Beet and Goat Cheese Tart

So today at work they had a farmer’s market and I decided to go see what was up.  I scored some beets and other veggies and didn’t even have to go to store!  This was a plus in my lazy book.  The problem is that I had to figure out what to make with this stuff that I didn’t really have a plan for.

I love me some beet and goat cheese salad, but I wasn’t feeling salad so I tried to figure out what else we could combine this delightful combination in.  I discovered a beet and goat cheese tart at Epicurious.  Tarts take a while b/c of all the dough making, blind baking, then custard baking and whatnot.  But since most of it is inactive time I went for it.  I still had to go to the store but since it was for two of my favorite things, goat cheese and wine, I was OK with it.  And I would get to use my nearly new Cuisinart food processor!

Food processor:

that's right, there's an AZ cutting board in the back

It was practically gleaming when I put it on the counter!  I was so psyched to make a dough not by hand! Apparently I haven’t used this baby nearly enough though. First of all, this thing when put together is sturdy.  I was scared to break it using my brute force trying to get the top off but after a struggle I was successful.  I looked in, thought “hm, looks like food would go in that hole in the middle” decided it didn’t matter and dumped in my flour and salt. 

What do ya know when I finally wrestled the top back on and locked it and pushed start I heard some whirring but definitely no processing. 

Did you know you need to put the blade in to make the thing work?  Yeah.

This made me feel stupid.  But I did remember I had a sweet blade organizer that I was excited to open up and it even had a dough blade.  After dumping out contents, putting in blade, and re-dumping back in the bowl things worked much better.

Tart Baking:

YUM

This was pretty standard and uneventful.  Roasting and peeling beets is always a fun and very red process.  I added beet greens to the mixture so I wouldn’t waste food and b/c it can’t hurt to have more green in your diet. I also omitted the walnuts from the original recipe.  (Something about walnuts in a quiche-like food didn’t sound good to me.)I also used half the amount of goat cheese as the original recipe called for; I started to put it all but it seemed kind of excessive.  Last substitution: I used a dough recipe that I’ve been successful with before instead of the one from the website.

I've got to say the finished product did not look like what I was expecting.  I don't know why it looks exactly like what beets and goat cheese would after being baked for 30 min.  Either way it's good.




Voila!

 

Beet and Goat Cheese Tart

2 to 3 small beets

1 tablespoon olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons dry white wine

3 large eggs

3/4 cup heavy cream (I used half & half and milk)
2 ounces fresh goat cheese

Crust

1 ½ Cups Flour
½ Tsp. Salt
3 Tbl. Crisco
6 Tbl. Butter
¼ cup water

Preparation

Heat oven to 400°F. Wash the beets and dry them with a paper towel. Roast about an hour until easily pierced by a fork, about and hour.

Peel the beets and cut them into a medium dice.

Heat the butter in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion, season with a little salt, and cook until the onion is just tender, about 7 minutes. Add in the beet greens and then the white wine and cook for another minute.

Heat the oven to 350°F. Toss the beets and onion together and put them into the blind-baked tart shell.  (Bake the tart shell on it's own at 400 for 15-20 min till golden brown.)

Whisk together the eggs and milk/cream, season well with salt and pepper, and pour over the beats and onions.  Top with dabs of goat cheese to your liking and bake for about 30-35 min.





Meatloaf with Asian flavors

Last week I was looking for recipes that would fulfill two criteria: I could make them ahead of time and bake later in the week and I would have leftovers for one lunch box. I was flipping through my magazine recipe index and came across a Rachael Ray full of meatloaf recipes. I pulled the issue out for a closer look and decided on an Asian meatloaf for a couple reasons. One, it used turkey meat. Two, it had chili paste in the glaze. Three, I had just about all the ingredients already in my pantry.

This came together very quickly:

The recipe calls for a small grated onion but I had a pretty large one so I used half and grated it on a micro-plane. I have a feeling the results were a much finer grate than was intended but truthfully the onion mush incorporated into the meat really well and I think helped keep the turkey meat moist.

1.5 pounds ground turkey, onion mush, 1 clove garlic chopped, 5 oz. can water chestnuts chopped, 1/4 c. soy sauce, 1 egg, and 1/4 scallions chopped into a mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper and mix! But not too much. Just enough to get everything squashed together and the egg holding everybody in place.

Now, bringing in that single girl serving mentality I decided to form 2 loaves out of this mix so that I could put on in the freezer for a lazy day. I mixed up the glaze which was 1/2 c. ketchup, 2 T chili paste, and 1 T. light brown sugar and spread half on the loaf I was planning on baking and saved the other half to put on towards the end of baking.

So into the oven at 400 for about 50 minutes. I shaved off 10ish minutes of the original baking time because it was a smaller loaf. I added the additional glaze with about 10 to go.

I was incredibly happy with the final product. It was moist and full of flavor. There were little crunchy spots because of the water chestnuts (which I love) and the sweet and spicy glaze was delicious. I think next time I will add some red pepper flakes into the meat and little more chili paste in the glaze just for some more zing but overall I was definitely diggin this meatloaf!

I served with roasted cauliflower that I covered in the extra glaze...yummm. PS I know this is not a beautiful food photo but whatever I was mid meal when I remembered to take it!

It has been too long...

Over the past 36 months I have been working full time, completing my Master's degree, and doing my best to maintain a life filled with fun. Part of that fun included starting this blog with my Biggy Pop almost 2 years ago. I love cooking and baking and sharing my creations and total failures with my computer screen but other things have certainly taken priority over new posts.

Don't fret! I can see the concern in your face as you read this.  I'm not waxing poetic in a farewell tour but instead just the opposite! With graduation behind me (Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!) I finally have time to really do things for me again like scrapbook, and blog, and even run for fun! Jo Anna and I will be running in a 5k in Disney World in November and I can't wait! Naturally it is the Epcot Food and Wine Festival run (seriously, we really love the food world...) so we will be sure to write about the good things we find to taste.

So anywho, all this brings me to my dinner creation tonight: noodle-less eggplant lasagna. Not only do I have a great recipe and cooking experience to share, I also dreamed up what I would like to create next for this blog! More of that to come but first...

Eggplant. Mom might disagree with me but as far as I am concerned I ate my first piece of eggplant when I was 25 years old when the ladies I work with brought a dish for a potluck. It is not something I ever saw Mom or Grandma(s) cook. I certainly do not blame them, the mountains of KY and the peidmont of SC are not exactly known for eggplant dishes, let's be real. Okra? yes. Grits? mhmm. molassey pie on your drop biscuits? damn skippy. But eggplant? yeah, no. So it is only recently I have been dabbling in eggplant dishes and I have to say, I am a fan! I have fried it for stir fry and roasted it for the top of baked ziti, so I was comfortable with this lasagna.

 I am more or less following the Sugar Busters diet and while whole wheat pasta is cool, I felt eliminating the pasta all together would be even better, hence the search for eggplant lasagna. I decided on this recipe but really did make quite a few adjustments.

Step one is handling the eggplant. First peel it with your trusty vegetable peeler, nothing fancy to see here. Next, cut off the top and bottom so you have flat ends. The recipe suggests 1/4 inch thick, lengthwise slices to mimic noodles. I bought a mandolin not long ago and this was an excellent time to justify the purchase! Now, I do feel the need to comment here on safety. I am the WORST with knives and the mandolin is like a rack of knives on steroids. I am 2 for 3 on slicing myself on this beast but luckily I still have all my fingertips (more or less after tonight's slip) and have not needed stitches. This being said, use the damn food guard it comes with. I thought it was too awkward with the lengthwise eggplant and it resulted in me slicing off a few layers of skin...so I wised up and then things went great! If you don't have a mandolin you can obviously slice up the eggplant with a sharp knife, just to try to keep your slices consistent. 

Set the oven at 425, spray cookie sheets with olive oil, salt and pepper all the slices that are in a single layer (took me three cookie sheets) and roast 5 minutes. Take them out, flip them over, season, and bake 5 more minutes.

In the meantime you can start your meat sauce.  I diced up 1 yellow onion and started that in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of my 12 inch cast iron. I kept the heat pretty low because I was chopping and adding along the way and I did not want things burning. Next came 4 small cloves of garlic.

For the meat, I chose to use 1.5 pounds ground turkey and .5 pound mild Italian sausage (If they had had hot at the store that would have been the choice). I added this in and turned up the heat just a smidge to get things cooking. Next comes one red bell pepper chop chopped, and then 5 baby bella mushrooms sliced.

The recipe calls for a 28 oz can tomato sauce and a can of diced tomatoes, but suggests using 3 roma tomatoes in lieu of the diced can to eliminate added sugar. I found this to be a delightful suggestion and took that route. So, in goes tomato sauce and diced roma tomatoes. At this point I also shook in 2+ tbsp italian seasoning (Giada's Tuscan herb mix to be exact, thanks Ma!), a good teaspoon plus of red chili pepper flakes, salt and pepper. I mixed it all up and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

The last piece of any lasagna is the cheese. I used 1 3/4 cups ricotta (recipe called for 2 cups and the small tub was 1/4 cup short. Did not want half a container of ricotta sitting in the fridge so whatever), 2 eggs, 6 fresh basil leaves, 3 scallions, and about a half cup of shredded mozzarella. I could tell you this was to offset the lack of ricotta but in truth it was a mistake because I was listening to the World Game on tv and not paying a whole lot of attention. I can assure you this made 0 difference in the final product.

With everything made it's time to layer. Meat sauce, eggplant noodles, ricotta mix, mozzarella, Parmesan, repeat.  Oven set to 375, cover in foil, bake an hour. Uncover, finish under broiler 5ish minutes til brown. I put the lasagna in the fridge before baking because I did not want to eat it until a later day.  I can honestly say I did not miss the pasta in this dish at all. The sauce was spicy and full of flavor and the cheese mixture just creamy and delicious.

Now, back to my 'Ah ha!' moment for this blog. As I looked at this beautiful but giant lasagna sitting on my counter cooling before going into the fridge for later, I calculated how many dinners and lunches this was going to make for me this week. The answer is a lot. And as good as it is I do not want to eat only eggplant lasagna all week. So I think my new mission is going to be finding great recipes like this one, making the full size first to get flavors right, and then adapting them to a single girl recipe.  You can't always just halve a recipe and it work out. Wish me luck, and I will keep you posted along the way...

Full Ingredient List

2 eggplants, sliced 1/4'' lengthwise
salt and pepper

1 yellow onion, diced
4 small cloves garlic, diced
1.5 pound ground turkey
.5 pound ground italian sausage
1 red bell pepper, diced
5 baby bella mushrooms, sliced
3 roma tomatoes, diced
28 oz. can tomato sauce
2 heaping T italian seasoning mix
1+ t red pepper flakes
salt and pepper

1 3/4 c. ricotta
2 eggs
6+ leaves fresh basil
3 scallions, chopped finely

3ish cups grated mozzarella
1 cup grated Parmesan

Roasted pork and fennel

So…it’s been a while. My cooking experience tonight indicates I need to hone my skillz a bit more.  I decided last week in an effort to have a healthier lifestyle I needed to cook more.  Good intentions! Well the week flew by and I had meals like hummus with a side of peanuts.  Even the grocery store lady laughed at that purchase.  So fine, I’ll cook.

I found this lovely recipe for roasted pork and fennel. I heart me some fennel and happened to have a pork tenderloin hanging around in the freezer.

I have to say that this recipe lies.  There is no way in the universe a tenderloin will cook through at 350 degrees in 15 minutes.  I cut into that baby and decided that no matter how impatient and hungry I was, I wasn’t willing to chance a suspect, too pink piece of pork.

In my impatience I decided 400 was a better temp, cooked for another 10 minutes and let it rest.  It was still a bit pink but I think I’ve read something that it’s ok nowadays to eat pork that’s not like a piece of leather so I went with it.  (I also still seem to be alive so living proof it won’t kill you)

Turns out it was pretty delicious.  I love fennel (did I mention that earlier?) and it went nicely together.  I also failed at buying something to eat on the side so green beans it was.  I again failed at that because while pondering whether I was willing to eat undercooked pork I forgot they were going and they were a little overdone.  Next time I’ll remember to go to a store that has fingerling potatoes.  P.S. what kind of store doesn’t have fingerling potatoes b/c I’m clearly too lazy to visit more than one in an effort to make a well-rounded dinner.

Little does not seem excited about this dinner but I swear fennel is much more mellow when cooked and browned and delicious.  Since the recipe calls for wine it's also a good idea to drink some of it because while you're waiting for your failed, undercooked pork to get to the right temp you can entertain yourself.

Bottom line: good recipe, just cook longer and use more lemon juice than it recommends because lemon juice is also delicious.  I’ll stick to baking, seems to be my sweet spot ;)

 

oh. and no pics because I forgot and my food never seems to be particularly picturesque anyway. Who needs to plate things pretty??

Whole Wheat Pizza

This Christmas I received a cookbook made especially for Kitchen Aid stand mixers. We all know how much I love and utilize Gladys, so I was pretty stoked to see what else I could do with her.  The cookbook is a bit of an advertisement for the multitude of attachments you can buy, however, there are a lot of fun ideas in there.
I'm currently on a diet that eliminates enriched white flours so I am always on the lookout for whole wheat recipes. I came across a grilled pizza recipe in the book that is topped with just cooked grape tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. I figured just swapping whole wheat flour was a terrible idea so I then started looking for a whole wheat pizza crust recipe.  I also decided grilling outside in the 15 degree weather was an equally terrible idea so I essentially combined elements of two recipes and added my own two cents to make a whole wheat cheese pizza.

The crust recipe came from a blog called Tablespoon. It looks like this:
2.5 c. whole wheat flour
2.25 t. active dry yeast
3/4 t. salt
1 c. warm water
1 T. EVOO
1 T. sugar

I realize now as I'm typing this I just assumed one packet of yeast was the right amount, however upon inspection I do believe I should have used two. This explains why it took so long to rise and didn't exactly double in size....

Anywho, Combine yeast (turns out 2 packets) and warm water with 1 t. sugar. Let sit and get foamy.

Dough ball, covered in plastic wrap

I used Gladys for every part of the dough so I combined 2 c flour and salt and remaining sugar in the bottom of her bowl, made a well, and then poured in the yeast when it was ready and the EVOO.  Using the paddle I mixed until combined then switched out the paddle for the dough hook. "Kneading" on speed 2, I added flour a T at a time until the dough pulled completely away from the sides of the bowl and wasn't sticky to the touch. I turned the dough out into a greased bowl, covered with plastic wrap, and let sit on top of the oven for almost 2 hours even though the recipe said 45 minutes-one hour.

Dough rolled out on the pizza stone

The dough did rise but like I said it was supposed to have more yeast so it didn't get super fluffy. I punched it down, made a disk, and rolled a circle with surprising ease. This is usually hard for me, as we have learned with my pie crust debacles...

In the mean time this is how I made my sauce (pieces from the Kitchen Aid book, some from me:
1 pint grape tomatoes
1 can roasted garlic tomato paste
1 clove minced garlic
1/4 t. dry basil
1/8 t. salt
1/2 t. red pepper flakes

Tomatoes and garlic in the oil

I heated about 1 T. EVOO in a skillet over medium high heat then added in the garlic. After a minute or two I added everything else but the tomato paste.  Once the tomatoes were cooked down significantly I added the tomato paste. I let this simmer on low heat for over an hour while the dough was rising, adding about 1/ c. water twice to keep it from reducing too much.

After I rolled the dough I let it rest ab out 10 minutes before topping it with the sauce, fresh mozzarella rounds, shredded mozzarella and a few pieces of salami.
I baked it for 12 minutes on a pizza stone in a 500 degree oven and then let it sit for 15 minutes to settle itself.

The pizza turned out to be quite delicious.  The crust wasn't chewy or tough which can sometimes happen with whole wheat. I am now curious what it is like with the right amount of yeast so I will probably be making this again very soon.  The red pepper flakes give the sauce a bit of zip and the fresh mozzarella really set up nicely on top. For me to be able to keep pizza in my diet is very exciting, and for it to be quite tasty is another solid bonus!