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If you are coming here expecting to find Carrot, Green Apple & Mint Salad, well, it’s not here. Even though this week’s Craving Ellie recipe was chosen by one of my favorite bloggers (A Singleton in the Kitchen), who also happens to live in the same city as me, this salad just wasn’t our thing. My apologies to Jessica - please don’t look me up and beat me, but please look me up and bring me some of your delicious looking baked goods, ribbons and all!

I have been doing A LOT of cooking lately, and not so much baking, so I decided to do a rewind this week and make Ellie’s Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti. If you are unfamiliar, biscotti are Italian cookies and their name means “baked twice". You bake the dough the first time in a log, then you cool it, slice it and bake the slices a second time to dry them out. The longer they bake the second time, the harder the cookies will be. They are the perfect mate to a nice hot cup of coffee.

These were easy to make. The dough is a very stiff and sticky cookie dough. The only sort of issue I had was that after the first baking of 25 minutes they were still very raw in the middle. I did not realize this until I sliced them, so I just had to do a longer bake the second time. I am really not sure if it was supposed to be that way or not, but it worked out in the end.

Overall these biscotti were pretty good, I enjoyed them even more after they had sat for a day. I like that they weren’t rock hard and the combo of chocolate, cherries, and almonds is always delicious. If I make them again I would add more cherries, decrease the chocolate, and put in some almond extract to get more of an almond flavor.

I am not really sure what the fat and calories are in a normal biscotti, but these babies have 10 grams of fat and 230 calories per cookie. So they are not exactly guilt free (at least in my mind), but they are certainly not a diet buster either. And they are made with half whole wheat pastry flour so the calories are not totally empty.

You can find the recipe for these cookies here.

Here is my log. I measured this to be 10 x 3, so I don’t think my under doneness had to do with the size. You can see how chock full of delicious goodness it is:

Here it is out of the oven:

Semi raw biscotti. I think I had to bake them for another 25 minutes, and I tested them this time with a cake tester!

Pasta is the love of my foodie life. If I am looking for comfort, I always go with pasta. It is probably the thing I crave most, and we eat pasta for dinner at least once a week.

So I was happy to make this week’s Craving Ellie pick, chosen by Farah of Confessions of a Novice Baker, Linguini with Shrimp & Vegetables.

I have actually made this recipe before as written and with variations. I usually like to melt a few anchovies into the olive oil, add some fresh thyme, and I cook the tomatoes longer than Ellie calls for. This time though, I added some chanterelle mushrooms because we got them for a steal at Costco over the weekend, and I added some fresh capers that our friend Dianna brought us back from Italy. We are generally not caper people, but these were so briney and delicious. I think Dianna described them as a very capery caper. Thanks Dianna!

Yay for Chanterelle mushrooms!

Yum!

Here is my recipe as I made it this time. It was great! You end up with a really light but flavorful sauce bulked up with lots of yummy veggies and shrimp. And of course something like this is forever adaptable to what you like and what you have on hand.

Pasta with Shrimp & Vegetables
Adapted by Sara at imafoodblog.com from Ellie Krieger
The Food You Crave, page 160-161
Serves 4

• 1 pound spaghetti or linguini
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 8 ounces Chanterelle or any other mushroom
• 1 bunch asparagus stalks, trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1 container cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup capers
• 1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 cup freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Freshly grated Parmigianno-Reggiano cheese

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook according to the directions on the box. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water.
2. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over a medium-high heat. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute.
3. Add the mushrooms and saute until all the water has cooked out and evaporated.
4. Add the asparagus and cherry tomatoes and saute until the tomatoes begin to break down.
5. Add the capers, lemon juice, white wine, and the reserved cup pasta water (as needed) to the skillet. Let simmer until the liquid is reduced by about half.
6. Add the shrimp and cook for 3-4 minutes, until they turn pink. Stir in the parsley and then add the pasta to the pan and mix. Salt and pepper to taste.
7. Add a healthy dousing of Parm. cheese to each plate.

Do you know that the Irish would carve turnips into jack-o-lanterns instead of pumpkins on Halloween? I just heard that on the History channel.

Pumpkin is not one of my favorite ingredients, I don’t hate it, I just don’t love it. Though I have been more open to using and trying things with pumpkin lately. So I was excited to make these muffins. Although I am always be happy to try a new muffin recipe, especially an Ellie Krieger one. This recipe is a pretty standard low fat muffin recipe. The fats are canola oil, eggs, and low fat buttermilk. And the actual flavor of the muffin is very much like a spice cake with a hint of pumpkin.

I did make a few changes to the original recipe, which can be found here.

• I used 100% all-purpose flour
• I added 50% more of all the spices since some were saying these were bland
• I only used 2 tbsp of molasses since that is all I had left
• I left out the pumpkin seeds because I did not want to buy them just for this
• I added in a handful of ground flax seed to the batter

Overall I really enjoyed these muffins. Ellie’s muffin recipes have not disappointed me yet. There was a nice flavor to the muffin with the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg, though I think there is room to improve by changing the amounts. It was also pretty moist and did not have the gross gummy dense texture that some low fat muffins can have.

I think that some golden raisins in the muffin might be good, I will try that next time. I also loved 24carrots idea on the Tell All to substitute maple syrup for the molasses. I may also try replacing one of the eggs with another cup of pumpkin and see how that goes. This would make it healthier as well as allow me to use up a whole small can of pumpkin instead of only half a can.

Bottom line: These muffins were very good, I will definitely make them again and try different variations.

Great pick by Amanda of Oddball Oven Mitt for this week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly.

Well, nowhere really.

My head just has not really been in food blog land as of late.

I have been spending a lot of free time at the gym. Nick, who used to have to harass me about getting off my butt and going to the gym, actually said to me last night that it was annoying how much time I spend there and that I need to go less! I will take that under advisement honey.

I have also been enjoying some free time shopping. I have apparently decided to singlehandedly stimulate our economy by spending all my money on clothing and shoes.

We have also had some exciting news from our family and friends recently:

One of our closest friends Dianna just got engaged to her adorable Italian boyfriend while on a trip in Italy. I couldn’t be more excited for her and for their wedding, which will most likely be in Italy!! Yay!

Nick and I also learned that we will soon become an Aunt and Uncle, so we are definitely excited about that as well. However, I don’t think that a new baby will help curb my shopping addiciton

And of course, I have been cooking. I have actually made the last 3 Craving Ellie in My Belly recipes, but just did not have the energy to take a decent picture and write a post. I feel like a bit of a slacker, so here is my attempt at redemption:

Chicken Chop Suey - this was a great choice by our one and only Healthy Hostess, Ali. I did think that the flavor of this was very similar to a lot of Ellie’s other Asian inspired recipes, but it was definitely tasty and filling. I loved the crispy baked wontons!

Tuscan Vegetable Soup - I can’t rave enough about this soup and I have to thank Pam of Lobster and Fishsticks for choosing it. It is so hearty and filled with yummy veggies. I loved that the broth has just a hint of redness from the tomatoes, and I also simmered mine with a parmigianno rind which gave it tons of flavor. I always keep my leftover cheese rinds in the fridge for things like this. I made this on Saturday night after it had literally been raining in DC nonstop for days, and it was so perfect.

And this week’s pick was Chicken & Mushroom Quesadilla and was chosen by Marthe of Culinary Delights. I have actually made these before, and they were really good. So this time I changed it up a bit, mainly to use up some stuff I already had in the fridge/freezer. I stuffed them with some leftover roasted veggies that I had on hand from roasted veggie lasagna I made the night before. I sauteed up some extra mushrooms to add to that, and I added some cooked shredded turkey to Nick’s that I had in the freezer. Topped with a generous helping of reduced fat colby/jack cheese mix, these were sooooo good, and easy. Although, I had a good laugh at Ellie’s suggested serving size of a half a quesadilla! Nick and I both had our own whole one, and it was a perfect dinner portion for me.

I also made the Allspice Crumb Muffins, which was a Tuesdays with Dorie pick a week or so ago. This was chosen by one of my Craving Ellie girls, Kayte of Grandma’s Kitchen Table. I was so happy that she chose these because I have been eyeing them for quite a while. And I will pretty much try any muffin recipe under the sun. These got two thumbs up from me. I made some with and some without the buttery crumble topping, and both versions were delicious. I loved the surprising flavor of the allspice, this was a nice change up for me as far as muffins go. Great pick Kayte!

I am really going to try to get back into posting and reading all your blogs regularly, since it is something that I truly enjoy doing!

Later.

This week it was my turn again to pick something for Craving Ellie in My Belly, and I chose a New York Breakfast.

Like Ellie, I grew up in New York (I may have mentioned that a bazillion times on this blog already), and thus I grew up eating lots of bagels with cream cheese and various types of smoked fish. My favorite being nova lox. I know this is something that people either love or hate, so I apologize to my Craving Ellie girls who fall in the latter category.

However, I was in New York a few weeks ago and every time I go I always ingest tons of lox while I am there and then bring some back with me and freeze it. So I was inspired by my trip up there to pick this recipe since I knew I would be flush with smoked fish.

Before we get to the recipe, let’s talk fish. Lox, nova, nova lox - it’s all the same thing. And what it is is cured and cold smoked salmon. Yum! It is the stuff of dreams (well, my dreams). The name is derived from the German word “lachs” and the Yiddish word “laks", both meaning salmon. Nova can sometimes be confused with smoked salmon, which are indeed two completely different things. Smoked salmon is hot smoked, so it is cooked, which provides a very different final texture and flavor compared to a cold smoked salmon. Cold smoked salmon is technically raw because it never reaches over 90F. You may have also heard of Gravlax, which is a Nordic preparation of salmon. In Gravlax, the salmon is cured with a spice rub usually containing salt, sugar, paprika and dill. It is then weighed down to push out all the moisture and cures for about 3 days. Gravlax is not smoked at all, so it is also a raw application of salmon. I love salmon - raw and cooked - and all of these different preparation are delicious. However, nova remains my favorite.

This sandwich is really simple to make and it does not have many ingredients. So that is why it is important that all the ingredients are top quality, because you will taste everything. I hope everyone who made this was able to find good lox. I prefer to get mine from a deli where they slice it off the fish themselves on site. I try to stay away from the vacuum sealed stuff, but it will do in a pinch. I also tried some lox from Whole Foods once and found it to be horrendous. This is why I usually don’t buy it unless I am in New York, but I am bit of a snob, so just ignore me.

I made my New York Breakfast a bit different than Ellie’s directions.

Here are my changes:

1. I used thinly sliced rye bread instead of pumpernickel.
2. I used full fat chive cream cheese instead of neufchatel cheese. I did this because Nick and I have decided that besides the fact that NY bagels are superior to every other bagel, another reason why our NY bagel sandwiches are always so good is because of the delicious homemade cream cheese you get at some of the bagel shops and delis. So I picked up some quality cream cheese from a NY style bagel store near my office in Maryland. Since I got chive flavored cream cheese (my favorite) I did not add extra chives.
3. I left out the cucumber and tomato.

So my sandwich consisted of well toasted rye bread, cream cheese, thinly sliced red onion, lox, and some more red onion. I hope everyone who made this enjoyed it. I sure did. And this is not the only way I like to eat lox, check out my post about lox, eggs, and onions. Also yum!

Lox:

And yummy cream cheese:

*I just wanted to first give a big internet hug to all of you who left me such understanding and spirit lifting comments last week. You all made me smile and it also made me appreciate this blog as an outlet and appreciate all the bloggy friends that I have made since we started this in January. So thanks, it helped. . *

I was excited for this week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly pick. I have had my eye on this one for a while. Leslie of Lethally Delicious came through with a fabulous recipe pick of Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. How could you not be excited for a grilled cheese sandwich?

Ellie jazzes up the ho hum grilled cheese by adding sweet caramelized onions and spicy pepperjack cheese, as well as some cheddar cheese and a slice of tomato. (We left out the tomato, yuck)

However, I did make some homemade tomato soup to pair with this cheesy goodness. Yes, I know. We are weirdos. We would never eat our sandwiches with a slice of tomato, but insist on eating our sandwiches with a bowl of tomato soup. Sue me.

I used some thinly sliced rye bread that I had in the freezer (getting ready for my recipe pick next week!) which worked out great. I also happened to be caramelizing onions for some French onion soup for another day when I made these sandwiches. So instead of using the red onion I just borrowed a couple forkfuls from my pot of already sweet and soft onions. I used slices of sharp cheddar and pepperjack, as Ellie calls for. Since I was not in a particularly healthful cooking mood on this day, I really piled on the cheese. It was oozing out of the center after I cut the sandwiches.

These. were. so. good. I don’t know how healthy they really are since we are using full fat cheese here, but no matter. They were good.

You can find the recipe for the grilled cheese on page 95 of The Food You Crave or at the Food Network website.

Now let’s talk about tomato soup. This is something I rarely make, especially since I am just not interested in canned soup anymore. To find a recipe I consulted my cookbooks first since I wanted to give them some action, there are some that are feeling unloved these days. I decided to try out a healthy recipe I found in EatingWell’s Comfort Foods Made Healthy: The Classic Makeovers Cookbook by Jessie Price, The Editors of EatingWell

This book has some great sounding recipes, but this was the first one I have tried. I was hesitant at first, since any recipe with the word tofu in it gives me pause. However, I recently made a dip that was thickened by silken tofu and was pleased with the results. So I decided to have some faith and try this out.

While we were grocery shopping as we approached the tofu area I said to Nick “Okay honey get ready, I am about to buy some tofu". I got this response: . It’s a big deal for us.

Long story short, the soup came out excellent. It was wonderfully thick and creamy and I would absolutely make it again. And the best part is that it really is low fat and healthy for you. It was the perfect accompaniment to the grilled cheese.

Ingenious creamy tomato soup recipe after the jump…

Read more »

I have been in a bit of a funk lately with blogging, and life in general. I am so busy doing things that I don’t really want to be doing (i.e. soul sucking work) and quite frankly it is depressing, and it makes me not want to do much of anything when I actually have free time.

So I haven’t really been posting much here or even reading many blogs, and the boys certainly don’t pick up the slack there. Do you even remember the boys anymore?

I have been cooking and baking though, and I made 6 loaves of challah, among other things, last week while on vacation. I will post about that soon.

I feel like a bit of a deadbeat Craving Ellie leader, and I apologize to my girls for not updating the website as often and not really commenting much on everyone’s posts. I have been cooking along each week, and Nick and I did enjoy this week’s pick from one of our most enthusiastic Craving Ellie girls, Joanne of Apple Crumbles. (If you haven’t checked out Joanne’s new and improved site already, take a gander, it looks great!) Joanne, ever the vegetarian, chose Black Bean Mexican Style Pizza.

This is basically a homemade black bean dip spread on a tortilla, topped with tomatoes and cabbage and then baked in the oven for a few minutes. It was pretty tasty. The homemade bean dip is definitely a keeper. Nick enjoyed his “pizza” more than I did, but that may have been because he insisted on having cheese on his. I was a good girl and ate my exactly as the recipe called for. The only change I made was that I used canned whole tomatoes instead of fresh.

I made the bean dip a day ahead, so this was a super quick meal that I made on Monday night. The Monday night where I came home from work at 5pm and then had to leave again at 7:30pm to go to an 8pm meeting. yuck.

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly is Pulled BBQ Chicken Sandwiches and was chosen by Pam over at Cookies with Boys.

This was a great choice by Pam, so great in fact, that I already made these sandwiches a few months ago.

We really liked them, and I have made them multiple times on my homemade burger buns. My only complaint was the sauce was a bit bland, Ellie did not even call for any salt in it!!!! I doctored it up while it was cooking and it came out quite tasty.

Check out my original post on the chicken sandwiches here.

This weeks Craving Ellie in My Belly is Chicken Sate with a Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce. It was chosen by the hilariously funny Cathy of The Tortefeasor. It can be found at the aforementioned Food Network link or on page 54-55 of The Food You Crave. This is in the appetizer section of the book, but I decided to make it into dinner portions and serve it with some rice.

This recipe starts with marinating the chicken in a mixture of chicken stock, lite coconut milk, soy sauce, shallot, garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar, lime zest, and ginger. I marinated my chicken for about 8 hours instead of the 1 hour Ellie suggests. The chicken was very flavorful on it’s own and my favorite part was the flecks of lime zest that stuck to the chicken from the marinade.

I enjoyed skewering the chicken but I only got about 6 skewers instead of 8. I guess I over stuffed my skewers, but it really did not matter since it was just the two of us. I did only use 1 pound of chicken breast and I felt like it was a generous amount of chicken for dinner. I couldn’t finish it all. However, Nick, who increasingly complains that he is always so hungry finished all of his and the rest of mine.

The peanut sauce was very good, similar to but definitely not the same as the sauce from the lime peanut noodles that we made a few weeks ago. The dipping sauce was made from peanut butter (I used up the rest of my homemade PB ), chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, lime juice, garlic, chili flakes, red curry paste, and shallot. I think I liked this sauce better, and I was pleased to see that Nick enjoyed it as well. I was worried that this would end up being a pizza night because he is not a big fan of peanut sauces or sauces in general on his chicken. However, to my pleasant surprise he not only tolerated but sincerely liked the sauce. I left out the red pepper flakes because I don’t really like any heat in my food. Though I did think the sauce still had a bit of a kick from the green curry paste (the store was out of red curry paste - but they smell the same to me - very strong and kind of gross).

Instead of tossing the leftover coconut milk I decided to make some rice with it. I combined 1 cup of light coconut milk, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of uncooked basmati rice, 1/4 tsp of grated fresh ginger, and a splash of lime juice. Just cook it up like you would normally cook rice, this took about 15 - 20 minutes. The rice was very creamy and it definitely retained flavor from the coconut milk. Though I could not taste the ginger or lime at all, so if I make this again, I would increase both.

Overall this was a very tasty dinner and I would absolutely make this chicken and the dipping sauce again.

I don’t eat a lot of salads. In order for me to enjoy a salad, it has to have lots of good stuff in it. I can’t stand the thought of eating a plate of lettuce with some vinegar and oil on it with a stray cucumber here and there.

However, when you start adding things like grilled flank steak to a salad, I am interested. And this salad was really good. The steak is marinated in a mixture of lime juice, soy sauce, canola oil, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, and red curry paste or chili garlic sauce. Yum!!! I was really impressed with this marinade and will definitely use it again.

For the salad part of this salad I used a spring greens mix and then added sliced shallots, basil, and some shaved parmigianno cheese for garnish. When you make the marinade the recipe says to reserve about half as a salad dressing. We thought we may not have enough dressing left over so I added some more lime juice, and that really mellowed out the dressing a little and it gave the salad a wonderful light flavor.

This was an awesome Craving Ellie in My Belly pick by Jen B.. You can find the recipe for this salad at the Food Network or on page 107 of The Food you Crave by Elie Krieger.

(Look at how perfectly my fabulous boyfriend grilled the steak while I was on my way home from a late night at work):