One Crepe-y day

Given that half of my family currently has some variation of a nasty stomach bug, we've stuck to lots of simple dinners this week. Tonight we went for crepes. Erik is the crowned King of All Thing Crepes so I felt pretty hesitant filling in his shoes while he was preoccupied moaning in and out of consciousness in the next room.

The recipe is ridiculously straight forward - and probably cost all of 73 cents.

1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup milk

pinch a' salt

1 tsp sugar

1 egg

Whisk together. Add small pat of butter to 8" pan. Once that was hot I poured about 1/4 cup of batter into the pan and swooshed it around for a nice thin circle. Once it sets flip it over for a few more seconds and whoa! you've got a lovely little vehicle for just about any filling. The warmed crepes smelled like all that is good and warm and holy in the world - just divine. Could have also been the butter.

Given that it was just me and the kids we went for the sweet stuff, obv. Peanut butter with banana slices... honey and cinnamon... not exactly a hearty dinner, perhaps a "light supper".

Enjoy!

By the way, here are some fun pictures from our pizza making adventure (my camera was MIA for the past few weeks). L to R: Mr. pizza Dough Man, sophia inspecting pizza in an entirely appropriate outfit, Ready to bake pizza with sauteed spinach

Result: deliciousness!

Fri tata tata

Eggs for dinner is always a good time. I thankfully overcame my fear of our broiler pan to whip up a yummy frittata (quiche without the crust, kinda). See, the last time I used a broiler it involved a frantic call to the fire department and me feeling like a bit of an idiot. Don’t let salmon oil splash on that open flame. Anyway, I spent half of an hour dusting out my broiler and then another half-hour googling “over-proof skillet” – what is that? What could that mean?!

This frittata involved sautéing thin slices of onion and potato with rosemary then pouring on a mixture of eggs, egg whites, and parsley. Cook until it sets, then stick it all under the broiler for a few minutes to finish it off. Sophia said “This photographer (her interpretation of the word frittata) is divine!”

The girls helped me stir:

A millisecond after this video Anneliese dumped the rosemary jar into the eggs. Awesome. But in the end I think the eggs were better for it – she already has culinary flair.

While cutting the potato I also discovered the girls entertaining themselves by using old paint on each other. What's better, preparing delicious nutritious meals for my family or not neglecting said family to prepare said meal?

I need to share a culinary trick. Have you seen plastic, hollow produce- shaped food savers popping up in stores lately? They're $4 - I went for the onion saver. I was at my wits end throwing out days old, half-cut shriveled onions. And good news, the saver works! This onion was able to contribute to several dinners. Good onion. Go get one!

We all scream for falafel

On Tuesday night, we went for some deep fried chickpea fritter goodness - also known as falafel. We've gone through an obscene number of canned chickpeas this week of "Middle Eastern" flavors - perhaps I'm being a bit cliche in my ethnic culinary approach, but hey the kids love hummus (pureed chickpea dip).

Ever since discovering falafels in Denmark six years ago I've been addicted. Every day my homestay mother would make me a lovely lunch box of cold cuts and dark bread - but at noon I'd rush out of school to the local $3 falafel stand on the Stroget in downtown Copenhagen. I even hunted down other falafel joints in far-flung neighborhoods to broaden my chickpea horizons. Who would've guessed my taste buds would discover Middle Eastern cuisine in northern Europe?

To capture my own homemade falafel magic, I used a recipe from Rachel Ray - just threw chickpeas, parsley, onion, and some spices into the food processor. Sophie was very excited to help shape that pureed mixture into patties. In fact, she asks me all the time now to help cook. The patties were then deep-fried in hot oil.... mmm, crispy. We whipped up some yogurt sauce (just plain yogurt, some olive oil and lemon juice) and toasted pitas - all for a delicious falafel burger. Sophie liked eating the crusty exterior - Anneliese just sniffed it and hopped out of her chair. Sigh.

"Your best dish yet!"

Or so said my husband about our dinner tonight. Sophia declared "this is divine!" and then did that fingertip kiss off gesture. What dish could have possibly prompted this rapture? Stuffed Zucchini! I've moved on from the Italian boot, around the Mediterrean to the Middle Eastern cuisines. Tonight we stuffed zucchini with couscous, chopped tomatoes and olives, and some pine nuts - then roasted it at 450 for about 20 minutes. On the side I made a fattoush, a lebanaese style bread salad - really just cucumber, tomato, red pepper, tons of parsley, all cut up and mixed with olive oil/lemon juice. Throw a little feta on top, crispy pita on the side and bada bing!

By the way, I've failed to blog every day... sigh, life just gets crazy and then all of a sudden I forget about monday's dinner because its already thursday. Anyway, last Friday we made homemade pizza. The girls and I had an awesome time making the pizza dough. Its nothing more than flour, yeast, water, and olive oil. I had never worked with yeast before. Sure, we all know it makes doughs rise... but do you know why or how?? I find this remarkable. It turns out that yeast are living fungi. As they do their happy little fungi thing in your dough, they release carbon dioxide. Those carbon dioxide bubbles are trapped by the molecular structure of the dough - thus making it rise! All this aha! science is making me want to reexamine my sixth grade science labs - perhaps there were other fascinating reactions going on that I failed to note because I was to busy admiring boy X.

The pizza turned out much like the pasta - delicious in its simplicity. Bittman again had cautioned against kneading by hand. But I loved it! Sure I was pounding my fists into the counter for 10 minutes - but who doesn't want that kind of release at the end of the day? I'm enjoying my cooking much more as a hobby now, rather than a chore. Sure, the household chores have fallen by the wayside a bit, and the children are generally neglected from 6-7pm each night but hey, we're all pretty happy at the end of the day.

We heart sardines!

What’s so yucky about sardines anyway? What’s made them the butt of jokes for ages? Popular culture would have you think they’re so yucky, the back-story for an entire movie is based on our aversion to them (“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” starts off with a desolate town forced to eat only sardines). Is it the vision of plopping an entire fish, eyes and bones and all, in one’s mouth? Consequently I never even remotely considered the thought of eating sardines until a few weeks ago.
I noticed sardines kept popping up on lists of “superfoods”, “extra healthy foods”, and “foods to cheat death”, etc. Something about it being akin to salmon, with high levels of omega fatty acids. I decided “why not”. Whole Foods had shelves and shelves of varieties – all about the same price as canned tuna. I went for the healthy “skinless boneless” fillets – not quite ready for the super-duper healthy full-on fish yet (eating tiny fish bones = loads of calcium).
One Sunday afternoon Erik and I slowly peeled back the tin lid. Four lumps of gray flesh, closely resembling the outline of four tiny fish, greeted us. I quickly mashed them up with spicy brown mustard, a little minced onion, and a squeeze of lemon. We smeared the spread on some hard crackers (crispbread or wasa). All four of us sat at the table with our plates, staring, sniffing. All right, here goes nothing! Crunch!
Ecstasy! I never dreamed sardines would taste so good, so flavorful. It’s definitely a strong fish taste but clean and bright and yummy. Also salty, oh so salty. I must have actually eaten sardines before because my taste receptors immediately tapped my long-term memory and pulled out images from my trip to Turkey. I had visions of sitting at a restaurant next to the fishing wharfs eating seafood straight from the boats that had just trawled the Black Sea. Only a cold, crisp wheat beer would have completed the picture. That fishing wharf was a hoot – completely overrun by slimy squid, vertically challenged flounder, and all other manner of marine creatures.
The sardines were a hit with the entire family, including Sophia who now requests them on a regular basis. Our favorite sardine recipe at the moment features pasta tossed with sardines, spinach, Parmesan, and fresh bread crumbs. Recipe is here.

Naked Pasta Glory

In taking on this little adventure of ours, I had decided I wanted expose my kids to foods at their source - not just telling them but actually showing them that veggies come from the ground, cheese is made from milk, and pasta doesn't always come from a box. Hence, homemade ravioli night!

First, making our own fresh cheese! The recipe is unsettling in its easiness - boil some quality milk, pour in buttermilk (which I believe has some vinegar, salts, etc.), wait for it to

curdle, then strain through (whoa) cheesecloth. To make ricotta I'm supposed to leave it undisturbed for 30 minutes. Apparently you can make different types of cheese but waiting different periods of time or squeezing out excess water. Who k

new? As proud as I was to make my own cheese, I was a bit suspect of it. I planned to use it in a ricotta filling for the ravioli but after my stomach flips after one taste of it, I decided to not subject my kids to my first cheese experiment.

Moving onto the pasta I kept calling "Sophie! Sophie!", trying to pry her from the latest game on pbs-kids online. Finally she reluctantly wondered over to the dining room. She spotted the flour "well" on the table - she eyes widened, completely engaged "What's next?!" She helped crack a hen's house full of eggs:

Then we had to slowly beat the eggs while even more slowly incorporating more and more of the flour. Basically like trying to shore up a levee you're simultaneously breaking down. Sophie was gallant in her efforts to save the egg from running all over the dining room table:

After letting the resulting dough ball rest in the fridge for a few hours, I had to muscle it into long long strips. Bittman cautioned against doing this with a rolling pin - he only provided directions for a pasta machine. Well, honey I'm not about to plunk down $95 for a pasta machine, so old-fashioned rolling pin it is. It was actually surprisingly easy - take that!

We dotted one of the thinned-out sheets with some fresh ricotta-spinach filling (with parmesean, egg, and a few spices). Then drew a checkerboard around the heaps with water from a pastry brush. After pressing the other thin sheet on top, I just had to cut each square and throw them in boiling water.

After sauteing diced canned tomatoes (sans juice), a bit of onion and a few cloves of garlic I had fresh tomato sauce to top our homemade ravioli:

Sophie ate her entire plate! A rare occasion indeed! Anneliese took a few nibbles. We agreed it tasted completely different from its frozen/pre-packaged box brethern. It tasted like eggs and flour, and that was it. It was naked in all its pasta glory.

Deep Breath

After the fiasco of Friday night, I really wanted to take it easy this weekend. Its so typical of me to rush headlong into a project (Beet with Kasha! I'm so cool!) just to get burned and quickly move on to the next crazy/brilliant project. But no! I'm not walking away - just need a better plan. From now on I'm going to group the weeks by regional cuisine - Indian, Japanese, etc. This week I'll take it easy by hightailing to the somewhat familiar territory of the Mediterranean. To up the ante I plan to make my own fresh pasta and fresh pizza. I may even try my own cheese - whoa, who knew you could even do that?!

Saturday night I relied on a tried-and-true recipe from a Food & Wine cookbook: Pasta with Canned Tuna, Capers, and Olives. Literally just heat up the tuna with some spices, olives, and capers and bam! A yummy, delicious, inexpensive dinner. I think I ate an entire "family" portion myself. I've found myself eating more as a vegetarian - I guess I'm not filling up with meat proteins and consequently I'm eating larger meals and snacks throughout the day. And that's completely fine by me.

Sunday night I needed something filling and nutritious, but could be prepared ahead of time. I was to pick up Sophie & Erik from the airport at 7pm - poor child had been traveling for 12 hours, I really didn't want to make her wait for a warm dinner. Ah! Vegetable lasagna! I've never made lasagna before and consequently looked over several recipes to get the feel of the meal - one called for broccoli and no tomato sauce (yuck!), another was just sauce and cheese (oh please). So I experimented and come up with a pretty darn fine meal.

Layers from bottom up (3x):
1) preboiled, not-quite-done lasagna noodles
2) 10oz thawed spinach, squeezed of excess water - stirred into jar of pasta sauce
3) spooned ricotta with some shredded mozzarella sprinkled on top
4) then repeat 2 more times, adding some Parmesan on the top layer
5) pop in oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes and yuuuuuuum
*I admit it was a lot of spinach - I might scale back the next time.
After a quick reheat everyone, small children included (!) ate large portions! Yaaay!

I have to say I'm proud to have successfully improvised with this recipe. I usually follow the instructions to the letter, unsure of my skills as an interpretative "chef" (wait, you don't have to actually measure out that 1/2 tsp. of salt?). Erik teases me for it - but I'm slowly learning to trust my cooking intuition. In college, I can still remember being astounded when a roommate constructed a meal from seemingly nothing. Peering in the refrigerator, he said "alright, looks like we have some linguine, pesto, some fresh bread, even spinach - we could make a nice pasta dish". I blinked quietly and said softly "you can do that? just make up a meal?". I felt slightly ashamed when asked with bewilderment "you've never done that?!" I was lost without a frozen box with printed instructions...