Category Archives: What’s cooking

A week for the soul

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in Music, Recipes, Red Wine, The Basics, The Wine Rack

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

I am not having a great week.  Boo to the cold inside my head.  I was starting to feel sorry for myself when I remembered the incredible week I had last week. (See also why I haven’t posted in two weeks).

Last week started in Virginia celebrating my Father’s 60th birthday!  Happy Birthday Daddy!  We had a great time drinking scotch, smoking cigars, and eating steak.  Basically sounds like we were trying to outsmart death.

60th Cigar and Scotch

Continue reading »

Manaeesh

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Recipes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I am not sure of the correct spelling but Mr. Mouse Trap (MT) tells me this is the phonetic way to spell it.  Man-a-eesh.  Yeah, something like that. Manaeesh is a dish that his Mama (Lebanese) made him for breakfast on regular occasion growing up.  She thinks we are silly for praising this dish because she thinks it is “poor people’s food.”  But all the best recipes come from invention from necessity combined with limited resources.  Basically this is a dough topped with za’atar that has been combined with olive oil and baked.  Za’atar is generally prepared using ground dried thyme, oregano, marjoram, mixed with sesame seeds, salt and sometimes sumac. After the dough is baked it is then served much like pizza.  Mr. MT likes to eat it with fresh tomatoes, olives, and coffee.

I thought I would share our pictures from our latest Manaeesh session: Continue reading »

Mudslinger’s Pie Experiment

05 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by in Recipes, The Basics, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

So we are apparently NOT all pied out here in the Muddy household. Amid the preparations for last weekend’s Boston Pie Experiment, 6 year old Mudslinger was feeling a bit left out. I promised that I would allow her to make up her own pie recipe after the competition was over. She wasn’t about to let me forget it.

This was also the perfect opportunity to put some of my new ceramic wares to the test. I recently made what I hoped would be the perfect size dishes to make half a pie. I often want to bake but don’t want lots of leftovers hanging around to tempt me. Having a set of smaller dishes would also be perfect for testing and developing recipes in that I could make several small pies at once with slight alterations.

We consulted the Joy of Cooking purely for the sake of proportions of fruit, sugar and flour. Otherwise, Mudslinger’s creative juices were allowed to flow freely.

Continue reading »

Pie Crusts – what I’ve learned this month

03 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Recipes, The Basics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

This morning I was trying to add up in my head exactly how many pie crusts I made getting ready for the pie competition.  I surmised that I made somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 crusts in the month of July.  Ugh.  What I really want to know is where the hell did the expression “easy as pie” come from.  The concept is simple of course but the execution is not easy.  You do not need fancy ingredients or tools but man you have to know what you are doing.  I still have some work to do in the rolling out the dough front.  Luckily Mudpie’s many, many years of working with clay really paid off for our competition.  We had to roll out 4 pie crusts to fit into a 14×20.5 in sheet pan.  Folks, that was tricky.

I thought I would share with everyone the lessons in pie crust making that I learned this past month.  Disclaimer: I am probably the only cook who didn’t know these things.  Also, I am mostly putting these out there for a reference for myself in the future.  Ya know, in 6 months when I decide to make pie again and forget everything that I learned. Continue reading »

The Gluten-Free Vegan Pizza Project + Syrah!

07 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by in Recipes, Red Wine, The Wine Rack

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Pizza is a regular Friday night thing around here. The kids call it pizza-and-movie night. We call it time-for-Mama-to-open-some-wine-and-eat-some-carbs-night. OK, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, at the end of a busy week of parenting and playdating and what-the-heck maybe even creating some art, it’s nice to relax with a yummy slice and a glass or two.  Continue reading »

Killer Mixed Berry Cobbler

04 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in Recipes

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , ,

The one where I make an EPIC mixed berry (not Blueberry – Mudpie!) cobbler.  I have mentioned before that I love blackberry cobbler.  I love the contrasts in the dish.  Soft, crunchy, tart, sweet, white, dark, hot and cold.  It is a party in your mouth that hits all senses.  The kind of dessert that makes you feel alive.  Okay, so maybe that is a bit of a stretch.  After my return from the holidays I had little desire to do anything but hunker down in my house.  Fear of leaving my house included being concerned that it would take two days, a rental car, a slum hotel, and $500 to return to it.  I will be damned if I am going to the grocery store.  You never know when a blizzard will hit.  I was tasked with bringing dessert to a New Year’s Eve bash/dinner party at Mudpie’s house.  I was paralyzed with the need to remove every single object that was related to Christmas and unable to go out and forage for ingredients so I turned to the cabinet.  The very empty cabinet. What could I make?   Continue reading »

A Non-Traditional Hannukah

09 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by in Recipes, Red Wine, The Basics, The Wine Rack

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

What? Bacon in the latkes? What do you expect when a recovering Catholic and an atheist Jew get together to celebrate Hannukah? (Also, we invited the Baptist/Catholic/Jews from next door.) While we certainly don’t intend any disrespect towards our kosher Jewish friends, we’ve always done things a little, um, non-traditional around the Sober/Drunk household. Continue reading »

Dark Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Frosting

01 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by in Recipes, Red Wine, The Wine Rack

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I prefer not to write about wines I don’t like – why waste space when there are so many tasty vintages out there? – but that’s exactly what I’m doing this week. Recently Mudpie and I tried Layer Cake’s ’08 shiraz, and while we got that wonderful shiraz slap in the face (you shiraz fans know what I’m talking about) it was a little too much. We got to talking about how maybe our palates were maturing, since last year we would have probably gone ga-ga over such a non-subtle wine. Anyway, if abusing your taste buds (in a good way) is your thing, go for it. Otherwise, stick with me for a much tastier, although still not subtle, version: chocolate layer cake with caramel frosting. Continue reading »

When Drunk Mama is away…

16 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in Recipes, Red Wine, The Basics

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

The co-authors will play …with her garden that is.  Drunk Mama is vacationing in California and has left behind a tomato patch bursting with voluptuous, crimson tomatoes. Cellar Mouse, myself and others have been on duty to make sure the harvest does not go to waste. We are consuming tomatoes with every meal; with eggs, on sandwiches, on pizza, and Mudpuppy is climbing the fence to eat them like apples. My personal favorite is Cellar Mouse’s amazing tomato pie. Do yourself a favor and check out the link on our home page.

We wanted to make sure that Drunk Mama and Sober Dad are able to enjoy the fruits of their labor as well. They have been lovingly tending their vines all summer and it would be a shame for them to miss out on their harvest. So, Cellar Mouse, myself and our new best friend, Stephen Vincent Crimson, got together to make a sauce for their freezer. We also selfishly want to entice them home to New England. We are admittedly concerned that they may fall under the charms of a more temperate climate. On the other hand, we may find it hard ourselves to resist the allure of California wine country when we are reunited in 3 days. Continue reading »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.