30 Before 30: Flautas con Chorizo (#23)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love the meat counter at New Seasons. They make some of the best chorizo I have ever had. I love that it varies in spiciness, but is always very, very good. This is a simple recipe, made simpler by using amazing, flexible tortillas. It cuts down on the amount of oil you need to use and makes everything go faster. I simply pop the tortillas in a warm oven while I get everything else ready for whatever dish. For this one in particular, it was easy to time.

Flautas con Chorizo via 1,000 Mexican Recipes:

Makes 6 flautas

2 tsp. vegetable oil, plus more for frying tortillas

2 Tb. finely chopped onion

¼ lb. fresh bulk chorizo (chicken is a good substitute if you're not into pork)

1 medium tomato, finely chopped

6 (6-7-inch) corn tortillas

1 c. very finely shredded cabbage (or lettuce)

1 avocado, thinly sliced

2 tsp. fresh lime juice

½ c. sour cream

In a medium skillet, heat 2 teaspoons of oil and cook the onion, stirring, until softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the chorizo, breaking it into small pieces, until completely cooked, about 4 minutes. Stir in the tomato and set the pan aside off heat.

In a large skillet, heat about ¼-inch of oil until it shimmers. Dip the tortillas in the hot oil, 1 at a time, until soft and limp, about 3 seconds. Drain on paper towels. If you have nice, thick, flexible tortillas, you can skip this step.

Lay 1 tortillas on a working surface and put about 2 tablespoons of the chorizo filling across the lower third of the tortillas. Roll tightly and secure with a toothpick. Lay seam side down on a plate and repeat with all of the tortillas. Add extra oil to the skillet and heat until hot. Fry the flautas 2 or 3 at a time until crisp and golden brown. Drain on paper towels and remove toothpicks.

Make a bed of shredded cabbage (or lettuce) on a plate. Lay the warm flautas on top. Arrange the sliced avocado around the flautas and sprinkle them with lime juice. Drizzle sour cream over the flautas. Serve at once.

These are fast, easy, and make for a super tasty dinner, especially when paired with rice and a vegetable, like the next post.

Recipes Complete: 23

Recipes to Go: 7 

Grilled Pizza

Today is the unofficial end of summer and I’ve decided to wrap it up with a week of grilled recipes that I haven’t posted yet. First up: grilled pizza. Obviously I love pizza and doing it a different way is fun.

Grilled Pizza:

½  recipe of pizza dough

Olive oil

Tomato-basil puree

Garlic, minced

Basil

Tomatoes

Mozzarella cheese, grated and sliced

Sausage, cooked

Grilled onions

Make your dough and roll out your pizzas. A full recipe can get your three good size pizzas for grilling. You want a smaller pizza so it cooks through well. Preheat your grill.

Oil the top of your dough, flip it over, and slide it onto the grill over medium-high heat. Grill until the bottom is cooked (it should have grill marks at this point). Oil the top and flip it over on the unheated side of the grill and quickly top it. Use a light touch with the sauces. We used the tomato-basil puree on two and just olive oil on one. Go light on the toppings too. You want it to cook through quickly.

Slide it back over the flames until the cheese is melted, your toppings are heated through, and the bottom side is cooked.

We had three pizzas. One was classic margarita: tomato, whole basil leaves, and mozzarella. The other was similar: tomato, basil, mozzarella, grilled onion, and garlic on an olive oil base. The last one was tomato sauce, grilled sausage, mozzarella, and basil.

There are a few moments of wondering if you can get it all together, but the results are so worth it. It would work well as an appetizer at a barbecue or just as a meal, which is what we did. If the weather is still nice where you are, I recommend doing this. It’s usually nice in Portland through September, so I think this will be happening again. Who says Labor Day is the end of summer?

Cheesy Baked Ziti

I am in love with Tillamook. I think this post makes that obvious. Aaron does too and he was excited to give one of their recipes a whirl the other night. We reduced the recipe by half since there are only two of us, omitted the bread crumbs (½ cup), and added garlic (because it’s, well, me) and sausage (because it’s Aaron), but the rest is all Tillamook.

Cheesy Baked Ziti slightly modified from The Tillamook Cheese Cookbook:

Serves 6

1 16 oz. package ziti
6-8 qt. water
1 Tb. butter
1½ c. heavy cream
¼ tsp. nutmeg
1/3 c. Parmesan cheese, plus extra to spread on top
1 Tb. olive oil
Marinara sauce (pre-prepared or your own)
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 chicken sausages, chopped and cooked
2 c. shredded mozzarella
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Boil the past in the water to al dente. Drain and reserve.

Heat the butter and heavy cream over medium-high heat in a 1-2 quart saucepan, stirring frequently. When the mixture starts to bubble, stir in the nutmeg and Parmesan. Season with salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium, and cook for 3 minutes more, stirring frequently.

Grease a large 13x9x2 baking dish with olive oil. Pour the pasta into the baking dish. Add the marinara, garlic, sausage, cream sauce, and mozzarella to the pasta, and stir well.

Top with more Parmesan. Bake for 25 minutes, or until bubbling. Bake for an additional 5 minutes, or place under the broiler for 5 minutes to crisp the top, if needed.

Cheesy, fast, and delicious. Leave it to Tillamook to come up with a stellar cheesy recipe. I loved this so much I almost forgot to take a picture of it. Are you busy tonight? Make this. Totally worth it.

Kale and Potato Soup with Sausage

Soup is wonderful. It satisfies and usually doesn’t take too much time or effort. Though the weather has been all over the place here in Portland, Aaron and I are both still craving soup. I think the Le Creuset has something to do with it. Can I just take another moment and talk about how wonderful it is? While making this soup, some of the onions did that thing they do and made some black crusted on stuff on the bottom of the pot. I freaked out a bit because when I made this soup in another pot, the same thing happened. Only with that one, I spent the better part of a week soaking it and trying to get that stuff off. Not with the Le Creuset. It came right off in the wash. I call that a win.

And so is this soup. It’s hearty without leaving your stuffed and is the perfect vehicle for a crunchy, crusty bread. It was also really easy to throw together because I had basically everything already in the house. I substituted veggie broth for the chicken broth, chicken sausage for the pork sausage, and a very large russet potato for the Yukon Gold, but I think my version is probably similar to the original and very, very good.

Kale and Potato Soup with Sausage slightly modified from Serious Eats:

Serves 4-6

¼ c. extra virgin olive oil
½ lb. chicken sausage, casings removed
2 medium onions, sliced thin
5 cloves garlic, chopped (1 more than the original)
1 large bunch kale, stems removed and cut into ½” ribbons
1 lb. potatoes, peeled and sliced thin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 c. veggie broth
Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering. Add sausage and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until crumbled and beginning to brown, about 4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve.

Add onion and cook until soft and beginning to brown, 10-12 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 1-2 minutes more. Add kale, potatoes, and reserved sausage, along with a couple pinches of salt. Cook about three minutes longer, then add veggie stock and bring to a boil. Simmer until the kale and potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide into bowls and top with fresh black pepper and grated Parmesan. Serve immediately.

This soup is so good! I really like the way the caramelized onions add some depth to the soup. The only thing I would change about it would be slightly more garlic. I only went one above the original and though I used fairly large cloves of garlic, it really could have used a bit more of that garlic flavor. Still, this is a very good and easy soup and I will be trying it out again soon.

Broccoli and Pesto Sausage Mac and Cheese

Here’s another oh hey, when did I make this? post. I have pictures, so obviously it happened and I do remember this being good. Mac and cheese is super simple and amazingly delicious. Plus, it helps to use up those random bits of meat and veg in your fridge. And I love cheese. There, I said it. Like that was a surprise to anyone.

Broccoli and Pesto Sausage Mac and Cheese:

Makes a bunch

Flour
Butter
Milk or cream
1-2 c. finely shredded cheese (Tillamook’s white cheddar rocks!)
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
2-3 pesto chicken sausages, heated and chopped (other or no meat is also cool)
1 large head of broccoli, steamed and cut into florets
Rotini pasta (or whichever shape you like. I’m particular to wagon wheels when it comes to mac and cheese. And yes, I’m aware that the mac in mac and cheese means macaroni noodles, but I like different shapes.)
Handful of bread crumbs

Boil off your noodles to al dente. Drain and set aside in a large bowl.

Using your flour and butter, make a roux. Don’t brown the butter. Slowly stir in milk until you reach a consistency you like. It’s better to put in less and add more if it looks off after the cheese than have a sloppy mess. Slowly add the shredded cheese. When you get something resembling a cheese sauce, take off the heat. Mix in the garlic.





Add the cheese sauce to the pasta. Stir in the broccoli and sausage. Take the whole mixture and place in a large casserole. Top with bread crumbs and stick in under the broiler until the crumbs brown a bit. Eat and be happy.

German Dinner

One of my favorite things lately has been how much Aaron has been cooking. I’ve been behind in my posting, so there will be a number of Aaron made recipes coming up soon!

This meal was all Aaron’s idea. He saw chicken bratwursts at Freddie’s and the whole plan came together. We made pretzels again earlier in the day and he went about making everything delicious. And it was quite the dinner.

German Dinner by Aaron:

Serves 2

Soft pretzels
4 chicken bratwursts
A small jar of sauerkraut
One delicious tasting bottle of beer
A few cloves of garlic, chopped
Mustards galore





The first thing Aaron did was poach the sausages in beer. He poked a few holes in each, added the beer to pot, brought it to a boil, and reduced it to a simmer. He then added the sausages, allowing them to cook for about 15 minutes.



Because sauerkraut from the jar is kind of lame, he jazzed it up by adding chopped garlic and some of the remaining beer from the sausage pot.



The brats went onto the grill and they cooked for about ten minutes.



After the sausages were done, everything was served with mustard. This was a fun dinner and a great mid-week meal. You will have leftover kraut, but I promise you it will taste better and you can use it for sandwiches.

A Tale of Two Tarts

I mentioned earlier that I had a failure involving my delicious oven-roasted tomatoes. This is that failure plus my later success. Not everything works out in my kitchen, as much as I would like it to. I got my idea for these tarts from some over-priced ones available at a certain food store in a certain area where I used to work. Though tasty, my coworker said that I could make them and they would be better. I thought so too.







After making the tomatoes, I got to making these tarts. I figured I’d make four big ones, so Aaron and I could have leftovers. I made the pastry dough (previously seen here), grilled some onions, cut up my tomatoes, chopped some garlic, sliced sausage and grated cheddar cheese for Aaron’s, crumbled goat cheese, and set them aside to stuff the dough. I rolled the dough out, filled it, folded it over the stuffing, and baked them sort of like pies.



For whatever reason, they just didn’t work. The dough was flaky, but not tasty. The insides were fine. Overall, not terrible, but definitely not great. I ended up taking the inside out of the second one and using it to make a delicious grilled cheese sandwich. I feel like cell phone pictures are appropriate for these as they are also not terrible, but really not great.





Anyway, I wouldn’t be defeated! I changed tacks and went for a tart more like this one, which was featured in Renai’s blog. Instead of doing pastry dough, though, I went for galette dough because it is wonderful and really does make for a fabulous tart. I did exactly what I did before for the other tarts and got these delicious ones instead. Success! I would definitely make either of these as an appetizer for a fancy dinner party or a regular party. Very tasty indeed!

As for my original idea, I shall return to it someday. I like the idea of it and it could be that it was just a bad day for pastry. I’ve made that dough before, obviously, and it usually comes out just about perfect, so I’m willing to try again. Or maybe I can use the galette dough and fold them into pockets. I’ll experiment and report back. After all, although not everything goes right in my kitchen, it usually does.

Pizza Dough and Two Pizzas

Back in the day, I made this focaccia and turned it into pizza. Afterward my mom sent me a recipe for pizza dough and I have been sitting on it for some time. Last night I decided to go for it, especially because my good friend Steffani is in town. I love pizza because it’s good any time and everyone loves it in some way. You can make it with any topping you like and make it so many different ways. This dough is so easy and it is very, very delicious. I did the half recipe, but I’m writing out the full one here.

Pizza Dough from The Romagnoli’s Table (via my mom):

Makes 4 12” rounds or 4 10x15” rectangles

5 c. unbleached flour
4½ tsp. active dry yeast
2 c. warm water
1 tsp. salt
Olive oil

Place warm water in a warm bowl and add yeast. Allow to proof, about five minutes. Add half the flour and salt to bowl. Begin mixing slowly and move to a higher as the flour becomes incorporated. Keeping adding flour until it whaps against the side of the bowl.

Place a bit of flour onto a board and knead a bit more. Add a bit more flour if it sticks to the board. The dough should be smooth and bouncy. Clean out your mixer bowl and oil it. Place dough in bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and a towel in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 to 1½ hours.

About a half hour prior to the completed rise time, heat your oven to 450 degrees. Lightly dust your pans with flour I did mine with cornmeal).

Punch the dough down and cut into fourths (half if you do the half recipe). Make round balls and allow to rest for 5-10 minutes. Roll out into circles, make sure to leave a ½” border. Place the rolled out dough onto floured pans. Push the dough with your fingers and around the pan to make a slight border to hold your toppings.





Cover in your favorite toppings. On one, we used homemade pesto, grilled garlic and onions, fresh sliced tomatoes, grated mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan cheeses, and slices of fresh mozzarella. On the other we used tomato basil marinara, smoked turkey sausage, chicken andouille sausage, the cheese mix listed above, and the onion garlic mix listed above.







Bake for about 20 minutes.





Serve with a tasty mixed green salad and enjoy.

This was a big hit and I love having multiple ways to make pizza. This was also good for breakfast this morning.

Jambalaya

My husband is wonderful and a fantastic cook. Have I mentioned this before? Again, this is an older dish, but due to delays, is only being posted now. Just know that I loved this and coming home to that home cooked delicious smell is one of the best feelings in the world.

Aaron found this recipe on allrecipes.com (original here) and used our slow cooker, which is one of the greatest things ever invented. He did some substitutions and took some things out that we didn’t have at the house, but this was delicious nonetheless. I’d also like to point out how many times I’ve misspelled jambalaya in this post and had to correct it. The answer is a lot. I am constantly misplacing the a’s.

Jambalaya modified from allrecipes.com:

A couple of chicken breasts, cut into 1” cubes
A couple of chicken andouille
1 (28 ounce) can stewed tomatoes
½ large sweet onion, chopped
1 c. chicken broth
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried parsley
2 tsp. Cajun seasoning (we got this at the Saturday Market, which I first mentioned back in this post)
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
½ tsp. dried thyme
1 c. cooked rice

In a slow cooker, mix the chicken, sausage, tomatoes with juice, onion, and broth. Season with oregano, parsley, Cajun seasoning, cayenne pepper, and thyme.



Cover and cook seven to eight hours on low or three to four hours on high. Aaron said it was closer to four hours on high. When it is done cooking, mix in your favorite cooked rice, serve and enjoy. This was spicy and delicious! If you took a look at the original, Aaron took out the shrimp as we didn’t have any, but next time he said he’d definitely put some in. I also had this as leftovers this next day and it was still fantastic!

Not a Breakfast Burrito

The more I cook, the more I want to. So when my husband said he was hungry the other night, I jumped up, ran downstairs and dug through the fridge to find something interesting to make. What I came up with was dubbed “Not a Breakfast Burrito” by my husband, but I think it was more like not a breakfast taco or tostada.

This is what I did:

About 2½ cups broccoli
¼ finely shredded cheddar cheese
2 corn tortillas
2 fully cooked mango sausages
¼ yellow onion, sliced and cut into half rings
2 small red potatoes
3 cloves garlic
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Sprinkle olive oil over both sides of tortillas and place on a cookie sheet. Heat in oven for about 5 minutes for each side. Add cheese and cook until cheese is melty. You can leave this in the oven to stay warm while everything else comes together. If you do this, add the cheese at the very end.

In a small saucepan, heat a small amount of olive oil, enough to coat bottom of pan, over medium heat. Add onion, sprinkle a bit more oil and reduce heat. The key to grilled onions is patience. To get nice, not crispy, onions, you need to give them time to cook. Don’t bother them. Just let them do their thing. It takes about 20 minutes for this.

Steam broccoli and whole potatoes. I have a really nice glass steamer I can stick in the microwave. Easy easy.

Meanwhile, chop sausages and mince garlic. When veggies are done, remove potatoes and chop. Heat olive oil in another small saucepan and add potatoes. Cook until outsides are crispy, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and sausages and cook until garlic is soft and sausages are warm.



Remove tortillas from oven. Add potato, sausage garlic mixture to the top and cover with broccoli. Garnish with grilled onions on top.



Because I use so much olive oil in my cooking, I got this handy little container at IKEA. It’s perfect for adding just the right amount of oil to the pan. It came with a twin (now holding my balsamic vinegar). It makes throwing together a vinaigrette a snap. I love this thing!

Galette Dough and Cheese and Sausage Galette

My mom sent me this recipe from her Baking with Julia book awhile ago and dang, I wish I had done it sooner. It was such a snap to put together and so tasty. Aaron and I had a savory one for dinner and there’s a sweet one baking in the oven right now that I’ll post about later. This can be done in a food processor or by hand. Since my food processor is itty bitty, I did it by hand. As with all recipes from my mom, her notes are scattered throughout.

Galette Dough from Baking with Julia via my mom:

Makes enough for two 8-inch galettes

3 Tb. sour cream (or yogurt or buttermilk. I used sour cream because for once I had some in the house.)
1/3 c. approximately ice water
1 c. unbleached white flour
¼ c. cornmeal
1 tsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
7 Tb. cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Sit in sour cream and 1/3 c. ice water together in a small bowl and set aside. Mom note – place in freezer along with your cut up butter while you get the flour thing going – it is important that these ingredients remain cold before adding. Okay back to the recipe.



Put flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and stir with a fork to mix. Drop butter piece into bowl, tossing them once or twice to coat them with flour. With a pastry blender (I used my fingers, as always), work the butter into the flour, aiming for piece of butter that range from bread crumb to small peas. The smaller pieces will make the dough tender, the large ones will make it flaky. Mom note – aim for a smaller crumb size – you will be happier when it comes time to roll it out later.

Sprinkle the cold sour cream mixture over the dough one tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork to evenly distribute it. After you’ve added all of the sour cream, the dough should be moist enough to stick together when pressed; if it is not, add additional cold water, one teaspoon at a time. With your hands, gather curds of dough together. You’ll have a soft, malleable dough, the kind you might want to overwork. Mom note – do not as this dough comes together quite easily.



Turn the dough out of the bowl and divide in half. Press each piece of dough into a disk, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. The dough can be kept in the refrigerator for a day or two, or it can be wrapped airtight and frozen for a month. Thaw, still wrapped, in the refrigerator. It is convenient to roll the dough into rounds, place parchment between each round and freeze them wrapped in plastic; this way you’ll need only about 20 minutes to defrost at room temperature before it can be filled, folded into a galette and baked.

I modified the Cheese and Tomato Galette from the same set of recipes my mom set for the following savory galette. It was so tasty and I wish I had more to eat right now. Yum, yum, yum.

Here’s what I did for a Cheese and Sausage Galette:

½ recipe galette dough, chilled
2 oz. Monterey jack cheese, shredded
2 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into chunks
½ c. yellow onion, sliced
2 Andouille chicken sausages, sliced (yay TJ’s!)
Olive oil

Heat a small saucepan over medium heat with a small amount of olive oil. Toss onions in oil and cook until soft and golden brown, about 8 minutes. Set aside.

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Put the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it into an 11-inch circle that’s about 1/8 inch thick. Since the dough is soft, you’ll need to lift it now and then and toss some flour under it and over the top. Roll the dough up around your rolling pin and unroll onto a prepared baking sheet. I missed this step here and prepared mine on the counter and then had to move it. As a result, it looked much nicer on the counter. Oh well. It still turned out fine.



Mix cheeses and scatter over rolled-out dough, leaving a 2”-3” border. Scatter the onions over the cheese. Place the sliced sausage in concentric circles, one slice slightly overlapping the last, on top of the cheese and onion. Fold the uncovered border of dough up over the filling, allowing the dough to pleat as you lift it up and work your way around the galette.



(PS: Thanks Blogspot for turning this one sideways! You're a pal!)

Bake the galette for 35-40 minutes (35 was just about perfect for me, but you may want to start checking on it at 30), or until the pastry is golden and crisp and the cheese is bubbly. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the galette rest on the sheet for 15 minutes. Mom note – Slip a wide spatula or two smaller ones under the galette and gently place on your serving plate. Do this with careful determination. The galette will easily peel away from the parchment paper.



Serve warm or at room temperature.

The galette can be kept at room temperature for several hours and is best serve the day it is made.

We had ours with some mixed greens. It was such a tasty meal! The dough is crispy and light and just has a really, really good taste. Aaron compared the flavor to the crispy part of a croissant, which I think is a very apt description. I will most certainly be making the dough again and will try different types of savory galettes. It’s just so adaptable and wonderful.

Savory Crepes and Dessert Crepes with Lemon Curd and Strawberry Compote

Yesterday afternoon involved me being hungry and grumpy and reading Tastespotting, which is a terrible combination. Because I’ve been using my Moosewood cookbook so much, it was up here next to the bed when I usually blog. Yes, I blog from bed. That’s what my laptop is for! Anyway, I started flipping through that and came across her recipe for crepes, which I have on my ambitious list of recipes to make. Of course, while looking through it, I realized a) there was no milk in the house and b) hardly any eggs.

Luckily, Aaron came to my rescue and helped me out of my grumptastic mood and went grocery shopping. He returned with all the things I needed and I was off on my mission to make crepes! The recipe itself is quite easy. The hard part of finding the correct pan temperature and spinning the pan around to get a good sized crepe. My first one was perfect…so we ate it. The next few were weird shaped or split it half. So I ate those ones too. Finally, I was able to get into a groove and made 5 decent size ones and 2 small ones. My goal is to be able to make good size crepes consistently. It is difficult! The thing starts cooking and you have to spin it around before all the batter runs out and you get spindly bits that stick out. Man, Alton Brown made this look far too easy. (PS: I totally have a nerd girl crush on Alton. His show is almost the only watchable thing on the Food Network.)

Anyway, despite the mishaps, these are very, very tasty. The thing I love about crepes is that you can have them for dinner, for dessert, just because, and you can fill them with whatever you want. Or just eat them. Last night we had them for dinner and after our friend came over, a couple for dessert.

Crepes from The New Moosewood Cookbook:

Yield: 8-10 7” crepes (if you’re good!)

1 large egg
1¼ c. milk (I use 1% because that’s what Aaron drinks. I have milk issues.)
1 c. flour
¼ tsp. salt
A few drops of oil for the pan

She has a note here that you need a 6 or 7” crepe or omelette pan. As I recall from Alton’s show about crepes, this is crap (if you pronounce that with Maurice Chevalier-esque French accent, it’s a bad pun). A heavy, nonstick skillet will work. Even if mine weren’t all even and perfect, the pan performed like a champ. I’m just a n00b.



Place egg, milk, flour, and salt in a blender or food processor, and whip until smooth.



Heat pan. After a few minutes, lightly brush its entire surface with oil. When the pan is hot enough to sizzle a drop of water instantly on contact, pour in approximately ¼ cup batter/ Slowly tilt the pan in all directions until the batter thoroughly coast the bottom. Pour off any excess batter. The pancake should be thin. This is the hard part. Mine weren’t perfectly thin or perfectly shaped, but it got easier as I went on. This is definitely something that needs practice. Cook on one side over medium heat until set, about 20 seconds, then turn over (use a plastic spatula) and cook for just another second or two on the other side.

Turn crepe out onto a clean, dry dinner plate, and repeat the procedure until you have used up all the batter. (If you keep the pan hot, you won’t have to add any additional oil. I did not find this to be true for me as I had to keep adjusting the heat. Maybe when I get it right…) You can pile the finished crepes on the plate – they won’t stick together.

Cover the plate tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until use. The crepes will keep well for at least a week.

To fill, simply place a small amount of whatever filling at one end of the crepe and fold over sides and end to make a need little packet. Filled crepes can be heated gently, covered, in a 325 degree oven or sautéed in a little butter just before serving. My husband and I did ours a little differently. We tried to fold them in packets with an open middle to resemble some we had while in Tours, France. This worked out, but involved the use of many toothpicks.

Anyway, for our dinner crepes, we had:

Sharp cheddar cheese
Sweet onion, chopped
4 eggs, fried (like an omelette that hasn’t been folded over)
Hot sausage (for Aaron)



Fill these and place covered in a 325 degree oven for about 10 minutes or until the cheese has melted. Very, very tasty.

The dessert ones were a little more complicated. I was so in love with the Citron Strawberry ones we had at Le Happy a couple weeks ago, I had to try it at home. The original lemon curd and strawberry compote recipes can be found here and here.

Lemon Curd from Gourmet Magazine via epicurious.com:

¾ c. fresh lemon juice (this was about 2 medium size lemons)
1 Tb. finely grated fresh lemon zest (1 medium size lemon)
¾ c. granulated sugar
1 stick (½ c.) unsalted butter, cut into bits
2 Tb. cornstarch
½ tsp salt
4 large egg yolks



Simmer lemon juice, zest, sugar, butter, cornstarch, and salt in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over moderately high heat, whisking constantly, 1 minute. Lightly beat yolks in a small bowl, then add 1/4 cup lemon mixture, whisking. Add yolk mixture to remaining lemon mixture, then reduce heat to low and cook, whisking constantly, until curd is thick enough to hold marks of whisk, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl, then cover surface with plastic wrap and chill.

Strawberry Compote from Gourmet Magazine via epicurious.com:

2 ½ c. strawberries (I used whole frozen unsweetened and it worked out fine), trimmed
¼ c. fresh orange juice (I used Trader Joe’s concentrate and again, fine)
2 tsp. granulated sugar



Halve strawberries lengthwise if small or quarter if larger. Whisk together orange juice and superfine sugar in a bowl until sugar is dissolved and add strawberries, tossing to coat.



Fill the crepes with lemon curd and compote and serve with extra because they are both just so delicious. Heat gently for about 5 minutes. As you can see from the pictures, I gave up on the whole packet thing and just folded them in half. Still tasty though! I think this was a good home attempt at a restaurant recipe. I have a bunch of lemon curd leftover, so I need to figure out something to do with that. Maybe just make more crepes? We’ll see.

Baked Macaroni with Smoked Turkey Sausage

Yesterday was a very exciting day for me. The GRE is over and my scores made me very, very happy. Even better, my husband decided to make dinner and what a delicious dinner it was. As always, I helped with the prep a little, but this is almost all his work. As you can probably guess from recipes like this, we’re into cheese and sausage dishes. I love turkey sausage. It’s tasty and it works well in so many things. Aaron doubled the recipe and added the sausage because a) we like leftovers and b) turkey sausage is wonderful!

Baked Macaroni with Smoked Turkey Sausage modified from Joy of Cooking:

Serves 4 or two very hungry people with plenty of leftovers

2 c. macaroni
2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
2 eggs
1 1/3 c. half-and-half
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. paprika
2 Tb. grated onion
About two smoked turkey sausages (use however much you like or omit altogether)
Au gratin: dry bread crumbs, dots of butter, grated cheese, and paprika

Boil macaroni in salted water and drain. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat eggs, milk, salt, paprika, and grated onion until blended.





Place layers of macaroni and sausage in a greased baking dish. Sprinkle the layers with the cheese (reserve some for the au gratin). Aaron says he had about three layers. Pour egg mixture over the top of the macaroni. Sprinkle the top with the au gratin.

Bake the macaroni for about 40 minutes. Place under the broiler for a couple of minutes for a delicious, golden crust.





Serve immediately. We had ours with a simple salad. This would also make a great side dish. It’s super tasty and I hope he makes it again soon (*wink* *wink*).

The day ended very well. Carrina honored me with a super delicious cake wreck (which you can see here). If you haven’t been to Cake Wrecks, go now. You’ll laugh so hard. Thanks Carrina!

Mighty Sausage Scalloped Potatoes

Yesterday, while drilling my brain with math drills and vocab, Aaron went out shopping and came home with far too much food, including lots of cheese (which was on sale). So he took it upon himself to find a cool recipe for the copious amount of cheese we have and Zenner’s sausages. While I still don’t eat a lot of meat, I find these to be pretty dang tasty. I first had them over at my friend Carrina’s house (she has a blog now too! Go check it out here) and really, really enjoyed it. It’s spicy, but not too spicy, and adds a great amount of flavor to the food.

Anyway, this was the recipe my dear husband found. What I really like about it was how versatile it is. You can skip the sausage altogether and just add some of your own herbs if you’re not into meat. Or replace it with chicken sausage, something I usually prefer. After eating it, Aaron and I came up with lots of ideas of how to modify it. Shredded chicken, for example, would be a great substitution. I think adjusting some of the herbs to taste would be great and maybe a little bit of garlic. Ah, who am I kidding? Yes garlic. In any case, I’m glad he made this and it’ll work its way into our rotation.

Mighty Sausage Scalloped Potatoes from zenners.com:

Serves about 4-6 dinner portions or 6-8 side/appetizer portions

Five Russet potatoes, peeled, boiled, thinly sliced (ours were huge, so we used two huge ones)
2-3 Zenner's Sausages of your choice, thinly sliced on the bias (just the two)
1 ½ c. cheese (1 c. Monterey Jack and ½ c. medium cheddar)
1 c. milk
2 Tb. butter, oil or margarine (butter works very well because you’re going to make a roux)
2-3 Tb. flour
1 Tb. dried parsley
Salt and Pepper
1 cup frozen green peas (optional. We did not go with this)






Begin to simmer or low grill any uncooked sausage. Peel and boil potatoes until just cooked, then cool and thinly slice. The just cooked part takes about 10 minutes, depending on the size of your potatoes. Melt butter in sauce pan, then whisk in flour, turning heat up to medium or so until cooked, then slowly whisk in milk, salt and pepper and parsley until slightly thickened. Using square or rectangle glass or non-stick pan, layer potatoes, thinly sliced sausage, sauce and cheese, reserving half cup of cheese for top.





Bake 40-50 minutes at 375 degrees; broil top if a more rustic crust is desired, cover with foil until last ten minutes if less is desired. 45 minutes is just about perfect in our oven. The top sausages did get a little crispy, but it was all good and very delicious. We had ours with steamed broccoli (with all that cheese and such, you need some greens) and again for lunch with mixed greens.

Kitchen Sink Sauce

Ever have one of those nights where you’re planning on making dinner and just have no idea what to do? Yeah, that was me last night. So I just grabbed a bunch of stuff out of the fridge and starting making things up. I tend to do this with a pseudo-Italian bent and it often consists of many of the same things. I decided that this is my kitchen sink sauce, which means I throw everything into a sauce except for the kitchen sink, and just go crazy from there.

This time around it came out really good. I did it with fusilli, but this would work well over grilled chicken (minus the sausage) or alongside potatoes. You can very easily just not use chicken sausage and go all veg with it. Go crazy. Add stuff, take stuff out. Use what you have. It’s fun.

This is what I did:

Makes at least 4 portions

5 cloves garlic
Handful fresh parsely
½ tsp. lemon juice
Large head of broccoli, cut into florets
1 small green pepper, cut into strips (any color will do. Mix it up and make it pretty!)
½ large sweet onion, cut into rings (Walla Walla, Vidalia, Maui)
2 cubes (about 3 oz.) vegetable stock (I used some I had already made and frozen into ice cubes)
2 chicken apple sausages, sliced
Olive oil
Parmesan cheese
Fusilli noddles (or penne)

Mince garlic and parsley together. Sprinkle with lemon juice and set aside.

Boil water and cook pasta. Drain and set aside, keeping it warm.



Place onions in a medium saucepan, toss with olive oil and cook over medium-low heat until transparent, but not browning, about 5-10 minutes. Add the green pepper and cook for about 5 minutes more, until onion is beginning to brown. Add the broccoli, vegetable stock and garlic-parsley mixture and cook, covered, for about 10 more minutes, or until green pepper has softened. If you want to broccoli less firm, add it sooner. Add the chicken sausage and cook for another 5 minutes or until sausage is warm.



Toss with pasta and parmesan cheese.

I think the veggie stock gave the sauce a nice depth. If I had had more stuff in the house, snap peas would’ve been a great addition. Just use lots of complimentary vegetables and you’ve got something great going on.