Just an Epicurious Kind of Evening

After our big shopping spree at Costco, my cooking has taken a nosedive.

While I've still been making attempts at baking, most of the groceries we bought were frozen ready-made foods and an absolutely excessive amount of bread products.

As such, we've been eating lots and lots of sandwiches, frozen pizza, and not a lot of my typical home cooking.

This evening, while watching Mad Men, I got in the 'Betty' mood and decided to actually cook dinner.

Cue Epicurious and their recipe for Pasta with Spicy Shrimp and Sun-Dried Tomatoes.

As per usual, I made substitutions and subtractions based on what I had on hand.

Onion, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, and lemon juice, OH MY!

Oh, and a pound of shrimp to thaw, peel, and de-vein.

That was a barrel of fun, haha.

Tonight also marked my first journey into the world of homemade biscotti.

I've been dying to make biscotti at home and I finally got around to trying out a recipe this evening, also from Epicurious.

Introducing: Double Chocolate Walnut Biscotti.

It was surprisingly easy to make.

I ended up halving the recipe because I only had a cup of flour left - definitely time to replenish my baking supplies.

I always assumed that there was some secret Italian magic to making biscotti, but making the dough was just like making any other cookie.

Beating together butter, sugar, and eggs. Adding in flour mix. Mixing in chocolate chips and walnuts at the end.

Then forming the dough into a 12" by 2" log and baking for 35 minutes.

After it's baked for the initial 35 minutes, let the log cool on a baking rack for 5 minutes before cutting diagonally in order to get that quintessential biscotti shape.

Turn the cookies onto their cut sides and bake for an additional 10 minutes, or until crisp.

Then - more cooling.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

Considering how much I love biscotti - especially with my morning coffee. It's practically a given that I'll order biscotti if I'm at a coffee shop. - I'm glad to know that I can easily make it at home.

And depending on the ingredients I have on hand, I can easily modify recipes to suit my tastes at the time.

If only I had made coconut-cranberry-walnut biscotti when I was still on that kick! ...And still had dried cranberries on hand...

Bon appétit,

Gabriella