Roasted Red Peppers

I did not Photoshop this photo at all. Costco sells some brilliant red peppers. They sell brilliant everything, but this post is just about peppers. I learned how to roast red peppers by watching a youtube video about a year ago. Youtube is quite useful when cooking. My friend Adam was prepping for a date the other night and I directed him to the frugel chef youtube video on chicken marsala. Other than her Paula Dean obsession with adding pounds of butter, the video was quite helpful.  Ahh the internet, what in the world did we do without it.  Making your own roasted red peppers at home is actually quite simple,  but they make everything just a tad bit fancier.

Need to make an antipasta, add roasted red peppers. Perhaps you fancy a goat cheese and grilled chicken wrap? Roasted red peppers would go quite lovely with that. They are also terrific for a simple pasta salad, which is where these were heading.

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Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes

Last week Pat’s school was having a potluck.  He asked if I would mind making something.  Really?  Of course I wanted to make something.  I went back and forth trying to figure out what the perfect treat would be and finally settled on mini cupcakes. I’ve always thought that bite size sweets work really well at potlucks and parties.   It allows people to have something sweet, even if they’re full from all of the other food.

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Pink Lemonade Whoopie Pies

This past weekend was Pat’s grandfather’s 85th birthday.  I was very excited when I found out it was a pot luck.  I love sharing food with new people.  Pat suggested I make these chocolate caramel slices.  Pat suggests these bars for almost every occasion, but with good reason – they’re delicious, rich, and always a crowd pleaser.

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Chocolate Blackout Cake

Happy Birthday Arlene

We recently celebrated my aunt’s birthday.. (I won’t say which one) and when I found out what her favorite cake was, I had to do a little research. Chocolate Blackout Cake was made famous by a bakery in Brooklyn called Ebingers, that closed in 1972. Traditionally it is a chocolate cake, layered with chocolate pudding, frosted in pudding and covered in additional chocolate cake crumbs. It was named “Blackout” because of the wartime blackout drills, where windows and city lights were turned off or blacked out to prevent aerial spottings during the war.

I found a variety of recipes online claiming to be the original Ebinger’s recipe, so I chose the most widely cited one and it turned out great. I think the cake tasted better the next day, after the pudding had more time to set. You will need to set aside some time, because the pudding needs about 4 hours minimum to solidify. Because you cover it in cake crumbs it looks like a sloppy joe of a cake, but like sloppy joes, looks don’t mean anything. This dessert is really delicious and chocolatey.

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Korean Beef and the Hudson River Greenway

This week I was blessed with having four days off.  Tuesday was my third and since I’d already done most of my errands I had the entire day to devote to fun.  In the morning I finished an overdue library book, watched Food Network Star, and caught up on the food blogs I follow.  In the afternoon I decided to make a jelly roll cake filled with lime curd and blackberries.  I made my grocery list and headed to the fruit stand.  When I got outside though, I realized it was far too beautiful to spend the day inside.

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CSA Week 2 – That’s a lot of lettuce

Don’t get me wrong I’m still incredibly psyched about our CSA, but boy oh boy do we have a lot of lettuce to eat.  I’m eating lettuce like it’s  my job.  Luckily I really like salad.

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Cinnamon Almond Biscotti

Until last year I’d never eaten biscotti, let alone baked my own.  To be honest I didn’t really understand the point of biscotti.  It’s crunchy.  Crunchy cookies are almost always terrible. But then one day a coworker put out some biscotti.  I was having an afternoon sweets craving so I tried one.  It was actually really good.  My previous experience with crunchy cookies had always been over-baked cookies.  There is a definite taste difference between a charred chocolate chip cookie and a cookie that is purposely double cooked so it’s crispy.

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Cookie Dough Truffles

This weekend was my boyfriend and my 2nd anniversary.  I could have made him an elaborate dessert, but the reality is he doesn’t enjoy anything more than chocolate chip cookies.  But I make him chocolate chip cookies all the time.  For our anniversary it had to be something special.  These truffles were the perfect solution.  They satisfy his love of chocolate chip cookies, but were something a little bit different.

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CSA Week 1: Salad, More Salad, & Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Beautiful, right?  Last Thursday we got our first CSA basket: arugula, Boston lettuce, red leaf lettuce, spinach, Japanese salad turnips, french radishes, rhubarb and strawberries.  I was overjoyed as I was unpacking all of these fruits and veggies.  I immediately made us salad for dinner with the Boston lettuce because I suspected that since it’s the most delicate it would probably go bad first.  After dinner I washed and spun the remaining Boston lettuce, the red leaf lettuce, and the spinach.  The spinach was especially sandy so it took a few rinses to get it clean.  Once they were washed they went into large ziplocs for the week.  It require at least a half hour on Thursday to clean everything, but it has paid off since then.  For lunches and dinner I just throw a few toppings onto the greens and I’ve got a meal ready.

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BBQ Grilled Pizza

It looks fun doesn’t it?

About a year ago I heard from a fellow coworker that she had made pizza on the BBQ the previous weekend. I was very intrigued. About six months ago this book came across my desk at work Pizza on the Grill: 100 Feisty Fire-Roasted Recipes for Pizza & More. I thought perhaps the stars were aligning and grilled pizza pies were in my future. Luckily last weekend I had a group of hungry, willing and experimental eaters to test out my first attempt to Americanize this Italian classic. In reality, a grill is probably much closer in temperature and style to a pizza oven then you would ever get cooking a standard kitchen oven.

I had big plans Friday to pick up pizza dough from my favorite neighborhood spot, Rose & Joe’s Italian Bakery in Astoria. But alas, when I got off the subway Friday night, the bakery had sold out.  I luckily found that the supermarket near us sold their own pizza dough as well, so I grabbed 5 bags for ten people. Once I had bought the pizza dough it was important to get all the toppings. I bought a can of pureed tomatoes, added in garlic, basil, oregano and some rosemary and mixed. I also bought BBQ sauce, chicken, red onion, mushrooms, basil, fresh mozzarella, pepperoni, gouda, and regular shredded mozzarella.  I wanted to allow  my guests to decorate their own pizzas as they wished and split the pizza dough in halves, and kneaded and stretched out to small personal pan pizza size.

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