February 14th, 2012 |
Author: Jessica | Filed under: food/recipes
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In an effort to balance the delicious, but not super-skinny-inducing baked goods that Christopher makes, I try to lighten our load with healthier fare. I have to get pretty clever because once you taste the real deal, it’s hard to enjoy the low-cal substitute. Basically, if my husband doesn’t see buckets of butter dumped in a pan, he is pretty skeptical.
I do have at least one tasty, but healthy, recipe in my bag of tricks. (Actually it comes from a healthy kids cookbook that I taught from when I taught cooking classes and nutrition education for after-school programs. Yes, I did that. It had its perks.)
Chocolate French Toast (the healthy version)
Grab:
4 slices whole grain bread
1/2 cup low-fat chocolate milk (or soy milk)
1 egg
powdered sugar
raspberries
Do:
1. Beat the egg and then add it to the milk, mix
2. Dunk the bread in the milk and egg mixture
3. Spray skillet with non-stick cooking spray
4. Put bread in medium heated skillet
5. Cook about 3 min on each side
6. Plate, and sprinkle with powdered sugar and raspberries. (Add a little syrup if you want)
Eat and enjoy. Happy V-day.
January 26th, 2012 |
Author: Christopher | Filed under: food/recipes
| Tags: beekman, beekman 1802 heirloom cookbook, blue cheese, caramelized onion, pizza |
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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.
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.
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!
January 19th, 2012 |
Author: Jessica | Filed under: food/recipes
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Doesn’t that sound like a novel idea? If I am being perfectly honest, Christopher and I eat dinner almost every night in our family room, at our giant coffee table, watching TV. I’m not going to apologize for this, because, honestly, television is a natural buffer for us and after working together all day, we mostly don’t want to talk to one another by dinner time. Eat and be absorbed by Modern Family or Fringe. That is the key to a well-adjusted marriage.
On the other hand, we realize that we are overlooking the fun part of making and eating dinner together – the sense of community and pleasure in simply enjoying our food and having a conversation. We actually really love to cook and usually work together on a meal (However, no baked goods you see on here will ever be mine! Christopher holds the baker title in this household and that is perfectly fine by me.) several nights a week. One of our goals for the new year is to once a week, sit down at our dining room table, plate pretty meals, and have the experience of dinner. I think we are either too busy or too tired or too annoyed with each other to really enjoy a lot of our down time and we end up just going through the motions. Plus, I think if we bribe each other with a good meal after a long day, I will forget that he never remembers to write things down and therefore forgets anything I tell him, and he will forget that I nag him to death, reminding him to write everything down.
First up; last night we made Onion and Pancetta soup with a fresh basil garnish.
We opened a bottle of wine and actually sat at our table. I totally get extra points for lighting candles.
Here’s the recipe (basically from The Soup Bible, though we lightened it up a bit):
Serves 4
You need:
- 2.5 – 3 ounces pancetta; chopped
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter (we used Brummel and Brown)
- 5.5 cups onions; chopped or sliced
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 and 1/4 quarts chicken stock
- 2.5 cups peeled and chopped plum tomatoes (you can use a can if you want it easy)
- Fresh basil
- Put the pancetta in pan on low heat, until the fat starts to run. Increase heat to medium and add oil, butter, onions, and sugar. Stir well.
- Half-cover pan and cook onions slowly for 20 min. Stir often.
- Add stock, tomatoes, and salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Lower heat and half-cover the pan. Simmer for 30 min. Stir occasionally.
- If it is too thick, add more stock.
- Just before serving, stir in some chopped basil.
- Serve and garnish with fresh grated Parmesan cheese and more fresh basil.
Then, eat a ton and feel content.