rhubarb pie

now, i'm not one to go BUYING strange, red celery with poisonous leaves (seriously-- don't. eat. the. leaves.) but we got my parents' csa share this week and i definitely AM one to freeze up when i'm doing something new and refuse to deviate, so... the rhubarb came home with us. what do you DO with rhubarb, i asked myself, and then i remembered little house on the prairie -- only the actual story probably came from the first four years or those happy golden years -- and bought a prefab pie crust.

ingredients:

• frozen pie crust
• 4 cups (a regular bunch that you'd see at a store) rhubarb, cubed
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup flour

prep:

• preheat oven to 450*
• defrost pie crust (or make your own... whatever)
• cube rhubarb (which the joy of cooking only BARELY deigns to call "fruit")

actual cooking:

• unroll first crust into pie plate, perforate with a fork
• combine sugar, flour and rhubarb in a bowl
• pour filling mixture into pie shell
• unroll top crust over filling, crimp & perforate
• bake (on a cookie sheet-- preferably rimmed) at 450* for 10 minutes
• decrease heat to 350* and continue baking 35-40 minutes

it's tastes like cherry pie-- honest! sugary and tart and pretty delicious.

chocolate cake with coffee frosting

kevin's birthday cake was a bakers chocolate one-bowl chocolate cake. it took, frankly, too damn long. in the future, i'll probably stick with the joy of cooking's "lightning cake" (or blitz-cake, as we call it).

ingredients (cake):

• 3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) butter
• 6 ounces (1 cup chips) semi-sweet chocolate
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cups water

ingredients (frosting):

• 1/3 cup skim milk
• 1/8 cup instant coffee
• 6 cups confectioner's sugar
• 3/4 cups (1.5 sticks) butter, softened

prep:

• grease & flour 2 8" circle or square cake pans
• preheat over to 350*

actual cooking:

• in a small, microwave safe bowl, nuke frosting milk for 1.5 minutes
• add coffee and stir until dissolved
• set aside
• in a large, microwave safe bowl nuke cake butter & chocolate for 2 minutes
• stir until melted & combined
• add sugar
• add eggs & vanilla
• add 1/2 cup flour, salt & baking soda
• add remaining flour & water (alternating)
• pour batter into cake pans
• bake for 35 minutes
• combine softened butter and confectioners sugar
• add coffee-milk by the tablespoon until desired consistency is reached

monkey bread

i bet there's a better way to make monkey bread, but this one was SO EASY (especially since i had some slave labor to roll the dough into balls and coat it in cinnamon sugar) that i need to the the interwebs about it.

ingredients:

• 3 cans of buttermilk biscuits
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 1 tbs cinnamon

prep:

• grease a bundt pan
• preheat oven to 350*

actual cooking:

• mix granulated sugar and cinnamon in a bowl
• melt butter, add brown sugar and bring to a boil (keep warm)
• cut (or tear) each biscuit into quarters
• in small batches, lightly shape the pieces into balls, roll in sugar mixture and add to the pan (next time, i would drizzle some of the butter mixture and some more cinnamon sugar on each layer)
• cover with butter mixture
• bake for 35-40 minutes
• let cool for 10-20 minutes

this was a roaring success. which is good, because the cheesecake i made that night had the texture of tapioca pudding... and i'm not sure why. whoops.

easter pie OR pizza rustica OR calzone

we call this dish calzone-- but we say ghav-uh-zoon-- and we pretty much live for easter so we can have it. we love it so much we'd make is other times of year, but you can only get basket cheese at easter, so we can't. because of the magnitude of this project, we have to do it at my mother's house where there are three ovens, and the occasional excitable teenaged brother willing to forgo book learnin' to get elbow deep in family tradition for an afternoon.

dough ingredients:

• 20 cups of flour (plus more for dusting)
• 2 tbs baking powder
• 2 tbs salt
• 6 cups vegetable shortening ("crisco: it's digestible!")
• 19 eggs
• 3/4 cup ice water
• egg wash (milk & 2 beaten eggs)

filling ingredients:

• 3 pounds sweet italian sausage, out of the case, browned
• 3 pounds ham, diced
• 1 pounds soprasotta, thick-sliced, diced
• 1 pound proscuitto, thick-sliced, diced
• 1 pound ricotta cheese
• 1 basket cheese, diced
• 20 hard boiled eggs, diced
• chopped fresh parsley
• 6 eggs

prep:

• hard boil 24 eggs, chop 20 of them and set aside
• brown sausage
• dice meats & basket cheese
• combine meats
  

• combine dry ingredients for dough

• blend in shortening
  

• add eggs & water
• blend thoroughly
• turn out and knead (or massagia)
  
  
  
• add basket cheese & parsley to meat
  
  
  
• preheat oven(s) to 375*
• break for a lovely lunch of egg salad sandwiches (those last 4 eggs!), carrots and limeade. it's traditional.
  

• add hard boiled eggs to meat
  

• add raw eggs & ricotta to meat
  

actual cooking:

• roll out dough into large circles

• paint egg wash around edges
• pile half with filling
• fold other half over
• crimp edges
• move to a greased baking sheet
• brush with egg wash
• vent

• bake at 375* until browned and bubbling
• cool for 5-10 minutes (depending on the size) on the sheet
• move to a rack to cool completely
• serve lukewarm or cold
  

this recipe made 2 extra larges (about 16"x8"), 7 larges (about 10"x5") and 6 smalls (about 8"x4"). that's a lot. but somehow, we always need as many as we make. they freeze so well that we usually have one in january to hold us over.

blue ribbon lamb cake

this is a molded easter lamb cake baked in a blue ribbon bakeware easter lamb mold using the blue ribbon bakeware lamb cake recipe. the mold belonged to my great grandmother, and she used this same recipe (which came with the mold). last year i tried to use a joy of cooking white cake recipe and it turned out really hard and dry, so this year i'm using the recipe that's worked for 60+ years because, to quote the recipe, "in all our testing and use there was no leakage of batter-- no breakage of the nose or ears and the cake was removed very easily."

ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup milk

prep:

• grease & flour mold
• preheat overn to 375*

actual cooking:

• combine flour, baking powder & salt, set aside
• cream butter
• add sugar
• add eggs & vanilla
• add dry mixture alternating with milk
• place mold on edged baking sheet
• pour batter into the front side of the mold
• place the back side on top
• bake for 45 minutes
• remove mold, back side first and allow cake to cool upright
• frost & decorate

because i hate coconut, i frost the cake with white frosting (after an attempt at boiled butter cream & regular butter cream yesterday, i settled on duncan hines fluffy white for this) and sprinkle green sweetened coconut around it. you could, instead, gently press the coconut into the frosting. i made the lips with 1/4 of a pink jellybean and the eyes with a split black one, but the traditional decorations are 1/2 a cherry and 2 raisins.

batter poured into the face side of the mold

back side of the mold on top

cake removed from mold (face-up)

the bow is at one end of the ribbon and secured to the other end with a dot of frosting

hearty banana muffins

this is a huge cheat of a recipe since the main ingredient is a banana bread mix. but, LO! some lady made a damn fortune writing books about making box cakes, so bear with me, k?

ingredients:

• banana bread mix (mine was trader joe's, naturally)
• 1 cup oats
• 1 cup apple sauce
• 1/3 cup egg whites OR 2 large eggs

prep:

• none, this recipe takes ten minutes
• oh, and preheat to 325*

actual cooking:

• combine ingredients in a bowl
• spoon into lined muffin tin (i did 12 regular-sized muffins)
• bake for 30 minutes

the recipe on the box (with eggs & oil) makes nine servings at something like 370 calories each. my recipe make 12 at 175 each. good deal, right? plus, mine have way more fiber since neither eggs nor oil have fiber, but applesauce and oat sure do. but i didn't do that math.

mu shu vegetables

mu shu vegetables is about my favorite meal currently, up there with veggie fried rice and veggie lo mein, so i had to take a stab at making it. in fact, i stabbed so close to the mark i just may have to stab and stab and stab until i get it right.

ingredients:

• 1 small shredded carrot
• 1 head of cabbage shredded
• (or a bag or two of cole slaw mix)
• 1 small onion in thin wedges
• (optional: handful of mung)
• (optional: sliced mushrooms)
• (optional: handful of chopped green onion)
• (optional: 2 beaten eggs)
• flour tortillas and/or rice
• hoisin sauce
• water

prep:

• slice & dice until everything is more or less the same size

actual cooking:

• (scramble eggs, set aside)
• (set rice to cooking. 1:2 rice to water, pinch of salt, bring to a boil, lower to a loooooow simmer and cover)
• saute carrots in a little water for 2-3 minutes
• add cabbage, continue sauteeing 2-3 minutes
• add mung, onions, green onions, mushrooms, whatever else (not egg), saute for 2-3 minutes
• allow liquid to evaporate
• add 2 tbs hoisin sauce, cook for 1-2 minutes
• add egg back in, stir
• warm tortillas in the microwave for 10 seconds each

we ate this with trader joe's chicken egg rolls (which you want to pierce all the way through before baking, and spray with oil), which are a staple in my asian cooking and will probably stay that way since last week's spring roll experiment was a massive FAIL.

it was a little sweet, and i'm thinking... soy sauce? garlic? i don't know. maybe i just need to use bok choy instead of the pre-shredded cabbage. it was still good enough that the leftovers are my lunch today.