Half-Anniversary, Full Menu

We have been married for 6 MONTHS! (6 months and 2 days now, technically.)

What to do to celebrate a half-year of wedded bliss... hmm... that's easy! Cook! Eat! And drink plenty of good wine!

My job was planning the menu, Mark's was picking out wine. He did so good - he found a bottle of wine from Bernardus, a tiny vineyard we visited on our honeymoon in Monterey! After Mark revealed the special wine, he opened the fridge to show me another "special wine" he chose in honor, not of us, but of the Master's.

red for our love, white for Arnie

Our first course was this: Mediterranean Vegetable Stacks with Garlic White Bean Spread and Arugula Cashew Pesto... plated with a sprinkle of goat cheese and balsamic glaze. Delectable. Mark ate a third for dessert.

first course.

 Our second course would be Pistachio-Encrusted Wild Caught Halibut with Saffron Risotto. 

second plate.

Before baking these beautiful, wild-caught halibut fillets (Mark said, "I got the most expensive fish at the counter,") I dressed them with olive oil and pressed them into a pile of crushed pistachios and dill. Baked at 425 for 10 minutes. Nailed it. The red puff is a sprinkle of Hungarian paprika. I realized almost too late that this dish, although its flavor could speak for itself, was not perfect in color contrast.

Dessert was a treat I had always wanted to try. It's easy, SO easy, and really quite refreshingly bright and good. Raw Brownies. I'm serious. It was walnuts, cashews, organic Medjool dates, and cocoa powder. Pulverized. Pressed into a pan and refrigerated until we cut them, brought to room temperature, and devoured! A friend sent me to this recipe on a blog called My New Roots - see for yourself. (We didn't add in chopped nuts at the end, because nuts in brownies do not belong, unless of course, they are pulverized.)

sweet ending

Mark definitely pretended like he was not interested in these raw brownies. It only took 1 bite to convince him. I think this dessert may be our new thing!

The star of this menu was really that first course. Here's the how-to:

To make vegetable stacks...

• Drizzle whole portobello caps, sliced eggplant, and red pepper halves with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, top with sea salt and pepper.
• Roast at 375 for 20 minutes. Flip. Roast another 10 minutes.
• Allow to cool slightly to handle. Remove skin from red pepper.
• Layer as follows:
• Portobello cap (bottom)
• White Bean Spread
• Roasted red pepper
• Arugula Cashew Pesto
• Eggplant

Garlic and White Bean Spread
Blend:
1 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp lemon juice
1-2 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt, pepper to taste
That was easy!

Arugula and Cashew Pesto
Recipe courtesy of Vegetarian Times

• 3 cups tightly packed chopped arugula
• ½ cup cashews
• ½ cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp thinly sliced basil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 garlic cloves
• Pinch of red pepper flakes
• ½ tsp tamari (or reduced-sodium soy sauce)
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Puree dry ingredients in food processor before adding lemon and tamari. Drizzle in olive oil with blade running until thoroughly combined.

YUM and YUM!

We have 6 months to dream up our next milestone menu (THE First Anniversary!)... what will it be?!

Dough Woes

Let me be the first to tell you: I don't bake. I can bake, but I choose not to. Blame it on studying food science for years in a formal setting. I've learned the ins and outs of this chemical and that acid and what can go wrong and what it looks like when you screw this up and how it should have turned out otherwise. Now, I don't mind a quick bread, and I am particularly skilled at the muffin method (food science geeks, where you at!), but there are a few baked goods I tend to avoid due to their complexity. One- the creaming method (i.e., butter cakes, cookies) that involves beating sugar into a fat to create a tender crumb; and two- yeast breads.

Yeast really is quite magical. But too much salt can kill it. And too hot of water can kill it. And overworking can kill it. And underworking underwhelms it. I'm a realist, like my dad, so I'd rather leave the yeast breads to the experts and buy a delectable loaf of sourdough for $4 at the farmer's market and not worry my pretty little self about how it came to be.

Allthatbeingsaid... I do love a challenge. And when our sweet friends Tim and Katie gave us the ever-creative wedding gift of a bread cookbook (Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois) and bags of special flours, not baking real bread was no longer an option. Let's go!

"Look how cute we are! Baking bread must be so easy!"

I followed the recipe exactly for the "basic" whole wheat dough. I weighed gluten and two kinds of flours and yeast and salt and took care of the temperature of the water and mixed it all up with the dough hook attachments for the right number of minutes and let it rise, loosely covered for the prescribed 90 minutes! Okay, that's not hard, I didn't even have to touch it yet! And then it was 8:00 pm.

I folded and turned and tucked it. Sticky. Despite using extra flour to help with the stickiness. And then I read these crucial words, "Dough may be easier to work with when chilled." Hmm. I bet. But we would like to make pizza right now. All hands on deck.


The 15 minutes that followed sounded like this:

Morgan: Get more flour! This isn't working! The dough is going up my arms!

Mark: It's fine! It's fine! Just keep working it, I'm adding more flour!

Morgan: I need you to HELP me! This is a disaster! It's sticking everywhere! I'M THROWING IT OUT! Get the trash can!

Mark: Get a grip! You are NOT throwing it out now! It's fine! It's fine! Calm down!

Morgan: You don't know what this is like!

Mark: Yes I do! I made homemade pizza crust once in Michigan and it looked like this!

Author's note- How many guys in northern Michigan make their own homemade pizza dough? Probably just one, and he recently moved to Easton...

Silence ensued for several minutes as I topped our tricky pizza dough with pesto, roasted acorn squash, and goat cheese. Baked our pie for 20ish minutes at 450... and you know what? It didn't look half-bad! And it was GOOD!

And then we ate it all up and laughed at my freak-out. We might have danced around the kitchen pointing to each other and to the pizza exclaiming, "YOU ROCK!" I am thankful for my gracious husband and how he looks past the crazed baking Morgan to the less crazy, good cook Morgan. (I trust he would have been as forgiving of my temper if the pizza actually sucked.)

First attempt at homemade pizza- far from a failure

And then 2 days later... I used the leftover dough in the fridge to make a loaf of BREAD! And it was SO easy to work with once it was chilled... and I even did this thing where I put ice cubes in the oven to create steam and it made a shiny, chewy crust! Shoot! It was really good too! We ate this with cheese and dipping oil.

And then the next day we made another pizza with the leftover, leftover dough! I had a good feeling about this one... I even apologized to Mark. I said... "I'm sorry if you thought you would be having a mediocre dinner tonight."

This proud pizza was topped with sauteed kale, peppers, and onions.

Gosh. We did it. We made yeast bread. It was challenging. But it was also rewarding.

I think sometimes the most trying recipes are the most satisfying. Hey, is this a lesson for marriage?

If you are reading this, and you have ever baked a homemade loaf of bread that you had touch, and did so without becoming a complete spazz, give yourself a pat on the back! You rock!