Asparagus, Mushroom, Broccoli, and Sausage Quiche

This post is one far overdue. I started this about a year and a half ago after a particularly fruitful trip to my local farmer's market where I got the bright idea to make a quiche. Below you will see all of the ingredients I used: basil pesto sausage, broccoli, asparagus, shallots, garlic, mushrooms, chevre, gruyere, and (of course) eggs, butter, and cream. I was nervous about making a quiche but this was one of the most successful dishes I've ever made.

All of my ingredients, minus the pie crust.

Everything chopped.

Shredding the gruyere. I didn't have a cheese grater for some reason, so this was all done with a paring knife.

I always start by sauteing garlic and onions (in this case, shallots) in a little olive oil.

Sauteing the vegetables together first.

Starting the sausage on its own so it gets a nice brown.

Combining the vegetables and sausage.

Beaten eggs, cream, and cheese.

All of the filling ingredients together.

Pre-baked and egg washed crusts.

Quiches poured right before the oven.

The finished product.

Oven roasted potatoes as a side.

Final plating!

I ended up roasting some potatoes (pictured above) and serving with a green salad with slivered almonds and a pomegranate vinaigrette. This quiche was so popular I had requests for whole quiches for people who tried my leftovers. Definitely a point of pride.

Anyway, I found this draft floating around when I posted my last post (Bacon Cheeseburger Cups) so I figured I'd finish it up and publish it as well! Enjoy! 

Bacon Cheeseburger Cups

So the boy and I are doing this keto diet. I've never done a diet like this before and I think I may just die without carbs. But I'm giving it a shot. Now, the ketogenetic diet (keto for short) is low carb, high fat, and high protein. Not really the way I'm used to eating, but I figure this is a good way for me to get creative. So tonight I got it in my head to do something I've never done before.

I've seen little bacon-cupped dishes all over the internet (*cough* Pinterest *cough*), but I've never bothered to try any of them. They seemed a little gimicky to me and way too high fat. I figured somebody somewhere had to have done this little meal, especially if they are doing the keto thing, but I could not find any iteration of bacon cheeseburger cups that were made with bacon cups and didn't involve biscuits.

So I looked up a biscuit-y cheeseburger cup recipe and I looked up recommendations on how to make bacon cups. It all ended up a little messy, but delicious.

The bacon cup recipe recommended that you use the outside of a cupcake pan lined with foil. This
works well to make the cups a little bigger and to keep the bacon from sticking to everything.

I had never done this before and I was using the cheapest bacon in the grocery store, so my cups were flimsy and
messy as opposed to the pretty lattices you see everywhere else. Hopefully practice makes perfect on this one.

The finished cups were not as cup-like as I would have wanted, but came out well
enough (I think). I baked them at 400º for about 10 minutes.

I put the bacon cups into the muffin tin so I could fill them and put them back in the oven.

To my ground beef I added salt, pepper, garlic powder, mustard, and cheddar cheese.

I mixed all the ingredients together.

Browning the meat is important, I don't think they would tasty burger-y enough just baked.

I scooped the meat into my bacon cups. I didn't have enough bacon cups for all of my burger, so I lined some cups in foil.

Sprinkle cheddar cheese on each cup and into the oven! I kept the oven at 400º and just put them in for ~5 minutes.

Just after I pulled them out of the oven, I was still concerned about the structural integrity of my bacon cups.

After they set for a moment, I took each cup out with a spoon. They stayed together surprisingly well!

I put a little mustard and some chopped roma tomatoes on top of each cup and placed them on
lettuce leaves. The crispness of the lettuce and tomato balanced the grease nicely.

All in all, I'd say it was a successful experiment. Next time, I don't think it's necessary to put cheese in the burger meat itself with the cheese topping on top, and I'd love some caramelized onions and more mustard in the meat. The bacon cups will get better with practice and higher quality bacon. I found this to be a really satisfying meal, though!

Tapsilog

I've been doing a pretty terrible job of keeping up on my cooking blog, but now that I am focusing solely on achieving my goals, it should be a little easier. Let me start fresh with something simple to make that is a delicious (and not terrible for you) breakfast food. It's called tapsilog, which is a filipino side dish consisting of yesterday's rice fried with freshly diced garlic and topped with a fried egg.

All you do is dice up some garlic and heat it in hot oil in a nonstick pan (a wok would be preferable), throw in yesterday's rice from the fridge and pan fry it up until it's warm. You don't need to wait for it to brown or anything, since that'll actually burn it. Put your fried rice in a bowl, fry an egg to however you like it (I prefer over-medium and the dish tastes best if you can break the yolk and mix it in with the rice) and toss it on top. You can add salt and black pepper to taste throughout the cooking process and you have your dish! Enjoy!

An Annual Tradition: Baked Goodies Galore

        As a broke college student, it's become a tradition of mine to bake for my family instead of buy gifts. Often this ends up costing nearly as much as buying gifts would as my recipe book expands, but I think there's something to be said for a gift from the heart and made by hand. This year's gifts included: homemade kahlua (not pictured), oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (pictures 1-3), chocolate and peanut butter fudges (pictures 4 and 5), wheat-free peanut butter cookies (picture 6), and three different types of cake pop (pictures 7-9).

Creaming the butter and sugar
together for my first batch. I ended up
adding a bunch of brown sugar to the
recipe, which made the cookies softer.

It always helps to have a
handsome man around the
kitchen to assist. Especially
when baking for 30.

The finished product. They came out
a little thin, but very soft and chewy.

Stirring the initial ingredients for
fudge. From here you can add either
peanut butter or chocolate (or both).

Finished peanut butter fudge.
I found it sadly lacking in
peanut butter, next time I'll
be doubling the amount.

The batter for my grandma's wheat-
free peanut butter cookie recipe. It
consists of peanut butter, eggs, and
sugar. The cookies are amazing, if
a little sweet.

Cake pops in the pan before
application of sticks. I saw
this pan and had to give it a
shot. It works fairly well.

Allowing the pops to cool upright
makes the stick more secure. I used
a mixture of melted candy coating
and chocolate chips for frosting.

The finished product. I made
three flavors of cake pops:
chocolate fudge with a light
cocoa frosting, vanilla candy
cane cake with chocolate mint
frosting, and yellow cake with
eggnog and a white chocolate
vanilla frosting.

All in all, baking was a success this year. I think next time I'd use a little less brown sugar in the oatmeal cookies, though not much, to add a little more volume and take away just a touch of sweetness. The peanut butter fudge definitely needs twice the peanut butter, and the peanut butter cookies could use a bit less refined sugar. As for the cake pops, they came out pretty well for my first attempt and I'll continue to experiment with them; I think I'll aim for a little more moisture next time.

A Birthday Request: Cupcakes

I should probably add right now
that I am terrible at decorating.

I have a little bit of a reputation among my friends for my cupcake baking. So, naturally, when my best friend Dréa's birthday comes up I am required to provide dessert. The great thing about Dréa's birthday is that it's also Halloween and we tend to combine festivities. This year, she made a couple of requests of me which was great because I like the challenge of fulfilling someone's requests with my own style. First, I was given this picture to work with:

Then, Dréa asked me for a combination I've never attempted before: some kind of citrus cupcake with a cream cheese frosting, if I can incorporate alcohol, bonus points. Challenge accepted.

My original plan had been to perfect a recipe I had been working on modifying a couple of years ago, but time and money became factors, so I chose to spruce up a from-the-box lemon cake and frosting instead.

The Cake:

The ingredients I was working
with. I wanted to incorporate
crushed pineapple, so I used the
vegan trick of replacing the egg
with applesauce (but used the
pineapple instead).

I also replaced the water called
for with 2/3 rum and 1/3 juice.
I used a little less since the
pineapple does add its own
moisture to the batter.

When I was done beating the
batter, it did look lumpy but
that was due to the fruit and
not the dry ingredients.

The Frosting:

Since I wanted the frosting to
go with the cupcakes, I had to
find a way to make cream
cheese frosting more "tropical".
I accomplished this by adding
rum and juice for flavor, then
refined coconut oil (the solid)
to counter the extra liquid.

I wish I had a hand mixer
because I did find a couple of
lumps of coconut oil that
hadn't incorporated later.

Because of all the extra liquid, baking
time was a little longer than anticipated.
It would probably help to not overfill
your cupcake papers, too.

I let the cupcakes cool overnight since
it was ridiculously late when they were
done baking. I need to take cupcake
frosting lessons.

Now, I may have mentioned before that decorating is not my forte. In the least. But, the birthday girl requested spiderwebs, so that's what she got. Unfortunately the store was out of the stupid little plastic spider rings, so she just got webs and no spiders.

To make the spiderwebs, I
took the black writing icing
from a can and drew circles
around a dot. Well, attempted
circles.

The picture is terrible because
it's morning and I was half-
awake. I took a chopstick
(some people use toothpicks)
and drew straight lines out from
the center dot.

This is the tray of my finished
cupcakes. As you can see,
uniformity is not my strong
point.

Drea's birthday cupcake!
Maybe not picture-perfect,
but they came out deliciously.

In the end, the cupcakes may have not been the prettiest, but I'm very proud of the flavor and texture. The only problem I came across is that the cupcakes are so soft, they lack structural integrity. All in all, it was a successful venture.

A Family Favorite: Warm Pear Walnut Salad

When trying to think of something tasty, light, and easy to make I always defer to this salad. It's from a "recipe" given to my parents by a family friend when I was much younger. Every time you make it, it comes out just slightly differently, but always delicious!

These are all the ingredients
needed. The original recipe
calls for sliced black olives as
well, but I always forget them
and, honestly, don't feel like
much is missed.

Tear the lettuce into decently
bite-sized chunks. The recipe
says to use both green and red
leaf lettuce and, if you're making
a large batch, you definitely
should. I was cooking for 3 so
I only used green leaf. Slice enough
red onion for your taste and choose a
soft pear. Drizzle with balsamic
vinegar to your heart's content.

This is another way I deviate
from the recipe: I think the walnuts
are the best part so I always cook
more than called for. You want
the olive oil to cover a little more
than halfway and watch
the nuts carefully, as they burn
easily!

As soon as the walnuts are
toasted, throw them on top of
the salad and toss quickly. The hot
oil will melt the bleu cheese and mix
with the balsamic vinegar to
make the dressing.

Enjoy while still warm with
sliced sourdough!