Baked Portabella Mushrooms with Homemade Breadcrumb, Three Cheese, and Spinach Stuffing

So its been almost a year. Afghanistan happened, and then I caught the exausted. I spent the last few months wondering how to explain what happened, and seeing no way, I froze. Deer in the headlights, toaster waffles instead of cooking, three nights a week of matzo-ball soup and my new local coffee shop FROZE.

So, after compiling months and months of half-written not so brilliant posts, I quit.

I disappeared. I am a bad blogger. It will take me some time to find my creativity, both for writing, cooking, and eating again, I know. And I am full of stories I want to share. Time will work them out.

For now, for the first time in months, I created. I made something that did not exist before, I created it in my little head. Its baking now, I have no idea whether it will be delicious or a total return-to-cooking fail. And I don't care. I cooked! I created! I made! Some little part of me is back, and I am rejoicing in it.

The oven is beeping at me, so I will make this quick:

Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Spinach (3/4 of a big bunch)
Garlic (as much as you can stand)
Cardamom (1 tsp)
4 Portabella Mushroom Caps (save stems and scooped out insides for making Veggie broth some other time- they freeze fine!
Ricotta (1.5 cups)
Two other cheeses to taste (I used goat and Parmesan)
Butter
Egg
Homemade breadcrumbs (I make mine from a mix of white and wheat bread and cornflakes, which gives things a great complex, slightly sweet flavor)
Truffle Salt (not strictly necessary of course, but a fun addition)
Balsamic Vinegar

Coat mushrooms in olive oil, then salt and pepper to taste. Melt butter and cook garlic in a pan over medium heat until fragrant. Add spinach, torn up well, and cook until spinach is soft an shrunken. Mix spinach into cheeses, add a beaten egg, and stir well. Add about a cup of homemade breadcrumbs and mix well. Divide between the mushroom caps, heaping on top. Cook for 30 minutes at 350 degrees covered with foil in a medium baking pan. Turn heat up to 45 and cook for another 30 minutes. Then remove the foil and cook another 10 minutes, or until cheese is melted and golden on top.

Serve with a sprinkling of the truffle salt and some reduced balsamic....

Will let you know how it is!

Glad to be back.

Hooray Poor Impulse Control- Dark Chocolate Thin Mint Cheesecake

You know something's good when you are checking to see if it's done every five minutes just so you can lick the knife. Especially when there is a consuming craving it's answering.

Yea, I crave. Its a big part of the reason I am good at whatever it is I am good at. I am usually not the most emotional person in the world (or so say legions of my ex-boyfriends), but I can derive a tremendous amount of passion from craving. Much of the skill I have in life is traceable directly to a lack of patience and some sort of slightly demented superman complex. The thought process is something like: 'I can't stand waiting, and why should I have to, I can do this better and quicker myself. I want x now, badly.'

This has unsurprisingly led me down a road littered with a variety of potentially poor/hazardous/certifiable decisions. The funny thing is, despite every public service announcement and self-help book out there telling me that this will get me nowhere, that I just need to work hard and love myself and keep slugging, somehow it is the violent, passionate, often irrational acts of an impatient soul craving something (sex, money, Kröllebölle, experience, Sushi, love, a trip to Indonesia, to name a few) that have led to the best experiences of my life. A big part of that is enjoyment of even the failures, and appreciation of the idea that the more colossal and passionate the failure, the more interesting it makes me. Who knows. Maybe I am just a lazy spoiled girl who has been cut a few breaks. Who cares. I am happy!

Today, after the return of my boyfriend from a few weeks abroad answered one craving, my mind was clear and poised for another. The boyfriend was trying to describe some delicious chocolate dessert he had in Copenhagen last week, and was at a loss for the name. Like any good children of the internet, we immediately began google image searching 'chocolate dessert'. Well, for a hungry girl looking for a craving, this ended predictably. Three pages of delicious looking things later, I 'needed' chocolate cheesecake. Not the fancy, delicate, complicated gourmet kind, but a giant, sour, huge slice of real New-York Cheesecake.

A brief search of my own records reminded me that I didn't have a 'go-to' recipe. I had some that were good, but nothing that was really 'it'. Years of living in Asia and being served fruit-ganache-cream covered glorified egg tarts masquerading as cheesecake left me with fairly low standards, and I had previous just settled for anything happily not durian flavored. Determined to do better this time, I went hunting.



I found this Emeril recipe on food network (yea, I know, I hate the celebrity chef thing too, but if there is anything that a dude who cooks for the psydo-pretentious masses might get right, cheesecake could be it). It provided a good amount of guidance as to proportions, but I wanted something a little more. Mint. Most recipes out there that add mint to the mix do so through creme-de-menthe; however, the alcohol changes the texture and rising of the cheesecake. I am not a fan. I don't even use vanilla extract in cheesecake for the same reason. I did, however, remember the second box of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies sitting in my freezer. Having had some fantastic success at making ice cream out of them, I thought, why not work up a whole line of deliciousness based off of these bestest cookies ever, and break up a bunch and use them like Oreos in the cheesecake? Easy!

I wanted to give the cheesecake itself a little hint of mint as well, however, and was at a loss for how to go about that. Until I saw a York Peppermint Pattie at the supermarket checkout. Perfect! Melted into the chocolate, the Peppermint Pattie was just the right hint of mint.

------Aside- they do give you a weird look when you checkout with only two pounds of cream cheese and a Peppermint Pattie. Like that's more strange that the dude with six boxes of Tampons and a bottle of cherries that was in front of me in line. Whatever. Maybe the checkout lady thought we were together. I shudder.



Cheesecakes are super easy, although they need to refrigerate a few hours before serving, so plan accordingly! Much of below is adopted from the original, with a few significant changes.

Ingrediants:
6 Graham Crackers
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
1 stick butter
2 1/2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese
Seeds from 1 vanilla bean (scraped from inside of pod)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
8 ounces melted semisweet chocolate, cooled slightly
1 full-size York Peppermint Pattie, melted into the chocolate
3 eggs
1 tube of Thin Mints (12 or so, to taste)


Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (if using a silver springform pan, or 325 degrees F if using a dark nonstick springform pan).


Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9-inch spring-form pan. In a food processer, combine the graham cracker crumbs, 3 tablespoons of the sugar, and the butter until well mixed and shapable (sticks together). Press onto the bottom of springform pan and set aside. You can use chocolate graham crackers, or any other dry cookie here too.


In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, combine cream cheese, remaining cup of sugar, and vanilla bean seeds and beat until light and creamy. Add the flour to the cream cheese mixture and beat until smooth. Add the melted chocolate and peppermint pattie and sour cream and mix well. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until just blended. Finally, hand-crush the thin mints, leaving some large pieces, and mix into the batter. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour 15 min, until the center is almost set. You will likely need about an hour and a half, but stat checking at 1:15. Dry cheesecakes suck.

Run a sharp knife around the rim of the pan and allow cake to cool on a wire rack before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight before serving. Cheesecake may be made up to 2 days in advance before serving and will keep for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.




Seriously, this is one of the best desserts I have ever made. Damn. There's the craving. Time for another piece. Why isn't running or learning Japanese craveable? Arugh.

Really, it was good! - Goat Cheese Chipotle Ice Cream with Chipotle-Infused Honey Drizzle and Fresh Basil

So I hate the word 'foodie'. I hate the entire culture of food pretension. When I first started this blog, the word 'foodie' was something like 'panties' to me. It seemed somehow pretentious and shallow, and maybe a little dirty. I really hated that it had anything to do with me. This was insecurity at its finest; I have more than once caught myself blathering on about how American food culture should change, and the superiority of eating fresh local foods to disinterested people just trying to get through their day (and hiding McDonalds under their seat). I can be a real ass sometimes. It's not that I don't believe in what I am preaching, I do. It's that I desperately don't want to become one of those Ann-Taylor-clad-preachy-DC-girls that wanders around telling all sorts of people who aren't interested how 'delectable the peaches from the Penn Quarter farmers market were this week.' I try to take time out from my high-falutin' blogging to stress the things that I love that are less top-hat-monocle and more flannel-shirt-old-style. Thus my 'embarassing things I love' series. That said, I do own alot of Ann Taylor. I mean, I am a 20-something professional in DC. There was definitely a note of defensiveness in my aversion to 'foodies.'

All of that aside, I never miss a chance for shameless self promotion. See my comment above about being an ass. When I came across 'foodie fights' a few months back, I thought it might be a fantastic opportunity for such unjustified self-aggrandizement. The site pits several food bloggers against one another to see who can come up with the best, most creative, most delicious-looking dish given two defined ingredients that change every week. I didn't particularly want to be 'queen' foodie for the week, but heck, I'll take the extra traffic, right?

Well, what began as a fairly typical cynical venture knocked me on my heels. These 'foodies'- they were, well, amazing. The recipes people posted were creative, unfussy, and nearly universally delicious looking. Try as I might to find a nugget of snobbishness or pretension in their posts, I came up dry. Once I realized that perhaps these 'foodies' had quite a bit to offer, I thought maybe I should wait a bit before I play. No one likes to be the 8th grader on the varsity court, what with all the wedgies and locker-room humiliation. So I held off for a few months to protect my still-un-towel-snapped ass, read the amazing posts and dishes that people created, and thought out a new approach to this foodie fight thing. Finally, last week I decided it was time to pull the trigger, and here I am, hat in hand, ready to play.

This week's ingredients? Chipotle and Goat Cheese.

My first instinct was the flatbread I normally do with goat cheese and rosemary. I made it, but this time used roasted red peppers in a chipotle marinade and put them on top with a chipotle goat cheese (with pieces of peppers in it!) from the Eastern Market cheese Nazi (who was out of my favorite honey-goat cheese). It was delicious, but really kind of a no-brainer. I kept it as my backup, but decided to go a bit more out there for the post. Disaster or not, I figured it would make a good post.




My mom bought me an ice cream maker a few years back, and I figured it was time to enlist it in some concoctions more devious than the melon sorbet it has been charged with most of the summer.

So the idea for Chipotle Goat Cheese Ice Cream was born.

1.5 cups milk

4 egg yolks

1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar (depending on the sweetness of the cheese)

2 oz chipotle (or any peppery flavor will do, not too sour though) goat cheese. You can make your own by mincing up a few peppers and mixing them in to taste. I suggest about one pepper per two oz, no more or it will overwhelm the cheese.

Honey (I used chipotle-infused honey, which basically means I steeped the honey with chipotle peppers before using it)

Basil Leaves

(A note- I don't include process pictures for a very good reason. It's not that I think they are boring or unnecessary. It's that my process is ugly. I mean sugar-on-the-walls, using-an-old-baseball-helmet-as-a-bowl, feeding-cheese-rinds-to-my-dog, occasionally-throw-an-egg-cause-its-fun-to-throw-eggs ugly. If you are reading this, chances are your process is better than mine. Certainly prettier. Why would I go screwing that up with my pictures? Make it your own.

I started out with a very basic custard recipe:

1. Heat the milk and sugar over low heat until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl.
3. Slowly add the milk to the egg yolks, whisking constantly, until well-combined.
4. Put the mix back in the saucepan over medium-low heat.
5. Stirring constantly (a good rubber scraper works best to keep it from congealing on the sides of the pan), heat the mixture until it is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon opaquely.

This alone makes a great base for any ice cream.

Then you add the goat cheese

6. Put the goat cheese large bowl with a strainer or small-holed colander over it.
7. Pour the custard into the colander and let it drain onto the cheese.
8. Stir the cheese into the hot custard until melted and combined.

From here, its just a matter of making it cold!

9. Put the mixture into the fridge and allow to cool.
10. Once cold, add the mixture to your ice cream maker and follow instructions. I left mine in for about 20 minutes, and then put it in the freezer for four hours to harden.
11. Serve with a thick drizzle of the infused honey over the top (I love the way it hardens just slightly), and serve with basil leaves as garnish (tasty when dipped into the melty bit at the end!)

I NEVER expected this to be so good, but it was just delicious. Something like cheese cake, with just enough kick to it to be interesting. I had thought I might add some chipotle chocolate cookies as well, but once I tasted the ice cream, I realized that it would be too much. One of the hardest parts of cooking (and something I think pretentious food almost always messes up) is knowing when to stop, when the right amount has been achieved with a dish.

One of the real pleasures of having friends who love food, but are far from 'foodies' is presenting them with creative dishes they have not seen before, and that they would never normally choose. This was absolutely one of them. Talking normal people into trying interesting, fresh, different food is one of my true pleasures in life- for that, I love my oldstyle-drinkin-papa-johns-pizza-orderin-non-foodie-friends. But for the ideas, the inspiration, and my own education, I am DAMN glad there are some amazing foodies out there. I can't wait to see what they did with this!

Saving Squash.....and meditations on being, potato-edition

So I like Squash. I never did when I was a kid, in part because I only was ever treated to the ethnic-family-boil-it-till-its-gooey-enough-to-be-soup-cause-soup-is-how-we-had-enough-to-get-to-this-country-and-you-are-so-ungrateful variety. It was only thanks to an otherwise charmless Australian boyfriend who introduced me to pumpkin as something other than a goofy once-a-year decoration filled with tasty seeds that I came to see this entire vegetable type as potentially appetizing. Add to that a few Chinese meals during which squash was a God-send amid plate after plate of things that were staring back, still flopping, or resembled the un-potato pieces of Mr. Potato Head, and squash became ok in my book

<< Linguistic aside: are Mr. Potato head feet actually potato, since they are by definition part of him, or does attaching them cause them to undergo some sort of transubstantiation by which they become 'potato' or are they just feet? British courts recently ruled, wisely that 'A Pringle is “made from potato flour in the sense that one cannot say that it is not made from potato flour"'..perhaps this applies in the abstract to representations of potato?>>

Anyway, now that I am safely back in the land of bread and cheese, squash has slowly but surely lost its appeal. However, I am a regular recipient of it in my boxes from Washington's Green Grocer, and have as of late had a harder and harder time not just letting it turn into a research project in the veggie drawer that conveniently takes out the potatoes and lettuce, of which I am equally enamored.

Last box, however, Washington's Green Grocer Came through- they published a post on facebook with a little recipe (they, and their followers, have been doing this more and more, its really a great use of the social media space for them). I tried it out today, and it was perfect. Nothing revelatory in the ingredients, nothing shocking or unexpected, but just the perfect balance of flavors, which I often seem to get not quite right, as I am distracted by the main affair (dessert) or the secondary affair (the main) and throw together vegetables as an afterthought. With a little thoughtfulness, this becomes a nice main course. Now I am not going to go all vegan or anything any time soon, but this was pretty good!

One note, use fresh cheese, and big lumps of Buffalo Mozzarella- it makes all the difference....

From Washington's Green Grocer, who adapted it from: Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook (Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbk)

2-3 small zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch thick slices (if zucchini are large, cut in half or fourths lengthwise, then slice)
1 T olive oil
4-6 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
pinch sea salt
2 T chopped flat parsley
2 T grated parmesan
1/4 cup grated mozzarella

With stove set to medium, heat the olive oil in a large frying pan with a lid. Add sliced garlic and saute about 1 minute, until you start to smell garlic. Add squash and stir to coat with oil, then cover and cook 4 minutes, stirring once or twice. After 4 minutes, check to see if there is a lot of liquid and whether squash is tender. Cook 1-2 more minutes, uncovered until zucchini is tender-crisp and liquid is evaporated.

Sprinkle squash with salt and chopped parsley and stir to wilt parsley. Add parmesan and stir until it melts, about 1 minute. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over the squash, cover pan again and turn off the heat. Let sit 1-2 minutes until cheese is melted and serve hot.

Embarassing Things I Ate that Sucked: Part 1

So sometimes I am lazy. Now that Mott's Mart, the local mini-mart, takes credit cards, I am doomed on these lazy days. Today, as I, the big fancy food blogger, checked out with an armload of ramen noodles and Diet Dr. Pepper, I won't lie, there was shame.

At the same time, I vowed to dig deep, and do what my dad did when I was growing up- turn Ramen delicious with all sorts of yummy stuff from the fridge. Upon opening the fridge, I discovered all that was in there was some squishy tomatoes with which I plan to make sauce this weekend, and some left over egg whites from the 4 egg yolks I used to make Thin Mint Ice Cream earlier this week. I figured, hey this will be good, I will make egg-drop noodle soup.

Well, suffice it to say, curdled egg yolks, slimy noodles, and enough MSG to kill all the rats in the kitchen of a giant-slice pizza shop at 1 am (look for a review of this in Embarassing Things I Love- Part 5) were not enough to convince anyone that I was a culinary genius. Or that its even safe to let me near the stove unsupervised.

Yuk. Well, at least I have a whole sleeve of Hit cookies to dull the pain.

Thin Mint Ice Cream- Go Girl Scouts!

I hate being sold to. I walk out of stores as soon as someone asks if there is anything they can help me with, and I never ever ever ever buy anything from someone who is selling door to door. Or at work.

With one critical exception- Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. There is no substance on earth quite as divine. This year, when someone at work was selling (well, mentioning loudly in the hall he had girl scout cookies on offer, since we work in a gov't building that doesn't allow any charities but its own), I pounced. I had previously actually ordered Thin Mints on the internet and had them shipped to Singapore when I lived there. I expected to convert the population. Instead I spent four hours explaining the different between scouting and the Hitler Youth. The best I came up with was "well, I think they let Catholics in".

Anyway, I have three boxes in my freezer, and had been patiently waiting for the mint in my garden to get big enough to use my brand spanking new ice cream maker to make what I was sure would be the seminal dessert of our time.

I found a what looked like a great recipe for mint chocolate chip ice cream. I figured, shouldn't be a problem to replace the chips with the far more delicious Thin Mints. A whole tube of them. Maybe two tubes. Well, maybe 1 1/2 because someone ate 5 or 6 spoonfuls of the cookie crumbs on the way from the food processor to the ice cream maker.

I used half as much mint, as I didn't want to do in the poor little mint plant. Basically you seep the mint in the milk/cream (make mint milk tea in effect). Then make a custard with 4 egg yolks. Yep, 4. Good stuff, mix in the remaining cream, and throw it in the mixer.

Well, I was disappointed when I took it out of the machine to put it in the freezer to get nice and hard. It was too eggy- for some reason I never like frozen custards as much as I think I will, given the preponderance of ingredients I love (eggs, milk,, sugar). I am curious how different types of egg would taste- maybe free range organic would have a different character since they are not all corn fed and white-y. For more on why this would make a difference, and my the reason I am thinking of driving 4 hours to get eggs like the fancy chefs, check out: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Anyway, I didn't hold high hopes for the ice cream when I dug it out tonight after a long day running around and scooped it out of the 20yr old Ricotta tub that my mom has been using to send me pasta sauce for ages in. Last night's disappointing taste after 30 min of eager waiting for the ice cream machine got the ice cream relegated to a crummy container so it could think about what it had done. This strategy seems to have been effective, quite to the surprise of the shred of rational me left in matters of ice cream. A night in the freezer did the ice cream a world of good. Its as though the mint came into its own over night, the cookies softened just enough to make pretty marbling, and the eggy taste dissipated into the freezer vent (or the ice cube tray, yuk). The flavor was a delicate spearmint, with rich dark chocolate cookie undertones. It scooped like a Baskin-Robbin's ad (did you know that they actually use mashed potatoes for ice cream pics, or so says a food stylist friend of mine).

It was awesome!! And so pretty. I now want to make it last to show it off, but the likelihood of that is about nil. Guess I will just have to convince myself all that slow churning the machine did burned off the calories!

The Story of My Mom's Lasagana

So, this mothers day got me thinking. Well, it also got me complaining about how we all got tricked into being jerks if we don't honor Hallmark with all we do a few days a year, but thats besides the point. Marketing worked, and I was thinking about my Mom. Maybe my memory has been colored by the nostalgia of passing years, and a sadly lacking robust adult relationship with her, but I remember the mom of 20 years ago as a domestic goddess. Halloween costumes were handmade, clothing was sewn, the house was immaculate, and dinner was always homemade (and awful for you, but oh so tasty). My mom doesn't pursue these sorts of things anymore with the relish she used to (I think she was the one woman on earth genuinely happy to get a vacuum cleaner for Christmas), but the one thing she still does is make Lasagna. Its our Christmas tradition. These past few years, even though I don't go home anymore and my cousin comes out here for drinks and escape, I still make it.

My family loves its traditions. Not the solemn, reflective, values-based traditions that ground the average corn-fed Mid-Western family, but rather the uproarious, beer-flowing, love-you-for-what-you-are-but-still-gonna-mess-with-you-about-it, show-love-through-food-not-touching, help-build-a-porch-for-you-when-you-need-it kind. On one hand, it means that serious conversations are impossible to have, and relationships that are not natural simply don't deepen. This is sadly why every conversation my mom and I have is something along the lines of "What, I'm working, I'm so busy, you don't understand, how's the dog?, gotta go." On both ends.

On the upside, it means that the few things we have left to connect about, especially now that we don't travel together any more, are these little traditions. For me, and my mom, I think Lasagana is where it all began.

For all the stress and sadness that is elsewhere in her life, my mom retains tremendous pride in this dish. She still makes it right, from start to finish each time. And she is still utterly unable to communicate how to make it to others with annoying, off-topic details like measurements. Its something you have to grow up tasting, watching. Grow up complaining about with the family like the spoiled brat you are, but then bragging about to friends when ma's not listening. Grow into wanting to make yourself. And grow-up to realize that its one of the only things you have left that ties you to your mom. Its precious, beyond the perfect balance of flavor and texture. Its the past of my family, and the future of a relationship.

Here are my mom's own words about this tradition. You can try to make it all you want. But some things are their history as much as they are their substance.

"When Mother's Day rolls around each year it [directs] my thoughts [to] my family. Particularly my daughter and husband. I think how caring they are to me. It makes me think about making my famous lasagna which they love. Learning to make this was an interesting part of my life. When I was 11 years old my neighbor was an older Italian man and one day I started to ask him questions about his sauce as it smelled so good. He said he would show me. We took all the ingredients, tomatoes, garlic paste, sauce, water and gently stirred and the most important factor is to simmer for 3 patient hours to get the well blended taste. Then a few years later I lived for a couple of years with a Sicilian lady and helped her and she asked if i would like to learn to make lasagna the real Italian way. Of course I said yes. She showed me how to mix the ricotta, mozzarella cheese, parsley eggs, milk and then how to layer. The sauce I used from what I learned several years before. This recipe came our very satisfactory for the real Italian way. I served to my family and they love it. It makes me so happy as they deserve it and just these thoughts give me a happy mothers day."


Thanks ma.

Happy Birthday Hammer- Doggie Birthday Cake

I thought my awkward days of trying to fit into the cool crowd were long gone, relegated to past Junior High dances and makeout parties I would rather forget. I mean, I think I am a pretty interesting person, not awful to look at, with decent taste and a successful job, right? Then why, when I take my beloved mutt to the unofficial dog park just a few blocks away, am I suddenly made to feel like I just turned up in un-ironic flannel and leg warmers to fashion week?

Why? Well, its simple. These are dog people. I thought I was a dog person. I like dogs better than cats, I enjoy a good game of frisbee as much as the next girl. But I was wholly unprepared for the social scene that is the urban dog park. Last week when I was there, someone took pity on me sitting in the corner all designer-poop-bag free and came over to talk. Relieved that someone was willing to chat with me, even though my modest pooch didn't support the upper-east-side crest of a fancy doggie day care, I asked her the requisite dog-related questions: Which one is yours? How old is he? etc. In response, she whipped out a framed photograph that she kept in her purse of her dog's wedding. Yea, read that sentence again. Its as ridiculous as it sounds.

Now, I like to think I have played the cocktail circuit enough for work to be able to think quick on my feet no matter where the conversational tsunami may take me, but none of my rigorous self-taught etiquette prepared me for what the follow up to "oh, here are mira's wedding photographs. We had such a lovely ceremony" might be, when 'Mira' is a 75lb Chesapeake. Ummm...congrats? Where did they honeymoon? Are they registered?

Wow.

I love my dog, don't get me wrong. He's about the best dog in the world. But he does not need clothing, psychotherapy sessions, daily grooming for self-esteem, reasoned discourse about desired behavior beyond "No! and Good dog!", or a pretty little doggie bride.

So no, I am not one of those 'dog people'. All of this is a admittedly defensive preface for the real meat of this post which is how to make a doogie birthday cake. Which is exactly the sort of thing 'dog people' would do. I will just keep telling myself that I did it ironically, and hopefully be able to believe it :-)

Hammer Dog turned 5 last Fri, on May Day. The East is Red and so is my dog. The weather has been beautiful, just cool enough to sit outside comfortably at night with a sweater. Perfect al-fresco dining. I needed an excuse for a dinner party. I figure a little appreciation of the best dog ever, who, for 5 years, has left my shoes happily unchewed, was in order.

I made a leg of lamb, rubbed with honey, cinnamon, cardamom, salt and pepper. It was delicious, and Hammer Dog loves lamb bone above all other treats. Except the laser pointer light. He would forgo food, water, and attention for that little red dot.

But the crowning achievement of this party was the doggie cake. I had never done this before, and wanted to make something that actually looked like cake. I couldn't believe this worked. It smells like death itself, and definitely should cool outside, but there is nothing a dog loves more than something smelling somewhere between dirty diapers and rotting rat carcass. Gross, but true.

Anyway, here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
4 cups dry Dog Food
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 Tsp baking soda
1/2 cup olive oil
2 eggs
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup oyster sauce (optional, really any savory good that your dog likes will work here)
Salt & Pepper
3/4 Can of Beef Broth

Frosting

4 large potatoes
1/4 can Beef Broth
Food coloring

Directions:
Put the dog food in a food processor and process until almost the consistency of flour. Mix with other dry ingredients Add oil, eggs, sauces and spices and mix. Mixture will be very thick. Add beef broth until mixture has the consistency of lumpy cake batter, about 3/4 cup.

Pour batter into a greased springform pan. Bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Remove and cool before frosting, preferable outside as this will stink something awful at this point.

Frosting: Peel and boil potatoes until soft in salted water. Remove, strain, and cool. Using the back of a spoon or your hands, push potatoes through a colander so that you have a pie of small tubular mashed potatoes (this keeps them from being lumpy for people to eat if you are also serving them at dinner, and more easily spreadable for frosting. add food coloring to make them a vibrant color (it really looks better if silly), and add about 1/4 cup beef broth to thin and for taste.

When the cake is cool, grease a frosting knife and spread the potatoes on the cake as you would normal frosting. I also wrote a birthday message on the cake in mustard.






For bonus fun, leave the cake accessible to annoying people- it looks so real, and delicious, that they will inevitably be compelled to try. Enjoy the gagging.

Seriously though, Hammer LOVED THIS. He stared at the oven the whole time it was cooking! He was terrified though of the candles!




Yea, I'm a dork.

Creamy Sauteed Mushrooms in Yogurt Sauce

So I came home from work with a hankerin (yes, hankerin, still thinkin about those Texans!) for something garlicky. In my quest to use all the veggies I got from my last shipment before I leave Friday for a trip, I noticed there were still a few packages of mushrooms in the back of the fridge. A few days past perfect, these were not meant for eating raw in salad or the like. Sooooo.....I harkened back to one of my favorite harrrrrible-for-you foods, and decided to go for some sauteed mushrooms.

Doesn't sound that bad for you you say? Well a little context- when I say 'sauteed mushrooms', I mean these butter and garlic covered fist-sized wonders we used to get at the renaissance fair (yes, I was/am a dork, nothing revelatory there) when I was a kid. My aunt would take my cousin and I, and we would get a cone full of these things that probably took 10 yrs off my life. There was no better warm up on earth for a whole day of whining about wanting to do things and looking for just the right opportunity to shove ones' little cousin in elephant poop (sorry Stephen, I can't believe you still talk to me!). From that moment on, I had a love affair with mushrooms.

Believe it or not, I was the pickiest eater in the world when I was a kid. The one somewhat commonly disliked type of thing I would dig into with abandon was mushrooms, the earthier and more fungus-like the better. My best friend from high school shared this love, and often, as we started inching out into culinary worlds beyond Olive Garden (probably more for love of the idea of being rich/fancy/sophisticated enough one day to regularly enjoy them vice any actual love of food), mushrooms were often the motivating factor for selecting a dish on a confusing and unfamiliar menu. Although I exercise a little more caution now (filled with breadcrumbs and cheese is reserved for sports bars and my living room), I still can't get enough of the little guys.

So here I am, freed from my food aversions and fear of trying things by a few years in a country where food was weird, I had no money, and my ability to grasp the subtle linguistic nuances between 'feet' and 'cabbage' was limited to say the least, nevertheless hankerin for some comfort food of my childhood.

Ingredients:
2 cartons of mushrooms (white button are best)
1/2 stick butter
a TON of garlic- as much as you can stand to peel and squish really- I used about 1/4 cup of fresh stuff here
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 cup yogurt or sour cream. I like good thick greek yogurt, but any thick sour milk product will do
1/4 cup fresh parsley (roughly chopped)
2 tbsp fresh dill (roughly chopped)

Melt the butter in a large saute pan. Add the garlic (shallots are a good addition here too if you are in the mood) and saute for 2 minutes. Slice the mushrooms and add all at once. Put about half of the parsley in at this point. Add the salt and pepper, and saute until mushrooms are soft, but not totally cooked down (about 3 minutes on high).


Once mushrooms have cooked down, poor a little of the liquid from the pan into a bowl. Whisk in the yogurt (this will keep it from curdling when you add it). Then poor the yogurt mix back into the saute pan, add the rest of the parsley and dill, and simmer until hot all the way through.

Remove from heat, and serve! Delicious!

Cinnamon Rolls

I am an emotional eater. Not a my-boyfriend-frowned-at-me-eat-a-whole-pint-of-ben-and-jerry's eater mind you, but when I have had a tough day, when I feel the love for someone in my life, when I am celebrating, when I am mourning, I cook. My family doesn't hug and kiss, we feed. Food is affection to me, for better (my taste buds) or worse (my waistline).

Combine this with a rather strenuous need to have a system for everything and the result is a menu for every occasion, a specialty for every emotion.

Lately the occasion that has dominated my psyche has been travel, both mine and that of people I care about. And traveling brings with it certain opportunities that living downtown in a big city, eating out with fancy people often does not- namely, road food. Or airport food, as the case may be. And few things make me salivate and ignore the snugness of my pants more than the smell of Cinnabon across the airport after a long flight, usually from barbaric culture that does not know the joy of free refills, liberal use of deodorant, and gooey, sticky, teeth-crackingly sweet head sized cinnamon rolls.

I, however, will not be at an airport anytime soon, as most of my travel will be by car. Nevertheless, I woke up craving the taste. Helps that a certain man in my life shares my passion, and was coming over that evening for dinner. I've been slowly working my way through various breads, and thought that maybe the time had come to give cinnamon rolls another shot, after an epic failure a few years ago that resulted in a 4pm Sat binge trip to Cinnabon in the South Bend mall and some pretty hateful self commentary after finishing off a pack of 6.

If you want them for breakfast, make them the day before, refrigerate, and reheat in the oven the next morning. These are actually even better reheated, something about being in the fridge makes the goo even yummier! I accidentally cut mine too thin (3/4 inch thick, before rising), I recommend about 2 inches.



The rolls are easy:
Ingredients:
-Bread-
2 packs of yeast
1 cup milk or water
4 cups of flour
1 cup Brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp nutmeg or cardamon
1 tsp salt

-Filling-
1 cup of brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup butter

-Frosting-
equal parts cream cheese and butter
two parts powdered sugar to cream cheese and butter
lemon and vanilla extract to taste

Scald the milk, let cool to about 105 degrees, and then add the yeast and brown sugar and one cup flour. Fold together. Let the yeast sponge grow for 30 min or so in a warm place.

Once the yeast mix is a bit foamy, add the the butter (softened) and fold in the flour a little at a time. Use only enough to get the dough firm and just past sticky. Too much will dry it out. Fold in the salt and spices last. Kneed the heck out of it, 10 min in a mixer with a dough hook, 20 min by hand (if you are good at it, more if you are new to this). Form into a ball, and put into a greased bowl (roll it around a bit to coat the outside of the dough- this prevents a crust from forming). Cover with a loose towel. Let rise about 40 min in a warm place

Once dough has doubled in size, punch down and let rise an additional 30 min.

Once dough has again doubled in size, roll it out into a large rectangle. Cream together the filling ingredients and spread over the dough. The butter should be very soft, and using your hands works best.

Then roll the dough from the bottom long edge to the top. Once the dough is rolled, slice into 2in slices and place on a pan with plenty of room to rise and spread out. Put in a warm place and let rise for an hour.

I like to use an egg wash on the rolls, but this isn't strictly necessary.

Bake for about 1 hr, or until golden. I like to make additional filling on the stove by mixing another set of filling ingredients in a pan, adding just enough water to make things dissolve, and then poring it on top of the just-out-of-the-oven rolls.

To make the frosting, whip together frosting ingredients until fluffy, about 8-9 min in an electric mixer. I really like to add the lemon/vanilla extracts at this point (using lemon juice vice extract will negatively affect the texture of the frosting for this recipe by preventing it from getting a little bit of a butter-cream like shell on the outside). I put a LOT of this on the warm rolls, and viola, deliciousness!!

If you are refrigerating the rolls, you can make a simple glaze from powdered sugar and milk and poor it over the rolls (prevents them from drying out). Make the frosting and set aside. Once you are ready to reheat, add the frosting on top, pop them in the oven on low, and yum!