Saturday, January 29, 2011

2011.01.27 - Roast Vegetable "Cake", Salad, Dessert Leftovers





I felt like making something vegetarian this week, and this roast vegetable "cake" looked great. I once again lacked imagination with a vegetable side dish, so salad it was. My freezer was full of small amounts of random baked goods, so I did a "clean out the freezer" dessert platter. It was successful, and augmented by the lovely desserts that C brought to celebrate the recent engagements in our group (including mine)!

Roast Vegetable "Cake"

I suppose this is really a tall frittata or a less eggy quiche. Either way, it was very good. I think that next time I'd use even more vegetables, especially broccoli. I used a mandoline to slice the potato and sweet potato, getting lovely thin slices. I would definitely make this again for a brunch, maybe Easter?

Modifications: Since I don't have a gas stove or a grill, I used a broiler method to roast the red peppers. I coated the peppers in some canola oil and put them on a baking sheet under the broiler. I then watched them and turned them when they began to char a bit. It is a bit of a pain because you have to watch the peppers closely and they sizzle and sound like they are one second away from explosion. After they are sufficiently charred (I get too scared to get it very black, so I only have a few char spots), I place them in a plastic bag and let them steam and cool a bit. After that, they are easy to peel. I also substituted the pumpkin called for in the recipe for pre-cubed butternut squash, because it was a whole lot easier. I used low fat ricotta and cream cheese and noticed no issues with consistency or taste.

Gripes: This took much longer to cook in my oven than the recipe called for (about 10 extra minutes to roast the veggies and about 30 extra minutes to cook). I really need to get an oven thermometer to see if the problem is on my end.

Salad

Trader Joe's bagged lettuce, heirloom cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots. Leftover balsamic vinaigrette from last week. Yawn.

Dessert Platter with Butterscotch Pecan Cookies, Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream, and Irish Soda Bread

I had made the ice cream and cookies for a dinner with my cousin and wanted to use up the leftovers from the freezer. The cookies froze and defrosted beautifully. The cookies are very butterscotch, which you either like or you don't. I like the texture added by the pecans. Next time I might leave the sprinkling of salt off the top, it was a little salty for me. The ice cream was very rich and almost a little eggy -- I think I prefer "Philadelphia" style ice creams that don't use egg yolks. The soda bread is my Nana's recipe, which I will be posting on this site when I get around to it :) This particular loaf was a pale (literally) imitation because I was out of molasses so had to make do with some brown sugar and water mixed together instead. Stay tuned for the awesome original. The platter ended up being sadly mono-chromatic, but that was also a little funny :)

C brought very adorable little chocolate ganache love bugs and a very rich ganache heart. So much chocolate! Heaven!

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