Vegetable Latkes

(adapted from the New York Times)

One of my absolute favorite things is my Aunt Wendy's potato latkes. Oh my Lord. I crave those things. These "vegetable" "latkes" don't really do her justice; that being said, I scarfed just about a whole plate down. The recipe claims that these are a great way to get your daily veggies - maybe your daily veggies with a heart attack. Wow, am I selling these yet? In all seriousness - these were fun to make, yummy, and definitely a do-again.

So:
1 zucchini and a few baby carrots, grated - about 2 1/4 cups
2 scallions, chopped
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
Ground black pepper
1 egg
1/4 tsp grated lemon zest
Olive oil for frying

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a different bowl, mix together the milk, egg, lemon zest, and pepper. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and whisk until just combined. It should be a little thicker than cream. Add the carrots, zucchini, and scallions and mix them in, then let them sit 20-30 minutes.

Fill a wide frying pan with 1/2-1 inch of olive oil to deep-fry, or less to shallow-fry, and heat until a small drop of the batter browns immediately. Have paper towels over a sheet of aluminum foil ready for draining the latkes. Drop the battered veggies into the oil in batches using a large spoon. Cook the latkes, flipping occasionally, until they're crispy and golden on both sides. When they're done, transfer them to the paper towels to soak the oil up a bit.

And that's it!

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Blueberry Cupcakes for Ali

(from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes")

Hmmm, Blueberries for Sal...My best friend Ali, whom I've known since 6th grade, came to visit with her fantastic fiance, Patrick this weekend. It just so happened to be Ali's birthday, so we celebrated with these delicious cupcakes. They're definitely the easiest cupcakes I've made yet; I will say that they turned out a little messier than Martha's looked (probably because of the liquid released by the blueberries), but hey - they tasted great. The topping is a simple whipped cream, with a little sugar added.

So, for 30 cupcakes:

BATTER
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups milk, room temp
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries, plus more for garnish

Preheat overn to 350. Line muffin tins with paper liners.

Mix together flours, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the butter and sugar with a handheld mixer on medium-high until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the vanilla.

Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk. Mix in blueberries by hand.

Divide the batter evenly in the tins, filling each cup 3/4 full. Bake, rotating halfway through, for about 25 minutes. Allow them to cool, then top (see below).

TOPPING
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Whip with a handheld mixer until thick. Dollop onto cupcakes once they've cooled, then top with more blueberries.

Eggnog Waffles

We've done regular Belgian waffles, Belgian waffles with ice cream batter, and now - Belgian waffles with eggnog batter, courtesy of Joef.

We stuck with Krusteaz Belgian Waffle Mix, which never seems to disappoint. These are a little less dense than the ice cream version, but more dense than if you were to only use water, and have almost a bit of a french toast taste, as our dear friend Ali pointed out. They were fantastic.

For 4-5 waffles, you'll need:

Krusteaz Belgian Waffle Mix, 3 cups
Eggs, 2
Oil, 1/3 cup
3/4 cup eggnog
3/4 cup water

Blend the ingredients together with a whip, and you're ready to spoon it onto your waffle maker. When done, top with homemade whipped cream and fresh berries.

Betty's Oven Beef Stew

This is Joef's favorite meal. His mom makes it the best, of course - it's her recipe, to give full credit. But I think we got it pretty close tonight. It takes several hours, but most of that time is in the oven, so it's perfect for a weekend. A great, hearty meal just in time for fall.

2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
Dash of black pepper
1 1/2 lbs beef chuck cut in 1" cubes/stew meat
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 cans condensed tomato soup
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1/2 tsp dried basil
5 smallish potatoes, peeled and cubed
2-3 handfuls or so baby carrots
1-1 1/2 cups frozen peas

Combine flour, salt, and pepper in a ziplock bag; add the meat and shake to coat.

Heat the oil in a pan over medium and add the meat to brown on all sides. In a casserole dish, add the soup, 2 1/2 cups water, onion & basil.

Bake at 250 for about 1.5 hours. Remove and add the potatoes and carrots. Cover loosely with aluminum foil and bake for another 2-2.5 hours. Turn the heat to 400 for the last 1/2 hour, and remove foil. Throw in the peas right before serving. Serve with crusty bread - butter the bread if you're feeling decadent.

Chicken Paprikash with Homemade Spaetzle

It ain't so pretty...

...but mmm, I love this dish! And it's about time I give Italy a break food-wise and get back to the other half (or 1/4) of my roots - Hungary! This is one of those meals that I was always asking my mom to make growing up. Oddly enough, I think this is the first time I've made it myself. It's yummy, different, and the dumplings are a blast to make (always something my mom and I would do together when she cooked it at home - a wonderful memory).

Next time - and this is probably sacrilege - I may try adding some chopped carrot and onion in at the beginning, just to play around a bit. (UPDATE! I made it with chopped onion and sliced carrot - see new photo - and it was great! Also, I cooked the drumsticks with the sauce, but in the end, took the drumsticks out, cut the meat off into bite-sized pieces, and returned them to the sauce, and that was great. AND, the sauce was a little thin, so I put a tablespoon or so of rice flour in a small bowl, added a little sauce to it and stirred until the rice flour and sauce were combined, and then returned that to the pan and stirred it in. Great thickening trick taught to me by my friend Archana.)

CHICKEN
1-2 large cloves garlic, chopped
Olive oil
1 package chicken drumsticks (5)
Flour
Ground black pepper
3 tsp good Hungarian paprika, plus more
5-6 cups chicken broth
Little squeeze of lemon
Salt

SPAETZLE/DUMPLINGS
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/3 cup flour or so
Salt

Coat the chicken lightly in flour with a little paprika and black pepper mixed in. Saute your garlic in a few tbsp of olive oil in a dutch oven, then add 3 tsp of paprika. Stir, then add your chicken and brown it well over medium heat. If it starts to get dry/near burning, add a little chicken broth. Once the meat is browned, add enough chicken broth to cover the drum sticks. Bring to a boil, then turn down and allow to simmer for at least an hour.

In the meantime, make the spaetzle. Beat the eggs, then add the flour 1/3 of a cup at a time and stir in to the eggs to make a soft, sticky dough.

About 5-10 minutes before you're ready to eat, bring the chicken and its broth to a boil again. Use a spoon to scoop out small (maybe 1/4 spoonfuls? 1/16?) bits of spaetzle dough, then dip into the boiling broth. The spaetzle should fall off the spoon when you do this. Repeat until you've gone through all the dough. The dumplings will rise to the top as they cook. Let it boil another minute or so, then serve!

 Love.

Tuna Fish Spaghetti

Well no, it wasn't with spaghetti tonight - "Tuna Fish Spaghetti" is just what we called it when my dad made it (or something similar) at home. And yes, this is akin to another recipe you've seen before. But this version omits the green olives and adds a little more tomato. There's nothing wrong with variations on a theme, folks, especially on a weeknight!

So here's this version, for the olive-averse:
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
Fresh parsley, chopped
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped and lightly salted
Red pepper flakes to taste
1-2 cans tuna fish in olive oil
1 can tomato sauce
1 lb pasta

Get your water boiling so that you can cook your pasta while you make the sauce.

Put the garlic, olive oil, and olive oil from your can of tuna in a pan and heat over medium-high. After a minute or so, add your tomatoes and parsley along with the chili flakes to taste. Let that cook for a couple minutes more, turn the heat to medium, and add the tuna, crushing the tuna into smaller chunks with a wooden spoon. Let the flavors cook together for a couple more minutes, then stir in your tomato sauce. Bring the sauce to a boil, then turn down to low and allow to simmer. Add more flakes if you want 'em. Cook for about 10-15 more minutes. If you time it right, your pasta will be done cooking right around the time the sauce is ready (although you can always cook the sauce a little longer if you want a deeper flavor - just keep the sauce on low and partially covered to make sure it doesn't dry out.) Add the pasta right to the sauce, toss, and serve.

Pasta with Egg and Homemade Sausage

(adapted from Loukie Werle's "Italian Country Cooking", of course)

This is a two-recipes-in-one deal: first, homemade beef sausage, sans casing; and second, a carbonara-esque pasta dish using that sausage.

I have to say that the pasta recipe probably isn't a whole-crowd pleaser, and I myself prefer a traditional carbonara. I also took a few shortcuts with the recipe, leaving out the pancetta that was called for. I've included the directions for using the pancetta - if you have the constitution to handle two types of meat in one dish, it's probably delicious.

As for the sausage, you could follow the same recipe with ground pork. And wow, they are easy. I made the sausage last week and kept them in the freezer.

SAUSAGE
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 clove garlic
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 3/4 lbs ground beef (or whatever meat you want)
1/4 tsp chili flakes
Pinch of ground nutmeg
Pinch of cayenne (optional)

Crush the salt and garlic into a paste using a mortar. Add the red wine vinegar. Put the beef in a bowl and add all the ingredients. Mix well with your hands.

Divide the mixture into 4-5 even parts and roll each into a sausage shape. Wrap snugly in plastic wrap, twisting the ends, and freeze.


PASTA WITH EGG AND SAUSAGE
4 eggs
Juice and zest of one lemon
3/4 cup parmesan
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
(1/4 lb pancetta, chopped)
1 lb homemade sausage, crumbled
3/4 lb pasta
Parsley for garnish, chopped
Red pepper flakes, optional

Combine the eggs, lemon juice and zest, and parmesan in a bowl and beat together. Season with black pepper.

(Combine the oil and pancetta in a large pan and cook over medium for 3-4 minutes. Remove the pancetta with a slotted spoon and set aside.) Add the sausage to the pan and saute until cooked. (Return the pancetta to the pan and keep warm.)

Meanwhile, cook the pasta, reserving a small cup of cooking water. Add the pasta to the pan, with a little of the cooking water, and cook over high for about 2 minutes.

Turn off the heat and immediately add the egg mixture to the pan along with the parsley and red pepper flakes. Stir and watch the egg cook, then serve.

PIZZA!

I've been wanting to make and post pizza on this blog since, oh, about March of this year. I'd been making it successfully for a few months, and decided to make it for my dear friend Ali (who suggested I start this blog) when she visited us in Madison. Unfortunately, that attempt was a total disaster. I somehow got the dough recipe wrong, and the pizza was un-postable. I've been pizza-shy since then.

But, joy of joys, homemade pizza is back in our lives! Homemade pizza was a New Year's Eve tradition in the Popolizio household, so I'm thrilled to have a dough recipe that works. And this time, I'm writing it down.

This was also probably the most workable dough I've made yet. The recipe below is enough for four personal, thin-crust pizzas. Your toppings are, of course, up to you - below are what our friends Matt and Marina and we decided on.

If you're going to make this, you need to plan ahead - it's simple, but not necessarily easy, and it takes some time to prep. It is also completely worth it.


DOUGH
4 1/2 cups flour
3 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (1 packet)
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
3 tbsp olive oil

Stir your yeast into the water, and let it sit for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, combine flour and salt in a large bowl. When the water/yeast mixture is ready, add that to the dry ingredients and add the olive oil, too. Stir the mixture briefly into a rough ball - don't worry about all the pieces coming together at this point.

Dump the bowl out onto a lightly-floured surface, and knead the dough until it really is a ball, this time. Continue to knead the dough, sprinkling flour if it becomes too sticky, for 15-20 minutes. The longer the better.

To make four pizzas, cut the dough into quarters, and knead each ball individually for 2-5 minutes.

Prepare four bowls by placing a drop or two of olive oil in each and spreading it around until each bowl is lightly greased. Then put one ball of dough in each bowl, rolling it around in the olive oil to make sure it's lightly coated, too. Cover each bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for about 2 hours to rise.

After two or more hours, take each ball of dough out, pound it once or twice with your fist on a lightly-floured surface, and knead it again for 5-10 minutes. Place each ball back in its bowl and cover, repeating the olive oil process if necessary (you shouldn't have to use as much this time around - one drop if any). Let sit for about one hour to rise.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees, with the pizza brick in the oven. Let the pizza brick get nice and hot. When you're ready to make the pizzas (we did each one individually), place the risen ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and use your hands to gradually stretch out the dough into a flat disc (you know, like a pizza) - about an 1/8 of an inch thick. I sort of rotate it, using the tips of my fingers to go around and push out the edges of the dough in a circle. You can toss it, if you like, too.

Prep a pizza "paddle" with cornmeal or semolina to keep the pizza from sticking to the paddle when you place it in the oven. Put your flattened dough onto the paddle, then add your toppings, starting with the sauce. Gently shift the pizza off of the paddle onto the brick in the oven, and cook until the crust is a light golden brown. Remove with the paddle and serve!

SAUCE
We had two sauce options: tomato sauce and garlic-habanero olive oil (guess who!). For the tomato sauce, put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a small pot with 2-3 cloves of chopped garlic, and heat for a couple minutes over medium. Add a little salt if you want, then add a can of tomato sauce and some dried basil. Bring to a boil, then turn down to low and allow to simmer for a bit.

For the garlic-habanero: Combine olive oil, minced garlic, and minced habanero and stir together.

TOPPINGS
We used, in a number of variations:
Arugula
Fresh mozzarella
Prosciutto
Chorizo
Cayenne pepper
Rosemary
Red chili flakes
Fresh basil leaves
Fresh tomato slices

Specifically:
THE JOEF: Garlic-habanero oil, mozzarella, basil, fresh tomato, prosciutto, salt


THE MARINA: Tomato sauce, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, prosciutto


THE MATT: Garlic-habanero oil, cayenne pepper, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil chorizo


THE JULIA: Tomato sauce, rosemary, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, prosciutto; arugula (post-baking)

Penne with Zucchini and Tomato

This is one of those, "How can I use these veggies before they go bad?" type of dishes, which generally, in my experience, can have mixed results. This, however, turned out pretty darn good for a quick lunch. Make sure to top it with plenty of parmesan cheese. Recipe is for one.

1/3 lb pasta
Olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 zucchini, quartered then sliced
1 large Roma tomato, chopped and lightly salted
Sprinkle dried basil
Salt to taste
Parmesan cheese for serving

Cook your pasta. Meanwhile, drizzle olive oil in a saute pan, add garlic, and cook over medium-high heat until garlic is sizzling (don't let it brown/burn). Add the tomatoes and the zucchini, and mix in. Sprinkle with a little dried basil. Turn the heat down to low-medium and cover or partially cover. Cook until the zucchini has softened.

Drain your pasta and add it to the sauce, cooking and stirring over low until the pasta is covered. Serve with parmesan.