Caramelized Onion Dip

After making dye from red onion skins, I had about 12 onions that needed to be used soon-ish.  I sliced them all fairly thin (with my handy mandoline slicer) and made a giant batch of caramelized onions.  I've been using them in all kinds of things - on toast, in omelets, in soup, and so on.  Since I have all these pre-cooked onions on hand I was looking for another way to use them up, and decided to modify my artichoke dip recipe for caramelized onions.

Recipe:

For the caramelized onions
1-2 tablespoons butter
2-3 onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup white wine
Salt and pepper

For the dip
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
Herbs & spices (I used sage and smoked paprika)
Chives or green onions

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the onions and season with salt and pepper.  Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are golden brown.  Add wine and cook, stirring frequently for another 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese on medium speed for 1 minute.  Add sour cream, mayonnaise, and seasoning, and mix thoroughly.  Stir in the caramelized onions and all of the juices into the cream cheese mixture.  Add more salt and pepper, if needed.

Place the dip in a serving bowl, garnish with chopped chives or green onions, and refrigerate.  Serve with pita chips, potato chips, veggies, etc.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip

I actually made this dip awhile ago, and I've been struggling with what to say about it, because I really have mixed feelings - more on that later.

Recipe:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1/4 cup brown sugar

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

3/4 cup confectioners sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Add the brown sugar and stir until it dissolves.  Continue stirring over heat until the mixture just starts to boil.  Stir in vanilla and remove from heat.

Beat the cream cheese, add the powdered sugar and mix until combined.  Turn mixer to low speed and stir in the butter and brown sugar mixture.  Add salt and mix until well combined.  Stir in the chocolate chips.

Before serving, garnish with additional chocolate chips.  Serve with Nilla wafers, animal crackers, or graham crackers.

Now, as I said, I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, it went together very quickly, tastes good, and was quite popular.  On the other hand, I've been off sugar for awhile, and to me it was just overwhelmingly, tooth-achingly sugary after about two bites.  And this was after I cut the sugar down from the original recipe.  I also felt guilty about making something so obviously unhealthy since I've gotten into better eating habits.

So I guess if you're used to mass quantities of sugar, go for it.  If you're not, make it for your friends and have one or two bites.

Cheeseburger Eggsplosion

I saw this the other day over on Serious Eats, and it was just about the best thing I'd ever seen.

I love egg-in-a-basket, and I love burgers, plus I haven't been eating meat for lent (and it hasn't swayed me to the vegetarian side, the last few days I've practically started drooling at the sight of meat).  So, this seemed like the perfect thing to break the fast with.

I'm not going to reiterate the recipe here, since it's pretty straightforward, and if you haven't been to Serious Eats, you should remedy that.  But, here's my pictures:

An ordinary cheeseburger?

Hardly!  There's an egg fried into the center of the patty, and how fantastic is that?  It's pretty fantastic.

Open Faced Cheese Cakes

So, this is what I did with my homemade cheese.  This recipe is from my family's Hungarian cookbook.

Recipe:

1/2 lb. (2 sticks) Butter
2 (8 oz.) packages Cream Cheese
2 cups Flour
2 tablespoons Sugar
2 teaspoons Baking Powder

Cream together butter and cream cheese, add remaining ingredients.  Roll out dough about 1/4 inch thick, cut out rounds, top with filling.  Bake for about 20 minutes at 350° until lightly browned.

Filling:

1 cup dry Cottage Cheese
2 Egg Yolks
1 tablespoon Butter, melted
1/2 cup Sugar
1 tablespoon Lemon zest
2 teaspoons Vanilla

Mix together all ingredients and place a spoonful on each round of dough.

These are the ones I made with my cheese.

 These are made with regular cottage cheese.  Other than a slight difference in texture, the taste was basically the same.

These aren't very sweet, but they're very rich.  And addictive!

Cheese

That's right, I made cheese.

This wasn't exactly planned.  I opened my milk yesterday and found that it was well on it's way to being curds and whey.  Now, this was almost a full half gallon of organic milk, less than a week old, and only one day past the sell by date.  So I was positively cringing at the idea of tossing it.

So, I consulted the internet and gave it a whirl, figuring that if nothing else, I'd be entertained for the morning.


Step 1: Curds and Whey


I heated the milk, which was chunky to begin with, until it separated completely.  Appetizing, I know.

Curds and Whey

Straining

Step 2: Straining

I got one of my mixing bowls, put the colander in it, lined the colander with cheesecloth, and secured the cheesecloth with clothes pins (because, apparently, I'm the kind of person who has cheesecloth and clothespins on hand).  Then, I poured the curds and whey into the cheesecloth, where the whey drained from the curds.

I let this sit for about an hour, so the whey could drain.

Step 3: Whatever You Call This

Whatever You Call This

Basically, I gathered up the edges of the cheesecloth and tied it around a wooden spoon and let it sit for about 2 hours.  Then when it wasn't dripping whey anymore...

Step 4: Unveiling

Voila!

Voila!  Fresh cheese.  The texture is kind of like dry ricotta.  It's very mild and smells amazing, but has an acidic whey aftertaste that I find unpleasant.  It's not great for eating on it's own, but just fine for cooking!

The half gallon of milk ended up making about 1 cup of cheese, which I used to make Hungarian Open Faced Cheese Cakes.

Spaghetti Pie

This is such a fun dish to make, and super easy.

Recipe:
8 oz. Spaghetti
3 tablespoons Butter
2 Eggs
1/3 cup shredded Parmesan Cheese
1 cup Ricotta Cheese
1 jar Spaghetti Sauce
1 1/2 cups Mozzarella Cheese, shredded

Cook spaghetti until almost done, drain and stir butter into hot pasta, set aside.
While pasta is cooling, butter a 9 inch pie pan.  Heat oven to 350.
Beat eggs with parmesan cheese.  Stir into cooked pasta.  Transfer pasta to pie pan and arrange into a crust.  Spread ricotta cheese into the center of the spaghetti crust.  (At this point you can add spinach, cooked sausage or ground beef, or anything else to the pie) Top with spaghetti sauce.
Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
Top with shredded mozzarella cheese and bake an additional 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted.
Cool 5 minutes and serve.

This is so delicious, the flavor is like lasagna, but much easier to make.  I like to add spinach to mine.  When I have fresh spinach, I just steam it for a few minutes to wilt it, and then pat it dry before putting it on top of the ricotta.

Spaghetti pie is one of my favorite comfort foods.  Mmmmm...