Since Max is at camp at Mexico, I’M IN CHARGE of the website and I GET TO CHOOSE WHATEVER I WANT TO MAKE…and I love meatballs.  So I decided to make spaghetti and meatballs, along with a green salad.  For dessert, I made traditional cream scones earlier in the day… YUM!  So I whipped cream, sugared some strawberries, and served the scones along side the berries & cream. (with a sprig of mint from our herb garden).

For the meatballs I loosely followed a recipe in DiPalo’s cookbook (DiPalo’s is a great Italian specialty food shop in Little Italy that has the best fresh mozzarella, Parmesan cheese, prosciutto and meatballs!).  There recipe calls for ground beef, 1 egg, minced garlic, bread crumbs, grated pecorino romano cheese, grated aged provolone, parsley and ricotta cheese.  We were upstate and didn’t have all those ingredients, plus I like pork meatballs better so I used ground pork, 1 egg, minced garlic bread crumbs, grated pecorino romano cheese, grated Parmesan and basil instead of parsley.  Since we didn’t have ricotta cheese, and the meatball mix seemed  a little dry, I added a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream (that we had for the scones).  It worked so well!!! The meatballs were light and fluffy inside but firm enough to saute.  (I sauteed them in olive oil till brown and then added to a simple tomato sauce I had made)

For the scones, I used the heavy cream both in the mix (along with butter) and then whipped it to serve with the scones.  Note: don’t roll out scone dough too thin.  It’s better if the dough is at least 3/4 inch thick.  If its’ thinner, the scones can be a little dry.

Mom loves kale so when Max bought a huge bunch from the Farmer’s Market (and then left for camp in Mexico!), it was up to me to come up with ways to cook all that kale.  I came up with three different recipes: kale chips; kale stir fry and fried egg kale salad.  Mom says they were all delicious — I tried the kale chips, and even though I am not a huge kale fan, they were pretty good.  Also the kale chips are super easy and fun to make.

Kale Chips

First you wash and dry the kale. Then you cut out the wood central stems, chop roughly and toss with olive oil and a little sea salt (not too much…you can always add more later).  Then you spread the kale in a single layer on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan and put in a 350 degree oven until crispy. It’s important that the kale be dry when you put in the oven, otherwise you may have steamed, soggy chips.

Kale Stir Fry

This kale stir fry also contained bok choy and spring onions that Max bought at the Farmer’s Market and then didn’t have time too cook.  I chopped up the spring onions, including their tender stems, and sauteed them in olive oil and soy sauce.  (I would have added chopped ginger but we didn’t have any).  I then added roughly chopped bok choy and kale.  Like with the kale chip recipe, I took out the tough stems from the kale first.  Finally I added papitas to give a little crunch to the stir fry.

Fried egg kale salad

Last week I made mom a fried egg spinach salad, so this week I wanted to try it with kale.  I also added some chopped up spring onions and bacon….yum!! (The other ingredients were left over spinach, tomatoes, red onions and cheddar cheese). The key thing to this salad is to make the salad first and then cook the egg and slide it on top.  You want to serve it with a warm runny egg.

(This is Max): in Spanish class, the teacher decided that we should have an end-of-year celebration, where we would eat and get to experience the food of several Hispanic cultures. I decided that I wanted to make something for this celebration, so I decided on the delicious dessert Churros. Churros are present in many different Spanish cultures, and are also very tasty.  They are sort of like deep-fried long donuts dipped in cinnamon sugar (but better).  Since we don’t have a deep fryer we decided to make them a less traditional and more healthy way – we baked them.  I researched recipes and found one that seemed both simple and delicious and voila: we made them.  (This is Alex):  Max let me help me and the most fun part of making them was putting the dough in a pastry bag with a star shaped tip and piping the churros out.  We liked making them (and tasting them) so much that we made two batches: one for Max’s class party and one just for the family. The first time we made them pretty small but the second time (for the family) we made them 8 inch plus (and dipped them in hot chocolate!!!! YUM)

(second batch…all for us!!!!) PS Dad is so happy that he gets to try them because we wouldn’t let him have any of the ones for Max’s class.

The other day I wanted to make a salad for mom but a lot of the ingredients I wanted to use weren’t available.  We had spinach so I thought I would make her a traditional spinach salad (with hard boiled egg, tomato, bacon, red onion, maybe a little avocado.) But we didn’t have bacon, onions or avocado and I didn’t have time to boil eggs.  So I came up with a new salad: fried egg spinach salad with cheddar cheese, tomatoes and pumpkin seeds (with a simple sherry viniagrette).  Mom loved it!

This weekend we celebrated Father’s Day by making one of dad’s favorite meals: STEAK.  Luckily it’s one of ours as well.  We also made corn on the cob, a big salad and home made strawberry ice cream–from strawberries Alex and Mom picked Saturday morning.  They picked 20 pounds! We also experimented with some other things, including making fresh mint tea (from our own mint) and of course we made some strawberry daquiris (no rum) as well. Here are some of the photo highlights:

We also made dad breakfast on Father’s Day: scrambled eggs with chives from our garden, fresh berry salad and bagels (we didn’t make those)

And here’s the mint tea: first we steeped fresh mint in boiling water, then strained it and added a little sweetener.  Finally we cooled it and served it over ice! Super refreshing on a hot day.

Tonight we were tired–long busy weekend and I (Max) am leaving for a school trip tomorrow so I really wanted to make one of my favorite meals: Pasta all’ Amatriciana (my “signature” dish); we also wanted to use some fresh peas we had bought at the farmer’s market, and Alex had a mystery ingredient that mom gave her (poor Alex…wait till you see what she had to cook).  But it was a fun and quick dinner.

Here’s my final plate:

For the pasta all’Amatriciana, first I chopped one onion; then I sauteed pancette in a little olive oil till it was brown.  (I started water boiling for the pasta at same time).  I removed the pancetta from the pan and added the chopped onion.  You need to cook the onion cook until tender then I added a can of chopped tomatoes.  You can use fresh or grated or chopped tomatoes–but it was a week night and the canned ones are fine. Salt, pepper and let simmer for a while.  When the pasta is al dente, you add it to the tomato sauce.  And then you plate it by adding freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and a large handful of the pancetta.  The pancetta flavors the onions and then you taste the crispy bits in the pasta. (If you mix it into the sauce, you lose the crispiness).

For the peas, they were so fresh all we did was shell them and eat them raw.  We also made a simple arugula salad — with just tomatoes and shaved parmigiano reggiano.

I (Alex) also cooked a mystery ingredient that Mom gave me: SQUID. Ewwwwh!  At least it was already cleaned so I didn’t have to clean it but I did have to cut it up.  It was kind of cool that you could easily cut it into rings.  I also chopped some garlic and cooked that in olive oil with paprika and red pepper flakes, then I added the cut up squid.  I wasn’t sure how long to cook it but I sauteed it until it was at least brown.  Then I squeezed a lemon on top of it.  I wanted to add fresh herbs but all we had was basil and oregano but hat didn’t seem quite right flavor-wise.  Mom said it was pretty good.  (I just couldn’t try it, those tentacles looked too weird:).  Max is so lucky he got to cook the pasta!:(

Tonight we wanted to make two classic dishes that we had heard of but never made: Beef Wellington and Tiramisu. But we also wanted to add a summer twist–a nice summer salad, so we made a spinach, feta, orzo and pine nut salad.(We made a olive oil -balsamic vinaigrette as well).

Here’s the final products:

The Salad: after we put all the ingredients together we threw it in the fridge for an hour. According to the recipe, it helps the flavors blend.  The only thing we changed about the recipe was to toast the pine nuts and add them at the very end so they didn’t get soggy.

Ingredients for the salad                           Chopping onions (with goggles!)               Mixing the salad

The Tiramisu: for the Tiramisu, we actually started in the morning because it has to sit for 4-6 hours in the fridge.  Again it must be for the flavors to blend.  One thing we realized was that you shouldn’t actually “soak” the lady fingers in coffee and coffee liquor.  If you “soak” them, they will fall apart.  So you really just brush the lady fingers with the coffee mix (you can just use coffee if you don’t want any alcohol involved, or decaf coffee I guess if you don’t want to stay up late:)

The Tiramisu ingredients……                              Six egg yolks!                                                    Egg yolks w/ mascarpone              Coffee-soaked lady fingers             Final product

The Beef Wellingtons: for the individual beef wellingtons, the actual recipe is pretty easy. But there are a lot of steps.  First you have to make the mushroom sauce (or “mushroom duxelles as Emeril Lagasse calls it).  Then you have to sear the beef filet mignons.  Then you have to let them cool completely.  Then you have to roll out your puff pastry and make your egg wash glue. Then you have to put it all together.  (Puff pastry, then filet mignon, then mushrooms then proscuitto then puff pastry wrapped up like a package and sealed with the egg wash (the “glue”).  Then you brush them with more egg wash and put in the oven until the pastry is golden brown and you HOPE that the meat is medium rare. :).  One filet was cut too thin by the butcher so Max had the brilliant idea of making a double decker beef wellington.  He cut it in half and put a layer of mushrooms between the two halves. Delicious!

AND STILL MORE STEPS!…

Egg-washed Wellingtons                                    Golden-brown Wellingtons                               Double-decker Beef Wellingtons                     Note layer of mushrooms between filets

This weekend we didn’t spend a lot of time cooking a whole meal: it was really hot and we got invited to barbecues both Saturday and Sunday night.  (Thank you Patrick, Virginia & Wyeth: we are definitely trying to recreate your potatoes; and thank you Russ & Erica: we are definitely trying to recreate your grilled lamb).  We did make dessert for both barbecues, and lunch for the family on Sunday.  But most of the time we weren’t in the pool, or playing soccer, we had to plant our garden.  Wow.  Who knew that planting a garden would be such a reptile adventure.  We started off well enough, but then: Yikes. Baby Snake under the weed cloth:

We managed to gently shoo it out of the garden and planted zinnias, peas, carrots and potatoes (that was Saturday).  Then we took a break to go swimming and make brownies for Patrick & Virginia.

The next morning we went out bright and early to the garden and there was this large black mound at the garden fence.  We investigated and discovered an enormous snapping turtle (like a foot long!).  Not only that but it was laying eggs (in front of OUR garden).  We helped it a little by misting it with water and untangling its leg from the weed cloth.  After it buried its eggs, it went back to our lake.  We are excited about watching the eggs hatch, although a little nervous about having a garden full of snapping turtles.

Finally (after the turtle left), we got to plant: we planted zucchini, more peas, kale, pumpkins, sunflowers, lettuce and more kale. Whew it was hot, hard work (Mom did a lot of it…)

Here is the final result (doesn’t look like much yet…but things don’t grow overnight. 🙂

To thank mom for her help in the garden, we made chilaquiles for her.

She loved then and Dad went back for thirds!!!

Tonight we wanted to make a special dinner for mom so we asked her what she wanted: she said she wanted us to make her ribs, a green vegetable and a fruit-centered dessert.  So we decided to make her Cantonese-style ribs, bok choy, and strawberry pie.  We also made corn-on-the cob in case the bok choy didn’t work out AND because we wanted to try out the new cuisinart we gave her, we made hummus as an appetizer.

The full meal

We actually made the strawberry pie first (in the morning) because it needs to set for a few hours.  It’s a combination of fresh strawberries and cooked strawberries (you mash them up and cook them with a little sugar and corn starch to make a lumpy sauce)

We also had to start early for the ribs because they need to marinate for at least two hours.  We have made these once before and mom loved it so I guess that’s why she chose them again. The marinade is pretty simple: chopped garlic, chopped ginger, hoisin sauce and soy sauce.  You let the ribs marinate for 2 hours to overnight and then you cook them in a pan with water in it.  After an hour of cooking, you brush them with honey and cook for 10 more minutes…DELICIOUS!

For the bok choy we just made a fairly simple preparation. We had chopped extra garlic and ginger when we made the marinade so we added that to olive oil and then cooked the bok choy (it really cooked down so we added spinach).  We also added some soy sauce.

For the hummus, we first minced the garlic then we put the garlic, sea salt, ground cumin, lemon and olive oil in the cuisinart.  While it mixed those ingredients up, we peeled the chick peas (they have this thin skin which you don’t have to take off, but if you do, it makes the hummus creamier.) Once the chick peas were peeled, we put them in the mixer and ground until smooth. Then we scooped it into a dish and added olive oil and paprika.  We served it with pita chips.

Here’s the plate we made for mom (and the dessert)

Tonight we didn’t have time to cook a full meal — too much soccer, prep for our piano recital and homework but we wanted to help out and make something tasty and quick for dessert.  So we experimented with making a stove top blueberry crisp.  We love blueberry crisp and apple crisp and pretty much any kind of crisp but it takes a lot of prep and cooking time.  But earlier this week we had made a stove top granola that was very simple so we wondered if we could use that granola as the “crisp” topping.

The granola recipe is very simple. Melt 1 tablespoon butter with 2 tablespoons honey and 2 tablespoons brown sugar about 2 minutes until bubbling…then stir in 2 cups oats. (You can also add chopped walnuts if you like.)  Stir until oats are coated. Let cool slightly.  (If you were making granola, you could add raisins)

For the filling we also decided to cook the fruit (this time blueberries, canned apple sauce and pears) on the stove top with a little butter and brown sugar.  The results were pretty good but next time we want to use all fresh fruit. The fruit filling was a little runny so we stirred in about 1/2 cup of the oat mix.

Then we plated…we put the berry mix in the bottom of four ramekins and then we added the oat mix. We garnished with a single blueberry. Whipped cream would have been good but alas we had none.

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