April 13, 2022

Everything potato gratin

April 13, 2022/ Rebecca Davis

This easy side dish is the perfect way to make something that seems fancy (gratin!) while using all the shortcuts (barely any chopping!).

Take me to the recipe!

So, I used Jamie Oliver’s method for a quicker potato gratin. Gratin’s usually need up to an hour in the oven, but by combining cooking methods, you can get a creamy, crunchy, crispy dish in less than 30 minutes. Also, using everything bagel spice means that you don’t have to chop any onions or garlic or really measure much of anything.

Just a quick word of warning: Use oven mitts to secure the tin foil over your skillet or tin on the stove. You want a tight seal so that the potatoes steam a bit before going into the oven. ALSO, use caution when removing the foil as the steam is plentiful and HOT.

A note about SALT: I don’t add any in this recipe because most of the pre-made Everything Bagel spice mixes are pretty salty. Check your labels and then decide if you want to add more salt. I would recommend a sprinkle of sea salt over the top of the finished gratin if you feel like it needs more.

Everything Potato Gratin

1½ lbs russet potatoes (about 2 very large), peeled and sliced thinly
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup water
2½ Tbsp everything bagel spice, divided
5-6 sprigs of fresh thyme
1½ cups grated cheese (mixture of gruyere, asiago, gouda)

Time: about 30 minutes, mostly active
Yield: 5 side servings

Preheat the oven to 425.

In a large oven-proof skillet or tin, spread the thinly sliced potatoes.

In a large measuring cup, combine the milk, water, and 1 1/2 Tbsp of everything bagel spice. Pour over the potatoes in the skillet. Add the fresh thyme and stir well to combine and to spread out the dried and fresh herbs.

Over a medium-high flame, bring the liquid to a boil. The liquid around the edges of the pan will boil quickly. Look for the first few bubbles in the middle of the pan and turn down the flame to medium-low.

Carefully wrap a piece of tin foil over the top of the skillet or tin. I wear oven mitts to do this because I want a tight seal, but I don’t want to burn myself. Let cook over a medium-low flame for 6 minutes.

Turn off the flame and CAREFULLY remove the foil being sure to wear oven mitts and to remove the foil away from you to avoid the hot steam.

Top evenly with the grated cheese.

Cook, uncovered, in the oven for 15 minutes. Top with the remaining 1/2 Tbsp of everything bagel spice.

Let cool slightly and serve.

November 08, 2021

Pumpkin and persimmon butter

November 08, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Cooking down some canned pumpkin and a few persimmons with maple syrup and spices will make your house instantly smell like the holidays and spice up even the most basic meals.

Take me to the recipe!

I’m a sucker for persimmons. I can’t help myself when they arrive in the grocery stores. But I never know what to do with them. I love baking with them, but I’m trying to have fewer baked goodies hanging around in preparation for baked-goodies-hanging-around season. And if I’m going to eat them on their own or in a salad, they need to ripen, which, in my frozen kitchen, takes forever and a day.

This is my grand compromise: A cooked down “butter” that’s thick and slightly sweet that pairs with toast, graham crackers, apple slices, pretzels, Dutch babies, regular babies, cornbread, muffins, oatmeal. etc. One could also use this “butter” as a fruity addition to an autumnal cheesecake or mix it with an ice cream or other custard. My favorite way to use it is mixed with mascarpone and a couple of eggs and then baked with a pie shell for a spin on pumpkin pie.

The best part about this concoction is that you don’t need to ripen the persimmons. You heard me. As long as you use fuyu and NOT HACHIYA*, you’re fine with unripened persimmons. Of course, the more you let them ripen, the better they taste, so it does behoove you to wait at least a little while before making this butter.

*Why not Hachiya, you ask? Well, those are the larger, more ovular persimmons and if you don’t wait until they’re almost completely mushy to eat them, the tannins in the fruit make your mouth feel gluey and dry. It’s awful, trust me.

Anyway, whatever you choose to do with it, you’re only 20-30 minutes away from the endless possibilities, so get to it!

Pumpkin persimmon butter

Time: 25 minutes, mostly active
Yield: 2 cups, depending on how much you cook down the mixture

1 can pumpkin puree
4 fuyu persimmons
1 Tbsp dark brown sugar (light is also fine)
¼ cup maple syrup
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground ginger
1/8th tsp ground cloves
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1 large pinch of kosher salt
½ cup water

Peel the persimmons and cut into quarters.

Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Transfer to a large pot.

Heat over a medium-low flame until just beginning to bubble. Turn the heat down to low and cook, stirring frequently to prevent burning, until the persimmons totally break down and the mixture has thickened slightly, about 20 minutes.

September 23, 2021

Apple cider slushee

September 23, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Deal with a fall heatwave with these frozen cider slushees! They can be spiked, spiced, or enjoyed plain! #meandthemoose #cider #falldrinks #frozentreats

Move over pumpkin spice latte, apple cider slushee is coming for your “best fall drink” title! This easy bev can be spiced, spiked, or enjoyed straight up.

Take me to the recipe!

This may be a very Northeast specific rant, but why is it so hot at the beginning of fall? I feel like September, much like that other “changeover” month March, is a tease. Occasionally it’s chilly and crisp and then BAM — humid and gross. It rains and then the sun comes out immediately to really perfect those sweatbox conditions. It feels slightly chilly at 7 am, but by 9 it’s 80 and the air is heavy. How do you dress? What do you eat? I want to want all of the cozy things, but it’s too. damn. hot.

Anyway, that’s why you should freeze your apple cider. You get the coziness of fall, but the refreshment of an iced drink!

You can absolutely spice this cider by adding cinnamon sticks, crushed whole cardamom pods, anise pods, or some fresh ginger, bringing the cider to a boil, letting it simmer for 20-30 minutes, and then straining out the spices. I don’t love adding ground dried spices to my cider because I feel like it makes the cider slightly gritty, but it’s not a deal breaker. (Really, nothing is a deal breaker for me when it comes to cider.)

Apple cider slushee

Time: 6 hours, or overnight + 5 minutes active time
Yield: 2 slushees

2 cups apple cider
2 shots Calvados or other apple brandy, optional

Fill a standard ice cube tray with fresh cider. Let freeze for at least 6 hours or overnight.

Chill the cups you plan to use for the slushees in the freezer while you make the drinks.

Add the ice cubes to a blender (the higher powered, the better) and pulse 3-4 times or let run for about 3-4 seconds. Pulse again or run for 1 more second at a time until the cubes are crushed to your liking. In my experience, the cubes crush up very quickly and you don’t want them to re-liquify.

Spoon the crushed ice into the chilled cups and add 1/8-1/4 cup of fresh cider. Add 1 shot of calvados (optional).

September 03, 2021

Cucumber, seaweed, and soba noodle salad

September 03, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

This easy, light salad combines a few ingredients into a subtle, delicious vegan dish that’s ready fast and is a great lunch or dinner option. #meandthemoose #lunch #dinner #recipes #easyrecipes #vegan #vegetarian

Before the well of summer cucumbers runs dry, make this easy, light salad that’s ready in a snap and is, at least in this house, very kid-approved!

Take me to the recipe!

We eat a lot of Japanese food in our house, so my love for these ingredients runs deep. I absolutely can’t turn down a seaweed salad. Ditto nutty buckwheat soba noodles. Unlike whole wheat or other whole grain noodles, soba doesn’t have that gummy (unless you WAAAAAY overcook it!) or gritty texture that can plague say, whole what spaghetti, so the flavor of the noodles really shines.

Everything about this salad is subtle. There aren’t any overwhelming flavors and all of the elements are in harmony with each other: A little salty, a little sweet, a little nutty, a little tangy, a little briny, and a little cool. The seaweed adds a salty, funky flavor and a little crunch. The cucumber adds even more crunch and and is a cooler counterpoint to the sauce that’s made of soy, rice vinegar, brown sugar, and sesame oil.

While this is a light salad that we usually eat as a side (though I’ve had it alone for lunch and it’s V satisfying), the soba offer some heft that leaves you feeling pretty full. My 6-year-old loves it because he loves anything with soy sauce and my almost 18-month-old loves it because he would eat noodles all day, every day.

But the real key to this salad is getting rid of the excess water from the cucumbers, noodles, and rehydrated seaweed. It’s a funny recipe because you have to add water to each element before you get rid of it. But the more you squeeze out, the more potent the sauce tastes. It’s worth a little elbow grease!

A couple of notes:

I used hijiki seaweed in developing this recipe because I love it, but have JUST NOW learned that it naturally contains a really high level of inorganic arsenic, which can be carcinogenic to humans. Whoopsie daisy. Instead, sub in wakame, which doesn’t contain the same levels of arsenic and is prepared roughly the same way—just rehydrate in water while you prep the rest of the salad.
In the US, you can find dried wakame seaweed in Japanese grocery stores, health food stores, or in the all-purpose grocery store (our Whole Foods has it).
Before you add the rice vinegar, check your bottle’s label and see if you have plain rice vinegar or “seasoned” rice vinegar. The “seasoned” variety has some added sugar already, so I decrease the brown sugar a little bit to avoid over-sweetening the sauce. See recipe note for exact changes.

Cucumber, seaweed, and soba noodle salad

Time: About 35 minutes
Yield: About 6 cups of salad

6 Tbsp dried seaweed (wakame or hijiki, but see note above!)
2 cups hot water
1 large cucumber, thinly sliced
1 tsp salt
9 oz buckwheat soba noodles (2 bundles)
3-4 Tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar*
1.5 tsp brown sugar*
4 tsp soy sauce
4 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp white or black sesame seeds

*if using “seasoned” rice vinegar, decrease the sugar to 1 tsp

Combine the dried seaweed with 2 cups of your hottest water from the tap (you can use boiling water, but hot water works just fine, in my experience). Set aside.

Slice the cucumber into very thin slices. Using a mandolin is great here, but if you don’t have one, a vegetable peeler also does the trick. Or just practice your knife skills- whatever works!

Place the cucumber slices in a strainer and top with 1 tsp salt. Massage a little with your hands and let sit in the sink to drain while you make the rest of the salad.

Boil the water. When the water boils, add the soba noodles and cook according to the package directions (usually about 5 minutes).

While the noodles cook, make the sauce. Combine the rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and sesame oil in a small container and shake to combine.

When the noodles are cooked, drain very well. I even use a few paper towels to dab up some of the excess water.

Add the noodles to a large bowl and set aside.

Drain the seaweed really well. Again, I use a few paper towels to soak up some of the excess water, but I DO NOT squeeze out the seaweed.

Add the seaweed to the noodles in a large bowl and set aside again.

Rinse the salt off of the cucumbers and drain well. Add the cucumbers to a paper towel, cheesecloth, or dish towel and squeeze to remove as much excess water as possible. Add to the bowl of noodles and seaweed.

Stir the cucumbers, seaweed, and noodles to combine. Top with the sauce and stir well to coat.

Just before serving, top with sesame seeds.

June 28, 2021

S'mores ice cream sundaes

June 28, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Combine graham cracker no-churn ice cream, milk chocolate magic shell, and freshly scorched gooey marshmallows to make the best and easiest ice cream sundaes to celebrate summer!

Take me to the sundaes!

Before we get to the ice cream, I need to vent a little. I haven’t been making these posts as person lately because there’s so much kerfuffle on the internet about how people hate reading food bloggers’ life stories. But I guess if you’re reading this, you’re one of the people who is, at worst, neutral on the topic, so here we go! (If you’re here by mistake, there’s a “jump to recipe” button above.)

I need a break from the mental load. We all have one. It’s made up of the stuff that weighs on us and feels like quicksand because there’s no way to think ourselves out of it, though we can’t stop trying. It’s made up of the constant to-do’s and the guilt when they constantly don’t get done.

I’m stuck under the mental load of parenthood and all the ways in which it affects my identity. Lately I’ve been thinking about how I invest too much in both parenthood and my blog/food photography to feel really masterful at either. I suppose one can argue that there’s no such thing as “investing too much” in parenthood, but I really enjoy writing and taking photos and that work helps me feel like I’m something other than “someone’s mom.”

But I also feel guilty about the times I let Z play by himself in his playroom (that’s part of our kitchen, don’t panic) when I want to work on a new recipe or catch a specific light. I’m sure someone would argue that I’m selfish while someone else would point out that kids need to learn independence. And, frankly, both of those people are me. But really, who added “constant playmate” to a parent’s job description?

Anyway, it’s hard to feel productive or creative when so much bandwidth is devoted to pediatrician appointments and camp drop-offs and nap times and making sure all the little things are accounted for. But when I do focus on work, I wonder if I’m depriving M and Z of quality time that will have lasting affects on their development? Maybe that’s way too dramatic. It feels a little dramatic as I write this.

And then I worry (maybe that’s my actual full time job?) that I spend SO MUCH time thinking about parenting and work that I neglect all of the other import things. Like, when do I think about my marriage? And developing new friendships? And nurturing old friendships? And exercising? And did we give the dog his heartworm medicine this month? And what do we do about that front porch pillar that seems to be sinking?

And then my brain short-circuits and I have to cool it down with an ice cream sundae. What a transition!

If, like me, your brain is a funny place to live sometimes, you want to combine elaborate and easy. This ice cream sundae is sort of a three-part recipe, but each part is dead simple. So, it feels like you’re doing something tricky but also not.

We start with a straightforward vanilla no-churn ice cream base that has soaked graham crackers in it. Then, we top it with a two-ingredient milk chocolate magic shell and freshly charred marshmallows.

You might be wondering, why wouldn’t you just combine the milk chocolate bits and charred marshmallows in the actual ice cream? And you absolutely CAN do that! BUT, frozen marshmallows bear no resemblance to fresh gooey ones. And why have plain chocolate bits when you can spend 30 seconds melting them with coconut oil and pour it over for some ice cream magic? And some of the magic shell probably won’t freeze, so you get the gooey marshmallows AND the gooey chocolate, which feels very much like the real s’mores deal.

ALSO, leaving the graham cracker ice cream alone makes it adaptable to soooo many other flavor combinations. Cheesecake ice cream? Yup. Key lime pie ice cream? Yup. PB&J on a graham cracker ice cream? You bet. The possibilities are endless.

So what are you waiting for???

A couple of notes:

You can let the graham crackers soak for as little as an hour or you can forget about them overnight. As long as the cookies are completely mushy, you’re good to go.
When making no-churn ice cream, i’m a big proponent of throwing everything together and whipping it in one step, but in this case, whip the cream/graham cracker mixture first and then fold in the condensed milk.
DON’T FORGET THE SALT! S’mores are a sweet affair to begin with. A nice pinch of kosher salt in the ice cream base before freezing cuts the sweetness just a bit.
For charring: if you don’t have a kitchen torch (but they really are super fun to use and you can get one at Target), roast your marshmallows over a fire or in the oven, but WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK. Marshmallows can catch on fire under a broiler, so I set the temp to about 400/425 depending on your oven and move a rack up to the top third.
For the magic shell: I like to use filtered coconut oil because it doesn’t taste like coconut. Virgin is fine to use if that’s what you have, but it might taste faintly of coconut.

S’mores ice cream sundaes

Time: At least overnight, but about 15-20 minutes of active time
Yield: about 5-6 large sundaes

For the ice cream:
8 full sheets of graham crackers (or one package if they come three packages to a box)
1 pint heavy cream (2 cups)
14 oz sweetened condensed milk (1 small can)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large pinch fine kosher or sea salt

In a large bowl, mash the graham crackers into tiny bits. I use my hands for this because the bits don’t have to be uniform. Pour the cream over the bits and stir to combine. Cover and leave in the fridge until the graham crackers have turned to mush, about 1 hour or up to 1 day.

Once the graham crackers have softened, remove the large bowl from the fridge. Using a hand or stand mixer, whip just until the cream makes stiff-ish soft peaks (see photo above), about 45 seconds.

Add the condensed milk, vanilla, and salt and fold gently with a spatula.

Transfer to a freezable container and freeze for at least 8 hours or overnight.

For the magic shell:
6 oz milk chocolate (chips, chopped up bars, whatever)
2 Tbsp coconut oil (see notes above the recipe)

Marshmallows to taste

Combine the chocolate and coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir well. Repeat in 10 second bursts until fully melted. (Mine usually melted within 30 seconds, but it’s really hot here, so my chocolate and coconut oil were already soft.)

Let cool for 10-15 minutes while you char your marshmallows (see note above).

Assemble sundaes with ice cream, magic shell poured over and topped with marshmallows and an optional pinch of flaky sea salt.

Me & The Moose

Me & The Moose

Elevated family food

Me & The Moose

Everything potato gratin

Everything Potato Gratin

Pumpkin and persimmon butter

Pumpkin persimmon butter

Apple cider slushee

Apple cider slushee

Cucumber, seaweed, and soba noodle salad

Cucumber, seaweed, and soba noodle salad

S'mores ice cream sundaes

S’mores ice cream sundaes

Me & The Moose