These fruit pastries can be a nice little dessert after a meal or a great partner with coffee in the morning. I've been having fun making and sharing these and decided they might be nice for people to make during the holidays.  They are so pretty, especially with raspberry jam.  I've made blackberry and blueberry, too, and they are just as delicious.  The dough is a snap to make in your food processor - it takes just a couple of minutes.

If you are familiar with my recipe for Pie Dough in 60 Seconds, then you will be happy to know that you can do the same thing with pasta dough.  I make this dough in a food processor and it takes about 60 seconds.  I'm going to give you step by step photos to show you how to make a pasta shape called garganelli and even a little video to make it easy (scroll to bottom of post for video).  All you need are two ingredients - flour and eggs.  You could make it today!

I'm going to be doing a whole series of pasta recipes this fall and winter.  It's so fun to make homemade pasta and I hope if you've never tried before that maybe you will give it a go this year.  This recipe is for agnolotti, a stuffed pasta that is easy and fast to make.  I'm giving you step by step photos plus a little video to give you the confidence to try. 

This agnolotti is made with a swiss chard and cheese filling.  This filling isn't hard to make at all - the chard is simply chopped a little and then cooked down over the stove in a bit of water.  If you have a food processor, you can process the filling in a snap.  

It's summertime and everyone should know how to make a classic fruit crisp dessert.  They are easy to make and you can make them with so many different fruits.  I'm making this one with blackberries, but you can add blueberries and raspberries for nice mixed berry crisp.  And leftovers are great the next day or even as a sweet treat for breakfast with your coffee.  

Why have I never written about these before in a post?  These are a family favorite as an appetizer and are a snap to make.  They are also - bonus - something you can make when you need an appetizer and have nothing available.  Because if you always keep frozen puff pastry sheets in your freezer (you should) and you always have a hard grating cheese in your fridge (I bet you do), you can totally make these in about an hour and a half from start to finish.   You can also make these ahead of time and stick them in the fridge before baking.  They hold all day in the fridge until you're ready to pop them in the oven. 

The last time I hosted Easter at my house, I made these cute little bunnies out of napkins and put one at each place setting.   Especially if you have children in your home, you may want to try these this Easter.  They are simple to do and you get better after each one!  Thinner napkins work a little better, if you have a choice.  

Also, this is the time to start thinking of making Italian Easter Bread.  If you have never made this delicious bread, give it a go this year.  It is slightly sweet and a real treat. If you are looking for additional Easter recipes, you can try my Pesto Stuffed Eggs, which are so pretty at Easter.  You can also try these pretty Edible Easter Egg Nests, which I have made and placed on the table for dinner.   Enjoy!

There are a handful of classic Roman pasta dishes that you will find in almost every good trattoria in Rome: Cacio e Pepe, Bucatini all' Amatriciana and Pasta alla Gricia. These dishes are what I like the best - simple to make and with just a few ingredients that you already have in your pantry and can make at the last minute. No fancy recipes here - these recipes are all about technique.  This delicious pasta has just four ingredients, but it's essential to prepare it properly. 

The holidays are upon us and for many people, this is the one time they fix a whole beef tenderloin.  Roasting a whole tenderloin is super simple to do, but most people skip the actual preparation of trimming the tenderloin, which they leave to their butcher.  This usually makes the tenderloin more expensive to buy. Learning to trim it properly yourself can be a big savings and is easy to do.  I'm going to give you step-by-step photos to show you how. 

Sometimes serving individual little cheesecakes is just a little more special than slicing servings from a large cheesecake.  If you're having a small dinner with just a few people, mini cheesecakes are a fun option.  I have two ways to make mini cheesecakes, which are easy and work well - one is Wilton's inidividual mini cheesecake pans and the other is this Norpro mini cheesecake pan.  But what if you don't have these pans and don't want to invest in something like this when you're only going to use them once in a blue moon?  You can bake a whole cheesecake in a 9x13 pan and just cut out individual cheesecakes with a cutter.  

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and so I thought I would compile a little roundup of recipes from the blog that might give you some new ideas or helpful tips. These are some of my favorites - some oldies but goodies! There's everything from a very different way to make turkey to a fun version of pumpkin pie.  I hope you enoy some of these posts!

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Elaine 

Make Ahead Buffet Mashed Potatoes 

Worried about having the time or energy to make mashed potatoes while you're juggling the turkey, side dishes and all your relatives?  You can make this dish the day before Thanksgiving and have it all ready to pop in the oven on Thanksgiving Day or even the week before Thanksgiving and freeze it.  It's delicious. 

It's that time of year again when the cherry tomatoes are overflowing in your garden and the Farmer's Markets. We love eating them raw in salads, of course, but how about roasting them until they are soft and sweet and serve them over pasta?  This simple dish is a snap to make and you probably have most of the ingredients on hand anyway. 

This dish is not about the pasta being overly dressed - remember, the sauce on pasta should just complement the pasta, not drown it.  Garlic is sauteed in a little good olive oil and then a spash of white wine and chicken broth are added with some seasoning.  There's a hint of tomato sauce, but not much.  The star of the show here is the roasted cherry tomatoes, so we let them shine with just a light sauce underneath them.

This is one of my favorite summer salads.  With sweet corn coming into season and tomatoes and peppers just around the corner, this is a great Farmer's Market dish. The dressing that I make for this makes the salad bright and crisp. It's easy to feed a crowd with this.

I like to grill the corn first in its husks and then char it.  I leave the corn in its husks and soak it in water for about 30 minutes.  This allows the corn to steam on the grill first before pulling back the husks and giving the corn a final char.  

For the sweet peppers, you can use any sweet pepper you like but I am really loving the mini sweet peppers right now for raw dishes - you can slice them into such nice little rings.

"Crostata" is a term used for an Italian tart. This dessert is a chocolate lover's dream and comes from Katherine Thompson, the pastry chef at several top NYC restaurants, including L'Artusi in the West Village and L'Apicio in the East Village. The recipe is from a book called "Women Chefs of New York", which features great women like Sara Jenkins, April Bloomfield and (my favorite) Gabrielle Hamilton. My future daughter-in-law, Robyn, gave me this terrific book for Christmas and as soon as I saw this recipe, I wanted to make it.   

ceramic plate from Fifty One and Half

This green leafy vegetable is a staple in the Italian kitchen.  It is called Rapini but it is better known in the U.S. as Broccoli Rabe.  Italians love their bitter greens and this vegetable fits right in.  It's in the mustard family and is like a turnip green with little broccoli florets.  It's absolutely delicious.  It goes well with a nice grilled steak. There are a number of ways to cook it, but I'm going to show you how to roast it til it's crispy. 

When you buy broccoli rabe, it will be in a nice sized bunch and it will look like a lot, but it does cook down. I like to roast it on sheet pans but you can't crowd it - one large bunch should be divided up between two sheet pans so it crisps up well and doesn't just steam. 

It still feels like winter here in Michigan!  I'm doing a lot of sewing and cooking wintry dishes like this one, until some nice weather arrives.  We do get to sneak out to Seattle, where one of our sons lives, where the weather is much nicer than here. And the food is so, so good! 

There is a wildly popular tiny Italian restaurant in Seattle's Pioneer Square area that has a line out the door every day.  It serves lunch only, Monday through Friday. It's Mike Easton's Il Corvo and it serves some of the best pasta in the city.  

ceramic plate from Fifty One and a Half

This soup hits the spot at this time of year.  This is such a delicious soup that makes a perfect marriage of meat and greens (hence the name Italian Wedding Soup).  There are so many versions of this soup it makes your head spin.  Some use rice, some add beans, some use pasta, most have beef meatballs, etc. etc.  Here is how I like to make it. 

First, I use pork for the meatballs. You can use whatever you like - turkey (which I've done), beef, a mixture of beef and pork, whatever.   And I grind it myself as some of you know.  It makes a nice fluffy mixture to work with and I know exactly what is in my meat mixture that way. I used pork shoulder for this - in the grocery store often they slice up this cut of pork into large strips and call it "Country Style Ribs".  It's a nice fatty flavorful cut of pork.  If you want something leaner, by all means use ground pork loin.  

I was saddened last week to hear about the death of Gina DePalma at the age of 49.  She was the highly acclaimed pastry chef at Babbo and the recipient of numerous awards for her work.  I had written about her before in this post about making her Mosaic Biscotti (which includes a video of her).  Mario Batali called her "the mother soul of the entire kitchen" at Babbo.  

I would like to share with you Gina's recipe for Lemon Goat Cheese Cake that was served at Babbo.  Goat cheese has such a delicious tang and it's great in this cake. The cake is light and airy, unlike a cheesecake.  It has such a light texture because you separate the eggs and whip the whites into a meringue, which you then fold into the egg yolk batter.  The results are almost souffle-like. 

After the cake has cooled, a delicious lemon syrup is poured over the top and sinks down into the cake and adds even more lemony goodness.

A little holiday cocktail for you!  This involves bubbly Prosecco, frozen cranberries and a little hint of orange. It's easy and festive and pretty.

Enjoy!
Elaine 

I'm finally putting this recipe up on the blog.  This delicious breakfast casserole is something I've been making on Christmas morning for years and years.  I do it because my mother-in-law gave me the original recipe and I make it for my husband.  So it's become a tradition and I serve it every Christmas morning. We give a big neighborhood Christmas Eve open house every year, so when I am preparing dishes for that on the 24th, I go ahead and make this dish and stick it in the fridge. Then, on Christmas morning, I get up and pop it in the oven while we open gifts and it takes about an hour to heat up.  It's perfect timing! Serve it with a bowl of fresh fruit and you're all set. 

See the quilt in the opening photograph?  I made that.  A lot of you probably know that I like to make things.  I cook, of course, but I like to knit and sew. I've started writing about what I'm sewing (mostly quilts) for fun and if you are into that sort of thing, I hope you will jump on over to Beech Tree Lane Handmade and follow me there!

I just finished giving a Fall pizza making class and it seems like I get a lot of e-mails from readers who cannot attend the class because they don't live locally and want to know more about what we make in the class.  So I'm going to talk a little bit today about what we discuss during class about the finer points of homemade pizza. We make six pizzas during class and this is one of them and one of my favorites.  If you think bacon, onions and mushrooms go together just about perfectly, you will love this pizza.  I'm also going to give you some parts of the handout that I give my students during class so you can see what we cover.