Herbed Ricotta Bruschettas

I made cheese!

Between this homemade ricotta (Barefoot Contessa How Easy is That?) and the peach ice cream earlier this week, I’m feeling like a regular dairy maid.  I didn’t have any chives, so I used fresh parsley instead.

 

Spinach Gratin

Barefoot Contessa Parties!

Chive Risotto Cakes

I’m afraid that whatever I write here will not do this recipe (Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics) its due.  This is quite possibly my new favorite food.  It’s the perfect combination of creamy and crispy, tangy and salty, gooey and firm.  Oh my.  It’s nice to have a victory after a few disappointments, and I was even afraid to try these because I had had such a rash of mediocre meals lately.  The ingredients sat in our refrigerator for at least a week before I was brave enough to try them.  Then, there was the challenge of what to pair with them for dinner.  I ended up making them with vegetable soup (coming soon), but soon found out that they’d be delicious with anything, or alone.  Or for dessert.  Or breakfast, for that matter.  I’ll stop now, so you can go make these yourself.

Kiss my Grits

I never cared much for grits until I met my sweet Southern husband.  We still don’t have them in our regular rotation, but they’re a nice change of pace every once in a while, and they’re certainly easier to make than anything that involves peeling potatoes.  These Creamy Cheddar Grits (Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics) paired nicely with the French Country Omelet (also from Back to Basics).  For the omelet, I only have a 12″ oven-safe pan, and the recipe called for a 10″ pan.  I just added an extra egg and a dash of extra milk, and I shared my portion with the toddler on my lap.  The grits must have passed muster, because my husband had seconds for dessert.

Penne with Five Cheeses

Really, this became Penne with Four Cheeses, because I didn’t want to add the Gorgonzola, so I just doubled up on the fresh mozzarella.  Many of you may be questioning my Wisconsin upbringing, given my pickiness about cheese.  Let’s just say that I know what I like, and as long as I have to eat this for dinner, too, I might as well make what I like, right?  The Barefoot Contessa herself claims this to be a versatile recipe, with some forgiveness when it comes to the varieties of cheese and their amounts.  If I had wanted to stay true to the title of the recipe, I could have added some freshly shredded parmesan and called it a day.  But here I am, telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  While we’re on the truth subject, you’ll see that I didn’t divide the pasta into six individual serving dishes.  Because I don’t have six individual serving dishes, and besides, what if I want to eat 1/4 of the whole dish all by myself in one sitting?  Hmm?  What then?

As it was, my son crawled up into my lap five minutes into the meal and relieved me of most of my portion – it was that good.

I also doubled the amount of tomatoes to keep it from drying out, and because of the larger dish size, I reduced the oven temp to 450 and cooked the whole thing for about 25 minutes – long enough for the cheeses to melt and the sauce to become bubbly.  I thought that the finished product might be somewhat bland, given the general lack of seasoning in the sauce, but the absence of garlic and other spices just let the cheese do its lovely job of tasting great.

Barefoot Contessa Family Style, p. 89

Potato Basil Frittata

I made a lot of frittatas during the CSA season as a way to use up vegetables at the end of the week.  Broccoli was added to bacon and cheddar, and swiss chard was excellent with sausage.  This particular frittata used some of our CSA potatoes, and it was hearty enough to serve for dinner, even though it’s probably more traditionally served at breakfast.  With a ton of cheese and plenty of eggs, we didn’t miss eating meat for dinner the night we had this.

The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, p. 182

The Five Buck Cluck

Every Friday, one of our local grocery stores sells rotisserie chickens for five dollars, and they call it the Five Buck Cluck.  This past summer, we’ve started a tradition of buying a chicken to go with some of our CSA vegetables, which arrive on Thursday evenings.  The Barefoot Contessa roasted chicken will be featured here shortly, but for now, it’s so nice to have that one predictable piece of the meal when we’re experimenting with new ingredients and recipes with all of these vegetables.  The bonus:  our toddler eats rotisserie chicken like it’s candy.  Also, we don’t have to turn on the oven on a hot summer night.  One recent Friday, the Five Buck Cluck was accompanied by Parmesan-Roasted Cauliflower (Barefoot Contessa at Home, p. 146) and String Beans with Shallots (Barefoot Contessa Family Style, p. 115).

Cauliflower has never been a favorite at our house, but we’ve been eating a lot of it this summer because of its ubiquitousness in our CSA boxes.  I love broccoli, but I could never get all that excited about cauliflower, probably because I’d only ever had it steamed or raw.  I’d tolerate it, but I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed it.  I should have known that roasting it would change my opinion, and adding cheese would seal the deal.  I’m not sure I’d ever roasted a vegetable until I read The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, but it has definitely broadened my horizons.  This recipe will definitely be repeated at our house, and we might actually look forward to the next head of cauliflower that comes in the door.

Next up:  string beans with shallots.  Unlike cauliflower, I could eat string beans raw, steamed, or roasted.  I could eat them plain or covered in goo.  I prefer them to be slightly crunchy and not mushy, but I’ve been known to eat my share of overcooked beans, too.  This recipe is a great mixture:  crispy green beans with a tasty shallot topping.  Shallots are a wonderful mix of onions and garlic, and we’ve gotten a great plenty of them in our CSA boxes this summer.  The beans, which started out purple, steamed into a nice green color, just until they were lightly cooked.  My grandparents used to grow purple beans in their garden, and I haven’t seen any beans that color since then until they started showing up in our CSA boxes this summer.  To me, they taste the same as ordinary green beans, but it’s so fun to watch them change color.  The crispy shallots added a nice flavor and texture to the beans, and they even helped my born-and-raised-in-North-Carolina husband tolerate the crispness of the beans, which he usually prefers to be a lot less al dente.