Goat Cheese: What to do with it?

I have to say that over time I've become less and less of a picky eater. I'm not a picky eater in the extreme sense, since I eat foods in colors other than white. But as a child I hated onions, hated fish, hated mushrooms, etc, etc. Slowly I've learned to love all of them, although certain flavors and textures I am still a bit hesitant about. In particular there are two types of cheese that I occasionally love, but often hate: blue veined cheeses and goat cheese. Sometimes they are the perfect addition to a salad, sandwich, or appetizer, and other times I find them unpalatable.

I decided to introduce goat cheese to my cooking after buying an assortment of beets, remembering that goat cheese if often paired with them. After putting together the goat cheese, beet, and walnut salad seen above, I still had about 6 oz. of cheese I needed to use (along with a vegetable bin full of veggies.) I'm now convinced the best way to use up an assortment of leftover food is to make a pizza.

I purchased the pizza dough from Trader Joe's, the Garlic Herb variety. And rummaged around my fridge coming up with caramelized onions, zucchini, tomatoes, and of course, the goat cheese. Once the cheese has had a chance to warm up and caramelize a bit it is soo delicious. So good that I made this recipe again a few days later for some friends.

GOAT CHEESE AND VEGGIE PIZZA
Makes 4 Individual Pizzas

• 1 package Trader Joe's Garlic Herb Pizza Dough
• 1 cup Pizza sauce (or mix 8 oz of tomato sauce with 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and add herbs)
• 1 large tomato sliced
• 1 cup caramelized onions
• 1/2 cup sauteed mushrooms
• 1 small zucchini sliced
• 2 oz. goat cheese
• Flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove pizza dough from refrigerator and let it start warming to room temperature for about 20 minutes. Spray a baking pan with cooking spray.

Flour a large cutting board or clean kitchen counter. Remove pizza dough from bag and flour lightly. Roll dough out to desired shape (I actually usually cut in 4 servings, and roll out what ever shape comes most natural, usually a triangular piece.)

Top each piece of dough with pizza sauce, then caramelized onions, then all remaining toppings. Add goat cheese near then end so it is on top and browns up a bit.

Bake for roughly 20 minutes, or according to the directions that came with your dough. The crust and goat cheese should both be lightly golden.

Enjoy!

My New Favorite Recipe

I have a weird obsession for making lists. I have massively long list of books I want to read, a list of books I've already read, a list of recipes I want to master, and an ever growing list of things to do. Each list is housed in its own notebook. A few months ago I started a new notebook to keep a record of all the new recipes that I try. Each entry contains the title of the recipe, any notes about alterations I made to the recipe, as well as my impressions, followed by a rating out of 5 stars. I've made 21 recipes since the beginning of the year, and today was the first time I questioned if a 5 star scale would be adequate.

I made Eating Well Serves Two's Orzo with Lamb, Olives & Feta. I am in love.

Lamb is probably my favorite type of meat. I particularly like it cooked all day in a slow cooker. It seems you can never ever go wrong with slow cooked meat of any variety (by far the easiest way to cook a whole chicken, and impossible to overcook.) The dish I tried today is much better suited for when you haven't planned ahead to allow an 8 to 10 hour cooking time. Man o man, this is one delicious treat. The flavors are complex, it's like a meaty marinara sauce with the addition of cinnamon. In the past I've stayed away from most things sweet, so luckily for me I've discovered over the last year that cinnamon offers great complexity to savory dishes, much more than you'd imagine (or at least more than I had imagined.) It's delicious used in fajitas, and as in this recipe it happens to go particularly well with lamb.

This dish is very quick and easy to put together. The end result is so good, I'd venture to make it even if it took several hours. Next time I'll have to create a slow cooked version to see if it's even possible to make any more delicious. If you love lamb, or maybe even just like it, try this recipe, it will be a new favorite. Enjoy!

Have Leftovers Got You Down?

I despise throwing away anything that at one point had been perfectly good food.

Kenny and I decided to forgo our Costco membership this year. Although we had mastered the art of checking out without buying the kitchen sink we would still end up with too much food that would eventually land in the trash. We called these endeavors "hands only" shopping trips. Pretty effective for shopping Costco on a budget; although, we still ended up with food we wouldn't ordinarily buy. For instance, we currently have a whiskey soaked English cheddar which has been sitting in the back of the fridge for about a month. Its pretty gross if you ask me; unfortunately, about a pound remains.

I approach eating all my groceries in two ways. The first is by cooking meals for "two." I have a great cookbook created by Eating Well Magazine, called Eating Well Serves Two. It is probably my most used cook book ever, surprising as it was published only about six months ago. So far my favorite meals have been Caramelized Onion & Green Olive Pizzas, Chicken & Fennel Flatbread, and my favorite, Fennel Sauerkraut with Sausage & Potatoes. I have yet to try a disappointing recipe. Eating Well is also a great magazine that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in learning about and cooking healthy cuisine. In the winter we fell in love with the Oven Barbecued Brisket, and the Butternut Squash and Leek Lasagna.

My second, and far less successful, method of preventing grocery spoilage is to eat the same thing over and over again until gone. This really doesn't work out very well. I eat too much of one thing, get tired of it, forget about it, discover it moldy in the back of the fridge a month later.

Luckily after buying four pounds of salmon for Mother's Day and having quite a lot of it left over, I devised a way to make use of it quickly along with a slew of other ingredients hidden in the produce drawer. The salmon already had a light spattering of Soy Vay Island Teriyaki marinade so I went with an Asian theme when choosing ingredients. The end result was delicious, so good I even ate the leftovers of these leftovers cold over lettuce with some vinaigrette.

Monique's Leftover Salmon Cakes
Makes 6 servings

• 3 1/2 cups cooked salmon
• 1 large shallot minced
• 1 tablespoon ginger
• 2 tablespoons tamari
• 1/8 cup cilantro
• 1/2 cup scallions
• 1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs (regular are okay too, Panko are Japanese and coarser than regular bread crumbs)
• 2 extra large eggs
• Extra Panko to coat patties
• Canola Oil
• Lemon for garnish

Break the cooked salmon up into little bits with a fork. Add shallot, ginger, tamari, cilantro, scallions, Panko, and eggs to salmon and mix together.

Pour extra Panko onto a plate. Form mixture into six balls (they should fit into your palm), then lay in the Panko and smoosh down to a patty about 3/4" thick.

Heat Canola oil in a pan over med-high heat. Cook patties in the oil turning when golden, about 3 minutes per side. Unless you have a humongous pan, you'll probably have to cook in batches. When you remove the browned patties lay on a papertowel to soak up excess oil.

Serve over greens or on a hamburger bun.

Enjoy!