This is a recipe that I have been meaning to make for over a year. Better late than never, right! I was introduced to this recipe in an online food styling class as a possible dish to try to style. I thought it sounded delicious and extremely easy at the time, yet somehow I never got around to making it until now. I have been caught in a rut of making my same old standby recipes, which is why the blog has been pretty stagnant recently. In an effort to switch up my own dinner routine and get something fresh online, I decided to finally try this perfect fall soup. It gets an A+ in terms of quick preparation and healthfulness. Although it was good when made exactly as the recipe said, I have to admit that I thought it needed quite a bit more seasoning, so feel free to go heavy on the salt and pepper. I'm a big fan of toppings on soup to add both flavor and texture, so I decided to experiment with adding some additional fresh sage and some prosciutto (although this makes the soup not quite as healthy as originally intended). I cut the prosciutto and sage leaves into thin strips and sauteed them over high heat in a little olive oil until crispy. I topped each bowl of soup with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese and then the crunchy sage and prosciutto. A drizzle of white truffle oil or good extra virgin olive oil is a nice finishing touch. I also made some simple dipping toasts by brushing thin slices of wheat bread with olive oil and then toasting them with some additional grated parmesan. This soup is great as an appetizer, or main course for lunch or dinner. It can be pureed in advance and kept in the fridge until you are ready to heat and serve it. It's convenient that it can be made entirely with items from your pantry. I highly suggest trying my topping suggestions to jazz it up or else experiment with a little gruyere cheese, croutons, or a dollop of greek yogurt or creme fraiche.

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I love pizza. Who doesn't? Instead of ordering greasy take out we often prefer to make our own pies with a whole wheat crust. These days you can find whole wheat dough in the refrigerated section of most grocery stores which you would think is a healthier option except that some varieties still use trans fats. Trader Joe's dough is trans fat free, Stop & Shop and Shaws are not. Sometimes I am too lazy to even deal with raw dough and instead just want to whip up a pizza on a ready made crust. My favorite new option is to make pizza using whole-grain Naan flat bread that you can find packaged in twos in the deli section of most major super markets. Naan is a traditional Indian leavened flat bread that is similar to pita bread. I use the International Fabulous Flats brand. These are the perfect size to make 2 individual pizzas. They also make great appetizers when cut in bite sized pieces. I like to make my crust extra crisp so I put the Naan directly onto the oven rack of a hot 400 degree oven for about 5-7 minutes (make sure you watch it closely). I pull out the flat bread and put it on a baking rack on top of a baking sheet. I add the toppings and then put the pizza back in the oven on broil for about 5 more minutes or until the cheese is melted and golden brown. The baking rack keeps the hot air flowing under the pizza which keeps it crisp. This is a super simple and fast method to make pizza during the week. If you want to get a little more creative you can throw these pizzas on the grill instead of in the oven. The Naan freezes and defrosts really well so you can stock up at the store and just pop them in the freezer until you want to use them. I also freeze bags of pre shredded mozzarella and then just pull out what I need the night I make my pizza. This way if you keep jars of sauce in the pantry you can create a simple home baked pizza any night of the week.

Last night I cracked open my copy of Giada de Laurentiis' cookbook, New Italian Favorites, that had been on my shelf, untouched, for well over a year. I was looking for a new simple, healthy and tasty fish recipe and found quite a few to choose from. Since the local fish market had some good looking wild salmon I decided to try her recipe for salmon over a purée of peas, fresh mint and parmesan. Giada recommends creating a broth of lemon, shallot and chicken broth to go along with the fish and the peas but I decided to forgo it as it seemed like extra work for not much added flavor. She also serves her purée at room temperature which I tried and was not thrilled with so I decided to serve it heated. I have made a similar pea purée in the past that I have served as a dip or spread on crostini. This version with parmesan is absolutely delicious and would also be an excellent accompaniment to grilled white fish, chicken or even tossed with pasta. It is a very satisfying side dish that is a great alternative to a starch.

Now that my baby is 12 weeks old and slightly more predictable, I am finally able to get back into the kitchen at dinner time. Since he goes to bed around 7pm, I am not able to start preparations until then (unless I am super organized early in the day!) so my recent dinners have been pretty basic and need to be able to be thrown together rather quickly so we aren't eating at midnight. We wouldn't want to waste any precious time that could be spent catching up on sleep! I have become very focused on creating one dish dinners, such as this whole wheat couscous with veggies and chicken. I used zucchini, squash and red onions as the vegetables but you could use any variety of produce that suits your taste. You can even omit the chicken and serve this as a meat free side dish. If using chicken, I recommend buying a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and taking the meat off the bones as soon as you get home (I discard the skin too), then you have cooked chicken all ready to throw into your meal. I did use "pearl" or Israeli couscous instead of the regular variety because I find it more substantial for a main meal. This variety of couscous can be found in most Whole Foods, I use a brand called Rice Select that comes in a plastic container. A key part of this recipe is cooking the couscous in chicken or vegetable stock to really boost the flavor of an ingredient that can be somewhat bland when cooked in water.

Corn Meal Crusted Soft Shell Crabs

(We used regular milk instead of buttermilk for this recipe with success)

Sauteed Soft Shell Crabs with Garlic and Butter

(We substituted shallots for garlic for a mellower flavor)

More chocolate. I know, it's been a bit of an obsession lately. I have been trying to use up some pantry items recently and came across a few cans of sweetened condensed milk that I bought over a year ago when I was going to try to make dulce de leche, the popular Latin and South American caramel. So I saw these cans sitting there, gathering dust, and remembered a recipe I had seen in one of my favorite foodie books, The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz. This book is part memoir, part cookbook and entirely hysterical so I suggest seeking it out. For those of you who are not familiar with him, David was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse for many years before packing up and moving to Paris where he writes an amazing blog and many highly acclaimed cookbooks. Many of his pastries are a little out of my comfort zone in terms of difficulty, but this dulce de leche brownie recipe seemed straightforward enough for me to give it a shot. I followed his recipe almost exactly, only substituting 77% Dagoba cacao chocolate bars for the bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, and using the entire 14 oz of dulce de leche instead of just 1 cup. These are amazing served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

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Recipe courtesy of Vegetarian Times, April 2009 issue

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It seems as though winter has briefly returned to Boston this weekend which has put me in the mood to bake. I find it too tempting to have sweets lying around, because I can't stop eating them like the ricotta cookies from earlier in the week, so I wanted to find as guilt free a recipe as possible to try out. For some reason blueberry muffins were on my mind, so I was happy to find a healthy recipe from the Food Network's Ellie Krieger, who is a nutritionist as well as a TV personality and cook. Her recipe lightened up the muffins by using applesauce and low-fat buttermilk and only a quarter cup of oil. Recently I have been determined to use up ingredients I have on hand, so I decided to forgo buying buttermilk by creating my own which is as simple as adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to 1 cup of milk. Just let the mixture sit for about 5 minutes until it curdles and then use what you need. I also realized I only had a half cup of applesauce instead of a full cup as the recipe called for. I knew that the applesauce was really a substitute for some of the oil that normally would have been in the recipe. When I went to reach for my vegetable oil, I was dismayed to realize that I was all out and only had peanut or olive oil in the cupboard. Both of these oils could have imparted a not so favorable flavor, so I was back to the drawing board to find a substitution (yes I could have gone to the store but it was raining and cold and I was lazy). I decided to use non-fat vanilla yogurt in place of both the 1/4 cup of oil and the 1/2 cup of applesauce I was missing. Would it work? I know that yogurt is often substituted for fat to make baked goods healthier, I was just a little hesitant about the fact that now I had no oil in the recipe at all and was using 2 different methods of swapping out fat. The batter came together beautifully and in no time at all. I watched the muffins rather cautiously as they baked as I was expecting a disaster but instead they rose normally and became perfectly golden. I could barely wait to try one so I dug in while they were still hot out of the oven. They were great! Ok, I have to admit these are not the super sized, cake like, crumbly blueberry muffins that are common place at bakeries now. These are not an indulgence at all. They are a muffin that you can eat multiple times in a week without feeling like you just ate a Big Mac, which is what most muffins these days are the calorie equivalent of. You feel good after you eat these muffins. I usually give my baked goods away so I won't eat them all but this time I am keeping every last muffin for myself. 

(As a side note, if you are ever in the kitchen and realize that you are out of an ingredient and need a substitute in a pinch, check out this site - it's a life saver!)

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Adapted from Ellie Krieger's Good for You Blueberry Muffins

While I was in the waiting room at the doctors office today I came across this recipe in one of the magazines I was flipping through. I knew I had half a container of ricotta in the fridge that was left over from my last batch of turkey ricotta meatballs, so I was drawn to this recipe as a way to use it up instead of making more meatballs or a heavy pasta dish. I quickly snapped a picture of the page the recipe was on with my iphone so I could visit it later (so much easier than scribbling down all the ingredients by hand!). I was pleased to see that I had all the ingredients to make the cookies so I got right to work when I got home. These cookies are really easy to make and cook quickly too. Instead of using the basic glaze the recipe called for which just uses confectioners' sugar and milk, I decided to jazz it up a little by substituting lemon juice and zest to make a lemon glaze. I was really happy with the taste and texture of these cookies when I tried them. They are very light and subtly sweet, like a cakey sugar cookie. They reminded me a lot of the sugar plum cookies an old co-worker used to make around the holidays that I absolutely loved. The lemon glaze makes these a nice, refreshing spring treat. Now that I have eaten three in the span of 5 minutes, I am packaging up the rest to distribute to family and neighbors because these are addictive!

Cookie recipe courtesy of Chris White, Bordentown, NJ

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