Meatballs

Sometimes Kevin and I will thaw out ground beef knowing that at some point in the next two days, we're going to find ourselves hungry with no leftovers in the fridge. Ground beef is an easy place to start to make something quick and tasty. Yesterday I made little meatballs. Some we ate for lunch, some I put in the fridge and used on a pizza today.

They're easy, fairly quick and delicious.

1lb extra lean ground beef
2 bunches fresh oregano, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp all spice
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp red wine
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix up all ingrediants in a bowl. Roll into small balls, about an inch and half to two inches in diametre. Place on greased cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 25-28 minutes.

Cool slightly and serve or cool completely and store in the fridge for a couple of days.

Lazy Sunday Pizzas!

Funny that I would call them "lazy sunday pizzas" as this Sunday hasn't exactly been lazy... yesterday I made meatballs (blog post to follow for those babies. Nom!) and today has been full of grocery shopping, cleaning and cooking - not only for us, but Kevin and I made some meat muffins (West Coast Canine Life) for Dexter.

I swear to you he knows when the cooking is for him. He parked himself on the kitchen mat the whole time we were making them, and then looked at me expectantly when I took them out of the oven. He seems to prefer them to just straight up raw food, but I digress. Back to cooking we did for human consumption (though the meat muffins are human-grade)!

Prosciutto Sage and Fig Pizza

Might sound like an unusual combo for pizza but lemme tell ya, it's tasty.

Because I have a few different things I want to make today, I opted for store bought pizza crust (blasphemy, I know). Thrify's has "Compliments" brand wholewheat and multigrain pizza crusts with sauce. $4.99 for two crusts including sauce. Fair enough...

Oil two pizza pans with olive oil, place your crusts on top and cover them with sauce.

This pizza requires:

fresh sage leaves, 2 turkish brown figs

about 1/3 Natural Pastures buffalo mozzarella ball

4-5 slices of Natural Pastures Amsterdaamer cheese, broken into small pieces

about 100g of very thinly sliced prosciutto

1tsp garlic, minced

Pre-heat your oven to the specified temperature (350 in my case)

Slice two figs into small sections, removed sage leaves from stems and place all around the sauced crust, spaced evenly.

Place whole slices of prosciutto over the sauced part of the crust.

Slice the mozzarella into 2 inch pieces and place evenly over the prosciutto. Dont freak out, there's going to be spaces with no cheese. These parts will get crispy in the oven. Mmmmmmm....

Now, sprinkle the broken up Amsterdaamer and minced garlic over the whole pizza. Place in the oven for about 10 minutes or until the crust is light golden brown and the cheese is melted. *NOTE* the buffalo mozza won't really bubble so melted is melted.

Remove, cool and slice!

Meatball, Salami and Onion Pizza

This pizza requires:

10-12 small meatballs, pre-cooked and cut in half

1 bunch of fresh oregano

2/3 ball of Natural Pastures Buffalo Mozzarella

3-4 slices sharp cheddar, broken into pieces

8 slices salami, thinly sliced (I used garlic salami)

1/4 small white onion, chopped

Place salami around the sauced part of the crust, place meatball halves on top of the salami, evenly spaced.

Sprinkle on chopped onion.

Place 2 inch slices of mozzarella evenly spaced over the pizza. Sprinkle with broken up cheddar.

 

Remove oregano leaves from the stem(s) and sprinkle over the pizza. Place in the oven for 10 minutes or until the crust is lightly golden and cheese is melted.

Cool, slice and enjoy!!

Mediterranian Steamed Mussells

Prime example of random laziness: I cooked these things last week but couldn't find it in myself to blog about them til now. Don't judge me... or do judge me, but don't tell me.

Being that I can be kind of lazy, this is a fancy looking dinner that really isn't that hard to make.

All you need is some tomatoes, mussels, a baguette, some kalamata olives, olive oil, garlic, oregano, white wine, salt and pepper...and maybe some paprika. Apparently I put paprika in everything these days. It's just such a nice colour!

In a saucepan combine:

1/2 cup white wine
2 tsp olive oil
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 large stem of fresh oregano
1 tbsp garlic, minced
1 bag mussels
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup of kalamata olives, pitted and halved

Cover and bring to a boil for 3-5 minutes until mussles open. REMEMBER mussels should be scrubbed before cooking and checked for any unresponsive open mussels. If it's open and you tap it and it doesn't close, don't cook it...unless you want food poisoning. Your call.

Tear the baguette into a few chunks. I like how rough it looks like this... Like you just threw this lovely meal together and couldn't be bothered to cut the bread. In my case, this is exactly what happened. If you want it to look a little more formal, feel free to use a knife. :-)

 

Fish Tacos with Peach Salsa

Tis the season for peaches, my friends, and that means PEACH SALSA! And what better to pair your peach salsa with than fish tacos! Nomnomnom.

Fish tacos are mega easy and well, so is the salsa, so let's boogie.

Fish Tacos

2 basa fillets (or any other white fish, but basa is nummy and cheap. Woot!)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp coriander

1/2 to 1 lime (depending on your preference)

Mix your spices together and sprinkle over the fillets on both sides.

On medium heat add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil to your pan and cook your seasoned fish for a few minutes on each side. While it's cooking, add the juice of half a lime. Cut into the fish to make sure it's cooked all the way through and remove it from the heat. Cut into bite sized pieces.

Peach Salsa

1 peach, peeled and pit removed

1/4 bunch fresh cilantro

1/2 a lime

1/2 a small red onion OR 3 or 4 green onions, coarsely chopped

1 jalapeno pepper

Combine ingredients in a food processor until all ingrediants are minced.

In our fish tacos, we add some plain yogurt and chopped lettuce to the tortillas and wrap them.

Serve!

Sticky Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Icing

Holy fuck. I have to add another day to my workout regime or I am going to get fat. For real.

I may have mentioned this before but this Kitchen Aid stand mixer is the best/worst thing that ever happened to me. No cake mixes here! Rising dough, sticky cinnamon buns? Yeah, I made some. What up?

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

Dough

One package instant quick-rise yeast
1 1/4 cups warm water

disolve together

add:

3 tbsp softened butter
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cream
1 tsp salt
3 1/4 cups flour

mix on Speed 2 with the kneading attatchment or, just mix that baby up with a wooden spoon. Switch hands or you'll end up with one really sore bicep.

lightly oil or grease the top of the ball of dough, flip it over and do the same to the other side. Cover and let rise for 2 hours in a warm place.

Once it's risen, punch it down and place on floured surface, roll it out with a rolling pin to about 1/2 inch thick rectangle. Smear with a WHOLE BUNCH of softened butter (about half a cup).

Filling

In a bowl, mix 1 cup of packed brown sugar and 3tbsp cinnamon, spread evenly over buttered dough leaving approximately an inch around the edge bare.

Carefully role the dough up and pinch the edge to the roll so it stays together. Flip it so the seam is on the bottom. Set aside.

Sticky Sauce

In a sauce pan, melt 1/4 cup of butter and add 1tsp of flour to make, add 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar, and 1oz of whiskey if you've got it. Bring it to a boil, stirring constantly.

Pour over the bottom of your bakeware.

Cut your roll into 1 1/2 inch to 2 inch thick slices, place cut side down onto the sauce. Place in the over for 20 minutes or until golden.


Cream Cheese Icing

1 tub spreadable cream cheese
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cups icing sugar

Mix until well blended.


Remove cinnamon buns from the oven, let cool 5-10 minutes. Flip bakeware onto tray or pan, gently tap the bottom of the bakeware to make sure the buns fall onto the tray. Cool 3-5 more minutes, then spread with icing.

I'm making fish tacos for dinner but I'll have to wait a bit before I do. I couldn't wait to have a cinnamon bun and now I'm full!

Strawberry Rhubarb Tarte

As most of you know, I get ridiculous anxiety sometimes. Luckily this past Saturday morning, I had something constructive to do after waking up at 6am - make some pastry!

Kevin's super sweet coworkers bought us a Kitchen Aid stand mixer as a wedding gift and lemme tell ya, I don't think that making pastry gets much easier than with that baby.

I used:

1tbsp white sugar
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, well chilled and cut into small cubes
3/4 tsp salt
8-9 tbsp freezing cold water

Mix the salt, sugar and flour well. Add little butter cubes. Either cut with a pastry cutter or mix at "Stir" speed on your stand mixer until the butter starts to look like little peas in the flour.

Add one tablespoon of cold water at a time, mixing as you go. The dough will start to stick to itself. Hooray!

Form into two balls, wrap in cling wrap and refridgerate for about an hour.

While your pastry is chilling.....


Cut up 2 rhubarb stalks and one 1lb clamshell of strawberries. Mix with 1/3 cup white sugar. Set aside.

Remove the pastry, sprinkle your counter with flour, grab a rolling pin and roll the balls of dough into 1/4" thick circles and place each on a cookie sheet.

Split your fruit mixture between the two circles of pastry and pinch the sides up around it.

Place in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 for another 10. Check periodically. Remove when it's golden brown and fruit juices are bubbling.

Serve with whipped cream. Nommmmmmmm!

Caesar Salad

Ever coddled an egg? Til tonight, me neither.

Coddling is the process of really quickly soft-boiling an egg. Back in the day, you could do it in a container called a "pipkin" that you would break the egg into and then place in a pot of water like a double-boiler.

People don't typically have a pipkin laying around these days, so you can just boil the egg in its shell for about a minute. Don't put it in the water until it's almost boiling and make sure you rinse it under cold water to cool it down right after or it will keep cooking. It's still going to be a fairly runny egg when you crack it open.

You will need:

2 coddled eggs
1-4 to 1/3 cup olive oil
1 head of romaine lettuce, rinsed, dried and chopped or torn into bite sized pieces
1 tsp black pepper
2 cloves garlic, mushed to paste
1 tsp anchovie paste (you can buy this in tubes at the grocery store)
1 tsp sea salt
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp worchestershire sauce
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Wisk eggs into olive oil, garlic, anchovie paste, lemon, pepper, salt and worchestershire sauce. Pour over lettuce. Toss. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Add croutons*. Serve.

*Making your own croutons is easy. Preheat your oven to 270 degrees F. Cut up half a loaf of french bread into cubes. Set aside. Mix 1/4 cup olive oil with a 2 tbsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper. Add bread cubes and toss quickly with hands to avoid soggy cubes at the bottom.

Spread in a single layer onto a cookie sheet, cook for 10 minutes and check, if they're dry, golden brown and crispy take them out. Best way to find out is try one. If not cook for another 2 minutes and check again.

Enjoy!