February 2007 Archives

These peppers were reconstructed from the leftovers of this dish. They've been in the freezer for a couple of weeks, waiting to be pulled out, thawed and baked on a busy day like today. They were a big hit with both Boy and Girl.

The Pesto-Polenta Loaf is left over from a party that my mother had this weekend. Apparently, it was a big hit with her guests, but she still had a bit left over. It was very messy, but very rich and yummy (a bit too rich for Boy and Girl, but Hubby and I loved it - thanks, Mom!). It has pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and bleu cheese in it. I need to get the recipe, but I think I will likely to try adapt it to be made in ramekins or muffin tins, so it's not so complicated to unmold. The idea of pretty layers in a loaf pan is nice, but comes up short if it self-destructs upon unmolding.

We LOVE guacamole around here. We dip chips in it, we put it in burritos, we slather in on sandwiches. We've even been known to occasionally dig in with a spoon, but you don't need to tell anyone about that.....

Here's how:
(If you are one of those yella-bellied cilantro-hatin' types, stop here and just skip to the next post.....we don't "cotton" to your kind around here.)

Texas Guacamole

3 ripe avocados
1/4 to 1/2 cup finely chopped purple onion (to your own taste)
2 finely minced or pressed garlic cloves
2 tsp. olive oil, separated
about 1/2 cup chopped tomato (de-seeded, if you like)
pinch of salt (1/2 tsp. or so)
juice of one small lime
one half to one whole bunch of cilantro, washed well and finely chopped
(you want at least 1/2 cup once it's chopped)
a dash or two of your favorite "hot" spice (such as Tabasco, sriracha or finely minced, seeded jalapeno or serrano pepper) - your choice of type and amount. We tend to go mild because Girl LOVES guacamole, but not "hot" stuff

Peel, pit and mash 2 of the avocados. Peel, pit and coarsely chop the 3rd one. Gently fold in garlic, tomato, cilantro, salt, lime juice and half of olive oil. Pour into a serving bowl. If preparing for later use, place one of the avocado pits in the bowl with the guacamole, and then cover TIGHTLY with plastic wrap, so that the wrap completely covers the surface of the guacamole, leaving no air space (guac is VERY perishable and will turn brown and yucky if exposed to air). Drizzle with remaining olive oil just before serving.

You can vary this to your own taste, but you can't omit the cilantro. There is NO SUCH THING as too much cilantro. If you must leave the cilantro out, for goodness' sake, don't tell ME about it!

Wonderful congratulations to one of the most talented men on the planet. He should have won for Goodfellas, but he definitely deserves this.

I made these for Girl's End-of-Season basketball party today. Use any cupcake recipe that you choose (a mix is even fine). Prepare some buttercream icing. Tint about 90% of it orange. Spread that on the cupcakes in very neat circles (try not to go down the sides of the cupcakes). Add a tiny bit of melted and cooled chocolate (a small handful of chocolate chips) to the remaining 10% of the icing. Put the chocolate icing in a pastry bag with a round tip (Wilton #5 or #6) or a heavy-duty ziploc bag with a tiny bit of one corner cut off and pipe it onto the orange frosting to make a basketball design.

This is my all-time favorite dessert. Ever. I love creme brulees and I love any kind of citrus dessert, but this dessert combines the best of both: tangy lemon flavor AND a crunchy broiled sugar topping. Mmmmmm......

The recipe was adapted from a Betty Crocker "back of the box" recipe.

If you're serving this dessert for a dinner party, it is crucial to prepare your "mise en place" ahead of time. The puddings take a while to bake, once they're prepared. You don't want to have to be grating lemon peel and squeezing lemons while your guests are waiting for dessert.

Saucy Lemon Pudding
serves 6

1/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, separated
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. finely grated lemon rind
(Having the lemon peel finely grated is important - I didn't do a great job last time and they were little chunky bits of lemon in it. Chop it up a little with a knife after grating, if you need to.)
1/3 cup flour
1 cup milk
Optional: 6 - 8 Tbsp. superfine (caster) sugar

Cream butter and 3/4 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in egg yolks, lemon juice and rind. Add flour; mix well. Stir in milk. Beat egg whites (separately) until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining sugar, beating until stiff peaks fork. Fold into batter; pour into 6 ramekins (6 to 8 ounce size). Set custard cups in baking pan; pour in boiling water to 1/2 inch depth. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

From here you have two options:
The original recipe says to invert on a small plate and serve.

I prefer, instead, to sprinkle the superfine sugar, liberally and evenly, over the surface of each pudding (while it's still in the ramekin) and then broil it lightly and evenly with a kitchen torch (a regular hardware-store blowtorch will work fine, too, if you buy a small adapter to go on the end) until the sugar has caramelized into a smooth, crunchy layer. In the past, I have used turbinado sugar, but I've decided that it's too crunchy and I prefer the superfine, since it melts better into one, thin, smooth crunchy layer. Place the completed puddings (still in the ramekins) on a saucer, small plate or shallow bowl and serve. Warn your guests that the ramekins will be hot.

These are very, very yummy.

This is what $180 worth of groceries looks like in my neighborhood. I don't buy flowers often, but we were having friends over for dinner and I thought they were pretty. The herbs were on sale, too, so I couldn't resist those.

I have served this delicious (and REALLY easy) Beef-Broccoli Lo Mein recipe from Cooking Light magazine before and we have really enjoyed it. The beef takes on the ginger-garlic flavor nicely (even though it's not marinated) and the sauce has the perfect balance of sweet and spicy. I substitute wide Udon noodles for the spaghetti for a little more authenticity. The only drawback to this recipe is that it calls for a lot of ingredients that most people do not routinely have on hand (oyster sauce, fresh ginger, Thai chile paste, etc.). Of course, around here, we ALWAYS have sriracha on hand. Hubby loves that stuff and put it on his breakfast casserole this morning.

I don't "Mise en place" for everything that I cook, but I do think that it is especially helpful for anything stir-fried.

When the recipe was originally published (in 2002 or 2003?), it featured a whole "menu" complete with Egg rolls and "spicy-sweet dipping sauce", but that feature is REALLY hard to find on their website now, even with a link (it's buried in a long article on weekday menus and it's hard to find that specific one), so I'll just give you the instructions for that here:

While you are cooking the pasta, bake 6 frozen white-meat chicken egg rolls (we actually prefer vegetable, but it's up to you) according to package directions. While egg rolls bake, combine 1 tablespoon minced green onions, 2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce, 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons duck sauce, and 1 teaspoon sriracha. Serve sauce with egg rolls. This sauce is DELICIOUS and is also great on potstickers. (Hubby and I learned how to make potstickers at our Chinese New Year cooking class last week - check back later for more info.)

This sauce is DELICIOUS and is also great on potstickers. (Hubby and I learned how to make potstickers at our Chinese New Year cooking class last week - check back later for more info.)
Hubby and I LOVE this sauce, but it's a little too spicy for Boy and Girl; they usually use the "sweet and sour"-type dipping sauce that comes in the package of eggrolls.

We also ate some in-the-shell edamame with this dinner.

Cooking Light suggests that you serve fortune cookies (natch) for dessert. When I was a kid, my mother and I made fortune cookies from scratch once (I cannot, for the life of me, remember WHY), but I do remember that it tough to get the cookies stuffed with a fortune, folded in half and rolled around a wooden spoon in time before the cookies hardened into unflexibility. This has been a running joke with Hubby and me. I told him once MANY years ago, when we were finishing dinner and having fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant, "My mom and I made fortune cookies from scratch once when I was little", thinking that he would be terribly impressed. In typical understated Hubby fashion, he said "cool" and went about eating his cookie. When I told him of my disappointment, he corrected his reaction so appropriately "Wow - fortune cookies - really? That's great!" that I now remind him of my childhood Chinese baking pursuits EVERY time that we eat fortune cookies - so much so that he will now sometimes say, "Wow - fortune cookies - really?" when he sees the server coming with the check and cookies at the end of the meal.

I was babysitting for my cousin's adorable 2-year old son today, so didn't get much cooking done, even though it's a "holiday". I did manage to find this totally cool doll-maker website, though.

This is really fun. I might have to let Girl's friends try it the next time they have a sleepover.

I saw this recipe from www.chow.com, featured as part of a Valentine's Love/Hate menu. It looked really good and the mom-in-law had fresh cauliflower and beets handy, so I thought I'd give it a try. Hubby was out of town for Valentine's, so I ended up making this a little later, for my dad's birthday. My grandparents were in town, too, so it was a multi-generational (4?) party. I forgot to take photos of the finished soup as it was being served, but it was quite lovely, with the colorful, crispy beets on top. (I've posted a photo of Hubby, me, Boy, Girl and my grandparents at the birthday dinner, instead.) I only made one batch of soup, which is only supposed to serve 2, but there were 8 of us, so I served small, appetizer portions in ramekins, as an "amuse bouche" before my mom's dinner of bruschetta, salad and lasagna. The soup was very yummy and creamy, especially for something so healthy. I did substitute chicken broth for the water, just to add a little more body. The parsnips gave a tangy, refreshing gingery flavor.

The leeks, sauteeing.

The soup, simmering, before being pureed.

These beet chips were SO yummy. They would be tasty on top of a salad, instead of croutons.

Sorry it's been so long since I've given you any new recipes. It's been an insane week and I haven't been cooking much. Girl had a basketball tournament (3 games in one week), Hubby was out of town and we're all still really tired and recovering from being sick. I did make some heart-shaped banana muffins for rhe kids for breakfast on Wednesday (also served them to basketball team, because it was my day to bring snack), but other than that and scrambled eggs at breakfast, the kitchen has been closed around here. Some friends invited us (minus Hubby, who was braving freezing weather in DC) to dinner on Valentine's and served us GREAT Chicken Curry that I SHOULD have taken a photo of. It was DEEE-lish!

Hubby and I are going to a "Chinese New Year" cooking class tonight, so I'll get back to cooking soon......

....here are the other two.

Queen (left) and Jack (right).

This is the drawback of setting the table too early (at least at our house).

Ace, waiting to be served.

I saw this recipe in the January issue of Food & Wine (recipe here) and thought that it sounded really yummy. I really like lentil soup, but have never cooked lentils before, myself, so I thought I'd give it a try. They were really easy and they turned out to be delicious! Both kids loved them. Girl has been trying to speak in Spanish a lot lately and she must have said "Me gustan los lentils" about three times at dinner (for those of you that actually KNOW Spanish, I said she was TRYING, not that she was fluent.....). Hubby is out of town on business, but I think he would like these, too - I'll definitely be making them again! Future Vegetarian Girl didn't care for the boudin. Boy loved it until he overheard me talking on the phone to Hubby about the fact that boudin has "organs" in it. Guess I blew that one. Oh, well.....more for me!

As usual, I made a few adaptations. Something about the celery and onion made me think "Cajun" when I saw this recipe, so I used boudin instead of the chicken sausage. I had some in the freezer, anyway.....why use chicken when you can have pork liver?

Boudin is really fragile and falls apart easily once it's cooked (because of all of the rice), so I just grilled it slightly, then gently sliced it and served it alongside the lentils, rather than trying to stir it into them (it would have fallen apart). It actually might have been good to pull the boudin out of the casing and stir it (loose) into the lentils after they were cooked - maybe I'll try that next time.

I used a little less onion than the recipe called for and just chopped all of the vegetables myself, rather than food-processing them. I actually don't OWN a food processor, nor do I want one. I actually find chopping veggies, herbs, etc. by hand (with a GOOD knife) to be cathartic. Weird, I know..... The only time that I wish I had a food processor is when I have to grate large amounts of cheese for something and it's hardly worth it for just that..... Because of my hand chopping, the chunks of veggies (especially carrots) were more evident in my dish than they were in the original, but I kind of like that, anyway. I didn't add the wedges of onion - just used the chopped, pre-cooked onion.

I didn't have fresh thyme sprigs, so I just added a bit (1/2 tsp?) of dried thyme to the lentils in the final stages of cooking. I also added a bit of parsley. I'm adding a bit of parsley to almost everything these days, because my plant outside is HUGE.

Oh, and I forgot the vinegar, but that probably would have been really good! Darn.

Addendum:
Boy just woke up, came downstairs, and said that he was hungry, so these lentils may find themselves on our plate as a side dish in the future, rather than as a main dish.

I cleaned out my pantry this weekend. This was a VERY long overdue task. I threw out anything that I thought was too old and reorganized what was left. In the process, I discovered that I had duplicates of LOTS of stuff. Apparently, I've been buying canned tuna and hiding it in the back of the pantry without remembering it. I like having a can or two around (I'll post my Tuna Melt recipe sometime soon - it's actually quite yummy), but I had 7 cans in there! I poked around on epicurious, trying to find a good way to use up the surplus. This recipe looked like a really good possibility. It looked quick, healthy, simple and fairly kid-friendly. A couple of the reviewers recommended adding a bit of sun-dried tomato and/or green peas. That sounded good to me, so I added both. I used whole-wheat penne pasta. The tuna that I use (and had so many cans of) is water-packed white albacore (not the oil-packed that the recipe suggested). I actually liked this quite a bit, but it wasn't a big hit with Boy and Girl. I think there was a bit too much lemon in it for them, so if I make it again, I might leave out the lemon juice and zest and just add a bit of vinegar, instead. I didn't add the cheese, etiher, and that may have made the kids enjoy it more. Not an absolute home run, but definitely not bad. It was VERY easy to throw together and that's never a bad thing. Thing would be a good dish to take to a potluck or on a picnic.

A cold-weather classic, especially since we've all been sick (bronchitis, allergies, sinus infection - 3 out of the 4 of us are on antibiotics right now). This was canned soup (I was in a hurry - Hubby was leaving for the airport - and did I mention that we've all been sick?). I'll post my own soup recipe later, though it's never the same thing twice - it's variable depending upon what I have on hand at the time.....

OK, I've already revealed way too much about my TV-viewing habits, but......I also have to confess my love of HBO's "The Sopranos". I am counting down the days until the new season starts (April!). So, when I saw The Sopranos Family Cookbook, I had to get it. It's actually (considering that all of the recipes were "written" by imaginary characters) a pretty good cookbook. I had a viewing party for the premiere show a couple of seasons ago and used quite a few of the recipes. I recommend the ones, in particular, for Biscotti Regina (Almond-Sesame cookies) and Arancini (rice balls).

And then, of course, there's Carmela Soprano's Baked Ziti. Mmmmm......
I'm too lazy (and afraid of copyright attorneys) to type the whole recipe in for you, but you basically make a batch of Uncle Junior's Sunday Gravy with meatballs (recipe is in the book, but also available on HBO's website here), boil a pound of ziti, pour a little sauce over the pasta, put it in a casserole dish, add a little ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan, then a little more sauce and parmesan, then bake it for about an hour.

I added a tiny bit of sugar, cayenne pepper, oregano, balsamic vinegar and sauteed onion and garlic to the original sauce recipe. For the meats, I used mild Italian sausage, beef stew meat (I just can't make myself do veal) and 2 (1/2 lb. each) country style pork ribs. I also added one more large can of diced tomatoes, because I wanted to have a little more sauce left over to make another dish, and because I wanted it to be just a TINY bit chunky. I pureed the whole tomatoes in the blender before I added them.

It's so delicious, it's a dish you can't refuse.....capisce?

Uncooked meatballs.

Browned meatballs (they finish cooking in the sauce).

This is a recipe from about.com (I did a search for a Crock Pot pork rib recipe). The recipe can be found here. I had some extra pork ribs (they came in a 3.5 pound package and I only needed one pound for the recipe I'm making tomorrow), so I decided to try this recipe tonight. I added about 1/4 cup of diced, purple onion that had been sauteed in olive oil, instead of the green onions, because I didn't have any green onions on hand. I also used fresh grated orange peel, instead of the dried, because I DID have that on hand. I used about 1 Tbsp. freshly grated peel, and the the flavor was just perfect, just enough tangy orange flavor to balance the smoky sweetness of the hoisin sauce.

I knew today was going to be hectic, so I threw these in the Crock Pot this morning and only had to throw together a couple of quick sides when I got home. I roasted some cauliflower in the oven (recipe here), threw some rice in the cooker (Lundberg's Black Japonica blend), some frozen edamame in the microwave and some turnips on the stove (boiled in chicken stock until soft and then mashed like potatoes - one of the kids' favorites) and we had a veritable Asian-inspired buffet!

This entire meal was a hit with all four of us. The pork was delicious - even borderline vegetarian Girl said so! We'll have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Boy REALLY loved this dinner. He's never met a meat he didn't like, and he LOVES edamame.

This is so funny! Type "your name needs" into Google, complete with the quotes and see what you get for your top ten. Apparently, someone out there thinks that I am very much more athletic than I am, but am in need of a makeover.....I suppose that's what I get for having the same name as an action video game character!

Lara needs a haircut.
Lara needs new breasts.
LARA needs an interactive way to teach kids about different foods, animals, and common household items.
Lara needs anger management therapy.
Lara needs to get a life and start dating someone her own age.
Lara needs to use stealth just as much as she does combat maneuvers and jumps.
Lara needs to let her hair down and dance to Donna Summer’s disco hits.
Lara needs another 86 runs to become the first player to reach 1000 runs for the 2004 calendar year.
Lara needs the paintings because a note in Von Croy's pocket led her to believe that they would help prove her innocence.
Lara needs to get to Shanghai?

This is another epicurious recipe. It can be found here. We love beets, anyway, but I was trying to find a different way to cook them. I usually just boil them in chicken stock and serve them over the top of the cooked beet greens. The kids really like them that way - simple, easy, yummy, but it gets old after a while. This ravioli recipe got great reviews on epicurious. I did as one reviewer suggested and added about 1/2 tsp. freshly grated lemon zest to the filling before stuffing the ravioli. We really like the beet greens, too, so I decided to serve them with the cooked ravioli. The color of these is a little alarming: one reviewer said that she served them at a Halloween party, for a spooky effect. They would be beautiful if made with golden beets, too.

The verdict: they were good, but not appreciably better than just plain (roasted or boiled) fresh beets. Girl liked them OK, but Boy said that he would rather just have beets next time, which would be considerably less work. Hubby wasn't wild about the poppy seeds. I think they would have been better with a tangy, vinegar-ish sauce of some sort to balance the sweetness of the beets. So, I guess, these would be good for adults or company, but I guess if you have kids that are already happily eating their veggies.....if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Both of the kiddos have been sick this week - sore throat, cough, sluggish, etc. I saw this recipe in the new (February 2007) issue of Gourmet magazine and just had to give it a try last night. The recipe is also available here. I thought it would be just the thing for a sore throat. It was great - really rich, almost like a pot de creme.

It was delicious and SO easy to make. I told Hubby, "This is so easy to make, I don't know why anyone would ever use pudding mix." He replied with, "I don't know why anyone would use anything other than the Linux operating system." Oh, well....I'm a food geek and he's a computer geek. Must be a match.