Best Grilled Cheese Tip

Sorry for the radio silence once again! I know I always have excuses, but a few days after my last post I got sick with a fever that lasted almost 10 days, mostly spent in bed sleeping or catching up on the schoolwork I missed. I also have tons of photos on my camera waiting to be posted, but the battery is dead and I cannot find the charger anywhere! Ugh. Excuses, excuses, I know.

I do have a new food tip for you though! Alex bought me a subscription to the Canal House Cookbooks for my bridal shower in June. If you aren't familiar with them, they are a series of cookbooks published three times a year with amazing photography, elegant writing, and amazing recipes. One of the essays in the latest edition is written by one of the author's sisters about her Christmas eve tradition of fancy grilled cheese with friends. She mentions a tip I had never heard before: using mayonnaise instead of butter for cooking the sandwiches.

I was intrigued and decided to try it out tonight and it worked perfectly! Whenever I use butter, I end up using a lot more than I would like in order to coat the bread enough for it to cook. A super thin layer of mayo cooked it perfectly. Plus, using less fat makes it a healthier meal. It's definitely what I will be using from now on! (I also highly recommend using Ezekiel Sprouted Grain bread and Pecorino Romano cheese....Mmmm!)

In lieu of a photograph of said delicious sandwich, I hope you will accept this adorable photo of our brand new puppy whose name is Ghost (however, Adam is pushing to change it to Falkor). As you can see, we have already started training him to attack squirrels. Maybe next year I will get some tomatoes after all!

Oatmeal Sandwich Bread

I've been meaning to get more into bread baking for...about a year. I've made the occasional baguette here or there, but I have pretty much made the same recipe every time. Last Monday, I decided it was time to get to it. Tuesdays are my long day at school and the only day where I have to bring a lunch. I was out of my usual sprouted wheat bagels so I decided to make some sandwich bread. I've also been meaning to bake more from Kim Boyce's Good the Grain, so I was able to kill two birds with one stone by making her oatmeal sandwich loaf.

I'm going to try to make some type of bread once a week, and so far I've made it two weeks in a row. Hopefully I'll keep this habit up, because so far it has been delicious.

Oatmeal Sandwich Loaf
Adapted from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain

2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or one packet)
3 tbsp unsulphured molasses
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 cups bread flour
1 cup rolled oats
4 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 tbsp kosher salt

Butter a 9x5x3 loaf pan. My pan was a little smaller (8.5x4.5) and if yours is too, I'd recommend making a few rolls or a small boule with some of the dough. I crammed all of mine into the pan and it baked up ridiculously tall.

Combine the yeast and molasses with 2 cups of warm water and sit for about 5 minutes (until yeast bubbles). Add the flours, butter, and oats and stir with a wooden spoon. Then let sit, covered with a towel, for half an hour.

Add the salt and knead for 8-10 minutes, until dough is soft and only slightly sticky (or mix on medium speed in a stand mixer for 6 minutes). Put the dough into a buttered bowl, cover with a towel, and allow to rise until doubled in size (about one hour).

Before:


After:


Then shape the dough:


First, flatten it out on a lightly floured surface (if making some rolls, take the dough out for that now). Then fold the top down and bottom up so that they meet in the middle. Press together the seam. Then put the dough into the pan with the seam down. Cover the pan with a towel and allow to rise again for another hour. Start preheating the oven to 400 degrees about 20 minutes before the hour is up.



Bake for 40 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when you thump the top. Remove the loaf from the pan and let cool for a few hours until cutting, if you can stand to wait that long.

Extra Spicy Green Tomato Salsa

Just a quick update to my last post...

Adam is having a "Hot Off" (aka a competition to see who can handle the spiciest foods) at work today and requested I make that Green Tomato Salsa with habaneros instead of jalapenos. I just made a new batch not only with orange habaneros, but with double the amount (four instead of two). He claims it is so good, people would pay money for it. I'm not trying it, so I'll have to take his word for it.

If you or someone you know is one of those crazy people that likes to eat food so spicy that they sweat until their clothes are drenched, maybe give this version a try:

5 green tomatoes
1 onion
1 garlic clove
4 habanero peppers
small handful of cilantro
salt to taste
(I skipped the 1 tbsp of vegetable oil this time)

Green Tomato Salsa

I don't think my expectations were too high.

I just wanted one. One ripe tomato. With 4 tomato plants in my garden, I didn't think it was too much to ask. It was my first garden ever and I just wanted to pick one juicy ripe heirloom tomato off the vine. I had "Julia Child" tomatoes, crazy banana pepper shaped tomatoes, and yellow tomatoes. At first, there were just a couple little green globes growing. I waited patiently....and then, the squirrels got to them. Then some more green balls appeared, but I went out of town in the middle of tomato season. No one really knows if any of them made it to being ripe before getting eaten by pesky critters, but I didn't get a single one.



There are still a ton of unripe green tomatoes growing though, but it's been really cold the past few weeks since we returned from our honeymoon and I gave up. Yesterday, we made fried green tomatoes. I'd never had them before and Adam hadn't had them for years. We were both underwhelmed. But what else can you do with those firm green buggers? I had no idea.

Google led me to this recipe. I was skeptical, but we decided we might as well give it a try. Plus, I got to use the jalapeno pepper I found hiding under an overgrown tomato plant. And what do you know? It actually turned out really good. So if you too have a bunch of green tomatoes still hanging on and want an option besides frying them, here you go.

Maybe next year I'll get one.



Green Tomato Salsa
Note: If you want to make it extra spicy, try this version.

5 medium unripe green tomatoes
1 small onion
2 jalapeno peppers
1 garlic clove
a small handful of cilantro
salt
pepper
1 tbsp vegetable oil


Combine ingredients in a blender or food processor. That's it!

Quinuevos Rancheros

Whenever I go on vacation, I come back completely disoriented. I forget how I used to function. In college, even after a long weekend, I'd come back wondering "How exactly did I mange to watch so many episdoes of Six Feet Under and do all my homework at the same time?" or even "What time do I normally eat dinner?" Coming back from my honeymoon has been no different. After 10 days of eating out for every meal, plus the weeks beforehand where I was traveling and not cooking regularly, have gotten my routines out of whack. I went to the grocery store the day after we got back since we had pretty much nothing in the fridge and was so overwhelmed, I ended up buying some apples and bananas and coming home. Not exactly great ingredients for dinner.

Slowly but surely I'm getting used to cooking again. The blogging part? That's coming back soon. I made myself a fantastic birthday cake last weekend and took pictures the first half, and then completely forgot about it. So I have pictures of making ganache and that ganache spread over the bottom layer of the cake, but anything else? Nope.

Oops.

I promise to be back in full force soon. There are too many new kitchen toys from the wedding for me not to be! I am super excited to start using my KitchenAid Ice Cream maker. I made my first batch of vanilla, just to get the hang of things, the other day and it is marvelous. I can't wait to try some more complex and delicious flavors. But anyway...to make up for my lack of entries lately, I bring you my dinner:



I got this recipe from Rebecca Woolf at Girls Gone Child. I am loving her new Eat Well section.

No recipe is really needed. Plop some quinoa on a plate. Top with 2 eggs, shredded cheese, salsa, cilantro, avocado and anything else you think would be good. I used cayenne pepper to add a little spicy to it. I don't think I've ever seen quinoa used in a dish like this but I think quinoa and runny egg yolks may be new favorite combo.

Honeymoon: Delancey

While we were in Seattle, we were lucky enough to have dinner at Delancey, the restaurant owned by Molly Wizenburg (Orangette), who you may realize from reading my blog, I love. A lot.



We started with Burrata, served with prosciutto and arugula (excuse the not-so-great pictures taken in the dark restaurant with my point and shoot):



Then, pizza! I picked sausage:



Salami and fennel seed (which I loved even though I do. not. like. fennel):


They may just look like normal pizzas, but they were AMAZING. Simple, high quality ingredients. The salami was especially phenomenal.

In the back, you can see Molly's husband, Brandon. In the front, you can see the bottle of rose that we drank...

Then, I met Molly. No big deal...



She and Brandon gave us dessert on the house since it was our honeymoon. This is Adam's. I can't remember what it was, except it involved blackberries and was delicious Oh hey, I took a picture of the menu. It's blackberry pavlova:



But mine was totally better. Peaches with honey whipped cream, and BOURBON carmel. The bourbon. It was good.:


If you ever find yourself in Seattle, I highly recommend checking out Delancey (and getting there when it opens or else you might have to wait 2 hours for a table. If you do have to wait two hours for a table, there is a bar across the street, not that we went there and had enough drinks to be a bit tipsy before dinner). Also, one pizza is not enough for two people, but too much for one person, which means leftovers you can eat for breakfast in your hotel room. Cold pizza. Breakfast. It's classy.

I'm Back!

We just got back from our honeymoon this afternoon! I had an amazing time and will be back in my next post to detail all the foodie highlights!

Thanks for sticking around!