Roasted Beet Salad

This salad is quick and actually very pretty.   I don't think there are many things more beautiful than the inside of a roasted beet.  Seriously, take a moment to appreciate it the next time you find yourself roasting a beet.  That's reason enough for me to make this dish again.

Serves 4-6
Ingredients:
2 large beets, washed to remove any dirt
1 cup red wine vinegar
olive oil, salt and pepper
1 red onion, sliced
1/3 cup feta cheese plus more for crumbling on top
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1 Tablespoon torn mint
more red wine vinegar (to taste)

1) Preheat your oven to 375 F.  Place the washed beets into a loaf pan and drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and then add the red wine vinegar so that there is about an inch of liquid in the pan.  Cover and seal with aluminum foil and put it in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until the beets are easily pierced with a paring knife.
2) Remove the beets from the oven and allow to cool completely or enough for you to handle them.  Meanwhile, place the red onions in some red wine vinegar or lemon juice for 15 minutes to remove the bitterness from them and then rinse them off.   If you want to save vinegar you can just soak them in ice water instead, but the vinegar gives the onions a nice flavor.
3) Wearing gloves, take some paper towels and rub the skin off of the beets.  Then cut them into cubes and place in a large bowl.
4) Add the torn mint, pine nuts, a drizzle of olive oil, crumbled feta, some of the cooking liquid, fresh red wine vinegar (to taste) salt and pepper.

5) Put into serving bowls and top with some more crumbled feta and mint.  Enjoy!

*I used mentuccia which is a wild mint plant because it grows in our yard but you can just use fresh mint leaves.

Flourless Molten Chocolate Cake (Good for Passover)

I wanted to make a Passover dessert that wouldn't taste like cardboard.  After looking through a lot of molten chocolate cake recipes, I came up with this one.  It is so so so easy to make and a definite crowd pleaser. 

Jalapeno Infused Tequila

A couple of months ago my brother ordered this amazing drink at a restaurant in the city.  It was spicy, refreshing and delicious.  I recently looked up the ingredients of said drink and found out it contained jalapeno infused tequila muddled with fresh cucumbers.  The restaurant has since closed, so I decided to recreate the tequila myself.

Cake Pops

A blog called Bakerella came up with a neat idea called "cake pops".  They are essentially a mix of cake and frosting rolled into a ball, put on a stick, and dipped in chocolate.   They have become pretty trendy and I decided to try my hand at making them.

Using a Ball Jar for it's original purpose

Ball Jars are the classic glass mason jar used for canning, but lately I see them being used for just about everything but canned goods.  People use them in place of cups, holders for candles, and I've even seen someone use them to make a thing called "pie-in-a-jar".  While these are very clever uses for the Ball Jar, I decided it was time for it to get back to its roots by making some sour orange marmalade.  There are very few ingredients, it only takes about two hours to bang out 7-8 oz. jars, and you learn how to make canned goods in the process.  Let's begin!

Everything Cookies

This cookie recipe came as a byproduct of scraps we were going to throw away at work.  We make and sell chocolate bark with nuts and berries it, but when the bark gets cut there are a lot of little pieces we can't  sell.  They were going to throw away these delicious little nuggets of cashews, almonds, and cranberries covered in chocolate.  I decided to take it home and transform this trash into treasure.  I then filled them with Mint Ice Cream that I made a couple of weeks before for a delicious gooey sandwich.

Brutti ma Buoni

I decided to make some of my favorite cookies that come from the Lazio region of Italy, but first a very brief lesson on Italy.