Blue Cheese Pizza with Caramelized Onion

January 26th, 2012 | Author: Christopher | Filed under: food/recipes | Tags: , , , , | No Comments Yet »

This week’s dining room dinner was blue cheese pizza with caramelized onions.

Jessica recently found a new obsession: The Beekman Boys and their show on Planet Green, The Fabulous Beekman Boys. They have a cookbook published that contains recipes created with ingredients from their own farm in New York state. The following recipe comes from that book, The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Cookbook.

It’s this show that has inspired us to want to get a “farm” of our own, but that’s a story for another post.

So let’s get down to the dish.

Looks amazing, right? It was. Blue cheese, caramelized red onions, honeycrisp apple and walnuts.

It’s super easy, and doesn’t take a great deal of time, either.

The recipe:

  • 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 3/4 pound store-bought or homemade pizza dough (I was going to make my own, but time constraints didn’t allow, so we just used a couple boxes of the Jiffy instant dough mix.)
  • 2 1/2 pounds onions, halved and thinly sliced
  • 8 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
  • 1/3 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
  • 1 large sweet apple, peeled and cut into thin wedges (you could even get away with two)
  • Salt

Heat 4 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet on low-medium heat (err towards the low side). Add the onions, cover and cook, stirring occasionally under tender for about 25 minutes.

RED ON-YON

Uncover the onions and continue cooking, stirring frequently until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Stir in the apple, season with salt, and cook until the apple is crisp-tender, about 5 more minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500° with a rack in the lowest position in the oven.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough out to a 14-inch round. (Or, if using the mix I used, just follow the package directions, with the exception of the temperature, which I’ll explain later.) Grease a baking sheet or pizza round. The mix calls for pre-baking the crust for about 3 minutes. If you choose to do that, then brush the top with the remaining oil after removing the crust.

sprinkles

Scatter the onion-apple mixture over the top, leaving a 1-inch border all around. Scatter the cheese and nuts on top. Bake for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 450° until the crust is crisp and the cheese has melted, which should be another 2-5 minutes.

Open a bottle of wine and go to town. On the pizza, I mean.

Enjoy!


Sometimes a Bowl is a Bowl

January 25th, 2012 | Author: Jessica | Filed under: Interior Design | No Comments Yet »

This mid-century pottery found while perusing vintage shops in Minneapolis was a nice decorative feature in our designer showcase condo this past November. Pretty, right?

After we moved all of the items out of the condo, I couldn’t part with it. So it moved in with me.

And, it became a wonderful way to store all my bracelets and brooches. Pretty and practical. That’s a motto to live by.


The 2012 Garden

January 24th, 2012 | Author: Christopher | Filed under: Landscaping | 2 Comments »

With this mild (so far) winter we’ve been having, we’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re going to be doing with our garden once the weather actually turns. Those of you that follow Jessica on Twitter (which should be all of you) may have noticed that she’s been talking about living off the land in a bigger way.

Our first step was getting a copy of The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, from Edward C. Smith. Love that hat, man. Besides now having an excuse to buy a completely garish hat to wear in the backyard this summer, now we’ve got some real instruction on how to get the best yield from our garden. This book is fantastic, giving great instruction to all levels of gardeners. Jessica’s all in on this project as well; I know this because she was actually talking about manure in a favorable way the other day.

Last year, we succeeded with tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos, romaine and herbs. We failed with scallions, carrots and celery. We’re hoping to add some new heirloom tomato varieties, more lettuce varieties, and an even greater variety of herbs. We’ve already started rosemary, basil and parsley inside, with dill, chives and mint this year.

All of this is just a trial run, really, until we can get more land to hopefully have one of those Martha Stewart-sized gardens.

Maybe not that big.

Point is, there’s nothing quite like cooking with fresh ingredients that you’ve grown or created yourself. Whether vegetables, fruits, or even baked goods, you’ll never want to go back to store-bought. (Although, that’s inevitable, living with the weather we do around here.)

Stay tuned throughout the year for more updates.