Spinach-and-Mushroom Baked Penne

Nothing says comfort food to me like a big bowl of pasta, red sauce, and lots and lots of cheese.  At the end of a long day at work, that's what I want to come home to (or find in my Tupperware at lunch, or graze on in the middle of the night, as the case may be).  Can you keep your Sophia Loren figure while indulging in an old-country carbohydrate feast?  I'd say yes.

Please, tell me more.

The key here is whole wheat pasta, a moderate amount of various cheeses, and a heavy load of delicious vegetables—spinach, mushrooms, onions.  Because of all the other flavors and the moistness of the sauce, the whole wheat pasta doesn't overwhelm the dish or make it overly dry.  So make sure not to skimp on the greenery!  As my grandmother would say, "A little bit of veg never hurt anybody."

Linzer Bars

The clocks are set back, the leaves are finally changing color, and it's getting dark far too early: These are all indisputable signs of cookie season's arrival.  That little bite in the air tells baking fiends across the country, me included, that it's time to get down to the serious business of making (and sharing) sweets.

Back in July, I attended my very first canning party, from which I brought home a jar of homemade strawberry jam.  Since I'm not much for toast-and-jam (butter is my topping of choice), the jam has been guiltily staring at me for the past three months.  Solution: Make it the basis for a cookie.

This recipe comes from The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Recipe from Each Year 1941-2009, which is coming out this month.  It's a really terrific book with lots of beautiful illustrations, plus it's interesting to see the evolution of what American readers of Gourmet expected from their cookies over the past 60+ years.  I adapted this recipe from their 1979 selection, leaving out ground almonds and other ingredients not readily at hand.

Special thanks for this recipe goes to Kirsten, without whom there would have been no jam, no cookbook, and no cookies.

Roasted Acorn Squash: An Illustrated Guide

Tonight is Halloween, meaning that I've gone the whole of the month without posting a new recipe.  Bad, bad Dani.  But I happy to be able to now share with you one of my all-time favorite foods, the acorn squash!  Catch me on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday in autumn (Union Square Green Market days) and, likely as not, I'm probably packing several pounds of acorn squash in my bag.  What to do with them?  I'm glad you asked!

Step one: Admire the perfection of the squash form.

Autumn Vegetable Kugel

First of all, I'd like to thank the extremely talented Tom Tian for the beautiful new banner.  Everyone should check out his blog for more of his great designs.

It's finally starting to feel like fall, which means that I want to eat only root vegetables (more or less).  I adapted this recipe for carrot, leek, and zucchini kugel from a few different recipes in Marlena Spieler's Jewish Cooking, which is beautifully illustrated and one of my all-time favorite cookbooks.

Apple-Cranberry Chicken Salad

On Fridays, if I've been a fiscally-responsible young professional the rest of the week, I'll bop out to one of the many Union Square eateries and buy my lunch.  Two weeks ago, I went to Pret, a sandwich shop chain imported from the U.K. They have an amazing chicken salad sandwich (see my last post on chicken salad for more on my life-changing conversion to the cold-meat-salad camp), but it's over $3 for half a sandwich.  And since I really wanted to eat several, the only solution was to make it myself at home.

After a pilgrimage to Ditmas Park to secure a roast chicken last Sunday, I wound up with more chicken salad then I could ever possibly consume.  Word to the wise: Using an entire chicken for chicken salad will result in something like a dozen servings.  Suffice it to say that I ate chicken salad for almost every meal last week. It was delicious, but I'd definitely recommend inviting some friends for a picnic or something with this giant recipe.

You'll need:

1 roasted chicken
1 tart apple, like Granny Smith, peeled and sliced thinly
Juice of one-half lemon
3 ribs celery, chopped
1 bag Craisins or other dried cranberries
3 tbsp. mayonnaise

Dissect your chicken and chop roughly.  The yield will look something like this:

Slice the apple very thinly, squeezing the lemon juice over the sliced pieces (this will keep them from turning brown and mushy).  Mix together the chicken, celery, apples, and cranberries in a large bowl.  Then mix in the mayo (just enough to make it all stick together).

Your final product:

You have many options for what to do with this: Eat it plain, eat it with crackers (my preferred lunch mode), make a sandwich:

Go crazy.  And share with friends—I'm not kidding.  So much chicken salad.

Vegetarian Fried Rice

One of the best things about living in Brooklyn is the constant availability of cheap, greasy, and delicious Chinese food.  Since I have very little self-control in this area, I've been eating more than my fair share of egg rolls, sesame chicken, and the like.  For better or worse, this leaves me with plenty of leftover rice, which just isn't that good when reheated.  As a semi-broke denizen of the publishing world, the thought of wasting all that (already paid for) food is alarming, so repurposing the rice is crucial.  Here's my answer to that problem, which also stretches one leftover carton of white rice into three or four meals.

You'll need:

1 carton leftover steamed rice (cold)
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 bag frozen vegetables (I used peas and carrots)
1 can water chestnuts, sliced
3 eggs
1/2 cup soy sauce
Black pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste

Heat vegetable oil in a large pan.  Once the oil is warm, add the frozen vegetables, stirring until thawed.  Add water chestnuts and stir-fry for 1–2 minutes.

Meanwhile, crack your eggs into a small bowl and whisk them with a fork, folding in air.  This makes for nice and fluffy scrambled eggs.  Add salt and pepper to the raw eggs.

Scoot your veggies over to one half of the pan, making sure the other, empty half is still well-oiled.  Pour eggs into the empty half and proceed to scramble.  After the eggs are cooked, the veggies and eggs can be mixed, but keep them separated until the risk of salmonella has passed.

Add rice and soy sauce to the mixture, stirring well.  Cook for two to three more minutes, stirring constantly.

Delicious!  It looks even nicer when you put it in a bowl:

Protein, vegetables, and carbs: This is a pretty good all-in-one meal, which is not typically something I'm talented at making.  Plus, Rizi Bizi loves her some scrambled eggs (I put some aside before I added the soy sauce, don't worry), so everyone's happy.

The epitome of a happy, spoiled, well-fed feline sous chef.

Nectarine Cake

My dad always tells me how important it is to "eat to live, not live to eat."  Consequently, there are very few foods that I allow to fall into my "worth-living-for" foods category.  Stone fruits, for better or worse, comprise a goodly chunk of that list.  Peaches, plums, apricots: I love them all.  So when I went to the farmer's market last week and found myself surrounded by stacks and stacks of lovely fruit, I couldn't help myself.  I had enough self-control to buy the least expensive type of fruit, but I still wound up carting three pounds of nectarines back to the office and then home on the subway.  Now, I can eat a lot of nectarines, but three pounds of perfectly ripe, rapidly spoiling fruit is too much even for me.  So what to do?  Bake a delicate dessert highlighting the fruit, of course.

This recipe comes from the now sadly defunct Gourmet.  I changed very little, as baking tends to be much more unforgiving of improvisation than other types of cooking.

Homemade Applesauce

Fall is almost here: The days are getting shorter and cooler, students have returned to Brooklyn College, and apples have started making a major appearance in the Union Square farmer's market.  Even I, a person who professes to not even like apples, can't resist a deal like 3 pounds of apples for $1.  So what to do with these apples that I sure as heck am not eating raw?  I always return to my old fall staple: Homemade applesauce, which disguises all the things I don't enjoy about apples (texture, mainly).  Whether or not you're an apple fan, this is a pretty delicious way to get in your daily doctor-prescribed apple.

You'll need:

3 pounds of tart apples, peeled and cored

1/2 cup sugar

4 cups water

1 tsp. lemon juice

1/4 tsp. grated lemon rind

1 whole cinnamon stick

A dash of salt

Roughly chop your apples into quarters or eighths.  Place in a large saucepan and add water.  Bring the mixture up to a simmer and let it bubble away until the apples are tender, about 15 minutes. You should be able to easily break up the apples with a wooden spoon.

This is what your pot full o' apples should look like at the beginning.

Add the remaining ingredients to the mixture and let simmer for an additional minute.  Remove from heat and mush up the mixture with your wooden spoon.  It should look like this:

Mmm.  Chunky and delicious.

I like my applesauce cold, so I stick in the fridge for a while before eating it.  This recipe makes about 6 generous servings of applesauce—Just be sure not to eat the cinnamon stick!

Made in season, this an extremely budget-friendly dessert.  With my $1 apples, a large jar of cinnamon sticks for $2.50, and a typical grocery store lemon (69 cents), this whole things comes to about $2 and change.

Even non-apple enthusiasts like me and Rizi Bizi enjoy this applesauce.  Seriously, she keeps trying to get in my bowl.

Caponata

There are certain recipes that, when I cook them, make me feel like wherever I'm cooking is home.  Caponata, an Italian eggplant dish that my grandmother used to cook all the time, falls into that category.  Though my grandmother was from Northern Italy (Trieste, to be exact), she loved to cook this Sicilian vegetable stew.  I guess she was ahead of the curve on pan-Italian cooking.  Served hot with pan-fried polenta or cold with a crusty piece of bread, caponata is one of my feel-good standbys, so today I'm going to share my grandmother's recipe with you all.  Now, being of the old school, my grandmother wasn't big on writing down recipes or measuring things, so it evolves a little bit every time I make it.  You should feel free to make it your own too.

You'll need:

Black Beans and Rice

So I've been sitting on this recipe for a long while now, but since I started my new job today, I am once again inspired to cook/blog!  While I haven't actually made this since I left Chicago, I'm excited to cook it here and bring the delicious leftovers along with me for lunch.  Because, for me, this dish is all about the leftovers.  The flavors actually get better as they soak together in the fridge, so it's perfect for a week's worth of protein-rich lunches.  I adapted this recipe from the Whole Foods website—my version's a little less fancy, but you've probably figured out by now that I don't like to use tons of ingredients.

Grilled Chicken and Peaches

The time had come to really cook something in my new Brooklyn kitchen.  It didn't have to be super-fancy or difficult, but it had to involve more steps than throwing hot dogs into the grill pan for the Fourth of July. But, since it is summer and I am deeply enamored with my grill pan, I wanted to make something in it.

Enter Bon Appétit.  I have a strange relationship with this magazine, since I want to dislike it because it replaced my Gourmet subscription after Gourmet went under, but it is simply TOO GOOD for me to maintain ill will.  Plus, the recipes are significantly more user-friendly than Gourmet's ever were.  Not that it means I will forgive Condé Nast for the death of Gourmet, but it softens the blow.

So, to make a long story short, I made one of the recipes out of Bon Appétit's July grilling issue and it was easy, tasty, and quick.  Now I'm going to share.

A quick note: For the apartment-bound without a grill, a grill pan is an amazing alternative.  Basically, it's a heavy cast-iron pan with grill-like ridges.  I have a Cuisinart model that was about $30 and it's one of the best investments I've made, kitchen-wise.  Cleaning it is a little bit of a trick, but a wet paper towel and some elbow grease will handily get off the caked-on burned stuff.

Canning Party Carrot Salad

My good friend Kirsten invited me along yesterday to a canning party at her sister-in-law's house in Kensington.  At first, I was a little dubious (canning?), but the party was fun, informative, and delicious.  The guests were in charge of all the chopping and prep work for a strawberry jelly, sour cherry and currant jam, and fresh salsa.  I had a little bit of a bad run-in with some jalapeños (I'd never encountered one in real life before), but it was a great chance to meet some lovely, interesting ladies and have a demonstration in case I ever feel the urge to can (I admit this seems unlikely, since I like to eat what I make as soon as I make it, but you never know).

After the food prep, a delicious afternoon tea party spread was set out, including banana bread sandwiches (genius!), brown bread baked in a coffee can (deliciously moist), chicken salad, scones, homemade sangria, and stuffed grape leaves.  My own humble contribution was a cold carrot salad, which was one of the lesser impressive items, but it's the recipe you're going to get.  I also neglected to take a photo (tsk tsk).  But it is tasty, simple, and extremely portable, so let's get cracking:

You'll need:

1 lb. carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 cut white onion, finely minced
1 clove garlic, finely minced
2 tbsp. parsley, minced
salt and pepper, to taste

Bring a small pot of salted water to a rolling boil, then add carrots.  Cook in boiling water for about 8 minutes, or until tender.  Be sure not to overcook—mushy carrots are gross.  Drain in the sink and then rinse with cold water for about 4–5 minutes to stop the carrots from cooking with residual heat.

Meanwhile, combine all the rest of the ingredients, except the parsley.  Stir well.  Once the carrots are cool, put them in a bowl and drizzle the marinade over top.  Mix well and stick in the fridge for at least 8 hours.  Right before you're ready to serve, toss in the minced parsley.  This keeps it from wilting and maintains the nice crunch.

And you're ready to go!  You can even walk two miles to the party with your tupperware in your bag and it will still be delicious!  Not that I know about that from experience or anything...

Meanwhile, our sous chef was:

Yeah, big help.

Strawberry-White Chocolate Muffins

Honesty, I've been told, is the best policy.  So I have to confess: I had an ulterior motive for baking these muffins.  Mainly: Bribery.

Yes, bribery.  To convince my New York roommate-to-be that I would be the best roommate ever.  And to sweeten the deal for a friend to look after Rizi Bizi.  Both of these situations, I might add, turned out quite well and while they might have done so anyway, the muffins sure didn't hurt.

So if you find yourself needing a baked good to tip the balance in your favor, I'll vouch for these extra-moist strawberry-white chocolate muffins (with a streusel topping), based on the decadent muffins at the C-Shop and this recipe.

You'll need:

3/4 cups brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup diced strawberries
3/4 cup white chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350 degrees and line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.

Combine brown sugar, butter, and vanilla in a medium bowl.  Add eggs one at a time.

Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt incrementally to the wet batter.  Then add diced strawberries and white chocolate chips.

Equally portion batter into the 12 muffin cups.

For the streusel topping:

2 tsp. cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp. cinnamon

Combine the ingredients together, cutting the butter into the mixture.  I used a fork for this process.  You should get a crumbly-looking mixture.

Sprinkle streusel on top of the batter in the muffin cups.

Bake muffins for 25 minutes, or until a knife stuck in the middle of the muffin comes out clean.

They ain't healthy, but they sure are tasty.

If you store them in an airtight container, they should last up to 5 or 6 days.

Word to the wise: When I was making these muffins, I was really concerned about the dryness of the batter.  But worry not!  When you add the strawberries to the mix and stir them around a bit, their moisture will make this into a surefire, true muffin batter.

Mushrooms and Polenta

Some of my favorite ladies came over for dinner tonight.  It was a hot, sunny day in Chicago, so I wanted to spend most of the day out, not cooking up something over-elaborate.  So, using only things I had in my cupboard, I whipped up a little meal of a mushroom-and-onion saute and herbed polenta.  It was simple, quick, and quite delicious (If I do say so myself).

Here's the final product:

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Earlier this week, I promised someone carrot cake cupcakes.  Yesterday rolled around and it was time to deliver.  I found it surprisingly difficult to find a recipe that I liked (something that used butter instead of oil, had traditional carrot cake ingredients), so I based my recipe off of this one, but with some pretty serious tweaks.  These are almost "hummingbird" cupcakes, but not quite.  One quick note: I didn't make my own icing, and for that I am sorry.  Next time I make a cake-like item, you can expect an accompanying icing recipe.

You'll need:

1/3 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tbsp. honey
2 eggs
1 cup grated carrot
1 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3 tbsp. apple juice
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup crushed walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a dozen muffin cups with paper liners.

Cream together the butter, sugar, and honey until the mixture is smooth.  Beat in eggs one at a time, then add grated carrot (you can grate right into the bowl—that's what I did).

Stir in flour, baking soda, and baking powder in two parts.  Stir smooth, but don't overbeat.  Add apple juice and stir.  Add walnuts and raisins.  You should have a smooth, moist batter at this point.

Spoon the batter into the twelve muffin cups approximately equally.  Bake until golden and risen, so that when you stick a knife in the middle, it comes out clean.  This takes about 25 minutes.

Cool on a rack, then remove from pan.  Let cool thoroughly before icing (This was a mistake I made because I was in a rush).

When you're done, you'll get some sweet cupcakes like this:

And your friends will be happy and look like this:

I warned you, Alex.  Now it's on the Internet.

Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus

The Oscars last night were a bit of a disappointment (no dark horse winners, no amazing dress disaster, a shockingly unfunny Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin), but we still had a good time watching them at Rachel's house.  Rachel made some delicious zucchini boats and chickpea fritters.  Sadly, I couldn't compete with those because I was pressed for time this weekend, so I brought along some extra-simple appetizers, especially good for winter, when asparagus is extremely inexpensive.

You'll need:
About 1 lb. asparagus
Dijon mustard
4 oz. Prosciutto

Rinse asparagus and cut off the tough bottoms (about 1 inch).  Place in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil.  Simmer the asparagus until it turns a bright green and is slightly tender.  Don't overcook!  Soggy asparagus is a sad situation.

This is the sort of setup I'm talking about.

Drain the asparagus in a colander and rinse under cold water to stop any residual cooking.  Remember: No overcooked asparagus!

Cut the prosciutto into long, thin strips.  Each slice of prosciutto should make 3–4 strips.  You'll need a very sharp knife to do this.

Lightly coat the bottom of the asparagus with Dijon mustard.  You'll need to cover about 1 inch.  This will help the prosciutto stick, and also adds a little kick of flavor.  Incidentally, cooked asparagus just with Dijon mustard is delicious.

Wrap the prosciutto around the Dijon-coated portion of the asparagus.  And done.  Wow, that was easy.

The finished product.

I asked Rizi Bizi to help me, but she was too busy napping/snuggling on the couch.

She did, however, get up to eat a little prosciutto snack.  I have never seen her eat anything so quickly.

Braised Fennel

Fennel is one of those vegetables that rarely gets used in American cooking, which is a damn shame, since it is so delicious.  My grandmother used to make this dish, one of my go-to comfort foods.  And it is possibly one of the easiest recipes to make ever.  It's also a great way to kill a partially empty bottle of white wine.

You'll need:
1 large fennel bulb
1 tbsp. olive oil
About 1 1/2 cups of white wine
Lots of freshly grated black pepper

Remove the feathery stalks from the fennel bulb and dispose.  Roughly chop the remaining fennel into bite-sized pieces.

Cover the bottom of a small-to-medium saucepan with the olive oil.  Place over medium heat.  Then add the fennel and stir until it begins to make a hissing sound.

Pour in enough white wine to cover the fennel.  The type of white wine doesn't matter so much—I used a cheap Rhone varietal.  Grate in black pepper to taste and stir well.  Bring the wine to a boil.

It should look something like this.

Let simmer for 20–30 minutes, or until the fennel is tender.  Remove from heat.

This dish is delicious as soon as it comes off the stove, but I think it's even better after it marinates in the fridge overnight.  Just wrap it up in a bowl and serve it cold for a simple side dish.

I also made my first béchamel sauce at Erin's house last night (she made an amazing cauliflower dish from Mastering the Art of French Cooking that required it), but that's a story for another day.

Tangy Chicken Salad

For 99% of my life, I have really and truly loathed chicken salad.  My dislike was so great that I actually had to leave the room if somebody was eating it.  So when my friend Rachel made chicken salad for dinner one night, I was slightly horrified.  Fortunately, my sense of politeness forced me to eat some and, boy, was it good!

The problem with most chicken salad recipes, I think, is that they rely on huge globs of mayonnaise to provide taste.  This recipe circumvents that problem by adding giardiniera for taste and color.  Now I am a chicken salad convert.  I made a few slight changes to the recipe for a little added zing.

You'll need:
1 roasted chicken (I got mine at the local Treasure Island for $4.99)
1 16-oz. bottle of giardiniera (mild or hot)
2 tbsp. mayonnaise
1 tbsp. white vinegar
Freshly grated black pepper, to taste

The first thing you'll need to do is disassemble the roasted chicken.  Now, I almost never cook with meat, so this was a new experience for me.  I attempted to remove the skin with a knife, but wound up using my fingers to de-skin and then to strip the meat from the chicken carcass.  I'm sure there are more elegant ways to do this, but using your hands is effective, efficient, and a chance to become intimately acquainted with the structure of a chicken (this could be a plus or minus).

Dispose of the skin and carcass, but be sure to save a little bit if you have a hungry pet:

Yes, I have to hold the chicken for her.  She is very spoiled.

Chop the chicken up coarsely and place in a medium-sized bowl.  Then chop up the giardiniera, but reserve the liquid.  Add the chopped giardiniera and the liquid to the chicken.  Add the mayo, white vinegar, and black pepper.  Mix thoroughly.  You probably won't need to add salt, as the giardiniera liquid is plenty salty.

Then it's ready to eat!  Or if you prefer your chicken salad really cold like me, cover it and put it back in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.  Serve with some crusty bread.

I'm going to guess this will make 4 or 5 servings.  We shall see.

In other news, I'm finally all caught up on LOST.  I think I'm a little bit in love with Michael Emerson, particularly the way he pronounces words that start with "wh."  Yeah.

Whopper Brownies and Raspberry Meringue Cookies

My younger sister, Juliana, and I have been planning to get together to bake something/have a dance party for weeks now, but it kept getting put off.  She finally came over this afternoon, and the results were of epically sugary proportions.

My original thought was to make meringue cookies, since I had leftover egg whites from a chocolate silk pie I made last week.  But since we needed to wait for the egg whites to reach room temperature, we warmed up our cooking skills with some Whopper brownies.

I got the idea for malted milk chocolate brownies after making the aforementioned chocolate silk pie last week.  It was supposed to be a chocolate malted silk pie, but the malt powder flavor just didn't come through.  I thought I'd give the malt powder another chance to prove itself, but with the aid of an entire movie theater-size box of Whoppers.

This recipe is based on the basic brownie recipe from my grandmother's copy of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook.

You'll need:
2 squares semisweet baking chocolate
1/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. malt powder
1 5-oz. box of Whoppers

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8-inch square pan with a little butter.

Melt the chocolate and the butter and place in a large bowl.  Beat in the sugar and eggs.  After it is thoroughly mixed, beat in the flour, baking powder, salt, and malt powder.

You'll need to break up the Whoppers before adding them to your brownies.  We did it this way:

Which is to say, we sealed the Whoppers up in a plastic bag and then Juliana jumped on them.

You could also smash them up with a rolling pin or put them in a food processor or something, but after seeing this method, why would you want to?

Add the crushed Whoppers to the batter, reserving about 2 tbsp.  Mix well.

Spread the batter into the pan and then sprinkle the reserved crushed Whoppers over the top.  This makes a nice caramelized crust.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top of the brownies have a dull color.  Cool and then cut.  This recipe should make about 16 brownies.

For our next trick, we made raspberry meringue cookies, based on this recipe by Sandra Lee.

You'll need:

1/2 cup egg whites

1 tsp. raspberry extract

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup powdered sugar

3 drops red food coloring

Preheat oven to 225 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg whites, raspberry extract, and cream of tartar with a whisk until the mixture gets frothy.  Then add powdered sugar by tablespoon.  Continue whisking while adding the sugar.  Add food coloring, and keep beating until the mixture forms stiff peaks (as Juliana said to the meringues, "I want you to make Madonna's tits from the '80s").  This took us about 30 minutes with our whisk.  You could go a lot faster with an electric mixer.

Juliana demonstrates the type of exercises you'll need to do if you want to beat the whites by hand.

Spoon mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a medium star tip, then pipe into 2-inch spirals on the baking sheets.

Like so.

Bake in the over for about 50 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.  When they are finished baking, turn off the heat on the oven, crack open the door, and allow the meringues to dry out for about 10 minutes.  Then you can just pluck them off the aluminum foil.

You'll get cookies like this:

This recipe made about 30 cookies.

They were slightly on the flat side, and more brown than pink, but they tasted airy and delicious.  Plus, the shapes were pretty hilarious.  Clearly we need more practice (and maybe an electric mixer), but this seemed like a reasonable first attempt.

Hearty Lentil and Chickpea Soup

There is very little more depressing than a sunless Saturday in Chicago in late February.  In fact, if you asked me what I did today, I would have to think very hard (I finished a collection of Truman Capote essays, but mostly I sat around and thought about what I would do if I had the energy to go outside).

This kind of day.

Around late afternoon, someone on my hallway started cooking something that smelled extremely chicken-y, and not in a good way.  Clearly the answer was to cook my own good-smelling meal to overwhelm the stench.

My mother has been telling me for weeks now that I should eat more lentils.  So I thought I would try to make a chickpea and lentil soup.  After investigating some recipes, they all called for either exotic spices (which I don't have) or a slow-cooker (which I also don't have).  So here's my own riff on a fragrant, vegetarian, and protein-heavy soup for a gloomy day.

You'll need:

1 medium yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, chopped
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 15 oz. cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup lentils
1 28 oz. can tomato puree
2 cups vegetable stock (I used Better than Bouillon, which has the added advantage of having all the salt you could possibly want in a soup)
1/2 cup black olives
Black pepper
Cinnamon

Sauté the chopped onion in a small pan in the olive oil for 3–4 minutes, until it starts to soften.  Then add the minced garlic and chopped carrots, sautéing for an additional 2–3 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Spice with black pepper and cinnamon to taste.

Add everything together in a big pot and put it over medium heat, partially covered.  Bring to a boil, and cook for 30–40 minutes, or until the lentils are cooked.

I put a nice dollop of 2% Greek yogurt on top, but otherwise this soup is vegan-friendly.  I'm estimating 5–6 big bowls of soup from this recipe.  Now I just need to figure out how to store all the rest of this...

Let's Eat!

I'm a college student on a budget (both financially and in terms of time), but I still like to eat well.  Solution?  Lots of home cooking, particularly on the weekends.  Check back on this blog for photos, recipes, and stories of what I like to call seat-of-the-pants cooking.

Featuring your sous-chef, Rizi Bizi:

Bon appetit!