Ummmm sorry for the lapse of time, I honestly haven’t been cooking a lot lately. But here I am! And I discovered the most delightful one biter app ever!!
*Thin French baguette sliced into 1in pieces.
*Gorgonzola cheese
*Figs (halved)
*Chopped thyme
*Black Pepper
*Honey
Assemble and sprinkle. Bake under the broiler for a minute, (until the cheese begins to ooze) then drizzle honey over top. YUM!!
http://www.tarteletteblog.com/2012/04/recipe-gluten-free-fig-gorgonzola-honey.html
Top of the evening to you all! Sorry for the lapse in time! More to come soon!! Happy green beer day!!
Alrighty, I haven’t had a lot of time this week to post anything, let alone cook anything but I wanted to share with you all one of my favorite Salmon recipe!! It’s soo easy and simple and most importantly, YUMMY!
I dub it Teriyaki Salmon:
1…2…3…6 -6-8oz filets of Salmon
~2TBSP Kikkoman’s Teriyaki GLAZE per filet (Usually in the International/Asian aisle)
~2TBSP Chef Paul’s Seafood Magic (check the spice section of your grocery store)
And that’s it!!
Pre-heat the oven to 400*F and cook for approx. 13-14 minutes. I personally like my salmon a little under cooked so I lean more towards the 13- 13 1/2 mark.
So the other night when I made this I paired it with some yummy sweet potato fries and some fresh baby spinach, lightly sautéed with 1 TBSP of butter, salt, pepper and a splash of white wine. Mmmmm so good.
Dinner made easy AND healthy!
Sweet baby Jesus, why is baking SO DIFFICULT?! Seriously. I’ve had more baking disasters than I can count, I don’t know why I try. Usually I don’t. However, every once in a blue moon the sugary baking bug bites me and I have an undying need to satisfy it. It’s a cruel bug. More times than not I screw up the first attempt; the second attempt is about 50/50. And by the third attempt, if I haven’t figured it out yet, the recipe becomes dead to me*(See HIMYM clip).
Anyways, speaking of Jesus… tomorrow is Purim!!!(I jest…about the Jesus part–maybe he celebrated Purim too! I dunno.) Annnnyways…. Purim has always been one of my favorite Holidays, and I always acquainted it as the Jewish Halloween. It has nothing to do with raising the dead, goulies and/or witches. However, every year growing up my synagogue had a festival where we dressed up and played games and caused a hullabaloo with noise makers and screamed BOO HAMAN! at the top of our lungs.
This is Haman... although I never pictured him as a Ginger
See that lil hat he’s wearing? That is a Hamantaschen. In Yiddish it means Haman’s Hat… and it is the shape used to make cookies on Purim.
Every Jewish kid worth their shekels has made at least one hamantaschen in their life. Usually at Sunday School, or perhaps at home with their Bubbi. I’m just going to throw this out there, I’m not a HUGE cookie person. Don’t get me wrong I do adore some cookies, but generally… not so much. These were always the ehhhh cookies for me growing up. I always found the dough dry and tasteless and I was never one for fillings. However a couple of years back I made a batch with my college roommate and they were amazing and rejuvenated my passion for the lil hat cookie.
Last year I found this amazing recipe in the New York Times, and it raved that this was the best G D Hamantaschen that you’ll ever eat. It involved making a poppy seed filling from scratch which almost ruined at the time a brand new coffee grinder. However it was worth it, and the filling was amazing. The dough was amazing. Everything was going perfectly to plan and I could hardly believe it! And when they came out of the oven. Smoosh. Then did not resemble the perfectly triangulated hat cookie that they were suppose to. They just looked like flat cookies with filling oozing all over the place. We still ate them, and they tasted great, but I felt disheartened none the less.
This year I decided to try once again. I found a different, less labor intensive recipe and picked out a tasty blackberry jam and fig jam for my fillings. And again everything was going perfectly to plan. The dough tasted great raw, which I believe is always a good sign– who cares about salmonella? And I popped in the fridge for 1-24 hours per the recipe, roughly 4 hours. I rolled out the dough and went a little crazy with the powdered sugar — I was having sticking issues. But everything was looking great and the dough held the pinch and didn’t fall apart. I dared not breathe for fear of them loosing their delicate shape!
Before. So perfect and cute.
I popped them in the oven for 8 minutes…I always do the exact middle of the recommended time allotted. I could smell the cookies and anxiously waited as the minutes ticked down. Upon the final second I opened the oven door and my heart sank. Flat AGAIN!
I truly don’t know what I am doing wrong. It could be one of a multitude of things honestly. Perhaps my dough was a wee bit too soft and I needed more flour. Or I may have used too much jam filling. Maybe I should’ve baked them on parchment paper instead of tinfoil. Alas, I do not know. Perhaps next year will be better. Third times the charm…or dead to me.
At least they tasted good.
Womp. Womp.
Ah Japan. One day I shall visit you and once and for all strike off Have a Sushi Food Coma Underneath a Cherry Blossom Tree from my bucket list. Until then I will continue my never-ending search for tasty sushi state-side.
Now I’ve had sushi pretty much everywhere. I’ve had it on the west coast, east coast, and I’ve had it up and down through the midwest. I’ve had it dirt cheap and I’ve had some pricy rolls. Honestly, the best sushi can not be simply judged by location or price, but by quality, care and freshness. With that being said today I grabbed a quick-lunch with a friend at my local favorite haunt, Kyoto. By no means is this place a 4 star Sushi Bar. It’s probably a step above a hole in the wall, and yet I love it. The waitstaff are super friendly and attentive (the point of annoying), the price is extremely fair, and the fish is always clean and fresh tasting.
If you’ve never tried sushi before, I highly suggest you give it a try. If it’s a “texture” thing, ask for rice paper instead of seaweed. However, I must say I hate when people use that excuse for not trying new foods. Texture is a part of life, and not everything feels like fluffy white bread and chocolate pudding. I think texture is half of what makes food so exciting. Trying new foods is an adventure in and of itself. Taste is only 50%, of course it should taste good! Anyways…I digress.
Over the years I’ve found myself becoming more and more prejudice when it comes to sushi. By definition sushi is vinegared rice topped with a thin slice of raw fish, more or less. So I don’t even both with the california rolls or any other cooked fish, I’m a go raw or go home kind of girl. I also have branched out more, trying new types, such as mikado and other roe rolls. Long story short I’ll try anything.
I’m sure this will be one of many posts to come about sushi, so I’ll keep it short and brief.
Jaa ne~
Lonely lil sushi
Chocolate Koalas
Oh my goodness they are delicious!! I have no idea what they are actually called since it’s all in Japanese, so I just call them chocolate Koalas. For that matter, I have no idea why they are Koalas, since I’m pretty sure they aren’t indigenous to Japan…. But neither are kangaroos in purple Justin Bieber street wear… but Dunkaroos did well over here back in the day. Whatever happened to that urban kangaroo?
Well anyways, those little chocolate filled koalas are like crack. So yummy! I like that they do different things like play the drums or look like a princess…and other random activities that are difficult to discern. I’m pretty sure you can find them in most grocery stores in the International/Asian food aisle, however I bought the economy box of them at Jungle Jim’s. Best. Decision. EVER.
OISHII!!!! =>.<=
Just a quick little post today, and sorry no pics! I wasn’t quick enough as it was a joint effort tonight between me and my Dad. So you want to make a killer tomato soup, from scratch? And I mean scratch…no canned tomatoes… however if you want to take a shortcut…. no one will stop you, least of all me.
Anyways here’s your shopping list:
~3 pounds of Romani Tomatoes
1 Large yellow onion
1 bulb of garlic
1 Quart of Chicken stock
Coarse salt & cracked black pepper
1/3 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
Dried Oregano and Basil
4 TBS Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 large baking sheets covered in foil
So here’s what you’ll do. And this was all pretty much eyeballin and guess work on my part.
Take your onion, peel it and cut it in half. Slice each half really thin and distribute between the baking sheets.
Next, wash and slice the tomatoes into thick slices and de-seed them. Put them in a large mixing bowl. Then go crazy with the seasoning. Shake a liberal amount of salt, pepper, oregano and basil. If you want to kick it up a notch add some red pepper flakes. Then add the EVOO and Balsamic. Toss.
Evenly distribute on top of the onions on both trays.
Now take your bulb of garlic and peel the paper away but you don’t need to completely peel each clove. Just distribute the cloves on top of the tomatoes.
Now pop the trays in the oven from anywhere between 2 to 6 hours… they honestly can go forever. I had them roasting at a nice toasty 325*F, but if you want to roast them for a very long time you can turn the heat down to about 275*F.
When you are ready to get soupy, remove the trays from the oven and pick the garlic out and peel them from the paper. Combine EVERYTHING into one big pot. Add the chicken stock. Now blend everything together, I like to use our handy dandy immersion stick. Warm it up on the stove and yay, soup!
*If you don’t have an immersion stick… I suggest you get one… they are awesome. But if you don’t you can batch everything in a blender.
This meal pairs extremely well with any kind of grilled cheesiness of any kind.
I really love breakfast and brunch foods, however, in my life their decadence comes but once in a blue moon. Usually I’m lucky if I can get in a quick piece of toast or some oatmeal/cereal concoction in the wee hours of the morning. But on lazy Sunday mornings there is no excuse to try to whip something special up! Thus I went to sleep last night with thoughts of frittata on my mind.
Having never attempted to make one before, yet assured of their devilish ease on many a Food Network show, I was convinced that the frittata had to be the lazy man’s omelet. I am NOTORIOUS for my lack of flipping skills, so omelets in general give me a headache. So I did a quick recipe search on Food Network‘s site and found an interesting recipe of Giada’s — Egg White Frittata with Lox and Arugula. Truthfully what sold me on this recipe first and foremost was the lox. Like any good Jewish girl, I was bought up on the smokey salmon. I have to say one of my top favorite breakfasts of all time is a warm fluffy onion bagel topped with cream cheese, lox, red onion, and a big fresh slice of tomato. Yummm. But I digress. Today is about Frittatas. The second less important part was that it was made with egg whites, so I felt a bit virtuous about the recipe all in all.
I pretty much had all the ingredients aside from the lox and arugula, so after a quick jaunt to the grocery store I was ready to cook.
I’d say the most challenging part of this recipe is the separation of the egg whites. It definitely takes a bit of practice. What I do is carefully crack the egg so it breaks evenly into two halves. Gently transfer the yolk back and forth in the egg caps while the whites fall into the bowl, then toss the yolks away. Watch here. You can also buy an Egg Separator. Entirely up to you, just do what ya gotta do to make sure you get none of the yolk in the bowl. After that it’s easy sailing.
Now since this recipe calls for a two-part cooking process, once on the stove top, and then you finish it in the oven, I came prepared this time. Having burned my hand on the skillet handle last time I tried cooking a skillet in the oven, I put gloves on BOTH hands this time, juuust to be on the safe side. Over cautious? Maybe… But no burns this time!
The recipe was truly delicious! It had all the high notes of an overly priced breakfast item on an upscale brunch menu, except I paid for a quarter of that price! The only tip I’d give you is to watch out on the salt. The lox is a pretty salty fish already so a little bit goes a long way!
Enjoy!
Right before I popped it in the oven
Bon Apetit! Paired really nicely with a grapefruit and some coffee!
This post goes out to all the coffee lovers out there.
This morning I decided to crack open my precious bag of Guatemala De Flur coffee beans that I purchased a few months back. Not really sure what prompted it, but I always think my coffee tastes 100x’s better when it is freshly ground and pressed, so that’s what I went for. I have my own grinder so why may you ask don’t I ground my beans fresh every morning? Because I’m lazy, and I work at Starbucks where I can pre-grind them before taking them home. But I always save a few bags of coffee whole-bean specifically for french press days.
Ah the French Press. It truly makes any coffee taste truest to itself, if you follow me. When you use a drip machine, paper filter or not, a lot of the oils are stripped from the coffee bean. With a french press none of that happens. Your coffee, no mater how it is processed or roasted will automatically taste more robust, in this barista’s opinion. So I recommend that any person who calls themselves a coffee addict immediately run out and try this. I know for a fact that you can order a press at Starbucks and they’ll prep one for you. Or just go and buy one, they’re roughly $20. Just make sure you SPECIFICALLY ask for your coffee to be ground for French Press. It must be EXTREMELY corse. If it is too fine then some of the grounds may seep into the coffee, and no one likes drinking random specks of grounds.
So the process is pretty simple. Measure out your coffee, roughly 2 TBS per 6 oz of water — just like you would for your coffee pot, and put in the bottom of the press. Then pour boiling water on top of the beans, I like to stir everything together just to make sure everything is incorporated. Put the top back on, but DO NOT PRESS. Set a timer and wait 4 minutes. Theeeen you press. Ta-da French Pressed coffee.
Coarseness!
And now we play the waiting game, for 4 minutes.
Annnd plunge. Enjoy!
Guess what today is?! Fat Tuesday! Mardi Gras!! Check back later today for something yummy! Hmmm what shall it be?
**EDIT**
Bonswa, back again! So what did I make for this super festive day? I stretched out my imaginary arms all the way down to N’Orleans for some good ol GUMBO! I actually used a recipe that I had scoured the internet for last year’s for Fat Tuesday. After sifting through recipe upon recipe for this Cajun delicacy, I came upon Uncle Dank’s Gumbo. (I think it was the carefully spelled description that caught my eye.) Mind you it will take every bit of that 3 hours and 45 minutes to make, and you might as well round that up to 4 hours if you aren’t a super fast chopper. Most of the time this recipe takes lies in the layering of ingredients and flavors, and trust me, it’s all worth it!
Now the only odd ingredient, ok maybe two… that this recipe calls for is the minor yet MAJOR herb Filé, pronounced Fee-LAY. It is dried ground sassafras leaves that has a truly unique flavor – earthy and a bit fruity, but is found in many Cajun and Creole cooking. It is incredibly hard to find in local grocery stores, at least in Cincinnati… Granted it is optional, but I think it adds a wow-factor to the Gumbo that makes it taste truly authentic. So look around in advance for it before you decide to make it.
The Second “weird” ingredient or not… is Okra. It is somewhat of a “new” vegetable to me in that I’ve really only used it a few times, pretty much just when making gumbo. If you’ve never eaten or cooked with Okra before don’t be alarmed when you cut into it and it oozes and slimes –that’s normal. The sliminess will dissolve into the gumbo as it cooks and help act as a thickening agent.
Holy Trinity + Okra
Crawdads, waaaay too much work for what they're worth
Everyone's gettin' happy in the pot
Soups on!
Oooh, but that’s not all! Having already had a King Cake over the weekend, I decided to try something new and different for a dessert. I’d been seeing these donuts all over the place for about a week or so-called Pączki. Assuming they were just some weird European donut, I didn’t give them much thought. However, when I stopped by my local bakery this afternoon and saw them, I had to ask. After butchering the pronunciation, I soon learned that these Polish delights are typically eaten on Fat Tuesday since they had to use up all the sugars and sweets not typically eaten during Lent, and that this practice has gone on since the middle ages or so. Ah this Jewish girl learned so much today.
Mmmmm
Today we travel not so much to a place, but a time. Have you ever eaten something or craved something so much that it transports you back to your childhood? Where you can just close your eyes and feel a flood of memories wash over you? That’s what Chicken Noodle Soup is for me. It’s not necessarily always a happy memory or a sad one, but when I feel a sore throat coming on or a bit sniffly, I instantly reach out for a hot bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup.
I grew up in a pretty traditional Jewish family. So suffice to say, I’d always known Chicken Noodle Soup to be a cure-all for anything that ails you. Perhaps you’ve heard the saying Jewish Penicillin? Seriously, a good home-made Chicken soup will kick your thereaflu/multivitamin’s ass! Airborne? Please.
So I’m actually “knock on wood,” healthy as can be, but when I heard one of my friends was feeling a bit under the weather today, I took it upon myself to finally take the reins and learn to make this soup. I called up my Step-Mother and asked her how she makes it, having watched her make the soup about a dozen and a half times over the past few years, I’d still never made it myself. She gave me the gist of the recipe, but told me that there really is no precise way to do it. So here’s what I did.
2lbs Carrots, chopped
1lb Parsnips, chopped
1 whole bulb of Garlic, peel each clove
1 head of Celery, chopped
2 Onions, quartered
~2lbs Chicken breasts, chopped
Liberal dash/pour of Chicken bouillon powder, or about 3 cubes.
2-3 Bay leaves
2-3 TBS of dried Parsley
2-3 TBS of dried Tarragon
1 bag of wide Egg Noodles
Salt and Pepper for taste
~6cups of water.
That’s pretty much it. Today will also be the first time I’m using a pressure cooker.
So glad that it did not come to this…
Just combine all the ingredients into the cooker, fill the water up to the max line, click the lid and place, and then sit back and let the pressure cooker do the rest! If you choose to make this recipe with a pressure cooker be sure to read the instructions on how to handle it!
When the soup is all done it is pretty much ready to go! Just add your cooked noodles. However, we recently have started to make our soups a bit thicker! To do that, remove all the carrots and chicken from the soup into a bowl. Then use either an immersion blender stick ,or batch the soup in a blender. After everything is pureed add the chicken, carrots, and noodles back into the soup! Mmmmm good stuff! Goodbye stuffy nose!
Veggies Galore
Under pressure, dum dum dum de dum dum
Yep, that's soup!
Thick and hearty!
travels thru food 