Happy Holidays, imaginary internet friends! And congratulations on surviving the end of the world. Now I’m off to Barnes and Noble to demand a refund for my Mayan wall calendar. Wish me luck!
In the meantime, I hope you’ll take another look at the 10 most popular recipes I shared this year.
S’mores Fried Ice Cream with Chipotle Chocolate Sauce
Asparagus Lasagna with Pancetta, Goat Cheese, and Lemon
Baked Churros with Cinnamon Ice Cream and Dulce de Leche
It’s embarrassing how much time I spend thinking about recipes I want to try. I’ll start with the germ of an idea (say, a pear dessert for Mom’s birthday dinner). Then I’ll spend weeks – maybe months – considering the options: pear tart, pear cobbler, pear cake, pear sorbet… And when I finally decide on the perfect recipe, I abandon the idea entirely because I’m terrified of making a mistake. (Yeah, I never said my process was a healthy one.)
In this case, the paralyzing fear was invoked by the menace of homemade caramel sauce—it’s the easiest thing in the world to ruin. I think if I ever get around to recording another CD, it’ll be called Ways to Ruin Caramel, with forlorn country ballads like “Too Runny,” “Too Hard,” “Bitter and Scorched,” and “Grains of Sand.”
It took no less than three glasses of cheap wine for me to face my caramelized fear, and I’m so drunk—I mean, I’m so happy that I did! This caramel sauce is the perfect texture (creamy but not too thick), with the subtlest bite of sea salt and just enough booze. *hiccup*
The other components of the recipe – poached pears, sweetened mascarpone, flaky puff pastry, and toasted pistachios—are a cinch to prepare, yet every bit as delicious as the bourbon caramel.
It’s my 2nd blogiversary! That’s right, imaginary internet friends, Galley Kitchen turns two this month.
I plan to celebrate the terrible twos by having a temper tantrum in the grocery store and demanding TWO stories at bedtime. Or maybe I’ll make a pie. I haven’t decided yet.
The very first recipe I shared on Galley Kitchen was inspired by an overabundance of apples, so today I’m sharing another apple recipe. This Pear and Apple Crostata is a perfect fall treat; the filling has just enough sugar and cinnamon to turn the apple and pear juices into a luxurious sauce, barely coating the tender fruit snuggled under a flaky duvet of pie crust. Next time I’ll brush the pie crust with egg wash—it was a tiny bit dry—but I’ll otherwise follow the recipe as is.
Most of the year, I really appreciate the giant, south-facing windows in each room of my apartment. Particularly in wintertime as the sun rises and paints my buttery yellow walls with a gentle glow, I’m thankful that my odd-numbered apartment placed me on the south side of the building.
In July, however, those same windows with tightly sealed blinds conceal an indoor climate of roughly 8 berzillion degrees with a dew point of oh-my-god-my-hair-is-still-wet-three-hours-after-washing-it. I can’t believe I’m talking about the weather, but what the fork? It’s hot.
So hot. Only my lemon understands.
And that’s not just my garbage-crap excuse for failing to post a new recipe for nearly a month. It’s also my garbage-crap excuse for failing to cook anything blog-worthy for nearly a month. I’m smack-dab in the center of my annual mid-summer meal slump. I don’t really feel like cooking and nothing sounds good to me except salads and sandwiches.
So I was shocked—shocked—when I found myself craving pasta. In JULY. One steamy afternoon, I imagined twirling my fork in a mess of spaghetti, and I just had to make a light, sunshiny, quick and easy, pasta dinner. This lemon pesto capellini with shrimp is the perfect combination of bright, summer flavors, tender-toothsome textures, and crave-busting carbs.
In honor of National Grilled Cheese Month, I’m posting a different grilled cheese sandwich every single day through the month of April. You’re welcome.
Cheddar and apple are already considered by many a perfect pair. When you add into the mix ripe pear, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and melt it between buttery whole wheat toast, the resulting sandwich is (dare I say it?) perfect. Sweet, salty, and gooey, with a hint of spicy warmth. This is pure comfort between two slices of bread.
Pear-Apple Butter and Cheddar Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Author: Bake Up, Little Suzy
Recipe type: Sandwich
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Servings: 1
Sweet, salty, and gooey, with a hint of spicy warmth. This is pure comfort between two slices of bread.
Ingredients
Pear-Apple Butter
2 ripe pears, cored and sliced
2 red delicious apples, cored and sliced
¼ cup water
⅔ cups brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon lemon juice
Pear-Apple Butter and Cheddar Grilled Cheese Sandwich
2 slices wheat bread
Butter
2 slices cheddar
Pear apple butter
Instructions
Pear-Apple Butter
Place the fruit and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring frequently, for 30 to 40 minutes, or until fruit is very soft when pierced with a knife.
Remove the pan from heat; add brown sugar, spices and lemon juice and stir to blend.
Puree mixture until very smooth in food processor fitted with a steel blade.
Return the mixture to the saucepan; simmer over low heat, stirring frequently for 30 minutes, or until thickened to desired consistency. Strain.
Pear-Apple Butter and Cheddar Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Top each slice of bread with cheddar cheese.
Spread pear-apple butter on one slice of cheddar.
Close it up and butter the outsides of the bread.
Griddle on medium-high heat until the cheese is melted and the bread is golden brown.
Winter in Minnesota is notoriously treacherous. Sub-zero temperatures. Deadly blizzards. Icy winds that’ll blow the lip gloss right off your face, and leave your naked maw puckered and chapped.
By March, after months of potatoes drowned in gravy, when the snow is still piled up in grey, icy mounds and it seems spring is never going to come, I dream of fresh, ripe summer berries. I long for strawberry shortcake and blackberry pie and homemade jam. And I wonder when will the berries at the grocery store drop in price and stop tasting like sawdust already?!
Well thanks to global warming or the world ending or something, we’ve seen record highs in temperatures and record lows in snowfall this winter. And I can’t help but believe this bizarro weather is somehow responsible for the rock-bottom price on sweet, juicy, organic blueberries at Rainbow last week.
We may very well pay the price down the road for this uncharacteristically mild weather. But if I can do nothing to change it, I figure I may as well enjoy it. And I’m enjoying the weather with blueberry crumb bars. The crust is rich and buttery with a satisfying crunch, and the blueberries bake to a perfectly thick, sticky jam that’s packed with fresh fruit flavor but not too sweet. Y’know what summertime tastes like? This.
For years, I dreamed of re-creating the Italian comfort classic in my kitchen, but I was always scared off by the many potential pitfalls. It’s too dry. It’s too soupy. The noodles are undercooked. The noodles are mush. The noodles are stuck together in a giant starch-bomb. Who are these kitchen acrobats willing to walk the cheesy Cirque du Soleil tight-rope of perfectly baked lasagna?
Well, I know of one lasagna superhero, and she’s been the greatest deterrent of all to my taking on lasagna. It’s my mom. She makes lasagna once a year for Christmas dinner, and it’s outstanding. Her take on the classic lasagna is hearty and packed with flavor, and it comes out perfectly every time.
I just can’t compete with that. It seemed pointless to attempt a classic lasagna knowing it would never measure up to Mom’s. So I decided the only way I could bake a lasagna that didn’t leave me feeling dead inside would be to take it in an entirely different direction.
I knew I wanted to nix the traditional red meat sauce and use a béchamel punched up with tangy goat cheese instead. Then I held a series of vigorous auditions in the produce department, and after much deliberation, ultimately cast asparagus, lemon, and thyme as the leads. Diced, sautéed pancetta plays a salty, supporting role. (Sorry, I’m watching the Oscars.)
The resulting lasagna is almost as delicious as Mom’s, but could not be more different. It’s really the perfect dinner for a late February evening, when I’m still craving winter’s creamy comfort foods, but I’m ready for bright, fresh flavors. The tender asparagus and sunshiny lemon zest reach out from under a velvet blanket of cheese and pasta to invite springtime to stay for dinner.
1. I eat all the crust off a slice of bread first, in a circle, until all that’s left is the center
2. I suck on Cheetos until they’re soggy, then chew and swallow
3. I eat french fries two at a time, and they have to be identical in length. I’ll sort them first, to match each fry with a similar-sized french fry companion, then eat them together
4. I don’t like cold foods touching hot foods
And relatedly:
5. I like to eat desserts one layer at a time
Cake, then frosting. Crust, then pie filling. Whipped cream, then Jell-O. Bars present their own issues, but that’s another story for another, messier day.
On the evening I served these ethereal splendors to Mom and Handsome Greg, I took care in sequestering the creamy filling from the cloud of meringue. Yet somehow, a crispy shard of meringue found its way onto my forkful of sweetened mascarpone, stained with blackberry juice.
How could this have happened? I mean, it’s not like I’d had three glasses of wine, or anything.
And then a light bulb turned on in my mouth, or maybe in my head. In that one, incredible you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter-no-you-got-your-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate moment, I finally understood the desire to construct “the perfect bite” of food.
While each element of the recipe – the light, crunchy meringue, the duvet of butter-sweet cheese, and the fresh, tart blackberry sauce – is tasty in its own right, together they are magical.
While I’m fully on board with the idea that one can cook with minimal tools, in practice, I adore kitchen gadgets, and I’ve grown dependent on luxury uni-taskers. At this point, I’m pretty sure I really need a garlic press and a cherry pitter and a mango slicer and an egg separator.
When it’s two in the morning and I’m watching infomercials, three-glasses-of-wine Suzy is positive that LIFE WILL END without Eggies. At that point, unemployed-for-nearly-six-months Suzy hides the credit cards.
But, but, look at how cute they are! And no shells to peel! And deviled eggs!
Unemployed-for-nearly-six-months Suzy puts her foot down, and reminds three-glasses-of-wine Suzy that I (we?) don’t even really care for eggs.
At this point, three-glasses-of-wine Suzy remembers the $100 gift card to Cooks of Crocus Hill that Handsome Greg gave me for Christmas, and unemployed-for-nearly-six-months Suzy shuts the hell up.
That’s right. I’ve got one hundred smackers to blow on kitchen tools. What gadgets do I want? Is it time to buy a proper tart pan? Should I buy a food mill and stop borrowing Mom’s every time I make mashed potatoes? How about a silpat?
So maybe I don’t need the twirling spaghetti fork and the banana guard, but I simply couldn’t have made my favorite satin zucchini ribbons without the razor-sharp mandolin slicer Mom gave me a year ago Christmas. I don’t use it often, but when I need to julienne vegetables or cut perfectly even slices (like these delicate zucchini ribbons), nothing else will do.
I sautéed the zucchini planks in garlic-infused olive oil, and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and lemon zest. They were bright and fresh as spring sunshine alongside the prosciutto, leek, and Swiss chard quiche.
