A Few Recipes

I wish finishing school was as fun as trying new recipes. I am in my final weeks of completing my Master's degree and I really should be more studious and get ahead of deadlines for projects, but instead I have been planing meals and cooking! I thought I would share a few gems from the past week.

1. Pizza from Dave Lebovitz. There a couple of things that made this pizza so amazing. First, you mix flour, yeast and dough in a bowl and then leave it sit all day. Easiest dough ever! I used 1/2 whole wheat flour which required about 1/4 cup more water than Dave's recipe. Second, you cook the pizza on the bottom of a cast iron skillet. I love my cast iron skillet and they was a great new way to use it. I followed Dave's directions pretty closely and precooked the dough for a minute or two before adding the toppings. The whole pizza probably took about 5-6 total minutes to cook. Instead of potatoes and blue cheese, we had chicken, tomato, and basil, ranch, bacon, tomato, and spinach, and roasted red pepper, kalamata olive, spinach and tomato pizzas! Excellent pizza and a dough recipe I will be using from now on probably.

2. Potato Salad from Smitten Kitchen. It is the season for grilling burgers, lemonade and potato salad. I liked this recipe because it does not include mayonnaise and it does not have hard boiled eggs, neither of which I enjoy. I did not pickle the onions like her recipe and I only used asparagus because I didn't have any snap peas. I thought the Dijon dressing was very flavorful and a nice twist on traditional potato salad. I am planning on making the dressing again to have for more salads. One note, this salad does not keep overnight very well.

3. Cocoa Brownies with Salted Peanut Butter Frosting from Not With Out Salt. All you have to do is look at the pictures of these brownies and soon you will be drooling. I have been wanting to have an excuse to make these for weeks. Finally this weekend we had some friends over for dinner and I made these for the finishing touch. I attempted to make the brownies Sunday morning- earlier than I am usually awake- and so they did not turn out right. I am sure it was my error from still being bleary eyed and tired and not a problem with the recipe. I ended up making brownies from a box and put this frosting on them. The frosting is really the highlight anyways and it is so good! I used 1/2 of the powered sugar that is called for in the recipe and it turned out great- not too sweet with peanut butter goodness. The salt really is important on top, so don't omit it. I will be making this frosting again for sure!

Enjoy!