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!
Who cares if Valentine’s day was a week
ago! Love is always around you! So surprise someone you love with this gorgeous
risotto. It is not only tasty but it is also a very sexy dish. Michael made
this for me a few months ago, and we added the touch of the beet hearts. You
will be sure to love this parmesan and beet risotto.
xoxo
Ingredients: serves 6-8
2 cups Arborio rice
3 cups vegetable stock
3 cups water
¼ cup parmesan reggiano
2 medium beets
1 Tablespoon olive oil
To start preheat the oven to 450
degrees, and coat you beets in olive oil. Create a pouch out of tinfoil and
place your beets in it, and stick in oven for 50 minutes to an hour. Your beets
will be done once you can easily pierce them with a fork. Take the beets out,
let them cool, and peel the outer rough skin off with your fingers under
running water. Slice the beets into ¼” slices. Take about ½ of one beet and
dice, set aside. Take the rest of the slices, and cut heart shapes out and set
aside to lay on top of risotto.
Grate parmesan and set aside.
In a medium sized pot heat the
Tablespoon of oil on medium high heat, add the Arborio rice, and stir, cooking
for about 7 minutes. This allows the rice to soak up some of the olive oil
flavor, and will allow the rice to cook a little faster. Add all the stock and 2
cups water and cover the pot until the liquid starts boiling. Once it reaches a
boil, leave on medium high heat and start stirring frequently until the rice
absorbs the liquid. Once it is absorbed, add the remainder of the water in
quarter cups allowing the rice to absorb the liquid and repeat. Do this until
all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is cooked.
**If you need to you can add more
liquid. You will know the risotto is done when the rice has a slight al dente
feel to it, but is really creamy. It is a frequent mistake to either not cook
it enough so it is hard, or overcook and it is mushy.**
Next add the parmesan and diced beets
and stir until the cheese has melted and the pink of the beets has colored all
of the risotto.
To serve, place a heaping spoonful of
risotto onto a plate and lay two hearts over each other! Tada! Now that is true
love!!
Happy Valentine’s Day!! We hope that you
enjoy it, and spend it with the people, places, and animals, whatever you love!
We are grateful for our parents, our siblings, our friends, neighbors, and our
puppies and pet fish! Show the people you love a little appreciation today and
whip up a batch of these delicious lemon shortbread cookies. They are so easy
to make, and you can make them special by painting your loved ones name on the
cookie. We decided to paint initials in a calligraphy style that keeps the look
elegant and beautiful as a gift in itself.
* To write the initials you will need a
tiny paint brush.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Ingredients: Makes about a dozen
Cookie:
1 cup butter, softened
½ cup granulated sugar
1
tablespoon lemon zest
2
½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup lemon juice
Icing:
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 teaspoons milk
¼ teaspoon almond extract
Yellow food coloring
Blue food coloring
To start preheat your oven to 325
degrees, and let your butter sit out to soften. Cream butter and sugar together
until completely combined. Add lemon zest and lemon juice, and mix. Now add
flour a little at a time. The dough will seem really dry, but you will dump it
out on to a flat surface and knead together by hand, it will meld together
really nicely. Dust a rolling pin with flour and roll the dough out to be about
a ¼” thick. Using a heart shaped cookie cutter, cut out cookies, lay on a
dusted baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown on the
edges.
Once baked, pull out and let cool. While
cooling, mix together all of the ingredients for the icing, except the blue
food coloring. Color with the yellow food coloring until you reach the desired
color. Once cookies are cooled, using a small spatula, cover the cookie in the
icing. If you want to make the icing dry faster, you can add a teaspoon of
cream of tartar into the mix. Let the icing dry completely before you paint
names on.
Once the icing dries, place a drop of
two of blue food coloring into a small bowl and a drop of water. Using your very
small paint brush, dip into the mix and paint the initials of the one you love.
Now eat your cookies or give them out to
the one you love!
Mardi Gras is the last day of rich
eating, the day before Ash Wednesday when lent begins. Literally translated
Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday. This is the last day in which people celebrate
and eat all of the rich things that they love, before repenting their sins and fasting
for religious obligations. This has become a great time of religious celebrations
throughout the world. Families join together, eat great food, drink great
beverages, and in many cases attend grand festivals. Living in Venice I feel that
every day is a Mardi Gras festival; the amount of colorful people that live in
the area, all the fur covered bikes, random beads, and all around kookooness
that occurs. This is one of the many reasons that we love living here.
When we think of Mardi Gras, Mikey and I
think of New Orleans and all of the great Southern food that there is. We think
delicious flavors, a little spice, some gooiness, and maybe something a little
fried. To mix all this goodness together we created a jalapeno cheddar corn
bread fritters! Not to mention the traditional southern drink of Sazerac to
accompany it! Nothing says Mardi Gras like a fritter with some booze!
*We used an ice cream scooper to make
perfect dollops of fritter.
* The best way to tell if oil is ready
to fry things in is to put a little water on your fingers and flick it in the
oil, (from far away as to not burn yourself), and if it sizzles you are ready.
Ingredients:
Fritters: makes about a dozen
1 ½ cups plus 2 Tablespoons vegetable
oil
1 jalapeno
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups cornmeal
2 teaspoons sugar
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup milk
Sazerac: makes 1 drink
3 oz rye whiskey
¾ oz simple syrup
Splash of peychaud bitters
Lemon twist
½ a tangerine
Make this lovely cocktail by measuring
out your whiskey, add your simple syrup and stir it in. Splash it off with the
bitters, and take half of a tangerine and squeeze it in to add a new tangy
twist to this classic. To make a lemon twist, using a peeler, peel a 3 inch
long strip of rind, take a knife to cut as a straight line, and twist around
your finger to curl it.
For the fritters start by shredding one
cup of cheddar cheese, and seeding and dicing one jalapeno. In a large and deep
sauce pan heat the 1 ½ cups oil on a medium high heat.
In a medium size bowl mix all the dry
ingredients together. In a small bowl whisk the egg and 2 Tablespoons of oil
together. Pour in to the dry ingredients, followed by the milk, mix until most
clumps are gone. Mix in the jalapeno and cheddar cheese.
Take whatever you are using to scoop
your mix out, and dollop about 2 Tablespoons out into the hot oil. Fit as many
as you can in the oil at once. Take a large plate and lay paper towels out so
that as you are making your fritters you can place on towel to soak as much
extra oil out as possible.
Cook on one side until golden brown,
then flip, until golden brown all over. Lay on paper towel, wait to cool, and
serve with the delectable cocktail you created! Now go collect as many beads as
you can! Hoorah!
