Port and cherry brownies

Rich and decadent round brownies made with ruby port and tart dried cherries.

I got a recipe for boozy cherry brownies delivered straight to my inbox. Booyah. If that's not fate, I don't know what is.

As a food blogger, I get slammed on a daily basis with press releases and other marketing emails, wanting me to promote/review/check out whatever food-related item or information is being hawked.

Most of it is crap, but every once in a while, there's a diamond in the crap pile. Recently, the diamond was this brownie recipe.

Since the recipe comes directly from Dorie Greenspan, I knew it would be foolproof. And since it's made with port wine, bittersweet chocolate and tangy dried cherries, I knew it would be completely awesome.

And it is.

I love that they are made in muffin tins which makes them not only round (Dorie calls them "broundies") but also cutely personal-sized without the jaggedy cut edges of pan brownies.

CSA Share Ninja Rescue: kale, asparagus, fennel and radish

Kale!

Clearly the harvests have started coming in around the country: I received more requests than I could handle this week for CSA Share Ninja Rescue, in which you, the readers, tell me, The Ninj, what veggies in your CSA share are giving you consternation and I give you some recipe ideas.

(Sadly, not so much bounty yet here in Vermont, where we just had another freakin' frost warning on May 17th!)

As always, if you need help with a veggie, leave a comment below or send me an email before this coming Friday. Recipes suggestions are posted on Mondays.

This week, readers in the Northeast asked for help with kale and asparagus, while some West Coast friends were confounded by fennel and radishes.

Kale
It's dark, it's tough, it's hearty -- and it's awesome! If you're new to kale, start out with lightly cooked versions. If you're already a fan, try using it raw, as well (I like to use it in place of lettuce on sandwiches and cabbage in slaws). Now, if only I could get Mr. Ninj to eat more kale, I'd be one happy camper.

• Kale and sweet potato quesadillas: These easy quesadillas have become a staple for me now. And I'm quite convinced that even kids will eat them.
• Kale chips: Move over potato chips, there's a new sheriff in town. 
• Kale and amaretti salad: Cookie croutons on your salad? Oh yeah! (adapted from a Ron Suhanosky recipe in the February 2012 issue of House Beautiful)

  Ingredients:
  1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  2 tablespoons olive oil
  1 bunch kale, washed, stems removed, chopped
  handful amaretti cookies, crushed (about 4 cookies if you use Lazzaroni brand)
  1/2 ripe pear, thinly sliced
  1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  salt and pepper
  
  Directions:
  Whisk together the oil and vinegar and toss with the kale. Add the pears and toss again, gently. Lastly, add salt and pepper to taste and top with crushed cookies.

Morning glory breakfast muffins: a recipe

Morning glory breakfast muffins (damn you, white balance!)

Breakfast is hard.

I feel that I say this to you at least once a week, but it's true. And I wouldn't want to let you down by not saying it, ha ha ha.

It's challenging to come up with a variety of healthy, grab-and-go recipes. I usually fall into a rut. To wit: you don't even want to know how many ham-and-cheese-on-a-100-calorie-thin-bun breakfast paninis we've eaten since I got a panini press.

Seriously, you don't want to know. Suffice it to say that we're in danger of hating ham and cheese.

Breakfast muffins are a good idea but too many of them wind up basically being cake. And I for one don't like a lot of sweetness in my breakfast.

Therefore, the "morning glory" muffin is right up my alley: all the excellentness of being make-ahead but still being jam-packed with healthy ingredients.

Molasses spice cookies: a recipe

Molasses spice cookies

Hopefully, you were one of the lucky ones that scored the awesome Dorie Greenspan book set deal on Amazon a few weeks ago. Two of Dorie's beautiful, awesome cookbooks for less than six bucks: I'm not sure why, but at that price, who cares?

I'm already a big fan of Around My French Table and as I started leafing through Baking: From My Home to Yours, I knew I would (again) not be disappointed. (After the stuffed pumpkin, figgy pudding and cocktail cookies, I am a Dorie groupie for life.)

I already have about twelve gajillion post-it flags marking the recipes I want to try (be prepared for an onslaught of scones in the weeks ahead).

And this was one of the first.

Apricot-tarragon cocktail cookies: a recipe

Apricot-tarragon cocktail cookies

I love a nice cocktail, don't you?

We are famous (notorious?) for our evening cocktail hour, a la 1954, here at Chez Ninj. Corny, but it's a very relaxing way to end the day, like setting an appointment to sit down together and talk. But with cocktails, so it's extra festive and not at all therapy-ish.

I'm currently a ridiculously huge fan of the simple, perfect vodka gimlet, probably as much for it's beautiful celery color as anything. (I swear, one of these days I'm going to carry one, in a martini glass, into the Benjamin Moore paint store and see if they can color match it.)

So, given Cocktail Hour, I'm always looking for good recipes for accompanying nibbles. Nothing sweet, just a little salty-cheesy somethin'-somethin' -- you know what I mean.

Therefore, you probably heard me screaming in delight recently when I opened the November issue of Food and Wine and saw that the incomparable Dorie Greenspan (insert reverential bow) had seemingly answered my prayers.

Move over, crackers and cheese ...

Get out of town, spicy nut mix ....

Cocktail cookies have arrived. 

Pumpkin soup with Gruyere: a recipe

Pumpkin soup with Gruyere

I love cooking from magazines but sometimes their ingredient lists send me on a bit of a wild goose chase.

Enter this pumpkin soup recipe from the October issue of Bon Appetit.

The soup is cooked in the pumpkin itself so the authors advise choosing a variety of pumpkin that will hold up well in the oven. Think about what a colossal mess you'd have if the pumpkin caved in on itself with all that liquid inside it. Yipes. So yes, great advice.

However, their recommendations for sturdy varieties include "Cheese" or "Jarrahdale."

Um ... say WHAT?

Now, granted, I live in the sticks so you'd expect I personally might not be as familiar with these varieties as our cosmopolitan recipe authors, but I do live in one of the locavore capitals of the United States and a place where heirloom varieties of anything can be pretty easily found at farmers markets, farm stands and even grocery stores.

So, undaunted, I headed off to a very large local farm stand, knowing that they supply not only local home cooks but also a lot of the high-end area restaurants and natural markets. Surely they'd have every kind of hip pumpkin that exists, right?

The owner had never even heard of these varieties. Great.

CSA Share Ninja Rescue: cabbage, kale and peas

Courtesy of Lousam of the NHL team via stock.xchng

Welcome to the first installment of the CSA Share Ninja Rescue, where you tell me what items in your CSA share are making you scratch your head or lose your patience and I provide you with some help in the form of recipes or ideas.

Commenters from last week were looking for recipe ideas for cabbage, kale and peas.

Peas:
If you have not received any peas in your share, just substitute frozen peas.

• Pea-camole from Simple Bites: Think guacamole but more like a veggie dip!
• Pea soup from Dorie Greenspan: Dorie makes this one as a winter soup with frozen peas, but it would be lovely with fresh peas as well. This is not sickly green like a split-pea soup but bright and fresh.
• Ham and cheese mac with peas from Cooking Light: A sing-songy name and a taste even your picky kid eaters will love.

What we ate this week

Sometimes, dinner can't wait for a photo shoot.

While it may seem to some of you that I'm doing little else other than taking pictures of everything I eat, I can assure you that I cook (and eat) a lot more than I blog.

Which is why I periodically give you these "what we ate this week" posts. A lot of dishes we eat are really tasty and certainly blog-worthy, but sometimes life intervenes: I can't find the camera, it's getting late, we're hungry ... or I just plain forget to take the picture before we scarf the meal down.

So cheers! Here's to having a real life in which you eat, rather than style, your dinner -- most of the time.

• Baked pasta with spinach, lemon and cheese -- like sophisticated mac and cheese
• Artichoke and goat cheese strata -- a rockin' good meatless dish
• Celery celery soup -- another winner from Dorie Greenspan's Around my French Table
• Light caesar salad dressing -- greek yogurt makes it light and a tad tangy, from Jamie Oliver