A mess of awesome.

Have you ever had something that you know you should be doing regularly but you just can’t find time to get to it? I call this my procrastithing. I have many of them.

I think most people would say their procrastithing is something like going to the gym.

I have a bunch, but one of my procrastithings these days is listening to The Splendid Table podcast. That might sound ridiculous, but as a food blogger, it’s something that I should really be listening to every week. For some reason though, I have a hard time finding the time.

Of course, every time I do listen to it, I freakin’ love it. They talk about everything I want to hear about. I especially like the part of every show where listeners call in with super-random food or cooking questions and the host, Lynn, always has an amazing answer for every problem.

Recently, a guy called in and said something like, “I’m cooking brunch for 50 people. It needs to be filling, fast, hot, and all that good stuff.” It was a tough one. Her answer was something I had never thought of: Savory bread pudding.

As soon as the words came out of my speakers, I knew I had to make it.

Savory Bread Pudding

Yield: 8x8 dish.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes + Chill Time

Ingredients:

4-5 pieces of stale bread, torn into large pieces
1.5-2 cups various cheeses, I used cheddar and goat cheese
1-2 cups vegetables, I used a roasted red pepper and 1/2 an onion
4 large eggs
2 cups milk
1 Tablespoon butter, for dish
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Butter an 8x8 baking dish. Tear pieces of stale bread into large chunks and layer them in the buttered dish. If you don't have any really stale bread, toast your bread for 10 minutes in a 300 degree oven to dry it out.

2) Add any sort of grated or crumbled cheese to the top of the bread until it just barely covers the bread. Two cups will be more than enough. I used a mix of cheddar and goat cheese.

3) Add a few handfuls of leftover veggies (or meat) to the dish. You can use almost any fresh vegetable. I used a roasted red pepper and 1/2 an onion.

4) In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk and pour the mixture over the bread and vegetables.

5) Cover the dish and let it rest for at least 15 minutes or up to overnight in the fridge.

6) Season the dish with salt and pepper and a tiny pinch of ground nutmeg.

7) Bake the dish at 350 degrees covered for 20 minutes and then uncovered for 30 minutes. The dish is done when the custard in the center are set.

8) Let cool for a minute or two and then serve immediately!

Recipe adapted from a Splendid Table recipe.

What the Custard?

Just like any bread pudding, you need a good custard. Depending on the size of your dish and how much bread you have on hand, you might need more or less custard than the recipe above.

Always shoot for two eggs for every one cup of milk. That’ll make for a really good custard.

Just milk and eggs, baby.

Just whisk the eggs with the milk and set it aside until you need it.

The Pudding Parts

The best part about this recipe is its flexibility. I’ve only made it once, but I could tell immediately that you can put almost anything in it. You can use almost any kind of bread, any kind of cheese, and any kind of vegetable.

It’s the perfect leftover dish.

The one key to the dish is to make sure you have really stale bread. This will make sure that the bread can absorb a lot of the custard mixture. If you don’t have stale bread, no big deal. Just stick your bread in a 300 degree oven for about 10 minutes and it’ll dry it out quickly.

Then just break your bread into pieces and layer it into the bottom of a buttered baking dish.

Then cover the bread with whatever cheese you’re using. I went with cheddar and some goat cheese I have left over from my macaroni and (goat) cheese recipe.

Toast that bread if it isn't really stale.

The Vegetables

As I mentioned, you can shove almost any veggies you have around (cooked or raw) in this dish. I went with 1/2 an onion and a roasted red pepper. I’m having a hard time thinking of something you couldn’t put in this though. Almost anything goes.

Just dice up whatever veggies you want to use and toss them on.

You can use almost any veggie.

Then just pour your custard mixture right into your dish!

Action shot!

Give it a Rest

It’s very important to let this dish sit for at least 15 minutes, but ideally an hour, before baking it. You could make it the night before you needed it and just stick it in the fridge overnight. That would be fantastic.

When you are ready to bake it, season it well with salt and pepper and a pinch of ground nutmeg. The nutmeg will really bring out the cheese flavors. It works well, trust me.

Nutmeg is a secret ingredient.

Baking the Dish

Bake this awesome thing at 350 degrees. I recommend baking it for 20 minutes covered in foil and then uncovered for about 30 minutes or until the custard is set in the middle. It should get slightly crusty and browned around the edges.

This will make your house smell awesome!

Let this rest for a few minutes once it comes out of the oven and then scoop into it.

It’s absolutely packed with flavor.

This is a really great dish.

I could easily see how you could feed a bunch of people with this method. Just make these the day before the event and toss them all in the oven.

Done deal.

Does anyone else listen to The Splendid Table podcast? They do good work!

This is some serious flavor.

When goat cheese won the poll last week, I started immediately having Paradox of Choice woes. There’s just so much that you can do with goat cheese.

Staring at a log of fresh goat cheese is the food blogger equivalent of a fiction writer staring at a blank page.

I started immediately brainstorming. I could put it in some fancy appetizer. I could make a salad. I could make some strange (but probably delicious) dessert out of it.

Or I could do the right thing and make macaroni and cheese.

I almost always do the right thing.

Macaroni and (Goat) Cheese

Yield: Serves 6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound macaroni, cooked
2 roasted red peppers, diced
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes (from oil), minced (about 6)
4 tablespoons butter + a bit for the pan
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups milk
6 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup goat cheese
1/2 cup bread crumbs
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Roast red peppers over a flame. If you have a gas stove, you can stick them right on the flame or you can grill them. You can also just used jarred peppers. Cook them until they are nicely charred all the way around.

2) Add peppers to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rest for 10 minutes and then peel off pepper skins. It's okay if some skin is left on.

3) Dice peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.

4) Cook macaroni according to package.

5) For cheese sauce, add butter and flour to a medium pan over medium heat. Whisk together once butter has melted to form a roux. Cook for about 3 minutes, whisking constantly.

6) Slowly add milk to the roux, starting with just a few tablespoons. Whisk it constantly so no lumps form. Keep adding milk in small increments until all your milk is added and your sauce is silky smooth. Turn your heat down to medium-low and continue to cook it until it thickens.

7) Whisk in cheeses into the sauce and season with salt and pepper.

8) Drain pasta and mix with peppers and tomatoes, then stir in cheese sauce.

9) Add macaroni to a buttered baking dish (2.5 quart or 9x13). Top with bread crumbs and bake for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees.

10) Let cool briefly before serving.

Adapted from a recipe in How To Cook Everything.

The Add-Ins

You could leave out the add-ins in this recipe if you wanted and still be left with a pretty rocking macaroni and cheese. But there’s something about the deep flavor of the peppers and sun-dried tomatoes that works really well with the goat cheese.

Plus it’s fun to roast peppers on a gas stove.

Any flame will do.

If you don’t have a gas stove, you can also roast these guys on a grill or in a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

You can also just buy the jarred peppers and use those.

If you do roast your own though, stick them in a bowl after they are nice and charred all over and cover them with plastic wrap. Let them sit and steam for about 10 minutes. That’ll make them much easier to peel.

Then just start peeling off the skin of each pepper. It’s okay if the peppers aren’t 100% peeled.

Some skin is okay.

Then just remove the seeds and dice them up along with a few sun-dried tomatoes. I like to use the sun-dried tomatoes that are in oil for this recipe. If you use the dried ones, reconstitute them in some hot water for a few minutes before using them.

Sun-dried tomatoes are also in there.

The Cheese Sauce

Besides the peppers and macaroni, the only thing left for this recipe is the cheese sauce. And let’s be honest. It’s the star of the show.

You’ll need this stuff.

A cheese sauce!

Start by adding the butter and flour to a medium pan and get it cooking over medium heat. It’s probably a good idea to melt the butter first and then add the flour, but I like to live on the edge so I just threw them in together.

The beginnings of something beautiful.

Once the butter melts, whisk the butter and flour together until it forms a paste (a roux to be specific and French). Continue to cook and whisk this paste until it turns a light brown color. This will probably take 3-4 minutes and you’ll end up with something like this.

That's the color you want.

Then start to slowly add your milk. When I say slowly, I mean start with just a few tablespoons and whisk that in. Then add a few more and whisk whisk whisk. If you add to much milk at once, your roux will get lumpy which will lead to a lumpy sauce.

Nobody likes a lumpy cheese sauce.

So work slowly and after a few minutes you should have all your milk incorporated with the roux and you’ll be left with a light gravy basically. Again, you could be French and refer to it as a Béchemel, but let’s be real. It’s gravy.

Once you have that part of the sauce done, you’ll need some cheese. Goat cheese is the star of the show obviously, but I added in some grated cheddar also just to give it a more complex flavor.

Hard to go wrong here...

Finishing the sauce is as easy as dumping all this cheese into the white sauce and continuing to whisk it until the cheeses are melted and smooth.

Lots of cheese....

Then just season the sauce with salt and pepper and you’re ready to make some serious mac and (goat) cheese.

Finishing the Mac and Cheese

Cook and drain whatever kind of macaroni you choose. I went with shells this time around, but you could use anything except those little wagon wheels.

I’m just kidding. You can use the wagon wheels. I have an irrational hatred of them for some reason.

Sorry. Getting sidetracked.

Add the peppers and tomatoes to the pasta and then pour on all of that delicious cheese sauce.

Whoa man.

Stir this all together and feel free to serve it up like that if you like or you can take it to the next step.

The next step being to pour the mac and cheese into a buttered casserole dish, top it with bread crumbs, and bake it at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Bread crumbs give some texture.

The bread crumbs should crisp up a bit and give the dish some really nice texture.

Yum.

It’s pretty hard to go wrong with goat cheese I guess, but that should just make you even more confident to throw it in random dishes with abandon.

Betsy and I ended up housing about half of this in one meal which, for the record, is a lot of macaroni and cheese.

You put what in my 'dilla?

“Wait. You put what in a quesadilla?”

That’s what I said when I first heard about this idea from a friend and reader a few weeks ago.

I thought of a million reasons why this shouldn’t work. The strawberries will get mushy. The leeks will overpower everything. Oh. And the strawberries will get mushy!

But, shockingly, I was 100% wrong. (That was sarcasm by the way. I’m generally wrong about such things.)

Turns out that strawberries are one of those hidden quesadilla ingredients that just rocks. It’ll change your Tex-Mex world.

Strawberry Leek Quesadillas

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large leek, greens cut off and washed
4 or 5 ripe strawberries, sliced thin
Drizzle of olive oil
2 large flour tortillas
1/2 Cup low fat mozzarella
1/4 Cup goat cheese
Black pepper
Cilantro

Directions:

1) Slice strawberries thinly. Cut green stems off of leeks, slice in half longwise, and wash between layers. Then chop into half circles.

2) Add a drizzle of oil to a large skillet. Add leeks and cook over medium heat for a few minutes until they are soft and slightly browned. Season with salt.

3) Remove from pan. Add another drizzle of oil and a flour tortilla. Turn heat up to medium-high.

4) Layer in mozz cheese, leeks, strawberries, and goat cheese. Season with pepper. Add a top tortilla.

5) Cook for about 3-4 minutes a side until tortillas are very crispy and cheese melted.

6) When flipping, I like to slide my full quesadilla onto a plate, invert the plate using another plate, then slide it back in the pan.

7) When done, cut into sixths and sprinkle with fresh cilantro. Serve immediately.

Adapted from a Sprouted Kitchen recipe.

The Main Ingredients

You should be able to find some really nice strawberries and leeks these days in the stores or markets. Obviously, since there are so few ingredients in this recipe, each one is really important. So try to pick some good ones.

Pretty things.

Leeks are kind of strange creatures. The important thing to remember is that they have lots of different layers, kind of like an onion, but unlike an onion, they will get all kinds of dirt in between their layers as they grow.

So you need to do some careful washing anytime you’re using them.

Just chop off most of the green stem (great for compost heaps) and then slice the leek in half. You should be able to peel back the layers and wash between them without too much trouble.

Lots of dirt in there....

Cooking the Quesadilla

I actually made this quesadilla twice. The first time I tried to make it in the oven and it didn’t work out great. It took too long to crisp up the tortilla and the strawberries actually did get mushy.

You want to cook the entire thing in a big large skillet.

Start by adding a drizzle of oil to a skillet and add the leeks along with a pinch of salt.

After a few minutes on medium heat, the leeks should soften a bit and start to just turn brown.

I love the smell of leeks.

Remove them from the pan, add another drizzle of oil and crank your heat up to medium-high.

Add the tortilla straight to the pan and start layering in your ingredients.

I did a layer of mozzarella, then the leeks, strawberries, and goat cheese. Season it really well with black pepper.

Piled high!

Add the other half to the quesadilla and cook it for about 3-4 minutes on each side.

When you’re flipping a full quesadilla like this, I like to slide it onto a plate, then invert the plate using another plate, which flips the quesadilla. Then slide it back into the pan.

If you try to do the air flip thing, it might work. Or it might ruin a really good quesadilla.

Once it’s ready, let it cool for a few seconds and then chop it up.

I was really happy with how it turned out. Nice and crispy on the outside with some delicious flavor on the inside.

CHOP!

In my opinion the cilantro is only optional if you absolutely hate cilantro.

Cilantro is a nice touch.

So yea. Who knew? Strawberries in quesadillas are really good.

It’s quick to make, very delicious, and will totally impress your friends with your abilities to pair berries and melted cheese.

Is a strawberry pizza in the works? Maybe…

There's fish in there.

This dish was hard for me to make. I had the idea in my head and I was determined to give it a shot, but there was a very serious problem.

The problem was that smoked salmon is one of my favorite foods of all time. I don’t like to mess with it. I like it very simply on crackers or a bagel. Why would you do anything else with it?

Besides that, it’s not the most economical thing in the stores. Four ounces of it can easily set you back $8-$9.

Don’t screw it up, I kept telling myself.

It was really hard for me to just call the whole quiche off and eat the salmon straight. But I pulled through. I made the quiche and it was good. The key to it is to make sure you don’t try to challenge the salmon flavor. Just let it do its thing and add a few other simple ingredients to accent the flavors.

Smoked Salmon Quiche

Yield: A 9 inch quiche

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Ingredients:

Pie Crust:
1 Cup + 2 Tablespoons all purpose flour
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1/2 Teaspoon salt
3-4 Tablespoons ice water

Quiche Filling:
6 eggs
1 Cup Milk
1/2 Cup heavy cream
4 ounces smoked salmon
4 ounces goat cheese
2-3 Tablespoons chives (or dill)
Pinch of salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Food Processor, for pie crust

Directions:

1) To make crust, mix together flour and salt in a bowl or food processor. Then cut in cold butter until it resembles pea-sized pieces. Add a few tablespoons of cold water and stir together or pulse a few times.

2) Turn out dough and press it together to form a tight ball. Wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes at least.

3) Roll dough carefully (use lots of flour) into a 12 inch diameter. Transfer the dough to the 9 inch pie dish.

4) Add parchment paper to the bottom of the pie and fill with a few cups of dried beans.

5) Pre-bake the crust at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Let cool.

6) Mix the eggs with the cream and milk. Whisk together well. Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

7) Layer salmon, goat cheese, and chives in the bottom of the pie crust. Add half of the egg mixture.

8) Add the last of the filling ingredients followed by the last of the egg mixture.

9) Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes until set in the center.

10) Let cool for a few minutes prior to serving.

Making the Crust

This is my standard pie crust recipe, but if I’m making it for a real pie I add in a pinch of sugar also. You can definitely buy pie crust pre-made, but I enjoy the process of making it and think that the homemade versions are generally better even if they aren’t always as pretty.

To get started, mix your flour and a pinch of salt in a bowl or food processor. Then cube up your cold butter and cut it into the flour. You can either pulse it a few times in a food processor or just mix it in with your fingers.

You can also use your fingers.

Once the butter is mixed in, add a few tablespoons of ice cold water and mix a bit more. You’ll end up with crumbs basically.

This scares some people I think because it doesn’t appear to be a dough at this point, so they add more water and that’s a bad idea.

You should end up with crumbs, like this.

Dough?

If you press these together a bit, you’ll notice that the crumbs stick very nicely to each other. After all, there’s a lot of butter in those there crumbs!

Eventually you should be able to mold the crumbs into a tight ball of dough.

Dough!

Wrap this guy in plastic wrap very tightly and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour though to make sure it’s really nice and cold.

Then, roll out the dough slowly. Use flour to keep the dough from sticking to the counter. It’ll probably crack some but just work slowly and try to keep it rolled in a circle. For a nine inch quiche, you’ll probably want 12 inches of pie crust.

Then just carefully plop it into your dish.

Tricky business.

As you can see, there’s some cracks in mine and it isn’t even all around. I cut off the parts that overhang and use it to patch up the missing parts. It almost always works out well.

I tried to form a kind of pretty edge around the crust, but mine definitely has a “homemade” feel to it.

The good news is, the hard part is over!

Some patchwork was necessary...

Pre-baking the Crust

I’m not sure if this step is entirely necessary, but I always pre-bake my crust a bit for quiches. To do this, just line the pie with some parchment paper and add a few cups of dried beans. I use the same beans every time which I just store apart from my cooking beans.

It's a bean pie!

Bake this guy for 10-12 minutes at 350 and it should be slightly firm, but probably not browned at all which is perfect.

Let it cool a bit while you make the filling!

The Quiche Filling

I kept my filling pretty straightforward. Some of the ingredients (salmon, goat cheese) are a bit pricey though.

Finally the good stuff!

To fill the quiche, I like to add about half of my filling into the bottom of the pie crust. Just kind of evenly distribute the ingredients.

How pretty is that salmon?!

A salmon layer.

Then mix your eggs, cream, and milk together well and add a pinch of salt and pepper. Pour half of that on top of the filling. Then add the rest of your filling ingredients (more salmon, goat cheese, etc). Then finish it off with the final bit of egg mixture.

Doing this in phases will create layers of sorts in the quiche so the goodies are evenly distributed throughout the quiche.

This guy is ready for the oven!

Ready to bake!

Bake the quiche as 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. It should be slightly firm in the center. If you’re unsure if it’s cooked all the way through, use a tester to check the center for any uncooked egg.

If you can help it, let this cool for a few minutes before slicing it up.

All finished!

I was very happy with the flavors in this quiche. The eggs were nice and fluffy and the smoked salmon flavor was intense, which I was hoping for. The goat cheese just adds another level of richness.

Was it hard for me to rip up 4 ounces of delicious smoked salmon and pour eggs all over it? YES.

But I’m glad I did.

Colorful things!

A few weeks ago Betsy and I went skiing for the last time for this season. Betsy and I usually have a pretty light lunch while we’re on the slopes. Sometimes we’ll split a sandwich or something just because I’d rather not be in a food coma while speeding (falling) down a mountain.

On this day, we split a really delicious wrap that involved wild rice, butternut squash, goat cheese, and a few other veggies. Because it was on a ski slope, it also cost like $10.

I figured I could make them at home for a very small fraction of that. I substituted beets for the butternut squash just because beets are a bit easier to find in the spring.

These are fantastic for healthy and quick lunches during the week though!

Wild Rice Wraps

Yield: 8 Wraps

Prep Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 Cup dry wild rice, cooked according to package
Chicken stock or veggie stock, for rice (probably need 3-4 cups)
Goat cheese, one ounce per wrap is good
Fresh baby spinach
2 beets, roasted and cubed
8 flour tortillas

Directions:

1) Roast beets at 350 degrees on a baking sheet for 60-75 minutes until knife tender.

2) When cool, peel beets and cube them fairly small.

3) Cook wild rice according to package.

4) When rice is cooked, stir in beets.

5) To make wraps, spread about one ounce of goat cheese on tortilla. Top with spinach and rice/beet mixture. Roll up and serve!

Roasting the beets

These wraps are easy to make, but not necessarily quick. Both of the two main ingredients (rice and beets) take a while to cook. You can obviously cook them at the same time though.

To roast the beets, just cut off the stem and bottom root section. Set them on a baking sheet and roast them at 350 degrees until they are tender. You should be able to easily push a knife into their center. It’ll probably take 60-75 minutes depending on the size of your beets.

These were mine after a good long roast.

Beets are so good.

Once they are cool enough to handle, peel the beets and cube them fairly small.

It’s kind of messy, but worth it.

Kinda messy but worth it.

The Rice.

If you’ve never worked with wild rice, it’s a different creature from the white stuff you’re used to. It has a really nutty flavor. It also takes about an hour to cook.

You should cook yours according to the package, but it’ll probably involve 3-4 cups of liquid per cup of rice, plus a pinch of salt and a drizzle of oil. I used chicken stock to cook my rice in, but you could use water or veggie stock if you wanted to make these vegetarian.

Basic stuff.

Just kind of throw all of this in a medium pot, bring it to a simmer, cover it, and let it simmer for about an hour.

Slow food.

When the rice is done, fluff it up with a fork and then stir in your cubed beets.

This would be a fantastic side dish as is. So you can use the leftovers for other meals pretty easily.

All mixed up.

Making the Wraps.

While you can use any flour tortilla for these guys, I found these fun veggie tortillas at the store. They came in different varieties (carrot, spinach, and tomato). I’m not exactly sure why the carrot version is yellow instead of orange, but whatever.

Carrot - Spinach - Tomato

For each wrap, spread about an ounce of goat cheese on the tortilla. This adds some nice richness to the wrap. Totally necessary in my opinion.

Can't go wrong with goat cheese!

Then layer on a good handful of spinach and top with about 1/2 Cup of the rice/beet mixture. Depending on the size of your tortilla, you might have to adjust. You want a stuffed wrap for sure.

Piled high!

Roll this up and you’re ready to go!

I sliced mine all in half so you could check out the cross-sections.

Rolled and sliced!

I found that a wrap is a really good healthy lunch. Two was almost too much for me. The rice is really filling actually.

I’m sure you could add other things to these wraps, but I wouldn’t get too crazy. The rice and beets are the stars of the show.

I think I made about 8 of these for the cost of one of the wraps on the slope. Go figure.

If you’re looking for a great lunch dish though, these hit the spot for me!

The cheese is hiding you see.

For some reason I always think brownies are the perfect thing to add stuff to. It worked great when I tried brownies with beets. But when I try putting cheeses in brownies, it’s very touch and go.

Cream cheese is the standard add-in, but I had one massive brownie fail a while ago that involved some unwieldy mascarpone cheese. And on this go, I had a very near-fail with goat cheese!

I was using goat cheese because you guys voted for a goat cheese dish last week. I thought that it might work really nicely in a chocolate brownie with some raspberries folded in. I had dreams of these luscious dark brownies with streaks of goat cheese running through them.

It didn’t really work out like that obviously. The good news is that even though my plan completely backfired and failed, the brownies tasted really good.

I guess cooking is like poker. I’d rather be lucky than good!

Goat Cheese Brownies

Yield: 8x8 pan

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate (get the good stuff)
1 Cup sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Cup fresh or frozen raspberries (if frozen, thaw in a paper towel to absorb moisture)
Pinch of salt

Goat Cheese Filling:
6 ounces goat cheese (chevre)
1/2 Cup sugar
1 egg

Directions:

1) Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan over low heat. Be careful not to burn the chocolate. When melted, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

2) For the goat cheese mixture, beat everything together until smooth.

3) Once slightly cool, stir in sugar until dissolved and then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Finally, add a pinch of salt and mix in the flour.

4) Stir in the raspberries and goat cheese mixture. The goat cheese mixture is optional honestly.

5) Add batter to a buttered 8-inch baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes (20-25 minutes if you aren't using the goat cheese mixture).

6) Let cool for 30 minutes before cutting and serving. They should be pretty gooey. If you want them firmer, you might want to add another 5 minutes onto the baking time.

The Goat Cheese

My grand vision for this dish started with the goat cheese. I thought I’d blend together some goat cheese with some sugar and an egg to give it some body and then be able to streak that into the batter.

Farm fresh eggs are orange.

The problem, as you’ll see, is that this ended up being too liquidy to work. But it does taste good. So feel free to go with it. Just use a hand mixer or fork to really mix the goat cheese up well until it’s a nice smooth consistency.

The Brownie Batter

This part of the recipe I wasn’t worried about. Good chocolate brownies are pretty straightforward to make as long as you don’t overcook them!

I don’t trust brownie recipes that start with something other than chocolate and butter.

The start of something beautiful

Melt these two ingredients together over low heat. Once they are melted and combined, let them cool for a minute and then stir in the sugar.

Pretty standard here.

The Raspberries

Ideally, you would use fresh raspberries for this, but I couldn’t find any on this particular day so I thought I’d try out frozen. The problem with frozen raspberries is that there’s a lot of liquid that will come out when you defrost them.

I solved this problem to the best of my ability by thawing them out in the microwave on low power over some paper towels. That way the towels soak up all the liquid as they thaw.

If it looks like a murder scene, you’ve done it right!

If you must use frozen...

Back to the batter

To finish off the brownie batter, beat in one egg at a time and add a pinch of salt. Then stir in the flour and your batter is ready to go!

After that, gently fold in the raspberries. Try not to over-mix it at this point or all the raspberries will just break apart.

Try to be gentle with the berries.

Then pour the batter into a buttered 8-inch baking dish and you’re ready to go. Please note that you could just bake them at this point and skip all the goat cheese business.

Butter the pan!

THE FAIL

Ok. So this is where I went wrong. I thought I’d be able to pour my goat cheese mixture onto the batter and then pull a knife through the batter to form some cool streaks.

The problem of course is that this technique only works if both batters are the same consistency. Otherwise they won’t really play nice.

In my case you’ll get something like this.

Oh dear....

If I were to toss this in the oven, I’m not sure what would happen, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. So I decided to go out on a limb and just stir the goat cheese mixture into the chocolate batter.

I grabbed an emergency fork (just a normal fork, but for emergencies) and just started whipping the two together in the baking dish. After a minute of mixing, I had something that looked pretty okay!

Here's to hopin!

Baking the dish

I added a lot of moisture into my batter (which turns out to be awesome). I knew though that I would have to therefore bake this for much longer than a normal batter.

So I baked mine at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. You could go for 35-40 if you like a firmer brownie.

My came out looking surprisingly good.

Looks good actually!

I let these guys cool almost completely before chopping them up. The consistency I had was exactly what I like in brownies: gooey.

Gooey and pretty darn good!

The official Macheesmo taste-tester (wife) had a bite of one of these and declared:

“Weird.”

But I must say, I thought they tasted pretty darn good. They’re definitely unique. The goat cheese has kind of a tangy flavor to it and the raspberries are really good folded in.

So, I was pretty happy with how these turned out given the near fail. Of course, if you want to try these, you can just fold the goat cheese mixture directly into the batter when you fold in the raspberries near the end or just leave out the goat cheese mixture and keep the raspberries.

If anyone has any ideas on how to accomplish what I was trying to do, leave a comment!

The secret is the goat cheese!

If there’s one appetizer I think I could eat with pretty much every meal, it would be olives. Some people aren’t into them, and that’s cool, but for me their briny saltiness is just the bee’s knees… or, I guess, the olive’s pimento.

Speaking of pimentos, that’s what’s stuffed inside of probably 99% of olives these days. While pimentos are okay, they are very far from my favorite when it comes to stuffings for olives. My two absolute favorite stuffings are pickled garlic and jalapenos.

And you can find olives in the store these days stuffed with both of these things. Here’s the problem though. First, they jack up the price. You’d think they were stuffing these things with gold or something. Second, most stuffed olives in the store are wussy. They have a tiny sliver of garlic or a fleck of jalapeno.

That’s not my style. So I decided to do some of my own olive stuffing a few weeks ago and they turned out awesome.

Stuffed Olives

Yield: 50 olives

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

50 pitted, but not stuffed green olives. The bigger the better.
6 ounces goat cheese
2 Tablespoons fresh herbs, (I liked dill, but you could use almost anything)
1 Teaspoon fresh black pepper
Pickled garlic (1 clove per 4 olives)
Pickled jalapenos (1 slice per 2 olives)

Directions:

1) Mix fresh herbs with goat cheese and fresh cracked pepper.

2) Slice garlic cloves into quarters and jalapeno slices into halves.

3) Using fingers, stuff olives with goat cheese mixture until it's full. For garlic/jalapeno, add a tiny amount of goat cheese and then press in the filling.

4) Serve them up!

The Fixins

Obviously, you don’t have to make 50 olives to do this recipe. The nice thing about it is that you can pretty much customize the amounts down to the exact number of olives you need.

Besides using large chunks of garlic and jalapeno for my olives, I also did some with an herbed goat cheese. I used some of the goat cheese with the jalapeno and garlic olives as well. So goat cheese was in every variety. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Some good flavors...

The Olives

When it comes to picking olives for stuffing, I like the green kind. Ideally, if your grocery store has a well-stocked olive bar you should be able to find some green olives that are pitted, but not stuffed with anything. If not there though, you can usually find a jar of them.

It doesn’t matter if they have herbs or spices with them, just make sure they are pretty good sized and pitted.

Mine had a Greek style pickling, but it doesn’t matter. You can use whatever you can find.

Get the big ones!

For the cheese filling, I just chopped up a few tablespoons of fresh herbs and mixed it with my goat cheese along with a good amount of fresh pepper.

Not only is it a great filling, but it works well in the jalapeno and garlic olives also.

Yum.

The Garlic

The key about the garlic is that you don’t want to use fresh garlic. That would be a bad idea.

You should be able to find pickled garlic though in your olive bar also. These are whole cloves and the pickling just takes off some of the bite. They are more mellow, but still pack plenty of garlic flavor.

I quartered my cloves and used one quarter per olive.

Quartered cloves.

The Jalapenos

As far as jalapenos go, any pickled jalapeno will work.

Half a jalapeno slice per olive should do the trick. You’ll have some of the jalapeno sticking out of the olive, but that’s fine. It acts as a warning for all those trying them!

Spicy!

Filling the olives

I wish there were an elegant way to stuff an olive, but it’s pretty much a hands and fingers job.

I thought about using a pastry bag with a fine tip and I think I might try that if I did them again, but fingers work just fine.

Just get some of the goat cheese mixture on your finger tips and work it into the olive until it’s coming out the other end. If you’re doing the garlic or jalapeno variety, I just put a tiny amount of goat cheese in the olive and then pressed in the stuffing.

Worked like a charm!

Fingers work best...

These are kind of messy and maybe not the prettiest things in the world, but the flavors are awesome. They’re really ramped up over the store varieties.

Really stuffed.

I used some pretty standard olive stuffings for these. I’d be curious if you guys have any ideas for other stuffings that might work in an olive.

Leave a comment if you have a good olive stuffing idea!

Crostini is one of those things that kind of baffles me because of how infrequently it’s served and how delicious and simple it is to make.

I guess crostini can sound like something difficult (especially when I italicize it), but stuff on toast just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Trust me though, you could make all three of the recipes in this post in minutes and have a dozen very pleased guests.

Let’s talk bread

Bread is the most important part of any crostini. If you’re topping it with gold-plated caviar, the bread is still the most important part. The key to a good toast is that you don’t want it doughy, but you don’t want it to resemble a cracker either. So basically, toast it. But don’t over-toast it.

Start with a good baguette, the best you can find (or make your own baguette if you want to turn a 20 minute recipe into a 20 hour recipe). Slice it into 1/3 inch slices on a diagonal just to maximize surface area. Brush the toasts with a light coating of olive oil or melted butter and either A) Grill them for a few seconds on each side or B) Toast them for a few minutes in a 450 degree oven.

Toasting the bread.

I used this method to make all of the toasts in this post. Just remember to check on them frequently. If they’re completely dried out, you might be better off slicing some new toasts and using those for bread crumbs!

Onto the crostini!

South of the Border Crostini

Betsy thought I was crazy for wanting to put guacamole on a crostini. After all, there are perfectly good chips right over there in the pantry! But it completely worked. This is just another example of my ongoing proof that guacamole is good on anything.

Simple Guacamole
Makes enough for 16 crostini.

- 2 avocados, mushed
- 1/2 lime, juiced
- 1 Tablespoon sour cream
- Salt and pepper

- Red onion, diced (for garnish)
- Cilantro (garnish)
- Red pepper flakes (garnish)

This is about as simple as guacamole can get. Instead of combining all of the ingredients in the guac though, I decided to do a bit of deconstruction action and use some classic guacamole ingredients as garnish.

For the guacamole, just mush the avocados up (tips on seeding avocados) and add them to a bowl with the lime juice and sour cream. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, taste, and adjust.

Basic guacamole.

Then, once your toasts are ready, pile on the guacamole and dot with all the garnishes. Very delicious and it looks pretty!

I could eat my weight in these.

The Summer Salsa Crostini

Kind of continuing with the salsa theme, I made a nice summer salsa with a nectarine and tomato base.

Summer Salsa (Adapted from the August 2010 Bon Appétit.
Makes enough for 14-16 crostini.

- 2 nectarines, seeded, diced
- 1 large ripe tomato (I used a yellow heirloom which was delicious)
- 6 big basil leaves, minced
- 1 Serrano pepper, diced
- 1 shallot, minced
- Drizzle of olive oil
- Salt and pepper

- Goat cheese (garnish)

Not your normal salsa...

For this recipe, I cut everything by hand just to give it a more rustic texture. I guess you could pulse everything in a food processor, but just be careful not to over-process it or you’ll have more of a soup than a salsa.

I didn’t even bother peeling the nectarines – just chopped up everything and tossed it in a bowl. By the way, this salsa is better on day two and is very good even with tortilla chips.

Made by hand.

For the crostini though, just pile it high on the toasts and dot each one with some crumbled goat cheese.

Hard to beat.

Goat cheese just because.

Minted Pea Crostini

Two flavors that go incredibly well together are peas and mint. Three flavors that go incredibly well together are peas, mint, and goat cheese. So why not slap that on a piece of toast and call it good?!

Minted Peas.
Makes 16 crostini.

- 1 1/2 Cups fresh or frozen peas
- 2 Tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
- 4 ounces goat cheese
- Pinch of salt
- Drizzle of olive oil

I used fresh peas for this but I’m pretty sure you could use frozen and not lose too much. If you’re using fresh peas you should boil them in lightly salted water until they’re tender, about 4 minutes. Frozen peas you obviously just need to thaw. I think that the fresh peas might end up with a slightly better texture, but I didn’t try the frozen peas so I can’t confirm that crazy theory of mine.

Boiled and drained.

Mush the peas with the chopped mint and goat cheese in a medium bowl. It’ll be a pretty thick paste and so I drizzled in a bit of olive oil just to make it more spreadable. I recommend you do the same.

Also, a pinch of salt helps.

A little texture is good.

Then pile it high and deep! The topping keeps for a long time in the fridge so feel free to make many batches.

Simple stuff.

My personal favorite out of these three was probably the guacamole one just because guacamole is one of my favorite things in the world. All of them though were very tasty and I easily housed plates of them all.

Which one is your favorite?

There's goat cheese in there...

I’m noticing a trend with the pasta salads that I really like: They are freakin’ packed with flavor. If I’m making a meal out of a pasta salad, it needs to be flavorful. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be really heavy. The white bean pasta salad I made on Monday was pretty light actually.

This salad is a bit heavier, but still summer appropriate. Betsy and I loved it mainly because we have a near-fetish for sun-dried tomatoes. Ok. I guess I can only speak for myself there, but I’m pretty sure we both really like them. And you can’t tell from the top photo, but there’s also some creamy goat cheese folded into the pasta which makes it really rich.

It’s hard not to love this quick and simple dish.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta Salad

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound Farfelle (bowtie) pasta
1 Cup sun-dried tomatoes
1/4 Cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 Cup pine nuts, toasted
2 Teaspoons balsamic vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
1 clove garlic
1/2 Cup olive oil
6-8 ounces fresh arugula
4 ounces goat cheese
Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Food Processor (if you don't have one, you can just chop everything really finely)

Directions:

1) Cook pasta according to package and drain pasta and reserve 1 Cup of cooking water.

2) Process sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan, pine nuts, and garlic in a food processor, blender, or chop finely. For more flavor, toast pine nuts in a dry skillet until fragrant over medium heat, about 5 minutes.

3) Drizzle oil into the tomato mixture. Then stir in vinegar.

4) Toss pasta in tomato pesto mixture. If it seems dry, add 1/2 Cup of the reserved pasta cooking water. Taste for salt and pepper.

5) Stir in goat cheese and arugula or serve pasta on a bed of arugula with goat cheese crumbled on top.

Adapted from America's Test Kitchen 30 Minute Suppers.

This is about as simple as it gets for pasta salads. There’s barely any chopping to do which is rare.

One of my favorite pastas for salad.

If you’ve never used bowtie pasta for pasta salad, give it a shot. It’s climbing the ranks in my favorite pasta list. Not only is it fun, but the ridges grab hold of a lot of sauce or, in this case, sun-dried tomato goodness.

Of course, you can use any pasta for this though if you can’t find bowtie pasta. I’d recommend larger blocky pastas though. Don’t come crying to me if you try this with angel hair pasta and it sucks.

Strong flavors!

Making the Pesto

Besides boiling your pasta, the only thing you really need to make for this is the sun-dried tomato pesto. This is as simple as adding in all your sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and Parmesan cheese into a food processor and pulsing it until it’s a coarse paste. Then drizzle in your olive oil and pulse a few more times and stir in the vinegar.

But Nick. I don’t have a food processor!

Do not fret. You have some options. You could try it with a blender although it might be rough going. But honestly you can also just finely chop all your ingredients and then mix together everything in a bowl. Your final product might be a bit chunkier than mine, but it’ll still be delicious in the final pasta salad.

A kind of pesto I guess...

The Others

There’s two key ingredients to this recipe that really make it pop. First, goat cheese. When that gets folded into the pasta it gives it a creamy, tangy flavor. I liked folding it in, but you could also kind of crumble it on the finished product if you wanted.

Second, and maybe more important, is nice fresh arugula. The peppery taste of it goes great with the goat cheese and tomatoes. The arugula is maybe my favorite part of the dish, but don’t tell the goat cheese I said that.

Creamy and peppery.

Once your pasta is boiled, just drain it and reserve some of the cooking liquid. Toss it immediately with the sun-dried tomato pesto. If it seems a bit dry, add in 1/2 Cup of the cooking water. After everything is well-combined you can fold in your goat cheese also if you’re doing that.

This smelled amazing.

Making it Pretty

I elected to not make mine very pretty. I just kind of mixed everything together because I was planning on taking it for lunch and stuff like that and it was just easier.

If you wanted to make this pretty though, you could serve the pasta on a bed of arugula with the goat cheese crumbled on top.

For my version, I chose function over form I guess.

You could probably make this prettier...

Start to finish this dish is literally done in the amount of time it takes to boil pasta. It’s fast and tasty and keeps for days.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the last summer salad of the week which is actually based off of last week’s poll winner!

Get it?? I hope so.

This is just a quick post because I have some 4th parties to attend and you probably do as well (assuming you’re in the U.S. of course). Anyway, I came up with a fun idea for a quick frittata a few days ago. There’s actually not much too it and the photo above pretty much shows everything you need to know to make it.

Here’s the recipe though!

Firecracker Frittata

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

6 eggs, beaten
1/4 Cup cream or milk
Salt and fresh cracked pepper
1 Tablespoon butter
3 ounces goat cheese
Cherry tomatoes (you obviously just need a few)
Assorted peppers. You could use all the same color, but I like the varied colors.

Directions:

1) Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Whip your eggs together with your cream and salt and pepper.

2) Add the butter to an oven safe pan over medium-high heat. I used an oven safe 12 inch non-stick skillet, but you can use any pan that can go from stovetop to oven. Obviously, the smaller pan you use the thicker your frittata will be.

3) When your butter is melted, add your eggs and cook for just 30 seconds until they start to set. Then take them off the heat and dot the eggs with goat cheese. Festively arrange the peppers and tomatoes to look like firecrackers!

4) Finish the dish in the oven. It should take no more than 10 minutes to set up.

5) Serve immediately. If you use a good non-stick pan, you can slide the entire frittata out of the pan onto a cutting board for serving.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Whip your eggs together with your cream and salt and pepper. While your oven heats, add the butter to an oven safe pan over medium-high heat. I used an oven safe 12 inch non-stick skillet, but you can use any pan that can go from stovetop to oven. Obviously, the smaller pan you use the thicker your frittata will be.

When your butter is melted, add your eggs and cook for just 30 seconds until they start to set. Then take them off the heat and dot the eggs with goat cheese. Festively arrange the peppers and tomatoes to look like firecrackers!

Then finish the dish in the oven. It should take no more than 10 minutes to set up.

I ate mine with some hot sauce, but I guess the american thing to do would be ketchup?

Anyway, have a great 4th of July everyone!