Onion Focaccia with Roasted Tomatoes

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I bake when I don't have a lot of fresh produce on hand (too lazy for the grocery store run). For dinner, I had some left over tomatoes and some jalapenos that didn't make it into the pickle jar. So I baked an onion focaccia and roasted some tomatoes with some garlic and thyme from our herb garden. As for the jalapenos, I made some jalapeno poppers with some leftover soy cheese and soy cream cheese.

You can find the onion focaccia recipe in The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook: 350 Essential Recipes for Inspired Everyday Eating. As for the roasted tomatoes, simply combine some diced tomatoes, thyme, garlic, olive oil, salt and sugar and roast in 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. The jalapeno poppers recipe is the same one as the one that VB made a long time ago. But this time, we have better pictures!

Summer Pickling Fun

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It took us about a year to finish the pickled vegetables that we made last summer. It was such a success that we decided to do it again this year. We streamlined the process and focused on cucumbers and jalapeno peppers this year. Also, we used the canning process to make a shelf stable product. The fridge pickles were good, but they took up too much valuable territory. This time, we can tuck away these jars in the pantry and use them when we need them. In a couple of weeks, we'll find out if these turned out successful or not. Until then, let's just admire all these pretty jars...

Homemade Pasta

Pin It Happy Fourth of July! I wish I can say that we're doing something fabulous today, but I caught a cold (yes, in the middle of summer... weird) and feel pretty lousy at the moment. So no big barbeque for us today, but I did try my hands at making fresh pasta a few days ago and here are photos from the process.

3 eggs and 2 cups of flour.

After incorporating enough flour with the eggs, I cut the egg mixture and flour together to form a shaggy dough.

Kneaded the dough for a few minutes into a smooth ball.

The dough rested for 30 minutes and then cut into 4 pieces. Then each piece was passed through the pasta machine.

I could only get the pasta to the second thinnest setting (6). Close enough. Then the pasta sheet was cut into strips.

Boil pasta immediately for 3 to 5 minutes. Mix with pesto, baby arugula and paper thin shaved fennel. Ta-da!

It turns out, making pasta is not as hard as previously imagined, although it did take a lot longer than I expected. The hardest part by far was trying to get a thin sheet of pasta without the pasta sticking to itself. Setting 6 was good enough for me. I actually wanted a thicker pasta after tasting the final product. So maybe it doesn't have to be paper thin. Overall, great success! Certainly heck a lot better than our last attempt. Let's never speak of that again.