I’ve been on a spoonlicker hiatus. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

For the past 4 months, I have been studying for a potentially life-changing exam. I hate to even mention it because there’s a good chance that I am setting myself up for failure. Nevertheless, as we all know, there’s no place better than the internet for sharing your failures, so here we are.

I have been trying to find some time to try out new recipes, but aside from occupying nearly all my free time, studying has me so stressed out that I have regressed to eating mostly junkfood. Suddenly Velveeta has new importance in my life.

On the bright side, I have made some truly fantastic junkfood. I’m looking forward to sharing my discoveries in how to be an unhealthy vegetarian when I have a little more time on my hands. In the meantime, please send your good wishes and processed cheese products my way.

Fried pot pie sounds like something Paula Dean dreamed of last night, but it’s not what you think. I invited Michele over for dinner last Wednesday and an hour before he was due to arrive, Nstar completely quit on us. Our gas range works in a blackout, but our oven was kaput. We could have gone to get dinner in a neighborhood with better electrical service, but we were too curious about what would happen if you tried to cook a pot pie on the stove top. None of us predicted that it would work as well as it did. I’m still feeling like a femme MacGyver over it. I hope our water or gas gets turned off someday.

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I’m learning that I’m not so great at fitting this food blog mold thing. I can’t be effusive and gushingly write about the caramelly sensuous taste of the nutty, velvetly wonderfulness of the OH MY F’ING GOD brown butter. Brown butter is good, yes. But. But! it is not the holy grail, OK? Get over it. But. But! Try it for yourself before you fall for the pretty orange blossom water-scented writing of random people on the internets.

Ok, rant over. Recipe starts…………. now:

A large handful of green beans *ahem* haricot verts, if you please
1/4 stick of butter
1/4 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1/4 of a lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a large sautee pan over medium high heat. Add the butter and allow it to being to develop a brown color. Reduce the heat to medium and add the walnuts and green beans. Cook for a few minutes until the green beans are tender. I like to leave them with a little snap to them. Transfer them to a dish, give them a quick squeeze of lemon, season, and serve.

I know I’m two days late and about 30 bucks short, but I needed to get a post in about St-Germain. Actually, St-Germain is partially responsible for why I wasn’t Johnny-on-the-spot with the blog posts anyhow.

If you’ve been eyeing this beautiful bottle at your friendly local package store, let me save you any future hesitation by insisting that you Buy It. Now.

I have been adding St-Germain to the champagne we had leftover from our Tree Trimming Party. If that wasn’t already the perfect cocktail, I would be eagerly mixing new concoctions with abandon. I’m working on tiring myself of this phase of obession, but until I wear myself out, I’d love to hear what you’re doing with it.

Every now and then, a condiment or spice comes around that suddenly seems to be everywhere. For the past month or so, I keep reading about Spanish paprika. It’s supposed to be the holy grail of paprika. I only recently discovered that there was flavor beyond the tasteless red powder that my mom sprinkled on shepard’s pie when I was a kid, so I was blown away when I tasted how intense it can be. It sure ain’t my mama’s paprika. Sorry mom.

There are a few different varieties of Spanish paprika. I like the hot stuff. It adds a nice smokiness along with the heat. As a vegetarian, I’m a little unsure of where I like to put my smokiness- seems like it belongs on a ham hock or something. We hit the cookbooks to get some instruction on where else to put it and we found a recipe that seemed to fit with the approach of Thanksgiving in Anya Von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table. We altered it slightly to give it more heat, but you could use a milder paprika if you want. (Read the rest of this post)

I didn’t set out to make this.  All I knew was that I had a can of pumpkin, some phyllo dough, and some work that needed avoidance. What resulted was good, but I didn’t know what to call it.  “Hey John, You’ve gotta try this… uh… thing.”

I clicked all over wikipedia for its closest relative. Many heritages of phyllo pastry were considered- Greek (tyropita), Turkish (burek), Serbian (gibanica), and Austrian (strudel) before I decided it must be a Bulgarian banitsa made with pumpkin i.e. tikvenik. I felt like the legitimacy of my pastry’s name was a stretch until I read tikvenik is a metaphor for someone  stupid, e.g. “you’re a big tikvenik” meaning “you are a pumpkin-head.” Sold. Clearly I made a tikvenik.

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These drizzle bottles are such an easy way to make a big impression without spending a ton of money. People like dots. Dots and truffles.

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This is another of Michele’s recipes.* He came over to cook us dinner and made amazingly good zucchini sformato. We devoured them in record time and it was no easy task leaving one aside to photograph. As I set up the shot, I (accidentally?) knocked a lamp over right onto the dish. We we sad for about two seconds before we ate that sformato in about that same amount of time.  You can imagine how upset I was to have to make some again today to shoot.

*cream cheese again, see! 

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Yeah,  it’s not a complete coincidence that I’ve posted two recipes that combine caramelized onions, brussels sprouts, and Explorateur cheese– although it’s so clearly an obvious combination.  I had extra ingredients left over from making a Brussels Sprout Galette, so I blended them into a creamy, rich soup using the latest addition to our appliance amusment park of a kitchen-a new blender.

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For those of us who live in the rapidly chilling northern part of the country, mapley sweet and salty corn is a reason to use the grill a few more times before it starts getting too cold to hold the tongs without gloves. John has been telling me about Maple Pepper® roasted corn ever since I met him. Maple pepper® is one of those super cute condiments you can find at country fairs and farmstands… usually next to the maple sugar candies and the preserves that are so adorable that they look like they were hand-crafted inside an old oak tree by magical fairy grandmothers. Normally, I don’t buy these things because they are too pretty to use, but this stuff begs you to use it. We finally stumbled upon it at Allandale Farm in Brookline, which according to their website, is Boston’s last working farm. Who knew?

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