Parmesan Risotto

Last night I was feeling very nostalgic for some of the foods that we made in class this past year. So when I had to think of something to make to go with salmon that I made, I thought about a suggestion that my friend made at the beginning of the summer, that also happened to be something that we learned in our traditional european cuisine class.

Parmesan Risotto

4- 5 cups chicken stock
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 yellow onion - diced
1 garlic clove - minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup grated parmesan
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon thyme

Begin by heating the chicken stock and keeping it on a low burning to stay warm. In a medium sized pot, melt 2 tablespoons of butter, add onions and garlic, season with salt and pepper and sauté for 2 minutes or until onions are translucent. Add rice and cook for about 5 minutes until slightly translucent, stirring frequently. add wine and cook until evaporated. Begin to add stock 1/2 cup at a time, stirring continuously. Once stock has been absorbed, add the next 1/2 cup, continue or 20-25 minutes or until rice is fully cooked. Once cooked, remove from heat, add remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, parmesan, thyme and season with more salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Risotto is definitely a time commitment but if you are willing to be patient, which is definitely sometimes difficult for me, than it can really pay off. With my work week basically over I am very much excited to relax this weekend. So till next time,
Keep Cooking Brooklyn!

Baked Salmon in Parchment

All day at work all I could think about was what I wanted to make for dinner. But it wasn't till after I had gotten home that I remembered one day in my nutrition lab where all we focused on was wrap cookery. So tonight I decided to bake salmon in parchment paper for my parents and I as a healthy summer meal that I anyone can do. 

Baked Salmon and Zucchini in Parchment 

yield: 1 serving

1 small zucchini or summer squash - halved and thinly sliced 

1 tablespoon shallots- thinly sliced 

Olive oil 

Salt and Pepper 

1 8-ounce salmon fillet 

1 tablespoon lemon juice 

A pinch of dill weed 

1 piece of parchment paper 

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Fold the parchment paper in half to crease it then open it back up. On one side lay down the sliced zucchini and top with shallots. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over vegetables and season with salt and pepper. Lay the salmon fillet over the vegetables, squeeze lemon juice over fish and top with dill weed. Fold over the other half of parchment and fold the bottom part over the top in small creases until the opening of parchment is sealed. Bake for 15 minutes, let sit for 2-3 minutes out of oven, then cut a slit in the top, open up parchment and serve. 

My work schedule this week has been switched around so it almost makes it feel like this week has gone on forever, although thats also probably because I worked Sunday as well. Either way I am happy for this week to almost be over and to fit in some more driving practice in this weekend. So till next time, 

Keep Cooking Brooklyn! 

Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding

Monday nights are not the busiest nights at work, so we are often left with a large amount of baguettes and donuts that we end up having to through away at the end of the night. So last night, instead of throwing them away, my coworker and I took some home. Since my family doesn't really eat bread that often, I thought I would use the day old bread today in a bread pudding.

Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding

1 baguette - cubed
1 1/2 cups almond milk
1 1/2 cups apple sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 eggs
1 apple (red or green) - diced
1/4 cup raisins
Powdered sugar

After cubing up the bread, mix together the milk, apple sauce, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl. Taste and add more sugar if needed. Beat in eggs. Fold in the bread cubes, diced apples and raisins. Pour mixture into glass pan and place in refrigerator for 1 hour. Preheat oven to 350 and bake for 45 -50 minutes until inside is set and top is lightly brown. Dust the top with powdered sugar and serve slightly cooled or fully chilled.

I usually am not a fan of bread pudding, and I added more sugar when writing this post because it originally did not have enough, but overall I actually liked this more than I thought. Even though we don't often have bread in our house, it is always hard to know what to do with it when we do, so I am hoping to come up with more stale bread recipes to re use what would normally be thrown away, so till next time,
Keep Cooking Brooklyn!

Meal Prep Monday

Yesterday at whole foods I got some orecchiette pasta to use for meal prep monday. So after my daily Starbucks run, I decided to use up some of the left over goat cheese from yesterdays recipe and make a quick pasta for after work.

Orecchiette with Goat Cheese and Mint

1/2 cup orecchiette
1/4 yellow onion
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup frozen peas
2 ounces goat cheese
1/2 cup milk or cream
1 tablespoon mint - chiffonade
Salt and Pepper

Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook orecchiette for about 11minutes. While the pasta cooks, sauté the onions in butter till softened and translucent. Add the peas and warm through. Add milk or cream and cheese and heat till the cheese melts. Add the pasta and reserve a small amount of pasta water for later use. Stir pasta into sauce and let the sauce simmer while stirring. Simmer till sauce has reduced slightly and thickened. Add a few tablespoons of reserved pasta water to add more thickness. Season with salt and pepper, plate pasta or place in tupperware container and top with mint.

There are only 39 days left of the blog and I can't tell if its moving quickly or slowing down. For the most part if feels like having basically a month left isn't that much time at all, but when you put it inot perspective a month can seem like a long time. Unfortunately I won't be able to go to Maine for two weeks like I usually do in the summer, so that means 6 more weeks of working, sleeping and cooking, which can start to get boring. Maybe I could think of something exciting to do for the blog to make time move a little more quickly. Till next time,
Keep Cooking Brooklyn!

Sweet Potato Latkes Appetizers

My family and I haven't really been all together for dinner in a pretty long time, with my brother on a two week long business trip and then my mom away for a week at a yoga retreat, a family dinner was long over due. So to make things a little special, I made a little appetizer to enjoy during the news.

Sweet Potato Latkes Appetizers

1 large sweet potato
1/2 onion
1 egg
1/3 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Salt and pepper - to taste
Canola Oil
1 ounce chevre goat cheese
1 tablespoon cream cheese
Dill

Using a box grater, grate the sweet potato and onion into a small bowl. Mix in the egg, flour, nutmeg and salt and pepper. Heat a pan filled an inch high with oil and place small spoonfuls of the sweet potato mixture and cook for about 4 minutes on each side till lightly browned. Let the pancakes drain and cool on a plate with paper towel to soak up the excess oil. When ready to plate, mix together the goat cheese and cream cheese and pipe a small dollop of cheese mixture on each pancake and top with dill.

After a short morning shift at work, my dad and I drove to the new whole foods that I hadn't gone to yet and looked around for some interesting products. The real point of the trip was to let me practice my driving, but the whole foods was huge and I could definitely see myself spending hours scouring the aisle for unique finds. Hopefully sometime soon I will have the time to spend there, so till next time,
Keep Cooking Brooklyn!

Classic Macaroni Salad

Today my family and I drove out to Long Island for a family barbecue to celebrate the summer birthdays of the family. The barbecue ended up being filled with sharing photos that were found in storage a few weeks ago from when we were all kids. There were tons of hilarious photos of our baby days and loads of pictures that we hadn't seen before. So with the request of my aunt, I made a macaroni salad to go along with everything else being served.

Macaroni Salad

2 cups dry macaroni
2 stalks celery - diced
1 red onion - diced
1/2 red bell pepper - diced
1 tablespoon parsley - finely chopped
1/2 cup mayonnaise
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons sour cream
Salt and Pepper - to taste

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook pasta till al dente - about 6 minutes. In a big bowl, mix together mayonnaise, mustard, sugar, vinegar and sour cream. When pasta is cooked, drain and rinse and let cool for a few minutes while you cut the vegetables. Add the pasta and the cut vegetables and parsley to the bowl with the dressing. Mix together and season with salt and pepper. This salad is even better if made a day ahead and allowed to sit in the refrigerator overnight.

Usually I am off of work all weekend, but tomorrow I am covering someones shift at work, which just seems odd because I feel like my whole week is going to be thrown off because I won't actually be sure of what day it is. So till next time,
Keep Cooking Brooklyn!

New York Style Black and White Cookies

Growing up in New York, it was pretty normal to see giant black and white cookies in the display cases of bagel shops or corner stores and it wasn't after I left that I realized that those delicious giant cookies were actually a New York thing. The other day I saw one of these giant cookies in a store and thought that it would be cool to try and recreate them at home. So today on my day off I decided to try it out.

Black and White Cookies
Yield: 8 Cookies

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg

Icing:
1 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1-2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda and salt, set aside. In another bowl mix together buttermilk and vanilla. In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar and mix for about 3 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the egg and mix till combined. Then slowly add the flour and buttermilk mixture alternating between the two and beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Scoop 1/4 cup mounds of the cookie batter onto a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 15-17 minutes, until lightly brown around the edges and still soft and springy in the middle. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and let cool for 10-15 minutes.
While cookies cool, mix together the confectioners sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice, vanilla and 1 1/2 tablespoons of water. Spread the vanilla icing on one half of the flat side of each cookie. Once all the cookies are iced with the vanilla icing, add the cocoa powder to the icing mixture. Add 1 teaspoon of water at a time until you reach the same consistency as before and finish icing the other half of each cookie with the chocolate icing.

These cookies were actually really fun to make and they came out pretty close to what I remember the original tasting like. It also made my day off a little more entertaining considering it was otherwise filled with doing laundry and cleaning my room. So till next time,
Keep Cooking Brooklyn!