My daughter and her boyfriend have been working on their blog: foodnasty.BlogSpot.com
for a couple of years.
She's an artist and he's a chef and they love coming up with new recipes and posting them on their blog - along with beautiful food photography - which is pretty tough to do. (doesn't hurt that she has used our beautiful ceramics from Deruta, Italy!)
Here are a couple of my favorite recipies:
Stone Fruit Summer Roast
Summer is about to end, though here in Los Angeles it feels as if it never will. If I could get some rain we will be happy campers, so will LA! The end of summer brings some amazing stone fruits, especially at this time when it is so warm, they get so juicy and delicious. There is no better way to honor the summer than creating a simple roasted fruit dessert.
We roasted some wonderful pluots, peaches, and nectarines, topped it with some sweet goodness and sprinkled some fresh mint! If you don’t want to use these specific fruits, you can use whatever large stone fruit you like. Delish!!!
Ingredients: Serves 3-4
2 peaches
2 pluots
2 nectarines
¼ cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon almond extract
5 -7 mint leaves
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wash and cut fruit in half, removing the center stone. Place fruit cut side down. Bake in oven for 20 minutes, flipping fruit oven half way through.
While in the oven, make simple syrup, boil water and sugar for 5 -7 minutes. You want the syrup to start to become sticky and a bit gel like, not super gooey though.
Next make whip cream by combining heavy cream and almond extract and whipping with an electric mixer until it starts to form peaks.
Lastly chiffonade mint by rinsing the leaves, then roll up and slicing in small strips.
To create the beauty that is this dish, loosely arrange fruit cut side up, pour some simple syrup over but not too much! Plop some dollops of whip cream on, and then sprinkle the mint. This is a guaranteed dish to wow anyone, and is so simple to make.
Cheers to the end of summer!
and....
Valentines Day Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup!
Happy Valentine’s Day!!!! I try to spend every day like it is Valentine’s Day, telling Michael how much I love him, loving my family, my friends, my dogs, and always being kind to others. What are your Valentine’s Day plans this year?
When I think of what makes me happy when it comes to food, it isn’t something incredibly fancy or highly intricate, it is the simple comfort food that melts in your mouth and makes you feel good. We have created an elevated grilled cheese and tomato soup combo for you, a more decadent version of a loved classic. So enjoy our heirloom creamed tomato soup with a Swiss Gruyere Emmentaler grilled cheese sandwich!
*It helps to have a blender, sieve, and food brush handy, and if you cannot find a bag of grated cheese, just buy blocks and grate equal amounts.
Ingredients: serves 4
Soup:
6 large heirloom tomatoes
1 large can whole peeled tomatoes
¼ cup heavy cream
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Yellow onion
1 Tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic
Parmesan rind
3 sprigs fresh thyme
Pinch of salt
Grilled Cheese Sandwich:
Block of soft baby Swiss cheese
Grated bag of Emmentaler and Gruyere cheese (they will be under fondue cheeses)
Sliced sourdough bread
1 Tablespoon melted butter
Start by assembling your mise en place by dicing the onion and garlic and setting aside, and then chopping the heirloom tomatoes and canned tomatoes. In a large sauce pan heat oil, then add onion and garlic and cook about 5 minutes until translucent.
Add tomatoes, then parmesan rind, thyme sprigs. When you add the rind make sure that there is no paper stuck to it. Put to medium heat and let cook 25 minutes. Remove the rind and the thyme.
In small batches (if it is too large you may burn yourself), puree the tomato soup. Pour the mix into a sieve over a bowl, and using a spoon push through the sieve until you are only left with the fiber and no liquid. Discard of the fiber. Do this until all of the soup has been strained.
Pour the soup back into the sauce pan, turn to medium heat. Add butter, pinch of salt, and cream. Stir. Return to medium low to keep warm.
To make the sandwich melt a Tablespoon of butter in a bowl, then brush both sides of bread with butter, not so much that the bread will be soggy. Heat a pan to medium high heat.
Place first piece of bread in the pan. Let heat for 3 minutes, then add Emmentaler and Gruyere, then Baby Swiss. Let cook for 2 more minutes. Add next slice of bread then flip, cooking the next side for about 3-4 minutes. You just want the bread to brown and crisp, but not burn.
To serve, slice sandwiches in half, and serve with small bowl of soup and a kiss!
And the last recipe I'm posting is my favorite!
Cinnamon crumble apple muffin
Instead of giving your teacher (or kid’s teacher) an apple, give some crumbled apple muffins. There is a specific smell that comes along with fall cooking, its warm, comforting, a little spicy, and always a savory and sweet sense at the same time. These muffins start to fill your house with a wonderful smell the second you place them in the oven. We wanted to combine an apple pie, with an apple strudel, with a muffin, and we were left with this fabulous thing! So enjoy this recipe, make it for the family, the neighbors, anyone you like, because it is sure to bring a smile to everyone’s face.
*brown sugar is a huge part of this recipe, so pretty much just have a cup of it set aside.
Ingredients:
Muffin:
2 cups flour
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
½ cup butter (at room temperature)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 ¼ tsp vanilla
1 ½ cup chopped apples (we prefer honey crisps, or pink ladies)
Crumbs:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tlb. flour
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tlb butter
Icing:
3 Tlb powdered sugar
2 Tlb milk (give or take)
When baking the best thing to do is to measure out all of your ingredients and set them aside. In cooking this is called mise en place, this will make it so easy to just put your ingredients together, not have to search around for stuff, and alleviate a potential headache. So measure everything out, preheat oven to 375, grease and line a muffin tray with 12 muffin papers, and fill each one with a spoonful of brown sugar to hold it down and to create a bit of crust by patting down with your finger. In a sauce pan heat and slightly soften a mix of your very small chopped apples and a few spoons of brown sugar, then set aside.
In a medium sized bowl mix together your dry mix: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a larger bowl mix together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, and then stir in apples, leaving as much of the melted sugar to the side. Once they are mixed in, slowly mix in flour, small portions at a time. The mix will seem pretty thick and dry, but when it bakes it will be the perfect consistency, and the apples will moisten the cake as well.
In a separate small bowl, mix the 1/3 cup of brown sugar, 1 Tlb of flour, ¼ tsp of cinnamon, and 1 Tlb of butter. Beat together until it starts to create small balls of sand like looking things. This is where a lot of the tasty is!
Now using a large spoon load it up with batter, and fill each cup about ¾ of the way, and then sprinkle with your crumble. Once all are loaded, place in oven, and set for 20 minutes (at the half way point turn the muffins around in the oven).
While the muffins are cooking, make the icing by pouring a little bit of milk at a time into your sugar, until you reach the consistency that you desire.
When muffins are done, remove from the oven, let cool for 10 minutes, and then drizzle icing on, and eat up! Damn they are good!!!
Here's the team at foodnasty.blogspot.com
She's turned out to be a wonderful, talented, beautiful, compassionate young lady who teaches art to kids!! I love you Francesca.
this is the most popular card that I sell!
