I love homemade pizza, you know this. And I really love burrata on homemade pizza – it is so creamy and gooey and just heavenly. It’s great with tomatoes in the summer, but when paired with caramelized onions it becomes this luscious and sophisticated fall combination.
The onions are caramelized slowly with butter (this takes time and patience), and finished with balsamic vinegar. They are piled on pizza dough and topped with torn burrata, no sauce needed.
Then it is baked and topped with fresh basil. Oh. My. Gosh. It is just so good – rich and creamy and perfect.
My thanks to Melissa from Smells Like Brownies, for suggesting that we make this and for teaching me to stop rolling my pizza dough out so dang thin! (more…)
It’s time for another Secret Recipe Club post! This month, my assignment was The Tasty Cheapskate. Food was not a big focus for Jean growing up, neither eating it nor cooking it, which is pretty much the opposite of my childhood. Luckily all that changed for her as an adult. Now she focuses on whole foods and budget friendly family meals. She even did a challenge where she fed her 6 person family on $6 a day! Incredible!
Looking through her blog, I found a lot of yummy baked goods. Like a bunch of different pull-apart breads, but especially this coconut and lime one. Also zucchini bread with lemon or with coconut. And self frosting nutella pumpkin muffins – shut the front door! But despite all those yummy delights, what I really wanted was a nice healthy meal – so my eyes lit up when I saw this Broccoli Barley Casserole. And I was even more excited when I saw that the original recipe used farro, which I have been meaning to start using for a long time, and that it could be made in one pot.
Start by sauteing onions and garlic in a Dutch oven. Then add the farro and allow to toast a bit.
Add in frozen spinach, water, and vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the liquid is almost all gone and the farro is tender but still chewy, about 20 minutes. (more…)
Earlier this week I talked about my Marrakesh box from Try The World, and what I did with the sardines from it. Now I’d like to tell you what I did with the rest of the items, which was to make this beautiful lamb and couscous dish!
First I took cubed lamb and tossed it with some of the kefta rub, then browned it in batches. (more…)
I really want to tell you guys about this delightful sardine butter that I made with lemon and fresh herbs, but first I need to tell you how I happened to acquire some sardines. (Also -check out my delicious Seeded Peasant Bread in the photo, there.)
I recently signed up for a subscription service called Try The World, which sends me a box of international goodies every other month. The boxes are themed, so that everything in each comes from one country – my first box was Marrakesh (Morocco).
Lemme walk you through what it is like to get one of these boxes in the mail. You open up the cardboard cube, and inside is an adorable print and your beautiful box. (more…)
Earlier this week, I posted about homemade Seeded Peasant Bread. Well, what goes better with homemade bread than homemade jam? This jam, made with Rainier cherries and Amaretto, is the perfect compliment.
Rainier cherries are so beautifully colored, I just love them. Start by pitting and chopping (I was lazy and just quartered mine, and the chunks were a bit too large).
Combine with sugar, bring to a boil, and cook down for a bit. (more…)
I have been trying to make bread for years. I have tried so many different recipes, and never been happy with any of them. Until Melissa introduced to to this recipe from Alexandra’s Kitchen, that is. It’s so ridiculously easy – there’s no kneading, just mixing and rising – and the texture is amazing. I’m seriously obsessed with it.
First step – activate yeast. And while that is happening, stir together flour, spelt flour, salt, and seeds. Melissa uses 1 tbsp each of quinoa, flax, chia, and millet – I don’t like flax seeds very much, so I use 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp each quinoa, chia, and millet.
Then you mix the yeast mixture into the flour mixture and THAT’S IT (at least as far as mixing goes). It’s so stupidly easy. Let it rise for 1 hour, or until doubled. (more…)
When I asked Melissa (Smells Like Brownies) to help me become a better baker, I specifically asked to do these cookies. If you have ever stayed at a Doubletree Hotel, then you know the joy of being handed one of these giant cookies when you check in. It’s probably one of the most searched for cookie recipes, and it has some secret ingredients that I wouldn’t have guessed.
So, let’s get started! The first step is to mix the dry ingredients, which include finely ground dry oats. This is one of the secret ingredients that makes these cookies so good – it makes the texture so lovely. There’s also a bit of cinnamon in there, yum.
Next, cream butter with both granulated and brown sugar, vanilla, and the next secret ingredient – lemon juice. I would never have guessed to use lemon juice in a chocolate chip cookie, but it keeps them tender.
Mix the dry into the wet, then stir in chocolate chips and toasted chopped walnuts. The original recipe didn’t call for toasting the walnuts, but I think it makes the texture nicer and brings out the nutty flavor. (more…)
This week Melissa and Sarah take their vegetarian lunch adventure to the grill! Woohoo! We’ve been meaning to grill all summer, but for some reason every time we pick a day it starts to rain. This time was no exception – rain was forecasted starting in the afternoon – but we decided to try and grill before it started, and we succeeded! Finally!
This flatbread had been kicking around in our minds for a while, the product of brainstorming, and I am so pleased with the way it turned out! Crispy grilled flatbread topped with pesto, grilled and fresh veggies, feta, and fresh basil – the epitome of Summer.
First, we made the flatbread dough – which is very easy and requires no yeast or rising time! Just flour, salt, baking powder, water, milk, and oil mixed together. (more…)
It’s Food ‘n Flix time again! Where we watch a movie and then make something inspired by that movie. This month’s flick is August: Osage County, hosted by Elliot’s Eats, and boy is it a doozy.
I could tell immediately from the dialogue that this was a play adaptation, and I was right. The movie portrays the funeral of the patriarch of an extremely dysfunctional family, set in the desolate plains of Oklahoma. The cast (including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Juliette Lewis) acted the crap out of some very dark and intense material – addiction, depression, suicide, abuse, and incest. This is not a feel good movie (you know it’s bad when incest is the best scenario), but it is very good and it will make you think.
As for the food inspiration – there was a ton! Many of the most tortured scenes revolved around food, including the horrible funeral dinner and the infamous “eat the fish!” scene. The moment that I was drawn to was Meryl Streep’s character talking about her last interaction with her husband over biscuits and gravy. She must have said the phrase “biscuits and gravy” ten times. I’m not even that big a fan of biscuits and gravy, but that was what I wanted to make.
I wanted to make something special, not basic, so I went to Pinterest thinking I would find an herbed biscuit recipe or something. But what came up were a ton of recipes for biscuits and gravy casseroles. I had never heard of that before and it sounded awesome! Some were just biscuits, gravy, and cheese; but I liked the look of one that included eggs (kind of like a strata). (more…)
I have said it before and I will say it again – I am not much of a baker. I feel much more comfortable with the flow of cooking, than the rigidity of baking. But I want to get better, and a large part of that is experience. So my friend Melissa, an excellent baker and author of Smells Like Brownies, is helping me learn.
We decided to start with some peanut butter swirl brownies, with the knowledge that we wanted there to be plenty of saltiness to contrast the sweetness. So we made sure that the peanut butter layer was salted, then finished the brownies with flaky sea salt – yum. (more…)
