Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater!

Last weekend I was determined to make progress toward my cooking challenge goal. I did. Sorta. I used two cookbooks, but think I can only count one of them because I sorta cheated.

Well, I feel like I like I cheated because a couple of the dishes really didn't meet the qualifications for the new-to-me rule, even if they did meet the qualification for the waste-not rule.

A third dish met all of the qualifications though. That makes me feel a little bit better, but only just a little bit.

Anyhow, on the roster for last weekend's cooking shenanigans were Chicken Fricassee (this is the qualifier recipe), Curry-Coconut Chicken Tenders (cheater recipe - i've made tenders of a different flavor before) and Blueberry Muffins (cheater recipe - please. muffins? muffins?! there's nothing new about making muffins).

Both chicken recipes came from Betty Crocker's Best Chicken Recipes. This is one of a number of cookbooks I received in a previous life as a perk of my job. There were several recipes in the cookbook that looked interesting and that were very pretty in their photos.

The challenge I kept running into is that so many of them called for some sort of jarred, pre-made sauce or some such thing that I'm sure was intended to make it easier to put dinner on the table. However, this recipe approach assumes that you're not up to the challenge of making your own sauce or that you keep the jarred stuff hanging around the house. I don't. In fact, I'm not sure I can imagine buying jarred alfredo sauce. Meh...

Anyhow, the Chicken Fricassee recipe (top photo) did appeal to me (hello dumplings!) and I had all the ingredients in my cupboards already. Although, oddly enough, this Betty Crocker recipe recommended that you make the dumplings from scratch. I don't have anything against from scratch dumplings, but a Betty Crocker cookbook didn't recommend the use of Bisquick? I find that odd.

In any case, I made the Chicken Fricassee and, if you know me, then I'm sure you won't be surprised to know that I actually did make one recipe modification. I skipped the whole from-scratch dumplings step in favor of using Bisquick. Yes, I used the Bisquick. I like the Bisquick.

Once the Fricassee had simmered and the dumplings had finally cooked through, I sat down to a nice casual dinner. For never having made Chicken Fricassee before, I think it turned out pretty well. In fact, it's a dish I'd make again, especially on an overcast, damp sort of day when comfort food seems so right.

The following day, I set out to use the remainder of my chicken as an easy way to adhere to my waste-not rule. From the same Betty Crocker cookbook, I picked out Curry-Coconut Chicken Tenders (middle photo).

This should have been a very simple, enjoyable dish. It wasn't. Due to what I'm sure was operator error, it was icky.

Let's start with the fact that even though I own just about five bazillion spices, curry is not one of them. So, I substituted chili powder. No biggie, right? Wrong. That substitution combined with the use of sweetened, shredded coconut and some other undetermined flaw led to a dish that was barely edible.

The coconut did not crisp up. I used too much chili powder. And the sum total was a bunch of chicken tenders that tasted not so good.

I redeemed the cooking adventures that day with a batch of blueberry muffins (bottom photo) using a recipe from "The Joy of Cooking: All About Breakfast and Brunch." Going against my own belief that not-Maine blueberries are bad, I had picked up a pint of Georgia blueberries along with some other berries. Having committed this egregious error, I had to use them before they went bad. I will concede that these were not awful in the muffins, but that's as much as you'll get from me.

The fun twist in this muffin recipe was using brown sugar instead of white. I liked this twist and think it might account for how moist the muffins were.

At the end of the day, I feel like I technically can say, "Check! One more cookbook down!" However, I feel like I cheated too much in making the blueberry muffins. To redeem myself, I will have to make something else from "The Joy of Cooking: All Breakfast and Brunch" cookbook.

Then, and probably only then, my guilty conscience might shut up and leave me alone.

Breaking in the New Kitchen

At the very end of August, I moved to a new apartment. When I first saw it's floor plan online, I was intrigued enough to book an appointment. Almost from the very first moment I walked into it, I was smitten. Lots of windows. Great space. High ceilings. And, most important, a kitchen designed for entertaining and cooking - much more so than my last apartment.

I love the new place. I couldn't wait to move into it - even though I was in the midst of a ginormous work project and loads of travel. Somehow, I managed the move and the work travel with only the occasional lapse in sanity.

What I did not manage so well was a timely approach to unpacking. I managed to create a semblance of order in my bedroom; found the necessities for the bathroom and kitchen; and hooked up my brand new, fancy TV and cable.

And then I hit a roadblock.

My new kitchen is much, much bigger than any kitchen I've ever had (my parents' kitchens do not count). There are acres of counters and unfathomable depths in my cupboards. Overwhelmed by the prospect of needing to organize my stuff in this much space, I spent several days rummaging through the organizing sections of multiple stores looking for the magic things that would ensure that my kitchen would make sense and that I'd be able to find my stuff in the midst of all this space. A Container Store in Omaha might have made my life a little easier. Alas, no such store can be found here.

And this is where I will call a spade a spade - right before my parents or one of my friends does so.

I was stalling. I was procrastinating.

But thank goodness for Twitter. I made a public promise to make chorizo and maybe even some pate knowing that if I told the world I was going to do something so specific, I'd have to do so.

And I did.

Well, I did make chorizo. I did not make pate. However, I also made roasted tomato soup. I'll try making pate some other day.

Prior to the move, I'd been pouring over Robb Walsh's "The Tex-Mex Cookbook" and remembered there was a recipe for chorizo that seemed relatively straightforward and easy enough. This recollection was confirmed when I finally found "The Tex-Mex Cookbook" in the third box of unpacked cookbooks.

Robb's recipe for El Chico's Chorizo is pretty simple. Not having a full-size food processor though, I cheated and bought ground pork into which I mixed the chili powder, paprika, salt, garlic powder, cumin and red wine vinegar by hand. Robb's recipe calls for buying a cut of pork and grinding it yourself along with the spices. But let's be honest kids, it's way more fun to use your hands to mix ingredients together than a food processor. It's okay to disagree with me, but I'm not sure I'll trust you quite so much anymore if you do. Just saying...

Anyhow, once the spices had been mixed in, I set the chorizo aside to allow the flavors to combine for a bit and turned my attention to making something out of the fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes a coworker gave me.

What I really wanted to make was one of Ina Garten's tomato soups again, but that would be repeating a cookbook and a recipe. Not good since I'm so far behind on accomplishing my goal of making at least one recipe from each of my cookbooks before the end of the year.

Lucky for me, my Mom gave me "Sunday Soup: A Year's Worth of Mouth-Watering, Easy-to-Make Recipes" as a gift last Christmas. This little collection contained a number of tomato-based soups. However, I struggled to reconcile my waste-not rule with my new-to-me rule. Eventually, I settled on Roasted Tomato Soup because it involved actually roasting the tomatoes myself - something I've not done before.

Aside from being time consuming, this too was a simple enough recipe. First, the tomatoes (cut in half and seeded) were roasted after marinating for about 15 minutes in olive oil, salt, pepper and crushed, dried rosemary. Once roasted, I put the tomatoes and some chicken stock in the blender and pulsed them to a slightly chunky texture. This was then set on the stove in a sauce pan and brought to a boil and then left to simmer. Taste tests proved that the salt from the marinating process wasn't quite enough for my tastes, so I added just a bit more.

While the soup simmered, I finished off the chorizo by browning it with a bit of veggie oil and some chopped onion. Once browned, I removed all but a couple of heaping tablespoons of sausage from the pan and cracked a couple of eggs into the pan to make Chorizo y Huevos, a recipe suggested by Robb in "The Tex-Mex Cookbook."

At this point, you might be asking, "How did this all turn out, Steff?"

Well, I'll be honest. By the time I finished making everything, I was tired and cranky. I'd spent all afternoon cooking not because I was making anything complicated, but because I had to remember where in the freaking world I had put my cooking utensils, pots, pans and whatnot. It was irritating and I just kind of snarfed everything down that night. I guess this is part of the process of breaking in a new kitchen.

Fortunately, I made enough chorizo and soup for leftovers. The next night, I made the Chorizo y Huevos again and put them on top of a slice of country bread with some shredded cheese and salsa. Very delicious. Plus, I think the sausage was better for having had a day to allow the flavors to combine instead of just a couple of hours. The soup was good too. But, I have to say, I like the soup I made from Ina Garten's recipe better. Perhaps that's because of the basil and cream though. Just a guess.

Blueberry Coffee Cake. Or Raspberry. You Pick.

This weekend, after blogging a bit about my family’s B&B days and after sharing a blueberry recipe with a friend, I felt the need to put that recipe to work for myself.

The below recipe is for Noni’s Blueberry Coffee Cake. Noni was our next door neighbor when we lived in Maine, and she shared this recipe with us. We, in turn, served the results to our B&B guests, who loved it.


As you can imagine, blueberry-containing dishes were a regular feature on our menu given that we were in Maine. And not just any ol’ part of Maine, but Washington County, Maine, where 90 percent of the nation’s blueberries are grown. That’s right. Ninety percent. Don’t believe me, visit this page then.

Unfortunately for me, while I love Noni’s Blueberry Coffee Cake as is, I don’t live in Maine anymore. Getting fresh blueberries in Nebraska is a little bit on the tricky side of things. And, don’t kid yourselves, those icky, faux blueberries from New Jersey don’t pass muster any whatsoever. No. Those come off of tall bushes and are artificially ginormous in comparison to genuine Maine blueberries, which have to be raked by hand from blueberry bushes that grow close to the ground.

In any case, having no fresh blueberries, I decided to follow my waste-not rule and used the frozen raspberries that have been sitting in my freezer for a couple of months now.

And you know what? It turned out a-ok. In fact, I liked it a lot. And so did my co-workers who were my guinea pigs today. So, there you go. Substitutes do work.

And now, the recipe...

Noni's Blueberry Coffee Cake
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (if frozen, do not thaw) or a 12oz bag of frozen raspberries (do not thaw)
1/2 cup all purpose flour (to coat the berries)
1/4 cup sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift together 2 cups flour & baking soda. Set aside.

Cream together butter & sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly. Alternate adding flour mixture & buttermilk until thoroughly combined.

In a separate bowl, toss blueberries in 1/2 cup of flour. Fold gently into the batter.

Spread batter into a well-greased 9x13 pan. (Note: This is a thick batter & you will have to spread it with a spatula to get it in the pan evenly. Don't work if you mash to berries a bit, the final result will be just fine.)

Lightly sprinkle with the extra 1/4 cup of sugar for a topping.

Bake 45 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature for best taste.

Most importantly … Enjoy!

Bacon. Bacon on Muffins. Need I Say More?

Creativity is a must sometimes. For example, when you’re too lazy to go out to buy an important ingredient for a new recipe. Say, when you want to make Bacon Pineapple Muffins in which corn meal is the key ingredient for the muffin itself and you don’t have any corn meal or, you know, something along those lines.

Okay. Fine. Something exactly along those lines.

Having no corn meal, having no desire to make a late-night dash or an early-morning run to the store and being determined to have a muffin with bacon and pineapple in it, I decided to improvise. And at this point, this is where I must say: Thank you, Jiffy Corn Bread Mix. Thank you very much.

Yes, I know you can make corn muffins from scratch. They would be darn right tasty, too. Or, when you’re short on a key ingredient, you can improvise and be just as happy. Because, let’s be honest. The only reason I was making these muffins was because they were going to be a carrier for bacon, an ingredient I fully planned on doubling as soon as I read the recipe.

These muffins came from an obscure, goodness only knows where they got it, muffins and only muffins cookbook that my parents used during our B&B days. Many of the muffins have been tried and loved. For some odd, unexplainable reason, we had not made these Bacon Pineapple Muffins. However, we had made the rather icky Cantaloupe Muffins because we had a lot of cantaloupe to use before it went bad. Let me tell you, we didn’t make that mistake again. Bleh!

Anyhow, the muffins were easy. Make a corn muffin base from scratch or use Jiffy Corn Bread Mix (like me). Fold in half a cup of shredded, canned pineapple. Pour muffins into muffin tins lined with paper things. I definitely recommend using the cupcake liners because even with the tins greased up with lots of PAM, the muffins stuck to the bottoms. I blame the pineapple. However, I will also note that since I was using a Texas-sized muffin tin rather than a normal, itty-bitty muffin tin, cupcake liners weren’t much of an option. Oh well…

Lastly, top with bacon. Lots of bacon. I think the recipe called for something absurd – like only using four or five strips of fried bacon crumbled on top. Absurd! Use more. Use lots. I think I used 10 strips of bacon.

And then you bake them. That’s it.

Well, aside from spreading loads of butter on them when they’re fresh out of the oven and eating them as quickly as possible.

Easter Orphans - A week after the fact

Easter has always held a very special place in my heart.

On my mother’s side of the family, this is a big family holiday. When I was young, it came complete with all the usual trappings, including a special outfit, Easter eggs and baskets, the Easter egg hunt, and – best of all – a very large Easter dinner.

Growing up, Easter dinner was almost always an Easter ham, potato salad, baked beans, some sort of veggie and bread. This was a tradition that I very much took for granted my first year at college, when I had no plans to go home and then broke down at the very last minute.

And I mean that literally. I was a crying, desperate mess making last minute arrangements to get home for Easter. I simply could not fathom *not* being home for Easter. In my books, it would be almost as bad as not going home for Christmas.

After that first year at college, my Easter traditions began to change. I spent an Easter with my paternal grandmother and her side of the family enjoying time with family I don’t get to see as often as I would like. Then I moved to DC, where getting home to see family became harder since I was an underpaid staffer on the Hill trying to make ends meet in a city that eats your paycheck before it’s even in your bank account. It was while I was living in DC that I began my own Easter tradition.

Easter Orphans Dinner.

And lest you start thinking that I’m some sort of noble soul hosting actual orphans, let me set the record straight. Easter Orphans is a dinner I host for friends who, like me, can’t go home for Easter Dinner. And when you live in DC, there are a lot of people in very similar situations.

My first Easter Orphans Dinner did not feature my family’s traditional menu. Instead, I served a Tex-Mex feast of chicken enchiladas and assorted other goodies. In subsequent years, I served the traditional menu, but I also hosted an Easter brunch whose center piece was the mimosa bar.

This year’s Easter Orphans Dinner was actually brunch for supper, featuring a mix of recipes from my family’s Bed & Breakfast days and new-to-me recipes from Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics” cookbook.

Oh. And mimosas. Mimosas are a must when it comes to brunch, even if it’s a brunch served at supper time. An absolute must.

First up on the menu was an Easy Quiche we served our Bed & Breakfast guests. The recipe is uber-easy and relies upon Bisquik rather than a pie crust. Add some eggs, cheese, sour cream, assorted spices and your choice of filler, and you’re all set. Following my waste-not rule, I used the cheddar and smoked apple chicken sausage already in the fridge as the key flavors in the Easy Quiche. I was a little worried that the smoked apple chicken sausage would be weird, but it turned out just fine. And the cheddar complemented the apples and vice versa.

But more to the point of my whole cooking challenge, I used two new recipes from Ina Garten’s “Back to Basics.” First off, let me just tell you that I want to make everything in this cookbook. Even the fish dishes, and I *hate* fish. For Easter weekend, I settled for tackling two recipes.

Actually, I feel like I should say I tackled three recipes. “Back to Basics” has two tomato-based soup recipes. One of which was more complicated than the other. The other of which used fresh tomatoes.

Being somewhat lazy and not having five pounds of tomatoes on hand, I went with the easier recipe, but used canned tomatoes as described in the more complicated recipe. The easier recipe had the added benefit of being Creamy Tomato Basil, a soup I love, love, love.

Essentially, you sauté an onion and couple of carrots in olive oil. I added two cans of Hunt’s Diced Tomatoes and one can of Hunt’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes in place of the five pounds of fresh tomatoes. Add chicken stock, fresh basil, salt and pepper; simmer for 30 minutes or so; add heavy cream; and then blend it to a smooth consistency. The easier recipe said put all through a food mill. I don’t own a food mill. So I just put the soup through the blender in batches.

Et voila! A Creamy Tomato Basil Soup to die for. I will never buy the pre-made stuff again. Well, unless I’m really freaking sick and can’t even contemplate putting one foot in front of the other, let alone making a soup that requires the use of a knife and blender.

The tricky part of the meal was the stupid warm goat cheese salad I made. Lawd!

The recipe made it sound so simple. Goat cheese wrapped up in some bread-crumb dusted phyllo dough.

Yeah. Whatever.

First off, I used the wrong type of goat cheese since the recipe called for a wheel and I used not-wheel goat cheese. Second, I put too much bread crumb between the layers of phyllo dough.

It looked pretty enough, but it wound up being too dry and not cheesy enough. Oh well. You can’t win ‘em all. The spring greens with champagne vinaigrette (store bought) that accompanied the warm goat cheese were lovely though…

Dessert was an ever so simple Strawberry Shortcake. I love making Strawberry Shortcake. Any recipe that is easiest to make by simply squishing the ingredients together with your hands gets big points in my book. And smishing strawberries together with a touch of sugar doesn’t get any easier or yummier. The shortcakes were made using the super, duper, top-secret Bisquik recipe that you’ll find on the side of the box.

And yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, I like Bisquik. So does Paula Deen. If you care to suggest alternatives to Bisquik, feel free to do so. Just know that I’m not very likely to listen.

And that was this year’s Easter Orphans Brunch for Supper Dinner. I made a big mess, had a great meal with fabulous company, and managed to walk away from the day with no injuries.

Definitely a success so far as I’m concerned.