Flu Season Mushroom Soup

Flu season is happening as we speak, and it is a serious pain in the buns. I have been trying to get rid of a cough for about two weeks now, and it is not awesome. Michael is super lucky in totally letting my sickness fly over him. In honor of flu season we have made a very simple and healthy mushroom soup, because what else are you going to eat when you feel like snot!!?

Ingredients: serves 6

1 pound button mushrooms
1 pound Portobello mushrooms
1 large shallot
3 Tablespoons heavy cream
2 Tablespoons butter
4 Tablespoons chives
Small loaf of French bread
32 Oz. vegetable stock
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 275.

Clean all of the mushrooms, making sure that you get rid of all of the dirt. In a food processor, roughly chop all of your mushrooms and set aside.

Chop up the large shallot. In a large sauce pan (that can fit all of your soup) melt your butter, then add shallot and lightly sauté, about 3 minutes.

Add the mushroom and reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring every so often. Cook about 15 minutes, or until most all of the liquid has disappeared.

Now dice the bread into ½ inch cubes, and place in oven to toast. Let toast about 7 minutes, or until crunchy.

Add the cream, salt, nutmeg, ground pepper, and cayenne pepper and stir. Cook 2 minutes. Add the vegetable stock and bring to a rolling boil. Reduce to let simmer for 20 minutes.

To serve, pour in bowls, add a few croutons, chop up chives and add to top.

Good luck with your cold/flu!!

 

Grilled Salad Pizza and Grilled Sausage Pizza!!

The summer is officially winding down, which is absolutely not okay, seeing as Michael and I feel that we have barely been able to enjoy it at all. However we did receive sweet vacay time last week, this is the reason why we have been MIA.

My family has a cabin in sequoia national forest, about 4 hours from Los Angeles, with a view of mountains, trees, and the Tule river; it is one of my favorite places to go in the whole world. This last time we decided to try some really healthy eating, and in the meantime also slide in a lil grilled pizza.

This recipe is so simple, and because we wanted it to be camping and BBQing friendly, we used a simple dough mix and added our favorite toppings. We made a sausage, onion, and mushroom pizza with a light sauce, and a salad pizza. Enjoy these recipes, there is no way you will be disappointed.

*We used Auntie Annie’s mix, the kind that makes pretzel, it is also a bomb pizza dough mix.

Ingredients:

Dough mix or premade dough

Sausage Pizza:

1 cup crushed tomatoes

1 teaspoons dried oregano

1 teaspoon garlic salt

5 sweet Italian sausages

3 small green onions

½ cup sliced mushrooms

Salad pizza:

2 cups mixed lettuce

3 cloves garlic diced

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Pinch of salt



 

 

Before you do anything, if you need to mix your dough, do so now because dough needs about 40 minutes to rise. The actual cooking of the pizza goes by really quickly so it is important to create your mise en place and lay out everything first.

Start by slicing mushrooms, slicing onion, dicing garlic, and measuring your olive oil out. To create the sauce all you need to do is mix the diced tomatoes, oregano, and garlic salt in a small bowl.

Next because we don’t want any of the sausage to be served raw, in a sauté pan, break up your sausage links into small bits and cook until your sear it and it is almost completely cooked all the way through.

Now that we have everything prepped, get your grill started. Lay your coals out evenly because we don’t want just the middle to cook. Have low heat, otherwise the dough will burn before you have time to cook the middle (trust me I had REALLY doughy pizza the first time haha).

Maybe set up a little table by the BBQ  so that you have everything close by, and be sure that you have a paper towel or a brush to brush the olive oil on for the salad pizza.

Once the dough is ready, separate it into two different pizzas. Roll them out about a 1/4 inch thick, so not that thick, and put back in the fridge to let harden for about 5 minutes.

Now lets get grilling! Start with the salad pizza, because this one is good cold. Once the coals are ready, pull the pizza off the plate and lay on the BBQ. The pizza will instantly start to bubble, and you only want to cook for about 2-3 minutes, brush with olive oil trying not to pop the bubbles. Now flip, and brush more olive oil on, top with garlic, and a pinch of salt. Cook for another 3 minutes and pull off and let cool.

Now to cook the sausage pizza, cook first side of down then flip. Quickly put sauce on, then sprinkle evenly the sausage, mushroom, and onion, and then cover the BBQ with the lid. This lets the toppings cook a little while preventing the bottom from burning. Only do this for about 4-5 minutes, and then pull off.

*If you aren’t happy with how cooked the toppings are but the crust is cookes, put the pizza under a low broil in the oven for about 5-10 more minutes until the toppings are cooked more, even add a little olive oil to help. But watch it, you don’t want to burn it.

Finish up the salad pizza by adding the lettuce and the remainder of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and serve with the hot of the grill sausage pizza.

Happy pizza grillin!

Oscar Party Pizzette, Stuffed Mushroom, and Blood Orange Mimosa!

Oscar season is upon us. We have received all of the screeners in the mail, and have our personal favorites. It is a fun time of year, when you can cuddle up with your loved one and watch a good movie. This year to celebrate the Oscars we are going over to our very good friends’ Jackson and Yasmine to eat some wonderful food, drink some dranks, and watch some glorious fashion and award giving. Mikey and I were thinking what do we enjoy the most with movie watching, and we thought pizza! So we have made you a really simply pizza crostini, or a pizzette you could say. Though the first thing to our mind isn’t stuffed mushrooms, to Hell with that, it should be! So we have also made a fabulous tarragon goat cheesed stuffed mushrooms.

Predict those awards, critique the fashion, and stuff your face with pizza on the couch!! Not to mention the wonderful blood orange champagne cocktail.

*Chiffonade= cutting herbs or greens in to long thin strips by either layering or rolling up the greens.

Ingredients: serves 12-15

Pizzette:
1 Baguette
½ cup tomato puree
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 pinch garlic salt
2 balls buffalo mozzarella
5 basil leaves

Stuffed Mushrooms:
15 cremini mushrooms
¼ cup goat cheese
2 sprigs tarragon
1 Tablespoon olive oil

Blood Orange Mimosa:
Champagne
Blood orange

Maybe you should make this cocktail while you prepare the food, because it is very refreshing and a simple twist on a mimosa. Simply squeeze the juice of a blood orange into a glass and top off with champagne, and then garnish with a blood orange slice. So sleek!

The first thing you should do is prep all of your ingredients and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice the baguette on a diagonal slice so the bread is about a ¼” thick, set aside. Next slice all the mozzarella about the same thickness, set aside. Next roll up your basil leaves tightly, and using a sharp knife chiffonade all the basil, set aside.

To make the sauce simply mix the past, puree, and garlic salt together.

Now we assemble the pizzettes. Cover the bread in the tomato sauce, then lay down some mozzarella, and top it off with basil. Lay the pizzettes out on a baking sheet leaving room for the mushrooms.

In order to make the mushrooms, pull the stems out, and if need be use a paring knife to cut the rest of the stem out. Put the mushrooms in a bowl, and coat them with the olive oil. Chop up the tarragon and in a separate small bowl mix together the tarragon and goat cheese. Fill the mushrooms with the cheese mix until overflowing a bit. Place on the baking sheet.

Put the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, pull out and remove the pizzettes, and then put the baking sheet back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes.

Now enjoy your delicious Oscar food! Hurray!

Christmas Eve Lamb Leek Mushroom Lasagna!

Christmas Eve at my house is left to last minute gift wrapping, dogs eating bottom branches of the tree, running out to CVS at midnight, and on the less stressful note watch a classic Christmas film and eat some delicious food. Traditionally in Italy one only eats fish because we are technically “fasting”….but since eating 7 courses of fish isn’t technically fasting, I will neither be fasting nor eating only fish. So Michael and I have prepared a festive Christmas Eve lasagna filled with tomato sauce, ground lamb, leeks, mushroom, and delicious ricotta cheese.

Enjoy this lasagna with your loved ones, maybe around the fire place and next to the tree!

God Jul!
Joyeux Noel!
Buon Natale!
Mele Kalikimaka!

Ingredients: use a 9”x13” baking tray

1 box oven bake ready lasagna pasta sheets
5 cups diced tomato in their juice
8 oz. tomato paste
3 cups sliced button tomatoes
2 lbs. ground lamb
2 medium leeks
4 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil
¾ teaspoon salt
1 lb. ricotta
2 cups shredded mozzarella

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and get all of your mise en place set up. Start by chopping the leeks. To do this cut the root off, then cut where the light green starts to turn dark. Cut the leek in half lengthwise and take one layer off. Holding the halves intact, run them under water to get all of the dirt out. Now placing the cut side down, thinly slice the leeks into half-moon pieces. Next pull the stems out of your mushrooms, rinse, and slice into ¼ inch slices. Lastly dice up as finely as possible all of your garlic.

In a large sauce pan heat your olive oil. Once the olive oil gets to a searing temperature, put all of your ground lamb into the pan and cook all the way through, about 7 mins, stirring with a wooden spoon. Now take your meat out of the pan and drain all the fat through a colander, and place the meat back in the pan. Add leeks, cook about 5 minutes, next add garlic. Once the garlic starts to brown a bit add all of your tomato paste and stir, cook for one minute. Add tomatoes and their juices along with salt, and lower the heat to medium and let cook for about 25 minutes.

Mix ricotta and all but a ¼ cup of mozzarella together in a small mixing bowl.

Once your meat mix is done cooking, and your cheese is mixed, begin your assembly of the lasagna. Start by laying some meat sauce down, then cheese, then evenly lay out the raw mushroom. Top with pasta sheets. Repeat with meat, cheese, mushrooms, pasta two more times. Once you are done layering your ingredients take the last ¼ cup of mozzarella and sprinkle over the top layer.

You are now ready to cook. Cover the lasagna with a sheet of aluminum foil and place in oven and cook for 50 minutes. After the 50 minutes are up, remove the foil and cook for another 15 minutes to allow the cheese to create a nice brown crust!

Your wonderful lasagna is ready to be eaten! Merry Christmas!