Strawberries, and Pasta, and Goat Cheese, Oh My!

I was feeling particularly feisty this morning, since the last pasta was an epic fail and I had no chance to redeem my good name until today.

And redeem it, I did.

For our first course, ladies and gentlemen, we had a Strawberry and Goat Cheese Tartin.
Oh yes, tartin.

It's the fancy french way of saying, "yummy stuff on a piece of bread."

We had some delicious wheat french bread, which was cut. On it, your put some spreadable goat cheese (soft or hard, whichever you prefer). Then, I put thinly sliced strawberries on top, with a little rasberry balsamic vinegar et voila. A delicious concoction of sweet, tart, and bready goodness.
This was more like a dessert, so if you save it for last, I wouldn't blame you.

It was very delicious.

Next, I saw this recipe in the food bible and really wanted to try it out. It was a recipe for slow- roasted tomatoes. Two problems with that: 1. What do I cook to put them in? 2. I don't have 3 hours to slow-roast tomatoes, so those suckers went in high heat for about 30 minutes and came out to perfection.

Put a little olive oil, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, and a little extra love into the oven and pray.
The finished product: a succulent, juicy morsel filled with so much flavor I feel the need to put a warning sign on them.

You can also add some garlic in here, but my mother is allergic, so we must make exceptions.
(Yes, you read that correctly, my mother is allergic to garlic and onions.)

So, while those babies were getting warm in the oven, I put on some pasta, cut up some zucchini and bell pepper, and sauteed them in a large pan with some cooking butter. I threw in a little rosemary as well, just to add flavor for the zucchini.

I also got a deal on some Prosciutto, so I bought some and guess what!? Only 60 calories for 2 slices... I'm in! So, I ripped up some prosciutto and put those on top of our pasta and voila!

So much flavor in one bowl, how can you stand it!? The veggies were delicious and the pasta was my redemption. I would have thrown a little bit more olive oil on top, just to bring all the flavors together, but mom got a little pushy at the end to try it.

Hope you enjoy!! I'm off to the gym to exercise today, so hopefully I'll be fit and ready to face my personal trainer on Monday.
Bon Weekend!

New Year, New You?

Welcome, 2012!!

This blog was inspired by my best friends Meryl and Dani. Meryl made a blog last summer about her time over in Italy (jealous) and Danikins is going to be in Israel for January. I never thought to make a blog, nothing so special to write about. But for Christmas, I (my dad, but it's mine now) received a cookbook, "around my french table" by Dorie Greenspan.
OMG.
And thus begins my epic January adventure of cooking and making yummy things all the while keeping track of calories and working out at the gym with my new personal trainer, Robbin.
My mom suggested that I take pictures of everything I make and post them here.


I hope you guys are hungry, because today I made........
Gougères!!

For those of you who don't know, this little morsel is basically just cheese bread... but not just any old cheese. Gruyère cheese. It's a hard cheese that comes from Switzerland that is sweet, but has a little bit of salty. Which is *muah* perfetto!

I started around lunch and these beauties have turned out very well indeed. This is for you, Lisa!!!

Making the dough was a bit intense, as it's over the stove and you don't want the whole milk to scald, and then stirring in the eggs definitely takes a bit of elbow grease if you don't have a mixer, but the end result is buttery, beautiful, cheesy goodness.

This is my southern table.

My sous chef, Fritz!

The source of inspiration, with all my notes in it.

Raw dough. I added a bit of cheese on top, not included in recipe.

While baking...

And the finished product?

Glorious. Simply glorious.
I cooked these for around 30+ minutes.

I guess my hour of cardio tomorrow has just become an hour and a half.
Enjoy these pictures! I wish you could smell the kitchen. If there is one thing I love to smell, it's cheese.
And chocolate. But that's for another day.


Happy New Year everyone! And as Paula Deen says, "Best Dishes!"