Sorry, so sorry!

I've been awful at updating this site. I'm in my final week or so of madness, with my department seminar and my qualifying exam next week. Once that's over (assuming I pass), things will go back to normal and I might be able to start cooking again. There's been a lot of pizza over the last month, aside from the week I was at a conference in LA, during which breakfast and lunch were provided and the boss paid for the rest. I did have some rather tasty Chilean Sea Bass in some sort of lemon-thyme sauce, I think. I all sort of runs together.

Anyway, I'll leave you with these pictures and instructions to check out Deb's Pasta with lemon and olive oil over at Smitten Kitchen. Two additional instructions, though: (1) I don't think you need quite as much water as she suggests in her recipe. We ended up with a lot of sauce pooling at the bottom of the Dutch oven we used. We made this a second time the other night and used about 3/4 cup of water and added a bit more cream. If we make it a third time (quite likely), we'll probably swap out part of the water and part of the olive oil for a bit more cream, just because we like creamy sauces, or we'll boil it for a bit longer than Deb recommends. And (2) she doesn't include sausage in her recipe, we did. Just heat up a tiny bit of olive oil in a pan, toss on a couple of spicy Italian sausages over medium heat and cook until nice and browned. And use a splatter screen if you have one (we don't.... yet). For larger sausages, start heating up your pan and cooking the sausages about 5 minutes before you start boiling your pasta water so that the sausages and the pasta + sauce finish at the same time.

Prosciutto English Muffin Snacks

Oh man. I've been very bad. I have a recipe I've been holding onto because I haven't quite gotten around to uploading the pictures. Heck, I still have pictures from the end of January that I was supposed to have sent out to my running friends from our half marathon. Those are still floundering in my camera. I've been working hard, folks. The past two weeks were spent in some serious science mode as I wrote my giant proposal (ok, in comparison to the dissertation I'll eventually write, it's puny. But it's probably the longest thing I've written to date). This proposal, plus the oral defense of it in April, determines my fate at school. Plus, this past weekend, I got to spend some awesome quality time with my big sister and her family (including my awesome nephew).

So, eventually I'll get around to posting the fantastic lemon-oil pasta with hot Italian sausages (inspired by Deb over at Smitten Kitchen, of course. Although I will be tweaking her recipe because I wasn't happy with it). Let's just say it was delicious, even twice in one day. But that's not why we're here today. This post is about the fabulous snack I just made while taking a break from writing a midterm for my undergrads. Because one of them wants to take the midterm two weeks early.

Prosciutto English Muffin Snacks
English muffin flavor of your choice, split
Butter
Fresh basil
Cheese of your choice
Prosciutto

Preheat the oven to 350F. You definitely want to preheat before you start building your snacks. Split your English muffin in half (I used cinnamon raisin, as that's the favorite in our house and we had one that needed to be used) and lightly butter the cut sides. Tear or chop a few smallish basil leaves into small pieces and sprinkle over your buttered English muffins. Lay a couple of slices of cheese (or use shredded) over the basil, just enough to cover the surface of the muffin. I used Monterey jack, but just about any kind of soft to semi-hard cheese can be used. I wouldn't necessarily recommend using a hard cheese like Parmesan, as it doesn't usually melt very well and you want your cheese to melt and hold everything together. Finally, layer your prosciutto on top of the cheese. For one whole English muffin (aka 2 halves), probably one full piece of prosciutto is enough, just tear it in half and use one half for each piece of muffin. Place your muffins on a baking sheet or some aluminum foil and pop them in the oven. It's ok if the oven hasn't finished pre-heating. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, including the time it takes for the oven to finish pre-heating.

The sweet and the salty and the prosciutto and the raisins and the basil.... just so good.

Variation!  I made this again last night, but this time I used the Honey Wheat English muffins and instead of basil and Monterey Jack, used peach preserves and mozzarella cheese with the prosciutto. Still super tasty.