Main Course

Blue Cheese Crackers

- Elspeth Leave a comment

I was looking for cupcake recipes this past weekend (Seth and Mia’s wedding is coming up! Cupcakes for all!) and stumbled upon dear Nigella’s Irish Blue Cheese Crackers.

Dear Nigella does seem to have a tiny issue with being a little, ah, forthcoming. But by gum the lady does know how to make a mean cracker.

I thought this would be a nice treat for my coworkers, who just spent a week training strange East Coast people in D.C. Poor souls need something comforting to help them forget the bad weather and flirty females!

You will need:
3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (I used Irish Cashel)
1 stick butter
1 egg yolk
3/4 c flour
1/4 c cornmeal (Nigella calls for blue cornmeal, but the only way that would happen in my house is if the yellow kind grew mold)
Pinch salt

Cut up the butter and let it soften to a seriously mold-able substance.

Add the blue, erring on the side of more.

To avoid getting blue cheese all over your fingers, flake it off the main hunk with a paring knife:

Slap the yolk into the bowl, but reserve the white for brushing later. The crackers, not your hair.

Here’s where I ran into trouble, because I lack a certain amount of patience and didn’t feel like letting the butter soften. I had no choice but to crank up “Money Maker” on the old iPod and really put some serious effort into crafting a homogenous mixture out of what felt like hardened cement. All worth it, in the end!

Add the flour, cornmeal, and salt and mix together.

Don’t bother using a spoon; just go at it with your hands, like some sort of animal. Doubtful that an animal would embark on a cracker-making extravaganza, but oh well.

Lump o’ dough. Flatten into a disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

When it’s ready, preheat your oven and dust work surface with flour.

Roll the dough out to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. It will be fairly crumbly, so just mash any stray bits back into the dough.

Using your favorite cookie cutter or the top of a glass, cut out all the dough. It should fill one baking sheet because they do not have to be far apart.

Brush the tops with the remaining egg white and bake for 10-15 minutes.

They will bubble from the butter and egg white. When they are toasty brown, take them out and CHOMP!

I thought they were very tasty, but am thinking of experimenting with soaking the cornmeal before hand. For my taste, it came out a little too noticeable. Perhaps cutting it back a couple of tablespoons and subbing a bit more flour would do the trick.

They are flaky and chewy, with the perfect hit of blue cheese. I saw Nigella recommending to smear them with more cheese, but I feel that would be overkill.

Nom..nom..NOM!

Gnocchi

- Elspeth 2 Comments

It’s less boring than it sounds. My trusty associates and I decided to embark on an adventure of epic proportions for this week’s culinary delight: Gnocchi.

Topped with Tomato-Cream sauce and Arugula. Major noms!


I know what you’re thinking: WAY too difficult, especially when you can get it premade in stores! Duh, Elspeth. Duh.

But this is a great dish to make with people you like (not recommended for people you hate, who might get a hot potato to the face) at interactive dinner parties and family soirees. Again, I know what you’re thinking: what if I don’t like my family?

That’s another fish to fry.

I’m going to leave the Tomato-Cream sauce for another post, since the gnocchi is somewhat labor intensive and will take my full attention here. It could use some mild tweaking, but even more important is the fact that I didn’t take enough pictures to demonstrate properly…oops!

So ready, set, NOM!

You will need:
2 lbs russet potatoes, rinsed (you will be removing the skins, so don’t stress yourself about scrubbing the living daylights out of the poor spuds)
1.25-2 cups flour
1 t salt

Bake the potatoes in a 400 degree oven for 45min-1 hr, until you can skewer them easily with a knife or samurai sword.

Using a reliable oven mitt, a paring knife, and some dexterity, remove the skins and discard. Press the tatoes through a ricer or mash them with a smush-masher-thing.

A ricer is the best option because it gives you the fluffiest, lightest result; however, not everyone is as well-prepared as my friend Lauren with kitchen gadgets, so don’t fret if you are missing this piece of equipment. Spontaneity is always fun in the kitchen!

Like when Luci demonstrated, for our pre-gnocchi snack, how good traditional bruschetta can be with a little melted mozzerella and sauteed tomato-mixture:

From scary/sassy…

To tasty:

Mmmm a sea of fresh basil and yummies.

Back to the tots!

Spread out on a cookie sheet and let them cool for about 15 minutes, until you are able to touch them without reaching for the aloe with tears in your eyes.

Take this opportunity to get a big pot of water on the stove and light a fire under that sucker. Salt the water liberally.

Sprinkle 1 1/4 cups flour and the salt over the potato mash and mix together with your hands, until it forms a cohesive mass. Do NOT over-knead!

When your hands are full of gummy, messy potato dough you can watch as your friend takes the last bruschetta:

Wipe back tears as she gives you a mocking, but strangely winning, smirk:

What. A. Jerk.

So now you’ve got a pile of dough. Congratulations.

If it is excessively sticky you’ll want to add some more flour. We ended up using about 1.75 cups of flour, plus more for dusting the work surface.

Take a pinch of dough (3/4 inch ball) and throw it in the water. When it rises to the top, remove it with a slotted spoon and run a taste-test. If it is too gummy or mushy you should add more flour to your dough (a couple of tablespoons). If it’s perfect, then proceed to the next step.

Now for the fun part!

Grab about 1 cup of dough and lightly smush it with your hands so it is a cohesive lump. Working from the center of the lump out, start rolling the dough into a long rope. You will have to evenly apply pressure with your fingers and move your hands along the rope so that it’s not fat and ugly on one end.

You should end up with a bunch of ropes that are about 3/4 inch thick. Cut the ropes into 3/4-1inch pieces.

Now comes the part that takes a bit of practice. Take a fork in your non-dominant hand and hold the gnocchi at the base of the prongs with the middle section of your dominant-hand thumb. Roll the gnocchi towards the edge of the prongs so you create ridges on one side and a little dent from the tip of your thumb. This is the “sauce catcher”.

As you will see during the consumption portion of the meal, this sauce catcher detail is key!

Place the gnocchi on baking sheets lined with kitchen towels, but keep them apart so they don’t stick together. This recipe yields about 3 baking trays worth.

Aren’t they cute? Take this moment to bask in how awesome you are for creating such a wonderful dish.

Turn the boiling water down so there are no bubbles– this will prevent the gnocchi from rising to the top too soon. Add about 1/3 of the batch to the pot and remove them with the slotted spoon ONLY when they rise to the top, about 1-2 minutes.

Place in shallow bowl (it’s a good idea to warm the bowl in a 170 degree oven to help keep the little darlings toasty).

Continue this process until all the gnocchi are cooked.

Top with your favorite sauce and some cheese. Enjoy!!

A good variation is to use half russets and half sweet potatoes, then top with a butter-sage sauce. You can add a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg to the dough to increase the awesomeness.

NOM!…nom nom nom

Butternut Squash Risotto

- Elspeth Leave a comment

“Rice is nice…but liquor is quicker!” Today, you get the best of both worlds with some tasty Saffron and Squash Risotto. A touch above easy but nothing too complicated, with a very comforting and creamy result:

I had this all by itself (a horrid thought to you raging carnivores out there) with a lovely glass of wine. Beringer Pinot Noir, if you must know. I don’t know if you’re supposed to have risotto with red, white, or grappa, but this sounded tasty.

I don’t know about you people, but I have always found rice to be a tad intimidating. Perhaps this is because my parents always argued over how to cook it:

“Why are you lifting up the lid? I told you that Grandma NEVER touched the lid until after 20 minutes! Has it been 20 minutes? Well? Has it?”
“I’m just checking to see how it’s going! I’ve never even heard of such a thing! Your mother isn’t always right, you know.”
“Excuse me? She’s a SAINT! How dare you! Your rice is doomed and it’s all your fault.”

You get the point, but they could go on for an hour about that rice. Inevitably, the poor grains didn’t always make it out alive.

It probably didn’t help that we small babes would hover around and check all the pots when my stepdad wasn’t looking. Poor guy didn’t even see it coming.

I’ve now discovered that, for the most part, rice is incredibly easy. And, better yet, you can do so much more than just throw it in a pot with some H2O and wait for your mother to tell you that you’re doing it all wrong!

So come along, friends. Let’s explore this dish without all the yelling.

You will need:

1 onion (Red, white, yellow, whatever your preference)
3 cloves garlic (or more, depending on how many vampires you’re trying to ward off)
1/2 a medium-sized butternut squash
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, pummeled into dust with your mortar and pestle
5-6 cups chicken broth
2 cups arborio rice
1/2 c white wine
1/2 stick butter
1.5 c shredded parm
Salt + Pepper to taste

Take your onion…

…show it who’s boss:

Show the garlic, too, while you’re at it. You need to make an example out of these fools or else all the sprouting root things will think they can just walk all over you.

Now, here’s the really crafty part: shred the butternut. So innovative! So creative! So not my idea! Thanks to my friend Lydia, whose Italian heritage gave her a one-up here and who gave me the idea. If the butternut was left in chunks it might not cook enough with the rice or you’d have to cook it separately, which takes all the fun/flavor out of the risotto.

So from this….

(eek!)
To this:
Word of caution: don’t shred the whole squash. The narrow top half wielded almost 3.5 cups of shredded squash, which turned out to be perfect. Any more and you’ll be asking “would you like some rice with your squash?” No bueno.
Throw a heavy-bottomed pot (I used my 5 qt Le Creuset, which was almost too small) with 1/4 c olive oil over medium-high heat. When it’s nice and toasty, toss in the onions and garlic.
Saute for a few minutes until soft, then add the squash.
Continue cooking for a few minutes and add the rice.
Stir until all the juices coat the rice, make a well in the center, and add the wine.
Let it cook off for a few minutes before you slowly add the broth. You want to add enough to just cover the rice, but without giving it everything you’ve got in one go. The idea is to keep it barely submerged until it’s pretty much done.
It should look like this most of the time. You can add the saffron at any time.
You want to keep it on medium heat and stir it very often so the rice doesn’t get any change to stick to the pan. It should take 15-20 minutes to cook through. Give it a taste, and when it’s almost soft enough to be done you want to stop adding liquid but keep the heat on for a few more minutes. You want it to be creamy and very “wet” looking.
If you get concerned and think “Oh golly, is it done? Do I stop cooking? Should I keep going?” Stop having a panic attack and give it a taste. This is your dinner, so just stop cooking when it’s a consistency that works for your taste buds!
Now throw in some butter
And butter’s best friend, cheese:
Give it a good stir so everything gets incorporated and SHAZAM! You’ve got yourself some tasty lovin’.
Enjoy, people of the world. Enjoy.
NOM NOM NOM!