Giant Green Pie & Kitchen Navigations

Navigating the perimeters of a domestic space can be tricky at times. Sharing a bathroom, a bedroom and a kitchen with another person requires a fair bit of negotiation & compromise. No doubt.
For our entire relationship, DH and I have enjoyed cooking together with near bliss most days. That said though, there are times cooking together feels more like a cold war than a creative hot spot.
This was the case when we attempted to cook from a recent NYTimes recipe for Torta Pasquina, or giant green pie.

Most often the disconnect is a matter of taste. DH has a taste for adornment while I lean toward more plain, austere flavors & textures. He'd be happiest with a dish made of a million ingredients and I'd be most content with less than five. Also, to be fair, I am a wee bit bossy in the kitchen. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with this but alas, it's true. "You see this kitchen as Emily's kitchen and everything in it as belonging to you", DH accused on this cooking occasion. I confessed, reluctantly, "Well, yes, I suppose that is true.". But I wondered then (and continue to wonder quietly now), what is really so wrong with that?

Anyhow, onto the recipe...
We chose to make this pie because it met the three requirements that matter most lately:
-quick
-healthy
-inexpensive ingredients

DH made the dough while I cooked the greens & onions. 
After mixing the ricotta into the green mixture, spread it over the bottom layer of dough.

Crack eggs onto the greens mixture...

...and cover the pie with two layers of paper thin dough.

Lastly, fold over the pie edges to envelop mixture (certainly could have been more artful than we achieved), coat with an egg wash and slice steam vents in the top. Cook at 375* for 40-50 minutes, depending on the oven.

Serve warm to a loving, grateful sister-in-law!

The one edit I would make to this recipe is to use store bought pie crust or phyllo dough instead of making it ourselves. This would have made an already easy recipe that much easier and arguably better tasting.

Here's to working out those learning curves and speed bumps in the pursuit of domestic bliss!

On Location: Eating In on Kauai Island

Cooking away from home is a real treat to me. Eating out is a great way to take in the culture and traditions but something about shopping at local markets and preparing a home cooked meal feels like the most truly authentic experience.

Between the ample fresh fish markets and daily farmer's markets, Kauai is an ideal springboard upon which to do some seriously delicious at-home cooking. As we were staying on the North Shore, the markets we frequented were in Hanalei but truly there is great, fresh fish and fruit to be had the island over. 

The avocados are the size of your face and run between $1-2. It truly is paradise!


Among some of our favorite meals...

Ahi Belly tacos. You've heard of pork belly but have you ever heard of ahi belly? We hadn't so of course we had to try it. Again lightly seared on a high heat grill draws the excess fat out of this cut and makes for an incredible fish taco fish. We also ate the seared ahi belly over brown rice which was equally great.

Sushi grade striped marlin, lightly seared. Raw kale salad with peanut chile pepper dressing and corn on the cob, both grown within miles of where we were staying. This meal made our Christmas Eve dinner deliciously non-traditional.

Macadamia nut pancakes with ginger syrup and poached eggs provided the perfect Christmas breakfast.

Rainbow chard frittata was delightful but the strange, unidentified root vegetable we paired it with was less than stellar. Physically, the tuber looked more like a yam but tasted more like a parsnip or turnip. Not our favorite.

I could not speak highly enough about the bananas in Kauai. If Butter Date were to have a sister site in Kauai, it would be named 'Apple Banana' because these bananas were out of this world. Completely unlike anything you'd find on the mainland they are half the size and twice as flavorful with a slight apple crispness to them. Yum!