I feel the need… the need for feast!

Since I last checked in to let you know that I’m still alive, I have made good progress on the secret projects that I’ve been working on. Sorry, you’ll still have to wait until the end of the year to see them though!

What I can show you is the delicious food that Nick and I have been making. You’ll have to forgive my many instagram photos, but I was so eager to eat the yummy-smelling food that I didn’t want to waste time getting out my good camera. In some cases I thought ahead and got my camera out before cooking, but that mostly only happened when Nick reminded me.

I’m surprised that we haven’t been granted Mexican citizenship at this point due to how much Mexican cooking we’ve been doing. Sundays have become “Slow Cooker Sundays,” filling our house with amazing Mexican smells thanks to Rick Bayless’ Mexican Everyday. It has now overtaken The Joy of Cooking as the most-used cookbook in our house.

The great thing about Rick’s recipes is that they are delicious and healthy. They are focused on fresh produce and not mounds of melted cheese (don’t get me wrong: I do love love love cheese). His introduction discusses his journey through figuring out how to eat delicious foods and still be healthy. Basically he eventually realizes that, as humans, we have a fundamental need to feast and should allow ourselves to do so once a week without feeling guilty. The rest of the week you should watch portion size and eat fresh, low-fat and low-calorie meals, but once a week you should gather together with your nearest and dearest and enjoy an amazing meal together. The meal doesn’t necessarily have to be a large unhealthy meal, but the point is to enjoy the food that you’re eating and the company that you are keeping. Essentially, the meal is an event and not just something we’re doing so we can keep our bodies going. I can totally get on board with this. He also talks about regularly exercising. He practices yoga and includes this crazy picture of himself doing this crazy handstand—of course making it look super simple. The introduction legitimized my need to feast but also inspired me to get back into my regular exercising routine. It's really what's behind all of this cooking as of late.

Although, to be honest, some of the recipes have fallen a little flat and we’ve had to think of ways to kick them up a notch. Somehow they smell amazing but you don’t get all of that deliciousness in the taste. For instance, the Chicken a la Veracruzana is absolutely perfect when it has a dollop of the tomatillo salsa on top, but is just OK without it. Last Sunday we made chicken with jalepenos and potatoes and it needed a little something extra to give it some depth. We’re still trying to figure out what that something is.

A few weekends ago I made his creamy corn soup with chicken, poblano chile, and cilantro.

 

It was better the second night, which confirmed my suspicion that all soups need a day of rest in the fridge so that all of the flavors can meld together. Otherwise, the flavors were good, but it was still a little thin for my taste, probably because Rick has you blend the ingredients and then strain them. I might skip the straining the next time we make this. We added a side salad of arugula topped with a yummy but light dill and sour cream dressing that Nick whipped up. You only needed the tiniest amount of dressing, but it paired really well with the arugula.

We have been doing some non-Bayless cooking though. Last weekend we made lime soup and our very first completely homemade pizza. Both were hits! I got the lime soup recipe from my sister-in-law, who got it from the February 2011 Clean Eating.

I had never heard of that magazine before, but it appears that they strive for delicious and healthy recipes. I am resisting the urge to subscribe to it since they have a ton of stuff online. We first had lime soup when we were in Cancun in 2010 for a wedding and have been thinking about recreating it ever since. This soup was so flavorful, clean, and delicious, although slightly different than the soup we had in Mexico (it was essentially just a broth with chicken). The chicken is cooked with some cumin and jalapenos and then you add the broth over top of that, retaining all of that amazing flavor. Isn’t cumin the best? We use it, in combination with other spices, to flavor chicken for tacos and it just makes it. After the broth comes to a boil, you remove the pot from heat and add green onions, cilantro, diced tomatoes, and spinach. After letting it rest in the fridge for a night, we reheated it and added the lime right before serving. The original recipe calls for toasting tortillas and topping the soup with the tortillas and sour cream, but we skipped that and just ate the soup with a side of tortilla chips. Let me tell you, it was amazing. It was like taking the successful elements of the lemon and cilantro chicken soup that I made last year and adding it to a complexly-flavored broth. What might have made the difference was cooking the chicken and then adding the broth in the same pot. Nevertheless, it was perfect! We will make it again and again.

Last Saturday we had our most adventurous cooking experience yet when we made pizza entirely from scratch. A friend recommended Jonathan Waxman’s recipe for pizza dough in A Great American Cook, and, after seeing the photo of it in the book, we immediately snatched it up. Even though prior to learning how to sew, I was into baking, I have never made dough from scratch, especially one that utilizes yeast. The dough turned out a little sticky, so we had some issues transferring the pizza to the stone, which resulted in a bunched up, thick-in-the-center pie. Still, it baked well and it tasted amazing. Other than getting the dough right, the one thing I would change for the next time is to put the bacon pieces on top of the other ingredients so they crisp up a little bit more (this time they were buried under the tomatoes, cheese, and green onions).

The best part about all of this weekend cooking is that we just eat the leftovers during the week! We did this a few times last winter but then fell off the wagon when the weather got warm. I’m now determined to make at least one meal over the weekend that we can just reheat during the week to cut down on the cooking/clean up time on weeknights. It makes dinner so much more enjoyable!

Do any of you have any tried and true cookbooks that you absolutely love? Nick will probably disable my Amazon account if I buy another cookbook, but Christmas is coming up and I am always looking for gift suggestions!

Mexican Every Day!

This year for Nick's birthday, I bought him Rick Bayless' Mexican Everyday and a whole bunch of stuff from Rick's food line, Frontera (he also has a restaurant in Chicago named Frontera Grill, which we intend to visit when we go back in August). We had seen Rick on Top Chef Masters, which he won, and then kinda fell in love with his PBS show Mexico - One Plate at a Time, even though we've only seen it a few times. The episode we saw involved him kayaking off the shores of a Mexican island, catching his fish, and then cooking dinner on the beach. It was insanely relaxing, which makes more sense to me now after learning that he regularly practices yoga. The show was kinda like watching a yoga DVD but without the yoga.

Ever since going to Distrito a couple of years ago (if you are ever in the tri-state area, you MUST go there), Nick and I have been borderline obsessed with Mexican food. Not Tex Mex—I'm talking real Mexican food with fresh ingredients and not smothered in cheese, although a touch of queso fresco really does the trick sometimes. Essentially, buying Mexican Everyday as a present for Nick was really a present for me as well. And it has been a present many times over in the short 16 days that it has graced our house.

Last Friday, we had my parents and my sister and her husband over for dinner. We made pico de gallo/chunky tomato salsa and tomatillo salsa served with Frontera chips; jicama salad with watercress, romaine, and lime-cilantro dressing; and grilled chicken with red pepper sesame marinade, mexican beans with greens, and Gulf Coast-style white rice pilaf. Then we had some friends over on Sunday and made chicken a la Veracruzana in the slow cooker and what I ended up calling churro cookies (Mexican shortbread cookies topped with cinnamon sugar). Last night we went to a barbecue and brought with us some smokey chipotle salsa with pan-roasted tomatillos. And today we made red chile chicken and rice with black beans (topped with some of last night's leftover smokey chipotle salsa) and another batch of chunky tomato salsa and jicama salad with lime-cilantro dressing. If you're counting, that is 11 different recipes in 16 days, with two made twice!

Mexican feast!

Pico de gallo/chunky tomato salsa

Smokey chipotle salsa with pan-roasted tomatillos

Red chile chicken and rice with black beans, topped with smokey chipotle salsa with pan-roasted tomatillos

Jicama salad with lime-cilantro dressing, topped with pico de gallo/chunky tomato salsa

I was preparing like a mad woman during all of the meals except for today, so I don't have pictures of everything to share. But believe me when I say that all of the recipes were delicious and we would make them all again, especially since they are all so easy. They all feature fresh ingredients and are all pretty healthy as long as you stick to the serving size. Rick's introduction is also really inspiring. It chronicles his journey to balance eating delicious and flavorful food with being healthy, and after reading it I couldn't help but want to mirror his lifestyle.

We are planning on making one of the bigger meals for our Saturday or Sunday dinner and having the rest as leftovers on one night during the week. The best part is that I literally want to make every single recipe in this book. How often does that happen with a cookbook? 

Mushroom Risotto

On Saturday Nick and I took a break from soup making to test out a recipe for our Thanksgiving dinner with friends, aka Friendsgiving.  Nick and I previously made the Risotto with Mushrooms and Pecorino recipe from Ted Allen’s cookbook, The Food You Want to Eat, and it was insanely delicious.  We thought it would be great to bring to Friendsgiving, but when we checked out the recipe, we realized that it only served two people as a main course or 6 as an appetizer.  Right now there are about 22 people set to attend the dinner, so that just wasn’t going to work.  We would need to triple the recipe.  Then we remembered that risotto, as Ted says, “doesn’t wait well.”  Since the dinner is about 45 minutes away in Jersey, I was a little worried about how it would turn out.  We decided that a test run was in order.

We found that risotto isn’t difficult to make, it’s just very labor intensive and you have to follow the directions without cutting corners.  First, we had to chop up two types of mushrooms: Portobello and shiitake.  You cook the mushrooms first in some olive oil and garlic.

Once they are tender and the liquid has evaporated, add some parsley, salt, and pepper, and then transfer them to another bowl.

Then you cook the onions with some oil until they get soft, and then add the rice, which you cook until it becomes translucent.  Next you add some white wine and continue to cook the mixture until it is almost dry.

At that point you add small batches of warm chicken stock to the rice and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed. 

Then you add some more stock, and so on until the rice is al dente. 

Once the rice is nicely cooked, you add the mushrooms mixture, some pecorino cheese, pepper, and salt to taste.  The recipe also calls for prosciutto, but I’m not a huge fan so we left it out.

We then jumped in the car and drove the pot of risotto five minutes down the road to my sister’s house, where she, her husband, and my grandmother were waiting patiently for dinner.  We served it right away with a spinach salad with carrots and tomatoes, but the texture of the risotto was more pastey even though the drive was pretty short.  Here's a shot of the same meal that we ate the next night.  There was plenty of leftovers!

It tasted good, but Ted was right: it needed to be served immediately.  We also found that tripling the recipe made the ratio between the ingredients a little off.  It was hard to get the rice to cook consistently because there was so much of it in the pot and I was worried that some of it would be hard.  Thankfully it wasn’t.

As good as the risotto turned out, we realized that we were going to have to make a different dish for Friendsgiving, one that can be easily reheated.  Any suggestions?

Lemon and Cilantro Chicken Soup

One of my goals for this winter was to try out a bunch of soup recipes.  For our wedding, my sister and her husband bought us an amazing All Clad pots and pans set, which includes a huge stock pot. I have loved using it to make our spaghetti sauce and I think it's also perfect for making soups.

Last Saturday we had our first snow of the year so I thought it was fitting to make our first soup of the season. The recipe didn't quite work out, which is why you're just hearing about it now. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, although it did get better as we ate the leftovers throughout the week.

This week we tried out a Lemon and Cilantro Chicken Soup recipe from the Bon Appetit cookbook. It made the house smell amazing and it turned out pretty good too.

The first step is to saute the chicken.  Remove the chicken and then, leaving the chicken juices in the pot, make the broth by simmering a bunch of onions, plum tomatoes, spices, and chicken broth. Yums.

The recipe called for orecchiette, but our grocery store didn't have any so I substituted orzo. I slightly undercooked the chicken and the orzo before I added them to the finished broth to simmer for a bit, knowing that they would continue cooking in the broth. Both ended up being cooked perfectly!

The soup turned out pretty good but overall I think it was a little too lemony for me. If I were to make it again I'd add a little less lemongrass when making the broth. It's definitely worth making though. It was so light and clean tasting.  We ate ours with a side of tortilla chips. What a simple and easy meal that goes perfectly with a cold winter day!

Dinner Party!

Nick and I had some friends over for a delicious feast on Monday night.  These friends nicely loaned us their house in Guatemala for our honeymoon, so we wanted to make something extra delicious.  Since we were working all day Monday and it was a “school night” for us, we spent Sunday preparing the dinner and dessert. In the course of 5 hours, I baked chocolate chip cookies, made the famous O’Neil ice cream, made spaghetti sauce, and baked a roasted vegetable lasagna. 

The great thing about lasagna is that you can prepare it in advance and, as it waits to be eaten, the flavors will meld together nicely and it’ll taste even better than it would have if served immediately.  I used the Joy of Cooking recipe using my own spaghetti sauce, which calls for 45 minutes of baking (30 minutes covered in aluminum foil and 15 minutes uncovered). I simply baked the lasagna for 30 minutes on Sunday and then baked it for another 45 minutes on Monday so it would finish baking and also be nice at hot to serve.  The original recipe calls for only an additional 15 minutes of uncovered baking, but since the lasagna was cold from being in the fridge all night, it needed some extra time to get all gooey and delicious.

The recipe includes roasted eggplant and zucchini, which adds a nice depth to the lasagna.

I roasted these a tad too long and some of them got too crispy to use. No worries though as there was more than enough to fill out the layers.

The only time our dining table ever sees anything besides my sewing machine is when we have dinner guests over. We actually sit at the table to eat!  I made pretty placemats and napkins last year which brighten up the table nicely. And they go so well with our dishes!

After dinner I served the ice cream in my vintage ice cream bowls while we showed them our photo slideshow from our Great Western Adventure. Ice cream is so simple to make I can’t believe I don’t make it more. I have vowed that the next time I make chocolate chip cookies, I will make a batch of cookie dough ice cream!

Summer Salads and Salsas

Yesterday was Memorial Day, aka the unofficial start of summer, and to celebrate the glorious weather that we had all weekend, Nick and I whipped up some delicious meals.  Is there anything better to eat in the summer than fresh fruits and veggies?  They're so refreshing, especially when eaten al fresco, as we have been by using our patio for meals all weekend.

We are lucky enough to live right by Tanner Brothers Farm, where we buy all of our milk and produce.  It is insanely cheap too!  The only downside is having to listen to country music while you shop.

On Sunday we picked up a ton of fruits and veggies to make a corn salsa, pasta salad, and fruit salad, three of our summer favorites.  They're all pretty easy to make, but chopping up everything takes a bit of time.  Here are the recipes for you to enjoy:

Corn Salsa

This is basically pico de gallo with corn added.

4-6 large ears of corn
1/2 red onion, chopped finely
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tomatoes, diced
1 jalepeno, minced
1 large bunch cilantro, chopped finely
Garlic salt, to taste
Juice from 2 limes

Boil the corn and then cut off the kernels.  After everything is chopped up, combine in a bowl.  We ate ours as a side dish, but then decided that it really needs the saltiness of a good tortilla chip.  Next time!  I kept a bowl of black beans on the side for me to add to my salsa since Nick isn't a fan.  They add a nice layer of flavor if you're into them!


Pasta Salad

This is actually my mom's recipe that we tweaked a bit by adding in grape tomatoes. 

1 box tri-color rotini
8 oz. Zesty Italian salad dressing
1/3 red onion, finely chopped
1 green pepper, finely chopped
4 oz. freshly shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
1 small container of quartered grape tomatoes (optional)

Like the corn salsa, you basically chop everything up and combine in a bowl.  We had this for dinner tonight after a day full of kayaking and it really hit the spot.


Fruit Salad
I feel a little silly listing out a recipe for fruit salad.  Basically you pick up all of the fruits that you love, chop them up, and combine in a bowl.  Our favorite fruits to include are cantaloupes, strawberries, nectarines, pineapples, and plums.  Although we love bananas and grapes, they don't make it into our fruit salad because the bananas tend to get mushy and the grapes tend to get sour.  In our opinions, they just don't play well with the other fruits!  But if you love them in your fruit salad, go for it.


After this weekend, our summer is shaping up to be filled with yummy and colorful salads.  What are your favorite summer recipes?

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day the Right Way

Being an Irish lass, I've always celebrated St. Patrick's Day.  And in our house, St. Patrick’s Day means two things: Irish potatoes and a viewing of Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

It amazes me how many people I encounter have never heard of or eaten Irish Potatoes, but I am single-handedly trying to make that population extinct.  And no, I don’t count Oh Ryan’s Irish Potatoes that you find in stores every March.  I advise you to not waste your money or taste buds on those things.  I’ve never had one, but I can’t imagine that they even come close to fresh, homemade Irish Potatoes.  There’s really no excuse to not whip up a batch because they are so simple to make.  And you get to get your hands dirty.  What could be better?  

If you are of the camp that doesn’t know what an Irish Potato is, I am very sorry that you have lived your life up until this point without them.  They aren’t made of potatoes, but rather confectioners’ sugar, coconut, cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract, and are then rolled in cinnamon.  All you have to do is combine the ingredients, roll a small ball of dough in your hands, and then dredge it the cinnamon.  Fair warning though: once you have on Irish Potato, you will be addicted.  I double the recipe to make 10 dozen to accommodate my family and co-workers.  They most often don’t last past lunchtime. 

For added fun while rolling potatoes, we listen to the Celtic Traditional Pandora station.  A crazy Irish dance party usually ensues, so we get our exercise for the day in as well!

Irish Potato making is reserved for the night before St. Patrick’s Day so the evening of St. Patrick’s Day is free to view Darby O’Gill and the Little People, which has been family tradition since I was a kid.  It has a good mix of silliness, horror, folklore, bar fights, and morals that few movies these days encompass.  Perhaps I saw Darby O’Gill a little too young, as I spent much of my childhood terrified of the banshee, and is probably one of the reasons why I’m still afraid to walk around outdoors at night.  

Darby O’Gill, featuring a young Sean Connery, a not-disguised-as-a-boy Janet Munro, and lots of old man cackling, tells the story of a manor house caretaker who matches wits with leprechauns, all while the town thinks he’s nuts.  Even better, the villain’s name is Pony.  Pony!  Come on, how could you not love this movie?  Trust me, it’s hilarious.  I usually catch it on TV this time of year, but it doesn’t look like it’s in the listings for this week.  Lucky for me I have an awesome husband who got it on DVD last year, so I’m not in a panic trying to find it.  I suggest you add it to your Netflix queue!

Homemade O'Neil Ice Cream

This past weekend we had a combined family birthday celebration, so I pulled out the ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid stand mixer and got whisking.

Don't get me wrong, there are a few local ice cream shops around here that I absolutely love.  But there's really nothing like good homemade ice cream.  It's so light and refreshing.  Last year, I made a vanilla fudge swirl with chocolate covered pretzel bits, and it has since become family legend.  We call this flavor O'Neil after my great grandmother who taught my grandmother and, in turn, a whole host of us, that you should always eat ice cream with pretzels.  The salty and sweet together is delicious!

I decided to make that again, but this time I hit a few snags and it didn't quite live up to the last batch.

Despite my snags, making ice cream is actually pretty easy.  I have a Ben and Jerry's ice cream cookbook and they have a few base recipes that you add ingredients to to make different flavors.  The base is eggs, sugar, milk, and heavy cream (check out the book for the exact measurements).  If you're making chocolate ice cream, you add in the chocolate before you put the mixture into the ice cream maker.  Most other ingredients get added halfway through the process or not until you take the ice cream out of the maker. 

Here is my beautifully whisked base.

My other grandmother gave me her set of Pyrex mixing bowls when she and my grandfather downsized into a smaller place.  Isn't the design on the bowls so comforting?

Here's a smaller bowl with the reverse colors.  They're so festive!

Since I was just adding fudge and pretzels, I put the base right into the ice cream maker.  All I have to do is click the attachment onto my standmixer and put the mixer on the lowest setting.  It takes anywhere from 30-45 minutes for the base to set into a soft serve consistency.

Once the ice cream looks like soft serve, you scoop it all out and put it in a freezer-safe container.  Doesn't it look yummy?

I keep the plastic ice cream containers from our local shop, so they're the perfect size!

Now we come to my first snag.  I forgot that when you are making a fudge swirl, you have to heat up the fudge slightly before swirling it into the ice cream.  Whoops!  My unheated fudge just mixed with the base, making a slightly fudgey base.  It's a good thing my family loves chocolate!  To make a fudge swirl, you scoop up some of the heated fudge on a spool and then simply swirl the spoon through the ice cream.  The fudge will come off of the spoon slowly and leave a trail in the ice cream.  It's that easy! 

My second snag was that I forgot that you should do the swirl last, after you have added in the other ingredients.  When I added the pretzels and mixed them into the ice cream, I messed up my swirls.  My only defense for this carelessness is that it was late on Friday night and I was exhausted from the day and week.  I ended up having to repeat the swirl step, so the ice cream was a lot more chocolatey than I had wanted.  It still tasted yummy though!

My third snag, which we didn't realize until we ate the ice cream the next day, was that the pretzels got soggy after being added to the ice cream.  The original batch that I made had chocolate covered pretzels and the chocolate acts as a barrier to keep the pretzel crunchy.  Next time I'll use the chocolate covered pretzels again.  And make sure to add the ingredients in the correct order!

Sunday Night Feast

All of my life, my dad made his own spaghetti sauce.  We were never a sauce-out-of-a-jar kind of family, and quite frankly I find the sauce in jars disgusting.  Doesn't matter what brand, it's all inedible.  This sauce has ruined all other sauces for me.  I can't go to a legit Italian restaurant without thinking that my dad's sauce is much more tasty.   Before I moved out of my parent's house, I wrote down my dad's spaghetti sauce recipe as he made it since he didn't know the exact measurements.  Isn't that always how it goes?  My grandmother has made legendary rice pudding for the past 40 or so years, and my mom and aunts always wanted her to write down the recipe, but she never measured when she made it so she had no idea.

I guess you would call my dad's recipe semi-homemade, since the base of the sauce is a pre-made spaghetti sauce, although it's in a can, so I consider it completely different than the jars.  Since I've been making the sauce myself, I've tweaked the original recipe a bit.  Here is the recipe in it's current state:

Dad's/My Spaghetti Sauce
1 diced spanish onion
4 diced garlic cloves
1 28oz. can Don Pepino Spaghetti Sauce
1 1lb. 12 oz. can Furmano's crushed tomatoes
1 6oz. Contadina Tomato Paste
1 palmful dried basil leaves
1 palmful dried parsley
1 palmful dried oregano
1 palmful finely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 palmful garlic powder
1 bay leaf
1 squeeze honey

If fresh parsley is available at our produce store, I include that as well.  Basically you saute the onions and garlic with a splash of olive oil until the onions start to break down.  Then add the tomato products and herbs.  The honey goes in at the end for a little bit of sweetness.  After everything is combined, turn the heat to low and let it simmer while you cook your pasta.  I usually double the recipe and it makes enough for 5 dinners for me and Nick.  Trust me, it's delicious and definitely worth the extra few minutes to make your own.

Don't worry, I'm not always wearing strange things on my face while at this stove.  What am I wearing this time, you may be wondering.  The goggles that I'm wearing are called Onion Goggles, and are one of the best gifts Nick has ever gotten for me.  I have super sensative eyes when it comes to cutting up and cooking onions, and these babies have foam around the rims so none of the fumes can get to your eyes.  Also, check out the awesome Anthro apron that one of my pal's got me for Christmas!

Here's a shot of the sauce with everything combined.  It's thick with small chunks and a ton of flavor.  Delicious!

My family has never bought garlic bread in the frozen food section either.  Why bother when you can just sprinkle some garlic powder, garlic salt, and oregano over some buttered bread and throw it in the toaster oven?  Here's a shot of our yumsy Sunday Night Feast.

Trust me, it was delicious.  For dessert, we had some of the chocolate chip cookies that I made on Friday night.  I can't claim any responsibility for the recipe, but I started using it about 5 years ago, and now feel no need to eat any other type of chocolate chip cookie.  The secret ingredient is pudding, which makes them soft on the inside but still have a little crisp on the outside.  They are amazing and addicting.  One of my co-workers compared them to crack.  I hope not from experience.  Do yourself and your family a favor and whip up a batch.  They will be gone the next day, guaranteed.