Vegetables in a Cobbler?? Well, Why Not?

I know, I know, I'm a week behind again.  I have been sick for over a month.  I got over bronchitis only to get better and immediately succumb to the worst allergies, EVER!!  Thankfully, I'm almost back to normal and it's time to get caught up.  So here I sit with my cup of tea (I'm a huge tea drinker.  I have about 20 flavors on hand at any given time.), a waiting book, some great music, and a post I haven't been looking forward to doing.  Not because I'm tired of sharing with you wonderful people (There are people out there, right?  I hope.  Hello?), but because it was just so lackluster it bores me to even think about it again.

Yes! We Have No Bananas, No Bananas Today...

...because we used them to make Vietnamese Baked Banana Cake!  As I've mentioned before, I hate to throw out food. so when my bananas get ripe I always end up making banana bread.  This isn't a bad thing by any means since I love banana bread.  However, I found this new recipe over at Almost Bourdain that made me drool instantly and decided to try it, instead of my old standard, the next time.  So I waited, and waited, for my bananas to reach the right stage. Of course, I waited longer than suggested, but one can only sit watching bananas ripen for so long before a shower is needed.

At this point I must mention that I used six standard bananas rather than the twelve finger bananas the recipe requested.  Hey it's six of one, half dozen of the other, right?  I also didn't have the correct sugar, but I learned via the wonder that is the internet, that I could throw standard sugar into my super-duper food processor and make it into the sugar I wanted.  The was extremely simple and took almost no time so don't let it stop you from making this dish if you can't find the sugar the recipe requests. 

Wicked Cool Chowdah!

Although I'm not a Northerner by birth, I love the North, especially the North East.  I spent several years in NYC and NH, before coming back home for family.  I found I really thrive in the cold and have my fondness for their seafood, in all its many forms, knows no bounds.  So when I ended up with Clam Chowder this week for our game I was ecstatic and, honestly, a bit nervous.  I've always thought chowder or chowdah, as the New Englanders call it, would be difficult to make.  I was amazed at how wrong I had been.

Can't talk...must cook...

So it's not quite time for another weekly challenge, but I've been cooking all week, and taking pictures, and I need to share them with someone!

For St. Patrick's day, I took some advice from a coworker of mine, and made cake balls.  I could go into detail about how it's done, but I'll just let you check out Bakerella's Blog.  This dessert is really her domain.  These are so amazingly delicious...and so easy to make.  You should go buy a cake mix right now and make them.  I'm not kidding...go now!!!

Quickfire Challenge - Cheese Sticks

So last Friday (my day off for the week) I was watching the Rachel Ray show, and she had chef Rocco DiSpirito on as a guest: he made baked fried cheese!  Talk about comfort food!!!  And the best part...there were 3 main ingredients!!!  I had to try this recipe as soon as humanly possible...

So I got my ingredients together; string cheese, egg whites, and bread crumbs.  Chances are most of us have these three things already in the house.  His recipe says to beat the eggs until foamy, but peaks haven't formed (I beat them a little too long, but oh well...)  He also calls for Panko bread crumbs, but I couldn't find any at Wal-Mart that day, so regular bread crums would have to suffice.

When I Think of Hummus, Veggies, & Goat Cheese I Think of?

Why pizza, of course!  What?  You don't?  Well, truthfully, neither did I, until we started playing this game.  I'm a week behind again.  I've been battling the flu, so please forgive me.  Anyway, I ended up with TV again, what is up with that, and this time I had Grill It! with Bobby Flay.  I'm not a huge Flay fan, but his Grilled Pizza with Spicy Hummus, Vegetables, Goat Cheese, and Black Olives recipe sounded really interesting, especially since I've never tried grilling pizza.  Now we have an actual outside grill, but it was raining this week when we made it so I substituted and it worked wonderfully.  Plus it will hopefully show you that you can make something this elaborate from your apartment kitchen too.

Happy Pi Day!

Nope, that's no typo...today is March 14...as in Pi (3.14)!!!  So happy Pi Day to you all!  And there's no better way to celebrate than with pie!!!

This week the challenge led me to the television show Chopped.  I decided to give it my all, and use all of the ingredients provided for one of the courses.  The secret ingredients provided for the dessert course included celery, blood oranges, frozen pie dough, and jaggery.

Rediscover Leftover: Guinness Beer

Shorty's cake recipe didn't use as much of the Guinness Beer as we had anticipated so we had leftovers.  Although he likes beer, he's not much into the dark lagers and I'm not into beer at all.  We couldn't just toss it aside, though, so we decided to have some fun and make Irish Car Bombs.  I had only had them once before so I was definitely game for the adventure.

Shorty dug out the Irish Cream and poured a couple of shots.  The remainder of the Guinness was poured into two pint glasses.  Each ended up being about half full. (Hey, I'm an optimist at heart!)  The object here is to drop the shot glass full of Irish Cream into the pint full of Guinness and then slam the resulting concoction.  Shorty swears they taste like beery chocolate milk.  I didn't notice a flavor as much as a texture.  The drink was smooth, like the beer, initially and then creamy once everything mixed.  In the end, it definitely added a little zaniness to our cooking experience.

Beer and Chocolate

 It almost sounds like the title of a B-Movie, doesn't it?  Perhaps...but it's also the two main ingredients in my challenge last week: Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake. 

Rediscover Leftover: Sweetened Ricotta Cheese

So I ended up with quite a bit of leftover sweetened ricotta after making my Tomato Ice Cream and, as Shorty and my waistline will attest, I hate to throw food away.  Now I won't lie, I was tempted to just squirt it straight from my make-shift pastry bag into my mouth, but I'm trying to be creative here.  You can not imagine the willpower it took though, that stuff is delicious!  I finally decided I'd just set it back in the fridge and figure it out later, but then Shorty pulled out some frozen blueberries to snack on and it hit me.  I tossed a cup of frozen blueberries into a bowl and then covered them in the ricotta.  Okay, just remembering how delicious it truly was is making my knees quiver.  Shorty mixed it up a bit and sprinkled cinnamon on top of his mixture.  This actually added just the right amount of warmth to the flavor.  Definitely give this one a try.

I would also like to mention that keeping fruit in your freezer is a good idea.  It keeps the fruit from going bad quickly and it ensures that you will always have some delicious fruit on hand for any strange culinary experiments you may come up with on a whim.  We use them for smoothies and often just as quick snacks.  Frozen blueberries have a creamy texture and wonderful flavor when eaten straight from the freezer.  Yum.

To-may-to, To-mah-to

No matter what you call it I bet you never expected to see a tomato used in this manner. 

I'm a week behind on my part of the game from last week (it was one of "those" weeks), but, thankfully, I had time Sunday to finally get in the kitchen.  So last week I pulled TV, again, and ended up with Iron Chef America.  As Shorty noted, Food Network was running an Iron Chef-a-thon that weekend so we found ourselves with a challenge within our weekly challenge.  Unfortunately, my secret ingredient ended up being one of my least favorite fruits, the tomato.

So I have to make something interesting from a tomato. Hmmm.  Well I watched the episode, but I didn't really groove on their recipes so I decided to have some fun.  We have a running joke about Iron Chef (Japan and America) and the ice cream machine.  They will turn anything and everything into ice cream.  So I thought to myself "Shorty got an ice cream machine for Christmas so why not?"  Thus it was determined that I would make tomato ice cream.  Yes you heard me correctly: Tomato Ice Cream. 

Iron Chef: Eggplant!!!

This is Shorty again with another exciting installment of IRON CHEF: SCRUMDELIOCIOUS!!!

So while Peanut ended up with Iron Chef tomato (a fruit he despises) for his challenge this week, I not only ended up with Iron Chef also (thanks to Food Network's Sunday night Iron Chef-A-Thon), but of all ingredients to use...I get EGGPLANT!!!  Now...it's not that I hate eggplant, because that's completely untrue.  But what are the chances that I would chose that as my secret ingredient, only days after cooking eggplant parmesean on a complete whim?!  Now what do I do?!?!?  Not only that..I had to go to three different grocery stores to find the stupid vegetable!

Ugh...but enough ranting...on to cooking...