Poppyseed Rolls

After making Hamantashen for Purim, I was left with most of a can of poppyseed pie filling. So since I hadn't baked anything in a whole 24 hours, I decided to make poppyseed rolls with the rest of the can. Becuase really, it's just not right to throw away perfectly good pie filling. They turned out so good I had to give one roll to my parents or I would have eaten the whole thing by myself. With a hot cup of coffee, a thick slice of this sweet bread makes even a frozen afternoon in March seem tolerable.

Shakshuka and pork

Seems like a bit of an oximoron, but I decided to put together an amazing Puerto Rican pork roast from Skinnytaste.com, topped with this lovely, spicy sweet Shakshuka from smittenkitchen.com. The dichotomy comes from the fact that shakshuka is an Israeli dish of tomatoes and eggs, while pork is, well, not exactly known for it's Jewish-ness. But together, these two dishes made for a beautiful mixed marriage of textures, fragrances, and flavors.

Click here for slow cooked Pernil from skinnytaste.

Click here for Shakshuka from my favorite blogger/foodie, smittenkitchen.com.

Healthy pizza (?)

Ok, so it's not exactly low fat, or low anything, but this pizza is made a tiny bit healthier by the use of a nutty, flavorful crust from Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg's book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

For tonight's flat breads, I chose to use the Master recipe from the book, and customized one pizza for me and one for my husband. I topped his with crushed tomatoes, some spicy chorizo, sun dried tomatoes, garlic and fresh mozzarella and pecorino. For mine, I opted for mozz, herbed goat cheese, pecorino, olive oil, rosemary, lots and lots of sea salt, and a bit of arugula (added post baking, of course). In addition, I threw together a lively salad inspired by local chef extraordinaire, Steven Brown: bitter arugula, pecorino, lemon zest and olive oil. It was a meal representing my disgust with this ever-cruel winter. All that was missing was a tall Mojito, and sunshine.