The Pursuit of Tastiness

Tarted Beets

Recently I have been on a canning mission, and this got me to Larriland Farms to pick my own berries.  And what was directly between blueberry and raspberry bushes?  A strech of leafy beets.  I had never seen a beet growing, and would have imagined the beet well nestled underground, but actually when they are ready, they kind of have shimmied up a bit, so you can see the top quarter of the beet poking out of the ground.  So it's pretty easy to judge which ones will be a good size before you grab the leaves and yank. 

So when the lovely Laura was in town for lunch, I had beets and looked in the fridge to find a pre-made pie crust and half a hunk of feta.  Hmm, if I google these three things, what pops up? the Beet-Feta tart at Orangette of course :)

I must say, I was a bit hesitant, but this is good.  So good that I packed up most of leftovers from lunch to have the same night in picnic form.  These two slivers are all that remained when I remembered to photograph the delish dish, so don't blame the tart, blame the chef. 

By the way, I served this with a simple salad of spinach, blueberries and almonds with a lemon vinegrette and the colors of all this were beautiful together, and the taste too!

Tarted Beets, serves 6-8, adapted from Molly at Orangette

3 medium beets, roasted in 375 oven for an hour and then peeled

1 pie crust, make your own or pre-made, baked in a 9 inch pan (cover with foil and add dry beans or pie weights when you bake to prevent the crust from puffing up) for 15 minutes in 350 oven

2 eggs

4 oz feta

3/4 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon herbes de provence, crumbled (if you dont have this spice mix, thyme would be a good substitute)

pinch of salt

 slice beets about 1/4 inch wide and place on cooked pie crust, try not to overlap, but fill in as much of the bottom as you can.  In a medium bowl whisk egg, milk, crumbled cheese and spices.  Pour over beets and put in 350 oven for 40 minutes (or more, you want the filling to have set). Remove from oven and let sit 10 minutes.  This can be served warm or cold, either is great.  Enjoy!

Creamy Carrot Calzones

  This recipe sounds kinda weird, right?  I mean, I love alliteration as much as the next gal, but actual carrots, in a calzone?  Obviously this is the work a crazy diet-concious person who took something normally lovely and tasty, morphing it into something vulgar with extra fiber, right? (I'm thinking of these as an example). 

But the author of The Essential Vegetarian cookbook says she's willing to bet we love 'em. . . Well, if your initial thoughts ran parallel to mine, then you too have to say to author Diana Shaw, "You were right and I was wrong."

These were crunchy on the outside and creamy, cheesey, spicy and just a twinge of sweet on the inside.  Pretty easy and if you make the filling earlier in the day, quick to bake once ready for dinner.  This recipe made 4 big calzones.  Next time I think I'll try it as 6 medium calzones, but could be party-finger-food friendly as 8 smaller ones.  Ohh, wouldn't a "pocket party" be fun . . . mini beef empanadas, carrot calzones and apple turnovers . . .I'll have to remember this next fall (and maybe rent the Jim Gaffigan video too)

Creamy Carrot Calzone, adapted from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook

1 onion, sliced thin

6 medium sized carrots, peeled and sliced in rounds

1 bay leaf

1 cup orange juice

1 cup ricotta

1/2 cup shredded Gruyere cheese

pinch of cinnamon

pinch of ginger

pizza dough (OK, I will admit it here, I buy my pizza dough!  But if you want to make it, I'm sure any of the estimated 1,100,000 recipes that come up if you google "pizza dough recipe" will work)

Place first 4 ingredients in medium sized saucepan.  Add water, enough to cover veggies.  Bring to boil over medium-high heat and then cover, reducing heat to a simmer.  Simmer about 40 minutes, checking to see if need to add water to prevent vegies drying out and burning.

Remove  from heat and drain off liquid, remove bay leaf and let cool 10 minutes.  Use a hand blender to puree veggies (or put it all in a regular blender if you dont have a hand blender).  Add remaining ingredients (NOT the pizza dough, of course) and stir until combined.  

Preheat oven to 350F.  Oil your pizza stone and sprinkle with cornmeal (if no pizza stone do the same to a   baking sheet).  Take 1/4 of your pizza dough and roll on floured surface until about 7 inches in diameter.  Add 1/4 of carrot mix to one side of rolled out pizza dough.  Fold other side of dough over, and pinch edges together.  Dip a fork in water and press fork along edge to seal completely.  Repeat this for all 4 calzones.  Place calzones on pizza stone/baking sheet and make a few air vents in each calzone using the same fork as you did for the seal (the less things to clean, the better, right?).  Place in oven and bake 25-30 minutes, until starting to golden.  Enjoy!

a note.  One thing I did not do, but would do in the future is add an egg wash of egg beaten with 1 Tbsp water brushed on the top of calzone before baking, it just makes it look prettier.

a second note.  Freezes well; I froze the cooked calzone that we had extra and re-heated on pizza stone in oven at 350F for 20 minutes and was great the second time!

Butternut Curry

 To think that just a year or two ago, Tony didn't even know what a butternut squash was, and now one of the meals he gets the most excited for is Butternut squash curried over couscous.  While there is a very likely chance that this is only because the squash becomes a vehicle on which to deliver mango chutney to his mouth, for a while it was requested whenever we saw one of these squash at the farmers market (which if you go to farmers markets, you know is pretty much every week of the year, perhaps excepting the few weeks where there are too many berries and tomatoes and corn to see anything else).  I too enjoy this dish, but the problem lies in the quantity it makes, which is 4 servings.  And I mean, really 4 servings, not when you buy a frozen dinner (I'm thinking Bertolli chicken parm here) and you end up eating at least 2 "servings" because 1 would be the equivalent of a chicken nugget . . . but I digress . . . anyway, this makes a lot, so there are leftovers.  Eatting leftovers usually means taking them to work.  Which means dealing with tupperware.  Since Tony is anti-tupperware, in any material, I end up having this curry over and over whenever I make it.  This has led to a bit of butternut curry overkill for me, and now limit it to once a month.  Don't get me wrong, it is still a great dish; one I would suggest to anyone who feeds a family of 4.

Butternut curry over couscous (based on a recipe from Real Simple)

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 yellow onion, sliced in half rounds

3 cloves garlic, through a garlic press

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, diced 

1 Tbsp curry powder

2 tsp salt

2 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth to keep this dish vegetarian)

1/2 cup half and half

2 cups whole wheat couscous

1/2 cup chopped peanuts

1/2 cup chutney of choice

Heat oil in a large pan.  Add onions and garlic, sautéing until soft, about 5 minutes.  Add squash, curry and salt, stirring to mix.  Pour in broth and bring to boil.  Reduce heat and cover, simmering until squash is soft, about 18 minutes.(while this is happening set pot of water to boil for couscous)  Stir half and half  into the squash and cook until sauce is thickened, about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.  

Add 2 cups of boiling water to couscous in large bowl, stir, cover with lid (or plate if you don't have a lid that fits).  Let sit 5 minutes, then remove cover and fluff with fork.

To serve, plate squash and sauce over couscous, add peanuts and chutney on top.  Enjoy! 

Two notes about this recipe.  1, I've found that to seed a butternut squash, slice the top half in rounds,   then slice off sides of the bottom (as you would a mango); this results in seedless and stringless pieces to dice.  2, the original recipe calls for cream, not half and half.  I've tried both of these and milk and milk is definitly too thin for any sauce, but both cream and half and half work.

Grape and Shallot Roasted Chicken

 My first big family meal at our new place called for a roast chicken, as that is the Rockwell-esque thing to do. And it just so happened that I had recently installed the epicurious app on my phone, so needless to say, I would randomly pick "grapes" and "chicken" in the search feature and come up with something that 100% of reviewers would make again.

Having made and eaten this, I would agree, it IS a definite "repeater".  What was rather awesome too, although I wish I could say I planned this, is that I served it with a waldorf-esque salad on romaine and not only did it all go together that night, but if you add the "pickings" of leftover meat and a few remaining grapes and shallot slices to any leftover waldorf-esque salad, voila! a very dear chicken salad and wow, look at that, are there some leftover tender lettuce leaves to add to that chicken salad sandwich?  yumm.

Grape and Shallot Roasted Chicken (adapted from Bon Appetit)

1 big fist of green grapes (seedless)

1 big fist of red grapes (seedless)

 6 shallots, peeled and halved

1 Tbsp of fresh Thyme OR 1 teasp of dry thyme

Olive Oil

1 4 to 5 lb chicken (cleaned and bag of organs removed, or actual organs if you are hard core like that)

Preheat oven to 400F.  In large bowl, mix grapes, shallots and thyme with 1 Tbsp oil, tossing to coat.  Rub chicken with about 1 Tbsp oil, inside and out, sprinkling with salt and pepper.  Place chicken on roasting pan and put about 1/2 grape mixture in chicken cavity, spread remaining around the chicken.

Roast in oven until thigh reads 165F with meat thermometer, about 1 hour 10 minutes.  Transfer chicken to platter and let sit for 10 minutes.  Remove grapes and shallots from chicken and add to others in a serving bowl.  If desired, skim fat off juices in roasting pan and serve as gravy with the meal.  Serve and enjoy!

Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce

Once upon a time I blogged.  Then I married the love of my live, moved to Inwood, changed jobs and my time to write seemed to disappear.  I've had another round of changes, namely becoming a mommy and moving inside the beltway.  After midnight nursings spent with one arm around the baby and the other thumbing through many foodie blogs, I decided to return to the wild world of postings.  

In a nod to the redundancy of these things, I decided I would start off by making Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce.  You can read about this tangy red concoction at Amateur Gourmet, Smitten Kitchen, Orangette, Dinner du Jour, DC Foodies, or I'm sure several dozen other sites.  Despite it being nothing new to the foodie people of the world, it turned out to be something different for this gal.  You see, at our house we have "spagetti sauce" and this is not it.  I had to emphasize that I was not looking for a replacement for the beloved "spagetti sauce", but just for a new pasta dish in general.  With that mindset, I have to say, ehhh.  Don't get me wrong, it was very fresh and tangy and rich, and coated the fusilli beautifully . . . but I missed the heavier weight of a meat/tomato sauce.  I don't blame the sauce; it was poor timing on my part . . . the blizzard of the century really calls for something else on which to dine. So I will keep this recipe on hand to retry once the cherry trees have blossomed.

Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce

1 - 28oz can of whole peeled tomatos (juice and all)

5T butter

1 onion, peeled and cut in half

Put the above in a pot and bring to a simmer, stirring/smushing the tomatos occationally.  Gently simmer for about 45 minutes.  Remove the onion and keep for another use (I'm going to use mine in a potato hash for breakfast tomorrow). Add salt or parmesan if you like. Pour over cooked pasta.  Enjoy!