Spinach Lasagna Roll Ups

This is yet another variation on lasagna. I really love pasta + tomato + cheese. I don't even like cheese, but I like it in pasta. I want to say this is healthier, but I have no idea. It has spinach and ricotta, but no heavy cream sauce so I guess it's a bit better than the wild mushroom lasagna I'll post later on.

Somehow they don't unroll themselves.

Oven baked Ziti and Mini Mushroom Potato Pies

Just look at the buttery, flakey crust.

This recipe for mini savory pies is amazing. It comes from the Pie Truck (sadly no longer in existence) via a design blog. I've never tried the Pie Truck, but this recipe was ammmaaazzinnnngggg. The pastry dough is delicious and easy to make- I had to keep sticking mine in the fridge because it was hot that day and the butter was melting. I didn't have zucchini so I substituted potatoes- delicious! The pastry is buttery and flakey, the mushrooms and potatoes were creamy with a bit of tang from the sour cream. And dill! Who knew I liked dill??

My sad crimping.

The insides. Mmmm dill.

This was my first time making a true pie crust and also a pie. As in... I had no idea how to really pinch the seams so it looked good. And to make matters worse, it was hot in the kitchen so the dough was getting mushy as the butter melted. I just threw it in the oven and hoped it worked and it was magically delicious. TA-DA, butter fixes everything!

Not the most pleasant picture of cheesy pasta, but you get the idea.

I really love baked pastas with ricotta so an oven baked ziti was a no-brainer. This is a great make-ahead dish and it fit nicely in my 8x8 brownie pan. This will be a fun recipe to mess around with.

Chinese-Style Lettuce Wraps

Recipe adapted from here. I used it as a base for ingredients, but I made some changes to make it more vibrant. :) Perhaps the most significant ingredient change was the portabella mushrooms--since it's often used as a meat substitute.

I added this (and other ingredients) mostly for texture/appearance. The final result doesn't look the most traditional, but it definitely tastes pretty close to it. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean ground pork (4% fat)

• 1 can (8 oz) chopped watercress

• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 small portabella mushrooms, chopped
  
• 1 head of lettuce (couldn't find butter lettuce, but I'd suggest using that)
  
• 1/2 tsp ginger powder
• soy sauce to marinate pork (~1/8 cup)
• 1/2 tbsp chopped garlic
  
• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce, plus extra to use as sauce
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• black pepper to taste
• 4 tsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp potato or corn starch mixed in 1 cup cold water
  

Directions:

1. Peel, wash, and set aside lettuce leaves for drying.
   
2. Heat canola oil in wok or large pan.
3. Add garlic, followed by ground pork, soy sauce, black and white pepper, and ginger powder. Stir to cook evenly.
4. When pork is almost all brown, add soy sauce, onions, mushrooms, and carrots.
5. When onions are translucent, add water chestnuts, potato starch mixed in water, and oyster/hoisin sauces.
6. Making sure pork is cooked thoroughly, remove from heat and serve on top of lettuce head leaves. Add hoisin sauce as desired. And yes, it's a finger/hand food!

Pumpkin Brown Butter Cupcakes & Baked Ziti

I made these cupcakes back in fall (kinda back logged here so I'm posting more frequently). I love pumpkin and I love brown butter so this was awesome. Although I thought it was more muffin-y because it was so dense (or maybe I made it wrong...). I forgot to take a picture of the cupcake sans wrapping, but you should go here and look at the recipe and the blogger's photos. Her photos are way way way better than mine.


Here's another great comfort food for fall or any cold day: baked ziti. Cheese + pasta = you're good. Also I really like recipes that involve the oven because you don't have to fuss around with it.

Both recipes use sage so it's a great way to get to know the herb or use all of it.

Vanilla bean ice cream and root beer floats

This recipe is from David Lebovitz's book, The Perfect Scoop. It's a very intense vanilla ice cream, very rich. I made a root beer float with the BEST root bear, Virgil's!


It's not the prettiest root beer float, but don't worry I finally bought an ice cream scoop! Yay!

Broccoli, leek and potato soup and bruschetta

Again, with the soups right? Well there was a cold streak awhile ago so I had a great chance to expand my soup horizons. This recipe is for a broccoli, leek and potato soup. Those are 3 of my favorite ingredients. That's a baked potato, spanish tortilla, quiche ready to go. This recipe requires a food processor or blender AND there's dairy involved so it's a very thick, filling soup.


I had some extra potatoes so I diced them, seasoned them with cajun seasoning and drizzled some olive oil and baked them until crisp. I served these on top of the soup for some contrasting texture, woooo getting fancy! I left out the cheese, I didn't feel like it needed any.


I also had a leftover, stale baguette so I made some bruschetta. Slice the bread diagonally and toast lightly. Then rub a garlic clove on it and top with mozzarella, thin slices of garlic and a little bit of olive oil. Toast in the oven with the potatoes and then top with shredded, fresh basil. Deliiccciouuussss.

Soup, post-blending.

Vanilla Ice Cream with Strawberries

The recipe for this luscious ice cream is from Tartelette. It's vanilla bean ice cream with nice bits of strawberries (not strawberry ice cream). I still have a bunch of vanilla beans left- I ordered a dozen from amazon, which is much much cheaper then getting one beach from Ralphs or Whole Foods. Not only are they cheaper, they're more fresh and pliable then the ones I normally get. The problem afterward is finding a use for all of them. Vanilla sugar, vanilla pound cake, vanilla cake, vanilla everything. Good thing Ilya bought me the ice cream attachment for my beloved KitchenAid mixer.

Egg yolks before being whisked.

Egg yolks, after being whisked. See how much lighter they are?

A lot of ice cream recipes call for raw egg yolks, which I'm not 100% comfortable with... Traditional custard based ice creams also tend to be more rich than I'm used to (thankfully my roommates are happy to help me finish my ice cream experiments). I think my favorite ice cream recipe is the one for green tea, which I'll post soon.

Look at my mixer go!

Making ice cream is easy. I leave my ice cream bowl in the freezer so it's always ready to make ice cream. Of course I have to wait anyways since the ice cream has to be refrigerated for several hours. The colder you can get all your ingredients, the better. This ice cream was okay- I think I didn't mix the ice cream and strawberries enough so there were some icey streaks of strawberry. Overall though, a good ice cream!

Latkes

Latkes with a side of sour cream and apple sauce.

This recipe comes from www.style.com from Pamela Love, who makes beautiful jewelry (including the famous bird claw cuff). The first time I tried to make hash browns from scratch, I didn't squeeze out the water and no matter how hot and long I fried the potatoes, I couldn't get them to crisp. In the end I had purplish-brown mushy potatoes. My poor dad ate a plate of them and I threw away the rest. LESSON LEARNED: always squeeze the water out of potatoes.


This is a basic, great recipe for latkes with ingredients you probably already have at home. I like to add green onions or some smoked salmon on top with a dollop of sour cream. YUM.

Oatmeal cookies & Oatmeal cream pies

I love oatmeal raisin cookies... kinda feels like eating a healthy cookie, no? Today there are two recipes: one for plain oatmeal raisin cookies and another for oatmeal cream pies. The oatmeal raisin cookie recipe is a great solid, basic cookie recipe.

I used a great vanilla extra that Joanne got for me somewhere in the Caribbean- it smells amazing, nothing like the fake vanilla extract you get from Ralphs. This actually smells like vanilla and it has a hat, so you should try this if you see it.


I didn't flatten out the cookies on the bake sheet so they're round little lumps- not my favorite kind of cookie. But they were chewy and just buttery/sugary enough. Not teeth-achingly sweet.

Look how nice and flat they are! I didn't even have to flatten them.

The second recipe is for oatmeal cream pies, a childhood staple thanks to Little Debbie. There's something deeply satisfying about making something from scratch even though you can buy one for less than a dollar at your grocery store or vending machine. The homemade version doesn't to whatever Little Debbie has in her cookie sandwich. I should mention that the cream involved shortening ): AAGGHHH. I avoid using shortening at all times- all my pie crusts are butter crusts, never shortening. But the blogger noted that she tried using butter and it just didn't work... so I used vegetable shortening. ugh. (but it was so delicious)


It's definitely still very sweet, but the cookie is dangerously tender. The marshmallow fluff holds the cookies together- they fall apart easily in your hands. These are so good, just amazing. Although I am a big big marshmallow lover, this was my first time using marshmallow fluff. It kinda freaks me out. I'll probably just make my own marshmallow fluff next time so it's completely home made.

The only photographic evidence of marshmallows.

I made marshmallows before, but of course I forgot to take a picture of them after I cut them up and dusted them with powdered sugar. They're surprisingly easy to make, but you need a stand mixer for it. The recipe is here. The recipe makes a ridiculous amount of marshmallows- be prepared to have hot chocolate every day, every meal.