mozzarella cheese

In Skillets: Cheesy Sage Baked Rice

April 22, 2013 | 17 Comments

Well look-uh here, finishing up Skillet Week right on Earth Day… it’s almost like someone, you know, got their planning on!

I do find my skillet to be the most environmentally responsible tool that I have in my kitchen, mainly because it will last my lifetime and hopefully that of my cookin’ babies.

It also takes nothing more than natural oil and a clean, reusable cloth to maintain, and doesn’t emit anything other than delicious foodstuffs, unlike the toxic fumes that can be a byproduct of cooking with certain types of nonstick pots and pans.

So what better way to celebrate Earth Day tonight than by preparing a succulent cheese and rice casserole in your eco-friendly cast iron skillet? (Answer: there isn’t one.)

Filed Under: Side Dishes Tagged With: baked rice casserole, cheddar cheese, garlic, green onion, Monterey Jack cheese, mozzarella cheese, Oaxaca cheese, recipe, sage, savory

Butternut Chorizo Pizza

October 30, 2012 | 17 Comments

It has been my experience that being married to an Italian person requires a significant amount of time spent discussing pizza.

Prior to meeting A., I mistakenly believed that pizza was just the product of a very simple equation:

dough + sauce + cheese = pizza (The End.)

Oh, sweet mother of a pizzaiolo, how wrong I was.

First, you’ve got your Crustology: thin, thicker, thickest and baked in a pan, crispy, bubbled, or flavored (sacrilege!).

And the crust really can make or break a pie: it’s the vehicle for your goodness so it needs to be strong enough to travel well. But it can’t be so assertive as to steal the spotlight away from the toppings, right? Sì, signora.

Filed Under: Main Courses Tagged With: butternut squash, carrot, chorizo sausage, garlic, leek, mozzarella cheese, Oaxaca cheese, pizza, recipe, savory

Hatch Chile Rice Casserole

August 17, 2012 | 23 Comments

It’s Friday! It’s Friday!

Let’s talk current obsessions!

First I’ll tell you mine! Then you tell me yours! And at some point I’ll stop using exclamation marks!

Promise!

Filed Under: Side Dishes Tagged With: casserole, cumin, Hatch chile, Monterey Jack cheese, mozzarella cheese, Oaxaca cheese, recipe, red onion, rice, savory

Roasting Chiles & A Lasagna

May 8, 2012 | 17 Comments

We roast a lot of chiles in this kitchen: it just seems like the right thing to do. A perfectly roasted chile can add depth of flavor to just about any dish, with the bonus being the intense, earthy aroma that will permeate the air and get your salivary glands going in all the right ways.

Hundreds of chiles later I’ve found that there are two key elements to successful roasting. The first is the char factor.

Newbie chile roasters are most often afraid of the over-scorch and, as a result, they shy away from thoroughly and evenly charring the outside of the chile pepper.

The truth is that the more blackened a chile’s skin is, the easier it will be to peel and prepare. You’re aiming for a solidly charred chile from stem to stern, so gird your loins and fear not the char.

The second key step in roasting a chile is the skin-loosening phase: a charred chile must be allowed to sweat for long enough that the scorched skin softens and becomes loose enough to almost slip off of the chile.

I personally accomplish this by carefully placing my charred chiles in a Ziploc bag, which I then seal tightly, opening only to insert additional chiles for sweating.

Again, it’s necessary to wait long enough that the skins become truly loose – your chiles won’t look like much more than soggy, sweaty messes by the time they’re ready. But appearances aren’t everything, right?