Special people and peppery pork.

You that friend you have who makes you feel better just by being around them?  Yeah, you know the one.  The one you want to spend more time with in hopes their aura of calm and sweetness sort of rubs off on you by osmosis.  Well, Meg is this person.  Dinner with Meg is all beautiful-last-books-you-read and did-you-see-this-inspiring-movie and others thing I wish I could spend my whole entire days thinking and talking about over coffee.  Instead we did it over my coffee table with plates of supper.  It was such a nice Tuesday.

Menu: 

Pepper encrusted pork tenderloin (#53)

Thyme roasted potatoes

Simply steamed broccoli

 

Because, friends, as you know, I like my pepper, I deviated from the recipe to make this more of a pepper-encrusted piece of meat.  You do this by grinding or crushing the peppercorns with a mill or mallet or something very heavy and useless.  Like the vacuum.  I've never been one to enjoy vacuuming anyway.  I digress.  

I love these vegetable steamer bags you can buy.  Perfect vegetables every single time.  I swear.  Just put in the bag, fresh or frozen, put in microwave for the minutes specified on the side of the bag, very user-friendly, and voila!  Amazing.  I highly recommend them.  What I don't like is that you end up using a bag that is thrown away, but I can't bring myself to stop using them right now. 

Tossing the washed and cut up potatoes in the usual olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme was perfect.  I put the baking sheet in with the pork and everything cooked at 400 degrees together. They were crispy and salty and basically glorified french fries, I guess.  

Overall, another wonderful Tuesday night meal, with an extra wonderful friend.  I hope you all know a Meg in your life. 

247 to go...

Tengo hambre.

I leave for Nicaragua in ten days and cannot wait to see palm trees and bright blue sky, nearly melt in the 96 degree heat, observe in a variety of schools and eat food that is limey and filled with things like arroz, camarones y frijoles.  So, because I simply needed to pretend I was already there, dinner was inspired by a few of those yummy ingredients.

Menu

Black Bean Soup with toasted cumin crème fraîche (#49 & #50)

Baked corn tortilla chips (#51)

Tomato, Onion & Serrano Chile Salsa (#52)

I love black bean soup.  In fact I love legumes and beans in general.  Growing up, we never ate anything with beans at all, so I am not exactly sure how I got to trying them, but I am sure glad I did.  When cooked right, their earthy flavor is well matched with a variety of spices.  This soup calls for a hefty dose of cumin, - a spice everyone should have in their cupboard.  Added to black beans, lentils, salad dressing, chicken, yada yada yada, cumin makes everything smell and taste yummy.  

The soup came out well, although it didn't completely blindside me as being the best-black-bean-soup-known-to-man.  Not that I have high expectations or anything.  Who...me?  Never.  I think I need a lesson in effective soup making.  Any offers?

I added the cumin crème fraîche called for in the Smitten Kitchen entry, but I didn't love the addition.  Perhaps it was a bit overpowering to me or perhaps I didn't have a great quality product.  Either way, I thought it better without. 

The chips and salsa, however, they really wow-ed me.  Tortillas brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and baked at 400 degrees until golden brown?  Si, por favor.  

Soon enough I will ordering camarones y arroz next to a real palm tree, not the imagined one in my mind. Until then...

248 to go...

February is short.

February is too short, and coupled with our week off of school due to the blizzardy weather, it has been even shorter!  Getting back to work this week has meant two things, and basically only two things:  admissions season at my school, a tower of files needing reading, and less than three weeks from our departure to Nicaragua with my students from AU.  I didn't cook much at all since Valentine's Day, and it makes me pretty sad.  I did however, after a day of nearly falling asleep standing up, cook up a nice little meal Wednesday evening.  I teach my course at AU on Wednesday evenings and normally it is a grilled cheese and canned soup ritual evening.  But, even though it was 8:30pm, I really needed a home cooked meal.  I had the following items in the fridge, none of which are remotely surprising or different.

Fennel

Onion

Thyme

Mushrooms

Garlic 

Cooked brown rice

They came together for...

Menu

Fennel, mushroom & onion stir fry over brown rice (#48)

Put the brown rice on if you don't have some in the fridge already cooked.  Or, if you're awesome, buy the frozen kind!  I love Whole Foods packages of frozen brown rice.  Just two minutes in the microwave and you have perfect rice!

I thickly sliced half of the fennel build and chopped about 1/4 of the medium-sized onion and sauteed them in olive oil with salt, pepper and a teaspoon of chopped garlic.  After about 6 minutes, when the fennel was nice and soft, I added half the package of mushrooms.  Throw in about a tablespoon of fresh thyme.  Partly due to a nice chat with my little sister, and partly due to my desire for a good browning on the veggies, I let them cook for awhile.  I poured the whole pan of deliciousness over brown rice, sat on the couch and relaxed after a long day. 

Simple and tasty.

252 to go...

The world's most beautiful chicken! And a failed souffle.

So, I like Valentine's Day in the way that I still would like to sit down and make paper doll garland.  And, I like it in the way that memories come flooding back of the little piles of candy hearts my mom used to leave around the house, in my lunch and with tiny love notes, - everywhere, until I was, oh, I don't know, eighteen, on this silly holiday.   But, I do not like the sardine-packed tables for two with prix fixe menus all over the city and people inappropriately dressed up.  No, no, no.  None of that, please.  So instead, I did this with Beth and Schaeffer:

Menu

Lemon, Garlic & Rosemary Roast Chicken (#45)

Parsley Potatoes (#46)

Green Beans Almondine

Chocolate Souffle (#47)

I'd seen the Youtube recipe link for the chicken awhile back, but being scared of chicken with bones, I had never found the courage to tackle it.  Wow am I happy I got over that fear!  Chicken with bones?  Yeah, it totally rocks.  And this preparation was so incredibly simple.  

Super fast chopping!

Just toss three lemons, halved and juiced, six crushed garlic cloves, three sprigs rosemary, five or six sprigs of thyme, salt and pepper, with the chicken.  Stuff everything (you won't get all the lemon rinds) inside the chicken and tie the legs together with poultry twine.  Bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes, and...

 

Voila!  The world's most beautiful chicken.

The lemon flavor was just right.  And, you know, you really need to be careful with lemon .  There is such a fine line between, "Wait, there's lemon in this?" and "Wait, there's chicken in this?"  This recipe got it just right.  And it was perfectly juicy.  

The potatoes were super simple also.  In a bowl just toss scrubbed whole small red-skinned and baby Yukons with a generous shake of olive oil, handful of salt and pepper and about a 1/2 cup of chopped parsley.  Bake these with the chicken, and they came out with a good crisp on the outside.

Steamed green beans seasoned with salt and pepper and 1/2 tablespoon of butter and a handful of crushed almonds.  To hell with all the prix fixe nonsense.  I mean, look at this plate.

 

Bellissimo!

 

Which brings me to the souffle.  I followed every step, whipped every egg white and folded both sets of ingredients into one another oh-so-gently.  And, man, did it look oh-so-pretty.  It seems, although quite appropriate given the 'holiday', we are caught again by the deception of looks!

  

 C'est bon!

But, friends, it didn't cook an inch below the surface.  I'm not sure why and plan to seek a souffle-advice-giver somewhere in the near future to inquire about my missteps.  But, that being said, the top of the souffle...topped with whipped cream and very thinly sliced (as per Beth's request) strawberries, was absolument délicieux! 

For having no Hallmark cards, high expectations or posh food (i.e. foamed shrimp) on the plate, I think this Valentine's Day came and went pretty satisfactorily.  Not too shabby.  

253 to go...

Beth cooks, I eat! (Ok, I cook a little, too.)

After the most unbelievable grocery shopping experience on Saturday afternoon, - about 1/3 of the city was crammed into Whole Foods at the same time, all of us buying the same stuff, Beth made the best veggie feast ever.  Not all that long ago, Beth introduced me to the most incredibly tasty vegetable.  They are colored like the sun and sweet as candy, and most awesomely, are just perfection when only peeled, boiled and sliced.  Any guesses?  Yes, you are right!  Golden beets.  

Menu:

Beth's Amazing Lentil Soup 

Beth's Golden Beets

Arugula Salad (I took care of this.)

Crêpes au chocolat (#44) with strawberries and whipped cream

Lentil soup instantly reminds me of sitting at the table with my old neighbor and friend, Tommy, that I told you about.  He introduced me to lentils with a can of Progresso Lentil Soup, and I have never looked back. 

Our plate of beets, salad and soup were just perfect for a Saturday night, and paired with a silly girly movie, it couldn't have been better.  Until we decided we needed dessert, of course!

 All the ingredients in the food processor

My mom sent me a box of kitchen treasures about a week ago, including a crêpe pan, wooden crêpe turner and, most importantly two jars of Nutella!  Yum.  It took a couple of tries to turn them without breaking them in the pan, but by try #3 and 4, I got it.  It was like our own little pre-silly-holiday-dessert-feast.  

 

Whoops!  This one was a mistake.

 

C'est délicieux!

256 to go...

So about those exploding brusselsprouts.

So the SNOverkill blizzards in DC kept me from my trip to Florida to visit my parents, but clearly it has also kept me from any sort of productivity at all.  As I haven't even updated here.  Sorry about that.  I have hit my limit with this warp of space and time where days and hours have smushed into one, long, unexpected mid February vacation.  I am not complaining here, as the snow has been beautiful and the break has been restful, but I need my life back!

On Tuesday night, as blizzard #2 began to descend upon our city, another pasta night was in order.  Ok, I get that perhaps this seems redundant, but it is winter and cold, and nothing seems to remedy those two things quite like floury hands and making something out of nothing.  

Menu:

Parsley and thyme fettucini (#42)

Creamy mushroom, wine wine & parsley sauce (#43)

(Attempted) Braised brusselsprouts with butter

So, I've learned that chopping just about anything that is fresh and green and adding it to pasta dough is a recipe for deliciousness.  This the fearlessness I was talking about in my first post!  I'm a creature of habit, habit and more habit.  I need spontaneity on my plate!  That and piles of pasta.  And mushrooms.   

 

So with everything all set up, one by one the ingredients came together to make such a fragrant and yummy pasta dough.  As per usual, it is of utmost importance to use equal parts regular flour to semolina flour, if at possible.  Store the semolina in the fridge it will last for a long time.  It is completely worth the extra bucks.

So as the flat lasagna ribbons dried on the rack, I worked on getting our brusselsprouts in the oven.  First blanched in boiling water, then nestled in a buttered baking dish, the brusselsprouts were to rest on a medium-heat burner for about a minute until the butter sizzled, then put into the oven.  

Easy enough, right?  Yeah, I certainly thought so.  And since I was using Julia Child's recipe, having watched my fair share of Julie & Julia during the blizzard, I thought I was golden.  The sprouts were resting on the burner for about 20 seconds when I walked three steps to the fridge to put the butter away, and....

BOOM!  EXPLOSION!  BOOM!  SECOND EXPLOSION!  BOOM!  THIRD EXPLOSION!

 

Glass everywhere!  The Pyrex was obliterated into a million pieces of glass.  Shot all over the kitchen.  Every inch.  Into the freshly chopped parsley, into the dishwasher that was open, two the very very very end of the counter.  You name it, - yeah, the glass got there, too.  Needless to say it was scary.  Needless to say, we didn't eat the brusselsprouts.  Not that we didn't think about salvaging such beautiful green little monster-like vegetables.  Especially at a point when they were nearly the only choice for fresh vegetables given our apocalyptic state.  But, we were really just happy no one got hurt.  After some googling, we learned that this isn't all that uncommon, unfortunately to say.  No more oven glassware for me I'm afraid to say.  I think I am cured.

The clean-up after this mess took quite awhile, and many food stuffs had to be reprepared.  But all was not lost.  Our drying pasta got a tad too dry, and it really took a team effort to get through the crank and become skinnier pieces for the mushroom sauce.  Which is also to say that the sauce ended up to a taste test to find our the right combination of the following ingredients:

Mushrooms

White wine

Heavy cream

Butter

Parsley

Salt and pepper

After the explosion of glass all over the kitchen I was a bit out of sorts, so I just sauteed the parsley, added the mushrooms and then guessed on the wine and cream.  It turned out just fine.  As Julia says, "No excuses, no explanations."  It turned out pretty delicious and made for a very warm, albeit unexpectedly heart-stopping, Tuesday blizzardy #2 night. 

 257 to go...

As an aside and confession of sorts, Beth and I have a habit of keeping flowers until they smell rancid.  That seems to consistently cue throw-out-the-flowers-before-the-neighbors-think-they-should-call-the-authorities moments.  So, as the sunflowers hit that moment right before this dinner, our friend noticed them, and pointed out that sunflowers look beautiful even in those moments.  I couldn't agree more.

 

 

A most delicious day and Holy Exploding Brusselsprouts!

Yesterday saw a feast of food, movie watching and Scrabble, and we even got to see a few friends!  But it wasn't without the return of Blizzard #2, that has been dubbed SNOverkill.  And, I must agree.  Although that unexpected week off work is certainly nice, this isn't a pleasant and wondrous snow.  It is more of an assault.  Ok, maybe it is still a bit wondrous.  The current view down 16th St and New Hampshire Ave from my window is this amazing sight:

Somewhere down there is my car parked and buried for what seems like awhile longer.  I am supposed to get out of DC tomorrow to visit my parents in Florida, where they are living a snowbird-ish life.  I'm crossing my fingers AirTran can work it out, but there is some skepticism.  We'll see.

As for yesterday, we needed soup to warm our fingers, toes and hearts for lunch.

(Lunch) Menu:

Herbed Tomato Soup (#40)

Cheesy garlic bread

Pear tart a la mode (#41)

I always have at least a bit of jarred tomato sauce in the refrigerator.  I almost always end up throwing it out.  This time I had two halves.  A whole jar!  Alas, there is something you can DO with said formerly-bound-for-the-trash sauce!

Herbed Tomato Soup Ingredients:

Jarred tomato sauce

2 c water

1/2 c heavy cream

2 tbsp butter

Chopped fresh herbs (I used Italian parsley, thyme and basil)

Salt and pepper to taste

I sauteed the chopped herbs in the butter and seasoned with a dash of salt and pepper.  This made the kitchen finally smell like I was back cooking things outside of pancakes, eggs and fried rice!  Phew.  All is not lost, even in a snomageddon.  Add the tomato sauce and cream, stir and add water.  I let it simmer more awhile like this.  Mostly because I was making the garlic bread (baguette toasted with butter, chopped garlic and chopped parsley) and just really enjoyed stirring again!  Topped with some parsley and parmesan cheese, the result really did warm us up. 

We turned on Julie & Julia for the second time in two days, set up the Scrabble board and enjoyed the afternoon.  The afternoon was time for some dessert and tea.  

Pear Tart a la mode Ingredients:

3 small or 2 medium/large pared and sliced pears

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 sheet puff pastry

Vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Mix up the ingredients in a bowl and arrange on the pastry sheet leaving a border around the edge.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden.  Add some ice cream and a cup of tea!  

 

More on dinner, those exploding brusselsprouts and the narrowly-missed ER trip from last night later.  Trust me, you're going to want to (see and) hear about this.

259 to go...

What day is it?

We are stuck in a bit of a time warp here.  Or at least I am.  My car hasn't moved since Friday, and I haven't left my 4 block radius neighborhood on U St since then either.  Today I finally got to the grocer!  Since then I have been cooking a lot and way more is on the way.  But more on that later.  Last night saw a pretty yummy vegetarian dish from ingredients on hand; with the exception of ginger, but the little Japanese grocer about 100 feet from my building helped with that!  

Menu:

Ginger fried rice (#39)

Garlic sauteed zucchini

The rice dish was inspired by the one linked up from Smitten Kitchen.  However, I didn't deconstruct the dish the way she did.  Rather, I took her ingredients and channeled the far too many Japanese Hibachi chefs I have been lucky enough to witness in my life.  You see, when we were kids, we used to go to New York City pretty frequently.  So, naturally, with all the incredible culinary options NYC has to offer, - celebrity chefs, undiscovered gems and restaurant pioneers, we always visited Benihana.  Looking back I feel for my poor parents.  They finally have every food choice available to them, but their three red-headed daughters only have eyes for the man who lets you try to catch a piece of sauteed shrimp in your mouth.  Whatever, the shrimp and steak delight is absolutely perfect.  

Although my rice for this dish wasn't cooked to perfection, - a bit mushed, the flavor was warm and cozy for the cold night.  The fried ginger and garlic, sort of make-shift bacon bits are worth the effort.  The crunch is just enough with the rice.

Ok, back to the kitchen!

261 to go...

No school snow day!

I swear I was just as excited as an eight-year-old last night when I learned today school would be closed for the snow.  No snow day is like a Monday snow day.  And, even better?  Knowing that tomorrow is a snow day, too!  Another 10-20 inches of snowfall are expected in DC today through tomorrow, and it almost does feel like this blizzard could last forever.   Or at least could snow us in nearly until next weekend.  

To celebrate this morning without an alarm and without anything but big sweaters and quilts to block out the wind whipping through the crack in my window, I had to be creative with the contents in the fridge.  Afterall, stores basically only opened Sunday or Monday, and certainly without fresh produce.   

Menu:

Three-egg cheese, onion & jalepeno omelette (#38)
Bacon
Coffee!

I'm not an omelette eater.  In fact I like eggs made one way: burnt.  Or at least that is what my dad always says I like.  It is a texture thing.  It doesn't mean I can't make a good one for a friend, though!  Of utmost importance here, which I learned when I was a waitress at a little cafe on the beach during summers on the Jersey shore, is to beat the eggs very fast to get as much air as possible in them.  Oh, and sauteing the ingredients first! 

And, despite it not being on my plate, I had a bite...or two, and it was delicious!

262 to go...

Oh, when the saints, go marching in...

You make quesadillas.  I mean, what the heck else would you make?  To me, the Superbowl is really just a time to eat awesome Superbowl food.  So in preparation for the big game, and the guests at the viewing party I was attending, I made a whole lot of quesadillas.  Turns out, not nearly enough quesadillas, but we'll get to that later.  

Menu:

Pepper and onion quesadillas (#37)

Ingredients:

Bunch of tortillas (I used corn, because that is all that was left on the shelf at the grocery store given our current snowy icy & chilly weather situation.  But flour would suffice just fine.)

Block of pepper jack cheese, sliced thin

Block of cheddar cheese, sliced thin

Medium yellow onion, chopped

Medium jalapeño, minced

Pinch salt and cracked pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

2 bell peppers, chopped

I sauteed the onion, bell pepper and jalapeño in olive oil with salt and pepper for about 8 minutes.  Until the onions are clear and just a tad brown.  Set them aside to use the pan for quesadilla making!  Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Queso cebollas y pimientas

Using three frying pans on the stove, I put a spoonful of the onion pepper saute with a slice of pepper jack and a slice of cheddar between two tortillas.  

 

Cook until the cheese is melting and flip over.  As I took them off the stove, I put them in the oven on a baking sheet to keep them warm as I finished them all.  

Then they were packed up with some salsa (store bought) and taken to the party.  They were gone in 90 seconds.  No, really.

263 to go...

A blizzard, pancakes & bacon

Need I say more?  A look out the window onto the streets below was like looking down at the land of Narnia after waking on Saturday morning.  The District of Columbia is blanketed in the most beautiful two feet of snow, and nothing seemed more necessary than pancakes.  But, not just any pancakes, ricotta pancakes.  Yes, I've heard of these before, and I already find ricotta to be beyond delicious, so it was time to try them out.

Menu:

Ricotta Pancakes (#36)

Bacon

Lots of coffee

 

Pancakes remind me of my mom.  Mostly because she loves them.  But also because she never needed an excuse to get out the pancake mix, syrup and have a lazy and yummy Saturday morning with us when we were kiddos.  This was a pretty consistent ritual, along with Dad's incredibly buttery and salty popcorn on Friday nights, - made on the stove, not in the microwave.  However, we were definitely the just-add-a-cup-of-water-pancake-mix type of family.  (Which falls under the cookie category of slice-and-bake.)  So, maybe my Momma didn't teach me her secret Saturday morning pancake recipe.  Who cares, though?  She taught me something way more important: go ahead, make the pancakes.  Enjoy the morning.  So, that we did.  And the 24 inches of snow made it all the more appropriate.  

Perhaps you're thinking, cheese in pancakes?  No es posible!  Pero es verdad. A cup of ricotta in pancake batter makes for the fluffiest and most delectable pancakes of all.  

But, you know, there is an equally important ingredient here.  It gets that brown and crispy outside that makes every bite more yummy than the last.  But, this ingredient isn't new at all.  It is the dear old friend that I cannot ever seem to keep in the fridge too long.  Yes, friends, it is just butter.  That pad of butter all nice and hot on the pan is what turns that vanilla-y cheesy batter into the fluffy short stack.

 

This plate of Saturday morning wonderfulness left me wondering only one single thing.  

Can this blizzard last forever?

264 to go...

Piles of Pasta and Meat-uh-balls

Since my last post, my apron and spoon haven't seen too much kitchen action.  I've been spending this week in a mixture of sadness and shock at the news of a very sudden death in my family.  On Wednesday, I packed a bag and made the trek home to New Jersey with my sister.  Knowing the difficulty of the events that were to conspire, I took a big LLBean tote bag and nestled in my stand-up mixer, pasta maker, spoon and apron.  Upon seeing this bag with my overnight bag at the door, Beth, roomie, said "Are you serious?"  My response, "Yes, very serious.  In my family, you don't head home for this type of gathering without cooking a big ol' family supper for a crowd of people afterwards."  So, this is precisely what I did.

My mother, an Irish second generation American, has learned to make her own delicious meatballs and gravy having married an Italian second generation American.  Both one of six children, there are aunts, uncles and cousins galore, and the pack just keeps growing!  Therefore after tears and hugs and a day full of emotion, I could think of nothing else to do at the end of the day but just make endless piles of pasta in my parents' beautiful kitchen for an intimate gathering, by our standards, of sixteen. 

Menu:

Momma P's Homemade Meat-uh-balls (#33)

Momma P's Homemade Tomato Gravy (#34)

Spinach Fettuccine (#35)

Semolina Fettuccine

Momma's meat-uh-balls are made super simply, and I adore them.  

1 package ground beef

1 package meatball ground-meat mixture (veal/beef/pork?)

2 eggs

generous shake of breadcrumbs

2 tsp Italian seasonings (parsley, basil, oregano)

1.5 tsp garlic powder

1/2 c milk

Mix together well.  Shape into meatballs.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, turn and bake for another 15 minutes.  Transfer to gravy and cook completely.

These, in her tomato gravy, simply embody an afterschool supper for me.  The smell of these two items on the stove reminds me immediately of bouncing in the door in my uniform, kicking off my shoes, dropping my backpack and playing afterschool with my sisters.

Momma's tomato gravy

2 28 oz cans tomato puree

1 28 oz can tomato sauce

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes

1 16 oz can tomato pasta

2 tbsp Italian seasonings (parsley, basil, oregano)

1.5 tsp sugar

1 tsp garlic powder

Put all ingredients in crock pot with meat-uh-balls (and/or sausage) and cook on low all day.  Come home to the aroma of perfection.  

Spinach Pasta Dough

2 c Semolina flour

2 c all purpose flour

6 eggs

2 egg yolks

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 c fresh spinach (pureed in food processor)

Knead well! Let rest 30 minutes prior to moving through the pasta maker.

Dad and I cranking out the pasta

After making both sets of pasta doughs, simply omit spinach for the plain pasta, we got out the pasta maker, and it made for a wonderful, albeit very long, project of processing the dough into beautiful and long ribbons of fettuccine.  It was such a therapeutic way to spend the evening with family after a day filled with such sorrow.  

 

Mom with a floured tray of pasta

The table filled with plates of pasta, glasses of wine and spoonfuls of parmesan cheese could not have been more apropos for all of us.  There was laughter and looking through old photo albums, story-telling and even a happy birthday to ten-year-old Alanna!  Put simply, it was exactly what I needed on Thursday night of this week.  

 

Alanna, Regina & Aunt Sandi flip through old photos 

Alanna makes a wish

265 to go...