Oven Baked Potatoes Hasselback

Sifting through my saved recipes to see what I can feasibly make and today I landed on the Potato Hasselback from Food and Wine Magazine. I love potatoes and the Hasselback is in the end just a really pretty version of a simple baked potato.

The recipe calls for small Yukon gold potatoes peeled but I only had russet potatoes on hand and thought I’d give it a shot with these instead and it worked out just fine. I didn’t see the need to peel these guys and while it may have been a prettier presentation there’s nothing wrong with the skins and I’m sure they’re packed with nutrients so why not try with it on.

The hardest part of a potato Hasselback is not cutting all the way through when making the slices. I had a couple of hiccups but it didn’t ruin the taste or function at all so it’s not a big deal. These guys get baked and basted with butter throughout the whole process for about 40mins. Once they got soft and opened up a little more I topped them with breadcrumbs (I like panko) and roasted it all for another 10 mins and seasoned with some salt and pepper to taste.

Visually really pretty but it wasn’t a complicated dish and tastes pretty much like a regular baked potato so this may be one of those “cook to impress” kinda things. I like simple recipes, they boost my confidence with cooking and with potatoes, I’d never say no to some leftovers!

Zucchini Pie

Sometimes, Facebook comes through with a nugget of gold. Today is one of those days.

I was recently scrolling through Facebook and spotted a recipe someone reposted for a zucchini pie. It’s the season for zucchini and we’ve gotten them from Caleb’s job and friends growing them in the garden so it’s no surprise a recipe would pop up using them.

Turns out the recipe is from The Seasoned Mom. A food blog online. It’s pretty simple as well. Slice or dice 3 cups of zucchini and mix it with Bisquick batter and onions, cheese, a little oil, eggs, and salt and pepper. Bake it in a pie pan at 350F for 35-40 mins and its ready to go.

I attempted this in a cupcake tin instead to try and make it more portable and sharable. This turned out to be a mistake. While this recipe is super easy and satisfying, the batter stuck to the muffin liners and I lost most of it while trying to eat it. While it still tastes and smells really really great warmed up, it’s not as good as it would’ve been had I followed the instructions and made it in a pie pan. Some experiments don’t work out. I’m saving the recipe and I’m ready to try it again (maybe after I finish eating all these first!)

CORT - Wild Ginger Asian Fusion

I think Wild Ginger is just part of my routine now. Moving is hard and sushi is the perfect treat for getting things done.

LOCATION: 45 MAIN ST., CORTLAND, NY 13045

I’ve been wanting to get sushi again since the last time I bought it so now I’m just finding any time to treat myself and today is that day. I’ve successfully moved all of my stuff to the apartment and this week we’re working on moving Calebs things after work so it’s gonna be a long week. Which means sushi.

Today I decided to forego my favorite Ebi and ordered two different pieces instead. I went with the Ika (squid) and the Tomago (egg) which is my friend Christel’s favorite. Every time I order it I think of her and her love for eggs. My roll this time was the shrimp tempura roll which is where I snuck in some shrimp for myself. Not that I wouldn’t eat an ebi on top of this.

The shrimp tempura roll was pretty standard. Very good but nothing surprising in terms of flavor. It didn’t wow me but it also didn’t disappoint. This shrimp tempura comes with avocado and cucumber so it had a nice crunch and the textures were all there for it. I’ve been playing around with the sushi pieces trying to nail down my favorites (aside from the ebi) and today’s choices didn’t disappoint at all. I was a little worried about the Ika that it might be a little tough but the way it was scored and the cut was amazing. This just melted in my mouth and had so much good, fresh flavor without being too chewy. Much better than the surf clam and I may add it to my favorite with the ebi from now on. The tomago was also really good. My egg to rice ratio was quite comical and I wish i had taken a photo but I had about a 1:2 ratio of rice to egg and it would’ve been much more satisfying to just get a little more sushi rice in there. I love rice and the balance helps sometimes. The tomago was also a great texture that just melts in your mouth. Sweet and easy to eat for sure. I know why Christal likes it and while it’s hasn’t made it to my top list of sushi choices, I’d never turn it down.

Thus ends another delicious order of sushi from Wild Ginger. I’m already looking forward to eating here again.

Best Bolognese Sauce

In all honesty, thinking of what to make every day for dinner is becoming very difficult. I’m finding I have less mental energy to prepare what I’d like to make every single day and it’s adding to this burnt out feeling I’ve been having. I’m trying to get over this hump and cooking new dishes and trying out this stack of recipes is helping to motivate me and give me ideas on what to make. It gets a little difficult because Caleb can be picky at times but the world is my oyster and there has to be a mountain of dishes I can try to make.

This weekend I decided to tackle a bolognese sauce. As traditional and iconic as this sauce is, I’ve actually never made it and felt down to the task of trying my hand at it. I looked to BA and of course, Andy Baraghani has a recipe and a video for it. Honestly, I personally don’t enjoy Andy’s personality so I’m not a fan of his recipe videos. I can still appreciate his skill as a cook and trust in his recipes though so I went all-in on the website recipe and skipped around the video before I started just to get a feel for the cooking.

Of course, I tweaked the recipe a little as needed so my meat this time around was half ground beef, and the other half was Italian sausage just because Caleb bought quite a bit of it when quarantine was kicking in and all the other meat was sold out. Since we don’t typically eat much Italian sausage, most of it ended up sitting in the freezer and we still have a ton but I figured this would be my time to use it. Caleb isn’t a huge fan of beef either but he’ll eat it in a meat sauce with all the flavors melding together since he can’t really taste the beef specifically. Perfect time to use both.

So, I browned the meat in the pan, took it out, then added the sofrito type mixture that Andy makes. I decided to skip the pancetta since I already had more going on with the Italian sausage. I think it’s a good substitute for now. My attempts to clear out the freezer will prevail. I added the meat back, and used some canned tomato juice as a substitute for the wine and kept moving on. I don’t have wine here and didn’t want to buy a bottle just for this since we tend not to go through wine at all. Andy mentions the acidity in the wine helping break down the meat so I’m hoping the acidity in the tomato water will work similarly. I added chicken stock (the last of the boxed stock sitting in the fridge!) and let the whole thing cook for 2 hours.

Once that two-hour mark hit I started the pasta. The Italian sausage was still a little tough and I figured it could still go for longer and be great so I let the meat sauce keep cooking and waited a little longer. Once the pasta was 3 mins out, I moved it to the sauce with about 1 cup of pasta water and let it finish cooking. I was a little worried about the sauce not sticking well and being too watery from the pasta water but then I realized I forgot to add the parmesan and once I did that, it thickened up more and hit a better consistency.

All in all, this was a pretty successful run at bolognese (with modifications). Caleb wanted more of a kick to it so the addition of pepper flakes or something along those lines would’ve appeased him a little more. I think it was a little salty for me with all the additions but it was a solid sauce. I’m not sure that I’d do another 3 hours to make something so average but it was a good dish and it wasn’t terribly difficult to make.

Creamy Pasta with Mushrooms and Prosciutto

I’ve been on my roll and I’d like to try and make at least one saved recipe a week to try and test out while I’m here working from home since I have a little extra time while I’m waiting for pages to come in. This week I decided to try Claire’s Pasta with Mushrooms and Prosciutto except I went for pancetta instead, just because pancetta works better for me when I’m cooking.

This is a pretty simple dish which I appreciate. I cooked my pancetta, removed it from the pan and then cooked down my mushrooms. Claire uses nice wild mushrooms but I haven’t made a trip to Wegmans in a hot minute so I just went with baby bellas. Minor alterations but the spirit of the dish lives on. Once the mushrooms cooked down, I added shallots, chicken stock (store-bought since we still have some in the fridge waiting to be used) and then eventually I added my pasta water and spaghetti. Claire uses a really beautiful pappardelle but we have two boxes of spaghetti in the pantry and as I said, small alterations. I added the cream, finished with some butter, and topped with some reserved pancetta! Finito.

This was a really nice creaminess but I worried that it was a little too loose and might’ve done better reheated when the sauce had time to cool and solidify a little more. I was still happy with the consistency and the flavor though. The pancetta was a little gamey which I suppose I should remind myself of because in this case, it would’ve probably been nicer with the prosciutto. This hit the spot for something creamy though and I’m happy with the choice to try it. I’m not sure that it was outstanding enough to add to my recipe book but It was a solid cook for sure.