Archive for photo

Caprise Salad

July 24, 2009 at 9:55 am · Filed under italian, lunch, photo, side dish

Caprise salad

This is such a yummy, fresh, and cool summer lunch or dinner side dish.
Alter the amounts to suite your needs and taste.

Tomatoes, roughly chopped
Salt
Olive oil
Fresh mozzarella, roughly chopped
Basil, chopped fine
Balsamic reduction (recipe below)

Put the tomatoes in a strainer and sprinkle generously with salt. Let sit for a few minute, giving them a stir every once in a while. This will help them not make everything too runny.

Then coat them lightly with olive oil.

Layer the tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil on a plate, and drizzle with the balsamic.

Balsamic Reduction:
1 c Balsamic vinegar
2 shallots, diced (or use 1/2 small onion)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced

Put ingredients in a small pot and boil, stirring occasionally, until it is starting to thicken up, and had reduced in amount.

Caprise salad

Leave a Comment

Pudding Bars

July 24, 2009 at 9:35 am · Filed under dessert, italian, lunch, photo, side dish

chocolate pudding meringue shortcake bars

The other day I started craving the custard and pudding pizza from Pizza Inn. Actually, I’m still sort of craving it, because what I eventually made wasn’t the same. It was GREAT, but different.

So for those of you who are not craving custard and pudding pizza from Pizza Inn, this should satisfy cookie and chocolate cravings.

I did use some custard when I made this, but since the pudding is custard based, and there wasn’t much actual custard to begin with, you can’t taste it, and I think it’s totally unnessessary.

Pudding Bars

Double batch of short bread crust dough
1/2 batch of dark chocolate pudding (make a whole batch and eat some!)
1 batch of meringue pie topping

Preheat oven to 425.

Give a 9×13 baking dish a quick spritz with baking spray and spread the shortbread dough out. Place the dish in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Cook the crust for 13-15 minutes or until golden. Let cool.

Spread the cooled pudding out on top of the crust, and freeze for 15 more minutes.

Then spread the meringue topping out on the pudding.

Bake at 325 for 15 minutes, or until meringue is golden on top.

Be careful if you’re using glass. Pyrex should transfer from the freezer to the oven without cracking, but some cheaper brands or other glassware might crack with the temperature change.

chocolate pudding meringue shortcake bars

Comments (1)

Pop on over for a popover

July 6, 2009 at 2:40 pm · Filed under breakfast, dessert, photo

Actually, don’t pop over for a popover- we ate them all.

I’d never seen a popover before this weekend, but they looked so awesome that I couldn’t resist making a batch.

I made them as a finish to our little fourth of july cookout at Charlotte’s house. She was nice enough to grab her camera and get a couple of pictures.

If you’ve never had a popover, they taste like little french toasts. They are sort of dense and airy at the same time.

I’d also like to point out that they have a grand total of 5 ingredients, and that includes the butter for the pan. They are insanely easy.

Popovers
3 eggs
1 c milk
1 c All Purpose Flour
1/4 csugar
2-3 Tbsp Butter

Heat the oven to 375.

Divide the butter into a 12 cup muffin pan (they make popover pan, but my guess is that if you own one, you don’t need this recipe). Place the pan in the oven for 3-5 minutes.

While the pan is heating, beat the eggs, milk, and sugar together, and then add the flour and whisk.

Remove the pan from the over (the butter will be golden brown) and fill the muffin tin evenly with the batter.

Bake for 5 minutes, and then lower the temperature to 350 and bake for 25 more.

They will start to deflate just a bit when you pull them out, but that’s okay, they’ll still look awesome.

I topped them with homemade whipped cream, raspberry sauce, and blueberries.

I bet they’d look good with savory toppings, too… maybe some chicken salad?

4th_of_July_22804_2009_07_04


4th_of_July_22860_2009_07_04


4th_of_July_22864_2009_07_04

Leave a Comment

Veggie Burger

July 2, 2009 at 11:22 am · Filed under dinner, photo

My aunt Lynda sent me a recipe for veggie burgers the other day. I had never even considered making my own before, but they were really great. I did change the recipe a bit, not only because I compusively change recipes, but because I didn’t buy everything I needed at the store. But really, you could change this recipe in a bunch of different ways. Here’s what I did:

Veggie Burger

1 can pinto beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 cups quick cooking oats
1 egg
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tsp wochestershire sauce
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
2 tbsp olive oil

Mash the beans together in a bowl (I used a potato masher, but a fork or your hands would work well, too)
Add all of the other ingredients together with the beans, and shape into patties. Be careful not to make the patties too thick or too big… they don’t shrink like real meat, and if you make them too thick they’ll be mushy inside.
Cook on medium heat in a greased skillet for 3-4 minutes on each side.

I added a slice of cheese for the last minute or so, and then I topped my burger with a slice of grilled pineapple. I just popped the pineapple down on the skillet as I pulled the veggie burgers off, and let them cook for a minute or two on each side.

You could add all sorts of things to these burgers. Just try to not add too much more moisture. If things seem too mushy, pop the mixture in the freezer for a few minutes to come together a bit more. You can also up the oats just a bit.

veggie burger

veggie burger

Comments (2)

Garlic Scapes

July 2, 2009 at 11:10 am · Filed under misc, photo

garlic scapes

This isn’t a recipe. This is me jumping on the garlic scape bandwagon. My guess would be that the current infatuation with them started with Dorie. Most infatuations in the food bloggersphere seem to start with Dorie. She posted a recipe for garlic scape pesto, and soon everyone was going to the farmer’s market in search of them.

I was no exception. Char and I went to the North Hills farmer’s market a couple of weeks ago, and I had hopes of finding garlic scapes. But I didn’t really think I would. Their season at the market is so short, and since they were currently showing up in markets all around New England, I figured I was too late for them in North Carolina. But at the first booth we came to, I saw a woman holding a curious green onion looking thing, and I said, “What are those?” “Garlic scapes” she replied, looking like she was about to explain what in the heck they were. I stopped her, “that’s just what I came here for!!!” She said they were the last two bunches of the season, and that there would be no more until next year. They were also the only two bunches I saw at the whole market (to be fair, it’s a small market).

Anyhow, garlic scapes are just the stem of a certain type of garlic. They have a very concentrated garlic flavor, and raw they have quite a bit of a bite to them. Since the ones I got were so late in the season they were tough, and definitely needed to be cooked. From what I’ve heard, the earlier ones are more tender and are great raw.

Here are a few more garlic scape posts from the past few weeks.

Not Without Salt’s garlic scape post

Foodie Reflections did garlic scape pesto on gnocchi

Amateur Gourmet did a post about them

Since I could only come up with two bunches of garlic scapes, I didn’t really think I had enough for pesto. So I added one bunch to the regular basil pesto I was making, and another bunch I diced up and threw in a pot of boiling water with some green beans.

I know it’s a bit cruel to tell you about these now that I possibly got the last garlic scapes for the year in the whole wide world. But… next year, right?

garlic scapes

Comments (2)

Black Bean and Corn Salad: take 2

July 2, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under photo, side dish

Black bean and corn salad: take 2

I posted a black bean and corn salad a while back, and this one is similar, but still different enough to warrant it’s own post, I think. The main differences are the lack of salad dressing, changing green onions to regular, getting rid of the basil, and using fresh corn.

We went over to Char’s the other night to cook on the grill, and she had a ton of fresh farmer’s market organic corn, and wanted to make some sort of corn salad. We were brainstorming about what goes well with corn, and I suggested blackbeans. She had a can on hand, so we dumped them in. Then we decided that some tomatoes would be good, we used canned with garlic and onion, but fresh would work. Some lime juice, cilantro, vinegar, and olive oil later and we had a great salad.

You don’t cook the corn for this, so the fresher the better. If you can get yummy corn from a farmer’s market, do that. I went with Harris Teeter corn, and it was good, too.

Black Bean and Corn Salad: take 2

6 ears of corn (I used 4 yellow and 2 white)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can tomatoes, rinsed and drained
2-3 tablespoons chopped onion (use less if you use flavored tomatoes)
1 tsp garlic powder (or use some minced garlic, again, use less if you use flavored tomatoes)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2-3 tbsp chopped cilantro (or to taste)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Juice of 1-2 limes (or 1 lime and the zest)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)

Remove husks and silk from the corn, and cut the kernals away from the center into a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients. Serve with goat cheese on top (optional)

Black bean and corn salad take 2

Comments (1)

Blueberry Custard Cupcakes

July 1, 2009 at 8:47 pm · Filed under dessert, photo

First off, I want to mention the amount of pressure I suddenly feel about this blog! I found out that a fried actually COOKED something from here, and had plans to cook something else! Whoa. I am so very super glad about that, so super glad that I’m using terms like, “super glad.” But… the pressure! I hope both types of BBQ turned out well!!!!

Speaking of BBQ, for the past week or two I’ve been churning out some summery recipes. Last weekend we went to my sister’s house for belated father’s day. I knew I wanted to make cupcakes, and I knew that my dad loves custard and loves blueberries. Luckily, that was easy enough to work with!!!

Blueberry Custard Cupcakes
Blueberry custard cupcakes

In addition to everything below, you’ll need some extra blueberries.

Vanilla cupcakes
Vanilla cupcake

1 recipe yellow cupcakes

Replace the sour cream with vanilla yogurt, and increase the vanilla to 1-2 tablespoons.

Blueberry Sauce

11 ounces blueberries, mashed up
1/2 cup sugar

Heat on low heat for 15-20 minutes, or until syrupy. Then strain through mesh strainer to catch skins.

Custard filling
Custard
1/4 c sugar
1 c milk
1 ts flour
3 egg yolks, beaten
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Blend sugar, flour, and salt in a pot. Stir in the milk. Bring to boiling; stir and cook 1 to 2 minutes. Add a small amount of the hot mixture to egg yolks, stirring constantly (this helps keep the eggs from cooking). Blend into mixture in saucepan. Cook 1 minute. Remove from heat and cool immediately by pouring custard into a chilled bowl and setting it in refrigerator or pan of cold water. Add the vanilla. Let chill in the fridge.

Blueberry Swiss Meringue Icing
1 batch swiss meringue icing
half the blueberry sauce

Mix the half of the blueberry sauce in with half of the icing. Keep the other half in a separate bowl.

Putting it all together

After the cupcakes have cooled somewhat, use a small spoon (I used a melon baller) and scoop out a chunk of the inside of the cupcake. Drizzle a bit of blueberry sauce down in there. Fill the rest of the way with custard. The plop a few whole blueberries on top of that.

Fill an icing bag with one side regular frosting, the other side blueberry frosting. Pipe the frosting on. Top with a blueberry and a bit more blueberry sauce drizzle.

I also made some with no blueberries for the blueberry haters.
Blueberry custard cupcakes
Blueberry custard cupcakes

Eat!

Leave a Comment

ABC Muffins

June 14, 2009 at 9:42 pm · Filed under breakfast, lunch, photo

The other night Zach and I went to a great little restaurant in downtown Raleigh called The Rockford. Service wasn’t great, but the food was. I got the ABC (apple, bacon, cheddar) sandwich, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten (probably helped that I was starving by the time I got my food!). It was apple, bacon, and cheddar inside french toast, essentially. Sort of a monte cristo with apple.

I really enjoyed having muffins for lunch last week, they were so easy to make and to get ready each morning. So this week I was trying to think of what kind of muffin to make, and I thought of that sandwich.

The batter for this looks WAY dry, almost more like cookie dough. My thought was that the apple would release moisture. But up until the point I bit into the muffin I was convinced that they were going to be too dry. They are dense, but they weren’t dry. I also realized after I pulled them out of the oven that I had planned to put some onion and garlic in, and forgot. I didn’t include them in the ingredients, but you could certainly add some.

So Zach was a bit hungry and decided to test one of these muffins for me. He declared that it wasn’t really the best thing ever, and I was feeling sort of dejected. But then he had the thought to dip it in some maple syrup, and suddenly a just “okay” muffin became GREAT. He said he wants to eat them for breakfast. I say that breakfast isn’t just for breakfast, so I’ll eat them for lunch.

ABC Muffins

Ingredients

1st set:
-3/4 cup whole wheat flour
-1/4 cup all purpose flour
-1/3 cup wheat germ
-1/3 cup ground flax seed
-1 Tbsp sugar
-1 tsp. baking soda
-1/4 tsp baking powder
-1/2 – 1 tsp salt

2nd set:
-1/2 Cup Egg Beaters (or other liquid egg substitute, I used the type with extra Omega 3) or 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 green apple, diced (I used one Granny Smith, and 1/2 Golden Delicious)
-1/2 stick butter, melted
-1/2 c. bacon, cooked and chopped
-1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese, diced

Mix the 1st set of ingredients together and mix the second set of ingredients (make sure the butter has cooled before you add the egg) together in two separate bowls.

Mix the two sets of ingredients together.

Spoon into a buttered muffin pan

350 degrees for 20-25 minutes for regular sized muffins.

Serve with maple syrup!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ABC Muffins

Note: I actually used *slightly* less flax/wheat germ, and *slightly* more all purpose flour. But I couldn’t really come up with a measurement for that, and I think the measurements provided will work just fine. You could also just use whole wheat and all purpose flour, or completely all purpose flour. You just want 1 2/3 c of flour, total.

Leave a Comment

Chicken tenders and nuggets – three ways

June 9, 2009 at 9:08 am · Filed under dinner, photo

A year or so ago I was watching an episode of Rachael Ray (that’s what I did when I was unemployed) and she made chicken tenders by breading them in crushed pretzels. Zach and I thought this looked awesome, so we tried it, and they tasted great. The problem with them is that they dirty a LOT of dishes.

The other day I decided to make honey sesame chicken, and the recipe that I based mine around used a different method to the breading.

Last night I tried to incorporate that new (actually very old) method into regular chicken tenders.

All three taste great. The pretzel chicken is interesting, but I’m honestly not sure it’s worth the extra mess, unless you’re going to be making a lot of them. They are fun because you can buy so many different flavors of pretzels now, that you can really vary the taste of the chicken tender.

On all of these you want to start with good quality chicken. It’s the main part of this recipe, don’t buy stuff that looks nasty.

We’ll start with the Pretzel Chicken recipe and move on from there.

Pretzel Chicken

Raw chicken tenders
Flour
Milk
Egg
Pretzel crumbs (food process works great for this)
Spices (garlic, onion powder, Bojangles seasoning, salt, pepper, anything that sounds good to you!)
Olive oil for cooking

Rinse the chicken tenders and pat dry. Pour the flour into a bowl, the milk and egg in a bowl, and the pretzel crumbs in a third bowl. Dip the chicken tenders into the flour, then the milk/egg, then the pretzels. You can repeat this if you want a thicker crunchier coating.

Pour olive oil into a large skillet until it is deep enough to come more than halfway up the sides of the chicken tenders. Heat on medium high. Drop a little piece of the breading into the oil to see if it’s hot enough, it should immediately start sizzling like crazy.

Lay a single layer of chicken tenders in the skillet, being careful not to crowd the pan. Let cook for aproximately 5 minutes, you want it to be nice and golden brown. Flip the tenders and cook until the other side is golden brown. You want a meat thermometer to read at least 165. If you don’t have a meat thermometer, then cut a tender open and see if there is any pink left.

Place the chicken tenders on a towel-lined plate to drain. Repeat with remaining chicken.

If you feel like the outside is cooking too quickly and the inside is not done yet, you can finish these off in the oven.

Chicken Tenders recipe 2

Raw chicken tenders
Wochestershire sauce
Garlic powder
Paprika
Cornstarch
Flour
Olive oil for cooking

Place chicken tenders in a bowl with enough wocestershire sauce to cover the bottom. Sprinkle with a heafty dash of garlic powder and paprika (I also used a heafty dose of bojangles seasoning, but I’m assuming most people don’t have any of that). Let them marinate for at least 10 minutes, an hour or two is better.

Give them a sprinkle with a tablespoon or two of cornstarch (don’t drain them or take them out of the wocestershire sauce!). Then start adding flour by the handfull (or scoop full), making sure to thouroughly coat the chicken and absorb the wocestershire. If you want a thicker breading, then drizzle some melted margarine or some chicken stock on top, and then coat with more flour. Don’t worry about putting too much flour, any excess just won’t stick.

Follow the directions from the pretzel chicken for cooking.

chicken tenderschicken tenders

Honey Sesame Chicken

Raw chicken tenders cut into chunks that are aproximately 1 inch square
Soy sauce
Garlic powder
Paprika
Cornstarch
Flour
Olive oil for cooking
Sesame Seeds
Altered polynesian sauce

Follow the directions from the chicken tenders recipe directly above, but substitute soy sauce for the wocestershire.

Alter the polynesian sauce recipe by using soy sauce instead of wochestershire. If you have any bell peppers on hand, saute a handfull of minced bell pepper, and add it to the sauce. If it is too runny, sprinkle some corn starch in it and stir well.

After they are cooked, drizzle them with polynesian sauce to coat. Then sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Serve over rice with whatever veggies sound good. Maybe brocolli (if you like that evil flower), bell pepper slices, and water chesnuts.

Leave a Comment

Ricotta Pea Wontons with Lemon Butter Sage Sauce

June 9, 2009 at 8:39 am · Filed under photo, side dish

Not such a pretty name for these guys, nothing with the word “pea” in it is ever going to sound pretty. But since peas are the main ingredient, I guess there is no way around it.

I starred a recipe similar to this in my Google Reader the other day, and decided to make them last night as a side dish. The original recipe didn’t call for any sauce in particular, and I thought a quick lemon butter sauce would work well.

This recipe made about 16 wontons, and they supposedly freeze well, just make sure to double bag them, and then bake straight from the freezer.

Ricotta Pea Wontons with Lemon Butter Sage Sauce

1 c. sweet peas, cooked, and mashed slightly
1/4 c. ricotta (I used part-skim ricotta)
1/4 c. parmesean and/or guyere (I used a microplane so my 1/4 c. was very fluffy and not packed in at all… use less if you’re packing it in more densly)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 serrano pepper, seeds and ribs removed (if you love heat, leave the seeds and ribs in, or use an extra pepper)
Dash of red pepper flakes
Salt to taste
Wonton wrappers (or eggroll wrappers cut in fourths)
Tbsp melted butter

Mix all of the ingredients except the wrappers and butter in a bowl. Lay out your wrappers and place a teaspoonfull of the mixture on each wrapper. Top with another wrapper and seal the edges with water, pressing down to make sure you’ve got them sealed. Brush the tops lightly with butter (I used Smart Balance light margarine with omega 3).

Cook at 450 for 7-10 minutes, or until golden brown and the edges are crispy. Drizzle with lemon butter sage sauce (recipe to follow).


ricotta pea egg rollsricotta pea egg rolls


Lemon Butter Sage Sauce

1/4 c. melted butter (I used the Smart Balance light margarine with omega 3)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3-4 sage leaves (I used pineapple sage from my garden)
Dash of garlic powder

I don’t like big pieces of sage, so I muddled my sage in the lemon juice and let it sit for a while, and then poured the lemon juice into the butter while leaving the sage behind. Then I added the garlic.

You could also mince the sage and just mix all of the ingredients together.

Leave a Comment

Older Posts »