Italia at Home [Inspired by Gordon Ramsey]

 So lately I've been on a cooking kick. And because of this I have successfully devoured the 10 seasons of Hell's Kitchen I previous had not seen ( I watched 11 as it aired this year), and I also watched all of MasterChef this year. The one thing that Gordon seems to spend more time yelling about than anything else is Risotto.

Seriously, the man screams about it constantly. And I thought to myself "well, if he's so hell bent on everybody knowing how to make the shit, I will learn!"

Having NEVER attempted risotto in my life, and having only the brief knowledge of what I'd watched people cook on tv (and a glance at a few online recipes) I embarked on my risotto quest.

With this image firmly implanted in my mind:

I began

Mushroom Risotto with Caprese Salad

What you need:

Basmati Rice

Stock (chicken, vegetable, whatever)

Butter

Olive Oil

Mushrooms

Onions

Scallions

White Wine

Garlic

Salt

So I started with two pans the first with Basmati Rice (washed) and two ladles worth of vegetable stock. I then proceeded to add another ladle every time it didn't look 'wet' anymore while stirring.

In the other pan I sautéed olive oil, minced garlic, chopped onions, and scallions until they were caramelized.

I then put them in a separate container to the side.

In that same pan I then added 1/2 stick of butter, mushrooms (chopped) and sautéed

After they were cooked I then threw the onion/garlic/scallion mix back into the pan and stirred. I then topped it off with half a cup of white wine.

By this time my risotto finally looked fluffy (and didn't taste crunchy) 

I poured the contents of one pan into the other.

Stirred.

Vwallah!

It turned out PRETTY DAMN GOOD. I was proud.

Yes chef!

To die for tomato soup

So I've been very domestic lately with my new found lover boy. I've had the urge to cook and clean constantly and once again experiment with food.

So, not feeling 100% I wanted tomato soup. However, I'd rather die than eat that tomato paste in a can Campbell's crap filled with preservatives.

Here's what you need:

A dozen ripe tomatoes

Basil (fresh)

4 oz Cream Cheese (half package)

2 Tbs olive oil

1 large onion

2 cups (1/2 box) of vegetable stock (could also use chicken or beef)

1.5 Tbs minced garlic

Salt & Pepper to taste

Ok, easy peasy.

Get a big soup pot and put the stock in. Put on high while you chop tomatoes. I just diced mine.
Throw tomatoes into the broth
When they're both boiling turn down to medium
Put lid on

In a separate pan:
put olive oil in pan and let heat
chop large onion and add to pan with garlic
Reduce to medium and stir vigorously.

Once you start to get some color on your onions add about 2 leaves of finely chopped basil.
Reduce to med-low heat.

Let that cook down. (this takes maybe 2 minutes. Don't do it long enough to let anything burn)

Add the 1/2 package, 4 oz of cream cheese (can use full fat, 1/3 less fat, whatever) cubed or softened.

Stir and cook until thoroughly mixed.
Remove from heat.
Pour in tomato/broth mixture.
Stir until mixed.

I then gave two cranks on my salt mill
Then one on my pepper mill (i'm not a huge pepper person)
Put the top back on and set it between medium and medium low.
Cook for 45 minutes.

Should smell like tomato soup when you take it off. Everything should look like (slightly chunky) tomato soup. If it doesn't, put the lid back on and give it a few more minutes. Feel free to crank up the heat a little at the end if you need to. But make sure to stir if you do.

Finally, remove from heat. Take handheld blender (like the old-timey milkshake blenders) and blend the chunks of tomato until smooth.

I made crescents with fresh mozzarella inside because who wants tomato soup without a grilled cheese?

Cleaning Out, Making Food

So in an effort to have to move as little food as possible I'm trying to use up everything I can in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. So I decided to tackle two of the pinterest recipes that I had pinned forever ago with that in mind:

First...

http://pinterest.com/marlipaige/recipees/

That's my board for all things food.

Next, the actual recipes:

http://pinterest.com/pin/141089400796337077/

Crock Pot Pizza Casserole

Gonna be honest, I cheated. I didn't want to wait for a crock pot so I cooked my pasta, cooked down the meat some (but not all the way through), mixed together with onions and tomato sauce (I'm not a pepper or pepperoni person), and then I put all of them in little baking dishes and put mozarella on top. Then I just popped them in the oven while my cake (next recipe) was baking).

http://pinterest.com/pin/141089400799398750/

Berry Bubbles Cake

I used about 2 cups of frozen berries, 1 cake mix, and 1 bottle of the blackberry flavored "sparkling ice" because it's what I had here in my house. 

350 for 30 minutes just like a normal cake. And it was still liquidy. So I left it another 30 minutes....and....it still wasn't cooked all the way through. But it was mostly cooked just a little gooey in the middle, and since it had nothing like eggs in it I didn't mind. I actually sort of liked the gooey center. I melted some ice cream in there and just made it super gooey. It was marvelous. Reminded me a lot of my Nanan's "dump cake" that had pears and blueberries growing up. I really loved it.

Fake-a-mole!

So normally if I were making guacamole where I'd go to the store and buy everything I needed it would include:
2-3 avocados
a jar of mild salsa (wouldn't use the whole jar, but you can't buy 1/4 jar)
lowfat sour cream
a lime
minced garlic
tube of cilantro paste
baked scoops

However, as I had two avocados in my fridge that I needed to use and was looking for a snack option I decided to take a stab at what i'm lovingly calling fake-a-mole.

2 Avocados peeled, sliced, and smashed with a potato smasher
1/2 cup of nonfat greek yogurt
1 lime (squeezed then pulp added to mix)
2 small onions (diced, sweated with garlic, and added to mixture)
1 tbsp minced garlic (which I cooked down with the onions)
a hearty sprinkle of seasoning salt
wheat thins

Without adding pre-made salsa it keeps that nice green color. The texture is amazing. The bite from the greek yogurt is exactly what the very mild avocados need. And guys, I've gotta be honest, this may be my new recipe for how I make guac. And I may never eat it with anything but wheat thins again.

This is SO much healthier than the way I normally make it. Everything is whole ingredients. Most of it is fresh. And it was SO easy. So, hooray for fake-a-mole!

Squash and Onions

A summertime staple around the Doss household was always squash and onions. They used to come straight from the garden to the table, but being a city girl now I have to buy them from a store and cook them myself. However, they're still a favorite meal of mine.

Ingredients:

1 white onion chopped

2.5 squash sliced thinly

2 tbs olive oil

garlic salt

I put the olive oil and onions in a skillet and get it nice and hot. I sauté the onions on medium high until they begin to caramel. I reduce heat to medium and add in the sliced squash. I then put a lid overtop and let me them sweat. Occasionally take the spatula and stir them around so they don't stick and add in your garlic salt as you do. They're ready when the edges of the squash begin to brown.

Marlipaige grade: A

Ease of creation: Easy/Medium

Total Time: 20 minutes

Infused Waters

Infused Waters.

These ideas come from two separate pins:

On my Exercise/In Shape Board:

Detox Water
http://pinterest.com/pin/141089400797584115/

And on the Recipees board:

Flavored Water
http://pinterest.com/pin/141089400798309636/



So I looked at these recipes and decided to do one straight:
Watermelon Rosemary

It's very refreshing. Simply line the bottom with cubes of watermelon (bought pre-cubed at publix) and springs of Rosemary, fill with ice, then with water, leave in fridge overnight and you have a super bright tasting water with hints of its components.


My second is based on a drink I had at PF Chang's. I always go there for my birthday dinner and I had a strawberry, cucumber, limeade. So between that, looking at these waters (and the detox water), I arrived at my

Sweet Tart Detox Water

It contains a handful of frozen strawberries, lime wedges, sprigs of mint, and slices of cucumber (about 3/4 of a large cucumber sliced). Then filled with ice then water and left overnight. You definitely get the sweet notes of the strawberry, the tart of the lime, the cooling of the cucumber and the herbal minty mint. It's really nice.

Both of these were so easy. Prep time was 5 minutes (after the shopping), and then you can drink them immediately, but if you let them sit overnight they taste better. This is a super awesome alternative to soda or sugary drinks. The natural sweetness of the fruit is presence in the water without adding calories!


Marlipaige grade: A
Ease of creation: Easy!
Total Time: 5 minutes (then however long you'd like to let them sit to soak up that flavor)

Cauliflower Pizza

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

As found on my "Exercise / In Shape" board which is full of exercise and healthy alternatives to nommies.

http://pinterest.com/pin/141089400797136784/


That picture makes it look like the most delicious, crispy pizza crust. Not exactly like dough, but similar enough in its crispy thinness that it could easily be taken as dough. So out I went to buy my ingredients and whip this up.


The "dough"
1 head of cauliflower grated via cheese grater
2 eggs
2 cups mozzarella cheese
basil (I used paste)

Mix the ingredients together by hand. Spread into 4 mini-pizzas. Cook for 10 minutes by itself at 400 degrees.


Pull out of oven.

The "topping"

I used spicy marinara (premade, bottled)
Thin sliced Squash (yellow)
Thin sliced Zucchini
Mushrooms (sliced)
Onions (chopped)
Ricotta Cheese mixed with basil paste (1 cup)
Sprinkle Mozzarella on top for true "pizza" feel

Cook 18 more minutes.

This was the result. It looks maybe like pizza if pizza exploded in the oven.

It tastes....nothing like pizza. Even a little. It was delicious, don't get me wrong. I loved it. But it wasn't pizza. It didn't come close to pizza. This wasn't even pizza's ugly step-cousin. This was just good baked veggies with cheese and sauce. Which...there's nothing wrong with that...so long as you don't expect pizza.


Marlipaige rating: B (A for taste, but C for deceiving me into thinking it was Pizza)
Effort: Easy/Medium
Total time: 35 minutes (the biggest time consumers besides cook time are grating cauliflower and dicing veggies)

Twisted Good

My boyfriend and I took a trek up to Blue Ridge for Apple Picking season and got some "Mercier's Honey Mustard Pretzel Dipping Sauce." So naturally, we needed to make pretezels to try it out.

On my recipe board http://pinterest.com/marlipaige/recipees/ I had taken a pretzel recipe pinned from his cousin http://pinterest.com/pin/141089400797424356/

It was fairly easy and straightforward. Basically, you take all the ingredients, blend it together (though we used a hand dough kneader and not a big stand mixer)

After completely mixing the ingredients, you just coat the bowl with cooking spray (we used the pinterest 5:1 homemade olive oil and water kind instead of pam) and make sure the dough is coated too.  Then you seal it in the bowl with cling or press and seal wrap and let it rise for 45 minutes.

At this point we start to preheat my baking stone (it's a double baking and grilling stone the best gift EVER) while the dough is rising.

Now it's not necessary that you use a hand kneader or a baking stone, but I think it made a lot of difference.


Once it had risen we separated it into 8 even pieces (Andy just made it like a pizza dough and used a pizza cutter). Then we balled each of the 8 pieces. Then we oiled down the counter and began to roll them out. What I found was the easiest thing to do was:

1. Take the ball and make it an oblong shape in your hands
2. Put it down and use a glass to roll it into a long snake
3. Fold the excess width back into the snake, turn over, and roll again.

You repeat this until it's about 1.5-2 feet long. Then I would twist it to keep it together, long, and sturdy. Then fold the pretzel shape and really push in the edges. If you don't REALLY work to keep it together it will fall apart during the next part.

You drop it into boiling water for 30 seconds. Pull it out, coat it with egg wash, re-salt it, and pop it onto the baking stone.

As you can see some of them turned out beautiful and some of them turned out funky looking. That was just trial and error of the whole pressing in the edges to keep the shape. However, they all turned out golden brown and DELICIOUS! We each ate 2 and then froze the rest for later.

Trial and error PINTOPIA

So I heard the other day of a blogger who keeps track of everything that she pins on pinterest that she then tries out. She shows step by step how she followed the directions, and how it went. And I thought to myself "WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT!?!"So...we'll see how that goes. I will probably throw in individual projects that I didn't get off pinterest as well. I will probably just add those to pinterest for others.

So! Let the PINTOPIA begin!


http://pinterest.com/marlipaige/