Broccoli Knishes

My last recipe of the day -- broccoli knishes. Though they don't look like the knishes I feasted on as a kid due to their smaller size and less doughy texture, I'm sure they will still be quite edible. Bonus - they're also fat-free. Happy Pesach!

Passover Brownie Cake

I'm ripping off recipes all over the Internet this morning - I settled on making a Passover brownie/cake blend for tomorrow evening after weighing all dessert options.

Pretty pretty (and smells delicious):

Charoset

Tomorrow night is the first night of Passover, and I'm making our charoset early.

This year I used:

3 apples (peeled, cored, chopped - I used Pink Lady and Empire)
1 T lemon juice
1/2 c golden raisins
1/2 c chopped walnuts
1/4 t cinnamon
3 T grape juice

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies with Wheat Germ

Making a healthier cookie occurred to me the other day, so I scoured the net to find this recipe on yet another stunningly beautiful blog. There are so many great cooking blogs - I'm constantly impressed with the creativity and style of authors.

Anyway, I made the cookie for a friend's baby shower today - I hope they're enjoyed;)

Healthier Empanadas - Broccoli and Mushroom

After receiving rave reviews from my husband over the empanadas I made last week, I decided to make them again for tonight, only this time a healthier version with less butter, some whole wheat flour, and broccoli.

Here is what I did: Place 1 c white flour, 1 c whole wheat flour and 1/2 t salt in a food processor and process for 30 seconds. Cut 6 T of chilled butter into pieces and add to the food processor; pulse several times until the mixture resembles course meal. Add 1/2 c ice water and stop the machine as the dough comes together. Turn the dough out onto a floured board and flatten it into a disk. Roll the dough into a thickness of 1/8 inch. Cut out circles of dough, and place a rounded teaspoon of the filling in the center. Moisten the edges of the dough with a fingertip or brush dipped in egg white and then fold over the filling. Place in the oven at 375 for 2o to 25 minutes.

Filling:
3 T olive oil
1/2 large red onion, quartered and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minces
1/2 t sugar
1 t balsamic vinegar
1/3 pound fresh wild mushrooms (I got mine at Whole Foods), chopped
3/4 c of broccoli, chopped
1/4 c sour cream

To make the filling, add 2-3 T of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and cook the onion and garlic slowly for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with the sugar and vinegar and cook until the mixture is brown and syrupy. Stir in the mushrooms, then broccoli, and finally stir in the sour cream and then chill.

Voila - eat and enjoy!

Also, take a look at this fun T-shirt - my cousin saw a woman wearing it (at a bakery, of course) and he snapped the photo -- love it!:

Fruit cobbler

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I have been madly craving sweets this week. In the back of my head I hear my OB telling me to eat more protein and fewer carbs if I want to get full. Yet I cannot stop my mind from brownie and cobbler fantasies.

So this morning, a fairly dreary Saturday morning in St. Louis, I opened a Williams-Sonoma cook book on desserts - great way to start off the day with desserts, no? Anyway, I found a recipe for a nectarine-raspberry cobbler but I changed this to an apple-blueberry-raspberry cobbler, which made our home smell delicious. I put on a CD of The Waifs (I can't recall how this came into my hands, but whoever burned this for me, thank you thank you!) and got down to business:

1. Preheat oven to 375 and have an 8-inch square baking dish ready.

2. Peel two Fuji apples, remove core, dice and place in bowl. Add 6 oz. of blueberries, 6. oz. of raspberries, and 3 T of sugar. Then pour the mixture into the baking dish.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together 3/4 buttermilk and 1 t vanilla.

4. In a large bowl, mix 3/4 c flour, 1/4 c sugar, 1 t baking powder, 1 t baking soda, and 1/2 t salt. Cut in 6 T of cold butter into the mixture forms coarse crumbs, and then add the buttermilk mixture until a soft dough forms, which you will drop by heaping spoonfuls onto the fruit.

5. Bake for about 35 minutes. Eat!

In other news, here is the finished mural in our nursery -- the artist, Courtney Veszi, did the most amazing job. It was such fun deciding what to paint and coming up with a design with Courtney. At first Jake was stuck on alligators, since we've both so enjoyed trips to the Florida Everglades:

However, can you imagine walking into a nursery in the wee hours and spotting a dozen alligators grinning at you? Well, I couldn't.

So we decided on a forest scene. I've so loved hiking with Jake on our last couple vacations, and the woods always feels very homey to me:

Here are some photos of Courtney's work:

Grilled Cheese w/Tomato

What perfect simplicity. A grilled cheddar cheese and tomato sandwich on whole wheat bread. I could just...eat you.

And, here is a pic of me at 26 weeks pregnant. I'm sort of making a face, but it's one of the only recent pregnancy photos I have, so oh well.

Carmelized Onion and Mushroom Empanadas

Morels! And shitake! Mmm...

Bake these for 20-25 minutes at 375.

Voila!

I learned to make these in a cooking class a couple weeks ago, and I finally got around to making them at home tonight...because I'm on Spring Break from teaching this week! It's been nice so far - I've been trying to make time to go outside and I've actually gotten some dissertation writing done.

Here's the recipe (which I made 3/4 of):

Place 2 c flour and 1/2 t salt in a food processor and process for 30 seconds. Cut 8 T of chilled butter into pieces and add to the food processor; pulse several times until the mixture resembles course meal. Add 1/2 c ice water and stop the machine as the dough comes together. Turn the dough out onto a floured board and flatten it into a disk. Roll the dough into a thickness of 1/8 inch. Cut out circles of dough, and place a rounded teaspoon of the chilled filling in the center. Moisten the edges of the dough with a fingertip or brush dipped in egg white and then fold over the filling. Place in the oven at 375 for 2o to 25 minutes.

Filling:
3 T of unsalted butter
1 large red onion, quartered and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minces
1/2 t sugar
1 t balsamic vinegar
1/2 pound fresh wild mushrooms (I got mine at Whole Foods), chopped
1/4 c sour cream
salt and pepper to taste

To make the filling, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat and cook the onion and garlic slowly for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with the sugar and vinegar and cook until the mixture is brown and syrupy. Stir in the mushrooms and finally stir in the sour cream and then chill. Season with salt and pepper.

Overall, they're delicious, but the mushroom filling recipe makes too much for the dough - you might lessen it by 1/3. Also, using a stick of butter seems a little intense to me, so you might lighten this up too - using olive oil to cook the mushrooms perhaps or at least cutting the butter a bit.

Financiers

Eat fruit!

After skimming through Dorie Greenspan's most beautiful cook book about Parisian sweets yesterday, I decided to make something with almonds and fruit - a dainty dessert called Financiers. Dorie Greenspan describes them as a nineteenth century tea cake. However, friends, my financiers do not look like Dorie Greenspan's financiers. I realized this in the end - the recipe called for rectangular financier molds or mini-muffin pans, and well, we don't have anything other than regular muffin pans. So perhaps these are jumbo financiers. But I took a ziplock with a couple to Alice in Wonderland tonight, and if you have a sweet tooth, they certainly do the trick, providing a warm nutty sweetness.

The recipe:

Put 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter (so much butter! I'd lessen this next time or experiment with olive oil) on medium heat in a sauce pan and stir occasionally until the butter has browned. Dorie warns you not to step too far away from the pan since browned butter can quickly become black.

Add 1 cup of crushed almonds and 1 cup of sugar (I wonder if you might substitute apple sauce for sugar, too) to another pan and add 6 egg whites on low heat, stirring for about 2 minutes.

Add 2/3 cup of all-purpose flour to the almond mixture, slowly add the butter, then put the batter (I'd moved mine to a mixing bowl at this point) in the fridge for at least an hour.

Then dust your muffin pans or financier molds with flour, add the mixture -- I inserted golden raisins or pieces of plum into ours - and bake for 13 minutes at 400 degrees.

The end product:

Not cooking...

I've been off this week.

A nasty bout of food poisoning and a recovery diet of Jell-o, toast and bland scrambled eggs have left me with little to write about this week.

But now I'm back baby.

I just read this delightful story and feel overcome with a hankering to bake again.

So watch out:) I'm skimming the pages of Paris Sweets for inspiration. Reading about bread in Paris reminds me of the five lovely wintry days Jake and I once spent there. I remember that I felt motion sickness after a train ride and stayed in our hotel room to sip soup while Jake went out to find a "good loaf of bread" in the city. He brought about ten loaves back to the room.

I think I'll bake tomorrow morning before we head out to make some decisions about nursery furniture.

Potato and Black Bean Torta

I made matzo ball soup again this week, and then tonight I adapted this recipe from my lovely friend Chava's blog, a blog that I just cannot praise enough. I honestly feel as though Chava teaches me to cook from 600 miles away. She features the most gorgeous meals all the time on her blog, and sometimes, like tonight, I feel that I must make these dishes riiiight away! So here is Chava's torta, which I've adapted just a bit to add more veggie protein and make do with what is in our fridge;)

Potato and Black Bean Torta

1 cup diced cooked potatoes

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced

2.5 oz olives, sliced

3 T olive oil
1/2 cup diced tomato
1 can low sodium black beans

8 eggs

1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/2 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese

~ Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Coat a 9X13" baking dish with cooking spray.

~ In a large skillet over medium-high heat, saute the onion, bell pepper, garlic, and olives and cooked potatoes in the olive oil.

~ Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the diced tomato and black beans.

~ In a separate bowl, beat the eggs along with the cheese, oregano, salt, and pepper.

~ Transfer the onion-tomato mixture to the baking dish, and pour the egg mixture on top.

~ Bake for 30 minutes.

Thank you Chava dear!