Broccolini pizza

This is our change of pace pizza. Our go to, a Margharita is awesome, easy and a standard. We like this one just as well.

1 recipe of pizza dough
Olive oil (maybe 2 oz?)
Enough mozzarella to cover the the pizza (maybe 5 oz?)
Enough broccolini to moderately cover the pizza (broccoli or kal work pretty well too).
2-3 cloves garlic finely sliced

Roll out the pizza and put it on a well corn-mealed pizza peel. Coat with olive oil. Put slices of the mozzarella to reasonably cover the pizza. Dont worry if there are gaps, as it melts it will cover it. Put the chopped broccolini over the pizza. Spread the sliced garlic. Drizzle olive oil over the top and gently dust the pizza with say half a teaspoon of salt. Bake on 425 for 10 minutes or until it reaches the desired level of done-ness.


I used to make garlic oil and then use that in place of the separate olive oil and garlic. However, when I came back from Europe and was in self-quarantine away from Evelyn, she made it this way. It is easier and just as good!

(Mostly) stove top mac and cheese

This is a modification of Rachel Ray’s Macaroni and cheddar cheese: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/macaroni-and-cheddar-cheese-recipe-2131153. The major change is increasing the amount of sauce.

Our go to Macaroni and cheese is from “The new basics cook book.” It takes me probably half an hour of harried labor or the better part of an hour if I do it relaxed. It then needs to bake for like 30 minutes. It's great, but it requires a lot of work, dirties a bunch of dishes and requires a pretentious cheese (gruyere). It makes enough food for 2 or 3 very filling meals for Ev and me and is worth it. However, with the Corona virus going around we had lots of cheddar, no Gruyere and are minimizing our shops (less than 1 a week) and so I searched for a cheddar cheese macaroni and cheese. I found this mostly stove top recipe (it goes under the broiled for some cheese melting and browning). After the first batch I made some tweaks. I was happy with both the first version and my alterations. It is not as good as my old go to, but it is easier in terms of ingredients (if you dont normally keep gruyere on hand), preparation and clean up. I think the verdict is I will still make my go to for guests and about once a season, but this will enter my usual cooking rotation. (Im excited to try variations: green chili or bacon). I should mention, I made this with powdered milk and it worked great. So keep that in mind if your store is low on milk.

1 lb pasta (elbows)

6oz or so broccoli (Im sure Kale would be great too).

3 1/2 cups cheddar cheese grated

Roux:

2 1/4 cups milk

1 Tbsp oil

3 Tbsp Butter 

4 1/2 Tbsp flour

1 tsp  ground black pepper

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp mustard

1/4 tsp nutmeg (I was skeptical but it helps give it a nice baked taste!)

1/4 tsp cayenne

Cook pasta. In the last minute or so add in the broccoli. Strain and place into a 9x13 pan.

Heat oil add butter and melt it over a medium heat. Add flour and stir until it turns light brown. Add milk to the flour and whisk together. Add the paprika, pepper, salt, nutmeg, mustard and cayenne. Continue whisking until it thickens so that when a wooden spoon is placed in it and pulled out it remains light coated in the sauce. Melt in the 2 1/2 cups of the cheese. 

Stir the sauce into the pasta and broccoli in the pan. Top with the remaing cheese and put under the broiler for 5-7 minutes until the cheese is melted and the top has appropriately browned. Serve!

Mulled Cider

Ingredients:
1 gal apple juice
3 stick cinnamon
10 cloves

3 star anise pods

1inch ginger
dash allspice
dash freshly grated nutmeg

Dice ginger and combine with other ingredients. Put on low heat for like 4 hours.

Peanut butter and jelly shortbread bars

A recent potluck had the theme of "school lunches," and I decided to riff on peanut butter and jelly. I knew I wanted to do shortbread because shortbread is delicious. After poking around a bit, I found two recipes that I wanted to hybridize: blackberry jam shortbread bars from Stuck on Sweet and peanut butter chocolate chip shortbread from the View from the Great Island, which I made a few years ago. I substituted peanut butter for some of the butter in the shortbread bars and cut the sugar to make the ratio a little more like the peanut butter chocolate chip shortbread.

I think this recipe turned out pretty well. I personally wouldn't have minded a little less jelly for the filling and a little more peanut butter in the shortbread.

Peanut butter and jelly shortbread bars

2 sticks of butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter (I used one with peanuts as the only ingredient; you may want to adjust sugar and salt if you use one with sugar and/or salt)
generous pinch of salt (or more if you like)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup almond meal
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups seedless raspberry jam or other jam/jelly of your choice

Make the shortbread: Cream butter and sugar in a mixer or by hand. Add the peanut butter, salt, and vanilla extract and mix until combined and a bit fluffy. While mixing slowly, add the almond meal and flour in small batches. Separate into two roughly equal halves. Press one half into a greased 9x13-inch baking pan. Save the other half in the fridge. (Note: my dough didn't come together the way shortbread dough usually does, but because I was just pressing it into the pan, it was fine. I think if I had used less flour, it would have, so if you want to make these into regular cookies, you may want to reduce the flour.)
Bake shortbread at 325 for about 20 minutes or until edges are a bit brown. Remove from oven and spread jam over shortbread as evenly as possible. Sprinkle remaining dough over the top. Put back in the oven and bake until topping is browned, about 30 minutes. Cut into bars once it's cooled.

Strawberries with orange blossom ricotta

See Baking and Math for a ricotta pun that would be perfect here.

Yesterday I made some crepes with a spinach-ricotta filling, and I had some leftover ricotta. In my experience, it turns pretty quickly once you open it, so I wanted to do something with it. I also had some perfect strawberries in the fridge, so I hatched a plan. Ricotta, whipped cream, honey, and orange flower water so I could feel all sophisticated. Be gentle with the orange flower water. It can cross the line into perfumey pretty easily. I think strawberries are the perfect fruit to eat with this, but I could imagine it going well on peaches or nectarines too.

Orange blossom ricotta (amounts are approximate because I didn't measure as I went along)
2/3 cup ricotta cheese
2 tbsp whipping cream
1-2 tbsp honey
orange flower water to taste (this is the only thing I measured-I used 1 tsp, but you might want to start smaller)

Mix it up and whisk with a fork to make it a bit fluffy. Dip strawberries in it.

Scallop pasta in a wine cream sauce

It has been a bit of a hiatus from the foodblog, but I am interested in starting it up again. Recently I have made scallops in a white wine cream sauce over pasta a couple of times and here is a basic recipe. I've used linguini and farfalle and my preference so far is the linguini. It might be even better over fettucini (though Evelyn leans more to spaghetti or angel hair). The wine we used has been Rieslings (of varying sweetness/dryness, I have liked dryer better). The lemon zest really brings out whatever fruitiness is in the wine. The peas add some nice sweetness. I recommend chopping the onions very fine. I hope that you'll enjoy it.

Butter

1 small onion

2 cloves garlic

paprika

salt

black pepper

a little basil

zest 1 lemon

1 cup white wine

1/2 lb bay scallops

1/2 cup peas

1/2 cup cream

Pasta (about 10 oz)

Finely dice the onion and garlic. Melt the butter in a pan over medium to medium high heat. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and cook another 2 minutes. Add the wine and seasonings and simmer until the alcohol has cooked off. Add the scallops and cook until almost done. Add the peas and cook another couple of minutes. 

Serve hot over pasta.

Double Coconut Shortbread

I made Smitten Kitchen's toasted coconut shortbread cookies last year, and I wondered whether coconut oil, another solid-at-room-temperature fat, could replace butter. I finally got around to trying it, and the result was delicious but delicate. The coconut oil gives them a really tender, melty mouthfeel and an incredibly deep coconut flavor.

Both the dough and the finished cookies were quite a bit more fragile than shortbread made with butter. I rolled the dough into a log before refrigerating rather than rolling out and cutting with cookie cutters as in SK's recipe. The dough was much more prone to shattering when I cut it off the log than regular shortbread is. I couldn't cut the cookies as thinly as I normally do for shortbread, which combined with the richness of coconut oil means you really just want one or two at a time, not seven. Whether that's a problem or a benefit is unclear.

After baking, the cookies were very liable to crumble completely, and I'm just eating them off of the cooling rack because they're too delicate to transfer. I'm guessing that there is some mixture of butter and coconut oil that will have the perfect combination of durability and tastiness. If you're in need of a vegan shortbread recipe, this is it. If not, you should try mixing butter and coconut oil for optimal durability.

Double coconut shortbread (adapted from here)

3/4 cup coconut oil, room temperature (or mixture of butter and coconut oil)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

generous pinch of salt

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup shredded coconut, toasted (the really small kind, about the size of breadcrumbs, not the big flakes)

In an electric mixer, mix together the coconut oil and sugar. Add the vanilla and salt and mix. Mix in the flour and then the coconut until it kind of forms a dough. I had to turn it out onto a cutting board and use my hands to get it to come together all the way. Roll into a log and refrigerate until hard.

Cut cookies onto a pizza stone or cookie sheet. Try to get them as thin as possible without the dough shattering, which for me was between 3/8 and 1/2 inch.

Bake at 325 F for 15-20 minutes or until they look like cookies instead of dough. They won't brown as much as cookies made with butter, in my limited experience, so the usual "golden" cookie instructions don't apply.