March 21, 2010

busy sunday!

so, i've been kinda MIA lately.  so sorry... but it's ok, i think i made up for it today!  i made a breakfast pastry, Paul's Nan's biscotti, and a delicious soup...

I started out the day by making a yummy breakfast pastry filled with mixed berries...

Mixed Berry Breakfast Pastry
1 cup sliced strawberries
1/2 cup raspberries, sliced
1/2 cup blackberries, sliced
1/4 cupblueberries
2 tbsp strawberry jam [or whatever jam you have on hand]
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed and rolled out to ~12" square
egg wash
honey

preheat oven to 400.  in a bowl, mix all berries and the jam.  let stand about 10 minutes.  in the meantime, roll the thawed puff pastry on a well floured surface until it's  12" square.  move the pastry to a cookie sheet covered with a silicon mat [or parchment paper].  place the berries in the center of the pastry using a slotted spoon [so that you don't get too much liquid into the pastry.]  fold the pastry around itself.  brush with egg wash.  bake fpr about 20 minutes or until pastry begins to brown.  brush with a little honey to help the browning and sweeten the dough a bit. don't add the honey in the beginning... the dough will burn... let stand 15 before cutting.  i served it with a little of the juice that was extracted from the fruit and a big cup of coffee.
after a little tv watching and the purchase of more butter, it was on to Paul's Nan's biscotti... the third try was definitely the charm... let me preface this recipe with the fact that i hate to bake simply because I HATE TO MEASURE!!! i'm an eye-baller... and in the off chance that my "measurements" don't quite work out, that's when i start to a pinch of this and a little of that... anyway, here's what happened last night when i tried to make these... 2 rookie mistakes: 1. when i read the recipe, i read tbsp, not tsp... so i had to throw out the dry ingredients and start over.  mistake 2. i made it past the dry ingredients... but when i got to the part where i had to add the eggs to the creamed sugar and butter, i made the awful mistake of adding the first egg straight into the batter... and it was a bad egg! UGH, i know better!!!! so i called it a night and started over today.  [i saved the dry ingredients in the bowl]. 

so here's the deal with this recipe... it was Paul's beloved Nan's recipe, so you'll have to go to Paul's page to get it! while you're there, check out the rest of his stuff- he's one hell of a cook! ;) Giusto Gusto

ok, so my biscotti aren't the prettiest, but man were they good!  the whole thing with biscotti is that they're twice baked- once as a big log, then you cut them and bake them again... well, mine took a little longer to set the first time, so the cuts weren't the cleanest... oh wells, they're still DELICIOUS!  i served them with a little more of the fruit extract from this morning.  tomorrow night i'll try them with Nutella- OM NOM NOM! next time, i think i'll line the silicon mat with slivered almonds, so that they stick to the bottom of the biscotti!

after doing a few other things around the apt, it was on to dinner- a yummy asian soup recipe i found in my "Real Simple" magazine... now, you know me, i can't follow a recipe, so i'll give you all of the substitutions along the way...

Asian dumpling soup with mushrooms and edamame
2 32- oz containers of ow sodium chicken broth
1 2-in piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 16-oz pkg froxen pot stickers [i used chicken & veggie ones]
2 med carrots, sliced [i used 2 big handfuls of baby carrots, cut in 1/2]
4 oz shiitake or white mushrooms, sliced
2 cups frozen shelled edamame
1 bunch watercress, thick stems removed [i substituted spinach bc i had it]
zest and juice of 1 lemon [not in the the original recipe]
2 cloves of garlic, smashed [not in the the original recipe]
1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
pinch kosher salt
sliced scallions for garnish

 in a large pot, combine the broth and ginger [and the lemon zest and garlic] and bring to a boil.  add the pot stickers and the carrots and simmer until tender- about 8 minutes. 
add the mushrooms and the edamame and simmer until heated through- about 2 minutes.
stir in the watercress [i used spinach], the soy sauce, and a healthy pinch of kosher salt.  [add the lemon juice].  sprinkle with scallions before serving.

the garlic added a little punch and the lemon brightened it up a bit.  all in all it was delicious - surprisingly filling!

2 comments:

thanks for the comment! =]