Pizza with caramelized onions, beet stems and ricotta

Coming back from Europe, there wasn't much in the house by way of food, aside from some veggies mouldering in the fridge and half a quart of whole milk.  Ed has been in Vermont a lot lately, and eating up there, so I guess it wasn't entirely his fault that the food situation was so dire.  Anyway, he went off to the midatlantic somewhere this weekend to test radios for the upcoming North American Orienteering Championships (he installs these radio gizmos at a certain control, and that gives information to the announcer about who is in what place at an intermediate control.  But, getting these things set up so that there is a signal back to the stadium can be a bit delicate, and takes pre-planning), leaving me on my own for dinner.  Since I made eggs last night, I figured I probably shouldn't do that again, but I wasn't feeling all that inspired staring at a bundle of beet stems whose leaves had long since been used.  They were sorta shriveled at the edges, but at least they were pink and crunchy in the middle.  I also was feeling a wave of laziness, that totally kept me from going to the store.  Then it hit me - put it on a pizza!  

But pizza needs cheese.  No matter, I have that leftover whole milk.  Within minutes, the dough was kneaded, and I had some milk heating to turn into ricotta.  Meanwhile, I caramelized an onion and sweated the salvageable parts of the beet stems.  

Once the milk was close to boiling, I added the vinegar, watched it curdle, and dumped it into a cheesecloth over a colander.  That drained while I finished the onions and beets, and stretched the pizza dough.  I made it with whole wheat, so it tasted too dry, despite smearing the top with some butternut squash seed oil we've had living in our pantry for a while.  Ah, well.  Onions and beets onto the pizza, I squeezed the ricotta to hurry its draining, crumbled it with my fingers on top of the pizza, and cooked it for 15min or so at 450.  Voila! pizza!  

Coulda used some goopier cheese... at least it filled my growling belly.

Simple sangria

Because some days, all you want for dinner is fruit and chilled wine.  Ed was experimenting with mint juleps, and it turns out I don't like those.  So, I made myself a glass of sangria, so as to not feel left out.  Usually, we'll make a pitcher, and I like to mix in bubbly water and something a little harder, but today, I just wanted fruity wine.  It was a cheap bottle of something or other, a pinot grigio I think, from Marty's 2 for 10 shelf.  It worked perfectly for a refreshing drink of melon balls, mint leaves, and frozen strawberries and raspberries!  The fruit was quite delicious after, too, all wine-soaked and soggy.  Yum.

Tomato-sardine stack salad

After a week of blissfully cool temperatures, the dial got twisted recently, and life got hot.  Way too warm for me to want to do anything other than lie in the shade and eat watermelon.  Eventually, on days like that, hunger gets to me, and I realize I have to do something about feeding myself.  Thankfully, there was some food available that didn't require cooking, and I had a tomato-avocado-sardine salad.  It was good, and even got a passable Ed-rating, when I made the exact same thing for dinner.

Tomato-sardine stack salad

1 large tomato, sliced into rounds
1 can sardines in oil, drained and cut in half lengthwise
1/2 lemon
1/2 avocado, sliced
~1/2C bread crumbs
salt to taste

I admit, I did cook the bread crumbs, but that was a different day.  You could use them raw, or toss with some olive oil and dried herbs and pan fry for a few minutes to give them more flavor.  Anyway, the salad:

Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on the plate.  Put down a tomato.  Top with some sardine pieces, then squeeze a healthy dose of lemon juice on top.  Sprinkle on some salt.  Put down a couple pieces of avocado.  Sprinkle on more bread crumbs.  Repeat these layers.  Eat!  With a knife and fork, to minimize mess.

Creamed spinach... or not

I wanted creamed spinach.  However, I was lacking every single one of the required ingredients.  I could get close, though, if I got creative.  Ed was quite skeptical, but in the end, the curried coconut creamed swiss chard was quite delicious, and even got a stamp of approval in the Ed-ratings.  In fact, it was so good that I'll probably make it again some day, although maybe with spinach, or beet greens, instead of swiss chard.  Basically, I replaced the cream with coconut milk, since we did have a can of that open in the fridge, and then added spices and things, using swiss chard instead of spinach.  The end result was basically a Thai-flavored red curry with only one veggie in it, but it was sure tasty.

I admit, not the most appetizing of photos.  Actually, that looks gross.  Be prepared.

Curried coconut creamed swiss chard
Made enough for 2
1 bunch swiss chard, stems removed and chopped very finely
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1" cube of fresh ginger, diced
olive oil
1/2 can coconut milk, well-mixed
1 tbs Thai red curry powder
salt to taste

Put some oil in the pan, heat it up, then cook the onion for 15 minutes or so, until it's starting to caramelize.  Add the garlic and ginger and cook until just toasted, another 5 minutes.  Add the chard, and the coconut milk, and the curry powder and salt.  Taste. adjust. taste. adjust. taste.

Cook another 10-15 minutes until the chard leaves are soft and silky, and infused with curry and coconut flavor.  Serve!

Find something else useful to do with the stems.  They're plenty edible.




We served this with the sauteed chard stems on top, and some meatballs and rice.  Pretty tasty lil' meal.

Pesto biscuits

I'm getting a bit back-logged here, I have oodles of new things that we cooked!  This is from last week, or is it the week before?  whenever it was that the temperatures were finally down in the 50s at night and only in the 70s during the day, so I actually was willing to turn on the oven.  We were severely short on anything bready or starchy, so to satisfy some imminent hunger cravings I made Alton Brown's pesto biscuits, from the I'm just here for more food cookbook.  They were pretty delicious, and quick to throw together.  And since I happen to have pesto in the freezer, it seemed like a good use for it!

I like to make drop biscuits, because then you don't have to knead them and cut them out and whatever, just makes it faster.  But, they aren't the prettiest things to look at.  I made some very minor tweaks to the recipe, using all butter instead of butter + lard (didn't have any lard), using half whole wheat flour, and like half the amount of buttermilk than called for, since I ran out halfway through measuring it.  Still worked out, and they were delicious!

Pesto dinner biscuits
Made 9

1/2C white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/8tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
2 tbs butter, frozen
1/2C buttermilk (if you run out, just add water until you have the right amount)
1/4C pesto

Preheat oven to 450F.  Grease a baking sheet.

Mix all the dry stuff together.  Use cheese grater to grate frozen butter into dry stuff.  Pinch with your fingertips for 30 seconds or so.  mix all the wet stuff together.  Add wet to dry, mix just to combine.  Plop spoonfuls of batter onto the baking sheet, in whatever size you feel like eating.

Bake for 15-20min, until golden brown and delicious.  Enjoy!

Moules frites

We had mussels the other day, and they were delicious.  We ate them with a modified version of french fries - I cut the potatoes into sticks, and pan fried them in bacon grease until they were crispy and brown on all sides.  This has got to be one of the most delicious ways to eat potatoes.  Ed tried making an aioli for dipping the fries, but I wasn't a huge fan of it.  Even the one made with beer (he tried three different kinds) wasn't all that great - I just don't like mayo.  The mussels, however, were awesome.  We cooked them with a whole bunch of delicious stuff, and the broth was awesome.



The mussels started with a piece or two of bacon, chopped up, and with the fat rendered out.  We used that to cook the potatoes.  Then we sweated an onion, toasted some garlic, and added a diced fresh tomato and a whole bunch of kale.  Into that went two pale ales, and some salt.  Once that was boiling, we added the mussels, put on the lid, and cooked for 5 minutes.  Pull from the heat and enjoy!  The broth was quite good when soaked up with toasty bread.



The "fries" were pretty easy, just cut up the potatoes and fry on all sides until they're crispy golden brown.  Salt as they come out of the pan.  For the three kinds of aioli, Ed did this in the food processor. I think it was just an egg yolk, and then he drizzled in olive oil while the processor was running, but I could be wrong.  He ended up putting it into three separate bowls to make a tarragon one, a spicy one (red pepper flakes and grains of paradise), and a beer-flavored one, which obviously got a lot runnier.

I gotta remember that mussels are a cheap and delicious way to feed myself protein!  yum.

Maple buttermilk pie

After the blackberry bars, I had extra egg yolks.  I don't like wasting food, so I needed to find something to do with them.  I also had some extra buttermilk, because Ali had left it here after making buttermilk strawberry cake (if she sends me a recipe for that, I'll put it up, because it was delicious), a few weekends ago.  So the buttermilk also had to get used up.  A google search for "what can I do with egg yolks and buttermilk" turned up this, and the decision was basically made for me.

Of course, with only two egg yolks, and one other egg, I had to cut the recipe in half.  I figured I could use my third egg yolk and just turn that white into a meringue, which was a successful endeavor.  But that meant that I wouldn't have enough filling for a full pie's worth of maple and buttermilk.  So, I made the pie into bars, with a shortbread crust.  This was a good decision.

I have no Ed-rating on these, since I know better than to try and feed him custardy things.  Maybe I should try it anyway, if only because these squares have been living in my fridge and I'm the only one I can blame for their disappearance.  The Alex-rating puts these squarely into the "make again" category, though I did think they were a little too sweet.  Tough not to have a maple pie be too sweet, I think, though maybe I'll forego the brown sugar next time.   I didn't have any lemon zest, but the original recipe called for some of that - I think that would have helped with the sweetness.


Doesn't this look like melted coffee ice cream?  That alone made me want to like these bars.

Maple buttermilk squares

Made 1 5x8" pan's worth

Crust:
1 stick of butter, more or less room temperature
1/4C sugar
1C flour
1/4tsp salt
1/2tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
1C buttermilk, shaken
1/3C maple syrup (C or B would be best, as that's most mapley-flavored)
1 tbs brown sugar
3 egg yolks
2 tbs flour
1/2tsp vanilla
1/4tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350F.  Grease and flour a 5x8" pan.

Make the crust first.  Cream butter with sugar, add vanilla, then add in salt and flour.  Press into pan.  Dock with a fork generously.  Bake for 15-20min, until barely golden brown.

Turn oven down to 325F.

For the filling, whisk the yolks with the brown sugar.  Add everything else, whisk to combine; no lumps.  Pour into pan on top of hot crust, and bake for 30-50min.  Check after 30min, if it's still jiggly, give it another 10, check again, bake another 10min, etc.  Cool completely before slicing, or you'll get less-clean-looking slices, sort of like mine.  Store in the fridge, and enjoy!