Month: August 2010

Almond Croissants

Like my Wizard of Oz coffee mug?  Yeah, we got a little obsessed around here for a while, but it has, blessedly, passed…

OK, so if you dig the flavor of almonds, you really owe it to yourself to make these right away.  I’ve made them a couple of times over the past few weeks and they are really something special, especially when they’re hot out of the oven.

Almond Croissant Turnovers

(recipe adapted from this one)

1/2 package frozen puff pastry

1/4 cup canned almond paste

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup sliced almonds

Thaw the puff pastry (you’ll use only one of the sheets in the package…wrap the other one tightly in plastic wrap and keep it in the freezer) at room temperature, wrapped in waxed paper or plastic wrap, for about 45 minutes, until it’s soft enough to handle without it breaking.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Carefully unfold the sheet and lay it out flat on a lightly floured work surface.  Using a pastry cutter or pizza cutter, cut the sheet into four equal-sized squares.  Gently spread one tablespoonful of almond paste onto each square, stopping about a half-inch away from the edges of each square.

Starting at one corner, gently fold each pastry square over, diagonally, to form a triangle over the filling.  Beginning on the folded side, gently press any excess air out of the dough and then press the edges of the triangle to seal it, using a minimal amount of the egg (applied with a pastry brush) as glue, if necessary.  Repeat with each pastry square and then place all of the filled and sealed croissants on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Brush each croissant with a thin but thorough (cover the whole surface, but don’t douse it and try not to apply so much that it bleeds over onto the parchment paper) coat of the beaten egg.  Sprinkle each croissant with a coating of the sliced almonds (as many or as few as you’d like…a small clump or coat the whole thing…your choice) and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until the croissants are golden brown and the almonds on top are toasted.

Let cool for about 1 minute while you brew your coffee,  and then enjoy.

Nota Bene:  I only use half the package of puff pastry, because there are four of us in my family, but you could obviously very easily double this recipe, by using the whole package, to make 8 croissants…or as many as you might need, if you’re serving a crowd.  I haven’t tried it yet, but I also think it would be fun to cut each sheet into 16 tiny squares and make mini croissants…stay tuned!

Dorie Greenspan’s Lemony Sour Cream Muffins

Recipe here.

These muffins were absolutely fantastic.  The melted butter gives a rich flavor and helps develop a delicious, crusty muffin top.  These will be a definite repeat.  Yum.

The recipe doesn’t specify, but this makes 12 muffins.

We served the muffins with a strawberry-banana-black grape fruit salad and some scrambled (mostly) egg whites.  When I make a recipe (such as custard or spinach-ricotta tortelli) that uses a lot of egg yolks, I’ll save the whites and either make meringues or macarons or just use them for scrambled eggs the next morning, for a slightly lower-cholesterol option.   I’ll usually add one or two whole eggs, also, for better flavor.   A good blend, to ensure palatability, is about 5 egg whites and 2 whole eggs (with some McCormick low sodium Montreal Steak seasoning – YUM!) to serve my family of 4.

Pimm’s Cup cocktail

Recipe here.

This was REALLY, REALLY tasty and refreshing and has the potential to be a new favorite summer drink.  I muddled a strawberry in with the cucumber, to add a little more sweetness and omitted the rhubarb garnish, because it just seemed a little superfluous.  Frankly, you could probably omit the lemon slice and herb sprigs, too.  They don’t impact the flavor (other than for you to be able to smell them as you sip,) but they do make a pretty presentation.

I took this photo before topping the cocktail off with the ginger beer and forgot to take another one afterward (I was too eager to start sipping, I guess!,) so the finished drink will be a little lighter in color and will fill the glass a little more.  I halved the batch and only made one drink, because Hubby’s not a gin guy and isn’t a fan of sweet-ish drinks.

Spinach-and-Ricotta Tortelli with Browned Butter

Recipe here.

I knew when I saw this recipe that, as appealing as it looked, it was going to be a fair amount of work.  I’ve had it sitting in the “someday when we have a lot of free time on our hands” pile for quite some time, just waiting for the perfect day.  I  knew that the kids would want to help with the stuffing and rolling, so it had to be a time when every one was home (difficult) and didn’t have other compelling things to do (near-impossible.)  It was time-consuming, but not terribly, and it took a little patience to get the hang of rolling the tortelli, but it was easiest than I thought and we were more successful than I had feared we might be.  All of the tortellis remained intact during cooking (I cannot boast this level of success with previous homemade ravioli attempts) and they were VERY tasty.  Well worth the effort and definitely something we will be doing again.  After running the pasta disks through the pasta machine, they became VERY long and unwieldy strips, so I cut them in half, but that turned out to be a mistake later, because I was not able to cut as many dough circles out of them.  We consequently had about a third of our spinach-ricotta filling left and our batch of dough made less tortellis than the recipe specified.  I’ll correct this next time by using a slightly larger circle cutter (I have another one that is 3 inches across) and using slightly more filling in each one.  We’ll be trying this again (now that the kids have mastered tortelli-shaping) and maybe experiment with different fillings and/or sauces.

Our batch only made about 52 tortelli, although the recipe states approximately 80.  I think I know what we did wrong, though, and will correct this next time.

We served the tortelli with some sauteed green beans and a grilled New York Strip steak (we just buy one steak and cut it into small strips to split three ways, amongst the carnivores in the family.)  Vegetarian Girl just had green beans and pasta.

We also sipped a lovely Syrah-Sangiovese blend that we brought back from Italy last summer.  We were saving it for a special occasion and figured that making our own stuffed pasta from scratch qualified as one.

Curried Couscous Salad and Sauteed Green Beans

Curried Couscous Salad recipe here.

Sauteed Green Beans recipe here.

Both of these recipes were vary tasty.  The green beans are very simple, just a slight variation from basic blanching or steaming, but the get just enough color in the saute pan to add some great extra flavor.  The couscous was a little more complicated, but well worth the effort.  This was a delicious salad with some really bright, bold flavors.  The recipe makes a TON of salad, so plan to invite people over, take it to a potluck or enjoy some leftovers (which are great for a day or maybe two, but not longer than that, and you can’t freeze it because of the cucumber.)  If you have a smaller family, I would recommend making half a batch.

We served this with a little bit of Baby Bam-dusted, grilled chicken for the carnivores.

Wakey, Wakey Eggs and Bakey!

Recipe here.

I’ve had this recipe stashed in my files for quite some time.  I don’t remember how I came across it, initially, but I’ve been dreaming of making these cute little egg tarts for quite some time.  These were not a disappointment and, when the shells are made a day ahead and stored in an airtight container, were not difficult to make at all.  The crusts could use a little more flavor, in my opinion, that what is called for in the dough, so when I make these again, I’ll add a little salt and pepper and maybe some minced herbs to it.  The shells would also lend themselves well to mini-quiches or other applications.

I didn’t have pancetta around this time, so just served these with regular bacon (no bacon for Vegetarian Girl, of course) and a small bowl of berries topped with yogurt and granola.  Yum!

Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

Recipe here.

We made this recently for a birthday cake for one of  The Boy’s pals.  It went over quite nicely, even though some friends initially expressed concern about the mayonnaise in the batter.  Apparently, it is a regional (The Carolinas, I believe?) specialty and may (or may not, depending upon which account you read) have originated due to creative solutions to deal with WWII food rationing.

Either way, it was rich and tasty.  If you think about it, mayonnaise is made from eggs and oil, anyway, so adding mayo rather than those two ingredients, independently isn’t really a deviation from most “normal” cake batters, anyway.

I forgot to take another photo of the cake after we actually sliced and served it, but epicurious has some good photos, if you follow the recipe link.

Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Puddings

Recipe here.

Make these now.  Really.  Yum.  They are like a creamy pudding-like version of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  Absolutely delicious and very simple.  They would be perfect for a dinner party, because they can be prepared in advance (they actually need to chill for a couple of hours before serving.)  They are VERY rich and you could probably make them a little smaller than the recipe calls for to stretch the number of servings to 8 (rather than the specified 6,) without feeling too deprived.

We will DEFINITELY be making these again.

Spring Salad with Grapes and Pistachio-Crusted Goat Cheese

Recipe here.

This was delicious and ridiculously quick.  The Easy Herb Vinaigrette in the recipe was indeed, easy and was quite tasty, but you could also use a balsamic vinaigrette or any other dressing that you prefer (although I would stay away from anything creamy, so that it doesn’t overpower the cheese.)  I highly recommend allowing the cheese to come to room temperature, as the cheese is much more palatable that way.  Nothing worse than a cold glob of cheese, in my opinion.  I used lowfat cream cheese for The Boy, because goat cheese is a little too gamey for him.  Boursin would also be good.

I was planning to grill some chicken to serve with this, but I forgot until I had the salads completely prepared and ready to go.  It was a very light dinner, but we didn’t miss the chicken at all, because we were having a VERY decadent dessert.  (Check out the next post for details.)