Pickles

Hey everyone, I'm back!! Besides a six hour car trip, I'm all right ; ) lol. Sorry for no posting in the last week or so, my good friend Liz experienced some technical difficulties hehe. But anyways, Maine was totally amazing. Wile we were camping, me and Gwen made ice box cake, and challah, but mostly we hung out at the beach.

But let me tell you, the seagulls in Maine are as bad as the squirrels in new york city. My brother was eating a sandwich just standing around, and a seagull swooped down and grabbed the sandwich right out of his hand!!

There was also this stone pier that you could walk out on. It was so cool, even though my cousin Gwen was a little uneasy with the situation. Good times ; D lol.

The day before we left, some Canadian hippies moved in next to us! They had this hilarious Scooby Doo van!So anyways, just some advise for the people who are the the level of crazyness that I am at: don't try to make watermelon juice. Just don't.

I spent quite a long time chunking, and blending a whole watermelon, and putting it through a fine mesh sieve. Personally, I hate eating chunks of watermelon because it is usually grainy or something. So me, being the genius that I am decided to make juice out of it. At first taste, it was good. Then it tasted completely nasty. Like it left such a foul aftertaste that I almost spit it in my dogs face.

So, like ten minutes ago I made pickles. My moms garden is overflowing with zucchini, squash, and cucumbers. It took me like 15 min. with my mandolin. No lie. Its nice because you don't have to cook or boil anything, just mix the stuff together and pour over pickles, and stick in the fridge.

Easy sweet pickles

• 7 cups thin sliced cucumbers
• 1 cup sliced onions
• 2 tbs salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tbs celery seed
• 1 cup vinegar

Mix salt, sugar, celery seed, and vinegar until dissolved. Place cucumbers in a jar. Pour vinegar mixture over cucumbers. Let sit in the fridge for at least a day.

Chinese take-out party!!

I got invited to partake in a Chinese take-out party hosted by Rita of mochachocolatarita! Her blog is totally awesome, and has great recipes. Her posts are also really fun to read! So when she invited me to make chinese food, I was really excited, but had no clue what to make. Having no experience with making chinese food, I just made a stir-fry recipe,but before that marinated chicken in some hoisen sauce, then cooked it before, and added it back in later. What is so great about making your own chinese food, is that you can make it healthy, and flavor it to your tastes! This was the first time that I had used fresh ginger. And wow is it strong stuff! But what really completed this chinese dinner was homemade fortune cookies!!!

Can you say *amazing*? I would have never thought that It were possible!!! And the crazy thing was that they were simple to make, and importantly, they actually tasted like fortune cookies!! What was really cool,was that me and my friend Liz made our own fortunes for the fortune cookies. We even looked up specific ones for each family member. It was really funny.

All in all, this dinner was a huge success! For the fortune cookie recipe, watch this on youtube. Have fun!

Stir fry chinese chicken and veggies
Food network/my brain

4 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon crushed red chili flakes
1/2 red onion, trimmed and cut into 4 wedges, layers separated trimmed,
1/4 pound Chinese broccoli, stems and leaves separated, each cut into 1-inch pieces
1/4 pound Chinese long beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
6 scallions, trimmed, 5 cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces,
1 thinly sliced and reserved separately
2/3 cup good-quality chicken stock or broth, vegetable broth, or water, heated
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoons cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tablespoon cold water
2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
As much chicken as you want
Hoisan sauce to marinate chicken.


Marinate chicken and set aside. After marinated, cook chicken in wok. Take out and reserve for later.
Heat a large wok over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil. When the oil is hot, add the ginger, garlic, and chili flakes and stir-fry just until they are aromatic, about 30 seconds. Scoop out the aromatics and set them aside.
Add the remaining oil to the wok. When it is hot, add the onion pieces and stir-fry until they turn glossy and bright, 1 to 2 minutes.
Add the bok choy and the Chinese broccoli stem pieces. Stir-fry 1 to 2 minutes more.
Add the long beans and the 1-inch scallion pieces. Continue stir-frying until they are bright green and glossy, 1 to 2 minutes more.
Add the Napa cabbage and the Chinese broccoli leaves, along with about 1/3 cup of the hot stock and the reserved aromatics. Continue stir-frying until the vegetables are all tender-crisp, about 2 minutes more. Add the remaining stock, soy sauce, and cornstarch mixture and stir-fry until the vegetables all look lightly glazed with sauce, about 1 minute more.
Add chicken back into the wok, and let re-heat.
Transfer the stir-fried vegetables and chicken to a heated serving dish. Garnish with the sliced scallions and sesame seeds and serve immediately.

A dinner well done

A wile back I was watching TV, one of my favorite food shows was on, Barefoot Contessa. She was making these scallops, which looked pretty good. Then later of that week, my mom bought some of those large scallops. I have never made scallops before, so that was the recipe I made. It was really great! The scallops had a really nice flavor, and were just the perfect dinner. My favorite part to any meal is the carbos though, or in this case, the rice. Now, I know what your thinking, rice? Wow this girl must be more blonde than we thought. But seriously, this is the best rice ever. My Persian aunt taught me how to make rice the way that she was taught as a child. It is sort of a project, but you will be amazed at how great your rice is. The key to amazing rice is to use long grain Basmati rice. Then you put it is a bowl, and rinse it under water until the water that you drain is clear. You take a large pot and fill it with lots of cold water and season the water with salt. Add the rice to the cold water and bring it to a boil. Now this is a very crucial part. You boil the rice just until it is done, but not completely done. If you don't check it for a wile, and the rice gets over cooked, and the water looks murky. . . then the end result will be gummy, not fluffy and amazing. So once your rice is tender, take it off the stove and drain the rice in a colander. Take your pot and drizzle some oil on the bottom, then add the drained rice. Cover the pot with a clean dish towel, the cover tightly with the pot lid. Return to the burner, and turn it to low. Let it steam for about 10 min, or more. When it is done steaming, the rice is fluffy, and perfect. The bottom will be crispy, almost like fried rice. So yummy! Before my aunt taught me this, my mom used to make minute rice. After trying the real stuff, I won't let my mom make minute rice anymore! The Basmati is just so fragrant and delicious! So this rice combined with the Scallops was completely divine!

Sorry my rice directions are so scatter brained. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away : D

Scallops Provencal
Barefoot Contessa

1 pound fresh bay or sea scallops
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
All-purpose flour, for dredging
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, divided
1/2 cup chopped shallots (2 large)
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 lemon, cut in 1/2If you're using bay scallops, keep them whole. If you're using sea scallops, cut each 1 in half horizontally. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss with flour, and shake off the excess.

In a very large saute pan, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter over high heat until sizzling and add the scallops in 1 layer. Lower the heat to medium and allow the scallops to brown lightly on 1 side without moving them, then turn and brown lightly on the other side. This should take 3 to 4 minutes, total. Melt the rest of the butter in the pan with the scallops, then add the shallots, garlic, and parsley and saute for 2 more minutes, tossing the seasonings with the scallops. Add the wine, cook for 1 minute, and taste for seasoning. Serve hot with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Phylo Tomato Tart

This post is very long overdue. Because of my baking frenzy, this post was delayed, but I'm excited to finally share it with you. the Noble pig suggested this recipe for easter, and it looked so yummy, I knew that I would make it. I have never worked with phylo dough before, and when I went to the grocery store to get it, the idiots that worked there were no help. I asked the manager where I could find the phylo dough. He was like "The what?" I told him that It was like a pastry dough in thin layers. He was completely befuddled. I was like well, where do you keep the pastry stuff. Then he told me that he wasn't sure. Then I asked him where the sushi rice is. Again, he didn't know. How is he manager and not know where anything is!? Well evidently, I found the dough after inspecting every freezer shelf in the whole darn store. Gee thanks price chopper. But I must say that it was totally worth it. I made it on easter day, with the help of my beloved easter gift. A baking mat! Yay! Now my mom won't yell at me for using so much parchment paper! The phylo dough was like nothing I have ever worked with before. It was thin like tissue paper. I used a mandolin to cut my onions and tomatoes thinly and precise.










You have to brush each layer of phylo with butter, and sprinkle it with cheese. Then you layer the top with cheese, tomatoes, onions and a sprinkle of thyme.After you bake it, the phylo gets crispy and golden brown. I don't know what it is, but this tart tastes so amazing. Its crazy that simple ingredients yield such a stunning result! It was so good, that after the first one came out of the oven, I made another one. Tee hee hee.
Everybody loved it, and it was gone after like 5 min. I still have a lot of phylo left, so I'm going to make this again, and again. : D

Filo Tomato Tart
The Noble Pig
adapted from Sunset Magazine

**Cut tomatoes very thin so juice evaporates while baking, or dough will be soggy.**(use a mandolin)

7 sheets filo dough, thawed
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
7 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1 cup very thinly sliced red onion
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
8 Roma tomatoes, cut into 1/8-in.-thick slices
1 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper and spray paper with cooking-oil spray. Lay 1 sheet filo on paper and brush lightly with a little melted butter. Sprinkle all over with 1 tablespoon of Parmesan. Repeat layering 5 more times (with filo, butter and Parmesan), pressing each sheet firmly so it sticks to sheet below. Lay the last filo sheet on top, brush with remaining melted butter, and sprinkle on remaining 1 tablespoon Parmesan.

Scatter onion across filo, top with mozzarella, and arrange tomato slices in a single layer, overlapping slightly. Sprinkle with thyme and salt and pepper to taste.

Bake until filo is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes, then serve.

Eggplant saywaht!?

Ok. I have tried so many new recipes right before Easter, and on Easter. I guess that I will just have to start at the beginning, posting according to occurrence. Starting on the night before Easter. Eggplant Parmesan. After making this, I was amazed at how great it tasted, was it possible that something named "eggplant" could taste so good?
Yes, my good friends Bob and Mike did not want me to make dinner. I'm not crazy hehe. By the picture above, you probably thought that I lost my marbles (did I have any to begin with?), but rest assured I am OK. I saw Peters eggplant on his blog, and thought to myself that I should give it a try. So when perusing the veggie isle, I saw those purple guys. I know this is completely random, but I think that eggplants feel like a beluga whale, of a dolphin or something, which kinda creeps me out.I picked them up, and decided to make them tonight. When I read through the directions, after committing to make the recipe I realized how intricate the directions were! Thats ok. I love a good challenge.I had to use my mandoline to cut it even. Then what baffled me was that you had to set them out, sprinkle them with coarse salt, and let them like drain their liquid. There goes my counter space. . .












Yes, my counter is a cluttered mess TAKEN OVER BY EGGPLANTS! You can see the bottles of vitamins and my Snapple white tea that I was drinking. I definitely got my hands full. Then you had to individually bread them, and pan fry them.I didn't actually fry them, more like crisp them in a little oil in the pan. I'm a health nut, sorta like my family, but probably more. Which really doesn't coincide with my blog, because I love love love to bake.
Then you make the sauce, and layer your stuff.Then to go along with this amazing dinner, I made homemade bread. I told you I had my hands full. . . I decided to take a short cut and just make the turtle bread, but shape it in a loaf for convenience. Then you take the dinner out of the oven. Wile the smell permeates the house.I wanted to take a picture of an individual slice for you to see, and I did, but it just didn't do the dinner justice. Plus everybody in the kitchen was staring at me like I was insane as I photographed our meal. Lol.

Eggplant Parmesan
from Kalofagas


2 large eggplants, sliced lenghtwise to 1/2 in. thickness
coarse sea salt
1 can of whole plum tomatoes, hand crushed
3 Tbsp. olive oil
3 anchovy filletss, chopped
1/2 medium onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups of bread crumbs
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
sunflower oil
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
grated Mozzarella
grated Parmesan

1. Cut the ends of your eggplant off and then using a mandoline, cut the eggplants lengthwise into 1/2 inch slices. Lay the slice out on a tray and sprinkle each slice with some coarse salt. Allow the bitter juices to leech for 40 minutes.
2. In the meantime, Place a skillet on the stove over medium-high heat and add your olive oil add your olive oil and anchovy fillets and saute for 3 minutes to soften and perfume the oil.
3. Add your onions and garlic and lowert to medium-low and saute for 10 minutes to soften. Now add the tomato sauce, salt and pepper to taste and simmer until the sauce is nice and thick. Reserve.
4. Wipe the excess salt and moisture from your eggplant with kitchen towels. Now set up your dipping stations of eggplant slices, a large bowl of egg/milk mixture and your breadcrumbs. Get another large skillet on the stove and throw on enough sunflower (1/2 inch) oil over medium-high heat.
   
5. If your cooking on your own, pre-dredge your eggplant so that you may pay full attention to frying the batches of eggplant. If you have help, have the other person do the dredging and other to do the frying. Dip the eggplant in egg/milk mixture, then the breadcrumbs and fry on both side until golden brown. Fry in batches and reserve on paper towels. Discard the sunflower oil.
6. Preheat your oven to 400F (middle rack) and commence assembly of your eggplant parmesan.
7. Grease a 14" X 12" baking dish and spread some tomato sauce on the bottom. Now place a layer of eggplant, some sauce, scatter some basil, grated Mozzarella and Parmesan. Continue layering these ingredients until your you've reached your fourth and last layer of eggplant and pour over the remaining sauce, basil and grated Parmesan.
8. Cover the baking dish loosely with aluminum foil and bake for approx. 20 minutes and then allow it to cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Soft pretzel experiment

And so continues my love of carbos. With the last of my crackers quickly devoured, I now needed a new snack. Hmm what shall I make? Well last weekend, up north at a ski lodge, I got a soft pretzel. They are my undoubtedly my favorite snack when out and about. There is just something about them that I can't get enough of! I have made soft pretzels before, but I have also made pretzel rolls. You had to boil, then bake the pretzel rolls, which gave them the signature chewy texture. Since I have never boiled my actual pretzels, I decided that I might as well give it a shot. So this is also a very quick yeast risen bread.I don't know why, but I'm wildly amused by this picture! All I added was yeast sugar and water, and in 5 min it turned into this fizzy beast! How cool! So then you mix up the stuff and let it rise.






















This dough is enough for eight pretzels, so divide it up evenly!

Then you shape them into pretzels. Once, wile I was being lazy, I just twisted them into sticks, which was still pretty cool.Ok so here is the moment of truth.**drums for added effect** The mountain of fizz! I think that this happened because of the baking soda that I added. : D So I slid a pretzel at a time into the pot, after the fizz went down. I sprinkled some salt on top of the pretzels, and baked them. I also baked some non boiled pretzels. The pretzel on the left was not boiled, the one on the right was. The ones that were boiled and baked were chewier. I like the ones that were not boiled also, because they were sort of crisp and cool in their own unique way.

*I forgot to brush my non boiled pretzels with egg wash to make them shiny, but thats ok, they were still great!

Soft Pretzels

• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 2 1/4 tsp yeast
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup water
• 1-2 tbs baking soda

Combine the yeast, warm water, and sugar in a small dish (5 min)

Combine the flour and salt in a med. bowl. Add the yeast mixture, and 3/4 cup water. Mix untill combined. Knead dough on a floured surface until smooth.

Place in an oiled bowl, and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

Cut the dough into 8 pieces and shape into pretzels, of pretzel twists.

You can either boil them in some water with the 1-2 tbs of baking soda for about a 30 sec. to a min., then bake at 400 degrees, or you can skip the boiling, and just bake at 400 degrees, but brush the pretzels with a little egg wash, or melted butter. Sprinkle with Salt.

Bake for 15-20 min, or until golden brown

Compulsive Crackers

So I'm going to confess a problem that my house currently has. We never have enough snack foods...and me, being a still growing person, needs snackage! So yesterday I decided to fix this problem by making something really cool- homemade crackers. Wile browsing blogs, I happened upon some crackers from Food Stories. Her crackers looked really yummy, and I can be a little compulsive sometimes. I got up from my chair and started to make them. But then... doh!...I don't have some of the ingredients. So I improvised! I used the same proportions, but like swapped ingredients that I didn't have. So It asked for whole meal flour, which when I first read, didn't completely connect in my brain. So for some odd reason, I substituted semolina flour for. Don't ask me why, because reflecting upon it now, still makes me wonder.So I mixed all of my ingredients to make this cute little ball!When you roll it out, make sure that you have enough flour, so that it doesn't stick to the counter : )













So then I got my sprinkles out. I decided to use rosemary, and sea salt.




Then I cut them into triangles, and poked them with a fork, so they would not bubble up in the oven. My first batch in the oven came out burnt, but the second batch came out really good.

Smoked Sea Salt and Fennel Seed Crackers
(rosemary/plain sea salt version)
Food Stories

4oz (1/2 cup0 plain white flour
4oz (1/2 cup)wholemeal flour (for some reason, I used Semolina)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
35m l(approx 1/8 of a cup) olive oil
Smoked salt (or regular (What I used))
Fennel seeds (I used rosemary)
Water

-Mix the flour, baking powder and fine salt in a bowl. Add the oil and then enough water for the dough to come together. It shouldn’t be too sticky.
-On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for around 5 minutes then cover and allow to rest (at room temp) for around 30 minutes.
-Roll out the dough as thin as you can manage without it tearing and cut into desired shapes.
-Sprinkle each cracker with smoked sea salt and fennel seeds to your taste.
-Transfer to a lightly oiled baking sheet and bake at 150C/300F/Gas2 for 20-30 minutes. The cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of your crackers but they are ready when golden brown and crispy (If you used non-whole wheat four, it will not brown up to much, if it does, then that means that you burnt your crackers like I did first time around: (. Cool on a rack, or in your tummy.

Before you put the crackers in the oven, make indents in the top with a fork to prevent them puffing

Gnocchi, a food that I can not pronounce.

Well it all started at 4:30 when I decided that I wanted to make dinner. But what shall I make? I offered to make soup, but my family has this thing, where they don't consider soup to be a meal, which I totally don't get because soup fills me up just fine. So the quest was on to find something that would be deemed suitable for dinner. About a year ago I remember wanting to make Gnocchi, just because I like to work with dough. So I found the recipe and started! Of course, when i told my mom what I was going to make, she had no clue what it was, and we both didn't know how to pronounce it lol. That gives me the advantage of surprise ; ) So I began by baking my potatoes, two pounds of them. I am always baffled when a recipe calls for pounds because, I don't have a weigher in my kitchen. So I weighed myself of a scale then put a bunch of potatoes in my arms and weighed myself until my original weight had two pounds added to it lol. So wile the taters were baking, I made some basil pesto to go with it.Then I got out my extra shiny grater!Now I must tell you that using a grater, food mill, or food ricer is completely essential!! I have learned from Smitten Kitchen, that Potatoes are 85% water! Yes! I know, impossible! But it isn't. So if you puree the potatoes, you will end up with tater soup, and we all know that there is nothing worse than a broken potato. So, since I don't have a food mill, I used a grater. I peeled my baked potatoes, then grated them on the side with the largest holes.Then I dumped out the potato contents, and prepared my lightly beaten egg.Then I mixed it all together with a cup and a half of flour and formed it into a dough.Yeah, this is a messy project, yet strangely satisfying! So i cut the dough into 6 pieces, then rolled the piece until the rope was 3/4 " thick, then I cut pieces 1" wide.Then if you want, you can make little ridges in them, but they are yummy either way. So you take your pieces and lay them out on a sheet, then cook them.I decided to cook them in a pan, then add my basil pesto.It was really yummy! Next time I make these I will try boiling them, then having spaghetti sauce and maybe meatballs or sausage. Or I could pan cook them again, but add veggies! The possibilities are endless.

Gnocchi
From Smitten Kitchen

2 pounds Russet potatoes
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Prick the potatoes all over with a fork, and bake them on a baking sheet for 45 minutes to one hour, or until tender. For best results, turn the potatoes over halfway through the baking time. Let the potatoes cool slightly.
2. Peel the potatoes, and then pass them through a potato ricer, food mill or grate them over the large holes of a box grater into a large bowl. Add the lightly beaten egg and the salt to the potatoes and mix well with a wooden spoon.
3. Add the flour to the potatoes a little at a time, using only as much as you need so that the dough will not stick to your hands. When the flour has been incorporated, bring the dough together with your fingertips.
4. Dump the dough and any remaining floury bits onto a slightly floured surface. Knead the dough as you would bread dough. Press down and away with the heel of your hand, fold the dough over, make a quarter turn, and repeat the process. Knead for about three or four minutes.
5. Form the dough into a ball and then divide it into 6 smaller balls. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the six pieces using your fingertips into a long rope about ¾ inch thick. Cut the dough into 1 inch pieces.
6. You can cook the gnocchi as it is now, but traditional gnocchi has ridges. To create the ridges, press each piece of dough against the tines of a fork. With your finger, gently roll the pressed dough back off the fork. This takes a little practice. If you find the dough sticking to the fork, dip the fork in flour before you press the dough against it.
7. Place the gnocchi in a single layer on a lightly floured or parchment-lined dish. If you’d like to freeze them for later use, do so on this tray and once they are frozen, drop them into a freezer bag. This ensures that you won’t have one enormous gnocchi mass when you are ready to cook them.
8. To cook the gnocchi, place them into a pot of boiling and well-salted water. After a few minutes the gnocchi will float to the top. Continue to cook for one minute then remove and set aside. You can also pan cook them by adding a little oil to the pan, and letting brown over low heat.