Deb's smashed chickpea salad

I love easy recipes!  And meals I can feel good about, nutrition wise!  And chickpeas!  And taking photos in natural light, especially if it means not showing my face in the office 'til... I don't want to incriminate myself, but you know, after I cook, photograph, and eat lunch.  Smashed chickpea salad is perfect.



I'm an olive hater, so I omit those.  I added raw red peppers into the mix.  A little of this, a little of that.



This recipe is so simple, infinitely versatile (add feta, avocado, sun dried tomatoes, pepperocinis, help me think of others!) , and dirt cheap.  And so good I could eat it for lunch every day.



At this point I'm just gushing, so I'll stop.  But seriously Deb, nice one.

Deb's really simple homemade pizza

I am so pizza obsessed. I have (at least) three favorite pizza restaurants around town, and I'm a fan of homemade pizza too. Sometimes I just burst out in song, proclaiming "I WANT PIZZA" like the Olsen twins, slowed down. However, I don't think I've nailed making my own crust yet, so I seem to try a new recipe every time. To have a more methodical trial and error method for pizza crust, I'll post the recipes I try on the blog, with a few comments.

The first is, of course, the really simple pizza crust from smitten kitchen.  Toppings were kept simple: this pizza was all about the smoked mozzarella we had picked up.



His and hers pizzas.  I like mine saucy and light on the cheese (left), and Phil is the opposite.  Both are heavy on the garlic.



The recipe says to bake the pizza at your oven's hottest temperature.  For me, that was 500º F, and they came out nice and bubbly.



And top mine with a small mountain of arugula, please.  It makes me feel healthy.

I thought the crust turned out well!  I didn't need to roll it out because it was easy to spread and shape just using my fingers.  Mine did turn out a little too thin in places, and because of my liberal saucing, it got a little soggy in those places.  Next time I'll try to make the crust a more uniform thickness (or thinness, but not too thin).

Deb's tomato soup and grilled cheese

Phil went out of town for a week to a conference, so I took this opportunity to make a personal favorite. A huge batch of soup that would keep me well fed and warm while he was away.



I was inspired to make a tomato soup by these really prettily packaged canned tomatoes from Trader Joes. I followed this recipe from deep within the smitten kitchen archives. The only changes I made were using water instead of chicken broth to make it vegetarian, and using light cream instead of heavy because that's what I had in the fridge.



Of course, the giant food processor got to come out and play for this one.

My grilled cheese was a little less classic than Deb's version: I made it with my favorite pain de campagne from Whole Foods, Emmentaler cheese, and a few spinach leaves.



Somehow the contents of my grilled cheese sandwiches seem to end up on the outside of the sandwich; I'm not that smooth when it's time to flip it over. But I like the toasty cheesy bits, so it's all good.

Deb's green beans and lemony pasta

It should not have been a surprise to me that Deb makes cooking look so easy.  Like inspire me to make a two-layer cake easy.  When I was browsing smitten kitchen for dinner ideas, I landed on spaghetti with lemon and olive oil.  Mouth begins to water.  And in the post she mentions she served these green beans.  Mouth watering intensifies.



I know that making a meal with two dishes is no big deal for many people.  But I'm someone who might just eat chips and salsa for dinner if I can't be bothered to cook.  For me, this was on par with Thanksgiving.  (I actually did make these green beans for a thanksgiving potluck!)




Let's just say that the process wasn't too graceful. Things got a little frantic. But the result was pretty darn good!

deb's carrot miso soup

My obsession with our giant food processor continues.  With it, I made carrot soup with miso and sesame.  This was one of the easiest meals I have ever made, and had such a huge flavor payoff.  I can see it becoming an instant classic in my kitchen.



And I barely chopped anything.  I sometimes dread the prepwork associated with a recipe like this.  Chopping onions makes me me cry. A lot. I have to leave the room after just a few seconds. And our knife situation is not ideal (although it is infinitely better thanks to Peter, who came to visit and saw me cooking and prepping everything with a paring knife). None of that matters now that I have my food processor.  It chopped the onion, garlic, and carrots in like, two seconds.  And I didn't bother to peel the carrots, I just washed them well.



The one change I made to Deb's recipe was to add tahini, about a half cup, at the end when the miso is being mixed into the soup.  It was, after all the 'sesame' in the post's title that piqued my interest, and I was surprised to see it only as a garnish.  The toasted sesame oil was delicious on top, but if you're sesame obsessed like me and have a jar of tahini hanging out in your fridge, why not add some to the soup?



Mine isn't as pretty because I forgot about the scallions.  But it was tasty and warm and the perfect thing to eat while watching a new episode of Shameless.

Joy's pesto and Deb's sorbet (but boozier)

I've become obsessed with our food processor.  Phil's parents bought a new food processor for themselves, and gifted their older machine to us.  Let me say, it barely qualifies as a small kitchen appliance.  With its multiple blades, bowls, its own caboodle-type storage case, and enormous base with three big buttons, it is a beast.  But when I saw with what ease it made the best version of Joy's spinach and cashew pesto, I wondered where it had been all my life.
I ate it with a delicously garlicky hasselback potato, as Joy suggests, and Phil had his with pasta.  (And I had the leftovers for both lunch and dinner the next day.)

Since the beast was here to stay, I typed "food processor" into the search bar on smitten kitchen, and drooled over the possibilities.  We landed on an easy recipe for sorbet, and then bastardized it just a little bit (but in a way I hope Deb would approve of).

Boozy Strawberry Mango Sorbet
Adapted from smitten kitchen and the cuisinart recipe booklet that came with the food processor

1 generous cup frozen strawberries
1 generous cup frozen mango
1/3 cup limoncello
1/3 cup simple syrup (if you like it sweet; omit this if you like it tart)
Juice from half a lemon

Puree all of the ingredients in a food processor.  Taste, and add more lemon juice if you think it needs it.  Pour puree into a ziploc freezer bag and freeze until firm.  The alcohol prevents it from freezing too hard.  Enjoy like it's summer, even though it's 20º outside.  Makes two servings.

savory scones

Our Christmas tree this year was a tabletop rosemary plant from Trader Joe's.  I promise I watered it regularly, but the tree is as dry as kindling.  It still smells fragrant so I wanted to use it in a recipe.  The rosemary, and a tub of pine nuts that have been hanging out in the fridge, reminded me of my favorite savory scone from Crema Cafe.



I searched the smitten archives, where there are many delicious sounding scone recipes, but nothing quite like I was imagining.  I came up with my own version of Crema's scone by combining elements of this cheesy one, with this one with rosemary and pine nuts, and a little bit of winging it.

The result was even better, if I may say so myself.  I've put a few in the freezer and I'll be eating them for breakfast (and lunch and dinner) for the next few days.

Savory Scones with Rosemary, Pine Nuts, and Goat Cheese
Inspired by Crema Cafe, Adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Fragrant Vanilla Cake

1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted for ten minutes, then cooled
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few sprigs rosemary, coarsely chopped
lemon zest from half a lemon
6 tablespoons cold butter, chopped
2.5 oz chevre (half of a small log), chopped
1/2 c heavy cream
2 eggs

Preheat your oven to 375º F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl.  Add the pine nuts, rosemary, and lemon zest and whisk.  Add the cold butter and goat cheese and mix everything together with your fingers.  In a separate bowl (I used my 1 cup measuring cup), whisk together the cream and one egg.  Add the cream and egg mixture to the mixing bowl and combine just until a dough forms.  (For this I continued to use my hands, but you may prefer to use a wooden spoon or your kitchenaid.)  If the dough is too dry, add a few more tablespoons of cream until it just holds together.



Place the doughball on your floured countertop.  Use a rolling pin or an empty bottle to gently roll the dough into an inch thick circular patty.  Cut into rustic triangles and place the ones you want to eat today on the baking sheet; put the rest in a sealed container and stick them in the freezer.  Whisk the other egg and spread a little on top, and bake for about 15 minutes, until the scones are golden brown on top.



Once they're cool, dig in.  Serve them with a savory spread or without.

deb's brussel sprouts

This is my first time making brussel sprouts, and I've only eaten them a few times.  I bought a bag of sprouts with the intention of making them as part of Christmas dinner, but with only two mouths to feed (mine and Jill's), we had more than enough food without them.  I followed a smitten kitchen recipe for dijon braised brussel sprouts.


The setup.  And yes, I'm starting to cook dinner at 8:30pm - gah!


Getting sauced. (And not because I have a whole bottle of wine minus half a cup to finish.)


The finished product!

At my first bite, I was a little skeptical; I like my vegetables on the raw side, maybe blanched, and these were a little mushy.  But some of them had pretty crunchy pan marks, and the shallots were so good, and the sauce was tasty, and the more I ate, the more convinced I became that I like brussel sprouts.  Which is a good thing, because I'll be finishing these off for a while.  I guess it's only natural to eat Christmas leftovers until New Year's.