More Nutella love....

Ok, seriously, my love for Nutella knows no bounds. It goes on and on. This weekend, despite having eaten a Nutella sandwich earlier in the week, we decided to make Nutella ice cream. Or gelato. Whatever. I don't care. It was delish either way. I followed the Giada recipe except I didn't have whole milk, so I used 1 c cream, 1 c half and half, and 1 c skim milk. It came out v. v. creamy and luxurious.


1) I love my ice cream freezer. Here it is churning away.







2) I love ice cream period. This Nutella version was possibly one of the best ice creams I've ever had. The only way I'd improve it is to put some toasted almonds in it. THAT would be an unstoppable combo.

Hillbilly quiche

So, I decided to start watching Paula Deen again, after taking a very long break from her show. She wasn't really bugging me, but I just got tired of seeing her and Michael having romantic breakfasts in their bathrobes. It kind of gave me the willies. But anyways, I started DVRing new episodes and on Saturday, I watched an episode all about breakfast. I skipped over the grits/sausage/egg parfaits, as grits horrify me, and the omelettes were fascinating in their strangeness. The hash brown breakfast quiche, however, did catch me eye, and I embarked on making it Sunday morning with ingredients at hand. I'd purchased a few bags of frozen hashbrowns during an acute craving a few weeks prior, so randomly, I had those in my freezer.

First, you mix 3 c of thawed hash browns with half a stick of melted butter, salt, and pepper. Press into a pie dish.







Bake at 450 degrees for about a half hour until crisp and golden. I ended up turning the broiler on to get it nice and brown. Allow the crust to cool slightly before filling.






Meanwhile, prepare the filling. 3 eggs, 1 c of half and half, crumbled breakfast meat of choice (bacon), veggies of choice (today, one small sauteed onion), and about 1 c of shredded cheddar cheese. I also added salt, pepper, and a dash of cayenne. Pour filling into crust, reduce oven temp to 350 degrees, and bake until the egg is set, about 30 minutes.




Inhale. Beware, dogs apparently like this too. Daisy found her way onto the counter and ate some. :(

More spinach

I've been on a roll with spinach lately - first, the pasta pesto with spinach then spinach dip. This morning, I needed a quick appetizer so I defrosted 1 10 oz box of chopped spinach and mixed that with one egg, 1/4 c grated parmesan, and about 2 tbsp prepared pesto. Then I spread that on a sheet of puff pastry I'd rolled out slightly (mainly to press out the seams). Slice, bake at 400 degrees for about 18 minutes (until v. brown and crisp) and voila - v. fast app.

Nutella revisited

I know I've blogged of the goodness of Nutella before. But I so enjoy the lovely chocolatey-hazelnutty spread, I need to speak of it, and it's goodness, in a sandwich again. Spread lovely Nutella between two pieces of bread (any bread - if you are feeling virtuous, use a multigrain - I however just used some Italian bread I had picked up at Whole Foods recently). Butter both sides. Toss onto a hot griddle. Fry up - slice - sprinkle with powdered sugar. Slam.

Sunday wafflings

No, we aren't politicians. HaHAHAHAHA! I'm SOOO FUNNY! We weren't switching positions on important issues of the day, we were making breakfast.

I started out making waffles using the luscious Williams-Sonoma mix I'd picked up at some point. I only had half the amount of mix as I'd already put in water and butter, then realized the batter was ever so slightly too runny (ok, it was the consistently of soup, NOT batter) so we had to improvise with more flour, soda, baking powder, and an egg. But the resulting waffles came out well, although, in the future, ALWAYS LOOK AT WHAT SIZE MEASURING CUP YOU ARE USING, especially if you are overtired from too much sangria the night before.

Chocolate Heaven

On Saturday, we also had a chocolate cheesecake. It was delicious. It was also insanely rich, so we made lovely whipped cream to cut the richness. First, make a chocolate cookie crust with 30 chocolate wafer cookies and a half stick of melted butter. Press into a spring form pan and bake at 400 degrees for about 5-7 minutes (keep an eye on it, it will burn).

Next, the filling. Melt 8 oz bittersweet chocolate and allow to cool. Mix 1/2 c of sour cream, 1 tsp of coffee powder, and 2 tsp of vanilla in a bowl. In a stand mixer, cream 3 8z packages cream cheese and 1 1/4 c sugar until smooth. Slowly add 1/2 c cocoa powder. Then the sour cream mixture. Then the chocolate. Then three eggs. Pour into the cooled crust and bake at 300 degrees for 50-60 minutes until the center is slightly jiggly. Allow the cake to cool at room temp, then refrigerate until cold and set.

I highly recommend serving with whipped cream, it really is so rich and dark, the lighter topping really adds a nice element to it. V. v. tasty. Miss M, please correct any of my measurements and ingredients, I'm doing it from memory!!

Ladies' Night...

Mr. R headed down to Cincy on Saturday night, so Miss M, Miss L, Daisy, and I had a lovely Ladies' Night in his absence, featuring the classic Knorr Vegetable Soup Mix Spinach Dip, homemade pizzas, SANGRIA (mmm), and lovely rich chocolate cheesecake. Yum.

We made the Barefoot Contessa pizza dough which is a reasonably good dough. It was a bit tough this time around, I think something was off with my gluten. Mix yeast, honey, warm water. Add flour. Mix on dough hook until Kitchenaid motor wants to die. Knead by hand a bit. Let rise. Divide. Let rise again. Then(again, I heart Ina) let it rest in the fridge until you are ready to use it.

For toppings, I bought regular old mozzarella and Italian cheeses, but also some fresh mozzarella. I roasted some cremini mushrooms, red onion, and red peppers at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes as well. I also had some boring pepperoni, but that was almost an after thought topping. In my infinite wisdom, I forgot to buy or make any red sauce, but we improvised with leftover pesto and just rubbing the dough with garlic.


FYI on Sangria - I heart it - probably too much, it just goes down too easy for me - bottle of red wine, 1/4 to 1/2 c of harder liquor (pref brandy, but SoCO and others work as well), 1/4 of sugar or more, slice up some fruit (orange, lemon, lime, peach) and allow the flavors to meld together as long as you'd like. Before serving, throw in about 3/4 liter of club soda or seltzer and enjoy. I've made white sangrias as well, also lovely, but I love a good red wine sangria. Yum.

Ain't no party like an Ina party

Ok, in case it wasn't ABUNDANTLY apparently, I love Ina Garten and I love her Barefoot Contessa recipes even though they usually involve too much salt and/or dressing where applicable. But I adjust. And digress. Anyways. Friday night, Miss M came rolling into town, so I prepared a modified version of the BC's Chicken Caesar Salad Sandwiches and Pasta Pesto and Peas salad! Hooray!

First, I had to make the pesto sauce. R enjoyed the fact that so much mayo was involved in this meal - mixed store-bought pesto (I was lazy) with mayo, more cheese, a squeeze of lemon, and a box of spinach. Mixed with a pound of pasta, a cup or so of frozen peas, and off we were.




For the sandwich, I cooked up about 3/4 lb of chicken tenderloins, 5-6 strips of lovely bacon (mmm, bacon) and sliced up some roma tomatoes, toasted up a big ol' loaf of ciabatta bread and assembled a ginormous sandwich. I spread prepared Caesar dressing (again, lazy) on one side of the bread, mayo on the other, then layered the toppings on. It made a big sandwich.



Put the salad and sandwich together, it was quite a meal!

Nigella's Perfect Pav

So, as you know, I heart Nigella Lawson, she is so beautiful and lovely to watch on TV, very soothing and her show is very beautifully produced. A calming show. Anyways - one dish I'd seen her make, I believe on Nigella Bites, for her family, was a pavlova - a dish with a meringue base, topped with whipped cream and fruit of some sort. I'd wanted to make it, but it always fell back in my brain as a possible dessert option. But at the end of last week I FINALLY remembered I'd wanted to make it, so yesterday, I took a stab, following a recipe from Nigella's Forever Summer. cookbook.

First, heat the oven to 350 degrees while you make a meringue - whip egg whites, add sugar, a touch of cornstarch, a touch of vinegar. Mound on a parchment lined baking sheet.






Next, load the baking sheet into the oven and immediately drop the temp to 300 degrees. This shocks the meringue. Bake for 60-75 minutes until the sides and top are quite crisp, but the center feels like it will be squishy. (A paraphrase of her technical description). Leave the pav to cool in the oven with the door open.

Whip up 1 c of whipping cream (I added sugar, more on that later, unsweetened whipped cream grosses me out) and once the pav is cool, invert the meringue onto a flat serving dish, and mound the whipped cream on top. Then, top with berries or other fruit of your choice (Nigella recommends the more sour fruits - passionfruit in particular, I opted for strawberries and blueberries, am v. dull) and serve!

Notes - I definitely over-sugared at each step. The base and cream were WAY too sweet for my taste, although R loved it and probably would have run around the house like a screaming 3 year old if I'd let him eat more. Luckily, my strawberries were quite tart, or else I'd have barely been able to eat the dish. That said, I did enjoy it. I would definitely make again, and who knows, I may opt for more exotic fruit! As you can see in the picture, in the base, you get the crispy outer edge of the meringue, but the middle is squishy, almost like a marshmallow, but much nicer tasting. V. lovely, a much lighter dessert option for summer!

Dinner on the Barbie

For a lovely summery evening, I prepared a lovely summery meal of Tequila Lime chicken and black beans and rice. For Ina's TL chicken, you marinade chicken breasts (I use boneless, skinless because that's what I usually have on hand) in tequila, OJ, lime juice, chili powder, garlic, salt, pepper, and in my case, some cayenne in place of a jalapeno, b/c I have problems operating peppers. Marinate as long as possible, then grill. Delish.


For my black beans and rice, which is actually more like black beans, onions, peppers, corn, and rice - saute two onions (chopped) in a small amount of olive oil over medium heat until softened, then add one chopped bell pepper, 3-5 garlic cloves (minced), some cayenne or red chili pepper flakes, LOTS of cumin (at least a tablespoon, more, I happened to run out), salt, pepper, and 2 cans of rinsed and drained black beans. On a whim I tossed in a big handful of frozen corn kernels. This was also quite tasty. If I'd had a can of diced tomatoes, or some fresh plum tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, I'd have thrown that in as well, towards the end of cooking. Serve with rice, although it is good plain, or in a salad.

Choices choices

R was in charge of choosing dinner last night because I had committee late. Hotdogs or actually cooking delicious meatballs and simmering them in sauce to serve over pasta with garlic bread.

What did he choose?

Weekend partay

Had a schmall partay yesterday. Made some beef (BEEF!) and whoopie pies, both recipes I grabbed from other food blogs. The beef was the Chipotle Maple BBQ Beef Brisket from Wellfed, the whoopie pies came from Eat With Me.

Here's the precooked beef. I can't even show the post-cooked beef - things went awry. My pan basically annihilated the meat. I was able to salvage it, but only by cutting off the outside bits of meat. I'm not entirely sure what or how it happened. It was pretty good, and the sauce was nice. I did not use 3 chipotles for fear it would be too hot (I've had issues with over-chipotling in the past) but it definitely would NOT be too hot, this sauce barely had any heat at all, so go forth and use all three with no fear. I just served with some cheap-o on sale hamburger buns, pasta salad, sister-in-law's antipasto pasta salad, and the whoopie pies.

The whoopie pies came out well. On the left, a large pile of whoopie pies awaiting their mascarpone-cream filling.




On the right, the finished product. These were flavored with Kahlua, but you couldn't really taste it. In the future, I might just skip the Kahlua in the cake, and put Bailey's or something fun in the filling. Yum. Yum-O even.

Daisy's Birthday

Yesterday was "little" Daisy's FIRST birthday! YAY! She made it to ONE without being killed by R! I did NOT follow through with making the horrible tuna/peanut butter cake that I'd threatened, although she would have loved it. She did get a special dinner of dog food mixed with tuna and "tuna juice" and a day at doggy day care AND a special "beef stroganoff" flavored rawhide retriever roll. Mmm. Delish.

At first, she was confused by it.












Then, she was very excited about it, as you can tell.

Baking Day

Yesterday was baking day, in order to 1) use up bananas and 2) make blueberry muffins I'd seen on an episode of Barefoot Contessa that just looked really good. Both recipes were Ina recipes, b/c I heart Ina.


I've made the banana bread before, from a variation on Ina's Banana Crunch muffin recipe. The muffins were new to me, Ina's Blueberry Coffee Cake Muffins and were delish. I did learn the very very hard way that you MUST use muffin cups on them, or else they do not come out in one piece. We have many muffins with conical bottoms from being cut out of the muffin pan. Also, a thrilling recipe this one is - it actually made MORE muffins than the recipe stated. Another bonus - I used a bag of frozen blueberries and it worked wonderfully!

Cake

I made a random cake on Friday. Just felt like making a cake. So I made the cake I'd had my eye on from the Baking Bites blog, a marble cake. Came out fine, although I think I slightly overbaked it, and I certainly didn't marble it quite right, as it ended up essentially being just blobs of chocolate on top, white on bottom, much less marbled than the cake in that picture. I also punked out on the frosting and just used a can of chocolate from the pantry. Yes, I'm a pathetic excuse for a human being. Forgive me.

M and R learn to decorate cakes

R decided he wanted to make a cake and decorate it yesterday. It was quite amusing. Let's just say, it was on par with giving a toddler fingerpaints and letting him go wild. We made a box cake (white) and filled it with strawberry jam (it was what we had on hand). Meanwhile, we made the signature buttercream icing from The Whimsical Bakehouse cookbook. Or a half-recipe at least, I didn't think we really NEEDED eight cups of icing. Then we got to decorating.

First we practiced a bit.










Then we iced the cake, and we both put a border around the bottom of the cake (we each did half).









Then we went crazy on the top practicing with various tips. It was fun. But the finished product is not quite ready for prime time. :)

Tarts and vicars...minus the vicars...

For a lovely dinner with Miss Maura, I needed a dessert. A quick and relatively easy dessert. I looked to Paula Deen to provide me with a dessert that included fruit and cream cheese but did not require much baking. Her fresh fruit tart did the trick. I modified it, of course. I only used strawberries and blueberries. And I did not make her glaze, it seemed overkill. I just heated up a small amount of apricot jam with a tiny bit of OJ and brushed that on. But it worked, and was quite delish. And EASY. I highly recommend getting a tart pan and making tarts. Very easy and they look purty.

Mmm...enchiladas...

Here is my gringo take on the ol' enchilada. Make a filling. Any filling. Mine consisted of chicken, black beans, red onion, red pepper, diced chiles, cumin, cheese, salt, and pepper. Fill flour tortillas (I know you should use corn. I don't really like corn tortillas. Sue me). Roll up and smush into a casserole dish. I managed to squeeze 8 into this 9x13 dish.



I topped it with some cheese, then some enchilada sauce, then tasted the sauce and decided I didn't like it, so I stopped pouring it and put on some salsa instead. Then, of course, more cheese.






I then baked the casserole at 375 degrees , covered with foil, until things looked hot and bubbly. Then took the foil off until the cheese was melty and browned. Serve with any desired toppings, such as sour cream.

Eggy, cheesy, porky, carby goodness

As another homage to winter, even though it was 70+ degrees and springlike, R requested penne carbonara for dinner. Fry up some pancetta (mixed with bacon, I didn't have quite enough pancetta, and I think I like the addition of regular smoky bacon) and boil up a pound of your favorite pasta. Meanwhile, I mixed four eggs, a hefty splash of cream, and as much parm as R could stand to grate with a microplane (our box grater being out of commission). Drain the pasta, add in the crisp meats, then slowly add in the egg/cream/cheese mixture and mix well. I let mine rest for a few minutes while I toast up some crusty bread, then serve with a sprinkle of additional cheese and a salad on the side.

Peanut Butter bars

Mmm...I get many good ideas from other food blogs, this time, a recipe for Peanut Butter Cup bars from the Eat With Me blog, who has many good recipes I'd love to try. A shortbread crust, creamy peanut buttery filling, topped with melty Reese's cups. Delish. Although, do not overbake your bars. I baked mine until I thought the center was "set" and it was overdone on the edges. The middle should be quite jiggly when removed from the oven, it will set up just fine when cooled.