Berry Sangria

Over the weekend, my thermometer registered over 100. And what is a girl to do when the wine she loves is just not cold enough for a hot summer's day. Make Sangria. I am Latina afterall, plus it is so easy everyone can make it. Plus the responses are usually thunderous applause and affirmations of undying affection. For instance this picture inspired my friend Leslie's text, "I love you"

My mother and I were in Seville once, and after a long hot day of walking Al Hambra we saddled up to the bar. My Mom proceeded to order a Sangria but she requested that it wasn't to strong. To which the affable bartender explained, "Here, we give this to the children." Not, that I am advocating giving this to children, but it is tasty and easy to make.

What you need:
1 bottle of cheapo red wine (white works too, Spanish preferably)
2 cups of fruit juice (I used blueberry and pomegrate, but any kind you like)
1/2 cup of brandy
cut up fruit to decorate

What you do.
1. Mix all together.

2. Serve over ice. Enjoy with friends and responsibly.

As always, much love, many blessings, and happy drinking!

Pancake Friday: Peaches and Cream Pancakes

This is not so much of a recipe as an idea. We recently instituted a new tradition in the Burnaska Household, I think we are on week three of pancake Friday. Today was Peaches and Cream. I had a can of organic peaches preserved in peach juice open in the fridge. I took the juice of the peaches and added it to my Aunt Jemimah Pancake mix that only requires water. I cooked the pancakes and put small pieces of peaches in the batter. I served them with the peach juice instead of syrup and light whipped cream (from a can). It is a work morning after all, but feel free to whip your own cream if you would like to make this special.

What you need:

1/2 cup of pancake mix that only requires water

1/4 cup of peach juice

cut up peach

whipping cream

reserved juice to be used as syrup

What you do:

1. heat up a skillet with butter

2. mix the pancake mix and the juice, add some of the cut up peaches

3. cook the pancakes until the edges are bubbly, and flip

4. cook for another minute until complete

5. serve with whip cream and peaches

As always, much love, many blessings, and happy Friday!

Morel and Fava Bean Fresh Pasta

I love fresh pasta. I love eating it, I love making it, I love cooking it. I love fresh pasta. I especially love fresh pasta in the late spring with a homage to the budding gifts of nature. This is my declaration of spring happiness, fresh pasta, morels, and fresh fava beans.

I am Egyptian, so I have an unhealthy obsession with fava beans of all varieties. Most Egyptians eat fava beans for breakfast in a dish called Fool Medamas. However, I adore fresh fava beans. They are a labor of love, you have to deshell them, parboil them, peel them, and then cook them, but they are so worth it.

The dish comes together very quickly, and you don't want to over cook the pasta. I think the total cooking time is about 3 minutes. So it is best to have everything ready, or as the professionals call it, mise en place.

Here is how you do it.

For the pasta:
2 cups of semolina flour
4 eggs
Cornmeal for dusting and flour for your hands

Method:
1. In your mixer add the flour and turn on low.
2. Add one egg at at time until fully incorporated.
3. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
4. Cut your dough into 4 peices.
5. Use a pasta press to slowly get your dough thinner and thinner, starting with the largest setting and working to the smallest. Use flour to help the dough from sticking.
6. Change blades on your pasta press and cut the dough for the pasta what ever thickness you like. We like linguini.
7. Pile the cornmeal and allow the pasta to fall into the little mound. Seperating the strings with your fingers so they don't stick.
8. Fresh pasta, ready for cooking... :)

For the dish:
1 cup of morels
1 pint of fava beans in the shell
1 lb of fresh pasta
oilve oil
salt and pepper

Method:
1. Set up a large skillet and a large pot of boiling water on two burners next to each other.
2. Take the fava beans out of the pods. Set a big pot of water to boil, and put a heat-safe strainer in it so you can re-use the water to cook the pasta. Parboil the favabeans in the boiling water for about a minute or until they looked shriveled. Take them out of the water. Let them cool so you can touch them, and remove the outer casing.
3. Pour a few teaspoons of olive oil on the bottom of large skillet (it should be large enough to hold the entire dish). Add the morels and sautee lightly for about a minute.
4. Add the fresh pasta to the boiling water in the large pot with the strainer in it, cook for 1 minute.
5. Add the shelled fava beans to the pasta in the boiling water, cook for 1 minute.
6. Take the strainer out of the boiling water with the fava beans and the pasta, pour into the morels.
7. Turn off the heat.
8. Turn the pasta and the fava beans into the morels. It is ok if some of the liquid from the pasta mixes in, that is good.
9. Quickly serve and enjoy. You can add salt and pepper and a little bit of grated parmesan if you wish.

Mange! Enjoy!

As always, much love, many blessings, and happy cooking!

Proscuitto Asparagus Bundles

This is an easy and elegant side dish or appetizer. You can even make this a lovely party food. Just make sure you have good quality prosciutto and fresh asparagus. For this recipe I am using San Danielle rather than Prosciutto de Parma. I like the taste and texture of the San Danielle better, it leaner, gamier, and more salty. But by all means get the best you like.

How you do it:

What you need:
1 lb of asparagus trimmed
4 oz of prosciutto
olive oil
salt and pepper

What you do:
1. If you are making pasta as well, please feel free to reuse the pasta water. Either way you need a large pot of boiling water.
2. Trim the woody ends of the asparagus and wash.
3. Drop in the boiling water for about 2 minutes until the asparagus is tender crisp. It may be less or more depending on the thickness of the spears.
4. Set aside and allow to cool so you can handle them.
5. On a serving dish or plastic cutting board, cut the prosciutto slices in half long way so that you have long thinnish strips.
6. Take two or three asparagus spears and wrap the middle with the prosciutto, by keeping one end in your hand and wrapping the other around the middle of the spears leaving about 1/2 an inch on each side. Tie the prosciutto ends together to have a lovely display. You can just wrap them, but lately I have been into presentation.
7. Display on your serving dish. Drizzle with good quality olive oil, Maldon sea salt, and some freshly ground pepper.
8. Eat with gusto and enjoy!

As always, lots of love, many blessings, and happy cooking!

Strawberry and Rhubarb Sauce

I understand the polarizing nature of rhubarb, either you love it or you are puzzled by it. I am firmly in the love it camp. I just adore the sweet tart taste, the silky texture, and the bright pink color (prink as I like to call it). This is an easy rustic way of celebrating the rhubarb with its favorite dancing partner the strawberry. The sauce is easy and delicious. I had it with yogurt this morning, and we are going to have it with angle food cake and whip cream for dessert. I hope you try it.

Here is how I did it...


What you need:

2 long stalks of rhubarb
1/4 cup of raw sugar
1/2 cup of water
1 pint of strawberries


What you do:

1. Heat up a heavy bottomed skillet and add the cubed rhubarb, sugar, and water. Cook on high for about 5-7 minutes until you have a jam-like consistency and the rhubarb has disintegrated. The smaller you cut the rhubarb the faster this happens. Take off the heat

2. Wash and cut the strawberries in quarters and fold into the rhubarb mixture.

3. Serve as a sauce with yogurt, gelato, cake, anything.


As always, much love, many blessings, and happy saucing!

Kitchen Cacciatora

So technically, this is Pollo alla Cacciatora or Chicken as the Hunter likes it. But... I call it Kitchen Cacciatora because really you can put anything you have in your kitchen in this. My recipe changes often depending on the left over ingredients of my fridge. The heady herbs and thick tomato sauce can bring new life to any leftovers. Since my in-laws will be dinning with us tonight, I have decided not to use leftovers and instead to buy proper chicken.

I'm using skinless boneless chicken thighs, because they cook up faster, they are easy to eat, and they have enough fattyness to keep the meat moist and delicious. You could put this on low in a crock pot while you are at work, but I am happy to plunk everything into a dutch oven and let it bubble for 20 minutes. Then put it in a low oven until you are ready to eat. My husband who runs our dinner preparation with the military precision of a swiss watch, is not a happy camper if dinner is cold.

You can serve it with rice, pasta, or crusty bread. Tonight for us, oriechette. Which is a type of pasta named because it looks like baby ears. I like shape becuase it holds on to the sauce like little edible bowls. But when we had it as left overs (above) I served it with sauteed kale and sorrell and a wild rice mix. I think I liked the pasta better. And my 10 month old son certainly liked it with pasta better also. I hope you enjoy.

Here is how you make it:


What you need:


2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 a large spanish onion diced

1 carrot diced

2 ribs of celery diced

3 smashed and minced garlic cloves

2 sprigs finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves

2 and 1/2 pounds chicken thigh (i don't bother to cut them)

1/2 teaspoon celery salt

1/2 cup any wine you have open

2 bay leaves

1 (14-ounce) can tomatoes (if you use the whole tomatoes squish them with your fingers first)

1/2 teaspoon raw sugar

pepper to taste

chopped parsely for serving


What you do.

1. Set aside a large dutch oven or safe crock pot you will be using this to catch the deliciousness as you build flavor.
2. Heat a large skillet add the oil, and the chopped veggetables until translucent. Add the garlic last so it doesn't burn. The minute you smell it, it is done. Reserve in your dutch oven.
3. With out cleaning the skillet, heat up the pancetta until crispy. Pour into dutch oven.
4. Same skillet, brown up the chicken a few pieces at a time so they don't steam. You just want the brown on the outside, not cooked. Reserve in the dutch oven.
5. Same skillet with all the yum drippings, add the chopped rosemary, celery salt, some cracked pepper, and bay leaves. Fry for a minute than deglaze with the wine. Add everything to the pot.
4. Pour in the tomatoes and half a can's worth of water over top of everything in the pot.
5. Add the sugar.
6. Now if you are using a crock pot, but on high and let simmer for 1 hr or on low for 3hrs ... If you are using a dutch oven. Set on a medium burner and let simmer for 25 minutes. After that you can put it in a 200F oven so that it will keep warm until you are ready.
7. Mange! Buon appetito!

Serve with pasta, rice, or bread, even polenta would be lovely. I had this with caprise salad and gelato for desert.

As always, much love, many blessings, and happy cooking.

Sticky Asian Spare Ribs

I lived in Japan for a few years when I was stationed there with the Navy. I remember the first time I was introduced to smells of real Asain cuisine, I ordered a salad at the officers club. The dressing was heady with the scent of toasted sesame seed oil, and ever since then I was hooked. I am sure my parents tried to introduce me to real Asain cuisine but the truth is the closest I got was Szchuan Star take out China Food. Suffice it to say that ever since that first salad in the O-club in Sasebo, I have always loved the balance of all flavor profiles that come with Asian cooking.

If you are going to start with baking, they say, start with cupcakes, they are easy, quick, and delicious. If you are going to start cooking Asain, I say, start with these ribs, they are easy, quick, and delicious. Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list, just go to the Asian Grocery Store and have a ball...

Here is how you do it.

What you need:

16 to 20 pork spare ribs
4 tablespoons of White Rice Vinegar
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of sweet chili sauce (the sweet kind that is luminscent pink not Sarachi)
2 tablespoons of honey (I used buckwheat because I like the flavor)
1 teaspoon of sesami oil
1 diced green onion
1 inch diced ginger
3 star anise
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
cilantro and Sarachi hot sauce for serving

What you do:

1. The morning or the night before dinner: Cut up the spareribs and plunk in a bowl.
2. Add all of the ingredients except the extra cilantro and green onion. Toss to coat.
3. About 2 hours before you want to eat: preheat the oven to 350F. Put all of the ribs and marinade inside a foil lined roasting tin. Cover with foil, and place in the oven for 1 hour.
4. Serve with cut up cilantro.

This is delicious just by themselves but if you want to add something, fresh spring rolls, white rice, or cold soba noodles would be delicious.