Mocha Ricotta Pie with Strawberries

This pie is one of my absolute favorite desserts. It's in my top three of all time, right up there with almond butter thumbprints and salted caramel brownies.

What makes it so fabulous is the trifecta of a lightly sweetened, crunchy shortbread crust, a rich and creamy ricotta filling with chocolate, coffee, and a hint of lemon (yes, lemon!), and a topping of juicy strawberries. It reminds me of the amazing Southern-style chocolate pie I always used to eat at the now-defunct Marimont Cafeteria in Austin, Texas, but with a mature Italian twist and bright berries to lighten things up.

Really good dark chocolate and high quality, full-fat ricotta are important for this pie. (Good coffee won't hurt either, but I love my Café Bustelo.) I was so excited about having a tub of Narragansett Creamery ricotta in my fridge that I proceeded to completely forget I'd bought it to make zucchini lasagna, and dumped all of it into the filling for this pie.

Zucchini Lasagna

I've been on the fence for a while about whether I should buy a spiralizer. I want to make rutabaga noodles so badly, but I can't seem to bring myself to purchase another kitchen gadget. I've made zoodles by hand with my julienne peeler, but it's a huge pain. After adding the spiralizer to my cart on Amazon several times and then taking it back out again, I've decided that I'm going to ask for one for my birthday next month (are you reading this, Mom?). I won't feel as bad about getting yet another cooking tool if it is a gift from my wonderful mother.

In the meantime, I was excited to find this zucchini lasagna over on Sarah and Tim's blog, Curious Cuisiniere, because it uses veggie noodles that you don't need any special gadgets to make. Strips of zucchini stand in for lasagna noodles, but all the great Italian flavors and delicious textures of the original dish still come through.

Curious Cuisiniere was my assignment for this month's Secret Recipe Club reveal, and I had a great time perusing the site to choose a dish. I noticed that this recipe isn't their only noodle-free lasagna--they also have a butternut squash lasagna that I'm planning to try in the fall. Sarah and Tim also have recipes from countries all around the world, and the best part is that they have an interactive map that helps you explore food from different regions. Click on India, for example, and you'll be taken to a page with all of the Indian recipes on Curious Cuisiniere. So cool! If you're looking to expand your palate and cooking repertoire with some food from faraway lands, their blog is the place to do it.

Grilled Adobo Chicken & Sweet Potato Bowls with Jicama Guacamole

I have a bone to pick with boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

I mean, there aren't any actual bones in there to pick, but I'm trying to say I have a problem with them. Ninety percent of the time I eat boneless, skinless chicken breasts, they're no good! Dry, flavorless, and boring. One hundred percent of the time, I would much prefer chicken thighs.  

(Side note: Back when I was a kid and McDonald's still used dark meat in some of their chicken nuggets, I would refuse to eat the white meat ones. I would actually take a bite out of each nugget to check and only eat the ones that passed muster, which was usually 2-3 per order. I was a super fun kid. Thanks, Mom, for putting up with me!)

Anyway, chicken thighs are one of my go-tos (and luckily, McDonald's chicken nuggets no longer are). I love bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs for pan-searing and roasting or braising. I am even willing to go to the trouble of deboning thighs myself to make Nom Nom Paleo's amazing cracklin' chicken. And I love boneless, skinless chicken thighs for grilling and making curries. They're moister and more flavorful than breasts, and won't dry out even if you overcook them slightly. I'm super paranoid about making sure my poultry is fully cooked, so I like that extra flexibility.

Matcha Avocado Ice Cream

I'm working with high school students this semester, and on Mondays we have great chats about our weekends. I always feel like a boring, lame adult because every time they're like, "What did you do this weekend?" I'm like, "Oh, I did a lot of cooking, and only a little bit of cleaning." Welcome to my life.

I was excited last Monday because I felt like it sounded a lot cooler to say I made ice cream. Cooler both literally and figuratively, I suppose.

Of course, they wanted to know what flavor, and I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces when they found out I put avocado in my ice cream. They didn't know what matcha was, and that part kind of flew under the radar--everyone was really stuck on the avocado.

You know what, though? It's not weird at all. I knew I wanted to make a matcha ice cream (because matcha in all the things feels like spring to me), and I decided to throw in an avocado because green tea and avocado are spring-green-colored soul sisters. The finished product doesn't taste like avocado, but has an added richness and health boost thanks to that sneaky addition.

Golden Cake with Strawberries and Whipped Cream

How were your Easter and/or Passover celebrations? Ben and I had a few people over on Saturday and then went to another Easter dinner on Sunday. I won a pork crown roast from Snake River Farms over at Rhubarbarians, and it was pretty great. I also made this cake--we enjoyed one of the layers on Saturday, and brought the other one, pictured here, to the party on Sunday.

So, yes, I've been sitting on this cake recipe for an entire week. I apologize! I had one of those very busy weeks that I should have seen coming, but instead somehow managed to take me completely by surprise. Am I the only one that happens to? Between papers and evaluation reports and trying to get at least a little shuteye, it took me all week just to edit these photos.

Crispy Chicken with Spring Vegetables

Remember when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West? And the witch screamed in agony: "I'm melting! Melting! Oh, what a world!" 

As I walked to the train station yesterday afternoon, I could almost hear my city's dirty snow screaming the exact same thing. Boston is not free of snow yet, but we sure have a lot less of it.

The thaw seemed like my cue to start celebrating spring in the kitchen by making a dish with bright green veggies. For the protein I went with crispy chicken thighs, because truly crispy chicken skin is the best thing ever. Ben only likes skin-on chicken when it's as crunchy as possible and not moist at all, so I practiced and practiced and now have my routine for chicken-crisping down pat.

Here's how you do it: sear the chicken skin side down in a very hot skillet for a little longer than it seems like you should, and then flip it over and finish it in a 450 degree oven. While the chicken roasts, you'll have just enough time to fry some bacon and chop your veggies. Then, while the chicken rests, the vegetables cook in the fat from the chicken infused with a bit of lemon.

Squash Noodles with Everything Pesto (and an egg on top)

It has been a very long time since I've posted a recipe, and I'm hoping these squash noodles with everything pesto and a fried egg on top will at least partly make up for it.  Things have been busy at school, and it's getting harder and harder to blog often and stay on top of my readings and projects.  However, I am sure you do not want to hear about that.  I bet you'd rather hear about this brunch (dinner? lunch? midnight snack?) recipe that's paleo, grain-free, vegetarian, and ridiculously delicious.

I have to admit that I was unsatisfied with zoodles (zucchini + noodles = zoodles) for a long time, due mostly to unrealistic expectations.  Anyone who tells you that zoodles taste just like regular pasta is either totally lying or has a vastly different palate from mine.  You can't expect these to taste like linguine.

Bacon, Arugula, and Avocado Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette

My last post was about inspiration, and this one is about exhaustion.  Not the discouraging kind of exhaustion that makes you feel like there's no end in sight, but the kind of exhaustion that leaves you cheerfully spent at the end of the day--content, but without much left to offer.

I started my first external placement for graduate school last week, and I'm in schools working with kids and teachers four days a week for ten hours a day.  (In case you haven't heard me mention it, I'm working on a master's in speech and language pathology with dual certification as a reading specialist).  I am learning and doing so much that I do not know where to put all my thoughts and ideas.  I have plenty of notebooks and folders, but there's not enough space and time to capture everything I want to hold onto.  Do you ever feel that way?  Please tell me about your own exhaustion in the comments so I can feel a little less alone!

7 Blackberry Recipes + Sources of Inspiration

While I always have plenty of ideas about food, I often go through periods of time in which I'm relatively uninspired about other areas of my life.  It's related to the seasons, but it's not just that--it's partly my unique ups and downs, which affect my perception of everyday life in ways I'm not always aware of.  I didn't even realize I had been in a bit of a funk this past winter until I started to come out of it at the beginning of May, and I think it all started with some really good blackberries.  (Have you had any blackberries yet this season?  Maybe it's just me, and I admit that I may be biased because blackberries are my favorite fruit, but I think this year's have been the best I've ever had.)

Luckily, I usually find that once I'm sufficiently inspired by any single thing, inspiration starts popping up everywhere.  Ever since I entered an inspirational period of sorts this month, it's felt like whoever or whatever is in charge of inspiration is yelling at me to be constantly inspired with a huge marquee made of flashing lights.