Tomato and Goat Cheese Frittata

If I haven't had a case of the Monday's today, then none ever existed! But, in spite of my challenges today, I managed to end the day with an extraordinary, quite healthy  (South Beach Diet friendly) dinner and a couple of glasses of good wine. I'm going to apologize in advance for the lack of photographs of my meal preparation. The boys were on a roll and I was playing referee at the same time that I was making dinner. It happens.

Tonight I made a simple, yet elegant, tomato and goat cheese frittata. The elegance, in my opinion, comes from incredible succulent and very much in season tomatoes....and goat cheese. It was juicy and creamy and just amazingly fresh. I'm not going to waste time with words, I'm just going to get straight to dinner.

Tomato and Goat Cheese Frittata

Olive oil
4 slices (aprox 3"x8") prosciutto chopped
1 sweet white (or Spanish) onion, diced.
2 large cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste
Mediterranean blend of spices (I used Global Garden Caliterranean Blend)
1 large heirloom tomato, thinly sliced
3-4 oz goat cheese crumbled.
1/3c half and half
2C egg beaters
2T Parmigiano Reggiano

Heat olive oil in pan and cook prosciutto until browned. While prosciutto is cooking, take 4 slices of the tomato and slice it in half creating a half circle. Dice the rest of the tomato slices. Remove prosciutto from  pan and set on a paper towel. Add chopped onion to pan, sprinkle with salt, pepper and mediterranean seasoning and saute. Once onions start to become translucent, add garlic and cook for about two minutes. Add diced tomato slices and cook another two minutes. Add half of the goat cheese and half of the prosciutto to the onion and tomato mixture and stir. Add half and half and stir again. Now add the egg beaters. Mix everything well for about 30 seconds and then transfer to a pie or tart pan that has been well coated with cooking spray. Then top frittata with the remaining 8 tomato half slices, remaining chopped prosciutto and remaining crumbled goat cheese. Then sprinkle with parmigiano reggiano.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 350, until golden brown.

This dish paired very nicely with a glass of dry Rose. I'm typically not a Rose drinker, but it went very well and it was very refreshing for this hot summer night.

10 Minutes 'Til Dinner

Alright, this is going to be a super quick post for a super quick, super healthy week night meal. It's so quick that it will probably take me longer to type up this blog post than it will take you to make this dish! It's South Beach Diet friendly and Gluten Free! This is less of a recipe and more of a meal idea.

Chipotle Black Bean Lettuce Wraps

You'll need the following:

• Four black bean patties (I used frozen this time, if you want to prepare your own use my pinto bean burger recipe in my burger and fries post)
• 1 head of butter leaf lettuce
• 1avocado
• 1 tomato
• 2T chopped red onion
• 4T chopped cilantro
• juice of one lime
• garlic salt
• Sour cream (optional)
• Cheese (optional)

While the black bean patties are cooking in a large skillet, chop the avocado, tomato, onion and cilantro and mix together with garlic salt and lime juice. Clean the lettuce and gently remove each leaf and set on a platter. When the patties are cooked, break them up with a spatula like you would ground meat.

Top a leaf of lettuce with some of the black bean patty mixture, avocado salsa fresca and sour cream and cheese if desired.

That's it! ENJOY!

Margherita Pasta

With summer definitely upon us here in Southern California, my weekly CSA shipments have taken transformation. I'm so happy to see the summer produce that the warmer temperatures have been providing! I used four items from my weekly Harvest2U shipment in my dinner tonight.

This dinner really couldn't have been easier. It's definitely a week night meal and it's South Beach (phase 2 and 3) friendly.

Margherita Pizza

Here's what you'll need:

1/2 box organic whole grain pasta (I used thin spaghetti) cooked

Olive oil (I used meyer lemon olive oil)

The stalk of one large onion (you may substitute a leek if you cannot find a onion stalk)

1 dozen med-large cherry tomatoes, halved

fresh basil (about 2T chopped)

garlic chives (about 1Tchopped)

salt and pepper to taste

parmesan cheese (optional)

Cook your pasta and set aside

Clean and slice your onion stalk. Once it's sliced, place in large skillet with 1T olive oil and a dash of salt. Cook just until barely softened, you don't want to cook them too much. Turn off the burner and toss the tomatoes into the pan. 

Toss pasta into the pan, as well as basil and garlic chives.

Add 2T of meyer lemon olive oil to pan and toss. Salt and pepper to taste.

Plate and serve! See, couldn't be easier!

Getting my cake on....Oh BABY!

One of my oldest friends is expecting her first child next month and I was honored to create her baby shower cake. She provided me with a napkin as a sample of the shower theme, told me what flavors she wanted and left the rest to me. Of course, I never do cakes completely alone. I'm so blessed to have a husband who is not only incredibly talented, but also enjoys helping me create my cakes.

So, we set out to design the cake. For some reason I kept hitting creative road blocks. Perhaps it's because I wanted so badly for it to be perfect and for the mommy-to-be to totally and completely love it. Who knows, all I can tell you is that I was stumped in a huge way. I had WEEKS to plan this cake and I didn't even really decide on my design until one week before the baby shower.

Alright, before I get to photos of the finished product, I wanted to share a few photos of the cake that I snapped in the process of building the cake. Here we go.....

Once the cakes are baked, I crumb coated them. My next step was to fill the cakes and then stack them. This particular cake was the bottom tier and it was chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate ganache filling.

While I was filling and stacking the cakes, Dan was busy working away on the little animals. He was molding them out of gum paste.

Once I had the cakes filled and stacked, I put another thin coating of buttercream frosting on them and put them back in the fridge. The next step was to make the fondant and cover the cakes in fondant.

I divided the leftover green fondant into two pieces. I knew that I would need a little bit of green again later. The piece I wasn't using right away I double wrapped it in saran wrap and placed it into a ziplock bag.

After the cakes were covered in fondant we stacked them using dowels for support. Once the cakes were stacked I piped the borders and piped the wording on the cake as well as placed the leaves (this is where I used that green fondant again) and the stars.

While I was working on the piping and the embellishments, Dan was busy working on making those adorable little animals come to life. 

Now, the moment you've been waiting for.....The finished cake! Happy Baby Shower Day Dominique and welcome baby Aidan!

Recipe of the Month Club: May Review

I've mentioned before that I subscribe to a message board online, and one of the threads on this message board is a recipe of the month thread. This post is going to be short as it's only a review of a recipe that was chosen as the May recipe of the month.

The recipe is Lemon-Mint Cake with Lemon Syrup. It can be found here on the Foodnetwork.com website at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/lemon-mint-cake-with-lemon-syrup-recipe/index.html.

The recipe was relatively easy to make and came together quickly. The instructions were straight forward and simple to follow. The result was a delicious summery cake with a definite lemon zing and a subtle hint of mint in the background. So subtle that you might miss it if you didn't know it was there. I believe it did bring something fresh to the recipe.

Kale Chips - Easy power packed nutritional snack

Kale is such a powerful green! It's packed with antioxidants, calcium, vitamins C & K as well as beta carotene.

Kale chips couldn't be easier to make. They are simple and quick and they disappear just as quickly as they were prepared in my home.

Here's what you'll need. Please don't be overwhelmed by the ingredient list, it's daunting, but stick with me.

1 Bunch of Kale
2(ish) tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt
Your favorite seasoning, if desired. ( I actually used Melting Pot's Garlic and Wine Seasoning)

Got it? Good.

Preheat your oven to 350. Honestly you'll be done preparing this dish long before the oven is even at temperature.

Wash your kale and pat it dry. With a sharp knife, remove the rib of the the kale from each leaf. Rough chop it in fairly large pieces. The kale will shrink big time in the oven. Place prepared kale in a large dish. Drizzle it with 1T of olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Toss it with your hands and repeat with the olive oil and salt. Dump it all on to a baking sheet and spread into a single layer. Add additional seasoning.

Place it in the oven and cook 15-20 minutes. Honestly, I'd start checking it at 12 minutes though. Remove from oven when crispy. Let the chips cool and then try not to eat them too quickly!

Enjoy!

Low(er) Carb Blueberry Scones

One of my very favorite parts of late spring in the Temecula valley is the amazing produce available. Not only from my local CSA, Harvest2U, but also from the amazing blueberry farm that is right down the street from my house! Depending on the weather, the Temecula Berry Company opens in May, and weather permitting, stays open until sometime in July.

As a family we've been making trips to our local blueberry farm almost weekly when it's open. They have a U Pick farm as well as pre made blueberry pies for sale. They have movie on the farm nights and other great events.

The farm opened Wednesday of last week, but the weather was less than perfect, so we waited until Friday to go for our first visit of the 2011 blueberry season. You can certainly tell the boys are getting older and well versed in the rules of blueberry picking, because picking our few pints took about half the time it took last year. The berries are big and beautiful and most importantly, delicious!

Blueberry scones are my absolute favorite and I made them several times last year. This year I decided to take my favorite recipe and make it South Beach Diet friendly. Granted, it does contain flour so it's more along the lines of phase two for an occasional treat or phase three.

What you're going to need:
Scones
2C stone ground whole wheat pastry flour (I use Bob's Red Mill)
1T baking powder
1/2t salt
2T Splenda
5T cold butter, cut into small pieces
1c half and half (plus about another 2T for brushing scones)

Glaze
juice and zest of one lemon
1/2t olive oil (I used meyer lemon olive oil)
3T Splenda

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees

Scones
Sift all dry ingredients together.

Cut butter into the dry mixture with pastry blender or two forks until butter resembles pea sized pieces covered in flour mixture.

Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in half and half. Fold the half and half into the flour mixture, taking caution not to over mix. This will make for a tougher dough and wheat flour is already not as light and airy as white flour.

Fold in blueberries.

Flour a cutting board or your countertop lightly and roll dough onto the surface. Gently press into a rectangle about 12" by 3.5". Cut the rectangle in half and then half again, leaving yourself with four squares (or square-ish). These squared you will then cut in half on the diagonal to make the traditional triangular scone shape.

Place the scones on to an ungreased cookie sheet and then brush with half and half. Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remember, the whole wheat flour is already a darker color so they aren't going to change color so much. Don't let them get "brown" or they will be over done.

Remove and let cool. Then top with glaze. That recipe will follow this.

Glaze
This could not get more simple!
Add all glaze ingredients to a microwave safe bowl.
Cook for 11 second in the microwave, stir and repeat.
Brush glaze on top of scones.

Enjoy!