Nutella Cookies

I pinned this recipe a while ago. It's not hard to see the appeal of Nutella cookies. The pin I pinned actually didn't link to the right recipe, so I searched online. Basically the same recipe popped up all over the internet, but I used the one from Kirbie's cravings. I added some chopped hazelnuts to about half the batter, and both Jon and I thought they improved the cookies. So in the future, we'll be including them. The Nutella flavor is subtle but definitely present. I think Frangelico would be a good addition to pump up the hazelnut flavor even more.

Nutella cookies

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1/2 cup Nutella

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350 F. Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Mix in Nutella, egg, and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl and slowly add to the wet ingredients. Mix until just combined. Stir in hazelnuts.

Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet or pizza stone. Cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies are starting to crackle a little.

Inductive almonds and post-party brunch

Our anniversary was on Friday, and we had a little party at our apartment. We served these almonds along with a cheese plate, spiced olives, mini puff pastry spanakopita, and stuffed mushrooms. We tried some sweet and salty spiced almonds at a party recently, and these are my attempt to recreate them. I think they're pretty great, and as a bonus, they are stupidly easy, especially if you buy roasted almonds. They are called inductive almonds because after you have one, you want one more.

Inductive almonds

1 cup unsalted almonds

1 tsp olive oil

1/4 tsp salt, or more to taste

1 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

A pinch of chipotle powder, optional

If almonds are already roasted, leave them alone. If not, cook them at 400 F for 5-10 minutes. When they have cooled slightly, transfer to a glass bowl. Add olive oil, salt, sugar, pepper, and paprika, and toss to coat. Taste test a few to make sure they're good.

The next morning, Jon brilliantly suggested that we have a party leftovers brunch. Inspired by my friend Renee, I made the table pretty and used the nice bowls (which were a wedding present). In addition to the almonds (a new batch because there were none leftover), we had cheese and crackers, pickles, olives, and a salad of romaine, cucumber, grapefruit, and avocado. I think it's a nice brunch salad. To drink, I had some Negroni punch left over from the night before, diluted with grapefruit juice and club soda. Jon boringly just had water and coffee. It's easy to have a good Saturday when you start it like this.

Chocolate chip bread pudding

My friend Katherine sent me a recipe for the pecan bread she uses for French toast. (Side note: she is vegan and uses a chickpea flour batter for French toast. It's awesome.) My bread machine didn't do a good job of distributing the pecans, so the bread was good, but not quite what I was hoping for, so it didn't get completely eaten before it started to get stale. Luckily, there's this awesome little thing called bread pudding. When the bread was all torn up, the pecan distribution didn't matter. I went with a chocolate chip bread pudding, slightly modified from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. It was tasty and held up surprisingly well in the fridge over the course of the week we took to eat it. I think it would be really good with bananas in it too, so we'll probably add them next time.

Chocolate chip bread pudding

3 cups milk

1/2 cup sugar, or more to taste

4 tbsp butter, plus butter for the pan

Bread, enough to fill the pan (we used pecan bread), torn into bite-sized chunks

3 eggs

3 oz chocolate chips or chunks

1/3 cup chopped pecans (I estimate that this is about how many pecans were in there, so you should add it if you aren't using pecan bread)

Put the milk, sugar, salt, and butter in a small saucepan over low heat and warm until butter melts.

Meanwhile, butter an 8- or 9-inch square baking dish.

Put the bread in the baking dish and pour the milk mixture over it. Let it sit for a while, poking it now and then to submerge the top pieces of bread. Stir chocolate chips and pecans into mixture.

Bake at 350 F for 45-60 minutes, or until the pudding is set and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. (Bittman suggests using a bain-marie, but I forgot to do it, and it was fine.)

Broccoli rabe pizza

This is a pizza recipe I came up with about a month ago to use up some leftover broccoli rabe. Broccoli rabe is a vegetable that I always think I will like more than I do. I don't dislike it, but honestly, I'd rather have broccoli or kale. Anyway, this pizza came about when I was browsing around for broccoli rabe recipes, and I ran across this pizza from smitten kitchen. When I saw the pictures initially, I thought the black blobs were raisins. When it turned out they were olives, I already had my heart set on raisins, so I swapped that out. I also decided to caramelize the onions on the stove instead of roasting them in the oven. I added pine nuts and used fontina cheese instead of mozzarella because I had some I needed to use up.

This pizza was excellent. Jon was rock climbing that afternoon, and he is always really hungry when he gets home from that. He inhaled 2/3 of the pizza and raved about it the whole time, but I don't really trust his judgment when he's that hungry.

Broccoli rabe pizza

Vegetable oil for sauteing

1 large onion, sliced into thin rings

1/2 pound broccoli rabe, washed and chopped

1 pizza crust (I used my standard 1/2 whole wheat crust)

1/2 cup shredded fontina cheese

1/4 cup raisins

2 tbsp pine nuts

Salt to taste

Start by caramelizing your onions. To do this, put a generous amount of oil in a large saute pan and heat it over medium. When it is hot, add the onions and lower the heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are brown and soft, between 45 minutes and an hour. Remove onions and set aside. Sometime while the onions are caramelizing, put your pizza stone in the oven and turn it on to 425 F.

Turn heat up to medium and add broccoli rabe to remaining oil. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until broccoli rabe is wilted and bright green, about five minutes.

Roll out pizza crust. Top with cheese, onions, raisins, broccoli rabe, and pine nuts, roughly in that order. Sprinkle with salt if desired. Put the pizza on the stone and bake until done, about 9-12 minutes.

Cranberry-Pecan delight

We had a little dessert party with family and a few friends the day before our wedding. We provided three desserts, and other people brought things, too. Of course, one of the things we made was this plum cake, and I can't resist showing off a couple pictures of it because I really worked hard to make it pretty this time.

One of the other desserts we made was this cranberry-pecan-cream dessert my mom used to make a lot when we were little. It's pretty simple, but you do need a food processor and something to whip cream with, so it's a bit messy and loud. Unfortunately, I didn't take as good a picture of it (and it was frozen at the time, so the texture in the picture is misleading), but rest assured that it's quite pink and pretty and smooth and fluffy. I have only ever eaten it as a mousse-like dessert, but Mom also uses it to frost cakes sometimes, in which case she uses a little more whipped cream. There's a rather large range in amount of cream you can use for this. Of course, the cream tempers the tartness of the cranberries, so pick an amount you think you'll like and see how it goes. I've made it a lot of different ways, and it's always good.

Cranberry-pecan delight

1 bag cranberries, thawed if frozen
1/2 cup plus 3-8 tbsp sugar, divided
1 cup chopped pecans
1-2 cups whipping cream

In a food processor or blender, combine cranberries and 1/2 cup sugar and chop coarsely. Add chopped pecans. In a large bowl, whip cream along with 3-4 tbsp sugar per cup of cream until it holds stiff peaks. Combine cranberry mixture with whipped cream. It's OK if you combine them incompletely. The red and white ribbons look pretty.

Caramelized onion, pear, and blue cheese pizza

I think I got the inspiration for this flavor combination from California Pizza Kitchen years ago. The onions and the pears are both sweet, but the tangy blue cheese balances it out. I served this pizza with a truly extraordinary salad. In addition to the normal lettuce, tomato, pepper, and cucumber, I added dill, sorrel, kale, and carrot tops from the garden and pear slices that didn't make it onto the pizza. Jon is the onion caramelizer in the household, so I can't give you guidelines on that. Low and slow is my best guess. I'm sure the internet knows how to do it, though, if you need a recipe. In addition to this pizza, we use caramelized onions in wraps with black bean dip and as a topping for veggie burgers. (We made veggie burgers from scratch for the first time a few days ago.) I plan on using the onion-pear-blue cheese trifecta in galettes later this week as well.

Caramelized onion, pear, and blue cheese pizza

1/2 recipe pizza dough made with whole wheat flour in place of half of the white flour
Extra- virgin olive oil for brushing
Caramelized onions
1 pear, thinly sliced
Crumbled blue cheese (we used a mix of Maytag and a local generic blue cheese)
2 tbsp pine nuts
Coarse salt, optional

Preheat oven to 425 with a pizza stone in it. On a floured surface, roll the pizza dough out to a large circle. Brush with olive oil. Arrange caramelized onions, pear slices, blue cheese, and pine nuts on dough. Carefully transfer to hot pizza stone. Bake for 12 minutes or until crust is done. Sprinkle with salt at the table if desired.

Inspiration pizza

A couple weeks ago, we got home late and hungry with very little food in the house. (We were even out of parmesan-the horror!) I felt like a Chopped! contestant. We had a beer pizza crust in the fridge from a couple days before. There were also some green beans that needed to be used. I marinated them in a mixture of lemon and tangerine juice with some black pepper, smoked paprika, and chopped garlic while I rolled out the pizza dough and assembled the rest of the ingredients. I spread some extra-virgin olive oil on the dough, followed that with a hearty helping of jarred pesto. I dotted the top with sun-dried tomatoes and layered the green beans on top. I wasn't sure that the feta would be good on the pizza, so I only put it on half of it. I put it in the oven at 375 and cooked it for about 12 minutes. I sprinkled on some pine nuts and then cooked it for another few minutes. It wasn't bad at all. If I decide to make green bean pizza in the future, I will chop them smaller, but other than that it pretty much worked. The leftover green bean marinade was a nice drizzle for the top. I was impressed by my kitchen ingenuity.
I'm thinking about doing a Chopped-style weird ingredient challenge every once in a while. My idea is that Jon and I each come up with two ingredients and then we each make a dish that has all four. It's dorky, but we don't have TV or internet at home, so how else are we supposed to entertain ourselves? If these challenges ever materialize, I'll post them here.

Pineapple peanut butter stew with millet

It sounds odd, but pineapple and peanut butter are both good in savory dishes. I've seen several versions of peanut or groundnut stew, but this is the only one I've seen that (brilliantly) adds pineapple. This is a recipe I got from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, and I think it was my first exposure to kale. You can use any green in it, but kale keeps a lot of texture when cooked, which is nice in this dish. I think millet is the perfect grain for this dish, but couscous and rice are good too. This recipe makes 2-4 hearty servings, depending on how big the bunch of greens is.

Pineapple peanut butter stew (from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home)
Pineapple tidbits are best for this, but crushed pineapple or pineapple chunks are perfectly acceptable. You want pineapple that is packed in pineapple juice, not sugary syrup. Fresh pineapple would be great, I'm sure, but if I've gone to the trouble of disassembling a pineapple, I'm not about to cook it in a stew.

1 cup hulled millet

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 cups undrained canned pineapple (20 oz. can)
1 bunch greens, washed and sliced (5 cups or more)
1/2 cup peanut butter
Tabasco sauce to taste (1 tsp or more)
Salt
Cilantro, chopped, for garnish
Crushed peanuts, for garnish

Combine millet, 1 3/4 cups water, and a large pinch of salt in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for about 20 minutes, or until water is gone. If it's still a bit crunchy, add a couple tablespoons of water at a time and cook until tender enough.

In a large pot, saute onion and garlic in oil for about 10 minutes, or until the onions are lightly browned. Add the pineapple and its juice to the onions and bring to a simmer. Stir in the greens, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring a few times, until greens are wilted. Mix in the peanut butter and Tabasco sauce and simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt to taste. Garnish with cilantro and crushed peanuts if desired.

Quinoa salad with peas and pine nuts

This dish has four ingredients (five if you count water), and I don't think it could be improved. I intended to dress it with sesame-lemon dressing, but it was so darn good without it that I left it alone. Later I did try it dressed, and it was not nearly as good. The pine nuts are so rich and toasty that the dressing just seems sharp and unnecessary. Jon says I should call this a salad, but I think the pine nuts make it somewhat pilaf-y as well. I could definitely see this served in a butternut or acorn squash for an attractive Thanksgiving treat.

It's funny, I normally have quinoa in the pantry, but I don't actually cook it very often. This week, I've made it three times, and now it's all gone. I guess making it the first time just reminded me how good it was, so I made it some more. I think quinoa is a really good dish to take in for lunch if you don't have leftovers handy. The quinoa itself only takes about 20 minutes to cook, and while it's cooking, you can prep whatever veggies, beans, or nuts you want. You have a healthy, tasty lunch in just 20 minutes.

Quinoa salad with peas and pine nuts

1/4 cup pine nuts
3/4 cups quinoa (I used a mix of white and red)
generous pinch of salt
1 cup frozen peas

First, toast the pine nuts. I spread them out on a tray in the toaster oven and click "toast" and take them out the moment I can see that they've started to brown. You can also toast them in a dry skillet over medium heat. Set aside to cool.
Combine quinoa with 1 1/2 cups water and a large pinch of salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes or until all the water has been absorbed. Stir in the peas and pine nuts. It's OK if the peas are still frozen. The heat from the quinoa will defrost them, and they'll bring the temperature of the quinoa down so you can eat it sooner. Serve warm or room temperature, not cold.

Soba noodle salad

My morning has been far too stressful. First, a Pyrex baking dish exploded in my oven (see above picture), scaring the bejesus out of me and making me feel stupid for not noticing that Pyrex says "no broiler" right on the bottom. Then on my bike ride to school a driver made a left turn into the wrong lane, where I was lawfully riding, and nearly hit me. And if the visions of burning glass flying at my face and broken limbs were not enough, my electric bill for last month was ridiculous, even though we weren't there most of the month, and when we are there, we keep it 85-90 degrees and unplug almost everything we aren't using at the moment. The apartment management company claims that our air conditioning had accidentally been cross-wired to someone else's meter, so we are now paying for what we actually use, but it seems way too high. Now in an effort to calm myself, I will tell you about this lovely salad I made for dinner last night before any of these upsetting things happened.

I got the idea for this salad and dressing from the June 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, but now I just customize it with whatever I have around the house. This time, I had edamame, tofu skins (more on those later), red bell pepper, tomatoes, lettuce, peanuts, carrots, and cucumbers. I normally make the dressing with an orange juice and peanut butter base, but I was out of OJ and very low on PB, so this time I based it on pineapple juice, a smidgeon of PB, sesame oil, and lime juice. It turned out pretty well, although OJ is better than pineapple juice for this purpose. The only cooking you have to do for this is boiling the noodles, edamame, and tofu skins, which I did at the same time, so it doesn't heat up your house much. That's always a plus in the summer.

Now to discuss tofu skins. Tofu skin is kind of new to me, and there are a couple different kinds, so I don't really know what to call it, but both Jon and I have really been enjoying it. It's my understanding that it is a byproduct of tofu production, kind of like a skin that forms on the top of a pudding. I picked up a few different types of tofu skins a couple weeks ago in Chinatown. Some of them are wet and wrinkly, and some are dry and almost look woven. I think the dry kind might be just a dried-out version of a wet kind, but since I know nothing about the tofu-making process, I don't know. All freeze very well. They have a really great chewy texture that makes them more satisfying in some dishes than regular tofu. The kind I used for this recipe was labeled "tofu striper", but that may have just been the store's translation. It was a dry one that looked almost like thin woven cotton handkerchiefs. It came in 4-inch squares, and I cut it into 1/4-inch strips to give it kind of a linguini shape. I cooked it with the noodles to get it a little soft but didn't really do anything special with it. Expect to see tofu skins appearing in more recipes on this blog. They're really quite fantastic.

The kind of tofu skin I used

Soba noodle salad
I made the dressing by pouring a little of this and a little of that and tasting often, so the amounts I have listed are just guidelines. Use your tongue while making it and adjust it to your tastes. I would recommend that you make the dressing a little sweeter than you think you should because there isn't much sweetness in the other ingredients. Finally, add whatever vegetables you want. Sliced raw baby bok choy is good, as are cooked greens. Water chestnuts and bean sprouts are nice for crunch, but I didn't have any around.

Salad:
8 oz soba noodles
1/2 cup frozen edamame
2 oz dry tofu skin, cut into narrow strips
1/3 large cucumber, julienned
1/2 large carrot, julienned
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into narrow strips
1 Roma tomato, cut into narrow strips, or 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
4 leaves of lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
Crushed peanuts to garnish

Dressing:
1/3 cup pineapple or orange juice
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp peanut butter
1 tsp sesame seeds
Srirachi sauce, to taste

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the noodles and edamame and cook for about five minutes. Add the tofu skins and cook until the noodles are tender, about 6 more minutes. While you're waiting, whisk the dressing ingredients together and mess around with it until you think it's perfect. Drain the noodles, beans, and tofu skins and put in a large bowl. Add most of the dressing and toss to combine so the noodles won't stick together. Add the cucumber, carrot, pepper, and tomatoes and toss together. Serve on a bed of lettuce and garnish with crushed peanuts.

Muhammara

Jon and I like to have something called "breads and spreads" for dinner. The title is pretty self-explanatory. It usually has a Mediterranean theme: hummus, tzatziki, baba ganoush or another eggplant spread, whipped feta, pita bread, etc. We also serve raw veggies, olives, and pickles. Recently, this Syrian red pepper and walnut spread has joined the "breads and spreads" spread. We saw it in the November issue of Bon Appetit, and both of us knew immediately that we wanted to try it. It is a great addition. It's a little tangy, a little sweet, and the walnut texture is great. It's a good contrast to the other spreads. I think this recipe would be amazing with red peppers one roasted oneself, but the jars are terribly convenient.

Muhammara
12-oz. jar roasted red peppers, drained
1 cup walnuts
1/3 cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp pomegranate molasses or lemon juice (I use pomegranate molasses)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Process all ingredients in a food processor until it's a coarse puree. Makes about 2 cups.

Granola

I finally found a granola recipe I really like. It's more a ratio than a recipe, really. Beyond the oats, you can use any liquid sweetener you want and any nuts and fruits you want. I got the recipe from Moosewood Restaurants: New Classics, which has a maple-nut granola recipe in it. Maple syrup is pretty expensive. I used it the first time but found that it wasn't really mapley, so I substituted honey, which is cheaper, for the second batch. I didn't regret it at all. I wanted this batch to feature almonds, and since apricots are related, I thought it would be nice to throw some chopped dried apricots in too. Dried cherries and pumpkin seeds went in because I wanted a little more variety. This is delicious with homemade yogurt in the morning. I will definitely be keeping this in stock. It makes a pretty big batch, so I won't have to be making it constantly, and it keeps indefinitely, as far as I can tell. Plus, there are tons of flavor combinations I want to try. The one warning I have about the recipe is that you can't put it in jars to store until it's completely cooled, and it takes a long time to cool (like over an hour). So if you start it at 10 pm, you might end up staying up later than you intended.

Granola (adapted from Moosewood Restaurants: New Classics):
4 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (quick-cooking or instant can be substituted but aren't quite as good)
1/4 cup oat bran (optional-gives a fiber boost)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup maple syrup or honey (or agave nectar or corn syrup, I'd imagine)
2 tbsp molasses (not blackstrap)
2 generous cups nuts, seeds, and dried fruit, chopped to whatever size you want it in granola (dried fruit should be kept separate until after cooking)
1-2 tsp spices, if desired (I like it without, but there is cinnamon in the original recipe, and I'm sure nutmeg or cardamom would suit some people)

Combine oats, oat bran, spices, and nuts in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine oil, honey or syrup, and molasses and stir vigorously to try to get it rather uniform. Pour liquid into the oat mixture and stir to coat. Pour oats into a large greased baking pan (I use a 9x13 Pyrex) and bake at 350 F for about 20 minutes, stirring every five minutes. When it is golden brown, remove from oven and add the dried fruit. Let it cool completely before storing it in airtight containers in the refrigerator. Stirring periodically will help the heat dissipate and keep the granola from sticking to the pan.