Blue Cheese, Bacon, and Onion Pizza with Arugula and Apples

Here is an improvised pizza with some non-typical pizza ingredients and a whole wheat no-knead crust.  It is amazing how little effort went into it and how wonderful it turned out.  This is one a few book-free posts.  There are a couple of reasons for this - first, I am trying to post more often, with great seasonal recipes, and I can definitely cook quicker than I can read!  Second, I am on about page 850 of a close to 1000 page book, so it has obviously taken me longer to get through it than my typical book.  Next weekend I will (hopefully) be ready to go with some book/food combos!  For now, enjoy this wonderful pizza.

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Cocktail Hour: Apple Cider Cocktail

This is a first of what I hope to be a weekly post where I share a cocktail or a delicious cocktail snack.  Just a quick little post with something yummy for you as you begin your weekend.  This week, we have an apple cider cocktail - with just three ingredients - bourbon, apple cider and rosemary.  The recipe and some info about the bourbon after the jump.

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Private Life and a " Trapped" Vegetable Gratin/Pot Pie

This gratin/pot pie is a "kitchen sink" creation of the vegetables, pastry dough and cheese that I had left over from a fiasco of sorts. I had planned to make some sort of lattice pot pie for Jane Smiley's "Private Life" to represent the main character's feeling of being trapped in a loveless, unhappy marriage.  This veggie pot pie came about because I had purchased a whole bunch of vegetables and other ingredients and made a batch of savory pie dough in preparation for going to a "Master Chef" open call here in Boston. For the open call you were required to bring a dish for the judges to taste, and you may be sitting there all day, so it should be something that tasted good cold.  For those of you that don't know, Master Chef is a pretty cheesy show on Fox where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey screams profanities at a bunch of amateur cooks who want to become a "Master Chef" (prizes are that title, some cash and a cookbook deal).  So, anyway, I thought it may be fun to go to the open call even though I didn't really fit the mold - I am not super hot, a fireman who cooks for my crew, or someone with a really poignant sob story.  Despite that,  I took a day off from work the day before the Open Call and planned to spend the day in the kitchen experimenting and coming up with a really good savory/tart quiche and fall salad combo.  Unfortunately, I was unable to cook that day because of a plumbing malfunction in my apartment.  So, I have all these great ingredients so decided to throw them together and make this rich vegetable gratin with a lattice crust.  It is sort of random, but definitely works and would be a great vegetarian main course for Turkey day.  More about the book after the jump.

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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nests with Birds' Nests

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to reading the final book in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I was inspired to do so by the totally amazing trailer for the American movie version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I have seen the first two Swedish movies of the trilogy and thought they were really great and Noomi Rapace, the actress who plays Lisbeth Salander, spot on.  That said, I personally believe any movie can be made better with the addition of Daniel Craig, n'est-ce pa?  Anyway, the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was much like the other two  Salander books and picked up where the middle book left off.  This book had a lot more political intrigue than the last two - which was both a good and bad thing.  Good because it was interesting and suspenseful without being overly violent, bad because it frankly included way too much about Swedish history and politics which got pretty boring in some parts.  But all in all, while the series had its faults, Larrson created a truly unique and compelling character in Lisbeth Salander, and  I am sorry that there will be no more books about her.  A mini review and these birds nests after the jump.  If you have not read the series and intend to, probably best to just skip this post.

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