its SPRING!!!

I'm blaming winter on my absence from this blog. I always get horribly depressed during the winter months... I start contemplating life... channeling Kafka... general wintry blues...

And my absence does have something to do with attending a cooking session with Virginia Willis. Gwen and I went to see her in November 2011 and I've been far too intimidated to write down any of my recipes after seeing her. She is brilliant! She is genuine. I was intimidated...

Alright... if I'm honest with myself, she would have encouraged me to keep blogging... but then winter set in and I went into hibernation...

But its finally spring! So I'm back :)

So, in typical Dani style, I decided to cook every dish I could possibly think of over the weekend. I made Beef Tangine (because I've always wanted to make a tangine)

Beef Tangine with Butternut Squash
This is a good recipe to follow- although I didn't have ground ginger so put a little ground clove for extra spice- it was delicious.

I think I will use lamb, and ground ginger next time though.

 I also made asparagus and English pea risotto (because after the Top Chef episodes of failed risottos I wanted to try it out) and I made shrimp with broccoli and peppers (because I didn't want to freeze the fresh shrimp).

The risotto was fairly simple to make- 
- saute, in 1 tbsp butter, green onions (1/2 cup), onions (1 cup), and garlic (4 cloves) till translucent
- stir in arborio rice (2 cups) and stir/ cook for 3 min
- add one cup of chicken broth at a time to the rice to cook. (I added about 6 cups of stock- one at a time) 
- I added 1 cup of chopped asparagus and 1 cup fresh English peas midway through cooking. 
- once the rice is cooked, I turned off the heat, added one tbsp of butter and 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese and stirred in. 


The shrimp was even easier to cook- 
Saute onions, garlic till softened
- Add red bell peppers and broccoli and saute till softened
- Add salt to taste and 1 tbsp of crushed red pepper flakes
- add 1 cup of tomato sauce- I used Pomi since its 100% tomato- no preservatives!
- add 1lb of shrimp and cook till pink!
- add 2 tbsp of fresh chopped basil
And you're done!


And then finally- I made a fresh fruit tart- OK...a lazy man's tart...

Crust:
In a bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, 1 1/2 sticks of cold butter (diced), 3/4 cup of sugar, and 2-4 tbsp of water. Mix into a dough, refrigerate for 10 min. 
- Preheat oven to 350
- then press ball of dough into a greased, fluted tart pan and refrigerated this for 20 min (it allows the dough to set and allows it to keep its shape better when baking)
 - Bake in oven for about 12 min.

Filling: again- pretty lazy method but after cooking 3 dishes I was tired...
- Follow directions of Jello- Instant Pudding
*note- its INSTANT... Its been so long since I've used instant pudding mixes that I was thoroughly confused when my pudding on the stove was congealing... I kept whisking it and whisking it and it then dawned on me... oh about 5 minutes into whisking that it's supposed to firm up quickly... 
- Cool filling


- chop any fruit that you will use on the tart as well. I sliced strawberries while my dough was baking and cooling


Glaze: also lazy method- you're noticing a theme right?
- Open jar of Dickenson's Lemon Curd. Heat two tablespoons of the curd in the microwave- voila- glaze!


Assembly:
- Spread filling mix onto the baked and cooled tart crust
- spread  layer of raspberries, blackberries, kiwis, and chopped strawberries (or whatever your preferred fruit is)
- with a pastry brush, spread glaze over fruit

Bushels and Bushels of Apples!

Apple Picking- a code phrase that our family occasionally uses to tell each other we're actually going to be doing something else. Sounds confusing right? It was confusing- for the first 2 years that we decided to use this since we actually do go apple, peach, and strawberry picking a lot. But last weekend, mom and I actually did go apple picking. We drove up to Pisgah National Forest, took the Blue  Ridge Parkway to Asheville and then stopped to pick some apples from our usual spot in Hendersonville. 

16 lbs of apples later, I'm trying every apple recipe I can get my hands on! Apple muffins, apple desserts, apple sauce, sausage stuffed apples! 

And of course, testing out all of these recipes on friends. For brunch today I made  apple muffins that I adapted from a Paula Deen recipe. Her recipe calls for an equal quantity of raisins and apples. Now, I don't hate raisins. I especially like them in oatmeal cookies. But I don't like flinging them willy nilly in recipes that they don't really belong in. I think they are overused in some baked foods. I don't even like them in my fruitcake! 

So I took the raisins out of this recipe. I also added milk to the recipe to make it more like a batter and less like dough. I might use yogurt or buttermilk next time.

Apple Muffins:

1 cup water

1.5 cups sugar

2 cups grated apples (I used Pink Lady and Granny Smith)

1 stick butter

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp allspice

1/2 cup milk

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 F

In a saucepan, combine apples, sugar, water, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. Bring to a boil and stir completely. The mix will look like a brown gluey mess. But it'll smell and taste like apple deliciousness. Remove the pan from the heat and cool completely. 

In a bowl,  mix the flour and baking soda. Add the apple mixture and milk to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Pour batter into greased muffin tins.  Bake for 15-20 min. This recipe will yield 12 small muffins. 

Pear Granola Tart

As the delicious Kale Turkey soup was in the pot simmering, mom and I needed something to do. We are, after all, Fernandes women. We ALWAYS need to do something. So we plotted. A dessert- made with pear. We had no flour or sugar in the house. How does mom live in a house without sugar?!?! The only "sweet" things in the house were Sweet'N Low (gross) and granola- the good kind from Earth Fare. I then remembered the brown sugar in my car. My summer was spent making a lot of cakes in various states so yes... I travel with several kinds of brown sugar. We wanted to make something different- clearly, with the lack of any baking item in the house. We decided to use the Camembert that we also bought from Earth Fare, granola, and pears. Layer of granola on the bottom to act as a "crust:, a layer of the Camembert over the granola, topped with sliced pear, drizzled with brown sugar and vanilla fig balsamic vinegar for a little bit of bite. We were crossing our fingers that this would work. And ohh....it did. Ooozy sweetness from the brown sugar and balsamic over the warmed pear, over this outrageously sticky granola mix... we could not stop at one bite.

It looks like a mess. I know. But- I'd make it again in a heart beat and try to clean it up a bit.

Mom and I struggled naming this dish. Pear crumble? Pear tart? Pear bake? Granola Pear? This led to a serious Wikipedia session on all baked dishes... how does one go about naming recipes?!? The research seriously threw my blogging off course.

So am back on track now- whatever this dish is (settled on the name of Pear Granola Tart for now)- here's the recipe:

3 pears, peeled and sliced
1/2 stick of butter, melted
1/2 cup of granola
2 tbsp of light brown sugar
6 slices of Camembert cheese, sliced thinly

Serves: 4 (although mom and I did just fine eating it ENTIRE thing)

Stir the granola and butter in a bowl till granola is softened. Put the granola mix on the bottom of a 6 inch round pan. We had just enough to put a layer of the mix on the bottom of the pan.
                                                 

Place the Camembert slices in the one layer over the granola. Place the slices of pears over the Camembert  overlapping the slices. Drizzle the vanilla- fig balsamic vinegar generously over the pears.

If you don't have vanilla fig balsamic vinegar lying around, you can make it! I'm a fan of reducing balsamic vinegar with different spices into syrups- recipe below.

Meanwhile, in a small sauce pan, add 1 tbsp of brown sugar and a little butter to make a brown sugar sauce. Once it the sugar has melted all the way, pour over the pears.
Place in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Serve hot! the granola is softened by the butter and cheese into a deliciously gooey mix.

Vanilla- fig balsamic vinegar recipe:
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 cup chopped dried figs
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise.
In a small pot, combine vinegar and water and bring to a boil. Add figs, vanilla bean and reduce heat to simmer. Stew figs in sauce until they are soft and sauce is thick and syrupy, about 10-12 minutes. Strain mixture, removing figs and vanilla bean.