wan-na find something?

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

eat your greens!

even though i haven't done much shopping in quite a while (*tear*), i still get a shitton of catalogs in the mail almost every freaking day. i guess it's a good thing we live in a place the size of a thimble, with no room to put shit away in, because i shouldn't be buying anything anyway.

in the last williams-sonoma catalog i got, i flipped through the pages, oohing and aahing at all the fun kitchen stuff in there. and then i turned a page and saw this:
i'm totally drooling all over myself again just at the sight of it. cute little puffy pancakes, filled with chocolate, drizzled with even more chocolate, and served with a dollop of sweet whipped cream. and this is breakfast. niiiiice. i tossed that catalog in the recycle bin and forgot all about it until i was browsing on amazon, and found a cheaper version of the puff pancake pan. um, with free shipping. sold!

yesterday, i decided to give it a shot. i googled for recipes and learned that they're actually called
æbleskivers, a dutch treat typically served at christmas breakfast. they can be sweet - filled with chocolate, jam, cream cheese, or savory - stuffed with cheese, veggies, bacon. i picked a simple recipe from the williams-sonoma website and busted out the nutella to use as my filling.

i put little dabs of butter in each well:



filled them with batter, and then dropped in a tablespoonful of nutella:



flipping them over was a little tricky, but with the nonstick surface (and that lovely coating of butter), i got the hang of it after the first couple of tries.



when they were a nice shade of golden brown, i put them on a plate and sprinkled some powdered sugar on top.



these are so much fun, and really yummy. hopefully, my next attempts won't be as misshapen. i can't wait till the teen gets home so i can try out a
lemon mascarpone-stuffed version! well, and maybe one with bacon bits too. gotta have the right balance of sweet and salty, right? heh.

i'd gone to costco and picked up a 2-pound bag of asparagus. inexplicably, i LOVE asparagus. i don't know what it is about it, but it's my very favorite vegetable. and corner bakery used to serve a really delicious cream of asparagus soup, but they haven't offered it in a couple of years. so i decided to make my own, and went with this recipe.


it was surprisingly easy, and with a few tweaks here and there, i ended up with a pot simmering on the stove that was chock-full of creamy asparagus-y goodness.



i served it with
my favorite spinach salad, and it made for a really yummy dinner. i guess i could've saved it for st. patty's day, since everything's such a lovely shade of green, but i refuse to serve anything but corned beef and cabbage on this holiday.



ah, how i love to cook.

12 comments:

  1. Mmmm, that salad looks sooooo good! And so do the pancake puffs, I may have to get a pan like that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Those little puff things look amazing! I want to try some with cheese and bacon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I just got the Ebelskiver pan and I love it too! They are so easy to make and so yummy. BTW, what do you use to turn them over? I've been using chopsticks... ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I really love how your blog inspires me to cook. Those mini pancake things look absolutely to die for.

    ReplyDelete
  5. oh.em.gee. I want to gobble all of it up!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Holy shit those puff things look to die for.

    ReplyDelete
  7. asparagus makes my pee smell funny.

    but it's delicious. especially when wrapped in proscuitto.

    ReplyDelete
  8. oooh, we got one of those pans for xmas. you are inspiring me to give it a try ...

    ReplyDelete
  9. damn! i had successfully avoided buying that pancake pan for almost a year now. but after this post, i feel a need to run out and buy one. :|

    ReplyDelete
  10. There's a Danish restaurant in my hometown, where my mom and I always have breakfast. I usually get 5 aebleskivers with apple butter. Mmm...

    ReplyDelete
  11. YUM!!! Here is another good asparagus recipe. Don't let the fact that it's a WW one fool you. It's really good and creamy. Of course, I always add in more cheese than it calls for...
    http://www.weightwatchers.ca/food/rcp/index.aspx?recipeId=75471

    ReplyDelete
  12. Yummmm. I have always wanted that pancake pan too.

    ReplyDelete

i heart comments. i wan-na hear what you have to say.
um, i think.

heading out to the big apple

like most of our best vacations, our christmastime trip to NYC was kind of a last-minute decision.  i don't even think there were six we...