Tuesday Night Breakie!

Tasty vitals for sure Maynard! Chorizo and potato frittata, sour cream pancakes with cinnamon vanilla syrup, & arugula salad with lemon and olive oil dressing - the perfect balance.  We washed it all down with decaf Texas Turtle coffee topped with whipped cream and a glass of chilled gewurztraminer! All followed by a lusciously tangy Campari Grapefruit Sorbet! 
All I can say is D-LUSCIOUS! 

Chorizo & Potato Frittata
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/3 large onion, diced
1 clove garlic minced
4 ounces chorizo, diced (we used Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo)
2 medium red potatoes
6 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons fresh basil, chopped
kosher salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium low heat. Sautee the onions & garlic until they're beginning to soften. Add chorizo and potatoes and brown.
• Meanwhile, whisk eggs together until they begin to froth. Add milk, thyme, salt, and pepper. Whisk well.
• Pour eggs into skillet and place into oven and bake until puffed and brown, about 10 - 15 minutes.
• Carefully remove from oven and let sit for 5 minutes before serving. 

Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes  
(from The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl)
1 cup sour cream
7 tablespoons AP flour (we used Pamela's Kitchen Gluten Free all purpose baking and pancake mix)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
butter 
syrup*

• Place an iron skillet or griddle over medium-low heat.  You want it to get nice and hot.
• Place the sour cream in a medium bowl. Dump in the sour flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
• Stir together very, very gently.  Stop short of the mixture being totally combined.  You want the pancakes to have some interesting texture.
• Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl.  Add the vanilla and stir to combine.
• Pour the egg mixture into the sour cream/flour mixture.
• Stir together gently.  Don't worry about the mixture being totally combined; a little white and yellow swirling is fine.
• Melt about a tablespoon of butter in the skillet.  Pour the batter into the skillet 1/4 at a time.
• Cook for about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes, then flip.  Cook for another 45 seconds and remove to a plate.
• Slather with butter and syrup and eat to your hearts desire!

* We did not have maple syrup.  So we took about 1/2 cup of agave syrup added about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and a teaspoon of vanilla extract in a small pot and brought it to a boil - cooking it for about 3 minutes.  YUM YUM YUM! I might not ever need to have maple syrup again!

Campari Grapefruit Sorbet  - Refreshing and not too sweet; with the right amount of pithy bitterness.  We'll definitely be making this again! Thanks Sarah G. for suggesting the recipe and bringing some of the ingredients!

Sunday Afternoon Suprise

Who says that our cooking adventures can only be on Tuesdays? Not this gal...
Megan and I had been emailing recipes back and forth to each other, brainstorming this coming Tuesday night menu, and I had sent one for Giada's Baked Panzanella Caprese, which I've made gluten-free before (and, I think my words were, "I might just be craving it right now...").

The craving was still pretty intense on Sunday afternoon, so I showed up at Megan's house with the ingredients, and I told her we were having Italian for lunch. :)

Our ingredients:

Tomatoes, garlic, basil, cheese (the original recipe calls for fresh mozzarella; I had a bag of mixed Italian cheeses, so we used that. I think I liked it better this way than with the fresh, but use whatever makes you happy), bread, olive oil, and balsamic. Simple, easy, good.

You are most welcome to use whatever yummy bread you like; due to the fact that I'm gluten-free, we used my favorite g/f bread on the market: Udi's. Seriously, if you need to be g/f, get this bread. It's so good, even my gluten-able friends like it (shameless plug done). Oh, make sure you've got REALLY good tomatoes. I got ours at Sprouts, but if you've got some in your garden, please make this dish. Please. I'm begging you.

Slice the tomatoes thickly. Sprinkle with salt & pepper and try not to eat them all right then and there. Layer them in a single layer in a greased baking dish. Chop up a clove of garlic, sprinkle that over the tomatoes, then drizzle with two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar.

Cover the whole thing with the cheese and some basil. Then, add a layer of the bread. Drizzle liberally with olive oil, and throw the whole thing into a 350-degree oven until the bread is golden and crispy, the cheese is melty, and the tomatoes, garlic, and balsamic have gotten happy together.

Then, make another pan of the dish, as we had to. I'm pretty sure we would've made a third pan, but we ran out of cheese. :)

Enjoy!

The End of May...

Tomorrow night's kitchen experiments will be Sour Cream Pancakes and Chorizo & Potato Fritatta!  Breakfast for dinner = YUM!  And you know we'll let ya know how it all turns out!

Rose Sorbet

I read a about a recipe for Rose Sorbet eons ago and was very intrigued. So last month when the first of our delicious smelling magenta roses were blooming in full glory, I snipped 6 of them and informed Aymie that we would be making Rose Sorbet for dessert that night! After looking all over the internet, I cobbled together a recipe that would work with the kitchen tools and ingredients we had on hand. And the results were gorgeous! Amazing taste and out of this world color!

First let me say that if you try this recipe for yourself,

you want to be sure your roses were grown pesticide free!

INGREDIENTS: 6 large roses, 1 cup sugar, 2 cups water. Note: the more fragrant the roses, the stronger the flavor of your Rose Simple Syrup.

DIRECTIONS: We pulled all the petals from the 6 roses, rinsing them well in the basket portion of my salad spinner.

Then spun them dry, and added them to my food processor along with the sugar. We pulsed the rose petals and sugar until they formed a finely chopped paste.

Next we added the rose & sugar paste to a large pot along with the water and simmered for 10 minutes.

Then we strained the liquid from the rose mixture by pressing it through a fine mesh sieve. Once all the liquid was removed, we discarded the petal pieces and placed the amazing smelling Rose Syrup in the fridge to cool.

Once chilled, we added it to the ice cream machine and processed it. After an hour more in the freezer, we had rose flavored deliciousness!

Photos, Pics, Updates for May 24th

Aymie here. Just realized the date and remembered that I needed to pay a parking ticket (oops! Don't tell my momma). Well...that'll get in the mail...later tonight or tomorrow or...

FOCUS. Right. Blog...

Tonight's theme became "Comfort Food." Cheesy pasta bake, red wine, and what one of our dear friends calls "Sneaky Chocolate Cake." Include laughter with good friends and dining alfresco, and that's the sign of a great Tuesday night dinner.

Alfresco dinner. First of the season.

This (recipe here) was yummy and just what the soul (and hips?) ordered, but since Megan always comes up with ways to change recipes, we thought next time we'd add some lemon zest to the sour cream/cottage cheese bit, and maybe add some red pepper flakes to the meat sauce. (Update: I forgot to add that we used gluten free pasta in this dish - brown rice pasta, actually.)

Dessert. Really, it's pretty much why we're here:

This is the "Sneaky Chocolate Cake"; I'll explain why it's so sneaky in a moment. We just took a gluten-free chocolate cake mix (we recommend Pamela's) and when it was just out of the oven, and therefore still screaming hot, we threw a bunch of chocolate chips (milk and white) on top and let them melt.

Then, we did this to it:

Hello, you sexy thing, you. Where have you been all my life???

(For the record, it's sneaky because it's possible that we might've added a bunch of shredded zucchini to the batter. You couldn't taste it, nor did it change the texture, it just added a "hint" of healthy. Granted, we didn't quite tell one of the dinner guests about said zucchini until well after she had enjoyed a mighty large piece of cake. That's another story...but we're not sorry about it!)

Tonights Menu...

Tonight we are going to modify a dish by Ree Drummond, a.k.a. The Pioneer Woman. We're making her Sour Cream Noodle Bake. It's kind of like a lasagna casserole with a twist! We'll also make a GF Chocolate Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake! Check back to see how it all goes!

Diggin In!

We're finally getting around to kicking off this blog! There is a backlog of yummy Tuesday night kitchen adventures we need to post! Where possible we will include links to the original recipes, any modifications we've made, step by step photos, and final pics & observations of the finished creations. We welcome suggestions and commentary, so let us know what you're thinkin!