The Most Delicious Lemon Squares

One of my favourite places to visit is San Francisco. It is an amazing city, and it is also home to my sister, my aunt and uncle, and my cousins. As a result, I end up going to San Francisco at least 2 or 3 times a year, despite the fact that it takes longer to get there from New York than it would take to get to Iceland.

All of my relatives who live in San Francisco are awesome cooks. My sister always amazes me with her creativity when it comes to food. Last time we were both in Houston, she made a pizza with barbeque sauce, peaches, and chorizo. I was seriously skeptical of these flavour combinations, but it was incredible. I also love my Aunt Jeanie's cooking, and have often asked her for recipes.

When I was in San Francisco almost a year ago, Aunt Jeanie made lemon squares that were to die for. I think I ate almost an entire pan of them. Before these lemon squares, I had never loved lemon squares that much. These were so buttery and crumbly, with the perfect balance of tart and sweet. I was so addicted. This was a recipe I had to have, and it is now a recipe that I perhaps make too often. The good news is that my friends love them too, so I always have someone to share them with.

I made a batch recently, realized I hadn't blogged about them yet, and decided that I needed to.

Right after I made this batch, I went to an orchestra rehearsal, during which my roommate Liz texted me to ask if she could have one. I said yes and asked if they turned out okay. Her response was, "Oh my holy f**k they're amazing!" When I returned from orchestra, half of the pan was already gone, courtesy of Simon and Liz.

Lemon Squares

recipe from my Aunt Jeanie

Part 1:

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sifted flour

Spread these ingredients in a 9 by 9 greased pan.

Bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Part 2:

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 tbsp flour

1/4 tsp salt

4 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix all ingredients together and pour over first part.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar while still hot.

Cut into squares!

Roasted Tomato and Goat Cheese Pesto Tart with Fresh Raspberry Vinaigrette Salad

Lately I've been craving tomato tart. I don't really know why. It's kind of a random craving.

My mom makes a great tomato tart but it's not something we ever had very often.

I thought about making my mom's tart recipe but I decided it would be fun to try something new.

I'm glad I did because this was incredible!

It was so good that I could have eaten the whole thing, but I decided to be nice and share it with my friends!

(also, the whole thing would have been twice the amount of calories I should eat in a day, so that probably would have been a very bad idea)

While I was eating lunch yesterday, I was watching Five Ingredient Fix on Food Network.

I don't usually watch this particular show because I happen to find the host rather annoying. However, whenever I have watched it I've always had to grudgingly admit that her recipes look kind of awesome.

When I turned the tv on yesterday, she was making a fresh raspberry vinaigrette salad with mixed greens. I had been wondering what to make as a side with my tart and it seemed as though I had my answer.

I love raspberries and the salad turned out great!

My friends Kathryn, Vlad, and Kaori joined me for the meal and seemed to really enjoy it!

There's nothing more fun than a delicious meal with awesome friends!

Slow Roasted Tomato and Goat Cheese Pesto Tart

recipe is from the blog What Katie Ate

Ingredients for Pesto:

2 handfuls of fresh basil

1/4 cup pine nuts

1/4 cup olive oil (not extra virgin as flavor would be overpowering)

100 g (about 4 oz) soft goat cheese

1 pinch chili flakes

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan

sea salt and black pepper

Ingredients for topping:

3 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered

shaved parmesan cheese for serving

fresh oregano leaves

fresh basil leaves

sea salt and black pepper

1 sheet pre-rolled puff pastry (I used Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry and it's amazing)

1 egg yolk and a splash of milk for egg wash

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Place all tomatoes on baking tray, cut side up.

Drizzle tomatoes with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

Slow roast for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, make the pesto.

Put two handfuls of fresh basil leaves, pine nuts, parmesan cheese, goat cheese, balsamic vinegar, chili flakes, and olive oil into a food processor and mix to form a smooth pesto paste.

Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Cut a circle out of the pre-rolled pastry using a standard size dinner plate.

Place circle of pastry on baking tray.

Using a slightly smaller plate (about 1/2 in smaller), make a groove in the pastry by centering the plate and then pressing down gently.

Prick the smaller pastry circle inside the groove with a fork.

Brush the exterior border of the pastry with egg wash.

Spread the pesto in a thin layer on the inside circle of the pastry, being careful not to get any on the outer border.

Place roasted tomatoes in the center over the pesto.

Season with salt, pepper, and oregano leaves.

Roast in oven at 350 degrees until pastry is cooked on bottom and golden brown around the edges. For me this only took about 14 or 15 minutes.

When ready to serve, sprinkle parmesan shavings over the tart and place some fresh basil leaves on top.

Greens With Fresh Raspberry Vinaigrette

Recipe by Claire Robinson on Five Ingredient Fix

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh raspberries, with extra for garnish

3 tablespoons dijon mustard

1/4 cup pomegranate juice

3/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

mixed greens

Put raspberries, mustard, and pomegranate juice into food processor and mix until smooth.

Add olive oil and mix until smooth emulsified dressing has formed.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Place dressing in bottom of salad bowl and top with mixed greens.

Toss and garnish with additional raspberries.

This made WAY too much dressing for me so I put the dressing I didn't use in the refrigerator.

According to the original recipe, the vinaigrette will stay good in the refrigerator for up to five days.

Rocket Pesto!

Pesto is one of my favourite things. I often make it in large batches and freeze what I don't use so that I can heat it up later and eat it.

Since it is so easy to make and so easy to freeze and keep for later, I eat a lot of pesto.

This time, I felt like doing something a little different. I had read a recipe on a blog called Cook Your Dream that described using arugula (also called rocket) instead of basil in pesto.

This intrigued me. I like arugula, so I couldn't see how this could go wrong.

After trying it, I think I might even like it better than basil pesto. No joke. This is delicious. My roommates liked it so much that they've been making their own batches of it ever since.

The original recipe that I looked at called for chickpeas in the pasta. Unfortunately, the grocery store in Aspen didn't have chickpeas. Also, no one who worked at the grocery store knew what a chickpea was. I thought chickpeas were a pretty normal thing to have at a grocery store. Apparently not.

So instead I put in cherry tomatoes as an extra ingredient.

Penne Pasta with Rocket Pesto

adapted from a recipe on Cook Your Dream

Ingredients for Pasta:

5 oz Penne Pasta

10 oz of Cherry Tomatoes, each sliced in half

however much Fresh Goat Cheese as you like

shredded Parmesan Cheese

Ingredients for Pesto:

2 cups Arugula

2 Garlic Cloves

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, broken into small chunks

1/2 cup pine nuts

Olive Oil

a hearty sprinkling of Salt

serves: 2

Cook pasta according to the instructions on the package.

While water is boiling and pasta is cooking, prepare the pesto.

Put all of the ingredients, except for the olive oil, in a food processor.

Process the ingredients until they are finely chopped, but still a little chunky.

Add in olive oil as needed, pulsing the processor between oil additions, until the pesto reaches your desired consistency.

Taste and add more salt if needed.

When the pasta is cooked, drain the water and return the pasta to the pan.

Add the pesto and the tomatoes and toss until pasta is well coated with pesto.

Transfer the pasta to a plate and crumble as much goat cheese as you like on top.

Then, sprinkle a bit of shredded Parmesan on top.

Eat and enjoy.

If there is leftover pesto, freeze it and eat it another day.

Personally, I used the leftover pesto on goat cheese crostini the next day. Yum!

Lemon Thyme Salmon

I have a tendency to get stuck in a rut when it comes to salmon.

I love my baked salmon topped with parsley so very much that I stop trying new salmon recipes.

This week I decided to end this.

I looked around, found a few good looking recipes, and ended up just kind of doing my own thing. I had found a few recipes that called for thyme and lemon, along with various other ingredients. I had also found a few recipes that suggested slow baking it at a lower temperature than usual.

I made my own mixture involving lemon rind, thyme, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I mixed it all in the food processor until I thought it tasted good.

Then I spread it on a 5 oz piece of salmon and baked it at 275 degrees for about 18 minutes.

Once it came out I squeezed some lemon juice on top of it and it was ready to go.

Tasty.

It was tender, moist, and flavourful. Also, It took barely any time to cook, which was nice since this was such a busy week!

Peanut Butter

I don't like peanut butter.

I'm told this is very odd. Everyone else I know seems to LOVE peanut butter.

I don't get it.

Lately I've been getting a lot of requests for peanut butter cookies, so I decided to give them a try. I knew this would be a cookie that I wouldn't be tempted to eat an entire batch of.

I searched the internet, looked through about a dozen different recipes, and finally found a recipe that looked pretty good.

It happens to be a recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow's new cookbook My Father's Daughter.

I found it on epicurious.

These cookies were good. Even I thought so. The peanut butter taste was definitely there but it wasn't overpowering.

These cookies were an even bigger hit than my snickerdoodles. People came back for second and third helpings of cookies.

Here they are cooling on the rack:

Grandad Danner's Favourite Peanut Butter Cookies

recipe slightly adjusted from the one in Gwyneth Paltrow's book My Father's Daughter

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick of unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup peanut butter chips

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

some granulated sugar to roll the dough in before baking

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl, cream together butter, peanut butter, and brown sugars.

Mix in egg and vanilla.

Add flour mixture in thirds and stir until smooth.

Fold in peanut butter chips and chocolate chips.

Roll dough into small balls.

Roll these balls of dough in granulated sugar.

Place dough on baking sheet and press each ball down with the tines of a fork in a criss-cross pattern.

Bake for ten minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking time.

Cool cookies on a rack.

Serve!

Cinnamon Sugar Cookies (also known as Snickerdoodles)

It's been a while.

Around the time when I broke my camera earlier this year, I stopped blogging. What is a food blog without pictures?

I still don't have a camera, but I do have an iphone, and it takes somewhat decent pictures, so I've decided to return to blogging.

This week I've been on a cookie baking binge. It's been a busy week with lots of rehearsals, and lots of rehearsals means a lot of people who need a little extra joy (cookies) in their lives. I think the orchestra managers love me a little more than they used to after this week.

Right now, I'm spending my summer at the music festival in Aspen, CO. It's a gorgeous place to be and it's a wonderful musical experience.

On Monday night, as I left rehearsal at 10:00 at night, I was not in a very good mood. Our conductor was extremely rude to everyone and treated every musician in a somewhat condescending manner. As a result, none of us really enjoyed that rehearsal.

I thought to myself, what better way to brighten my mood than by eating a snickerdoodle from Paradise Bakery? Unfortunately, Paradise closes at 10. I was too late. So I decided to make snickerdoodles! I only wanted to eat one, but I knew others would appreciate the rest, so it was worth it.

I couldn't find any particularly convincing looking snickerdoodle recipes online, so I simply took a good looking sugar cookie recipe and added cinnamon! They turned out amazing! Everyone in my orchestra loved them. I even gave one to Julia Fischer (super famous violinist) and she said she loved it! That was an exciting moment for me.

Here's what they looked like in the end:

Delicious.

Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe

adapted from a sugar cookie recipe from Bon Appetit, written by Gretchen Davis

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter, softened

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon salt

a very hearty dose of cinnamon that I did not measure

extra sugar and cinnamon for pressing the cookies with

Beat butter, oil, sugar, and powdered sugar until well blended.

Mix in egg and vanilla.

Add flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and cinnamon (to taste). Mix it all in.

Cover the dough and let it chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll dough into small balls (about the size of a ping-pong ball) and place on baking sheet.

In a bowl mix together some sugar and cinnamon. Dip the flat bottom of a glass into water and then into the cinnamon sugar mixture. Then, use this sugar covered bottom of a glass to flatten each ball of dough into little circles.

Once done with that process, bake cookies for about 15 minutes, or until they are a light brown color.

Place cookies on a rack and let cool!

the end is near (of first semester)! and I couldn't be happier

The past couple of weeks have been stressful. I had the majority of my finals last week and my first solo recital at Juilliard this past Friday. Luckily, I only have 2 finals left and then I can go home to the warmer weather of Houston.

I did get some cooking in last week. A surprising amount of cooking considering the fact that I was so busy.

On Monday night, I made a dish called Orange Chicken. It's a recipe from my mom and it's something I grew up eating. It is called orange chicken because it looks kind of orange in color, not because it tastes like oranges or anything. It's really easy to prepare. First preheat the oven to 350. You need chicken parts with skin and bone...whichever parts you like best. Personally, I got a chicken breast. You place the chicken in a pyrex dish or shallow pan. Sprinkle the chicken with garlic salt, pepper and paprika, and then pour Italian dressing over it, allowing some of the dressing - At home we use La Martinique French Vinaigrette, but I couldn't find that in New York, so I used Newman's Own Italian dressing - to fill up the bottom of the pan. Rub the seasonings and dressing into the chicken and then add a small amount of water to the pan. Place the chicken in the oven and bake for an hour. This is my finished product, along with the hunk of bread that I had as a really boring side:

The side dish may have been boring, but the chicken was delicious!

For my birthday, my amazing roomates gave me a grill pan. This has been very useful for my steak cooking. I used it for the first time on Tuesday night. Both Liz and I had a steak. We sprayed the pan with Pam, sprinkled the steaks with salt and pepper, and cooked them each for about a minute on each side. They were thin steaks, so they cooked fast!

They turned out so good! I can't wait to use the grill pan more in the future!

On Wednesday night, when I finally got home from school at 10:00, I made penne pasta with roasted tomatoes, basil, ricotta, and parmesan.

First, I roasted the tomatoes. I placed a box of cherry tomatoes on a cookie pan covered with foil. I poured olive oil over them, and sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. After heating the oven to 400 degrees, I put them in the oven and left them there until they started to look a little bit wilty. That's how you know when they're done.

While I was roasting the tomatoes, I cooked the pasta. I then chopped up some fresh basil, and mixed together the pasta, basil, tomatoes, fresh ricotta cheese, and parmesan cheese. Roasted tomatoes have to be one of the most delicious things ever, and they taste even better with pasta, cheese, and basil:

Our kitchen was crowded that night. Liz was busy cooking eggplant parmesan for our friends/the vocal holiday party. This time she included ricotta cheese, just to give it a little extra flavour. It was sooo good! Apparently it got devoured in seconds at the party.

On Thursday night, my parents came to town! We ate at a restaurant called Delta Grill. It was a restaurant that I had been to once before with my sister and her friend Ashley. The fried chicken is amazing, as well as the chicken BBQ sandwich. My parents and I really enjoyed it.

That night, I baked cookies! They were simple Toll House chocolate chip cookies, which can always be counted upon to be delicious. You can find the recipe and instructions here.

That was the extent of my cooking this week.

I also ate at some amazing restaurants this week. On Friday night, my parents and I went to Bar Americain, one of Bobby Flay's restaurants. We all shared tuna tartar to start. It came with slices of toasted bread, capers, cheese, and other garnishes. My mom hates raw fish and even she liked it. That's how good it was. My dad and I both had steaks for dinner, and we agreed that they were the best steaks we've had in a long time. My mom had duck and it was also incredible. For dessert, we shared an amazing apple tart.

On Saturday night, we ate at Blue Smoke BBQ. I had been craving barbeque for a long time. I had read about this place on a friend of mine's blog, and it was on the sifty fifty, so we decided it must be good. It was. It was different from most of the bbq I've had but it was incredibly good. We shared Texas Beef Brisket and Beef Ribs. Everything was extremely tasty. It definitely satisfied my bbq craving. Before dinner, I tried one of their blood orange margaritas, and it was one of the best margaritas I've ever had. Overall, Blue Smoke was a great experience!

Now it's time to finish up finals and go home to Houston!!!!!!!