Monthly Archives: September 2011

Ratatouille!

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Why did I decide to try making ratatouille? To be perfectly honest, I’ve wanted to try it (homemade or otherwise) since I saw the Disney/Pixar movie. I mean really, an adorably animated rat living in Paris who loves to cook? Totally up my alley. Especially when you add in the necessary feel good message that if you keep trying you can achieve your dreams.

I fall for that stuff every time.

In the movie (spoiler alert!) ratatouille is the dish our furry friend makes to melt the heart of the mean old food critic. It’s considered a risky move because it’s a simple peasant dish, and is that really what you want to serve the most highly regarded food critic ever?

I decided to make some myself and find out. And yes, it’s pretty darn good. I would definitely make this recipe again. This is a wonderful dish for anyone with a bumper crop of tomatoes hanging around. It also let me experiment with eggplant, something I had never cooked with before, which always makes for an exciting day in my kitchen!

Ratatouille – recipe modified from Food & Wine, Oct. 2011

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 pound eggplant, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice
  • 6 large garlic cloves
  • 1 large zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch dice
  • 1 large yellow squash, cut into 1/2-inch dice
  • 1 large yellow onion, cut into 1/2-inch dice
  • 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch dice
  • 2 pounds of tomatoes, cored and finely chopped
  • 1 cup of loosely packed and shredded basil leaves
  • lemon zest of one lemon
  • lemon juice of 1/2 a lemon
  • 4 oz. crumbled feta cheese
Directions:
1. In a large casserole dish or Dutch oven (and I mean large, this nearly didn’t fit in the pan I used and I made a huge mess all over the stove top) heat 1/4 cup of the olive oil. Add the eggplant and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until almost tender, about 5 minutes. Add 1/3 of the garlic and cook for another minute. Remove the eggplant from the dish and pour it into a bowl. *Note* this recipe is done in batches to speed up the cooking (and therefore eating). I promise eggplant tastes better than it looks.
2. While you’re cooking the eggplant: add 2 tablespoons olive oil to a second pan and let it heat up. Then add the zucchini and yellow squash and cook over medium heat until lightly browned in spots, or about 5 minutes. Add another 1/3 of garlic and cook for another minute. Remove the zucchini/squash mixture and add it to the bowl with the eggplant.
3. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the original casserole dish and let it heat up. Add the onion and the red pepper and cook over medium heat until softened, about 7 minutes.. Add the remaining garlic and cook for another minute.
4. Add the tomatoes to the onion and pepper mixture along with 2/3 of your basil and the reserved vegetables you previously cooked. (Now you see why we needed the big dish!) Cook the whole mixture, stirring to combine throughly until the tomatoes have broken down and all the vegetables are tender. A fork should easily pierce your largest piece of eggplant. That will take about 15 minutes.
5. Stir in the remaining basil along with the lemon zest and juice. Remove from heat, spoon into bowls, sprinkle with feta cheese and dig in! This dish is great with a light Sauvignon Blanc. We enjoyed it with a bottle of Mohua, 2010.

Zucchini Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Butter Cream

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I have been a very very bad food blogger. It’s time I confessed my crimes and made amends. My darling friends and readers, I have been keeping these from you:

I know. It’s nearly unforgivable….except for the fact that you’d have to forgive me and keep reading to get the recipe. The reason I’ve held on to this recipe for so long is simple, I’ve been swamped in my non-food life recently. First I was offered an amazing job opportunity in late August, which I accepted, and started my first day on the job this past Monday. Monday also happened to be my birthday, and since you can’t party like it’s your birthday on a Monday as well as a Friday, I consumed the entire weekend into my birthday net. The weekend before that (when I actually made the cupcakes) I was stuffing myself silly at the State Fair and suffering from allergies that left me sounding like Fran Drescher or possibly a smoking goose.

But none of that matters now. What matters now is that I am sorry, and once you’ve forgiven me enough to read the rest of the post you need to jump up off the couch and go buy some zucchini NOW! Actually, go get the zucchini now, and THEN finish reading this post because these cupcakes are best with fresh zucchini and the season is ending now!

Cake Ingredients: (makes just over 2 dozen cakes)

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup applesauce
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups shredded zucchini (or courgettes for my friends abroad)

Frosting Ingredients: (makes enough to frost all the cupcakes with some left over)

  • 2 1/3 cups powdered sugar
  • 3 sticks of butter at room temperature
  • 2 oz. cream cheese
  • 1tsp. vanilla
  • 1/2 tsp. all spice

Directions for the cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two cupcake pans with liners of your choice.

2. In a small bowl, combine the spices and add to the flour, sugars, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk to combine.

3. Add the wet ingredients one at a time and beat to combine. Shred the zucchini (I used a food processor) and stir it into the batter.

4. Pour the batter into a gallon-sized bag, snip the off the tip of a bottom corner and use the bag to pipe the batter evenly into the paper cups.

5. Pop the pans into the oven, bake for 15-18 minutes and poof! Magically delicious veggie cupcakes.

Directions for the frosting:

1. Beat the butter and the cream cheese in an electric mixer. Add the vanilla and beat to combine. Slowly add the powdered sugar (feel free to adjust the amount based on the consistency of frosting you’re looking for) and after beating throughly, add the allspice.

2. Spoon the frosting into a gallon-sized bag and use the corner snipping tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.

3. Unwrap those suckers and enjoy the bounty of late summer!

Minnesota State Fair – The Fair Strikes Back

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You really can’t do the Minnesota State Fair in one day. You can try, but how could you ever take in all the awesomeness there is to be had when you’re too full of cheese curds to walk over to the animal barns and commiserate with the state’s largest pig? The trick, my friends, is to space out all the joy over multiple days.

For anyone not living in Minnesota, or even you Minnesotans who have yet to experience the fair, this might sound insane. Why would you want to spend a day on your feet, fighting the crowds, dodging animal doo-doo, and walk away (hopefully!) five pounds heavier?

Because the Minnesota State Fair is THAT much of a spectacle. For Minnesotans, our state fair is a Big Deal. And yes, you walk a lot, but really that only keeps you from gaining ten pounds instead of five. Yes, it’s usually crowded, but those crowd members are sporting mullets, tattoos, belt buckles and fishnet stockings (only sometimes on the legs) with glorious abandon. You will have to dodge the poo, but you can’t really blame the animals for that, and every person at the fair has their own unique dodge-the-droppings dance. And finally there is the food. Yes, you will be heavier at the end of the day, but it is worth it for the amazing variety and tastes happening at the fair.

So, without further ado, here is my list of top Minnesota State Fair must haves!

Deep Fried Cheese Curds from the Mouse Trap inside the food building

Do not get your cheese curds anywhere else. We’ve tried them, they are not this good. These cheese curds are so fresh you can almost get a squeak out of them as you take a bite. The batter is crispy and thin, really all that’s necessary to carry the gooey cheese from the paper curd boat to your mouth. They’re always piping hot due to their popularity; you get them right out of the frier because they’re handing them out as fast as they can make them. I don’t know their secret, but somehow they make these little bundles of hot melty joy better and better each year.

 

Onion Rings from Danielson & Daughters Onion Rings

These are by far the most delicious onion rings I have ever had. Ever! My boyfriend came back with these on a previous trip to the fair and when I demanded to know where these little bites of heaven came from I was shocked when he pointed to a tiny, very nondescript, little stand outside the food building. It could have been any stand at any local fair or festival, but these onion rings have forever made this stand a stop on my state fair route.

As you can see from the picture, these onion rings aren’t your typical breaded and fried rings. You don’t run into the problem of taking a bite out of one of these and having the whole onion slice slip out of it’s coating leaving you with a fried (but still tasty) semicircle. The batter on these rings is sweet which is a nice change to counter the bite of the onion. They’re wonderfully light, crispy, and can satisfy a craving for fried foods without the feeling that you’ll need to be rolled out of the fair like a barrel.

Frozen Custard from Custard’s Last Stand

Most people pass right by this tiny stand under the bridge leading to the Grandstand. I like to think of it as the fair’s best kept secret, and I am probably doing myself no favor by writing about it here since I love that I can usually walk right up and no line 40 people deep is standing between me and this amazing, thick, creamy, unbelievably satisfying frozen custard. There really aren’t many places in Minnesota where you can find frozen custard. Obviously Culvers corners the market on this ice cream alternative, but this stuff blows Culvers out of the water. The first bite I took of this custard had me wide-eyed with amazement followed by quick demands that everyone in my skeptical party try it immediately. This is the thickest, most decadent frozen custard I have ever found. That said it’s not overly rich, and I managed to eat that entire cone sans tummy ache while still looking fly in my state fair swag.

 

Apple Cider from the Agriculture Building

While this is neither the best picture of me, or the cider, the fabulous fair-goer in the background really goes with the general feel of the fair. The fair is a strange mix of urban and rural. We urbanites go there to stuff ourselves and oogle animals that the more rural crowd has brought there as a part of their livelihood. They’re competing to be the best in the state with their livestock, baked goods, vegetables, you name it! This apple cider is a great example of the hybrids that come from such an environment. When I think of apple drinks in general I picture saturday morning cartoons, me in my jammies, cereal bowl in hand and a big glass of apple juice. This cider is reminiscent of those mornings, but in a farm fresh, just picked, best of the crop sort of way. You can tell this cider is made with whatever apples were just picked because it tastes different every time. The cider featured here was undoubtedly made from granny smiths and was a bit tarter than my previous visit to the stand. This is a great way to sneak in your fruits at the fair and a full glass is only $1!

 

Sweet Martha’s Cookies and All-You-Can-Drink Milk

Cookies! The reason these chocolate chip cookies are on my must have list isn’t because they’re the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had. They’re good, don’t get me wrong, really good in fact, but it’s more that they come hot out of the oven and into my hand that makes these a necessity. Yes, chocolate chip cookies are an odd thing to get at the fair, but can you ever really pass up freshly baked cookies? I think not. Is an entire bucket necessary? Depends on who you ask. It’s great for large groups of course, but my favorite way to eat a bucket is shared with someone I love while we watch the annual talent show, but there is something to be said for the family of four who each sported their own bucket.

And what do you need to wash down all those melted chocolate chips?

You guessed it! Because nothing goes better with chocolate chip dimples than a milk moustache. All you can drink milk for a dollar. Cold, frothy, and unbelievably refreshing on a hot day. Enough said.

 

Carnita Fajita from Juanita’s Fajitas

A new entry to the list of must haves! I didn’t think it was possible to expand this list further (only because I didn’t think I could eat anything more) but I somehow managed to make room for this fajita. Let me just say, I never imagined myself eating, or even wanting to eat Mexican food at the state fair. I don’t know why, maybe it just wasn’t fried enough for me, but for whatever reason I was prejudice. I had walked by Juanita’s Fajitas often enough before, it’s also located just under the bridge to the grandstand (a possible deliciousness connection???) and looked like your average fajita vendor at these sorts of events.

Well I was wrong. SO wrong. The stars aligned that fateful Sunday at the fair, it was too early for the cookies, but I was looking for something substantial after not eating anything but apple cider for the past 3 or so hours and I suddenly had a craving for Mexican. Luckily I was close by to Juanita’s or the whole thing could have ended much differently. I randomly selected the carnita fajita (because it’s fun to say) and it was love at first bite. I didn’t even see it coming. The meat is a tender juicy pork mixed with three types of beans, black, pinto and chick peas (do those count as beans?), as well as your standard pepper and onion mix with pico de gallo thrown in for a colorful masterpiece. This fajita was wrapped more like a burrito and thank goodness it was because that sucker was juicy! I’m talking dripping down your fingers juicy, so I suppose it was a win-win that it was also finger licking good!