Gorgonzola, Pear and Walnut Pizza

Time for the Autumn shift in food.  Apples, pears, butternut squash, pumpkin.  Oh, I love it.  I love everything about Fall.  Putting on a sweatshirt, curling up with a blanket.  Swoon.  It's my favorite time of year. 

Today, I made some little pizza's and had some Raging Bitch Beer.  Believe me, yesterday it was totally apropo. It did not calm me down in the least.  But, hey, me and my hormones is not what this post is about. Its about food.

Yesterday, I had this beer with some roasted cauliflower that had this amazing Maple Dill Dressing.  Sadly, I can not give you this recipe.  It was developed by a chef at a lodge where I go for retreat.  Her and the lodge are seeking a patent at this time.  I have to tell you, this stuff rocks. 

Anyway Raging Bitch beer was everything she promised to be.  She's a very bitter woman.  My taste buds were not happy about it.  I drank half of it and put it away for another day.

So, today when I made my Gorgonzola, Pear, Walnut Pizza, I decided to give her a try again.  With the bold flavors of my pizza, it paired so nicely.  I really enjoyed the Raging Bitch tonight.  And I tell you, it was much calmer around here.

I made two small pizza's. After making my little round, I added two tablespoons of gorgonzola and half of a pear and a tablespoon of chopped walnuts.

Baked at 475F for about ten minutes.

Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper, Kosher salt and arugula.  

A-mazing!

Cube Steak and Porter

Wanted to share with you this cube steak recipe and tell you about this great bbq sauce.  I am going to share a secret with you about me and meat.  When I first lived on my own, I really had no idea how to cook different kinds of meat.  If I bought a cut of beef I would invariably screw it up and it would come tasting like nothing and being really chewy or downright unpalatable.  That is when I really started learning how to cook.  I turned to recipes.  I figured recipes would have the answer about how to cook things because they promised to deliver this wonderful end product in their recipe.  So that is really when I learned to cook.  Have I made steak since then? Never.  Yes, never because I knew I would kill it. Okay I made hanger steak once... that was not a good idea.

Fast forward to today.  I bought some cube steak.  I was afraid of cube steak.  My Mother cooked it a lot when we were young so I was familiar with it.  But no, I had never cooked it.  ABout a month ago I made some.  I watched  afew You Tube videos on how to make it.  One was this teriyaki style- cooked for 30 minutes.  And the other was onions, garlic and bay leaf cooked for 30 minutes.  Both very flavorful I must say.  But I wasnt, like, wowed by them.

Monday, I decided to do from memory what my Mom did.  Flour those cuts of beef and fry them on high heat, fast, like, really fast. How did it go.  Swoon.  Why have I waited so long!

Cube Steak

1.  If you don't buy it pounded, pound the heck out of some round steaks.

2.  In a shallow bowl, mix flour with salt and lots of pepper.

3.  Place steaks in bowl and generously cover with flour.  Alternately, if you are gluten free, corn starch or arrowroot powder works really well too!

4.  Heat a skillet on medium high heat until a drop of oil dances on it.  Add butter and swirl it around the pan.  Add in steaks and keep the heat like that.  Cook until the top has turned a different color- kinda gray brown and you can see the sides are cooked.  Turn and heat for about 2 minutes.  Done!

5.  Flavor with your favorite barbeque* sauce.  Enjoy.

Hint, don't crowd the pan because you want the heat to get around it adequately.


I tried a Porter.  I am so new to the wide world of beer I don't even know the difference between a porter, ale, lager, etc. If you want to learn more about what is out there, check out this link here.  http://www.craftbeer.com/beer-styles  I will tell you about this beer.  It went really well with the cube steak and heavily spiced cabbage, and corn salad that I ate for dinner.  I don't think I would like it, say, kicking back and hanging out with just a beer.  Or even with a handful of popcorn.  It has strong flavor and for me personally I like it with something. 

*The amazing barbeque sauce that I used here (and you can kind of see it in the background of the beer photo) is called Chef Lermans, Smoldering Chipotle Hot Sauce.  It can be found here in the Southern Tier/ The Finger Lakes region of NY or you can order it through the link. 

The Blues

 
I haven't been cooking or baking much lately.  We have been moving my parents into their new abode.  They are in their 80's and needed to downsize and be on one floor.  So my awesome brother and his awesome wife came up from TN and that is what we have been doing all week- moving them in. 

They have lived in that house for 52 years.  That is a LONG time.  I never knew any other place growing up.  Some people may find it sad, the move and the loss of that house.  I have not frankly. I am more of a "anywhere you hang your hat" kind of gal. The only time it hit me as sad was when we were sitting eating lunch at the table, on paper plates because nearly everything was gone from the kitchen, at that point.  My Mother said, "This is our last meal here at this table."  I got kind of teary eyed then.  All those memories locked up in a table. 

That table was where we gathered every day.  No matter what.  We always ate dinner together.  It was where I crafted. It was where we met to discuss pivotal life events. Its where we gathered with company.  Where we played board games and got silly.  Its where my parents piled a bunch of booze on the table when I was 16 and said, "so your curious about alcohol, go ahead, have at it. Under their watchful eye me and my friend set out to get drunk. (BTW, that was pretty much it for me by the way of alcohol in my teens.)  Other than wine on special occasions.  Everything happened around that table.

We managed some time to go and pick blueberries at our favorite spot.  We go pick at this place every year - for many years.  It started about 9 years ago.  I found the place when I lived in Lockport, NY.  I took my daughter there and at 3 she picked blueberries.  This made me incredibly happy.  My parents always taught me about good food.  Lots of stories around blueberries as a matter of fact.  I use to pick wild blueberries with my parents in the woods of Pennsylvania. They were very tasty blueberries.  My father use to pick blueberries when he was a kid in those same places during the 40's and sell them by the pint along the highway.  He would get paid 10 cents for those pints.  If they couldn't sell all of them, he and his brothers would sell them to a man called Scoblick.  He had some sort of processing center to can the blueberries.  He would pay them 8 cents.  So, obviously, they preferred to sell them along this highway where motorist were happy to pay them 10 cents for some fresh blueberries.

It was totally apropo that I found this blueberry craft beer for my dinner the other day.  It was delicious.  Kind of smacked a little of a wine cooler without all the sweetness of a wine cooler.  I loved it! 

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Love mushrooms.  Do you?  Do you know how good they are for you?  I remember a time when professional health care people thought there was no benefit to mushrooms.  Nothing really to speak of nutritionally in mushrooms.  Ah, but they just didn't even know yet.  The one great thing about mushrooms is that they can serve as highlighters for cancer cells.  They kind of tag cancer cells so that the body can identify the cancer cells and attack them.  They say one mushroom a day is enough to do this task.  Pretty efficient, huh?  And it doesn't matter whether you eat them fresh, dried or cooked.  Awesome.  So get a little mushroom in your diet.

This certainly is one delicious way to do it. This mushroom cream over pasta.  We loved it.  Even my picky girl said she would eat.  She said of course she would have to pick out the little bits of mushroom in there.  Goodness, gracious.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

6 ounces mushrooms
3/4 cup onion, minced fine
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
4 ounces of light beer
1 cup milk, your preference, I used a combination of 2% and half and half
1/2 cup pecorino Romano or Parmesan
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper
1 pound cooked pasta

In a large deep frying pan, saute onions and mushroom in butter until tender.  Add chopped garlic, cook one minute more.  Add in beer and then cream.  Sprinkle flour over mixture and then stir in until absorbed. Toss in cooked pasta.

I like to time it so my pasta finishes about the same time. I ladle (with a slotted spoon) the pasta right into the frying pan. No matter if some of the water gets in there. A little bit anyhow. Once completely tossed, pour into serving bowl and sprinkle with parmesan and  parsley .