1. Boil a package of broccoli florets in chicken (or vegi) broth.  The broccoli should be soft enough that you can mash it easily.
2. Add 1 cup instant mashed potatoes, 1/2 cup half and half, and 4 tbsp of butter.
3. Season.  I like to use paprika, salt, pepper, and garlic.
4. Use a potato masher until the broth and mashed potatoes are smooth but the broccoli is still slightly chunky.

• 2 cups ricotta (not that gross stuff from Safeway!  real ricotta!)
• 1/2 cup cream cheese (marscarpone would also work)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 lb strawberries (other tasty fruits like blueberries would be good)
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

Put everything through a food processor.  Pour into a springform pan (a really good investment!).  Bake at 325 for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Get it really nice and cold in the fridge.  Enjoy!

Because Ilya and I keep some limited degree of kosher (i.e.: I feel very guilty every time I eat a cheeseburger), I can’t use the regular additions to manacotti like ground beef or sausage.  So, I decided to look for a parve alternative.  What I came up with was smoked salmon.

I am preparing these little guys right now, and so far the modifications seem successful.  I added chives, olives, smoked salmon and chevre to the ricotta mixture.  For the sauce, I used a can of Trader Joe’s Pizza Sauce and added more chevre and some chives.  The sauce is excellent, and the ricotta mixture smells good (although the kalmata olives have turned it a rather disgusting shade of black.  I’m currently boiling the pasta, and preparing to assemble.

***UPDATE***

So, it did turn out awesome.  I will probably make it again!

For many years, I thought that I hated Mexican food.  After visiting a few good restaurants (such as Celia’s and Mario’s), I realized that what I hate is BAD Mexican food.  Lately, I’ve become particularly excited about Chili Colorado, which consists of chunks of tasty beef in a spicy red sauce.  It’s delicious.  So last night, I decided to try my hand at it.

Ilya started complaining when I brought out the beef, so I agreed to also make a version with shredded chicken.  We had about a pound and a half of boiled chicken from when his mom made chicken soup, and maybe another pound from some pre-cooked chicken breasts that I got at Trader Joe’s (and subsequently forgot about).

For the sauce:

• 1 big can of stewed tomatoes
• 2 cartons of chicken broth
• 3 chopped and fried yellow onions
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tsp oregano
• 3 dried ancho chili peppers: seeded, stemmed, and chopped (Important Note: Seriously, use gloves when working with these!  I had an incredibly bad experience with hot sauce as a child and I am not keen to repeat it.  GLOVES!)

I blended all of this together, put half of it into the pot with the shredded chicken, and set the other half aside.

For the steak:

Season the chunks well, then brown them in a stew pot with some olive oil (or shortening, or lard).  Poor the sauce over this and let it simmer for about two hours (or until the beef gets tender).

If you like, add a can of pinto beans to the beef, or white beans to the chicken.

Enjoy with a side of sour cream, some refried beans, and tortillas!

P.S.: If anyone has a good recipe for refried beans, let me know!

Seriously, those people know how to live.

Unfortunately, cheap Indian food is too greasy and expensive Indian food is…well…to expensive.  I know some friends who have attempted Chicken Tikka Masala, but it’s quite difficult and still fairly horrible for you (the list of ingredients looks something like: cream, whole milk yogurt, butter…).

A pleasant alternative is daal, a curried lentil dish.  I happen to love daal, but find House fo Curry’s version to be way too greasy to eat on a regular basis.  Ilya has been experimenting with lentils for years (with limited success), so I decided to try my hand at the lentil thing.  Happily, the results were incredibly quick and delicious enough to be served along side Biryani House takeout without anyone noticing a difference!

Here’s the basic idea:

1. Saute some yellow onion with about 2 tablespoons of curry powder (I like madras curry powder, but whatever yo have should work) and vegetable oil.
2. I have major issues with the texture of onions, so I place the cooked onions in a blender with two big spoonfuls of tomato paste, more curry powder, some turmeric (if you have it), lots of salt and pepper, three cloves of garlic, three cups of water, and some powdered chicken broth (about 1/4 cup).  Blend the whole thing and pour into a pot (or a frying pan with high sides).
3. Add about a cup of lentils (I used green because that’s what we had, but I suspect that red or yellow would be better).  Bring the whole thing to a boil, then turn it down and simmer until the lentils are cooked.  Add more water (plus chicken broth) as needed.  This should take about 45 minutes.
4. Serve with rice or naan and enjoy!

• 4 cans of cannelini (great northern) beans
• 2/3 of a pot (anywhere from 1 quart to 1/2 gallon depending on how big your soup pot is) full of chicken broth (I actually use powdered vegetarian chicken broth from Berkeley Bowl to keep the Boy happy, but real chicken stock is probably much better)
• 1 large can of tomatoes
• 1/2 box of macaroni (splurge and get the Barilla variety)
• 1 large yellow onion
• salt and pepper
• 3 cloves of garlic
• big bunch of basil
• rosemary
• good olive oil

There’s a lot of leniency in the order of things, especially is you’re not going to blend it, but here’s roughly what I do.

1. Chop up and fry the onion.  Make sure to season it with salt, pepper, etc.  When it’s just about cooked, toss in the rosemary.
2. Add the chicken broth (or water + chicken broth powder), and the beans.  Bring to a boil.
3. Ladle about half of the beans along with some broth into you handy blender.  Add the canned tomatoes, basil, and garlic.  Puree.  If things aren’t working out, it’s probably because you don’t have enough liquid, so add more!
4. Pour the blended mixture back in to the pot, bring the whole thing to a boil, and then let it simmer for about 30 minutes.  I like my soup to be a bit thicker than a broth, but much thinner than stew.  Some people like to have this soup as thick as spaghetti sauce.  It’s up to you!  Add or decrease chicken broth as needed.  Congratulations!  You have now finished the base of the soup.  If you don’t want to eat it right away, STOP HERE.  When you’re ready to eat, go on to the next step.
5. The main problem with this dish is that the pasta is the only thing with texture, so if you overcook the pasta, you are left with a sticky pot of homogeneous goop.  To avoid this issue, I boil my pasta separately.  Cook as much pasta as you plan on eating at the moment.  Then, when you’re ready to eat, fill each bowl with about 2/3 soup and 1/3 macaroni (depending on your own preference).

Enjoy!

As I mentioned before, I’ve reached a level of moderate obsession with insalata caprese.  It’s fast, it’s healthy, and it’s fabulous.  So that’s made up a big chunk of recent dinners.

As for special occasions…

A few weeks ago, we had one of Ilya’s colleagues from work over for dinner and I made one big hit and one “meh.”  I took the filling from crispy ricotta cakes and stuffed it into squash blossoms.  I then dipped the blossoms into some egg, breaded them, and fried them in extra virgin olive oil.  When I told my dad that I was planning on making this, he gave me a big long lecture about securing the petals so that the filling doesn’t leak out, but it ended up being a complete non-issue.  To prepare stuffed squash blossoms, you just tear out all of the inner-bits (the stamen for the biologically-inclined among you), rinse them off, and stuff about three tablespoons of filling into each blossom.  Broken petals are not an issue, as this is all getting coated in bread crumbs at the end.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, squash blossoms are the flower of a zucchini plant.  As far as I am concerned, they are mildly tasty vehicles for getting cheese into your mouth.  You can kind of taste the zucchini flavor when you eat them, but mostly you taste the crunchy outside and the glorious cheese within.  I added some goat cheese to the ricotta filling and it created lovely little explosions of flavor within the ricotta matrix.

The other thing that I made for the party was my take on spinach and artichoke dip.  Other people seemed to really enjoy this, but I’m pretty sure that my problem was that I just don’t like spinach and artichoke dip.  I find it highly enjoyable for about two spoonfuls and then start to feel that it’s way too rich.  Still, it was remarkably easy to make, and would be a great choice for a holiday party.  Here’s the recipe:

• 2 cups ricotta
• 1/2 cup cream cheese
• 1 big bag of fresh spinach
• 1 can of artichoke hearts
• 2 eggs
• garlic
• salt and pepper
• two large pinches of paprika
• 1 large pinch of cayenne pepper
• 1 cup shredded parmesan (reserve some of this for sprinkling on top)

Saute the spinach with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic.  Drain as much of the water as possible.  Place all ingredients in to a food processor.  Blend until smooth.  Pour in to a large casserole dish.  Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.  Bake at 350 until bubbly.

I am supposed to be tutoring right now, but I haven’t seen my student.  I’m going to go and search for him now.  Next time I write (maybe later today?), I’ll tell you about making pizza and Tuscan white bean soup.

Have an awesome weekend!

People have this idea that ravioli is incredibly difficult, but I think that it’s one of the easier “impressive” dishes that you can make.  You just have to know where to cut corners.  Some people say that you should use wonton wrappers.  I’ve never tried this, but I imagine that it would work pretty well, because pasta dough and wonton dough have almost identical ingredients: flower, water, eggs.  I really don’t know how this would turn out because I am lucky enough to live near Berkeley Bowl where they sell fresh pasta sheets.  These are pure genius.  Simply, unfold, cut, and fill and you have fantastic ravioli.  For the sauce, I just used the canned stuff and added sherry, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil.  It was that simple!  So here’s the actual recipe

For the filling:

• 2 cups good ricotta
• 1 big handful of fresh basil leaves
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper
• Option additions: spinach, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes

Mix everything together.  Cut the  pasta sheets into 1 1/2 in squares.  Put a small dollop of filling in the center of the half of the squares.  Be sure to leave about 1/2 in of exposed dough on each side of the filling.  Brush the edges of the squares with an egg.  Put the unfilled squares on top of the filled ones.  pinch the edges together, then press the edges again with the tines of a fork.  Boil in small batches for about 4 minutes.

Important note: I tried to make some of the ravioli ahead of time.  The pasta dough soaks up the moisture from the ricotta, so even if your ravioli start out well-floured and un-sticky, they will become sticky in the fridge.  They ended up cooking just fine, but if I had had any more of them in the bag, then it would have been a giant mess.  If you want to store these little guys, then place them on a baking sheet between layers of wax paper.  Put that in the fridge and don’t let them sit for longer than a day or two.

Other sauce ideas:

1. I tried sauteing a few of them in butter with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.  It was okay, but a lot more fattening, and I actually liked the tomato sauce better.
2. Pesto would probably be good, but I would recommend adding sun-dried tomatoes and olives because the ravioli are so creamy that they really need to be “set off” by something tangy.  I’ll probably try this idea out tonight and let you know how it goes!

Burrata is an Italian cheese, similar to mozzarella, but more awesome.  Burrata is a basically a sheet of fresh mozzarella wrapped around cheese curds and cream.  It’s quite hard to find, so I couldn’t resist getting some.  The people at cheeseboard and I had a wonderful time testing it out (burrata needs to be incredibly fresh; anything older than 48 hours develops an unpleasant tang), and we must have gone through three different ones before we found one that we liked.

  With my prize in hand, I skipped home to figure out what to make with it.

I ended up serveing it over panzanella.  When I made the panzanella on Thursday, I noticed that the balsamic vinegar that I have is horrible.  It was so acidic that it burnt my throat when I dipped bread in it; not a pleasant experience.  I followed my dad’s advice and put about 1/2 a cup into a sauce pan, added maybe 1 tablespoon on sugar and boiled the heck out of it for about 15 minutes.  Important note: DO NOT BREATH IN THE STEAM COMING OFF OF BAD VINEGAR.  I couldn’t stop choking after this little experiment.  In the end, though, it ended up being absolutely sensational.  In the future, I’m probably going to buy super-cheap balsamic and just make it in to syrup.  It was much better than the expensive balsamic that you can get at a typical grocery store.

Long story short: this was an amazing dinner!

Panzanella is an Italian summer salad.  It’s remarkably easy and filling enough to act as a meal.  I especially appreciated this, because I’m dieting a bit right now, and it’s nice to eat healthy and be full!  Panzanella is often times called a “bread salad” because one of the main ingredients is cubes of either stale bread or croutons.  The bread is mixed with big chunks of tomatoes, cucumbers, mozzarella, and basil.  Traditionally, red onions are also part of the equation, but I really hate onions, so those were nixed from my salad.

I was lucky enough to be able to find some really gorgeous heirloom tomatoes at Berkeley Bowl.  They can be a bit pricier than normal tomatoes, but if you’ve never had them before, I highly recommend trying a few.  Normal tomatoes have been bread to look nice; unfortunately, this comes at the expense of the taste.  Heirloom tomatoes are big and irregular looking, but they taste amazing.  Think of the sweetness of little cherry tomatoes with this really amazing full-bodied tomato flavor.  They come in many different varieties.  The green ones tend to be a bit on the hard side, the red ones are often squishy by the time that they make it to the supermarket, but the yellow and orange ones are usually just right! 

As for cheese, Alan treated me to some mozzarella di buffala, which is the most amazing fresh mozzarella that you will ever find.  If you can’t get a hold of that, fresh mozzarella is just fine.  I’ve also tried this with good feta and it’s delightful.  I imagine that ricotta salta would also be nice, and I might be trying that today.

So, without further ado, the actual recipe:

• 2 pounds of tomatoes, chopped
• 1 pound of fresh mozzarella cheese
• 1 large english cucumber or several small persian cucumbers, NOT PEELED!
• 7-10 leaves of fresh basil (none of the dried stuff!)
• 1 large loaf of ciabatta or other crusty bread
• Good olive oil
• Garlic powder, dried garlic, or fresh garlic
• Good balsamic vinegar (if you can’t get good balsamic, just take regular balsamic, place it in a sauce pan and simmer until it reduces to a thick syrup)
• salt and pepper
• red chili flakes (optional)

Chop the veggies and cheese so they they’re all about the same size.  Mix with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and basil.  Let this sit for a while so that the veggies soak up the vinegar-y goodness.

Cut the bread into 3/4 inch cubes.  Heat up a frying pan with some good olive oil over medium heat.  If you have a pan with high sides, this would be the time to use it!  Fry the bread cubes in the oil until golden brown.  Add the garlic, salt, and pepper and cook some more.

Mix the whole salad together, and serve immediately.  Alternatively, you can lay down a layer of bread cubes, and then spoon the salad over the top.

Two alternatives for the bread:

1. Use stale bread and then let it soak the the veggie juices for about ten minutes before serving.
2. Bake the croutons in the oven, turning them every few minutes.

This dinner was a huge success and I hope that you enjoy the recipe, too!