·:[ Sweet Pea Cooks ]:·
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This recipe’s not so much scary as kind of funny.  The recipe is for Beef Mexicana.  Check and see if you can find what makes this Mexican in the ingredient list…

1 lb hamburg

2 8-oz cans tomato sauce

1 box frozen corn niblets (or a can)

1/2 c chopped onion

salt and pepper to taste

Ummm, the corn?  I guess that must be it.  Not even a smidge of cumin.  And I imagine that this was probably what was the international food highlight here.  I’m sure it’s fine, there’s no cream-of-anything soup in it, but it’s kind of funny.  The submitter says to serve it with rice and corn bread.  They also note an optional green pepper or chili pepper could be added.  Viva Mexicana!

I have been doing a fair amount of baking in these parts lately. Part of this stems from lack of bread, and the other part stems from lack of sweets. I can only watch Mr. Pea sojourn to 7-11 so many times for Hostess cupcakes before I cave and make something. Last weekend, I made some brownies. These are pretty standard brownies from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. They’re not super fudgy, but not cakey, and this is fine with me. I’m not a fan of cakey brownies. I like ‘em sticky.

Part of the reason why they weren’t super fudgy was because I lacked regular sugar and used some turbanido sugar instead, which, because it’s rather chunky, gave the brownies a sort of crystally texture in spots. You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew, but lesson learned.

1/2 c (one stick) butter
3 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
2/3 c flour
1/4 t baking soda

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat and allow to cool.

Grease an 8×8 or 9×9 pan.

Stir sugar into chocolate mixture; add eggs and vanilla, stir stir stir. Add dry ingredients and stir until everything is just combined. Spread in pan and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, depending on pan size.

Pardon the  layout–I’m toying with the idea of a redesign, but likely won’t get to it for another couple of weeks.  I was tired of all that pink.

This one isn’t nearly as nasty as the last one, but I still just don’t know about it. When I was a kid, though, I probably would have been very excited.

Potato Puff Casserole

1 lb ground beef

1/2 c chopped onion

1/2 c chopped green pepper

1 T ketchup

1 10-oz can of (the ubiquitous) cream of mushroom soup

1/4 c water

and, of course, 1 10-oz package potato puffs

For any of you who are keen to make it: brown meat with onion and peppers. Add ketchup, soup and water. Turn into a 1 1/2 quart casserole. Cover with puffs. Bake at 375 for 35 minutes. Serves 4.

I think I’m likely one of the last people to notice the existence of The Kitchn, Apartment Therapy’s all-things-epicurean subdivision, but boy am I glad to have found it. Today’s entry is about overwhelming numbers of cookbooks. This is clearly a place for me.

We’ve been slowly weeding stuff out of the house in preparation for an upcoming yard sale, and I’d even put a couple of cookbooks in that pile that I think will be crawling back onto the shelf. Who knows if I might want it again?

So while I really ought to be grading papers (so many) or writing exams (three) or working on the paper that’s long overdue for an upcoming conference (whoops), I’m instead drawn to the Kitchn’s archives. It’s vastly preferable to work.

Most weeks when we go grocery shopping we buy stuff to make five dinners. As of late, a lot of food has languished in the fridge as, despite my intentions to actually save money, we’ve been eating out more. Knowing you’re moving out of state means you have to hit up all your favorite places before you go, you see. Furthermore, running errands starting at 6:30, for us, means we have no desire to come back and cook afterward or wait to have dinner first before we go. This also translates to eating lunch out, too, as there are no leftovers to bring to work. Lameness! I used up some of the poor aging veggies in the fridge this week to make a pantry pasta–you can use whatever you’ve got on hand, as this is pretty flexible.

I chopped up a clove of garlic, an onion, what was not decaying of a sad zucchini, and a summer squash. The latter I cut into rounds that were about 1/2″ or less thick, and I cut the big ones in half.

Put a pot of water on. I cooked 1/2 lb of rotini for this.

While rotini cooks, add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to a big, wide saute pan. Add onion and a little salt, and allow to cook a few minutes until it starts to soften. Add zucchini and summer squash. Cook for a few minutes. Add a little water or chicken broth to the pan to deglaze it and to cook the veg more. I then added 8 or so halved cherry tomatoes. A little more broth. Then I remembered the garlic and tossed that in with a little oregano and red pepper flakes. Add cooked pasta and a little more broth to make a sauce. Add a nob of butter to make velvety, and that’s that. Serves four, and make sure there is lots of parmesan or pecorino to go on top. Yum!

You people must think all I make is pizza. The reality is that I probably make it once a month or so but it holds still so well for photos, it gets documented more often than anything else.

But this pizza–this was easily one of the tastiest pizzas I’ve ever made. Ever. Even Mr. Pea thought so, and he’s not just saying that. It’s a standard whole-wheat pizza crust covered with some pesto I made last summer and froze, forgetting about it until recently. You smear it all over the dough. You then slice and onion and get it started in a tablespoon of olive oil. After they start to soften, add 3 sliced portabella caps and saute them until they’re soft and brown. Top pesto with a good 6-8 ounces of shredded mozzarella (I highly prefer the brick of cheese to the sacks, but that’s a new thing for me), and then add veg. Then–and this is what did it for us–add a couple of tablespoons of crumbled feta all over the top.

Bake in a 450 oven for 12 minutes or until bottom is browned and all seems cooked.

To die for, I swear.

This cake was, for me, something of a use-what-you’ve-got pantry cake. Oddly enough, I had some frozen raspberries sitting long neglected and some cream cheese that was on its last legs. I found this recipe on allrecipes and it was delicious. It requires very little butter, getting most of its moisture from buttermilk (or, in my case, milk with vinegar added) and the cream cheese on the top. The batter is pretty standard coffeecake batter, and on top of that you add your fruit. On top of that, you mix an egg white with sugar and cream cheese. This did not blend terribly well for me, though I ultimately set the mixer on high and did what I could. In the long run, this was a delicious cake, somewhere between a coffee cake and a cheesecake, and it totally hit the spot. We kept it in the fridge and would nuke slices for 20 seconds or so to warm them up a bit before eating.

So here we go. This is from Better Homes and Gardens, initially. You’ll need:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon or orange peel (which I didn’t have, so went without.)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 c milk with a 1/2 T of white vinegar, allowed to sit a few minutes)
2 ounces reduced-fat cream cheese (Neufchatel)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg white
1 cup raspberries (I used frozen)

Prep a 9″ circular pan.

Mix dry ingredients in one bowl.

In your mixer, cream 3/4 c sugar with the butter until well blended. Add egg and vanilla, and beat on medium for a minute. Add milk and flour alternately, mixing just to mix, not over-mixing. Pour into prepared pan.

Wash your bowl. Add cream cheese and the remaining sugar and mix until combined on high. Add egg white. Mix, mix.

Arrange berries all over batter. Pour cheese mix over.

Bake in a 375 oven for 30-35 minutes. You’ll want to test for doneness, but it’s a little hard to tell, as the cream cheese never fully sets, especially in the middle. I overcooked mine (40 minutes) and the crust was a little too thick and a little too brown, but just fine. When I make this again, I’ll stick to 35 minutes.

My long silence (yet another) can be explained by an unforseen series of events. I finished grad school last summer, and so this fall went on the job market. This actually went well, and me and Mr. Pea are moving out of state in just a couple of months! Our lives are a little chaotic right now. The combination of new job + moving away means I’m closing down Sweet Pea, at least for a while though it could be a lot longer, starting June 1. Yep, that’s it for the Pea. And I’m ok with that. At first I was a little freaked, but then I remembered that all the changes coming up are what I worked really hard for, so off I go.

Now I do plan on keeping up with Sweet Pea Cooks and making it a far more functional place. Eventually, if Sweet Pea the company doesn’t come back, I’ll move it to another server, but I’m not concerned about that yet.

I’m going to post about a cake I made last weekend shortly; in the meantime, I’ll leave you with one of a series of little gems I’ll be sharing over the coming weeks. On one of our last trips home, my mother-in-law gave me a copy of her church cookbook (one of those spiral-bound dealies everyone has from school or church fundraisers), c. 1984. Some of the recipes are hilarious, and certainly date the cooks who submitted them to sometime mid-century! It amazes me how little fresh stuff, and how much canned, makes up these recipes. I grew up with (though at about 10 launched a staunch protest against) things like tuna noodle casserole, but that can’t compare to what follows. Ready?

Scalloped Tuna

1 10-oz package Cheese Nips

2 cans white tuna

2 cans mushroom soup

2-3 T milk

1/4 c chopped celery

1 1/4 c mustard

Oh my. I won’t even grace you with the instructions. What kind of recipe needs half a bottle of mustard? And a box of cheese-nips? Oh my goodness. As my husband said, what makes these kinds of recipes even greater is that if someone submitted them, they must have been proud of them, or they were a family favorite. That family must not have had much left for taste buds after all that mustard. Yikes.

This recipe was in Gourmet back in November, and while I folded over the corner to someday make it, I then pretty much forgot about it. I saw it some time later on Orangette, but didn’t think too much about it. Last weekend at the store, however, I had a craving for brussel sprouts (a veg I never ate until four months ago. So many years wasted!) and remembered this.

Mr. Pea is always game to try new things, and when we got in last night from work we started cooking. This recipe comes together very easily, and it is so tasty. We cut a tablespoon of butter and half a tablespoon of olive oil out of it, but you could easily add it and be quite happy.

The original recipe called for 3 T of pine nuts–lacking pine nuts, we used chopped almonds. We over-toasted them a little but it gave the dish a yummy smokiness that worked well with the earthiness of the sprouts.

So you’ll need:
1/2 lb fettucine
3 T chopped almonds
1.5 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T unsalted butter
3/4 lb brussel sprouts, trimmed and shredded in food processor
pecorino romano or parmesan for sprinkling

First, get your fettucine started. The rest of the recipe only takes six or seven minutes to make, so you want your pasta at least boiling away when you start the other pan. Make sure you save 1/2 c or so of pasta water.

In big, deep skillet, add butter and oil over medium heat. When foam subsides, add nuts and toast a few minutes. When toasty, add sprouts and cook for 4 or so minutes. Add fettuccine and toss, adding pasta water as needed to make it a bit more saucy, less sticky.

Serve in bowls with cheese. Serves four.

I made these noodles the other night as part of a very tasty meal including a peanut-crusted chicken (I’m serious) and steamed broccoli. Finally, it was a victory for the last issue of Cooking Light, which had been a bit of a bust all month. These noodles are delicious warm, and I think they would make a fabulous summer salad. Add some red bell pepper for color and you’re on your way.

This has a few steps, though. First, you have to make the orange oil. That’s right, orange oil.

In a little pan over medium heat, combine:
1/2 c canola oil
2 T toasted sesame oil
3/4 t orange rind (I use my handy microplane for this)
1 small clove of garlic, minced
good pinch red pepper flakes

Allow to cook for 10 minutes–mine barely simmered away–stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. We’re only going to use a little of this but it’ll keep in the fridge for a month. And trust me, once you taste it, you’re going to want to taste it again.

Ok, so in the meantime, cook up 4 ounces of soba noodles. As a side, this made four mid-size servings, but I easily could have eaten half of the dish myself. I’m hungry like that sometimes.

Chop 1/2 c of green onions/scallions and 1/4 c of cilantro. When the noodles are done, toss with 2 1/2 T of the oil, plus 1/2 T rice vinegar, 1/2 T soy sauce, and a pinch of salt. Add onions and cilantro, toss, and voila. You’ll thank me later