foodiefanatics

For Easter, we were pretty non-traditional, but yummy.  We started the morning with a honeyed yogurt and blueberry tart with ginger crust (Food and Wine, March 09). This tart was easy and relatively healthy (you mix 10 graham crackers with 1/2 cup chopped candied ginger, 3 T butter and one egg white and bake. On top is drained Greek yogurt mixed with 2 T honey and spread with blueberries). I used frozen wild maine blueberries that had thawed and just put blueberries on each individual piece.
For dinner, we had hunks of bread spread with olive oil and grilled then sprinkled with sea salt (really good and really easy), a salad with a homemade creamy italian and a homemade mac and cheese

Hard cheese mac and cheese

Bring a pot of water to a boil and boil about 3/4 lb pasta (gemelli, fusili, something that will catch the sauce).
While the water is boiling, head 1 T olive oil in a large sauce pan and sear 3/4lb italian sausage (I used precooked. If it isn't precooked you need to fully cook it).  Drain. In the same pan, saute 2 chopped shallots, 1 T chopped garlic for five minutes. Add 3 T flour and stir for two minutes. Add 1/2 cup white wine, scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan.  Then slowly pour in 3 cups of chicken broth and whole milk (I used about half and half).  Bring to a boil and turn off.
Shred 2 cups of cheese. I used a mixture of Italian Pecorino and sharp cheddar. Add the cheese to the hot milk mixture, whisking until it melts.  Add 1 1/2 cups peas (thawed if frozen) and 1/4 cup chopped jalapeno.  Mix in pasta and sausage and 1 t black pepper.

Last night we had a great Indian meal using recipes from Madhur Jaffrey's Flavors of India.  I made Beans with Roasted spices (using pinto beans and coconut milk).  This tasted great but it almost seemed Mexican.  Very spicy (total cooking time was about 1hr 45 minutes using canned beans).  Boatman's curry was a spicy fish curry (cooking time is brief, but prep time is at least one hour).  Flavors are fantastic but lots of blending and frying. I used coconut milk for the grated coconut in this recipe as well. I love this sauce and would like the sauce on rice without the fish! The third dish I made started with the recipe for potateos with mustard seeds and onions but I significantly adapted this recipe. Instead of tomatoes, I added 1 cup peas. I also added two chopped carrots with the potatoes. The dish was loved by all and it's very colorful.

The menu: tomato soup, Chicken Tikki Masala, spicy broccoli, eggplant and canned dal (which, by the way, is quite good).
The reviews:  Tomato soup was excellent, with the dominant taste that of fresh tomato (so the tomatoes have to be good) (from The ARt of Indian Vegetarian Cooking)
Broccoli was quite simple and incredibly easy to make (Madhur Jaffrey's World VEg) but quite tasty, just garlic, ginger, salt and sesame oil.  The kids loved it.
Eggplant was fantastic, almost like caramelized eggplant (the kids wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole), but I wished we had tons more. It was called Char-flavored eggplant with green peas (also from Art of Indian Veg). You cook the eggplant with spices without stirring until all the liquid evaporates and it starts to caramelize and literally melts in your mouth.
Chicken Tikka Masala was also excellent.  I used the Chicken tandoori recipe from Cooking Light which uses thighs marinated in a tandoori paste and then cooked on the grill. The key to the cooking is not drying the meat out. I cooked it barely 6 minutes a side, checking often, at about 400 degrees. I then used the Tikka masala sauce from 1,000 Indian recipes which was fantastic but I did not have fenugreek leaves and I think it really could have used that. This is close to the sauce from a restaurant (although the chicken itself does not have the charred flavor from a restaurant).
Great Meal.

Last night we tried some creative mex.  Chicken tostados (using the chicken tandoori I'd made a few nights before which was great by the way--more on that later) and carrot mole.  I was the only one who liked the mole, but for a quick dinner side dish, I highly recommend it for those who like mole (it's from The Border Cookbook, by Bill and Cheryl Jamison).  The Chicken Tostados were great, from the quick section of Gourmet (July 2008)

Tonight, I've got an unusual combination of dishes. We're starting with a fig pizza with goat cheese and prosciutto (but I'm actually going to use sopresetta because I'm kind of tired of prosciutto and its texture).  I've got figs on my fig tree so I'm trying fig recipes. And, I'm retrying the pizza crust recipe from cooking light that I made such a mess of last time. That starter will be followed by halibut with corn gravy and chive mashed potatoes (Rachel Ray, 7/08).  The corn gravy is a mix of bacon, milk, chicken broth, corn, thyme and red bell pepper.  Dessert is a carrot cake recipe I downloaded from epicurious.com that was originally from Bon 10/04. 
I did a bunch of research before picking this recipe.  I looked through four different recipes trying to get a sense of the differences.  The recipes were quite different. Some had very little flour, other very little carrot. The Martha STewart recipe had 1 1/2 pounds of cream cheese and 3/4 cup of butter in the frosting!  Sounded great but too much.  This recipe had lots of reviews that were very positive and seemed a bit middle of the road.
I'm doing the crust for the pizza on the grill.  Hope it works out.

Thursday, the menu included avocado tomato stacks (cooking light, June 08) and Welsh rarebit burgers (Rachel Ray, 7/08). We had pecan pie for dessert.  The avocado tomato stacks were fantastic and looked good too. If I can ever figure out how to get the pictures on her, I'll post one.  Of course, once you cut into the stack the whole thing falls apart.  They were drizzled with a cilantro buttermilk dressing.
The Welsh rarebit burgers are fantastic if you like the flavor of the rarebit sauce (cheddar/Worcestershire/Guinness).  The burgers are browned in the skillet and then placed on pumpernickel bread with broiled rarebit sauce, tomato and bacon. 

Dinner last night was an adventure.  The menu included tomato and basil bruschetta (from Cooking Light, 6/08), avocado, mango salad (from one of Rick Bayless's cookbooks, but I don't know which one) and pizza on the grill from Cook's Illustrated (7/05).  All the food was great. The bruschetta has a quickly cooked tomato topping with capers and balsamic vinegar, and I chopped up some fresh mozzarella as well. It was flavorful and the toasted bread rubbed with garlic was crunchy without being hard.  No problems making it either.  The salad was fantastic. I had some difficulty procuring the pepitas--strangely the only ones I could find were lime flavored which probably would have gone. I bought them but at the last minute decided to substitute some spicy pine nuts I had instead.  The dressing was great--flavorful but mayonnaise like even though there is no mayo in it. Must be the effect of the blender.  This course was also great. Light and flavorful for the hot weather. The final course, however, was where the fun began.  I made the dough, split it into fourths and rolled out the first of the four.  Looked good. I happened to glance back at the recipe and it said to roll the dough out in parchment paper. So I did. I had, neatly stacked, all three pizzas in parchment and then the one I'd rolled out on it's own on my pizza paddle. I put all the topping ingredients on a tray and headed outside to the BBQ.
The magazine says to cook with all burners on high.  Well, the pizza bottom was charred in about 22 seconds. we quickly flipped it, through on the toppings and had to take it off in a minute. Needless to say, the toppings were still raw and the crust was overcooked, but still tasty. Okay, turn down the grill. I go to get the second crust out of the parchment and it is stuck like glue. And I mean  that literally the mess was horrendous. No luck, throw that away.  Meanwhile, of course, everyone is waiting for dinner.  The third one I meticulously use my fingernails to scrape off the parchment and end up with ripped up, scraggly mess that we are still able to turn into a kind of sort of pizza. THis time, we cook on the lower temp and it works better.  For the fourth one, I get a brainstorm. Put it in the freezer.  Which works wonderfully. AFter about 20 minutes, I can easily remove the crust from the parchment. The final pizza we cooked at about 450 on the grill for 2 minutes, flipped over and cooked at 450 for about two minutes, then turned the grill off, put the lid down and let the pizza sit for another two minutes to melt the toppings. Finally, it worked. Of course, by now, dinner is long over and I ended up putting the pizza in the fridge. (by the way, the recipe did say to coat the parchment paper liberally with flour--a step that I overlooked!)