eggs on sunday

Don’t you just love it when you find a recipe that’s stellar on its own, but also lends itself to endless variations? It becomes a staple in your repertoire, but the “basics” of the formula lend itself so well to experimentation that you could never have the same flavor combinations twice.

Such is Mark Bittman’s (aka “The Minimalist”) recipe for crustless quiche, which appeared in last week’s NY Times Dining section. The idea itself isn’t all that earth shattering — it’s basically a cheese custard with optional fillings — but the results are delicious. Plus, they puff up like little souffles when you take them out of the oven; you have to love the presentation aspect of that! (more…)

Can you tell I decided to have a little fun with our latest Friday night pizza? I was dying to see the look on B’s face when I set it down in front of us. Lucky for me, he’s always up for my pizza experiments.

In the pizza section of Jamie Oliver’s cookbook Jamie’s Italy, there’s one that jumped out at me and inspired me to try this version: Jamie’s is a pancetta, egg and tomato pizza. I suppose it appealed to my endless love for a softly cooked, oozy egg…mmm. The egg is cracked right on top of the pizza, and bakes in the oven — which is also so hot that it crisps up the bacon nicely; no need to cook it beforehand.

For my version, I made a basic modified pesto using spinach to spread on the crust, and diced up some bacon to scatter over the top of the fresh mozzarella. Because I knew the eggs would look like two eyes, I just couldn’t resist adding a strip of bacon curving up in a smile…I kind of felt bad hacking the pizza in two! But our bellies thanked us for it — this was one of my favorite pizzas of late! It might even get a repeat performance in our kitchen, which you know is saying something.

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“Clafouti”…fun to say, but even more fun to eat! (Actually, I’m not sure if it’s “clafouti” or “clafoutis.” I’ve seen it written both ways, and I think either is acceptable. We’ll just go with “clafouti,” shall we?)

This was actually my first clafouti. I’ve been meaning to make one now for about a month. I think about making one every week, and every week for some reason I’ve gotten sidetracked. One of the things I love about blogging is all the events you can participate in — Sugar High Fridays, Daring Bakers, Weekend Herb Blogging, etc. — but sometimes it’s hard to fit everything in! About a month ago, I saw that the theme for April’s Hey Hey it’s Donna Day event was going to be clafoutis, and I thought to myself, “great! now’s my chance to finally give this dessert a try.” (more…)

Why rainbow, you ask? Well, it sure is colorful — and it’s a lot less of a mouthful than “black bean, mango, and jicama quinoa with red and green cabbage, cilantro and lime vinaigrette.” Whew.

I suppose I’ve been on a bit of a quinoa kick lately — last week it was the lemon-scented quinoa with asparagus; this weekend I thought I’d make a quinoa salad to have both as a side for our Cinco de Mayo dinner, as well as for lunches later on in the week. (more…)

As I sit here thinking about what to write about these cupcakes — they’re dark chocolate cakes with peanut butter frosting — all I can do is smile. They are just make-my-day, grin-ear-to-ear delicious! Rather than writing a long story about them, I think I’ll just say this: MAKE them. You won’t be sorry! They’d be a perfect surprise for any chocolate & peanut butter lover in your life.

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Spinach and artichokes are a great combination together, no? I mean really, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who doesn’t like spinach and artichoke dip (side note: if you have a good spinach and artichoke dip recipe, would you please point me in its delicious direction? I don’t have one; the last one I tried was a clunker.)

Last week, I sauteed up some baby spinach with olive oil, diced onion, frozen artichoke hearts and a little squeeze of lemon juice for a side dish one night for dinner. I made a little extra so that I could use it as a topping on our Friday Night Pizza, which I thought I’d try to make with similar flavors to a spinach-artichoke dip. I sprinkled some grated parmigiano-reggiano across the crust, layered on the sauteed spinach and artichoke hearts, then topped with some creamy garlic and herb goat cheese as well as chunks of fresh mozzarella. It was delicious — a “loose” interpretation of the dip, but still delicious!

TGIF!

(click through for the recipe) (more…)

So here’s the thing.

As many of you probably do, I have a loooooong list of recipes on my “to cook” list. Some of these come from my food magazine subscriptions (BA, Gourmet, CI), some of them come from the time I spend browsing around epicurious.com, many of them come from food bloggers whom I regularly read (I simultaneously feel overwhelming love and just “overwhelmed” at my Google Reader list, many days.) And don’t even get me started on my cookbooks: this past year I finally tried to get my act together and put post-it flags on the recipes I wanted to try. I had grand plans to go through all of my 100+ cookbooks and do this. Months later, how many have I gotten through? Maybe six. Sigh. And flagging the recipes doesn’t mean I have any structured plan to actually cook them; oh, no. I’ve made baby, baby steps of progress through a handful, but I have a long way to go.

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Yes, I don’t think of these as mere cheesecake pops — I say “cheesecake pops!!!” every time I eat one. What a cute idea for this month’s Daring Bakers challenge! I’ve been enamored of the dessert pop idea ever since I saw Bakerella’s cupcake pops (aren’t those amazing?), and I was thrilled to have these as my second DB challenge.

The pops are a New York-style cheesecake — smooth and creamy — rolled into balls and coated with melted chocolate. According to the rules for this month’s challenge, we had leeway as far as flavoring the cheesecake (though it had to remain white), as well as what we used to decorate the pops. I divided my batch of cheesecake batter in two and made half raspberry-flavored (with Chambord) and the other half hazelnut flavored (with an organic hazelnut extract.) I rolled both kinds of pops in dark chocolate, and then drizzled white chocolate over the raspberry pops and rolled the hazelnut pops in finely chopped toasted hazelnuts. They were really delicious, and I’ve been keeping ours in the freezer…which makes them OH so good. Like frozen chocolate-covered cheesecake! We’ve been having some every night for the past week; no one is complaining.

Here’s how the cheesecake pop adventure unfolded: (more…)

Last week, I was in a bit of a Friday Night Pizza rut. I’ve really been enjoying coming up with new ideas for them since I started this series, but last week….well….I was clean out of inspiration. A quick search on epicurious.com (what would I do without that web site?) yielded this recipe for sausage, red onion, and wild mushroom pizza. (more…)

Waiting for me this morning, there was a lovely note from Lori, aka Recipe Girl: I was one of the blogs she named for the “Blog of Distinction” award! Aww…thanks, Lori! I’m so flattered, and really, it made my day! If you haven’t yet been over to her blog, you should make a visit: I’ve recently been really enjoying her string of Ina recipes, and she has some great suggestions for Cinco de Mayo (coming up!)

Part of the idea behind this award is that you share the love: i.e., pass it along to others. I knew right away who I wanted to pass this award along to. (more…)