Short Hiatus

My oven broke on Sunday night, and it's created a mental block for me in terms of cooking. Hopefully I'll return sometime next week with some new food-related posts, but I've been in a bit of a funk lately where everything I think of that I want to make somehow involves an oven.

If anyone has any recommendations for non-oven meals that can get me out of this cooking funk, I would appreciate it!

Oct/Nov Recipe Exchange: Apple Scone Cake

I have to admit that I was not that excited when I got this recipe in my inbox. For one thing, I was really overwhelmed with schoolwork, and it just didn't appeal to me. I normally find scones too dry for my taste, and I haven't baked much with apples. As I looked closer though, I realized I had all of the ingredients in my pantry except for the apples, and that was easily solved. So I figured I would give it a go this Friday when I had the whole afternoon to myself.


As a warning, the dough is incredibly sticky, so be sure to flour your hands heavily when kneading. Also, this turned out to be amazingly delicious. The dough is soft and buttery, much more cake-like than scone-like, and the apples add so much to the taste. The dough was a little hard to spread, but believe me when I say this tastes a lot better than it looks.

Apple Scone Cake
source: Oct/Nov recipe exchange

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted chilled butter (cut into pieces)
1 egg
1/2 cup (minus 2 tbsp) milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 granny smith apple, thinly sliced
3 tbsp sugar
cinnamon to taste

Heat oven to 350-degrees and butter a 9-inch pie pan.
Mix dry ingredients and chop in butter until it looks like coarse meal. Mix together sliced apples, 3 tbsp sugar and cinnamon to taste. Mix together egg, milk, and vanilla. Stir into flour mixture - do not overmix. Then knead the dough 5 times. 1/2 the dough - press into the bottom of your pan and slightly up the sides. Then add in the apple mixture. Take the rest of the dough and drop biscuit it on top. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 45 minutes.

YUMMY! :) Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

This is definitely better straight out of the oven or heated up.

Dinner Party

I don't entertain often, okay, ever, but the past two Fridays, I've had people over. This last Friday was a couple where the guy is a fellow anesthesia intern with Joe, and we've been meaning to have them over for dinner. It ended up being a blast. We stayed up really late, even though we had a flight to San Diego in the morning! I was also glad to get to use some of the things we received for our wedding, like our white napkins and napkin rings.

Menu:

Appetizers -
Bacon-wrapped Jalapeno Poppers (see below)
Pita chips with roasted garlic and red pepper dip (a WC gift exchange gift)

Dinner -
Spicy Turkey Peanut Noodles

Dessert -
Zebra Cake (even though mine didn't turn out very zebra-y)

Drinks-
Red wine
Oliphant gin (a great gin to sip, even if you think you don't like gin)



Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno Peppers
source: Pioneer Woman

There's not much to this recipe. Basically, chop fresh jalapenos in half and scoop out the seeds and membrances. Fill with cream cheese, and wrap with bacon. Secure with a toothpick. Bake in a 375-degree oven for 20-25 minutes on a rack over a pan.


These are crazy good, and a great appetizer because you can make as many or as few as your little heart desires. For four people, I made 18, and they disappeared pretty quickly.

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

I swear I have perfectly good reasons for neglecting my blog, namely midterms and a trip to San Diego, which I promise to blog about once I catch up.

I had been eyeing various Shepherd's Pie recipes for a little while when I found this vegetarian one. Fortunately, the weather cooperated with my stomach, and I made this on the day that a front blew through, bringing with it a sharp temperature drop and rain. My one aversion to vegetarian dishes is that they often don't seem to stick to your ribs quite as much as meals with meat do, but this is a major exception. This had a great earthy flavor from the eggplant, and the cumin and curry flavors were a hit with Joe. It also made delicious leftovers.


Also, I have now been convinced of the wonder of the eggplant. I usually avoided it due to too many bad experiences with greasy, floppy eggplant parmesan, but now I think I'll use it more often as a substitute for meat in meals like this. Next time, depending on what I have in the refrigerator, I may add mushrooms to this. They would go perfectly.


Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie
source: Cheap Healthy Good

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 small red or green bell peppers, chopped
3 cups cubed eggplant, with peel (This turned out to be about 3/4 of an eggplant for me.)
1 (15 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup water (I used some chicken broth I had on hand, making this not vegetarian.)
1 1/4 pounds small red potatoes, halved
1/2 cup fat-free half and half (or skim milk)
1 cup frozen or fresh peas
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I used some various assorted cheeses.)
1 pinch Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat 1 Tb. oil; add onions, garlic, curry and cumin. Saute until onions are soft, about 5 minutes. Remove to a bowl.

2) Heat remaining oil in skillet; add peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and 1/2 cup water. Saute until soft, about 20 minutes. (It's a good idea to let a lot of the extra moisture evaporate - Kris.) Stir in onions. Place in a shallow 8-by-8- inch baking dish.

3) In a saucepan, boil potatoes until done. Drain and smash. Stir in half and half, peas, salt and pepper. Spread over vegetables and top with Parmesan.

4) Bake 15 minutes. Brown in broiler. Serve.

Margherita Pizza

Oh boy, looking at these pictures is making my stomach grumble. Now that I have discovered the wonders of homemade pizza, there may be quite a few of these types of updates. After transplanting my basil plant to a bigger container, it finally grew, so now I have lots of basil too! When I was contemplating what to do with it, I decided on a margherita pizza: a little more exciting than plain cheese but still simple.


There's no real recipe here. I rolled out some of Mitch's Pizza Dough, mixed an 8 oz can of tomato sauce with some Italian seasoning, covered the dough with the sauce (we used leftovers to dip the crust in), sprinkled on some mozzarella cheese and some sliced Roma tomatoes and chiffonaded basil. I threw it in a 450-degree oven for about 10 minutes.

I honestly don't know if there is a more beautiful sight in the world than real, non-greasy delivery pizza.