canadian bacon & carmelized onion fritatta

(how fantastic is the evening light in my kitchen? love.)

mimi bought me a cast-iron skillet so i don't have to flip my fritattas anymore-- now i can just shove them under the broiler for a couple minutes to finish cooking the top. there's so much you can do with a cast-iron skillet, it's amazing. cornbread is traditionally made in one and it's great for a cobbler or one-pot meal, too. it's a huge pain in the ass to clean, though. scour with coarse salt? no soap? ugh. fortunately, we're accustomed to washing dishes without soap since something, something, blah, blah, blah no soap in the beer glasses!

okaaaay. recipe.

ingredients:

• several slices of canadian bacon (or ham, whatever you keep around)
• 6-8 small red potatoes
• 1/2 an onion
• 4-5 eggs
• canola oil
• sea salt & ground pepper

prep:

• slice canadian bacon & onion into matchsticks
• slice potatoes
• beat eggs

actual cooking:

• put a generous splash of oil in the skillet
• add potatoes
• cover and allow to cook until slightly browned
• add onions
• allow to brown slightly
• add candian bacon
• salt & pepper to taste

• add eggs

• reduce heat, cover
• cook until set
• put under the broiler for 5 minutes (or so) to finish the top

serves two or three, can be doubled or more, but you might have to cook the potatoes in batches.

fritatta is the dish that turned bill to eggs. it was his idea to add the onions, here, and he was totally right. fritatta is making, um, a comback, i guess because it's so "recession-friendly." it's been in all the magazines lately being all hip and new. which it's totally not. but it's still good.

zucchini risotto

risotto is not as hard as everybody says it is. plus: it's totally yummy.

ingredients:

• 1 onion, coarsly chopped
• 3 tbs butter
• 3 small/medium zucchini (you can use one huge one, but smaller ones have better flavor), cubed
• 1 cup rice
• 4 cups chicken/veggie broth
• 2 cups water
• about 1/2 cup of scratch cheese (more or less to taste)
• sea salt & fresh ground pepper

prep:

• bring your water & broth to a boil (i generally heat it a cup at a time in the microwave because i like to keep the dishes to a minimum for bill)
• chop onion (i chop it coarsely, but i do everything coarsely because i am a delicate lady flower, but the recipe said finely.)
• reserve 1 tbs butter

actual cooking:

• heat 2 tbs butter in a large skillet
• saute onion until lightly browned
• add zucchini
• (salt & pepper it now for even flavoring)

• add rice and stir

• add one cup of boiling liquid
• reduce to simmer

• allow liquid to be absorbed
• repeat until all liquid is gone
• remove from heat
• add reserved butter
• add scratch cheese

we eat this for dinner about once a week. it takes longer than i like a weeknight dinner to take-- about forty-five minutes-- but is so totally worth it. i've served it as a side dish as well... but i'm pretty sure i skipped the main course in favor of it. oh! and this recipe makes a nice dinner for four or a huge dinner for two with leftovers.

lunch break: chicken salad salad

(or: why i'm willing to spend three and a half dollars on chicken in a can)

(or: we don't need no stinkin' grapes and walnuts)

(sorry, mom.)

in an effort to eat wonderful lunches that i totally love, like bill and his turkey & asiago sandwich, i'm trying new things which-- let's be honest-- has never been a strength of mine.

i actually DO love this lunch something serious and it's insanely easy.

ingredients:

• two or three stalks of celery, chopped fine
• 1 can of trader joe's canned chicken (packed in water)
• a blob of mayo (er 1/4 cup?)
• sea salt and fresh ground pepper
• a bag of spring mix

prep:

• drain & flake chicken (it's already pretty flaky, just jab at it with a fork some)
• chop celery

actual cooking (okay, "actual" is relative, here):

• combine celery, salt & pepper, chicken & mayo
• divide into 2 or 3 small containers (one cupish)

in the morning:

• toss some spring mix in an old take-out container (i like one from the olive garden-- a constant reminder that awful meals can come in nice containers) or something
• grab a contain of chicken salad

at lunchtime:

• dump chicken salad on spring mix
• do the happy chair dance at your desk

guest post: mama's world famous fried walnuts

First of all, wait for a dry, cool day. You can't do this when it's humid. And you will need a deep fryer with a thermostat. You can do small batches in one of those Fry Baby things, but you're better off with one that has a basket rather than the slotted spatula thing for scooping stuff out of the oil. Walnuts covered in molten sugar are tricky to work with. You don't want to be chasing them around with a spatula. You want to be lifting them out of the boiling oil with a nice sturdy basket. We have a big Waring deep fryer, and we use it for just three things: 1) fried walnuts, 2) smelts for Christmas Eve, and 3) Clare's faschnachts. I can't remember the last time I deep fried anything else. Even so it was worth spending $100 and having this big honkin thing sitting on my counter top in the downstairs kitchen because those three things are just that good.

For each pound of fancy whole unroasted walnut halves, you need about 1-1/3 cup of sugar and 2/3 cup of water. The amounts are approximate. You should err on the side of more syrup rather than less syrup because extra sugar will just crystallize into walnutty sugar dust that you can use the next time you make a coffee cake or cobbler. And some of it melts into burned walnutty brittle in the deep fryer that you can crush in the food processor and sprinkle on ice cream. So don't skimp. Put the walnuts and sugar and water in a bigger pot than you think you need, because you want to be able to stir them when the syrup is boiling without having it slop over the side. Also, overcrowded walnuts tend to break more and you want the walnuts to stay whole. My big spaghetti pot is big enough to do 3 lbs at a time but that's pushing it. If you want to make a total of 5 lbs of nuts, you're better off boiling up 2 batches.

Set the pot over medium high heat and stir frequently (but carefully) once it gets bubbly. Keep stirring until the syrup gets really thick and then -- suddenly! -- the bottom of the pot is dry when you scrape it with the spoon, and all the nuts are covered in sugar. They will be gritty, not candied, because the syrup doesn't get to the temperature you need for hard candy. Spread the nuts out in a single layer on a big pan. You'll need to separate them once they cool down a little. Let them cool completely but don't let them sit around too long or they'll pick up moisture. Overnight is OK if it's dry.

Fill your fryer with oil (canola, vegetable, or peanut oil all work OK) to the fill line and heat it to 375 degrees. Fill the basket to the fill line and submerge the nuts in the oil. Shake them around gently to keep them from sticking. When the walnuts start to brown and look a little shiny, pull the basket halfway out and shake VERY GENTLY to drain off as much of the oil as possible. Watch them carefully -- this only takes a couple minutes. If they're a little undercooked, they'll be gritty. If they're a little overcooked, they'll have a slightly burnt taste, which a lot of people actually prefer. If you're working with small batches, the later batches will cook faster because of the layer of burnt sugar that builds up on the bottom of the fryer.

Dump the fried walnuts onto a jelly roll pan. Don't line the pan with paper towels or anything, because they'll stick like a sumbitch. Working fast while they're still hot, push them apart with the back of a big spoon with one hand while sprinkling them with a salt shaker with the other hand. After a couple minutes, I usually transfer to walnuts to another pan so they cool faster.

Once they're cool enough to touch, I separate the stuck ones with my fingers. When the oil cools off and you pour it out into a jar to use again the next time you fry walnuts (or faschnachts, but take it from me, DO NOT use walnut/faschnacht oil for smelts, much less smelt oil for walnuts or faschnachts), don't forget to scoop out the fried sugar and drain it on paper towels (it won't stick, because it's cool by then) and crush it up to use on ice cream because it's like getting a sundae for free. That's it. Everybody really loves these. Almost everybody, anyway.

squash'd tomato flor-n-bean

this soup is one of the varieties i call "veggie sludge." it's thick, flavorful and easy to make. generic veggie sludge is really easy to make, but if i don't feel like thinking about what veggies to use, i go with this insanely simple one.

ingredients:

• 2-3 yellow squashes/zucchinis
• 1 can of tomato paste
• frozen spinach
• 1 can of white kidney beans
• mirepoix (chopped celery, carrots and onions, which i buy prepared from trader joe's because i'm lazy and it's good)
• veggie broth (a quart? or chicken, i guess, or ham would probably be tasty)
• olive oil

prep:

• chop your squash into, eh, chunk-sized chunks
• rinse the beans

actual cooking:

• coat the bottom of your (not huge) pot with olive oil
• add mirepoix and stir
• give that a minute
• add broth
• add spinach, beans, tomato paste and squash
• simmer for 45 minute to an hour, depending on how sludgy you want it (i want to be able to eat it with a fork, so 45 minutes mostly covered and 15-20 uncovered to boil off the extra water)
• salt & pepper to taste

this soup is delicious alone, over chicken, as a pasta sauce, with some grated cheese, with some melted cheese, hot, cold, whatever. it's good.

gluten-free/egg-free chocolate birthday cake (licensed character merchandise optional)

this recipe is incomplete, but i'm hoping not to have to make it again until next year, so i'll try some variations then, okay?

there's a pair of littles in my life who have some special dietary needs: no gluten for either of them, and no eggs for one. loving them as i do-- and loving kitchen experimentation as i do-- i spend lots of time thinking about how to accommodate their allergies without making them feel left out. their fourth and second birthday party was saturday and i made them this delicious, mostly-hypoallergenic cake. i've also included adjustments for dairy allergies and no allergies, just for the hell of it.

i bought some of my ingredients from amazon.com, so...

special ingredients:

• gluten-free flour blend-- i totally forget what brand i got, but next time, i'm going to try for one that doesn't smell like ass. i'm a super-smeller, though, and no one else had a problem with it. i think the ingredients are potato starch, corn starch, garbanzo beans and fava beans. the cake was originally going to be half chocolate and half vanilla, but the vanilla smelled so unappetizing that i had to make the whole thing chocolate. really, really chocolate. if dealing with a chocolate allergy, too, i'd make this cake with another STRONG flavor. like gingerbread.
• egg replacer-- i forget what the vendor for this was, too, but i suspect you can pretty easily find it in supermarkets or fancy food stores.
• gluten-free/egg-free frosting mix-- total. ripoff. you know what was in it? confectioner's sugar and vanilla flavoring. i had to add butter and milk (or margarine/butter flavored crisco & soy/rice/almond milk). just make a butter cream. it's cheaper.

ingredients:

• 3 1/4 cups flour OR flour blend
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs OR 6 tbs egg replacer & 8 tbs warm water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbs baking powder
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter OR margarine, softened to the consistency of mayo (butter flavored crisco might work, too, and it doesn't have any major allergens in it)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• (1 tbs instant coffee powder, optional, but makes it taste chocolatyer)
• 3 ounces chocolate, chopped very fine (semisweet, unsweetened, whatever you have, just watch ingredients if you're going hypo-allergenic)
• 1 1/2 cups milk OR soy/rice/almond milk
• 1 tbs vanilla

prep:

• preheat to 375
• chop/grind chocolate
• soften butter or margarine

actual cooking:

• combine dry ingredients
• add wet ingredients
• mix it all up
• pour into greased baking pans (2 8" squares, i guess, it doesn't rise as much as you think it will)
• bake at 375 degrees until a cake tester (or toothpick, or sharp, unserrated knife) comes out clean
• cool completely before frosting

so, the issue i'm left with is HOLY CRAP was that cake dry. HOLY CRAP. next time i'm going to try adding either a can of tomato paste (no, really, this is a good idea!) or some vegetable oil/more butter. it could probably also use a bit more sugar.

i frosted mine to look like the magic carpet from disney's aladdin and decorated it with figures of the characters. it's not my favorite way to decorate, but it works.

the kids loved it and even a couple adults said it tasted like food. so i'll call it a success. next up in my allergy test-kitchen: gluten-free/egg-free gingerbread people.

potatoflower soup

this delicious soup makes a great lunch, and all it takes to convert the recipe to a healthy alternative to mashed potatoes is omitting the water. sweet. and? it's SO EASY. i always thought soups would be hard to make and then last fall: click. i get it. you need one of the following to make this soup: an immersion blender, a huge blender, a potato masher, a big food processor, a hand mixer or a fork and infinite patience.

ingredients:

• 4 large potatoes
• 1 quart chicken (or veggie) broth
• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 onion
• water
• sea salt & fresh ground pepper (should we just assume that every savory recipe needs these?)
• a drop (or spritz) of oil

prep:

• cube potatoes (and skin them if you or your eaters are wusses)
• trim cauliflower into florets
• chop onion

actual cooking:

• put a big pot over high heat, spritz with oil
• add onions, stir
• add cauliflower, stir
• add potatoes, stir
• add broth and about 1/2 quart of water
• cover, cook for, oh, you know, a while... until both potatoes and cauliflower are a bit soft
• remove from heat and mash it all together with whatever implement you're working with (i used a potato masher & hand mixer. i bet an immersion blender is freaking AWESOME, but i don't have one.)
• salt & pepper to taste

tada! easiest. recipe. ever.

so, like i said, all you have to do to make this seem just like mashed potatoes is omit the water and maybe add a bit of butter at the end. mmmmmmm.

(by the way-- cauliflower is a cabbage. so it kinda smells. which apparently makes people think it tastes gross. it DOES NOT. it is delicious. and versatile. and potato-like.)

veggie fried rice

this is a per-serving recipe. i can't think of any reason not to multiply the number of people (+ at least two, for safety) by the amount of each ingredient. if you have a big enough pan, that is.

ingredients:

• 1/2 cup leftover (or chilled) rice
• 1/2-3/4 cup mixed veggies, chopped (i used a frozen blend form trader joe's [organic foursome] 1/4 of a small onion and 3 asparagus spears)
• 1 egg
• canola oil (a spray is ideal)
• soy sauce

prep:

• cook your rice yesterday

actual cooking:

• spray a medium-sized frying pan (at medium-high heat) with canola oil
• add veggies, stir
• add rice, stir
• (spritz with oil)
• add a drizzle of soy sauce to taste
• cover and let the flavors blend (two minutes, tops, and make sure everything's well lubricated)
• push rice mixture to the sides of the pan (basically, make a very big well)
• spray pan with oil
• pour in scrambled egg
• scramble the egg alone until almost done, then pull in rice mixture

believe it or not, it is very important to salt your rice water, but not too much, or this dish is really bland-- even with the soy sauce. and a small note on veggies: the organic foursome is perfect with julienned carrots, corn, peas and chopped green beans, onion is pretty much a must and asparagus is just yummy. i've also enjoyed veggie fried rice with mung sprouts, brussel sprouts, broccoli and a bunch of other veggies i'm forgetting. be creative!