Did I ever tell you how to make Margherita Pizza on the grill?

I thought not. I made this during the height of the tomato onslaught of '08, and was quite good.
Start with one of those Betty Crocker "just add water" pizza crusts. Make it according to directions (by adding water, I presume), and roll it out on a floured surface. I put mine on this metal grate-thing that is supposed to be for grilling vegetables that would otherwise fall through the grates of the grill. Help with a name, anyone? Or, if you are feeling brave, you can just paint some olive oil on the surface of the crust and toss in on the grill, oil-side down. Grill for a few minutes; long enough for the crust to be done on the outside, but not cooked all the way through. Brush the top of the crust with oil and flip it over. This was the hardest part for me, I think because I didn't have enough oil on the crust. Once flipped, top the pizza with round cuts of fresh mozzarella cheese, about 3 chopped tomatoes, a few handfuls of chopped fresh basil leaves, maybe 1/3 cup chopped red onion, and salt and pepper. Grill until the cheese melts, which is not very long.

"It's Delicious!" --Steve McPherson

Best Brownies. Ever.

Steve says these brownies are like high school cafeteria material: a nice flaky top but still half-baked and gooey in the middle. Excellent. This recipe is from Everyday Food Magazine (thanks, Martha), which includes nom-ular variations such as cream cheese, mocha, chocolate chip, and nut. I opted for mocha.
Ingredients:
8 tbsp unsalted butter (1 stick), cut into pieces, plus more for pan
1 cup flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
8 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp instant espresso powder

Preheat oven to 350.
Brush 9x9 inch pan with butter and line with parchment paper (leave edges hanging over so you can pull it out of the pan easily when you are finished. Mix flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Place butter, chocolate, and espresso powder in a large heat-proof bowl and set over a pan of boiling water. Stir occasionally until smooth (2-3 minutes), remove bowl from pan. Add sugar, mix to combine. Add eggs, mix to combine. Add flour mixture, mix just until moistened. Transfer to prepared pan, smooth top.
Bake until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean, about 50-60 minutes. Cool in pan for 30 minutes (if you can stand it). Lift brownies from pan using overhanging parchment paper.

Supposedly you can keep these in an airtight container for 2 days, but let's be honest, these things are not lasting that long.

Roast Chicken with 49 Cloves of Garlic

Hooray! The Joy of Cooking arrived at my house and all is well. I made an all-Joy meal the other night, which included Roast Chicken with 40 (technically there were 49) cloves of garlic, and roasted peaches. I was pretty pleased with the chicken roasting process, as I have never done it before and it seems a little intimidating. Turns out it is really easy. The only part that I found, um, disgusting was removing the spine from the chicken. The recipe doesn't actually call for this, but my dad suggested it so that the chicken could actually be stuffed, so to speak. It worked out really well but was gross.

Chicken with 40 (49) cloves of garlic, From The Joy of Cooking:
One 3.5-4 lb Chicken
Rub the skin with Olive Oil
Mix:
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sage
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp black pepper
Rub mixture on the skin and in the cavity.
Place 1 quartered lemon in the cavity.
Place the chicken, breast side up in a casserole, cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (up to 24). Preheat oven to 375 degrees with rack in center.
Add:
3 garlic heads, separated but not peeled.
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
1 cup dry white wine
Bring to a boil on the stove, when boiling cover and place in the oven. Cook at 375 for 25 minutes, then increase heat to 450 and cook for an additional 30-45 minutes. Add chicken stock or wine as needed to keep liquid in the bottom of the pan.
Optional: Remove 6+ garlic cloves, peel and mix with2 tbsp minced fresh parsley or finely shredded basil. Mix paste in with the sauce.

I used extra garlic cloves to make garlic mashed potatoes...yum yum.


And then dessert! Baked Stuffed Peaches.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Halve 4 peaches.
Mix 1/2 cup orange juice and 1/4 cup powdered sugar until sugar dissolves. Toss peaches in juice mixture until evenly coated.
In a food processor, mix 1/3 cup slivered almonds, 1/4 cup dark brown sugar. Pulse until almonds are small pieces. Add 1 tablespoon cold butter and pulse until crumbly (I forgot to add the butter so ended up just putting small pats on top of each peach). Divide the almond mixture among hollows of peaches. Bake until pan juices are bubbly, about 15-20 minutes.

Pot Roast

I have had a hankering for some pot roast since the first day it started to feel like fall. Here's how it went down:

Ingredients:
2 lb beef chuck Shredded/chopped/minced carrots, onions, and garlic
Various spices
Red Wine

Brown the beef on all sides w/ butter and a little flour. Add shredded carrots (I used 2, do not grate your fingers), 1 chopped onion, and 3 minced garlic cloves. Fill pot with water up to about 1/4 of height of roast. I added about a cup of red wine. This smells amazing. As for spices, my dad suggested thyme, and other recipes suggested marjoram and bay leaf. I have bay leaves but never have actually used them in cooking, so this was a must. Remember to remove bay leaf when you are finished, they are not totally edible. Dashes of thyme and marjoram. Also smells amazing. Cover and cook for about an hour, flipping the beef once. Keep the heat low so the juice doesn't boil like crazy. After an hour, scoop some of the juice/water/wine mix out into a small bowl and whisk in some flour to the thickness of your liking. Think gravy. Return this concoction to the pot. Chop up some potatoes, carrots and onions and add them to the pot. I may have added way too many potatoes, but hey, I'm Irish. Cook until the meat is tender and the potatoes are done.

A very productive Saturday

I have been working on getting into a pretty nice Saturday routine. Sleep in, take Gibson to the dog park, lounge around, make some delicious foods. Yesterday I threw in ordering The Joy of Cooking and subscribing to Martha Stewart Living (a long-time dream of mine). I am excited.
As previously mentioned on this blog, we bought into a CSA this summer. It has been great and not so great. As Steve puts it, "you really have to love vegetables" in order to enjoy the CSA. I do love vegetables, but have felt a little overwhelmed by the quantities of things that I don't necessarily know how to use, slash do not have the gastronomic capacity to consume it all on my own. Yesterday, I decided to do something about the tomato situation in our house. Again, love tomatoes but had about 4 gallons of them yesterday. I did a little internet research and "triangulated" recipes, as my dad would say, and made up this number. My true inspiration was the tomato-basil soup at The French Meadow in Minneapolis, which Steve and I often refer to as "crack soup." It has insanely addictive qualities.


Calley's Tomato Basil (Crack) Soup

About 20 tomatoes, various sizes and varieties (I honestly didn't count them)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 small onions
1 can chicken broth
about a cup heavy cream
1 cup loosely packed basil leaves
3 tablespoons butter
Blanch tomatoes, remove peels and seeds. Puree in small batches in food processor. Try to get all the big lumps out. It turns out that tomatoes are really acidic and turn your fingernails yellow and your skin to paper. Awesome!!
In your big pot that you will be cooking the soup in, melt butter and saute the onions and garlic until soft. Add tomato puree, chicken broth and cream. Chop the basil (I used a mini-food processor) and add that in too. Salt and pepper to taste. Heat to your liking. I am going to freeze some of this, so I'll let you know how well it keeps in a couple of months.

Next on my list of things to do yesterday was to finish a birthday gift I had been working on for our friend Courtney. She loves robots--please, please! visit her blog and read her Wall-E story. Start here, then read this. It is truly heartwarming. I found this Sublime Stitching robot iron-on and knew I must put it on something for Courtney, decided on dish towels and then found out that her birthday was coming up. What a happy coincidence! She liked them, I am happy to report.



Finally, I decided to make this sage-walnut pesto recipe I found on this blog. I have a sage plant on my deck garden that I haven't used all summer, and decided this sounded like a pretty yummy dish. And I was correct. It tastes a lot like regular pesto, minus the sometimes-overwhelming garlic flavor. The sage flavor is pretty subtle, though I think you could mix pretty much any leaf with olive oil and cheese and get the same general flavor. Next week I am going to make geranium leaf pesto.


This one I ate on as an open-faced pesto and smoked swiss on wild rice multi grain bread. It went very well with the crack soup.

Coconut Curry Chicken in the Crock Pot

I discovered this blog called "A year of CrockPotting" in which the blogger has spent much of the past year making something in the crock pot every day. Ambitious. I was drawn to this Thai Chicken Curry recipe, but made a few modifications. I really like the sweet potatoes in the recipe, but the chicken turned out a little tough. I think next time I will try to cook it longer or keep the chicken closer to the bottom of the pot so it breaks down a little bit more and takes on more of the saucy flavor. I ate this with brown rice and made everyone at work jealous of my lunch. Yum!

Burn-your-face-off Guacamole

I picked up some avocados and jalapenos at the produce market the other day, and made up some guacamole.

Ingredients:
2 avocados
2-3 garlic cloves
1 Jalopeno, chopped with ribs and seeds removed
2 smallish tomatoes, chopped
Salt and pepper

Mash up the avocados and mix in all the other ingredients. Salt and pepper to taste.

I ate the guac with red-hot-and-blue corn chips, which are also hot. This stuff did not last very long in our house.