Sauteed Apples: A Rare Breakfast

It is a very rare thing when I make breakfast in this house. Breakfast is Ken's domain, filled with lots of omlettes and even more breakfast sandwiches. I actually had to request that I be allowed to make this breakfast dish and luckily we both liked it. This recipe goes with the lemon ricotta pancakes but I served them with regular old pancakes and it was great way to jazz them up. Throw in a slice of turkey bacon and mmm mmm mmmmmmmmmm.

Sauteed Apples

Adapted slightly from Smitten Kitchen

3-4 peeled, cored, and sliced Granny Smith apples

2 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

A squeeze or two of lemon

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the apples. Cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar over the apples and add the lemon. Stir it up and keep the mixture warm until ready to serve.

Easy peasy! And delicious.

A Salad Story

For a long time my philosophy with salad was to throw in everything but the kitchen sink, make some dressing, and ta-da! Salad! These days I am trying to pare down the amount of ingredients and make more simplified, dare I say "elegant" salad. Enter, spiced pecans. They are so simple and if you serve them to guests they will say, "Where on Earth did you buy these." And you can smile and say, "Oh, why I made them." Little does your guest know that you can make these almost a week ahead of time and snack on them all you want.

Though I could have eaten all of them straight from the pan, instead I put them in a salad. Along with sliced pears, blue cheese crumbles, and few thinly sliced shallots. YUM. However this salad could have easily been apples and goat cheese or any other combo of fruit and cheese, or leave out one or the other, go nuts! I'm not here to judge you.

Spiced Pecans

Adapted from Fine Cooking December 2009 and smittenkitchen.com

1 cup pecan pieces or any other nuts

3 tbsp light corn syrup

1 1/2 tbsp light brown sugar

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

salt

Preheat the oven to 350°. Spray a large baking sheet with vegetable oil. Stir together the corn syrup and the spices. Fold in the nuts. Spread the nut mixture on the baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown and sizzling.

For Salad:

1 bunch leafy greens (I used spinach)

3 medium sized bosc pears chopped

1 cup spiced pecans

1/2 cup (or more) blue cheese crumbles

2 thinly sliced shallots (I soaked mine in vinegar to make them soft and hell, I like 'em that way.)

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl with your favorite salad dressing.

Broiled Ricotta with Olives and Sun-Dried Tomato Relish

Oh Internet, what a weekend for this home cook! Everything turned out fabulous and I have days of posts to share with you! I had hoped that the pizza would be the first one to follow the ricotta recipe but that one is so involved and I am still working on it. So, instead for your eating pleasure, please enjoy this delightful and easy little appetizer.

I made this on Saturday night and it ended up being a great way to use up some of my fresh ricotta. My only minor regret is that I could have left the cheese under the broiler just a little longer. Important to note: your cheese WILL start to bubble like crazy but be not afraid! Let the cheese become golden before pulling it out of the oven.

Adapted slightly from Food & Wine November 2008 (I halved this recipe but it could be easily doubled, tripled, quartered, etc. Below are the original proportions)

1/2 cup oil packed sun-dried tomatoes

2 tsp minced shallot

2 tsp minced flat leaf parsley

1 tsp chopped oregano

1 tsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp lemon zest

Sprinkle of crushed red pepper

2 tbsp olive oil (which I strongly disagree with, the oil from the tomatoes is more than enough. I ended up using a little less than 1 tbsp), plus more for brushing

1/4 cup brine cured pitted olives, coarsely chopped

2 cups ricotta cheese

1 garlic clove, split

1 baguette or other country style bread

salt

Preheat the oven to 400°, and combine the first 9 ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Slice the baguette and brush each side with olive oil and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Toast bread in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden and crusty. Remove baking sheet from oven and rub the bread with the split garlic clove.

Preheat the broiler. Spread the ricotta in a shallow glass dish and drizzle with oil. Place under the broiler for about 10 minutes until golden brown and bubbly.

Spread ricotta on toasts and spoon relish on top.

Back in the Saddle with Fresh Ricotta!

It's true I made cheese! Something I thought I would never ever do until I realized how freaking easy it was to make ricotta. I used Barbara Lynch's recipe from her FABULOUS FABULOUS cookbook Stir. There are so many recipes I am dying to try from her book. Now that winter seems to be finally over hopefully family will be willing to visit us so I can stuff them full with delicious Italian food.

The only two non-everyday things you will need are cheesecloth and a cooking thermometer. So, go forth! And make cheese.

Taken from Stir

1 gallon whole milk

3/4 cup white distilled vinegar

1 tbsp kosher salt

Fit a large footed colander with a double layer of cheesecloth and place in a clean sink.

Pour all ingredients into a large stock pot fitted with a cooking thermometer and turn on low heat. Stir the mixture constantly with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until it reaches 140 degrees. Barb claims this will take 10 minutes but for me it took much longer--probably 20 minutes. Once the mixture reaches 140 stop stirring and let the liquid come to 175 degrees. As soon as it hits 180 remove the pot from the heat. Don't let the mixture get past 180 otherwise it will turn grainy.

Ladle out the curds into the colander with cheesecloth and let drain 1 hour. If not using right away chill in a container in the fridge, up to one week. And that's it! Easy as cheese. Use it on anything.

Note: the other option for draining your cheese is to tie up the cheesecloth with string and secure the bundle on a cabinet nob with a bowl underneath. As much as I wanted to do this I figured my cats would be far too excited by easily accessible cheese-water.

Look for this cheese appearing in a pizza in the very near future!