#fyogood

EVERYTHING BAGEL JALAPEÑO CREAM CHEESE PUFFS BECAUSE EVERYTHING BAGEL EVERYTHING

Hi again - we’ve been hitting the beach and working our tails off this whole summer, and now it’s back to school season which means 1. empty beaches where we can eat our meatball grinders in peace and 2. we’re gonna be cooking and posting a lot more. I thought the summer would give me time to do cute things like post on a food blog but it made me a lazy bum instead. A BUM I TELLS YA.

“Oh, I’m gonna miss the whole summer!” “Don’t worry, boy. When you get a job like me, you’ll miss every summer.”

Anywho, let’s get on with these delightful puff pastries! I have crowed about how amazing frozen puff pastry is for a while (and I’ll keep doing it) because of its versatility and sheer deliciousness. One box of Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry offers two sheets of dough - enough for 18 small pastry squares or 2 strudels. You decide! Tonight, in addition to these jalapeño puffs, I also made peach goat cheese puffs and peach apricot pastries - puff pastry is also great if you have fruit + veggies you need to use up before it goes bad! Strawberries, blueberries, peaches, even asparagus! Shove that shit into a puff pastry and boom - you got yourself a hand pie, my friend.

The ingredients are simple - this recipe will be for 2 sheets of puff pastry and will yield 18 puffs.

THE INGREDIENTS

1 box frozen puff pastry (two sheets) 4-5 jalapeños, bisected and sliced (seed them if you don’t want them too spicy...but just know that spicy food is good for you) 1 jar Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel Sesame Seasoning Blend 1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened A little milk

THE RECIPE

1. Thaw the puff pastry about 20 minutes - it should still be cold to the touch but not wet. While you’re assembling these pastries, the dough will continue to thaw. 2. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and lay out the puff pastry - you can cut the pastry into nine squares. 3. Spread cream cheese (about a tablespoon or so) into each square - I had some leftover roasted garlic & chive cream cheese from Rebelle Artisan Bagels here in Providence so I used that for a few of these bad boys. 4. Top each cream cheesed square with 5-6 slices of jalapeños, then sprinkle each with some everything bagel seasoning. 5. With a brush, wet the sides of the pastry with milk. Fold the cross corners of the pastry one over the other in order to make a diagonal shape. Brush the top of the pastry with milk again, and top with more seasoning if you like. You can also top it with crushed black pepper or queso chihuahua if you’re feeling amorous.  6. Bake in the oven on the top rack for 25-35 minutes - these babies will puff up and you’ll know they’re done with they turn a delicious golden brown. Enjoy with a tequila drink because it’s for your own good :} 

BONUS: here’s what the peach goat cheese puffs turned out like - topped with rosemary and black pepper aka fucked UP.

ROASTED CARROTS & POTATOES AKA WHAT STEFAN AND I HAVE BEEN EATING EVERY DAY BASICALLY INSTEAD OF POSTING ON THIS BLOG

...but seriously, we’ve been quite busy. And today, on this lovely sunny Sunday, I woke up at 6 am and decided to roll around in bed for the first 1.5 hours of being awake which is the perfect segue into writing a recipe! My almond chai candle is lit and my phone is on do not disturb so LET’S DO THIS

We’ve been doing improv with PIG every week, rehearsals and shows, joining new teams, WRITING SKETCHES which is something I’m super excited to get back into, and general tom foolery. HERE’S PROOF, YA ANIMALS:

WHAT A HAM! Stefan is also in a play called The Dining Room, where he’s playing ten characters, all of them sexy. SPEAKING OF SEXY, let’s get to the recipe, shall we?

It’s springtime here in Rhode Island, which means we are goin’ in heavy on veggies and fresh herbs. We’re getting farm fresh produce like carrots, potatoes, lettuce, onions, and kale around here - can’t wait for fresh berry season! We’ve planted tomatoes, sugar snap peas, basil, PURPLE BASIL, oregano, rosemary, thyme, strawberries, and lavender in big pots around our apartment and on our balcony - here’s our kitchen herb planter that looks like it came off the set of a David Lynch movie:

(seen here: rosemary, purple basil, thyme, and horrifically bizarre nightmares) 

We’re also going to LA in a month, so we’re trying to cut back on FAT ASS BULLGOOF like desserts (*gasps*) and dairy (*weeps*) and chips (*dies*) and eat cleaner. It’s all about feeling good, making healthier choices, and being more active - it’s super easy to come home from work and want to just loaf around before rehearsal or a show, but setting aside some time to do Yoga With Adriene or whipping up a healthy dinner OR WRITING ON THIS BLOG is going to make me feel a hell of a lot better. But I do recognize the heavenly art of laying down eating ice cream with high honor (see what I did there?)

GET THIS STUFF pawtucket farmers market has the baby shallot hook up, btw

This recipe can be customized to your fancy~* since carrots and potatoes are fairly neutral - I’m posting a savory recipe:

“You might say the extra ingredient is salt.”

But you can try roasted carrots & potatoes with cumin, chili powder, and jalapeños for a Mexican twist or coriander, garam masala, and turmeric for an Indian take - I’m partial to adding red curry paste and bell peppers to the mix for Thai style RC&P. SO VERSATILE, SO DELICIOUS. My spices of choice for this particular dish are fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, sawlt ‘n peppuh, garlic powder, and nutmeg. NUTMEG WHAT THIS ISN’T A PIE that’s right, it’s NOT a pie, and it IS nutmeg, and here’s some interesting facts about nutmeg:

1. It’s a spice that grows off of evergreen trees in Indonesia! 2. Nutmeg is known for its ability to relieve pain, soothe indigestion, strengthen cognitive function, detoxify the body, boost skin health, alleviate oral conditions, reduce insomnia, increase immune system function, and prevent leukemia, and improve blood circulation, according to this article I’m reading right now. 3. There’s also that thing where if you eat too much nutmeg, you’ll trip balls.

The only thing I’m tripping balls over is this recipe. Get comfy with the broiler on your oven (NOT TOO COMFY SAFETY FIRST) because broiling these veggies at the end of roasting them is the hottest thing you can do for yourself and for them.

SO HOTTTTTT

The broiler browns the edges more, so you get a caramelization on the carrots and a crispness to the potatoes. Definitely worth it.

OKAY THE INGREDIENTS NOW 12 oz (about 7-8) baby potatoes, quartered 2-4 carrots, chopped diagonally 2 shallots, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced Olive oil SAWLT ‘N PEPPUH nutmeg rosemary (the fresher the better!) thyme (but it’s fine if you have dried) garlic powder

ALRIGHT HERE’S THE DIRECTIONS 1. Preheat oven to 450F. You’ll need a 13x9 Pyrex dish, or a large metal baking sheet for this recipe. 2. Wash and chop all your veggies, adding to the pan as you go. Chop fresh herbs, if using. 3. Once the veggies are in the pan, add the oil, herbs, and spices. I like to eyeball this part - you know how much salt is too salty. I generally sweep over the pan with spices, and then mix ‘em up and do a finger taste of the oil - then you can go back and add in whatever you’d like a little more of. It’s usually garlic powder for me...can’t go wrong with more garlic. 4. Make sure your veggies are all evenly spread out on the pan and not all pilled up (they won’t roast evenly if your pan is too crowded) and place on the bottom rack of the oven for 20-25 minutes. 5. Move the pan to the very top rack of the oven, stirring around the veggies to make sure they’re not sticking to the bottom. Roast on the top rack for another 20-25 minutes. 6. Fork test your RC&P - if they’re soft, switch the oven to broil and keep that pan on the top rack. The broiler is an open flame and will cook your food super fast so keep an eye out! This part adds all the crispiness and carameliness and makes the waiting so worth it. 7. Remove from oven and try to wait more than approximately .5 seconds before trying to eat this food, like we do - serve it up in a bowl with some fresh grated parmesan and enjoy!

eat up...it’s for your own good...

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of eating a sauce made by me (Stefan) then you’ve probably said “holy shit, this is the best sauce I’ve ever tasted.” And then I probably said “I’ll send you the recipe, it’s so easy!” But then I never sent the recipe, not because I don’t want to share, but because I am lazy. Also, just about every time I make sauce, I do it a little differently, so it’s tough to write a recipe for a thing I never make the same way twice. Now you might already be sick of me bragging about my sauce, but ask anyone who has had my sauce - it’s fuckin good, and not like any sauce out there.  My own mother even said it’s the best sauce she’s ever tasted (for real, I’ll forward you the email if you want proof) and if that doesn’t say it all, well then come over, it’ll be my pleasure to make some sauce for us (seriously, I love to make sauce for people).

This recipe is more a basic, boiler plate tomato sauce, good for pasta, pizza, lasagna, zoopy (just bread dipped in sauce aka the best meal invented). A good jumping off point, which you can transform into your own brand of sauce. So here we go, gonna get SAUCED.

Che bellissimi pomodorini!!!

A lotta markets will sell over-ripe produce for pennies. We got 3 pounds of ripe tomatoes for less than $3 at Market Basket. Ripe means soft (not squishy) to the touch. Now, a lot of people have never made a sauce from scratch, and understandably so - it takes time, which is hard to come by, society being broken and all, but trust me, a little patience and elbow grease will all be worth it when you’re sitting down to a bowl of pasta topped with your nice fresh homemade tomato SAUCE. But if you wanna just use a couple big cans (heh) of crushed tomatoes, by all means, it is a very easy substitute which yields practically identical sauce. But just try making it from scratch once, it’s a nice exercise in patience. So STEP 1: BOIL TOMATOES (what?)

So you can peel em!!!

Bring a pot of water to a boil, and add your tomatoes. The riper the tomato, the quicker they pop - some will pop as soon as you put them in, but some take a little more, in which case you can STAB IT.

Just a little poke and the skin should pop. 

Anyway, as they pop, put them in a bowl or strainer in the sink. Then run them under cold water for about a minute, just to cool them off so you can handle them. Then peel em and throw away the peels. You could probably use the peels for compost or whatever, but I’m not a friggin gardener.

*blushes*

So you got a bowl of peeled tomatoes- great. Now you can chop them or dice them on a cutting board, but that turns into a tomato guts massacre real fast, so what I do is just use kitchen shears and cut em up in the bowl.

bada bing-boom

You get the picture, chop em up until you won’t have any huge chunks, or leave huge chunks if you like a chunky sauce. We’re going to cook this in the oven for a couple hours, so it cooks down anyway. Speaking of which, LET’S START COOKING THE GODDAMN SAUCE ALREADY.

Fry up a medium sized yellow or sweet onion, sliced thinly, in olive oil over medium heat (add some butter if you want some sexual caramelization). Add some salt & pepper, red pepper flakes, thyme, oregano and FENNEL SEEDS. After about 7-10 minutes, add some GARLIC (obviously).

About 5-200 cloves of garlic should do, diced. I’ll even add a couple whole cloves after I add the tomatoes, so you get some nice roasted garlic action too. Add some more of those seasonings I mentioned above, just a touch of each though. Let simmer for about 5 minutes - garlic cooks very fast. Now, we add the tomatoes that we so painstakingly boiled, peeled and chopped.

In case you don’t know what it looks like to put stuff in a thing.

Then all you do is season again - salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, red pepper flakes, FENNEL SEEDS - I keep capitalizing FENNEL SEEDS because they are sauce’s best friend. You might’ve thought basil or olive oil, but no, those are sauce’s sister wives. FENNEL SEEDS are like sauce’s sexy dance instructor who comes over to take sexy baths together. Sexy sauce baths ;)

But anyway, throw in some nice fresh chopped basil, put the lid on the pot, and throw it in the oven at 350° for about an hour. Then take it out, take the lid off, give it a nice stir, then back in for another hour or so. Bing bang, sauce ahoy. Now for some reason sauce always greatly benefits from a night in the fridge. It’s delicious out of the oven, but something real sensual happens with a good night of rest in the fridge. You’ll see. Just trust me. Try some when it’s out of the oven, then try some the next day. Here’s the recipe in plain English. 

PREHEAT OVEN TO 350°

2 cans of crushed tomatoes of 3 lbs of fresh plum or traditional tomatoes, peeled

1 medium Vidalia or yellow onion, chopped

5-6 garlic cloves, diced

2-3 tbs each of dried thyme, oregano and red pepper flakes

4-5 tbs fennel seeds

1 ½ cups fresh chopped basil

1 cup olive oil

a pinch of salt with each addition to the pot

cracked pepper until your wrist hurts

Chop and brown the onion with salt and pepper in olive oil over medium-low heat – 7-10 min

Add diced garlic cloves and stir – 3-5 minutes

***For a nice pot of chicken cacciatore-ish sauce, add about a pound of boneless chicken thighs before the tomatoes and brown them. You can use white meat too, but dark meat just tastes better***

Add tomatoes, then salt, pepper, season and stir, bring to a simmer – 5-10 min

Add fresh basil, stir - 2 seconds

Put LID ON pot, put in oven – 60 minutes (check after 30 min to make sure heat is appropriate)

Take LID OFF, put back in oven – 60-90 minutes, stir every 25-30 minutes

Total cooking time shouldn’t be more than 2 hours and 45 minutes, though a little more than 2 hours usually does the trick,

ALMOND BUTTER COOKIES AND LIFE UPDATES!

(because we know you like us for more than just our food…right?)

Okay so we MOVED! AGAIN! We’re still in Providence but we are in a great super awesome fun neighborhood and our new apartment has a b-e-a-utiful kitchen so get ready for some cute pictures in the near future. We’ve been busy packing and unpacking and putting our shit in new places and figuring out what goes where. Also, cooking in a new kitchen is always an adventure - it takes some careful rearranging, and you have to get used to different appliances. Not all ovens are created equal. Bonus for our new place: we have a brand new dishwasher. My manicure is forever grateful.

More fun news: Stefan and I are the newest members of Providence Improv Guild! We’re on a great team called Real Mature and we’re both super excited to get back on stage and goof off with new friends. SHAMELESS PLUG COME SEE US PLEASE YOU’LL LOVE IT KBYE

So now for the recipe because I know you’re all jonesin’ to know how I made those delicious bitches. Well, I have some great news for ya:

no butter. no flour.

JUST LOVE jk but seriously there is zero butter or flour in these cookies. Totally gluten-free, not vegan however because I used 1 egg. I’m going to play around and see if I can make a vegan version with banana instead of egg - STAY TUNED! But for now, deal with it. Almond butter is the key here - quality is important. This isn't like picking out a college or a car, this is serious. GET GOOD ALMOND BUTTER. Farmers markets will usually have a vendor for this kinda thing, if that's your kinda thing...you know, going just so you can talk about the fact that you went. You can go to Dave's if you're from Rhode Island and get a nice small tub of it for $3.99 - this is what I prefer. I like my almond butter like I like my women - THE FRESHER, THE BETTER. Go to an organic grocer and get that shit churned FRESH 4 U. You'll see the machines - sometime they're at Whole Foods, they have nut barrels on the top and a nutty poop chute on the bottom. Price points vary - I thought $3.99 for a small tub was a good price, and it was also probably the best almond butter I've ever had. If you can't get fresh, fear not - jarred nut butters (heh) are becoming more and more available, and there's a variety. Sunflower, cashew, hazelnut, and good ol' fashioned peanut butter should work just as well in this recipe. I went to a regular ass grocery store and found Woodstock almond butter (shown above), a little more expensive but I think we're worth it. Still though - the fresher, the better. Make your own.

A quick note: keep your almond butter in the fridge, at least for the sake of this recipe. Cold nut butter means your cookies will have a puffier consistency. I tried to make this recipe a couple weeks later with chocolate CHUNKS and room temperature almond butter, and ended up making cookie brittle. Still delicious, but cracker thin.

Not even brittle tho - they were chewy! Good ol’ freak cookies.

OKAY HERE’S THE INGREDIENTS GO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY AND BUY THIS STUFF IF YOU DON’T ALREADY HAVE IT

1 egg, lightly beaten 1 cup almond butter or peanut butter or whatever nut butter your heart desires 1/2 cup dark brown sugar (ALWAYS DARK BROWN - it just means there’s more molasses mixed into the sugar) 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 tsp salt 1 tsp baking soda 1 cup (half a bag) dark chocolate chips

OKAY NOW THE RECIPE

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a cookie sheet with coconut oil. Stefan bought me a dope cast iron baking sheet for Christmas (shown above) - whenever you’re using cast iron, grease that puppy UP.

2. Combine egg and almond butter in a large bowl. Add in brown sugar, vanilla, salt, and baking soda, one by one. Mix until combined - the texture will look like greasy sand. DELICIOUS GREASY SAND.