Pizza Secrets

Pizza
Simple? Yes. Boring? Hardly.





My ultimate pizza dough recipe. Dead simple. Dead quick. Dead delicious.

Whole Wheat and Honey Pizza Dough recipe from Allrecipes.com
(If we don't happen to have honey or I just don't feel like dirtying a spoon to scoop some out of the jar (ie, most of the time), we omit the honey, and honestly, I can't taste the difference.)
The Mustards split this recipe in to two pizza pies.

Mr. Mustard is real particular about the order of his pizza toppings.
This is how he does:

In order!

Pizza/tomato sauce
Cheese
Onions
Vegetables etc
Spices

The tastier of the two pizzas pictured featured diced potatoes & pesto!

And now for the real secret to gooood pizza:
HOT OVEN!
Forget 350F or whatever the recipe says.

- Turn your oven to broil with the rack near the top.
- Sprinkle a cookie sheet with cornmeal and place the bedazzled pizza in the centre.
- Now let that baby buuuuurn (not literally) for 7-10 minutes, or until everything is nice and bubbly and lightly browning.

Eggs Benedict

Weekend Eggs Benedict



Eggs Benedict is absolutely my favorite fancy breakfast. If you ever need to suck up to me, this meal is well in order. But it has to be homemade! I've never tried a great, or even really good, Eggs Benedict in a restaurant. Ever. Yet I always try.

Now, this Saturday morning, make this. Then ask for a car. It will probably work.




Eggs Benedict for 2

1 whole wheat english muffin, cut in half
2 slices of veggie ham
2 eggs
1 T vinegar
1 package of "International" brand Hollandaise sauce (such a cheater!)
brussel sprouts

1. Prepare Hollandaise sauce as per directions.
2. Steam washed brussel sprouts.
3. Place English muffin halves, with veggie ham on top, on a baking sheet in a 250 degree oven.
4. Bring a pot half-full of water & 1 T or so vinegar to a steady simmer.
5. Crack one egg into a teacup.
6. Swirl simmering water with a spoon and gently add egg to the swirling water.
7. Remove egg with a slotted spoon after about 3-5 minutes or until the white is cooked but the yolk is still jiggly. (You can test this by taking the egg out, placing it gently on a plate and poking it a bit. Very scientific and precise)
8. Repeat with second egg.
9. Assemble bennies: English muffin, ham, egg, salt & pepper, generous helping of Hollandaise sauce.
10. Serve with brussel sprouts (also drenched in Hollandaise sauce).

If making this for 2, you will have leftover Hollandaise sauce, even with pigish helpings the first round. Store it in the fridge, covered. The next day, heat it on the stove and have Eggs Benedict on Sunday too! Weekend bennies, mmm.

Homemade Pasta with Homemade Pesto

To make up for my (extremely)extended absence, I thought I'd ought to make my (re)debut post a knock-out. And that, it is. It really is.

Homemade Pasta with Homemade Pesto



(I literally had to throw this plant out a few hours ago. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic, hence the surprise posting... but it was just getting too buggy(ew) and those bugs are stubborn and I would not put it past them to mowsy on over to my brand-new herb additions and set up camp there.)











To the last drop.


Recipe for homemade pasta from JoyTheBaker. Get it here!

Recipe for homemade pesto from Das Grosse Betty Bossi Kochbuch:

(Lately we have been adding chopped sundried tomatoes to the basil mixture before pureeing it and it is amazing!)

Basilikum-Pesto

3 bunches basil, coarsely chopped (about 100 g)
3 garlic bulbs, pressed (*we use only 1, though)
2 T pinenuts

Puree in food processor
(do not over-process or basil leaves will become bitter)

1/2 t salt
3 T grated parmesan
small amount of lemon peel (*I think we skip this, but it sounds nice!)

Mix into basil mixture

150 ml olive oil

Add slowly to mixture

Pesto will keep in the fridge for a maximum of 5 days.

My Parents' Garden

My (Parents') Garden



Our raspberry patch is a marketing scheme. You walk by, unable to resist the big, red, plump berries at the road-side. They are sinfully delicious and you venture deeper into the patch only to find they have substantially diminished in size. Line and sinker, ladies and gents. This is nature.



Our peas are not a marketing scheme. They are just tasty.



Is that not the cutest bean you have ever seen? Am I not the lamest rhymer you have ever... um nothing rhymes with rhymer. And to be honest, I quite liked my rhyme.
I took these a few days ago so we have been enjoying fresh, purple beans for a while now.

We have also got:
onions, carrots, spinach, peppers & tomatoes!

Having a garden is da bomb diggity.
Now, things to do cook with peas... hm.

Cocolate Puffed Wheat Squares

Chocolate Puffed Wheat Squares









This recipe is always a winner. It's not healthy by any stretch of the imagination (hey, it's got puffed wheat, doesn't that count for anything?! And about a pound of butter and sugar, nice try) but it's good. That much I know.
My mum used to make it for us to take on school trips and the 4L ice cream bucket full of them was licked clean long before we got where we were going and sad was the kid who didn't realise we had brought them and didn't get one.

You can also substitute 4 C Rice Krispies for the puffed wheat. Magical.
But the most magical thing about them? They're dead simple. Even easier than that, really.
And, if you use margarine and not butter, they're vegan. Yum.

(This recipe is from memory, hence the wild-Missus-Mustard-this-does-not-make-sense style instructions.)

Puffed Wheat Squares

1/2 C butter or margarine
1 C brown sugar
1/2 C corn syrup
2 T cocoa powder (feel free to add more!)
2 t salt (this is my addition, but I recommend it)
6 C puffed wheat

Stovetop Directions
1. Melt butter/margarine over low-medium heat in a small saucepan. Add remaining ingredients - except puffed wheat - and stir until sugar dissolves.
2. Pour puffed wheat into an appropriately-sized, greased baking pan. ("Appropriately-sized" meaning, pour the puffed wheat in, and if it looks like the height you wish your squares to be, go for it)
3. Pour chocolate mixture over puffed wheat and stir to coat evenly.
4. Let set for a few hours at room temperature, if you can wait that long.

Microwave Directions
1. Melt all ingredients - except puffed wheat - in a large, heat-proof bowl until sugar dissolves or almost dissolves.
2. Pour puffed wheat into bowl with chocolate mixture and stir to coat.
3. Pour mixture into appropriately-sized, greased baking pan. * See above note!
4. Let set for a few hours at room temperature. I dare you.

Maybe Dad would like some.

Root Beer Float Cake

Root Beer Float Cake



Recipe from joythebaker.com/blog

I had planned weeks in advance that this was to be my birthday cake. Baked my me. For my own birthday. Yes, my mum thought it was a bit weird too.

So I make the cake. With the whole cup of cocoa powder. And I tell my mum and sister what the icing is meant to be. There is uproar. No, you can't have root beer cake with root beer icing! Make a white icing! It was only after I played the "it's MY birthday!" card that they agreed to go along with this (in their opinion) overly root beery icing.

It turned out perfectly. I have never had a better cake in my existence. It wasn't that root beery but it was all-around delicious and thinking about it's dense, moist chocolateyness makes me want to bake one this instant. And I'm already thinking about that pop/soda to use next.

PS - This is the second cake I have ever made from scratch in my life. The last one being six years ago in Grade 10 at OSS.

Key Lime Cheesecake

Key Lime Cheesecake





I have been away. I have been a naughty blogger.
But I am getting back onto the scene! (Literally meaning: I'm not "new" at my job anymore and Mr Mustard has moved back to Vancouver, so I can finally breathe)
And as I'm easing myself back into the beautiful bounty that is blogging, I present you with something easy (for me). Here's a link. Done.

Recipe from smittenkitchen.com

I'm not the loviest lover of cheesecake, but as my sister ordered it for her birthday, cheesecake it was! As you can tell, I did not use mango as a topping and I thought it was great (as far as cheesecake goes).

Cheese Fondue

Cheese Fondue From a Box

Maybe you can sneak one of these in before it gets well too balmy out to even think of sitting round a hot pot of melted cheese. Sounds good, doesn't it?



I don't have a recipe for this (though I have made it from scratch before) because it's from a box!
We Mustards buy the Safeway brand from, uh, Safeway but add a pinch of paprika and pepper and an even smaller pinch of nutmeg. And about 1/4 C white wine. Which you are required to purchase anyway should you make fondue, so you will inevitably have it on hand.
We sometimes dip drained, canned pineapple in the cheese in addition to bread. But I know Swiss people who would object to this.



I know all this because Mister M is Swiss. A real, live Swiss man.

Blueberry-Lemon Muffins & Banana Muffins

B Muffins


Blueberry muffins.
My mum used to make these often when I was growing up. I will always remember taking them to school in Kindergarten and having this one boy (Ryan?) asking to trade some of his lunch for my muffin. Hands off, boy! These are some good muffins!


Banana muffins.
Last year, in Switzerland, jonesing for some muffins, I made these. Several times. Because they never stayed around long.

Blueberry-Lemon Muffins
From my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook.

1 1/3 C flour (I used whole wheat, but my mum always made white. I think both are tasty)
1/4 C sugar
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 well-beated egg
3/4 C milk
1/3 C cooking oil (I used melted margerine since I didn't have neutral oil)
1 tsp lemon zest
1 C blueberries (fresh or thawed)

Stir together first 3 ingredients and 3/4 t salt; make well in centre.
Combine egg, milk and oil; add all at once to dry mixture. Add in lemon zest and blueberries.
Stir just till moistened.
Fill well-greased muffin tins 2/3 full.
Bake at 400 F for 20-25 minutes.
Once muffins are baked and still slightly warm, dip tops in melted butter (we used margerine) and then in sugar. **

** I suppose you could skip the butter and sugar top, but really, why would you? I like to cut back on fat and sugar just as much as the next girl, but I think you should endulge here.

Banana Muffins
Recipe from muffin-paradies.de
(loosely translated by me)

Ingredients
2 ananas
100 g chocolate
60 g butter
120 g sugar
2 T milk
220 g flour (I use whole wheat)
2 t baking powder
1 pinch salt

Method
Preheat oven to 180 Celsius and grease (or spray) muffin tins.
Mash peeled bananas in a bowl. Cut up chocolate (Europeans don't typically have chocolate chips, but you would obviously use them here. Unless cutting up chocolate is your thang)
Mix butter, bananas, milk and sugar well.
Add flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate and mix only until moistened.
Fill muffin tins and bake for about 20 minutes.

Cheedar Broccoli Soup

Cheddar Broccoli Soup Dreams



Recipe from thewiveswithknives.blogspot.com
It is cooold and rainy today. I would have felt like eating this for dinner. But. Lazy.

At 9:45pm I think it's about time to snuggle under the covers with My Booky Wook...

Vegetarian Wonton Soup

Vegetarian Wonton Soup



I possibly feel like making this right now. It is delicious.
And, what I mean by "vegetarian" is simply that I used mock ground "beef" (I have also used mock ground "chicken") instead of the real deal. Maybe I can think up a yummy vegetable version.
Really, this soup is so good. Especially with the cabbage, which you don't find in traditional wonton soup. You could leave it out of you want, but I think it really adds to it.

Missus Mustard's Wonton Soup

Serves 2-4

For the wontons:
about 14-16 wonton wrappers (for as many dumplings as you want) (I found mine in the freezer section of Buy-Low)
1/4 of a package of Yves Original Veggie Ground Round
2 tsp dried chives
1 spring onion, white & green parts chopped
salt & pepper

For the broth:
1/2 head of a small savoy cabbage, cut into strips
3 c (ish!) of water
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
enough vegetable bouillon to make the water salty enough for your taste
sprinkle of dried chives
pepper (optional)

1. Thaw wonton wrappers in the fridge the night before.
2. Put cabbage and sesame oil into a pot and let cook for 1-2 minutes, until just beginning to wilt. Add the rest of the broth ingredients and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
3. Mix all ingredients for the wontons (except the wonton wrappers) in a small bowl.
Place a teaspoon of mixture in the centre of a wonton wrapper, bring in opposite corners of the wrapper over the filling and pinch the wrapper together at the top. Get it? Then squish the top all together so nothing can spill out and so it looks like a little candy in a wrapper. **
4. Do this with all wrappers and filling.
5. Bring a pot of slightly salted water to a slow boil.
6. Add the wontons in carefuly and take them out with a slotted spoon once they float to the top.
7. Place the wontons in the broth and serve.

** Next time I will try wetting the edges a bit with water on my finger to help them stick together. I think this will really help a lot.

Mum's Banana Bread

Mum's Banana Bread
A Little Taste Of Home



Before I go home in four days. (!?!?)

Pasta Salad

What I Have Had On Previous Days
That I Would Have Had Today
Had I Not Had Something Else
(title)



Really cheap (in every sense of the word) beer in my Mason jar.
I did drink out of my Mason jar today, but it was iced coffee, not beer.
And I did drink beer today, just not out of my jar because it was dirty from my coffee.



Pasta salad. Atop a bed of lettuce.
Wanna know the recipe? Here it is:

Pasta Salad a la Missus Mustard

roughly 200 g uncooked whole grain egg noodles
a handful of grape tomatoes
a nice bed of lettuce
2 tbsp olive oil
(vinegar if you want)
1-2 tbsp pesto
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1-2 tsp fresh, chopped basil
salt & pepper
dollop of cottage cheese
sprinkling of parmesan cheese
(mozzarella would work nicely too)

1. Cook pasta in salted water
2. Cut grape tomatoes in half, set aside
3. Drain pasta, put back into the pot (make sure it's not too hot) and add oil (vinegar), pesto and spices. (Add enough oil to coat all pasta quite thoroughly, it should not be at all dry. I suppose you could add a little water too if it's too dry and you don't want to add extra oil.)
(At this point I also stuck a lid on the pot and put it outside to cool down. You don't need to, but Mr M wanted the pasta cold)
4. Plate on top of lettuce with cottage cheese and parmesan.

Mister Mustard put vinegar and sliced black olives on his and he loved it.
I'm sure it would be tasty with a lot of different things thrown in too.

Spätzli

Spätzli
(pronounced sh-PATZ-li)

A Swiss specialty made by my special Swiss Mister.
If you've never had spätzli before, it essentially tastes like pasta. (Is it a pasta?)
In Switzerland you basically don't bother making it from scratch because pre-made is everywhere, cheap and delish. But this is North America! We don't typically do spätzli. But luckily for you, my Swiss guy does. And I will lovingly hash out the directions into English.









Adapted a lot from Annemarie Wildeisen's Kochen recipe for Käsespätzli.

(We made a half recipe)

400 g flour
4 eggs
250 ml fizzy water
1 tsp salt

1. Put flour in a big bowl, make a well in flour, drop in the eggs and lightly beat them.
2. Add in fizzy water and salt and mix for 5 minutes until dough is fluffy.
3. Leave at room temperature for 15 minutes.
4. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
5. Drop small blobs of dough into boiling water by cutting off pieces as you slightly pour dough out of the bowl (if that makes ANY sense. Look at pictures 1 and 2 and it might make more sense)
6. Let blobs boil until they float to the surface.
7. When they float to the surface, scoop them out with a slotted spoon.

Optional directions:
Lightly fry spätzlis in a pan before serving with sauce.

Mushroom sauce

um...

I'm still waiting on this one. It is a Mister Mustard original and he's not home. Next time, okay? Okay. Deal.

Huevos rancheros, baked egg rolls and falafel.

A breakfast, a lunch and a dinner.
Of course, these 3 meals were not eaten in one single day! That would be a bit much, don't you think?
Although it might be fun to go to Mexico for breakfast, China for lunch and the Middle East for dinner. But again, we're verging on piggishness here and that will not do!

Huevos Rancheros


Thanks to my vast knowledge of first-year-University Spanish, I can safely say the first word of the title means "eggs". I can also safely say, this meal is gooood.
Recipe inspiration from fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com
though I didn't really follow the recipe.

Baked Vegetable Egg Rolls








Recipe from the same site. I like her blog because 1. she loves Mexican food, as the Mustards do 2. she is always looking for ways to cut out fat and make dishes healthier 3. she consistently has tasty recipes to try.
And OH MAMA, these are no exception! We didn't have enough filling (though we made it to the recipe, so if you make these, I would (at least, because, I mean, I can certainly deal with over-stuffed egg rolls!) double the filling for just as many wraps) but they were scrumptious, crispy without being greasy (though give me some greased up Vietnamese roll dips any day and I'll be beaming like a clown), definitely vegan and all other sorts of yummy.

Falafel




You know what? Mister M made both hoummus and falafel from a mix. And you know what? It was good! And we're not ashamed! Go buy yourself a box (or 2 if you want hoummus) and eat yourself a big, bad falafel in a pita.

We used:
whole grain pitas
hoummus
fried falafels
chopped tomatoes
shredded lettuce
homemade tzatziki sauce

Homemade tzatziki sauce (from The Vegetarian Cook's Bible):
1 english cucumber
1 1/3 c Yogurt Cheese (we used plain yogurt)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped (we didn't want to stink, so we omitted this and it was still good)
2 tbsp finely chopped mint (we didn't have any)
2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper

1. Scrub cucumber (peel if not organic) and shred into a colander. Let stand in the sink or over a bowl for 30 minutes. Squeeze lightly to expel excess liquid.

2. In a bowl, combine cucumber, yogurt, garlic, mint, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Stir to mix well. Taste and add more mint, lemon juice, salt or pepper as required.

And there you have it; a breakfast, a lunch and a dinner.

Mock crabcakes & cinnamon buns

Mock Mayland Crabcakes



Recipe from delicioustv.com
I have been watching Toni's podcasts lately and thought this one sounded yummy. I will basically try mock-seafood anything, though, so maybe it's just me. Mister Mustard deeply objected to the making of crabcakes, but I persisted and finally made them.
I didn't like them all that much. Sorry, Toni.
Tartar sauce recipe from allrecipes.com
I added a few chopped capers and spices. It was quite a while ago, so I don't remember. It was good, though.

Cinnamon Buns



Recipe from edible-moments.blogspot.com
Half of the recipe I used straight away and half I put in the freezer. Both batches were tasty, but the freezer batch was even more so.
The author of this recipe didn't specify how thick to roll out the dough and I definitely went overboard with the rolling pin. Next time I will stop myself at about 1 - 1.5 cm to make them more fluffy like her's.

Jogging time, folks. We had roasted potato fries with miso gravy for lunch. Guiiilty.

Capers loot & Asian market fun.

The spoils of a recent Capers raid.

I love cheese.
I love cheese so much it hurts because of how much it hurts my wallet.



Dutch 3 year aged Gouda cheese.


But it tastes like caramel!


Naam Miso Gravy.
The Naam is one of the Mustard's favorite restaurants in Vancouver. I guess it's been kickin' it for 40 years now? Impressive.
Also impressive, I used to hate this gravy and now, here I am, buying it by the bottle!

Let's go the the Asian market, shall we?


Burger candies. We did not buy them.


A GIANT sack of peeled garlic for less than $4.






We bought this baby bok choy for $1.64. Bargain!


Our super-fun enoki mushrooms.
I also hate mushrooms, but I am trying to work on this. Just ask Mister Mustard. I eat them now and they're not all bad.
Plus, if you're going to eat mushrooms, you might as well eat mushrooms that look like alien fingers.


*cue creepy music*
OooOooooOOooo...

Stay tuned to find out what we did with half of the alien fingers.