Red Cippolini

I have been savoring a beautiful red cippolini onion that came in my CSA bag last week. It is so sweet ... and I'm going to caramelize half of it ... but I've been nibbling away at the other half. Normally cippolinis are small onions, cooked whole ... but this one was a little larger and delicious nonetheless!

I used part of my special onion in roasted cauliflower salad. Clean the cauliflower and separate into flowerettes. Drizzle them with olive oil and toss them so they are coated. Drizzle a little more olive oil in a baking pan and spread the flowerettes out in a single layer.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes. The size and the texture you desire ... could change the amount of time required ... so check them about fifteen minutes into baking. After the cauliflower has cooled to room temperature, add chopped onion, chopped olives, chopped rosemary and oregano ... salt and pepper ... about a teaspoon of garlic paste and the juice of a lemon. I also zest the lemon for my salad and add a little more oil if it needs it.  Serve it at room temperature, but refrigerate left overs.

I might share this recipe with some of the blog parties listed in my sidebar, but make sure you stick around my home page for a little while. You might find something else that you like!

Cheesecake with Splenda

Isn't this a beauty? I'll be posting several recipes in upcoming weeks that include Splenda instead of sugar. Nobody is paying me to do this ... I'm just wanting to experiment with some conversions. This sweet little cheesecake is just 7 inches, so don't try to make it and put it in a big spring form pan.  If you have a 9 or 11 inch pan, you can double the recipe, though.  Baking time is about the same.

The ingredients are simple. 
To make the crust, crush enough cookies or graham crackers to have about 1 1/2 cups of crumbs. Blend that together with 2 Tablespoons soft margarine or butter and press it into the bottom of a 7-inch spring form pan.

For the filling, use 2 
8-ounce blocks of cream cheese, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of almond extract and 1/2 cup of Splenda. Whip it all together until it is smooth. I use my food processor.  Pour it into the crust and bake it at 350 degrees. It will take about an hour and the top will puff up ... but calms down as it cools!  Cool it on a wire rack ... completely cool ... before you remove it from the pan.

The blueberry topping is also made with Splenda. I cooked 2 cups of fresh berries with 1/2 cup of water and a Tablespoon of cornstarch ... and 1/4 cup of Splenda. My berries were extra sweet. If your berries are tart, it could take a half cup to make a good topping.

I'll be sharing this recipe with some of the parties listed in my sidebar, so click through to see all the other participants!

Red Bean Hummus

I love hummus, but I don't love garbanzo beans, so I make my hummus with red or white kidney beans. The recipe sure is easy and makes a great snack with vegetables, pita bread or crackers.

Use your food processor or your blender. Drain a can of red kidney beans and pour them in the food processor. Add the juice of 1/2 lemon ... and some of the zest if you like lemon! Add 1/2   cup of Tahini,
1 teaspoon garlic paste and about a dozen big leaves of fresh basil. Blend it all together and enjoy!

I'll be sharing this with a few of the parties listed in my sidebar, but make sure you hang around my home page for a little while! You might find something else you like!

Stir- Fry Shrimp

I'm cooking each day with foods from our CSA and enjoying every bite of it! This stir-fry recipe is about a simple as it gets and takes just minutes to prepare. I love the flavors of vegetables, so I frequently prepare stir-fry without any kind of sauce. This is one of those times!

I drizzled the shrimp, mushrooms and squash with sesame oil ... tossed them around it it ... and let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes to absorb a little of the oil. Then I dropped those ingredients into a hot skillet and seared in the flavors, stirring and turning until the shrimp were pink. I added a big handful of greens right on top of the other ingredients ... turned off the burner ... then continued to toss things around until the greens were wilted.  That's it!  All done!

ZOODLES!

It doesn't take much to entertain me! I'm crazy for kitchen gadgets and probably have more "used it once" things buried in my kitchen drawers than most people! The zoodle maker will not be one of those things, however! Nobody is paying me to blog about this little gem, but it is worth a little focus. I've looked at all the recipes for preparing the long strands of squash on Pinterest for the past couple years, but just decided I would join in with the ZOODLE crowd last week. I ordered my zoodle slicer and used it immediately the day it arrived!



My recipe was about as simple as it gets.  I sauteed my zoodles in a couple Tablespoons of pesto and it only took about 4 minutes to have beautiful zoodles. You probably already know that zucchini will take on any flavor that you put with it. You can make mock apple pies using zucchini and you'll never know you aren't eating apples!
It is simple to use the tool. Slice the top and bottom off the end of the squash and twist it in the little slicer. There are two sizes of blades and you can choose the one you like best. There is also an end cap to use to protect your fingers from the last few twists. Use it! A couple summers ago, I taught over 1,000 students how to cook using locally grown produce and most of those students were kids.  I think this tool is safe enough for children to use.  You can also use it to slice carrots and potatoes and I'll be trying that soon!

I'll share this post with a couple of the parties listed on my sidebar, but before you venture off to visit the other party-goers, stick around my home page. You might find something else that you like!

Fried Chicken Secret Spices!

It is very common to find copycat recipes online these days, and there are scores of posts that say they have the "exact" recipe for that famous Colonel's fried chicken. I doubt that, especially since the ingredients vary from post to post! Don't believe everything you read!

I've had a fried chicken spice recipe for many years and the originator claimed it was the "real thing" from the Colonel. I'm sure it isn't but it sure is a good one! I  combine these spices: 

A teaspoon of each:

Poultry seasoning

Pepper

Salt

Onion powder

Garlic powder

Cinnamon

Celery salt

2 Tablespoons:

Paprika

Accent

I store these combined spices in a jar and when I'm oven frying or pan frying chicken, I use a teaspoon of the spices to every half cup of flour. You can sprinkle more on each piece of chicken before you bake it or after you remove it from your skillet.  I soak my chicken pieces in buttermilk for about 30 minutes, then dredge the pieces in the seasoned flour.  I prefer to oven fry chicken these days, so I place each piece in a shallow pan that has about 1/4 to a 1/2 cup of canola oil in it. If you want more seasoning, sprinkle it on at this point. Bake the chicken at 350 degrees for about an hour. Turn the pieces over after 30 minutes, so both sides brown. You can turn the pieces more frequently, if you want to brown it all the way around (like the legs).  It is possible that it will take a little longer than an hour to finish the chicken, especially if the pieces are larger. I cut chicken breasts into 4 pieces, but the thighs might take a few more minutes to get done.

My mother made oven fried chicken and we call it "Boyfriend Chicken" because she made it as a special meal with our boyfriends or girlfriends came to visit! Mother turned her chicken every 15 minutes and sprinkled each piece with Lawry's Seasoning Salt. Instead of using oil, she melted a stick of butter in her baking pan. I still make this, too ... and it is delicious, too!

Greens with Outlander!

It seems fitting that I'm reading the Outlander books this summer ... and experiencing all kinds of recipes with greens! Every time I try a new recipe, I think of Claire and all her medicinal concoctions using herbs and greens and things that she foraged. I'm loving the books and since my daughter is way ahead of me in reading them, occasionally I can get her to give me hints about what will be happening!  

This week's greens from the CSA are sorrel. It isn't often that I say I haven't eaten something, but until today, I had never knowingly tasted sorrel. I say 'knowingly' because my grandparents and a pair of elderly neighbors used to cook all kinds of pots of greens ... so it is possible that I've eaten them in childhood!

I am delighted by the flavor. They taste like a combination of Granny Smith tart apples, lemons and limes. The leaves that I cooked were about four inches long and I chopped the stems right with the leaf. After a little study, I found that folks love them in salads, cooked as pot greens and used in sauces. Because of the tart flavor, they are especially good served in sauces made with butter and cream and accompanying fatty fish like salmon. The tart flavor cuts the richness of the fatty ingredients. I also found that sorrel with ripen and burst a boil if you make the leaves into a poultice!

I might try that, but tonight I had my sorrel in a cream sauce over pasta, and here it is!

This recipe is enough for two servings of pasta or four side servings of pasta.

In 2 Tablespoons of butter, saute 2 Tablespoons of finely chopped sweet onion. When the onions are beginning to soften, add 2 cups of loosely packed sorrel leaves cut in a chiffonade style. As soon as the greens wilt, add 1/2 cup of dry white wine, 1 cup of half and half and 1/2 cup dry parmesan cheese. Add a dash of salt and a grind of black pepper and let this simmer until the sauce thickens ... about 4 - 6 minutes. When the sauce is done, add 1/2 cup chopped tomato (no juice or seeds) and stir it into the sauce.

I served this over penne pasta ... so the sauce would seep into the center of the noodles!  Loved it! 

This sauce resembles a Florentine sauce, but the flavor is different ... not so "icky" rich because the sorrel indeed cuts that out. It will be delicious served over any kind of meat, used as a sauce for crepes or stacked in a flour tortilla casserole with shredded chicken. 

I'll be sharing this with a few of the parties listed in my sidebar, but I hope you'll hang around my home page to see my other posts!

Lots of Basil!

Phoebe convinced me to move all my planters filled with herbs to the front yard this spring. She was just working on our "chair garden" and wanted to fill the spot with as much as we could! She had no idea that the sun would be better in the front. Our shade trees have gotten so huge in the back yard ... we don't have enough sun in my old planting spots! Wow! Do we ever have an abundance of basil ... two kinds .. cinnamon and Italian sweet basil. So, I'm clipping and freezing and today I decided to make a batch of pesto and a little vinegar with some of the purple cinnamon basil flowers.

My pesto recipe isn't anything special ... I made tons of it when I owned an Italian restaurant, so I just throw it together now ... 35 years later!  I had a colander full of basil leaves, so I threw them into the food processor with a cup of walnuts pieces and another cup of parmesean cheese. After chopping it, I slowly added olive oil until it reached the consistency I wanted.  I store my pesto in a jar in the refrigerator, but you can also freeze small portions of it if you like. It doesn't last long at my house, so no need to freeze it! I can always make more!

I'll post some of the ways I use pesto in upcoming weeks, but here is one simple way to make a flavorful focaccia-style appetizer or bread to accompany a meal. This is actually angel biscuit dough! Blogging friends usually email me and ask me what I do with all the angel biscuit dough when I make it ... here is one way to use it ... and pizza crust is another way. I simply spread a chunk of the dough on an oiled sheet and slathered the top with the pesto. 
I baked it at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.  Doesn't take too long!

I'll be posting this wit ha couple of the parties on my sidebar, but make sure you stick around my home page to see my other posts ... before moving on! If you'd like to see Phoebe's "chair garden" just click through right here!

If you need a recipe for Angel Biscuits, it is included in this post.

To see our Monster Pizza made with this dough, check this out!

Monster Pizza!

I have a batch of Angel Biscuit dough in the fridge and one of my favorite things to make with it is pizza!  Phoebe and I made a little monster pizza for our lunch one day this week and here's how easy it was!

We just plopped a hunk of the dough on an oiled baking sheet and pushed it into a misshaped form! That makes it look like a monster.  The sauce is a package of my homemade pasta sauce that I froze awhile ago. I use enough ground beef, onions and peppers in it that you don't have to add anything else for topping. Then we added lots of mozzarella cheese, so it would be all gooey when it was done.  Bake this at 350 degrees for about twelve minutes. It doesn't take it long to get nice and brown.

You'll find a recipe for Angel Biscuit Dough in this post ... and you can visit my homemade pasta sauce post right here!

Celebrate with Chocolate Hazelnut Marble Cake!

I remember the first time I ate a piece of chocolate marble cake. I was too young to go to school and I was at a neighbor's house ... not a neighbor who would normally have helped my mom out by babysitting, so there must have been a reason why I was not staying with the folks who would normally have helped! Don't know ... but I know that she had a beautiful chocolate frosted cake sitting on the kitchen counter when I got there and wow, there was nobody there but me to eat it! I was the baby child of five and my mother baked beautiful cakes and pies, but they were quickly devoured by the hungry horde! When she cut that cake and I saw that, by some kind of magic, it was both yellow and chocolate, my mouth watered! When I returned home and told my mother all about the cake, she said ... "Oh, that is from a box mix" ... like it was nothing special! Mother baked everything from scratch, at the time! That changed!

Let me tell you how easy this Chocolate Hazelnut Marble Cake is to make. Use a box mix of white cake! Mix it following the directions and pour two-thirds of the batter into your prepared cake pan. To the remaining third of cake batter, add a big scoop of chocolate hazelnut spread ... and thoroughly blend it together. Pour the chocolate mix over the white and use a knife to swirl it around. There you have it! My hazelnut spread included chopped hazelnuts, but I threw in a handful of chopped pecans, too.  This cake is so good, it sure doesn't need any frosting, but I added some of the spread to the center of my sunflower shaped bundt cake. It was delicious and makes a really good celebration cake!

I'll be sharing this with a couple of the parties listed in my sidebar, but make sure you visit my home page to see some of my other posts!

Happy Fourth of July!

Buttermilk Pie

Who doesn't love a piece of pie!  This easy recipe is one of my favorites for summertime because it can be dressed up with the fresh fruit of the season, but here it is in its naked beauty!  This recipe uses Bisquick and makes its own crust, so it is about as easy and quick to make as blinking your eyes!

BISQUICK BUTTERMILK PIE

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup Bisquick or any other Baking Mix

1 cup buttermilk

1/3 up butter or margarine, melted 

1 teaspoon vanilla, almond or coconut extract 

3 eggs

Mix all the ingredients together in a food processor or blender. Pour into a sprayed pie plate and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

You can add other things to the ingredients to make the pie a little different. Sprinkle the top with cinnamon ... or stir in a cup of shredded coconut.  Use brown sugar instead of granulated sugar to make a Caramel Buttermilk Pie ... sprinkle the top of it with chopped nuts.  

Serve it with a dollop of whipped cream and surround each piece with sliced fresh peaches or berries. Drizzle a little caramel or chocolate syrup over it ... or serve it with a little canned cherry pie filling.  Anything goes!

I'll be sharing this post with a couple of the parties listed in my sidebar. Make sure you stick around my home page, though. You might find something else you like!

Tandori Pork Steak

Years ago I had a friend from India who introduced me to the flavors of the foods she had grown up eating! Comparing her very flavorful spice combinations to potato salad and baked beans was areal hoot! She convinced me that there was more to grilled meat than thick tomato based barbecue sauce!

What I've learned since, especially with regard to Tandori, is that everybody has their own rendition of the recipes! I've developed my own, as well. I mix equal portions of cumin, paprika, garlic powder, dry mustard and coriander together. Make what you need for a few pieces of meat ... or make a container full to store. I rubbed these pork steaks with a little bit of olive oil, then generously seasoned them with my spice mixture. In addition to the dry spices, I chopped plenty of cinnamon basil to sprinkle on them. Grill the meat over medium heat until their juices run clear. The amount of time depends on the thickness of the steaks. These took about 8 minutes on each side.

I served my pork steaks with sesame peanut slaw and small new potatoes that I had boiled first ... then tossed in olive oil and finished on the grill.

Enjoy!