Things Alex And I Have Been Cooking Recently

Here are some things Alex and I have been cooking recently!

First, and best:

Black bean tostadas! Oh, man, so much Mexican-food-deliciousness and California-nostalgia all wrapped up into one amazing meal! We shredded our own farmers' market lettuce, cooked up some beans and tomatoes, made our own guac, fried some tortillas, and life was golden!

We were very excited about our tostadas.

Alex's was messier than mine.

Later, we made latkes in the same oil. Latkes are good for all times of year, it turns out! Also, Jamie had never had a latke, so we had to remedy that, because she was of course missing the best food on the planet. Well, the best food tied with tostadas and blintzes. Fortunately, we made blintzes the day before yesterday, so we have completed the trio! Oh, well, also they are probably tied with or slightly behind homemade macaroni and cheese. But that doesn't count because it is in a whole other league and also because we haven't made it recently. Anyway, I will get to the blintzes later, because I am trying to go in chronological order.

So, also, we went to the fancy cheese store and bought bleu cheese, and I put it with honey on sourdough toast, and that was delicious and beautiful.

I especially like it on my butterfly wings plate!

I made a chocolate mousse pie but was sad when somebody else ate the last piece, so then Alex made his first chocolate mousse pie and decorated it with a chocolate Easter egg and the surprise found therein!

My chocolate mousse pie

Alex's chocolate mousse pie!

We made chile relleno casserole, which would have been good if it hadn't been so salty.

I am mixing up the egg whites, cheese, and chiles!

We made spinach torte, which was incredibly delicious mainly because all the egg and cheese covered up the spinach taste! The layers of dough were very difficult to roll as thin as necessary, but it was a fun time trying.

The six eggs were basically unnecessary,

but they were very silly and fun!

The finished product was

soooooooo

good!

We made Welsh Rarebit, which is super good mainly because it is primarily made of cheese, also with some beer and egg, and put it on sourdough. We added apple and broccoli, as per Moosewood.

There is one and a half cups of cheese

on my plate alone.

Delicious!

With the rarebit, we made beet horseradish salad, which is weird and looks pretty freaking gross and also exciting, but which tastes pretty darn good. Alex likes it even more than I do, which is cool because he thinks beets taste like dirt and normally won't touch them. He is silly. Beets are nature's candy!

Yum yum, magenta!

We made blintzes, which, yummmmmmm. I found some farmer cheese at the farmers' market (how appropriate!) and we used that. I don't think I'd ever had real farmer cheese blintzes before; I think usually people use cottage cheese and/or ricotta, because farmer cheese is not sold in stores because they haven't figured out a convenient way to mass produce it. I still don't know what hoop cheese is, though. Also, it turns out that crepes are really really easy to make, especially when you know you are going to fry them again so you don't have to flip them! Now we can make them any time!!

Blintzes are beautiful, golden, and so easy!

Also, I made a crepe with the caramel sauce

that we had made as an ice cream topping

but cooked too long

so it was too hard

until I heated it inside the crepe.

Also, I sprinkled the top with cinnamon.

Best dessert.

And most recently, we made risotto! I was intimidated, because risotto is what they always screw up on Hell's Kitchen because apparently it is really hard. And while it is entertaining to see Gordon Ramsay throwing plates around the kitchen, it is less pleasant to be stuck at home with a gooey burned mass of gross. And it is true that it requires constant attention, and it is tricky to know when exactly the rice is "dried out" enough for it to be time to add more stock, and also you have to stir it more than it says because it sticks like crazy. However, it worked beautifully! We used the Moosewood recipe and also added some mushrooms, asparagus, and sausage, all from the farmers' market. It is a beautiful goldenrod color, and also excellent eating! Hearty and yummy. And the pan wasn't even hard to clean, after a little soaking!

So that is all. Next up: Alex's birthday cake. Which is actually my birthday cake recipe, from Aunt Carolyn! I'm excited to try my hand at this six layer thing, and also this highly complicated fudge frosting....