Well, my ART DIRECTOR (cough, Rob, cough) got a little LAZY with things, and thus we have 15 dishes that I’ve cooked and Rob photographed that he just hasn’t gotten around to uploading and tinkering with yet. We’re having a “staff meeting” tonight (in which I yell at Rob for his lack of devotion to thefoodsex.) So what does that mean? New post tonight, and then it’s on! I am so pumped for this.

Also, read the newly updated About thefoodsex.com page–it’ll explain why you’re about to see the kind of recipes that I will be posting soon.

So as I mentioned yesterday, my friend Laura will be taking over most of the baking duties on this site. Last night, she made a batch of banana cookies. Unfortunately for me (for many reasons) Laura lives in Columbus, so I didn’t even get to try a cookie. But they look damn good!

She wanted to call these “Chunky Monkey Banana Cookies” but as I am worried about trademark lawsuits, we’ll call them….

Crunky Monkey Banana Cookies

Note from Laura, who had a really mean roommate in college: I recommend people don’t make these if they have a neurotic roommate who will put overripe bananas on their pillow (Bitch, I’m still not over it, can you tell?)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt (I recommend NOT pouring it into a teaspoon over the batter)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/4 stick of butter flavored Crisco (don’t tell my mom, she’d flip out.  But, the shortening makes a moister cookie)
1 egg
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 3/4 cups uncooked oatmeal 

In a bowl, combine the Crisco, egg and bananas.  Hand mix it, it will be chunky. Don’t use an electric mixer. 
Then combine all the dry ingredients, except the oatmeal.  It’s really important to do the wet ingredients first, then the dry. Once incorporated, add the oatmeal and mix gently. 
Use a scoop to portion out 12 cookies per tray.  They don’t need to be spaced out too far apart, as they don’t spread much when they bake. 

Bake at 350 degrees, It really depends on your oven, so I would recommend starting to bake them at 12 minutes, and see if they are golden brown.  Then check on them every three minutes, they probably wouldn’t bake for more than 20 minutes.  Cool on a rack.  And since they are made with bananas, that means they’re healthy.  So you can eat a bunch.  Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

See? I couldn’t have done that. Plus, Laura looks a lot better with an apron and mixing bowl than I do.

So, this will most likely be one of my last baking entries. Why? Because I suck at it. Why else? Because my good friend Laura, she of the gorgeous monkey cupcakes, has applied to do a regular contributing post of her baked goods. Since she is awesome and I am terrible, and she is kind and I am a jerk, and she is beautiful and I am a toad, I agreed. So thus, I leave you with this: my Christmas cookie medley.

My grandmother had commissioned me to bake a few kinds of cookies for Christmas. I ended up not having to make the labor-intensive gingerbread men, and instead baked all of these at midnight on December 23rd. Because I am a procrastinator who SUCKS AT BAKING.

Anyway, there are three kinds of cookies on this plate. If you look very closely at the plate, under the rum balls, you may be able to see that my cookies were, in fact, displayed on a Last Supper plate, probably to remove the sin of my having touched them. Catholics.

Anyway, the white cookies along the outside are butter balls, that Nana requested; the dark brown cookies are rum balls (oh rum balls, how I love thee) and the lumpy jobs up front are oatmeal-dried cherry-white chocolate cookies. The first two recipes are courtesy of my grandmother, and the third is an adaptation from Cooking Light. (Rob’s dad likes these also. At least SOMEONE likes my baking. Or maybe he’s just being nice.)

Here is the recipe for each:

Butter Balls
2 sticks of butter, softened (seriously, I know. These things clogged some major arteries)
2 tsp vanilla
4 TBS white sugar
2 cups flour
½ cup chopped walnuts

Mix all ingredients together. Roll into balls the size of a walnut. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. DO NOT spray or grease your nonstick cookie sheet beforehand, as this will cause the cookies to spread.

Remove from oven and allow to cool. Roll in powdered sugar.

Rum Balls
2 cups crushed vanilla wafers (I use Nilla brand)
1 cup walnut meal (or ground walnuts)
2 TBS light corn syrup
2 TBS cocoa powder
1/3 cup dark rum…plus another splash or two, oh and a glass for the baker

Mix all ingredients together. Roll into SuperBouncyBall-sized balls (you know exactluy what I mean, don’t act like you didn’t spend your quarters on these things in the grocery store machines) and then roll in a mixture of equal parts cocoa powder and powdered sugar. So, the rum doesn’t cook out of these, which means they are actually alcoholic. I mean, if you ate the whole batch, that’s the equivalent of like two shots of rum, so um…eat responsibly. Yeah.

Oatmeal-Dried Cherry-White Chocolate Cookies
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (about 3 1/3 ounces)
1 cup regular oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
3/4 cup dried cherries
1/3 cup white chocolate chips

Combine flour, oats, baking soda, and salt; stir with a whisk. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar until well-blended. Add vanilla and egg; beat well. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended. Add cherries and chips, mix carefully.

Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes. Cool, remove, eat!

So I have to say, I’m wildly impressed by the fact that I managed to launch a new version of thefoodsex. Now listen. I know nothing works and everything looks kinda crappy right now, but I’m working on it, I swear!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I have an excuse. I’m in the midst of several huge holiday projects involving food, including two potluck dinners this weekend, cookies for Christmas Eve (as commissioned by my grandmother) a huge meal for mine and Rob’s solo Christmas Day dinner (his parents are jet-setting off to COSTA RICA for Christmas, so it’s just me and him), and last but certainly not least, PAUL’S FREE TURKEY EXTRAVAGANZA. Paul’s office gave him an 18-pound turkey, so we’re gonna have us a feast. Even though I don’t eat turkey. Whatever. I promise, it’s coming.

So, I’m a total dweeb, seriously. Do people still say dweeb? I’m a dweeb. Whenever people would mention to me in public that they’d seen my food blog, I’d get all embarrassed and feel like a loser. And I decided I wasn’t going to do it because I wanted to be cool. You know.

And then people started asking me what happened to it, and it was way more embarrassing to say that I didn’t want to do it anymore because I wanted to be cool, so fuck it, here’s some soup.

Seven-Veggie Soup

This technically has eight vegetables in it, but Rob said that Seven-Veggie Soup was a catchier name, so let’s go with that. You could use whatever you wanted, really. I had started out intending to make traditional minestrone, or at least what I thought traditional minestrone was, but as it turns out, there are no hard and fast rules to minestrone.

So, here we go. I had some zucchini and the very, very last of the summer squash. It looked a little anemic, but I figured it’d be okay. Dice these both into bite size pieces. Heat some olive oil in the bottom of a big pot, and add a clove or two of minced garlic, and maybe half an onion. Sautee them until they are soft and fragrant. This, incidentally, is the beginning to every good recipe for soup, and also for tomato sauce. I love this method, it just feels so familiar and smells so good. Anyway, enough dweebiness. I added a few shakes of dried oregano. You could use dried basil, or Italian seasoning, or whatever you like. The key to cooking with dried herbs is to add them at the beginning so they have time to release their flavors. When using fresh herbs, add them at the end so they don’t lose all their flavor in cooking.

Throw in your chopped zucchini and squash and stir. I also threw in a diced red pepper at this point, which I thought was really good, but Rob was not sold on. Also, I’d had half a bag of frozen corn leftover from something, and I added that too. Cook about 5 minutes until the veggies are soft, then add a can of crushed tomatoes. The big can. If it had been summer, I’d have pureed some fresh tomatoes, but it’s not, so canned it is. Pour in 2 cans of vegetable broth and bring it to a boil. Once it’s boiling, lower the heat a bit and simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes.

Add a can of drained white beans. I used navy beans, which prompted me to keep singing that line from that terrible Adam Sandler song that just goes, “navy beans navy beans navy beans!” Clearly you know exactly what I’m talking about. Also add about a ½ a cup of uncooked small pasta. I actually ended up putting more in because I thought it didn’t look like enough, but I was wrong. ½ cup it is. I used ditalini, because that’s what I thought was usually in minestrone. Cook until the pasta is tender, about 10 minutes. Just keep trying it. Once the pasta is tender, throw in a big handful of spinach and let it wilt for a few minutes, then remove the soup from heat. Season with salt and pepper if need be, add a little fresh basil if you want, and serve.

I garnished with freshly grated asiago cheese, because Rob gets antsy if he doesn’t get at least some animal-product in him, but this would certainly be a good vegan soup otherwise.

I wish the picture had come out a bit better, because the soup was definitely more red and vibrant than this, but oh well. Rob says he was pleasantly surprised and went into it timidly, which isn’t surprising because we recently had someone who knows him well convinced that Rob is allergic to vegetables.

Eight hot dogs. Woo!

Asparagus Pesto with Baked Goat Cheese

As you may have guessed, I’m really into making different kinds of pesto. Traditionally, pesto refers to a puree of fresh basil, olive oil, garlic, parmesan cheese and pine nuts, but there is so much more you can do with it.

I made this asparagus pesto recently. I think I just love the idea of green noodles, which means I really ought to try making fresh spinach pasta, but you know, sometimes I’m lazy. So here’s the asparagus pesto:

Start out with a pound of the thinnest, youngest, most tender asparagus you can find. I know they aren’t in season right now, which totally sucks, but I end up buying it year-round anyway. Snap off the tough ends of each spear, and cook asparagus in boiling water for really just a few minutes—no more than 4. Take the asparagus out with tongs (rather than draining, so you can use the boiling water for pasta.) Cut off the tip of each spear (about 1.5 – 2 inches) and set aside. Chop the remaining spears into pieces.

Into your food processor, place:
The chopped spears,
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of olive oil
About 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice
3 tablespoons of hot water from the asparagus/pasta pot
A handful of fresh basil leaves (just under ¼ cup, I’d guess.)
Process until smooth.

Serve over your choice of pasta (I used linguine) and top with the reserved asparagus tips and some grated parmesan.

WARNING: Don’t make this stuff if you’re planning on getting hot and heavy with anyone. You’re ingesting about a half-pound of asparagus per serving, so it makes your pee (and thus, your nether regions) smell like a garbage dump on a hot day in July. Seriously. I’m sorry.

I served this with baked goat cheese, because goat cheese is my new obsession (take that, milk allergy!) Goat cheese usually comes in a little roll of 4 ounces. Stick the whole package in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes before you start this, it makes the slicing go much easier, as goat cheese is pretty crumbly. Carefully slice into 4 rounds and dredge each round in seasoned bread crumbs. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 425 for about 6-8 minutes. Yeah!

The concept of baked goat cheese nearly pushed Rob to the brink of a nervous breakdown, but he pushed through. Unfortunately, I didn’t freeze the goat cheese long enough and it was still a little crumbly, so that kind of sucked. But he really liked the pesto, so he gave it a rating7.5 hot dogs.

 Potato-Rosemary Soup 

Anyway.
MMMM soup. Around this time of year, I’m pretty much obsessed with soup. It’s liquid, it’s chunky, it’s WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE.

Anyway, I had made this soup a few weeks ago when Rob went out in the cold to play paintball with his coworkers (yeah– I don’t know why, either.) and then promptly forgot to write down what I put in it. So I tried to recreate it last night and paid closer attention this time around.

In a large pot, sauté the following in a bit of olive oil:
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 celery ribs, chopped (leaves and all)
1 white onion, chopped (because Rob is so afraid of big chunks of onions, I always puree them before I put them in soup or sauce. It’s actually pretty nice, except that when you go to sauté pureed onion, it will burn your eyes like you wouldn’t believe. Seriously, do NOT lean over that pot.)

Sauté these all for a few minutes until the celery seems tender. Add to this two cans of vegetable broth and 12 small red potatoes, quartered (this is about 2 pounds, I’d guess.)
Cover and let boil, then cook about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Once the potatoes are cooked to your liking, take out about 10 of the quartered potato pieces and set them aside. To the soup, stir in a few glugs of balf-and-half (I never said this was fat free, did I?) until the soup begins to turn white/light brown. Ew! It tastes better than it sounds, I promise.

Working in batches if you’re me, or all at once if you’re an awesome person that owns a big food processor, puree the soup until it is a thick consistency. Return to pot and add salt and pepper generously. Simmer for a bit, and add more half-and-half if you want it to be a lighter color, a bit of water for a thinner soup, etc.

Sprinkle the potato pieces you left out with some salt and cut them into smaller chunks. You could either put them back in the soup now, or divide them among the bowls once it’s been served.

Chop a few sprigs worth of rosemary very finely and add it to the soup. I find that rosemary flavor gets weak very quickly when cooked in soup, but if you don’t cook it long enough, it’ll be overbearing. Just keep tasting, you’ll know when it’s ready.

Ladle into bowls and add the remaining potatoes, if you didn’t before. Garnish with a sprig of rosemary (come on, like you’re ever gonna use all the rosemary that comes in that package) and eat.

This soup is awesome with stale-ish bread, oyster crackers, and watching the X-Files on DVD in bed with your loved one. Um, not that that’s what we do. We’re exciting and fun, I swear!

Rob gave it 8 hot dogs. Awesome!

So this past weekend was my good friend Liz’s 20-somethingth birthday, for which she hosted a dinner party at her house and enlisted my help. Amongst several other dishes, including spinach dip, a lasagna and a cheese platter that the kind people at Whole Foods put together so we didn’t even have to, we also made a few other things.

Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage-Cream Sauce
The pumpkin ravioli was a recipe Liz found in a Rachael Ray magazine her roommate bought.

1 cup canned pure pumpkin puree
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese, plus shaved parmesan for serving
1 large egg
Salt and pepper
32 wonton wrappers

1. In a medium bowl, mash together the pumpkin, cream cheese, parmesan, egg and 2 pinches each salt and pepper.
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Spoon a tablespoon of the pumpkin-cream cheese filling into the center of 16 wonton wrappers, brush the edges with water, top with the remaining 16 wrappers and press to seal, gently squeezing out the air. Arrange in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet.
3. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
4. Working in 3 batches, cook the ravioli in the boiling water until they float to the surface, about 3 minutes.

Surprisingly, we had very little trouble with this. Only one or two of the wontons burst, and only because the second you dropped them in the boiling water, they sank to the bottom and stuck immediately. The key seemed to be moving them around in the water constantly, especially in the first minute.

The Rachael Ray sauce was just butter and pumpkin seeds, so we decided to make a sage-cream sauce. Melt 2 tablespoons of a butter in a small saucepan until foamy. Add one chopped shallot and 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh sage, cook about 5 minutes. Add two cups of heavy cream (aw yeah) and three fresh sage sprigs, and simmer about 15 minutes or until sauce is reduced by half. Remove the sprigs of sage and serve over pasta.

The only things we decided we would change about this dish was that next time, instead of using two wontons to make a big ravioli, we would use the wrapping directions on the back of the wonton package and call em tortellini. Taste-wise, they were great, but the look of all the noodles was a bit weird. Also, people began to arrive as the sauce was still simmering, so I think I took it off the stove a little too soon and it was a bit runny. Oh well, lesson learned.

Sorry the picture is a little out of focus–Rob wasn’t there to take it.

4-Layer Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Filling and White Chocolate Ganache

The cake recipe came from Paula Deen:

2 cups sugar
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 ounces red food coloring
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter, beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition. Mix cocoa and food coloring together and then add to sugar mixture; mix well. Sift together flour and salt. Add flour mixture to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Blend in vanilla. In a small bowl, combine baking soda and vinegar and add to mixture. Pour batter into 3 (8-inch) round greased and floured pans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from heat and cool completely before frosting.

Well, that was the recipe for three 8-inch cakes. I increased it by half to make four 9-inch cakes. Why? I don’t know. I really don’t.

The cream cheese frosting between each layer is just 8oz cream cheese, softened, mixed with half a stick of butter, softened, 1 tsp of vanilla and a 16oz package of powdered sugar, added in increments. Simple enough.

The white chocolate ganache was 13 ounces of Ghirardelli white chocolate, chopped into pieces. Over this, pour 1/2 cup of heavy cream that has been brought to the boiling point but not quite boiled. Now stir like hell until the chocolate melts and you have a goopy syrup. Pour over the top of the cake.

I should probably have made more ganache, as you can see it didn’t quite make it the whole way down the cake, because the cake was like two feet tall. The red stuff on top is just the extra cream cheese frosting, thinned out with a little cream and tinted with red food coloring. It looks orange in the photo, but I promise it was red. The top is garnished with the leftover white chocolate pieces. This cake made people’s bellies hurt, so…mission accomplished!!

Wahoo (Fish) Tacos with Lime-Garlic-Cilantro Crema

So, in an effort to use up more of the aforementioned wahoo, I decided to make tacos. Now, when I say, “Let’s have tacos for dinner,” Rob thinks Taco Bell. That’s not what I had in mind. Traditional Mexican cooking does not include melted orange gunk, and I wasn’t about to cook up a pan of Grade D ground beef. Words that Rob never wants to hear in reference to what he’s eating: lime-garlic-cilantro crema. Oh well. It was good! This was also adapted from a Cooking Light recipe.

I cut the fish into fillets, which is one of the most disgusting tasks ever. I’d rather scoop the litter box with my bare hands. Into the raw fish, I rubbed a mixture of spices. The ratio was probably something like 1 part cumin, 1 part coriander, 1 part chili powder, ½ part garlic powder, ¼ part crushed red pepper and just a few shakes/grinds of salt and pepper. You could definitely up the spice factor on this with more red pepper. The fish was baked at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes, until it flaked easily with a fork (the best way to tell when most kinds of fish are done.) Into a bowl went the cooked fish, and I broke it up into bite-size chunks with a fork.

Split the fish between some warmed tortillas. I stupidly bought the fajita kind, but you should get the smallest kind possible. Add some shredded romaine (shred it yourself instead of buying the pre-shredded kind, it tastes so much crisper) on top of each and top with lime-garlic-cilantro crema. For this, mix equal parts sour cream and mayonnaise (Mayonnaise freaks me out a bit, but I happened to have some Veganaisse around, and it worked fine) and then equal parts of thinly sliced green onions and chopped cilantro. Add garlic, as much as you’d like, along with a few big squeezes of lime juice and, even more importantly, some grated lime rind. Mix it up and adjust it to taste.

In the pictures, you can’t really see the crema too well, but that’s because I got the world’s largest tortillas and by the time they were done, I was ready to just devour them, so we only got one picture before I had a taco in my mouth.

I served this with a corn and black bean salsa/salad, which was tossed with cilantro, lime juice, olive oil and a bit of salt.

I liked this one a lot— you had to tear a bunch of the tortilla off in order to get at the good stuff inside, but I thought the tanginess of the crema was a nice compliment to the slightly spicy fish.

Rob was “pleasantly surprised,” which is pretty much the best compliment you can hope to get when feeding him something he’s never tried before. He gave the tacos 8 hot dogs, and the salsa 6 (because he really only seems to like liquid-y salsas whereas I am more of a chunky salsa kind of girl), so we’ll even it out to 7.

You know what the worst part is? Right after I made this and effectively finished the wahoo, we went to visit Rob’s family, at which point his stepmother sent us home with another 10 pound bag of it. And a 10 pound bag of mahi-mahi. Looks like I need to come up with some good fish recipes.

Got any you’d like to submit?
Send ‘em to food@thefoodsex.com