Mushroom Sausage Puffs

I love puff pastry. I consider it a culinary wonder. But it’s not exactly something you can have for dinner every night, and most of the uses to which puff pastry can be put fall firmly in the appetizer category. So I relish the opportunity to make appetizers for dinner parties, and I was given just that opportunity this past weekend. Our awesome friends Stan and Charity hosted a dinner party and invited me, Mr. X, and some kind of pre-dinner treat, so I decided to throw together these.

They are very similar to the Mushroom and Goat Cheese Triangles I have made for several dinner parties in the past, but I wanted to do something a little different, a little more substantial. So sausage it is! And frankly, I think they are much better for it.

Pollo al ajillo

The last month has been crazy. Between finishing graduate school, preparing for a job interview, and traveling to California and to Washington within the space of a week, I hardly had a chance to breathe. Then I came back from Washington (site of aforementioned job interview) and, before I had even unpacked, I was offered the job and was immediately thrown into the reality of moving across the country. So it looks like the next month will be crazy, too.

During all of that craziness, this recipe sat patiently on my desk, just waiting for me to find, not just the time to prepare food of any kind, but an occasion that deserved it. That occasion came last week when Mr. X and I finally had a Saturday evening at home that involved me not doing homework and him not doing work. Amazing. As was this dish.

Sometimes you just need a quiche

Quiche is one of my favorite things. It’s something I remember my mom making when I was a kid, a special event brunch kind of food. I have memories of mom squeezing and squeezing so much defrosted spinach in paper towels, and I think quiche was one of the first egg-based dishes I ever actually liked. And when Smitten Kitchen featured spinach quiche a few weeks ago, it was all over. I had a craving, and I needed a quiche.

Thank goodness for all that leftover pie dough from my nectarine galette experiment. The pie dough is the only potentially tricky thing about quiche, and honestly? Most of the time I buy it pre-made, because who needs to fuss with that stuff in the morning anyway? Not that I think quiche must be relegated to breakfast. In fact, this quiche made several satisfying lunches and dinners for me. And thank goodness for tart pans. I never thought to make quiche in a tart pan before; I’ve always used 9-inch pie pans. But the tart pan, while it does produce a thinner quiche, halves the cooking time, which made me very happy when I was very hungry. Who woulda thunk it? Oh, yeah, Deb at Smitten Kitchen.

Parmesan Shortbread? Oh hells yeah.

Bon Appetit’s December issue included a beautifully laid out article featuring easy to make Christmas gifts from the kitchen (and man, those photos were enticing). I wanted to make everything: the spice rubs, the coconut dulce du leche, but most especially the parmesan shortbread, the perfect gift, they said, for cheese lovers. Which both Mr. X and I, as well as pretty much everyone I know, are. Before I flew out to San Diego, I made up a batch and brought them down to the JJ as a gift for my favorite bartenders, as well as wrapping up a few for the boy. I only ate one before giving them all away, and man did I regret it. So much so that I had to make another batch as soon as I got to San Diego.

I do have to admit that this particular recipe is perfectly flavored, but the texture needs a little bit of work. They are just a little too buttery (and you thought that wasn’t possible). They don’t have the density that I really love in shortbread, and I suspect that if you added just a little more flour, they would reach cheesy perfection.

Only the blog has been neglected, my stomach remains satisfied

Oh the neglect. I must apologize to whatever readers remain. The past few weeks have been stressful, exciting, busy, exhausting, fantastic, and terrifying. This being a student again thing is turning out to be more intense than I expected. My previous educational experiences stand out in my mind as a series of thrilling days full of joyful learning. I didn’t remember the hard work parts. I’m remembering them now. Don’t misunderstand. It’s freakin’ great, but I am tired.

I finally got a chance to talk to the Lady Crystal today (oh thank god, I needed that) and her plaintive sighs about missing my cooking and my blog are what brought me to the ‘puter tonight. It’s about time, and I swear, I will do my best to not let so much time elapse in the future. Especially because I really have been cooking things. I’m not subsisting on take out and frozen pizza, I swear!

Arancini di Riso con Funghi, and this time it worked!

Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments and sent emails lamenting my sudden disappearance from the kitchen. It’s great to know that I and my food experimentation have been missed. Things have been absolutely crazy here these past few weeks. Crystal left for Spain, after many visa debacles. I started a new job. I’ve undertaken a massive book reorganization project, so the huge collection is finally being put in order. I’ve had to spend way more time than I wanted dealing with computer issues and yes, I am actually debating going over to the dark side and buying a macbook. Not to mention attempting to keep the house clean, getting myself to the gym on occasion, and taking advantage of my last weeks of freedom before school by going out to the bar too much. Uh oh.

But I have been cooking, at least a little bit. Before Crystal’s departure she requested one last risotto, a Wild Mushroom and Pea risotto, which was fantastic. Of course, I made way too much and the day after making it, on Crystal’s very last night in the States, I decided to try, yet again, to make arancini di riso, or risotto fritters, risotto balls, fried risotto, whatever you want to call it. My last experiment with these never made it to these pages because it was disastrous. They stuck to the pan and fell apart and didn’t cook all the way through and, ugh, nightmare. This time, though, they were perfect.

Caramelized Onion Tortilla Espagnola

In keeping with our little household Spanish theme, the other night I decided to make Tortilla. The Spanish version of Tortilla (Tortilla Espagnola) is not in any way the same as the Mexican version of tortillas. In fact, Tortilla Espagnola is pretty much just a frittata with potatoes. But it is delicious. It’s a staple in any tapas spot, served either warm or room temperature, and it is awesome.

As I searched through recipes for Tortilla Espagnola, I realized one thing: They are all boring. The only ingredients listed were potatoes, eggs, and salt. Blech. Dull dull dull. Frittatas, the Italian version of the same thing, are often way more interesting, including all kinds of stuff like peppers and spinach and meat and cheese. I’m sure you can find Tortilla that includes some of this yummy stuff, but none of those recipes were available to me. The major differences I could see between a Frittata and a Tortilla were the cooking method and the fact that Tortilla always includes potatoes. Otherwise, they are pretty much the same dish, so I decided to try my hand at some kind of bastard child of the two. A Tortatta, if you will. Heh. I’m a dork.

Waiter, there’s something in my eye…

Those are tears, because this dinner is not only my entry in this month’s WTSIM event, but our sad good bye dinner to our dear, loved, and lovely housemate, Alex, who is graduating from law school today and setting out for Texas and lawyering. We decided to pull out all the stops with much prosecco and mojitos, and a great big celebratory dinner. I decided on stuffed peppers because I’d been thinking of them for weeks, and they were sufficiently elegant and could easily be made sans meat for our non-meateating Alex.

They were quite a hit, and I must say one of the best things to have graced our kitchen table in recent months. Sure, I spent two hours in the kitchen, but they were relatively leisurely hours and all the my pains were quickly forgotten as we moved into our second bottle of prosecco, and our third toast to all of the ginormous changes coming up in all of our lives.

An ESADE Acceptance Celebratory Feast

So how dumb am I? Last night I put together a Mediterranean-style feast in celebration of my housemate’s acceptance to business school in Spain. I made crostini with tapenade and artichokes and aioli and marinated olives and delicious cheese and little chocolate tarts and plated everything and it was lovely and then I forgot to take pictures. We were just so excited! My excitement is mixed with extreme sadness at her imminent departure, but I’m still excited for her.

I suppose it’s really just as well, because this was about the most semi-homemade dinner I’ve ever made. But I was proud of myself for putting the whole idea together in the grocery store in about 10 minutes, and Crystal was overjoyed, although at that point I suspect she would have been overjoyed no matter what. So, I’m not going to write up anything long and fancy, but I do some quick words to share.

Makin’ Crackers

The other night I found myself with a serious craving for crackers and hummus. See, I don’t have a sweet tooth so much as a salty carb tooth, and I really wanted crackers. Alas, I was also so poor I couldn’t even afford a packet of saltines, but I did have some flour in the pantry. Ding ding ding! I could make crackers!

Well, the only recipe I found in The Joy of Cooking that night involved yeast and rising times, and since I didn’t really want to wait until midnight for crackers, I forgot the whole idea and finished watching my movie, snackless. The next day, though, I went onto the interwebs, and lo! with the wonders of technology I found plenty of yeast-less cracker recipes of all types.

What I decided to make is a variation of a recipe for sesame wheat crackers. I didn’t have sesame, and what I really wanted were rosemary crackers, so I just did a little changing and a little tweaking, and in less than an hour I had my own homemade and carb-craving-satisfying crackers.