This weekend, I took a dive into my cumin recipe of choice. I had seen it in the Real Simple February, and knew it would accomplish several things: the need for cumin, a new cuisine, some lamb (something I’d been dying to cook with all last year), and best of all it was EASY.

The slow cooker seems to be coming back into style, just in time for our busy lifestyles, which is good for me, as Corelyn left her slow cooker safe in my hands, and I’ve been dying to use it all day, every day. And, tagine is something I’ve been meaning to try!

Here’s our cast of characters. The recipe is available here.

Take some carrots, first.

Cut them into one inch pieces. I’d like to note here that all of this photography is from Jeff, and he saved me no less than eight handwashes during this recipe making, and for that my hands are entirely grateful.

Cut up a medium onion, too. The recipe calls for a chopped onion, so don’t waste too much of your time!

Now halve your dried apricots.

This recipe also called for green olives, but I couldn’t find any non-stuffed green olives, so I just cut the garlic out of these ones I found at TJs. As a result, I didn’t add any garlic per the recipe.

I must say if I made it again I would probably add some more garlic from these olives, because it was mild and delicious. Not that I ate any straight or anything…I’d never…

Here is my lamb. I went to a new butcher to get it, and I must say I was quite pleased. I went to a butcher first that didn’t have lamb shoulder, but the second place did — and he chopped it up for me! If you live in the Los Angeles area, it was Marconda’s in the Farmer’s Market.

This is a photograph of the man who cut my meat for me.

Here’s my meat! Please note that I’m probably cutting terribly, but I was trying to get around the bone, and was too excited to think too much about what I was doing. Forgive me.

Cut your meat into one inch chunks, too, like your carrots.

Here’s your cumin. Things are getting serious.

In this bowl, we have flour, kosher salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, cinnamon, and ginger. In other words, we have Heaven.

So after you’ve chopped all your ingredients, you pour about 1/2 cup of water on them, then your spices.

Then use your hands to make sure all your ingredients are covered in all your spices.

Put the cover on, and set your slow cooker. I put mine on the fast track, 5 hours, and then went and worked on the blog for a bit, then headed to a three hour Yoga Workshop on low back pain.

When I came home stretched and relaxed, I walked into a house that smelled divine, and a dinner that tasted even better.

Jeff was kind enough to make the couscous, which really completed the meal well. I served with pistachio and lemon, as well as cilantro (which I am slowly making myself eat). It was perfect for a quick dinner, though it does take a bit to simmer.

It took about an hour from pulling the ingredients out of the cupboard to dishes drying in the rack, which is double the amount it says — and that was with Jeff photographing, so more accurate than my usual estimates. But it definitely serves four, as the recipe stated, and I will be eating leftovers for a few lunches to come!

As we roll into March, and into Spring, we wanted to tackle an ingredient that may be broader than we’ve chosen in January (leeks) and February (cumin) but that we believe still belongs together in a category. Don’t worry, this is as broad as we’ll go – no “meat” month (although that’d be delicious!) or “fruit” month (though we’ve been tossing around the idea of a “stone fruit” month.) Sometimes broader categories can help you figure out exactly what the category is all about. You think “Oh yes! Beans, I love a bean.” But where do they come from? How do they grow? Who eats ’em, anyways? Are coffee beans really beans? And cocoa beans? Wait, what about GREEN beans?

I know, we had all of those questions, too! So first thing’s first. Coffee and cocoa beans, some of our favorites, are not truly beans at all. Coffee beans are the fruit off a flowering tree. And cocoa beans are seeds from an evergreen tree. Green beans are unripe beans, usually common beans.

These are some cannellini beans I used in a soup!

Which brings us to this month’s real ingredient: the common bean. These include a lot of the basic beans you and I eat: navy, pinto, black, kidney. This is the bean we’re looking to focus on. These beans were introduced to Europe in the 15th century, where they then spread to the rest of the world by way of Spanish explorers.

Part of the reason they were so popular was because they were inexpensive, and contained protein. In addition, they have fiber, iron, vitamin B1, and a whole slew of other nutritional value to make your heart happy (and healthy!)

Here are some pinto beans we added to a chili.

These common beans can be found all over the world, with Brazil and India leading the way in the dry bean production (how many common beans can be found!) Because of their versatility, these beans can be found in native dishes from Mexico to China. In fact, Navy beans got there name from the fact that the US Navy used them so much!

So what do we plan on making with these beans? Corelyn plans on delving into the world of what was that thing you were going to make? while I plan on heading to my roots and whipping up a escarole and bean soup that reminds me of my family and childhood. But please feel free to send suggestions our way for a third recipe – we love to hear from you!

Last night, Traci, Caitlin, Jeff, and I headed to the Melrose Food Truck night, and ate way to much delicious food.

This is the Grilled Cheese Truck. I had a mac and cheese pulled pork sandwich…ate it too fast to get a shot!

Cool Haus ice cream sandwiches.

Peanut butter cookies. Fig + mascarpone cheese ice cream.

And French Fries from Cheerburger.

It was an amazing night, and we went to 5 trucks in all…can’t wait to go next month!

Meanwhile, around the Internet this week, I found some pretty interesting, delicious recipes I want to try. Made me wish for winter weather — but maybe you’re somewhere chilly!

First, look at this GF Shepard’s pie. I can’t wait to try this with Melissa.

Speaking of cold weather dishes, check out these casseroles. I am really hoping I can get a few under my belt between now and May.

Also on the list of things to try came from Sodium Girl – a blogger who has gone almost salt-free. I don’t know how, but I aim to scourge her website and find out!

I appreciate this post from the Food Network about the difference between good and bad calories — because despite the fact that eating less “bad” calories would make you skinnier, that doesn’t mean you’d be healthier.

So how was your week? Any new recipes you want to try? Any new restaurants? Requests? Happy Friday, y’all!

For a friend’s recent birthday, she requested tiramisu as the dessert of choice. I had never made tiramisu before, but Rebecca had made it once, and we had a few recipes on hand that made it look interesting.

I say interesting because the recipes didn’t exactly look easy. Or fast. So we compromised: even though I wanted to use the recipe from the Pioneer Woman, I knew it was too time consuming on account of we were making it on a “school” night.

So we settled on a recipe that looked a bit easier: Giada’s tiramisu recipe. I don’t always trust skinny chefs, but it looked the easiest under the circumstances. I must say, in the end, the recipe worked alright, but I am eager to try the PW’s because Giada’s was a little runny for my taste. Rebecca and I recommend using a little heavy whipping cream in the egg whites so it stays together a bit better.

We also doubled the recipe, because we were cooking for more people, but ended up with extra mascarpone/egg mixture, and extra coffee.

You’ll need:

6 egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar
1 pound mascarpone cheese
1 1/2 cups strong espresso, cooled (we used espresso roast coffee, made very strong)
2 teaspoons dark rum (we used Myers’s)
24 packaged ladyfingers (we used the soft kind)
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate shavings, for garnish (we used cocoa powder)

Here is the start of a lovely thing: twelve egg yolks about to be combined with some sugar.

Here’s the sugar. Definitely the start of a beautiful thing.

Combine egg yolks and sugar and beat until pale. Ours didn’t really turn out pale, but it was certainly beaten. We beat for 5 minutes per the instructions. We suspect this may be part of the reason that the recipe was runny, because we didn’t let it pale…but, maybe not. The world will never know.

Here’s our mascarpone. Doesn’t it look beautiful?

Add mascarpone cheese and beat some more. Your mixture should be smooth (duh, you are beating). Then, add in a tablespoon of the espresso (or coffee) and beat until just combined.

In a separate dish, mix the rest of the espresso with rum. Try a little sample! I didn’t get a photo, because we were busy sampling, indeed.

Lay out a layer of ladyfingers in your dish. We doubled this recipe, so we used a 13 X 9 inch baking pan.

Instead of completely submerging the ladyfingers in the espresso mixture, we “heavily drizzled” them. Due to the use of the soft ladyfingers, submerging only resulted in nastiness and ladyfingers falling apart.

Here’s the one we soaked as an experiment. It did not go well.

Spread ½ of the mascarpone mix on top of the ladyfingers soaked in coffee and rum. Be careful not to rip the ladyfingers, they are delicate in this phase.

Start a second layer of ladyfingers and repeat the process.

And some more espresso.

And then, another layer of mascarpone.

Refrigerate at the very least, 2 hours, or at the most, 8 hours.

Before serving, sprinkle with cocoa powder or bittersweet chocolate shavings. The Justin Bieber silhouette made out of powdered sugar is just an added bonus! And who doesn’t love a powdered sugar silhouette?

Definitely eat this tiramisu within 24 hours of putting everything together. It was tasty, but slightly mushy for Becca’s tastes, and mine too! It was absolutely delicious, however, and I can’t wait to make another recipe!

This past weekend, Nikki and her husband Jon came to visit, and requested that we make ravioli while they were here. We also had a million other things to do, but managed to squeeze it in between the hot dogs, walks, hikes, and pizza.

I apologize in advance, because I went into food blogging mode and managed to get exactly zero photos of us working — no lovely photos of my sister and brother-in-law’s faces!

Here’s the recipe we used, from the North End Cookbook:

Dough:

6 cups unsifted flour
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup boiling hot water

Ravioli filling:

2 pounds ricotta
3 medium eggs (I used large)
2 additional egg yolks
1 garlic clove, pressed
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup chopped spinach (we decided to add this to recipe)
salt and pepper

This is the dough. The cookbook says it’s enough for 5-6 dozen, but this is wrong – we stopped counting at 12 dozen. And we ran out of filling. I’m not sure what size ravioli maker it’s expecting us to use, but the point is it made a lot.

For the filling, you start with ricotta.

Jon got tasked with separating the eggs.

You add your eggs, and your chopped parsley and spinach and your garlic.

And some salt and pepper.

Look at that beautiful, vibrant parsley. I love it. Why can’t cilantro be more like parsley? The world will never know.

 Here’s the delicious sauce that Jon made, with Nikki’s advice on garlic. I love a family affair!

Now it was time to roll the dough, after letting it rest for about 30 minutes. That’s Becca, who came over to be an honorary family member.

After filling all the ravs, you have to cover them up, and seal ’em!

Nikki was a daredevil, and filled them way more than we had in the past – this made for very delicious ravioli.

Here they are, boiling in the water – they only needed a minute or two, maybe three, because they were fresh!

Becca and Jeff also made garlic bread, but somehow that did not manage to get adequately photographed, as we ate it up as we went. There’s always next time for an excuse to make garlic bread!

Overall, this still took us a few hours to make, as it always does. We ended up with some frozen ravioli, and enough to feed four and have a few days of lunch leftovers for me! Definitely a great weekend activity.

Do you ever make your own pasta? How do you do it?