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This is a shameless copycat of Pioneer Woman’s pasta, trimmed down to serve two and with slightly less cream. I’m posting it because a) it’s delicious, b) it feels fancy, and c) it’s pretty cheap and easy to make, especially for two. Also because a friend asked me to. You’re welcome.
I didn’t know about leeks until this dish, and now I think I could eat them every day. In case you didn’t know about leeks either, here are some notes:
Leeks are delicious. They’re in the onion family, but their flavor is very light and fresh. They tend to have lots of sand between their leaves, so you wants to rinse them very well, but the extra trouble is worth it. And they don’t make you cry when you slice them! You can use them essentially anywhere you would use an onion, or you can let them shine, like in this dish. They’re also a common ingredient in potato soup; leeks are often paired with potatoes or bacon or both.
Leek and Bacon Pasta
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman
Serves 2
You will need:
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 slices bacon, cut into small strips
2 leeks
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tbsp. cream or half-and-half
1/2 lb. penne pasta
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese
Start a pot of water boiling and prepare pasta according to package directions. Set aside.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. When oil shimmers, add bacon and cook until browned. Remove bacon from pan, leaving grease behind.
Meanwhile, wash the leeks by removing their outer leaves, slicing off the roots, and slicing the leeks into 1/2″ coins from the white part of the vegetable to the first inch or so of the green part. Rinse these coins well, and pat dry. Add the leeks to the pan (this is why you want to dry them– it avoids starting a grease fire) and cook until tender. They will start to come apart into ribbons. Do not be alarmed. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant.
Add pasta and reserved bacon to pan, and stir to combine. Add cream, stir again. Serve immediately with parmesan cheese. Leftovers also keep well and heat up quite nicely the next day.
Photo by adactio, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Asparagus and I are on a roll lately. Every time I head into the grocery store, bundles of asparagus are neatly tied up in ice baths, on sale, waiting to be taken home. They’re like small green stalk-y puppies, begging me to cook them. I can’t help but oblige.
I’ve put asparagus in risotto, served it over pasta, and alongside roast chicken. I wanted to do something nontraditional with my new love, though, so I channeled my favorite pizza parlor and thought outside the box. Asparagus on pizza? Who’d have thought. (Mom, you can stop reading now.)
I once had a pizza topped with bacon, jalapenos, and asparagus, and it was maybe the best and most interesting pizza I’ve ever tasted. That and a crispy crust and simple sauce, and lots of parmesan cheese, made me a happy pizza camper. Pioneer Woman’s trusty pizza crust recipe at my side, and I set out to replicate this tiny piece of asparagus heaven. Trust me, be adventurous and enjoy. (Also, Eric? You were totally right about the perfect pizza sauce: crushed tomatoes only.)
Italian Meat and Asparagus Pizza
Serves 2
You will need:
1/2 recipe Pioneer Woman’s pizza crust
2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 c. crushed tomatoes
Salt and pepper
4 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced thinly
Various italian meats (I used deli pepperoni, a spicy salami, and some leftover prosciutto. Use enough to make one layer on top of the cheese.)
8 spears asparagus, roasted and cut into 2″ lengths
Sliced fresh jalapeño (optional)
Prepare pizza crust according to directions.
Preheat oven to 450. Using half the dough, spread evenly onto a 15 x 10 baking sheet. Spread olive oil over crust; top with crushed tomatoes, salt, and pepper.
Top with cheese, in an even layer. Lay sliced meats over mozzarella, in an even layer. Top meats with asparagus and jalapeño slices.
Bake 15-20 minutes, until crust is golden brown, cheese is melted, and jalapeños are cooked through. Top with parmesan cheese, if desired, and serve immediately.
Photo via Wikipedia, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
Life as a recent college grad is quite different than life as a student. I wake up, make some coffee, and start my laptop. I spend some time catching up on my favorite blogs, updating Facebook, and making plans with Donald. I head to work around noon, and don’t get home until late evening. When I was a student, I felt guilty about whatever time I took to myself, time I “wasted.” As an employed person, however, I am free to clock out, come home, and not worry about work until the next time I clock in. This lifestyle change sure is nice, but cooking is no longer a procrastination tool for me, and has instead become something I don’t have time to do. Rather, it’s something I’ve chosen not to make the time to do, as I am exhausted and it’s just easier to pick up a frozen pizza or get take-out than to whip up something homemade. Homemade sounds so exhausting after spending all day on my feet.
I love recipes that I have memorized so I can complete them without opening a book or consulting the internet and know that they will come out absolutely perfect. I enjoy the rhythm, the expectation that things will turn out well, the predictability of a familiar recipe. Maybe that’s why I like to bake; if one measures properly and follows directions, the dish will come out well. It’s supposed to. I like “supposed to.”
Homemade pizza crust, I recently realized, is now one of those recipes that I can throw together without thinking. It has the added bonus of being something I can do when Handsome isn’t home, and that’s ready when he and I get home. I can whisk flour and salt in a bowl, sprinkle yeast onto warm water, and then mix the yeast water with the flour and some olive oil, cover it for a few hours, and know that I will have a thin, flavorful but subtle pizza crust. Actually, I will have two, which makes dinner decisions easier in a few days. This recipe only gets better with a few days in the fridge.
My pizza sauce recipe is not there yet. I don’t have a go-to pizza sauce recipe yet, and the one posted below is not “the one.” It was tasty, and a little spicy, but I’m not feeling it long-term. Still, that gives me another project: find The Pizza Sauce Recipe. Make it a zillion times. Make it in my sleep. I’m a goal person, a project person. This is a good, attainable goal.
Homemade pizza sounds like a time-consuming project for a weeknight, but trust me. It isn’t. If you have ten minutes the night before, make the dough, cover it, and put it in the fridge. The next night, all you have to do is take it out, make some sauce (or use some out of a jar), grate some cheese (or use some out of a bag, even though it isn’t as good), and top with whatever you have on hand. Or have cheese pizza, and maybe a salad. (I never have a salad. I should.) The crust recipe makes enough for two 13 x 9″ pizzas, but go ahead and make the full recipe; either plan to use the other half in a few days, or freeze it until you’re ready. This is so much better than the refrigerated stuff, trust me.
Homemade Pizza
Pizza Crust
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman via Tasty Kitchen
Makes two 13 x 9″ pizza crusts
1 1/2 c. warm water
1 tsp. active dry yeast
4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/3 c. olive oil, plus 1-2 tbsp. for drizzling
Pour water into a small bowl. Sprinkle yeast on top of water; there is no need to mix. Let stand at least 5 minutes.
Whisk flour and salt in a large bowl.
When 5 minutes has passed, drizzle olive oil into flour mixture and use a whisk to mix well, until all oil is absorbed. While mixing, drizzle in the water and yeast mixture. Mix well, until flour and water are homogeneous.
Place ball of dough into a clean bowl and drizzle with 1-2 tbsp. olive oil. Turn dough so it is coated in olive oil. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rise in a warm, dry place at least 1 hour if using the same day, or in the fridge at least 24 hours if using the next day. Dough gets better with age.
Pizza Sauce
Adapted from Nick Stellino via RecipeZaar
Makes enough sauce for 1 pizza, with a little extra. Enough for two pizzas if you apply with a light hand.
1 c. tomato sauce (all of one 8 oz. can)
1/4 c. tomato paste
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. oregano
3/4 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
Dash red pepper flakes
Mix all ingredients in a bowl; use a whisk if the tomato paste is not mixing easily. Set aside.
The Pizza
1/2 recipe Pizza Dough
1 recipe Pizza Sauce (you may have some left over)
2 ounces fresh mozzarella, shredded or sliced
2 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
1 ounce Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
1 ounce parmesan cheese, grated
20 small slices pepperoni
Other toppings as desired
Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
Grease a 13 x 9 cookie sheet with cooking spray or with olive oil. Spread pizza dough with fingers until it reaches all sides.
Spread sauce, leaving a 1/2″ gap for crust. Top with grated cheeses, except parmesan. Top with pepperoni and other toppings. Finish with grated parmesan.
Bake 7-10 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. Let rest 3-5 minutes before slicing.
I recently went back home (you know, that place where you grew up and where they have to take you in and give you a bed) to celebrate the birthdays of my mom and sister. Their birthdays are about two weeks apart, so it made sense to go home for one weekend and celebrate with both of them.
While we were organizing my trip by phone, my mom said to me, “And one more thing: Your sister and I want you to make us some cupcakes.”
Uhh, what?
I love to bake, and I post photos of my efforts on my Facebook page. My family knows that I am trying my hand at new recipes, and they continually both razz me for and stand in awe of my desire to bake from scratch. But this was the first time I’d been asked to perform, asked to bake something specifically for a special occasion.
Still, it’s their birthdays! Of course I am up to the challenge.
Picking out the perfect recipe was hard work. I combed the internet for ideas, rejecting many recipes as too pretentious, too difficult, too time-consuming, requiring too many specialty ingredients, too adventurous in ingredients for such a small gathering. Finally I wised up and searched the archives of my old stand-by, The Pioneer Woman.
PW recently posted a delightful-looking recipe f or chocolate cupcakes coated in chocolate ganache, using her chocolate sheet cake recipe as a base. My major adaptation was in halving the recipe, which still yielded me twelve cupcakes (and a whole lot of leftover ganache. Not good for the waistline).
You will need:
Cupcakes
1 cups Sugar
1 cups All-purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoons Salt
1/4 cups Buttermilk
1 whole Egg
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
1 stick Butter
2 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa Powder
1/2 cup Water, Boiling
12 whole Hershey’s Kisses, Unwrapped
Canned Pitted Cherries (optional)
Ganache
4 ounces Bittersweet Chocolate
1/2 cup Heavy Cream
3 Tablespoons Corn Syrup
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 12 muffin cups with baking spray.
To make the batter for the cupcakes, whisk the flour, sugar, and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
In another bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, and vanilla.
In a saucepan on medium heat, melt the butter. When the butter is all melty, add the cocoa powder and stir. Add the boiling water, stir, allow to bubble for a few seconds, and remove from heat.
Pour the melted chocolate mixture over the flour mixture and stir a few times. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture and stir.
Fill muffin cups a little more than half full. Place one Hershey’s kiss in the center of each muffin cup and allow it to sink down. Or, place three cherries in the bottom of the muffin cup and cover with cake batter.
This would be where I read the recipe incorrectly. I made some cupcakes with cherry bottoms and Hershey’s kiss centers. This was by no means a misstep– it was a beautiful mistake. It did mean, however, that I had enough batter for 12 cupcakes and that some of my cupcakes were a little overfilled.
Bake for 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then cool on a baking rack.
For the ganache, chop the chocolate and set aside. Heat the cream and corn syrup on medium heat in a saucepan. Once hot, stir in the vanilla. Pour the cream mixture over the chopped chocolate and stir together until the ganache is nice and glossy. Once the cupcakes are cool, dunk the tops in the ganache and set on a plate to allow the ganache to set.
Verdict: “Uuhhhmmmmmmm.” -Mom. “Oh my god.” -Sister.
Thank you once again, Pioneer Woman.
Recently I tried out Pioneer Woman’s recipe for homemade salsa. Her recipe makes an absolutely delightful, gentle-kick-in-your-mouth salsa. It also makes a metric ton of it.
Or it does if you follow the recipe as written, conveniently forgetting that exactly two people live in your house and this fresh salsa has no preservatives. Once I made this salsa a few nights ago, I realized we would be eating a lot of Mexican food this weekend. Fine by me!
So I wondered if I could make Mexican/ Spanish rice (I’ve seen essentially the same Tex-Mex dish called these two names) with some of this salsa. See, almost all Mexican rice recipes call for canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, some jalapeno, lime juice, and cilantro (maybe or maybe not among other things). If you click the link above, you will see that those are, indeed, the same ingredients in PW’s salsa. Seems logical that a substitution could be made here.
Enter Google, which led me to adapting this recipe. This blogger’s explanation confirmed my theory: It can be done! So this is what I did:
You will need:
1 c. long- or medium-grain white rice
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 c. salsa (I used some of my multitude of PW salsa, but use any salsa you would be happy to throw on a chip)
3-4 c. chicken broth
Water
Cilantro, chopped
Heat your chicken broth and some water in a pot, letting it simmer.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a skillet on med-high heat and add the rice, stirring to get it all nice and coated.
After about a minute, pour in one cup of whatever salsa you’ve got on hand.
Stir the rice well, and let the liquid absorb. Your kitchen now smells like spicy deliciousness. Ladle in the hot broth, a ladleful at a time, stirring the rice until the liquid is completely absorbed.
After you’ve done this a few times, taste the rice for doneness. If it isn’t done, just keep ladling, stirring, letting the liquid absorb, ladling, stirring, etc. (Think risotto.) When you’re satisfied, remove from heat, top with cilantro, and serve. Voila!
Don’t be like me. Don’t forget the fresh cilantro in the photo. Or on the table. (I totally meant to include it, I promise. If you forget, all is not lost. The rice was divine even without it. But it would have been amazing.)
You could also use pico de gallo in place of jarred salsa, and it might be interesting to try out different varieties of salsa. I’m thinking rice with salsa verde has possibilities.
