The Essential Rhubarb Pie

My Kitchen Is Having a Bad Hair Day

2012-02-02T19:05:00.000-05:00

First I went to the farmer's market and decided to try something new.

Kohlrabi. I'd had heard of it before, but never seen it. I'm trying not to be such a food skeptic and try new things and I tend to eat the same veggies over and over. I took three of them home and scoured the 'net for ways to prepare them.

I cut them up in chunks, dusted them with olive oil, salt, and some balsamic vinegar and roasted them at 450 for 25 minutes.

Texture? Tough. Taste? Not bad, but no real standout. Kind of sweet. They tasted better the next day for some reason. I doubt I'll buy them again. SPP didn't like it at all.

If veggies could oblige me more by being delicious, I am sure I would eat more of them!

Next up was a new beef braise. I have wanted to try braising lamb shanks for the longest time, but Whole Paycheck stubbornly refuses to not be out of them when I shop there. I saw some beef shanks and decided to give them a try.

I cooked them with wine and a medley of sweet veggies. I served it all over cauliflower puree.

The meat just never took that fall-apart tender texture and rich taste that a good chuck roast would. It was tough and a bit gristly.

If I ever find lamb shanks again, I'll post the recipe. It was a good recipe.

I read a great food-related book a few weeks ago, which I keep meaning to review on here. I will keep you posted.

Now I need to go back ot the kitchen and cook something I actually like and want to share.

Yet Another Cauliflower Soup Recipe

2012-01-25T20:38:00.000-05:00

Is it just me or bloggers making cauliflower soup a lot these days? Nothing wrong with that of course. Cauliflower is available in the farmer's markets this time of year, it's good for you, and while it's not the worst vegetable in the world, it could use some help in the taste department.

I needed something for lunch this week, so I decided to join the cauliflower soup party. What could I bring to the party that hadn't been brought before?

I started by roasting the cauliflower until it got those brown edges that I love so much.

Next I sauteed an onion in a little olive oil (I was tempted to use butter but my arteries voted no). I added a mix of spices to the pot: coriander, cinnamon, tumeric, ginger, and cardamon.

Then I tossed in the cauliflower to make sure it took on all of those spices and turned a pretty yellow color. I added a quart of chicken stock.

After 30 minutes of cooking and getting nice and integrated, I added my secret ingredient.

Coconut milk added flavor and a nice rich creaminess that went well with my spice blend.

I pureed with the stick blender and there was my lunch.

I would love to have a photo of a steaming bowl of the finished product, but I made this soup in the evening, put it away, and packed it up for lunch the next day. Sorry about that. It's not the prettiest shade of yellow, but it was definitely creamy and flavorful. This can easily be made vegetarian, but I prefer to use chicken stock because I like the extra flavor it gives and I find it physically more satisfying.

A coworker saw it and said it looked good. I told him he could have it for five bucks.

Roasted Cauliflower Curry and Coconut Soup (how alliterative!)

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower, cut in small florets
Olive oil for tossing
Salt
2 Tbl olive oil for sauteeing
1 large onion, diced
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp tumeric
1 quart chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you prefer)
1 can coconut milk

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Toss cauliflower in olive oil and spread out on a cookie sheet. Roast for about 20 minutes, occasionaly taking them about and giving them a toss so they brown all over.

Heat remaining olive oil in a stock pot. Add onions and cook until they begin to soften. Add all of the spices and cook until everything is very fragrant. Add the roasted cauliflower to the pot and toss with the onions to coat them with the spices.

Add the stock to the pot. Simmer everything for 30 minutes.

Pour in the coconut milk and blend the soup either in a blender or food processor or with an immersion blender until smooth. Season with salt to taste.

If You Cook with Foods You Think You Don't Like, Will That Make You Like Them?

2012-01-21T08:23:00.001-05:00

I think even the most die-hard foodies out there have foods they don't like. It's hard to love the tastes and textures of everything. If you truly have a discerning palate, how can it possibly be pleased by everything that crosses it?

Of course I'm way off course from your average foodie since I slide out of "discerning" and veer right into "picky". I'm not as picky as my husband, or my niece and nephews, or my brother-in-law, or my one particular BFF with the super-sensitive sense of smell, but there is a rather substantial list of foods I actively avoid. I don't eat seafood, peas, lima beans, olives, blue cheeses, or grapefruit and I doubt I ever will. I just really can't tolerate the tastes and smells of those foods.

There are plenty of foods I have said I don't like over the years and have learned to acquire a taste for either because my taste buds aren't as sensitive as they were as a kid, or because I learned ways to prepare them that are tolerable, or because certain varieties taste better than others (e.g. Yukon Gold vs. russet potatoes or cremini mushrooms vs. shitakes). I think that despite being razzed by my family over the years for being a picky eater, I have come a pretty long way.

But what about foods I have never tried before?

I'll admit for much of my life I have been a food skeptic. If I never tried it, I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it. I could see food that looked good in a photo, but if it didn't smell right on the plate, I wouldn't eat it. I had definite ideas about how something would taste and most of the time I believed it would taste bad.

I like to think I have outgrown some of that. I'm usually open to trying new fruits and vegetables these days since my vegetable preferences are kind of limited and I feel I need to expand. I try to approach every new food with an open mind.

So let's talk about game meats. For most of my life I never ate them. No one in my family or in my circle of friends hunts, so I grew up sheltered from venison, rabbit, pheasant, quail, and other meats like it. At first my reaction was purely just disgust. "Ewwwww...you SHOT BAMBI." I wouldn't touch something like that just on principle. Hunted meat seemed so cruel.

I have softened my stance on that over the years. Game meat is the ultimate free range meat and is leaner than the grain-fed bloated beasts in the supermarket. Even though the concept of hunting for sport (versus hunting for the procurement of food - and yes I know the two are not mutually exclusive) still makes me twitchy, I'm far more tolerant of the idea of eating the spoils.

Just because I'm more tolerant of the idea doesn't mean I'll automatically enjoy the taste though. Again, it's not easy for a suburban girl with no hunters in her circle to eat stuff like this. Even though I'm willing to try it now doesn't mean I have many opportunities. On this blog I have managed to try cooking quail and pheasant with reasonably good results. On my trip to Wyoming two years ago I tried elk and ate more bison than I have ever eaten in my life and enjoyed them. The one thing I had never tried was venison.

I did try venison once. I should correct that. I was at a very upscale venue on New Year's Eve once and I had a multi-course wine-pairing dinner. By the time the venison course came around I had drunk a glass of champagne and 3 glasses of wine. I'm not sure I really noticed how the venison tasted. I even ate half the fish course that night.

I needed to know once and for all how I really felt about venison. I don't want to spend my life disliking it out of prejudice. I really needed to try it. The best way to try it would be to prepare it in my own kitchen - if I could only get my hands on some.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this at the local Shop Rite earlier this week.

The stuff cost and arm and a leg, so I was reluctant, but I knew the cut was big enough for a few meals. Of course that would mean nothing if I hated it.

When I brought it home I took it out of the package and examined it. I was surpised at how smooth it was. It almost looked like a slab of organ meat. There was very little grain to it.

Here goes nothing. I seared it in the pan. I liked the way it smelled at first. There was a naturally spicy scent to it.

I cut it into medallions and served it with what I call Standard TERP Sauce - in other words onions (or shallots), garlic, wine (in this case pinot noir) and in this case, juniper berries.

The end result? Meh. The meat was a little mealy . The taste was unexceptional. I caught hints of different flavors here and there - some good, some not so good. My sauce came out wonderfully and that helped it quite a bit, but I'm not inclined to eat venison again. I suppose if I were in a restaurant and the venison was being prepared in a way that sounded really intriguing I would try it, but I won't go out of my way for it again.

I also think I let it overcook. I had seared it at first, but my medallions sat in the sauce for longer than expected as my dinner ended up delayed. I wonder if they would have tasted better if they were cooked less.

I wasn't sure whether or not I would post this recipe. I was debating it all week. I decided to do it since technically the recipe was fine.

Venison Medallions in Red Wine Sauce

Ingredients

1 venison tenderloin
2 Tbl olive oil
Salt and pepper
3 diced shallots
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 cup pinot noir
1/2 cup beef stock
1 tsp juniper berries

Heat olive oil in a pan and add the shallots. Cook until soft. Add the garlic and cook one minute more.

Sprinkle the venison with salt and pepper and add to the pan. Brown well on all sides, about 3-4 minutes per side (more if you want it cooked more). Remove from pan and keep warm.

Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook until soft. Add the wine, stock and juniper berries and bring to a boil and let it reduce down a bit. Bring to a simmer. Cut venison into medallions and cook a minute or two more. Don't let it overcook though. Adjust for seasoning and serve.

I Can Tell You How to Get to Sesame Street

2012-01-15T07:49:00.000-05:00

Well, my version of it anyway.

I'm infamous for not checking the cabinets before I go shopping, which means I end up having to run to the store in the middle of preparing a recipe to procure the neglected ingredient, or else I have multiple containers of the same food.

This happened to me last week after making the mole chicken. I bought sesame seeds before realizing I had nearly a full container of them in the freezer. What does one do with them?

How about sesame chicken? Who doesn't love chicken coated in sesame seeds? If you don't, please don't answer that question.

I had also bought these cute little satsuma oranges. I had hoped to find a nice recipe for them. How about making them into a sauce for the chicken?

I started my recipe with boneless, skinless thighs and used the sesame seeds in a traditional breading. I floured them (I used coconut flour, which gave another dimension of flavor - very paleo), dipped them in egg wash, and then coated them in the sesame seeds. Sesame seeds stick nicely to chicken. They're a much more cooperative coating than nuts.

I cooked them in the oven because cooking stuff like that in a frying pan makes me worry that I'll burn the nut coating before the insides are cooked, or else the already naturally oily coating will get greasy because it's cooked in more oil. Ovens are our friend.

I sauteed some shallots in coconut oil and then added the orange sections and just let them soften a bit. Then I added a little soy sauce, some grated rind, and some five-spice powder.

Serve it on top of the chicken. The sauce has a bit of a bitter twang to it and I'm not sure how to deal with that, but otherwise it was nice - like a savory Asian marmalade that went well with the chicken, which was a little flat tasting. I wonder if I should have toasted the sesame seeds first.

Feel free to use whatever flour you want for the dredging and use another oil for the sauteeing. I just liked experimenting with the coconut.

Sesame-Crusted Chicken with 5 Spice Satsuma Sauce

Ingredients

1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs (or breasts if you prefer)
Approximately 1 cup coconut flour for dredging
Salt and pepper
2 eggs
1.5 cups sesame seeds
8 satsuma oranges, peeled and sectioned
2 Tbl coconut oil
2 minced shallots
1 tsp grated satsuma zest
1 tsp 5 spice powder
2 Tbl gluten-free soy sauce

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Set up your breading station. Toss flour with salt and pepper in one dish. Beat eggs lightly in the second. Place your seeds in the third. Dip your chicken thighs in the flour, then the egg, then the sesame seeds, making sure they are well-coated.

Lay chicken on a cookie sheet and bake 20 minutes. Halfway through the cooking, turn them over so they crisp up evenly.

Meanwhile heat the coconut oil in a large pan and add the shallots and cook until softened. Add the orange slices and cook until they begin to soften, but not lose their shape. Add the soy sauce, zest, and 5 spice powder. Stir well to get all of the oranges coated and cook until the oranges begin to fall apart.

Serve sauce over chicken.

Ole` Mole

2012-01-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

Wow. That title was too hokey even by my standards. I must have had too much to drink on New Year's Eve.

We are now heading into that dreaded time my husband calls "The Dog Days of Winter." Although the days are lengthening, they're still rather short and all too often they're very cold. I'm not a winter lover at all. It's particularly tough on people like me because I have a year-round, outdoor hobby that keeps me out in the cold on weekends for hours at a time. As much as I love being with my horses, on some cold winter days I just want to stay home with blankets, a good book, and some comforting beverages (they can be of the chocolate or the alcoholic variety). It's rough being out there with chilled fingers and toes feeling the warmth get sucked out of your every pore every time you breathe!

This time of year is when everyone starts talking about "comfort foods" - foods that are warm, heavy, take a long time to prepare from scratch, and fill us up quickly. Examples of this might be big pans of homemade macaroni and cheese or lasagne, enormous pots of chili, loaves of butter-soaked homemade bread, soups lovingly prepared with homemade stock, or slow-cooked stews.

I have said numerous times on this blog that I tend to eat what I eat when I want to eat it. I'm not always so perfectly attuned to the seasons when I cook. I think part of my lack of attention to typical cold weather foods is that so many of them are heavy and starchy and I fear of gaining weight. Then there is the issue that some of them are cheesey or beefy and I can't serve them to my husband. As much as I like to say it's about being weird or cynical or rebellious, some of it is just being practical. I don't cook many stereotypical comfort foods because I feel I shouldn't be cooking them for health reasons, or because if I modified them, it would ruin exactly what makes them comfort foods in the first place.

Anyway, this blog has begun to chronicle a kind of change in attitudes in the past year or two. I have actually begun to experiment more with stews and braises. I find these types of recipes enormously fun to play with and as warm and satisfying as they are purported to be.

Obviously I braise a lot of chicken, so today's recipe will be a braised chicken. I learned the secret to making my husband be more receptive to braised chicken recipes. When I make chicken I prefer to use bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces (although I like skinless, boneless thighs when I need to cook something quickly). I like them because they are flavorful and more succulent than boneless, skinless varieties. Sir Pickypants doesn't like fussing with bones. He doesn't like having to work too hard for his food. When he was less than enthused about my coq au vin, his main complaint was that he had this giant, messy chicken breast to contend with. It was too much work to cut around the bones. (He's not a pick-it-up-and-stick-your-face-on-it type.)

I solve the problem quite easily now. I just cut the breast meat, skin and all, off the bone before cooking. It's easier for him to eat, but the flavor is still there. It also takes a bit less time to cook. The bones go into the freezer for future use in stock. It's a win-win situation.

Even before the attempt at coq au vin I made an attempt at mole verde sauce. I invented a recipe after cobbling together a few ideas I saw on the internet. It involved toasting and grinding seeds of all sorts and long slow cooking and more effort than it was worth considering it was another dish Sir Pickypants poo pooed. I really liked it, but I never saved my recipe for it. I decided there wasn't much point.

I've been craving something slow-cooked and fragrant with sweet spice lately. Now that I learned the secret to making my husband like whole chicken pieces, I have decided to try a mole sauce again. This is a more straight-up version than the green one I made previously. It still a ridiculous amount of effort as well, but it's so perfect on a winter night.

It was less sweet and a little spicier than I orginally intended, but after I ate the first serving, I realized just how addicitive this sauce is. Worth the effort after all.

A-Lot-of-Work-But-It's-Worth-It Chicken Mole

Ingredients

1 whole chicken, cut up (breasts removed from bone if desired)
6 large dried chili peppers of your choice, stemmed and seeded
2 cups boiling water
1 cup pepitas
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbl sesame seeds
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ancho chili powder
2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbl cocoa powder
Salt and pepper
2 Tbl olive oil for frying
1 28 oz can whole tomatoes

Place chili peppers in a small bowl. Add the boiling water. Allow to soak for about 30 minutes. In a blender or food processor puree the peppers with about a cup of the soaking liquid.

Toss the pumpkin seeds and 1/2 cup sesame seeds with the cumin, cocoa, cinnamon and chili powder. Place them in a shallow pan over low heat and toast until everything is very fragrant - almost to the brink of burning. You will have to trust your nose as the spices will keep you from seeing how the seeds are browning. Place in a food processor or other grinding device and grind into a rough powder.

Meanwhile sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a pan and brown the chicken well on both sides. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Add the pureed peppers and the tomatoes to the pan, breaking up the tomatoes with your hands. Mix well. Allow to simmer for a minute or two. Season with additional salt to taste.

Place the chicken back in the pan and simmer for about an hour.

Serve chicken sprinkled with remaining 2 Tbl sesame seeds.

Back to Real Life in the Kitchen

2011-12-30T06:48:00.000-05:00

After making that fantastic rib roast for Christmas, and spending three days prepping for a major meal and multiple desserts, it's hard to know where to go next. I need to eat to live and I should cook if I want to eat, but what?

I decided to start small and simple, using just what I had in the house. This is so basic, I don't need a recipe.

Brown 2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs on both sides in a little olive oil. You can use breasts if you prefer.

Remove from pan and saute` two large diced shallots until soft and add 3 cloves of minced garlic.

Deglaze the pan with a cup of white wine. Scrape up the brown bits in the bottom. Add about a tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary and the zest of a lemon and the juice of half a lemon.

Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and add chicken back to pan and cook another 10 minutes (more if you're using thicker pieces of chicken). Finish the sauce with a pat of butter if you're so inclined.

I got a bit more elaborate with the next meal because I used up all of my duck fat at Christmas and wanted to make more duck so I would have a supply of duck fat again.

I took a whole breast, scored the skin with a knife, and put it skin-side-down in a pan at a very low temperature for 20 minutes, pouring off rendered fat periodically and saving it.

Then it went 10 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

Meanwhile I caramelized an onion, then added some port wine (about a cup) and chopped dried figs (around 6). I let the figs soften up in this mixture and let it simmer and reduce down.

It all got whirled in the blender with some stock and a pinch each of cinnamon and powdered ginger.

It went over the finished duck. I served spinach on the side, but for once I didn't cream it. (Yes, I do have an obsession with cooking spinach with lots of onions.)

Hope everyone has a very happy new year. What are you doing to celebrate? Going out somewhere fancy? Staying home? Going to a house party? SPP and I will be hanging at the home of one of our horsie set friends and spending the weekend at a B&B. I'm making Emily's Chocolate Rum Cake for dessert.

Christmas Live Blog

2011-12-22T07:25:00.021-05:00

Hi-Ho and Ho Ho Ho to all of my TERP Muffins. Christmas is here and it's going to be a doozy this year. Saturday night I'm hosting Christmas Eve dinner for Dad's side of the family at my place. Sunday evening it's a Christmas dinner at Mom's.

I have tons of stuff to do. It's so overwhelming. I decided that I'd blog the whole process. I doubt many readers care about every detail of Christmas dinner, but I am hoping that by keeping an account I will keep my sanity, and perhaps stay better organized.

It's Thursday morning and I probably could use this day off to relax, go riding, and take a breather before the real stress, but I decided to stay home and start putting dinner plans in motion. The more I spread the chores out over the next three days, the less overwhelmed I feel.

Right now my to-do list consists of:

Buy coffee, milk, and ice
Buy wrapping paper
Wrap gifts
Iron table linens
Bake two kinds of cookies
Bake one cake
Make chocolate pudding
Clean the house from top to bottom
Prep anything I can prep ahead of time for dinner

My menu for Christmas Eve:
Cheese and pate` tray
Chianti risotto (another imitation of Italy)
Beef Rib Roast (using this method Susan recommended)
Shrimp roasted with lemon and herbs (Thanks to Sir Pickypants, I can't have a seafood-free Christmas Eve)
Green beans sauteed with garlic
Duck Fat Smashed Potatoes
Dark Chocolate Pudding in Snickerdoodle cups

I'm taking two desserts to Mom's house:
Cranberry and Chocolate Chip Cookies
Emily's Chocolate Eggnog Cake

Right now my house looks like this.

Can I pull off a Christmas miracle in 3 days? Can I do all of this cooking and baking, get my gifts wrapped, and make my home look like civilized people live there?

I do have my trusty guide containing all recipes and a game plan for what needs to be done and when I should do it. I didn't get fancy and bind it this time.

So...let's get this holiday started.

10:05 AM - Just did a big sweep through of the house, revealing my dining room table and trashing (via recyling of course) any excess paper. My goal is to simply be rid of anything that doesn't need to be there.

My next stop is CVS. I need more wrapping paper and gift bags. This time of day it shouldn't be too crowded. We shall see...

1:40 PM - I checked out our wrapping paper supply. We did, in fact, have two large rolls of it, but the large rolls were bent to fit into a small drawer, crushing the paper and leaving it in deplorable condition. I decided to buy some new paper anyway. I finally have all of the gifts wrapped and under the tree. I confess that during my lunch break I did some extended time in front of the Idiot Box. I watched Gorden Ramsay and was reminded to stay in line and cook good food on Saturday.

I had to hit the supermarket as well. At first I thought all I needed was ice, but then I realized I had very little coffee in the house (I only keep it around for guests, so I don't keep track of the supply). While I had heavy cream, half-and-half and eggnog, I had no milk. I also noticed I had very little Windex and a very dirty bathroom mirror. The store was suprisingly quiet and uncrowded today.

I cam home to find my Christmas gift from my BFF had arrived.

I could put these lovely artisinal Italian salami out in the appetizer tray for dinner.

But I won't. (evil grin ensues)

My next stop is to work out. How else will I maintain this girlish figure during the holidays?

3:20 PM - RIP to my trampoline. I decided I needed to shake up my cardio routines a bit and that I hadn't used my trampoline in a while. I pulled out my Urban Rebounder DVD and did two of the workouts on it (they're short). I heard something snap while I was bouncing around. I assumed it was just the elastic on the mat cover and thought nothing of it. I would just pull off the matt cover and trash it after my workout. After I was finished, I turned the trampoline over to take the legs off and put it away when I saw that one of the springs had snapped off. If the spring next to it had snapped off, the mat would have pulled away from the frame and probably would have caused a broken bone somewhere. My trampoline is no longer safe if the springs are going to be breaking off. I'm afraid I had to send it to the compactor room. :-(

9:00 PM - I think I have accomplished everything I want to do today. I did laundry, cleaned the hardwood floors and ironed all of the table linens. I feel uncommonly exhausted. How will I feel tomorrow after hours of baking and more cleaning? Find out in the next liveblog entry.

Friday

8:45 AM - Last night I tucked myself into bed with my annual reading of Paul Theroux's A Christmas Card. It's the best children's Christmas story ever. It's about a little boy whose family gets lost on their way to their new home. They are given shelter for the night in the home of a strange and mysterious old man who disappears the next day, but leaves them with a Christmas card that seems to have magical powers.

I slept kind of fitfully, which is why I'm up so late. I have taken my ingredients for my first batch of cookies out of the refrigerator and I'm going to work out while I wait for them to come to room temperature. I'm a little angry with myself since I neglected to print up one of my other cookie recipes. Good thing I was going to come here and live blog since I was going to be at the computer anyway.

Every muscle in my body aches right now. I wonder how I'll survive another day on my feet. A good workout should get the blood flowing.

11:15 AM - Just baked my first batch of cookies. My chocolate chip-cranberry cookie recipe made so many that I had to bake two shifts. That is setting my day back by quite a bit. One would think all of the cookie dough I ate would keep the number of cookies to bake down. ;-)

I wanted pictures of them, but my camera battery died. I'll be charging the battery while I head out to buy some more liquor, some toilet paper (the supply is way too low in the house for 8 guests) and take a shower (I did just work out after all).

1:05 PM - Made a batch of cookie dough that is chilling in the refrigerator. You'll have to wait to see my plans for it. Then I headed to the liqour store. I just wanted some spiced rum for my cakes and a bottle of white zinfandel for my mother-in-law to drink at dinner, but ended up with a very pleasant surprise . There sitting on a shelf was Brolio Barone Ricasoli chianti! To think I had trudged all the way to NYC for a bottle of that stuff and it was right there in my neighborhood! I asked if they carried it regularly. They said they had just gotten it in and didn't know if they would continue to carry it. I snatched up a bottle right away. Let's keep those memories of Italy going!

Time to indulge in less fun activities like cleaning the guest bathroom and dusting.

4:10 PM - Just had my first flop of the holiday. When I decided to serve chocolate pudding for my dessert, I realized I had nothing nice to serve it in. I had some small, ugly bowls. I also had nice ramekins, but only 4 of them. Should I go out and buy some nice dessert cups?

Then I had an inspiration. I saw an idea online where you bake cookie dough over an inverted muffin tin to create little cookie cups. There was my solution. I could serve my pudding in cookie cups. I had been planning to make snickerdoodles on the side since the pudding is garnished with ginger and the cinnamon cookies would make a nice accompaniment. I figured I could just bake my snickerdoodles into cups.

After I had baked them, I realized I should have used a recipe that was specific to being baked this way. Any old cookie recipe just doesn't cut it. My cookies spread way too much and were thin on the top (where they needed to be thickest) and thick on the bottom.

Only 3 or 4 of them were able to be separated from the tin reasonably intact and they looked awful. I ended up with a lot of cookie crumbs.

I didn't want to waste all of that butter and sugar, so what was I to do?

I have since been inspired. I will take some of my small highball glasses and layer the cookie pieces with the pudding in them - like a freeform pie or parfait or trifle. This is not the first time I have destroyed a cake or cookies and had to use what I had salvaged creatively. I think it's going to turn out well

My cranberry-chocolate chip cookies are excellent though. Now that the camera is charged, I got a photo.

The guest bathroom is clean now too and I even cleaned the glass doors on the shower in the master bathroom. I dusted and vacuumed (but I will have to vacuum again due to all of the cookie crumbs that fell on the floor. Next step will be the pudding.

6:05 PM - Pudding done and successful. I made up my little snickerdoodle parfaits and wrapped them up and put them in the fridge. Tomorrow evening all I have to do is top them with the whipped cream and candied ginger. They don't look beautiful, but I think they are a fine example of making lemonade when life hands you lemons.

Waiting for the hubs to come home from the barn. I'm sure he's going to hit terrible traffic over the Tappan Zee Bridge tonight. I have told him that I'm NOT cooking. He said, "Why should you?" I said, "That's exactly right." Takeout for us tonight. The Christmas TV special for "Wait Wait, Dont' Tell Me," is on tonight too. Have to chill out and watch that.

Tomorrow will be super busy. I'll have to jump out of bed and start prepping veggies. I have to keep everything on schedule if I want my roast to cook properly and my meal to be served on time.

Saturday

7:05 AM - The countdown begins! Last night we ended up going out instead of takeout so we missed "Wait..Wait". Oh well. I'm staring down a few veggies that need prepping right now. Then there is laundry to do, a master bathroom to clean, and a kitchen to clean. I want all of that done before the roast goes in the oven.

12:05 PM - Just got back from Mom's to pick up some extra folding chairs - which I will have to return to her tomorrow for her holiday dinner. Master bathroom is clean, laundry is done, and veggies are prepped. I just took my roast out of the fridge to let it come to room temp. I'm doing the same for the eggs and butter for the cake. Then the kichen will need a good cleaning. Once I finish that, all I need to do is set the table and wait for the guests to arrive. Hard to imagine the idea that things could be this close to finished!

2:00 PM - Kitchen was tidied up and roast went in the oven. Right now I'm defrosting the shrimp and waiting for the cake to cool before taking it out of the pan. I'm afraid it was a little overbaked, so I hope it doesn't crumble to pieces when I take it out.

Roast about to go into the oven. I rubbed it with a mixture of salt, pepper, dry mustard, garlic powder and orange peel. I had it sitting out for two hours, but it still doesn't feel like room temperature. I hope it isn't too cold!

4:30 PM - Guests are due to arrive in 30 minutes. My husband isn't even home from the barn yet. I have the roast in the oven doing its thing. Everything else is prepped to be cooked in its own time. Let's hope it all goes smoothly.

As for transforming the house....

I got rid of a lot of clutter - or more accurately, hid much of it in the spare room and shut the door. The towels on the couch may not be the most attractive thing on earth, but I just had that couch reupholstered a few months ago and I'm not taking any chances!

My appetizer table. I have cheeses, pate`, and various accompaniments. See? I didn't need to put out my new salami. I have plenty of other good options (and it has nothing to do with the fact that I managed to polish one of those salami off myself in the past 3 days - nothing at all).

Drinky drinky. I think I'm very clever for turning my front hall table into a bar. We will be drinking lots of chianti tonight. Some of it comes straight from Italy, but all of it comes from the wineries we visited in Italy (Brolio, Arceno, Pacina)

Now I have to actually cook dinner!

9:55 PM - Dinner is over and everyone has gone home. I think I was right to start dinner early and go through each course at a leisurely pace. No one felt rushed, but the folks who shouldn't be up too late were able to leave at a reasonable hour.

I never took a picture of my chianti risotto. Sadly I didn't make enough of it though. The hosts had to have rather measly portions.

The meat was PERFECT. I can't say enough good things about how wonderfully tender and perfectly cooked my rib roast was. That cooking method was amazing.

On the side I sauteed some blanched green beans with garlic and powdered ginger. The whole smashed potato didn't work too well for me. I find it's very hard to smash a boiled potato and have it stay in one piece. Once my potatoes started to fall apart I decided to just keep smashing them and made a sort of duck fat hash brown dish. It was a big hit.

My snickerdoodle pudding parfaits were perfect. I think they were even better than the cups would have been. They were quite rich. Not everyone could finish them easily.

The dishes are running through the dishwasher now and I'm ready for bed. I'm so glad we weren't up all night. I can go to bed early and wait for Santa!

Let's see how tomorrow's Christmas dinner goes!

8:00 AM - Christmas morning. I'm the kid who can't sleep. Husband is still in bed. He had a long day (and a big disappointment after seeing the Jets lose yet again). We'll open up each other's gifts soon. I have one more cooking thing to do and that's make the frosting for Emily's cake. I have my cream cheese and my butter softening up in the kitchen right now.

11:50 AM - I frosted the cake. Doesn't look as pretty as it does on Emily's blog, but I'm sure my family will eat it anyway. Just finished my workout, so now all I have to do with my day is hang out till dinner. Sounds like a plan!

Monday

7:30 AM - So I came home a bit late to blog about Christmas dinner, but I will say it was a huge success. My desserts went over well. We also had a trifle provided by one of the guests.

Dinner offerings included beef tenderloin, lasagne biachne with mushrooms, mashed poatoes (high-fat Pioneer Woman style), Cajun turkey breast, and brussels sprouts.

We had a very nice load with the loot, but also just enjoyed a wonderful evening with friends and family.

Happy New Year from the Pickypants-(dis)Order Family!

I Should Probably Make a Post, Shouldn't I?

2011-12-15T11:08:00.001-05:00

I will start by saying this post is just a placeholder.

I have been cooking, but I haven't cooked anything new or noteworty recently. Also, work is getting busier and I have less time to compose blogs during down time as I am sometimes known to do. (Knowing I'll be laid off next year, I'm really hoping that future potential employers aren't reading this.) I'm also so focused on Christmas that it's hard to want to be creative with upcoming meals. I just want to have dinner on the table. I envy all of you who never seem to lose your creative juices and keep blogging away.

So let's talk about Christmas. Is everyone planning the big meal right now? I feel like those people who wait until the last minute to shop. I know what I need to do, and I know what I'm making, but usually by now I would have at least started compiling all of my shopping lists and put a game plan together. I'm just not getting my butt in gear this year. It's like how I finished all of my gift shopping, but no gifts are wrapped and the ones that need to be mailed have not been mailed. This weekend I have promised myself that I will take care of the gifts. Let's hope that I can also finish the shopping lists and game plans.

I am making Christmas Eve dinner for 8 people this year. There will be a blog all about that when all is said and done, so I won't give away too much. Suffice it to say, I won't be doing the traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. I know being in Italy this fall inspired me, but it didn't inspire me quite that much. I will be making one of my Imitations of Italy recipes though.

I'm also making cake and cookies for Christmas day dinner at Mom's. I'm trying to decide on what kind of cake. As always, I take a lot of inspiration from Emily!

Hope everyone is enjoying the planning and enjoying the season. Can't wait to read everyone's Christmas blogs!

Still More Imitations of Italy

2011-12-09T18:43:00.000-05:00

Stews have never been my favorite food. I don't know what it is about stews. I think it's because my first experience with stew was a classic beef stew, which consisted of overcooked beef and vegetables all mushed together in a homogeneous and mucky tasting bowl of glop. All too often it would contain foods I disliked like peas or mushy, overcooked carrots. The worst part was the potatoes. How I hated those starchy lumps of potatoes clinging to everything!

Even as I grew up and my tastes became a bit more sophisticated, and I tried other versions of braised beef dishes, they never really tickled my tastes buds. I can even remember tasting a well-executed Boeuf Bourguignon as a teen and feeling sort of lukewarm about it. I did a bit better with pot roasts in my twenties. I guess that's because the meat can more easily be separated from the mush that surrounds it in a pot roast. You can remove the roast from the muck and cut it separately.

I think part of it is I always preferred tender cuts of beef served rare. I always wanted a steak or roast beef and not a burger as a child (and don't get me started on meat loaf). Beef that had strong flavor and longer cooking requirement just never tasted quite as good. If I had a burger it had better be cooked less than what today's food fascists would ever advise you to cook for a child.

I had to ask myself, "What about a nice barbecued brisket? How about a nice slow-cooked bowl of chili? What about short ribs? That's long-cooked beef." So I think more about it and think that while a rare steak is still my preference over beef that's been cooked forever, maybe if I cooked beef forever in the right flavors, I would make a stew or pot roast that I really loved.

My first experiment was last year where I used a wine with an edge and sweet spices. I avoided the mushy vegetable problem by browning the vegetables first, then removing them, and only adding them in at the end of the cooking.

While in Italy I ate a wonderful beef stew that was nothing more than onions, tomatoes, and red wine. The flavors were perfect and there were no mushy bits of veggies clogging up the meat or the sauce. Potatoes and vegetables were on the side rather than turning to sludge in the stew.

It's December and winter braises are on everyone's mind, so I decided to try to imitate my Italian meal yet again.

I started with bacon. (Isn't that always the best way to start?) I doubt that's how they did it at the farm, but I'm American and in this country we believe everything is better with bacon! (Wave your flags now.)

I had about two pounds of beef. I cut a chuck roast into chunks. I could have bought stew meat already cut up, but it's cheaper to cut up a whole roast. Money was a big factor in this because I wanted to get the best quality, most local, most lovingly-raised beef possible. That would be the closest to the kind of beef I had at the farm. That kind of meat is going to be pricier. I save money where I can.

I also added some red pepper flakes, garlic, and oregano. Everything went into the oven for a little over two hours.

The result was a mouthwatering combo of flavors and fall-apart tender beef. Even the smell was irresistible. The long cooking mellowed out the flavor of the Chianti nicely. I served with with fried potatoes like we had at the farm along with a veggie mixture of mushrooms and spinach cooked in olive oil and garlic.

I think this will be my go-to beef stew recipe from now on.

Chianti Beef Stew

Ingredients

2-3 pounds beef chuck, cut into chunks
Salt and pepper
2 strips thick-cut, uncured bacon, cut into small pieces
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 cups Chianti wine

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

In a large saucepan or dutch oven, cook the bacon until crispy and fat has rendered. Remove bacon from pan and set aside. Try not to eat it all before the recipe is done. Pour off a tablespoon or two of fat if it makes you feel less guilty.

Add onions and red pepper flakes to the pot and cook until soft. Add garlic and cook for another minute.

Lightly sprinkle the beef with salt and pepper. Remove onions from the pot and add the beef. Cook until browned. It is a good idea to do this in two shifts as adding it all at once risks crowding and your beef will steam more than it browns.

Add onions back to the pot with the beef. Add the tomatoes, wine, and oregano and stir to combine well. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover the pot with a tight-fitting lid and place in the oven.

Cook for 2.25 hours. Sprinkle whatever reserved bacon bits you haven't already eaten over the top. Serve with potatoes.

More Imitations of Italy

2011-11-30T16:07:00.000-05:00

Although it's been over a month since I returned, I am still working on trying to recplicate some of the dishes I had in Italy. For such simple, homemade cuisine, some of it was rather complicated. For example, my attempt to do the egg-stuffed turkey rolls was not going to make it onto this blog (unless I felt brave enough to post it in the "Flops" category).

One thing I felt pretty sure I could do though was the lasagne dish. It didn't seem to require any complex techniques and contained basic ingredients: white sauce, zucchini, mozzarella, and noodles. That seemed easy enough.

I did my best to put a little of my own spin on it. I added mushrooms along with the zucchini and sauteed them with garlic. I fried the zucchini in olive oil first before adding it to the lasagne as well. I like that it added more flavor. Besides, the extra olive oil it brought to the dish was very much like the olive-oil-soaked dishes we ate on the farm. The garlic is also my own spin. I know Italians don't use nearly as much garlic in their cooking as Americans think they do, but as an American, I need my Italian food to be splashed liberally with garlic.

Certainly you could just slice the veggies into the dish raw, but cooking them really does add something to the dish. I suppose if you're health conscious, you could try spritzing them with olive oil and roasting them instead of frying.

The recipe is easy, but it is a bit time-consuming as there are several components. The results are well worth it though. This is a very tasty dish!

Lasagne Bianchi con Zucchini e Funghi

For Veggie Layer

Copious amounts of olive oil for frying
Salt
6 small zucchini, sliced thin
3-4 cloves garlic
10 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced

For White Sauce

4 Tbl butter
4 Tbl all-purpose flour
1 quart milk
Dash of nutmeg
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 cup grated pecorino cheese

For Assembly

1 package no-boil lasagne
1 pound mozzarella, grated

Lightly salt the zucchini. Cover the bottom of your biggest frying pan with plenty of olive oil and heat to medium high. Fry zucchini slices in a single layer until cooked through. You will need to work in batches. Set aside.

Lower heat and add garlic to pan. You might want to add some extra olive oil, but don't go too overboard as the mushrooms will give off plenty of liquid. When garlic is fragrant, add musrhoom slices. Cook until they are browned and give off their liquid. Add zucchini back to the pan and toss together. Set aside.

In a large saucepan melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Cook for a few minutes until the roux doesn't taste like raw flour. Slowly whisk in the milk. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Add the nutmeg, pepper, and cheese.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Place a layer of white sauce at the bottom a 13"x9" pan. Add a layer of noodles to cover the bottom. Then add a layer of white sauce, a layer of vegetables, and a layer of grated mozzarella. Cover with another layer of noodles and repeat until you have used up all of your sauce, vegetables, cheese, and noodles.

Cover with foil and bake 50-60 minutes.

So What Did I Have For Thanksgiving?

2011-11-28T18:07:00.000-05:00

As always, I had a fabulous time in Chicago. Kevin, Mom, MIL and I enjoyed some great meals, some great sightseeing, and of course, lots of quality time with family.

Our food explorations started before we even left the airport. The new Jet Blue terminal at JFK has a pretty aspirational food court. In one area of the terminal you will find a grouping of international restaurants: Italian, Spanish Tapas, Steakhouse, Asian Fusion, and Mexican. Kevin suggested we give one of them a try. I said we should try Piquillo, the tapas place. Some of us had eaten large, late breakfasts, and some of us had eaten small, early breakfasts. It was 2pm and half of us was starving and half was not really up to eating much. Tapas fit the bill since everyone could order as many small plates as needed. I didn't have my camera handy to dig out of my bags, but I had a pretty good deal on a 3-item meal. For $17 I had a dish of chorizo and potatoes, a dish of asparagus with sherry vinaigrette, and two croquetas. I was expecting smaller portions with the tasting menu, but they were full-sized plates (which were tapas plates, so they were smallish to begin with). Considering if I had ordered a la carte, two dishes would have cost me that much, I thought it was a good deal. The food wasn't brilliant, but it hit the spot.

We arrived in Chicago in the early evening. After settling into our hotel, Kevin's brother and SIL took us out to Abruzzo. It was a nice, casual Italian restaurant. Once again I forgot my camera. Although it had been almost 5 hours since my last meal, I had been well fed by the tapas and wasn't looking for anything heavy. I chose a chicken breast in tomato-basil sauce. It was a simple grilled breast, so it was perfect for my small appetite. I was trying to be a good girl and not eat the pasta that came with it, but the sauce was so tasty, I had to eat the pasta to make sure I got every bit of it.

The next day was Thanksgiving. Once again we went to Lovell's of Lake Forest. Once again I had the option of ordering turkey or not ordering turkey. So I ordered...

*cue drum roll*

...a salad with a tasty mustard vinaigrette.

(What you want more details?)

and...

Roast duck! No, it's not turkey, but it's still poultry and it tastes better. My only complaint about this duck is the skin could have been crispier. I really liked the rice mix on the side. Behind the duck is a poached pear filled with nuts and granola.

Dessert I was as predictable as always.

They call it the "Muca Muca Cake." Off to the side is a coffee liberally mixed with Baileys.

The next day we spent walking around Chicago, hiking up Michigan Avenue, fighting the Black Friday crowds, and showing Mom the Art Institute for the first time. To fortify ourselves for the sightseeing, we started out with an early lunch at the Signature Room.

We had a great table, decorated for Christmas, with a spectacular view.

Once again, I neglected to take photos of the actual food. I was told the Signature Room is better known for its views than for its food. I didn't want to eat too heavily after the big Thanksgiving dinner, so I had a Thai chicken salad that was perfectly acceptable. I really liked the dressing. The table split some appetizers, most of which were unremarkable except for a flatbread topped with gruyere, caramelized onions, and bacon. The "flatbread" was actually a thin piece of puff pastry. I think if I had just ordered that and eaten it all, I would have been just as happy.

Our final meal was at Mortons. This Mortons has some rather special meaning for our family. Three years ago it was where Kevin's nephew celebrated his bar mitzvah. It was the last time Kevin's entire family was gathered together before some of them passed away. I'll always think fondly of Mortons for that.

The food isn't too shabby either! I joked I wasn't taking photos of this lovely ribeye for my blog. I was taking it to hang on my wall.

Still more chocolate cake for dessert. How did this compare to the Muca Muca? Hard to say. This one came with ice cream. The other one came with creme anglaise and strawberry puree`. How can one really judge? We had some chocolate souffle with this as well.

We went home the next day with full bellies and said hearts knowing we had to leave our loved ones again for a while. We are all so grateful for the generosity of Kevin's family with both their money and their time. We hope it won't be too long before we're all together again.

Another Nod to the Season with My Good Friend Dan

2011-11-23T07:16:00.002-05:00

I'm very excited about Thanksgiving this year. Once again I will avoid having to cook for 17 people and I'm heading to Chicago to spend the holiday with Kevin's family. My mother will be joining us as well this year. (It's like the opposite of most holidays where Kevin's mother celebrates with my family.) It will be her first time ever in Chicago, so she's very excited. It will be a nice relaxing holiday since no one has to cook! We will be back in the same restaurant as last year.

I'm looking forward to eating in Chicago restaurants. I can't wait to trash them. I want to make snarky remarks about kitschy decor and take offensive photos of lamb chops! (Can you tell I'm really hoping that my brother-in-law is reading this post? Hi Bob!)

I still had to make one more meal before we left. I wanted to make something that would remind me of Thanksgiving, but wouldn't actually be too Thanksgiving-like. I don't know if I'll decide to have a traditional turkey dinner in the restaurant on Thanksgiving day, but I figured it was best to err on the side of caution and make a dinner that was a little different.

I knew I wanted to make a poultry dish, but which poultry would I choose? Last week I made a meat loaf with that beloved Thanksgiving meat, turkey. What would I use for my last dinner before vacation? Chicken? Duck?

I saw these quails in the freezer at Whole Paycheck and decided it was time to try cooking them. Experimentation is good for the soul.

I had no idea what the best way to cook them was. There was a recipe on the side of the package for making them with mushrom stuffing, but I had other ideas for how I wanted to flavor them. Do I wrap them in bacon? Put them on skewers? Pan fry? Roast?

I had a pre-Thanksgiving chat with a friend on the phone while trying to figure this all out. I said I was trying to figure out how to cook Dan and Marilyn. He told me not to serve a potatoe with them. Will anyone reading this laugh at the 20-year-old political humor?

I decided to go with roast. Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Italy had a method for roasting quails. Granted he suggested covering them with pancetta, which I didn't do, and it probably would have moistened the meat a bit more. I did rest them on a bed of fresh herbs as Jamie suggested though. I went out on my balcony to pick the thyme and rosemary. It was a horrific, rainy, chilly night and the 30 seconds I spent out there cutting herbs was torture. The things I do to feed my family!

What was my sauce? Cranberries! That was my nod to the season. I like how at Whole Paycheck I can get loose bulk cranberries so I don't have to buy way more than I need.

I went a little crazy and decided to try them with tangerines and port wine. I just went nuts. I was inspired somewhat by my mother's delicious port-ginger cranberry sauce.

The sauce had a little bitterness that I wasn't fond of, but otherwise had good flavor. The quails were a tad dry but the flavor was decent. They are really hard to eat. You have to work hard for very little meat. Not sure I'll make them again, but I'm glad I did the experiment.

See you all after Thanksgiving. Hope you have a wonderful celebration with family and friends and delicious food. I will leave you contemplating the myster of whether or not I will actually order the traditional turkey dinner...

Wishing you all a very happy happy happy Thanksgiving. Hope you enjoy your meals and your loved ones, however you decide to celebrate.

Quail with Cranberry Tangerine Sauce

Ingredients for Quails

4 quails
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Several sprigs of rosemary and thyme
4 Tbl butter, melted
1/4 cup sweet wine

Ingredients for Sauce

1 cup cranberries
1 cup port wine
Juice of 2 tangerines
3 Tbl honey
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp peppercorns
1 Tbl butter

In a small saucepan combine cranberries, juice, wine, honey and cinnamon stick. Place the peppercorns in a tea ball or cheesecloth bag and add to the pan (you don't want to have to be picking peppercorns out of your sauce later). Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and simmer about an hour, letting sauce reduce and craberries soften and lose their shape. Remove peppercorns and cinnamon stick. Stir in butter.

Meanwhile heat your oven to 375. Brush your quails with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place each quail on a bed of rosemary and thyme sprigs on a baking sheet.

Roast 35 minutes. About halfway through cooking pour the butter and wine over the quails.

Serve quails with sauce. This recipe serves two.

More Meat Loaf Variations

2011-11-17T18:55:00.000-05:00

It's not just Christmas that gets rushed.

I was just thinking of how back in my college days the week before Thanksgiving the cafeteria would put on a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for the students. For this dinner you had to have your group reserve a table and then you would be presented with a turkey and all the fixings for your group. The real novelty was that members of the faculty and administration would volunteer to serve the students, so it could be fun to have your prof waiting on you (and you would be nice to him or her if it really was your prof since your grade could hinge on it). I remember one year my totally non-sports-loving friends and I had the honor of being served by none other than exalted Skip Roderick the soccer coach (kind of like the Joe Paterno of Elizabethtown but without any child molestation scandals).

It was all very nice until the next day. Also the following day. Then the day after that. You see, the Elizabethtown College cafeteria was no different from any other host of Thanksgiving dinner. They had to use up those leftovers just like the rest of us. So for a week we had turkey noodle soup and turkey tetrazzini and hot open turkey sandwiches and turkey croquettes. After a week of turkey leftovers, we would all go home for Thanksgiving dinner with our families and then spend the remainder of that weekend eating turkey leftovers.

Now (CENSORED) years later, the cafeteria in my office building is offering a special pre-Thanksgiving turkey dinner this week.

How much of this stuff are we supposed to want to eat? Does everyone really want constant turkey dinners in November?

Turkey has never been one of my favorite proteins. I find the meat is often unremarkable and rather bland. I like things like pork and lamb and duck. Turkey sandwiches have never topped my list of favorites (although I have often favored them for health reasons). I like my meatballs and burgers made out of beef and my sausages made out of pork. (Does that sound slightly off color?)

I used to really hate turkey in most forms, but I guess turkey meat producers are doing a better job of putting out better tasting turkey products. Still, the way I enjoy turkey most is a whole roasted turkey, covered in nice crispy skin, where I can chow down on drumsticks and pope's noses and cover everything in tasty gravy. Otherwise, I can take it or leave it.

Then I met my husband who is sensitive to more robust meats. It's all about the turkey for him. The blandness is exactly what he loves and craves. That has put me on a lifelong quest to make turkey meat taste more interesting.

So despite it being a week before Thanksgiving, I'm making a turkey dish.

I've never been fond of meatloaf in general, even the beef variety. I think that's because I have spent my life eating your standard beef-breadcrumb-egg loaf that was dense and weird in texture and less-than-thrilling in flavor. I know that meat loaf can be transformed by being made into meatballs as they sit simmering in tomato sauce soaking up moistness and flavor, so there have to be other ways to improve upon it. Once I started cooking my own meatloaf, I found I could make it taste decent.

One of my favorite variations is my Feathers and Fruit Loaf, but as husband and I are trying to get away from the gluten, I have been keeping it out of rotation.

I saw an interesting recipe for a turkey and veggie meatball on a Paleo website. I wanted to give it a try so I decided use it as an inspiration for a new meatloaf recipe. My binder was almond flour instead of breadcrumbs (I have learned I just HATE gluten-free breadcrumbs).

Making this meatloaf was a comedy of errors. I didn't realize when I was making it that I was out of eggs. It was dark and rainy outside and I had no desire to get in the car and drive to the supermarket to buy eggs. I did the unthinkable and walked down the street to CVS and bought the cheap eggs there. I like to think of myself as an egg snob who always buys fresh, local eggs. I felt so dirty buying CVS eggs. I felt less dirty when I paid for them. They were cheap to begin with, but I found out they were on sale. Eggs for under $2? I think I'm a convert!

Then there was the issue of sides. I made no vegetables because I felt the meatloaf was veggie-enriched enough. I still wanted to serve more on the plate than just a slab of meatloaf. I raided the cabinets for something usable. I guess I cleaned out the cabinet pretty well in the past. I had no rice or other grains. All I had was a box of cornmeal. Since I had some rice flour in the freezer, I made some gluten-free cornbread on the side.

The meatloaf was really good - for turkey meatloaf anyway. It was flavorful and light-textured. Husband has requested I make it more often, so it's a keeper. I think I'll wait until a few weeks after Thanksgiving though.

Turkey-Veggie Meatloaf

Ingredients
1 package ground turkey
3 carrots, cut in chunks
1 medium onion, cut in chunks
10 ounces cremini mushrooms
2 Tbl tomato paste
2 tsp salt
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 eggs
2 cups almond flour

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

In a food processor puree carrots, onion, and mushrooms until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and add tomato paste, salt, and smoked paprika. Taste for seasoning.

Mix in ground turkey and eggs. Add almond flour. You may want to adjust your amounts if you feel your mixture is too gloppy and needs more flour to absorb some of the liquid.

Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray. (You can't free-form this meatloaf. It's too wet.) Place turkey mixture into the pan and bake for one hour.

Forget Italy. Let's Go Back to Paris for This Post

2011-11-05T08:57:00.000-04:00

Compare and contrast my last two anniversary celebration vacations. For both trips I went to Europe. One was spent in a big city. The next one was spent on a farm. For the first trip we got around on trains and on foot. For the next one, we moved around mostly on horseback. One one trip Kevin did all of the talking (French) and on the next one I did the talking (Italian). For both trips we drank more wine than we ever do at home. Both trips had fantastic food, but for one of them we ate only in restaurants and the other almost all of our meals were cooked in the farmhouse kitchen.

We loved our meals in Italy, but when I remember our Paris trip, one of my most vivid memories was of the hearty French food we ate. One of my most memorable meals was our anniversary dinner at that Paris institution, La Coupole.

If you are a regular reader of TERP, you may remeber (I can also jog your memory for you) of how I ordered Jarret de Porc at La Coupole. Then I realized that I didn't know what "jarret" meant and freaked out for a few minutes until my dinner was actually served to me. The hock that was my dinner turned out to be perfectly delicious and was an even better choice than I had originally anticipated. Score one for me. It was the kind of meal I thought would be once in a lifetime.

Quite recently I caught this post at We Are Never Full. Amy and Jonny are never ones to shy away from new and different ingredients. Looking at their rendition of Jarret de Porc, I knew it was possible for me to recreate my Parisian adventure.

The only real obstacle to making the recipe would be finding the ingredients. Most markets carry smoked hocks since they are such a flavorful addition to legume-based soups. Fresh ones can be a little trickier. Not all markets are likely to carry nose-to-tail meats.

I am very lucky to have the Norwalk Shop Rite just a stone's throw from my office. (How I will miss this palce after I'm laid off next year!) I have seen all sorts of interesting animal parts there from fresh tongue to tripe to pork skin to fresh pork neck bones. It is my supplier of smoked turkey tails. I made a trip there to see what they could offer me and sure enough I saw pig's ears, necks, jowls, and most importantly, fresh hocks. I was ready to go.

My intention was to follow Amy and Jonny's recipe. I was a little puzzled by it. I am used to regular stewing methods where you brown your meat first and then cook it in liquid. This recipe had it backwards. First you poach the pork and then you cook it in the oven. This was my first time cooking with a new ingredient, so I wasn't about to start experimenting. If it worked for them, then I would do it that way. If you're going to alter something about an untried recipe, alter the ingredients and not the method.

I did alter the ingredients a bit. Pork tastes great with reisling and it tastes great with apples. I replaced two cups of the water in the poaching liquid with two cups of reisling and also added a quartered apple to the mix.

The hocks were slightly problematic as they stuck to the pan terribly when I roasted them, ripping off some of that lovely skin. I also think I probably didn't need to roast them the entire recommended time (I guess I just have a hotter oven or used smaller hocks.) My pan drippings were a little burned.

I will not post the recipe here, as I don't want to be poaching anyone else's work. Please refer to the link to We Are Never Full if you are interested in making this. My only difference in preparing the pork is that I added the apple and the reisling to the poaching pot.

I served it with plain mashed potates instead of garlic-parsley ones and my plating just isn't as pretty (a dish this special probably deserved the light box for the photo, but I was lazy) but it was one tasty dish. In some ways I liked this better than the one I had in Paris because I was able to really taste the meat naturally and not flavored heavily with sauerkraut. The reisling and apples gave it some sweetness and some sharpness, but I could still taste lots of porky goodness. Pork hocks do taste very similar to ribs. If you're a rib lover, you definitely have to try these.

Imitations of Italy

2011-11-01T08:55:00.007-04:00

As soon as we returned from our trip SPP started talking about how I should make the stuff we ate in Italy.

Easier said than done. The food in Italy was just so darned divine and quite hard to imitate. Why do you think I keep saying I never want to eat my own cooking again?

But the meals we had in Italy were relatively simple dishes, even if they were so expertly prepared. I could at least attempt them and make them my way. I still kept things simple, so there are no official recipes here, just suggestions.

I started with the Zucchini in Parmigiana.

I thin-sliced 4 zucchini and coated them in egg and then in a mix of a little cornmeal and finely-grated parmesan. This was my first deviation from the recipe at the farm. I don't think they breaded their vegetables at all. I fried them in LOTS of olive oil (they didn't skimp on olive oil at the farm, so why should I?) and layered the slices in the dish with some of the cheese, then put most of the cheese over the top. I poured 2 cups of my lovingly-made-from-farm-market-tomatoes sauce and baked the thing for 25 minutes at 400 degrees.

It was cheesier and less saucy than the farm version, which I guess is just my American showing. I only used a half-pound ball of fresh mozzarella to make this and it was still twice as cheesy as the Italian version. I still liked it a lot and so did SPP.

I served some chick peas boiled with sage and rosemary and a little garlic then doused with olive oil on the side. I was still trying to imitate the meal I had at the farm.

Kevin's favorite dish of the week was the simplest. He loved the spaghetti with herbs. It's an easy dish, although there is an actual recipe available for it. It's garlic, parseley, and a little hot pepper in olive oil.

Then I tried to do their frittate. These were harder because they were called "omlets" on the farm and weren't exactly like traditional omelets, but also weren't thick like a frittata would be.

I cooked 3 chopped onions until they were super soft, almost caramelized. Then I browned some mushrooms with them. I placed them in a small frying pan with lots of olive oil poured 3 eggs over the top. I cooked that until it was barely set and then placed it in a 400 degree oven until it was cooked and a bit brown on top. I served it over mixed greens. Not quite the farm, but pretty good.

I suppose in my kicthen I can keep a bit of Italy with me always.

Because I Have To Cook Again Sometime

2011-10-21T17:26:00.002-04:00

After eating all of that fabulous food in Italy I swore I could never eat my own cooking again. There are a couple of problems with that though.

1. I have to eat to live. So does my husband.
2. I have a food blog, and food blogs aren't much use without content.

So this week I did have to drag myself back into the kitchen.

Since I am the (dis)Order cook, I do tend to do things backwards all over the kitchen. I cook what I feel like cooking when I feel like cooking it, regardless of season. If I want to make ice cream in January and fried chicken in June and soup in August, I will do just that .

I'm actually managing to get with the season right now. Maybe Italy had a good influence on me. After all, while I was there I ate vegetables grown on the farm and locally produced cheeses, eggs, and meats. I was beginning to understand true seasonal food.

I have been thinking quite a bit about about stews and braises lately. I want to expand my horizons with that type of cooking. The only thing I ever braise are chickens because that's all my husband will eat, but I really want to try other meats. It's time to make the effort and make two meals and start looking at ways to prepare lamb shanks (something I love to order in restaurants) or beef stew (like the one I had in Italy).

Despite wanting to expand my horizons, I wanted to start with chicken this week. One of my favorite braised chicken recipes is my cider braised chicken with cream. If I wanted to do another chicken braise, I should at least try a new recipe.

This month's issue of Food & Wine had an article about hard cider. I went through one very brief period in my life where I drank hard cider. I decided to try it when I was in Ireland 8 years ago. I didn't love it, but it was better than beer and less fattening than Baileys or Irish coffee. I haven't touched the stuff since. Seeing the article made me think about how I might use it in my cooking. Cider is a fall beverage and would be an interesting braising liquid for fall recipes. It would be better than beer, but less sweet than sweet cider.

As an interesting coincidence is that the local Whole Paycheck was pushing a certain brand of hard cider in the Darien store this week. I considered that fortunate and bought that very bottle. The cook had to taste a bit before putting it in the pan. This was sweeter than the cider I drank in Ireland, but still had a bit of bitter aftertaste that wasn't to my liking. I knew I would rather cook with it than drink it.

I was braising chicken, which doesn't have a very strong flavor. I needed to enhance my dish with things that could really stand up to the strong flavor of hard cider.

Bacon!

Sausage! (I used turkey sausage, but pork would be just as good)

Carrots, mushrooms, and lots of onions.

This ended up as one very tasty dish. The flavor of the cider was sweeter and mellower after a good long braise and the chicken had great flavor without having to add a lot of unnecessary seasoning. It had a lot of steps, but it was worth it.

It wasn't Italy, but it was good! I served some braised swiss chard on the side (made me think of Italy) and some roasted potatoes (ditto).

Hard-Cider Braised Chicken and Sausage

2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into small pieces
3 lb chicken pieces of your choice
1 lb mild Italian sauasage (about 4 large links) cut into small links
Salt and pepper
2 large yellow onions, diced
3 large carrots, cut into chunks
10 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 cups hard cider
Olive oil (as needed)
Chicken stock (as needed)

In a large saute pan or saucepan, cook bacon until crispy and fat renders out. Drain off excess fat. Set aside.

Brown the outside of the sausage links over medium heat. Set aside.

If you feel your pan is too dry, add a little olive oil. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper and add to the pan, skin-side down and brown well on both sides (about 5 minutes each). Remove from pan.

Add your onion to the pan and saute until soft. Add the carrots and cook them to allow them to take on a little color. Add the mushrooms and cook until soft.

Add chicken and sausage back to the pan, nestling everything well among the vegetables. Add the cider. Simmer another 30 minutes. If you need more liquid, add some chicken stock (or more cider!).

Serve with potatoes or noodles.

I'm Back From Italy and I May Never Eat My Own Cooking Again!

2011-10-18T18:41:00.000-04:00

I apologize in advance for the screwy formatting of this post. Just when I thought Blogger had its act together on such matters, it goes haywire on me again.

What a fabulous trip I had! It exceeded my expectations in every way. I could not have had a more perfect 10th anniversary celebration. Everything was fabulous. This post will be about the food, of course, but you can read more detailed stories of the trip here, or just look at the full set of photos.

During our trip we did not eat out. When I first planned this trip, I was actually a bit sad about this. Restaurants are one of the best ways to explore a foreign country. I had little trouble getting over that disappointment once we arrived. The food on this trip was fabulous in every way. Each day was full of wonderful home-cooked food from the farmhouse kitchen cooked by our host, Sadio, or their housekeeper/cook Gioia. Most of the food was local, often coming from their own kitchen garden.

Any regular reader of this blog knows of how I have to cook around the delicate widdle tum-tum of my darling husband, Sir Pickypants. I never know the whims of his digestive system and often things that should be on his "safe" list leave him complaining of tummy trouble. On top of that he is prone to migraines and has to be careful about his consumption of alcohol.

Not once on this trip did he complain of an upset stomach or a headache. He ate cheese daily. He drank wine - red wine - with abandon. We both ate bread and pasta, undoing months of trying to see how removing these things from our diets might benefit us. We were never healtheir. Every day we ate this fabulous food and had energy to spare for hours spent in the saddle.

It makes me wonder exactly what is in my food here in the States. What are we all eating? How is it being prepared? That's why I concentrate as much as possible on fresh food these days. When you spend time eating real food, you understand just how bad processed food is for you. Your body knows what it needs and tells you in the subtlest of ways sometimes.

Rather than go day-by-day as I often do with vacations, I'll just showcase our meals.

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Breakfast

This was the simplest meal, eaten around the farmhouse table. Every morning we had a selection of salame along with hard boiled eggs (often still warm). We had homemade walnut bread daily with a selection of interesting jams. There was cake as well and homemade yogurt. Sometimes it was chocolate cake. For two days we had a thin rustic cake topped with lemon curd.

There was always a fruit bowl as well, served atop this charming table that had once been the farmhouse sink.
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Antipasto

Always served with table wine, sometimes served with an aperitif. On chilly nights we ate them by the fire.

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Lunch

When we rode the full day we had picnics in the fields. There was always a cold pasta dish such as penne with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, or bowties with pesto, mozzarella and tomatoes. One time we had spicy couscous instead. There were always fresh garden tomatoes and a selection of local cheeses to accompany them. The wine flowed freely.

The days we rode half of the day we had lunch on the club house patio.

One day it was ribollita. Another day it was gnocchi with pecorino sauce, followed by a homemade pizza covered in cauliflower, pecorino and olives.

On the last day lunch was this. What's this Scooby Doo box about?

Pizza! We decided to try the local pizzeria. Sadio set the table with cute themed plates and we had an accompaniment of zucchini carpaccio. My pizza was covered in prosciutto while my companions tried a caprese pizza with cherry tomatoes and an artichoke pizza. The pizza had a very thin crust and a very nice quality cheese. I am still pretty loyal to NY pizza though. Italy may have invented pizza, but NY perfected it!

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Dinner

There were always two courses at dinner. The first course usually pasta, but sometimes it was other types of starch.

Spaghetti pomodoro, followed by a lovely mixed grill of ribs, sausage and chicken (this was on my first night and it was quite a welcome to have several of my favorite foods on one plate!). The fried potatoes were so crispy, but Gioia doesn't disclose her secrets on how she got them that way. Also on the side was some braised swiss chard. They don't add much seasoning to it, so they encourage us to pour lots of olive oil over it.

Bread is typical Italian bread made without salt. It's quite bland, but once you get used to it, you understand it's meant to be eaten with the salty foods on the table.

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Chianti risotto followed by zucchini parimgiana (Sadio is a vegetarian and he tended to cook accordingly) and chick peas. I like zucchini parmigiana more than eggplant parmigiana. Then again, I like zucchini better than eggplant.
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Lasagne Bianche with zucchini followed by free-range beef stew and white beans with more of those crispy potatoes. Kevin had local chicken sausage, which he shared with me.

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Bowties with cauliflower and broccoli, followed by chicken saltimbocca. I had to apologize to Sadio about my issues with peas. He was cool with it and never cooked with peas again that week. (Our cauliflower pizza from lunch had olives on it and I had to explain that I wasn't fond of olives either. He said olives were, "big black peas." I think for the rest of my life I will refer to olives as "Big Black Peas.")

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Fettuccini with cherry tomato sauce followed by thin and delicate frittate. One was made with onion and one was made with potatoes. We had white beans on the side.
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Pasta in a simple sauce of garlic, oil, and parseley and then some stuffed turkey roulades. The stuffing was made with eggs.

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Our last night was a lighter meal of Pappa Al Pomordoro (tomato and bread soup) and then eggs baked with asparagus and tomatoes (tomato version not shown). The potatoes were thinly sliced and roasted with parsley this time.
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Dessert

We teneded to just have things like store-bought ice cream, but sometimes we would have biscotti with vin santo (sometimes we had that for lunch too!).

We did make sure to buy gelato when we had an afternoon in Siena though. I had my favorite - nocciola (hazelnut).

How about some chestnuts literally roasted on an open fire?

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Wine

This was a riding and wine-tasting tour, so we drank more than just the table wine served at meal times.

We joke that we drank wine with every meal except breakfast, but one day we came close to even having it for breakfast. On our third day we rode to Arceno vineyards. They sold mostly chianti wines with one more complex blend in the mix. After tasting all four, I had trouble getting back on my horse.

Another day we went on foot to Castello Brolio. This is the birthplace of Chianti wine . They have a much wider range of wines to try. I went for a very robust chianti that day, while my husband stuck with an ice wine.

We rode to the organic vineyards of Pacina the next day. They make a robust chianti, Collo Senese (named for the hills of Siena that surround them), a milder chianti, Secondo, named because it comes from younger vines less rooted in the soil, and a Syrah. The Syrah grapes do surprisingly well in the dry, clay-like soil. We were given a tour their cellars so we could see the winemaking process.

They gave us a bottle of Secondo for our picnic, which I loved. We had a bottle of Collo Senese with dinner that night, which I found it a bit too oaky.

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After eating all of this fabulous food it really is hard to want to eat anything else. It's a good thing I have this blog so I am always challenged to keep going in the kitchen.

Donatella saw my interest in the food with all of my photographs and such and said I should open a trattoria back home. At many of the meals she ate with us, she would say, "You can use this recipe for your trattoria." Not a bad idea, but it would be hard to make such a place fly in a country where people think the Olive Garden is the pinnacle of Italian cuisine.

Buon Appetito Everyone!

One Last Dish Before I Go

2011-10-05T20:13:00.002-04:00

My mind is completely and utterly focused on vacation right now. Even before I leave for vacation I need to go out and celebrate 10 years of the Pickypants-(dis)Order alliance. This is a big one. We plan to go to the same restaurant where we celebrated number 7.

So we go out on Thursday and leave for vacation on Friday, but we still have to eat the rest of the week. That means I have to cook - or I suppose I should say that I should cook. But what? My brain is just too full to think of meals to make.

I went to the store and saw some pork tenderloins on sale. I decided to grab one since they're one of my favorite meats. I really didn't know what I wanted to do with them. I bought some mushrooms. I bought some onions. I figured when it came time to cook I would know what to do with it all.

When it came time to cook and I started improvising, I wasn't intending to make a TERP-worthy recipe, but that's exactly what I did. My pork dish ended up being so good I had to share it.

I started by coating the outside of the tenderloin with salt, pepper, and fresh thyme and searing it in a pan. I set it aside.

I cooked up some mushrooms, onions and garlic. This is where it got interesting. I decided to add some brandy, and also the cherry preserves I had left over from making the cherry-cream-cheese brownies over the weekend.

I don't know why I prepared the pork this way, but I cut up the seared tenderloin and cooked the slices in the musrhoom mixture. I really should have cut them into slices first before searing it all, or just cooked the tenderloin whole. Not sure the texture of the meat was the best it could have been cooking it the way I did. I also think I cooked it a bit too long though.

This is such a simple weeknight supper. I was so surprised at how something I came up with on the fly when I'm totally distracted with other events could taste so good. Make sure to use unsweetened cherry preserves with this. I worried the dish might be too sweet and it wouldn't work against the mushrooms, but it wasn't. This dish doesn't need any sugar though, so keep the cherries sugar-free.

Weeknight Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin
1 Tbl fresh thyme leaves
2 tsp salt, divided
Few grinds black pepper
2 Tbl olive oil
1 onion, cut in medium dice
3 cloves minced garlic
10 oz sliced cremini mushrooms
5 sage leaves
1/2 cup brandy
1/2 cup cherry preserves
5 fresh sage leaves

Roll the tenderloin in the salt, pepper, and thyme to coat it evenly. Brown on all sides in a hot pan. Set aside.

Lower the heat and add the olive oil to the pan. Add the onions and the salt and cook until soft. Add the garlic and cook another minute or two more until fragrant. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently until soft and browned.

Mix together the brandy and the cherry preserves with the sage leaves. Add to pan with mushrooms and onions and cook on medium-high heat for a minute or two. Slice the tenderloin into thick slices and bring the sauce to a low simmer. Cook an additional 10 minutes or until tenderloin slices are cooked through.

Oktoberfest Time!

2011-10-02T11:26:00.003-04:00

Ah October. What kinds of things do you think of when you think of October? Hot cider? Colored leaves? Short cool days? Halloween?

How about Oktoberfest?

Yes, this weekend my theater group held a dinner dance fundraiser with an Oktoberfest theme. We had all kinds of tradtional/stereotypical foods like chicken schnitzel, sauerkraut, spaetzle, cabbage, and bratwurst. I got to be the girl who tapped the beer keg. I even dressed for the occasion. Later on that evening I entertained everyone (a very loose definition of "entertained") by belting out "Mein Herr". A fun evening overall.

In addition to making a fool of myself with my singing and my clothes, I also helped out on the food end by providing some German-ish desserts.

I made German Chocolate cake squares. I found the recipe online and stuck to it. I also made these "Black Forest" bars.

I wasn't sure how to go about turning a black forest cake into a dessert that would be good finger food at a dessert buffet (a whole cake is kind of awkward and messy at these kinds of parties). A traditional black forest cake is cherries, cream, and chocolate cake.

I decided to make it into a black forest style brownie. I adapted a cream cheese brownie recipe (in this case one from Martha Stewart) with cherry jam and cherries.

I had orginally considered using plain canned or jarred cherries and putting the cherries themselves in the cream cheese part and using the liquid in the brownie part. I used to be able to get jarred cherries at Whole Foods. Unfortunately, they don't carry them anymore. I had to come up with something else.

I mixed cherry jam into the cream cheese part and then spiked the cake part with frozen whole cherries that had been soaking in kirsch.

I think I really need to keep sharp and making good desserts. You seen, when other folks think of things that make them think of fall, they think "pumpkin". That means every fall I am assaulted with pumpkin recipes on all of my favorite blogs. I hate pumpkin. I must do battle against the onslaught of pumpkin desserts with as much chocolate and apple (my nod to the season) as possible. I will continue to recite my annual Fall Dessert Mantra: SQUASH IS NOT DESSERT!

Ah, that's better. Here's the Black Forest recipe. This may be the last post I make for a week or two since I'm leaving for Italy on Friday. Have I mentioned I'm leaving for Italy on Friday? BTW, I'm leaving for Italy on Friday. And another thing, I'm leaving for Italy on Friday. Have I mentioned I'm leaving for Italy on Friday? (Can you tell I'm a little excited?)

Cherry-Cream-Cheese Brownies (Black Forest-y Type Brownies)

Ingredients

1 pound frozen pitted cherries
½ cup Kirsch
1 stick plus 2 Tbl unsalted butter
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
5 ounces cream cheese, room-temperature
1 cup cherry preserves
1 1/2 plus cups 2 Tbl sugar
4 large eggs

Place cherries in a bowl. Toss with the kirsch and the 2 Tbl sugar. Allow to sit for an hour. Drain and reserve the liquid.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a 9-inch square baking pan. Line bottom of the pan with parchment paper, making an overhang on two sides and then grease the paper.

In a small bowl, combine 1 cup flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

Place 1 stick butter and chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Heat until melted and smooth. Mix in 1 ¼ cups sugar. Add 3 of the eggs. Add flour mixture. You want to mix the ingredients until they are just moistened, but about halfway to that stage, gently stir in the cherries.

In another bowl whisk cream cheese with remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Whisk in 1/4 cup sugar, 1 egg, and 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour. Add in 2 Tbl of the cherry soaking liquid and the cherry preserves.

Drop spoonfuls of the brownie batter and the cream cheese mixture alternately into the prepared pan. Swirl with the tip of a sharp knife to marble.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, about 55-65 minutes. Cool in pan for 30 minutes on a rack. Carefully lift brownies out of the pan using the paper overhang and then allow to cool further on the rack on the paper. Cut into squares when completely cool.

You Didn't Ask, but I'll Post Anyway

2011-09-21T20:39:00.001-04:00

I was surprised no one asked me for the cookie recipe. I was wondering if folks are boycotting my blog. Where is everyone? Did I offend everyone with my Food Network and Pioneer Woman posts?

Okay. I'm a big whiner. I got it out of my system. Now I'll give you the cookie recipe 3 weeks after I made them.

About 20 years ago my mother started acquring these fund-raising cookbooks by MADD. One of the ones in the series was nothing but cookie recipes. I discovered a pumpkin cookie recipe in that book that actually makes eating something as gross as pumpkin almost tolerable. There was also a really delicious double chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The chocolate cookie recipe was like no other one I had seen before. The base of the cookie was made with instant chocolate pudding mix. This made for a very moist cookie and a very simple recipe. I made these cookies constantly in the dorms in college because they didn't require too many ingredients or too much time.

There is a world of cookies to be made though and so many good recipes to try. Eventually I dropped the pudding cookie recipe in favor or other cookie recipe made with more natural ingredients. Still, when I left home for my own place years later, Mom sent all of her MADD cookbooks with me. She never used them, but she knew I did.

Now it seems everything old is new again. Pudding cookies seem to be all the rage in the blogsphere. Everyone seemed to be making them. Who knew that a recipe I made 20 years ago would become fashionable? I pulled that MADD cookbook off the shelf and decided to resurrect them.

Once I made the decision to try making them again, I considered doing variatoins. Instead of double chocolate, I would try other flavors of pudding and other types of chips.

I made two variations. I made a chocolate chip cookie with vanilla pudding. I wanted to make a butterscotch cookie with toffee chips, but I could only find fat-free/sugar-free pudding butterscotch in the store. Instant pudding is scary enough without having to add more mysterious ingredients to make it fat free and sugar free. I opted for banana pudding and peanut butter chips.

The cookies were pretty good. I didn't think the vanilla ones tasted radically different from regular chocolate chip cookies.. The banana flavor could have been stronger in the banana cookies and the artificial flavor was defintely a bit artificial. I am also starting to notice that peanut butter chips taste very strongly of the hydrogenated fats used to make peanut butter stay in sold chip form. Just as I remembered, the pudding gives the cookies a wonderful texture!

I apologize for the lack of photos. Just forgot to take any.

Pudding Cookies

Ingredients

2 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup sugar
1 package vanilla instant pudding mix*
2 sticks butter at room temp
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
12 oz. chocolate chips*

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Sift together flour, pudding mix, and baking soda.

Beat butter in a large mixing bowl until creamy. Beat in sugar until fluffy. Then beat in eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla. Gradually beat in flour/pudding mixture. Carefully stir in the chips.

Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes or until the begin to look dry.

*For Banana-PB cookies use banana pudding and peanut butter chips.

Here are some other things I have cooked, but haven't posted.

Here is a great veggie variation on Eggs Benedict. I started with a roasted portobello mushroom cap. I put down a slice of proscuitto (optional) and some spinach sauteed with garlic. I topped it with a poached eggs and then finished the whole thing off with a sauce made of pureed roasted peppers, olive oil, basil, and a little white wine vinegar. (Yes, I totally stole the idea from Cook Yourself Thin.)

Another egg dish: This one is my take on Huevos Rancheros. I fried a corn tortilla (as in stuck it in the Fry Daddy - it was gooooooood). Then I added some homemade salsa made from farm market tomatoes that I mixed with black beans. A fried egg and some avocado slices went on top.

Mid-Week Asian, a chicken and hot pepper stir fry. Here I cut up some boneless, skinless chicken thighs and tossed them with soy sauce, orange juice, a little orange zest, ginger, and garlic, onions, cashews and these gorgeous multicolored local peppers.

A New Take on Blueberries (Yay! I'm blogging)

2011-09-14T20:26:00.001-04:00

I was so prolific a couple of weeks ago and then went back to dead silence. I never even bothered to post my cookie recipe for the cookies I made Labor Day Weekend (twist my arm and I still might) or show the creative egg variations I made for breakfast and dinner the following week . There is no excuse for it either. I used to say I wanted to publish at least one blog a week on my other blog to keep my writing fresh. I haven't done that either even though I have 3 blogs I want to write. Make that two. One is already written and I'm too lazy to publish it!

I probably haven't stopped much by your blogs either, dear Muffins. I'm sorry about that too. I have swooped by some of the ones on my follow feed, but haven't visited many others. I truly am a bit Disordered, no?

I have been suffering a bit from the Food Bloggers Curse. No new recipes have crossed my path or my head. It's hard to write a blog when you have nothing to blog about. (What do you mean, "What about those cookies?") I did finally hit some inspiration this week and now I can share with you the fruits (yes, I suppose there is a pun in there) of my labor.

I have had a glut of blueberries in the kitchen lately. I keep wanting to buy them every time I'm at the farmer's market. I feel like I have to keep buying and buying while they are still there and still fresh. (I feel the same way about tomatoes and keep having marinara-making nights as well.) I make a lot of breakfast smoothies, but it was time to figure out some other uses for them.

It's not unheard of to put blueberries in a savory dish, but it's not all that common. While raspberries, cranberries, and blackberries often seem to make their way into many a savory recipe, the sweeter berries like strawberries and blueberries are often ignored. That has been changing in recent years, but it's still not as common.

I decided to put my blueberries to use in a glaze for a roast chicken. I would temper the sweetness with balsamic vinear (ever since the Pioneer Woman show debuted, I have this uncontrollable urge to say bal-SAM-ic) and add some rosemary then finish it off with butter and see what would happen.

The free-range chickens in the store were rather small, so I decided to buy two. I cut out the backbones (hee hee -spatchcock!) and prepared them the way I often prepared game hens. I browned them in a pan before glazing and finishing in the oven.

I know the photo, despite the use of the light box, isn't really indicative of anything. It looks like every other roast chicken I've ever made, but let me tell you, this recipe was fantastic. The combination of blueberries and rosemary was just out of this world.

Like the beans? They're long beans that I saw at the farmer's market over the weekend and couldn't resist buying. They had an interesting flavor, but I wasn't crazy about their toughness and starchy texture. At the market they said to saute` them or braise them. I braised them with some stock, a little red wine, and crushed clove of garlic. I braised the heck out of them and they were still a bit tough. I probably won't buy them again, but I will check out this one particular vendor again. He had all sorts of intriguiging veggies that I think I should try.

Roast Chicken with Blueberry-Balsamic Glaze

Ingredients

2 2-3 lb chickens
1 cup blueberries
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbl butter
2 Tbl olive oil
Salt and pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove the backbones from the chickens by cutting up and down both sides of the spine with kitchen shears. Press on breastbone to flatten. Set aside. (Don't forget to save your backbones for making chicken stock in the future.)

Puree` the blueberries. Press them through a sieve into a bowl to remove the skins. Place the puree` and the vinegar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add the rosemary. Simmer until reduced and thick. Stir in the butter.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan or saute` pan, Sprinkle the chickens with salt and pepper and place them skin-side-down in the hot oil. Brown well. You should be able to lift the chicken off the bottom off the pan easily when it's ready. Flip and brown the other side lightly.

Place the chickens on a large, rimmed cookie sheet. Brush generously with blueberry sauce. Roast for an additional 45 minutes. Allow to sit 10 minutes before carving.

Chicken Newton?

2011-09-03T10:00:00.021-04:00

There is a bit of a nip in the air in the evenings and that's starting to make me think of cooler weather dishes (even though its' still August, the days are still hot, and it's not even Labor Day yet). Lately I've had a craving for big cuts or roasted meats flavored with sweet fruits. I think of apple-stuffed pork loins or my favorite branded fruit sauces poured over just about anything.

In this household though, most of the time, those roasts are just going to be chicken breasts. I can still stuff them with fruits, can't I?

My brain really took a strange detour because I started thinking of dried fruits. I don't know why. I tend to prefer just about any fruit fresh to their dried versions (except for apricots). Dried fruits are almost always too sickly-sweet for me. Despite all of that, I found myself thinking of dried figs.

I came quite late to the fig party. My experience with figs either came encased in a cookie or else seeing how much my grandmother enjoyed dried figs. They never thrilled me. I wasn't crazy about the taste or texture. Three years ago I tried fresh figs for the first time and discovered how much I loved them. Like grapes and plums, their edibility increased manifold when they were fresh.

I can't explain to you why I decided it would be fun to stuff a chicken breast with dried figs. I just couldn't get the idea out of my mind. I specifically wanted to soak the dried figs in booze and mix them with pine nuts. I was just compelled to make that a recipe.

I originally wanted to soak my figs in marsala, but learned at the last minute that I had none. I decided to try bourbon instead. I love cooking with bourbon even if I don't like drinking it. I soaked my figs for about 30 minutes and ground them up in the food processor.

I mixed them with toasted pine nuts. Then I flattened out some chicken breasts. I laid two slices of prosciutto down (on my portion anyway), spread the fig-nut mixture on them, rolled them up, and stuck them in the oven.

Halfway through the cooking, I poured the soaking liquid mixed with a little chicken broth over them.

I served them over a bed of zucchini and yellow squash cooked on the indoor grill and tossed in a dressing of orange juice, orange zest, garlic and scallions.

The pan juices were AWESOME. The chicken was a little dried out. I will cook it less the next time. I'm afraid the filling tasted a little flat. I think it needed something else besides figs, nuts, booze, and salty pork product. I find that unusual since I'm the one who preaches about simple flavors! Maybe all it needed was a pinch of salt or two. I'm not sure.

I call it chicken newton for obvious reasons. I can't get the cookie connection out of my head.

Chicken Newton

6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, tenders removed, pounded thin
15 dried figs
1/2 cup bourbon
6-12 slices prosciutto
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/2 cup chicken broth
Salt and pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Soak figs in bourbon about 30 minutes. Reserve soaking liquid and grind the figs in a food processor. Stir the pine nuts into the ground fig mixture.

Lay out the chicken pieces. Place 1-2 slices of prosciutto over the top. Spread about 2 Tbl of the fig/nut mixture onto the chicken. Roll up and place in pan.

Sprinkle chicken rolls with salt and pepper and place in the oven. Cook 15 minutes. Mix together the bourbon and the chicken stock and pour into the pan. Cook an additional 15 minutes.

All TV Cooks Are Created Equal?

2011-09-01T15:28:00.002-04:00

Everyone is now well aware of the "fight" that has been going on between Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen. Food lovers and TV lovers everywhere are sitting back and munching on the popcorn as this plays out. Armchair warriors for Team Tony and Team Paula are weighing in across the internet. I have been leaving comments on forums and blogs everywhere. I decided it was time to to do a blog of my own.

Every successful TV food personality has some kind of schtick, a persona that they present to the viewer. That persona may or may not be related to the person they really are. They do have maintain this image if they want to hold on to their base audience.

Rachael Ray is the clean-cut perky girl next door who wants everyone to know she's not perfect. She has to do this to make people feel comfortable with their own ignorance or incompetence.

Guy Fieri is the manchild frat boy who never grew up. He wants to be the guy who hosts the tailgate party at every game.

Sandra Lee is the obsessive-compulsive homemaker who is in love, totally in llllllllove with everything she cooks. She has to push that love as much as she can because she really needs to convince people that this food is gawna be good.

Giada DeLaurentis is subtly sexy and generally understated.   She tends to let her looks due the talking. Quite obviously loves speaking Italian.

Paula Deen is your eccentric aunt who acts like a nice southern lady until she comes out with some naughty joke. She wants to feed you and feed you a lot. There is something very familial about her. She wants to remind y'all that she's from the south though.

Tony Bourdain is the cool badass dude who wants to show the world that he is willing to eat anything and everything and has extraordinary contempt for the conventional and commonplace. He is somewhat like Guy Fieri in some ways. Fieri doesn't want to leave the frat house. Bourdain still wants to be one of the cool kids who hangs in smoky bars, flirts with danger, and tries to prove how cool he is by showing you how much he doesn't care. He never quite grew up either.

Yes, Bourdain has a schtick just like any other TV personality. Maybe it's authentic, but he definitely works hard to push that image out there and maintain it. He really wants you to know his contrarian opinion in the hip and correct one.

Here is a good example of image management. Contrast for a moment Tony Bourdain with Rachael Ray on the topic of smoking. Bourdain wanted to let you know that he smoked and didn't care if you didn't like it. Smoking on camera made him that much cooler.   It was a reminder that he didn't care about public opinion. Ray kept her smoking habit under wraps for years because it would ruin her image as the clean-cut girl next door.. Although now claiming to have quit, she denied ever doing it until that photo of her holding a cigarette in front of the Louvre (and a mention or two on Gawker) kind of outed her as a smoker. Bourdain has let us know that he didn't want to quit. He did it for his child and if it weren't for that baby, he'd be doing it till it killed him. Cigarettes, or lack thereof, were a huge part of image and image management for both of them.

An acquaintance of mine defended Bourdain recently saying that he "walks the walk." He has tons of experience in professional kitchens. He has written cookbooks. He travels everywhere and eats all of the food. He is serious. He means business. He has been there and done that and has earned the right to act the way he does because he does things no one else will do. I say that's fair enough, but just because not everyone has walked his walk doesn't mean their experience isn't valid.

Paula Deen worked her way up from nothing, overcoming crippling agoraphobia to create an incredibly successful restaurant business. One would think that Bourdain, and others like him who like to bash Deen would give her credit. If she's such a terrible cook, then she probably wouldn't have had much success with her restaurant, would she? Bourdain once said the definition of a chef is someone who has cooked as the head of a professional kitchen. By Bourdain's own definition Paula Deen is chef. Imagine that.

Foodies love to dismiss the whole gang of Food Network cooks as one large gang of untalented amateuers and that Sandra Lee is the equivalent of Paula Deen who is the equialent of Giada DeLaurenits. I'm not sure where this comparison comes from.

DeLaurentis studied at Le Cordon Bleu and worked at Spago before becoming a food stylist and eventually landing on the Food Network.

Guy Fieri lacks culinary school training, but has worked in restaurants including managing and owning them most of his life.

Sandra Lee is a failed decorator with no real food background.

Rachael Ray worked front of the house in restaurants and in food retail, but was never trained in cooking. She had no food business of her own and taught basic cooking classes.

We're dealing with a mix of experiences and skill levels here. Hardly any of these cooks are the same. Paula Deen has some cred in my opinion, although it may not be the most nuanced or sophisticated. Watch her earliest episodes of Paula's Home Cooking and you will see something a bit different from what you see now.

I have mixed feelings about Paula Deen these days because of what has happened to her show. I have talked about this before. I have seen her cook things from scratch. I have seen her cook outside of the comfort zone of her own sphere of cuisine (such as Italian and French dishes). I have seen her cook things with reasonable amounts of fat. Buried under that Food-Network-generated image there is someone who is somewhat competent - more so than some of her colleagues, although less so than many others. Her food may not be your cup of tea, but I'm not so sure all of it needs to be demonized.

I also think it's quite hypocritical to criticize the high fat food of Paula Deen when she is hardly the first cook in the world to cook with copious amounts of fat. I have remarked on more than one occasion that folks rarely call out Ina Garten on the obscene amounts of butter and cream that sometimes go into her dishes. I guess a tony Hamptons address does miracles for your food's image. Did Julia Child back off the butter? I don't think so. Pork belly, foie gras, proscuitto and various other artery-cloggers are all hip and trendy ingreidents and high-end, seemingly more respectable chefs are loading onto their menus. Is fried chicken a lowbrow and unhealthful food?   It is unless Thomas Keller makes it. That goes the same for macaroni and cheese, which graces so many pricey menus these days. Comfort food is all the rage as long as it isn't made by someone who cooks comfort food habitually. The Les Halles cookbook is chock full of heart attacks on a plate. It's one thing to serve Cheez Whiz, Cool Whip, and onion soup mix (I'm looking at you Sandra Lee), but if butter is your biggest sin, then look in the mirror before criticizing anyone else.

I'm not saying that Bourdain doesn't have a point. I think I have said enough times how much I can't stand Rachael Ray. I have been unable to find a single Sanrda Lee recipe that I would ever want to cook (and I've tried). I hate the fact that cooking good decent homemade food is something that is now seen as complicated and elitist. I wish that both the Food Network and the people who watch it would understand that there really is a middle ground between CIA-style cooking and throwing together a box of this and a can of that with a chicken breast. You can create healthful food with a handful of fresh ingredients and just a few basic techniques. It's not as hard as the Food Network wants you to believe. I also agree with Bourdain that we can't be pushing organics as the only food worth living when half the population can't afford such a lifestyle. I agree with him on more topics than you would guess. I just can't stand his presentation or his incredible judgmentalism. It doesn't really add to his argument.

Paula - Go back to cooking the way you did ten years ago. Make satisfying southern cuisine from scratch and throw a few surprises our way now and then. Stop the cackling. Cook food that you would be proud to serve in your restaurant. I mean it about cutting back on the cackling. Stop shilling for Smithfield.

Tony - Stop acting superior to everyone who doesn't cook or think like you. I've never heard anyone say anything complimentary about Les Halles, so what does that say about your culinary talent? (What? You're not affiliated with Les Halles anymore? Then you really need to shut up. You're not in the business yourself anymore it seems, so from what angle do you speak?) Travel the world and show us international cuisines for our entertainment. Just don't assume it makes you better than the rest of us.

Now please just go to your rooms and don't come out again until you learn to make nice.

My Thoughts on The Pioneer Woman and Her New Show

2011-08-28T11:24:00.002-04:00

Has any new show on the Food Network generated more controversy than the Pioneer Woman? I think Ree Drummond has outpaced both Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee in negative reaction before the show even aired. After all, Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee have only one hate sight each dedicated to them. The Pioneer Woman has three hate sites. (Maybe I shouldn't say "hate site". It's a very negative term and while sites like they aren't always kind, they often contain plenty of legitimate criticism and are quite funny to boot.) The Food Network website had to take down a blog posting about the new show due to the negative comments that poured in by the hundreds. The show wasn't getting off to a good start.

So what do I think of all of this? Well, if you have been reading this blog, you know I was crazy enough to shlep to Manhattan on a cold winter day to spend insane amounts of time standing in line have my book signed by Ree Drummond. While she was very nice and I have nothing bad to say about my 60 seconds of interaction with the famous Pioneer Woman, I wouldn't say it was worth it. I will say that after hearing her voice, I can definitely imagine her impersonating Ethel Merman.

"But you went." you said. "You must be quite a fan."

Let's just say over time I have had very mixed feelings.

I first discovered PW when I was blogging about my fears regarding hosting my first Thanksgiving dinner. I had never roasted a turkey before. A helpful reader suggested I try the Pioneer Woman method of roasting turkey, promising it would come out perfect. I went to the PW blog. I decided to try her method. The reader was correct. The turkey turned out wonderfully.

Since the turkey method had been so good, I decided to check out more of what was on the blog. At the time I was pretty impressed. PW had an interesting mix of recipes - at least to me.   She has drawn a large amount of critcism for posting recipes that are unoriginal or too salty or too fatty, but to me, many of them were new and interesting. Maybe there is nothing new about Texas Sheet Cake if you live in Texas, but the PW web site was the first time this New Yorker ever saw a Texas Sheet Cake. When it comes to cheesy casseroles and butter-soaked rare steak, I have to say I'm a bit out of the loop. I didn't grow up eating stuff like that. My family was kind of fat-phobic and I was always rather picky. Unlike most kids, I hated creamy and cheesy things. My favorite dinners consisted of a hunk of meat (but not meat loaf), some carrot sticks (maybe some cucumber, celery, and iceberg lettuce for variety), a glass of milk and ice cream for dessert. This might be varied with hot dogs or spaghetti and meatballs. Lunch was a roast beef or PB&J sandwich with a piece of fruit and maybe a candy bar, cookie, or piece of cake if available. If you wanted to take me out, you gave me Chinese food. Pioneer Woman recipes were the ones I should have been eating all of my life, but wasn't. That's what drew me in and held my attention.

I found a decent variety of recipes and a decent display of technique in the beginning. I loved her vegetable and pasta salad (yes, she was capable of doing things that were healthful). I disliked her lasagne (tube sausage and cottage cheese? ICK!) I disliked her risotto (you don't put cream in risotto - if your technique is correct, the risotto will be creamy already).   I disliked her occasional use of premade food and boxed mixes. I was appalled at her apple dumpling made with premade dough and Mountain Dew. I adored her homemade cinnamon rolls. Don't even get me started on her deliciously artery-clogging mashed potatoes. She wasn't a well-trained cook, but she seemed to have a few basic techniques down and had better knife skills than I do.

I also loved the piles of horse photos. I couldn't get enough of the mustangs.

I  observed that as humble and "aw shucks" as she tried to sound, she clearly was well educated. Her blog was fairly well written and had impeccable grammar. Unlike many other bloggers, she actually knows the proper use of "lie" and "lay" - something many other supposedly well-educated bloggers (and that annoying know-it-all Alton Brown) can't seem to grasp - including Pioneer Woman Sux and her contributors. *

I forgave her many of her faults in her recipes, because she said over and over again that she lives in the middle of nowhere and that she was limited by what was available in her local market. If she had to use grated parmesan in a can, it wasn't because she didn't know better. She just couldn't get the superior parmiggiano reggiano in her country market. I saw her do a guest post on another blog where she baked brownies using different qualities of chocolate. She mentioned having to sell a cow to be able to afford the Valrhona chocolate she had to buy via mail order. She managed to come across as a humble ranch wife - someone who had to eke out a living in a brutal business. I never really questioned where she got her fancy kitchen equipment, (She had it before she married?) her high end camera (Ditto?) or the remodeled building on her property (which I initially thought was her house). I didn't even consider how she managed to cram in photography, blogging, gardening, and homeschooling her children into her days. I just assumed she did what she had to do, living out there in the middle of nowhere.

I never read her Black Heels to Tractor Wheels story. I tried reading snippets here and there, but couldn't motivate myself to read the whole thing from the beginning. For some reason, I inferred a lot about Drummond's life story from just the few things I read. I don't know where I got this idea, but I originally thought she was from the east coast - maybe the Baltimore/DC area, had moved to California for school and settled there, and then met her Marlboro Man on a business trip. I saw her as this ordinary middle-class girl who became a high-powered career woman, and then gave up everything for a much more simplified life in a place she would probably never have considered living - all for love. It all seemed so romantic to me.

Around the time the cookbook came out I started seeing more buzz around the web. I think I was on a forum discussing overrated food blogs when Pioneer Woman came up. Someone made a comment about how the Drummonds are multi-millionaires and that Ree has a staff of housekeepers, nannies, and tutors who make it quite easy for her to take photos, blog, and cook all day. The whole humble ranch wife story was a ruse, a persona, something she made up.

At this point I actually began to pay attention to her real story. She wasn't from the east coast. She was from Oklahoma and not all that far from where she lives now. She lived in a wealthy suburb and was showered with every kind of priviledge. She met her husband when she was staying in her hometown, taking a break between her former career, and working on her goal to go to Chicago and attend law school. She married the wealthy rancher instead. She didn't go from east coast ordinary girl to humble ranch wife. She went from suburban Oklahoma wealth, to urban wealth, to rural wealth. She has led a charmed life.

Not that any of that should matter really. If I liked her writing and recipes, should I care about how much money she and her husband make? In theory I shouldn't, but the blog started to feel sort of false after a while. Sometimes after reading about PW's teen and young adulthood, I began to feel like she was the kind of girl who would have made fun of me in high school. She still has a more expensive wardrobe than I do. At least part of my wardrobe is for mucking around in mud and manure, which is something she never has to do despite living among cows and horses.

I bought the cookbook anyway. It has some good recipes in it (those cinnamon rolls!) as well as gorgeous photos, and while I was reading the blog less and less, I still checked in there now and then.

I was beginning to grow tired of PW and her schtick. I was sick of her catch phrases and her fake hick talk. I was sick of the photos of the same subject matter. The recipes were becoming dumber and dumber. I stopped commenting on her blog because I saw no point in being one of over 1000 commentors. I considered participating in the Tasty Kitchen, thinking it might bring some more traffic to my blog. I couldn't bring myself to do it. It all seemed devoted to Ree worship.

Another thing that bugged me about her blog was the way she treated life on the ranch around dangerous animals and equipment. Young kids are driving trucks and tractors. Then of course, there is my biggest pet peeve of all: NOBODY, including TODDLERS, wears helmets on their horses. PW has been showing photos of her kids riding, and even falling off with bare heads and then justfies it with some crap about, "If they wear helmets they won't learn to fall." (If you wear a seat belt, will you not learn to stop at red lights?) I'm not the only reader who has called her out on this, but she and her husand are fine with this blatant disregard of safety, saying no kid has been killed on the ranch before, so surely no kid ever will be.

It was the Pioneer Woman Sux site that posted about this abomination of horse safety. She put a kid who can't ride (no insult intended - four year olds in general can't ride) on a horse that was way too big for him out in the open country with the cows. The horse was nervous. The kid panicked. The horse reacted. Ree stood there and took pictures. The horse ended up punished even though he was behaving exactly as a horse would in that situation. Ree should have walked up to the horse, grabbed the bridle, and led him back to the barn and never let that kid do something like that again until his size and riding skills improved. He should have been riding an appropriately-sized pony, in an enclosed space or on a lunge line, and wearing a helmet until he was skilled enough and big enough to control a horse in open country. This had to be some of the most irresponsible examples of both parenting and horsemanship I have ever seen!

It was official. I was over the Pioneer Woman. I was over Ree Drummond. I haven't been to the site in ages and I don't care to go. The few times I have sneaked a peak back there I'm appalled at the recipes she gives. They're filled with pre-made and processed ingredients (no more pasta salads chock full of fresh veggies) or else just plain gross (cabbage, Cheez Whiz, and cream of chicken soup baked together? Ewwwwwwwww!) I laugh my head off at the Pie Near Woman site instead.

The woman who first led me to the PW site never commented on TERP again. She doesn't appear to have a public blog of her own. Maybe I'm just growing jaded, but I now wonder if she was some kind of shill.

I really wanted to watch the show, see what is was like, and do a critique. Unfortunately it's on at a time when I am usually not home (because I'm mucking around in the mud and manure with my own horses - wearing a helmet). I did watch the preview on the Food Network website. She seemed pretty stiff on camera. The personality in her blog did not come through at all. Will she ever be relaxed and comfortable? Will that Ethel Merman voice be grating? Will she learn how to pronounce "balsamic"? Will the catchphrases become part of the routine because it's the right thing to do, or will they quickly become annoying and tired? (Then help me Rhonda! Amen.) That remains to be seen. Hopefully I'll have a chance to catch it in the future.

I do know that if I ever make a turkey again, I'll still use the Pioneer Woman method. I got that much out of. I'll leave it at that. May she and her fans enjoy her success. I'm done.

*Yes. I know I'm horribly pedantic. Misuse of lie and lay is my biggest grammatical pet peeve (as in weak writers who say stupid things like, "I'm going to lay down because I'm tired," or "The mixing bowl is laying on the floor after I threw it down in disgust after the recipe wouldn't work.") Don't like it? Tough. Deal with it. Better yet, say "lie" and I will stop complaining.

Temporary Cookie Satisfaction

2011-08-27T07:24:00.001-04:00

The problem of being on a sugar fast is that sometimes you just want some sweets. You feel as if you would kill your own uncle for a cookie. (Killing your mother would be too extreme for a cookie, but uncle would probably be okay.)

One afternoon last week someone brought a box of store-bought gluten-free cookies to the office. They were chocolate pecan and they were tempting. I took a look at the box and saw that they were meringue cookies. If it hadn't been for the sugar, I would have considered taking one. I know that meringue cookies, when done in a certain way, can be chewy rather than crispy, which would make them a bit more like traditional cookies. How could I make a similar cookie without sugar?

I thought about chocolate meringue cookies mixed with fruit purees. Fruit is sweet! Maybe I could do something with a fruit puree.

Inspiration came. How about bananas? Bananas are very sweet when very ripe and go beautifully with chocolate.

I wasn't sure how it would work. I have made chewy meringue cookies with peanut butter in the past. Could the same be done with bananas?

I started with whipping 4 eggs whites till nice and stiff.

I mixed banana pulp with cocoa powder. I used a very ripe banana hoping it would be sweet enough, but sadly it wasn't. I had to break my sugar fast just a bit and added a tablespoon of agave syrup.

I baked them at 300 degrees for 40 minutes and hoped for the best.

Hard to make a really pretty photo out of them, but here they are. I was eating them as soon as they were cool enough to come off the sheet. They weren't terribly sweet, but had nice subtle chocolate and banana flavor. The texture was very light, but not chewy or crispy. It was more like a very light delicate sponge cake. I could eat a few of them guilt-free because I knew all I was eating was four egg whites and one banana - hardly a caloric overload.

Banana Chocolate Mergingue Cookies

Ingredients

4 egg whites
1 ripe banana, mashed into a smooth pulp
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 Tbl agave syrup

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Lay a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.

Whip egg whites until stiff.

Mix together banana, cocoa, and agave syrup together until well combined. Gently fold into egg whites until well combined.

Drop by spoonfuls onto prepared sheet. This should make about 12-14 cookies.

Bake 40 minutes or until they look set and dry.

Curry Meatballs

2011-08-16T19:10:00.001-04:00

I was finding myself having one of those black holes of recipe inspiration. It's a viscious cycle sometimes. I can't think of any new ideas for recipes, I panic that I will have nothing for the blog, then that makes it even harder for me to come up with new recipes.

I thought it was going to be particularly difficult these days because I'm on a bit of an austerity diet. Vacations and birthdays and visits from friends have caused me to indulge in a bit too much gluttony and it was starting to show on the scale. I knew I had to take some drastic measures. It was time for another 3-week sugar fast. Usually sugar fasts are also wheat fasts (that's one way to enforce the gluten-free lifestyle in this house). I can lose a few pounds nicely this way.

These sugar fasts have caused me to become more interested in the whole "Paleo" diet even though I'm a bit of a skeptic about diets. It's a pretty tough idea for me to follow through with since it requires abandonment of all grains and sugar and even dairy products. However, I am trying to keep my diet as natural and fresh as possible and the Paleo eaters, while a bit "out there" in their thinking, are nothing if not natural.

Surprisingly enough it was a paleo website that provided me with inspiration for a new recipe. I found a recipe for meatballs in a coconut sauce that sounded delicious - sort of. It needed a little TERP treatment to make it truly delicious, but once I knew what I wanted to do, a recipe came together.

I seasoned meatballs made from turkey and chicken sausage with mint, cumin, and cinnamon. The sauce was made from fresh tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, ginger, spices, and coconut milk. I served it over cauliflower puree, but rice will do just fine.

One issue I have with meatballs is that since I have started to cut the gluten, I haven't found a good substitute for bread or breadcrumbs. I hate the taste of rice breadcrumbs. Nut meals haven't been much improvement either. Paleo eaters just leave it out. I don't think the elimination of bread was detrimental to the taste or consistency of my meatballs.

Fresh tomatoes are good and abudant this time of year, so if you have them, use them. You can experiment with canned during other times of the year.

Like the photo? I took the trouble of setting up the light box and then realized my camera battery needed charging and ended up taking this with my phone. Not the prettiest dish in the world? That's okay. It tasted pretty good. It was a lot of work though, so I'm not sure how worth it the whole thing was.

Curried Turkey Meatballs

For Meatballs
1 pound ground turkey
2 large links chicken sausage (avoid fancy flavors - mild Italian will do) removed from casing
2 tsp chopped fresh mint
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 egg

Mix together all ingredients. Shape into balls and fry in a little olive oil until browned on all sides. Place in curry sauce and cook for about 20 minutes or until cooked through.

For Sauce
5 cloves garlic
1" piece of ginger
2 tsp salt
1 onion, diced
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamon
2 tsp garam masala
2 carrots, cut in small pieces
6-8 ripe red tomatoes (depending on size), cored, seeded and diced
1 cup coconut milk
2 Tbl olive oil for cooking

Mince garlic and ginger. Then mince them together with the salt, smooshing them up with the flat of your knife. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan or saute pan. Add onions to the pan and then add the cumin, cinnamon, cardamon, and garam masala. Stir till onions are well coated and cook until onions are soft. Stir in ginger-garlic mixture and cook until fragrant. Add tomatoes and cook until they are soft and start losing their shape. Stir in coconut milk. At this point you can add the meatballs to simmer.

A Weekend with Abbey

2011-08-08T14:59:00.002-04:00

Life is all just ups and downs lately. First I had my birthday and that fancypants dinner. Then I got the news about my impending job loss. Then my husband booked our trip to Italy for our anniversary in October. Then we went to Chincoteague for the week. Then, unfortunately, we came home from Chincoteague.

I did have one thing this past weekend to help me get over post-vacation letdown. I had a visit from one of my BFFs, my former college roommate Abbey just one week later. That cheered me up immensely.

In college Friday nights consisted of eating dinner in the cafeteria with friends, then heading to the weekend movie on campus (they always showed cheap, second-run movies in one of the auditoriums on campus). Next we would retreat to our room where we would put on some Roxy Music (Street Life: 20 Great Hits) and play mixologist with what was in our fridge. We were good girls and generally didn't drink much, but once it was legal, we took advantage of the ability to create concoctions in our room that would make Sandra Lee cringe. Our most infamous drink was the FLD - Fuzzy Lemon Driver (peach schnapps, lemonade, and vodka). My boyfriend and his best friend would come over and make fun of us for a while until we would all go off to the weekend dance, where we would see the true drunks in action.

Good times I tell ya.

I thought that perhaps for Abbey's visit, I should try to be somewhat more adult and provide food and beverages a bit above the level of bizarre cocktails and the offerings of "The Caf." We tend to go out a lot, but I thought I'd save everyone a few dollars and cook in for us the night she arrived.

We began with a chilled avocado and corn soup. This was a very simple recipe inspired by a soup I saw at my favorite lunch stand in Chincoteague. The recipe I used can be found here. I didn't include much in the way of garnish as the recipe calls for except for the cilatro-infused olive oil. I also used a seeded poblano instead of a serrano with seeds. I wanted to make the taste a bit milder. This soup was beautifully creamy and I definitely achieved the mild flavor I was going for.

Then some chicken saltimbocca with a tomato gratin on the side. My recipe is a very basic one. I just use chicken, sage, prosciutto, and wine. I believe there are times that keeping the flavors simple will make the best dish. The tomatoes were just tomato slices layered with (gluten free) bread crumbs, pecorino, basil, salt, and thyme and baked at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Dessert was dulce de leche and coconut ice cream. I still had a bit of homemade ducle de leche left and and I wanted to try one more experimental recipe with it.

The next morning I made an easy, but rich breakfast of a tomato, bacon, and cheddar quiche.

We then went to the city to have lunch and watch a production of War Horse. It was an excellent show and I highly recommend it to anyone who lives in or near NY or plans to visit any time soon. I understand they are making a movie out of it. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Seeing puppet horses die on stage was tough enough. I don't want to see that with real horses, or even realistic CGI horses.

Anyway, on with the recipes.

Chicken Saltimbocca

Note: I used a package of thin chicken cutlets here to save time. You can save money by buying a package of whole breasts and just pounding them thin.

Ingredients

4 thin chicken breast cutlets
4 slices prosciutto
20 sage leaves
Flour for dredging
Salt and pepper
2 Tbl olive oil
1 cup white wine
2 Tbl butter

Lay 5 sage leaves across each piece of chicken. Then lay the slice of prosciutto over the top of it. Secure with toothpicks.

Lightly salt and pepper the cutlets and dredge in flour.

Heat olive oil in a large pan. Place chicken pieces prosciutto-side-up in the hot oil. Brown well on that side about 5-7 minutes and flip. Cook another 5 minutes or so until cooked through and prosciutto is a bit crisp. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Pour wine into pan and bring to a simmer and allow to reduce for a minute or two. Swirl in the butter.

Pour sauce over chicken and serve.

Coconut Dulce De Leche Ice Cream

Note: I was using my rather thin homemade dulce de leche. You may need to make adjustments to your amounts of dulce de leche and milk or cream when making this recipe if you have dulce de leche of normal thickness

Ingredients

1 cup cream
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup dulce de leche
1/2 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
Pinch of salt
1 tsp coconut extract
1 cup shredded coconut

Set a bowl on top of a large bowl filled with ice water.

Bring the cream, dulce de leche, and coconut milk to a gentle simmer in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When the bubbles begin to form, remove from heat and let cool for about 5 minutes.

Beat the eggs, sugar, and salt together until thick. Quickly stream in the milk mixture and whisk briskly.

Return the entire mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, gently stirring until thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon and you can draw a line through it with your finger.

Strain into the chilled bowl and stir in coconut extract. Cotinue stirring until cooled to room temperature. Chill in refrigerator until completely cold.

Freeze in ice cream maker according to your manufacturer's directions. When ice cream is still soft, stir in shredded coconut.

Bacon Tomato and Cheddar Quiche

Ingredients

1 unbaked pie crust
4 eggs
3/4 cup cream
1 pinch nutmeg
1 pinch white pepper
1 tomato, cored, seeded and diced
8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated
2 scallions, sliced
4 pieces of bacon, cooked to crispy and crumbled

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine cream,eggs, nutmeg and pepper.

Carefully stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pie shell.

Bake 45 minutes or until set. Allow to cool before cutting as all of the melty cheese will make it kind of drippy and hard to cut.

TTFN My Dear TERP Muffins!

2011-07-22T19:01:00.000-04:00

It's been a crazy week here in the (dis)Ordered kitchen, or actually, the kitchen is the only sane place.

After that lovely birthday dinner, I returned to work on Monday only to be told that the mega-corporation I work for has decided to consolidate all of its customer service operations next year and I will be out of a job in the spring.

Nice birthday present, huh?

So I did some cooking this week, but my brain has been elsewhere, so I have been neglecting to blog about it.

I made these nice chicken tequila lime tacos. They were inspired by a free sample I got at Whole Foods last week. They had this jar out of a tequila lime salsa that I tried. My first thought was, "I want another taste." My second thought was, "I could make one just as good."

Did I remember to write down the recipe? Of course not! These had chicken thighs, and tomato puree, and, of course, tequila and lime juice. I also added some chile powder. They were good. Not much else to say.

Then I made these lamb chops. I just sprinkled them with salt and pepper, cooked them in a cast iron pan, and covered them with a pesto sauce I made from basil, mint, pistachios, and pecorino. The sauce was very good. It worked well on the shrimp I served to SPP that night as well.

I also have to say that there have been some good reasons why I have been distracted from my blog. For one thing, my dear husband, seeing how depressed I was, finally took the plunge and booked that trip to Italy for our anniversary that I have been bugging him about. How can one concentrate on anything when there is a trip to Italy in the future?

Also, this is the last week before I take my annual pilgramage to the Chincoteague Pony Penning. I leave on Sunday. My body is still home, but my brain is definitely swimming in the ocean, watching ponies, and eating hot fudge sundaes from the Island Creamery.

So that's why I must say TTFN. I will be gone all next week. Unfortunately I have no guest posters while I'm gone. My brother will be joining the family in Chincoteague this summer, so I can't cajole him into writing a blog post for me.

Hope everyone has a wondeful week! I'll be back with more recipes soon!

Birthday Dinner at The Bedford Post Inn

2011-07-17T06:17:00.001-04:00

It isn't easy staying 29. Since as of yesterday I have now been 29 for 12 years, we needed some serious celebration.

When it came time to choose a restaurant this year, SPP gave me free rein over the choices. I was growing tired of the options in my immediate neighborhood. This town and the towns that immediately surround it are not exactly chock full of occasion restaurnts and we have eaten at the few that exist 10 times over. It was time to stop being lazy and actually do some driving and explore the surrounding areas a bit.

I knew what some of the popular occasion restaurants are, but I had no concept of just how popular they are. Nearly two weeks ago I started calling around for reservations, only to find that not many restaurants had reasonable times available. I was tempted to call the French restaurant down the end of my block and call it a day, but I persevered and got a table at the Bedford Post Inn Farmhouse.

The Bedford Post is a restored historic complex in the tony town of Bedford and owned by Richard Gere (we have friends who live in Bedford are friendly with Richard Gere, Kevin suggested at one point we use that connection to get us a good table - fortunately, we didn't need to). It's a beautiful building with gorgeous landscaping all around. There are two restaurants: the more casual Barn, and the upscale Farmhouse. These are farm-to-table restaurants. The property also contains a yoga studio and a B&B.

Inside the decor is kind of understated. It doesn't go for that all-out country kitsch, but goes for something a bit more modern. Colors are neutral without too many patterns. This little sitting area was right behind our table.

When the hostess saw me snapping photos, she offered to take a photo of the entire family at the table. Our server was kind enough to pose with us!

Time to get down to the business of eating. They brought us an amuse bouche of eggplant marinated in olive oil. Not bad considering I don't have much love for eggplant.

I have to apologize for some of these photos. The light was never quite right whether I used the flash or not.

Not all of us had appetizers, and those of us who did, stuck to the veggie ones. I had this wonderful salad of very fresh mozzarella topped with plums, pistachio, and basil oil.. The plums were a bit underripe and the tartness of it went well with the sweetness of the cheese and the basil. Truly a brilliant dish. I could eat this for lunch every day.

(I think I had a slightly better photo than this, but accidentally deleted it).

My main course was a giant pork chop on a bed of corn puree with mushrooms, pecorino, arugula and more corn. I wish I could describe how good this chop smelled when they put it down in front of me. It was cooked nicely (no dried-out, overcooked pork) and so delicious. The rest of the family ate branzino or halibut. The presentation of the branzino was gorgeous. I wish I had taken a photo. My mother's boyfriend thought the portion of halibut was too small though.

We ordered a side of asparagus. They cook this on their woodburning grill outside on the patio. You could taste it.

Then of course we had to have dessert. I chose a gianduja semifreddo. The chocolate coating encased a super-rich and creamy hazelnut filling inside that sat on a thin bed of chocolate cake. The cake was a bit dry, which was the only flaw in the dessert, and in the meal really. See the nice presentation!

Most of the rest of the table went with this rather unusual presentation of strawberry short cake.

We found that Bedford Post is like a tonier and more local version of our beloved Iron Forge Inn. After dinner Kevin remarked that it will definitely be on our rotation of special occasion restaurants. We will be back when the occasion calls for it (and I want the same server). It definitely must remain a special occasion restaurant though. I freaked when I saw the bill. We were definitely not their typical clientele. As we left the restaurant and waited for the valet to get our car, we observed all of the cars in parking lot. Kevin remarked that his car was most certinaly the only Hyundai!

So What Have I Been Cooking? A Roundup

2011-07-14T06:57:00.003-04:00

Summer is a time I think of as leisurely where I have ample time to bake (remember Sweet Treat of the Week) as well as dream up new recipes and blog about them to my heart's content, while reading everyone else's blog and ~~stealing~~ borrowing their ideas.

This summer has been different. It's flying by without a chance for me to stop and breathe. Yes, I've been cooking, but I haven't had much time to talk about it. I haven't had much time to read all of the wonderful blogs that inspire me so much either.

Rather than center a blog around one recipe as I often do, I'm going to share everything I have cooked recently. Most of it is simple.

First I made a "quiche" with a pototo crust. I started by making a crust of shredded potatoes, an egg, and some olive oil. I piled it into a pie pan and baked it partially.

I cooked some bits of smoked turkey tails (bacon, ham, pancetta, or no meat at all would be just fine) until well-rendered.

I cooked some onions, mushrooms, and peppers in the grease.

Next I mixed eggs with some cream and the veggies and baked it all up.

This was somewhat inspired by Heather's post about an Egg and Tater Tot casserole. I wanted to play with egg dishes beyond my usual Friday Night Frittata. Since the hubby loves potoates, I thought I would find fun ways to incorporate.

This tasted more like a kugel than a quiche since it was very heavy on the potatoes. Still pretty good though. A winner on the husband's side anyway.

Potato-Crusted Quiche

Crust

3 cups shredded potatoes
1 egg
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste (I like my potatoes salty)

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix all ingredients together and mound carefully into a pie plate in a piecrust-like shape with the sides mounded higher.

Cook 20 minutes or until golden. Set aside.

Filling

1 smoked turkey tail cut into small pieces (or your preferred amounts of bacon, ham, sausage, pancetta, etc.) (Optional if you're vegetarian)
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
10 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced
Oil for sauteeting (If you're not using a meat that will render out some cooking fat)
4 eggs
1/2 cup of heavy cream
Few grates nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper

Reduce oven temp to 350 degrees.

Cook turkey meat until crisp and fat is rendered out. Set aside.

Cook onions until soft. Add mushrooms until they are soft and giving up their liquid. Then add peppers and cook until just beginning to soften. Set aside.

Mix together eggs, cream, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Add the veggie mixture and the smoked turkey. Blend well and pour into crust.

Bake about 25 minutes or until eggs are set.

Next...

I bought a chicken at the farm market, but it was so small. It wasn't the kind of chicken I felt would satisfy me if I just roasted it as is. I decided to cook it so it was richer and more substanial.

I hacked it up (and I do mean hack - talk about not honoring the protein) and cooked it in a sauce of cream, leeks and wine. It was a very simple dish, but sometimes simple flavors are the best ones.

Chicken in Creamy Leek Sauce

1 chicken cut into 8 pieces
2 Tbl olive oil
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 leek, cleaned and cut into 1" slices
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream

Saute chicken in olive oil until browned well on both sides, about 5-7 minutes per side. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Add leeks to pan and cook until soft. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.

Add chicken to the pan, skin side down. Pour in wine and stock. Simmer gentle about 25 minutes or until cooked through.

Remove chicken from pan. Add cream and cook another two minutes until reduced a bit more. Pour sauce over chicken and serve.

Next...

I always thought this blog was all about chicken. Do I present too many chicken recipes?

I went through my labels and found I have cooked way more pork dishes on this blog than chicken dishes. Keeping that in mind, I don't feel so bad that I'm bringing up so many chicken dishes in one post. This was me making a simple meal out of what I had growing in the garden mixed with one of my favorite cuts of meat - chicken thighs.

I still had a lot of potatoes left over from the big bag I bought when I made the quiche. That's why mashed potatoes were my accompaniment. I suppose roasted potatoes would have been more appropriate, but these potatoes were starchy ones and starchy potatoes need to be mashed or fried in my opinion.

Basil, Mint, and Lemon Chicken Thighs

8 leaves chopped, fresh basil
6 leaves chopped fresh mint
1 Tbl fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper
Two pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Mix together all ingredients except for chicken.

Marinate chicken in this mixture for about an hour.

Cook chicken in your preferred method. Grill would be great, but if you, like me, can't grill, saute`about 8 minutes per side in a frying pan.

I Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

2011-07-10T08:36:00.000-04:00

Actually, what I got was a lovely bunch of coconut flour from my friends at Duo Dishes. If you're not reading their blog, you should be. They are an adventurous pair of cooking pals who will tackle just about any cuisine you want to throw at them.

Since I've been experimenting with gluten-free baking, coconut flour has been one of the ones I've been working with. It's a pretty cool product. It's high in fiber (how many other flours can boast that), gluten-free, and low carb (if you're into those sorts of things). Definitely worth experimenting with to obtain a few health benefits from your baking.

It has its disadvantages though. It's not the easiest flour in the world in the sense that you can't just automatically substiute it in a recipe and keep everything else the same. You will need to adjust your liquids and your eggs for the perfect texture in your baked goods. (My somewhat chewy chocolate coconut waffles are a testament to that!) Coconut flour absorbs way more liquid than wheat or rice or bean flour. It can become a stiff ball of dough within seconds.

Fortunately there are some folks out there with the foresight to figure it out for you and give you a recipe with all measurements listed out for you for the perfect baked goods.

However, my first recent experiment I didn't do that.

I had a bumper crop of wild blackberries at the barn this year, so I decided to make some coconut-blackberry muffins. I used a mixture of coconut and almond flour and added my berries and plenty of shredded coconut.

My problem was I needed some more milk and another egg to get the right consistency and level of cohesiveness in the muffins. One I added my wet ingredients to the dry, I saw that I still had a stiff dough. I didn't want to add more liquid for fear of overmixing.

My resulting muffins were kind of crumbly, but tasty. They weren't tough at all. With a few adjustments they would be better. I'm not going to share the recipe I came up with, because it clearly needs to be perfected. I think I'm in the right direction though. Definitely a couple more eggs will be in the next batch.

Next up was coconut flour brownies. I found a recipe on the internet a long time ago and printed it up. Then I stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it. Thank goodness I found it again when I received my new bag of flour.

These use a lot of eggs, which makes sense considering the use of coconut flour. They are cocoa brownies rather than ones made with solid chocolate. I have come to accept that cocoa brownies can be good, so I wasn't hesitant to try this recipe. I have since managed to find a recipe that also includes solid chocolate.

These were really very very good. I think they could have been a tad more chocolately (I would add more cocoa the next time) but the texture was delicious. They were soft, fluffy, and cakey, but still quite moist. I brought them to an impromptu gathering at a friend's house and they were quickly gobbled up. They take no time to make, so they're great if you need a quick dessert.

Coconut Flour Brownies

Ingredients

5Tlb butter
1/2 cup cocoat powder
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup coconut flour

Heat over the 350. Grease an 8"x8" square cake pan.

Melt butter together with cocoa in a small saucepan. Set aside.

Whisk together all remaining ingredients except coconut flour until smooth. Slowly whisk in the flour.

Pour into prepared pan and bake 30-35 minutes.

Barbecue Turkey Burgers - A Rant

2011-07-03T07:37:00.001-04:00

Much has been said over the past few weeks about Gwyneth Paltrow and the Bon Appetit cover. Does she deserve a spot on a magazine cover when she isn't a chef? Can she seriously be considered a foodie? Does she have decent credentials to write a cookbook?

Since I don't read BA, and don't care about Ms. Paltrow one way or the other (although I did read that silly newsletter of hers once and wondered what purpose it serves for humanity) I would normally say I really don't care, but it seems this magazine cover happened to come along when I learned a few other interesting tidbits.

Gwyneth Paltrow has tried to sell herself as some kind of macrobiotic health nut and serious foodie simultaenously. I find her cred in both categories to be suspect mostly because of the ways they overlap. She seems to have quit smoking, however reluctantly, but what of her diet?

I found this article online recently discussing her diet and exercise plan, as well as her current state of health. It's odd that she doesn't link her osteopenia to her current diet and fitness regime. As someone who regularly trains hard and trains heavy, it always irks me to see that there are trainers out there who are still trying to make women swallow the whole "Don't train too hard or you'll get big," line. (Thank goodness for smart women like this.) Their solution is "Train really light and you'll get no strength gains at all." But most appalling was the listing of Gwyneth's diet. All issues of health aside, does that diet of kale juice, almond milk, and chicken breast that clocks in at under 1000 calories seem like a "foodie" diet to you? She truly can't be questioning why a woman as young as she is now suffers from osteopenia.

All of this isn't really what triggered this rant. After all, I don't read the magazine as I stated earlier. She's also not the only celebrity who is viewed as being fit and healthy while surviving on a diet of coffee and cigarettes. Bon Appetit I'm sure did what they thought they needed to do to its cover to sell a magazine. My rant comes from something even earlier than that - something I saw in Food & Wine, a good magazine I do read.

F&W profiled Paltrow and her new cookbook as well, featuring some of the recipes. One of the recipes was for turkey burgers. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that making a bland, dry, turkey burger taste good is a lifelong quest for me. I was more than willing to see what Paltrow said on the subject. What was her recipe?

Her recipe consisted of jarred barbecue sauce. I stopped reading the article.

I have ranted for years that most basic sauces are easy enough to make homemade and usually taste better than those in a jar. I don't see how barbecue sauce should be an exception to that rule. What goes into barbecue sauce? Well, it starts with something acidic to cut through the fat in the meat. After that, it's anyone's pleasure. Depending on what part of the country you're from, it may or may not contain tomatoes or something sweet, or something smoky. Chances are your popular barbecue sauce in a jar contains tomatoes, sugar (or HFCS), some spices, and some vinegar. Is this that hard to do at home? Do I need a cookbook to tell me how to mix jarred sauce with my turkey?

I answered that question myself and came up with this recipe. I think this is the best turkey burger recipe I have ever made so far. I'm not sure if my sauce is worthy of anyone's grill. Maybe you will like jarred sauce better, but for my turkey burgers, it was just perfect and certainly not in need of anything from a jar. Can I have my own cookbook now?

Barbecue Flavored Turkey Burgers

Ingredients
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 Tbl cider vinegar
1 Tbl molasses
1 tsp salt
1 tsp smoked paprika
Few drops of hot sauce
1/2 onion, grated
1-2 pounds ground turkey

Mix together all ingredients except turkey. Taste for seasonings. Add more or less of whatever you like to it. Adjust recipe as you see fit.

Mix sauce with turkey and cook burgers according to your preference.

It's Always Time for Pie!

2011-07-01T01:45:00.002-04:00

One of the first pies I ever baked was a black bottom pie. I can even remember the recipe. I found it in Young Miss magazine (which later became YM, which later came to stand for Young and Modern, which later ceased publication entirely). The recipe required that I make one custard then add chocolate to half of it, then place the chocolate layer at the bottom of the pie crust and spread the remaining layer of custard over it.

Over the years I lost the recipe, and I have occasionally been interested in making black bottom pie again but have not found the same recipe. I have seen many variations on black bottom pie. Some are topped with meringue. One was just chocolate custard topped with whipped cream (which is not black bottom to me, but is just chocolate cream pie). I even decided to try my own variation where the vanilla layer was panna cotta (a disaster). Why was no one making a double-custard pie?

Pie is always on my mind, and with the lazy days of summer upon us, I have much more time for baking (even though it's not baking weather, which just shows I'm nuts). One of my most exciting inspirations for baking has been the homemade dulce de leche I had made recently. I had plenty left over and so many ideas of how to use it. A pie seemed like the perfect idea.

One day I had the coolest idea ever. I was going to make a black bottom pie, but instead of having the top layer of custard be vanilla, it would be dulce de leche flavored! How is that for an original pie idea?

Once I had the idea in my head, I had a dilemma. To make the custard, you have to split one recipe in half and flavor one with chocolate. I would have to flavor the other half with dulce de leche. My dulce de leche was quite thin despite three hours of cooking. I was afraid if I added it to an already-thickened custard, I would thin the custard out too much. I thought about simply making the dulce de leche part of the custard itself. The only problem with that is I still would have to use half of the custard for the chocolate layer and I wanted two distinct flavors. Could I cut a custard recipe in half? Considering most pastry cream recipes use an odd number of egg yolks, that seemed unlikely.

I finally decided to make two recipes of pastry cream. Why not? Will the pastry cream I don’t use in the pie go to waste? I think not.

I started with a basic pastry dough. After baking, I lined the bottom of the crust with melted chocolate. It makes the pie easier to cut, keeps the bottom from becoming soggy, and makes it taste even more delicious.

The chocolate pastry cream was easy. It came together quickly and was perfectly thick and rich. I started with a basic cream and melted semisweet chocolate in it.

The dulce de leche custard was more problematic. It did not tighten nearly as much or as quickly as the one made with just milk. I didn't have as much left over because I had to cook it so long that much of it had reduced. My top layer was definitely looser than the bottom.

Cover it with whipped cream. Who can tell? My cream was flavored with kahlua and cinnamon.

Cut it and you can see the layers - until the top layer runs down a bit.

Overall I'd say this would be one of my best pies ever if it weren't for the loose custard on top. Very tasty. I brought it to work and surprisingly had few takers, although I received some compliments from those who tried it. Sir Pickypants certainly didn't complain.

My recipe will come with a few caveats in that you will have to make your own recipe adjustments for the dulce de leche pastry cream. My DDL was quite thin, so I used a half cup and made it part of the custard. If your DDL is more like it should be, you might want to adjust your amounts of milk and DDL.

Dulce De Leche Black Bottom Pie

Chocolate Pastry Cream

Ingredients

2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 stick butter
1tsp vanilla
4 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped

Prepare an ice bath. Set a bowl in a larger bowl full of ice water.

In a small bowl combine egg, egg yolk, and corn starch with 1/2 cup of the milk. Set aside.

In a heavy saucepan combine milk and sugar. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool 5 minutes. Add some of the hot milk to the egg mixture, whisking quickly Then whisk the tempered yolks to the mixture in the saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook whisking constantly until thick with a good pudding-like consistency. This can take anywhere from 3-10 minutes.

Remove from heat. Add butter, vanilla and chocolate. Stir until butter and chocolate are melted. Strain into the bowl in the ice water. Allow to cool about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Refrigerate with a piece of plastic wrap on top until ready to use.

Dulce De Leche Pastry Cream

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup dulce de leche
1/4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 stick butter
1tsp vanilla
Pinch cinnamon

Prepare an ice bath. Set a bowl in a larger bowl full of ice water.

In a small bowl combine egg, egg yolk, and corn starch with 1/2 cup of the milk. Set aside.

In a small heavy saucepan combine remaining milk, dulce de leche and sugar. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool 5 minutes. Add some of the hot milk to the egg mixture, whisking quickly. Then whisk the tempered yolks to the mixture in the saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook whisking constantly until thick with a good pudding-like consistency. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook whisking constantly until thick with a good pudding-like consistency. This can take anywhere from 3-10 minutes

Remove from heat. Add butter, vanilla and cinnamon. Stir until butter is melted. Strain into the bowl in the ice water. Allow to cool about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Refrigerate with a piece of plastic wrap on top until ready to use.

Pie Assemblage

1 baked pie crust
1 oz semi-sweet chocloate, melted
1 cup heavy cream
2 Tbl Kahlua
1 tsp cinnamon
Chocolate pastry cream
Dulce De Leche patry cream

Spread melted chocolate in the bottom of the pie crust and allow to cool and harden.

Pour chocolate pastry cream into the crust, filling it about halfway. Pour the dulce de leche cream over the top to cover it. If you have more cream than you need to fill the crust, simply enjoy the extra pudding snacks!

Mix cream with cinnamon and and Kahlua. Beat to stuff peaks.

Top custard layers with cream and serve!

Anyone Else Have This Blogger Issue?

2011-06-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

I want to apologize to any bloggers of whom I have been a loyal and faithful reader. You may be noticing that I haven't been commenting on your blogs. Well, part of that is that I sometimes don't get around to doing blog reading as much as I would like to these days, but when when I carve out a chunk of "Blog time" to get to everyone's blogs and steal recipes, I am still not commenting on certain blogs.

Fear not, dear friends. I am still a fan of your blog. I am just having some major tech issues with Blogger. I will post comments on certain blogs, logged into my Google account, and I will be prompted to "choose an account". I choose Google and it boots me back to the login screen. I then log in and it takes me back to the comment screen. I try to post the comment again, and it boots me back to the login screen. I log in and go back ot the comment screen. I try to post the comment, and I'm back to the login screen. It goes round and round until I am totally frustrated and just give up.

Two blogs where this issue stands out are Burp and My Tasty Treasures - two of my favorite blogs, but I believe there are a couple of others I can't remember right now. If anyone knows why this is happening, I'd love some tech support. In the mean time, please note, dear friends, that I still love you and still read your blogs whenever I am having my "blog time".

From Sea to Shining Sea; A Tale of Two Seas; Keep Reading and You Will SeaSee What I Mean

2011-06-16T18:48:00.000-04:00

No, my dear muffins, it's not about me cooking fish!
One of my most favorite dishes to make is risotto. It's easy, it's creamy and comforting, and people who don't know how to make it think you slaved over it and are really impressed. It's also extremely versatile. You can eat it plain, or you can add just about anything to it.

Most cooks like to enhance their risotto dishes according to the season. In the fall and winter it will be adorned with squash and carrots. In the spring it's peas and asparagus.

I was in a risotto mood and didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Asparagus has been done to death in this kitchen lately. I hate peas. Spring is just turning into summer and the later summer abundance of vegetables is yet to be available. I'm also growing tired of sticking broccoli and cremini mushrooms in everything. I really have a strong need to branch out.

What, besides vegetables and fruits from the farmer's markets does summer make me think of? With the recent heat wave I have been craving icy tropical drinks and ice cream. Imagine a lovely pina colada on a hot day. Then I knew I had my inspiration.

I asked myself what a risotto made with coconut milk would be like?

"You would be making rice pudding," answered my logical brain.

"No," argued the creative side. I would not include any sweet ingredients. This would have a savory edge."

So my idea for "fusion risotto" came to be. I would be combining the Mediterranean technique of risotto with Caribbean flavors - a mishmash of two seas.

I did a quick internet search and found out that I was not the inventor of coconut risotto. Recipes abound out there. Here I was thinking I was so creative! I vowed not to look at anyone else's recipe so my recipe could truly be my own.

I have been keeping this stuff in the house a lot lately. I've been replacing regular milk with it just for kicks.

The risotto was also lightly flavored with ginger and scallions.

I made the risotto as a side dish. I decided that as long as we were on a Caribbean them, I would make a jerk sauce. I used the same spices I used on pork once: allspice, cinnamon, hot pepper, and nutmeg. I blended this with molasses, olive oil, and garlic.

My ~~victim~~ carrier for the sauce was a whole turkey breast, covered with the sauce before being slow roasted.

My turkey was seriously spicy, so the risotto was a nice creamy foil for it. I made grilled lemon zucchini and summer squash on the side mostly because I couldn't think of any other vegetable to make and the sale on these just jumped out at me at the store. I thought the risotto was a bit too rich. I would use less butter (or none) next time and add some lime juice and zest to freshen it up a bit. As I was cooking it, I thought it tasted a bit weird, but the finished product was pretty good and will be awesome with a few tweaks.

Jerky Turkey Breast

Ingredients

1 whole turkey breast - 4 lbs
1 Tbl allspice berries
1 tsp cinnamon
Few grates nutmeg
3-5 dried hot peppers stemmed and seeded (I used red chills and habeneros)
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbl molasses
1 tsp salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small pan over low heat, toast the allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and hot peppers. Your kitchen should smell like Christmas - in Hell.

In a mini food processor, coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, or other grinding device of your choice, add the toasted spices to the garlic, oil, molasses and salt. Process into a paste until relatively smooth (you won't likely get it completely smooth).

Rub the paste generously over the turkey. Roast for about 75-90 minutes. Let sit a few minutes and serve.

Coconut Risotto

Ingredients

2 Tbl butter
2 Tbl olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup arborio or similar rice
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
2" piece of ginger, cut in a few small chunks
3 scallions, sliced, green parts only

In a small saucepan mix the coconut milk, ginger, chicken stock together and bring to a gentle simmer. Keep warm on the stove.

Heat butter and olive oil in a larger saucepan. Cook onion until transparent. Add garlic and cook a minute or two until it becomes fragrant.

Add rice and cook until grains are coated and start to look translucent.

Slowly add the simmering stock mix about a ladleful at a time. Stir until absorbed. Keep adding stock and stirring till absorbed. Stir in scallions and serve.

What Else Can I Do with Pork?

2011-06-08T06:07:00.000-04:00

I was craving pork tenderloin. I had to have pork tenderloin. There was a deep-seated feeling in my soul that cried out for pork tenderloin and assured me that life as I knew it would end if I didn't have pork tenderloin. I knew that the next time I made dinner, it would have to be pork tenderloin.

Unfortunately, the store was out of pork tenderloin.

How about some really big thick pork loin chops?

So I'm cool with this, but the next question is, "What do I do with them?"

Such is the life of a food blogger. If you want to stay relevant, you have to keep it fresh. If I was going to make pork chops, I was going to blog about it. If I was going to blog about it, I had better make a pork dish that wasn't the same old pork dish. Otherwise, why would anyone want to read my blog?

I had made pork with oranges, with limes and oranges, with mangoes in two ways. I had made it with port (and pomegranate), and brandy, and sherry, and bourbon and more bourbon as well as stuffed with sausage. What else was left? What could I do with pork that I had never done before that would be totally TERP-worthy?

I first considered fruit. Did I want it fruit-flavored, and if so, what fruit?

I never made pork with raspberries before.

Next I started raiding the cabinets again. I needed something more than just raspberries. What would go with them?

Limes! Chipotle! Raspberry vinegar!

Sear in a pan.

Glaze.

Finish in the oven and serve!

Inspiration is saved once more.

The pork tasted of fresh fruit and lots of spice with just enough burn on the throat. I would consider putting this sauce on chicken as well. I lost a bit of sauce when I cut the meat off the bone for presentation though. Next time I put a big sloppy chop on the plate! I would also reserve a little glaze before glazing the chops to drizzle over this.

Sir Pickypants did not go hungry. I had the chipotle and limes, so I took a cue from the other Kevin over at Closet Cooking who had a good recipe for fish tacos using lime and chipotle. I didn't bother with the taco part. Just made some nice spicy fish.

Asparagus seems a little atypical for the flavors, but it's local. I thought I'd be a little PC.

Raspberry Lime and Chipotle Pork Chops

2-4 thick pork chops, about 12 oz. each
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup fresh raspberries
1/4 cup raspberry balsamic vinegar
Juice and zest of one lime
1 tsp honey
1 tsp chipotle powder.

Heat over to 400 degrees.

Puree berries in a blender until they are very smooth. Press puree through a sieve to remove seeds. In a small saucepan combine puree, vinegar, lime juice, zest, honey and chipotle powder. Bring to a boin and reduce to a simmer. Simmer 20 minutes or until nice and thick like a barbecue sauce.

Sprinkle chops liberally with salt and pepper. Brown them well on each side in a hot, ovenproof pan.

Remove from heat and cover them with the raspberry sauce. Place pan in the oven and roast an additional 10 minutes (less if your chops are not so thick).

Arrosto - Biggest of Birthday Bashes

2011-05-30T08:39:00.001-04:00

The city of Port Chester, NY is a city where you will never go hungry. In Port Chester you can find anything from hole-in-the-wall South and Central American takeout to Brazilian rodizio to pizza places to Mario Batali-owned restaurants. That meant when it came time to celebrate Mom's big landmark birthday this year, it made sense to stay in the neighborhood. Last week we celebrated the birthday with friends (go two posts down for the cake). This week it was time for the family to really celebrate.

We chose Arrosto, a relatively new restaurant that recently had the seal of approval from The New York Times.

This building has housed a few different restaurants over the years, although they have always been Italian ones in my memory. From the outside it's a very attractive place with red awnings and plenty of outdoor tables.

Inside it's sleek and simple with lots of wood and wine bottles on the walls.

There is a small portion of the kitchen that's open, so you can see the chef finishing dishes and seeing the signature grilled meats.

We had 12 people so they wouldn't give us a table unless we had a very early reservation. They treated us well though. When SPP and I arrived with his mother and her friend, not everyone arrived and the baskets of bread were already laid out. We had crusty bread and breadsticks and foccaccia. Instead of butter we had some white bean dip (although they did end up bringing us butter upon request).

Arrosto offers several appetizer options including salumi and cheese platters. We opted to get two full antipasto platters with four cheeses, speck, prosciutto, mortadella, duck rillette and a couple of other meats I don't remember. It also came with bowls of ricotta mixed with truffle honey and some crostini to spread it on. I only really liked one of the cheeses other than the ricotta, but the meats were all awesome.

We ordered some margarita pizzas for the kids. These were not up to kid pizza standards though. According to my niece, "It looked like someone just put the cheese on." She feels pizza cheese needs to be evenly sprinkled. One of the kids just at the pizza and took the cheese off. I decided to take a piece off of their hands!

Arrosto's signature dishes, as the name would suggest, are large, fire grilled meats - whole roasted cuts meant to be shared by 3-4 people. They list several on the menu, but they only ever offer two at a time. That's too bad because they mentioned a pork braciola that sounded wonderful, but weren't offering it that night. Four members of our party decided to split the red snapper that was offered that night. Sir Pickypants was among them. He never read the menu where it said it was wrapped in proscuitto though. He pulled the ham off and ate the fish. I tried to eat the ham, but it tasted too fishy. He was the only one with complaints as far as I know. It was certainly a nice presentation.

I opted for lamb on top of creamy polenta. I thought the lamb was just a tad tough, although well seasoned and the polenta was wonderful. It also came with fava beans, which I learned that night I'm not all that fond of. The chunks of sausage were unexpected, but definitely appreciated!

We also had ordered some side dishes for the table like a gigante bean gratin and some nice roasted potatoes. The potatoes had some parmesan sprinkled on them and Sir Pickypants acted as if they were poisoned.

Finally it was time for dessert. The offerings all looked wonderful. It was hard to choose. Most of us ended up going for the Nutella budino though. This was delicious, filled with hazelnuts and super-rich.

All in all I would say Arrosto makes a good effort, but can be a little uneven. I suspect that as a new-ish restaurant they are still working out the kinks. I would definitely go back in the future and see how they are shaping up. However, my husband was not happy with the place so I doubt if I go again, it will be with him.

Mom seemed to think the dinner was lovely and she had a great time celebrating a major birthday with her children and grandchildren around her, so we had a lovely night regardless!

Two For This Week

2011-05-28T06:27:00.003-04:00

Did anyone see Darius on Cooking for Real this past weekend? Always cool to see a fellow blogger being recognized on TV. I’d say he’s just as cool a guy on screen as he on the internet.

I’m amazed at how a food blogger can receive national attention like that just by catching the right person’s eye. How can I do that? I want to be on TV and have people love my blog.

Hey Sunny Anderson, I know you are one of the few television food personalities who actually reads the blogs of ordinary folks and participates in ordinary forums (or is that fora?). If you’re reading this, can I be on your show? I can be at the FN studios within the hour if you just say the word.

Anyway, I was glad I watched the show because I was definitely inspired by it. Anderson made smothered steaks. After cooking off some gorgeous ribeyes (and I want to convince Darius and the other guest on the show that a rare steak is a true joy), she made a gravy with onions, herbs, and sour cream. Wow did it look good! It was pure, fattening, comfort food at its best.

It definitely put the bug in me to make something similar. Smothered steaks would be out of the questions in a dinner for two, but there are plenty of ways to make smothered chicken.

I found a ridiculous numbers of ways to make smothered chicken on the internet. It’s amazing how many baked, stewed, and fried chicken recipes can be “smothered”.

I decided to start with the most basic and comforting chicken recipe out there: a coated and pan-fried chicken cutlet. On top of that I would put creamy and onion-studded gravy.

I coated my chicken with the standard flour-egg-crumb mixture. I used rice flour and nut meal in place of AP flour and crumbs. These were fried up and kept warm while I worked on the gravy.

Onions were cooked down to a nice sweet softness and then I thickened up some chicken stock. Wine, mustard and heavy cream finished it off.

A week ago this meal would have been totally appropriate. Even though it’s almost Memorial Day, comfort food weather has stuck around for most of the spring. It has been consistently chilly and rainy for most of March, April and May. This week, in typical New York fashion, summer has decided to arrive. It’s hot and sunny and I’m thinking more of veggies and grilling than of chicken and gravy, but I am the DisOrder Cook and I don’t do what’s expected of me.

I admit the gravy looks a little weird, but it was pretty tasty.

Anderson served some seriously rich mashed potatoes on the side. I decided to give our arteries a break and use roasted fingerling potatoes with garlic and lemon and parsley and then just some green beans on the side.

Smothered Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded lightly
Flour for dredging (I used rice flour) + 1 Tbl
Salt and pepper
4 Tbl oil, divided
2 cups breadcrumbs, almond meal, or hazelnut meal
1 large onion, diced
2-4 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup white wine
2 Tbl Dijon mustard
½ cup heavy cream

Mix flour with salt and pepper and dredge chicken breasts well. Dip in egg and coat well with crumbs/nut meal.

Heat 2 Tbl olive oil in a large pan. Cook chicken breasts till cooked through, about 5-7 minutes per side depending on thickness. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Add remaining 2 Tbl of oil to pan. Cook onions until soft and add the garlic and cook until fragrant. Move the onions to one side and add flour to the pan. Cook a few minutes until it is nicely toasted. Add wine and chicken stock, Whisk in quickly and keep whisking over low heat until sauce is thick. Add mustard and cream and mix in well.

Serve chicken breasts with gravy on top.

Moving Right Along...

Wow. I actually cooked two new recipes this week!

I had a huge craving later in the week for my roasted pepper cream sauce. So far I have made it plain and with tomatoes. I decided to try another way - with pesto. I still had some pesto in my freezer (used up the last of it just in time for me to start growing basil on the balcony again) so I thought about a roasted red pepper pesto sauce.

I wanted gnocchi, but couldn't find any gluten-free gnocchi at the store and wasnt' inclined to make any. I used regular pasta and to give it more substance added some Italian sausage (shrimp for the hubs).

The only thing that takes any time here is the prep for the peppers, which can be done ahead of time. The rest of the recipe can just be whirred together in less time than it takes the pasta to cook.

Red Pepper and Pesto Cream Sauce

Ingredients

4 red bell peppers, stemmed, seeded and halved
Olive oil for brushing
1 pinch red pepper flakes
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup pesto sauce (not too hard to make your own, just saying)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 pound of your favorite pasta, cooked
Sausage, shrimp, or whatever meat you like

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Brush peppers lightly with olive oil and roast for 30 minutes or until skin starts to blister. Place peppers in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit 20 minutes. Carefully peel off the skins.

Add peppers and all remaining ingredients except cream and proteins to the food processor. Blend until well mixed thoroughly. Add cream. Pour over cooked pasta. Add protein if desired.

So I Tried Something New

2011-05-18T20:32:00.000-04:00

All my life I have loved baking. I don’t just love it because I love baked goods either. I love the sense of accomplishment I feel when I have made something from scratch. I love the Zen I get from measuring and mixing. I love using the best ingredients I can get my hands on, knowing I’m making something so much better than a store-bought treat. I love the idea that I’m taking on a challenge others might not take on.

Over the years I haven’t backed down from too many challenges. I have made yeast breads and rolls, pies, custards, and candies. There are some pastries I haven’t tried (like puff pastry) but I’ve attempted many desserts at least once.

I have had success with some desserts more than others. There have been times when a single failure has turned me off from ever trying that recipe again.

As I grow older, I sometimes question the wisdom of my baking efforts. Years of baking haven’t made me any better at it. I still churn out patchwork pie crusts and lopsided cakes. I do better with cookies and ice cream and puddings since they don’t have a set shape. As much as I love baking I’m not sure I have the touch to be a really good baker. Sure my desserts taste good, but I have to wonder if the lack of visual appeal can turn people off.

Despite this, I still find myself wanting to take on a dessert challenge now and then. Since I started this blog I have made my first doughnuts as well as finally being successful with cream puffs. I may be discouraged from time to time, but I still keep going and finding new tastes to try.

That brings me to the main point of this post (if you’re a regular reader of TERP, you know how much I have to ramble on with stories or contemplative blather before I arrive at the point of the post). I do get those bugs up my butt now and again to make a specific food I have never made before (or haven’t made in a very long time due to a past flop). My current obsession is homemade dulce de leche.

Dulce de leche has been the hot dessert ingredient for the past few years. It shows up in cakes and cookies and ice cream. Most recipes I see that incorporate it suggest you buy it in a jar. Making it homemade is a long slow process that most cooks don’t have time for. There is no shame it buying it.

Homemade dulce de leche may be a slow process, but it didn’t seem like a difficult one. I decided that I really had to try making it myself. All I needed was a few hours at home.

I surfed the net like crazy for a recipe. You would not believe how many recipes out there are “shortcut” recipes that use condensed milk. I wanted to make it completely from scratch. I finally found Alton Brown’s recipe. I’m not an Alton Brown fan and find his recipes don’t work more often than they do, but he was offering me a from-scratch recipe and I took a chance.

After 3 hours of simmering, I ended up with this. The consistency was on the thin side. It wasn't gooey and sticky as I thought it would be. The directions said to simmer it until it was reduced to one cup and was a dark caramel color. It was more like 2 cups than one, but I didn't know how much more cooking the sugar could stand. The color was becoming very dark. It tasted pretty good though and I knew it would serve my purposes.

So what were my purposes you ask?

Well, this weekend some of my horse people friends got together to throw my mother a party for her upcoming landmark birthday. The host of the party instructed me to "bring one of your outrageous desserts." I have always been the designated dessert maker for occasions like this. I was ready and willing to make something with my new dulce de leche.

I knew exactly what I should bring. Emily's Mexican Milk Chocolate Cake. It's chocolate, it uses dulce de leche, and it's a recipe of Emily's, so I knew it had to be good. It seems every time I go to a party with this particular group of people, I end up making one of Emily's recipes.*

I definitely was a bit fearful. I was going to a party for a major birthday for Mom and I wanted a cake that looked nice. I wanted to present something that was at least symmetrical. Could I do that?

I hit one snag when I started baking. The recipe calls for both butter and oil. I never used to keep anything other than olive oil or butter in the house. Vegetable oil is made from soybeans - which I try very hard to avoid. I think canola oil is just plain gross. However, since I now have a deep fryer, I am more inclined to have oil in the house. I was sure I had some. When it came time to bake the cake, I found out I was wrong.

I ended up using a whole stick of butter instead. Emily's recipe calls for combining the oil, butter, sugar, and eggs together. Since I was only using butter I stuck with the more traditional route of creaming the butter, adding the sugar, and then adding the eggs one at a time. I crossed my fingers and stuck it in the oven.

My layers came out nice and even- almost. I was shocked. I made the frosting. It was buttery and rich, but not too sweet thanks to the addition of cocoa powder with the milk chocolate. When I piled them on top of each other, there was a bit of a gap between the layers in one spot. I didn't have quite enough frosting to fill it in. When I took the photo, I took it from the "good side" of the cake.

The cake was delicious and much loved by all party guests. The consistency of the cake was very dense and brownie-like (I don't know if it was supposed to be that way or if it was caused in part by my tinkering with the recipe.) The chocolate was subtle and balanced nicely with the cinnamon that spiked the dulce de leche. Guests who said they really weren't all that into cake took second slices. I made sure Mom took the leftovers home, which she was more than happy to do. No one seemed to notice the gap.

I still have a fair amount of dulce-de-leche left in the jar. I have all sorts of plans for it. Ice cream anyone? How about some pie?

*One time I made her chocolate coconut bread pudding and one of the party attendees, an employee of Martha Stewart, kept declaring it, "Yumm-o." I didn't know what to think.

Mad Pasta Experiments

2011-05-05T21:45:00.012-04:00

The bad news of the day is I have started to moderate comments here. I was never keen on having to do the extra work to approve comments. I figured as long as I used a captcha code to avoid comments that weren't from real human beings, I could just delete any comment I didn't like. That rarely ever happens (one advantage to a low-traffic blog is that you don't get much negative feedback or hate mail), so I never worried too much. I have been receiving some rather cleverly disguised spam lately, so I have decided to do something to discourage it.

Anyway, let's get on with today's recipe.

Ever see a recipe where you see a bunch of your favorite ingredients, a recipe that you're sure could be pretty good - except for one ingredient - and that ingredients is the major star player?

You probably haven't, Dear Reader, but me being as weird as I am, tend to run across this issue fairly frequently.

The recipe I'm talking about now is Pasta con Sarde. It's a pasta dish that contains many ingredients I love: fresh fennel, pine nuts, wine and onions. Raisins are added for sweetness, but since I have that weird quirk about raisins in savory food, I don't mind. The only problem is the fact that the starring ingredient is SARDINES. Ick poo!

I thought about a nice pasta recipe that would incorporate all of those great spring-like flavors and still have a nice richness about it. Sardines are oily and salty. What could I use to replace that?

Pancetta anyone? Oily and salty coming right up.

It's spring, so what could be more appropriate than a bulb of fennel and some ramps. I also had some fresh mint lying about.

I sauteed the fennel, mint, and ramps after browning off the pancetta. Sir Pickypants doesn't love fennel because it's hard and tough. I sliced it very thinly on the mandoline so it softened up nicely.

Into the sauce went some wine and chicken stock. The gluten-free pasta was tossed into the pan with toasted pine nuts and golden raisins. I also tossed in some of the fennel fronds. The whole thing was topped with pecorino and the pancetta chunks. I really wanted to use spaghetti, but the store was out of gluten-free spaghetti.

This was a really awesome pasta if I do say so myself . It was a bit sharp, a bit sweet, a bit crunchy and a bit chewy. I will definitely make this again and recommend you try it.

It was also very easy to make. I came home from work, sliced up the fennel, ramps and mint, gathered the rest of the ingredients, and then went to Zumba class. After Zumba class I put the water on to boil, browned the pancetta, toasted the pine nuts while the pancetta browned, and then was able to quickly cook up the veggies and throw it all together.

I had a hard time naming this pasta. As I see it, the recipe is just another one of my mad flavor experiments that I have been so fond of lately. It has some spring-like ingredients.

Springtime Pasta of the (dis)Ordered Mind

1 pound pasta of your choice
1/2" thick slice of pancetta, cut into small chunks
1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced on a mandoline, fronds reserved and chopped
6-8 ramps, cut in thin strips
1 Tbl chopped fresh mint
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
Copious amounts of pecorino

In a large saute pan cook pancetta chunks until fat has rendered and it is brown and crispy. Remove from pan and set aside. Drain off excess fat.

Add the fennel, mint, and ramps to the pan. Cook until fennel becomes soft.

Pour in the wine and broth. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer until reduced by half.

Cook pasta according to package directions. When cooked, toss the pasta in the pan with the vegetables. Then toss in the raisins, fennel fronds and pine nuts. If you are not married to Sir Pickypants, toss in the pancetta chunks and some of the cheese as well. If you are married to Sir Pickypants, only put the pancetta and cheese on your own plate.

Do You Think Maybe I Should Cook Something?

2011-05-03T19:09:00.000-04:00

Yeah. I know. Long time no post. I'm sure folks were thrilled to see nothing but a post about a fairly commonplace Easter brunch up there for a week.

Well, my life continues to be rather busy and I'm spending less time in the kitchen. I confess I still depend a bit on takeout and dining out and stretching the one or two easy meals I cook out over a couple of days. I wish I had more to blog about. I have bounced around a few non-recipe topics in my head, but haven't had much chance to sit down and write them out.

I decided this was getting silly. I had to cook something new. It wasn't just for this blog. It was to keep the cooking part of my brain from growing soft.

I decided to make some soup to carry to lunch during the week. Soup is easy and allows for lots of creativity.

I decided on a little variation on sweet potato soup. One of my favorite recipes is an Asian version filled with coconut milk and ginger. This soup went south of the border with flavors.

First I roasted and peeled my sweet 'taters.

I sauteed an onion with cumin, ancho chile powder, and my beloved chipotle powder.

Potato chunks went in and simmered a bit in chicken stock. I suppose the politically correct thing to do would be to use vegetable stock, making this soup totally vegan. I didn't do that because I had a nice quart of homemade chicken stock in my freezer and I wanted to use it.

Besides, chicken stock just tastes better.

Then I pureed it all and added a can of black beans and a bag of frozen corn.

Garnish with chopped fresh cilantro and you're good to to.

I wasn't in love with the starchy texture of the soup, but the flavor was pretty good.

Sweet Potato, Black Bean, and Corn Soup

2 large sweet potatoes, cut into chunks
2 Tbl olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 tsp ancho chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tbl chipotle powder
1 quart chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1lb bag of frozen corn kernels
Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Heat oven for 400 degrees. Spray the potato chunks with cooking spray and roast on a cookie sheet for about 30 minutes, or until soft.

In a large pot, saute the onions in olive oil. Add the chili powders and cumin and stir to coat the onions. Add the garlic and cook another minute or two.

Add the potatoes and stock to the pot. Simmer about 20 minutes or until they start to really break down. You can transfer this to a blender or food processor and puree in batches, or you can use a stick blender. Either way, blend until smooth.

Stir in corn kernels and black beans and cook until corn is heated through. Top with fresh cilantro and enjoy.

The Joy of the Extravagant Brunch

2011-04-26T19:10:00.000-04:00

It's a bit odd and a bit sad how things can change in a short period of time. Two years ago I hosted 16 people at my place for Easter dinner. It was a crazy day for sure.

Last year my family gathered at Mom's place in the evening after the most beautiful spring day spent at the barn with the ponies.

This year, it ended up just being Sir Pickypants and me. Mom decided to shuffle off to Chincoteague for the weekend. As for everyone else? That's a good question. (Sadly, honorary guest from last year, Tippy, has shuffled off this mortal plane.)

We made the best of it by booking brunch at the Crystal Springs Country Club. It has a nice view of the mountains and is right across the street from the stable. We could eat our brunch, change our clothes and spend the rest of the day riding.

It wasn't quite as beautiful day as it was last year (you know how much I love having warm sunny Easter days), but it was at least much warmer than it had been all week.

They seated us at a table by the window. We could see the barn from there.

We were sereneded by a jazz band.

Let's talk for a moment about how much I love love love love love love love big brunch buffets. As far as I'm concerned, the more over-the-top the better. I want the full breakfast and the omlet station and the carving station and every kind of cheese imaginable along with any number of hot dishes. Even if I don't want to eat it all, I love seeing it all there.

I always make two trips with buffets like this. I started with the cold stuff. Here I chose some mixed greens, some asparagus and mushroom salad, a few cubes of cheese, dried apricots, caprese salad, and melon with LOTS of prosciutto.

My next trip I decided to try the delicious looking pork tenderloin with mustard glaze and dried fruits along with a big ol' slice of lamb from the carving station. I put some home fries on the side.

I decided to skip the breakfast foods since I can get those at any diner or just make them myself. SPP loved their French toast though.

Here are the photos I took of the dessert buffet. Such pretty cupcakes.

Such pretty everything else.

These bunny-faced chocolate mousse cups were adorable, but I was just too full to take one. They haunt me now.

I ended up with some tiramisu, praline cake, chocolate cake with mousse on top, and a little bit of red velvet cake. Normally I think red velvet cake is rather overrated, but I'm glad I tried this because it was the best red velvet cake I ever had.

So it wasn't such a bad day after all. The sun decided to come out that afternoon making for a beautiful riding day. If we get to do this again next year, I won't miss the big family gathering so much. SPP and I both agree that we are lucky to at least have each other.

Another Orange Flop? I Hope Not

2011-04-19T17:00:00.002-04:00

Once again I was in that conundrum of having beautiful pork chops from the farmer's market and no immediate ideas of what I should do with them.

After buying some oranges I started to think about one of my previous flops. I made pork chops with an attempt at an orange-honey glaze. They would have been fine if the honey I used hadn't been gross. Italian chestnut honey only sounds like a good idea.

So I considered the idea of making another honey-orange glaze and seeing if I could have some fun with it.

I don't know what made the gears turn in my head the way they did. I don't know why I grabbed certain things off the supermarket shelves. I don't know why I thought I should throw certain flavors into the recipe, but I did.

I started with fennel seeds, toasted in a pan.

I simmered them with honey and the juice of two oranges along with a little zest. Towards the end I added some chopped fresh mint. I considered adding some more savory spices or something salty, but I left it as it was. Why not have something completely sweet on my pork chops? People use sweet applesauce don't they?

I felt like such a mad scientist that I almost considered this stuff. Yes, I still have it. I can't bear to get rid of it because it cost so darn much money. It's Italian and I'm hoping to go to Italy later this year and I thought it might get me in the mood...

...I then slapped myself repeatedly and told myself to use the local stuff. This stuff really is local - very politically correct.

After the glaze had simmered down, I added some chopped fresh mint. Mint? Fennel? Honey? Orange juice? Is this going to work?

I browned my chops, stuck them in the oven covered with the glaze and hoped for the best.

I'd say they were pretty darned good. The mix of flavor wasn't too weird and was a bit unexpected after using more conventional citrus glazes for years.

I served these alongside some creamed spinach. Why? Because there was a lot of spinach at the farmer's market and these days I can't seem to make spinach without wanting to chop it up with dairy products.

I made two chops and used some of the glaze to cover some shrimp for Sir Pickypants. It was easy to just roast the shrimp in the oven at the same time the chops were finishing. He liked the flavors too.

When he came home and saw me tossing shrimp in the sauce and spreading them on a cookie sheet he asked what I was making for dinner and I said, "Shrimp." He said, "That's great for Passover." Whoops! I hadn't even been thinking about that. It was Seder night and I was making shrimp AND pork. I remain the Meshugge Shiksa.

Pork Chops with Orange Fennel Glaze

2-4 center-cut pork chops, 1" thick

salt and pepper

1 Tbl fennel seeds

Juice of two oranges

1/4 cup mild honey

2 tsp chopped fresh mint

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

In a small pan toast fennel seeds over low heat until they are very fragrant.

In a small saucepan combine juice, seeds, and honey. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer till the liquid is reduced by half. Add the mint.

Sprinkle pork chops with salt and pepper on both sides. In a heavy, ovenproof skillet brown the chops well on each side. Pour the glaze over them and make sure they are well coated (you might want to strain out the seeds first).

Transfer skillet to the oven and cook for an additional 6 minutes.

Inspiration in the Refrigerator

2011-04-12T21:29:00.003-04:00

It's Friday night and I didn't know what to cook. I already had in the fridge some old leftover wine, some fresh thyme, and some garlic. I decided to just go with it. I bought some chicken and some mushrooms and made a recipe so easy that I don't even need a recipe.

Dredge boneless, skinless thighs in flour (I used almond flour here) and cook in olive oil.

Mince 4 cloves of garlic and add that to the pan with some sliced mushrooms and fresh thyme (a tablespoon maybe?).

Deglaze pan with 1 cup of white wine. Reduce down a minute. Add a pat of butter.

Pour over chicken.

It's not a particularly special recipe, but goes to show you that you can easily cook dinner if you get creative with what you have in the house. It was a perfect "Casual Friday" meal.

Then there was breakfast.

I didn't eat all of those tomatoes in sherry sauce from earlier in the week and didn't know what to do with them. I had served some broccoli on the side that night as well and some of that was left over too.

I chopped the broccoli into little bits and warmed it in a pan with the tomatoes and some pancetta chunks. Two fried eggs went on top.

Eggs on tomato-broccoli hash!

I was expecting this to be a throwaway dish, but it turned out to be really delicious. Somehow all of the flavors worked really well together.

Chicken with Tomatoes and Sherry

2011-04-07T18:52:00.001-04:00

I promised a new recipe this week and I'm not going back on my word. Sorry about it being yet another chicken recipe, but that does tend to be the main protein in the Pickypants-(dis)Order household. As I see it, always needing to cook the same thing means I have to always keep my creative juices flowing.

I've been on quite the roasted cherry tomato kick lately. As mentioned in this blog and many other blogs, long slow cooking makes winter tomatoes bearable. Actually, I shouldn't be so unkind and say bearable. It makes them quite tasty. I keep finding ways to enjoy sticking them in recipes.

This tomato kick triggered a memory of a recipe I hadn't made in years. It was a recipe from The Frugal Gourmet called Chicken with Tomatoes, Shallots and Vermouth. I'm not sure why I took it out of the regular recipe circulation because it was a pretty tasty and easy recipe (as I remembered it anyway).

I realized I had no vermouth, but I did have a few other liquors that I enjoy using in recipes hanging out in the cabinet. One of them was sherry. I learned a few years ago that tomatoes are great cooked with sherry (although I must make the startling confession that I learned such a thing from a Rachael Ray recipe). I decided to adapts Old Jeff's recipe with sherry and maybe pep it up a bit.

In the end I decided not to pep it up too much. I had considered adding some pancetta (Shop Rite was out of smoked turkey tails. How dare they!) garlic and hot pepper. I decided against it for two reasons. The first is that I don't think recipes are always good loaded down with too many ingredients. Restraint can sometimes be the best ingredient of all. The second is that adding pancetta and hot pepper would make it taste too much like last week's pasta.

Start by browning your chicken well.

Shallots were mixed with a bit of garlic.

Add tomatoes and cook till soft and bursty.

Add sherry, some chicken stock and the chicken and simmer.

The dish was good, but subtle. It was almost like a twist on chicken cacciatore (another dish I feel needs no pile-on of ingredients). I think I would adjust the sherry/stock ratio a bit the next time. It probably didn't need quite so many tomatoes either. SPP seemed ambivalent, but I asked him if it was a keeper and he said yes.

Chicken with Tomatoes and Sherry

1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces
2 Tbl olive oil
4 large shallots, thinly sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 pints cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup dry sherry
1 cup chicken stock
Salt and pepper

Heat oil in a large pan big enough to hold all chicken pieces. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and brown well on each side. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Drain off some of the excess fat (you won't need it) and add shallots to pan. Cook over low heat until soft. Add garlic and cook a minute or two until fragrant.

Add tomatoes and cook until the soften and start to burst. Pour in the sherry and stock and deglaze the pan well, scraping up all of the brown bits at the bottom. Add chicken back into pan and bring to a simmer. Simmer 20 minutes or until cooked through, flipping chicken pieces over occasionally.

Placeholder Post

2011-03-31T09:03:00.000-04:00

First I wanted to do what I neglected to do in my last post. I wanted to thank everyone for their sweet congrats and insightful comments regarding my anniversary. TERP has the best readers, no doubt!

Second I want to apologize for the sparse recipes in the recent past and also for the upcoming weeks. This spring is a busy time as I am working on my spring dance recital as well as taking a voice class. Since classes are on consecutive nights, it doesn't leave me much time for cooking. I'm relying on restaurants and takeout much more than I would like to be and it will be that way for a little while. I'll cook once or twice a week and then eat leftovers for as long as they will last. I'm often not in the mood to start creating new recipes, so it's back through the blog archives to use my old favorites and standbys. (This blog really does serve a purpose!)

I have promised myself that I will come up with at least one new recipe next week. I figure I can do at least that much. Stay tuned...

Spaghetti Al'Amatriciana - with a Turkey Twist!

2011-03-25T19:00:00.001-04:00

I first discovered amatriciana sauce about 15-20 years ago when I was looking through an old Silver Palate cook book looking for some new ideas for pasta.

I liked the amatriciana recipe as soon as I saw it. I had never heard of the sauce before. It was not as common in cookbooks and restaurants as it is now. I liked that it was simple and had a mix of familiar flavors that all worked well together, but it wasn't your typical spaghetti and tomato sauce. The recipe called for onions, garlic, wine, tomatoes, and Canadian bacon. It had an unexpected sweet-smoky flavor beneath the typical flavor of tomatoes and onion and garlic.

As the years went on I started seeing more cooks and more recipes making amatriciana. The Canadian bacon was unique to the Sliver Palate. Most recipes I saw used bacon. Then as pancetta became more popular and more readily available, I started seeing it with pancetta.

These days true foodies know that authentic amatriciana sauce is only made with guanciale - cured pork cheeks. From what I have been reading on the Internet, many foodies will dispute what goes into a true amatriciana. Onions, wine, and garlic are all argued both for and against. However, guanciale reigns supreme for true amatriciana.

I took amatriciana off my repetoire years ago. Guanciale may be more common than it used to be, but it's still not easy to find without a special trip to an Italian market (Eataly may be too much of a trip for me, but Mario Batali did open another market locally.) I could substitute bacon or pancetta or even that Canadian bacon, but as my husband still claims pork products irritate his widdle tum-tum, I don't use it.

Why not use turkey bacon? You ask. Well, I don't like turkey bacon too much. I find most turkey bacon is this weird strip of pressed and formed meat. It's just too highly processed and it never tastes close enough to the real thing. Amatriciana recipes were officially retired.

Then one day I found these.

*Puts fingers in ears and waits while everyone screams "EWWWWWWWW WHAT IS THAT?"*

What are these? Well, maybe I can help you guess.

Are you the kind of person who always wants to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving, or at least be close to the person who carves the turkey so that you can have a certain piece of the turkey all to yourself? A piece that there is only one of?

Do you eat that piece of turkey in private for fear of ridicule (or because you have another family member who secretly wants it and you want to claim it for himself)?

Do you sneak into the kitchen while the turkey is being carved and quickly grab a certain something while no one is looking before it makes it to the table?

I know for years when my mother made Thanksgiving dinner I would always ask her for the carcass for soup-making purposes. Certain parts of that carcass never made it into the stock pot.

Do you not want to admit that something so loaded with fat is just so darned delicious?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

If you didn't, I'll clue you in. I'm talking about the back end. The tail. The part that goes over the fence last. THE BUTT. Maybe they don't always want to admit it, but turkey butts have their loyal fans and the gods help any family that has two turkey butt lovers.

I openly loved my turkey tails as a kid, but my mostly fat-phobic family started to instill a sense of shame about it as I grew older, so I stopped openly asking for it at Thanksgiving and began eating it on the sly. I found out as I grew older though that many tail lovers are coming out of the closet and now openly snack on the back end. My brother has admitted to eating a tail or two. I was even shocked when I found out my very calorie-conscious stepmother is an aficionado of the turkey tail.

You can imagine my joy when I was browsing the meat department at my local Shop Rite and discovered a package of turkey tails - SMOKED.

Yes, smoked turkey tails are my new best friend. I bought that package right away not even knowing what I was going to do with them (other than the obvious act of simply chowing down on them as a midnight snack). I put them in my freezer and pondered their purpose.

What I have discovered about smoked turkey tails is that they are the perfect substitute for bacon in recipes. Like bacon they are rich and fatty, and they are also sweet and smoky. I would even believe slices of smoked turkey tail would be great alongside eggs for breakfast. They have much more flavor than turkey bacon and don't taste so artificial.

So I decided to use turkey tails to rescue the amatriciana recipe.

I rendered the meat then added the usual suspects of hot peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes and wine.

I know there are plenty of chi chi recipes out there that use bucatini, but I stuck with spaghetti. My store had no bucatini. They did have artisinal perciatelli, and I can't tell the difference between bucatini and perciatelli, but they were way more money that I would want to pay for pasta!

Sorry for the rotten photo. I should have put it on a nice plate and stuck it under the light box, but it was late and I was hungry and just wanted to eat and not fuss with photography.

My sauce was very thick. I probably should have cut back on the tomatoes because you could eat this sauce with a fork. I might have thrown another hot pepper in there for a bit more bite. Many recipes call for sugar, but I'm trying not to use sugar in recipes unless I really feel it needs it. The turkey was delicious, but the rendering and cooking did make the bits a slightly rubbery. If I do this again, I will do a few tweaks like maybe just using one can of whole tomatoes instead of two cans of crushed.

Sir Pickypants said his tum-tum was bothering him a bit the next day. He said that maybe it was from the "sausage" I used in the pasta. I said it wasn't sausage, it was smoked turkey. He said, "Either way it was good."

Two things to know about this recipe. The first is it will take some time to cut your tails into little pieces. You need to cut around the coccyx bone as well as the little bones (feather attachments) at the back. Just factor in the time when you make the recipe. Second is that you don't need to add salt to this, so don't worry that I left it out of the ingredient list. The smoked tails provide all the salt you need.

Totally Inauthentic Spaghetti Al'Amatriciana

1 pound spaghetti

2 smoked turkey tails, cut into small bits

1 onion, finely diced

2 dried hot peppers, stemmed, seeded, and crushed into bits

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 28 oz. cans crushed tomatoes

1 cup white wine

Pecorino cheese for topping (optional)

In a large saute pan or saucepan render the turkey until it has given off much of its fat and outer skin is a little crispy. Drain off excess fat.

Cook onion in pan until soft. Add garlic and hot pepper flakes and cook until fragrant. Add tomatoes and wine and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Serve with sauce and pecorino cheese as desired.

TERP-A-Versary #4 Happy Birthday to The Essential Rhubarb Pie

2011-03-22T09:21:00.002-04:00

Can you believe it? I made it to yet another blogiversary! Can't believe I've been managing to come up with new topics and new recipes for that long!

Every time I hit a new anniversary, I get a little philosophical. Why do I do this? What do I get out of it? What does anyone get out of this? Am I just another mediocre, unimportant food blogger who has delusions about her own writing/cooking skills? Does it matter to me if that's all that I am?

Years ago before the days of blogs and universal internet access, I remember reading the columns in the local paper and thinking about how I would love to write a food column. I wanted write a humorous food column - something that would elicit a chuckle or two from the reader and yet still tackle the joy of cooking something. I wanted to build my recipes around a good story.

I think I forgot about that dream for many years until I began blogging. Originally I only had my non-food blog Shipwrecked & Comatose. Then I started hearing about this thing called a "food blog". I realized that I had my chance to write about food for my own enjoyment. I could write that column that I wanted to write years ago because there is now plenty of free space online to do so.

My main purpose in creating the blog was twofold. First I wanted to talk about food, one of my favorite topics, without having to bore the non-foodies who read my other blog. The other was to archive my recipe ideas and archive good recipes I found elsewhere. All too often I would come up with a recipe and people would ask, "How did you make that?" and because I never wrote things down, I could never really replicate. In fact, I started this blog making my recipes non-recipes where I would just write down, "I did this, then added that..."

Eventually I realized a good food blog has an actual recipe. I still believe in the philosophy that "a recipe is just a story about food," though and I think the endless anecdotes about food and my life around it is one of the major elements of this blog (along with geek references and bad puns). If I were to say what my blog is about, what its theme is, I would have to say it's simply that I want to tell a story -and that story happens to include dinner!

Still it's hard sometimes to feel confident as a blogger. So many blogs I read are by professional (or at least part-time professional) food writers or serious food competitors or folks with a much more glamourous life than I have. I'm not working my own farm - or even elaborate garden - in the country and I'm not a city person who travels the globe finding every exotic dish out there. I feel rather ordinary at times. What am I doing that thousands of other hobbyist home cooks aren't doing? Everyone is a critic too. So many bloggers and forum participants have all kinds of ideas on what makes a bad food blog. Bad photos? Check! Boring recipes? Check! Bad writing? Hard to say. That's a subjective topic and I am often told I'm a good writer - by my very biased friends and family! Is what I'm doing really worth anything?

But I think this post is starting to feel more like a pity party than a celebration. That's not what this post is meant to be about. When I started TERP I wasn't sure if anyone would actually read it. Then some people did start reading it. I saw how many people were reading other blogs. I could get two visitors while other blogs had fifty. I wasn't sure what I was or wasn't doing to make people like me. Why couldn't I be one of the cool kids? Over the years I had a revelation.

There is a quote I picked up from a fairly obscure off-Broadway (brief run on Broadway) musical that I like to use. "I'd rather be 9 people's favorite thing than 100 people's 9th favorite thing." I look at some of the seriously popular blogs out there. I see the pressure they must be under to keep their huge audiences happy. I see the hundreds of comments they receive on every post that they have to stay on top of. I find myself eschewing those blogs these days. Recently I found a recipe I liked and wanted to use on Smitten Kitchen and was going to comment on the blog, but I would have been one of 500 commenters. Would what I have to say really matter? I would be just another blogger who dropped by to look at a recipe. I haven't read The Pioneer Woman in months. I don't even have it on my reading list anymore. Occasionally I do get a response in the comments to my comment on one of the more widely read blog and it tickles me to death when one of them likes my comment enough to pop over here and say hello. I don't expect it.

Flying under the radar has its advantages too. I don't get featured in any stories about the Top 10 Worst Food Blogs Ever. I don't receive hate mail from Rachael Ray fans. On the down side I don't get freebies from food companies. I always wish some food company could make me an offer that I could give products away to readers. That would be a nice thing to do!

I'm really happy that I have the readers I have. My readership is small, but I love you all for your loyalty. Some of you have been commenting here for nearly all four years that I have been up. That's what really keeps this blog going.

In the end I can't write a blog based on what other people think a blog should be. It's my blog. It is what it is - bad photos and all. If I'm not writing it for me and only for me, then I need to stop blogging.

I believe I got exactly what I wanted from this blog: A place to log my recipe ideas and to just blather about whatever food topic is in my brain. I also got something I didn't expect at first, but it definitely the best thing about having this blog. This blog brought me friends. Truly my newfound foodie friends over the years are the best thing about blogging!

Bringing Back Casual Friday

2011-03-14T18:48:00.000-04:00

You know these kinds of posts. It's Friday night. I'm home to cook, but I want a nice, easy leisurely dinner with no complex recipes.
What was on tap this Friday?

Remember that homemade pesto from my "garden" that I froze last fall? Well it seems I promptly forgot about it. I decided it was time to trot it out.

I defrosted 6 cubes of frozen pesto and then added them to some cream for a pesto cream sauce (I never said "Lowfat Friday").

I added some thawed frozen broccoli (that vegetable guilt) as well as some roasted cherry tomatoes. Roasting cherry tomatoes makes them way more palatable this time of year when good tomatoes are a distant dream. Oddly enough, brilliant blogger Bellini Valli had the same idea recently (and I refer you to her blog for directions on how to do it). Lastly I tossed it with gnocchi. Yes, they were frozen gnocchi and not homemade. I just said it was Casual Friday.

Comfort food perfection and so easy!

Classic Repost - Some Thoughts of "Foodieism" and Obesity

2011-03-09T12:07:00.008-05:00

I recently deleted my MySpace account. I spent some time taking my favorite posts and reposting them as "classics" on Shipwrecked & Comatose's new location here on Blogger. Before deleting the account I made one last run through that blog and tried to find any other blogs I felt were worth saving or taking a second look at.

There was one that caught my eye that I hadn't saved elsewhere yet. It was a blog that had been on my mind since I read a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly. Many bloggers were in an uproar over it. The article, as much as I could figure out behind the three-dollar words and overbearing tone, is that "foodies" are just glorified, elitist gluttons who use their love of food and cooking to lord over the common folk and rape the planet.

Foodies, according to the author, will eat anything and everything to somehow prove themselves, and justify their lifestyle. If that means eating a tortured house cat, so be it. Foodies delight in watching slaughter because they need to prove to vegetarians that they know where their food comes from. Foodies don't understand how real people eat. They can afford to eat the way they do and shove that knowledge down everyone else's throats.

I think I can join my fellow bloggers in taking exception to much of that. We all love to eat. We all love to cook. I think the blogging community can agree that most citizens of the developed world would be much healthier if we all ate more fresh food and less processed crap did our own cooking. Beyond that, I don't think we all feel the need to eat everything and anything just to prove that we are willing to do so.

We all have our limits and our preferences. I'm not willing to eat an animal that is acknowledged in our culture to be a house pet (unless the circumstances were really dire). I acknowledge that it may be hypocritical, but is it any less hypocritical than saying you will only eat meat from a kosher animal? We all have our reasons for drawing the line at certain animals. I am willing to acknowledge that there are places in this world where house pets are a silly luxury and it would be a waste to not eat an edible animal that would otherwise compete with you for food sources. On one hand, I have not eaten veal since I was in high school. On the other hand, I have developed an unfortunate taste for foie gras in recent years. Some folks will go to great lengths to taste new and exciting animals. I personally don't care if I never try certain ones. All of us are different.

Then there are foods that I simply don't like. I say I'm not really a foodie because I'm picky. I may be pickier than most, but that doesn't mean every food lover in the world loves every food. Most of us have limits on what we don't like. I hate foods that foodies stereotypically love like seafood, olives, and blue cheeses. I may be extreme, but I'm not alone. I don't have to enjoy everything and neither does any other food lover.

However, there is a dark side to the whole foodie movement. This is the side that I can't deny. This is where the accusations of elitism ring true with me. I understand them well. When I found this old blog, I knew I had to repost it because it does address that one critique that I can't help agreeing with.

*******************************************************
Sometimes phrases like "local and seasonal", "sustainable", and "slow food" make me want to tear my hair out and commit uncharacteristic acts of violence.

Why should I feel that way? After all, the whole "localandseasonal" movement is supposed to be aimed at people like me. Isn't the revered localandseasonal all about us liberal treehuggers? Shouldn't I be supporting it with every ounce of my being?

The thing is I'm not just a treehugger. I'm also a champion of the downtrodden and a believer in open access, and that's where localandseasonal rubs me the wrong way.

It all started with a newspaper headline.

Kevin and I dream of one day getting ourselves out of this hellhole known as NY and retiring to the country. One of our dream destinations is Chincoteague of course. Because we like to dream of the place as our final home, as well as our favorite place for vacation, Kevin subscribes to the local paper, The Chincoteague Beacon. It helps us keep tabs of what's happening down there.

The headliner for this week's issue was that Accomack County, VA is the fattest county in Virginia. It is the Number One county for obesity.

How can that be? I wondered. If I lived in that area, I believe I'd be so very healthy. There are beaches for swimming. There are horse farms for riding. There are quiet streets for biking, tails for hiking, and lovely estuaries for kayaking. The area is surrounded by farms. Chincoteague hosted not one, but two farmer's markets the week I was there. There is also a large farm-fresh produce market on the island and several small vegetable stands. There is fresh seafood for sale everywhere. If you're willing to stick a net in the water, you can pull out some fresh seafood yourself. How can people be anything but healthy in such a place?

Perhaps I should back up and think about a few things for a moment.

I remember during my first trip to Chincoteague, my mother made the observation that many of the locals were missing teeth. She thought it was a pretty good indication of the economic situation of the area. In today's messed-up world of health care, good dental care is somehow a luxury and not a necessity. Even people with health insurance don't always have dental coverage. It's not something I'm used to, having grown up in a wealthy NYC suburb where some quality time with the orthodontist is as much a rite of passage as a bar mitzvah or one's first car, and cavities are few and far between.

When I go down to Virginia, I often visit relatives in Ocean City first. When I drive the back roads from Ocean City to Chincoteague, I see some of the worst poverty imaginable. I see homes that don't look as if they could possibly be habitable, but still have a car in the driveway or a flag on the porch, or other random signs of life. The area is definitely depressed.

I often personally find it hard to be politically correct with my eating habits. I have a two nearby farmer's markets that take place near my home on weekends. There is one near my office during the week. I still have trouble making time to get to them. I spend my weekends in the rural areas of Sussex County NJ where farmstands abound in summer, yet I don't always have a chance to stop by and buy something (although I find it funny that I drive to NJ to buy "local"). I don't belong to a CSA because I'm not sure it would be economical for me to buy all of that farm bounty for a two-person household(and also none of the CSAs in the area deliver through the farm markets where I shop). I am supposed to be the kind of person who wants to, and should be able to buy all of the fresh local produce she wants, but often I don't. It's often just not convenient, and it's also not always cheap.

Imagine if I lived in the kind of poverty I often see on vacation. If I can't always make it to the farmer's market because the one job I work gets in the way, how can someone working two or three jobs do it? What if you don't have a car and the farm markets or stands are not in walking distance, or accessible to public transportation? How about the cost? A dollar can buy me a cheap mac-and-cheese kit that feeds at least two people. That same dollar won't buy me two apples at the farmer's market.

Then there is the exercise thing. How many of the people living in these shacks have the leisure time or energy to walk? The roads are great for bike riding? Great. How will they buy the bicycles, or the kayaks to explore those estuaries? Can they afford the fishing equipment and the licenses to fish? Do they have hours to spend at the beach to perfect their body boarding skills? (You also have to pay a permit fee to park at Assateague for the beach.)

Remember the 80s when ~~Satan~~ Reagan said that poor people obviously weren't going hungry because they were fat? They're not fat because they're eating too much. They're fat because they're eating too much of the only food they can afford. It's low quality nutrition combined with lack of safe and plentiful opportunities for exercise. I should never have questioned why a place as beautiful as Accomack County, where opportunities to be healthy are plentiful, has the nighest obesity rate in Virginia. It's obvious. There is just so much poverty. The links between poverty and obesity sometimes seem to be ignored by both the localandseasonal proponents and the "let them eat more cake" crowd who thinks they're not hungry because they're fat.

This is why I join those who call people like Alice Waters elitist. Don't preach about good health to the choir when the people who most need fresh food have no access to it, and couldn't afford to eat in your restaurant. Michael Pollan can kiss my fat, cellulite-riddled butt with his plea to grow your own food. If you can't afford your own land, the seeds and equipment to sow it, and the apparatus and chemicals needed to keep the vermin from eating your crops before you do, that's pretty useless advice. (I do like his advice to avoid eating anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Thanks for telling me I shouldn't eat tofu, Mike!)

In the end I'm not surprised that Accomack has the highest obesity rate of any county in Virginia. I would like to know if anyone else is surprised and if anyone is going to do anything about it.

Justify Your Subscription - The "Winter" Braise and More from Laos

2011-02-28T11:11:00.011-05:00

When October comes and fall weather makes its visit, I notice many of my blog buddies anticipating the hearty comfort foods of fall and winter - particularly soups, stews, and braises.

I always agree wholeheartedly with them in spirit, but not always in practice. I cook according to my own whims. Sometimes it's because I see a recipe or ingredient I want to try or because I happen to have certain ingredients in the house, or sometimes it's because I just have a craving for something. That craving can be ice cream in January or fried chicken on a hot July day.

It's not spring yet, but you can see if from here. Right now foodies are thinking of this summer's garden and the first ramps and fiddleheads of the year. Everyone is tired of winter and winter food.

I notice all too well that it's not spring yet. We have another three weeks of official winter and because this is New York, the Vernal Equinox does not guarantee spring weather in any way. The snow may stop (if we're lucky), but plenty of rainy, chilly days will follow and comfort food may very well still be in demand.

Well, at least that's my excuse for making a braised dish recently. Once again, I marked a "must make" recipe in Food & Wine to make sure that I am speding the money on this subscription wisely.

The first recipe was Cider Vinegar Braised Chicken Thighs. I was a good girl and mostly followed this recipe to the letter except for using some breasts along with the chicken thighs. I suppose it would have been even more comforting to serve it with noodles, but I continued to be a good, almost virtuous, girl and used brown rice instead.

I was a little afraid of how this might taste as my husand is not a fan of vinegary foods. The cooking with the leeks and carrots mellowed it out so that I had a sauce that was tangy, but not throat-burning. It was a nice change from always staying safe and braising in wine.

Next up was more Laotian food. The Loatian recipes in the February issue continue to haunt me. This time I went for Lemongrass Cilantro Chicken with Honey Dipping Sauce.

I LOVED the flavors in the recipe, so I believed I had a winner on my hands as soon as I saw it.

I made some adjustments to it though. First the recipe called for boneless, skin-on chicken breasts. Those are not easy to find and I wasn't in the mood to start deboning breasts. I just bought them with the bones on and kept the meat on the bone.

You are supposed to grill them. Had I bought boneless, skinless breasts I might have done that - if it were July. I don't like using my grill pan in the winter because it smokes up my place too much and I can't exactly open a window when it's freezing cold outside. Instead I roasted it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and then blasted it under the broiler for 4 minutes to crisp up the skin.

I added mint to the marinade and also sprinkled some mint on top of the chicken before roasting it rather than after. I love fresh mint.

I didn't serve it with rice. I dug into my archives and pulled out my old Tropical Cole Slaw recipe. I think it went well with the light flavors of a psuedo-grilled chicken.

THe chicken had great flavor and the dipping sauce was pleasantly sweet-tart. It was a real winner.

I just realized I did two chicken recipes in a row with vinegar sauces. So much for being original. But I have to look at it this way. It's pretty amazing how some of the same ingredients can produce two very different recipes.

I am beginning to think the subscription may be justified.

What To Do with Leftovers

2011-02-22T19:30:00.008-05:00

I had leftover lime and cilantro from the Laotian laap.

I had leftover tortillas from the duck tacos.

I had poblano peppers leftover from I don't remember what.

I also made a ridiculous amount of chicken stock last week that was taking up room in my freezer.

What do I do next?

The answer was simple – Tortilla Soup!

When I researched recipes for tortilla soup I found many many ways of making it. The few common elements seem to be chicken stock, hot peppers, cilantro, lime, and, of course, the tortilla strips.

I made mine with chicken stock, garlic, poblano peppers, tomatoes, chicken, cilantro, chili powder and lime. It was definitely a sinus-clearning soup. For my tortilla strips instead of frying them, I tossed them with olive oil and baked them in the oven over high heat. They were nice and crispy this way, but not super greasy.

Boring post, but a good soup. Comfort food on a winter's night with a spicy kick.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

1 Tbl oil for sauteing
1 poblano pepper, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp ancho chili powder
1 quart chicken stock
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups cooked chicken meat, diced
Juice of 1 lime
1 handful chopped cilantro
6 corn tortillas
Oil for brushing over the tortillas (I used olive because it was in easy reach, but you may want to use something more neutral flavor)

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Brush tortillas with oil and cut into strips. Place in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake 10-15 minutes or until crispy. (13 minutes worked well in my oven.)

Heat oil in a large pot. Add poblanos and cook until softened. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Stir in the ancho chili powder until it is very fragrant.

Add stock, tomatoes and chicken. Simmer 30 minutes.

Mix in lime juice and cilantro. Ladle into bowls and top with tortilla strips.

Here's to the Laddies Who Lunch

2011-02-21T19:15:00.006-05:00

Sometimes I really hate being an adult.

I remember how in college and the immediate years beyond when I was officially an adult, but still transitioning from living the life of a carefree youngster, my social life was so easy.

It was a Saturday night. I’d call up my friends Mike and Rich and say, “You want to hang out?” We’d pick a place – usually either Mike’s house or the diner – and just spend hours goofing off together. Sometimes we would plan adventures. We would head to museums and water parks and historic sites and hiking trails. We’d climb into my giant old Buick (The Blue Bonnet we called her) and take off parts unknown.

Now we have grown up almost completely. We have jobs. We have moved multiple times. We have married or partnered off. Getting together is no longer as simple as picking up the phone and asking if your friends are free that night. It means spending weeks of emailing back and forth, trying desperately to find a date everyone is free, often not finding a date until two months after the first contact. It’s a sad fact of life. Growing up stinks!

It does mean that we really do cherish those times when we do get together and we try as often as possible. We had the extraordinary luck that on President’s Day we all had the day off and we all had open schedules. All of our spouses and partners were working, so it would be more like the old days. Rather than plan some elaborate getaway, we decided to have the kind of day like we used to have. Everyone would come over to my place for the day and we would simply hang out, goof around, play Trivial Pursuit (although we have stopped playing the version where you have to take a drink every time you have a wrong answer, or roll a 6, or land on a yellow square, or land on “roll again”), and play Xbox karaoke.

I decided that there would be one change and that’s in the quality of food we would eat. There would be no diners or junk food. I am compelled to feed people, so I would cook them lunch.

Cooking for friends isn’t as easy as it used to be. Mike has become a vegetarian in recent years (the man anthropomorphizes every living thing.) Rich isn’t picky and generally eats everything, but when he doesn’t like something, he really doesn’t like it. What could I make that everyone would like?

The answer was simple: Macaroni and Cheese! It’s something I almost never make for myself because it’s hard to eat a whole pan of it myself and Sir Pickypants won’t touch it. It was a cold, snowy, winter day, which was ideal for comfort foods as well. Macaroni and Cheese is also something I can really play with and do all kinds of fun variations on.

So how would I make my Mac & Cheese more interesting? The best place to start is in the cheeses you use. I was very tempted by this recipe, but Rich hates rosemary (“It’s like eating pine needles”). I decided to do it with a Spanish twist. I started with manchego cheese. Since it’s strong and it’s expensive, I tempered it with havarti. I added bit of piquillo peppers, caramelized onions, sherry and paprika. On the top I put a layer of garlicky breadcrumbs, lightly seasoned with smoked paprika. I also used some heavy duty shells for my pasta. Elbows are good, but I wanted something a bit heartier.

This was some mightily impressive M&C. I had trouble restraining myself from eating the whole dish of it. What made it even tougher is that Rich ended up having to go into work at the last minute (I suppose on the good side his wife probably didn’t feel so bad about working), which meant that the two of us were eating this whole dish ourselves. I could at least send a good chunk of it home with Mike. He and his partner Paul could have it for dinner.

Yes, of course I provided dessert. I made my Bourbon Orange Pound Cake, which I always say is one of the best cakes I ever came up with.

It was a great day and I hope we can do it again – hopefully with Rich the next time. Maybe we’ll even let Kevin and Mickey and Paul join us the next time. ;-)

Manchego Macaroni & Cheese

2 cups fresh bread crumbs (I used a small, stale, multigrain, artisan baguette)
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp salt
4 Tbl olive oil, divided
Butter for buttering baking dish
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 pound hearty macaroni
4 Tbl butter
4 Tbl flour
1 quart milk (whole is good, but you can mix in some half and half if you feel like it)
½ pound manchego cheese, shredded
½ pound havarti cheese, shredded
2 tsp paprika
1 10oz jar piquillo peppers, drained and diced
2 Tbl dry sherry

Heat 2 Tbl olive oil in a large pan and add garlic, cooking until fragrant. Add the crumbs and cook until well coated with the garlic and oil and a bit crispy. Stir in salt and smoked paprika and set aside.

Heat remaining 2 Tbl of oil over low heat in a pan. Add onion and cook over low heat until very soft and light brown. The thinner you slice your onions, the faster this will happen.

Heat oven to 350 and butter a baking dish.

Cook macaroni in boiling, salted water for about 5 minutes. You want it to be very firm still. Drain and set aside. You can throw in a little butter to keep it from sticking together.

In a large saucepan melt butter and whisk in the flour. Keep whisking until the flour starts to smell good and loses its raw taste. Slowly whisk in the milk. Keep whisking over medium heat until thickened. You should be able to coat the back of a spoon and draw a line with your finger through it.

Add cheeses and stir until mixture is melted and smooth. Stir in paprika and sherry.

Mix cheese sauce with macaroni and pour into buttered baking dish. Top with garlic crumb mixture.

Bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden and bubbly.