Spicy Mango Dip

I had a whole thing typed up about this recipe, and then somehow deleted the entire thing. I don't really feel like typing it all again, so I'll sum it up.


~Made it in Boston. Had a BBQ. Good times
~Made it again, some changes, still tasty. Good times.
~Made it for Memorial Day. More changes. Used fresh mint from my garden. Good times.


Perfect summer-time dip recipe. Spicy, sweet, and refreshing at once.

Play with ingredients, change, substitute, have fun. If you have a lame allergy to mango, like Karen does, use peaches or something instead.


 Done. Enjoy!

Click here for the recipe!

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Chicken and Corn Risotto

I love making risotto. It's become one of my go-to meals. I  first learned about it in college, when Sarah taught me how to make it a couple times. Then, on a vacation in New Hampshire I had this really awesome mushroom risotto, but when I told my mom about it she had no idea what I was talking about. What kind of Italian doesn't know about risotto (ignore the fact that I had only recently learned about it as well)? So I planned on making some. We had butternut squash growing in our garden, so I made a butternut squash risotto. It was fantastic! (Recipe will be up when it grows again this summer!) Realizing it was my mom's new favorite, I made it again on different occasions, such as her birthday or a random Tuesday. Sometimes it's mushroom and beef, sometimes it's chicken and corn. Today was the random Tuesday chicken and corn version. It was pretty spectacular.

Usually I make it with those boxes of tasty broth, but we didn't have any and it's gross out so we didn't feel like going to the store. So it turns out that risotto works well with bouillon cubes! Lucky us! Plus we had leftover corn on the cob since I bought some yesterday to make a black bean, corn and mango salsa (which will also be posted eventually) as well as some parsley for that same recipe.

And don't forget, making risotto is always a good excuse to open a new bottle of wine! Both for the recipe, and for you to enjoy while endlessly stirring the rice. Comfort food and wine on a rainy day, it doesn't get much better than that!

FYI: Arborio is the best kind of rice to use for risotto, in fact the bags or containers usually say "risotto' on them. But if you don't  feel like buying fantastic risotto rice, you can always use medium grain instead, it just won't be as glamorous.

Click here for the recipe!

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Simple Mozzarella-Steak Pinwheel

Using pizza dough the way it's used in this recipe is a very simple, yet very impressive, technique. It's the most basic stuffed bread, but when your guests have a piece they'll think you spent forever making it because it is just that awesome.

Once again my parents had their friends over and I agreed to make a few snacks for them. These are good opportunities for me to practice cooking since I can pick whatever I want to make and then have them pay for the ingredients! I have made pinwheels before; I used a recipe out of one of Giada's cookbooks and have since altered it a little. Her recipe had the bread stuffed with mozzarella, spinach, and prosciutto. I made it that way, and it was fantastic. When I made it again this time, I took out the prosciutto since my mom's friend is a vegetarian. And it was still fantastic.

But then I was thinking, what about everyone else? Surely they would like a stuffed bread with meat in it too (mostly I was thinking of me). So I decided to make an entirely different recipe, using steak. And what goes with steak and bread better than pepper, onions, mushrooms, and cheese? That's right, nothing. And so this recipe was born. And then devoured.

Seriously, it was delicious. And so easy to make. Especially if you just buy the pizza dough like I do. You can make it from scratch, but the would negate the point of this recipe being quick and easy. It's also very versatile, so it's easy to substitute whatever you want. But you'll want to try this one, trust me.

Remember, the thinner the cut of steak you can buy, the better it will roll in the bread! So try your best, ok?
Also, props to Mark for seasoning the steak and helping me make this.

Click here for the recipe!

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Tips! Keeping parsley and researching recipes

I decided to be charitable today and share my genius with you all. Or, to be more honest, I was kind of bored and thought this is as good a time as any to share some of my little tips with the world.

#1
One such tip is the importance of researching recipes. I always always always go through cookbooks and websites to see what's out there and tasty looking. And I try many of the recipes I see. The first time I make a recipe I follow it exactly. From that I can usually play around with it the next time and turn it into something of my own. But it's important to see what other people are making in order to come up with your own ideas and use them to greatly impress everyone who knows you. When you want to do things and learn how food works, I suggest you research, cook the recipe exactly, and then experiment the next time you make it. When you get used to recipes through this method then you should do what I do whenever I want to try something different: research, pick parts of recipes you like, and make your own dish.

My research today for appetizers and snacks:

I'll give you an example. One day I decided that I absolutely had to make corn chowder. The only problem was, I had no idea how to do that. So I went online and found several of my trustworthy go-to cooking websites and looked over many different chowder recipes. Some were overly complicated, some had ingredients that I despise, and some were too simple. But the important thing was that they all had certain similar aspects to them. Many had a roux to start off with. A few had creamed corn, and some had just frozen kernels. And so on and so forth. So I took the common aspects and applied them to my own recipe, and then took the bits and pieces that sounded good and used those too, like using creamed corn and corn kernels and adding bacon fat (it isn't the healthiest of recipes!). I've learned by experimenting like this that you can just find a bunch of recipes for the same food and just take from them what you want to. Chances are that it'll come out spectacular and you will feel like a Culinary God.

Don't worry, I'll eventually post that recipe! It's just a little hard to do because I make it slightly different each time :)

#2
The next bit of advice is more directly linked to herbs. My herbs still aren't useful yet so I rely on grocery stores. The problem is that buying those little plastic containers of herbs tends to be a huge rip-off. So I buy the bundles that are dripping wet and always 5x more than what you actually need. But won't all that go to waste?!? Um...no. Chill out. I told you there was some advice here, didn't I?

The best example I can give you is with parsley, since that's what I always like to have on hand. That stuff lasts forever! It's awesome like that. I can buy a huge bundle, use what I want, and then I take the rest and put it in a cup full of cold water and put it in the fridge. Every once in a while I check the water and add more, or dispose of stalks that become unappealing. The parsley can last quite a few weeks like this and having it around will help you figure out how to use it. Here's a pic of my parsley after I've had it for about 3 weeks:

 Yea, it's a little sad looking, but it's still good and remember, it has been sitting in my fridge for 3 weeks! I find this system to be much cheaper and way more convenient than buying just a little bunch for an outrageous price whenever I need a tablespoon of parsley in a recipe. And I know there are tube containers you can also buy to keep it more compact in the fridge to save space, but i haven't gotten around to that yet, so this works just fine.

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The herbs are ok

I know it's been a while since I posted new info about my herbs. And no, it's not because I forgot or anything lame like that, it's because they honestly hadn't changed much since my last update. There was a few days when I thought they were going to die, and that wasn't cool, but since it got warmer they've been doing much better and have actually grown a little! I'm going to start watering them with a fertilizer water thing that my dad made for our garden and I hope it will make the herbs grow to the point where I can actually use them. I did NOT expect it to take quite this long!

The basil has finely grown some new basil like leaves. After remaining unchanged for 2 months I was concerned that I had duds, but now I see actual progress. See how cute? It actually resembles basil now! I just want to gobble it up!

Now, the parsley I was really really worried about. It was not doing well at all. It was losing the green color and being all long and floppy and terrible and kind of shriveled  up. Thankfully it looks like an actual plant again! I rescued it! I probably wasn't watering it enough because of my fear of over-watering my herbs. But now the parsley is quickly on its' way to a full and healthy recovery, all for the purpose of being eaten! Mmmmmmm tasty....

The sage has always been pretty and healthy looking. The only real change is the leaves are bigger and cooler looking, and there is more of them. Enough said, check out the pic.

My dill is being kind of strange. It's growing well, but with a purple tint to it. Is this normal? I guess I just have to wait and see. It is steadily growing, so it's still doing well, right? Oh well, at least it's looks neat!

We've also started growing plants for the garden in the back yard. My dad and brother (with my help of course!) built this huge wooden structure for our garden, so we're pretty excited about it. They had to build such a big garden so the deer won't be able to just eat everything. I'll put up pics of it when we've planted some of the plants outside. Right now the peppers and tomatoes and eggplant are growing inside, and are doing quite well if I do say so myself! Here are some of the tomato plants! They're huge (compared to the herbs at least)!

So many growing things! Only problem now is how to get rid of all the stupid little flies. I'm going to blame my brother's orange tree for them. No way can my cute little herbs be at fault!

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Grandma's Carciofo (Stuffed Artichokes)

My grandma always spoiled us rotten with scrumptious Italian meals, one of which is Carciofo (we pronounce it ka-chof). She used to always make it for my family once a year, usually during Lent, even though it is kind of expensive to buy enough artichokes to feed my family. It's a meal my brothers and I would always request and she would always make it no matter how much she really didn't feel like it because we are just so cute! It is a traditional meal for us that is very important and we wanted to make sure we never lost it.

My grandma passed away last year, and so we were extra diligent to keep the tradition going and were determined to have Carciofo for Good Friday even though we had no idea what we were doing. My mom and I used a scribbled and barely legible hand-written recipe of my grandma's along with the recipe off the box of Sclafani Bread Crumbs, which she apparently always used. The bread crumbs can sometimes be found at regular supermarkets, like Stop 'n Shop, in the pasta/International aisle. You might have to go to an Italian market for it though, or you can just use regular Italian seasoned bread crumbs. We just use this brand because it has the recipe on the carton and it's what we like.

For those of you not in the know, Carciofo is whole artichokes with the leaves stuffed with an Italian bread crumb mixture and then baked. Then you pull off each individual leaf and eat the bread crumbs along with the meaty part of the leaf that was attached to the base. When you get to the bottom, you spoon out the weird prickly stuff and toss it out, and eat the heart. It's messy, and takes some time, and you need many bowls to discard leaves into, but it is so very fun and perfect. It can also be prepared a few days ahead of time, which is kind of neat.

There is no way I can fully express how much I love this dish, and always have. Even when I was a kid I loved it, and kids are suppose to hate things like artichokes. A teacher in elementary school once asked me what my favorite food was and I could not remember the English name for it, I may have actually never learned it, and confused her greatly when I said "carciofo" and could in no way explain what it is. I ended up telling her to just trust me that it is really good.

Making it this year was confusing, and stressful, but in the end it was tasty and nostalgic and that made it all worth it. So while this recipe is not exactly my grandma's, it is our best try to replicate our memories with the vague directions left behind.

Also I have no idea why the measurement for cheese is 10 tbsp., but that's what my grandma wrote so that's how we did it!

Click here for the recipe!

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Curry Lasagna

Yes, you did read the title correctly. This post is about a curry lasagna. There are probably herbs in the curry mix somewhere, so I deem it acceptable to discuss here. My friend Sarah was visiting from Boston so we could go to a Bridal Shower for our friend Laura (it was fun and I was wicked jealous of all the kitchen gadgets she got!) but before that we had a couple of days to cook weird and random stuff. Some amazing treats resulted from this cooking fun weekend such as caramel-apple semifreddo, strawberry lemon semifreddo, roasted red pepper hummus, guacamole, mushroom and sun-dried tomato pockets, and most importantly: the curry lasagna.

 I know the layers aren't perfect, but it smelled really good and made us all hungry, so we may have rushed the process.

Some of those recipes will probably be up later, but we just kind of made them and didn't exactly measure so I have to go back and see what it was we actually did. They were all fantastic, and only a few had fresh herbs, and I feel it is my responsibility to share these treats with the world.

Let's start with the curry lasagna. I really wanted to make something with curry since it's one of my favorite things in the whole world. To be more specific, I'm talking about Japanese curry. I usually use S&B Golden Curry boxes (found in the Asian section of your local supermarket). So, we knew curry was a definite plan. But then we wanted to be creative with it so of course we thought of fusion. Sarah, my brother Mark, and I all brainstormed our way to success. Curry risotto, while potentially delicious, is too similar to how curry is anyway, so there's no point to that. Curry on spaghetti? Been there, done that. Curry lasagna? There is no way that could fail. And so the adventure began.

There's no actual recipe, but it's quite easy to explain. We cut up the onions, carrots, and potatoes into really really small adorable pieces and cooked them for a bit. Then we added a package of ground turkey, probably about 1.5 lbs, and cooked it until it was brown. Since it's a lasagna we wanted it to be a little more tomato-y then curry normally is so we tossed in a small can of tomato paste. Then we followed the directions on the box. Simmer in some water, remove from heat, add curry cubes, mix mix mix, heat again, simmer for a bit, and it's done.

We mixed a pint of ricotta with 2 eggs and some salt and pepper. Cooked the lasagna noodles like normal. Put some curry into the lasagna pan, layer with noodles, spread some ricotta, sprinkle some cheddar cheese, spoon on curry, and repeat. Sprinkle cheddar on the top layer. We baked it at 375 for about 30 minutes.

When it's piping, burning, oozing hot all you can taste is the curry, but when you let it cool for a few minutes you can taste the cheeses and feel the texture differences. It's a little strange to have lasagna with small pieces of potato, but I found it to be pleasing. Success!

There are some variations that I want to try. I think it would be interesting to use some sort of vegetable in place of the lasagna noodles, and some more Italian flavoring would be good. Next time I will definitely add fresh basil and some more tomato. Curry has a very deep and savory flavor and I hope the basil and tomato will give it a slight hint of refreshing sharpness. I would also like to add some sort of flavor to the ricotta, but I haven't decided yet. Maybe that's where I should put the basil. Who knows? It might be awesome or it might be an epic fail. I'm excited to try.

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