Asparagus Ricotta Tart (With Variation)

I've long wanted to try this Asparagus Ricotta Tart that I saw on Stacey Snacks. Look how pretty:

I've held off for two reasons. First, I had a feeling 50% of the household wouldn't dig it. Second, despite being the season for asparagus, I have to say what I've seen in the stores looks pretty awful. Maybe it's not yet quite the season?

But that box of frozen puff pastry in the freezer is calling me. I think it's the concept of the tart that I find so appealing, more than the ingredients. Can I make this more kid friendly, or at least appeal to 75% of the household? Forget Redman, he can have a scrambled egg. Let's see...

Ricotta Tart with Ham and Peas

• 1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
• 1 egg
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 1/4 cup cubed prosciutto or ham
• 1/2 bag frozen peas, thawed and drained
• zest of a whole lemon
• salt and pepper

Roll out puff pastry in a tart pan, or lay free-form on a baking sheet. You can use whole, or cut into individual "tartlets."

Mix ricotta cheese, egg, zest, salt and pepper. Spread in the center of puff pastry. Sprinkle with ham and peas (if you are making an asparagus tart, use pre-blanched spears).

Let cool 5 minutes then slice with a pizza cutter. This wasn't as pretty as Stacey's, but it was a total hit. We killed it to the crumbs. "We" meaning 75% of us: Redman took no notice of it but Panda had three pieces. Definitely making this for a party, and with the asparagus.

Brussels Sprouts: a last stand.

I got this recipe out of Prevention magazine years ago, in one of those shaming articles called something like "10 Super Foods You Need to Eat More Of Right Now or Die." In addition to the fear-mongering title, this particular recipe was hard to ignore because it called for butter and maple syrup.

Butter and maple syrup?

"Yes," admitted the article, "we admit butter and maple syrup are hardly comme il faut for Prevention magazine." (OK, I may be paraphrasing here but it was over a decade ago.) "However," they went on, "we will do whatever it takes to get you to eat Brussels Sprouts." 

(Trust me, the tone of the article was very funny).

I made them. They were knock-you-on-your butt amazing. I now make them by rote and can't remember the exact proportions of the Prevention recipe. So I searched around and found Mrs. Stewart's very-similar version.

I really must insist that you try them this way. If you don't like them, I will never bother you again about Brussels Sprouts. I will just, in the silence of my heart, feel very sorry for you.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Orange-Maple-Butter Sauce

• 2 pounds small Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved lengthwise
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
• 4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, toss Brussels sprouts with olive oil and salt. Arrange in an even layer on prepared baking sheet, cut side down.

Transfer to oven and roast until brown and tender, 15 to 18 minutes, rotating baking sheets halfway through baking. Transfer to a large bowl.

In a small saucepan, mix together vinegar, maple syrup, orange juice, and orange zest over medium heat until heated through but not simmering. Remove from heat and whisk in cold butter, a few pieces at a time, until smooth and creamy. Pour vinegar mixture over Brussels sprouts and gently stir until liquid is absorbed and mixture is well combined. Serve immediately.

OR DIE!!

Moosewood Banana Bread

When life hands you those 2 or 3 overripe bananas, either make a smoothie or banana bread. If you can't do this immediately, freeze the bananas, but harken to me: PEEL THEM FIRST. Trying to unpeel a thawed frozen banana is not fun and rarely successful.

This banana bread recipe comes from The Moosewood Cookbook. It's actually their carrot cake recipe but they are thoughtful enough to give the banana variation on the facing page. One quirky part of it is that you soak the 2 cups of pureed banana in 1 cup of strong coffee. And being that today was our annual Easter Egg Hunt, guess what we happened to have lying around but the quarter-full Box O' Joe.

So not only did I have the ripe bananas, I had a cup of coffee. I am so good.  I rock. Mush up those bananas, pour the coffee over. Set the bowl aside and get busy measuring dry ingredients, humming happily to myself. I love it when these things just work out. I'm so smug. Coffee and bananas. You gotta pity those poor unfortunates who just don't have their shit tog—.... I have no flour.

What?!

No flour? Impossible. There's always flour. Flour is just one of those things that's always around, how could there be no flour? Commence the hilarious ballet of denial, looking in every conceivable and inconceivable cabinet in the kitchen, muttering to myself (in various four-letter words) that this is just impossible. After my triumph of glory of coffee and bananas, I'm going to blow it on flour?!?

I have no flour.

Thank God for my next-door neighbor who keeps me in eggs, and now keeps me in flour as well. The kids were up playing with hers, and she sent them home with 4 cups of flour in a ziplock, thus saving the bread.

Moosewood Banana Bread

This makes 2 loaf pans, or 1 9X13 baking dish, or some variation thereof if, like me, you think you have 2 loaf pans but you only have one (I'm an idiot). You could also cut the recipe in half.

• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
• 1 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• grated zest of 1 orange
• 4 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups pureed banana soaked in 1 cup black coffee.
• Optional:  1 cup fresh or dried blueberries
• Optional:  2 tbsp poppyseeds

Preheat oven to 350. Spray baking pans with Pam.

Sift together salt, flour, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg and cinnamon. Set aside.

Beat together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and orange zest.

With mixer on lowest setting, add half the dry ingredients. Then add banana-coffee mixture. Then add rest of dry ingredients and poppyseeds (if using).

If using blueberries, stir in by hand.

Spread batter evenly in pans. Bake anywhere from 45 to 55 minutes (a cake pan will take less time, a loaf pan more). A tester inserted in the center should come out clean.

Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then remove and let cool completely.

Spinach Pie

When I think Spinach Pie I immediately think Spanikopita. Until I saw this on Stacey Snacks.

I guess technically this is a quiche but whatever name you call it, this was so easy, and so delicious.

Easter Spinach Pie (from Stacey Snacks)

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 packet Lipton Vegetable or Onion Soup Mix (Stacey used vegetable; I had onion)
• 1 cup of cubed Gruyere or Swiss Cheese
• 10 oz package of frozen spinach, thawed, excess water squeezed out
• 10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved (my own addition)
• 1 frozen pie shell

Mix all together and fill the pie shell. Bake 40 minutes at 350. Can be served hot, warm, or room temperature. Can be the appetizer, the side, or the main course. Stacey advised, and she is right, to not add any salt whatsoever because the soup mix is so heavily seasoned. The next time I make this I may experiment with half the soup packet, or at least try the vegetable mix.

Now you will have had my Cornbread

Little bit of heaven and a little bit of HELL YEAH!! (This song makes me blush)

I wish I could give provenance but I don't even remember where I got this recipe. It's written down on a post-it note so I assume I got it online somewhere. Can it be mine? Please? Thank you. Let's get to it.

Heaven and Hell Yeah Cornbread

• 1/2 cup (one stick) butter, melted
• 2/3 cup sugar (this bread is on the sweet side, you can fiddle with the sugar to your taste)
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk (or regular milk with a little plain yogurt mixed in)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 375 and grease an 8" square baking pan

Sift flour, cornmeal, baking soda and salt and set aside.

Put sugar in mixing bowl, stir in melted butter, then add eggs and beat until well blended. Add buttermilk and combine. Add dry ingredients and combine. There will be lumps. Pour into baking pan, bake for 30-40 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean.

Cut it down the middle, open wide and jump right in.

Dave can tell you the rest...

Gnocchi with Ham and Peas

A ham steak is a useful thing, I'm finding. I bought one a while ago, on impulse, either vaguely recalling an interesting recipe that called for a ham steak, or simply figuring I could use it for something, by golly. I threw it in the freezer and promptly forgot about it. Such is how I roll.

But recently pried from its frozen grave, I've used this one steak on two occasions. Half of it went into split pea soup, made in David Crockpott. 

I used a quarter of the remaining steak tonight with gnocchi and peas. I almost used all of it and I'm glad I didn't because it's really quite salty, especially when paired up with a packaged sauce mix. I used Knorr Garlic & Herb. Remember these? They came out in the 90s, I still remember the radio commercials. Being young and broke in the city, Jeeps and I lived on pasta and we became Knorr Whores for a while. I don't use them as often now but they are handy to have around.

Gnocchi with Ham and Peas à la Knorr Whore

• 1 package potato gnocchi (bowties or oriechiette are a nice substitute)
• 1/2 ham steak, diced
• 1/2 bag frozen peas
• 1 packet Knorr Garlic & Herb pasta sauce mix, made according to package directions

Bring water for pasta to boil but do not salt water. Add gnocchi and cook until they rise to the surface. Add the peas and cook another 1-2 minutes. Reserve 1/4 cup pasta water, then drain pasta and peas in colander.

Return pasta to pot, add diced ham and the sauce and toss well.

Old friends

I made a very simple corn chowder soup tonight, which follows the same formula as carrot or squash soup:  two potatoes, two onions, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, chicken broth, and Vegetable X...in this case, 1/2 a bag of Trader Joe's Roasted Corn.  Saute the vegetables lightly, add broth to cover, simmer until tender, then puree.  Add a little milk or cream, salt, pepper and paprika to taste.

To go with it, I made roasted salmon and shrimp along with the leftover 1/2 bag of langoustines, using my miraculous tried-and-true method of oven roasting seafood that I discovered here:  preheat the oven to 425 with the baking sheet inside.  Toss shellfish and salmon with olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, dill and brown sugar.  When oven is heated, take the sheet out  and spread the fish and shrimps out on it.  Put back in the oven for five minutes, six tops but no more than five for little langoustines otherwise they will dry right out.

Speaking of miraculous, I did the near impossible and made the perfect amount of soup.  I seem to have a very difficult time making a little soup, it usually ends up being a gallon.  But it was just enough tonight.  And the soup was perfect with the shrimp, and also perfect with the salmon flaked into it.

Al Fresco

I think I just named my deck... Yes, indeed, it actually felt like spring today.  Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of....

CHEESEBURGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We ate outside on the deck tonight after a couple rousing hours of outdoor play.  Bunless burgers (it happens) and fries.  "This is the life," sighed Pandagirl, on her third helping of celery-fennel slaw.  Nobody answered because we were all busy eating and making nommy-nom sounds.

Do you like the posy?

Beans on Toast

So being in need of comfort, I wanted to see if everything Uma said about baked beans on toast was true.

I had this awesome multi-grain boule which I toasted up. I followed Uma's recommendations used Heinz Vegetarian beans and topped with bits of cheddar cheese.

So was all Uma said true?

In two words: um, yes.

YES!! Holy cow, this was delicious! The one 8-oz can of beans on one long oval of toast made the perfect size lunch for me. I might even have this for breakfast. My friend Julia, whose mother is British, says her Mum would make this with a fried egg on top. Something definitely worth considering.

P1060027

Bare Cupboards

There is not a thing to eat in this house. The canister of coffee has ten beans in it. Panda and I just ate the last four eggs, soft-boiled, without toast because there is neither bread, nor butter to be had. The produce drawers in the fridge are empty. I think I could manage chili if I needed to. The truth is I haven't cooked a dinner all week. With the advent of spring sports, the weeknights are dissolving.

Mondays are my city day and I get home around 7:00. Jeeps made tacos on Monday.

Tuesdays Panda has her dance classes and Redman will have soccer practice, and the family eats together, but not until 7:30. This Tuesday I brought home Boston Chicken.

Wednesday is a universal free day, but I am whipped, fried, exhausted from work. Wednesday I made the lima bean salad which we ate with leftover chicken, and I did make Oma's cake.

Thursdays Panda has dance again and Redman will have baseball. This Thursday we had pizza.

Fridays are free, thank God, but last night Redman had a Cub Scout thing and I had been in the city for a meeting. I pulled into the driveway just in time to see the boys off, they were going to grab a piece of pizza in town before the scout meeting. I made two ham-and-cheese pizzas for us girls, and another lima bean salad, improvising because I had neither parsley nor parmesan. The dishwasher hadn't been run. Panda and I ate without silverware, sharing a plastic spoon as we dipped the lima beans right out of the serving bowl, watching Food Network together. All our favorite shows: Iron Chef America, Chopped, and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We had a fine time and this is what I need to hold onto because she is getting so tall, and there are moments when I look at her and my heart turns inside out. Better to cuddle on the couch holding hands and eating lima beans.

I don't know what I'm going to do about blogging. Just keep doing it, I guess. Often I just make dinner out of whatever's around, and the blog works the same way. I love to cook but when you get down to it, who cooks something different every day, all year long? Cooking is cyclical. You have a dependable, seasonal repertoire of recipes that you circle through, occasionally throwing in a surprise. Cooking is a source of comfort in the dark, winter months, but as the weather gets nicer, I only want to be outside. As my garden grows, I look to see what's ready to harvest and build dinner around that. But right now Spring seems to be sulking. I'm just waiting for seeds to sprout and wondering what the hell happened to those daffodils—this time last year they were in full bloom along my stone wall, and this year they are nowhere to be found. If I didn't have pictures of them, I'd swear I dreamed them up.

Right now I'm really tired and I have to take Panda to dance class in an hour. So I'm going to put on my boots and go outside.

Come with?