Naughty and Nice

I am terrible. I realized that it's been nearly two months since my last post. It's not for lack of food stuffs, we had a fantastic trip to Chicago, another trip to New Orleans and I've been baking and cooking up a storm. I have about 5 posts started, but haven't been able to find time to finish them.

However, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thought I would post a recipe that I just made for an Apple Cake covered in Salted Caramel. I made it for Thanksgiving and our guests couldn't get enough. You can add raisins, walnuts, dried cranberries, you can top with with caramel sauce or powdered sugar or leave it plain. We served it alongside Tiahetian Vanilla Bean gelato, and covered it with some additional Salted Caramel because, why not?!

And as a side note, this cake is kosher. I found the cake recipe on  Food 52 and made a few modifications.

Check Out These Mussels!

My First Attempt!

So, growing up, I dislike seafood. As a matter of fact, I hated it. It drove The Parents insane. They couldn't understand it. Which says something, since each of my siblings and I have issues with what many people would consider "normal" foods. I LOATHE ham, as in the stuff you eat on Christmas, with the spiral and the cherries and the pineapple...not the expensive stuff like prosciutto, which drives The Husband insane (obviously) and smoked turkey. I hate smoked turkey so much that if I get a sandwich and it's on there, I'll pull off all of the turkey and eat the bread and the toppings. It's disgusting to me.  

My middle sister, The Lawyer, hates tomatoes and sausage. My youngest sister, The Dental Student hates beans and sausage and had a phase growing up where she put yellow mustard on everything. And I mean everything (corn, green  beans, salads) and my brother The Beer Geek had a phase where no one was allowed to touch his food. If it happened, he would pitch a fit and wouldn't eat it.

A Cure For our Wednesday Evening.

Guys, I have been TERRIBLE. And I'm so sorry. The month of September was a bit of a mad house. I was gone 15 of the 30 days for either work of personal travel. And when I was home, I was working like a maniac. BUT I have tons of great recipes that I've been working on and food that I've been eating.

The Husband had his first of two vacations this past week and we made it a point to go play in our new city. And boy, did we play.

On Wednesday evening we went to Cure, a restaurant in our new neighborhood that has been getting rave reviews since it opened in 2011.  The Chef/Owner Justin Severino was in a New York Times piece about reviving the Rust Belt, Bon Appetit nominated him for one of the 50 Best New Restaurant in 2012 and he won the Pittsburgh Magazine's 2013 Star Chef award.  And from eating at his restaurant, he deserves it.

The restaurant is small, it only seats about 44 or so people at a time on the floor, with an additional four seats up by the kitchen. The menu changes regularly, depending on what meats and vegetables they are able to locally source and the charcuterie is no joke. Everything but the bread is made in house and everything was awesome.

Spicy and Smokey Mac

So as you can tell from previous posts (Mac Attack!) , The Husband has a thing for Mac and Cheese. And as this past week has been rather challenging for him, he took his Internal Medicine Boards (he has spent all of his free time since starting Fellowship studying) and is on call for the fourth weekend in a row. So, when I came across this recipe I thought "Self, you should do it for The Husband!".

It also helped that there was some Habanero up in here; and we all know how much I love me some spice. When I told The Husband about it, he was a little worried at first, but I assured him that it would all work out well and that he would not have a five alarm fire in his mouth.

Hotspacho!

Last summer there was this hilarious iPhone commercial with Samuel L. Jackson. He was having a lady friend over that evening for dinner and was making a list of things he needed to do for his date night.  One line item was to have Siri set a reminder to put the gazpacho in the refrigerator, unless she liked Hotspacho. I found this hilarious, I’m fairly confident I must have walked around for months telling The Husband we didn't want Hotspacho! See the commercial here, maybe you’ll find it as amusing as I did…maybe not.

I’m also the person who goes into a fit of giggles when I hear this joke “Two peanuts were walking through a park; one was assaulted!” Seriously, I’m laughing as I write this.  For those of you who are disappointed, I never said I had a highbrow sense of humor, just a taste for delicious food and drink.

One of My Many Addictions

As many of you may have seen from my wildly excited Facebook postings, I recently won an Ice Cream recipe contest.  I’ve only won one other competition in my life and that was for paper I wrote in college on the history of 19^th century English Church bands (entitled “Wake Up and Hear the Music” I was so cleaver, even back then).  So with this excitement,  a few people had requested that I post a recipe I had alluded to in my Cinnamon Ice Cream post about making a Deconstructed S’more.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve made this in passing and people always look at me a little strange. It’s a mixture of “That sounds DELICIOUS” and “How the heck did you think of that?” So, I’ll tell you. 

This had nothing to do with camping, or nights by the fire roasting marshmallows; this was purely a practical decision.   I’m pretty good a most cooking and baking related things, however  I am actually a really terrible S’mores maker.  I never get the chocolate soft enough; I always break the damn cracker, ALWAYS. The only thing I can do right is toast the heck out of the marshmallow.

Ours For The Taking

Three days into our stay here in PGH, The Husband and I went to the grocery store. First, I must say how amazed I am at some of the produce we get here. We purchased zucchini, squash and cucumbers that were the size (both length AND width) of The Husband's forearms for nothing--ninety-nine cents! Beautiful tomatoes and peppers for a song. They have a whole mushroom section, literally bins of Wild Mushrooms for the taking.  I forgot that Pennsylvania has the Mushroom capital of the country within it's boarders; lucky for us. And so, on our first trip to the store, we took.

We ended up purchasing a beautiful Hen of the Woods to do something with.  A week later, I found myself back in the grocery store, standing in front of this mushroom wall and thinking, I need more. So I grabbed a bunch of Oysters, some Chanterelles, another Hen of the Woods, some Trumpet Mushrooms and a few other wild varieties.