Mushroom Reminders

• You want to you buy organic mushrooms. Why? Because to wash a mushroom is to ruin it. Mushrooms are sponges, they will taste like whatever you cook them with. So if you run them under water to wash them, they will absorb some water and be rather rubbery and tasteless. If you must wash them, take a dry paper towel and dust off the dirt.
• When browning mushrooms,  do not use salted butter or add any salt until after they have browned.  For more tips click here.

One Pan. Vegetarian. Healthy. Affordable.

Not to worry, we aren’t going vegan or anything. Ben and I have just been contemplating the amount of meat we consume. Questions along the lines of, yes, God gave us permission to eat steak, but still some cow has to die and shouldn’t we show respect by not eating beef every night of the week? That’s another tangent, but my point was, that we are cutting back on meat. We have been finding other places to gain protein through food (I’m not a big fan of vitamin supplements). Lots of legumes and cheeses. I’ve learned to soak the beans in salt water to add flavor and to slow cook lentils for 12 hours to make very filling and delicious soups. But sometimes life gets in the way of meal prep and I’m stranded at 6 o’clock with no dinner on the table and not an idea of what to do about it. Yesterday was one such night. I’ve been reading a lot of Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food, in which she provides a list of food to keep on hand for such emergencies. It is because of that inspiration that I did have potatoes, olive oil, thyme and frozen asparagus on hand. I prefer red or little golden potatoes, which have so much flavor and are easy to quarter into bite sized pieces, but you could just as easily use russets. I washed and quartered my reds and spread them into a glass cake pan. I laid full sprigs of thyme (stripping them takes so much time and I didn’t have it!) on top, and poured a generous amount of olive oil on top of the whole she-bang. Fresh ground sea salt and pepper topped it, of course. I baked it at 375′ turning the potatoes occasionally, which allows for the cooking thyme leafs to fall off and mix in. Once the potatoes were soft, I turned up the heat to 425′ and placed some frozen asparagus spears on top of the potatoes. I kept it in there about 10 minutes until the asparagus had heated through. Ben and I like to dip our roast potatoes in prepared horseradish for an extra kick.

Approximate cost for serving 3 (1/2)

• red potatoes  =  $1.75
• fresh thyme = $2.00
• 1/8 c. olive oil = $1.00
• s & p = $0.25
• frozen asparagus = $1.00
  ____________________
  Total meal cost: $6.00
  Cost per serving: $2.00

Optional prepared horseradish will make each serving about 15 to 20 cents more.

Spinach & Humiliated Cranberries Pizza

Ingredients:

• Dough:
  Flour
  Salt
  Unsalted butter
  Sugar

• Toppings:
  Approx 1 tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  Some coarse kosher or sea salt
  4-5 oz fresh spinach
  1/4 cup sliced red onion
  4oz of crumbled feta cheese (or more if desired)
  4oz of grated mozzarella cheese
  1/4 cup of cranberry raisins

This one is really easy, especially if you have a breadmaker. Just use a basic dough recipe that works for you.  Water, flour, salt, butter, sugar & yeast. Run through the dough cycle. After it’s finished, go ahead and knead it down again. If you’re me, that means starting the dough cycle again for a couple minutes and then unplugging the machine.  Roll it out into your desired pizza shape.  I have a handy dandy pizza stone someone gave me when I got married, so I just sprinkle a little cornmeal on that and transfer the dough to rise in a warm oven for 30-40 minutes.  Then a pour a little oil on it, and sprinkle some salt (the amount depends on how sweet I made the dough). Cover that generously with fresh spinach. Then some sliced red onions, feta, mozzarella, and sprinkle your cranberries on top of that. I like to put all the toppings on in that order because the mozzarella will melt and hold it all together nicely so you don’t loose any goodness when you cut and serve it.  Cook in your oven 350′ until dough is slightly browned (usually about 30 minutes for mine). Enjoy!

In other news, my basil sprouted!!!!
I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, though.

Orzo Stuffed Peppers

Here is another winner from Giada. The only things I did differently was to use squash instead of zucchini and added extra cheese into the stuffing.

Ingredients

1 (28-ounce) can Italian tomatoes
2 zucchini, grated
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano, plus more for sprinkling
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups orzo (rice-shaped pasta)
6 sweet bell peppers (red or yellow)

Panini with Chocolate and Brie

A new favorite in our house. Ophelia was impressed that I was actually serving chocolate for dinner. I pulled this one out of my Giada’s  cookbook. (Which is, by the way, one of my new top cookbooks. It features beautiful pictures and good recipes. I also made tomato soup out of it, and while I did end up putting in about 5x the garlic, it was still really yummy!) But if you use the Food Network, it is also up on their site.  For this recipe I used my mini George Foreman since I didn’t have an actual panini press lying around. I’m sure you could just fry it up on a frying pan or on an outdoor grill. Be sure to scrape off any cheese or chocolate that seeps out before grilling another snadwhich. It would be a travesty to ruin these babies with burnt drippings. For ours, I didn’t pre-brown the bread. I just loaded it up and grilled the whole thing at once to save time, it worked fine. Also, cut up the sandwiches however you want. For dinner, Ben and I each had one, but for lunches, snacks or hors d’oeuvers, halves or quarters would be more appropriate.

Ingredients

12 slices sourdough bread
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
12 ounces Brie cheese, thinly sliced
1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves

fresh nutmeg

With the cooler weather rolling in and all the baking that is waiting to be done at this wonderful time of the year, I thought I’d let you all in on one of my favorite spices: fresh nutmeg. Now you really have to note the word “fresh” there, because it makes all the difference. This is one of those times where fresh ingredients really take it up a notch.

For grating the nutmeg, I just use my citrus zester, but you could use any micro type grater. Some places will even sell the whole nutmeg in a little jar with a mini grater which can be handy as well. For locals, you can buy whole nutmeg in bulk at the Co-op, which is where I got mine last year. I use it on drinks (think egg nog), in cookies, and in yummy yummy gratins that seem so prevalent this time of year.

Christmas ideas…

I was looking around epicurious.com last night and came across this deal. I’ve never subscribed to either of these magazines before, but at that price I think it’s going to go on my Christmas list and I’ll give them a try!

fresh spinach pasta

I tried my hand at fresh pasta the other night and loved the results. I followed this recipe, but I had to make some adjustments since I don’t have a pasta machine. Here’s how it worked out for me.

Fresh Spinach Pasta

1 lb. fresh spinach
2 eggs
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1. Rinse the spinach well, drain briefly and place the damp spinach in a large fry pan. Cover and cook over medium heat until the spinach wilts, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain in a sieve under cold running water. When cool, squeeze thoroughly to dry.

2. Place the spinach in a food processor with 1 of the eggs. Process to a smooth puree, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides of the work bowl.

3. Place the 2 cups of the flour into the bowl of your KitchenAid and make a large well in the center. Put the spinach mixture and the other egg (lightly beaten) into the well. Using a fork (the bowl will not be on the stand mixer at this point), begin gradually incorporating some of the flour from the sides. Continue working in more flour until the dough is no longer wet.

4. Once the dough is no longer wet, put the bowl in the stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and begin kneading in as much of the remaining flour as is needed until the dough is no longer sticky and completely separates from the sides of the bowl (just like when you’re kneading bread dough). Sufficient kneading will make the dough elastic enough to not break apart when you roll it out to 1/8″ thick.

5. Separate the dough into two balls and set one aside, covered with a towel to keep moist. Dust a large work surface with flour and begin rolling out the ball of dough. I read somewhere that the Great Italian Pasta Makers say that you should work up a sweat while rolling out pasta dough. I rolled mine out once to about 24″x12″ and then folded it into thirds one way and then folded that in half and rolled it out again to roughly the same size. When it’s all rolled out, it should be roughly the thickness of a dime.

6. At this point, you can cut it into whatever shapes you want. I did simple fettuccine and cut it using a pizza cutter (it’s a little faster than using a knife), but you can do ravioli or whatever you want. It’s at this point that a pasta machine would be really useful so that you didn’t have to spend an hour cutting out your angel hair pasta. Roll out and cut up the second ball of dough now.

7. After this point, I’m not really sure what you could do with the pasta if you’re not going to use it right away (anyone know?). I cooked up half of my batch and put the other half into a plastic bag and cooked it up the next day. Since it’s fresh, it only takes 3 or 4 minutes to cook up, so keep an eye on it.

Doesn’t that just look tasty? Tomorrow I’ll share a recipe for Fettuccine Quatro Formaggi to use this pasta in.

Roses

We had Ben & Abra and their kidlet over for dinner last week. This was my first time entertaining since I’d repainted, and I was a little nervous that they might walk in and go all bug-eyed at the pure yellow-ness of it all. So I bought these roses to put on the table to kind of tie in the colors and make the walls look a little tamer (the roses are only a hair yellower than the walls, so it worked well).

Fortunately, even without the roses, they liked the new paint job and so now I’m not quite so nervous about our next guests going into color shock.

In other news, it’s a lovely cool dreary day here and so I’m taking advantage of the natural air conditioning and firing up my oven to make Coconut-Pineapple Loaf Cake this afternoon. If it passes muster, I’ll post some pictures to go along with the recipe.

biscuit trick

Here’s a little trick that I learned a while back. The next time that you’re rolling out your biscuits, roll them out rather thick and twice as long as wide. Brush the rolled out dough with a generous helping of melted butter and then fold in half (to form a square) and then finish rolling out and cut as usual. When they come out of the oven they’ll split perfectly on their own, thanks to that lovely layer of butter in the middle. You are then, of course, free to add the normal amount of butter and jam that you usually would. One can never have too much butter on one’s biscuits.