Peach Apple Cobbler

The neighbors are remodeling. Right on the other side of my wall. Using jackhammers. After listening to the noise all day, I decided I needed a treat. "Mmm, peach crisp would be good. Wait, I have apples, too!" It's also been cooler the last couple days, so turning on the oven didn't sound so terrible. So google and I set to work to find the perfect recipe, one that doesn't have too many ingredients, or use too much sugar.

I just wanted peaches and apples and something yummy on top. Of course, that is impossible to find. Everything called for copious amounts of butter (I only have 1/4 cup left, oops) or cups and cups of sugar (Tim objects to this). Nothing was right.

How hard could it be, anyway? Apparently not very.

I started slicing and sprinkling and it came out absolutely delicious. Grease the pan you want to use and slice peaches. How many you use depends on how big the pan is. Cover the bottom of the pan with peaches, sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar. Then slice apples thinly and cover the peaches. Sprinkle with maybe a tablespoon of brown sugar. Repeat with peaches. Repeat with apples. Repeat until your pan is almost full.

For the topping, I used bisquick. Yeah, yeah, I'm lazy like that. You could make real biscuit dough if you'd like. I added a couple good shakes of cinnamon to the biscuit dough and then spread it on top of the last layer of apples.

Because I was using my tiny Italian oven for dinner, my cobbler had to wait its turn to be baked, but I think it just made it juicier and let the sugars (what little there was) soak into the fruit more. Once it finally went in the oven, it took about 30 minutes at 350.

Warm with ice cream on top, it was just what I needed. I needed seconds, too.

Good thing there's leftovers, they're jackhammering again.

Stay tuned for the great Eastern European Adventure, commencing Friday. I see schnitzel and goulash in the near future and my mouth is already watering in preparation for it.

Oh, what to make for dinner?

Every summer I have the same problem: it's too hot to cook, but we still have to eat. Currently, my kitchen is already so hot, that if I were to turn the oven on, it very possibly would cook me as well as my food. So here's my question, what do I make for dinner when I'm tempted to simply put an assortment of cereal on the table and say "have at it!"?

Sure, we could always go get pizza...

... but obviously, we do that a lot.

As I grumbled and sighed and tried to come up with a non-life threatening menu, I realized I'm probably not the only person who is having this dilemma. Then I thought, maybe those people might take comfort, not only in my similar struggle, but in using my ideas. So here you go, here's what I've come up with so far.

Day 1: Bacon-onion grilled cheese and cold tomato soup.

Grilled cheese: Cook bacon until crisp, drain; fry thinly sliced onions in leftover bacon grease. To put sandwiches together, layer cheese (I used pepper jack, yummy and spicy), bacon, and onions, butter outside of the bread and cook in a frying pan. The recipe I based this off told me to use mustard inside the sandwiches, but Tim didn't like it. So sauce, no sauce, it's your choice, I'm sure it's good without, too.

Soup: I was short on time, so I made just a can of tomato soup, but once it was hot, I stirred in a couple spoonfuls of sour cream, some milk, and a couple ice cubes to make it cold.

Day 2: BBQed pizzas and Tuscan Bread Salad

Pizza: I'll admit, I finally gave up trying to use the Italian ladies' pizza dough recipe and I've been using a mix. But this time I thought I'd try my mom's recipe because my VERY warm kitchen is a perfect environment for rising dough. It worked! Then I divided the dough into 8 parts, brushed then with olive oil and put them on pieces of foil on the grill until they baked enough so they wouldn't fall through the cracks. After the dough was cooked (about 10 minutes or so), I put on seasoned tomato sauce, assorted veggies, salame, and cheese, and put them back on the grill for about another 10 minutes until the cheese melted. They had a nice charcoal-y flavor.

Salad: I found this in a magazine: Chop leftover, slightly stale French bread into chunks. Then chop tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives and add all of it to a large bowl. (It said to use cheese, too, but I didn't have any and it was good without it.) Then sprinkle with salt and pepper and give it a good drizzle of olive oil, mix and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Day 3: Pasta with vegetables and sausage

I had some leftover pasta fresca (fresh pasta) in the fridge that needed to be eaten. Darn it. While it cooked, I cut up sweet red onions from my "garden", zucchini, red bell pepper, and mushrooms and cooked them in some olive oil and spices (it was a mix, but basil, parsley, oregano, and red pepper flakes would do). I chopped the sausage and added that. Once everything was all cooked, the veggies went on top of the pasta with some fresh tomatoes and basil.



Hope this helps! Also, other ideas are welcome.

Buon appetito!

Pasta alla Siciliana

In Italy, pasta is a main food group. It is cooked differently based on what region you are in. This pasta is called Pasta alla Siciliana, or pasta from Sicily. We refer to it that way, but I've heard that in Sicily, it is called Pasta Norma, or Normal Pasta. Anyway, here is the recipe that got written down on the back of an old gas coupon booklet at the last Italian cooking class. It didn't get baked (you normally would), just because it took so long for the water to boil and people were REALLY hungry.

Pasta alla Siciliana

Ingredients:
Eggplant
1 large jar tomato sauce
Oil (enough to cover eggplant spears)
¼ onion, cut in small slices
Basil
Water (about ½ C per jar of sauce)
Provolone cheese, chopped (make sure it is soft provolone)
Penne pasta

Process:

Slice the eggplant into spears and fry it in a pan in oil.

For sauce, fry onion slices in oil until soft, then add tomato sauce, water, and basil. Cook for 20 minutes.

Boil water, cook pasta until it is al dente. Mix sauce, pasta, and cheese; bake for 10 minutes. Serve topped with eggplant and extra sauce.

Note: Remember that Italian cooks rarely use measures, they just go by how much looks right. This makes about 4 servings, so put in about that much pasta. One eggplant is enough, and you can fry up any leftovers with some garlic and oil and serve it as a side dish.

Buon appetito!

Adventures with peanut butter

I have been having some interesting and tasty encounters with peanut butter lately. I made Tim chocolate/ peanut butter brownies for Valentine's Day. I used just a basic brownie recipe, but added peanut butter to the melted chocolate and mixed in peanut butter chips. I cooked them in a muffin pan for easy serving sizes. Once they were baked, I used a couple to make chocolate peanut butter trifles. These were decadent!

I had been reading in a magazine about making trifles, and I thought I'd try it. They are all about different colors and textures, and the layers should be interesting to look at. I made them in juice glasses so I could see the layers.

So here is my trifle, starting from the bottom:

1. crumbled brownies

2. chocolate pudding

3. peanut butter (melted in the microwave for 30 seconds, so it spreads nicely)

4. mini marshmallows

5. chocolate pudding

6. more brownies

Then I made peanut butter cup cheesecakes. I have been looking at the mini cheesecake crusts at the grocery store and wishing I had a reason to use them. A coworker's birthday was an excellent excuse!

I started out with my basic no-bake cheesecake recipe:

1 can sweetened condensed milk

8 oz cream cheese (room temp.)

1/3 C lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

Mix until well blended. (It fit in exactly 12 of these little crusts.)

Then I melted some baking chocolate and spread it on the bottom and sides of the little crusts. When the chocolate had set, I melted some peanut butter and mixed it with some of the cheesecake mixture and spread it in the pans. It is topped with chocolate chips and chocolate syrup. The white ones are s'mores: chocolate chips on the bottom and cheesecake topped with marshmallows and chocolate sauce.



Turkish delights

Over President's Day weekend, Tim and I took a trip to Istanbul, Turkey, which was a culinary delight. Let's just say we spent a lot of time eating. Everything just looked so interesting! Some things were a little odd, like the super-sticky ice cream made from goat milk that you had to bite and chew. Lunches consisted of kebaps, shaved meat wrapped in a tortilla with french fries and veggies, and we stopped frequently for pomogranite/orange juice.

The first evening I had ravioli, which was stuffed with veal and and topped with a yogurt sauce and oregano. Tim had the daily special, which wasn't worth taking a picture of.

Being February, Turkey was very cold, so we stopped frequently for hot Turkish tea. They had apple tea, lemon tea, and just regular tea, all of which were served in little glasses. It took skill to pick up your cup so you didn't burn your fingers. These teas were instant, but at the spice market, we bought dried apple-chunk tea, which is excellent.

For all you Narnia fans, we did eat Turkish delight. There were lots of different flavors, many had pistachios and they came with little plastic swords for more fun spearing. 

Our mid-afternoon snack consisted of borek, which is the general word for pastries. These particular ones had cheese in them. The one on the left was basically just rolls with cheese melted in them, while the one on the right was more like phyllo dough with cheese baked in layers.

We took a ferry trip down the Bosphorus Strait, and stopped on the Asia side for lunch and a hike up to a castle with views of the Black Sea. Lunch wasn't anything spectacular, but we stopped for the local specialty called lokum. It is little dough balls that are deep fat fried and then rolled in maple syrup.

The Turkish people have an interesting way of making coffee. They keep adding a little to the cup and then cooking it some more until it can float a horseshoe and the bottom half of what is in your cup is made up of grounds. I had it with LOTS of sugar, Tim had no sugar (because that's how the locals take it). At the particular coffee shop we went to, they served it with chocolate to cut the bitterness. They also put chocolate covered coffee beans on the table. We were a little hyper afterwards.

Finally, the last evening in Istanbul, we found a restaurant on Trip Advisor that was out of the touristy section of town and we decided to give it a try. Besides the fact that it was in a slightly creepy part of town and though I was the only female in the restaurant (weird?), the food was outstanding. Appetizers of tomato and cucumber salad and a baked rice thing with chicken and raisins. The main course was thick pita bread with lamb. After we finally finished, having struggled with cutting the bread, we happened to look at the next table and see how those men were eating them. They were tearing the bread and using it to pick up the meat. Ohhhh, that's how you do it! Sheesh, we are such tourists.

Pasta & potatoes, peanuts, and pizza

It's been a long time since I posted anything, and I've had several wonderful cooking experiences, so I'll share some with you. Last week we had another Neopolitan cooking class. The pasta dish we made was extremely traditional, pretty easy, and really tasty! I thought I'd share it with you.

Pasta and Potatoes

Sauce:
½ onion
½ stalk of celery
1 container pancetta (about 1/5 pound bacon, chopped)
Olive oil to cover

½ kilo potatoes (peeled and chopped)

2 or 3 cherry tomatoes
Mixed pasta (or your choice)

Put all sauce ingredients in large pot, cover with oil, and sauté until cooked. Then add the potatoes. Squeeze tomatoes to get extra juice out, add to the pot. Cover with water, add salt, and cook 15-20 minutes until potatoes are soft. Add pasta and cook until pasta is done. Serve with extra liquid as sauce.

Serves 4-5. Rice can be substituted for pasta.

I finally gave up on making pizza dough from scratch and now I just use a packaged mix, but it still tastes good. I think I have finally come up with the perfect pizza:
Alfredo sauce
Red pepper flakes
Chopped onion
Chopped red bell pepper
Crumbled bacon
Cheese

That, my friends, is pizza perfection.

And finally, a recipe I found in a brand name cookbook my mom sent me. Tim loves it and it's very popular wherever we go. We do, however, use chicken instead of beef. The beef tastes gross. It's good on either spaghetti or rice.

 

Thai Peanut Beef (er, Chicken)

8 oz uncooked thin spaghetti

1 lb lean (at least 80%) ground beef (or chicken)

4 green onions, chopped (1/4 cup)

8 oz fresh pea pods, halved diagonally (about 3 cups)

1 red bell pepper, cut into 3x1/4x1/4-inch thin strips

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup chopped salted peanuts

DIRECTIONS

1. Cook and drain spaghetti as directed on package; cover to keep warm. 2. Meanwhile, in 12-inch skillet, cook ground beef over medium-high heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thoroughly cooked; drain. Add onions, pea pods and bell pepper. Cook and stir 3 to 4 minutes or until vegetables are crisp-tender. 3. In small bowl, mix broth, ground red pepper, salt and cornstarch. Stir into beef and vegetables. Add peanut butter. Cook 1 to 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until thick and bubbly. Serve over cooked spaghetti; top with peanuts.

 

Buon appetito!