a weekend in

so last week, there i was at work one day, and i got a craving for cheese. like, a yummy cheesy pasta dish. and that made me think of a food52 recipe i had seen, that just looks utterly delicious -- a cheesy pasta with pumpkin in it. omg it looks to die for, and someday i am going to make it. but as i was looking at the recipe for it, i was also hit by a craving for pizza. and so i decided to combine my cravings by making a cheesy butternut squash pizza. triple points because i had almost all of the ingredients in my fridge already. i swear those things all go together.

so i stopped at whole foods, and picked up some of their pizza dough in the refridgerated section. FYI: it is deeeeelicious stuff. i peeled and cut up some butternut squash, and threw it in the oven along with some garlic cloves. an hour later, i mashed the lovely roasted stuffs together. i then stretched the pizza dough out. turns out i am very bad at this. i tried to do it in the air, because how else does one really do it? (i actually dont know, so if you have tips for easier ways to stretch pizza dough out, let me know!) anyway, i didnt really do it effectively, but i like thick dough anyway so thats fine.

so i sprinkled corn meal out on the baking sheet, and then the dough. and i rubbed it with oil. i then spread some fresh mozzerella out, that i had shredded. and then glopped on the mashed butternut squash and garlic. and then i spread out some onions i had caramelized. and then i sprinkled some pancetta i had crisped up. and THEN, i cut some shavings of bucheron on top -- a really delicious goat cheese that i bought at wholefoods the other week in the bin ends basket but didnt actually have anything to do with. threw it in the oven (500 degrees) for about 10 minutes, and it puffed up into deliciousness!! best pizza ever.

the next day, i went with a nice snowday comfort: pot roast (with carrots and onions), mashed potatoes, and roasted veggies. yummmm.

a plummy day.

i wrote the below, in italics, back in september. and delayed uploading the photos and then forever passed. lets try to get better about that...

i was once asked what i do to relax / de-stress. you know, after a long week at work, or if something less-than-happy happened in my personal life, or whatever. and i had to think for a minute or two, but it eventually came to me: spending time in my kitchen. which is probably one of the reasons that i sacrificed location for an amazing kitchen with my current apartment. what does this mean, exactly? it means i like to spend time in my kitchen, chopping, cleaning, preparing foods. it relaxes me and gives me the opportunity to structure and organize things, which is nice for someone slightly obsessive-compulsive like me.

today i had a lovely day like that. i peeled and chopped up all the carrots i got in my farmshare this week. i shucked, de-cobbed, and made soup out of the corn on the cob from my farmshare this week (and i roasted some to go with some avocado as a soup garnish. yum). i peeled and cut up potatoes and onions for roasting. i cut up a watermelon into chunks for this week. i roasted and peeled some beets for this week. i washed and cut up and made into a cake some lovely plums i got at a farmers market on friday.

it. was. lovely. and exactly what i want in a weekend.

so about that plum cake. my good friend kaitlin, who i went to high school with, posted a picture of a gigantic tub of plums on twitter, way back when. and they sounded delicious. so when i found them at the farmers market not a week later, i had to buy a little container. but what was i to do with them? especially since i had never consumed ones that looked like them before! make a cake! thats what!



i went with a recipe from food52. a friend of mine turned me on to the site quite some time ago, but i have to admit i don't use their recipes that often. i love the fact that they are well-illustrated, and tested to be sure that they work well (at least the contest winners!) but i find that my cooking style isnt neccessarily the same and so i dont try all of the recipes on there.



this plum cake recipe, however, looked great, and so i of course had to try it, since i had the plums. i liked the way that the plums were layered into the cake too. it was quite delicious. but of course i don't ever have a reason to make dessert, because who is going to help me eat it! one of the difficulties of my single life -- no one to help eat leftovers! i once made apple crisp for a party thinking it would be all gone and of course people barely ate half of it! i cant eat that much leftover!! and then when AJ&UB came for dinner in december, AJ brought a small cheesecake, but then left half of it for me! how am i supposed to get through it! so coming back to the plum cake. i ended up bringing it to dinner with bryan and emily, and left a bunch with them, which is how i solved the plum cake issue!

such a tasty hiatus

okay. i know i have had QUITE the hiatus. someone at work mentioned to one of the new hires (my awesome buddy who also likes to cook!) that i have a cooking blog and i was like "well, technically i havent updated it in months! months!" it is depressing. i even stopped taking pictures of things that i cooked. well that, and i stopped cooking quite so much because i was insanely busy at work. but still! i made the duck again in december when my aunt and uncle visited, along with a bunch of delicious sides, and no pictures! and the plum cake post that is going to go up shortly after this (but might get backdated) -- i wrote that entry ages ago, when i actually made the cake, but i delayed posting because i needed to upload the photos, and it has taken MONTHS to bother to do that.



but tonight...tonight i decided that i needed to post about my most delicious dinner. because tonight, i made shrimp curry. this recipe came from emily, who makes it with bryan fairly often i guess, and made it once when i came over for dinner. and i was like "omg omg this is delicious" and i was craving it the other week, and emily was kind enough to send me the recipe so that i could make it myself! to much success. it really just is happily delicious. possibly one of the reasons for this is that there are 5 tbsp of butter in it. you can see from the picture below that there is a LOT of butter in there with the onions. and it is DELICIOUS. when em did it, she had cashews and avocado and something else as toppings. but when i went to whole foods, there were no ripe avocados! they were all a few days off! so, i did cashews and green olives which actually worked out really well.



the side to go with is carrots and parsnips. sauteed a bit then through some chicken stock in, then when they were all warm and crispy and falling apart, i threw some butter in. it looks terrible, because the veggies are falling apart, but it was DELICIOUS!!! DELICIOUS!!!!!

and the recipe for the shrimp curry, since it is not found online:

3 pounds lg. shrimp (frozen shelled, deveined lg shrimp, thawed and drained) (I only used 1 pound, because i was making just for me -- i have about 4 servings and lots of delicious sauce)
5 tbsp. butter
1 sm onion minced
2 1/2 tsp. curry powder (i threw a little extra in)
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground ginger (em uses fresh ginger, and you can throw a little extra in)
2 cups milk
1 cup chicken broth
1 tsp. lemon juice (i omitted this! because i didnt have any!)
6 cups hot cooked rice (i used white sushi rice! and it was delicious. and i didnt make enough because i only cooked 1 cup!)

1. If using fresh shrimp, shell and devein them; rinse with running cold water.

2. In 4 qt saucepan over high heat, heat 3 in. water to boiling. Add shrimp; heat to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low; cook 1 minute or until shrimp turn pink and are tender. Drain.

3. In 3 qt saucepan over medium heat, stir in hot butter, cook onion till tender. Stir in curry powder; cook one minute. Stir in flour, sugar, salt, and ginger until blended. Gradually stir in milk and chicken broth, and cook, stirring constantly until mixture thickens. Add shrimp and lemon juice; heat through. Serve shrimp with rice and accompaniments.

Accompaniments: In separate small bowls, place two or more of these accompaniments to be sprinkled over servings: chutney, golden raisins, salted almonds or peanuts, pineapple chunks, crisp bacon, flaked coconut, sliced avocado, green olives.

breakfast in

I don't make brunch myself very often. way too much effort than going out to a tasty little diner nearby. plus, if you try to make waffles or pancakes or something on your own, there is no single-serving recipe. you always make some batter but it ends up being enough for a BUNCH of people and then you have a ton of leftover batter or leftover waffles and it is sadness. within the last year, however, a few friends started doing a weekly brunch thing. one of us would host, alternating, and we'd make brunch for the group. sometimes potluck-style, sometimes the host doing everything. and THEN, one of the group moved to the netherlands for a year. and so we fell out of practice. and then she came back, but we were still out of practice.

well, a few weeks ago (almost a month at this point! oh my!) one of our own moved for good. Sarah headed to Ohio for grad school. gone for 5+ years. not cool, sarah. not cool. so we did one last brunch together. and i made biscuits and gravy, from a recipe that came in my tastingtable email, based on a recipe from Nate Appleman, Pulino's, New York. my first time ever making biscuits and sausage gravy. and it turned out really well! as in, crazy delicious. and fatty, i am not going to lie. though i think i might have gotten leaner sausage than i had wanted, because there wasnt much fat for the gravy, but it still worked well. and the polenta biscuits were a very nice consistency, i think i will repeat them in the future.

Pasta Summer

i dont make pasta very often. i think a few months went by, actually, during which i didnt make pasta at all. i dont really know why - maybe for some reason i think that boiling water takes too long, even though that is a bit of an absurd notion. or i'm just not in the mood. BUT a few times this summer, i had vegetables and cheese and nothing to do with them except for throw them over some delicious pasta. above is actually one of the most delicious pasta dishes i have ever made, and if i hadnt portioned it out bringing it to work, i would have eat the ENTIRE thing in 1 sitting because it was so incredibly good. what made it so good? fresh gnocchi (no, i didnt make it, i got it from wholefoods), tomatoes, mozzerella, and fresh basil pesto (now that one i DID make, with basil from my farmshare). it sounds so simple, but the combo of the gnocchi and the homemade pesto was just incredible.


pasta dish number 2? well, i had a party a few weeks back, and one of the things that i made was an eggplant dip - i roasted some eggplant (coated in a little bit of olive oil) and then chopped it up with some parsley and more olive oil into a little spread. well, i had some leftover, and so i threw it in with some pasta, more tomato, and more mozzerella. it was also quite tasty, though not as incredible as the gnocchi. ah well, not everything can be amazing.

a summer dinner party

pardon the terrible cell-phone picture. its the only one that had everything in it.

backstory: there was a weekend in july that the whole fam was going to be home, while brother and father played in a golf tournament. i decided to take advantage of the fact that they have a grill, and i dont, and so brother and i schemed to have a bbq one of the nights of the weekend. i looked through all my cooking magazines, and found some exciting recipes. so i stocked up at whole foods for everything on our list, grabbed my mandoline, and headed home for the weekend and a nice summer bbq.


first up? cilantro-lime slaw. it was actually rather good, and not as hot as i feared (or rather, as the fear instilled in me by mother, who pulled out rubber gloves for me to wear while chopping up the serrano chile that went into the recipe. i, of course, made wayyyy too much as i had a red cabbage from the farm share, and wanted green cabbage as well, but luckily the family was able to get through the leftovers easily.


next side? Israeli Couscous with Roasted Eggplant and Cinnamon-Cumin Dressing. also found in the bon appetit magazine. it was actually my first experience with israeli couscous, as i am much more familiar with...whatever normal (much smaller grain) couscous is. BUT it was a very favorable experience that i think i will need to repeat. the actual recipe...i am not as much a fan of. I think that maybe it needed some added salt, or SOMETHING else, but it was lacking the strong roasted flavor that i was hoping for (maybe too much oil cooled it off? maybe too much cilantro?) something to adjust in the future.


next side is one i didnt not actually make myself! this is a mango lime salsa that mary made! her recipe came from here. it is very tasty, and goes well with a lot of things. lots of lime. better with more ripe mangoes. as i have never used mangoes, i had no idea what goes into choosing one, so i selected one that was less than ripe :( bad jenn.


we also grilled some avocados (yummmmm), and i made 2 sauces for the pork and steak tips that we grilled. the pork itself got a nice rub. i cant remember exactly what i did this time, it was either garlic+salt+pepper, or it was paprika+cumin+garlic+salt. i think the second, but i vary my rubs all the time so. ANYWAY, the 2 sauces that i made? innnnnnncredible! first up, the Bourbon and Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce. this required a lot of ingredients. some of which my mom actually already had (including liquid smoke, which shocked me). and it took quite some time to reduce to the correct consistency. but it was also incredible. like, so so good. and it improved upon re-heating. after using it at the bbq, i also used it the next week with some pulled pork i made in my crock pot. again, delicious. sauce #2 was a bit different, mostly because we had planned on doing some chicken on the grill as well. and so, i made a Red Curry Peanut Sauce. which was OMGSOGOOD. it went well on everything, and was so incredibly good. like, i want to make it ALL the time. i had some leftover the week after, and smothered some chicken with it, and it continued to be incedible on the leftovers-nights. highly highly recommended.

i am so lazy

wow, i really am incredibly behind on my posts. i was looking through all the pictures that i prepared and NEVER bothered to post, and i cant believe it has been so long. a fact that actually segways quite nicely into the theme for this entry. my laziness.

i once bought some bananas. and i was too lazy to actually eat them before they got very brown. in my defence, i really prefer bananas that are sort of green still, nice and firm, and have that green taste to them. so, once the bananas were no longer green, i didnt really want to eat them anymore, so naturally they then became brown shortly after without my intervention.

you would think, at this point, that i would have trashed the bananas that i was too lazy to eat. but no. i called my mother and got her banana bread recipe and made 2 loaves of banana bread. which is delicious. too lazy to eat the bananas while they were fresh, but not too lazy to make banana bread? that is how my brain works.

and so we come to july. when i made the baby quiches in the previous post, i had some leftover egg yolks. which i didnt want to waste even though work was really busy. so i tried to find some easy recipe on epicurious that would use them up, like a dessert or something. instead, i was intrigued by a recipe for ravioli. because ravioli pasta dough requires a bunch of egg yolks. and so, i went to the trouble of making pasta dough, from scratch (from this recipe), and then rolling it out because i DONT OWN A PASTA ROLLER (thanks mother, for promising that you would get me the kitchenaid attachment for christmas so that i wouldnt buy it for myself, and then NOT ACTUALLY DOING IT). i then cut it up with a biscuit cutter, because also unlike my mother, i dont have a ravioli mold.


i mixed together the cheese mixture from the recipe above, except instead of parmesan, i used gorgonzola (it was what i had on hand. either that or i purchased it intentionally at the store. i dont really remember). and, naturally, i made WAY too much filling. even though it was the amount that the recipe called for, i had like, 2 cups leftover. what does one DO with all of that leftover gorgonzola ricotta mixture? one throws it into a pyrex dish along with a bunch of cherry tomatoes, and bakes it for a bit, for an additional delicious side.


laziness can be good, see. it produces homemade ricotta gorgonzola ravioli.