Bitch and Bake

Things We Like Thursdays: Robert Irvine

2012-01-26T17:02:00.001-05:00

It will come as no surprise to you that a woman who loves food would be obsessed with the Food Network. Of course, I've passed on this obsession to BabyBella and it has become our go-to station during our hour of daily TV time.

Out of all the shows our agreed-upon favorite is Restaurant Impossible. Robert Irvine is all sorts of silverback gorilla in charge sexy in my opinion whereas BabyBella just thinks he's a super-nice guy who helps people who need it. As far as I'm concerned, both are true which makes that show, with it's high drama and happy endings, a win-win in this household.

Of course, I'm skipping all right ahead and you may be asking "yes, that's great and all, Bella, I love the Food Network too, but where in hades have you and Jo been." We'll get to that over future posts. For now, dear reader, hold on to your potholders and be patient just a little longer.

I'm normally not much of a reality television sort of person, but something about the transformation of inedible food, customer-less tables, cockroach-ridden kitchens and sad decor even your grandmother at her most tacky kitsch would frown upon into something beautiful, some so very full of promise and hope just warms the cockles of my cold little heart. Yeah, doesn't hurt that I'm looking at this for an hour:

Is this man for real? And he can cook? I'll take two please.

*le sigh*

Apricot Preserves Pork Marinade and Summer Vegetables Salad

2010-08-17T08:00:00.015-04:00

Pork tenderloin, how I love you. You're quick, easy, go with a variety of sauces, and always come out perfect.

Really. I love me some pork. Normally I just throw my standard soy sauce marinade on it but I was in the mood for something a little lighter, more summery and citrus so I went with a gingered apricot version instead. Also, I was feeling especially lazy so was all about the easy. (Recipes after the break)

Apricot Preserves Pork Tenderloin (serves 4 with leftovers)

Ingredients:

2 - 2.5 lbs pork tenderloins
1 cup apricot preserves
2 tbl margarita mix (or limeade)
2 tbl soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 - 2 tsp chili sauce, depending on desired heat (see picture of it in Jo's posting here)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small saucepan combine all ingredients, except for the pork, and, stirring occasionally bring to a simmer then remove from heat.

Yeah, I'm sorry, the picture is really blurry. Won't even offer an excuse.

Remove pork tenderloins from the package and place in shallow baking dish. I get mine from the local club store where they're as cheap, by the pound, as 80/20 chop meat. They come two in a package which is going to be way more than you will need to feed four, but trust me when I tell you it is awesome the next day cold wrapped in flat bread with some greens.

Here are the tenderloins, all squished up in the packaging.

Pour the sauce over the pork tenderloins and bake in the oven for 45 - 60 minutes or until the thermometer registers 160 degrees. Flip the tenderloins at least once during cooking.

Please be careful and don't splash yourself...I've done it and it stinks to have all those splash burns. If you can't manage the flip, basting is fine as well.

Let the meat rest at least ten minutes before slicing. Once sliced and on the platter pour the juices from the pan over the meat. Serve.

Yes, I know--could it be any easier? I served it over curried couscous. All I did there was cook one cup of couscous in a cup of chicken broth into which I'd added a teaspoon of curry powder, a tablespoon of butter, plus a dash of salt and pepper. Yeah, I totally forgot to take pictures of it. But you know what couscous looks like, right?

While I was on the quick and easy theme, while digging through my refrigerator I found a ton of really lovely in season vegetables--grape tomatoes, cucumbers, and red, orange, and yellow peppers.

To make a nice, fresh salad I chopped up 3/4 cup of each of them then tossed them in a half cup of light balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing. I then chilled everything for thirty minutes, stirring to coat in the dressing every ten.

Could that be any prettier?

All in all, we're talking fifteen minutes worth of effort for a lovely seasonal and colorful meal--and all I dirtied was one pot, one baking pan plus the cutting board and knife. No fuss and very little muss. :)

Banana Walnut Muffins

2010-08-15T17:03:00.000-04:00

Ah, rainy Sunday. One of those days that just begs for the warm smell of baked goods to be wafting around the house. Lucky for me, I had a bunch of overripe bananas sitting on the counter that I had to do something with--so I did my usual "what to do with leftover fruit" thing which is bake muffins.

Now why muffins? Sure, there are breads, jams, tarts and pies which all would have easily used up the bananas, but for me muffins are the best because if well wrapped, they can go in the freezer and last for months. Then, for a healthy-ish dessert, I just pop one of them in BabyBella's lunch box (still frozen) and it's defrosted by the time lunchtime rolls around. (Recipe after the break)

Banana Walnut Muffins (makes 12)
Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups flour
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
6 tablespoons melted butter
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Either grease muffin tins or add paper liners (I so prefer the later as its a much easier cleanup). In the mixing bowl, mash the bananas with a fork.

The darker brown the bananas the better as they will be sweeter as well as easier to mash. Just looking at the mashed up bananas brings back the days of making BabyBella's baby food.

Add the remaining ingredients, except for the flour and walnuts, and mix on medium for a couple minutes until everything is blended together. It will be lumpy but don't worry about that.

You'll notice there are four eggs in my mixer--once I mashed up the bananas I realized I had more like three cups worth so I doubled the recipe.

Once everything is blended, gradually add the flour, a cup at a time, until well blended. Again, the batter will be lumpy--don't worry about that.

Then, mix the chopped walnuts into the batter with a couple of quick stirs. Take large spoonfuls and divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean.

That's it. Yup, really, in about 30 minutes you have springy sweet muffins with a lovely little crunch.

Things We Like Thursdays -- Food Jewelry

2010-08-12T08:00:00.050-04:00

I don't normally do "cutesy." This is a general statement covering everything from movies to fashion to home decor.

Except for one little exception--I'm a total sucker for realistic mini food jewelry. There's just something about wearing tiny bits of squee-worthy yumminess about your person that does it for me. Yes, cutesy out the wazoo.

I totally own these:

Seriously, if it wasn't for the earring hooks attached you'd so want a bite of that cake.

The genius behind these earrings is mmagda who sells, at ridiculously awesome prices on Etsy, a ton of different confectionary jewelry treats. mmagda even does custom work. Sadly, the rainbow cake earrings are no longer for sale, but these others are on my wishlist (click caption to go directly to Etsy listing):

Chocolate Cupcake Bracelet

Sandwich Pendant

Strawberry Ice Cream Cone Ring

Waffle Bobby Pins

Cuteness overload!! (And no, I don't know mmagda and they don't know I am writing this. I'm just being a total fanboy.)

Full baking day

2010-08-11T08:25:00.002-04:00

As Bella posted we made another recipe together. I bit of planning as I really did want to bake on Saturday, but I came home from work pretty darn wiped out. So what did I learn from this recipe? I didn't bother with precise measurements. No matter what Bella says, I really don't measure that much.

Hmm, I seem to have gotten Bella dirty. Well when in the kitchen messes do occur.

I had gone to the store to pick up fresh berries and a few things for dinner that night. I had even mentioned to Bella earlier that I needed more butter as I had only 3 sticks left. I usually have a spare pound or two in the deep freezer, but for some reason my deep freezer is full of split chicken breasts and I'm afraid they will break a foot as I go looking. I sparingly buttered my bundt pan, but I floured the heck out of it!

Bella mentioned coffee in the cake, I had a fresh pot of coffee brewed, so I just poured it into the batter, perhaps a tablespoon or so. I also used cinnamon, and ground ginger into the batter. Bella used whatever Hershey's cocoa powder she had available, I did also, but I happened to grab the Dark Chocolate powder.

I chose to bake at 325* for an hour. I let it rest out of the oven for about 30 min before releasing from the pan. Hmm, note to self; next time when I flour a pan for chocolate cake use cocoa powder instead. I had clumps of flour stuck to my cake. Hmm, maybe I just shouldn't use such a heavy hand or make more of an effort to remove the excess flour.

Thank goodness for powdered sugar

Oh so what did I do while Bella was making a pork loin? Well I had a flank steak marinating in Bulgogi sauce for the grill. Also since Stinky was to start school the next day, I felt the need to make sweets to bribe him in a good mood. I made an off the cuff compost cookie dough, and also a blackberry pie. What can I say? I made sure I got all my baking done in one day.

These cookies were made from a basic chocolate chip dough. 2 sticks butter, white and brown sugars, etc etc. What was different was that I used a full bag of chocolate chunks, a bag of Heath Toffee bits, and half a bag of Caramel bits, oh and about 1 1/2 cups of stale pretzel sticks.

So on to the pie. My husband has a love of blackberries. Also Stinky had to mow the backyard and it's quite long so I didn't want an argument or worse, so a bribe was necessary.

It's a basic recipe I grabbed from Simply Recipes. Elise has a wealth of easy reasonable recipes to peruse through. I did not make my own crust as I was short butter. I admit I do have Pillsbury ready made in the freezer, so that was defrosting while we were cake baking.

I baked this pie at 400* for 30 min, then reduced the heat to 375* for another 30 min. This recipe called for 5-6 cups of berries, fresh or defrosted. I didn't wait for the berries to defrost fully and drain the excess liquid, hence my pie runneth over.

Oh but what a happy husband I have now.

Of course I had to make whipped cream for the cake, and it certainly goes well with pie too.

By the way, the pie is gone. It barely lasted 2 days. What can I say, he loves his pies.

Everyday Chocolate Cake from Smitten Kitchen

2010-08-09T09:47:00.004-04:00

Another weekend where the stars aligned and both Jo and I managed to catch up to cook together. This time the project was Smitten Kitchen's Everyday Chocolate Cake (I told Jo we need to pick another blog to do recipes on so no one feels picked on...teehee).

(What happened after the break)

All in all, it is a straightforward recipe. The biggest glitch was that neither Jo or I could get our butter/sugar combo fluffy until we both realized we had to put our mixers on high for the 3 minutes.

Beyond that everything went just peachy. Of course, neither of us can actually follow directions and I added both a tablespoon of brewed coffee and malt to the batter. For some reason the addition of coffee to any chocolate recipe is just necessary to bring out the true chocolaty flavor. Here's the batter all ready to go, just needed a quick stir to get the edges:

As we decided to use bundt pans (they result in a prettier end product) I increased the temperature to 350 degrees and after 50 minutes the cake center passed the toothpick test.

Here the cake is, looking all lovely out of the oven.

Unfortunately, I only let the cake cool for 10 minutes before flipping. That was a mistake--I should've waited a teeny bit longer (another 10 minutes) as I lost bits and pieces of the top. Also seems that although I remembered to spray the bundt pan, I hadn't floured it (thanks for pointing that out Jo). This is why you're supposed to read directions.

But hey, it gave me a really good reason to taste test before serving. I couldn't just leave the cake bits in the bundt pan uneaten, right?

Thankfully a sprinkling of powdered sugar hides a multitude of sins:

Was it delish? Oh most definitely. I ended up at an impromptu dinner party last night with some friends and brought this cake with me--and the universal opinion from everyone that it was moist, decadent, and they were collectively mad at me for bringing such an irresistibly delicious cake that ruined their diets.

Two thumbs up!

Things We Like Thursdays -- What's New Cupcake?

2010-08-06T09:28:00.001-04:00

I harbor deep, unrealized fantasies of learning to decorate cakes, cookies, and cupcakes like a pro. But honestly, the quest scares me a little bit. There's fondant and gumpaste, gel coloring, rollers, and a whole slew of specialty language and tools to learn before I can even begin.

Or so I thought.

What if creating gorgeous, fun, whimsical cupcakes was easy? What if anyone could do it with stuff they picked up at their local 7-11? Well, seems Karen Tack and Alan Richardson have unlocked the secret code to do exactly that and shared it in their two cookbooks Hello, Cupcake! and What's New, Cupcake?.

Easter Flower cupcakes from Hello Cupcake's blog

Autumn Leaves and Pumpkin Patch Cupcakes

Recipes located here

What I love about these books is that the recipes use everyday items like M&Ms, Tootsie rolls, jelly beans and Circus Peanuts to make gorgeous cupcakes. And the recipes are all accessible. Instead of being intimidated I find myself inspired that I, too, can do this. I don't like all of the recipes (a lot of dreaded CCC's. If you're a Cake Wrecks reader you know what I mean) but what I find most important about the books is they give you confidence, flexible ideas and techniques with examples that you can then leverage, like any technique, to make pretty much whatever your imagination fancies.

Roast Chicken Dinner

2010-08-04T11:17:00.002-04:00

Jo has previously posted her Roast Chicken recipe which is much fancier than mine. Admittedly, Jo is a much more precise and imaginative cook whereas I'm rather slap-dash with things.

That's what I love about roasted chicken--it's easy, throws together quickly, and is flexible on ingredients but is still really tasty. With my decided lack of preplanning these are all key elements in getting something on the table around here. Recipe follows below...

Roast Chicken Dinner
Ingredients:

1 4 - 4.5 lb whole chicken
4 medium potatoes
2 cup mini carrots
1/2 medium onion
6 tbl butter (4 tbl softened, 2 melted)
1 cup chicken broth
1 tbl poultry seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Remove chicken from package, remove innards pack in cavity, wash well under cool water and pat dry. Place in large baking dish (I use a lasagna pan) with breast up. With fingers, carefully separate the skin (don't tear it) from the breast on each side to create two pockets. Put 2 tbl of the softened butter in each pocket and smoosh it evenly across the breast meat. Then rub the remaining 2 tbl of melted butter all over the outside of the chicken and tie the drumsticks together. Here's the chicken all buttered in the pan prior to tying the legs together.

Next, wash, halve and chop the potatoes into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices. I personally prefer yukon gold potatoes for this recipe because they are more flavorful than russet which need, personally, a ton of butter and sour cream to make then palatable.

Then halve and chop the onion (vidalias were on sale...yay) into 1/4 inch slices. I personally prefer to halve the mini carrots before cooking so they are more evenly distributed in the pan. Notice I say "mini" instead of "baby" carrots--there is a difference which is discussed here.

Throw all the chopped veggies in a bowl, add the poultry seasoning, 1/8 tsp of black pepper, pour the broth over it all then mix. I was using broth made from bouillon which is why I didn't add any salt at this point, so if you're using something less inherently salty go ahead and add some to taste. Note on the veggies--I use a basic onion, potato, and carrot mix. However, feel free to use any combo you like. Leeks, turnips, celery, all work--just stick to roots and vegetables that can withstand long baking without turning to mush (for example, broccoli would turn out nasty).

Evenly distribute the seasoned vegetables and broth around the chicken in the pan then put it in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes lower the temperature to 375 degrees and continue cooking for another 40 minutes or until the breast meat reads 170 degrees. Then remove the chicken from the oven, drain any collected juices out of the cavity into the pan and let the chicken rest for 20 minutes on a cutting board.

Notice the legs are tied together in this photo and not with twine. Cooking twine is one of those things on my grocery list that I'm constantly forgetting or not finding so I just use 100% cotton thread--something I always have around the house. Hey, it works.

Oh yeah, why the temperature change? Well, there are two reasons for that. The first is that it results in a lovely, crispy skin. The second is that it decreases the cooking time thereby resulting in a more juicy chicken. Of course, there are many different schools of thought on this and good arguments on all sides (long slow roast vs. hot fast roast vs. combo). I've seen recipes where they reverse the order of the temperature changes--40 minutes at 375 then 30 at 450. Having tried all of the suggested methods this is what I've personally found most consistently results in both a juicy bird and a crispy skin.

While the chicken is baking I take the giblets packet, put them in a pot and slow simmer them in three cups of water (tt looks kind of gross at first, but trust me, it'll turn out yummy) Once the chicken is done and removed from the pan, I take the giblets out of the pot and discard saving the liver. Mash the liver and return to the pot, then add the juices from the bottom of the roasting pan and bring the entire mixture to a boil. Then, stirring constantly with a whisk, gradually add two to three tablespoons of flour until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat then season as needed with salt and pepper. Voila! Perfectly complimentary gravy.

By now the chicken has rested 20 minutes so go ahead and carve away. Jo's recipe gives really good instructions on how to properly carve a bird so I suggest you reference that. My carving method results in legs/wings, breast meat, and "ravaged by wolves" or the remaining meat which I used my fingers to rip off the bones thereby resulting in meat that looks like it was attacked by wild animals.

If you have time, save the carcass to make broth. I'll get Jo to post her recipe how to do that one of these days. If not, well, make sure to well wrap it so animals don't attack your trash.

There you have it. Another minimal fuss meal. Which, as we're a minimal fuss household works just fine by us.

Berry Easy Cheesecake

2010-08-01T09:00:00.004-04:00

I have mentioned my love of all things pie, right? Well, let me expand that now to include all things made in a pie dish. As part of my "hey, I'm inviting myself over for dinner along with the whole family, but no worries I'll bring the food" I decided to throw together a second dessert. As I was already up to my eyeballs in other food prep I decided to keep it simple with a basic cheesecake smothered in seasonal berries.

Berry Easy Cheesecake Recipe

Ingredients:

1 prepared crust (see here for instructions or just cheat and buy a premade one in the pan--hey, this is supposed to be easy. I tend to cheat and use the ones from Pillsbury)
2 packages cream cheese, softened (8 oz each)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
2 - 3 cups fresh fruit (this will vary, see below)

Preheat over to 325 degrees.

Beat cream cheese, sour cream and sugar on medium speed until well-blended.

Add vanilla then blend in the eggs one at a time until just mixed. Do not overbeat. Pour into prepared crust and bake 40 minutes.

Let cool at room temperature at least 30 minutes then refrigerate for another 2 - 3 hours.

Once the cheesecake is cooled, arrange your preferred fruit(s) on top. I personally used strawberries and blueberries as they were the freshest and nicest looking at the grocery. But as this is a basic recipe it will complement pretty much any soft fruit that you find in season--kiwis, raspberries, blackberries, etc.

If you're not serving immediately, toss any sliced fruits in a half teaspoon of lemon juice to prevent them from darkening before arranging them on the cheesecake.

The strawberries were so amazing looking. I used two cups, sliced, to top the cheesecake plus another cup of fresh blueberries.

I started to arrange the strawberries all perfect and symmetrically but gave up and just "artistically" scattered the fruit on top.

And there you have it. A perfectly easy, fresh summer dessert.

Just before I had to transport the cheesecake I decided it needed whipped cream so I removed most of the blueberries, threw on some whipped cream on top of the strawberries and topped the whole thing again with the blueberries. Not as pretty, but from the looks of it (I tried to get a picture of the first slice, but they dove into it before I had even realized it was out of the fridge) that certainly didn't deter anyone.

Things We Like Thursdays

2010-07-29T09:00:00.005-04:00

This week Jo and I are starting "Things We Like Thursdays" to randomly rant or showoff anything fun, nifty, cool of entertaining we found this week. Whether it be a new blog, a beautiful looking recipe, extra-yummy restaurant, a squee-worthy puppy licking a kitten in a room full of stuffed animals and rainbows, or anything else that crosses our beady little minds, Jo and I will be sharing our obsession of the week with you.

To kick off the inaugural edition of "Things We Like Thursdays" I present to you one of my top ten completely-unnecessary-but-OMG-I-want-it kitchen items: Geeky Ice trays.

That's right--the Overlords at ThinkGeek have brought us the coolest (argh, really?) nostalgia-inspiring drink accessory since the resurgence of 50's style milkshake blenders in the form of Space Invader Ice Cube trays. Imagine geeking out your favorite drink with these little dudes then rhapsodizing for hours with your friends about the gazillions of hours you spent crouching progressively lower (as if that ever helped) to avoid the alien descent. Oh...was that just me? Come on, you know you just like totally had an 80's flashback. Fer shure.

You May Experience Technical Diffculties

2010-07-28T10:20:00.000-04:00

Now that Bitch and Bake has been up and running for a few months I've decided it's time for a bit of a site design overhaul. Admittedly the current layout is made up of a few graphics I slapped together one afternoon plus some basic widgets. Not exactly high-class design, but it gave me time to learn a bit more about this platform.

What I need from you, dear reader, is twofold--first, your patience because as things get changed I will likely break parts of the site by botching up new code elements. I promise nothing will be broken long so your patience while certain content is unavailable will be rewarded. Second--if there is anything you'd like to see, have any feedback, or requests in layout or functionality or anything else (including "hey Bella, this over here is still broken) please let us know by leaving a comment below. Jo and I want to make your visits to our cooking journey as much fun and easy as possible.

Oops, there is a third thing--if you're a reader and want us to post a link to your blog leave us the URL below and we'll add it in (disclaimer: nothing NC-17 or plus please...Jo and I are both parents of impressionable youngsters).

Thanks everyone!

Blueberries Part II

2010-07-27T08:00:00.013-04:00

Jo has all the essentials covered in her version of our happy baking escapade. I love it when a plan comes together and we get to Skype our way through a recipe. As a note, BabyBella is a big fan of Jo's to the degree where every time she's helping me make something new and unusual she always reminds me to either Skype Jo or take pictures.

In case you're wondering what Jo looks like, here's a picture of her as we're talking (after the break):

Wave to Jo!

(What? I'm just showing you what I see)

Anyway, Jo's timing couldn't have been more perfect. I'd bought two pounds of blueberries at my local club and had just reached smoothie saturation point and needed a new idea on how to finish the remaining blueberries.

As Jo noted, the batter came together easily with our couple tweaks. For me, it seemed like a ridiculous amount of butter (I use less than two sticks in a layer cake--both layers!) but went with it.

Unlike Jo, I used the stated amount of blueberries and noted immediately that it didn't seem like enough. But, as I only had a cup of blueberries total, I followed the directions. Here's my half cup of blueberries ready to dive into all that buttery goodness:

Same goes with the sprinkling part. "Even" is not a word that executes well in my world so I just flung the second half cup of berries merrily about.

For the second half of the topping I doubled the cinnamon. In retrospect, since I was using only a 9x9 pan I probably should have cut the sugar amount down by a third, but oh well. Instead I ended up with a nice thick coating.

Forty minutes later it passed the toothpick test (having used less berries I didn't run into Jo's problem of stabbing them while checking for doneness). I got distracted by dinner and BabyBella so actually let it cool in the pan for about another 40 minutes but that didn't cause any issues when I flipped it out as I'd well-sprayed the pan.

As you can see, the topping got all brown. I definitely loved that slightly caramel crunch.

And here we are, final product all ready to go. BabyBella and I dove in with the pieces still slightly warm.

So what did we think?

- Pros: The cake part was very moist and the crunchy topping was a nice contrast to the softness of the cake. The recipe overall was easy to throw together (Jo and I probably whipped it together in ten minutes even with providing each other feedback as we went) and I can see it being perfect for bringing to a pot luck or a classroom party.
- Cons: Definitely needed more blueberries. There were slices with little to no blueberries whatsoever which kind of ruins the point (you can see how sparse some of the slices are in the background). Admittedly, I used a 9x9 pan which helped result in this, but I think I prefer the slightly taller pieces to what Jo had with the 9x13. Also, as Jo already mentioned, despite our additions of cinnamon and vanilla the cake part was just missing something--though I did notice that in the original she used buttermilk whereas Jo and I both used plain milk, as per recipe, which definitely would change the flavor.
- Neutral: it was very sweet. BabyBella liked that quite a bit as did my friend with a serious sweet tooth. But I personally found that the already sweet cake plus topping to be a bit much.

Verdict: Definitely worth another try. As-is the recipe is fine and I would certainly not be embarrassed to serve it to anyone. With the sweetness I can see this being a big kid-pleaser. However, to suit my personal preferences I think I'm going to tweak it. Jo mentioned using lemon zest in the batter which definitely would help. My personal changes would be to cut down the butter and sugar then add in yogurt in addition to the changes I already noted above. Maybe even the evilly delicious tangy Greek yogurt (ok...my mouth is watering now). I think that would preserve the really lovely moistness while cutting back on the sweet and adding that tangy zing that would complement the blueberries.

Hmmm, wonder what cooking adventure Jo will take us on next...

Blueberries!

2010-07-26T08:00:00.002-04:00

Today, I went blueberry picking with a friend. I came home with 3.6 lbs of blueberries. I threw about 2lbs into the chest freezer and the rest, I've been planning to make Blueberry Boy Bait Not that I'm trying to catch a boy, lord knows there are 2 human males and one canine male in this house and they drive me batty. But come on, like anyone else, the name is the draw! I pulled my butter out of the freezer and started laying out the ingredients and pulling up the recipe on my laptop, and of course, there was something missing. My baking buddy! I sent Bella a text, asking if she was interested in baking with me and the planets, gods, nature, whatever were aligned. Bella was available and she had blueberries in her fridge to boot! Fortuitous! So of course, now it's grab our laptops and set up the skype and let her rip. I decided to make a full sized pan and Bella went with a 9x9. The excuse for me is that I can take it to work tomorrow and have people help me eat it all.

Not bad looking blueberries, and I didn't have too many stems, leaves or unripe berries in my basket. The recipe calls for only a total of 1 cup volume blueberries. That's not enough. I decided to go a full cup for the batter and the topping. it's not like I'm gonna run out.

I was totally amazed that I found Cabot at my Walmart. But then again, they could have sold to a larger company or they aren't that great a butter, but I like it and it works well enough for my baking.

So two bakers chatting up and admitting mistakes while they are happening, kitchenaids running on medium speed at both ends the batter was made and some adjustments were announced. We both agreed that there was no vanilla in the recipe and it just seemed wrong. I poured in a splash, so not quite a full teaspoon in my batter, and since there was cinnamon in the topping, we felt the batter would be jealous. A half teaspoon was added in. Both of us skipped the toss the blueberries in a tablespoon of flour then fold into batter thing.

Now this is one full cup of blueberries in the batter spread out in a 9x13 pan. Doesn't seem like much does it? Now another cup of blueberries just tossed into the batter. I'm not certain what Deb meant by scatter but it certainly doesn't look very uniform.

Now here is the cinnamon topping. I decided since it was a full pan it would need the full 50 min.

I totally stabbed many blueberries in my testing of the cake's doneness.

It seems 20 min cooling time was not enough. I should have let it sit alone for a full hour to cool.

This is when I'm totally glad I have two full sized cooling racks. I think in fact I want more ;)

It was incredibly moist, but hey with two sticks of butter sure why not? The flavor well it wasn't blowing my mind. It was sweet, yet there was something missing. I used salted butter and kosher salt, but yet the flavor was rather bland. The berries were picked at 10am same day, so less than 6 hours off the bush. Perhaps the cinnamon should have been increased? I suggested that lemon zest was needed to help perk the flavor.

Would I make this again? Yes, I would continue to tweak it, as I think it could fill that flavor profile I'm searching for.

(For Bella's attempt click here)

Pecan Pie

2010-07-24T11:30:00.011-04:00

I love pie. Any and all pies. Peach pie, apple pie, cherry pie, chicken pot pie, shepherd's pie...they make me happy. Of course, just saying the word "pie" makes me think of David Cross' guest appearance in Just Shoot Me.

Anyway, with that said, I invited myself over my brother's for dinner the other night. I absolutely adore big family dinners but my house is too small to fit our ever-expanding extended family in so my solution is to invite everyone over my brother's then bring the food. It's a good solution all around--he has the space, I enjoy cooking for a small army, and we both like any excuse to get everyone together. With it being summer, dinner was traditional family picnic favorites such as seasoned burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and tortellini salad. But I was in the mood to do a little something different for dessert so decided to tackle my very first pecan pie. (More after the break)

Pecan Pie Recipe
Ingredients:

1 prepared crust
3 cups pecan halves
6 tbl butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbl vanilla
3 eggs
dash of cinnamon

As I was making a ton of other food that day I totally cheated on the crust and bought the premade rolled ones from Pillsbury. Is there a significant difference between store-bought and home-made crust? Yes and no. I've used some crust recipes that tasted virtually identical to store-bought--which trust me, is frustrating because after all that work I certainly want people to know I made it from scratch--and then others which are so incredibly flaky and light I would almost skip the pie part and just eat crust. So in my personal experience if I have the time or want to impress someone who can tell the difference I will take the time to make pie crust from scratch, but for the most part I don't really bother.

Anywho, I digress. For the crust, I floured a pie pan (yes, there are two pictured because I also made a Berry Cheesecake. I'll post that recipe later) then unrolled the room temperature pie crust out over the pan. After smoothing the bottom and sides, I then folded the edge of the crust all the way around the edge of the pie pan and crimped it. To crimp, or what I think is officially called a "fluted edge," I pinch together my thumb and pointer finger of one hand, place them on the inside edge of the dough then from the outside edge of the dough use my other pointer finger to gently press the dough into the little "v" shape pinched fingers make.

After crimping, dust the crust with flour and then loosely cover with foil. This is the part where if I'm not careful I smoosh the crimping, so watch when you put the foil over the edges. Then, fill the center of the pan with pie weights. As you can notice, I don't actually have actual pie weights. Instead, I just use a cup and a half of uncooked rice. *shrug* It's cheap, easy, and I always have rice in the house.

Put the crust in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes. Then take out and leave to cool slightly.

While the crust bakes, add the pecans to a dry skillet over medium heat. Being careful to not burn/scorch the nuts, cook, tossing frequently, until toasted which takes about 6-8 minutes.

Let the pecans cool a bit then rough-chop them.

Then melt the butter in a heat-safe glass bowl placed in a pan of water simmering over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add the salt and sugar and stir until completely incorporated. Remove the glass bowl from the heat then, one at a time, whisk in the eggs. After the eggs are mixed in, whisk in the remaining ingredients (both syrups, vanilla, cinnamon) and return the bowl to the simmering water.

Then stir...and stir...and stir the mixture. If you happen to have an instant-read thermometer, cook over the simmering water until the mix reaches 130 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer, watch for the color to darken slightly, the mixture to get all gooey, shiny looking, and it be hot to the touch (be careful on that last part...eek). Once the mix reaches that point, stir in the pecans.

Remove the foil and weights from the prepared crust and pour in the pecan filling. Bake at 275 degrees for 50 - 60 minutes or until the filling is firmed up but still slightly soft. Let cool to room temperature and serve.

Here the pie is going into the oven:

And this is what it looks like after baking:

Pecan pie is ridiculously decadent...enjoy.

Everything but the kitchen sink

2010-07-20T19:06:00.000-04:00

This will be a quick post. I've been working and dealing with the summer heat. So I'm not interested in coming home and heating up my kitchen. I've grilled chicken the other night and some nut, not me decided to bake MONSTER chicken breasts last night. I mean really big hormone induced white meat, that takes an hour to bake because they are so big.So I have left over chicken and I do not want a repeat of a hot house and my poor electric bill rising exponentially for our comfort as the oven flames on. One of my go to meals in the summer is macaroni or pasta salad. I toss everything and anything that sounds good to me.In the photo you can see sliced olives, celery, carrots, and chickpeas. What is also in there is finely chopped Vidalia onions, chopped eggs, sliced grilled Thai style thighs, and baked breasts, thinly sliced napa cabbage, chopped parsley, and pickled jalepeno slices. I like to season the salad with a bit of black pepper, lots of paprika, a bit of salt, and Sirracha sauce, besides the requisite mayo. I like that heat the chili sauce brings.Now if this was my non mayo salad, I would make a simple vinaigrette with the pickled jalepeno juice, a bit of oil, and the usual seasonings.

When it's time to clean out the fridge what do you do? Make quiche

2010-07-08T14:04:00.001-04:00

Sometimes even if it is hot, I still turn on the oven. One of the reasons, well I have to clean out the fridge. Nothing is better than a quiche or a frittata. I can pass most any vegetable past my kid as long as there is plenty of cheese in the quiche. I use whatever meat I have too, but usually it's bacon. Hey we always have bacon in this house.
Parbake a piecrust, homemade or Pilsbury. saute thinly sliced onions one low heat with 1 tablespoon butter and a pinch of salt. Nothing tastes as good as bacon. Don't forget to chop the bacon, we gotta be fair in the bacon portions. Mix together 1 cup of milk, 3 eggs, salt and pepper. That's your custard. Whatever green veggie you got. This is chopped broccoli Layer the pie crust with caramelized onions, vegetable, bacon and cheese, then carefully pour egg custard over the whole thing. Now this is ready to go in the oven at 350 for 50 min.

Caffeinated cool drinks

2010-07-02T11:00:00.002-04:00

Holy smokes it's hot out there! Atlanta has been in the 90s with humidity and heat index making everyone feel like it's 110* in the shade.

One of the pleasures I enjoy during the warm months is iced tea. We drink iced tea by the gallon daily. I also brew my own tea. Now, I appreciate sweet tea, I really do, but the tea that is consumed out here, will make you a diabetic. Also I'm a tea snob. Hey, I can't help it, my ancestors figured out tea was a beverage.

Making tea in my house is a simple thing. I have a hot water pot that always has water at the right temperature.

Using either a big tea ball, or those fantastic Japanese tea bags,

steep in 4 cups of hot water for 5 min, then pour into a gallon container with 3/4 - 1 c of sugar, (if you have time make a big jar of simple syrup and keep that in the fridge- 1c water : 1c sugar, boil to combine and let cool, before putting on the lid) Stir well to combine, then add a combination of 3 parts cold water to 1 part ice. Stir well again and store for up to 4 days. I use Lychee flavored black tea, with a handful of crushed mint leaves, or loose leaf Earl Grey.

Another cool treat is Thai tea. I'm not certain what the ingredients are in Thai tea.

The tea has been roasted and flavored with several flavoring agents and also colored.

To brew Thai tea, bring to boil 2 cups of water, then add 2 tsp Thai tea leaves, and 1/2 cup sugar, reduce heat to a simmer and stir until sugar has dissolved.

Using a coffee filter, strain out the leaves.

Pour into a glass jar and let cool before sealing and placing in fridge.

To serve pour 3 oz over a glass with ice and milk. Oh by the way, this tea has a lot of caffeine. If you want to stay up this will do it.

Vietnamese Coffee is another unusual drink. It's a sweetened espresso in my opinion. I use regular coffee, but authentic Vietnamese coffee uses chicory flavored coffee.

Using this neat little coffee press,

scoop out 1 Tbs coffee,

and screw on press. The press has a screw to adjust the flow of coffee.

Place the press over a tall glass filled with 1-2 oz sweetened condensed milk over ice,

and pour hot water to top of press, place lid on and watch.

When the coffee has finished dripping,

remove the press, and stir glass.

Enjoy the caffeine rush.

What is in our food?

2010-06-30T13:46:00.000-04:00

I saw this on Serious Eats US nuggets and followed the link to CNN's Sanjay Gupta section.

Which also had me looking for this clip.

Now that's Jamie's take on the prepared nuggets, he didn't add multi-syllable chemical agents to maintain form and what little texture there is.

Here is another clip of real chicken nuggets.

So tell me which one do you want to eat?

15 Minute Bay Scallop Alfredo

2010-06-28T12:26:00.001-04:00

Cooking during the summer in this house can be a chore. It's a darling house that I love dearly, but having been built in the 1800's and gone through several owners, the quality of the various upgrades/changes varies. The kitchen, for example, was a later addition done on the cheap--they literally plugged an 11'x10' box onto the back of the second story with no insulation and minimal underside supports. Therefore, besides having to shore up the room before I moved in (nothing like having to ask the question "well, is it going to fall off?") my kitchen, being the outside wall on four of six sides, is pretty much the same temperature as outside. During the winter I just make a lot of breads, stews, and other long-cooking items to keep the room toasty, but in the summer anything which adds heat to the room makes the entire floor unbearable.

Not being a takeout kind of girl (it's fine once in awhile, but all summer? Expensive and unhealthy!) instead I've made it my mission this summer to come up with recipes that minimize my time in the kitchen and don't use the oven. Yeah, I know, there are millions of 30-minute cookbooks out there but really--isn't that aiming too low? Dinner is totally possible in 15 minutes which I proved last night with my 15 Minute Bay Scallop Alfredo. (recipe after the break)
Ingredients (serves 2):
Sauce:

2 tbl butter
1 tbl flour
1 tsp sugar
1.5 cups milk (I use 2%, but whatever is in the fridge will do)
1/2 tsp salt
Dash of cayenne
Black pepper to taste
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Topping:

1 tbl butter
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 cup bay scallops
2 cups rough-chopped vegetables
1 lemon

Plus: 2 servings cooked pasta of your choice

To start off, cook pasta according to package directions (I used penne but it's purely a personal preference--feel free to use fettuccine or whatever it is you like best ). While the pasta is cooking make the sauce and topping--each of which will take under 10 minutes.

For the sauce, add the butter, flour, sugar, cayenne, and salt to a small saucepan over med-high heat. Stir until the butter is melted and the flour is incorporated. You can see my pasta merrily boiling away as the butter melts.

Then slowly whisk in the milk making sure to completely mix it into the flour mixture before adding more otherwise the sauce will be lumpy. Bring to a boil and simmer 1-2 minutes until thickened slightly, remove from heat, stir in the cheese, then season with black pepper to taste.

Now, my version isn't a "true" alfredo sauce which would use more butter and heavy cream. Examples include this one from the Olive Garden (OMG, egg yolks too?) and this one from Tyler Florence at Food Network. Although for special occasions I will use heavy cream in my alfredo, for everyday cooking that's just ridiculously unhealthy. Using sugar and flour adds the sweetness and thickness you would expect from heavy cream, minus the fat and cholesterol. This sauce is really flexible and for variation try using 1/2 Parmesan and 1/2 Romano cheeses, or adding in a 1/4 tsp of fresh garlic. I've even seen variations using cream cheese but honestly, haven't tried that one yet.

Now that the sauce (or your variation of it) is done or, if you're a multi-tasker at the same time, make the topping. In a small fry pan over medium-high heat add the garlic, butter, the juice from half a lemon and scallops. Saute for 2-3 minutes. You will notice that all sorts of juices are in the pan--but don't worry, that'll change in a minute.

While the scallops are cooking, roughly chop two cups of vegetables--just enough to make them smallish bite-sized. I used a bagged broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mix but again--whatever vegetables you like will do.

Add the veggies to the pan with the scallops and saute another 3-4 minutes until the scallops are opaque and vegetables crisp-tender. Notice that the veggies have soaked up all those lovely scallop and lemon flavored juices. Mmmmmmm.

A couple of notes. First--I used frozen bay scallops because they are super-cheap ($9.99 for that entire bag!), can just hang out in my freezer until I'm ready to use them, cook quickly and can be used in almost anything (chowders, stir fries, cold salads, etc.).
As for the vegetables, when I'm trying to stay out of my kitchen I shamelessly use pre-washed, packaged (but fresh) vegetables because they're super-convenient and not having to trim them myself cuts the prep time to practically nothing (I do rinse them before using, but that's just me being OCD).

Time for assembly: toss the pasta in the alfredo sauce, add to plate, then top with the scallop/vegetable mix and serve. I personally like to squeeze a little extra fresh lemon over the top to enhance the mix of tart and creamy/cheesy. My daughter, however, prefers to top hers with an extra sprinkling of parmesan.

And there you have it--dinner in fifteen minutes. Phew!

We're on Vacation

2010-06-27T11:57:00.000-04:00

Neither Jo or I have posted in a bit because we're on vacation. We really should've warned you that we'd both be on summer break and not posting. For Jo, well she's been busy back at work and her Stinky is off from school. For myself, I don't tend to cook as much during the summer because it's a gazillion degrees here (and humid) and with the crappy lack of insulation in my house any cooking just defeats my poor over-worked air conditioning. Never mind that, I decided to redo my kitchen which means it's been lots of takeout around here.

But I saw this yesterday and had to share. I was in the local kitchen store looking for a new pot rack (darn those things are expensive!) and as I'm browsing this caught my eye:

A Monkey bread pan? Really? Now, I know there are all sorts of specialty cookware items out there for pretty much everything imaginable but sometimes it makes sense because its an essential (e.g. bundt pan, bread pans) but this just seems silly. One day I will have a huge kitchen with plenty of storage for all my random specialty toys, but even then I don't think this is going to be something I'll buy.

Salad Nicoise!

2010-05-11T13:29:00.017-04:00

It's spring out here! Well in a few weeks it will be the unofficial beginning of summer. Once Memorial Day hits out here, it's summer for all intents and purposes. The kids are out of school until early August.

Since warm weather means room temp or cool foods, this is a tasty one. I used leftover vegetables, and steamed some not quite so tiny baby red potatoes.

I decided to give this tuna a try.

I made my own dressing, a simple one with with balsamic vinegar, canola oil, lemon juice, minced shallots, a dash of mustard, salt, pepper, and fresh chopped herbs.

Oh and I found some wonderful little sweet and spicy peppers at the deli bar of my grocery store.

I didn't use boston or butter leaf lettuce as they are pretty pricey, but the romaine was just right along with spinach, and sliced onions.

I hope you find a healthy delicious salad to keep you cool this season.

Slow smoked pork picnic

2010-05-08T16:04:00.016-04:00

So my husband has been working on this cooking method for a while. When in the South, smoke meat!

The process starts with a pork butt, also called a boston butt, or shoulder. Heavily season with salt and pepper.

Now the proper way to cook this is to use a smoker, but hey sometimes you aren't certain if you will use the appliance that often so you make do. Using our gas grill, he set the temp very low at 200* and used a tray to place soaked wood chips over the burner. He also placed some large soaked wood chunks on the grill too.

So with a meat probe inserted in the center, watch your temp and make sure there's plenty of smoke, when the pork reaches 180* it's time to eat!

By the way. The house will smell slightly of wood smoke for a few days if your husband has the door open the whole time. Well you know 8 hours of slow smoking will do that to the house.

Sweet & Spicy ribs... Where did they go?

2010-05-04T15:24:00.047-04:00

This is my follow up on the sweet and spicy marinade. This is the preferred sauce for ribs or pork in my house. Now Bella has her way of cooking ribs, and this is my way.

Doesn't matter what type of ribs I use, spareribs, or baby back, it's all processed the same way. This batch I made the ribs weighed in at about 3 lbs. I grab my favorite knife and slice them into single bone sections. All are placed in a evenly spaced pile on double layer of foil.

Foil pouches are awesome.

This goes into the oven at 350* for 1 hour. When they come out, I've got steam baked pork, it's tender and fully cooked all pure pork flavor at this moment.

While the ribs are cooling, it's time to make my marinade again.

I realize now that there is a chili sauce that's available in the ketchup aisle. Heinz makes one and I've never used it. We'll just stick with the Asian sauce. By the way, I noticed also that Lee Kum Kee and Dynasty make a garlic chili sauce also, and those might be considered mainstream market items.

Take the ribs out, and shake off excess liquid, place in bowl and rotate several times during the marinating process.

Now it's the finish time. The weather has been warm and it's grill season again!

Make sure you brush the glaze on the ribs often, and it should only take 5 min on each side.

As you can see from the first photo the ribs barely made the platter, before Stinky descended on them.

Pho

2010-05-02T20:38:00.001-04:00

I love soups, quick soups especially. Pho is not a quick soup, well the process is not quick unless you use a pressure cooker. Steamy Kitchen's Pho or Steamy Kitchen's crockpot Pho I have found that using a pressure cooker takes about 5 hours off the process. Does it taste as good? Yea it's not bad, slow cooking is the best, but crockpots are never big enough!

I have a 12 qt pot with pressure lid. I do everything as the above recipes, except when the bones come to a boil, I put the lid on, and set the pressure to high and let it rip for 1 hour. Then I turn off the heat and release the pressure. Wohoo soup is ready! Now I have soup for several servings. I freeze them in one quart amounts, and pull them out when I am craving pho.

Now the fillings, I purchase frozen thin sliced ribeye, or brisket from the Korean market. If you have a deep freezer it totally works. I bring home 6lbs and separate them into 3/4 lb sections.

I hate mung beans, just my thing, so I don't buy them every often only when my husband wants Pho will I get some. Otherwise, I serve a plate with all the vegetable accompaniments for everyone to chose, thin sliced onions, jalapeno peppers, basil, cilantro, and spinach.

Always place the noodles in the bottom of the bowl and for food safety I place the raw meat slices in the bowl and pour boiling soup over to cook them. The bowls of steaming hot soup are placed at the table and everyone has perfectly cooked meat. I like a dab of chili garlic sauce and hoisin in my soup.

One Pass, One Fail--Ruhlman Rolls and Monkeybread

2010-04-28T22:04:00.004-04:00

Cooking is one of those things where sometimes you just fail. I've set the frying pan on fire, dropped pan loads of lasagna fresh out of the oven, exploded soup in the blender and all sorts of other entertainingly spectacular (and messy) disasters. Other times, cooking results in absolute hits where impressed guests clear the dinner platters and ask for the recipe.

This week had both.

First was the monkeybread. Jo's pics and rave reviews had me drooling over the thought of some gooey yumminess. The recipe was easy to follow and mixed up easy as could be.

The first and second rise went great.

As I was planning on making them the next morning for breakfast, I put them in the fridge overnight.

This is the monkeybread after the second rise. Looking perfect and wonderful.

The next morning, unfortunately, didn't go so well. I pulled the bread from the fridge and it looked very sad and deflated. I popped it into the oven anyway...not one of my better ideas.

Ah well, so it didn't turn out to be the prettiest breakfast in the world. But I will say, it was tasty. But yeah, pretty much a fail. Oh yeah, I call it Monkeybread instead of Monkeyballs because, after my six-year-old daughter went skipping off to her Catholic school singing "I love Monkeyballs, Monkeyballs" I decided maybe we'd keep it a bit more G-rated.

On the other hand, the buttermilk rolls from Ruhlman were amazing! Admittedly, I was bit nervous after the Monkeybread incident, but decided to go ahead with them anyway. OK, so I didn't weigh the flour or be as precise as Ruhlman suggested I be...but I referenced the two other recipes cited and just kind of went with it. First, happy little dough balls.

Which rose exactly as expected.

Then baked up nice and golden.

And were some of the most tender, delicious rolls I ever ate. Total win.

So there you have it--sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. At least with food the results, no matter what they look like, it's almost always delicious.

Dublin Coddle

2010-04-25T21:13:00.005-04:00

So, let's see, it's been over a month since I promised I would post the results of my St. Patty's Day dinner.

Admittedly I have a good excuse for my lapse:, but instead of giving you excuses, let's skip right to the food. :)

I've read many a recipe and several variations in researching the dish. However, most of them all contained some variation of potatoes, onion, sausage, some sort of pork product (ham or bacon), parsley and pepper. Some used broth, others just water, a couple added beer but overall, they contained the same basic ingredients. I also saw many with various vegetables from turnips or leeks to carrots. With all that in mind, I went with the following:

Dublin Coddle
Ingredients:

2 lbs potatoes, peeled and sliced into large chunks
2 large onions, roughly chopped
1 lb pork sausage, either whole or cut into 2-inch pieces
1/2 lb thick sliced bacon
2 cups water or chicken broth
2-4 tbl parsley (to taste)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup of carrots -- I added these just because I really love long simmered carrots

Over medium high heat, add the bacon, onions, and sausage to a large cookpot. In more traditional recipes the sausage was left whole, but since this seemed like a total comfort food, the last thing I wanted to do was fight with a large sausage while eating. Cook until sausage is browned and the bacon slightly crisped.

Add the remaining ingredients and bring the pot to a boil. Turn the heat to low and cover the pot. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour.

Mmmmm, my house was smelling absolutely wonderful at this point.

Garnish and serve! I made some soda bread to mop up the juices.

And that's it. Easy as could be. But, oh my goodness, it was amazingly good. Rich, salty, and filling. My poor arteries aren't happy with me, but my tastebuds were in heaven.

Banh Mi, and Thit Nuong

2010-03-24T13:45:00.001-04:00

Banh Mi is the Vietnamese fast food staple. Americans have fast food burgers, this is the Vietnamese version. Banh Mi is really simple. Using the thit nuong recipe with sliced pork, you've got your meat filling. There are way too many fillings that go in a Banh Mi, that I haven't tried yet. The ones I like happen to have pate, grilled pork or chicken and veggies in them. Vietnamese sandwich shops have the best demi baguettes. The rolls have a thin crisp crust and sweet and tender crumb. The rolls are sliced halfway through, mayo is spread on the bread, the meat is placed along with pickled daikon, and carrots, matchstick cucumbers, thin slivers of onion, cilantro, and jalapenos. I know there has to be more in them, but I never pay too much attention to what as I'm too busy stuffing my face. When I first started eating them, I would buy 5 and get one free, and they were only $1! Gee, that was 10 years ago. Now they go for as low as $2.50 upwards to $4 depending on where you are. Oh and you will need breath mints when you are done eating.
I haven't found any decent Vietnamese bakeries close to me, so I'm stuck with sub par baguettes from my local Kroger or Publix. One of my next projects will be to make demi baguettes.

Pot Stickers

2010-03-22T21:56:00.003-04:00

I grew up making these from scratch. Even the wrappers. Well, I didn't mix up the flour to make the wrappers, but I certainly helped my mom wrap these suckers. My brother's task was to flatten each round and then come back when they were cooked to eat. He was a bit overweight until puberty. Lucky for me, a noodle shop opened in Chinatown, and they made fresh wonton, and pot sticker wrappers besides twenty different kinds of noodles. I miss the convenience of a decent Chinatown, but I still make my pot stickers. You can make these using ground pork, chicken or turkey. Just be aware that if using chicken or turkey, you must get the ground dark meat, as you need some fat in the meat. If you are really lucky, even with fresh dungeness crab. (I don't remember those, what a shame) I usually make them with pork, well, because, I like my pig.

The recipe involves a ratio; 1 part meat, 2 parts vegetable.

1 lb ground pork
2 lbs napa or green cabbage, shredded finely, salted with 1 tsp salt and excess water squeezed out
1 c green onions, finely chopped
2 inch chunk of ginger, peeled and minced finely
3 Tbs light soy sauce
1 Tbs corn starch
1 Tbs Shaoxing, Chinese cooking wine
1 1/2 Tbs canola oil
2 tsp ground white pepper

2 pkgs Pot Sticker (Goyza, Dumpling) wrappers (I keep several packages in my freezer, usually I use about 2 packages, but mine contain 50 wrappers per package) I am not certain how many are in the Azumya packs.

If you are looking at a head of cabbage and wondering, "What the heck?" This is what you do; Napa Cabbage should be separated into leaves, and stacked, slicing crosswise into 1/4 inch shreds, green cabbage, should be cut in half and laying flat side down slice into 1/4 inch shreds. You can cheat by cutting either cabbage into reasonable size that fits in your food processor with shredding blade and save yourself some time, and you won't need to sharpen you knife so often. I have not tried using the packaged shredded cabbage, mainly because it's cheaper to get a head of cabbage than $1 bag for 8oz of wilted cabbage. Place all that shredded cabbage in a large bowl and sprinkle with 1 tsp salt, toss, let sit for 5 min then dump into cheese cloth, or single layer large diaper cloth, or kitchen towel. Gather ends and twist forming a ball of cabbage over the bowl, squeeze as much liquid into the bowl. Drain bowl and place ball of cabbage in bowl, rest your hands for a few minutes and repeat. You should squeeze out about 1 cup of liquid.

Meanwhile, in another large bowl mix meat, ginger, green onions, and seasonings together. Add cabbage after all liquid has been drained, mixing well again. Let rest in fridge while you prep your work area.

I have read that dumpling parties are common in some cities like LA, SF, and NY. If you have a decent Asian population and appreciation of the foods, and the desire to make them, you might find yourself invited to a party. Dumpling parties make the process of wrapping faster, and fun, otherwise make sure you have some upbeat music going on. You will need to lay out your materials, wrappers, a small dish of water, spoons, and trays. I was able to get some trays from my grocery store, by asking nicely. You may also use regular baking pans, just make sure that they are lined with wax paper.

Now the fun part. Grab your big bowl of meat mixture and make yourself comfy. Take a wrapper and place it in front of you.

Scoop 1 1/2 tsp of filling and place in center of wrapper

Using finger tip or back of spoon, dip in water and wet edges of wrapper, (1 spoon for filling, 1 spoon for water)

Pinch the top and bottom of wrapper together.

Pinch left side of wrapper

Pinch right side of wrapper

Crimp and fold the sides together.

Yea, I know it doesn't look like the ones you get out of the Ling Ling bag. Hey, these are homemade. I know there are better descriptions on how to shape them, than what I have done. Heck you don't even need to do all this, just fold in half and crimp like empanadas. Also my mom makes them beautifully. My aunt could always tell who made them, and she would go for mine. Why? I tend to over stuff. She liked more filling. I know of some who prefer more of a doughy wrapper.

So now you are sitting at your table making a boatload of pot stickers and placing them in the trays or pans. Now what? Well the best thing about them, is that they freeze well. Place each tray as you are done in the freezer (It gives you a chance to get up and stretch your legs) When the next tray is done, the prior tray should be frozen enough to place pot stickers in a freezer bag. Hey if you are going to all this trouble to make them, why not make enough to last a month or so. They keep in the freezer up to 6 months. Actually that's the longest they have ever lasted for us, and that's because we usually make 400. They cook exactly the same, just a few minutes longer on the steam time. You may also steam, boil or deep fry them. Whatever application you use, it's usually about 10-15 min cook time.

So all that work and you wanna eat them now. I must tell you if there is a dumpling party or someone who knows how to wrap them also you can test a couple to check your seasonings while you are wrapping. Hey, I don't taste test raw pork!

Using a large non stick pan over med heat, pour 1/2 Tbs oil, place pot stickers in pan and let the bottoms brown slightly, about 1 min.

Now pour 1/2 c water into pan and cover, let steam for 10-15 min, until water has evaporated.

Remove lid and check the bottoms of the dumplings, they should be crisp and nicely browned.

Remove from pan and serve as an appetizer or savory brunch, dim sum side dish with a dipping sauce of 3Tbs soy, 1/2 tsp vinegar, 1tsp chopped green onion and ginger, or whatever floats your boat. My dad likes half soy and Worcestershire.

A Vietnamese dinner

2010-03-18T13:40:00.007-04:00

I totally have a craving for Vietnamese food. Now this is a shameful story to tell you. I grew up eating Cantonese, and plain American fare. Typical American fare would be spaghetti, pizza, lasagna, and hamburgers. I branched out when I got married and worked on my french bistro, Tuscan, and Northern Italian dishes. I have enjoyed Indian food, but alas curry is not something my husband likes. In the past 6 years we've expanded our palate to Thai, and Vietnamese food. The shame of it all is that I didn't experiment with these cuisines until I was in my 30's, and now I find living in the suburbs of Atlanta, there isn't a large variety of Asian cuisine. (The ubiquitous brown or white sauced entrees were never in my Mom's repertoire.) Oh and by the way, what the heck is the big deal about the white sauce at the hibachi restaurants out here?

One of the first ethnic restaurants we went to when we moved to Atlanta was this place I found through the AJC's food section. Grape Leaf Grill in Marietta. This place was hilarious. The chef is temperamental. I'm not certain if the waitress screwed up the order or the chef decided what you were to eat. There was this whole story to our first visit there. We read great reviews about the restaurant and decided to try it out. When we got there, it happened to be rather early and a weekday so it wasn't too busy. The waitress took forever to even bring water to the table. She offended my son somehow by insinuating he was a young kid,(Hey, he was 10 and at a crossroads, plus he was small) We finally made our choices and we looked forward to our orders. My son was still incredibly upset that the waitress treated him like a little kid, he wanted to leave, we were trying to enjoy a meal as a family that wasn't at some obesity buffet, and learn the area we would be staying in for a few weeks while our house closed. It took over 40 min for our meal to arrive, and not once did the waitress refill our water. But oh the food! The chef was known for his bo la lot, meat stuffed in betel leaves. He had left another very popular restaurant to start Grape Leaf. We made sure we ate there once a week for the next 6 weeks. My son was able to get over his anger by playing with the chef's son, and we got to watch a soap opera play out with the waitress. I can't even explain it all, but the food was what drew us. We kept trying to order different meat in our bo la lot. Once we had beef, but mostly the chef kept giving us his pork filling. I never figured it out, but I know for certain each time we came he was going to give us the pork ones, and whatever else we ordered. I really miss that restaurant, and it's not that feasible for us to go there since it's about a 70 min drive with NO traffic. Hey this is Atlanta, when is there no traffic? Also we don't have reasonable excuses to go up there besides the restaurant.

I was wandering about through the food blogs, and I've followed White on Rice, for a while. I took a peek at the recommended blogs and ran across Ravenous Couple Perusing through their recipes I found bo la lot Wow, one of our favorite dishes, and it didn't look that difficult. Since Hong and Kim mentions it's part of a meal called Bo Bay Mon(seven courses of beef) I figured why not, and found another recipe that sounded tasty, and used beef as the meat, bun thit nuong Which then led me to make their pickled daikon and carrots too.

Now where do we begin? I had gone to the Korean market for some supplies, but I still forgot one item and well, it might have made a big difference. Unfortunately the store is an hour away, hopefully I will find it at Kroger. Betel leaves are not in season so frozen was the way to go.

The label says Jute leaves, but they aren't. No clue why, it's actually Perilla, and there are different varieties, the one with the saw tooth edge leaves are also known as shiso leaves. I took the leaves out of the package and placed it on paper towel to defrost at room temp. I barely used a third of the package with this recipe. I also chose to use frozen chopped lemon grass instead of dealing with fresh.

While the leaves were defrosting, I mixed up the meat and seasonings and placed that in the fridge.

Now time to marinate the beef for Bun Thit Nuong. The recipe calls for pork, but I decided to use thin sliced ribeye instead.

Now it's time to cut up the daikon and carrots. I did not use my mandoline or food processor, and just cut them up into thick strips.

After everything had marinated for 2 hours and the betel leaves were separated, it was time to make the bo la lot. Yes, you will end up using your hands to form the meat, and do make sure you clean your hands before grabbing your phone or camera to take pictures, meat germs on electronics are never a good idea.

I used less than a pound of beef and made more than 30 rolls.

The oven was warming up and the rolls were placed on my broiler pan, I'm not quite ready to head out and grill yet, it was raining.

While I was waiting for the broiler to come to temperature, I cooked the fine rice vermicelli, and rinsed under cold water.
Again, I cut an english cucumber into large matchsticks, and julienned basil, mint, and sliced green onions.

At this point the rolls went into the oven, and I started the Thit Nuong. Using a large pan, with about 1 tablespoon of canola oil over med-high heat, I seared the thin slices of beef.
Again no grilling due to rain. Next time yes I will use the grill and I have a grill basket too!

I decided to plate the meal instead of serving on a platter family style. This is the meal without the bo la lot yet.

So how did it go? Well the adults enjoyed themselves. The beef turned out fantastic. I really enjoyed the combination of basil, mint, green onions, betel leaves, and chopped peanuts. Herbs as salad ingredients, why isn't this more common? Rice vermicelli is mild in flavor and really helps the textural qualities and absorbs the juices from the meat. Sweet, salty, spicy, cooling, and umami. The rolls were not as spiced as I thought they would be. Perhaps it is because I did not add the curry powder in the recipe. (Remember the man who does not like curry?) I even goofed up and used 2 Tablespoons of fish sauce instead of the correct 2 teaspoons! They were rather bland. Back to the drawing board on that one. I won't discuss the kid's opinion, as it was a bad hormonal day. Anyone want to raise an obnoxious, spoiled, self centered boy? Next time, Pho - Beef noodle soup. Don't worry, this Vietnamese kick won't last that long. We'll go back to boring pork chops soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

2010-03-17T09:03:00.003-04:00

La Fhéile Phadraig Sona Duit! In honor of St. Patty's Day my daughter's kindergarden class is having a small party with treats. Sadly (for me) the class went with a decorate-your-own cookie activity. As I was eager to test out some decorating ideas from the book I just bought Hello Cupcake I offered to bring in treats for the pre-K class as well. That is the best way to test any decorating technique--because even if you totally mess up, as long as it tastes good the kids are happy. I made green iced shamrocks and round leprechaun decorated cookies.

(note to self: next time allocate more than an hour to decorating 60 cookies, the beards were rather rushed and didn't come out as good as they could have)

Left: cookies drying. I used colored fondant for the faces, spearmint gummies for the hats, orange gummy slices for the beards and decorator's gel icing for the details.

Right: Treat/activity bags packed and ready to go. Each bag contains two undecorated shamrock cookies, a bag each of green icing and a mix of colored (two different greens, yellow, black, white) sprinkles, Smarties, and chocolate kisses

Tonight's dinner is a very Irish meal of Dublin Coddle and Soda bread. I will post the results later.

Sweet and Spicy Marinade Part II: Fall Off the Bone Spareribs

2010-03-16T20:33:00.002-04:00

Jo and I got talking about marinades the other day after her post. My usual marinade is different (I'll get around to posting it one of these days) and after comparing she got me in the mood for some ribs. BabyBella and I absolutely love, love ribs. However, to make them truly fall-off-the-bone that takes time and preplanning (two things I'm horrible at finding and doing). But, the stars aligned and for once I did both. Yesterday I swung by the meat department and picked up 1 3/4 lbs of spareribs--I know that's too much for the both of us but I'm planning on having them for lunch during the week--and checked my work calendar and voila! had the time to step away from my desk for a few minutes in the middle of the day. Happy.

First things first, I made a batch of Jo's marinade though since BB doesn't like overly spicy foods I cut the chili sauce down to 1 tbl. Then over medium-high heat I quickly browned both sides of the ribs in a tablespoon of canola oil to seal them. I then covered them in the marinade (I saved about a quarter cup for later) and placed them, bone side down, in a baking dish and covered it very tightly with aluminum foil. The point is to steam the ribs, slowly, in their own juices and if they aren't covered tightly enough all that lovely steam is going to escape. I put the dish in the oven at 250 degrees and then waited.

Seriously, this is definitely a "I'm going to be home all day" sort of thing. I put them in the oven at 1:30 pm planning on dinner by 5:30. Yeah, that's right folks--we're talking FOUR HOURS including broiling time (we'll get to that in a bit) so plan ahead.

What goes better with ribs? Well, potato salad and cornbread of course! I used the cornbread recipe from my trusty old America's Test Kitchen cookbook and made the potato salad from scratch using a recipe I've made and adjusted many a time over the years. Something weird--I'm allergic to mayonnaise but only the commercial buy-it-in-the-store-in-a-jar type stuff. I can eat homemade mayonnaise without problem. However one bite of the store stuff and...well let's just say it isn't pretty.

Homemade Mayonnaise
Ingredients:

1 egg
1/2 tsp yellow mustard
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbl vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
1 cup oil (I used canola but have also used light extra virgin olive oil)
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp granulated sugar

Add all ingredients, except for the oil, to a blender on highest setting. I like to chill the container part first, but that's really just a personal preference since I tend to use it immediately. Once everything is well blended, with the blender still running, slowly pour the oil into the mix. It's a really neat process. One second it's merrily spinning around obviously very much a liquid then *poof* it thickens up and is mayonnaise. Use immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

This makes about a cup and a half of mayonnaise which is perfect for making a decent sized batch of potato salad (enough for 6 people). However, tonight I halved my own recipe so I didn't end up eating potato salad for the rest of the week. The whole recipe is as follows:

Potato Salad
Ingredients:

2 - 2.5 lbs potatoes
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
6 sliced of cook bacon, crumbled
1.5 cups mayonnaise
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbl stone ground mustard
2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
2 tbl sugar
1 tbl garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Peel and dice potatoes into bite-sized pieces. Boil for 15 minutes until just tender then drain. Chill in refrigerator at least an hour or until centers are cool. Once potatoes are chilled through, add remaining ingredients and toss well to coat evenly. Best if refrigerated and served 4 hours or more later as the flavors will develop and blend in that time.

Back to the ribs. With the cornbread already done that morning and potato salad chilling in the refrigerator, after three and a half hours of baking I pulled the ribs out of the oven and pulled off the foil. When doing this part, be very, very, very careful because steam is going to come bursting out and that's a nasty burn.

I pulled the ribs out of the pan and as you can see from the picture, the meat had pulled back from the bones and was so tender that because I was a bit careless in lifting the ribs from the pan, you can see how they started falling apart.

I transferred the ribs to a cookie sheet covered in foil and brushed the ribs with the quarter cup of reserved marinade. I then threw them under the broiler on high for about five minutes to get that "grill almost burnt bits" flavor.

Oh boy, let me tell you they were GOOD. I love the whole salty/sweet combination of the soy and sugar. Only wish I could've used a bit more of the chili sauce because I could tell that just a bit more bite (there was a bit of the chili flavor but none of the heat) they would've been out of this world. As was, my daughter informed me it was "De. Lih. SHIS!" and I was rather moany groany ate too much myself for a couple hours later.

Shortcut Japanese: Miso and Rolls

2010-03-14T22:56:00.013-04:00

Disclaimer: What I'm about to do is probably ten kinds of incorrect. There are correct ways of making sushi rolls but I don't know them. Yet it works and if you're fiending for a bit of yummy goodness without a trip to a restaurant then read on....

I may have said somewhere that I'm part Japanese. No? Oh, well, it's not really relevant to much so that's probably why I neglected to mention it. Anyway, my father immigrated here with his parents when he was 16 and his influence is likely why I consider things such as soy sauce and soba household staples. Since the "oriental" section of the local grocery stores is only about two feet of shelves, once in awhile I treat myself and make a trip to the closest Asian Grocery. To be perfectly honest, I haven't the foggiest idea what the package labels say and there are a bunch of foods that I don't know the English word for--I just buy what I've always seen in my Grandmother's pantry. Maybe not the most informed shopping, but if it's good enough for Grandma, then its good enough for me.

So, today was the big trip. Several grocery bags and a "wow, that's a lot" comment from the store clerk later I trundled home with my bags full of goodies with plans to make miso and sushi rolls for dinner. Then realized I forgot avocado and green onions and ran back out. Of course, now I'm standing here getting ready to make dinner and realize I probably should've picked up a bamboo mat too while I was out. Oh well, I've done without one for this long (real chefs go ahead and shake your heads sadly at me, it's OK, I really am a disgrace) so another day isn't going to hurt anything.

Oops, yeah, another note--I do shortcuts. Yeah, I could totally go ahead and buy everything I'm supposed to have, but as I'm the only one who eats it it would just be a waste.

First things first--the miso. Here is a big old ugly daikon which is a type of radish. I kid you not when I tell you it was the smallest one they had at the farmer's market. Thankfully I really like daikon. One this size would probably make 8 or more servings of miso depending on how much you like it (for me it'll probably be about 4, I LOVE the stuff). I julienned about a cup's worth and am cooking it in two cups of boiling water for 20 minutes.

Since I'm cheating I'm just going to add the miso mix and will be done. However, if you're not cheating add a packet of dashi (stock) to the cooking water or use an equivalent amount of the liquid stuff. If you happen to have miso paste, when the daikon is done just add three tablespoons of the paste, 1/2 package (diced) of tofu, 1 finely chopped scallion, and a half cup of wakame (curly seaweed) then cook another minute or two before serving.

I know, I know, it's ridiculously easy so why bother with the shortcut, but seriously one of those tubs of paste, even the small one, makes gallons of miso and that makes no sense around here. Anyway, here it is, ready to eat.

Next comes the rolls. I only use one brand of rice which is the same brand I grew up with. Go ahead, laugh at my mini rice pot. That's another one of those things I keep promising myself I'll upgrade but since I only make one cup at a time, again its just not worth it.

To make vinegared rice, heat 8 tsp of rice vinegar to just below boiling. Then remove it from the heat and stir in 4 tsp of sugar. Keep stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved. Then, pour it over the nice hot, fresh rice (it was 1 cup uncooked worth) and stir until evenly coated. You'll notice that the rice now looks "shiny." You also probably notice the brown bits...again, not the world's fanciest rice cooker and it tends to scorch the bottom bits.

Now here's the fun part--arts and crafts time!! I know that rolls all have their special restaurant names but why do you have to do that at home? I got all sorts of yummy stuff--cucumber, avocado, roe, tuna, crab, pickled radish, wasabi paste, green onion, made some scrambled egg and sliced it all up.

Here, this is where I will be picky for just a little bit--you can't just go and get any old tuna like a slab from the fish area of the grocery store. If you are eating it raw please visit a specialty store and get sushi-grade tuna so you don't get sick and die. OK? Thanks.

BTW, you don't have to go raw either. Cooked shrimp, broiled eel, crab stick like I used, heck--even BBQ chicken--all taste great in rolls without the whole possibility of getting sick thing.

Anyway, spread a thin layer of rice over a piece of Sushi Nori--or basically a flat sheet of dried roasted seaweed. Make sure to leave a border on the long sides. Then, just lay out the ingredients of your choice and roll it up. It's really that simple--treat the roll like a sleeping bag and firmly (being careful to not tear the seaweed) but evenly roll the whole thing up. Dampen the inside of the outside edge of seaweed slightly with a bit of water to seal the edges. Using a very sharp knife slice the roll evenly and you're done. I personally like the rolls dipped in a very little bit of soy sauce with a lot of wasabi (mmmm, sinus clearing) with just a bit of pickled ginger. But how you serve it really is up to you.

Admittedly I probably did a thousand things wrong. But once the rice is cooked its fairly quick and simple to make and its oh-so-open to doing whatever you want with it. Like mayo? Use it. Like carrots? Sure, throw those in too. Have some leftover pork from last night? Why not? What really matters is that you like it and its really fun to make. Ain't it purdy?

Sweet & Spicy Marinade

2010-03-12T10:33:00.005-05:00

This one of my go to marinades for chicken and pork. In fact it's absolutely wonderful used on the grilled items. I've adjusted the spice factor several times for the tastes of guests. It requires a specific ingredient which you should be able to find in the ethnic foods section of your grocery store.

I always buy this brand and no, I haven't a clue how to pronounce the name of the company, I just call it Rooster brand. This is not the same thing as the Chili sauce with the dispensing spout. This sauce has actual red chili seeds in it. It's thicker, more like a paste. Now on with the recipe....

1c brown sugar
1/4c ketchup
1/4c soy sauce
1/4c rum
1/2c chili sauce (I've used as little as 2 Tbs)
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 tsp dry mustard
dash of black pepper

I use a 2c pyrex measuring cup for all the liquid ingredients first then dump them into a bowl and then add the remaining ingredients. Once this is mixed well, place 3lbs mixed bone in chicken parts in a ziptop bag, pour half of the marinade into bag, close bag and massage to cover each piece of chicken in marinade. Place in refrigerator for 1 hour. Simmer remaining marinade in a small pot on low heat until thickened to preferred consistency, and let cool off heat.

Preheat oven to 425*
Empty bag of chicken and marinade into a 9 x 11 baking pan, arrange chicken in one layer skin side up. Bake for 25 min. Remove from oven and baste chicken with marinade in pan, return to oven for another 20-25 min. Remove from oven and let rest 5-10 min. Serve chicken with cooked marinade alongside.

Yes you have to cook the marinade down as it's really not a good dipping sauce otherwise. You can also cook the sauce down and use it as a wing sauce too.

Five Minute Chocolate Ricotta Pears

2010-03-08T20:24:00.006-05:00

Thankfully Jo has been a busy tasty bee and has kept you entertained because I haven't cooked worth mentioning in over a week. I swear I have a good reason! Really! OK, maybe I don't and it's kind of embarrassing, but I'll tell you about it anyway. Here we were last week, BabyBella and I, playing around, she's in my arms being carried and I'm leaning in one direction, when suddenly she flings herself in the other direction then starts slipping out of my arms (she's a big girl!), so I quickly swing back around toward her and RRRRIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPP! something gives out in my back. Holy moly, Jiminey Crickets, wowza and crikey, that hurt. Whatever it was I did, the pain radiated from my knees to my shoulders and literally made my vision swim for hours. Thankfully, Jo gave me some excellent advice what to do to help manage it so I was able to grit my teeth and kept going. Since I still had to work and take care of kiddo, I cut myself a break by keeping dinners easy this week. We even *gasp* ordered pizza one night.

In other words, it was the perfect week to make a homemade dessert that barely takes longer than scooping out some icecream--chocolate ricotta pears.

(Recipe after the break)

Chocolate Ricotta Pears (serves 4)
Ingredients:

2 fresh pears, whichever variety you prefer
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1.5 tbl unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp lemon or orange zest or 1/4 tsp dried peel
2 tbl semi-sweet chocolate chips
Chocolate sauce for drizzling

Peel, halve, and core pears then set aside. Add all the ingredients, except chocolate chips, to a bowl.

Using a hand mixer, mix at medium speed until well-blended. Either stir in the chocolate chips or reserve for sprinkling over the completed dish.

Spoon the mixture evenly onto the pear halves then sprinkle with chips (if hadn't been already added to the ricotta). Drizzle with chocolate sauce as desired then serve. That's it! You're done!

For Babybella I diced up her pear first so she wouldn't have to tackle it with a knife.

She certainly is enjoying it!

And that's all it takes--five minutes or less to get that happy a grin out of a six year old.

(oh yeah, don't tell her it's actually not even bad for her...shhhhhhhhhhh)

Macaroni and Cheese

2010-03-05T22:18:00.004-05:00

No photos, but a bit of a rant. We went to the store today, as I had no clue what to make for dinner. As the three of us walked through the store, we scratched our heads and Stinky saw something. He wanted Kraft macaroni and cheese. Excuse me? You want noodles with orange food coloring? Not happening. Now I don't make mac n cheese very often. Usually when I make it, it's the baked kind with the four to six different cheeses, milk and eggs, and baked. But since he was craving it, we headed over to the cheeses and grabbed a chunk of mild cheddar and monterey jack.

Macaroni and cheese is a really simple dish, why do people buy Kraft? I don't understand it. From start to finish it takes about 20 min to make it from scratch and it's comparable timing to the boxed fake stuff. Boil macaroni, while the noodles are cooking grab another small pan and heat 1/2 to 3/4 cup of milk with 8 oz of shredded cheese of your choice over medium low heat. When the cheese is melted, the noodles should be ready, drain then put the noodles back in the pot and pour the melted cheese over the noodles and stir to mix. Gee how hard can that be? Yea there are two pots to wash instead of one, but it's so much better this way.

Stinky was happy. Oh what did we have for dinner? Fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. It was easy and didn't take a lot of thought.

Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookie

2010-03-01T20:35:00.002-05:00

Amateur Gourmet posted about Momofuku Milk Bar's Compost Cookie. Seems the recipe was posted on the Regis and Kelly site. Wohoo! I have yet to run across a terrible recipe from David Chang and his crew of insanely genius chefs. The first time I made one of his recipes was Thanksgiving 2008. My SIL brought the recipe for his roasted brussel sprouts with Japanese marinade. I now love brussel sprouts and in fact will only roast them or cabbage now.

Lately my son has been asking for cookies and well I get lazy, and I worry that he will eat 6 dozen cookies in one day. Hey, it's happened between my son and husband depending on which cookie is made. I like to make a batch, scoop and freeze, so we can maintain some semblance of portion control when it comes to sweets. The same goes for cookies I like too.

Now this cookie is insane. A chocolate chip cookie with pretzels and POTATO CHIPS! I told Bella and she thought that was insane. It is insane, but I can't imagine life without it. I did skip the potato chips, but used pretzels, mini chocolate chips, and crushed heath toffee bars. This cookie requires a Kitchenaid. The mixing time is quite long.

Because of the long mixing time, the dough is really light. I don't make big cookies. I like little ones, you get to eat more for the same amount of calories. I use a 1oz cookie scoop and froze most of the cookies. So I froze the cookies instead of putting them in the fridge for 30 min. It worked just fine. These cookies are out of this world! Next time I make them I'm putting more stuff in them. These cover just about every craving a girl may have.

Fast and easy Empanadas

2010-02-28T20:05:00.010-05:00

Everything is still frozen! I looked in my refrigerator and found only ground beef ready for usage. Sheesh, what to make that isn't meatloaf, meat sauce, or something that hasn't been created a few times already this year. So looking at everything in the fridge, I decided to try empanadas. I haven't made them in years, literally. The problem is that I don't have the dough made, and I don't want to fry. So I went the lazy route and used ready made pie crust. (recipe after the break)

Empanadas (Makes 4)

1lb ground beef
1/2 onion finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs tomato paste
1 c shredded Monterey Jack Cheese
3 Tbs cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper
1 pkg ready made pie crusts

Preheat oven to 450 and line a jelly roll pan with parchment or a Silpat. Heat a medium pan on med-high heat, and cook beef and onions until beef is no longer pink, about 5 min. Add garlic, and tomato paste, mix well and cook for 1 min. Remove pan from heat, add cilantro, and cheese, season with salt and pepper to taste.

Roll out the pie crusts and cut in half. Spoon 1/4 of meat mixture in each crust half. Wet the edges, fold crust over and pinch to seal all the edges. Using a fork poke holes for steam escape. Bake for 15-20 min.

And that's all folks. I know empanadas are a classic Spanish hand held meat pie, I've butchered it, as they are fried too, but heck, I'm not a fan of frying. As for how it went over with the family, they enjoyed it.

Stuffed Peppers

2010-02-24T21:55:00.002-05:00

Some of my earliest memories involve watching my Mom make dinner. Growing up, no matter the occasion, the whole family always ended up hanging out in the kitchen chatting, laughing, playing, picking on each other and snitching bits from the cook pot. The scents of Mom's recipes are inextricably linked to the feelings of being surrounded by those I love. After a wonderful week of seeing two of my three siblings and both parents, I was really missing the only sibling I hadn't seen (and won't for awhile since she lives abroad)--my sister. That rather missing, whimsical, family-oriented mood inspired me to make an old family favorite and Mom specialty--stuffed peppers.

(Recipe after the break)
Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients:

3 bell peppers
1 cup rice, uncooked (2 cups cooked)
3/4 lbs ground beef (I used 93% lean)
1/4 cup finely diced onion
1/4 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp worcestershire sauce
1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 cups water

Cook the 1 cup of rice per package directions. In a large bowl, beat together egg, milk, soy, and worcestershire. Then add the chop meat, cooked rice, finely diced onion and breadcrumbs.

This is where you roll up your sleeves and have fun. With hands, smoosh and mix up the ingredients very well. I guess you could use a mixer to do this part, but that's no where nearly as much fun as mushing up the filling by hand.

Here is the meat stuffing, all ready to go.

Wash and slice the peppers in half then remove the stems, ribs and seeds. I personally love using all sorts of different color peppers--its really pretty and I like the slightly more sweet flavor of the oranges and yellows. However, any sort of bell pepper works just fine.

Evenly divide the meat mixture between the six pepper halves. I'd say something all sorts of cooking advice here and stuff, but really its just like taking a rather large meatball and pressing it into the pepper half--nothing difficult about it.

Put the stuffed peppers into a casserole dish large enough to accomodate them all.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the tomato paste, salt, pepper, sugar, ketchup and water. The sauce will seem thin, but it will thicken while baking.

Spoon the sauce evenly across the peppers then cover lightly with foil. Bake for thirty minutes then remove the foil. Re-baste the peppers with the sauce then return to the oven for another half hour or until the center temperature reaches 160 degrees.

Looks like they're done!

Serving is easy--throw one of the stuffed peppers on a plate, add some of the sauce from the bottom of the baking dish and enjoy.

Ah yes, enjoy!

So yeah, stuffed peppers aren't fancy-schmancy. But they are easy, tasty, filling, and an oh-so-perfect winter food. Most importantly, to me anyway, is they take me right back to my Mom's kitchen poking at my big sister.

Autumn Stuffed Pork Loin

2010-02-24T10:03:00.010-05:00

This is one of my very own recipes. Oh, I'm guessing there are plenty of recipes out there that are similar, but this one was born out of an especially nostalgic afternoon's shopping. You see, I was raised in Upstate NY in the Hudson Valley where Autumn was my favorite season. By mid-October everything turns a thousand shades of red and gold with amazingly crisp mornings that smell like a combination of apple cider and that utterly undefinable but unmistakable aroma of fallen leaves that is more like touch than scent. Being in the foothills of the mountains during that season is one of the most glorious experiences you could imagine.

West Bank of the Hudson River (Image courtesy The Poughkeepsie Journal)

However, when I moved south I discovered that there really isn't a such thing as Autumn. We go pretty much from summer to winter with a brief two or three weeks where everything turns brown and drops. And it rains. A lot. Blech.

So here I was one rainy afternoon in October being incredibly homesick for a season while grocery shopping and had the inspiration to make something decidedly "fall-like" so I grabbed cranberries, apples, and cider and went from there. If I couldn't have golden trees and smoky leaf-scented air then I would taste it. (Recipe after the break)

Autumn stuffed Pork Loin (serves 6-8)
Ingredients:

2.5 - 3 lbs Pork tenderloin or pork roast
1 Granny Smith apple, approximately 1 cup diced
1/2 cup Cranberries (dried or 3/4 cup fresh)
1 cup vidalia or white onion (anything mild), diced
1.5 cups orange juice (I use no pulp, but it doesn't matter)
1 tbl granulated sugar
2 tbl Apple cider or apple wine
2 cups chicken broth
4 slices toasted wheat bread
1 tbl. rubbed sage
1.5 tbl butter
Salt to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine cranberries, sugar, and orange juice in a small pot and bring to a boil, stirring frequently to incorporate the sugar. Once the OJ is boiling, turn the heat to low and let simmer for 15 minutes. Since I used dried cranberries this time, I smashed them with the back of a spoon to break them up a bit. If you use fresh cranberries (usually easy to find around holidays) they should burst on their own.

Here the cranberries are simmering, onions and apples sit ready to be sauteed and tenderloins await slicing...

While the cranberries are simmering, add the butter, apples, and onions to a separate pan and cook over medium-high heat about 5 minutes until the onions soften. Then, add the sage and two tablespoons of apple cider or wine. I just so happened to have a nice spiced apple wine handy so used that, but apple cider works just as well. Continue to saute for about two minutes then stir in the cranberry sauce and 1 cup chicken broth and simmer the entire mixture for five minutes. Remove from the heat and add the toast, broken up into 1-1.5 inch pieces. Mix well then set aside to cool.

While the stuffing was cooling I then butterflied the tenderloin. Since I don't have a decent butcher nearby, the best quality of meat is sold at my local club store. They package two tenderloins per package and as I was cooking for 6 I used both of them. However, any type of pork roast will work just fine. To butterfly, using a sharp knife, starting about 1/2 an inch from the long side edge of the meat, slice downwards but not all the way through the piece, stopping 1/2 inch from the bottom. Then lift the flap you've just cut, and roll the meat a quarter turn so what was just the bottom is now facing away from you. Repeat the length-wise cut through the piece, stopping at the 1/2 inch mark, then roll the meat again and repeat the length-wise cut one to two more times depending on how large your piece is. This will result in a wide, flat piece of tenderloin.

Then lay a piece of plastic wrap over the sliced meat and pound it gently with the back of a flat spoon to even it out (will cook more consistently). Here's my nice, flattened tenderloins:

After the meat is flattened, spread the cranberry/apple/stuffing across the meat. Leave a stuffing-free border all around the meat otherwise when you roll it the stuffing will be squeezed out the sides and length-wise seam.

Starting on the long side with stuffing, roll the meat, with the stuffing on the inside, then place seam-side down into a lightly sprayed baking dish. I used a 9x13 casserole dish, but anything with at least 1-inch sides that will accommodate the length of your roll with suffice. Repeat with other tenderloin as necessary.

Then pour the remaining 1 cup of chicken broth into the dish and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes or until the center of the roll reaches 150 degrees. When done, remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing into 1.5 inch thick pieces for serving.

If you wish (and I always do) take the leftover pan drippings and over medium-heat simmer them while whisking in a tablespoon of flour. Cook for a couple minutes until thickened then serve the gravy on the side. Here the stuffed pork loins are taking a little rest before slicing:

As the stuffed tenderloin took a bit more than usual effort, I went super-simple with my sides--couscous and glazed carrots. Couscous only takes a few minutes to make so I threw that together per package directions while the meat was resting. The glazed carrots were put in the oven at the same time as the pork and taken out at the same time.

Here's everything baking together in the oven all timed to come out at once (also made rolls...mmmmm)

Ginger Glazed Carrots

Ingredients:

3 cups mini carrots
1.5 tbl butter
1 tbl light brown sugar
1 tbl maple syrup
1 tsp ground ginger
dash cinnamon
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup chicken broth

Directions:

Slice the carrots in half and add to a 8-inch round casserole dish. In a small saucepan over medium heat, add the butter, sugar, syrup, ginger, cinnamon and salt and stir until the butter and sugar melt/combine, about two minutes.
Mix in the chicken broth then pour the entire mixture over the carrots. Stir the carrots well to coat, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and bake at 400 degrees for thirty to forty minutes until tender. At least once, midway through baking time, remove from oven and stir well.

As these take less than five minutes to put together I tend to make them (or variations) a lot. This recipe is very forgiving and can be baked at whatever temperature between 250 and 450 degrees for varying lengths of time. The oven temperature is just dictated by whatever else you are making. So whether it is a beef roast or baked chicken or whatever else, go ahead and pop them into the oven with it--just check on them every 15 minutes to stir and make sure you don't overcook them.

Variations:

Instead of maple syrup and ginger, leaving the rest of the ingredients the same, you can try these variations to complement your meal:

1 tsp grated orange peel and 1 tbl orange juice
Sub 1 tbl honey for brown sugar, 1/4 tsp nutmeg
Sub 1 tbl honey for brown sugar, 1/2 tsp lime or lemon juice
1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp rosemary

And voila! Dinner is served!

Do you have a recipe that reminds you of a particular time of year?

Things You Don't Do: Explosion Avoided

2010-02-19T10:59:00.010-05:00

With my work day, sometimes I can step away from my desk and get dinner started in the early afternoon and others...well, let's say I'm scrambling at 5 or 5:30 trying to get something on the table before BabyBella is hollering that she's starving: now. Problem is, I rarely have any sorts of heads-up and know when work is going to be crazy so between that and BabyBella's weird food habits (this week she suddenly hates PB&J after asking for it daily for lunch for the past six months...really child?) any sort of pre-planning of meals is out the window. This entire week has been like that--running like the idiomatic chicken at dinnertime.

Side note and warning: cooking is an art form. And like any art, there are proper tools, techniques, and rulesets that should be followed as you exercise your creativity. Have I mentioned I'm not so good at following rules?

So BabyBella has been asking for roast chicken all week and here I am last night, standing in the middle of my kitchen at 5:45 pm staring dejectedly at my still-mostly-frozen cornish hen. I had taken it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge overnight, then it sat on the counter all afternoon, but the stupid thing was barely thawed. I dropped it in a cold water bath to hasten the process and turned to the internet to find a solution (yeah...at this point I should've just ordered a pizza or made something else, but I was on a mission dangit). Bingo! I find three recipes (here, here, and here) for deep-friend cornish hen which only takes twelve minutes! More after the break...

Excited at this point, thinking that in half an hour I'd have dinner on the table I called Jo to tell her the good news (I'd already texted earlier that I was having problems because the darn hen was still frozen) and share with her the recipe. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Jo, problem solved--I'm going to deep fry the cornish game hen!"

Jo: "Um...where? Not in the house, right?"

Me: "Yeah, in the kitchen. Why?"

Jo: "Is it still frozen?"

Me: "A little. The recipe says to make sure its room temp, but its only a little frozen so that shouldn't matter, right? It only takes twelve minutes and I really need to get dinner done now."

Jo: "Don't do that. You'll set the house on fire."

Me: "Nah, I have a big pot and its only a cornish game hen, it'll be fine."

Jo: "No, really, don't do that. You're going to set the house on fire. Haven't you ever seen videos of people deep frying turkeys? They explode. Now just run it under some cold water and chop it in half before you put it in the oven so it'll cook faster."

This went 'round and 'round for a bit until Jo convinced me that it was really, really a VERY bad idea to attempt the deep frying and I just threw it in a 450 degree oven for 40 minutes. Dinner was late, but the hen was awesome and no fire department assistance was needed.

This morning though I woke up and asked myself "really...how bad could it have been if I'd done it anyway?" Well, I found out:

This is from Underwriter Labs:

Thank goodness for good friend like Jo who keep me from setting the house on fire!!!

Oh, and in case you want to try it, for the proper way to deep fry a bird I always ask WWAD? (What Would Alton Do?):

Official FoodNetwork Video

Probably not-so-official but entire episode (in three parts) on YouTube:

Jo:
Here in the south, frying turkeys or fowl is a common occurance. Have I done it yet? Nope, I'm still waiting to pick up an outdoor propane fryer, and planning on laying a concrete pad at the edge of the property line, before I try it.

As I have told Bella, I have set off my smoke alarms in each house I have lived in. I own 3 fire extinguishers for each area that might blow up, kitchen, garage, and basement. I need another one for my grill. Also if you own a home extinguisher, (Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Target, local ACE hardware) replace them every 2 to 3 years. You aren't going to test them or get them recharged, so just replace them. You never know, what may happen.

Pizza!

2010-02-18T19:50:00.007-05:00

My son had a friend over for a sleepover. This friend is a vegetarian, and well my kid is definitely a meat eater. I told him I was getting him a shirt that said, "Powered by Bacon" He's all for it. Most kids have a love of pizza. Well unless you are a teenager working at a pizza parlor, and see it daily. I was that teen. I worked at a Round Table Pizza when I was 16. What skill did I take away from that after school job? I can still weigh a pound of cheese in my hand. Of course I'm going to make pizzas from scratch! More after the break.
So the ingredients are as follows;

1 3/4c warm water (no more than 100*)
2 1/4 teaspoon Active Dry yeast or 1 pouch( I use Fleischman's in the jar and keep it in the fridge)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/3 c AP flour

3lbs shredded cheese
1 cup tomato sauce, tomato paste, or marinara sauce
toppings of your choice

In a 2 cup measuring cup measure out warm water, sprinkle yeast, and stir in olive oil.
Next step, measure flour and salt into mixer bowl, insert dough hook, and set to stir to aerate the flour.
Slowly pour the yeast liquid mixture into the bowl. After the liquid is incorporated increase speed to low and step away for 5 min to check on your monkey ball dough. Check dough and see if the dough is coming together, if it is, great increase speed to 4 and wait until you hear dough slapping and it comes together in a cohesive ball. If not, give it another 3 min, and if it still seems wet add another tablespoon of flour.

Lightly flour your working area and flip dough out of bowl. Knead a few times by hand and form a ball, tucking the dough underneath, until you form a nice smooth ball. In a lightly oiled bowl, I used cooking spray, place the dough in the bowl and toss it a bit to oil the dough, or you can just spray the dough too. Cover with saran wrap and let rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until double volume, in a draft free place. Usually it's in the oven to do it's thing, freeing the counter.

Take the dough out of the oven, and adjust your rack to the upper middle of the oven. Now I don't have a pizza stone, what I do is invert a baking pan on the rack and use that as the stone. Preheat your oven to 450* if you don't have decent exhaust hood, or 500* if you do. While the oven is heating, take the dough and place it on your lightly floured work surface, cut the dough into 3 pieces. Now this is where I use my big pizza pan. I cut 3 sheets of foil and lay them over the pan. (Hey, I only have one pan) Place one of the balls on the foil and gently flatten and stretch the dough out to the edge of the pan. Oh, by the way it's a big pan, the size of a family sized pizza. If you have smaller pizza pans separate the dough into more balls. Remove formed pizza and repeat with next ball on underlying foil.

Now take that pizza pan and place that in the oven to heat on top of the baking pan.
Now spread the sauce over the pizza, using the back of a large spoon, or silicon pastry brush. Sprinkle 1lb of cheese over the entire pizza, add toppings as desired.

We made cheese, shallots, and mushroom pizza for the vegetarian, pepperoni, shallots, mushrooms and olives for the boy, and the adults had sausage, mushrooms, shallots, and olives. I used shallots because I had them in my fridge and I couldn't find small onions at the store. I also wanted a diced tomato, but they aren't in season.

Open your oven remove pizza pan and place on open oven door, carefully lift the foil and place on top of the pan, put pan back on baking pan, and bake for 10- 14 min, depending on how topping heavy your pizzas are.

As each pizza is done, I just take the pan out, place it on the oven door, lift the pizza out, and put the next one on and back in it goes. Yes, there is a waiting time for each consecutive pizza, but we are use to it.

Tips:
Pepperoni is so greasy. I use a heavy plate with two layers of paper towels and lay out the pepperoni singly, cover with another paper towel, repeat laying of pepperoni, until you have used the desired amount. Cover with another layer of paper towel, then place another heavy plate over the layers. Hey it's a pepperoni sandwich with plates as the bread! Place in microwave and heat at full for 1 min. Remove pepperoni to another double later of paper towels to soak up any excess grease. This makes the pepperoni firmer also, and you don't get that grease slick on your pizzas.
Sausage and mushrooms are great, but Commercial ovens heat higher, so I worry about fully cooked sausage. I brown the sausage on the stove and drain on paper towels before sprinkling over the pizza.
Mushrooms pre-sliced are nice, but they are still too thick for a pizza, if you have the talent and kevlar gloves use a mandoline, otherwise break the mushrooms into chunks or rough chop whole ones and sprinkle.
Basil is great whole or chiffonade.

Monkey Balls!

2010-02-17T20:14:00.009-05:00

As usual I check my favorite food blogs and one of my favorite bloggers never fails to deliver. Deb from smittenkitchen.com has a recipe called Monkeybread. One of the reasons I'm following her also is that she has an adorable little baby boy, and she posts photos of the darling. Another reason why I follow Deb, my wonderful sister in law loves her recipes too and has a darling baby girl, who's just a few months younger. Plus they live in the same city! lol

Now, I don't have a sweet little boy. When the finished product was placed in front of him, and told what the dessert was called, he decided that the name didn't fit, but "Monkey Balls" did. So we will now refer to them as such. (More after the break)

So follow along Deb's recipe and I'll share my experience with this recipe. The dough was a simple quick yeast bread recipe. Fairly easy, and when people say, " Quick yeast bread" they mean it takes 2 hours instead of something like a brioche dough which takes minimum of 8 hours.

This was my dough after I mixed the milk mixture and flour together, using my kitchenaid.
I had to knead the dough for 10 min, not 7 min.

I let the dough rise for an hour and 20 min.

I moved the cut dough all over the work area so they wouldn't stick together.

I did find that I used more butter and cinnamon sugar mixture than Deb did. I used 10 tablespoons of melted butter for the dipping, and increased the brown sugar to 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar, and 4 teaspoons of cinnamon.

I used a two cup pyrex measuring cup and dropped four balls in at a time, then using a wide soup spoon scooped the balls out and dumped them into the cinnamon sugar. I tossed them a bit in the bowl and using a fork removed them and placed in the bundt pan.

At this point I covered the bundt pan with the same piece of plastic wrap and back into the oven it went to rise again.

Now we are ready for the oven. I baked it for exactly 30 min.

But what I didn't do was take it out of the bundt pan the prescribed time she mentioned. I flipped the pan after about 10 min.

I lost a few in that flip. I think the problem might have been the timing and the shape of the bundt pan. I didn't have a round bundt pan, well I did, but it was a crappy silicon one, that wasn't able to hold it's shape properly. I tossed it many years ago.

But oh man were they tasty! The balls that were on the bottom had a lovely caramel gooey glaze. They pulled apart very easily. Perhaps more gooey caramel was needed. Sorry I wasn't able to get a decent shot of the interior. But I can tell you, it had a sweet nice tender crumb. We all really liked this recipe, and the next time I make it, I will put a layer of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon mixture as a base and build the monkey balls on it. When it's served, it would be like donut sized cinnamon rolls, with a bit of the caramel goo on each one!

Busy snow day! Two recipes accomplished in one day

2010-02-16T22:33:00.011-05:00

Last week the Eastern Seaboard was inundated with snow. What was it called? Snowmageddon. WTH? Yea, well some nut decided to call the snow system that hit the deep south, Snowplosion. Another WTH? Atlanta doesn't get high volumes of snow. More like 4 inches the whole winter, not in one day. We get wintry mix, which is really just icy rain. So in preparation of the snow fall, I planned on two recipes. Chicken soup and snow cream. Yea, I had to make snow cream when I found out I would actually have a decent amount of snow.

(More after the break)
I grabbed two of my biggest bowls when the snow was actually sticking to the ground, that's about an hour after it started falling.

Now that we have that out of the way... It's time for the soup. My son was waiting for a decent ground amount before heading out, and I knew he would be cold and hungry when he came in. Of course hot chocolate was on the menu too.

I wanted to try using frozen vegetables to see how the flavors would be compared to fresh mirepoix. I have a friend who hates onions. She grates or minces them as small as she can so they practically dissolve in the cooking process. Also I didn't make a fresh stock, even though I have plenty of carcasses in the freezer. My son has decided that using store bought rotisserie chickens do not give him the flavor he likes. I guess it's back to using the rotisserie on my grill now. So I have a jar of chicken base. It gives an extra oomph to the stock of "chickeny" flavor. I think it's the salt, but that's what the men like.

Only one breast was used as it makes plenty of soup for 3 people and leftovers.

So the recipe starts like this;
8c water
1 bag of frozen mirepoix mix
1 tablespoon of chicken base
1 bone in chicken breast (1 lb, these things are big!)
salt and pepper to taste
cooked egg noodles

Using a dutch oven or 6 qt pot on high heat, bring the first 3 ingredients to boil.

So when that's boiling, place the chicken breast into the pot and lower the heat to low, you want a slow simmer. Simmer for 30 min, then take the chicken breast out to cool, and continue to simmer the soup for another 30 min.

When the chicken is cool enough to touch, go ahead and shred it or dice it. I like shredding.

After 30 min has passed add the cooked egg noodles, and the chicken to warm up and serve.

Now some people like herbage in their soup, so you could use dill, parsley, tarragon, oregano, whatever floats your boat.

So the boy has come back in, soup has been gratefully consumed along with the hot chocolate, and now it's late in the evening. The sun has gone down and the snow will turn icy. Time to bring the snow in.

I'm using the same recipe, but my flavoring happens to be powdered vanilla.

The thing about snow in Atlanta is that it's usually hard packed icy stuff. It's pretty wet. But this snow storm gave us some fluffy dry snow. (Isn't snow frozen water particles? How can it be 'dry'?) This stuff was fun to work with.

And this is the finished product. Sorry, I am still using my camera on the Blackberry, and well I don't have any bowls that aren't white inside. It's slightly yellow in color, more like cream because of the powdered vanilla.

And yes, it was tasty. I was going to try using Oceanspray Blueberry cocktail juice for blueberry snow cream, I would have skipped using milk, and it would have been more like a slush or a sorbet, but the second bowl of snow turned to icy slush the next morning.

But you do need to grab a bottle of the blueberry cocktail juice and make yourself a blueberry martini. Yes you heard me right, vodka, vermouth and blueberry juice. That was the fastest I've ever consumed a drink. My husband makes a mean martini.

Valentine's Day Cookies

2010-02-14T23:56:00.009-05:00

Recently, I got this wild notion that I will learn how to bake and to decorate. I don't mean just throw some icing or sprinkles on something, I mean fancy-schmancy, wow-gee-whiz that's so cool kind of decorating. I guess this is what happens when you watch too many episodes of Ace of Cakes. Problem is, I've never really tackled anything more difficult than drop cookies and the annual birthday cake for BabyBella. Thus, when I was asked by my daughter's teacher to bring in something sweet for their Valentine's Day party I decided that this was the perfect time to learn how to use fondant. Seriously, even if I royally mess up, a bunch of kindergardeners won't mind. Talk about low-pressure.

So, off I go to the local craft store where I grabbed a bunch of stuff I thought I'd need and merrily went home, excited to tackle this. Yeah...maybe I should do some research first. Seems I forgot the right extracts, rollers, cutters, etc. Ah well, so I made due. Here's the result after the break:

Chocolate Mint Valentine's Day Cookies
Butter Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1.5 cups granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2.75 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Creams butter and sugar until light and fluffy then beat in egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix remaining ingredients. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture, mixing well after each addition. Roll out 1/8" thick and bake on a parchment lined cookie sheet for 7-8 minutes or until lightly browned.

A couple years ago I bought a set of 100 cookie cutters with every possible season and occasion imaginable. As a mom of a school-age child I've used them so many times already. So worth the investment! And I always, always use parchment paper. Its cheap, its easy to find, and after the incident where I wrecked two dozen rolled cookies when they got stuck to an old cookie sheet (the recipe said ungreased sheet!) I've never not used it. Why take the risk?

Chocolate Buttercream Icing

1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, room temperature
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 tbl milk

Beat the shortening and butter until fluffy then mix in the cocoa and vanilla. Scraping the sides frequently, gradually add the sugar. Finally, add milk and beat until light and fluffy.

For the sake of full disclosure, I know I got the recipes above from somewhere...but can't remember where as I have them written down on recipe cards. However, I checked all of my cookie and cake books and the two above are pretty much standard recipes. As a note, the above recipe also makes way more icing than will be needed. But I'm planning on baking cupcakes later in the week so I made more than I needed today.

I let the cookies cool for a couple hours then went back and iced them with chocolate buttercream icing. I made a mess of it. I really should invest in something better than a butter knife to ice cookies with.

I then pulled out my brand-new box of rolled fondant. Although you can make it yourself, I just went and bought the pre-made stuff you can get at any craft store. I then sprayed a clean surface with cooking spray and dusted it with powdered sugar as recommended by a couple of articles I read. In the future I'll skip the cooking spray as it made the powdered sugar clumpy which made lumps on the fondant as I rolled it.

I then cut off a big hunk of fondant (about half of one of the two packages inside the box) and kneaded in a teaspoon of mint extract. I then split that it into four pieces, took toothpicks and put a couple dabs of gel coloring on three of them--rose, blue, and green, leaving the fourth white--then kneaded the fondant until the color was even. I then rolled out the fondant and, using the same cookie cutter I used for the cookies, cut out enough hearts to cover each of the cookies. To attach the fondant, I just pressed it gently but firmly on top of the buttercream and smoothed it with my fingertips.

Then, using two different sized heart-shaped fondant cutters, I cut out enough to put two more hearts on each cookie. To attach then, using my finger dipped in a cup of water, I dampened the back of the smaller heart cut-outs and pressed to the cookies where I wanted them placed.

And voila! I was done!

So, lessons learned: 1. Get the right tools. I really could've used one of those nifty fondant rolling pins with the thickness gauge. I'm pretty sure I made some of them too thick, but ah well, I know better now. 2. Contrary to what I've heard/read--fondant is actually kind of tasty. Once I added the mint extract it reminded me of Necco wafers. 3. Give myself plenty of time. When all was said and done, this probably took me about four hours to do. 4. Learn how to properly ice cookies. This would have made a major difference in how smooth the fondant was and the cookies wouldn't have been so messy around the edges.

All in all, it wasn't such a bad experience and wow, it really does make a pretty end result. I'm so excited to work with fondant more!

Snow Cream

2010-02-11T17:05:00.014-05:00

Jo is much better than I on keeping up on various food blogs. So, when she heard about the vicious snow storms we have been getting Jo, being an awesome friend, sent me a recipe for Snow Cream.

Out of curiosity, I Googled for other versions and found a ton! I found that a lot of the recipes use either evaporated milk, such as Paula Deen's version or beaten egg. Although according to the American Egg Board (really, there is one) the chances of getting salmonella from raw eggs is very low, as this was a project for my 6 year-old daughter BabyBella and 5 year-old niece, I went with the simplest milk version. Recipe after the break.

Snow Cream
Ingredients:

6 cups clean snow
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
Desired flavoring (more on that below)

Directions:
Considering we got almost 40 inches of snow in the last week, getting some wasn't much of an issue. I put my snow collecting and mixing bowls outside for awhile to chill, then when the kids had reached "where's my snack?" point I went out and collected them. As it hadn't snowed since last night, I scraped off the first two inches and scooped up 6 cups of nice, fresh fluffy white stuff (don't eat the yellow snow!).

Here's BabyBella, yesterday afternoon, trying to climb the 5 foot drift in front of our house.

I measured out all of the ingredients then split them into two so each girl could make their own. For flavoring, BabyBella wanted vanilla so I put one drop of vanilla extract into her milk. For Num1Niece, I stirred a teaspoon of chocolate syrup into her milk.

Alternating, add half a cup of snow, then some milk and sugar, then more snow, milk, sugar, in layers, until you use up the ingredients, then stir very well.

Some recipes say to fold in the ingredients with a spatula, others say simply stir. I tried both the spatula and stir methods and found that whisking the milk/sugar into about a cup of snow first then folding in the rest of the snow with a spatula gave it the creamiest texture.

YUMMY!

Of course, Mommy had to make some for herself. I used a teaspoon of strawberry jelly in mine plus stole taste-tested what the girls made.

Now THAT is a good use for snow!

Chicken Casserole

2010-02-11T09:33:00.014-05:00

For the last week we've been getting totally pounded by snowstorms. Two blizzards! Growing up in upstate NY we were much more prepared for getting buried. We had snowsuits and thermal underwear (not exactly fashionable, but when it's -20 degrees F, you need it), firewood stocked, snowblowers and BIG plows. Here in the mid-Atlantic, they close schools for an inch of white stuff and since I've lived here, usually they see about 4 inches of snow in total over the course of the entire winter. This is what my town looks like today:

So, to say the least, getting over three feet of snow in the last few days has completely shut down the area. BabyBella hasn't been to school since last week and a State of Emergency has been declared twice. Thankfully, we still have power and the kitchen is well-stocked. Yet, after a week of this we're both getting a little stir crazy and had to get out to stretch our legs during a lull in the storms.

Since its ridiculously cold outside, to help keep the house warm (have I mentioned that my house is over 100 years old and doesn't have insulation?) I've been doing a lot of comfort-food cooking that involves either long simmer times or baking. One of my favorite comfort foods is an adaptation of a chicken casserole recipe that a friend brought me as a welcome home gift after having BabyBella. Recipe after the break...

Now, casseroles aren't something in my food lexicon. My mother never made them and every recipe I ever read sounded kind of gross. The version my friend brought was the stereotypical casserole--StoveTop stuffing over condensed cream of mushroom soup mixed with shredded chicken. Although, honestly, I didn't love it and cringed at the thought of the sodium content and relative lack of nutrition, I saw something in the idea: it was hot, filling, contained three favorite elements (stuffing, chicken, mushrooms) and was easy. So I decided to make my own version.

Easy Chicken Casserole

Ingredients:
Stuffing:

6 slices of whole-wheat bread, toasted
2 stalks of celery, chopped
2 tbl butter
1/2 onion, diced
2 cups chicken broth (fat-free, sodium free)
2 tsp poultry seasoning (my favorite is Bell's)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Sauce:

1/2 head of a medium cauliflower (about 1.5 cups), roughly chopped
1 cup chopped white mushrooms
1.5 tbl butter
1/4 tsp minced garlic
dash cayenne
1 cup milk
1/8 tsp pepper
2 tbl flour
3/4 tsp salt

2 cups chopped or shredded chicken

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I usually throw the bread into the oven as it preheats for about five minutes to toast it--just don't forget you put it in there. While the oven's heating, dice/chop all your veggies.

Using the trusty blender, puree until smooth all the sauce ingredients listed above except the mushrooms. After the sauce mixture is smooth, add the mushrooms and do four or five two to three second pulse chops. Do not over blend the mushrooms--the point is to have a nice, smooth, creamy base with mushroom chunks for texture. Pour the sauce into a pot and over medium-high heat (stirring frequently so the bottom doesn't scorch) bring to a boil. Reduce the pot to low and simmer for 15 minutes.

While the sauce is simmering, add the onions, celery and 2 tbl of butter to a fry pan. Over medium heat, saute the veggies until soft, about five minutes.

After the veggies are soft, add the chicken broth, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper to the pan and bring to a boil.

You can see the toasted bread ready to go while the sauce simmers in one pot and the veggies for the stuffing await completion.

Turn off the heat under the pan then tear the toasted bread into 1-inch chunks (I do it by hand) and add to the pan. Gently toss the bread to completely cover it in the vegetable/broth/seasoning. That completes the stuffing.

As I'd made a five pound roast chicken earlier in the week, I had plenty of leftovers. For a really great way to make roast chicken check Jo's recipe here. Mine is much more simple as all I do is remove the gizzards, wash the chicken, rub olive oil, salt and pepper over the skin then roast it at 450 degrees for an hour or until the meat thermometer registers 180. Because mine is so simple, that's why I suggest Jo's recipe. Her's is yummier.

I took about two cups of the leftover chicken and rough chopped it into bite-size pieces.

To assemble, spread about half a cup of the sauce on the bottom of a round casserole dish. Then evenly spread the chicken as the next layer, pour the remaining sauce over the chicken, then top with the stuffing.

Note: You will find that the recipe makes a LOT of sauce. This is a personal preference as BabyBella and I like it saucy. You can either halve the sauce recipe above when preparing the dish, only use half when putting the casserole together and reserve the sauce as either extras or as a nice soup the next day. To reheat the sauce and use as a soup, add either a quarter cup of chicken broth or milk first.

Bake the casserole for about 25 minutes or until bubbly and the top of the stuffing is lightly toasted. Let cool about ten minutes before serving.

And, ta-da!!!

Ruhlman's Buttermilk Dinner Rolls

2010-02-05T18:12:00.006-05:00

I'm at a loss for dinner ideas. Instead, I spent my afternoon making Buttermilk dinner rolls.

Rulhman's recipe is here.

So the family will have chicken soup for dinner at least the rolls will go in hand.

His recipe and my results after the break.

Yes I weighed the flour!

I didn't have help with the camera so I wasn't able to take shots of the forming of the rolls. (Hey, all I had was my blackberry, and I still haven't gotten the maple syrup out of the usb outlet.) I found when I formed the rolls, I referred back to copy of The New Best Recipe Cookbook, from Cook's Illustrated. I used the same technique in making their Parkerhouse Rolls. Take the ball of dough, place on counter, place cupped hand over ball and roll around in circles until it forms a tight ball.

After the two hour rise and shape, ready to go into the oven.

I really don't like springform pans, but they do make it easier.

needs honey!

Three Ingredient Tomato Sauce

2010-01-27T17:35:00.004-05:00

I'm so over Winter. I want days in the mid 60's, with warm breezes, not blustery cold winds that cut through clothing and freezes your toes even with 2 pairs of socks and Uggs on. I am craving spring and summer veggies, more variety than what is available now.

Running across two different recipes for a basic tomato sauce, made me happy. I found the Scarpetta recipe at Steamy Kitchen, but that was a bit more than I wanted, not that a garlic basil oil isn't tasty, I just wanted a simple recipe I could throw together while cleaning house. A few weeks later I run across Smitten Kitchen and her quick tomato sauce recipe. Now I'm more in tune with her recipe since she's got her hands full with a really cute little baby.

This was my lunch for two days, and it was totally yummy. When one thinks about it, what does a basic sauce need? Tomatoes, onions, and butter. Life can be fantastic with just those three?

One can of tomatoes, I have used San Marzano style, regular whole peeled, diced, and no salt kinds. They all work. Since it's a side dish, I use only 14oz cans of tomatoes, not the 28oz. It requires half a onion and 3 tablespoons of butter. Just put it all in a sturdy pot and put it on low heat to simmer for 40 min to 1 hour. Stir occasionally.

This is what it looks like when it's been simmering for a while. I like to puree the sauce when I'm done, so I used my hand immersion blender. I do admit I enjoy basil so I chiffonade a few leaves and toss them in after the immersion blender, then salt if needed. So if you need something warm and sunny give this a try. Right now I'm trying to keep a basil plant alive in this cold. Hopefully it will make it to Spring and I'll be able to plant it.

BBQ beef sandwiches

2010-01-23T19:31:00.008-05:00

I was trying to find something that was simple and filling and ran across this recipe on Simply Recipes. This looked good, something different and tasty, and a bit of a warm weather reminder in the freezing cold. The ingredients were fairly inexpensive and made enough to serve 12. That's two meals in this house.

(more after the break)

I love onions, the scent means dinner is on the way!

After the onions are sauteed, add the tomatoes and bbq sauce. I happened to have a jar of Corky's bbq sauce in the fridge. This brand is from a restaurant in Memphis, TN.

After the sauce has simmered, it's time to add the beef.
Honestly, there is a slab of beef in there!

I pulled out the beef after a 3 hour simmer, and took my Global and tongs to the mass of meat. I did toss the tendon and extra fat bits into the dog bowl. Knowing my son he's not gonna touch his dinner if he saw that.

After the sauce was simmered again and had reduced to a thicker consistency, I added the shredded beef back into the pot to warm it up.

This is the finished product. This is best served with seasoned corn, a salad, or coleslaw.

Kiddie Food--Corndogs and Mac and Cheese

2010-01-20T15:19:00.010-05:00

As previously mentioned, BabyBella hates eating vegetables. This is not at all unusual in children her age. I've read countless articles and books on how to deal with this from the "try one bite" to "hiding the veggies." My problem with these two approaches is the first won't get enough vegetables into my kid and the second is, quite frankly, lying to her. Thus, I have gone with a blended approach. I often serve vegetables as a side dish, have her try at least one bite (she inevitably says she hates it) and fortify the meal with vegetables I've blended into other foods. As BabyBella is my #1 kitchen helper (menu planner and sous chef) she's fully aware of what I'm doing.

Today BabyBella chose for dinner a school cafeteria favorite--corn dogs with macaroni and cheese. Now, before you get all "that's not a healthy meal!" on me, know that it is not the traditional carnival treats.

Recipe and more after the break...
Corn Dogs (makes 4)

Ingredients:

2 hot dogs (2oz each): I use the all beef/no filler kind. If you want to know why, read the label for "regular" hot dogs some time. Bleech.
1/3 cup corn meal
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup milk
1 tbl sugar
1 tbl melted butter
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
1/2 beaten egg (half? I'll explain in a bit)

Directions:

First, preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Wait...wait...wait...did you just say "oven?" Aren't corn dogs supposed to be deep fried? You betcha. But it goes without saying that's really bad for you. As a treat once in a blue moon? Sure. But when it comes to recipes that my kid just might ask for again, I try to stay away from the deep fryer. That and it makes my house smell funky. Back to the directions...

Dice the hot dogs and divide evenly among 4 cupcake tins. I use the silicone ones, with feet, just because they're cute. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl. Beat egg, pour off half and save for later, then mix in the remaining wet ingredients. Pour dry ingredients to egg/milk/butter mixture and mix until just combined (don't overmix). Pour a spoonful or two of batter into each cup.

Using a butter knife, gently stir the cups to get batter between the hot dog pieces. Then top with remaining batter. Could you just put the hot dogs right into the batter? Sure. But I've served this to little kids before and hearing "Hey! She got more hotdog than I did!" makes me want to tear my hair out. This method avoids any little kid arguments. The cups are now filled:

Put them in the over and bake at 425 degree for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Mmmmm, yummy.

While the corn dogs were baking I made the macaroni and cheese.

Macaroni and Cheese (serves 4, decent size servings or 5 "official" size servings)

Ingredients:

10 oz of pasta (I use the Ronzoni Garden Delight--more veggies!)
1 cup butternut squash
3/4 cup milk
1 tbl butter
3 tbl flour
1/2 beaten egg
1.5 cups cheese (used a 4 cheese "Taco" blend of Jack, Cheddar, Quesadilla, and Asadero)
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tsp yellow mustard
1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

Slice the squash and boil for 15 minutes in 1.5 cups of water.

Put it into the blender with 1/2 cup of milk and puree until smooth.

While the squash is boiling, cook the pasta per package directions and drain. Then, over medium heat, add the butter, remaining milk, and flour. Whisk constantly until the flour thickens. Then add the squash puree, cheese, broth, 1/2 beaten egg (see? it got used after all), mustard and salt. Continue to stir until the mixture is smooth and comes to a boil. Remove from the heat, add the drained pasta, and stir to coat.

Here it is all ready to be put on the table:

The corndogs cut open:

Mmmm, kid cuisine at its finest!

Jumuk Bap

2010-01-13T17:56:00.006-05:00

This recipe was something I found on Serious Eats. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/01/jumuk-bap-korean-rice-balls-beef-pears-seaweed-recipe.html In retrospect it seemed like a great comfort recipe, reminding me of something my mom made when I was a toddler and for my son when he was young. I think every ethnicity has some type of comfort easy to chew type food. Call it baby mush. Not that I remember from my childhood, but when I tasted it, I had a sensory recall. Mom would take lean beef, flank steak or flap meat, or lean pork, using two cleavers she would chop the meat finely and marinate it. While the meat marinated she would prep the vegetable of choice (for my son it was green beans fresh from her garden, or squash from mine) In a 3 or 4 qt pot she would cook rice on the stove top and add the meat and veggie at just the right time to gently steam on top of the rice, the flavor soaking through out the dish. She would make this every day for my son as a lunch. One of my friends loved it when her son would come over for play dates and he would be given a little margarine tub of this concoction to take home for her son's dinner. She had difficulty deciding if she could justify eating it all herself and not sharing.

Then something went wrong. More after the break.

Unfortunately something went wrong with this Korean rice ball recipe for me. Most likely it was the rice. I didn't have sushi rice on hand, well 1/4 of a cup is not enough. We keep Jasmine long grain rice on stock, and I wasn't sure if risotto rice would have worked. I did not use sheets of Nori as I have the rice seasoning and decided to go for that. A word of warning. I doubled the recipe and it does not need a full pear for the juice. Half a pear is more than enough juice.

So this was the marinated meat.

I decided to put a vegetable in it like my mother so I used green beans.

The seaweed seasoning...

The finished dish

I wasn't able to make rice balls. Perhaps it was because it was too hot or the rice wasn't sticky enough to hold the mixture together. How did everyone like it? Well I felt it needed more salt, it was too sweet. While it wasn't exactly my mom's rice balls, it wasn't too bad. My son liked it enough, my husband didn't even try it. Will I make this again? Nope, I'm going to wait for my mom.

Hiding the Veggies in Pasta e Fagioli

2010-01-11T23:06:00.005-05:00

My six year-old daughter, henceforth referred to as BabyBella, is a horribly picky eater. We've been through all the phases--only eating particular colors, insisting on only eating one kind of food for days on end then refusing to eat it at all the next week, refusing to eat food that touched another food--name it, we've been there. These days, BabyBella's picky phase is refusing to eat any fruits or vegetables. For obvious health and nutritional reasons, I can't accommodate this phase and have her not eat any fruits or vegetables.

Luckily, although BabyBella won't eat vegetables, she and I have a deal--if she can't tell its a vegetable, she'll eat it. That means things like tomato sauce, cornbread, spinach pasta, etc. are all totally OK with her. Thus, I've become talented at hiding fruits and vegetables in everything BabyBella eats.

I wasn't feeling particularly creative tonight but it is extremely chilly out and wanted comfort food, so I went with an old standby--Pasta e Fagioli. Of course, I use the title loosely as it's not exactly the classic Italian soup recipe, but I've kept the general idea with a few modifications to accommodate my picky eater and make it a little bit more of a complete meal.

Recipe after the break...

Ingredients:

32 oz low fat, low sodium chicken broth
12 - 16 oz chicken breast (approximately two), trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces
1 small onion, quartered
2 ribs of celery
12 baby carrots (or you can use 1 regular carrot. I just always keep the small sized variety around for snacks)
6 strips of turkey bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can (15 oz) cannellini beans
2 tbl olive oil
1 tbl minced garlic
1 tbl dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp paprika
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste
Dash of crushed red pepper
8 oz (1/2 box) Elbow macaroni or favorite pasta

Directions: (30-40 minutes plus 5 minutes prep)

First things first, heat the olive oil in a large pot on medium to medium high. While the oil is heating, I turn to my trusty blender which was a gift from my aunt many years ago and, with BabyBella's food peculiarities, one of my best beloved appliances. Drop all of the fresh veggies (onion, carrots, celery) into that bad boy with half a cup of chicken broth, puree until smooth, then add it to the pot. Don't bother to rinse the blender yet--you'll need it in a few minutes. The resulting mess looks something rather like baby puke. Don't worry though, it'll get better. I promise.

Stirring frequently, cook the mixture for about 5 minutes until its thickened. Then, add the diced chicken, garlic, and bacon. Cook until the chicken is completely white on the outside, about 5 - 7 minutes. See? Looking better already...sorta.

While the chicken and bacon are cooking, return to the blender and puree the diced tomatoes. I've also used fresh cherry tomatoes when I see nice ones on sale, but today I just used the ones in the can.

Add the tomatoes, remaining herbs/spices (yes, I know fresh is better than dried, but I killed my herb garden which is a story for another day) to the pot with the remaining chicken broth. Bring the pot to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes. The addition of paprika is more for aesthetic than taste--notice how the vile baby puke color is now a nice deep orange.

Finally, bring the pot back to a full boil and add the pasta and the beans--including the liquid in the can. Don't worry if the liquid seems a little "grainy" and thin. This is due to the pureed vegetables and the large amount of chicken broth. The liquid from the beans as well as the pasta will cause the soup to thicken as it cooks and will smooth out the texture a bit. Simmer another 10 - 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the pasta is done, adding salt and pepper to taste. It is usually at this step that I skim off any oils that have floated to the top.

To serve, remove the pot from the heat, remove the bay leaf, then stir in the Parmesan cheese. Dump it into a bowl, sprinkle a little more cheese on top and eat by itself or with a nice salad and crusty garlic bread. Serves 4-6.

See? I promised it'd get better. YUM.

REALLY? Another food blog? Criminey...

2010-01-10T15:09:00.002-05:00

I know, I know, why yet ANOTHER blog about food? Hasn't it been done to death, ad nauseum, already?

Yes and no. What this blog is really about is a place for Jo and I to share the results of both our own recipes and recipes we've found with each other as well as randomly rant about whatever happens to pop into our (exceedingly odd) minds. If you happen to stumble upon this and find a recipe or two you like--fantastic! If not...well, the web is an awfully big place so chances are you won't have to ever see us again.

If I haven't bored you yet, more after the jump.

How this all got started is rather convoluted. Jo and I met under very different circumstances and happened to "know" each other for months before we realized how much we had in common as moms and foodies (translation: we're both geeky gamers). That led to recipe sharing and mutual attempts at making said recipes over the phone and over Skype--have I mentioned we happen to live several hundred miles apart and haven't technically met? The results have been, to say the least, mixed: trial and error, misfires and woohoos. So one wine-fueled night we decided it would be a fabulous idea to start recording our little adventures for posterity (and hopefully general amusement).

Here's to wine, cheese, and baking!!!

Is America too stupid?

2010-01-09T19:12:00.015-05:00

I've made an effort for the last 15 years to cook for my family and avoid prepackaged or processed food. So the other day I ran across a blog post from Michael Ruhlman, http://blog.ruhlman.com/2010/01/america-too-stupid-to-cook.html I love Michael Ruhlman, it was through his creativity and curiosity that brought to the world the recipes and technical mastery of Thomas Keller's French Laundry. I admit I haven't made any of the recipes in this coffee table work of art book. I drool at the images, the techniques, the details the chefs put into the prep of the ingredients, and the amazing outcome. But again is America too stupid to cook? No, I don't believe that is the problem. America is time crunched, or cash strapped.

More after the break...

The majority of the populace are not high end foodies. I say 'high end' as in consumers. Most people do not have truffle oil in their pantry. Most don't have a clue what Pancetta or Lardo is. Ask them if they know how many types of salts there are. Most people don't know the answers, and they certainly don't have the budget to purchase all these items. We have huge mega supermarkets, and many shop for a week. Most shopping is done on Saturdays. We don't have the time. The work day on average including commute runs about 10 hours. That contributes to the laziness factor. Leave the house at 7am come home at 5pm. Now add in the kids and husband factor. When is dinner served? How much time can you spend in the kitchen prepping and cooking? When do you get a moment to actually sit down and rest? Or do you just keep moving until bedtime? This is when they get lazy and grab the frozen pizza out of the oven or the microwave dinners. Kraft macaroni and cheese? Hey it's a side dish, well in the south it's considered a vegetable.

Have you noticed the price of food has gone up? Or the packages have gotten smaller but the price is the same? In the last 3 years I've noticed this. The cost of fuel and transportation of foodstuffs have gone up. The value of the dollar has gone down, and people in general do not have the disposable cash they had before the recession. If you don't have this problem, consider yourself lucky and keep a large safety net so that never happens to you.

I love reading food blogs. I know there are way more blogs out there, than just the six I follow daily. The internet is fantastic, Food Network's website, Epicurious, America's Test Kitchen, Allrecipes, Recipezaar, Serious Eats, these are all great resources when you are trying to find something new to feed the family. But what can I reasonably feed my family? Everyone has taste preferences. I don't like bell peppers, they give me heartburn. My husband doesn't like curry. My son doesn't care for peas. It's difficult to figure out what to feed the family to appease everyone's tastes. Many times, we bend and cater to the other eaters preferences.

One main dish that the whole family enjoys is a roast chicken. Simple as all can be, it's the cook time that puts people in a bind. Where is the difficulty in this recipe? One whole chicken, some flavoring inserted in the cavity, a cast iron pan or ovenproof pan, and an hour of your time. So let's get down to the fun part, the pictures and preparation...

One whole chicken is required, for a family of 4 go for a 3-4 lb chicken. No there isn't anything smaller than a 3lb chicken, it's packaged under Cornish Game hens. Seriously. I'm still trying to figure out why something that weighs less and comes to the market sooner costs more per pound than a chicken who resides in a farm another 4 weeks. We aren't going to discuss organic, farm raised, or large corporate farming practices. You buy what you can afford. If it happens to be a chicken that costs $2/lb, that's wonderful. I'm not buying it unless it's on sale. The chicken I used is Sanderson Farms, I got it on sale last month for 69 cents a pound and it's been sitting in the deep freezer along with the other four. So this lucky bird sits in the refrigerator for 3 days thawing, and then into the sink for a cool water bath. Yea the yucky part now happens, pull out the neck and organs sitting in the cavity. What to do with the innards now? Well, use it for a gravy or feed it to the dogs. That's another day, I didn't have time for gravy. Now that you have a whole chicken sitting in your sink, what's the next move? Grab the table salt. Huh? You are going to give it a salt massage. The reason for a salt massage, is that it cleans the skin, removing any thing the machine pluckers missed. Yea, not going to talk about that today either. Just take half a cup of regular table salt, and pour it on the chicken and rub it all over the outside and inside of the chicken. Rub gently and thoroughly, then rinse well. Take that chicken and place it sitting up in a bowl to drain of water for about 5 min, then pat dry with paper towels. Preheat your oven to 450*F or 425*F if you don't have really good ventilation. Grab about 10 inches of kitchen twine, and move chicken to your pan. I used my 12 inch cast iron pan. Rub 1 tablespoon Canola oil all over the chicken, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon kosher salt, and place an onion, lemon, orange, apple, or various fresh herbs inside the cavity, truss the legs together and place in oven for one hour.

Now this is the time consuming part. Walk away and do something else. Work on the rest of the dinner, make your mashed potatoes, cook your rice or pasta, prep your veggies, or do your laundry, pay your bills, go over homework, the stuff that you gotta do, but don't wanna. When that hour is up this is what you have.

Now you gotta let the chicken rest for 15 min, this is the time to set the table remind everyone to wash up. Now go and make sure your knife is sharp, it's time to cut the chicken into serving sized pieces.

Legs missing

Nesting legs and thighs

Holy Smokes! The darn thing is missing it's limbs!

All nice and nestled ready for the dining table

So now what do I do with this?

Well you take the carcass place it in a freezer bag and wait until you have a weekend at home and make stock.

Dinner is plated

So how much did this dinner cost?
4lb chicken $0.69/lb
rice for four pantry item
broccoli and cauliflower $2.00
salt pantry item
oil panty item
onion in the cavity $0.50
This meal was less than $6 for four people. Not bad if you are on a budget.