Passover

Tonight was my annual passover dinner with my friend Boston, and I made dinner and she made apple cake and thumbprint cookies for dessert.  (Plus we had salted caramel matzoh.)  For dinner we had:

Patatas Bravas - and now we have a ton of delicious aioli leftover

Baked Sweet Potato Falafel - this recipe has some serious delicitude going on. 

Matzo Brie, topped with cheese and zucchini
Ingredients
4 sheets matzoh
2 eggs (or one egg and two egg whites, if you also made the aioli.)
salt
pepper
dash of milk (about one tablespoon)
boiling water
cheese
small zucchini, sliced thin

Procedure
1. Heat a skillet on medium heat until pretty hot (I actually baked my cast iron one in the oven at 400 for thirty minutes and then put it on the stove on medium heat). 

2. Break matzoh up into small-ish pieces (no bigger than two inches square), put in a colander, and pour boiling water over matzoh. 

3. Press matzoh dry with paper towel, squeezing water through colander.  Put matzoh in a shallow pan.

4. Combine eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and pour over matzoh. Allow to soak for about 5-10 minutes. 

5. Grease pan.  Be generous.  Pour matzoh and egg mixture into pan into a big pile of eggy-matzoh-ness. 

6. Add zuchinni slices if there is room around the matzoh. 

7. Once matzoh/egg has cooked on one side, flip the whole thing and cook on the other side. 

8. Flip the zucchini. 

9.  Remove matzoh from heat, top with cheese, and then zucchini. 

Asparagus Frittata

The other night, I didn't feel like making anything complicated for dinner.  So I made a frittata.  We had asparagus and it needed to be used, so I googled "asparagus frittata".  The recipe that came up was this one, and I had everything it needed, except I subbed in some cheddar cheese.  Apparently frittatas can be made with pretty much anything, and they come out fairly delicious.  So I'll be making more, but here is the procedure for this one, illustrated TPW style.
1.) Crack a few eggs.

2.) Melt butter in a pan

3.)  Chop the veggies.   

 4.) There is very little in life that isn't improved by garlic.  Mr. Barefoot HATES our garlic press, but I think it's awesome and I love how quickly I can add garlic to dishes I'm already trying to do super-fast.

5.) Saute everything in a pan.  I found it didn't take as long as the recipe said - I think I only sauted everything for about 4 minutes total.  

6.) Pour in the eggs.  

 7.) Top with cheese, toss under the broiler for four minutes.

8.) Serve and enjoy!  

Breakfast is Delicious

This is actually a recipe from last week, and I'm sorry to be late with it - but it's so delicious you'll forgive me.
Last week, Moose and Squirrel (my future sister-in-law and her boyfriend) came to stay with us, and I decided to throw together a slow cooker breakfast casserole and some pancakes (I had leftover buttermilk from an ill-fated cake I tried to make. I'm not posting the recipe because it was not good.)

(Breakfast casserole - I recommend putting everything in the crockpot and actually mixing it together.)

The breakfast casserole was a poor man's version of this - I only had a half a thing of hash browns, and I only used 6 or 7 eggs. And I had to use bacon, because, um, I don't know how to cook sausage. It always goes poorly. So I don't. Bacon? I can cook. I ate around the bacon in this one, and didn't have a lot anyway. Because I was focusing on the deliciousness that is the AB Pancake.
If you don't own "I'm Just Here For More food"...you might want to, but only if you have enough time to cook. I've tried making some of the stuff in it, and I'm sorry, but some of AB's recipes are just. too. complicated. This one was pretty simple. The only thing it asked of me that I couldn't give it was a food processor for sifting. I sift with a strainer, which works okay. The key to great pancakes, apparently, lies in not overstirring, and in letting the batter rest.
So here is the pancake recipe. (Make ahead version here. Which I'm sorry, will save you about 5 seconds. But if you really need that time, go for it.)
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 tblsp sugar

2 L. eggs
2 cups buttermilk
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled.

Procedure:
1.) Sift dry goods together.
2.) Mix wet goods together in a separate bowl.
3.) Pour wet goods into dry goods. Mix gently. You should not make more than 5 circles around the bowl. I think AB actually wants you to stick to 3. Batter will be lumpy. Do not break up the lumps! Do make sure you have scraped all the flour off the bottom and there are no massive clumps of flour.
4.) Set the batter aside to rest for 5 minutes. This is key. I know you are hungry, but wait.
5.) Heat a frying pan to medium-low, or an electric griddle to 350.
6.) Ladle pancakes into griddle and cook until bubbles have formed. Pay attention: Some of you may be inclined to flip your pancakes when they start to bubble - but you want to wait until they look like this.

See how the edges are cooked and the batter is looking like it set? You should be cooking your pancakes for about 3 minutes on one side, so adjust the heat lower and just be patient!

I think this was the best batch of pancakes I've ever made. I'm going to try it again soon with my usual buttermilk substitute of milk + vinegar.

Low carb french toast

Cinnamon scrambled eggs!
This morning I wanted something sweet, but not to make a mess (we're having people over for dinner). I made cinnamon scrambled eggs - basically french toast mix, but without bread, which cuts the calories signifigantly, and makes them super easy to make.
I'm not even going to bother with the usual recipe format, they were so easy.
Take two eggs, whisk in two tablespoons of sugar, a dash of cinnamon, and some milk (maybe a tablespoon or two, it should look creamy.) Scramble!

Enjoy!