Food: Scarborough Fair Mock Risotto

Oh man, oh man.  Now I've done it!  I finally created something with the Scarborough Fair oil that is not only worthy of serving, but it's completely and utterly sinful and carb-laden and delicious!  Plus, it's fusion food, if you want to take the "Scarborough Fair" song to be British Isles origin and risotto is Italian, so... there we go!

Here's what it really is: orzo with tons of butter, Scarborough Fair oil, spices, half and half, shallots, and Parmesan cheese.  It looks kinda like big-grained risotto.

Here's what I did.

You need:

• 1 pound orzo pasta, cooked
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• about a quarter cup of Scarborough Fair Oil - make sure it's REALLY dense with herbs, almost like Scarborough Fair pesto...
• Lotsa garlic - probably 4 cloves, chopped
• 1 large shallot, diced
• Crushed red pepper to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup half and half

Once I cooked the orzo, I melted the butter and blended the oil in.  Once it was warmed through, I added the shallots and garlic and cooked until the shallots were translucent.  At that point I stirred the orzo into the mixture and made sure it was well-coated.  This is when the to-taste moments started happening.  I added a whole bunch of crushed red pepper (we like it spicy here), salt and pepper, and the Parmesan and half and half.  Once it resembled risotto in its creaminess, it was tasty as heck.

But be sure to serve it immediately.  I learned during dinner that the oil liked to separate from the herbs and yummies sticking to the pasta and collect underneath the pasta.   It still tasted fantastic.

Food: Curry

I am studying up on curry, because I want to learn more about them and learn how to cook my own from scratch.  Of course, the curries I fell in love with came from India, which is the first kind of curry I tasted.

 My first Indian food experience was taking my father out for Indian food for Father's Day or his birthday (I can't remember because the dates are close together) one year, and he introduced me to naan bread, samosas, and all these other delicious things he had discovered while traveling in Great Britain and India.  I ordered chicken tikka the first time and enjoyed it, though it was very, very hot to my traditionally bland-eating tastebuds.  But I loved its complexity, even though I ate tons of bread and drank tons of water.

The second time I ate Indian Food was in Georgetown near Washington DC and had chicken saag.  Oh lord.  That was some amazing food.  Later in life I tried Biryani chicken and loved that too.  The occasions weren't that notable (dinner with various friends) but I loved the food.  I still order chicken saag regularly when I go to an Indian restaurant.

Bringing us to the past couple years, I've been using Butter Chicken curry paste from Kitchens of India as my go-to curry shortcut.  My father introduced it to me, and I loved that I could make "Indian Food" easily without having to pay restaurant prices.  It's very good, but I've been told from some people that it's a little salty (the sodium content is quite high).

My most recent curry adventure was at the home of Winston's dog breeder when she had me, my husband, and another owner of one of her dogs over.  She is British, and she told me that Indian food has now surpassed fish and chips as the number 1 take-out food in Great Britain.   Wowzers!  I always knew you could get good Indian food in Great Britain, but not that it was that popular.  At any rate, she made us Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for Prawns with a Dark Sauce (this recipe is available with a quick Google search).  It was hot, but delicious, and I am definitely in love with more curry now.  I want curry all the time.  I'm on a curry kick.  Give me more curry!

So I went to Indian Food Forever and found lots of recipes for the dishes I've tried and many for dishes I've not tried.  I made a list of basic spices I need, and I placed my order to Penzey's today for my little Indian food "kit."  I hope that this makes for some delicious food and some interesting blogs.  I do have some occasions to cook for in the near future, so I plan to blog more soon.

"And here's to curry vindaloo!" - Rent

Food: Mac and Cheese experiment II

So I did another mac and cheese experiment.  It turned out even better than the last recipe, if I do say so myself.  Plus I learned a lot.  Such as: never trust a mac and cheese recipe for the roux.  You have to know your roux, defend your roux, beat the heck outta your roux until it's that badass golden color and then SLOWLY add your milk and get it to the perfect simmer as it thickens all bubbly and wonderful.  I have never followed a recipe to successfully make a perfect roux.  Every time I've improvised, the roux gets awesome.  So: never trust the recipe.

Anyway, here's what I did.

grated an 8oz. block NY reserve aged cheddar, a 4 oz block of Yancey's Fancy roasted garlic cheddar, and a 4 oz block of Yancey's Fancy Champagne cheddar.

Boiled the pasta in salted water for 6 minutes and then drained.

Made the roux with a stick of butter, a pile of all-purpose flour, and a whisk.  Seriously, I just added flour and whisked until it looked like that wonderful roux you see on food channels.  Then I slowly whisked in bits of milk until it turned into a very thick gravy.  Then I added more milk slowly.  And then let that get thick and bubbly and coat a spoon.

Added: a whole ton of garlic powder (shame! but I was out of fresh garlic), probably 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (sprinkled it in), a teaspoon or so of smoked Spanish paprika, a teaspoon or so of dry mustard, 1/2 teaspoon-ish of kosher salt, and tasted.  It tasted good.

Mixed in the cheese till it melted.  Adjusted the seasonings until I tasted even more yum.

Mixed in the cooked elbow pasta.  Poured the mixture into a 9x13" pan and covered with a generous amount of panko bread crumbs.  Baked at 350 for 35 minutes.  Took it out of the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes.  Dished it up.

It was good.  And no, I didn't take a picture, because I was too busy eating it.

food: quick dinner

When I don't feel like cooking, I usually make the same old chicken with pasta and spinach.  Always.  It has garlic in it, and chicken, and pasta, and spinach.  With a touch of butter or olive oil, depending on my mood. Today, I altered it and did the following vegetarian option:

• 1/2 pound pasta, uncooked
• 5 ounces raw spinach
• 1 jar Alfredo sauce (I used Classico roasted garlic)
• a whole bunch of garlic powder (because I am out of fresh garlic)

I cooked the pasta, then drained it except for about an ounce of the water.  Then I threw in the spinach and let it cook in the water for a bit (not a lot of water, just enough to "steam" the spinach).  Once the spinach was almost-cooked, I threw in the pasta and stirred.  Then I poured over the jar of Alfredo sauce and garlic powder and stirred.  It was delicious.

And no, I didn't take pictures because hubby's plate was the prettiest, and right before I could take a picture, he unscrewed the top of the crushed red pepper and poured the entire jar over his pasta before he realized that you flip up the top of the lid to sprinkle it on.  Since this happened to him at a restaurant once also, this was hilarious and amazing and I nearly squirted seltzer out my nose.

In other news, I started running on a treadmill today.  I am immensely proud of myself and plan to lose the 45 pounds I wish to lose by doing this, assuming my knees and shins can handle it.  Grrr.  Hear me roar.

Food: baked ziti the easy way

Baked ziti was a staple dish of almost every covered-dish, potluck, or shared-responsibility dinner I went to growing up.  The joke was that it wasn't really a local meal unless there was baked ziti.  But there is good baked ziti and bad baked ziti.  The bad is the kind that has little cheese except a sheet of cardboardy mozzarella from a bag on top and a smidgen of sauce in the "filling."  Not mine.  Mine is a cheesy wonder, which is how it should be.

For basic baked ziti, you need:

• 1 pound of pasta, cooked until it's almost-cooked (about 2 minutes less than the indicated time on the package)
• 1 regular-size jar of spaghetti sauce.  I use marinara sauce from Barilla a lot of the time, but Prego got me through it today.
• 1 to 2 pounds ricotta cheese, depending on your taste.  Today was a 1-pounder day.
• 1 pound fresh mozzarella - not the little balls, but the blob that you can slice
• Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
• sprinkly Italian seasoning

If you haven't done it already, cook the pasta 2 minutes short of the cooking time on the box in salted water.

Get your 9x13" pan out.  Pour in the spaghetti sauce.  All of it.  Trust me.  Then, pour in the ricotta and mix it around until it looks pink and gross.  (It really is ugly to me.)

Pour your pasta in, and stir it until every single one of those little ziti noodles (or penne noodles) is covered in saucey-cheesy goodness.

Top it with the fresh mozzarella slices.  If you have extra, you can munch on it for a good treat.  Sprinkle the mozzarella with Parmesan and Italian seasoning.

Bake at 350 until it is bubbly, melty, and delicious.  Probably a good half hour to an hour will do.  But don't brown the cheese too much, because you want it to be moist and heavenly and not cardboardy and dry.

Eat.

Variations:

- vodka sauce with fresh mozarella balls (not ricotta) and chopped frozen spinach (thawed), topped with fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese

- sausage and peppers in the sauce with the regular recipe.  A restaurant down in Endicott calls that "ziti rosso."  It's ahhh-mazing.

- alfredo sauce, chicken, and spinach, with tons of garlic and possibly broccoli.  And cheese on top.  Maybe breadcrumbs too.

Be creative.  Baked pasta is an amazing vehicle.  I even saw a variation once for mild sausage and a pumpkin-sage cream sauce that was heavenly... I think it was Paula Deen who came up with it...

Food: Parmesan-Panko Tilapia

Let me be clear: fish is one of my least favorite meals, but I can stand tilapia.  So here is how I fixed it up tonight and made it more tolerable than usual.  I do this "recipe" a lot, so it's in the oven right now and I can assure you it tastes fine.  Which is more than I can say for most fish, unless that fish is fried.  All fried fish is food of the gods, for a reason I cannot fathom except that it's deep-fried.  And deep-fried anything (almost) is tasty.  Including cheesecake.

First, I took 2 frozen tilapia fillets (plain) that I got from ye olde Wegman's.  You can get these at Walmart, too, but I find the Walmart brand tilapia a little more fishy-tasting and less plain-tasting than the Wegman's ones, and like I said earlier, I dislike fish, so the less fishy, the better.

Then I put them in a 9"x9" pan and drizzled a little extra-virgin olive oil over them.  Not a lot, but enough for it to drip down the sides of each fillet and into the pan a bit to prevent them from sticking to the pan.  (It probably would have been good to spray the pan with cooking spray too, but I didn't.  We'll see what happens.)  Next, season with seasoned salt and Fines Herbes (I use Penzey's mix of Fines Herbes).  Probably a total of a teaspoon of each went on both fillets.

Now, get out your can of Parmesan (or, if you like to be fancy and flavorful, your wedge of Parmesan and your microplane grater) and sprinkle that stuff generously over each fillet.  Don't be stingy.

Finally, sprinkle each fillet with some panko bread crumbs to taste.  I use a lot, because the crunch helps me forget that I'm eating (ugh) fish.

Bake at about 400 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the fish flakes with a fork.  I'm not positive on the time, so check it often after about the first 15 minutes.  Usually it's a good 10 minutes after I check it for the first time.

And I do assure you, it's quite tasty.  The fish part is mild, the fines herbes and Parmesan are tasty together, and it has a pleasant crunch and texture.

Food: how to have dessert coffee

Tonight was a birthday celebration at my in-laws' house, and we made special coffee for dessert.  It's pretty easy to make and quite delicious.

You need:

• coffee
• Kahlua or Frangelico
• whipped cream
• caramel sauce

Brew a pot of coffee.  While it's brewing, pour a shot of your favorite liquor (I used Kahlua) into the bottom of the glass.  Pour enough coffee to cover it.  Top with a generous dollop of whipped cream (I used unsweetened, my family used sweetened from the squirt-can), and then drizzle with caramel sauce.  An attractive, impressive, and delicious cup of Joe!

Food: Chicken Pesto Pizza

In honor of that big football game that was Sunday, I decided to try my hand at making pizza for the first time.  It wasn't fantastic, and it wasn't terrible either, but I had a few limitations going for me:

• There was no "raw" pizza dough available at the market, only pre-made flaps of bread that were then placed on the pizza stone and then baked... (boo)
• I had never made pizza before
• This particular type of pizza-bread-thing said to put it right on the oven rack, but darn it, I wanted to use my pizza stone, so I disobeyed.

So I decided to make one pizza all fancy - chicken pesto pizza - and one pizza with red sauce and cheese and pepperoni.  The pepperoni pizza was fine, but nothing great.  It just needed less sauce, although the sauce that I had bought was quite tasty.

The chicken pesto pizza, though, had potential.

First, I took out that bread-dough-thingie.  Then I slathered the entire thing over with pesto sauce I had made from the basil I grew this past summer that was sitting in my fridge waiting for such a special occasion.  Covered that with diced chicken breast (cooked, of course).  Covered that with mozzarella cheese.  Baked the whole thing for a good 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

The end result?  Very pretty, very flavorful, and very tasty.  But it needed a little more "lubrication" according to my husband, and I have to agree with him.  What the heck can I use for more lube?  I'm almost thinking of mixing in a tiny bit of plain red sauce on top of the pesto so it's tomato-pesto pizza, but I don't want to lose the intensity of basil flavor that I had before.  Help me, foodies everywhere!

Food: Risotto

I have been meaning to conquer risotto for some time.  I love its creamy texture, the nuttiness of the arborio rice, and how everyone is impressed more if you say "risotto" than if you say "slow-cooked rice."  Plus, it's creamy and delicious and oh, so amazing.

So I went to the interwebs and found me a basic risotto recipe and basically followed it.  With a few alterations.

Here's what I did.

First, I put a quart of chicken broth (Swanson organic) on the back burner to get really warm but not simmering.  Just nice and steaming hot.

Then, I melted about a tbsp of butter in a saucepan with a tablespoon of veggie oil (canola to be exact).  Then I cooked a chopped shallot (medium size) in it until the shallot was almost translucent.

Added rice and stirred until the rice turned translucent except for the center and it smelled nutty and delicious and amazing.

Poured in a half cup of good white wine: Casa Larga Chardonnay to be exact.  I would also recommend Toasted Head Chardonnay (my favorite white wine EVER; the Casa Larga was a Christmas gift and it was just as good).

Stirred and stirred and stirred until the liquid was almost absorbed.

Then I added a ladleful of broth and stirred and stirred and stirred until it was almost absorbed.  Lather, rinse, repeat until the broth is gone.  Don't stop stirring except to add the broth.

I tasted a few times to make sure the rice was absorbing the liquid.  Partially cooked arborio rice is kind of gross.

Once all the broth was gone, I stirred in 3 tbsp of unsalted butter and a quarter cup of Parmesan cheese.  Freshly grated is good, but I use Wegman's brand in the green can because it has the most flavor of any canned Parmesan I've ever tasted.

Then I served.  And ate.  And ate.

I normally have a rule of no seconds, but this risotto was creamy, drowned in butter, subtle-tasting, and amazing.  It punctuated a glass of that Casa Larga very nicely.  So did the roast chicken I made to go with the risotto.  But really?  It was all about the risotto tonight.

YUM.

Sorry no photos... I was busy stuffing my face after all the stirring.

Food: Mishaps in the Kitchen

We all have our kitchen debacles.  For example, when I was about 9, I decided to make a jelly roll.  Instead of using regular dough, I used bread, crumbled it up, and added milk to it and tried to make that into "dough."  It didn't work, and was really gross-looking.  To make it taste better, I added jelly and stirred it all around.  What came out was an unseemly concoction that my mother served to me for dinner that night to "teach me a lesson."  I didn't eat it.  She cut me a deal: I could have regular dinner with them if I had NO SNACKS for the rest of the week.  Needless to say, I took the deal.  But I sneaked a snack anyway... several times.

Which brings me to tonight's debacle.  I wanted to roast a chicken, but it was still sort of frozen.  As in, the outside was soft, but the inside?  Rock-hard.  I didn't think this would matter; I'd just reduce the oven temp and roast it for a longer time.  No problem, and the house would smell delicious when I was done.  Which brings me to the thing I forgot.

The giblet bag.

Yup, there it was in the hole of the chicken, frozen in there solid.  Ice-pick solid.  I tried several methods of removing it, all while wearing rubber gloves (yes, I'm that wimpy about raw meat).  None of them worked, until it dawned on me: heat thaws frozen things.  (Who would have guessed that I have a masters degree?!)

So I popped it in the oven for an hour.  Took it out, got out a pair of tongs, and promptly removed the giblet bag.  It is now safely in the trash.  The chicken, meanwhile, is roasting and toasting in the oven, happily seasoned and getting ready to be devoured by the occupants of my house.

And no one was the wiser.

Food: Christmas Dinner

I am blessed every Christmas with a dinner beyond compare.  Last year it was made by my (late) father and involved steak, grilled scallops with a ginger-wasabi glaze, roasted potatoes, and some kind of uneventful vegetable.  This year it was cooked by my husband's family, and involved prime rib, oven-roasted potatoes, scalloped corn, deviled eggs, cabbage salad (cole slaw essentially), and hot dinner rolls.  It was a veritable feast.

 The prime rib...

 The White Christmas Cake...

The roasted potatoes... 

The scalloped corn

Indeed, it was delicious and amazing and insane and fantastic.  I feel almost as if I'm still full.  Heaven!

Food: Mac and Cheese experiment

Christmas Eve is traditionally an evening of feasting at the in-laws' house every year.  This year promised to be no different, and I had the opportunity to invade my (amazing, awesome, generous, and dear) mother-in-law's kitchen to cook some kind of experiment.  Normally I operate on recipes and recipes alone for special occasions, but I had some ingredients on hand that were begging, nay, pleading for an experimental combination.

It started with dog-paw shaped pasta from Pastabilities that mommy-in-law got me as a gift.  Then I realized that we had applewood smoked cheddar and Adirondack cheddar in the house.  And onion.  And panko breadcrumbs.  Plus pantry staples like butter, seasonings, and flour.  Lo and behold, a plan for mac and cheese was born.

What I had on hand:

• about 6 ounces applewood smoked cheddar, rubbed with paprika (from the fancy cheese section of Wegman's)
• 8 ounces McAdam brand Adirondack cheddar
• 14 ounces dog-paw shaped pasta from Pastabilities
• a large white onion
• a stick of butter
• flour (I used about half a cup)
• black pepper
• mustard (spicy brown, a tablespoon)
• about 3 cups milk

What I did:

First I boiled the pasta in salted water for the 6 minutes it says to on the package and drained.  Then came time for the cheese sauce.

I melted a stick of butter in the pasta pot, added the chopped onion, and cooked on low heat until the onion was translucent and sweet-tasting, but not brown.  Then I added the flour and stirred it around until it made an onion-y roux.  Once the roux reached a golden color, I stirred in the milk and brought this all to a nice simmer on medium heat and the roux turned into a thick delicious saucey looking thing.  Added the mustard, added the black pepper, and inhaled.  Something about black pepper makes me euphoric.

Anyway: then I busted out mom-in-law's salad shooter (the only way to grate cheese, for real) and grated the cheese into the pot, stirred it up until melted, and stirred in the pasta.

The next step is obvious: pour it into a casserole dish, top with panko bread crumbs, and bake for about 30 minutes (we were close to 45) at 350, until the crumbs are golden and the cheese is bubbly and delicious.

So how was it?  Smoky.  Paprika-y (remember the paprika on the cheese).  Cheesy.  Delicious.  Oh, it was a treat indeed.

And yes, I'm eating its leftovers for lunch today, with a side of Croghan Bologna (a Northern NY delicacy) and cheese curds.  Bring on the cholesterol!

Food: Gram's English Toffee

Neither English nor toffee, Gram's cookies were always my favorite of her cookie assortment.  It's a brown sugar cookie bottom covered in chocolate and (optional) nuts.  (I don't do the nuts because I don't like them.)

You need:
1 stick butter or margarine
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup brown sugar
3 egg yolks
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
2 cups sifted flour (sift it and then measure)

a whole bunch of chocolate.  For me, it was 2 10-ounce bags of bittersweet chocolate chips.  For Gram, it was 12 Hershey bars.

First, cream the butter, shortening, brown sugar, egg yolks and vanilla together.  Add the flour.  Press this dough into a jelly roll pan or small cookie sheet.  Mine was 10.5"x15" I think.  Bake at 375F for 10 minutes.

Once you remove the dough from the oven, put your chocolate on it immediately.  As the chocolate melts, spread it around with a spatula.  (For the chips, I returned it to the turned-off oven for about 2 minutes and then spread things around.)  At this point, if you want nuts, sprinkle them on top of the chocolate.  I don't.

Cool completely and cut into squares.

Food: Pan seared beef tenderloin steaks

The fanciest-sounding dish I make is a pan-seared beef tenderloin steak with a red wine reduction sauce.  What's hilarious about this is that it is incredibly easy to make if you have a basic knowledge of cooking, and it tastes amazing.  It's a little expensive if you use actual tenderloin instead of sirloin, but it's worth the expense if you want a flavorful, tender, medium-rare steak.

To make this dish you need:

• 1 beef tenderloin steak per person eating
• 2 shallots, minced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• about a tablespoon fresh rosemary, minced
• 2 cups red wine (or thereabouts - I just pour from the bottle)
• 1 heaping teaspoon beef-flavored Better than Bouillon
• 2 tablespoons butter (unsalted)

First thing's first: get your steaks out and DRY them with a paper towel.  Wet beef will not brown properly.

Warm your pan to pretty hot.  Place the dry steaks in them.  Let them sit for a few minutes, or until you can feel the steak "release" from the pan.  Then flip and do the same thing on the other side.  Usually this takes about 5 minutes per side on my steaks, but it will depend on the thickness of your steak and how well-done you like things.  Regardless, make sure your steak has a nice golden brown crust on it before you flip it to the other side.

Once the steaks are done to your liking, remove them to a plate and cover them with foil.  You might have to pop them in the oven at 300 if you like a more well-done steak to finish them off.  This is up to you, not me.  I like mine pretty bloody.

Anyway - there will be a beautiful crusty accumulation on the bottom of your pan.  Throw in your 2 tbsp of butter and scrape this up with the butter.  Then throw in the shallots and garlic and rosemary and stir constantly until barely brown.  Then add the wine.  Keep scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan.  Stir in the Better than Bouillon.  Bring to a boil and cook until the wine mixture is reduced by at least half.

Serve over the steaks.

Sorry no photos - I never have time to photograph what's going on while I cook this.  But try it.  You'll like it.

Food: Chicken Soup

Every time I get a cold, I crave old-fashioned chicken soup.  Nothing fancy, just plain old chicken soup.  Today after teaching for a full day and straining my vocal cords with elementary-school-aged children, I looked forward to nothing more than a bowl of chicken soup.  So I stopped at the grocery for the ingredients and made it.  This is what I did.

First: chop up 1 heart of celery (leaves included), 2 medium onions, and half a pound(ish) of carrots.  Saute all these in a bit of olive oil in the bottom of your soup pot.  When the onion becomes translucent, add 5 cloves minced garlic.  Yes, 5.  Garlic is good for a cold.  Go ahead and add more if you want, but never less.

When the smell becomes almost too much for you, but before the garlic has browned, add 2 quarts chicken stock.  Since I didn't have my usual handy-dandy chicken stock boxes around, I made my own out of Reduced Sodium chicken flavored Better than Bouillon.  It worked just fine.  Add in: 2 bay leaves, about a tablespoon fresh rosemary (I just snipped off a sprig and threw it in the pot), and about 3 tablespoons of freeze-dried shallots from (you guessed it) Penzey's. 

Next: tear all the meat off a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.  (My reason for not roasting my own chicken?  A whole rotisserie chicken was cheaper than a whole raw chicken by about a dollar.  And it saved me a few hours time.  And I wanted chicken soup TODAY, not tomorrow.  If I had a raw chicken, I would have made roasted chicken for dinner today.  I digress.)  Stir the meat into the soup.  Bring to a simmer.  Oh yeah - don't put the chicken skin in the soup. Ick.  Season with seasoned salt and pepper to taste.

About an hour before serving, add 1 cup uncooked white rice.  Stir occasionally until it is time to serve.

Food: Frangelico Cheesecake

I made this for my dad's penultimate birthday cake and it turned out great.  I haven't really made it since, but it's delicious.  It's a cheesecake laced with frangelico, topped with frangelico-laced chocolate ganache and fresh raspberries.  It's  also probably the fanciest thing I've ever made.

For the crust, you need:
1.5 cups chocolate graham cracker crumbs (I used chocolate-flavored goldfish and crushed them - they're chocolatier than Oreos)
1/4 cup sugar
6 tbsp butter, melted
a pinch of Cassia cinnamon (or just regular.  But I use the Cassia variety because it's spicier than Ceylon cinnamon.)

Do the things you need to do to turn this into a graham-cracker crust (mix it together with a fork), and press it into the bottom of a springform pan.

For the filling, you need:
32 oz cream cheese (by weight), softened
3 eggs
3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup Frangelico liqueur

Blend the ingredients together with a hand mixer.  Pour over the crust.  Bake at 350F for 40 to 50 minutes and remove from oven.  (It's often cracked on top, but the ganache fixes this!)

For the ganache topping, you need:
8 oz bittersweet chocolate
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp Frangelico liqueur

chop the chocolate and set in a medium bowl to the side.  Bring the cream and butter to a boil on medium heat and then pour over the chocolate and let it sit for 5 minutes.  Whisk together until blended.  Add the liqueur and whisk until blended again.  Pour enough of this over the cheesecake to cover it.  Eat the rest with a spoon while it's warm, or refrigerate it and roll it into balls later for impressive chocolate truffles.

While the ganache is still warm, put fresh raspberries all over the top of the cheesecake.

Voila.  YUM.

Food: Cream Cheese Frosting

I just improvised cream-cheese frosting and it literally tastes like cheesecake!  YAHOO!  Here's what I did:

1 stick butter, softened

8 oz cream cheese, softened

---> cream these together until completely mixed.

1 cup confectioner's sugar

----> mix in well until it looks like frosting

1 tsp-1 tbsp vanilla extract

----> mix that in until it looks like frosting again.

I put it over a boxed carrot cake (the Duncan Hine's extra-fancy version where you rehydrate actual carrots and raisins).  We shall see how it goes.  I would have baked a real carrot cake, but I wasn't feeling THAT motivated today.  And everyone knows that frosting is the best part, right? ;)

Food: Nutmeg Cookies

Nutmeg cookies are a Christmas tradition I started 3 years ago, after having bought a giant book of Christmas cookie recipes.  They are simply a sugar cookie dough with 2 tsp of nutmeg added.  (For copyright concerns, I will not be including the actual recipe here.)  The cookies themselves are flavorful, crumbly, tender, and delicious.  The dough smells amazing as you handle it.  The house smells amazing as you bake them.  And the recipe makes one veritable ton of cookies.  You can get the book here and bake nutmeg cookies to your heart's content.  They call them "Nutmeg Bells" but I didn't have a bell-shaped cookie cutter, so I used my favorite star cookie cutter instead.

Yesterday I made the dough.  Today I rolled it out, cut the cookies out, and baked them.  Then I frosted them after dinner.  Here is a small sampling of them.  I couldn't bring myself to frost stars in any color other than yellow, and I am a lazy cookie decorator, so they get just a simple icing of corn syrup, confectioners sugar, milk, and almond extract.

The icing recipe?  Easy:

• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 tsp milk
• corn syrup, enough to make it icing-y (I'd guess a scant quarter cup)
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• food coloring of your choice - a few drops

Stir together until it turns into icing.  Use immediately.  It dries hard and shiny, but takes at least overnight to dry.  The color stays bright too. 

Food: A Tough Nut to Crack

'Tis the season for Christmas cookies, fa la la la la...

And this year, I decided to embark upon a recipe that requires me to have 3 cups of hazelnuts.  (Raspberry Linzer Thumbprints - a hazelnut cookie with seedless raspberry jam in the thumbprint middle - ooooh!)  I dutifully went to my neighborhood Wal-Mart, because it is prohibitively expensive to shop elsewhere in the nearby grocery store pantheon, and lo and behold!  They don't carry hazelnuts in any form.

Off I went to Wegman's, the 40-minute-away foodie mecca and most perfect grocery store I know (their generic food is almost always just as good as - if not better than - the brand names).  Surely they would have them, and they did, in both whole form (un-shelled) and in bags of pre-shelled and pre-chopped goodness.  Upon price comparison, we decided to save $2 per pound and shell them ourselves.  Couldn't be too hard, right?  I got a big ol' bag of them that would surely yield three cups, and went on my merry way.

Today was a nut-cracking morning, I could see that.  It is cookie-baking weekend here in the Fussy Foodie house, and so I decided to embark upon nut-cracking first.  Before you read on, keep in mind these things about this adventure:

• I don't own an official nut-cracker
• Husband has a hammer called the Death Stick
• I'd never shelled nuts before

So I got out the Death Stick and the nuts and the cutting board and proceeded to crack nuts and dig the meats out of the shells.  This soon became a very annoying and tedious task because

• I'm not what you would call a "strong" person.  As in, I have little upper body strength.
• The Death Stick is a heavy hammer
• Hazelnuts are slippery and very tough to crack with a hammer.

As a result, I broke a lot of nuts, sent many shells flying (which Oliver loved chasing), and wound up with a measly 1 and 3/4 cups of nuts.  Upon discovering this, husband and I decided to run an errand to get the nuts.  Meanwhile I would start the nutmeg cookie dough while he finished his video game mission, and all would be well.  Ingredients?  sugar, butter, nutmeg, vanilla, eggs, baking powder, salt.  I started creaming the sugar and butter together and was making my mise en place while the sugar and butter creamed, and guess what?

I'm out of baking powder.

Food: Lasagna my way

It's lasagna night, oh yes.  Before I go into the intricacies of how I make my (totally inauthentic yet delicious) version of lasagna, I must establish my paradigm from which I'm cooking:

• I'm Irish-German but grew up in a village that has a large Italian population, so Italian food is no stranger to me.
• I don't cook my lasagna noodles, ever.
• My dad was famous for his lasagna, even before we moved to said Italian-American village.
• I'm a fussy eater who refuses to eat mushrooms in any form, so if you want mushrooms in your lasagna, be prepared to be disappointed.  Also be ready for not many bell peppers in this recipe.
• I have not had much "authentic" lasagna because the one time I had it in one of those hole-in-the-wall restaurants that has a cute little old Italian lady making the secret-recipe red sauce, I was disappointed.
• I like a lot of sauce and cheese.  My lasagna weighs at least 10 pounds.

So with those in mind, I bid thee to keep reading my process.

First, we need sauce, and a veritable ton of it.  To begin, brown your ground beef in a LARGE pot:

And add about this much chopped onion:

When the beef begins to look like this:

See?  The beef is crumbly, but not brown all the way yet.

After that, add a bunch of garlic:

at LEAST this much.  You can pop it through a garlic press, mince it, or do like I do and SLAP-CHOP it!

Make sure all that garlicky goodness is in that pot.   Ohhhh, yes.  YUM.  Stir.

Next, add the cast of (simple) seasonings: seasoned salt, black pepper (freshly ground of course), and "green stuff" (also known as Italian seasoning).  Do it to taste.  I have no measurements for this process, but do remember that the flavors deepen slightly after you bake the lasagna.

Next, it's time for the sauce.  I always make too much sauce while creating lasagna, but this is the sauce-mix ratio that I find most pleasing (and you can always use the leftover sauce for a terrific sauce for spaghetti later):

For those of you who don't have Wegman's around you, more's the pity.  But "Grandpa's Sauce" is simply a tomato sauce with Italian Sausage, roasted red peppers, and wine.  It is oh, so good.  If you can't find Prego traditional, I'm terribly sorry and question your grocery store.

Pour it all in:

YUM.  Turn the heat off because you don't need to simmer this long, as long as you let the lasagna rest a few hours before you pop it in the oven.  If you're cooking it all at once, simmer this sauce for a good 30 minutes.

Next, it's time to assemble the ricotta cheese mixture.  This is a very simple mix of ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and two eggs.  Mix 2 pounds of ricotta with about a cup of parmesan and the two eggs until it looks like this:

Now that you have your sauce and your cheese mixture, get out your big huge lasagna pan (mine is actually a turkey-roasting pan), your noodles, and your (8 cups of grated) mozzarella.

Assembly goes like this.

First, coat the bottom of the pan with sauce:

Add noodles:

(the reason I love this pan is because it fits 6 noodles perfectly with room to expand in the cooking process.)

And spread a third of the ricotta mixture on the noodles:

Cover that with some of the mozzarella.  Continue in this fashion:

• generous amount of sauce (cover that cheese!)
• noodles
• ricotta
• mozzarella
• sauce
• noodles
• ricotta
• sauce
• the rest of the mozzarella

Finally, you should have a full pan and a lasagna that looks like this pre-oven:

Wow, the lighting sucks on that photo.  But that's how full it is and that's what it looks like.

According to a chef my mother-in-law knows, this whole she-bang is supposed to rest in the fridge overnight. I don't necessarily rest it overnight, but I do let it sit for several hours.  This saves me sauce-simmering and lets me cook the lasagna in advance of the dinner party I'm having, so I can greet my guests with a glass of wine and the lasagna happily in the oven.

Now, for baking.  I do it at about 300 degrees F, for at least 90 minutes.  Keep it covered with foil for at least the first hour, and then take off that foil to allow the top layer o' cheese to brown up a bit.  And remember!  Let it sit for about 5 minutes OUT OF THE OVEN before you serve, otherwise your poor lasagna will run all over the place!

Ohhhh, yes.