garlic Bread
Buckwheat crepes with apple filling
Crunchy seed braid
Grilled cheese
Brown rice risotto
Mushroom-Ramp Risotto
NYT No-Knead Bread
Oven-cooked polenta
Pan-fried potatoes

Pasta dishes
Spaghetti with duck sausage, fava beans, and morels
Pasta in a brown butter sage sauce
Prosciutto-ricotta-filled ravioli
Pasta with Brussels sprouts and chicken and ricotta
Spaghetti Carbonara
Pasta with a tomato anchovy sauce
Pasta with ramps, fiddleheads, and asparagus
Tuna casserole pasta
Pasta with cabbage and sausage
Quail egg raviolo

Meat
Lamb lollypops in an orange-soy-ginger glaze
Squab, with ginger-cilantro risotto and pan-fried endives
Duck legs with roasted vegetables
Rabbit
Rack of lamb with broccoli rabe
Tenderloin with chantarelles and celery root
Chop Chae (Korean beef dish)
Buffalo Basil
Boef Bourguinon
Chicken Stir Fry

Fish
Sushi
Scallop ceviche
Seared ahi tuna
California rolls
Mussels
Crab with mango-avocado salsa
Polenta with a tomato tunafish sauce
Fried Seafood
Fish Tacos
Halibut with Pasta with spinach and ricotta
Salmon with couscous and spinach
Salmon salad
Steamed scallops with middle eastern couscous

Salads
Gazpacho salad stack
Tomato-basil stacks
Endive-walnut salad
Radish-carrot salad
Beet salad with fig-balsamic vinegrette
Mango-Avocado Salad
Steak Caesar salad
Tomato avocado salad
Cucumber salad
Anne Leith's tomato-avocado salad
Tomato-basil salad

Veggies
Vegetable fritters
Crunchy kale
Tuscan Kale Chips
Crunchy broccoli
Butternut squash puree
Roasted root vegetables
Caramelized brussels sprouts
Eggplant parm
Vegetable-polenta salad stacks
Kale with stuff
Kale with Bacon, Egg, and Tofu
Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
Spinach Curry
Cooked Endives
Spaghetti Squash
Sweet and Sour Tofu Stir Fry
Zucchini and caramelized onions

Sweet
Chocolate
Mystery mocha cake
Peanut butter balls
King Arthur Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Chocolate Raspberry Truffles
Chocolate Tofu Mousse

Cookies
Almond biscotti
Sparkling cranberry gems
Freezing cookie dough
Jam-filled oat bars, or "nutrigrain" bars
Papaya cookies
Date-almond-coconut balls
Oatmeal-coconut cookies, or, the best oatmeal cookies you'll ever eat
Egg-yolk sugar cookies
Chewy Chocolate Walnut Cookie/brownies
Dream Bars
Mint-chocolate pinwheel cookies
Eggless chocolate chip cookies
Pumpkin Chip Cookies
Thumbprint Cookies
Cut-out Cookies
Chewy Ginger Cookies
Pignoli Cookies
Jan Hagel Cookies

Cupcakes
Lemon chiffon cupcakes
Car-bomb cupcakes, V1 and V2
Margarita cupcakes
Mojito cupcakes
Oreo cupcakes (vegan)
Lavender-blackberry tea cupcakes
Chocolate-beet cupcakes
Pumpkin Cupcakes
Blackberry Cobbler Cupcakes
Almond Lemon Cupcakes

Other desserts
Thai rice pudding
Cake balls
Fresh fruit tart and sticky maple-pecan bars
Beeramisu
Strawberry Lemonade Bars
David Lebovitz's Lemon Curd Tart

Fruit
Red wine-poached figs
Blueberry bars
Strawberry-lemonade bars
Strawberry charlotte ripoff
Peach-blackberry crisp
Peach tart
Persimmon Pie
Cherry-studded Whitney Cake
Applesauce
Chewy Chocolate-Walnut Clif Bar Knock-offs

Muffins
Pumpkin cranberry muffins
Veggie muffins
Summer squash and lemon muffins
Blueberry-bran applesauce muffins
Strawberry muffins
PDQ muffins
Coconut-lime muffins
Honey whole wheat muffins
Rhubarb-ginger muffins
Cranberry-orange-walnut muffins
Carrot spice muffins
Maple walnut banana bran muffins
OCD muffins
Cottage cheese muffins
Lemon cornmeal summer squash muffins
Lemon-Ginger Muffins
Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
Apple chunk muffins

Baked things other than muffins:
Pear-cranberry coffee cake
Sticky buns
Irish soda bread
Blackberry scones
Strawberry scones
Persimmon pudding bread
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread
Orange Yogurt Cake
Chewy Granola Bars
Lime Polenta Yogurt Cake

Tasty, healthy, cheap
Introduction this this idea
Being a cheap-ass grad student: free food

Vegetable fritters

I like pancakes. Mostly the fluffy kind that you drown in real maple syrup, but crepes with strawberries or apples are also good, as are vegetable fritters. Vegetable fritters? Why would you put vegetables in a pancake?? Well, I've found that its a good way to use up extra veggies and make them taste good, so there. I normally go with the pancake approach (flour, baking powder, salt, egg, milk, and the veggie) but last night I tried the panko approach. This way had more veggie and less bready stuff. They're both good. One of my recent favorites was when Ed came back from Vermont with a couple pounds of corn off the cob left over from a party his cousin had been hosting. Corn, cheddar, jalapeno fritters, anyone? We made a lot of these... here are some recipes.

Corn, cheddar, jalapeno fritters

1C flour (any combination of white and whole wheat)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1C grated cheddar (or any cheese, really)
1C corn
1 jalapeno, diced (or more, depends on your favored level of spiciness)
1 egg
3/4C milk, to make 1C of liquid
Butter (or oil) for frying

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, grated cheddar, corn, and jalapeno. In a 1-cup measure, beat the egg with the milk. Pour the wet into the dry. If it looks too dry to be a batter (highly scientific here), add some water. Get your pan warm (around the 4 on my stove, which goes up to 6), rub it with butter, and form little pats of batter on the stove, flattening them with your spoon. Let them sizzle for 2-3 minutes, then flip them. They should be golden brown on the cooked side. Cook them for another couple minutes and when they're done put them on a paper-towel-lined plate, and sprinkle a little salt on top if you like that sort of thing.



Zucchini fritters

These fritters have no flour, just panko, a Japanese breadcrumb that generally adds crunch to stuff. These were more zucchini-y than my generic zucchini fritters.

1 zucchini, grated
2 eggs
1/2C panko
1/4C grated parmesan cheese
1/4tsp salt
ground pepper
butter (or oil) for frying

To grate the zucchini, cut off the rounder end, but leave the little stalky end on. Holding the stalky end (see, you have a handle!) grate it using a cheese grater. Take your mound of zucchini (you'll have between 1-2 cups) and squeeze it between your hands to get the water out. A lot of water will come out. Put the dry (er) zucchini in a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients, and form into patties in a hot pan. Fry for 2-3 minutes on one side, then flip.

Generic zucchini fritters

These ones use more of a pancake batter. Like the corn fritters.

1 zucchini
1C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
3/4C milk

Follow the corn fritters instructions.

Lasagna: Cheap, easy, and healthy?

Jess, this one is for you. Protein, iron, and vitamin C. Plus, ground beef isn't as bad to handle (gross-factor) as chicken or a hunk of meat. You just put it in a pan and poke at it until its little gray crumbles.

I'm not at all an experienced lasagna-maker. I've only ever made two in my life. The first was before we went to Italy, because I had ricotta and mozzarella in my refrigerator that had to get used up. Then I had extra lasagna noodles, so I just made another one. Unfortunately, I hadn't used up all the ricotta last time and had been planning on using that, stupidly, because its pink and smelly and probably would make my stomach a little unhappy... if I even ate it in the first place. So, this lasagna didn't have enough cheese in it. Live and learn... buy fresh ricotta each time you want to make a lasagna.

I could also have made this easier by purchasing a pre-made sauce. Or just using canned tomato sauce thats unseasoned. But nooo, I have to do it the hard way. In the end, the sauce tastes better, I think, so I guess I'd recommend the 1.5 hr prep time. If you're less scatter-brained, it might go faster, or if you're more experienced in lasagna-making, but otherwise, don't do this on a weeknight. The good news is that the pieces freeze really well, and to me they tasted about the same fresh out of the oven and microwaved for lunch after being frozen for a few weeks.

The concept at least is easy. Layer sauce, noodles, and cheese until your lasagna fills the pan. Then bake for 35-40 minutes at 350F until its bubbly. I bought ready-bake noodles, since I couldn't find any other ones--you don't boil them first, you just put them in the pan. Its like magic. Or ramen. Maybe ramen is magic. We'll never know. Supposedly this cuts the preparation time in half, if you believe the box, but I don't believe that. I also put eggplant into my lasagna, because I like eggplant, and Ed didn't mind it too much. He actually didn't notice it, but I told him, and then he sort of shrugged, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, and then decided that he couldn't taste the eggplant so it was ok for it to be in there. The sauce has peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini, although really you can add whatever you want. If I'd had spinach or kale I would have tried to put that in there. So here goes...

Sauce:
1 can tomato sauce, the generic store-brand kind, not the classico or other expensive stuff.
1 can tomato chunks
1 zucchini
1 box pre-sliced mushrooms (they're cheaper than the un-sliced ones. Baby bellas)
1/2 green pepper
1 onion
3-4 cloves garlic
1 tsp rosemary, or other herbs you like to put in sauces. I recommend basil, sage, marjoram, or oregano.
salt and pepper to taste
1 pound ground beef
1/4C white wine (optional)
2 pinches white sugar

Other stuff:
1 egg
1C ricotta cheese (skim is fine)
2-3C grated cheddar (One of the small blocks, rather than the gargantuan block)
6 slices mozzarella cheese
lasagna noodles
olive oil

Start by dealing with the eggplant. Slice it into 1/4 inch (or so) slices, sprinkle both sides with salt, and let it sit for 20-30 minutes. It will ooze out most of its water and get nice and firm, and then you can rinse off the salt and squeeze out the rest of the water. That way it won't get too mushy. Preheat your oven to 350F.

To make the sauce, start by sweating the onion in some olive oil, then add the garlic. A wok is good, since you'll end up with a LOT of sauce. Once the garlic is golden-ish, add the mushrooms and peppers. Cook them for a little bit, then add the beef. Depending on how long its been living in your freezer or how little you trust the source, cook the bejesus out of it or if you trust it, cook it until its medium rare. Drain off some of the juice, and add the tomatoes, after draining their juice. Otherwise its too watery. Add the can of sauce. Add the white wine (if you're using it - makes sauces taste better, but if you don't have a bottle just sitting around waiting to be used on risotto or tomato sauce don't bother) and sugar (cuts the acidity of the tomatoes). Cook this down for a bit as you grate the zucchini on a cheese grated. If you leave the little knobby part on, its like you have a handle. Add the zucchini, and take the sauce off the heat. Its a chunky sauce. If you don't like chunky sauce... go buy a premade one. (that was much nicer than the other thing I was going to say). You'll end up using half of the sauce. Its good on pasta, too, but if you don't eat pasta as often as I do, go ahead and freeze it, it'll keep.

Meanwhile, rinse your eggplant, and put about a tablespoon of olive oil on a baking sheet. Use a slice of eggplant to smear around the oil. Get both sides of the eggplant oily, and bake the slices for approximately 10 minutes, until they're softened. As that does its thing, beat the egg and add the ricotta. If you have any fresh herbs on hand, those would be a nice addition. I didn't have any. Grate the cheddar cheese.

Time to layer the beast. Never having made a lasagna before, I wasn't sure what order I should do things in. I eventually decided to put the eggplant on the bottom (ideally, you'll take off the skins first, but I was too lazy). Then sauce, to fill in the cracks. Then mozzarella cheese, to seal it in. Then noodles. Then ricotta/egg. Rinse and repeat, and top with a thick layer of cheddar. Bake for 35-40 minutes. The cheese should be browning on top when you take it out, if not, turn on the broiler and broil it until its brown. Then comes the hard part - let it cool before you cut it. At this point you're starving, I know, but still. Let it cool.

OK, so lets get to the point here. Is lasagna cheap, healthy, and easy? I nixed the easy part, since the prep work was an hour and a half, although the concept is pretty easy. Takes too long. Although taking it out of the freezer makes it easy, so thats like the cheating way to make it easy. So how about cheap? Looking at the ingredients, we have:
Tomato sauce: $0.75
Tomato chunks: $1.00
Zucchini: $0.34
Eggplant: $1.15
Mushrooms: $2.49 (but you only use half, so its actually $1.25)
Green pepper: $1.12 (again, only using half: $0.56)
Onion: $0.89
Garlic: $0.50 for a head, you use a quarter of that, so $0.13
Noodles: $1.00
Ground beef: $5.00 (This was some of the grass-fed-Vermont-highland-cow beef, a little more expensive than you average slaughterhouse stuff...)
Ricotta: $2.89
Mozzarella, 1/4lb at the deli: $3.00
Cheddar, generic block: $3.99
Egg: $1.99/12 eggs, so $0.08

The sauce ingredients cost $11.07. Since you only use half of it, thats $5.54. So our total cost of the thing was $17.50. In an 8x8" pan, you can cut 16 slices. A normal person or a not-too-hungry-Alex will eat two slices, so a meal of lasagna would cost $2.18 (for two slices). Eh, not too bad, but not great. I wouldn't call that cheap, but I wouldn't call it expensive the way a rack of lamb is expensive. I suppose you could use less cheese. But then, what would be the point?

As for healthy, I guess this depends how lean your beef was and how much cheese you use. If you only use half the block of cheddar, I'd call it pretty healthy. I mean, there are a ton of vegetables, which is a good thing. So, it gets one checkmark! Wooo!

Oh, and I almost forgot. Tasty? DAMN STRAIGHT.

Israeli Couscous glop

Doesn't this picture just look like such an appetizing pile of glop? Maybe it would look more appetizing if I didn't call it glop... but I like that word. It describes so many things so well! Anyway, I was hungry, and I didn't want to make it look all nice and fancy, and how fancy can glop look anyway? There be my excuse for glopful pictures.

Couscous is just pasta, and Israeli couscous is large couscous. It kind of reminded me of those bubbles you get in bubble tea. I don't particularly like bubble tea, but I liked the couscous. According to the all-knowing google, Israeli couscous is actually Levantine couscous, and it is made with hard wheat instead of semolina flour. Useless fact of today!

So I figured that since couscous is pasta, it would go well with a sauce. This is a pretty quick meal. While you're chopping/cooking the veggies, get the water boiling. It'll take about 10 minutes to boil the water and 10 minutes to let the couscous sit, so you have 20 minutes to chop the veggies and make the sauce. I had some leftover canned tomato sauce (like tomato puree, but already seasoned, and the same price!) from my lasagna exploits, so I used that. I sweated some onions in bacon grease, added garlic, cooked some mushrooms, added the sauce, and then grated a zucchini and added that. Its a nice way of using up zucchini without actually thinking that you're eating zucchini and being sick of it. It just adds thickness to the sauce, in my experience, no strange zucchini flavors or anything like that. You can add whatever veggies you think would taste good, I bet an eggplant would be alright, or some peppers.

To cook the couscous, boil 2C of water, add 1C of couscous, boil for 3 minutes, and then removed the pot from the heat and let it sit covered for 5-10 minutes, until it tastes cooked but still quite chewy; al dente. It is a pasta product, after all! Drain any leftover water. Then add the couscous to the sauce, toss to coat, and serve! Simple, and almost a one-pot meal. A two-pot meal. The Ed-rating was a "I like this couscous better than the normal stuff", which I'll take as a success. Grated parmesan cheese is another great addition...

Easy Red Wine-Poached Figs

Salutations from sunny, decidedly-not-humid California! It's my first time posting and I'd just like to apologize for the long delay in posting. But this blog isn't about apologies; it's about recipes and here's a really simple yet delicious one that can be a dessert or an et cetera.

Several weeks ago, I had an intense craving for yogurt. Maple flavored yogurt from Trader Joe's, to be exact. I developed my obsession for it while working as a scenic artist for Berkeley Rep, where just about all the scenic artists were obsessed with a particular flavor. While picking up some yogurt, I couldn't help but notice a nice packet of figs sitting nearby. Now, I'm a sucker for good figs. Something about the sweetness and the color and the bajillions of seeds... So, I had a bunch of figs, but unfortunately not all of them were ripe. And since I'm the only one in my household who likes figs, the poor things languished for awhile. And then, Eureka!

A quick way to keep otherwise delicate fruit or just dress up less than fabulous fruit is to gently cook it with sugar, a bit of liquid, and sometimes a good dollop of butter. What better pairing for the distinctively luscious fig than red wine? Pick a good red wine, one that you wouldn't mind drinking straight, and go for it. It will bring out all the sweetness of the figs and soften any sharp notes you might get from unripe fruit. Add a good dash of cinnamon and sugar, and you're set.

Easy Red Wine-Poached Figs

2 handfuls of figs, topped and split in half lengthwise
2 c good red wine, maybe a merlot or beaujolais
2-3 tsp granulated sugar, to taste
about 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon, to taste
dash of nutmeg

Try to choose a wine that's well-balanced, not too much bite, preferably a bit fruity. I used some of a Gallo blended red that my mother had leftover from her Boeuf Bourgignon.

1. Combine wine, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in saucepan over medium heat. Heat until sugar is dissolved and bring to a simmer. Add the figs.















2. Simmer until the figs are soft and the aroma from the pot is fragrant. You may need to flip the figs over to get every side immersed.















3. Remove the figs. Reduce the poaching liquid down to about half.















4. Return the figs to the liquid to get it all to the same temperature. From here, you can serve it over vanilla ice cream (mmm!) or, since I was desperate, over maple yogurt. It'll also keep well in the fridge. Enjoy!

Mystery Mocha Cake

It was Ed's birthday last week, and I wanted to make a cake, so I was browsing the King Arthur Flour site for cake recipes. I never actually made him a cake, since he just took in the leftover car bomb cupcakes to work and they all gorged themselves on those, but, I found a cake I really wanted to make: the MYSTERY MOCHA CAKE! Mostly its the mocha in the title--anything with coffee and chocolate put together is a win, for me. It looked pretty straightforward, so I tried it last night.

The recipe says to bake it for 40 minutes, which I did, and it did in fact bounce back when poked, but, it was still really goopy on the inside. Since there are no eggs in the cake, thats ok. Its molten. And DELICIOUS. There is this crunchy coating on top, and goopy insides, and some chocolate cakeness too. Oh god. Amazing. I would have taken more pictures, except. well. There wasn't much to take pictures of, once we got into it. King Arthur says this this is a "low calorie" cake--I think thats relative. I mean, if you eat the whole thing, thats not so low calorie. Although low is a relative term, right?

Here is the recipe from King Arthur Flour's site, but I've reprinted it for your lazy viewing pleasure. Seriously, make this. It is so good. You will not regret it. But its not fancy or pretty-looking, so don't make it for some special occasion. Or do.

Mystery Mocha Cake
3/4C granulated sugar (I used brown sugar, due to my current lack of white sugar)
1C flour (I used 1/2C white flour, 1/2C whole wheat)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4C cocoa
3/4C skim milk
2 tsp vanilla

Sauce
1C double-strong coffee (I don't have a coffee maker, so I just used instant coffee. And decaf. Thats like sacrilege to some people...sorry. tasted good anyway!)
1/4C cocoa
1/2C white sugar
1/2C brown sugar (I used all brown sugar)

For the cake, preheat the oven to 350. Mix together the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the skim milk and vanilla, stir it around until it makes a cake batter. Go ahead and taste, since there aren't any eggs.

Spread the cake batter into an 8x8" pan that has been lightly greased. Sprinkle a cup of sugar over the top of the batter. It is going to look like a LOT of sugar. Like an inch thick. Thats ok. Thats a good thing. Don't use less sugar.

Mix together the coffee and cocoa. Pour it over the top of the cake batter + sugar. Its going to look like a LOT of sauce. In fact, the whole top of the cake is going to be liquid. Thats ok. Just put it in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes, and take it out when it bounces back a little when you press it.

You want it still pretty goopy inside, because that goopy coffee-chocolate (ok, mocha) sauce is the best part. Unless the crunchy sugar top is the best part. The whole thing is pretty good. Especially when topped with vanilla ice cream, when its still hot from the oven. Ohhhh chocolatey heaven!


Here you can see the chocolatey-goopy-goodness. A zoom-in to the bite-size piece that is missing from the whole cake...