Hot Dishes

"The way to a man's heart..." Screw that. 

This has nothing to do with dating. I just like good food. 

These are a few of MY favorite things.

Pasta with Toasted Mizithra
This is the easiest 3 ingredient recipe in the world, and one of my all-time favorites. Grate up a block of mizithra cheese (most grocery store delis carry it) and crush a few cloves of garlic. Melt a cube of butter (yes, one whole cube. If you want to be healthy you can swap half of it for olive oil, but you really shouldn't. Butter is good.) in a large skillet. Add the garlic and nearly all of the grated cheese, reserving a small amount of mizithra to sprinkle on top at the end. Stir and saute the butter, garlic, and cheese until the butter and cheese turn a lovely toasty, nutty, caramely brown. Mix in with fresh fettucine noodles and sprinkle the untoasted cheese on top. Dig in. You won't regret it, I promise.

Seattle Seahawks Shots 

I want to go to there.

My friend T's husband just returned home from fishing in Alaska, where he was unable to watch the Super Bowl. We decided this is the perfect opportunity for us to throw another Super Bowl party.You can keep your Christmas in July - I'll take Seahawks Super Bowl in April any day. I made the above Jello shots for our first SB party, and am working to recreate them today.

Here is the recipe, courtesy of Seattle Soap Girl: http://seattlesoapgirl.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-make-seahawks-jello-shots.html. In my variation, I replace the pina colada mixer with equal parts pineapple juice and cream of coconut, and used rum instead of vodka.

The Cuban Mercy (or the Twisted Cuban?)

Crazy delicious!

Hmm. I need to put more recipes up here. Right now it just looks like I eat nothing but sandwiches and toffee. Actually, I have eaten a lot of sandwiches since being on my own. I love to cook for other people, but cooking for myself just seems needlessly messy and time-consuming. So maybe I'm mastering the art of sandwich. What of it? I can be just as creative with a sandwich as I can with other food, but sandwiches leave so much less clean-up. Perfect single gal fare. Even so, I will get around to posting some actual recipes soon.

This is my variation on a Cuban sandwich, inspired by my discovery of pretzel bread slider rolls at the Safeway bakery. If the pretzel bread looked more like a pretzel, I'd name this sandwich the Twisted Cuban, but instead I'm going to let the Cuban Mercy (or Merced Cubana) be the signature sandwich at my imaginary Havana cafe. I have eaten five Cuban Mercy sandwiches this week because they are just that good. Well, they are really small, but still...five!

• Pretzel Bread Slider Buns - I found these in a pack of eight at my Safeway bakery department. If you can't find pretzel bread, don't even bother. I mean, you could probably still make a tasty sandwich with some other bread, but you would be missing out on a whole layer of awesomeness. It wouldn't be the same sandwich. You can name that sandwich after yourself if you want.
• Mayonnaise 
• Dijon
• Honey
• Swiss cheese
• Pastrami
• Dill pickle, thinly sliced

Slice the pretzel bread slider and spread each side with mayo, dijon, and a teensy bit of honey. Smear it all together with a knife so you have a sort of honey mustard mayo thing going on. (You could probably make yourself a honey mustard mayo in advance, but that would require dirtying another dish, which kind of violates the Simplicity of Sandwich. When preparing a sandwich for one, a bowl should only be dirtied in the case of tuna or egg salad.) Add a slice of Swiss cheese and pastrami to each half. Place both halves under the broiler. Remove the sandwich as soon as the cheese begins to melt, layer the bottom half with pickle slices, assemble, and enjoy.


English Butter Toffee

Right around Thanksgiving, I begin hoarding butter. Any time I see a pound of butter for $2.50 or less, I snatch it up and throw it in the freezer. My freezer currently contains 5 pounds of butter, and I probably need more. Why? For butter toffee, of course! It is really pretty easy, and makes a delicious holiday gift. Be careful, though...it's kind of like crack. Once you give it away for free, the junkies come back begging for more. That's why you need so much butter.

I have my mom's recipe memorized, but for the past few years I've found pulling up this recipe from Cooking for Engineers puts me in the holiday spirit. It is virtually identical to Mom's, but explains the whole process in an engineer-y way that makes me giggle every year. Here's the full link: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/159/English-Toffee

When I make mine, I like to use the Nestle dark chocolate morsels - they're a little bigger than typical semi-sweet chips and melt really beautifully. I also like to spread some melted chocolate (a little bit of coconut oil helps it set up, but isn't crucial) out on the cookie sheet, sprinkle with crushed nuts, and put it in the freezer for a while before pouring the toffee out on top of it. Oh, and crushed almonds stick better than slivered almonds.


Grilled Cheese Redux

This is quite possibly the world's greatest grilled cheese sandwich. A little dijon mustard on each slice of bread, grated Tillamook white sharp cheddar, granny smith apple slices, and two strips of center cut bacon. You're welcome.