Waffle Makeover!

15 Jun

The Carbo-Queen, as my family used to call me, is serious about waffles.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve tried every waffle mix there is, and have made them completely from scratch about a thousand times. There’s just something about achieving that perfect mix of sweet and savory that makes my mouth really, really happy.

But (there’s always a ‘but,’ isn’t there?) I’m supposed to focus on eating protein first at meals. Sure, a side of wheat toast with some eggs and turkey sausage is fine, but a meal of waffles? Probably not the best option for me, although I do treat myself to the occasional plate of French toast or slice of banana bread.

When I want to slay my waffle cravings without trashing my diet and going into a carb-coma, I turn to this recipe. It turns out crisp, light, and super-flavorful protein-filled waffles. You won’t miss the cups of flour, believe me. The secret to making these really delicious? Use full-fat ricotta to keep the insides rich and moist. Fresh-made would be the very best, but hey, there’s not always time for that.

Because I am usually only cooking these for me, this recipe yields a small amount (4 square waffles), so feel free to double or triple it if you’re feeding a crowd.

Pecan Ricotta Waffles

  • 1/2 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
  • 2 tbsp. whole wheat pastry flour (or brown rice flour, almond meal, rolled oats, buckwheat flour…etc.)
  • 1 tbsp. ground pecans
  • 1 tbsp. sugar, honey, or light brown sugar (or less, if you prefer more savory waffles)
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 egg whites and 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract

In a large bowl, combine the ricotta cheese, egg yolk, and vanilla extract. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar, ground pecans, and a pinch of salt.

Whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt and beat until soft peaks form.

Fold the ricotta mixture into the dry ingredients. The batter will seem very stiff at this point.

Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

Cook in a preheated waffle iron according to the manufacturer’s directions. In my waffle iron, they take about 2-3 minutes to get nice and golden brown. If they seem slightly soft when you remove them from the waffle iron, just put them in a warm oven or toaster for a minute or two to crisp up the outside. Leftovers freeze pretty well and take about 3-4 minutes in the toaster oven to reheat.

Bust out the maple syrup and enjoy. These are already on the lightly sweet side, so go light on the syrup. I barely used a teaspoon on these and it probably didn’t even need it. They’re also good with peanut butter, bananas, berries, jam, and probably whatever other toppings you can dream up. I personally like something crunchy like more chopped nuts or some chopped, crisp bacon on top.

Seriously, writing this post has already made me hungry for more of them! And at under 100 cal. per waffle, why not? Go to it, friends.

P.S. In case some time goes by and you wonder why you’re not getting your fix of food porn, just FYI Neen’s Notes is going on vacation for a little while.

“Why Neen? WHY would you do such a thing?”

Oh, I’ll be busy marrying my best friend, that’s all.

But don’t worry, I’ll write again in a few weeks…maybe about something tasty inspired by our honeymoon abroad. Until then, “mangia bene!”

Ciao for now,

Neen

Unexpected Favorites: Zucchini Lasagna

22 May

Creativity, in my opinion, is one of the most important assets any cook can have. It is always really interesting to me when I have a chance to exchange recipes with other RNY post-ops. Generally they’ve revamped favorite recipes into ones that fit into their new healthy lifestyle. People have come up with really interesting, delicious things like chocolate cakes sweetened and moistened with canned pumpkin, or protein-packed pancakes made from ricotta cheese and nut flour.

It was during one of these exchanges many years ago that someone first brought up the idea of using zucchini squash as a replacement for lasagna noodles. Although skeptical (I love pasta), I gave it a try and LOVED it. If, like me, you are currently being driven crazy by a project and just need something simple to heat up at lunchtime, this is the answer. You can use low-fat cheeses if you wish, but I prefer to use full-fat in this recipe. Even with full-fat cheese, it only works out to 8g of fat per serving.

Zucchini Lasagna

  •  1 lb. ground turkey breast
  • 2 zucchini, sliced thin on a mandoline
  • 2 cups tomato sauce
  • 1 1/2 cups diced mushrooms
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 16 oz. whole milk ricotta cheese
  • 3 oz. whole-milk mozzarella cheese, grated
  • 1 oz. parmesan cheese, grated
  • 1 egg
  • Thyme, salt, onion powder, and cayenne pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Brown the turkey in a large saucepan and season with salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms and minced garlic and saute a minute longer. Add the tomato sauce, herbs, and seasoning and simmer while preparing the filling.

Combine the ricotta, 2 oz. of the mozzarella, and parmesan with thyme, salt and pepper. Taste and re-season as needed, then add the egg and mix well.

Put a thin layer of the tomato sauce mixture in the bottom of an 8×8 in. square baking dish. Top that with a layer of zucchini, and then finally with a layer of the ricotta mixture. Repeat this process until you’ve used up the filling. I usually get about 8 layers.

Top with any remaining small slices of zucchini and mozzarella cheese.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until bubbly and cooked through. After removing from the oven, allow it to sit for 15 minutes before cutting into slices. Yield: 9 slices.

Want to get a bunch of meals out of this? Simply refrigerate the leftovers in the baking pan overnight so that they firm up. Then wrap individual servings in several layers of plastic wrap and then freeze. To reheat, either place in a baking dish and bake at 350 degrees F until warm, or in the microwave for 3-4 minutes.

That’s all for this healthy and happy recipe. But I’ll finish this post off with something even happier. Check out my face as I realize that I’ve just walked into a surprise bridal shower thrown by my wonderful family and friends this past weekend:

Then realized my sister-in-law flew in from New York to be there:

And ended up with a bouquet of bows from generous gifts for Joe and I:

Truly, I am the luckiest.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Ciao for now,

Neen

Return of the Gouda

9 May

Fortunately I did, in fact, remember to save a piece of finished homemade gouda to show you. This is not the wheel that I made in that post. It’s one I made late in the autumn after I had trouble aging the first batch. It turned out that waxing the cheese made all the difference in getting it to age without forming an incredibly hard rind, especially given that the humidity I was able to achieve in my aging space was less than ideal. It stayed in there for three months and I then vacuum sealed pieces after opening. This is the last one:

Very creamy, rich, and soft. Such an amazing contrast to the hard, squeaky mass of curds that came out of the cheese press. It really turned out well. If I make another, I want to try and let it age for a full year!

Ciao for now,
Neen

Easter Bread 101

26 Apr

I consider myself a bread connoisseur. Outside of really good cioppino or bouillabaisse, fresh bread is my favorite thing to eat. When I think about the fact that people have made this one food for centuries, I realize that I cannot possibly be the only one that feels this way.

One of my most beloved varieties is one that only pops up in the spring. It’s lightly sweet and a little bit rich, and for one reason or another only gets made at Easter (oh cruel fate). But you should totally rage against the machine and make it all year.

For most of my life, I’ve almost always seen this bread made with either vegetable shortening or oil, so when Bon Appetit featured an all-butter recipe in one of their recent issues I was very keen to try it. While it was an excellent recipe, I thought that their methodology lacked some important details, and that there were a few ingredients I’d tweak. When I baked up a loaf for our Easter Sunday picnic with the future in-laws, I took some pictures and thought I’d share the experience.

Easter Bread

Adapted from grandma, dad, mom, Bon Appetit…etc.

  • 2/3 cup whole milk
  • 5 tbsp. sugar, divided
  • ¼ oz. envelope of dry active yeast
  • 2 large eggs, room temperature
  • 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (plus extra for handling dough)
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1-2 tsp. grated orange zest
  • 4 oz. unsalted butter
  • Egg wash: One whole egg mixed with 1 tbsp. water

First of all, get out the eggs and butter and let them get to room temperature. It’s really important for your butter to be soft, so don’t skip this step.

Heat the milk until it reaches about 110 degrees F and then put it in a small bowl and whisk in 1 tbsp. of sugar and the yeast. Let the mixture sit for 5-10 minutes or until foamy. Add the eggs and orange zest, and whisk thoroughly.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour, salt, and remaining sugar. With the mixer running on low speed, add the milk mixture. Once it has been thoroughly integrated into the flour, begin adding the butter about 1 tbsp. at a time, blending well between each addition. Slow and steady wins the race here. It’s kind of like making buttercream.

Once all of the butter has been incorporated, fit the mixer with a dough hook and mix on medium-high speed until the dough is very smooth and elastic.

Now, here’s the part where people seem to panic. This dough is sticky, and I mean “I can’t get my hand out of this blob of dough” sticky:

But you have to get the dough out of the mixing bowl and into a clean bowl brushed with melted butter somehow, and the best tool for the job is a bowl scraper. If you don’t have one, a rigid silicone spatula or greased spoon works well. Once you’ve transferred it to a clean, greased bowl, gently brush the top of the dough with melted butter, cover the bowl loosely in plastic wrap, and stash it in the refrigerator.

Letting this dough do an overnight “rise” in the refrigerator makes it infinitely easier to handle, so I highly recommend that. I have the word rise in quotation marks because honestly, the dough doesn’t rise very much at all. In fact the first time I made it I thought something had gone horribly wrong.

The next step is to lightly flour a surface and cut the dough into three equal pieces. Use as little excess flour as possible. You want just enough to keep it from sticking to the surface.

Roll each piece into a long (15-16in) rope and taper at the edges. Place the dough ropes on a piece of parchment paper, pinch them together at one end, and then braid. (Many Easter Bread bakers tuck dyed, boiled eggs in between the braids, but I didn’t make any this year.)

At the end of the braid, pinch the ends together and tuck them under slightly to secure. Let the loaf rest in a warm place for one hour. It will puff a little bit, but not too much.

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F.

Brush the loaf of bread with the egg wash and bake it for 23-25 minutes, until the top is a deep golden brown. The internal temperature will measure about 190 degrees.

Eat every day until it’s gone. Future mom-in-law said she used a few slices for grilled cheese the next day and it was really good. I’m a big fan of Easter bread toast and runny fried eggs. Or you could try using it in this supremely tasty recipe for French toast.

Hope you are all having a beautiful spring. Who else is getting really impatient for summer fruit? Come on berries, get growing already!

Ciao for now,

Neen

Beaches, Brahms and Brownies

25 Apr

What a busy April it has been! First we were off in the Bahamas with family for what was a wonderful, relaxing and awesomely fun vacation. There is nothing so calming to me as being by the ocean. Not to mention the glee I get from enjoying good seafood, freshly rolled cigars, and time to just be with the people I love the most.

Once I was back in town it was straight into a very tight rehearsal schedule. Choral Arts Society of Washington just performed our last concert at the Kennedy Center for the year, and it was Maestro Scribner’s final show as our director. “Ein Deutches Requiem” rang through the air just beautifully, and I felt truly privileged to be a part of such a fantastic choir. We got some pretty excellent reviews to boot:

http://www.examiner.com/review/scribner-s-final-performance-at-the-kennedy-center-filled-with-great-admiration

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/concert-review-norman-scribner-leads-choral-arts-society-in-swan-song-performance-of-brahmss-requiem/2012/04/23/gIQAgkNvcT_print.html

Our final concert of the season will be in June at the National Cathedral and is a tribute to the maestro for his 47 incredible years as Choral Arts’ director.

Joe and I get married two weeks after that concert, wow. Summer is going to be wonderful!

Still riding the adrenaline rush from Sunday, I finally had both the time and energy to do some baking last night. At the same time, since we’ve been getting home so late that I had very few interesting ingredients hanging around the house. A handful of this, a pinch of that, a few squares of chocolate…etc. But any decent cook knows that you just work with what you have.

And I had brownie ingredients.

I’m not into tooth-achingly sweet things when it comes to chocolate. I like decadent and rich, not too much flour, and little or no leavening agent. Brownies are not, in my opinion, mini-cakes and are best when creamy and a little bit dense.

Dark Chocolate Brownies with Toasted Coconut and Pecans

  • 3.5 oz. dark chocolate. I used 72% for this batch.
  • 4 oz. unsalted butter
  • ½-2/3 cup of sugar
  • ½ cup flour
  • 2 eggs
  • Handful of pecans
  • Handful of shredded coconut. Sweetened or unsweetened is fine.
  • 1 tsp. coconut extract
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extraxt
  • Pinch of salt

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F, and line an 8×8 in. square pan with foil. Grease the foil lightly.

In a dry pan, toast the coconut and pecans over medium heat until fragrant and lightly brown. I did them in separate batches since the coconut browns much quicker.

Melt together the butter and chocolate, stirring occasionally. When the chocolate is almost completely melted, remove from the heat and mix until smooth.

Add ½ cup of sugar and give the mixture a taste. If you want it a little bit sweeter, use up to 2/3 cup, but I wouldn’t go any higher than that.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition. Then add the salt and extracts.

Mix the flour into the wet ingredients and beat by hand until it is incorporated.

Pour the batter into the 8×8 in. pan and top with the shredded coconut and pecans. Bake 20-25 minutes or until the center has just set.

The only patience involved in this recipe comes at this stage. Let the brownies cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes and then remove (the foil makes this so easy) and rest on a wire rack until completely cool…or at least close to it.

I’ve cut this batch into as many as 24 small brownies, but you can choose your own destiny there. They’re hard to share, but when I saw how happy they made folks I gave them to, it more than made up for the fact that I only got to try a bite of one that broke when I cut them.

And I hope delicious chocolate makes up for my long absence from the blogosphere. There should be a bread recipe coming up soon once I finish getting the photos ready to go, so be on the lookout for that.

Ciao for now,

Neen

Joe’s Confetti Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

21 Mar

Who here liked Funfetti cake as a kid? Okay, now who here still likes Funfetti cake as an adult? No shame in admitting it. There’s nothing quite like rainbow cake to bring some unanticipated cheer into our lives. And while that box of color speckled white cake is pretty tasty, the truth is that you can make it yourself with very little angst.

This is what Joe requested for his birthday, and here’s how I put it all together.

White Confetti Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

White Cake

  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 6 oz. unsalted butter, softened
  • 2 3/4 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract½ tsp. almond extract
  • 1 1/4 cups whole milk
  • 6 egg whites at room temperature
  • 1/3 cup of multi-colored sprinkles

Quick Buttercream Frosting

  •  6 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
  • 16 oz. butter, softened
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • 2 tbsp. vanilla extract
  • ¼ cup milk

Grease and flour two 9 in. cake pans and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and  1 ¼ cups of sugar and beat until light and fluffy. This will take several minutes on medium speed. Mix in the vanilla and almond extracts and then add the dry ingredients in three additions, alternating with the milk until everything is combined. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Clean and dry the stand-mixer bowl thoroughly and then add the egg whites and a pinch of salt to it. Whip on high speed until the egg whites are frothy and then very slowly add the remaining 1 ¼ cups of sugar. Whip until the meringue is thick, glossy, and holds almost stiff peaks.

Fold one third of the egg whites into the batter to lighten it, and then gently fold in the rest. Add the colored sprinkles and fold them into the batter.

Divide the batter evenly among the two pans and then gently tap the pans on the counter to release any air bubbles in the batter.

Bake the cakes for 30-40 minutes or until the tops are lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool in the pans for 15 minutes and then turn them out onto a cooling rack. Let them cool completely before frosting. It is best to wrap the cooled cake layers in plastic wrap and refrigerate them overnight prior to frosting.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter on medium speed until very smooth and creamy. Add the powdered sugar and mix on low speed until the sugar and butter are combined, then add the vanilla extract, salt, and milk and beat on medium speed until thick. It will take about 3-4 minutes.

Frost and decorate the cake as desired! You will probably not use all of the icing, but it’s better to have extra for decorating. No one wants to run out in the middle of frosting a cake (which I did while testing variations of this recipe).

So freaking good. You can also use a Swiss Meringue Buttercream on this cake, which is a slightly more involved recipe. The upside is that it uses much less sugar and a little less butter without sacrificing consistency or taste.

  • 4 large egg whites
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 13 oz. butter, softened and cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
  • Pinch of salt

Place a large bowl over a pot of simmering water and add the egg whites and sugar to it. Whisk them together until the sugar is completely dissolved, meaning it does not feel grainy in the slightest. Transfer this to a stand mixer and whip until the meringue is white and doubles in volume. Add the vanilla and pinch of salt.

With the mixer running, slowly add the butter, one or two pieces at a time, making sure the additions are thoroughly combined before adding more. Do not panic if the mixture starts to look like it is separating—trust me, it will come together. Once all of the butter has been added, whip the buttercream on medium-high speed until thick and creamy. It may take 5 minutes or maybe a little more, but it will come together. Scout’s honor.

Both the quick buttercream and meringue buttercream will hold up at room temperature for an extended period of time, although the latter is more susceptible to condensation. So if you have a particularly humid refrigerator I would recommend using the first recipe.


Happy birthday super-fiancé! I hope all of your wishes come true.

Ciao for now,

Neen

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