Inspired Bites

Irish Soda Bread

2010-03-04T14:07:00.024-05:00

Irish soda bread is awesome, and it's that time of year when the supermarket starts stocking it and the recipes are in every food magazine and Website. So I'm joining the crowd. It's hard to believe that up until past week, I've never made it. According to Irish chef Rory O'Connell (in Bon Appetite's online article), both the white and the brown Irish soda breads are traditional, and butter was not an original ingredient. The recipe I read about was made with 50% wheat flour and had butter, but not too much, and that's nice compromise in my mind.

The recipe came to my attention in the doctor's office. That seems to be when I get inspired to cook - looking at the recipes while I wait for my appointment (just seeing how my wrist is doing). This time, I brought along the latest issue of Bon Appetite. There was a fabulous article about Andrew McCarthy's (the actor) search for the Irish soda bread of his youth. It was a great read and the recipe was a tempting one for me. Though I had every intention of disgracing Andrew McCarthy's concept of what Irish soda bread is by adding nuts and currants.

The results were mixed. Things I did like were the oat flour and walnuts.

But there were issues with the dough being too dry, my overworking it, and the difficulty cooking it through without burning on the outside (I scrapped the worst parts of the piece in the picture).

Based on the issues with the first loaf, I also made some changes which worked out well. I was pleased with the loaves when I took them out of the oven.

The flour mixture was 2 1/2 cups of white, 2 1/2 cups wheat, and 1 cup oat. If I were to make the recipe a third time, I would make change it to 2 1/2 cups white, 2 cups oat, and 1 1/2 cups wheat. If I don't become completely sick of Irish soda bread, I see a third batch in my future!

Irish Soda Bread
Inspired by Bon Appetit

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour
(note: I also enjoyed 3 cups white flour and 3 cups oat flour)
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) chilled margarine or butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 cups buttermilk + 1/4 cup reserved to the side in case the dough is too dry
2/3 cup currants
1 cup toasted and chopped walnuts

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Whisk the flours, sugar, baking soda, and baking powder in medium bowl to blend. Add the butter and cut it into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender (aka dough blender). It will be ready when the bits of butter are the size of peas.

Add the buttermilk and stir until the ingredients are just blended. There will be clumps at this stage. But if you notice that there is no way that the dry ingredients are going to be able to become one with the dough, you should immediately add more buttermilk.

Turn the dough out onto lightly floured work surface. Knead until the dough comes together, about 10 turns. Be careful not to overwork the dough!!! If you kneed it too much, the bread will be tough.

Shape the dough into two 6" rounds and cut large "x", 1/3 inch deep, in the top of the dough.

I read that cutting the "x" on the top serves several purposes. For the bread, the cut helps the bread cook because it is at the thickest part of the bread. For the people of Ireland, it signifies the cross, and is a way that the bread is blessed. It also is a symbol for breaking the bread - which is easier to do once the bread is baked.

Place dough on prepared (oil-sprayed) baking sheet. Mine baked for 42 minutes, but I suggest checking the dough's progress at 35. I did the toothpick test, but with a wooden skewer. Poke it into the thickest part of the bread, and you'll know it's done by a lack of resistance when you pull it out, and when you look at it, it's clean (there's no dough on the toothpick/skewer).

Let it cool completely before cutting it.

My favorite way to eat it is toasted, with butter and honey.

Dried Shitake Mushrooms

2010-02-23T07:35:00.010-05:00

Shitake mushrooms give fantastic flavor to Chinese food. But they can be either hard to find or expensive. The solution? Dried shitake mushrooms!

Dried shitake mushrooms are a great deal. First of all, they seem to last forever if you don't use them. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the shitake mushrooms I just used in my Orange-Soy Glazed Tofu dish were probably over five years old. And they were no worse than they were the day I bought them.

But not only are they good for how ever long you store them, but they are good for your budget. If you have an Asian food market near you, you'll see what a great deal they are. But if you don't have an Asian market, or if you feel intimidated to go in, you can buy them online. I did a search on Amazon.com and found numerous good deals on dried shitake mushrooms.

This is what they will look like:

To use them, you have to rehydrate them. Put them in a bowl or plastic container and add boiling water - enough to cover them.

Then, you have to push the mushrooms down with something so they are submerged. I used a smaller lid and it fit perfectly so that I didn't have to weigh the lid down with something.

But chances are you'll have to put something on top of the lid to hold it down and keep the mushrooms submerged.

Then cover the bowl or container to keep the water good and hot.

In about 15 minutes, the mushrooms will be ready.

Roasted Pears Topped With Almonds, Raspberries, and White Chocolate Yummies

2010-01-30T12:24:00.021-05:00

I'm so happy that this is my first recipe of 2010. It represents the way I'd like to cook and eat this year.

First of all, it's absolutely delicious! And it looks elegant, so you can serve it at the finest dinner party. Another plus was that it is quite simple. There really aren't a lot of ingredients, and you can have everything ready to assemble by the time the pears come out of the oven.

I don't know about you, but I need the "simple" in my cooking repetoire. My life is overwhelmed with minutia. But I do not want to cook the semi home made way. I want to cut down on processed foods and overwhelming amounts of sodium and chemicals. I believe that foods taste better when they are natural, and I feel better about eating them.

I decided to use organic frozen raspberries for my version of this recipe. It's the dead of winter, and while fresh raspberries were available, they were quite expensive and the quantity was small. I got about twice the amount of rasperries, and with the juice, I was able to make a 2nd sauce - a raspberry reduction. Here it is in all it's juiciness:

It was pretty spectacular. If you want to make the sauce, just though the raspberries. Strain out the juice while preserving the best of the berries for decoration. With some of the less-beautiful berries, put them in a sieve and use a rubber spatula to press out all the juice. You would be smooshing the berries to do this. Then put the juice in a small saucepan and boil it down to about 1/2 of the original amount of juice. If you wanted to, you could add some sugar. I didn't.

This recipe uses Vietnamese Cinnamon, aka Saigon Cinnamon. It is not the same as regular cinnamon - it's more pungent and complex. Maybe some of you can buy it in the grocery, McKormick does distribute it. But I prefer to order my spices online. I get mine from Penzey's Spices. They do have a few stores, which I hear are an incredible experience, but they also ship. My link is to the Vietnamese Cinnamon, but they sell every kind of spice, and they are fresher than anything you can buy in the grocery store, and most likely much cheaper per weight.

Penzey's Spices: A jar of 1/4 cup (7 ounces) of the cinnamon is $3.25.
McKormick on the shelf at Stop and Shop supermarket: only 1.5 ounce (the regular tall-size glass jar) costs $5.98.
Amazon.com: Spice Islands Saigon cinnamon, the same size (7 ounces), is 5.80.
King Arthur Flour: just 2 oz. cost $4.50

Roasted Pears Topped With Almonds, Raspberries, and White Chocolate Yummies
Inspired by Cat Cora (for McKormick)

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon Vietnamese cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 pears, firm, halved with cores removed
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons heavy cream
2 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted
fresh or frozen raspberries

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the pear haves, cut side up in an 8 x 8 inch baking dish sprayed with cooking oil. Brush the tops with butter and drizzle some more into the cavity, but leave as much as you can for later (I used half the butter).

Mix the sugar and spices in a small bowl and then sprinkle half of the mixture evenly over the pears.

Bake for 15 minutes. If your butter, sugar, and spices have fallen off of the pears, use a brush or spoon to baste the pears with it again. Sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture on top, drizzle with the remaining butter, and bake for another 20 minutes, or until the pears are tender.

While the pears are cooking, bring the cream to a boil in a small pot over medium heat. Take the pot off of the flame and add the white chocolate, stirring until it is melted and the sauce is smooth.

To serve, place a pear half on a dessert plate or shallow bow. Spoon any of the butter/sugar mixture from the pan over the tops and sprinkle with the almonds. Then drizzle the cream and chocolate mixture over it and top with the berries.

Roasted Pears Topped With Yummies

I'm so happy that this is my first recipe ...

See Roasted Pears Topped With Yummies on Key Ingredient.

Winter Squash- Black Bean Bake with Meat

2009-12-18T20:53:00.002-05:00

Watch out! This casserole is dangerous . . . . Dangerously irresistible, that is! I've made it twice in the span of a week, and I'm about to make it a 3rd time.

The first time, Joe and I ate it. And we did a good job of it. It was mostly gone the first night. Definitely gone the next day.

I made it yesterday to give to a friend, but as I was finishing the meat part of it, Joe called and said he needed a dish for his office Christmas party the next day. So since it was already made, he got that batch and I'm about to make it a third time for my friend whose husband is in the hospital. I figure she doesn't want to cook right now, and she will enjoy and appreciate some healthy and delicious home cooking. And her husband will probably be able to eat it since it is fairly healthy (he had heart surgery). While the original recipe called for beef, I made it once with ground turkey and once with ground chicken and both were wonderful.

I'm looking forward to the little bit extra that won't fit in the pan that I will put in a little loaf pan for myself (he he he).

Winter Squash-Black Bean Bake with Meat
Inspired by Better Homes and Gardens

1 lb. ground turkey or chicken
3 cups of 1/2-inch pieces peeled butternut squash
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup whole kernel corn (I used canned)
1 4-oz. can diced green chiles
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1-1/2 tsp chipotle powder
a dash cayanne
1 cup lower-sodium beef broth
1 3-oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
1 8-1/2-oz. pkg. corn muffin mix (the Jiffy mix is 8 1/2 ounces)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup milk (I use 2%)
1/3 cup canned pumpkin

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In your biggest skillet, sautee the squash and onion with the salt and pepper until the onion is tender and golden and the squash is close to a point where it could be eaten - sort of like it's aldente.

In a separate pan, cook the meat. I find it helpful to cook it in a little bit of water. It breaks apart easier. Drain off the liquid and fat.

Add the meat to the veggies. With it, add the broth, beans, corn, green chiles, and the spices. Heat it all through and then Transfer mixture to 2-1/2-quart baking dish.

In medium bowl stir together the corn muffin mix, cream cheese, egg, milk, and pumpkin puree until just combined. Spoon over beef mixture.

Bake the casserole for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted into topper comes out clean.

Winter Squash- Black Bean Bake with Meat

Watch out! This casserole is dangerous . . . . Dangerously irresistible, that is ...

See Winter Squash- Black Bean Bake with Meat on Key Ingredient.

Easy Pumpkin Tiramisu

2009-12-15T14:49:00.000-05:00

This pumpkin tiramisu was an absolute success, and yet it was so easy to make! My friends were visually impressed and quite happy when it made its way to their plates and then into their mouths. Even several days later, when I brought the last piece, which I saved and guarded with my life, to my friend in CT the night of her holiday party, it was still working it's magic. Linda scoffed it down instead of going for any of the desserts on her table, and raved over it.

In short, you should make this!

It was so easy to make, I made it one-handed. As my life is always full of drama, I broke my wrist in two places the weekend before Thanksgiving. So between my one good hand and my KitchenAid mixer, I was still able to make this. Typing up the blog post was another story - it got delayed until now.

As for the ingredients, let me just write about a couple of them. First, the ladyfingers. I guess the ladyfingers that are traditionally used in tiramisu are somewhat crunchy. So, if you are like me, you won't find crunchy ladyfingers at your grocery store. I only had the soft ones available to me - the kind you put in a trifle. To remedy this, you will have to toast them in the oven. I put them in the oven at 350 degrees for 7 minutes.

The other ingredient I want to mention is the amaretti cookies. I've seen them at Ocean State Job Lot. I got them at a specialty market because I was there and so were they. But if you can't find them, I saw reviewers of the original recipe write that they used ginger snaps. Amaretti cookies are great. And I totally loved eating the leftovers. But hey, if you can't get them, you can't. I would imagine that ginger snaps would be an awesome replacement.

Ooh, there's one more thing I want to mention. Don't skimp on the rum! By the time you eat it, it won't taste too boozy. In fact, I felt it added an essential flavor. When I used it, I used a small nip bottle and covered most of the opening with my thumb as I splashed drips onto the ladyfingers as evenly as possible. The rum was really a wonderful flavor when we dug into this tiramisu.

Do make this the day before you plan to serve it. And then use some self-control. It will be totally worth it!

Pumpkin Tiramisu
Bon Appétit

1 2/3 cups chilled whipping cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 (8-ounce) container mascarpone cheese
1 (15-ounce) can pure pumpkin
1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice *
2 (3-ounce) packages halved ladyfingers - crisped
1/4 cup dark rum (or regular if that's what you've got)
2 ounces crushed amaretti cookies (if you can't get them use ginger snaps)
Powdered Sugar
* No pumpkin pie spice? No problem! Just mix 2 tablespoons each of cinnamon and ground ginger with 1 tablespoon ground nutmeg and 1 tsp ground allspice.

Beat the whipping cream and sugar until peaks form. I beat it till stiff peaks formed, but I recommend that you don't. Aim for softer peaks. Then add the mascarpone cheese, pumpkin, and pumpkin pie spice. Mix it until it's smooth and all the ingredients are well-blended.

Line the bottom of a 9-inch-diameter spring form pan with parchment paper. It might be good to make the parchment paper a little too wide. That way, when you put the finished tiramisu on a serving plate, you can slide it off the bottom of the pan, while someone tilts the metal disk toward you. Also, put parchment paper around the sides of the pan.

Crisp your ladyfingers in the oven if they are soft. I put my oven at 350 degrees and put the ladyfingers in for 7 minutes.

Spread out an even layer of ladyfingers to cover the bottom.even with 2 3/4-inch-high sides with 1 package ladyfingers, overlapping and crowding to fit. I regret that mine looked so messy. Were I to do it again, I would make this bottom row much neater, more like the 2nd row of ladyfingers looks (you will see that photo soon).

Sprinkle the ladyfingers with approximately 2 tablespoons of rum. Then, spread almost half of the leftover filling over ladyfingers. What I'm getting at is that if it's possible, it would be great if you can save some of the filling to spread it on the sides once you put the entire tiramisu on a plate.

Repeat with second package ladyfingers. Doesn't it look so much neater?

Sprinkle the new layer of ladyfingers with the remaining 2 rum. Top with much of the remaining filling (trying to save some for the sides) and smooth it on the top. A little trick you can use if the smoothing isn't going so well is to spray the bottom of you plastic spatula or spoon with cooking oil spray. That will keep the filling from sticking to it, allowing your top to be smoother.

Note: I didn't save any filling for the sides. You may notice that in my photos. That's why I recommend that you do. It doesn't need to be a lot. Most of the sides will have filling already. I'm recommending that you reserve maybe 1/2 cup.

The next day, put the spring form on a serving plate and release the sides of the pan and remove. In this photo below, you can see how I over-whipped my whipped cream. The top layer of mine was very thick. That's why I'm recommending soft peaks.

My husband helped me here to tilt the serving plate, while I lifted the tiramisu with a spatula and carefully grasped the parchment paper underneath it and took the entire tiramisu off of the bottom of the spring form and the parchment. Now my tiramisu was directly on the glass plate. It would have been even easier if the bottom layer of parchment was a little bigger than the pan - even if only in one area.

In this next picture, you can see where I wish I had that leftover 1/2 cup filling:

Grind up the amaretti in a food processor or crush it in a bag. Decorate the top with it. Perhaps even the sides. I put some on the sides to cover up flaws.

I sprinkled with powdered sugar just before serving.

pumpkin tiramisu

This pumpkin tiramisu was an absolute success, and yet it ...

See pumpkin tiramisu on Key Ingredient.

Red Lentil and Butternut Squash Soup

2009-11-04T22:33:00.024-05:00

Before I get to the food, let me address this important issue. Where have I been?

Well, I've been very, very busy getting a certificate in Web Design - the first step in a hopeful career change. So I've been crazy in over my head as I learned all about css, page design, flash, using available java scripts, jQuery, a bit about XML, and table-driven and css-driven DHTML.

I haven't cooked much beyond boxed pizza in months. The freezer has been full of frozen meals and I've been thrilled about the invention of the microwave. We didn't have those things when I was a little kid!

But on to the food!

This recipe happened by mistake, as I got punished by my bad karma.

Several weeks ago while out taking fall pics, I stopped in at one of my favorite foodie destinations, Idylwilde Farms. I saw the soup mixes on the shelves and couldn't resist. You know, the dry soup mixes - the ones with the dried beans in a clear cellophane bag, and then at the top are the herbs and such. You add some stock and veggies. Here's a pic of one of the mixes I got:

Well, I bought about four of them because I thought it would be like homemade goodness, but with convenience. Also, they make rather large batches, I could do it in a crock pot and freeze individual meal-sizes that I could just reheat when I felt like it and have comfort food any time.

The first one I made was the beef stew pictured above. And it was delicious. But as I made it I felt like an idiot. I spent so much time sauteing the onions and peeling and cutting up yellow turnip. I thought to myself, "Meryl, what you are doing now is the time consuming part of making anything. You could have made your own stew and made this a blog post and been proud of your creation instead." But it was too late for that.

So a couple of days ago I figured I'd use another of the mixes - this time the Red Lentil and Butternut Squash soup mix. But I got bitten in the rear by bad karma!

So, I was kicking myself as I cut up and seared some chicken, sliced and sauteed the onion, and cubed the butternut squash. But I thought that I must not let this soup mix go to waste. And I was sure it would taste good.

I put all the chicken broth (low sodium) in the crock pot. I added the chicken and veggies, and opened up the top of the cellophane bag of soup mix. The herb packet is always at the top. I reached in, took it out, and I immediately noticed that things were hanging off of it, as if caught on a web.

I was holding it over the sink, puzzled. I thought to myself, "what is this?" as I removed it all from the little plastic herb packet. It was then that I saw the live little worms twitching around inside.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

And now I've got a dilemma because the soup is already started! I had to do something right away! I remembered that I had some red lentils, so I ran to my laptop to look for my own recipe.

I began by typing in epicurioius.com to find out that my Internet went down. OMG, the Gods are totally against me today! I thought to myself, "Meryl, don't panic. Take a walk with the dogs and the Internet will be back up and running when you return."

So I did. And when I came home, the Internet was back up. I looked at various recipes on various sites and came up with a game plan. Then, I ran to the cupboards to get the lentils. CRAP! I no longer had any.

I decided to let the what was in the crock pot cook, since the chicken was in it, for the rest of the afternoon. Then I put the entire crock in the fridge that evening and went to the store, not knowing if I'd find the red lentils easily or not. Luckily I did find them and I got back to the soup the next day.

In the end, the recipe I chose was a success. Warm, cozy, seasonal, and tasty. I'm glad that I made it and not the mix, although I could have done without the roller coaster ride.

Red Lentil and Butternut Squash Soup
(a crock pot recipe that makes 8-10 servings)

10 cups broth (I use low sodium - by the way, how big is your crock pot?)
a bag of frozen chicken breasts – and olive oil (large bag - approx 8-9 breasts / 3lb?)
a bunch of scallions
olive oil
1 onion sliced
1/2 can light coconut milk *
1 tbs garam masala ** (mine was old)
1 tsp red madras curry
1 tsp cumin
2 cups red lentils (added in last - cooked for about 2-3 hours, tasting for doneness)
salt (I added 1 tsp - I'm very sensitive to salt. I'd suggest 3 tsp for normal people)

* The coconut milk was great. If I were to remake, I'd add the whole can.
** My garam masala was quite old. But even if it were fresh I would still try the entire tablespoon. I bet it would be awesome. But if you are wary of that, you could go with 1.5 teaspoons.

Okay, if I were making this today, all in one day, this is what I would do.

Put the crock pot on high and add the broth, the coconut milk, the cut up butternut squash, and the spices.

Cut up the chicken in to small pieces or slices. Sautee them and them in 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and add them into the crock pot.

Back in the sautee pan, turn the flame on medium-high, add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, heat it up, and add the sliced onions. Sautee them till golden brown and then add them to the crock pot. Leave the crock pot on high for 1/2 hour to an hour. Then turn it to low for a good long time. Geeze, this is where I had it on low for about 6-8 hours and then put it in the fridge overnight.

The lentils don't need as long to cook. Red lentils will take between 1-2 hours to soften on low.

Then you have a delicious, hearty, comforting fall soup. If you put it in the fridge, you'll probably need to add more broth, it gets very thick overnight, and the crock pot can only hold so much liquid.

Red Lentil and Butternut Squash Soup

A comforting, hearty, fall soup.

See Red Lentil and Butternut Squash Soup on Key Ingredient.

Blueberry Pie

2009-08-27T11:30:00.002-04:00

This pie rocks! It was the best blueberry pie I've ever had! I'm super proud to have made it!

That's pretty impressive since I almost never have the opportunity to make a pie. It's been years since I've made a pie, and I've never made a blueberry one. So I'm patting myself on the back and saying "good girl, Meryl."

Why, do you ask, do I never get to make pies? To begin, it's just Joe and I (and the dogs), and we struggle with weight issues. So the last thing we need around here is an entire pie sitting on the counter top. And during all the holidays when people make pies, all the pies are spoken for by other members of the family. The one or two times that I tried to add to the repertoire of pies, my pies were practically untouched, so I gave up. Perhaps I lost my pie-baking confidence as well. So, I just don't make them.

I bought this Longaberger pie plate from my friend Karen about 4 years ago, and up until last Sunday, I hadn't used it yet:

But last Sunday we were invited to a friend's for brunch. She was going to make a peach pie for dessert, and that was very nice of her! But knowing that Joe wouldn't have touched it with a 10-foot pole, I offered to make a blueberry pie (blueberry is Joe's favorite pie).

She accepted, and I thought to myself that I had gotten into a conundrum. I would have to live up to Joe's idea of a blueberry pie, and that idea was his mom's blueberry pie. Oy vey! That's a lot to live up to.

I found a well-liked recipe for a pie on Epicurious.com. Well, the filling was well-liked and the crust was not. Many of the reviewers only suggested to double the cornstarch, so I did. I accidentally omitted the butter when I made my pie, but it wasn't missed.

The crust I used came from my friend Karen. I've posted her recipe as well.

If you are looking for a great blueberry pie, look no further! This is the one.

Blueberry Pie
Filling inspired by a Gourmet Magazine recipe

6 cups blueberries, picked over
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons half-and-half or milk (optional - to top the crust)
turbinado sugar or large-grain cane sugar (to top the crust)

Karen's No-Fail Flaky Pie Crust

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

In a large bowl toss together the blueberries, the cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice, nutmeg, and the salt. It might be easiest to use your hands so you don't crush all the blueberries. Mound the filling in the shell.

If you use the butter, place little pieces of it around on the top.

Place the top crust over it and crimp the edges.

Be sure to use a knife and make air vents in the top crust. I made a smiley face with some outer slashes like short rays of sunshine. Next time I do it, I will remove slivers in the smiley face.

Bake the pie in the bottom third of the oven at 425 for the first 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 375 (leaving the pie where it is) and bake for another 25-35 minutes. I baked mine 30 minutes and wish I had taken it out a few minutes sooner. But it was acceptable nonetheless.

Karen's No-Fail Flaky Pie Crust

2009-08-26T10:55:00.006-04:00

I'm not accustomed to making pies, so when I needed to make one and I found myself visiting my friend Karen, I asked her if she had a no-fail, flaky pie crust recipe. I had a feeling she did, and I was right!

I thank you Karen for this wonderful crust recipe. It was perfect! So easy and simple, that even a pie buffoon like myself could use it and impress her friends.

Karen doesn't even roll out this pie crust. She puts it in the pie pan and spreads it out to fit it with her hands. But in the few times I've made crusts in my life, I've had problems, so I put the chilled dough between sheets of wax paper and rolled them out. It worked like a charm. I only wish I had a little more on the bottom crust. It didn't look too thick, but maybe I could have rolled it out a bit more to have more to play with on the outer edge.

Karen's No-Fail, Flaky Pie Crust
makes a double crust for a 9" pie

2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt (I used more like 2/3)
1 egg
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup shortening

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Cut in the shortening. I used this tool pictured.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg, vinegar, and water.

Mix in the dry ingredients.

Use your hands to form it all into a ball.

Split the ball in two. One ball should be larger for the bottom crust.

Wrap them in plastic wrap and chill for at least two hours.

When it is time to make the pie, roll out the dough balls between sheets of wax paper.

I learned a little trick to get the dough from the counter to the pie pan when I was watching Sara Moulton the Food Network a long time ago. Fold the dough over in half once, and then again in the other direction. Then place it in the pie pan and unfold. It's much easier than trying to lift the thin sheet of dough.

Karen freezes hers sometimes so she has it ready-made for later.

I used this crust to make my Blueberry Pie.

Costa Rican Beet Salad

2009-08-25T11:45:00.000-04:00

I love beets. I cannot say the same for my husband, but I can say the same for my friends, Phyllis, Jennifer, and Scott. So I took advantage of spending time with them on Sunday to make some beets.

This Costa Rican Beet Salad is the best I can do to re-live a fond food memory. I studied at the University of Costa Rica in San José for a semester and they served a beet salad that I loved on campus there. That beet salad was near and dear to my heart.

I'm sad that I forgot to save a sprig of the beautiful cilantro for the picture and I had to use a sprig of flat leaf parsley. It was better than nothing. But know, that the cilantro was a wonderful flavor in this dish.

Also, there really are few ingredients. That’s great, because I was originally going to make a salad that had many ingredients and would have cost a bundle. Like many of you, I recently lost my job, so I have to be careful about how much I’m spending.

This salad may have served four, but not if those four wanted large portions. I had more beets because I was originally going to make two different beet salads, but decided to double this one when I realized how little salad I had when I was done.

This recipe will be in the regular recipe rotation around here. It was scrumptious and easy. And who doesn’t like an easy recipe!

Oh, in the picture, I was sad to have to use a sprig of parsley for decoration on the beet salad. I had forgotten to save a sprig of cilantro. Cilantro was an important flavor in the salad. I was gentle with the cilantro - Phyllis liked that it was on the subtle side. But the salad wouldn't be the same without it.

Costa Rican Beet Salad
Inspired by a recipe posted on Recipezaar.com by Cheerleader

4 medium fresh beets
1/4 sweet yellow onion, minced (I used vadalia)
1/3 large yellow pepper, finely diced
2-3 Tablespoons chopped cilantro
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
salt to taste (if you must – truth is, I didn’t)

Prepare the beets and remove the skins.

Dice the beets into small squares

Add minced onion, cilantro, and sweet pepper. This is what I had before I added the mayonnaise:

Add mayonnaise and gently mix thoroughly.

Add the salt if you use it.

Preparing and Cooking Beets - The Boiling Method

2009-08-25T10:34:00.010-04:00

Beets are easy to work with and there are several ways to prepare them. In the cold weather it's nice to put them in foil packs with the skins on, baked them, and then removed the skins when done. In the summer, I choose the boiling method.

When choosing your beets at the grocery store, try to get a bunch that has beets of approximately the same size. By doing this, you will have beets that finish cooking at the same time. If they aren’t the same size, be aware that the smaller ones will finish cooking sooner. You will need to remove them earlier so you don’t have beet mush!

Preparing the Beets

Cut off the greens at the base of the beets.

Cut off the tail of the beet.

Leave the skin on the beets! This is very important!

Boil the water first and then place the beets in it. I started out with a 30 minute time limit with the pot covered. Check the beets by piercing them (or attempting to pierce them) with a fork or knife. When the fork or knife easily pierces the beet and goes toward the middle, coming out with no effort, the beets are done! Beets shouldn't be cooked al dente.

When I checked at the 30 minute mark, I knew that at least another 30 minutes would be necessary. I had chosen large beets at the store.

Thirty minutes later, I set the timer for 10 more minutes. At that point, my two smaller beets were done. I removed them and ran cold water over them while I removed the skins. By the time I was done with that, a few more of the beets were done, and so on and so on.

Important Note About Skin Removal

If you want to place the beets in a bowl of cold water before handling them, do it with the skins on!

Case in point – I removed the skins of the first two small beets and then cut them in half and put them in cold water. I forgot to do it with the next beets, and I’m so glad! Look at the difference in the color of the beets I cut in half and then placed in cold water without skin compared to the beets that I place in cold water with the skin on and in tact before removing the skin:

Removing the skin is easy when the beets are cooked. I took the picture below without the water running just so you could see that all it takes is a little pressure with your thumb and pulling away. The skin will go with it. Easy-peasy! Even easier under running water.

Now you are ready for any beet recipe, such as Costa Rican Beet Salad, or to just eat them as they are.

Bourbon-Maple Scallops

2009-03-29T09:26:00.002-04:00

This recipe came from a failed cedar-planked salmon experiment I had last week. The marinade was originally for grilled salmon on a cedar plank.

I liked the combination of flavors in the marinade, so I decided to try it with scallops. First, I tried it on a wood plank. I really disliked the taste of the wood planks. Maybe it was the type of wood I had. I was surprised because I've had wood-grilled scallops before, and I've liked them.

Next, I made the scallops without the wood planks. That's much better! The scallops are sweet and tender. The syrup and the bourbon combine and create pure deliciousness with the scallops. This recipe gets a big thumbs-up!

Bourbon-Maple Scallops

1 pound of fresh sea scallops
1/4 cup Bourbon
1/4 cup grade B maple syrup
2 Tbs olive oil
salt
pepper

Lightly score the tops and bottoms of the scallops with a crosshatch pattern (a slanted tic-tac-toe board). Only let the knife go through the surface slightly.

Whisk the liquids and seasonings together. Add the scallops and let them marinate in the liquid for 15-30 minutes. Saute on a medium-high flame for 2-3 minute per side. Try to only turn over once.

Drizzle the pan juices over the top and serve.

Chicken And Dumplings

2009-03-15T12:02:00.003-04:00

Chicken and Dumplings is a truly comforting dish that I have been craving for some time now. After an unfortunate first try, I have now satisfied myself with the help of Simply Recipes. This recipe, while a bit time consuming, wasn't difficult to make. And even better, it ended up being very popular at a pot-luck lunch where I got several requests for the recipe. I am now very happy to share it with you.

Why was my first try at Chicken and Dumplings such a flop? Well, in reflecting on the experience, it probably wasn't a good idea to poach the chicken for a long period of time to make the stock. Also not a good idea was putting in the vegetables early in the process.

This time, I seared the chicken and only poached it for a short time afterward. The vegetables didn't go in early. I put them in toward and finished the recipe with the dumping topping as soon as they reached the correct level of doneness. The dumplings are the final step, and they cook very quickly. With this cooking process I got much better results!

I spent time finding just the right recipe that I would adapt to my tastes. In my Chicken and Dumpling research, I learned that there are two versions of the dish: a southern version and a northern one. I do prefer the northern version.

The biggest difference in the two versions has to do with the preparation of the dumplings. In the northern version, the dumplings are dropped into the stew and cooked while the pot is covered. The dough for the dumplings is just barely mixed, and the dumplings end up light and tender. In the southern version you make the dumplings by rolling out a dough and cutting it. You cook them for a longer period of time in the stew and they end up being much more dense.

So here it is, a delicious, crowd-pleasing, northern-style chicken and dumpling recipe.

Chicken & Dumplings
Adapted from Simply Recipes

For the Stock
5-6 lbs chicken parts (breasts, drumsticks, thighs, with bones), skin removed
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
salt and pepper for seasoning the chicken and onions (to taste)
6 cups hot water

For the Stew
3 celery stalks, trimmed and cut into 1/3-inch pieces
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
6 boiling onions (approximately 1" in diameter), peeled, halved, & sliced
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
6 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 tablespoons dry sherry or vermouth
1 tablespoons heavy cream (optional)
1 cup frozen green beans, thawed
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley leaves
Ground black pepper

For the Dumplings
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup minced fresh herb leaves such as parsley, chives, and tarragon (optional)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/2 cup milk

In a large dutch oven heated to medium-high, add a tablespoon of oil and saute the onions with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the pot and set aside.

In the same dutch oven, add another tablespoon of oil and brown the chicken on all sides. Reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook an additional 15-20 minutes. Return the onion to the pot and add the water. Increase the heat to medium high.

Add the bay leaves, 1/2 teaspoon salt and simmer, partially covered, for 20 minutes. By the end, the chicken should be cooked through. At this point, remove the chicken pieces so they can cool. Strain the broth and discard the solids. Reserve five cups of the stock for making the roux.

Add the chicken and the unreserved stock back into the pot along with the carrots and cook three minutes. Then add the celery green beans, and parsley. Cook for an additional five minutes.

While the chicken and vegetables cook in the stock, you can make the roux which will thicken the stock and turn it into a light sauce.

To make the roux, melt the butter in a large pan. Whisk in the flour and continue whisking for one to two minutes. The roux will turn light golden brown. As you whisk, pour in the sherry or vermouth and continue whisking! Slowly add the reserved five cups of stock while still whisking. You should now have a lovely gravy such as mine:

Add the gravy and the heavy cream to the pot. Salt and pepper to taste.

Doesn't it look so wonderful? At this point, you are almost done!

The dumplings will come together very quickly. Begin making them now by sifting together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix in the fresh herbs. Finally, add the melted butter and the milk. Use a large fork to combine the liquids and dry ingredients only until the dry ingredients are just moistened.

Uncover the pot and drop the dumplings by the heaping tablespoon onto the top of the stew. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. No peeking!

Because I made this dish for a pot luck, I wanted extra dumplings. So at this point, I mixed the dumplings into the stew, added even more stock (this time the stock came from a box), made a second batch of the batter, and added the new dumplings to the top of the stew, cooking for another 30 minutes.

This dish is best if served immediately, but it was fine next day when I served it (reheated in a crock pot).

Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and Dumplings is a truly comforting dish that I ...

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Mussels in White Wine

2009-02-25T07:00:00.000-05:00

It's hard to take a good picture of mussels in a bowl. I don't think that the picture above does this dish justice. Because I'm going to make a serious proclamation: These are some of the best mussels I've ever eaten! And I'm the cook! I'm so proud.

And not only are these mussels incredibly tasty, but they are incredibly easy to prepare - and the dish comes together really fast too!

Mussels feel fancy to me, yet they are so much less expensive than other seafood items in the store. I got a 3 1/2 lb. bag of them for just over $3.00. I can appreciate that, can't we all? In comparison, I keep wanting to buy scallops, but I just can't justify spending the money on them lately. They are $13.00 a pound for fresh (not frozen) large scallops - and that's here in new England.

I recommend these mussels to all you shellfish eaters. You can impress yourself and your friends with them. They are great as a side dish, but I could totally see tossing them in pasta. The sauce is really flavorful and so pretty too! When my mussels were done, I would have dipped in crusty bread, but I didn't have any. So I cooked up some rice and had it like this:

Isn't that broth so beautiful! It was delicious. And since making it, I bought some crusty bread to have with the still-leftover broth.

I will definitely, without a doubt, make this mussel dish again!

Mussels in White Wine
Adapted from Barefoot Contessa

Serves 1 as a main dish - 2 as an appetizer

3 pounds cultivated mussels
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons good olive oil
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup petite diced canned tomatoes, drained
1/2 teaspoon good saffron threads, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 cup good white wine - I used a chardonnay
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

When you open your mussels, you want to remove any that might not be alive. If the shells are closed tightly, you can trust the mussel. If the shell is open, quickly press it together.

It will spring open some, and at that point, a live mussel will close on it's own (sometimes it takes a few seconds). I tend to do this to all the open ones as I sort through the mussels. I put any open to the side. When I'm done sorting, I go back to the ones that were open and see if they closed. Toss any that didn't close!

Sometimes mussels have sand in them. It's not pleasant when you bite into them, so here's how to remove that pesky sand: Fill a large bowl to completely submerge your mussels with a couple of inches of water on top. Sprinkle 1/3 cup flour into the water and mix. Then add the mussels. Leave them in the water (some will float) for 1/2 hour.

Drain the flour water and rinse the mussels. You are likely to see all the sand they spit out as you pour off that water and see the bottom of the bowl. Pull off any beards from the mussels and scrub off any dirt. Now your mussels are ready.

Heat-up the butter and olive oil in a deep stock pot. After about 4 minutes, add the saffron. After 2 more minutes, add the garlic, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, wine, and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Add the mussels and cover the pot. Cook for 8-10 minutes on medium heat. Shake the pot (while it's covered) from time to time so that the juice can get to the ones on top, and so that they don't scorch on the bottom.

You're done now! Enjoy your mussels.

Moroccan-Style Chicken Pie

2009-02-20T16:48:00.032-05:00

My latest Bon Appétit magazine has been sitting on my coffee table for a week. I finally opened it today and a few recipes caught my eye. This is one of them.

I like this recipe for many reasons! First, the ingredients are readily available. I had almost all of them right here at home. Next, it was an easy recipe to make - no complicated procedures here. Finally, the pie was wonderfully aromatic, flavorful, and satisfying.

I loved the combination of sweet and savory, too. And the crunchy phyllo topping with nuts and sugar (and salt) between the layers was really nice.

I'm not sure how necessary it was having 6 layers of phyllo on the bottom and 4 on the top. I would switch that around for next time. The other thing I would do differently would be to cut the bottom layers of phyllo the way the recipe recommended (using the bottom of the pie plate), but make the top layers bigger. As you can see below, the top layers weren't quite big enough.

But those are minor little adjustments that I can recommend to you if you try this recipe.

Speaking of the recipe, I really didn't stray much from what was published in Bon Appétit. I used butter flavored cooking spray instead of butter between the bottom 6 layers of phyllo dough. I did use butter between the top layers because they were exposed and I didn't want to risk the texture being wrong. Also, I used granulated sugar for the crust, and skipped the cinnamon (by accident!).

Moroccan-Style Chicken Pie
Slightly Adapted from Bon Appétit

Serves 5-6 people.

Filling Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large sweet onion, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/8 teaspoon crumbled saffron threads
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 cups low-salt chicken broth (I used home made stock)
1 1/2 pounds skinless boneless chicken thighs
1/4 cup chopped golden raisins
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley

Crust Ingredients
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 sheets (about 17x12 inches) fresh phyllo pastry or frozen, thawed
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted*

* I used less butter because I used cooking oil between the layers for the bottom of the pie. I also went easy on the butter for the layers of the top crust. I don't think you need more than 1/4 cup to prepare the crust with all butter.

To Prepare The Filling
Put a large, heavy pan over medium heat on the stove. Add the oil and the onion. Season the onion with salt and pepper and cook for approximately 10 minutes until the onions are soft and transparent. At that point, sprinkle them with the ginger, cinnamon, tumeric, and saffron. Continue to cook the onions for one minute. Then, sprinkle them with a tablespoon of flour and cook for one more minute.

Add the chicken stock to the pan and the chicken thighs. Cook, uncovered, for about 20 minutes so that the thighs are cooked through. Turn them over midway through the cooking time. Here's my chicken when it was done.

Remove the chicken from the pan and add the golden raisins to the sauce. Once the chicken is cool enough, shred it. Then combine the chicken and the sauce and place the mixture in the refrigerator to cool. Here's my finished filling:

It is supposed to cool completely before assembling the pie.

The pie assembly goes very quickly. So turn on your oven to 375 degrees and start preheating.

Prepare The Crust Ingredients
In a small food processor, mix the almonds, sugar, and salt until it is evenly processed and resembles coarse salt.

Cut The Phyllo Dough
Remove 10 sheets of phyllo dough from the package. Put the rest back in the freezer. Split the 10 sheets of phyllo so that you have 5 for the top layer of the pie, and 5 for the bottom. Keep the phyllo covered with a damp (not soaking wet) paper towel or two while you are not using it. Phyllo dries out very quickly, so you want to keep it moist.

Place the 5 layers designated for the bottom of the pie on a working surface. Put the pie pan you are using on top and cut around the bottom edge of the pie pan so that you have 5 phyllo disks that will perfectly fit into your pie pan. Put the disks on a plate and cover them with the damp paper towels.

Place the 5 layers designated for the top of the pie on a working surface. Place the pie pan on top. This time, when you cut through the layers of phyllo, trace the edges of the top of the pie pan, which will give you larger disks for the top of the pie. You want these disks to fit perfectly on top of the pie once it is filled with the chicken mixture. Put the disks on a plate and cover them with the damp paper towels.

To Assemble The Pie
Work with the bottom layers of phyllo first. Remove one sheet of phyllo. Brush butter on it and then top with a sprinkling of the sugar-almond mixture. Place another sheet of phyllo on top and repeat the procedure. Keep repeating until you have the five layers of phyllo ready. Place them in the bottom of the pie pan.

Cover the bottom layers of phyllo with the chicken filling.

With the top layers of phyllo, use the same procedure of buttering the dough and sprinkling with the sugar-almond mixture until all five layers are ready. Place them on the top of the pie and tuck in any extra edges into the pie pan. Top with the remaining sugar-almond mixture.

Bake the pie for 35-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown.

ChocoLee in Boston's South End

2009-02-07T23:04:00.040-05:00

I was browsing through Boston.com the other day and saw their story on Boston's best new restaurants. The very first picture in the slideshow was of ChocoLee chocolates. And in the description it read, "Be sure to sample the main draw, offered only on the weekends: beignets oozing with a ganache of dark chocolate and mascarpone. "

Well, they didn't have to tell me twice! I was all over that, immediately emailing several friends trying to find one who would go with me on Saturday.

I had figured that since ChocoLee was listed as a best "restaurant" and they had beignets, that there would be seating with a small selection of drinks and pastries. But while there was no seating and no menu, it was absolutely worth the trip into Boston's South End.

ChocoLee is located at 83 Pembroke Street, which is right around the corner from Tremont Street. If you drive in, you'll need to park on Tremont Street and have plenty of quarters to feed the meter. If you take the T, the Back Bay orange line station was within walking distance.

I did love the large metal bowls of "chocolate" and monster-sized whisks in the windows.

One can't help but notice the magazines full of praise for Chocolee that are displayed near the above window. There was also one of those Boston's Best signs from the well-known annual poll of Boston residents.

There were two women working behind the counter. They were very friendly and approachable. I mentioned that I had a food blog and asked if I could take pictures, and they didn't hesitate to let me.

They did not know of the Boston.com Best of the new restaurants story. I mentioned that I had driven in from Worcester County and they asked if I came into town just for their chocolates. I should have just fessed up and said yes, I did. But I made myself look like less of a chocolate freak and I mentioned that I decided to make a day of it and meet friends there for those chocolate beignets and lunch somewhere. Just then, my friends Karen and Jon walked in the door.

They make the beignets to order right there. They were nice and hot when they handed my order to me in a bag and warned me that the liquid ganache inside was very hot and to be careful. My mouth was watering. Not only did I get the beignets, but also a number of their delectable looking chocolates. I like being able to choose which kinds I want instead of being forced to buy a pre-packaged box of the flavors someone chooses to give me.

The chocolates were in a glass display and were fresh. In fact, there were more freshly made chocolates on the counter top behind the display. They make the chocolates right there, daily!

I loved the chocolate pod displayed on the top of the counter next to the chocolate dipped strawberries (the pod was a replica).

For the chocolates I got lavender, toasted sesame, lemon curd, lime curd, ginger, vanilla ganache, cardamom, chile, lemon pistachio, salt caramel, and I think the last one was cherry cordial. I should have written down the exact names, but I wasn't thinking. So those are my approximations of the names of the flavors.

I've had three of my chocolates so far, and each one has been wonderful. I like that they had flavors that weren't chocolate inside and out. The lemon curd was exactly that - lemon curd inside a delicious dark chocolate shell. The lavender was in a white, creamy filling. I loved it as well. The third one I had was what I think was cherry cordial. All of the chocolates were incredibly satisfying and as fresh as could be.

But lets get on to the beignets! As soon as we walked outside the door, we all dug into them. It was hard to take this picture without gorging on this little dough ball filled with chocolaty goodness.

And here's the glorious inside:

OMG! It was pure heaven!!!!! But they must be eaten carefully! If you don't bite into it correctly, the chocolate ganache squirts out. So my advice is to tear off a bit of the dough to expose the chocolate without putting pressure on it! At that point, Jon sucked the chocolate out of the beignet, while Karen and I just put the entire thing in our mouths. It was totally chocogasmic!

I won't hesitate to go into Boston again - just to visit ChocoLee, and for no other reason but pure chocolate indulgence.

Mussels with Tomatoes, Herbs and Garlic (Moules Provençale)

2009-02-01T08:35:00.028-05:00

Public Television has the best of the cooking shows these days. They aren't trying to hook people with a personality that pushes a marketing strategy. It's all about the food, the ingredients, and the techniques of some of the best chefs around - be they big TV personalities or not.

Yesterday I watched Jacques Pepin cooking up some mussels in a spicy red sauce with rice. While I didn't feel like trying that particular recipe, he did remind me of how much I love mussels. He also taught me a thing or two about using mussels, which I've only cooked one other time.

Before you cook your mussels, you want to know they are alive - they should be! If you are looking through your mussels, a closed shell is good. And you see some that are open, tap on the shell, or tap the shell on the counter. A live mussel will close up before your eyes. If a mussel doesn't close up, throw it away - it's dead.

Joe picked up a pound of mussels for me yesterday. I didn't want to make them yet, so I looked up the proper storage method. I didn't want to kill the little critters (which I did last time)! To keep them alive, make sure they are not in an airtight container. I took some online advice and put them in a bowl and covered with a damp towel. My mussels were still alive and well today - perfect for me to kill them!

I like the smaller mussels. When I've had larger mussels, I didn't think they had a lot of flavor, and they seemed rubbery. Here was my batch of happy small mussels:

Mussels with Tomatoes, Herbs and Garlic (Moules Provençale)
Adapted from The Blego Cookbook (posted on epicurious.com)

2 1/4 lbs mussels, cleaned (I used less, but 2 1/4 is the max)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/4 cup sweet white onions, chopped
1/3 cup celery, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, plus extra to garnish
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp thyme
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 lb. ripe plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or 1 14-oz can chopped tomatoes
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Saute the onions and celery over medium-high heat. Salt and pepper to taste.

While it cooks, put all other ingredients (except the cheese) into a medium sized pot. Add the celery and onion when it is ready.

Cook until it boils. I don't like tomato chunks, so I used my immersion blender here. Little chunks are fine, but no more big ones.

Add the mussels. Stir around. Cover and cook one minute. When you uncover, they will already be opening. I stirred here to let the sauce into the shells more. Then cook two minutes more.

You could decide to eat it just like this! It's pretty good stuff:

Just look at that delectable little morsel. It's smiling at me!

You could also serve it on pasta, with chopped basil and Parmesan cheese.

Mussels with Tomatoes, Herbs and Garlic (Moules Provençale)

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Spaghetti With Meat Sauce

2009-01-25T12:20:00.001-05:00

I've been hanging out a lot on Facebook lately. And so has Elle, from Elle's New England Kitchen. This past week she posted a picture (only on Facebook) of a rigatoni she made, and it looked really good. Shall we say that she inspired Inspired Bites? Yes!

So when we made plans for friends to come over for dinner and board games (and drinks!), I decided to make something similar.

I'll admit to you all that I didn't want to make dinner. It has been a really long, hard week, making midterms for 3 different levels of classes. I didn't stop working last night until 7:30 when the school musical began. I left school at 10:15 that night wondering what we'd do for dinner. But in talking to my friend about possibilities to order out, it became clear that I would need to cook. Living out in the boonies, we don't have too many choices, and I will not eat take out pizza with a bread crust and canned mushrooms.

I threw this together on Saturday afternoon and it made for a fabulous dinner. Joe made a garlic bread with naan, and we had a great bottle of dry red wine. Karen made a wonderful salad with toasted pine nuts, artichoke hearts, cucumber and tomatoes. We sprinkled balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil over the top.

I'm going to eat every bit of the leftovers. I'm pretty proud of myself since I didn't use a recipe, instead making this one as I went along.

Spaghetti and Meat Sauce

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup chopped green pepper
2 cups chopped sweet onion (I loves me some sauteed onion)
4 chopped cloves of garlic
8 ounces sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup dry red wine
1/4 teaspoon salt
1.25 lb ground beef (85% fat)
1 (1.5 ounce) rind of Parmesan cheese)
one 2/3 ounce package fresh basil, chopped, plus more for garnish
salt, again, to taste (my taste was 1/2 teaspoon)

Add the 2 cans of crushed tomatoes to a dutch oven. It should be good and deep - my sauce tended to splatter, even on a low heat. Begin heating it up on a medium-low heat.

Saute the onions and pepper in the olive oil on a medium-high flame. Add the garlic towards the end.

Place it in the pot with the tomato sauce.

Saute the mushrooms. Add it to the sauce pot.

Brown the beef. Pour it and the juices into the sauce pot.

Add the wine, basil, tomato paste, and the rind of cheese. Stir it, cover the pot, and cook on low for 2 hours. Remove whatever rind has remained. Much of it will disintegrate into the sauce and flavor it wonderfully. Here's what mine looked like:

You should taste the sauce as you go and season it with salt and pepper to your liking. Depending on which type of cheese you use, you may not even need salt! My cheese wasn't salty, I guess, and not all of it fell apart, so this is when I added another 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

I used linguine instead of spaghetti. It's a little bit wider and flatter, but not as much as fettuccine. I like it.

Serve with Parmesan cheese and fresh basil on top.

Mmmm, that's good stuff!

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

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Seafood Quesadillas

2009-01-24T11:47:00.021-05:00

When I was in my teens, my family lived in Evansville, Indiana. My mom and I would frequent a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants (they called themselves Mexican) call La Hacienda. My favorite dish there was their seafood enchiladas, which were basically fake crabmeat rolled up in a flour tortilla and covered with a cheesey dairy sauce and sour cream. They were really good!!!!

Last week I happened to see this recipe (which I slightly adjusted) in a magazine advertisement for TransOcean Crab Classic. I gave it a try and I was happy because these quesadillas are very similar to the flavor I remember of those seafood enchiladas I loved so much.

Seafood Quesadillas
Adapted from TransOcean

1 cup chopped onion

10 twists of the pepper mill

salt to taste
a couple of shakes of red pepper flakes

a good handful of chopped, fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice

10 ounces chopped imitation crabmeat
Cheddar and Monterrey Jack cheese

Sautee the onions, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Add them to a bowl with the seafood, citrus, and cilantro. Mix to combine.

Heat up a pan. When it's good and hot, coat it with spray oil (I used olive oil spray), and place the cheese-covered tortilla on the bottom. Top it with the seafood mixture.

Then add more cheese on top and another tortilla. Spray the oil on the top of the tortilla.

When the bottom tortilla is golden brown, flip over and brown the other side.

Place on a cutting board and cut your quesadilla into triangles. I do a cut across the middle, and then two across the diagonal, making 6 triangles.

I bet these quesadillas would be awesome with a mango salsa. But I just ate them plain.

This recipe makes 4-6 quesadillas (depending on how much seafood you use).

Seafood Quesadillas

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Sauteed Bok Choy

2009-01-14T07:00:00.000-05:00

After making my Beef and Vegetable Stir Fry with Peanut Sauce, I had a good amount of bok choy left over. Bok choy is a Chinese variety of cabbage. It has long stalks and dark green leaves. It's pretty common in Chinese food.

I wanted to make something yummy to use the bok choy before it went bad, and I found just the thing. I found a nice little sauté recipe on Recipezarr, originally posted by Aimchick. I had all the ingredients on hand (that's awesome!) and it was quick and easy to prepare. I only made a few little adjustments to suit my taste. The result is very tasty and flavorful. Especially since I used my own homemade chicken broth!

It is hard to make bok choy look pretty (at least it is for me), but bok choy is a beautiful thing. It's has a great texture when sauteed - just a little crunch to it. And it makes for a healthy side dish, offering lots of vitamin C, calcium, and vitamin A. According to About.com, it "contains glucosinolates, which may prevent cancer." I like that!

Sauteed Bok Choy
Adjusted from Recipezarr poster Aimchick

Serves 4

1 head bok choy, sliced, both white and green parts
1/3 cup onion, diced
1 tablespoon grated ginger root
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame seeds, plus more for garnish
1/4 cup chicken broth

1 teaspoon low sodium soy sauce
crushed red pepper flakes (I like heat, so I did 5 little shakes of the container)

Before I rinsed my bok choy, I cut it into manageable sized pieces. It was about a foot long before I did that. I cut it into 4" sections. Then I put it in a deep bowl of water. I drained it and filled it up 2 more times, to make sure all the grit came off the stalks and the leaves.

You could use a salad spinner to remove the excess water. But I had time, so I let it dry by putting the stalks vertically in a colander.

Heat up a sauté pan or a wok on a fairly high flame. Add the olive oil, swirl it around, and then add the onion and ginger. Sauté the onion until it's tender (about a minute).

Then add remaining ingredients and sauté for about 8 minutes.

Garnish with sesame seeds.

Italian Wedding Soup

2009-01-11T14:19:00.006-05:00

Every winter it seems I buy can after can of Progresso Chickarina and Italian Wedding Soup. I love the stuff - they both taste so good and have a respectful amount of protein, and a nice low calorie count.

My quest this past week was to make a delicious soup - similar to Chickarina and Italian Wedding. I kept thinking that if I liked them so much canned, how heavenly would they be if they were home made? Ooh, and an added bonus is that I can lower the sodium count. FYI: one can of Progresso Chickarina has a whopping 2,000 grams of sodium! Ouch!

It took two soup-making attempts, but I ended up with the most awesome soup. I dare say it is perfection in a bowl, and the perfect food for a cold, snowy day .

My first try was good, not great. I decided that I would use a beef-pork mixture. I used 16 oz. beef and 4 oz. pork.

While the soup was good, I couldn't understand, why my fingers swelled like little sausages every time I ate it. One morning I couldn't even put on my wedding rings!

It turns out that I just wasn't thinking. I had used canned chicken broth, and I'm guessing it was loaded with sodium. Also, even though I went with more beef than pork, I could feel a light film of fat on my lips after eating it. And hey, it's the new year, and it's time to make up for that holiday eating. But if you don't have a problem with the beef/pork mixture, then that is the more traditional way to do it and it does have great flavor as well.

But I need to watch my fat intake, so I went back to the drawing board today and decided to lighten it up with turkey meatballs. And I would improve the flavor and have better control over the sodium if I made my own broth this time.

While rolling out the little meatballs, I was worried that I had over-done it with the egg plus the egg white. The consistency of the raw meatballs was so different when made with ground turkey as opposed to beef and pork. They were sort of sticky as I was rolling them in the palms of my hands. I added some extra panko bread crumbs, but I stopped at 2/3 cup and hoped for the best. And the best I did have!

I love this soup! I know that I will make it every winter from this day forward.

Italian Wedding Soup

One recipe of Home Made Chicken Broth
4 large diced carrots (I prefer a small dice for this recipe)
1 small head of escarole (only the tender leafy parts - I removed the tougher parts for this recipe)

For The Meatballs:
1 (20.8 ounce) package of ground turkey
1 small onion, grated
1 egg + 1 egg white
2/3 cup panko bread crumbs
1/3 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 tsp pepper

Mix all of the meatball ingredients with your hands! Don't be afraid, just delve right in. Once all the ingredients are spread evenly throughout the mixture. Put a little splash of water on your palms and take very small amounts in the palm of your hand and make many little meatballs. The water will keep the mixture from sticking to your palms. I found it much easier to work that way. Here's mine:

Once all the meatballs are rolled, put them into the soup raw. As you add the meatballs, add 4 chopped carrots.

Crumble about half the chicken meat from when you made the broth into the soup. I felt that adding all of it was too much. I saved the other half and hope that it's good for chicken salad!

Cook the pasta half way separately in a different pot. Add it to the soup pot.

At the end, add the leafy parts of the escarole. Cook two minutes more so that the escarole wilts.

Serve with Parmesan cheese and perhaps a nice hunk of crusty bread!

Italian Wedding Soup (with turkey meatballs)

Every winter it seems I buy can after can of ...

See Italian Wedding Soup (with turkey meatballs) on Key Ingredient.

Home Made Chicken Stock

2009-01-11T13:41:00.011-05:00

Home made chicken broth is far superior to it's canned counterpart! It has an enormous amount of flavor. I noticed the beautiful fragrance almost immediately after the broth began to boil. The entire house was filled with a beautiful scent that made our mouths water.

I originally made this chicken broth for my Italian Wedding Soup. I reserved a small amount and used it the next day in my Sauteed Bok Choy.

Chicken Broth

1.25 lb chicken drumsticks, skin removed
1 lb boneless chicken breasts
15 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt (I added 1 1/2 teaspoons more afterwards)
1 small onion - cut in half
2 cloves garlic - cut in half
1/2 cup chopped parsley (flat leaf)
3 ribs celery - with the leaves
3 carrots
12 peppercorns
1 bay leaf

Put all ingredients in a dutch oven. Bring it to a boil. Then turn the flame to low and allow to cook for 2 hours - covered.

Strain the broth through a colander, and if there are still particles you want out, again through a sieve.

You can freeze this broth and have it on hand. It will keep well.

It's Truffle Time!

2009-01-04T10:58:00.001-05:00

I finally made some truffles, folks! I have such a feeling of accomplishment for finally reaching that little goal.

I've wanted to make chocolates for quite some time. The first time I tried to make them was a couple of years ago. I had candy molds and all, but the experiment was a complete flop, if I do say so myself.

The second time I tried to make them was early in the fall (October 19th to be exact), but the ganache seemed to be far too soft to work with. Failure number two kind of hurt.

But like the little engine that could, I tried again just before New Year's Eve. And just like that little engine, I got up that hill and successfully reached the end game! Ahh, truffles. And they are not just good, they are fantastic. I gave them to my friend, Karen, along with her Christmas cookie package. Then, today, I brought some to my friend, Maureen. She called to tell me that they were sinfully good and comparable to any of those expensive Godiva chocolates she's had. Well, that comment really made my day!

I made two types different kinds of truffles: Gingerbread Truffles, which used a traditional type of ganache made of cream and chocolate, and Cream Cheese Truffles, which I flavored two ways: Raspberry and Amaretto-Honey.

See my post, About Melting Chocolate if you aren't quite sure about the process.
I bought some inexpensive tools and supplies at Michael's to help me out:

a candy dipping set (tools to roll the truffles in the melted chocolate and remove and set them properly
couplers and tips
parchment pastry bags
decorating candies

If you are unfamiliar with these and want to learn about them, see my post on Candy Making Tools.

Because the recipes are different, I'm going to put them in different posts:

Gingerbread Truffles
Cream Cheese Truffles (some flavored with amaretto and honey, some with raspberry)

Cream Cheese Truffles in Two Flavors

2009-01-04T09:55:00.007-05:00

I first saw a cream cheese truffle recipe in the Kraft Food and Family magazine. They certainly looked good in the picture. But for whatever reason, I didn't make it.

Christmas came and went, and I still wanted to make truffles. I browsed around in other blogs and kept seeing those cream cheese truffles with all sorts of variations.

So I did it. I made the cream cheese truffles, with higher quality chocolate (Callebaut). Yum! Then I split the batch up and made two flavors, Amaretto-Honey and Raspberry.

Cream cheese truffles are easy and taste divine!

Cream Cheese Truffles
Adapted from Craft Food and Friends

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, at room temperature
3 cups confectioner's sugar
10 oz. high quality dark chocolate (I used Callebaut)

12 oz. high quality chocolate for coating the truffles
candies and white chocolate for decorating

To make the "ganache", blend the cream cheese and confectioner's sugar in a mixer.

Melt the chocolate in a double broiler. See my post, About Melting Chocolate, if you would like more information on this procedure.

Add the melted chocolate to the cream cheese mixture and mix until completely combined.

At that point, I wanted to split the ganache and make two different variations.

Amaretto-Honey Cream Cheese Truffles
1 Tbs. honey
1 Tbs. amaretto
1/4 tsp. almond extract

Raspberry Cream Cheese Truffles
In the other half, add 2 Tbs Dickinson's seedless red raspberry preserves. I like these preserves because they have a strong, wonderful flavor.

I didn't have Chambord in the liqueur cabinet, but I could see 1 tablespoon Chambord and 1 tablespoon preserves.

Whichever variation you make, roll the ganache into 1" balls. You could also use a melon-baller with the little metal piece that slides across to release the ball. I wish I would have had that melon-baller because I had a hard time getting a perfectly round shape:

Some of my truffles weren't round enough, and that ended up showing when I dipped them in chocolate.

Chill the truffle balls for an hour. They should be as solid as possible before you dunk them in melted chocolate.

Melt the other 12 ounces of chocolate in the top section of a double broiler on a low flame. If you have tools to work with the truffles and get them in and out of the chocolate, those would be quite handy. See my post, Candy-Making Tools, if you want to see what I used.

Work quickly to dunk and cover all of the truffles in the chocolate and place them on a non-stick surface such as a Silpat mat or wax paper. Don't decorate until all the truffles are done because you risk burning the chocolate if you don't work quickly.

Once all the truffles are completed, decorate by adhering candy, coarse sugar, or whatever decorations you want to use. I also used melted white chocolate in a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a piping tip. Those items are also pictured in my post, Candy-Making Tools.

I recommend keeping these truffles chilled. You can package them in 1" candy cups and put them in decorative containers - that is if you want to give then away and impress your friends and family.

Your truffles will be enjoyed by all!

Gingerbread Truffles

2009-01-04T08:49:00.016-05:00

I love gingerbread. In my recent cookie baking for Christmas, I think the gingerbread cookies were my favorites!

Shortly after Christmas, I set out to make truffles. As I poked around some of the wonderful bloggers posts out there. I ended up at Shaved Ice Sundays, where this blogger did a post on a variation of cream cheese truffles.

Looking further, I found the blog, Bitter Sweet, with a variation of cream cheese truffles that had gingersnaps in them. Mmm, truffles and gingersnaps. What a wonderful combination. What a wonderful recipe.

But I really wanted to make a traditional type of truffle, with a ganache made of melted chocolate and cream. So I searched further and found this Gingerbread Truffle recipe at Epicurious.com from Bon Appétit magazine.

These truffles are absolutely amazing!

Gingerbread Truffles
Adapted from Bon Appétit
Makes about 2 dozen

3/4 cup whipping cream
10 whole allspice
10 whole cloves
1 tablespoon molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons grated peeled fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
7 ounces plus 12 ounces dark chocolate (I used Callebaut)
7 ounces plus 12 ounces high-quality white chocolate (they recommended Lindt or Perugina. I used Ghiradelli), chopped
1/2 cup chopped candied, uncrystallized ginger

Bring first 7 ingredients just to boil in heavy medium saucepan; remove from heat and let steep 1 hour. I couldn't decide whether to cover it or not. In the end I didn't.

Assemble your double broiler to melt the chocolate. A double broiler is really just a pot with a little bit of watter in it, and a bowl on top. You can see my post on candy melting if you want to see how I set mine up.

Once the water boils in the lower pot, add the white chocolate to the bowl/pot on the top level of the broiler. Let it get started heating up and the edges of the pieces starting to melt before adding the dark chocolate. I'm advising this because I found that the white chocolate took longer to melt, and I risked burning the dark chocolate while I waited for the white chocolate to finish melting. Be sure to keep the flame on low and stir often while the chocolate melts. Remove the top bowl from over water.

Pour the cream mixture through a fine strainer and into the chocolate. Discard the solids that are left in the strainer. Stir until the new mixture is completely blended. Then stir in the ginger.

I got my uncrystallized ginger at Trader Joe's.

Cover and chill your ganache until it's firm, at least 3 hours. I left mine in the fridge over night.

When you remove your ganache from the refrigerator, you may find that it's almost rock-hard! Don't worry. Just let it sit on the counter for an hour or so, so it becomes soft enough to work with it.

Line a baking sheet with parchment. Using 1-inch melon-baller, scoop filling and roll between palms to form balls. Truth be told, I used a rounded tablespoon.

But a melon-baller would have been better - the kind that's like an ice cream scoop that has the little bar that helps to release the ice cream. My balls would have been more uniformly shaped, and that does matter! If they look awkward before you dip them, they will look awkward after you dip them too.

Place the truffles on the parchment. Chill them at least 2 hours. You want them to be good and cold when you dip them in the melted chocolate.

When it comes time to dunk the truffles in chocolate, you need to work quickly. Dunk all of them in the chocolate before you decorate, and cover them all as quickly as possible. There's plenty of time to adhere toppings before the melted chocolate sets. But if you wait too long to dunk them all, you risk burning the melted chocolate.

See my post, Candy-Making Tools, if you are unfamiliar with them and want to see pics. I was glad I had them, and they were not an expensive investment.

I placed my truffles on a Silpat sheet, but I'm sure that wax paper would be just fine. Then I decorated.

I loved my truffles. It was a great first experience. But in the future, I will get the proper melon-baller and I will work more quickly to dunk the chocolate. My truffles looked nice, but there was room for improvement as well.

Candy-Making Tools

2009-01-04T08:16:00.011-05:00

To help me to make truffles that look presentable, I went to Michael's and bought some inexpensive tools and supplies at Michael's to help me out:

a candy dipping set
couplers and tips
parchment pastry bags
decorating candies
paper candy cups

This is a candy dipping set:

I don't know if I used them the right way, but it worked for me. I used the rounded end to roll the truffle around in the melted chocolate. Then I used the one with the prongs on the end to lift the truffle out of the chocolate and place it on my Silpat mat (you could place yours on wax paper - that's fine!). I liked it because the truffle just slid off of it with ease.

This bag of parchment triangles (perhaps a lifetime supply!) cost just over $6.00. I used it to pipe the white chocolate over the top of the truffles.

These are the couplers and tips:

The couplers fit on the end of the parchment bag and the tip comes out from the inside. Here's the result:

And I got some valentine's decorating candies - hearts, pink and white balls, and colored sugar.

Then I placed each truffle in a paper candy cup (the 1" size) and put them in a box.

I'm no professional candy decorator, but I was happy with the results.

About Melting Chocolate

2009-01-04T07:13:00.008-05:00

When making truffles, such as the Gingerbread Truffles and the Cream Cheese Truffles I made, you will need to melt chocolate for both the center and the topping. There are two ways to melt chocolate:

the microwave
the double broiler method.

I prefer the double broiler method when I'm melting a large amout of chocolate.

Don't worry if you don't have a set of pots dedicated to double-broiling. You don't need it! I made this little double broiler out of what I had:

Because the glass bowl was too small for the pot, I made a tinfoil snake (I didn't roll it tightly - you want room for the bowl to mold to it). Just put the snake on the outer rim of the pot. Add about an inch of water to the bottom of the pot.

Then place the bowl on top and, voila!

I also found that I had a Corell bowl that fit perfectly:

Oh! That flame in the picture is too high! I lowered it just after I took the shot.

Note: Chocolate burns easily! Use a low flame and stir often.

Notes on white chocolate: White chocolate takes longer to melt than dark chocolate. If you combine white and dark (as in the gingerbread truffle recipe), be sure to add the white first. I also noticed that white chocolate seems to harden faster when removed from heat.

I did, however, use the microwave to melt the white chocolate that I used to decorate my truffles:

Microwaving White Chocolate
I only use the microwave to melt my chocolate when there is a small amount to be melted. I was trying to melt about 2/3 cup of white chocolate chips. The first time, I let the microwave run for 30 seconds before stirring. BAD IDEA! The chocolate burnt and was unusable.

The second time, I stirred every 10-12 seconds, even before the chocolate really started melting. That worked out perfectly.

Beef And Vegetable Stir Fry With Peanut Sauce

2009-01-01T14:38:00.003-05:00

I got my new Eating Well magazine in the mail yesterday and was instantly drawn to this recipe.

While I always strive to meet a certain amount of protein each day, I'm reflecting upon my less-nutritional food choices as I struggle through the holidays. My inner child wants to make and eat a bunch of sweets, and my adult self wants to satisfy my cravings with something more substantial and satisfying.

Truth be told, I seem to fight with myself a lot lately to keep from ordering lo mein from my local Chinese take out place. I just love the stuff, but I know it's bad by the way my lips are slicked with oil after just one bite, and by the way my fingers, hands, and feet are completely swollen the next day from all that sodium.

So when I saw this recipe, it appealed to me because it has those Asian flavors that I crave, and it was pictured on top of a bed of udon noodles. But at the same time, it was a nice change of pace - beef was the protein. And I so seldom cook with beef.

The sauce looked rich, in a healthy sort of way. It has orange juice in it and peanut butter (the natural stuff, which is good because we always have it here). And to save my pudgy little fingers, I cut down on the soy sauce in the recipe and used the recommended low sodium type.

As for the noodles - I went to the wrong grocery store to get them. So instead of udon, I ended up with write rice, but that's just fine too!

Beef & Vegetable Stir-Fry with Peanut Sauce
Adapted from Eating Well Magazine

Makes 4 servings

¼ cup smooth natural peanut butter
⅓ cup orange juice
2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
4 teaspoons canola oil, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sesame oil, divided
1 pound sirloin steak, trimmed and thinly sliced (see Tip)
3 large stalks of bok choy plus the leaves of one more
2-5 tablespoons water
2 medium carrots, grated
¼ cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts (optional)

In a bowl, whisk together the peanut butter, orange juice, soy sauce, and vinegar. When I did this I didn't feel too confident about the sauce. It seemed like the peanut butter was flecked through it and the liquid seemed too thin. But it was thicker when I went back to it later.
Because the ribs of the bok choy will need longer to cook than the leaves, separate the leaves from the ribs of bok choy. Slice the ribs in even sized pieces, about 1/4 inch thick. Then roll up each of the leaves and cut across the rolled leaf, each cut about 1/2-3/4 inch thick. Set aside.

Heat a large pan or a wok over a medium-high flame. Add 2 teaspoons oil and coat the pan. Add the garlic, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, and the steak and cook, stirring,until the beef is cooked about 85% of the way. Remove it, with the pan juices, and set it aside.

In the same pan, heat up another 2 teaspoons of oil. Add the bok choy ribs and saute them until they are tender and slightly browned. Add the remaining teaspoon of sesame oil and toss to coat. Then add the carrots and cook about 3 minutes more so that the carrots are partially cooked and lightly browned.

Return the beef and juices to the pan and reheat for a minute or two. Add the sauce and toss to coat.

Serve on a bed of white rice or on top of udon noodles. Garnish with the optional peanuts.

Tip: For thinly sliced beef, freeze for 30 minutes to make it easier to cut into very thin slices.

Beef and Vegetable Stir Fry wit Peanut Sauce

I got my new Eating Well magazine in the mail ...

See Beef and Vegetable Stir Fry wit Peanut Sauce on Key Ingredient.

Red and White Pasta Bake

2008-12-29T06:21:00.001-05:00

Mmmm, doesn't that look good? Oh, it was good! The bechamel sauce was creamy and flavorful and the tomato sauce on top added a little zing. It was a perfect combination.

This was originally a recipe from Cooking Light Magazine. I used to make it from time to time. It was really good. But when I made it this time, I made it less light and it was more than really good - it was divine.

And now that I made this excellent sauce, I would like to revisit a recipe I did earlier, Butternut Squash Casserole, and add it in. I would be willing to bet that it would make the casserole heavenly.

A little note about the bechamel sauce: I originally made it with 4 tablespoons of flour, as recommended in Mario's recipe. But I found my sauce to be to watery. So I added 3 more tablespoons of flour, but that was toward the end. So when I wrote out the ingredients for this recipe, I wrote to use 6 tablespoons of flour at the beginning. I'm estimating that the sauce would be thick enough that way. Of course, if it's too thick, add some milk and perhaps a few more dashes of spices.

Red and White Pasta Bake
Adapted from Cooking Light Magazine

1 pound linguine
Cooking spray
4 cups sliced cremini or button mushrooms (about 12 ounces)
2 (14.5-ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes, undrained
1 recipe of Bechamel Sauce (see below)
1 cup mixture of mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses

Preheat your oven to 350°.

Cook the linguine according to the directions on the package. Cover it and set it aside.

Saute the mushrooms and set them aside.

Empty the cans of tomatoes with the liquid into a bowl. Puree it with an emulsion blender until it is fairly smooth. I, personally, don't like the chunks, so I blended it till all of them were gone.

Prepare the bechamel sauce:

Bechamel Sauce
Adapted from Mario Batali

5 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk (1 cup whole, 2 cups 2%)
½ onion
2 cloves
2 cloves garlic, sliced in half
2 teaspoons salt
1/4-1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (to your taste)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
3.5 oz. light Finlandia Swiss

For the Bechamel Sauce
In a medium saucepan, heat the butter until melted. Add the flour and stir until smooth. Over medium heat, cook the mixture until it's light golden brown, about 6 to 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the onion in half and stud it with the whole cloves. My onion was large, so I cut off a chunk and pretended it was a small onion.

Place the onion with the cloves, and the garlic into the milk in a small pot. Heat it until it is just about to boil.

Add the milk to butter mixture 1 cup at a time, whisking continuously until very smooth and bring to a boil. Add the Swiss cheese and stir for another 30 seconds or so. Remove the mixture from the heat and continue stirring until the cheese is completely melted. Season the sauce with salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

Assemble the Dish

Add the mushrooms and pasta to the bechamel sauce. Mix it well to evenly distribute all the contents of the mixture.

Prepare a 9 x 13 inch baking dish (or similarly sized casserole dish) by spraying it generously with cooking spray. Pour the pasta mixture in and distribute it evenly. Top it with the pureed tomato sauce and a mixture of mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.

Bake the dish, covered, for 20 minutes. Then, uncover and bake 5-10 minutes more to melt and slightly brown the cheeses on top.

Mangia Bene!

Red and White Pasta Bake

Mmmm, doesn't that look good? Oh, it was good ...

See Red and White Pasta Bake on Key Ingredient.

Christmas Baking - Barely done on time!

2008-12-27T09:09:00.022-05:00

This was a very challenging Christmas season, but things ended up being really good.

Challenging was the week we spent away from home while we waited for the power to come back on. I was already running behind and then that happened. You see, I have cookie assortments to make each year. People are counting on me and I have to come through!

Then, as a result of the ice storm, school was cancelled until January 5. That gave me time to catch up in my Christmas baking. Three days straight were spent searching for recipes, making and rolling out dough, and baking. But it was worth it.

I have a list of 17 people - each receiving this package:

First I made the chocolate mint cookie drops. They were a favorite of the family:

And they certainly don't need to be a Christmas cookie either.

I made two different kinds of butter/sugar cookies. This first one, came from the Land O' Lakes Web site. They are called Sparkling Citrus Cookies. I changed the recipe just slightly. They were supposed to have little colored balls in them and be in a triangular shape. I made them more festive with colored sugar on top (which I sprinkled on before baking). Also, I didn't like how the triangular shape looked once baked, so I switched to using a cookie cutter. This was the delicious result:

The Holiday Butter Cookies below came from the King Arthur Flour site.

I ordered a special flavoring from King Arthur so I could make it: Fiori di Sicilia. It's sort of like vanilla with citrus. Most people really enjoyed the taste - that is everyone except for Joe, who thinks that citrus doesn't belong in cookies. Hmmf!

The Royal Icing on the cookies was a recipe I found online that was accompanied by a video demonstration on decorating your gingerbread men. I used it on the butter cookies and on the gingerbread. I found the recipe for the icing and the video demonstration to be so helpful. And even though my power went out for four hours on Christmas Eve, just when I had made the icing and was about to decorate, I used the techniques with much success - by candle light. I wish I would have had more time, and better lighting, but such is life. My relatives and friends oohed and ahhed over the gingerbread men.

By the way, this is the only gingerbread cookie I make because the recipe is stupendous! It is the original Martha Stewart recipe and can be found here. Everyone loves these cookies. Even Joe's family!

On to the next cookie! I used a recipe from Epicurious.com for Pecan Salbes. They are quite delicious.

The Almond-Cardamom Christmas Cookies was a slightly controversial recipe within the family circle. I sort of knew there would be issues, but made them anyway.

You see, my husband's family is very meat and potatoes. They don't tend to go outside of their comfort zone to try new things and enjoy exotic ingredients. So the cardamom didn't go over so well. Also, they don't hold back in expressing their thoughts - but they also hugged me and told me not to take it personally when they described the cardamom as tasting like turkey stuffing.

Personally, I did enjoy these cookies, and I love cardamom. But I will suggest to anyone who views the recipe to cut down on the amount of cardamom by half. My cardamom was from Penzey's and was fresh. So the flavor was strong. I would imagine that most people would appreciate it in lesser amounts.

Finally, were the Santa's Whiskers, which also came from the Land O' Lakes site. I changed the recipe by using dried cherries instead of the candied ones. I also lowered the amount of coconut to 2 cups and instead of rolling the dough in the coconut so it would only be on the outside edges (the whiskers), I combined it with the dough.

The Santa's Whiskers were good, but not great. I suppose that the candied cherries would have made them look more festive, but I preferred the dried fruit instead.

In the end, I was pleased with my cookie assortment, as were the recipients. Christmas was great. And the gifts were wonderful. That will be a separate post.

Chocolate Mint Cookie Drops

2008-12-23T13:51:00.005-05:00

Okay, time is running out to get all of our Christmas-cookie baking done. But in case you are still looking for something festive, easy, and yummy, I'm posting this now.

This recipe is from the Land O Lakes Web site. Click here to see it. I made one slight modification. I added 1/2 teaspoon mint extract to the dough. Then, the chips I put on top were mint-flavored. I got them at Ocean State Job Lot just yesterday.

They are made by Nestle and they are pretty tasty too. In fact, they exceeded my expectations.

Other than adding the mint extract, I followed the directions exactly. But I do have two recommendations:

Make them a little on the small side. They tend to be more plump that way.
Undercook them just slightly. They are done when they begin to crack.

This batch was neither undercooked nor overcooked:

Oh, and one last thing...

if you can enjoy them warm, they are the best! Just look at that melted morsel on the top of my cookie! That was a treat indeed!

Almond-Cardamom Christmas Cookies

2008-12-21T15:39:00.019-05:00

Every year I make a small assortment of Christmas cookies for friends and family. Now that I'm home again, I have just enough time to make some before Christmas!

My first cookie this year is one that I found on Recipezarr and was posted by a member named Bergy. I'm so happy I found it because it is such an awesome recipe. It melts in your mouth from all the delicious butter, yet has a crunch from the almonds. It's perfectly sweet too, and has one of my favorite flavors - cardamom! But I will warn you, if you don't absolutely love cardamom, or if you like it more subtle, you may want to cut the amount in half.

I tried different patterns for the top of the cookie, but the one pictured at the top is my favorite, and it's perhaps the easiest one to do! Other things I tried were arrangements of three almond slices, four almond slices, just one big almond slice, and even mini chocolate chips.

The one slice was elegant, but there were very few large slices in the bag that would do the trick.

Oh, and another wonderful little feature of this cookie is that it can be stored for months in the freezer in a plastic container - not that they would ever last that long!

Almond-Cardamom Christmas Cookies

12 tablespoons powdered sugar

10 teaspoons ground cardamom (whichever amount - it will be separated) *

1 1/2 cups salted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar

4 cups flour
1 cup sliced almonds
sliced almonds for garnish

1 egg (or just the white) to adhere the garnishes

* Some people may want to consider cutting the cardamom in half. I love cardamom, but I will admit that it was strong in this amount.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Mix together the powdered sugar and 6 teaspoons of cardamom in a small bowl. Set it aside.

Cream the butter and sugar, and the remaining 4 teaspoons of the cardamom in a large bowl. Add the flour by cupfuls until it is completely blended. Then stir in the almonds by hand.

Grab a heaping tablespoon of the dough at a time and roll each piece into a ball. Drop it into the powdered sugar and cardamom and toss it around until it is coated.

Place each cookie on a greased cookie sheet (or one lined with a Silpat silicone sheet) and press gently with something flat (I used a measuring cup) until the cookie below is about 1/2 inch thick. Once flattened, the cookies should be 1/2 inch apart on the cookie sheet.

Use egg wash to adhere the almonds on top. Truth be told, I used Just Whites because I had it in the fridge.

Bake for 14-15 minutes, until beginning to brown around the edges.

Don't try to remove the cookies from the cookie sheet until they have cooled somewhat. Otherwise, you would risk having them crumble apart, and that would be a shame.

Makes 50 cookies.

Almond-Cardamom Christmas Cookies

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Fruitcake Wishes and Gingerbread Homes of Old Sturbridge Village

2008-12-21T09:16:00.016-05:00

Let me begin this post by saying that I am no longer homeless! Yippee!!!!!! We fortunately had our power restored late on Friday and moved back into our home that night. It's so good to be home.

Late on Friday night, we got a snowstorm too and got about 10" of fresh powder. It hasn't stopped since. And now we are beginning a new storm that will bring another 10 inches of snow.

During our period of refuge, we visited our friends, Karen and Todd. Karen had just discovered the King Arthur Flour catalog and she and I ordered several items that were delivered to her home. So yesterday I went to pick up my fruit cake kit:

I am looking forward to making it. Then, I'd also like to make one from scratch and compare them. But that's a lot of fruitcake, and other than myself, I don't think anyone else will eat it! So I'm totally indecisive about which to make first.

Before I left Karen and Todd's to head back home, they invited me to Old Sturbridge Village. The village is a living history museum - buildings represent those of the time, volunteers dress in period costumes and demonstrate crafts, careers, and life during the years of 1790-1840.

It's hard to believe that in all my years in New England (about 20 years), I've never been there! I was going to spend the day making Christmas cookies, but I ditched my plans and jumped at the opportunity. And I'm so glad I did.

Todd sings with the Worcester Men of Song who were performing that night at the village. After watching the performance, we ventured out into the village. It was still snowing lightly and there was a real winter wonderland before our eyes.

There were sleigh rides around the village common:

But the best part for me was the gingerbread house competition taking place in one of the buildings.

Some of the entries were representations of the buildings of Old Sturbridge Village:

I was fascinated with the gingerbread houses. They are so beautiful and I can only imagine how much work some of them were. I applaud all the contest entrants!!!

There were other food-related demonstrations also.

In one house, we got to sample the cider, which I very much enjoyed. They added spices like cloves and cinnamon, and then they would put a red-hot poker that had been sitting directly on a fire into the metal bucket of cider. The sugars in the cider instantly caramelize and make the most marvelous flavor.

In another house there was a demonstration of Christmas dessert-making techniques and ingredients. The woman volunteering was making waffle-cones. She had a batter which she would butter and then pour onto an iron that had been sitting directly on the fire heating up. Within a few seconds the cone was ready to be removed from the iron and wrapped. She would then fill them with cream that had been whipped using a whisk made of small twigs tied together with string. You can see the cones in the background of the following picture. They are behind the sugar plums (which look like rum balls).

It was a great time. But today I must get back to the cookie making!

I'm homeless! (pics included)

2008-12-13T09:22:00.011-05:00

Well, folks, we are homeless. Seriously. We had the worst ice storm ever and evacuated yesterday morning.

It began in the afternoon on Thursday. We all went home from school. Then, around 8:00 pm the power went out. We took out our heaviest down blanket and burrowed in for the night. But sleep was not easy. Every few minutes we heard a tree snap and break and fall to the ground. The ice made it especially noisy, and it sounded like a war was going on around us. Joe was worried about a tree coming in through the roof. I'm happy to say that didn't happen.

We had a transistor radio which came in real handy in the morning for me. I wake up at 5 and it's pitch-black out. So I found a local station and listened till I could find out my school was closed.

When daylight came, we could see just how bad it was, so we decided to try to leave. Trees were down everywhere and we saw a neighbor from the other side of the neighborhood seeming to be looking for an exit in his truck. Not a good sign.

Joe ventured out and found an escape route out of the immediate area. Good enough to decide to risk it and try to leave. En route out of the neighborhood, we saw a neighbor who is a part time police officer in town. He said he heard it may be weeks before we get the power back in our area.

This was the road we took to get out of our neighborhood. The other one was impassable.

These pics are the main road that gets you near the highway. We were in a little caravan of large vehicles. Luckily, Joe has a 4-wheel drive truck. Between the truck and a whole lot of desperation we made it through 15 miles of this to a safer place.

Once we got to the highway we were free and made it to the first open gas station, filled up, and continued south.

So we are staying with some very generous friends about one and 3/4 hours from our home. They have an efficiency apartment above their garage. I am so grateful and feel so fortunate to have this to escape to.

I'm spending time wondering how long it will be before my school has power and I'll either also have power at home, or I'll have to drive 2 hours to work. Only time will tell!

Spinach with Golden Raisins and Pine Nuts

2008-12-07T11:22:00.016-05:00

I've had a bag of spinach in my refrigerator for longer than I care to admit. It surprises me that it still looked in tip-top shape this morning and I decided it was time to do something with it.

I had a plan all along. There was a recipe in last month's issue of Food and Wine Magazine. All I needed was the spinach! That's great because sometimes I see a recipe and I hardly have any of the ingredients.

So today was the day.

The toasted pine nuts and plump golden raisins were so wonderful. Sweet and nutty are great with spinach. And I added a little kick with some red pepper flakes.

Food and Wine recommends serving this dish with roast beef and potatoes. I kept it simple and made it the fun part of an egg white omelet, to which I added some goat cheese. It was a great breakfast and I felt like I had something good for me.

Spinach with Raisins and Pine Nuts
Adapted from Food and Wine Magazine

1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped white onion
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
20 ounces fresh spinach (2 bags)

Place the golden raisins in a container with very hot water. Cover and let stand.

Place a pan on medium-high heat. Once it his good and hot, add the olive oil. Only wait a few seconds (just to warm it up) before adding the onion to the pan. Add half of the salt and pepper and saute the onion until it is caramelized and browned.

Add the spinace in batches, along with the remaining salt and pepper. After you add each batch, toss it around in the pan for maybe 2 minutes while it wilts and makes room for more spinach.

Serves 6

Spinach with Raisins and Pine Nuts

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Best Pound Cake Ever!

2008-12-05T22:25:00.007-05:00

I have to thank another blogger for this one. Thank you, Kim Morgan Moss at A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen for this most scrumptious, moist, and impressive recipe.

I came upon her blog while browsing through all the fabulous food porn at Food Gawker. This is one of my favorite sites on the Internet and I can spend oodles of time there, drooling at the photos posted by my fellow bloggers.

Should you visit either of these two sites, you'll see her photos. I'll be the first to admit that I was unable to make mine look as elegant as hers. But the recipe was the best!

As for my experience, I chose the bundt pan option. But I'll admit that were I to do it again, I think I'd go for a parchment-lined springform pan. I had some problems when it came to getting the cake out of my pan.

But, then again, the cake was so moist, I just patched it back together! A little icing covered it up quite nicely.

My family, for better or worse, doesn't care so much about how a cake looks, so my flawed presentation was just fine! And nothing could destroy the deliciousness of a good recipe.

I recommend this one with a big cake-eating grin.

Christmas is Like a Lite Brite

2008-11-29T17:52:00.008-05:00

I recently was reminded of one of my favorite toys from my childhood. It was a Lite Brite. Light Brite was a creative toy where you put colored pegs into a board, perhaps following a pattern. The board was black and was lit from behind. So when you looked at it with the lights off, it was colorful and Christmas-tree-like.

My happy Lite Brite memories shot me out of the gate to decorating for the holidays.

Not wanting to wait several weeks so that a freshly cut real tree wouldn't dry out, I bit the bullet and splurged on a beautiful faux tree at one of my favorite stores. I also got a few little goodies for my babies to express their good cheer as well.

As soon as I cleared off the dining room table, I ran downstairs to dig out the boxes of ornaments, lights, figurines and other items. Then I got right to work. Here's the tree:

Then, up when the lights. It's so warm and cozy in here and I'm full of peacefulness looking at my adult-style Lite Brite.

Getting back to the goodies for my boys, here's Petey to wish you all some happy holidays!

And Elvis likes the tree too! He's having happy puppy dreams.

May you all share in the warmth of the season!

Butternut Squash Casserole

2008-11-28T06:18:00.019-05:00

Last week I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office, flipping through the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. I will admit that I go straight for the last pages of the magazine because that's where the recipes are. And that's where I found the original recipe for this dish.

I love butternut squash. Its so awesome when it's roasted. It's sweet and savory and so colorful too. And the texture is so awesome.

So it was just me in the waiting room, and I knew I had to make this dish. My first instinct was to rip out the recipe from the magazine. But I decided to be big, and I resisted, and as soon as my appointment was over I went running home to look up the recipe online.

I'm sure that the recipe would have been wonderful without the changes I made, but I wanted to add some more protein and make it a meal in a bowl. So I added spicy apple chicken sausage.

For the pasta, I chose a noodle called campanelle. I'm guessing that campanelle means "bell" or "little bell" (campana in Spanish). And they do look like little bells!

They are really pretty when they're cooked.

The results were really nice. It was a hearty, warm-you-up-on-the-insides kind of meal; the perfect flavors for this time of year. I'll admit that I was expecting it to hold it's shape once it was cooked and it did not. But I didn't load it up with gooey cheese either.

I liked this dish a lot and I can see myself making it again. But since it didn't hold it's shape, I thought of an alternative approach for next time: add more liquids so it's sort of in a sauce. I'm thinking of milk with a flower thickener and going a little heavier on the Parmesan than I did this time.

So once you get through all that leftover turkey and the sides, here's a dish you may want to consider making!

Ingredients
1-1/2 lb. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut in 1-inch cubes (3 cups)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
8 oz. dried noodles (I used campanelle)
4 tablespoons butter
6 shallots, minced
6 chicken sausages (I used apple flavored, but Italian would be good as well)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 8-oz. carton mascarpone cheese
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, chopped
1 cup panko (Japanese-style) bread crumbs or soft bread crumbs

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Toss the squash, oil, and salt and pepper in a bowl. Place the squash into an 15x10x1-inch baking pan. I line my pan with tin foil because it saves me from washing it, which can be tough if any of the vegetables stick to the bottom.

Roast, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes, until the squash is lightly browned and tender. Stir the mixture twice during the roasting period.

While the squash is roasting, cook the noodles according to package directions in a large pot. Drain them and set them aside.

Saute the shallots in butter. Remove them from the pan and set them aside.

Remove the casings from the sausage and cook it in the same pan you just used so that it crumbles. You might have to actually chop it some with your spatula.

When everything is ready, add the noodles back to the pot. Then stir in the lemon juice, mascarpone, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan, 1/4 cup parsley, and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and black pepper. Mix it up well and transfer it to a greased baking dish.

In small saucepan melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter; stir in bread crumbs, remaining Parmesan, and parsley. Sprinkle it onto the noodle mixture. Bake, uncovered, 10 minutes, until crumbs are golden.

Serves 8-10.

Butternut Squash Casserole

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Sweet Potato Casserole

2008-11-21T23:34:00.033-05:00

I'm on cloud nine having just had a small helping of my sweet potato casserole. It's perfect and I'm making a second batch on Wednesday to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sure to get lots of complements with this one!

I began my quest for the perfect sweet potato casserole last weekend when I saw a picture of a sweet potato casserole recipe in one of the many magazines I subscribe to. I was dying to make it. The picture was mouth-watering and how could any sweet potato casserole be bad?

I remember that I was surprised that the recipe called for cream, but no butter. There were no eggs to give it structure. I should have trusted my instincts - it was a clunker! There simply must be butter! Also, the sugar just has to be brown sugar. So I tossed the batch and I started over this weekend on my pursuit of an acceptable sweet potato casserole to share with you.

Now, there are sweet potato casseroles with pecan crunchy toppings (struesels), and there are those with the mini marshmallows. I am combining them here and using a special little twist that came from the recipe I tried last weekend: the pecans are toasted in butter and sugar, and they have a little zing and smokey flavor from our spice rack friend, Mr. Chipotle Chili Powder.

And you can make the pecans days ahead of time. In fact, you may like the pecans so much that you make them and keep them for snacks! I have been picking at the ones that broke and weren't photogenic.

I baked my sweet potatoes days ahead of time. Bake them at 350 degrees. Mine were large, so they took over an hour. If you aren't familiar with baking them, just make sure you poke them with forks and I recommend putting them on tin foil. As they become good and cooked, the sugars will escape through those holes. So if you don't have the tin foil underneath them, the sugars will clump up and stick to the oven grate and drop to the bottom. Then, every time you turn the oven on, they will re-burn and stink up your house.

After I made my sweet potatoes, I stored them in the fridge for a number of days. So as I began preparing the casserole this morning, I took off the skins, and I reheated the sweet potatoes in the microwave.

By the way, I won't feel guilty eating this entire batch throughout the week because I cut back on the typical amount of butter and sugar that most other recipes have. Sweet potatoes are a wonderful thing, and they don't need that much sweetening. The butter is great, but let's not overdo it! Baked sweet potatoes are creamy enough with less butter.

Without further ado, here's the recipe. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Sweet Potato Casserole

For The Sweet Potatoes:
3 cups mashed sweet potatoes (from baked sweet potatoes)
½ stick butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten

For The Topping:
1 (6-oz) bag of pecan halves
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup honey (I used chestnut honey)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
salt

Let's begin with the topping.

Melt the butter in a pan. Add the pecans, sugar, honey, and chile powder. Toss them around for about 8-10 minutes so that the sugar and honey caramelize around the pecans. Empty out the mixture onto parchment paper so it can cool. Store the pecans in an airtight container till you are either ready to eat them or put them on this special casserole!

The only utensil you will need to mash the sweet potatoes is a fork. In fact, you won't need to even mash them, just cut them into large chunks with the fork and ass you mix in the butter, vanilla, and brown sugar, they will fall apart into the perfect consistency.

Add the eggs once everything else is mixed.

If your sweet potatoes are especially hot, you should temper the eggs. That means, that you take a hunk of the hot sweet potato and mix it into the eggs separately. That evens out the temperature before you add it to the rest of the sweet potatoes. By doing this, you prevent cooking the eggs before they are mixed in. If that were to happen, you'd have scrambled egg hunks in your casserole, and that wouldn't be pleasant.

Coat a 9 x 9 inch baking dish with cooking spray and spread the sweet potato mixture evenly throughout the dish. Top with the marshmallows. Personally, I think I had too many marshmallows on mine (just a bit too may). I would have one layer of marshmallows - no extra. Place the pecans on top with plenty of space between them.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40-35 minutes. Check toward the end so that the marshmallows brown, but do not burn.

Sweet Potato Casserole

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Roasted Parsnip Soup with Balsamic Syrup

2008-11-16T11:45:00.002-05:00

I just love parsnips. I had my first ones just a few years ago. Where had they been all my life?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with parsnips, they look like white carrots. But their flavor is stronger, a bit more bitter, and deeper. I wouldn't eat them raw (though Wikipedia says you can), but when they are roasted, they caramelize and have a fabulous, earthy flavor.

In this soup, parsnips are roasted with pears and onions and the result is beautiful in this flavorful and hardy fall soup. The soup alone is great, but the balsamic syrup knocks it out of the ballpark.

Oh, you can use boxed broth, but why? When I cook, I save the liquids in the freezer. I had enough to use in this soup so that I didn't have to go for the box. But let it be know, if the box were all I had, I'd have used it without thinking.

But I was fortunate, and instead of using boxed broth, I had my own stock on hand along with 1/2 cup of liquids that came from some butternut squash I recently cooked. Using that instead of the boxed stuff really added a level of depth to the soup.

I've been eating it for dinner with a big hunk of crusty wheat bread, and it's great! I also think this soup could be a huge hit at any one's Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Roasted Parsnip Soup With Balsamic Syrup
Adapted from Eating Well Magazine

Makes 7-8 servings, generous 1 cup each

Ingredients
2 pounds parsnips, peeled and chopped into equal-sized pieces*
2 pears, peeled and cut into eighths
1 small yellow or white onion, peeled and cut into eighths
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt, divided
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 cup balsamic vinegar
4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth
2 ¼ cups low-fat milk

Position the rack in lower third of oven and preheat to 450°F.

Toss the parsnips, pears, and onion in the oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper. Put it in a roasting pan. Roast, stirring every 10 minutes, until very soft and starting to brown, about 50 minutes.

While your fruit and vegetables roast, boil the vinegar in a small saucepan (I used an omelet pan) until syrupy and reduced to about 1/4 cup. It takes 10 to 14 minutes. Watch the syrup carefully, especially at the end, so it doesn't burn. When it is done, you can pull a spoon through it and it see the bottom of the pan without the syrup immediately covering it back up. See my picture below. When you reach this point, remove it from the heat.

In small batches, puree the roasted fruit and veggies in a blender with the liquids. You may find that you have more liquid than you need. I added 2 cups liquid to the original recipe because it just wasn't enough! And still, my soup was very thick.

Add it all the saucepan and stir in the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. Reheat the soup over medium heat, stirring often, about 5 minutes.

Gently reheat the balsamic syrup if it has become thicker than syrup while standing.

Ladle the soup into bowls and drizzle with the balsamic syrup (I used a spoon sprayed with PAM so the syrup would drizzle). Garnish with chopped chives, if you like.

* Eating well said to remove the fibrous, woody core of parsnips before using. But I didn't know what they were talking about. There were no woody cores in my parsnips.

Roasted Parsnip Soup with Balsamic Syrup

I just love parsnips. I had my first ones just ...

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I'm Back, People!

2008-11-15T10:00:00.018-05:00

Dear Readers,

I totally apologize for my absence. I have been so incredibly bogged-down with a class I was taking that I had no time left for the good things in life: cooking, blogging, keeping in touch with my online blogger community.

The good news is that my class ended - and I got an A. God, do I love an A. I simply must have it!

What class did I take, you ask? I took a class in Web design, and learned how to make a Web page using Dreamweaver. I also learned a lot about Photoshop. I'd like to now learn flash.

For the most part, though, I was completely overwhelmed with class and work. I didn't think the workload was going to be as big as it was. So, I'm left glad that I took the class, but glad that it's over!

During my absence, I did get to do a few things, but I was unable to post the good ones, and unwilling to post the experiments that had gone wrong.

For the Days of the Dead I made sugar skulls for my students and they decorated them after school one day. Oh, and I kept one for me.

But since I was running behind, I didn't even think of getting a chance to post about it until now. The holiday was two weeks ago. So I'll save the recipe and such till next year.

Lets see, I also made my first tamales ever. They were based on a recipe for butternut squash and goat cheese tamales. I made it a bit more Mexican. I added sweet potato, poblano peppers, and replaced the goat cheese with queso fresco:

But you know what? I wasn't so pleased with them and I didn't want to post the recipe I used. I do want to make them again, but I think I need to make them more fattening. It was sort of a light recipe and I didn't like the dough. But I will chalk it off to being a great learning experience and I'll make better tamales next time.

Then there was the day that I was going to make a gateau de crepe. I made a stack of crepes (they were good) and a pastry cream:

But I turned my eyes away from the pastry cream to take a picture of something else, and the cream curdled. I tried to save it, but I wasn't happy with it, and had to toss it with the hopes of having more success next time.

Oh, and there was the ganache I made.

It was a pumpkin ganache - actually had pumpkin in it. And some pumpkin-type spices too. I was going to make truffles with it. But it seemed a little too delicate. I think the cream to chocolate ratio was too high in the cream department. It was okay in the fridge, but less okay in the room temperature. So I ate it, little by little with a spoon. But ultimately, I threw most of it away and vowed to try again another time.

A few weeks ago my husband took a business trip to San Francisco. Lucky him! I would totally LOVE to go to San Francisco. But during the school year a trip like that is out of the question.

What did I want from San Franciso? Chocolate, of course. So I chose a chocolatier on line, and sent Joe on a mission. He visited Christopher Elbow chocolates for me, and they were wonderful. I will post about them within a few days or so.

I also had recipe success with a roasted parsnip soup. That was just a few days ago, and I still have a little left over. I will be posting the recipe very soon. I just don't like the pictures I have of it, and it's rainy now, so the light doesn't make for a good picture.

Oh, and I want chives for the picture. So when Joe left for the grocery store about an hour ago, I put chives on my list. Can't wait to get them on top of that soup!

Today, though, I'm dealing with some severe back and neck pain - probably from the stress of finishing my class. I'm taking some very strong meds. I hope my writing doesn't show that I'm really out of it! But as soon as I'm able to chop some vegetables, I'm going to make a moussaka - a lamb moussaka. I just know it's going to be good. I'll post that too, now that my dance card is open.

So hi, everyone! It's so good to be back.

Meryl

Irma's Cranberry Nut Bread

2008-10-26T20:27:00.013-04:00

When I was a kid, growing up in New Jersey, my family would spend every Thanksgiving with some family friends from Long Island. I guess that both families were rather far from blood relatives.

And even though "Aunt Irma" had six young boys, she could still cook! In fact, if I remember correctly, she was a terrific cook! Thankfully, at some point she shared her recipe for this most-awesome cranberry nut bread with my mom, who shared it with me.

As an adult, I make this bread every year. I bring it to our family Thanksgiving celebrations and will be sharing it with my coworkers for our pot luck tomorrow. I just know it will be loved and I will be admired, just as I admired Irma every time she cooked for us!

This recipe makes one large loaf, but just to make sure I have enough for myself, I set a smidgen aside and made this sweet little mini loaf just for me!

Eat what you want people! I still have my own personal stash.

I have a note on the recipe that Irma used to quadruple it and bake it in three larger loaf pans. After all, she had a big family to feed!

Irma's Cranberry Nut Bread

2 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
juice & grated peel of 1 orange
2 tablespoons butter
boiling water
1 cup chopped, fresh cranberries
1 cup chopped nuts (pecan or walnut)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Blend in the egg.

Combine the orange juice, peel, butter, and enough boiling water to measure 3/4 cup. Mix it into the flour mixture.

Add the nuts and cranberries and mix by hand until well-blended.

Turn the batter into a well-buttered 8 1/2 inch loaf pan and bake for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. The top of the loaf will crack while baking.

Cool on a wire rack. Wrap in foil and refrigerate overnight before slicing.

FYI: This bread is delicious toasted!

FYI(2): you can quadruple the recipe and bake it in 3 larger loaf pans.

Irma's Cranberry Nut Bread

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My new little chocolate buddy!

2008-10-19T08:13:00.000-04:00

I have a new little friend on my sidebar thanks to Teresa at Mexican Chocolate Lore and More:

And then I got it again! Thank you Gloria at Cookbook Cuisine.

This award is perfect for me! And it's awful cute!

I am a chocoholic. And I don't think a day goes by without a little smidge of my favorite thing, be it M&M's, part of a Lindt or Vosges bar, or a truffle from a favorite mail-order chocolatier. And I'll admit that I've been known to drive 50 miles just to try a chocolatier who is a bit out of the way.

And let it be known, that if all goes well, my next post will be for Pumpkin Pie Chocolate Truffles. My ganache is cooling in the refrigerator right now.

So my new little buddy is a wonderful addition to Inspired Bites.

Stuffed Sweet Dumpling Squash

2008-10-09T17:57:00.001-04:00

Fall is my absolute favorite season. I love the crisp air, the morning frost, the colors of the leaves, and of course - the food! Fall is the time for pumpkins, apple cider, donuts, apple pie, hot chocolate, and squash.

I was at the supermarket the other day and I couldn't resist the bin packed with beautiful sweet dumpling squash. There are so many squash varieties available in stores these days. I was at first torn between them and the delicata. Actually, for the recipe I ended up making, either would be good. I just happened to go for the sweet dumpling. This is the sweet dumpling:

Honestly, I don't taste a difference between it and the oblong delicata.

What to do with my sweet dumpling squash? Seriously, the squash is great just totally plain with a hint of butter, perhaps some pumpkin pie spice and a wee bit of maple syrup or honey. Just look at that golden goodness:

I want some just looking at that picture.

When you cut the squash open, just scoop out the seeds. I bet you could toast and salt the seeds and they would be good too!

So, what I ended up with was wonderful - I'm full of pride. I ate it as a meal, but it could easily be a side dish. To give it protein, I added ground beef. The squash was sweet, the currents were tart, the brown rice was nutty and satisfying. The pecans were wonderful and gave it a little crunch. And not only was it delicious, but it was pretty and you could impress your friends and family with this perfect fall dish.

Stuffed Sweet Dumpling Squash

3 sweet dumpling squash
salt and pepper

¼ cup toasted pecans

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup red pepper, diced
1/3 cup green pepper, diced
1 small stalk of celery, diced
1/3 cup sweet, white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
¼ cup currants
1 cup chopped baby spinach

½ cup brown rice
1 ¼ cup water

Add the rice and water to a small pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 40-45 minutes. When it’s done, all the water will be absorbed and the rice fluff with a fork.

While the rice cooks, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Because of the indent in the area of the squash where the vine connects, I decided to cut lengthwise.

Spoon out the seeds in each squash half. Season the cavity with salt and pepper. Place cut-side down on a baking sheet and cook for 30-40 minutes. When it is done, you will be able to press on the skin, and it will give because the inner flesh will be softened.

While it cooks, heat up the oil in a large pan and saute the vegetables along with the salt and pepper. About half way through the cooking time, add the currants, garlic, and spinach. When the vegetable mixture is cooked till it is soft and slightly browned, transfer the mixture to a medium mixing bowl. Add the rice and the toasted pecans.

Brown the meat in the pan you used to cook the vegetables. Add the browned meat to the vegetable mixture.

Place the mixture into the squash halves. Over-stuffing is just fine!

Bake uncovered for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Stuffed Sweet Dumpling Squash

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Pan de Muerto: Bread of the Dead

2008-10-07T22:50:00.002-04:00

I have a confession to make: I’ve never made anything with yeast outside of a bread machine. Even worse, every year, I bribe my students with extra credit to do something I’ve never done: make Pan de Muerto and feed us all with it!

Pan de Muerto is an essential element of the celebration of Days of the Dead. The Days of the Dead are a fascinating holiday primarily celebrated in Mexico and where populations of Mexicans thrive. Pan de Muerto is a special bread for the holiday and bakeries make an abundance of it for their customers.

The Days of the Dead honor family members who’ve passed. There is a common belief that the spirits of the dead are allowed to return on these days, so families construct altars to honor and please them. So the altars are personalized for family members, but there are some common, essential elements of which Pan de Muerto is one.

I love the entire view that the Mexican culture has about death. They don’t fear it. In fact, many Mexicans believe that life is just the first stage of existence, and death leads to the next. So the people are happy during the Days of the Dead, and visitors would see a lot of funny (and sometimes edible) images of skeletons, skulls, and the fun existence of the dead – really!

If you are interested in learning about the Days of the Dead, I recommend Wikipedia for a captivating read.

For my Pan de Muerto, I used my favorite recipe (from tasting the results of my students). It comes from Global Gourmet. I didn’t change it at all, mainly because I didn’t know what I was doing! (he he). The texture and base of the bread reminds me of Challah, which is a favorite.

Pan de Muerto's got butter and eggs in the dough. Oh, and it has sugar and anise seeds. If you're not a big fan of the flavor of anise, don't worry! It's not at all overwhelming. In fact, the flavor of the anise is subtle and pleasant. I can say that, because I'm not a huge anise fan - yet this is my favorite recipe for this bread. Then, to make it all even better, there's a somewhat sticky and delicious orange glaze on top. Yum!

I tried to make a very traditional shape that I see in pictures, but I will admit, that my loaves came out looking like pumpkins. But the flavors where right, and I just love eating this bread. The next day, I tried making skulls and crossbones, and skulls with bones coming up the sides. Oh, and I made a bone to give to my friend, AnnMarie. Here's the spread:

So, in all, I made four huge loaves to bring to my students, and one small one (the bone) for AnnMarie, but I wanted to make sure I had a little for myself. So I made a little mini loaf that I tied to decorate with some colored sugar:

It sure was a tasty treat to have it warm, right out of the oven, no butter needed!

Well, I've done enough "talking" now, so here's the wonderful recipe.

Pan de Muerto: Bread of the Dead
Recipe by Global Gourmet

Makes 1 large loaf

For the Bread:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
5-1/2 cups flour (it will be divided and used throughout the mixing)
2 packages dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon whole anise seed
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs

For the Glaze:
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons grated orange zest

In a saucepan over medium flame, heat the butter, milk and water until very warm but not boiling.

In a large bowl, place 1-1/2 cups flour, the yeast, salt, anise seed and sugar. Add in the warm liquid you just made and mix until well combined.

A note about the mixer:
I wish I had one of those cool, Kitchen Aid standing mixers, but I don't. In fact, I think that is one of the reasons that I've always avoided making bread. Instead, I have a hand mixer. But it did come with a bread-type attachment. I began using it when I noticed that the beaters just weren't working, and the dough was climbing up to the top of them, and above. So I tried the other mixer attachments for the first time. Here's what it looked like:

Add the eggs and beat in another 1 cup of flour.

Continue adding more flour, one cup at a time, until the dough is soft but not sticky. I'll admit, I had a hard time incorporating everything. This is what I had when I flipped the dough out of the bowl and onto the counter for kneading:

Knead on lightly floured board for ten minutes until smooth and elastic. I was pleased with how the dough was looking at this time:

Lightly grease a bowl and place dough in it, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1-1/2 hours.

Pre-rising:

At the end of 1-1/2 hours:

Punch the dough down.

Here's what I found to be the most difficult part: Shape the dough. This was something completely new to me. I have unimagined respect for bread makers at this point.

The dough is very elastic. I'd shape it into bones, and it would shrink. I'd find that some parts of it didn't stick to the main loaf well, so I tried a little egg wash. But sometimes, as the loaf sat raising again (you need to let it rise an hour once it is shaped) in it's new shape, it would unattach. Sometimes I ended up poking in toothpicks. That worked!

I shaped some of the loaves into the traditional shape (shown at the top of this post), but I also tried some loaves resembling skulls, skeletons or round loaves with "bones" placed ornamentally around the top.

Once the dough is shaped, let these loaves rise for 1 hour before baking.

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Bake in a preheated 350 F degree oven for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and paint on glaze.

For the Glaze:
Bring all the ingredients to a boil for 2 minutes, then apply to bread with a pastry brush. If desired, sprinkle on colored sugar while glaze is still damp.

Pan de Muerto: Bread of the Dead

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Aromatic Rice-Noodle and Beef Soup

2008-09-28T17:22:00.012-04:00

Soup for the sickie! That’s me – the sickie.

I’ve been ill this week. It must be the ragweed, unless I actually have a cold. Nevertheless, I feel like crap. I've got a bit of bronchitis and all the wonderful things that go with it. I’ll spare you the details. Oh, but I will tell you that when I blow my nose, my ears pop and I get a momentary case of vertigo. Not much fun!

So, I was too ill to cook yesterday, but I wanted some soup with a spicy kick to make me feel warm inside and open up my sinuses. Yesterday I settled for canned and boxed soup. Today, I’m going for the gusto and trying something that I think will hit the spot.

This recipe comes from Gourmet Magazine. It is a classic soup from Lao. Apparently it has a lot in common with Pho (a Vietnamese soup). I’ve never had Pho, but I’ve been wanting to try it. So I almost feel like I am today.

I never used lemongrass before (not fresh lemongrass). So that was a new experiment. It resembles scallions, in a way. But it's more wood-like. Especially the outer layers. The inner parts are softer than the outer. You remove the outer and throw it away. But don't worry if the inner parts aren't soft like scallions. You end up pouring the stock through a sieve and throwing away the solids.

In the end, you place the noodles in a bowl, pour the stock over it, and then add the rest.

I used beef in the recipe - sirloin. But Gourmet says you can use pork, chicken, or fish instead. Either way, I'm sure it will wake up your senses and make you feel good. :)

Aromatic Rice-Noodle and Beef Soup
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine

2 tablespoons minced shallot
2 serrano chiles, thinly sliced, with a few seeds left in for some heat
1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 lemongrass stalk
2 tablespoons minced ginger
8 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce
2 whole star anise
1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly crushed white peppercorns
2 small tomatoes, cut into a small dice
4-5 scallions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/2 lb. dried flat rice noodles
1-lb. sirloin steak (about 1 inch thick)
2 cups chopped spinach
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

Discard any dry outer leaves from lemongrass and coarsely chop bottom third of stalk. Don't worry if it is somewhat fibrous (wood-like). You will discard it in the end.

Heat the vegetable oil and the sesame oil in a 5-qt. heavy pot over moderate heat until hot but not smoking. Add the shallot and chiles, stirring, until dark brown, but not burnt. It will take about 4-5 minutes. Add the lemongrass and ginger and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

About the white pepper: While the chiles and ginger cooked, I crushed my white pepper. I had whole peppercorns. I put them in a bag and crushed them with the back side of a strong tablespoon. White peppercorns are fairly easy to crush, I guess.

Add the broth, fish sauce, star anise, cinnamon stick, salt, and white pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes. Pour through a fine sieve into another pot and discard the solids. Add the tomatoes, scallions, and lime juice and simmer until the tomatoes are softened, about 10 minutes.

While the broth simmers, bring a large pot of water to a boil for noodles. Trim the fat from the steak and season with salt and pepper. Heat a well-seasoned ridged grill pan over moderately high heat until hot, then grill the steak for about 5 minutes on each side for rare. Let stand 5 minutes before slicing very thin.

While the steak is resting, cook the noodles in boiling water until tender. Follow the package directions for the times. Mine was 4 minutes.

Place the noodles in your soup bowls. Pour the soup over top and then top it all with the spinach and steak. sprinkle with the mint and enjoy the experience.

Aromatic Rice Noodle And Beef Soup

Soup for the sickie! That’s me – the sickie.

I ...

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Brown Butter Heath Bit Cookies

2008-09-23T21:06:00.014-04:00

Have you ever noticed that the cookies we eat tend to change with the seasons? Maybe in the summer we eat more lemon or other citrus cookies. In the winter I tend to go heavy on the chocolate and nut content. Do you?

Well, as fall hits in New England, and the temperatures dip and the heat comes on at night, I'm ready for some autumn cookies, and these are some good ones. I browned the butter before using it in the dough. The sugar is brown, and the heath bits are brown toffee goodness! These cookies remind me of the turning leaves and the taste of being toasty warm in front of the pellet stove.

By the way, I'm not a soft cookie fan. I like my cookies to have some bite to them, and these do. For me the texture was just right. They are not soft, but won't crumble apart when you eat them either. They are the perfect in between.

Brown Butter Heath Bit Cookies

2 sticks unsalted butter
2 ¼ cups packed light brown sugar
2 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon table salt
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract (I used double-strength)
2/3 package heath bits

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Brown the butter by heating it over medium-high heat in a medium sized pot for several minutes, stirring occasionally. Then, pour it into a bowl to cool.

Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Set the flour mixture aside.

Once the butter is cool, add the brown sugar. Blend with a mixer until it is smooth and well-blended. Add the 2 eggs and the vanilla extract. Beat until smooth.

Add the flour mixture, beating until all is incorporated into the dough. Then use a wooden spoon to add the heath chips.

Roll into golf ball-sized spoonfulls of dough and place on a cookie sheet lined with either parchment paper or a Silpat baking sheet.

Bake for 14 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before moving to a cooling rack.

Makes approximately 24 yummy cookies.

Brown Butter Heath Bit Cookies

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Cold Soba Noodle Salad with Shrimp

2008-09-14T19:59:00.012-04:00

I just got through watching Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations in Japan. I will admit that lately I seem to be a bit fascinated with Japan, it’s culture, and it’s food.

Well, in this episode, Bourdain, being the food idol that he is, was joined by Masaharu Morimoto, being the food idol he is! The topic of soba noodles was the first one in this episode. I imagine that most of the noodles we eat are made in a factory, by machine. And maybe they have factories like that in Japan.

Bourdain says, “Soba is the Japanese word for buckwheat. And good Soba noodles are 80% buckwheat, 20% wheat flour.”

There are people in Japan who spend their whole lives making soba, with no machines involved. They work the dough, roll it out, and then precisely cut it into 1.6 millimeter noodles. And do know, that’s a guy, cutting through sheets of noodles folded onto themselves to form into thick squares of flat dough. Then he cuts them with a tool, guided by a piece of wood to get a straight edge. The only power is coming from the man’s muscles. It’s truly amazing. These noodles were not dried, but rather cooked fresh.

Bourdain and Morimoto ate their noodles in a traditional style, with a soya-based sauce called tsuyu. The tsuyu probably contained nori, wasabi, and Japanese leeks. They scooped-up the noodles plain, and dipped them into the sauce before loudly slurping them up – the proper way to eat the soba.

My noodles? Well, let’s compare. I have a package of them sitting in my pantry. Hmmm .... mine were made in Australia. It’s the Hakubaku brand organic soba. But the package says it’s number one in Japan. But it is 70% wheat flour and 30% buckwheat. Shouldn’t that be turned around? The last time I made soba the noodles were, in fact, much darker. So I imagine that they had a more traditional buckwheat to wheat flour ratio. Well, no matter, I guess. I think they taste pretty good.

In fact, I think this noodle dish tastes pretty good! And there are so many little add-ins you could do to change it up. I made a small batch of the sauce and used it for a pound of shrimp. It could just as easily be chicken, or tofu, or even beef. Also, I steamed some snow peas and shaved carrots. That’s what I like. But you know what? Even without all that stuff, the dish was pretty tasty. Looks good, doesn't it?

While making the soba dish, I was excited because I got to use a new ingredient. About a month ago I ordered Yuzu juice online. It has a strong citrus flavor. I used is sparingly. It combined really well with the soy, vinegar, honey, and sesame oil.

Oh, one nice thing about this recipe is it doesn't have to be done at one time. I made my shrimp and veggies in the morning and cooked the pasta much later in the day when I was getting hungry.

Cold Soba Noodle Salad with Shrimp
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer

1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 package soba noodles (mine was 9.5 ounce)
5 scallions, diced
8 ounces snow peas
one large carrot, shaved with a peeler and left in long strips
1 1/4 pounds shrimp, peeled and de-veined

Shrimp Marinade
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
5 teaspoons low sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons strong flavored honey (I use chestnut honey)
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
½ teaspoon grated ginger (done on a microplane zester)
1/4 teaspoon yuzu juice

Sauce (it's the same as the marinade, but doubled)
5 teaspoons rice vinegar
10 teaspoons low sodium soy sauce
4 teaspoons strong flavored honey (I use chestnut honey)
4 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
½ teaspoon grated ginger (done on a microplane zester)
½ teaspoon yuzu juice

In a small bowl, mix one batch of sauce. Pour it into a freezer bag and add the shrimp. Let it marinate for 1-2 hours.

To cook the shrimp, place them in a non-stick pan sprayed with cooking spray or with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Cook them for about 1 1/2 minutes per side. They will turn opaque. Cook them till they are barely done. Be careful because shrimp can easily overcook and be overly chewy. Cool the shrimp in the refrigerator in a container that is sitting in a container of ice to cool it from below.

When you are ready to prepare the noodles, mix together the batch of sauce in the bowl where you will place the cooked noodles.

Toast the sesame seeds by putting them in a dry pan over a medium-high heat until they look golden brown. You should shake or stir them around so they are browned evenly on all sides. Place them into a bowl and let cool.

Put a pot full of water on high so you can bring it to a rapid boil. You can steam the vegetables while you wait for the water to boil.

To steam the veggies, bring about an inch of water to a boil in a steamer. You will be steaming the snow peas and carrots. When the water is ready add the snow peas to the steamer. After 3 minutes, add the carrot shavings and continue to cook all of the vegetables until they are tender (about 3 minutes more). Place the steamed veggies in the refrigerator to cool.

Once the pot of water is boiling rapidly, put in the soba noodles and cook them according to package instructions (mine called for 4 minutes). They should be tender, but not mushy.

When the noodles are done, drain them and plunge them into a bowl of ice water to stop them from cooking further.

Place the noodles, scallions, and toasted sesame seeds into the bowl with the sauce. Toss to combine. The dish will taste better if you let it sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

Cold Soba Noodle Salad With Shrimp

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So Much To Do - So Little Time!

2008-09-06T08:31:00.006-04:00

I'm a teacher, and school started 2 weeks ago. To put it bluntly, I feel like I got hit by a truck! Teaching is fun, but it can be such an exhausting job physically and mentally. I slept 12 hours last night. The last time I did that was probably was about a year ago - when school started for the year. :)

As I got into bed (after my nap) last night, I decided to flip through the pages of my brand new Food and Wine that arrived in the mail yesterday. I love Food and Wine.

Well, this month's issue was a real good one.

Each time I go through a food magazine I go through and flag the recipes I want to make. Usually there are maybe three to four recipes that I long to make. But this month was overwhelming with greatness.

I'm in such a pickle! There were eight this month that I just wish I had the time to make - along with the twenty or so that got backlogged throughout the summer.

Some look very do-able, even on my tight schedule. Some aren't.

First, there's a nice, probably not time-consuming scallop recipe from Stephanie Izard, winner of last season's Top Chef. It's on a bed of greens with bacon in it. She shares her secret to browning the scallops. I can't wait to try it!

There's a fritatta recipe that I just know I will make when my department feeds all the teachers for our monthly breakfasts. It's got mustard greens and sweet onions. I just love sweet onions.

The Chicken Tikka looks like something I can accomplish. It's an Indian recipe. They offer easier to find ingredients, but let you know what they are replacing in true Indian cooking. I really haven't done any Indian cooking, and I'd like to expand my horizons in that direction.

Another featured Indian recipe that I'm just dying to try out is the Creamy Indian Spiced Halibut Curry. Wow, that's right up my alley. I'm going to go all out when I make it and use the whole milk and all the cream. Honest!

One of my favorite foods it goat cheese. I did a post on a local producer in my area, so I can practically drive down the road and get it any time. Food and Wine has two fabulous recipes with goat cheese this month. There's delectable-looking little stuffed mushrooms and Creamy Pasta with Tomato Confit and Fresh Goat Cheese. Yum!

There's Sauvignon Blanc-Steamed Mussels, Chicken with White Wine and Creme Fraiche, and a Raisin-Studded Apple Bread Pudding too.

And the one that I most want to make, but the least likely that I will (I'm giving myself a challenge here) is the Apple Tart with Almond Cream. OMG! That looks so wonderful.

Is that just eight recipes? Nope, it's ten. Ugh!

Hummus Like My Tailor Makes It

2008-09-02T19:05:00.020-04:00

Being super-short, and no size 6, I have to bring a lot of my clothes to a tailor. I found a great one in a nearby town. She and I have bonded to some extent. During my last visit, we talked about weight and food. She is from Syria and was thrilled to share with me a sample of her hummus. I typically am not a fan of hummus, to be honest. But her hummus was unlike any hummus I’ve ever had! It was so much thinner and creamier in consistency and the taste was fabulous. I asked her for the recipe, but she seemed reluctant. I get the impression that she’s given it to people before who didn’t do it justice.

We talked about the ingredients. I told her I tasted the tahini and lemon. She pointed out that the black flakes were cumin. She doesn’t grind it to a powder – she likes it being noticeable. It looked to be the size of somewhat coarsely ground pepper. As much as I'd like to say that mine is just like that, I only had ground cumin. But I think that the taste was comparable.

I am going to try to recreate her recipe, by putting together a hodgepodge of recipes I saw on the Internet with pictures that looked like hers but relying mostly on one I saw in Food and Wine. I think I came close!

By the way, I had a can of tahini in my pantry for a long time. When I finally opened it for this recipe, it was separated (as expected), and the solids were rock hard. That was a problem and I almost threw the whole thing away. But Joe convinced me to try to save it by microwaving. He's so smart! So, to soften it up, I microwaved all of it for short amounts of time and broke it up in between them. It took quite a few cycles, but eventually I was working with a mixture that could be stirred!

Hummus
Adapted from Food and Wine

1/2 pound dried chickpeas
water
5 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil plus more for garnish
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons tahini
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cumin, divided
parsley for garnish

lavash bread for serving

Add the chickpeas to a large bowl and cover with several inches of water. Refrigerate overnight. Drain and rinse them before cooking.

Add the chickpeas and garlic cloves to a medium saucepan and cover with several inches of water. Bring the chickpeas to a boil and then reduce the heat to low and simmer for approximately 40 minutes or until they are tender. When they are done, reserve 1/2 cup of the liquid and then drain the rest.

Note: If you like your hummus thick, then you may never use the reserved liquid. Hold back where I say to add it. Then, if at the end, your hummus is too thick, stir it in later.

Peel the garlic cloves.

Add the chickpeas, garlic, reserved cooking liquid, 1/4 cup of the olive oil, and salt to a food processor and puree roughly. Then add half of the tahini, the lemon juice, and cumin and puree it all till smooth.

Remove the mixture from the food processor and put in a bowl. In the bowl, add the rest of the tahini and stir.

To serve, add the hummus to a bowl. It's good to not have a smooth surface. I tried to leave swirls of lower areas. That helps to create a great presentation by filling those areas in with the rest of the olive oil.

Garnish with parsley, more cumin, and if you like paprika, use that too! Additionally, some people add whole chickpeas to the top surface.

Hummus Like My Tailor Makes It

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Pork Roasted Tenderloin with Appled Sauce, Appled Wild Rice, and Greens

2008-08-30T20:02:00.000-04:00

Here's another reason that I bought the most recent cookbook, The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great, from Pamela Anderson. The original recipe (before I adapted it) appeared in Food & Wine Magazine. I also made another of her featured recipes in that issue, the Brown Sugar Custards.

When I think of this dish, I think of an an episode of the Brady Bunch when Peter was talking to Alice about dinner and he imitated her in a Humphrey Bogart voice saying "Pork chops and apple sauce." Do you remember that episode? Well, Alice had the flavor combination down! Pork and apples go very well together.

I was very pleased with the dish. The flavors were spectacular! I will absolutely make it again and perhaps serve it to friends. I intensified the flavors of the sauce, adding extra apple and then straining it at the end and leaving the wonderful fruity flavors in the sauce that went over the tender, perfectly seasoned and cooked pork tenderloin. I placed the tenderloin on top of a bed of seasoned Swiss chard with red pepper flakes and onion. All of that lay on top of a bed of wild rice that I boiled in part water, part apple juice, ever more adding apple to the dish. It was good stuff!

Pork Roasted Tenderloin with Appled Sauce, Appled Wild Rice, and Greens
Adapted from Food & Wine's printing of a Pam Anderson recipe

For the pork:

One 1 1/4 pound pork tenderloin
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup naturally sweetened apple juice or apple cider
1/2 cup apple sauce - no sugar added
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 single-serving package of golden raisins
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Also, heat up a non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Coat the pork tenderloin in oil and season with salt and pepper. Brown it on all sides in the pan. Then place it in the oven for approximately 18 minutes, turning once. The pork will be done when an instant-read thermometer registers 140 degrees when poked into the center of the thickest part of the tenderloin. Place the pork on a cutting board and let it rest.

Add the juice/cider, broth, apple sauce, soy sauce, raisins and ginger to the pan. Cook it down until the liquid is reduced by half. Pour the mixture through a strainer and into a bowl or gravy boat.

For the greens:
one bunch Swiss chard
1/2 cup thinly sliced onion
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Heat the pan on medium-high. Add the olive oil. Saute the onions. Then, begin to add the Swiss chard. There will probably be too much of it to add all at once, so add maybe half. It will wilt and shrink quickly as you toss it around with a pair of tongs. Then add more, or the rest of the chard, salt and red pepper flakes. Continue to toss with a pair of tongs until the chard is wilted. Remove from the pan and set aside.

For the rice:
I used the Lundberg Wild Blend of rice, replacing half of the liquid on the package directions with apple juice. Once it was cooked, I tossed in small amount of toasted pecans.

To Plate:
Begin with the rice. Top with a layer of the greens. Slice the pork tenderloin in thin medallions. Place on top of the greens. Pour the sauce over it. Enjoy!

Pork Roasted Tenderloin with Appled Sauce, Appled Wild Rice, and Greens

Here's another reason that I bought the most recent ...

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My Anniversary Dinner at the Oyster Company in Dennisport

2008-08-24T19:06:00.013-04:00

Joe and I spent a week on Cape Cod, during which we celebrated our our ninth anniversary. We got a great recommendation from the man we rented our cabin to go to The Oyster Company in Dennisport. Here we are, about to get into the car to go to dinner!

Our anniversary fell on a Thursday and we made a reservation for 6:00. We arrived and the restaurant was about half full. The hostess was going to bring us to one table, but I saw a two-seater right under a nice window and asked if we could sit there. That was great.

The atmosphere was fairly casual. Some people were Friday casual, and some were just plain casually dressed. I get the feeling that most of the people dining there had some money - and their children were extraordinarily well behaved. I noticed that right away. There were quite a few families with fairly young children, yet I didn't hear one scream or argument during our entire dinner. Amazing!

There were a number of special drinks on the menu, and I ordered one. It's not listed on their site because it was a new special. But in was something like a white chocolate espresso martini. It had some sort of Godiva liqueur, vodka, and espresso. Here it is:

The drink was true heaven! I've had other espresso-type martinis. Compared to them, this one had very little espresso, but it sure was good anyway. I had to stop myself from slurping it down in a minute - it tasted so good! I loved the little decanter they brought it in. It was full of ice, and there was more of the drink in it that didn't originally fit in the martini glass. It was probably close to two drinks by the time I finished.

I was feeling a little bold, and wanted to try oysters of some sort. After all, we were at The Oyster Company, and I've never had oysters! They had a lot of oysters, but I think most of them were raw. I figured that probably wasn't the way to go for me. So I got what I felt was a beginners' oyster dish - Caitlin's Oysters (broiled with a lime cilantro and shallot butter).

Turns out I like oysters plenty! Maybe next time I'll do something a little more adventurous. These oysters were the tops. And there just weren't enough of them! The butter sauce was so good I dipped bread in it when the oysters were gone. I wanted to just drink it up.

Joe got the chowder. It wasn't an exciting picture, so I left it out. But he enjoyed it. It wasn't too thick and it tasted great. I did taste it and I agree - it was good.

For dinner, Joe ordered the Lobster Fettuccini:

We are quite sure that the pasta was homemade. If they didn't make it there, then someone nearby did. It was fresh and perfectly cooked. The lobster chunks were plentiful and the cream sauce was delicious. We both agreed that it was nice that the pasta wasn't swimming in the sauce. The ratio of sauce to pasta was very pleasant. The green things you see are edamame.

I had one of the best meals ever. It definitely goes into the Meryl Top 10. It was the Pan-Seared Dayboat Scallops:

The scallops were placed on a celeriac puree and were surrounded in a lemon-herb emulsion. I'm pretty confident that there was some bacon fat used in searing the scallops - though it wasn't overly bacon-flavored. Just enough to make the scallops spectacular. On top are some sweet potato chips. I was so stuffed I had to give my last scallop to Joe, and that hurt. Nor could I finish my second martini.

We looked at the dessert menu. I mentioned that were I to get dessert I would either go for the creme brulee or the flourless chocolate torte. Joe got the cheesecake for dessert - damn him! I should have gotten a picture, but I forgot! Joe says it was very good. He would have liked more of the fruit sauce which was very lightly drizzled over it and onto the plate in thin ribbons. The cheesecake was not the typical consistency of cheesecakes I've had in Massachusetts. It had a lot of cheese in it and the top browned some when it baked. I particularly like this kind of cheesecake and I sampled some of his. It had a thick graham cracker crust.

In the end, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about The Oyster Company. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

Battle of The Cape Seafood Shacks

2008-08-20T14:23:00.088-04:00

Greetings From Cape Cod!

I've been ending my summer vacation this year with Joe and the boys (our two Boston Terriers) in lovely Dennisport, MA on Cape Cod. We New Englanders refer to it as "The Cape." Joe and I've eaten out a couple of times at two similar restaurants, so I decided to do a "Battle of ..." post.

When on The Cape, eating at a fried seafood joint is an absolute must! I seldom indulge in the joy of a fried seafood meal, but this is the time to go all-out. And I am counting it as okay since we are getting tons of exercise kayaking, taking long walks and going on long bike rides.

Here we were on our ride on the Cape Cod Rail Trail:

So the day arrived for my fried clam indulgence and after much research, I had decided to let loose on a place called the Original Seafood Restaurant located between the two, also on route 28. But we walked in and I ordered the clam platter (clams with bellies) but they foolishly ran out! Hey, when you are supposed to specialize in a food, you shouldn't be running out! So they get a thumbs-down in my book!

So I now present to you the Battle of the Seafood Shacks. The two restaurants, the Weatherdeck and Kream N' Kone, both located on route 28 and are within a couple of miles of each other.

The Weatherdeck
168 Route 28
West Harwich, MA 02671
(508) 432-8240

When doing my restaurant research on the clam shacks in the area, I didn't see anything written about this place anywhere. I had no intention on going there. But those bastards at the Original Seafood Restaurant were out of whole belly clams and Kreme 'n Kone was a mob scene - we couldn't even get a parking spot. So we went to the first other place that we saw, the Weatherdeck. I was keeping my fingers crossed.

Well, the food was great!

I got the belly clam platter for $22 (the average rate around here) and my husband got the fried scallops for about $9.00. Both were totally delicious.

The Clam Platter:

I really enjoyed the coating on the clams. The clams were on the smaller side, and were sweet and tasty. In all the clams I ate (and there were a lot of them), there was only one with a bit of sand in it, and that's pretty good!

The Scallop Platter (there actually are a lot of scallops under there!):

The coating on the scallops was good, not out of this world. But the scallops were perfectly cooked. They were tender and sweet. And they were pretty large in size (not huge).

The onion rings were awesome. I wanted more clams and less fries, so I completely passed on the fries, but Joe said they were good! He also had a clam chowder. He said he liked the flavor very much, but the consistency was too thick.

It was the atmosphere that could use improving. While there are a lot of windows, and a high ceiling with ceiling fans, it was hot. Granted, it was a really hot day, but some air conditioning would have been appropriate. Also, it doesn't look enticing from the outside. It needs updating. On the inside it could also use some updating of decor as well. The booths remind me of fast food joints from 1983. The benches were the hard orange particle-board ones and the table was a wood-grain laminate on particle board. Joe recalls the tables being sticky.

Here's pics from the outside:

When you order your food, you get a ticket with a number, and they call you when it's ready. That was fine when the place wasn't too busy, but it would have been annoying if they were busy and constantly calling out numbers.

But the food was good and plentiful. We had a lot of leftovers and I couldn't even finish my clams even though I never even ate a french fry. If you're hungry and you're there and don't want to deal with a crowd, it's a good restaurant and I recommend it.

Oh, and I think they may have sold beer. I could swear I saw a Budweiser sign.

Kream 'N Kone
Rte 28
West Dennis, MA 02670
(508) 394-0808
http://www.kreamnkone.com/

The first time I went to Kreme n' Kone it was so crowded we couldn't get a parking space and figured that if one opened up, it would take forever to get a table and our food, so we turned around and left. Their sign says they were voted best on the cape, so they are pretty popular.

But today, it was just before noon, and the mobs hadn't arrived yet. So we went for it. We were trying to spend less money, so I didn't get the clam belly plate like I did at the Weatherdeck, but the price was comparable, at $21.75. Instead, I got the fried scallops ($12.99) and my husband got the fried haddock ($10.99). He also got a clam chowder.

The atmosphere was nice. The seats were comfortable and the decor was light and airy. there was an outside dining - not a patio, but the end of the parking lot, really. The location is good - just along the river, so if you sit on that side of the restaurant you can watch the kayakers and paddle-boaters. It was much cooler out on the day we visited the Kreme N' Kone (as opposed to the really hot day when we were at the Weatherdeck). There was no noticeable air conditioning. But on this day, they didn't need it. There was great ventilation coming from the breeze through the open windows.

One downer was the ladies room. It only had 3 stalls, and one of them was out of order. This is a family restaurant, so half of the adult women in the bathroom have a child with them. Seriously, I was in line while the restaurant was almost empty. There were two stalls, each with a mother and child in them, and two single women in front of me in line. In 15 minutes, the lunch rush probably was going to begin, so the facilities were not sufficient! It can be so hard to be a woman who needs to do her business.

Prices were similar to the Weatherdeck. But there was a noticeable difference in ordering in that they give you a number sign and they bring the food to you, which is nice.

The onion rings were great and were exactly like those of the Weatherdeck. The fries were good. My husband said they were just slightly better than those of the Weatherdeck. The chowder was good in flavor, but a little thick, just as that of the Weatherdeck. Perhaps they were made by the same people.

The coating on scallops was crispier than it had been at the Weatherdeck, but the scallops were slightly overcooked. They had tried to not cover up the scallops with fries. I'm guessing it's because the scallops get soggy under the fries. There were a couple under there and it was noticeable. In all, I'm giving the upper edge to the scallops at the Weatherdeck.

Here's the haddock platter:

The haddock was delicious. I think it was the same coating that was on the scallops. I'd get it again without a doubt.

Here's the scallop platter:

And the winner is?

Honestly, this is a tough one to answer. If I look at our experience, I'd have to give the win to the Kreme N' Kone. But on a different day, it might not be an easy choice. Here's the breakdown:(btw - I don't know why you have to scroll down to see this table. Blogger is fighting me and I can't fix it!)

	Weatherdeck	Kreme N' Kone
Atmosphere (looks)	Needs Improvement	Nice
Onion Rings	Delicious	Delicious
French Fries	Very Good	Great
Fried Scallops	Great	Very Good
Clam Chowder	Good	Good
Ease of Parking and Speed of Food Arrival	Great	Depends
Service	OK	Good
Facilities	Good	Insufficient

Bolognese-Style Pasta Sauce

2008-08-14T11:01:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I began watching Secrets of a Restaurant Chef on the network I love to hate, the Food Network. The restaurant chef is Anne Burrell, who is an accomplished chef in New York, and Sous Chef to Mario Batali on Iron Chef America. I like her show a great deal and I like learning from watching her and listening to her secrets.

This past week I decided to make a Neopolitan Meatballs recipe from Eating Well, and I decided to change the sauce recipe and combine it with the Spaghetti Bolognese recipe that I saw Anne prepare on her show. But for some reason, the Food Network is only posting recipes from one of her shows so far. I think they've aired about five episodes. So I relied on my memory of Anne, preparing that marvelous-looking sauce. Aside from her advice on seasoning foods and some of the ingredients she used, I remember Anne talking about the Bolognese sauce as one that goes to the brink of destruction (from over-cooking) and then bringing it back from the edge to make a wonderful sauce with complex, deep flavors.

I think I did this sauce justice! It is seasoned more than it would have been and the flavor is amazing! I will definitely make my version of this sauce again. Maybe with the meatballs, but maybe not!

Bolognese-Style Pasta Sauce

Adapted from Eating Well Magazine
(with the help of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef)

yield: 8 servings

Ingredients
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cups onion, chopped
1 cup zucchini, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 (28 ounce) cans petite diced tomatoes
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup water
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil

Procedure
Heat-up a dutch oven on a medium-high flame. Add the olive oil and heat it up for a minute. Don't let it heat to the point of smoking. Add the onions. Stir occasionally for 2 minutes. Add the zucchini and and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Sauté the vegetables for about five minutes, stirring occasionally so they are soft and cooked, just beginning to brown. Add the garlic. Cook, stirring, for one more minute.

Add the tomatoes (don't drain them), white wine, water, bay leaf, the rest of the salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, oregano, and basil. Cook it for about an hour, stirring occasionally and checking to see the level of liquid. Each time that I saw the level of liquid get very low, I'd add about 1/2 cup water, stir, and continue cooking for one hour. I added water 3 times during the cooking period. If it were to have needed more, I would have used it.

Here's what it looked like after that first hour (water was a little low and I added 1/2 cup just after this picture was taken):

I don't like chunks of vegetables in my sauce, but I like the flavor. So I used an immersion blender. If you don't have an immersion blender, transfer the sauce to a regular blender. Be sure to temporarily remove the bay leaves first!

If you are going to add meat, such as the Neopolitan Meatballs that I made on this particular day, add it now and continue to cook. It took me about 1/2 hour to cook my meatball (I had to do it in batches). then I cooked the sauce for another hour after adding the meatballs. So the total cooking time of the sauce was 2 1/2 hours.

Here it is, with the Neopolitan Meatball recipe. That's good stuff!

By the way, this was definitely the best sauce I've made in my life!

Bolognese-Style Pasta Sauce

A few weeks ago I began watching Secrets of a ...

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Neopolitan Meatballs with Bolognese-Style Sauce

2008-08-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

As I write this, I am enjoying a small dish of meatballs with sauce - no pasta, no extra cheese. These meatballs are totally awesome. The texture is perfect and they are completely satisfying as I chew them, and afterward they leave me full and content. The sauce (Bolognese-Style Pasta Sauce) is equally fantastic, the best sauce I ever made. I will put these meatballs and sauce in my regular rotation!

This was the second time during the week that I made these meatballs. I had made them earlier this week, following the recipe, and I felt they were too delicate and the texture was off. Also, I had used the wrong kind of seasoning, so the flavor was off too. So I remade them, making adjustments, and creating perfection! I'm so proud of myself.

I'm going to make a huge batch before school starts back up (in just over a week) and portion it out into lunch-size servings and freeze them. I can see the future - in a hurry trying to get out of the house. No worries about lunch. I'll just grab a lunch-size container of them out of the freezer and I'll be good to go. Lunch will fill me up and I'll enjoy every bite. I'll meet my protein intake for the day, and I'll have some fiber too. Life will be good.

Neopolitan Meatballs with Bolognese-Style Sauce
Adapted from Eating Well Magazine

yield: 24 meatballs

Ingredients
1 pound 93% ground beef
1/3 cup bulgar wheat
2 cups bread (french - not a baguette), cut into cubes
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon oil (for cooking the meatballs)

Bolognese-Style Pasta Sauce

Procedure
Place the bulgar in a medium bowl. Add boiling water, covering the bulgar one inch above. Cover the bowl tightly and let sit for a half hour to absorb water. It won't absorb all the water, but that's okay!

Add water too the french bread and stir it around with your hands. I added enough so that the bread got wet in all parts, but I didn't add extra water. Once it's wet, put it into a sieve and press the extra water out of it so that no more water can be removed. Put the bread in a medium bowl.

Put the bulgar into the sieve and strain out all of the extra water. Add the bulgar to the bowl with the bread.

To that bowl, add the remaining ingredients (eggs, Parmesan, beef, cinnamon, salt, and pepper). Mix together with your hands - they are the best tools! Mix it completely so you can't see the different ingredients - just one big mass of mixture.

Form your meatballs. I got 24 meatballs. Here's what they looked like (compared to the size of a penny). They were between 1 1/2 - 2 inches in diameter:

Heat up a nonstick pan. Add the tablespoon of oil. Place the meatballs in the pan. But be careful to leave about two inches of space between the meatballs. You'll need room for them as you roll them to cook them on all sides. I had to cook the meatballs in 3 different batches before adding them to the sauce.

When the meatballs are browned on each side, carefully place them into the sauce as it cooks. They will finish cooking in the sauce for an additional hour.

Now you've got perfection! Yum!

You could serve them plain, or with pasta. But I bet they would make a great meatball sandwich too.

Neopolitan Meatballs with Bolognese-Style Sauce

As I write this, I am enjoying a small dish ...

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Brown Sugar Custards with Cointreau Cream

2008-08-07T10:51:00.024-04:00

In the world of food, Pam Anderson is not the bombshell blonde sex symbol. She is a cookbook author. Her most recent cookbook is The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great, which I just ordered myself.

She had a few recipes featured in Food and Wine Magazine recently and this one caught my eye. It was a rewarding little recipe.

The components are all easy to prepare. In fact, you could do what I did. I made the candied orange peels one day, and the next day I made the custard. While it cooked I whipped-up the whipped cream! By the way, the whipped cream wasn't in the original recipe - it sure doesn't help to lose weight. But I used a small amount!
I love the flavor. It tastes like caramel, with hints of orange coming from the zest in the recipe. The whipped cream on top has Cointreau in it, expanding on the orange flavor in the custard. It's topped with yet another layer of orange, the candied peels.

Brown Sugar Custards with Cointreau Cream
Adapted from Pam Anderson (in Food and Wine Magazine)

Custard Ingredients
1 3/4 cups 2 percent evaporated milk
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest

Whipped Cream Ingredients (Whipped Cream is optional!)
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons Cointreau

candied orange peel for garnish

For the Custard
Preheat the oven to 325°.

Combine the evaporated milk and brown sugar. Add it to a saucepan with the heat on medium. Stir occasionally so the sugar dissolves while you bring the mixture to a simmer. Be careful not to boil it.

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, egg yolk, vanilla and orange zest.

You will need to combine the hot mixture with the eggs. But if you were to simply add the heated milk and sugar mixture to the egg mixture, you would cook the eggs and they would clump. The way to avoid the egg cooking is to only put in a small amount of the milk and sugar mixture into the eggs and stir while you add that small amount. Mix it up, and then add another small amount of the milk and sugar mixture. By doing this, the egg mixture heats up and distributes so that it won't clump and cook when you add the rest of the heated ingredients.

Once combined, strain the custard through a sieve to catch any solids that may have occurred anyway.

Place four small ramekins in a baking dish or roasting pan. Pour the custard into the ramekins. Add enough hot water to the baking dish to reach halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes, until the custards are just set.

Remove the ramekins from the pan and water. I used a set of tongs. Place them on a cooling rack and let them cool for at least 1/2 hour.

Cover the custards with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 3 hours.

Garnish with the optional Cointreau-flavored whipped cream and candied orange peels.

For the Whipped Cream
Place the cold cream in a medium bowl. Mix on high till whipped. Add sugar and mix again. Add Cointreau and mix again. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Brown Sugar Custards with Cointreau Cream

In the world of food, Pam Anderson is not the ...

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Candied Orange Peels

2008-08-06T21:29:00.020-04:00

I've wanted to make candied orange peels for some time now, but for some reason I was intimidated. That was silly because this was one of the easiest things I ever did! I've been snacking on them, but I made them to garnish a recipe for Brown Sugar Custards that I will post later.

Candied Orange Peel
Adapted from Bon Appetit

2 oranges
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
3/4 cup water

Bon Appetit suggested using vegetable peeler. I don't have one that works that well, so I cut the orange peel off the orange with a good knife. Try to do it in nice, long sections. The white part that you see in the picture below is called the pith.

The pith is bitter and you want to remove as much of it as possible if you are not a fan of that bitterness. I'm not a fan, myself.

Make sure to cut by moving the knife away from your fingers!

Cut the peels into strips, about 1/8-1/4 inch thick.

Stir 3/4 cup sugar and 3/4 cup water in heavy small saucepan over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat heat and simmer for 2 minutes.

Add orange peel and simmer for 15 minutes.

Place the remaining 1/2 cup sugar in small bowl. Remove the peels from the syrup with a slotted spoon and toss them into the sugar, coating them with the crystals. Cool, tossing occasionally. I left them out on the counter for a little while to cool down before I put them in a container together.

For the remainder of the day, they were still soft. But the next day they had more bite and the sugar crystals were crispy again. I liked them that way!

I can't help but think that the syrup that was left in the pot (and that I threw away) would be wonderful in a citrus-flavored martini. But I have no plans on making one.

After using the candied peels to garnish the Brown Sugar Custards I made later that day, I wanted to chocolate-cover the rest of them, but I keep nibbling at them, and I wonder if I'll have any left. For now I'll post this recipe. If and when I chocolate cover either these, or a new batch, I'll post it.

Candied Orange Peels

I've wanted to make candied orange peels for some ...

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Soba Noodles with Fresh Vegetables and Pan-Grilled Tofu

2008-07-31T15:13:00.031-04:00

I've been into many things Japanese lately. For years now, I've been enjoying sushi, edamame, and tofu. I've enjoyed many an evening watching Iron Chef and then Iron Chef America.

Lately I've been very fascinated the show I Survived a Japanese Game Show. It's a reality show where 10 Americans signed up and had no idea that the premise of the show was they go to Japan and compete on a real Japanese game show called Majide (which translates to "You must be crazy"). Right now you can watch the episodes now by clicking here. I think this show is outrageous!

One one episode of the game show, the winning team's reward was to see how soba noodles were made and to have them prepared fresh. It looked great! I think on that particular episode, the loosing team had to shell and clean live clams for food preparation - a messy, smelly job.

But in general, I'm intregued by the Japanese culture and its food. So it's time I start experimenting more.

Two weeks ago I went to a restaurant in Harvard Square where I had soba noodles for the first time. I really enjoyed them! They were served with coconut shrimp. Seemed simple enough!

I felt that soba noodles would be an easy place to start my adventures into Japanese cooking. This is a bundle of soba noodles:

Soba noodles are buckwheat noodles. The packages at my local grocery store are 12 oz. and have 3 bundles.

So I've been doing some experimenting this week, making many adaptations to a recipe I saw on Epicurious.com. I added a lot of vegetables. I love the carrots and the snow pea pods, which remain somewhat crispy when they are sautee. The The dish is sort of sour, but slightly sweetend by the addition of ginger and just a pinch of sugar. For my protein, I chose tofu. Though if you don't like tofu, you could just as easily use chicken! Maybe even salmon would work out well.

I am now very happy to present to you, this resulting recipe!

Soba Noodles with Fresh Vegetables and Pan-Grilled Tofu
Adapted from Epicurious.com

Ingredients
8 oz soba (2 bundles)
1/3 lb (4 oz) snow peas (about 3 cups once sliced)
4 oz carrots (about 1 1/3 cup once sliced)
3 oz scallions (about 1 ½ cup once sliced)
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger (the small grate)

1 tablespoon oil (for sautéing)

1/3 cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce (I used low sodium)
1 ¼ teaspoons sugar

1/4 cup chopped fresh mint

1 brick of tofu

Procedure
Drain your tofu if you are using it. I would recommend doing this step an hour before cooking. But you can always do it the day before if you want. If you do it the day before, just put it in a Rubbermaid container once it's drained and keep it there until you use it.

Mix the liquids (rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil) and sugar first.

Put enough liquid on the tofu to coat with a slight bit extra. Let it marinate while you cut the vegetables and cook the noodles.

To prepare the soba noodles, bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the soba noodles and cook for 5 minutes. Pour the water and noodles into a colander. Run cold water over the noodles. Drain them and place them in a bowl. Cover to keep warm.

While you prepare the noodles, slice all the vegetables into very thin strips.

Heat a large pan on medium-high flame. Add about 1 tablespoon oil. Then add the carrot strips. Toss to coat and sauté for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the snow pea strips. Sauté for 7 minutes more, stirring occasionally.

Add the scallion strips. Sauté for 1 more minute.

Then add the ginger and mint. Stir to mix the ginger and mint into the vegetables.

Place the entire vegetable mixture into the bowl with the soba noodles. Pour in the remaining sauce and toss using a pair of tongs (I found that tongs work best to mix the ingredients evenly). Cover to keep warm while you grill the tofu (or whatever other protein you decide to use).

Heat a grill pan to medium high. Spray with cooking oil. Place tofu steaks on the pan and don’t turn them over till you have beautiful grill marks (about 2 minutes per side).

To serve, plate the noodles and place the tofu steaks on top. Garnish with sesame seeds and fresh mint sprigs.

Serves 4

Soba Noodles with Fresh Vegetables and Pan-Grilled Tofu

I've been into many things Japanese lately. For years ...

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Ponzu Restaurant in Waltham, MA

2008-07-30T11:58:00.011-04:00

Last night I had the pleasure of dining at Ponzu on Moody Street in Walthm, Massachusetts. Joining me were my husband, and our friends Bev and Bob, who have both worked with my husband at a former workplace.

I wish I had pictures to show you, but taking pictures really would have disrupted the moment and the conversation. But let me tell you that Ponzu is a must-dine if you enjoy Asian foods (it is a fusion restaurant) and you are in reach of Waltham.

Looking on Yelp.com, I can refer you to these photos taken by other people:

The Inside (view from the back of the restaurant towards the front)
The Sushi Bar (taken from the entryway)

I was in an adventurous mood and we ordered a lot of things I have never tried: sake, sea urchins, and most of the items on my sushi sampler dinner.

I was a wee bit late, so when I arrived, everyone had already gotten started with beer. But I'm not a beer-drinker. I saw sake on the menu. There is warm sake, and there is cold sake. I recently saw a show on sake where they mentioned that good sake is served cold. In fact, Wikipedia states:

heating serves to mask the undesirable flavors of lower-quality sake

So I asked the waitress for a suggestion of the cold sake and she suggested Momokawa Pearl. It was a fairly small bottle, probably the size of an average beer bottle. That was perfect. The sake was served in small, tinted blue glasses. We each got one and everyone tried it. This was the cloudy type of sake, which is not filtered and has rice sediment in the bottle. So before serving, they shake the bottle which turns the sake cloudy. I thought it was mighty tasty. I'd buy it if I were to see it in the liquor store.

On To The Food!

The appetizers

We started out with 3 small appetizers. Joe, not being into raw seafood, ordered the Ponzu Hot Ribs. They looked so good! Bev, Joe, and Bob all ooh-ed and ah-ed over them. I withstained, knowing that we ordered a lot of food and that I almost always end up with too much. I regret not taking a little taste, but it's too late for that!

The 2nd appetizer was the Torched Sashimi Napoleon. It was a combination of thin slices of just-slightly seared tuna, salmon, and scallops. It was on top of a bed of matchstick carrots and another vegetable (whose name I don't know). It was really impressive and tasted fabulous. Even Joe tried a taste of the salmon and liked it.

Bev and I went a little wild for the third appetizer. Neither of us had ever had sea urchin, and I was dying to try it. I brought it up and she was equally enthusiastic. The Sea Urchin Shooters came in two little shots. There were about 5-6 pieces of urchin bathing in a ponzu mixture with a raw egg of some sort on top. Wanting to taste the sea urchin specifically, I went at my shot with the chopsticks. Bev drank hers in parts. We found that we both liked sea urchin. The best way to describe it is that it tasted like the freshest of ocean scents, very pleasant and enjoyable.

The Meals

I got the Sushi Martini Sampler. I wanted to break out of the tuna and salmon I always have. I gave those away to others along with the "crabmeat" and shrimp pieces. I sampled the striped bass, eel, octopus, yellowtail (I have had that), squid (never had it as sushi), and there was another I can't remember the name of. It was a really nice sampling platter and had a substantial amount of food.

The other three entrees came in bowls with a very wide rim, so wide that my husband was concerned there wasn't enough food. But the bowl in the center was deep, and Joe said there was actually plenty of food, which made him happy. Rice was served on a different plate for all three.

My husband got a Red Creamy Spiced Curry Chicken. It was delicious (I did try it).

Bev got the Basil Seafood with Malaysian Black Bean Sauce. Had I not ordered sushi, that would have been my choice. It was shrimp and scallops in a very flavorful sauce. The dish was absolutely impressive (I tried that too).

Bob got the Banana Leaf Dried Curry Beef. Wow, that was an amazing dish. We all tasted it and commented on how good it was.

And when we finished our meals, we were brought a complementary Mochi plate for dessert sampling. I've always wanted to try mochi! It was really good. There is ice cream on the inside (one of them mochi was tea flavored - I liked that) of a rice-based outside. That is to say that the outside layer is made of rice, but you wouldn't know by looking at it. It is made into a paste and rolled out so it completely surrounds the ice cream ball on the inside. Very delicious.

I can't say enough nice things about Ponzu. It was one of the best dining experiences I've ever had. The people were nice, they were good at recommending things to me. The atmosphere is chic. We all had a wonderful time.