Ricotta Gnucky**

Joe and Lauren come over most weeks to watch Boardwalk Empire.  (Is anyone else out there watching this show?  Do you feel that, more than other HBO shows, it is needlessly gratuitous?  What's with all the bouncing breasts?  And blood spattering everywhere?  Also: why isn't Omar slash Chalky in EVERY SCENE?)

Anyways, Joe and Lauren are new parents, and they bring their baby, Gwen, who is Bean's favorite person in the world.  Including me and Matt.  But I can't take much offense, because to be fair, Gwen is way, way cuter than either of us.

In any case, when they came this weekend I made this New York Times recipe for ricotta gnocchi.  The article touts it as "light" but be forewarned: it pretty much consists entirely of cheese, flour, and butter.

Which is probably why I liked it so much.

You start by mixing a container of whole milk ricotta with flour, salt, pepper, two eggs, and a cup of freshly grated parmesano reggiano.  Then you drop rounded spoonfuls into a pot of boiling water six at a time, fishing them out after about a minute, when they rise to float on the surface of the water. 

And then, you throw them in the "sauce" which you have made in a saucepan by frying sage leaves in butter.  And you let them get all warm and golden and buttery and sagey.  

When you've cooked and tossed them all in the butter-sage mixture, I'd recommend squirting a slice of lemon in to add a little citrus lightness.  I didn't do this the first night, but the next day eating leftovers, it made a huge difference to balance out the heaviness of the cheese and butter.

Aaaaand they were phenomenal.  A special occasion treat, for sure, to those of us STILL working on the last ten pounds.  But phenomenal:

We served them with jalapeño bratwurst (from Greg's farm last summer) and some juicy honeycrisp apple slices, figuring that you really can't go wrong with that pork/sage/apple combination.

PHENOMENAL.

** Credit goes to Lauren for the awesome titular pun.

Project: Freezing Burritos

You may have noticed that posting is down on this blog, and if I had to blame anything, it would be how HOLY BUCKETS INCREDIBLY BUSY 3L year has turned out to be.  I've been eating right on a day to day basis, but it's been mostly repeat recipes, peanut butter sandwiches, or black beans and cheese.  There hasn't been anything particularly photo-worthy.

So last weekend, in an effort to combine interesting cooking with time efficiency, I took an old recommendation from Lauren and spent a couple hours putting together burritos to freeze and eat throughout the week.

I started with a simple tortilla recipe, combining white and whole wheat flour with a little canola oil and water, rolling out the dough and cooking them one by one.

Once the tortillas were cooked, I chopped and fried an onion and some garlic, then mixed in a can of black beans and a can of refried beans, and seasoned with salt, cayenne, chili, garlic powder, and cumin until it was spicy and flavorful.  A couple ounces of shredded sharp cheddar added tang and richness.

I ladled a half cup of the bean mix into the center of each tortilla, folding the top and bottom in and rolling to close them.  Then I wrapped each in foil and threw them in the freezer, to pull out and microwave throughout the week.

These have been such a lifesaver the past week: the tortilla is rich and thick, the inside spicy, tangy, and rich ... and they heat up in just three minutes.  Thanks for the idea, Lauren!

(Recipe here)

Dipping Foods

Approximately one month ago today (I know, I know), Matt and Mom and Mara and I made French dip sandwiches on toasted baguettes with oven-melted provolone:

The meat was left over from a beef brisket we'd had the night before, and was salty and garlicky, tearing off in juicy shreds; in true French dip fashion, we sopped up the jus, letting it soak into the bread until the crisp from the oven became this dense, melt in your mouth experience.

We paired it with not one, not two, but three styles of zucchini: battered and fried blossoms, battered and fried slices, and a small handful of oven grilled for those watching their waistlines.

The zucchini blossoms had come in Mom's CSA bag, inspiring the fry-fest; the tender petals and stems are a perfect match to the crispy batter shell.  I threw together the batter: an egg, milk, salt, and enough flour to get the desired sticky consistency.

We dipped the blossoms and slices in the batter, then dipped them again into a pan of hot canola oil for a few minutes, turning occasionally until they became a dark golden.

We pulled them out and patted dry with a paper towel, then served them with a simple bruschetta Mara had created: two tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a few sprigs of garden-fresh basil, a dash of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.  

She was very proud.

She had every right to be; it was delicious. 

Simple Shrimp Scampi

Wow, I am so behind.  The following meal occurred on or about Thursday, July 8th ... which makes this post belated, to say the least.

Anyways... SHRIMP!

Shrimp, as a concept, kind of gross me out.  Like, if someone showed me a pool of live shrimp, with all their little legs wiggling around and their little white muscley bodies bouncing off one another, and asked me to eat one, I would say HECK. TO THE. NO.

This is where processing helps us; it divorces the animal from the eating, so that we don't think about how what is now lying so temptingly on our plate was once a creature struggling to get from this day to the next.  This is why I have such respect for those who farm and slaughter their own animals (see forthcoming post re: Matt killing chickens with Katie and Greg).

Shrimp are different, though.  I wouldn't not want to eat a shrimp because of a deep moral dilemma about the value of its life and the selfishness of my killing it.  Live shrimp are just creepy.

But I digress.

We melted a couple tablespoons of butter in a frying pan, then popped a pound of shrimp in with a couple cloves of crushed garlic, letting the shrimpies cook for just one minute before flipping them over.  One minute on the other side, and we took the shrimp out into a bowl to wait for the juice. (This way, they didn't get all rubbery and overcooked while the sauce heated.)

We deglazed the pan with the juice of a lemon and a couple cups dry white wine (we used a crisp New Zealand sauvignon blanc, the rest of which we drank with the meal).  Once the sauce was simmering again, we added back in the shrimp, tossed in a couple handfuls of fresh parsley, and immediately poured it all over a big pot of fresh linguine.

We served it with a hearty bakery bread -- great for mopping up the runny, lemony sauce that pooled in the bottom of our bowls -- and some slow-roasted vegetables Matt made in the oven.  The result was a summer feast:

I loved this sauce, because scampis are delicious (especially in summer) but often too rich for me.  Because we used such little butter, relying on the parsley, lemon, and wine for taste, this one was light and refreshing.

This meal happened too long ago to remember, but I think it's a safe bet that I licked that bowl clean.

Olive OIl Poached Lemon Fish

One of the greatest joys of food blogging is discovering other food bloggers in the food blogosphere, each busily cooking and arranging and photographing and then rearranging and photographing again and rearranging perhaps one more time until our significant other is looking at us and clearly thinking IT IS ALL GETTING COLD CAN WE PLEASE JUST EAT IT ALREADY.  


Anyways.


One of the numerous food bloggers I follow is Adrienne at Hungry Bruno, from whom I boosted the following delicious olive-oil poached fish with lemon and capers:

It's outrageously simple:  thinly slice two lemons and use half the slices to cover the bottom of a glass baking dish.

Layer fresh filets of any white fish that looks good at the fish counter (we used cod) and sprinkle with capers, fresh parsley, salt and pepper.  (We didn't have any fresh parsley at the time, so we used a little dried instead, but this is not a substitute I would recommend, in a perfect world.)

Layer the other half of the lemons on top, then pour in enough olive oil to cover the fish.


Stick it in a 250 degree oven and allow it to cook ever so slowly, the fish poaching in the oil rather than broiling or baking.  Leave them in for an hour or a little longer, until the fish is flaky.


Serve with your veggie of choice, and try to restrain yourself from being a creepy lemon paparazzo who keeps everyone else from their meal.

Good Brown Bread

A quick, no-rise loaf of hearty brown bread, from 1990 Gourmet Magazine recipe:

I like yeastless breads, because I lack the patience and foresight required for baking risen bread.  I feel like I always want fresh-baked bread at about 4:37 in the afternoon, when it's absolutely too late to start something that needs kneading and hours to rise.  And if I happen to think of my craving the next morning, when there WOULD be time for all that, I simply can't be bothered.

And then I go to the bakery instead and walk out with about four different breads, only one of which I actually wanted.

And a croissant.

So yeastless breads are a good lifestyle choice for me.

This one has molasses and brown sugar, raisins and wheat germ, and a hearty dose of buttermilk to add moisture.  Could it please combine a few more of my favorite things?  Like cheese?  Maybe we could get some cheese in there?  Or chocolate?  OR PEANUT BUTTER?

Mara and I cut slices when it was still hot from the oven; the little pat of butter we put on each slice melted immediately, making that wonderful bright/salty/buttery marriage with the dark/sugary/heavy bread.

Good Brown Bread
1.5 cups wheat germ
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp. salt
1.5 tsp. baking soda
.25 cup packed (dark) brown sugar
2 cups buttermilk
.5 cup dark molasses
.5 cup raisins

Combine wheat germ, wheat flour, salt, baking soda, and brown sugar in a big bowl.  Combine the buttermilk and molasses, then add to dry ingredients.  Stir in the raisins last, and bake in a lightly greased loaf pan at 350 for one hour.

Mustard Salmon with Bruschetta Melts

Sorryyyyy again for the long delay in posting.  But I have a huge back-up of delicious, home-cooked meals to share with you, so I hope to make it up to you with an orgy of mouthwatering photographs.

Such as:

and...

This was salmon rubbed with mustard, a recipe courtesy of our friend Elizabeth.  We slathered the filets in a mixture of melted butter, two types of mustard, and brown sugar, then baked for twenty minutes, broiling for an extra ten.  The broil gave the brown sugar a crunch, making a wonderful sort of mustardy-sweet crust on the tender fish flesh.

We ate them with simple oven-melted bruschetta slices.  Just slices of fresh French baguette, each topped with a slice of tomato, a leaf of basil (fresh picked from the garden, of course), and a chunk of mozzarella from the cheese counter, then set under the broiler for ten minutes:

Pull them out when the cheese begins to blister and the bread begins to brown, and OH SWEET HEAVEN that's my favorite part of summertime.

We also boiled some sweet corn (wait, maybe THAT'S my favorite part of summertime) and voila:

Elizabeth's Mustard Salmon
1/2 stick butter, melted
3 TBS country dijon mustard
2 TBS regular dijon mustard
3 TBS brown sugar
1 lb salmon

Mix butter, mustards, and brown sugar.  Slather onto fish filets.  Bake at 375 for twenty minutes, then broil an additional ten minutes.

Extra topping can be kept in the refrigerator for next time, and is also (apparently) delicious on pork or chicken.

Risen Buckwheat Cakes

My family loves brunch.  When at least two of us get together on a Saturday or Sunday, you can pretty much guarantee that something will be whipped together, fried in butter, slathered with maple syrup or jam, and eaten with bottomless cups of coffee.

This can present a problem for the size of my thighs.

Solution: risen buckwheat cakes!

We fry them on the griddle like pancakes, but they're made with yeast as well as baking soda, so we mix them up the evening before and let the batter rise overnight.

The molasses gives a hint of sweetness to balance the nutty buckwheat.

Because the buckwheat flour is so hearty, they're a heart-healthier option than our other favorite recipes; I think Jenny once calculated the Weight Watchers points on these, and got ten pancakes for one point.  NOT. BAD.

Last weekend, we had these with heaping bowls of blueberries, stacks of free range/organically raised chicken sausages, and of course, the requisite bottomless cups of coffee.

The recipe was passed down to my mom from my grandfather, possibly passed on to him from his mother, which means that A) it's golden for my whole foods diet and B) some of the directions in the recipe are a little quaint...

Risen Buckwheat Cakes:


Ingredients:
Water
1 packet yeast
1 TBS cornmeal
1 tsp salt
Approximately 2-3 cups buckwheat flour
Approximately 1 cup white flour
3 TBS dark molasses
1/2 tsp baking soda
Approximately 1/2 cup milk


The night before:
Heat one pint water until lukewarm (not hot).  And half cake yeast (we translate this as one dry packet) and stir until dissolved.  Stir in one tablespoon cornmeal and one teaspoon salt.  Then sift in enough buckwheat flour, mixing a little white flour as well, to make a medium-thick batter.  Let rise overnight in a fairly warm place.

The day of:
Add three tablespoons dark molasses and half a teaspoon baking soda.  Thin batter with milk.  Fry in batches on hot griddle.

Sweet Summertime

I'm Homaha for the summer, on break from law school (ONBREAKFROMLAW SCHOOL!!!ZOMGG) and starting work for the public defender in just a couple weeks.  Matt and I are heading to California next week for Kim and David's wedding, and I'll launch into work immediately upon my return.  In the meantime, though, I'm taking a few days to run, play, read, write, generally decompress, and -- of course -- eat.

My mom and seven year old niece grow an amazing garden every year, which means there are always fresh vegetables and herbs for our meals, hand-picked only moments before cooking: as fresh and as local as you can possibly get.  (Photos coming soon).  Summer makes slow food so much easier.  

This morning, for instance, Mara and I set out to make parfaits with organic yogurt, summer-sweet berries, and the granola mom recently baked up:

(The granola is just old fashioned oats, shredded unsweetened coconut, and chopped pecans coated in a little canola oil and honey, baked until golden and then tossed with tart dried cherries.)

We layered the ingredients.  As one does with a parfait.

But when it came time to photograph, she grabbed some mint she'd picked from the garden last night for a garnish, and suddenly, your average fruit and yogurt parfait became a SUMMERTIME WORK OF ART:

You can't tell me that's not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.  Go on.  Try it.

Liar.


In any case, we heartily enjoyed them:

And when they were gone, we had to do something with the extra few mint leaves and strawberries...  Luckily for us, there was lemonade in the fridge.

I'm rapidly revising my list of favorite months of the year.  February?  You got nothing on June.