MG's birthday meal

MG's Birthday bash. Well, to the left is one of the pizzas: roasted garlic with spinach from the garden, some porcini mushrooms, parm and mozzarella. Crust was flavored with a bit of honey and some parm. Big hit with Nathaniel, who had three slices (!).

The one in the middle is buffalo chicken pizza with some homemade tomato pizza sauce, scallions, jack, cheddar and mozz cheeses and an herb and parm crust. The person pictured (as opposed to food) is the birthday gal.

Florida food

Haven't written to the blog in a long while and there has been lots of cooking and baking in-between. In fact, these pics are from back in June when I went to Florida to present a worshop at a conference and then visit my folks. Let's see, we have wild mushroom quiche with Gruyere and Parm, with an herb crust, then bacon, scallion, herbs and parm mini frittatas, and some chicken cacciatore with wild mushrooms, and an assortment of olives, capers, etc. All in a day's work. Also convinced Mom to buy a microplane zester. Yay! Love cooking at their house--calphalon, and le crueset cookware--what fun.

What a stage for a lentil loaf!

I made a lentil loaf with tons of veggies--corn carrots, celery, peppers, onions, garlic, kale from the garden (already!), lots o herbs--basil, parsley, mint, oregano, etc. Topped with sliced tomato and covered (not in photo) with salsa (scallions, garlic, shallots, lemon, tomatoes, seasonings). Used a tiny bit of parmesan, sharp chedder and egg.

Yum.

Of Cookies, Brownies and Babes

This weekend was the Great Saunter around manhattan. Took me out of the kitchen for a moment and so I thought I'd share some pix.

To the right Pete and Michelle finish the walk at @7:15. Yay!

Katie and Peter on the trail

Early Friday I made orange brownies: real orange zest, extract and juice with a glaze of more of the same. I think they went over well but next time would use less eggs and flour---or more juice. The chocolate toffee gooey cookies were an adaptation of a Paula Deen recipe--adding heath toffee to the mix for a bit more chewy gooeyness. Those did not last the evening at my house, and went over well with Katie and John. Oh, and that's Katie's wee baby Molly--contemplating the possibility of another feeding.

Asian meatball and homemade wonton pasta

Here's my take on asian meatballs--pork, ginger, scallions, toasted and ground rice , one egg, soy sauce, fish sauce, star anise, coriander, garlic, clove, cinnamon, parsley and mint. I roasted them in the oven and then added to a stir fry with homemade wonton noodles, tons of veggies, soy, black bean garlic sauce, rice wine vinegar, sirachi sauce, etc.

catching up on the cooking pix

It's been a little while since I've posted my cooking adventures, so here are a few samples. I now use various rooms around the house for drying pasta. . . this is tomato-herb pappardelle. I like the bigger pasta but this could be rolled out a bit. We'll see how it tastes like this.

Here we find my lastest baklava. It never lasts long. I like the combination of apricot, almosd and walnut with just a touch of honey. It's less sweet than the usual stuff but still does the trick--and then some.
here is my lobster/shrimp with wild mushroom pappardelle (from the batch seen above). I made up the recipe using a combination of white sauce and tomato/herb base to match the pasta. The pancetta/sofrito base added a good flavor to the whole thing.

One day later, uncovering the garden

Another crostada staging. . . I won't give up.

Even after a day of chopping up trees, time to make the porcini-pancetta sauce for gifts.

Here's the backyard almost one day later--and ten hours of cleanup (love those power tools!)