A Grilled Cheese to Please

Cozy up with this late night snack: grilled mozzarella, parmesan, and honey crisp apple on Ezekiel sesame wheat bread. Food for life.

Linguine with Tomato Ricotta Sauce

Yum pasta, num pasta. We had leftover ricotta and decided to try turning it into a quick sauce. We sauteed onion, garlic, green pepper, and Tofurkey Italian sausage (that's even fun to write) in a little olive oil until browned, and then added two cups of chicken stock. After a little simmer, we whisked in one cup of skim ricotta, one half cup of red wine, one half can of crushed tomato, red pepper flakes, and both dried oregano and basil. We brought everything back to a simmer for another 10 minutes and finished off with salt, pepper, and parmesan.

Treatin' the Body to Manicotti

OK, so we watched an episode of ATK this morning and they made this pretty rad looking tray of cheesy manicotti. We fixated on it all day, so much so, that we ventured out in -4°, yes I said MINUS, to get the necessary ingredients. We riffed a bit on the filling-skim ricotta, 2 eggs, salt, pepper, basil, oregano, parsley and nutmeg, along with shredded mozzarella, parmesan, and asiago. The best tip from the show this morning was that instead of using manicotti shells, they soaked sheets of no-boil lasagna pasta in hot water for about 10 minutes and then rolled the filling in them. We defrosted our summer marinara, assembled the tray and baked at 400° on a middle rack for 25 minutes covered and 15 minutes uncovered and topped with cheese.

Maeun-Tang

This spicy Korean-ish fish stew started with carrot, daikon, ginger, garlic, and onion softened in 2 tablespoons of sesame oil. Then we added 4 cans of chicken stock, 2 tablespoons of Korean red pepper paste, red miso, chopped swiss chard, hard-boiled eggs, and two raw whitefish fillets, cubed. We brought everything to a simmer for about 15 minutes and then served over brown rice.

Split Pea and Barley Soup

These are the days of nourishing soups and stews. We've been experimenting with the silly idea of not adding a stick of butter to every dish, so this one is actually very low on the fat side and the salt side. We started with onion, garlic, red bell pepper, carrot, potato, and celery browned in a scant two tablespoons of olive oil. When soft we added low-sodium chicken stock to cover, thyme, rosemary, bay leaf, basil, black pepper, split peas, barley, and tofu sausage. We brought up heat and simmered for 20 minutes, then added 2 tablespoons of miso.

SUCRÉ

Downtown Madison has a lovely new dessert bar and patisserie called SUCRÉ. On a recent visit we sampled thee attractive items. I'm afraid I don't remember what they all were, but it was a super-sweet time and we will be sure to return.

Also, here is a very quaint story about their wood flooring:
http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/13663987.html

Antipasto-ish salad

Bite into 2008 with this salad topped with smoked mozzarella, hard salami, shaved carrots, kalamata olives, pomegranate seeds, and a lemon vinaigrette.

Nummy New Year!

We had an impromptu Num Years Eve party last night, and floated lazily into 2008 on a river of sangria... Our mix: 3 bottles cheap Trader Joe's cabernet, 1 1/2 cups each cointreau and brandy, sliced oranges, lemons, limes and pomegranate seeds. Happy, happy, happy!