I STILL HAVE A BLOG!

Hi everyone! It hasn't quite been a month since my last updated. I feel like I've been neglecting you all! I haven't, really; I've just been so busy with school this semester. Taking three writing classes is definitely do-able, but it's a whole lot of work! It's a damn good thing I don't have a job or anything. I'm right in the middle of midterms right now--last week I had to write an essay and two short stories, which doesn't seem like that much, but I put a full workday into one of those short stories and it's only a draft. (Everything is only a draft right now.) And much to my surprise, I'm totally rocking my Statistics class. Hooray!

Anyway, that's my life for now, and I have a recipe for you! I made this so long ago. I have so many things piled up on my camera that I stopped taking pictures of new things because they just weren't getting done with school. And I haven't had much time to cook, though I roasted a chicken for the first time ever a few weeks ago. This was made for my mom's birthday in August. It is yet another of Patricia's recipes over at Technicolor Kitchen--I'll admit, I have a total blog crush on her.

After my (arguable) success with the Strawberry Balsamic panna cotta, I was excited to try something new, but I generally have difficulty with the idea of making desserts just because. Unless it's something really easy--which it turns out this is! But unless I have all the ingredients on hand and it's only going to take a little while (like those peanut butter cookies*), chances are, I won't randomly make it. I'll wait for a special occasion of some sort, and given how much my mom loves Nutella, this seemed the perfect thing to do for her birthday.

RECIPE: Nutella Panna Cotta

not adapted at all from Technicolor Kitchen

Ingredients:

-1 tbsp powdered gelatin (I would imagine you could safely use less if you're not unmolding them)

-1 cup of Nutella (it's a lot of nutella)

-1/4 tsp salt

-1 1/2 cups heavy cream

-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

-1 cup whole milk

Instructions:

1. Whisk together the gelatin and 3 tbsp cold water in a medium-sized bowl. (Don't do it in something tiny--you'll be adding stuff to it.)

2. Put the nutella and salt in a different medium-sized bowl.

3. Pour the heavy cream and vanilla into a medium-sized saucepan, put it over medium heat, and bring to a simmer, stirring frequently.

4. Pour about a third of the vanilla and cream mixture into the bowl with the gelatin and whisk it together, then add that third back into the saucepan.

5. Pour about a third of the vanilla, cream and gelatin mixture into the bowl with the nutella and whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the vanilla-cream-gelatin mixture and whisk until smooth again, then add the milk and do it again.

6. Divide this mixture between ramekins or glasses or cups. Patricia says 8. I say 6-8. I think six would be a large amount, but it wouldn't be absurd. Instead of doing this, I saw that she put hers in teacups and thought it was adorable and I should do the same. Unless you have really small teacups, don't do this. You'll probably get sick. Divide it evenly between 6-8 different containers.

7. Refrigerate until set, then eat!

The end of Step 5: This recipe goes pretty quickly and I was cooking alone so I wasn't able to get pictures of all the earlier steps, but honestly, they would have been really boring. This is panna cotta in liquid form! I was amazed at how easily the nutella melted into everything else.

Right before eating. These teacups are deceptively large. The adorable pinkness and print always makes me think they're dainty little teacups, but no. Don't fill a teacup this size with panna cotta unless you really really want to binge on panna cotta. Of course, I'm stubborn, so once I started eating it I had to finish. Luckily I didn't feel all that disgusting afterward, but I'll definitely put it in smaller containers next time.

So...is it okay to talk about medical things on here? I hope so. I mean, it is MY blog. One reason I've been cooking less recently is because I have an ulcer (my doctor called it "peptic ulcer disease" but that sounds really bad, so I'm just saying an ulcer). I haven't been forbidden from any foods except soda, coffee, aspirin and advil (yes, aspirin and advil are foods) because different things irritate different people, so the best thing to do is apparently to eat stuff and then don't eat it again if it hurts you. However, this thing is friggen' painful. So if there's any chance that what I'm about to eat might cause a lot of pain, I'm avoiding it. Unfortunately, pretty much every food ever is potentially bad for an ulcer. If you look at that list, you may notice "garlic" is on it. And on the non-foods list of things you're not allowed to have with an ulcer is "stress." (Oh! Hi, midterms!) Unfortunately, a lack of garlic causes a lot of stress for me. Because of this and other similar problems, I've been ignoring the list and mostly just avoiding things that sound painful, but most of my "you should make this recipe" folder sounds sort of painful, so I'm restricted.

Does anyone have recommendations about what to eat with an ulcer that still has flavor?

Anyway, sorry for the medical stuff, and I hope you make the panna cotta! I would not be afraid to eat this right now, and it's super delicious. How can anything with nutella not be?

Taste&Create: Chicken Creole

It's time for this month's Taste&Create! This month, I was paired with Becky of Baking and Cooking, A Tale of Two Loves. I went through her archives and found that her very first recipe, "Sunday Chicken Creole," is exactly the type of thing I would do if I knew anything about 1-pot cooking, which I don't. But looking over the recipe, I was pretty convinced that I'd love it: peppers, tomatoes, onions and garlic. I mean, that's how I cook. So I'm pretty sure this is at the last minute (or perhaps even late--which I feel bad about, but my classes are INSANE this semester; I think I'll be not doing Taste and Create for the next two months).

So basically, this is an extremely easy meal. And people around me are talking too much for me to type (and I'm in a huge hurry, as usual), so here's a recipe and some pictures!

RECIPE: Chicken Creole

adapted very slightly from Baking and Cooking, A Tale of Two Loves

Ingredients:

-4 large chicken breasts

-3 tbsp olive oil

-2 cups chopped red onion

-2 small green peppers, chopped

-4 sticks celery, chopped

-5 cloves garlic

-2 tbsp chili powder

-2 tbsp paprika

-1/2 tbsp smoked paprika

-2 28-oz cans whole tomatoes in puree (Cento's San Marzano tomatoes are in puree; I found that they generally didn't say what the tomatoes were in unless you looked closely at the ingredients. If you can't find them in puree, drain the liquid and use a can of tomato sauce.)

-1/2 cup white wine

Instructions:

1. Chop the peppers, onions and celery. Put them and the minced garlic in a large stockpot with the olive oil and saute for three minutes.

2. Add the paprika, smoked paprika and chili powder and cook for another three minutes.

3. Put in the wine, tomatos, black pepper and chicken. Simmer for 35 minutes until the chicken is cooked thoroughly.

4. Serve over rice.

Step 2!

Also step 2! This smelled so good. I'm just discovering a love for paprika--it's so exciting!

Step 3: It's almost done! Yay!

You can't even see the rice. I should have made more, but this was delicious! I was happy with how it came out.

I tend to chop everything up and mix it together. It worked pretty well for this. The chicken was super tender and all the flavors had fully permeated everything. It was delicious!

Hah! Simple. Dinner that takes less than an hour, and it's so easy for a weeknight when you don't have a lot of time. Which I don't. And even the blog post didn't take much time! YAY! Mike and I are off to see Cabaret now, so go check out Becky's blog--she's got some great recipes on there! (She's got bacon cupcakes in there somewhere, too!)

I hope everyone has some exciting plans for the weekend! I'll be doing statistics homework and writing papers, so I'm glad I'm at least starting it out on a good note!

Taste&Create: 4 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

Hi everyone! Look at me, blogging on a Tuesday like I'm supposed to. I was super excited to be paired with Dragon Musings for this month's Taste&Create. She has 3 kids, I believe, and does a lot of cooking with them that results in some pretty awesome things, like stegosaurus shaped calzones (which I can't find right now but I love dinosaur-shaped food so they must be delicious). She also posts a new flash game every Friday, which frequently consumes my weekends if I'm not careful, and menu plans on Monday which cause me to admire her ability to plan out what she's going to eat. I definitely can't do that. So check out her blog, but first look at how AWESOME these cookies are!

She emailed me to ask about my peanut butter and chocolate chip banana cookies, since she lives in Australia and they don't have peanut butter chips there. I, sadly, didn't know how to go about replacing things with peanut butter to get both tastes in there, but I asked her to let me know if she figures it out because I've been looking for a good peanut butter cookie recipe. She responded pointing out that she'd just posted a peanut butter cookie recipe the day before. Apparently I'd been too distracted to check my RSS feed, because I definitely would have noticed that, but I checked and was super excited to see that she had, and that they looked like the peanut butter cookies I remember eating when I was a kid. So here's the recipe! It's the most amazingly easy thing I've ever made. If you screw up every food that you ever cook, you can make these and they will be perfect. Just trust me.

RECIPE: 4-ingredient peanut butter cookies

Ingredients

-1 cup peanut butter (the kind with lots of ingredients, like Skippy or Jif, not the kind that is just peanuts or peanuts and salt)

-1 cup sugar

-1 tsp cinnamon

-1 egg

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them until they reach an even consistency.

3. Roll them into balls and place them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Squash crisscrossed fork marks in them (as pictured below).

4. Bake for 8 minutes.

Step 2, part 1: put everything in the bowl.

Step 2, part 2: Mix everything until it looks like this.

Step 3: roll into the balls so they look like the balls here, and then squash with a fork so they look like the fork-squashed ones here.

Right out of the oven. Isn't that the most gorgeous peanut butter cookie you've ever seen?

I was SO impressed with this recipe. Not only is it incredibly simple, but it tastes exactly like a peanut butter cookie should. The consistency is very cookie-like, which I didn't expect given the lack of flour--Mike just ate one and asked me how they seem so cookie-like without any flour. So, other bonus: gluten free! (Assuming the peanut butter is gluten free. I'm not sure. I couldn't find anything on the label saying it was, but I couldn't find anything saying it wasn't, either. And I'm sure if it's not there are brands out there that are.) The whole thing took probably 20 minutes, and most of that was fork-squashing because I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

The only problem I had with this recipe was actually the cinnamon. I feel blasphemous even saying that--anyone who knows me knows that I put cinnamon in EVERYTHING and a teaspoon of cinnamon in a pie recipe translates to two tablespoons, but it was sort of weird with the peanut butter flavor. I think, though, that this is my fault--it was only weird for two cookies, so either I got used to it quickly OR I should have mixed the cinnamon and sugar together first so that it was evenly integrated. Whoops. I should know to do things like that by now. I'm pretty sure that the cookies that tasted too strongly of cinnamon just had a higher concentration of cinnamon in them than the others and it would be fixed if I followed normal baking protocol instead of getting excited to take a picture that clearly showed the four ingredients. Oh well.

So go make these! You probably have all the ingredients. I got 17 cookies, so it doesn't even make so many that you'll have to give them away or get sick from eating only cookies for the next few days. And don't forget to stop by Dragon Musings and check out her flash games...er...recipes and such.

PGG's Panzanella

It seems like forever ago that I told you all to buy the Poor Girl Gourmet cookbook. Have you bought it yet? Because if you have, then this post is probably completely unnecessary, but if you HAVEN'T then I'm sharing my new favorite recipe with you. (I'm not quite sure if it's my absolute favorite, but it's definitely up there.)

Panzanella is a bread salad based in the idea of "cucina povera"--poor cooking. This also includes things like Minestrone, so I'm pretty sure Italians are just geniuses when it comes to cooking with not much in the way of funds. This is the recipe that I spent about an hour staring at after I bought Poor Girl Gourmet, trying to figure out exactly how it worked (bread salad? really?) and what "ricotta salata" was (and whether my grocery store would carry it).

There are lots of reasons to make Panzanella for dinner. Have some day-old bread? Excellent. Don't feel like actually cooking? Great! Leftover chicken? Wonderful. Tomato/basil/mint plants going crazy? Perfect. In the mood for a light dinner? Well, here you go! Seriously. Any excuse is good enough and this is the easiest thing in the world to make and toss together. If you don't have day old bread lying around, there's probably a rack of day-old baked goods at your grocery store. There isn't one at mine, of course, but that didn't stop me--I just sliced it up fairly thick and toasted it first. (I mean, toasting is sort of the same thing as making bread go slightly stale really quickly. Sorry if I just ruined toast for you.)

I only have one picture here because it's way too easy to require multiple pictures, though if you really want pictures of bread cut into cubes then I'm sure I can get some to you next time I make this.

Hmm. It doesn't look nearly as completely gorgeous as it tastes, though it looks better in the cookbook. This is also before I figured out the right setting on my camera. Anyway, if this picture doesn't look mouthwatering to you, ignore it and try the recipe.

RECIPE: Panzanella

Adapted very slightly from the Poor Girl Gourmet cookbook

Ingredients:

-1/2 lb day-old bread (the cookbook recommends ciabatta, which my grocery store doesn't sell--I went with a completely different country and used a multigrain boule, and I'm sticking with it)

-3 medium tomatoes (large on the vine tomatoes)

-1 medium shallot

-1/4 pound feta cheese crumbles (book recommends ricotta salata; again, my grocery store doesn't carry it, but I love the feta)

-1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

-1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped

-2 leftover thin-sliced chicken breasts (or equivalent amount of cooked chicken), shredded (this is completely my addition and therefore you can leave it out for a vegetarian version)

-1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

-1/4 cup white wine vinegar

Instructions:

1. Chop the bread and tomatoes into cubes. Put them in a large bowl. Mince the shallot and add that, along with the feta, basil, mint, and chicken. Let sit for about 20 minutes to half an hour.

2. Mix together the oil and vinegar in a small bowl. Pour it over the bread salad. Stir. Eat.\

It seriously doesn't get any easier than that, and I can't get over how good this is. I added the chicken to make it a more filling meal than just a salad, but it's absolutely not necessary. And I can't help thinking how easy it would be to adapt--tomatoes are out of season now? People are eating squashes? I can add some squash, okay. Cool. The best part? You're serving four people for under $10. If you buy things on sale, it's a lot under $10.

Of course I'm going to tell you again to go buy that cookbook, but also don't forget to check out her blog. It is just as lovable!

And speaking of blog love, you should also go check out Pixie's most recent post. She loved my blog so much that it inspired her to start documenting her food! I'm so flattered! And I must say her stuffed chicken breasts look delicious; she seems to have the "presentation" thing down much better than I do, too.

Buy This Cookbook: Poor Girl Gourmet

Hey everyone! I've been trying recently to actually have a regular update schedule. It wasn't a conscious effort at first, just an idea to post twice a week, and I looked back and realized that, the past few weeks, I'd posted on Tuesday and Friday. So before I posted on Friday, I said, "cool--I'm gonna stick to that schedule." Of course it only lasts one post. OF COURSE. Yesterday, I woke up with a combination sinus-allergy/TMJ headache which even Excedrin, Claratin D and a nose rinse thing couldn't help, an awful stomachache every time I ate anything, and 24-hour narcolepsy. The post, needless to say, didn't happen. So it's happening today, and another one will happen on Friday, and I'll try to stick to a schedule. (Once the semester starts up, though, I can't promise anything.)

This post does not include a recipe. This post exists because I feel a moral obligation to tell you when I find something awesome food-related (like my garlic zoom). I suppose I should mention--nobody's giving me free stuff or paying me to review things. I just want the world to know about faster and more fun ways to mince garlic, and now, much cheaper ways to eat gourmet food at home.

I met up with a friend in Harvard Square a while ago, just to hang out and walk around and talk about stuff. It ended up being one of those July days where it feels like the air is starting to boil, so we stayed indoors, hopping from a bookstore to a tea shop to a store with weird stuff to a bar where the World Cup was on TV. On one of these hops, we walked by a bookstore (you can't not walk by a bookstore at least 7 times in Harvard Square). I looked in the window and saw this book on display and needed to have it. Because...well, because I'm a college kid, and Mike's a med student, and my mom's paying two tuitions, so while occasionally it's nice to go all-out and prepare something super expensive, it's not a good habit to be in. So I go into the store. I buy the cookbook. I bring it home and read it through and daydream about the recipes.

Photo Credit: Amy's email signature

I had no idea that Poor Girl Gourmet was a blog, but given my inclination toward cooking from blogs, I was happy to find that it was. You should all go read her blog, if you don't already. But you still need to buy the cookbook. Why? Well, the recipes in the book aren't on the blog, so you can't get them on her site. And sometimes it's nice to have everything printed on a nice pretty piece of paper in front of you--it's way easier to flip through a cookbook for dinner inspiration than it is to read a million blog posts.

Each recipe is categorized according to course (main dish, salad, dessert, etc) and expense. I feel it's important to mention that these recipes all serve 4-6 people (or more, sometimes). They're divided into "Under $5," "Under $10," "Under $15," and at the end there's a section for "splurges." There's also a little section on wine, which I imagine would be great if I planned on entertaining someone who knows anything about wine (since I don't).

Now, the best part about this cookbook (at least, I think) is that reading it and using it, you begin to get a sense of how it works--how cooking gourmet for almost no money works. And, after a little while, you adapt the recipes, keeping them inexpensive. And a little while after that, you start to develop inexpensive-cooking habits even when you're not basing it off a recipe you found in the book at all. It changes how you look at making dinner and makes you realize that you don't need to spend $30 on groceries to make something everyone will love, and you stop doing that. And then you have more money than you've had in months and a few new favorite recipes to whip up on a hot summer day.

I already have food spills on half the pages. And you'll save the money on food that you spent on the book within a month, at least.

Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare-Bones Budget, by Amy McCoy. Click here to buy the cookbook, and click here to visit her blog (and DO BOTH!)

Over time, I'll be sharing with you two or three recipes from this cookbook (with Amy's permission) to give you an idea of how awesome it is.

Taste&Create: Spare Ribs

You may remember that, last month, I participated in a food-blogging "event" called Taste&Create and really enjoyed searching for recipes from my partner blog, My Year on the Grill. Because I had so much fun, I decided to do Taste&Create again this month. And APPARENTLY because I said I wanted to cook something else from My Year on the Grill, they paired me up with him again! Hah! (Actually, I think they do this randomly. I was happy, though, to have an excuse to cook something else he posted.) And...do you remember how last month I said I was having a hard time deciding between two recipes, but then found an ingredient on major sale and that decided for me? Well, yeah, that sorta happened again. So, deja vu...except it's completely different this time. This time I made spare ribs. And...it's picture heavy, and there's not much of a recipe really (more like instructions), so this post will be mostly pictures that hopefully sort of tell you how to make spare ribs. And you should, because they're delicious and actually quite easy. And if you want BETTER instructions, check out Dave's post. He actually knows what he's doing.

Spare ribs were on sale for $1.99/lb. There was no way I was not going for that. This was a pretty small rack, around 10 dollars for the whole thing--there were some that were almost 30!

The first step, once you get the package open (which was actually sort of difficult), is to remove the membrane. I had no idea that ribs even had membranes, nevermind that I would have to remove one, but hey--I did. But, do you see that big slice in the middle of the rack? I didn't do that. They came with that. And it made the membrane-removal WAY more difficult than it had to be. Anyway, this step is super important (the membrane is tough and tastes gross and prevents your rubs from getting in), so do it right.

If you read Dave's post, you'll notice how he talks about "St Louis Style" and "Removing the Flap Meat." This picture here documents how I failed at that--my knife just wouldn't cut through the bones that were attached to the breast bone. And...

One random rib was really really long. I couldn't cut that off, either. I guess these weren't St Louis style at all, but I did get a good amount of flap meat cut off. (I don't know what the remedy for randomly long bones is except maybe a knife that cuts through bones.)

This was the other weird thing, except that I'm not actually sure it's weird at all. Some of the meat was just sorta hanging there and once I removed the membrane had big holes in it. Regardless of whether it's supposed to be there, it was pretty tasty, so I'd say leave this on. And, at this point, start removing all the unnecessary-looking pieces of fat. I ended up with a little bigger than a golf ball sized ball of fat. I took a picture but it grossed me out too much to post it, and I'd apologize, but it was gross.

Time for rubs! Rubs are important. You have a wet rub (the honey mustard) and a dry rub (the barbecue seasoning). You could use whatever you want, depending on what flavor you want your ribs to be--Dave explains more about different rubs and flavors in his post. For now, a spicy honey mustard and barbecue seasoning worked great, so I highly recommend them.

Apply your wet rub! I used about half the jar of honey mustard to cover these. And remember, it's a rub, not a sauce, so pretend you're putting sunscreen on or something and actually rub it in. Obviously it doesn't all rub in (and hey, I could be completely wrong about this rubbing thing) but I think that gets the flavor into the meat a little bit more. And yes, wet rub goes first.

Now apply your dry rub! This is pretty much the same principle. Sprinkle generously, rub until covered completely. Again, I used half the container here. I used the same two rubs on the flap meat that I'd cut off, too--if you're adventurous, you could try with different things, but I was more concerned with "oh no it's later than I realized get this in the oven" than "have some cool leftovers." (These were pretty cool anyway.)

Now it's time to bake them! Perhaps you're confused--"bake ribs? why would I do that?" Well, it's either bake them or smoke them, and I don't have a smoker. So I baked them. You can bake them for a fairly short time at a high temperature, but a low temperature for a long time will give you super tender, fall-off-the-bone ribs like you're dreaming of. Dave's advice was 225 degrees for about 6 hours, and don't open the oven door no matter how tempted you are. My oven is kind of a jerk and doesn't really do anything below 250 (it has the setting, but I think it turns off) so they were done after about 5 hours. A meat thermometer should read 170 degrees, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a good place to put a standard meat thermometer in these. When they finish, take them out, baste them with barbecue sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory and Brown Sugar) and bake them for another 20 or so minutes. They'll be less messy to eat and the barbecue sauce will be much nicer after some time in the oven. (OH! The other thing is to coil them up and skewer them and stand them up in a pie plate for better air flow while baking. It's a good idea!)

Mine sort of broke when uncoiled, but after hours of waiting, I felt victorious to take them out of the oven and prepare to serve them. This rack served 3 people with the flap meat as leftovers, and we were all very full.

Four ribs for me! These were the meatiest ribs I'd ever eaten--whenever I've gotten them at a restaurant, I've been fully capable of eating a whole rack (maybe only a half rack? I don't remember) but this was PLENTY of food. Dave says that if you're not used to leftovers from ribs, you're probably eating baby back ribs and not spare ribs. This is possible. Dave also says to cut between each rib before serving to be nice to the people who are eating, but when I tried to do that the meat sort of dissolved. Plus, part of the whole ribs experience is to cut them apart and wrestle with them, right?

So, there is my spare rib adventure! Remember that they take a long time to cook, and give yourself about an hour to prepare them before putting them in the oven (it probably won't take that long, but I'm slow), so if you want to eat at 7, you want to start these around noon or 1. If you eat at 5, you'll have to start around 10. Give yourself lots of time.

And, really, if you want to make them, take a look at Dave's post, because I'm pretty sure he's an expert on this and I'm just figuring out how it works. I'll be looking for an excuse to make them again (such as "oh hey they're on sale again!") and maybe play with some different rubs and perhaps get the St Louis Style right next time.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Asparagus Risotto

A while ago, a couple of the blogs that I follow posted recipes for asparagus risotto. I've never made a risotto before--well, not a REAL risotto--and I absolutely love asparagus, so of course I absolutely had to make it. I went searching for recipes all over the place. Though I didn't really know how to make a risotto, I felt very strongly that it should include more than a tablespoon of cheese and/or cream, yet that seems to be how most recipes write it. I finally found a satisfactory-looking recipe over on Epicurious, modified it a teensy bit, and got cooking.

This was my first experience that caused me to realize how much I've come to love cooking from blogs and sites like Recipezaar (now Food.com), where people who aren't professionals make the dish and write it up. The instructions are clear to those of us who didn't go to culinary school, and if we have a question, we can easily ask. Things like "turn the burner from medium to low" don't usually get left out. While I'll probably make this again sometime, I'll make it from the recipe I'm typing up here, not the one I followed the first time.

RECIPE: Asparagus Risotto

Ingredients:

-1 1/2 lbs asparagus

-4 cups chicken broth (one box)

-1 tbsp butter

-1 large red onion

-2 cups arborio rice

-1/2 cup white wine

-2 tsp chopped fresh sage

-1 cup freshly grated romano cheese

-1/4 cup fat-free half and half

-water (about 2 cups)

Instructions:

1. Wash and trim the asparagus. Cut off the tips and set them aside. Cut the rest of the asparagus into inch-long pieces.

2. Combine about 2/3 of the asparagus with one cup chicken broth and one cup water in a blender. Puree and set aside for later.

3. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the onion over medium heat until tender. Add the rice and lower the heat to medium-low. Once the pan has cooled down a little, add the wine and stir until absorbed. (This should take about 4 minutes. If it takes less time than that, lower your heat more. If it takes longer, turn the heat up a little. The original recipe doesn't say anything about changing the heat so my first half cup of wine just cooked off immediately and I ended up using a whole cup and it was perfectly delicious, so if it cooks off too fast and doesn't actually absorb, don't worry about adding a little more.)

4. Add 1/2 cup broth and the chopped sage, again stirring until absorbed. Continue to add broth but the half cup, allowing each one to be absorbed before adding the next half cup. After about 15 minutes, add the asparagus pieces that you didn't puree, and continue adding half cups of broth. Once you've run out of broth, add two half cups of water in the same manner.

5. Increase the heat (back to medium) and add the asparagus puree. Stir often until absorbed.

6. Add the cheese and cream, stir thoroughly, and serve! Garnish with fresh sage if you would like.

Step 2. I took about 12 pictures of this and this was the least blurry one. Sometimes I think my camera hates me.

The rest of Step 2. It looks like those green smoothies that I buy at the store, but I wouldn't drink this. Just set it aside for now.

The rest of the asparagus, after 2/3 of the stalks were pureed. The only reason to separate the tips is to not puree them, so if you want to toss them in the bowl together now, that's okay. You probably don't even need a separate bowl to begin with.

Step 4. I loved how the red onion had a nice pink color that contrasted with the sage (and, later, asparagus) but most of the color disappeared after cooking for so long. Oh, well--it tasted delicious.

Still step 4--this is right after I added the asparagus. I'm glad I used the hugest pan I had, this made a TON of food!

Step 5: Asparagus/water/chicken broth puree added, and I'm now very worried that my pan will overflow if I stir too vigorously. Epicurious seems to think this takes 3 minutes to absorb. Like I said earlier, I like to have some direction about the heat. Mine did well after taking a while to absorb, so I guess it's okay.

Everything is added! It's ready! WOOOOO! Notice how the onions don't look nearly as pink anymore? After some refrigeration they lost their color completely.

The 'eat' step. It was rich and thick with plenty of asparagus flavor but it didn't overpower the grilled chicken that we ate it with. It's very warm and perfect for a cooler evening.

So, there's my first risotto! I was pretty happy with it, and I had leftovers for quite a while, which was nice. One night my mom and I had the leftovers with poached eggs, thanks to Kevin over at Closet Cooking. (I forgot where I'd seen it when I decided to try it, but went and found his post afterward. He deserves credit for such a perfect combination!) My mom was skeptical; I was not--the runny yolk complemented the creamy risotto perfectly and made for a great light meal. (Not that the risotto itself doesn't make a delicious light meal, of course.)

Given the amount of risotto I had left over, unless you're serving at least 6 people, I would probably recommend cutting this recipe in half or freezing half of your leftovers--the last of mine went bad before I could eat it! I was very sad about this. Now, though, I have a bag of arborio rice and an idea of how to make risotto, so I'll be looking for more tasty recipes. I think it would be fun to make this with three colors of asparagus--green, white, and purple. It would be so pretty!

Okay, so I've voiced my opinions about where I like to cook from. How about you guys? I'm assuming that if you're reading this you're not averse to cooking from blogs, but do you have difficulty with cookbooks or "professional" recipe sites? I'm sort of nervous about using epicurious again; both recipes I've followed have been less than ideal in the way of instruction, and I'm not sure there's anything I'd want to make that couldn't be based on something in one of the blogs I read. What do you think?

Oh, and I've also started a new thing with the comments. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I've enabled commentluv, which means that if you have a blog and leave a comment it'll link back to your most recent post with a title. I think it will also let me reply to comments directly, but I'm not sure. Let me know how you like it!

Sage-Roasted Potatoes

So, a while ago I finally got around to getting those plants I wanted and potting them--I have four tomato plants that are growing amazingly fast, three basil plants (I know it's a lot, but I really REALLY want to make my own pesto from my own basil) and a sage plant. The thing is, I only bought the sage plant because my friend and I made some delicious chicken dish from Giada that involved sage, and we didn't have sage, so she went to buy sage, and a jar of dried sage cost TEN DOLLARS. So despite the fact that that was the first time I'd ever used sage in my life, the fact that it was $1.99 for my own sage plant or $10 for a jar of dried sage...well, I had to buy one, right? But then I had to find out what to do with it.

I turned to Google. I'll admit it--I'm a google fangirl. I use Gmail, Gtalk, Google Chrome, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google search, and googlegooglegooglegoogle.com (which doesn't seem to exist anymore, unfortunately). Oh, and Blogger. They're Google now too. I'd want one of those awesome phones that uses Google to browse the internet, but I'm super anti-internet-on-my-phone. I mean, I spend all my time in my house online--I need a break, so I won't give myself the opportunity on the phone. However, those of you who visit frequently may notice that I recently added a google search bar to my blog, so if my labels don't help, then you can search for things! Hooray! ANYWAY. The point here is that whenever I have absolutely no clue as to what to do with something, I turn to google, and it gives me something. This time I basically found "roast potatoes on top of fresh sage!" and that's it, but it was way more helpful than it sounds. So anyway, I made some delicious roasted potatoes off of a half-made-up recipe and I'm sharing it here. Hooray.

RECIPE: Sage-Roasted Potatoes

Warning: Amounts aren't really gonna work here.

Ingredients:

-A bag of small potatoes (we used purple; red and yellow would also work)

-A handful of fresh sage leaves

-Enough olive oil to pour a thick coating (about 1/8 in) on the back of a baking pan the size of a baking pan that will fit the amount of potatoes (cut in half) packed closely together

-A couple large cloves of garlic (3 or 4, more if they're smaller)

-Salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.

2. Wash the potatoes and cut them in half. If you have really small ones (I had some the size of cherries) poke a bunch of fork-holes into them; they'll make good filler between the larger potatoes.

3. Pour an eighth of an inch of olive oil into a brownie pan (or whatever other pan you would like to use). Lay the sage leaves over the olive oil so they almost completely cover it. Cover with potatoes, cut side down, filling as much of the pan as you can but keeping it to one layer.

4. Cut the garlic cloves in half or thirds (or leave whole if they're smaller) and place them on top of the potatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

5. Place the potatoes in the oven (I hope you heated it already) for 40-45 minutes.

6. Remove the potatoes from the oven, let them cool a for a few minutes and serve!

Brownie pan with oil and sage.

Filled with potatoes! And garlic!

All done! WOOO!

Okay, so in that last picture, can you see how the sage leaves are darkened and stuck to the bottom of the potatoes? It's kind of hard to see because we used the purple potatoes, but it's there. The sage (well, and the cut side of the potatoes) gets SUPER crispy in the oil, and the potatoes come out perfectly creamy on the inside with nice crispy outsides. The best part? The garlic. You can barely even see it in the picture (the bottom piece of asparagus points right above one piece)--it gets dark brown on the outside, nice and crispy, and, like the potatoes, amazingly creamy inside. I mean, I could have SPREAD this garlic on the potatoes if I'd wanted to, but instead I savored each piece on its own. So delicious.

I served these with a pork chop recipe that I found on an Italian blog that I started reading in order to (hopefully) not completely forget how to speak Italian before I go to Italy. Not that I have any real plans to go to Italy; I just want to some day. They're dredged in flour, then sautéed in oil, adding a sprinkle of sage and rosemary, and drizzling some balsamic vinegar into the pan right before they're finished. They were delicious, and I was super proud of myself for cooking from a recipe in Italian! (I mean, I had to look up pretty much every word because we didn't learn about cooking in the first two semesters of Italian, but hey, I can learn from here!)

Overall, a delicious meal--and these potatoes absolutely beat oven fries. I hope my sage grows a ton and I can make this a lot! Yum!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I'll be super busy, helping some of Mike's friends move and then celebrating Father's Day a week late (I might be able to sneak in another post, depending on how long these things take) and waking up ABSURDLY early to go out for breakfast tomorrow. (And somehow I have to make a pie or cake or something for my dad. Awesome.) Anyone else have a busy weekend coming up, or are you planning on relaxing and savoring some free time?

Ciao!

Sage Leaf

Taste&Create: Fried Chicken Point Pizza THINGS

Hi everyone!

This month, I decided to participate in Taste&Create, a food-blogger-community event that pairs you off with another food-blogger and you each have to cook something from each other's blog and blog about it. Sound fun? It is! Interested? Click on the Taste&Create logo to the right to go to the site and learn more. (Okay, wait, nevermind that doesn't work. It just takes you to the picture which you see here and clearly don't need to see again. Click here to go to the site.)

Anyway, I was paired with Dave from My Year on the Grill. At first I was excited because, as you know, I've been looking forward to grilling things. And then I saw that he had to abandon his grill to go live in the Caribbean (U.S. Virgin Islands, to be specific) and I became extremely jealous. Which doesn't really make sense. I hate the sun and I don't swim and I don't like beaches but the Caribbean is just gorgeous. Anyway, this meant that his most recent posts were not about grilling and I was too lazy to go back months and months to find something that was, especially when he had so many delicious-looking posts since he's been there. He even made my life easier (totally not intentionally) by having a recent post that was basically a list (with pictures) of everything that he'd done since he got there, so I looked through that to decide what looked good.

Well, it all looked good, and I was having quite a hard time making a decision--a few different things caught my eye, but they all had ingredients that I didn't have access to because we don't have the same foods around here as he does in the Caribbean. And, though not everyone does this, I wanted to stay fairly true to his recipe and not make something I didn't have the ingredients for. After all, the whole point is to taste something that, in theory, someone else made. (I guess we do this whenever we follow a recipe directly, but I adapt pretty much everything these days. I even ended up adapting this, albeit accidentally.)

Okay, so I was trying to decide whether I should make one recipe and use wine instead of whatever crazy flavor of rum he had used, or another one and just plain leave out the black sesame seeds, when Mike and I went to my grocery store and found a half off bin that had two jars of black sesame seeds in it. My grocery store doesn't normally carry black sesame seeds. Not that I've ever looked for them specifically, but I have spent quite a lot of time staring at the spice shelves wondering why sage is so expensive or what I would do with allspice, and I tend to enjoy oddly-colored variations of normal foods so I would have noticed and remembered black sesame seeds. The point here is that the fates made my decision for me: I would make Dave's Sesame Chicken Points.

He tells an interesting story with these points. He made up the recipe based on something he'd had years ago at a Thai restaurant (ooh, is this asian fusion?), and a couple weeks later got an email from a cook at a Thai restaurant giving him a more accurate recipe, which he then followed to make shrimp points. The cook also mentioned that sales increased drastically when they started calling them "fried pizza," but I agree with Dave--points sounds better.

Anyway, I said above that I adapted the recipe--basically, I took his chicken points post and tried to add a few elements of the shrimp points post (specifically, more chicken and ginger). So! Here's the recipe, along with pictures, and you should all go check out Dave's blog because it's funny and has good recipes and he spends one day a week making all the bread and doughs he'll need for the rest of the week, and that's just cool. (I want to do that someday. When I have one day a week that I can dedicate to making breads. Right now I just try to make homemade pasta whenever I run out so I don't have to eat boxed pasta.) Oh, also? I need to give you two recipes. Because I used his pizza dough, too. (But I didn't take pictures of that because, I mean, it looked like pizza dough. Not really all that exciting.)

RECIPE: Quite Excellent Pizza Dough

Recipe (indirectly) from The Bread Baker's Apprentice

Ingredients:

-4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, chilled

-1 3/4 tsp salt

-1 tsp instant yeast

-1/4 cup olive oil

-1 3/4 cups cold water

Instructions:

1. Make sure you have cold water and flour. If you don't, flash-chill it in the freezer for about 20 minutes or in the refrigerator for a few hours.

2. Combine flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Stir thoroughly.

3. Add the olive oil and water in bits (about a quarter of each at a time). Stir until it becomes doughy and you need to knead it. (Dave kneaded his in a gallon ziploc bag, I did mine in a bowl with a quart ziploc bag over my hand because dough feels icky.) Once it forms a ball, continue kneading for about 10 minutes.

4. Flour a surface and put the ball of dough on it. Then flour the ball of dough. Then cut the ball of dough into six pieces. This will make individual pizzas; if you want larger pizzas, then cut it into fewer pieces.

5. Spray the inside of sandwich-sized ziploc bags with oil (hooray for Pam's extra virgin olive oil spray!) and put each small ball of dough into one bag. Refrigerate for at least six hours or overnight.

Woo! Pizza dough! I never made pizza dough before, and it was SO easy. It took about 15-20 minutes total, and from what I found googling pizza dough, this is just about the best you can make. I'll definitely keep some in the freezer for homemade pizza nights! Okay, onto the chicken points.

RECIPE: Sesame Chicken Points

Adapted a tiny bit from My Year on the Grill which I already linked you to

Ingredients:

-two balls of the pizza dough I just told you how to make

-about 1 cup of pulled-apart leftover rotisserie chicken (oh yeah, one of the reasons I liked this was because it meant that I'd have an excuse to get a rotisserie chicken and make soup with it later. I don't care that it's summer, I like chicken soup.)

-3 cloves garlic, sliced thickly (for once I didn't increase the garlic, and I was quite happy with how it came out--then again, my garlic cloves were abnormally huge)

-1 large shallot or tiny onion, also sliced thickly

-about 2 tbsp olive oil

-about 1 tsp powdered ginger

-2-3 green onions, chopped fairly thin

-about 1 tsp black sesame seeds

-about 1 tsp normal sesame seeds

-salt, to taste

-a bunch of oil for the pan (they cook in about 1/8 in. of oil)

Instructions:

1. Combine chicken, garlic, onion/shallot, olive oil and ginger in a food processor. Make the blades spin around until you have a thick chickeny paste. If it seems too dry, drizzle a little more oil in until you reach a good consistency. (I started with 1tbsp but ended up adding at least one more to make it not just minced chicken-garlic-onion-with-ginger.)

2. Flour a work surface (cutting board) and stretch each ball of pizza dough into a roughly 6-inch round. Coat each round with chicken paste. (Use all the chicken paste!)

3. Sprinkle the green onions over the chickeny discs and press them into the paste. Sprinkle half of each sesame seed onto them (about 1/4 tsp on each).

4. In a large skillet, heat about 1/8 inch of oil on high heat (Mike refers to this setting as "LOTS OF FIRE!" The caps are important here.)

5. While the oil is heating, cut the discs into sixths.

6. Once the oil is heated, reduce the heat to medium/medium-high (or "less fire" as Mike is insisting I should tell you, but that doesn't help those of you with electric stoves and it also doesn't tell you how much less fire, so it's not very helpful. But if you have fire, there should be less than there was.)

7. Place each triangle chicken-side down in the oil, trying not to splash the oil all over your skirt. (I did each disc separately, letting one cook while I put the other one together. This might have been a bad idea because the first one sorta burnt, but not really, and that's probably because I didn't reduce the heat. LESS FIRE.) Allow to cook for a few minutes until they reach a nice golden-brownish color.

8. Flip the points over and sprinkle with the remaining sesame seeds (again, a quarter teaspoon per circle, so...1/24th of a teaspoon per point. But you don't have to be that obsessive about it. (If you are, I might recommend making an appointment with a psychologist, who can probably give you some excellent anti-anxiety pills that will quell that OCD.) (Oh, wait, Mike says they'd taze you. Nevermind.) Then sprinkle lightly with salt.

9. Remove the points from the pan and place on a plate. Eat. Enjoy.

So, um...I think I could take any recipe and make it look really complicated with my instructions. Seriously--if you go back through my older posts and look at the recipe I adapted them from, it's usually a few sentences, but I manage to write a million steps. I'm not sure how. The point here is that these are SO EASY to make, and they're delicious.

Step 1: Chicken, garlic, onions, olive oil and powdered ginger in the food processor, ready to go.

Also step 1: A satisfactory paste-like consistency.

Step 5: Wow, I skipped a bunch of steps in the photo-taking. Luckily they were not complicated steps. This is what they'll look like before you put them in the hot oil. (They might have fewer green onions, if you use fewer green onions. Or something like that. They'll look roughly similar to this.)

Step 7: frying chicken-side down.

Step 8: chicken side up, more sesame, a little bit of salt, almost done!

The last step is always "eat."

So these were DELICIOUS, and as I said above, sooooo easy and quick. I was a bit worried about the chicken-paste, but it was great and I'd do it again. The best part is that these seem so easily adaptable--different kinds of meat, different spices, different toppings, completely different dish! I can't wait to play around with it (and see if it works in a pan brushed with oil instead of with a lot of oil). I was happy to be able to get to know another food blogger a little bit and can't wait for next month's Taste&Create. And if you see more posts with recipes originating from My Year on the Grill, don't be surprised!