Posts Tagged “recipes”

Our kitchen was so full of hustle bustle this year (hey, let’s face it…every year!) that I just couldn’t even think about taking pictures of the cooking process for most of our dishes.  I did manage to sneak in a few shots of the bacon-wrapped brussels sprouts, but I’ll do that as a separate entry.  Here, I’m going to focus on the bread-like dishes.  These pictures are just mined from the interwebz. All of these recipes were tried for the first time and all turned out so good I simply have to share the joy!  Go and make them…then come back and tell me how your family liked them!  By the way, comments making any reference whatsoever to calories, fat content, or weight gain will be immediately deleted!  Other than that, comment away!  LOL!

I’ve tried at least a half dozen recipes for spoon bread and have been disatisfied every time.  Then, my stepson Matt mentioned he’d had the perfect spoon bread at a Thanksgiving table several years back.  He got the recipe for us and we made it this year to RAVE reviews!  The key…and I am telling you this is key…is the use of Jiffy Corn Bread Mix.  From scratch recipes and other corn bread mixes just didn’t come out with the intense flavor and texture that reminds me of my favorite Mexican restaurant’s spoon bread.  This one is da bomb!

Kentucky  Spoon Bread
Ingredients
1 Box Jiffy Corn Bread Mix
1 stick of butter, melted
1 8 oz. can of whole corn, drained
1 8 oz. can of cream style corn
1 cup sour cream (I prefer Daisy brand)
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Instructions
Melt the butter and combine the Jiffy mix, corns, sour cream, and beaten eggs in a large bowl.  Pour into a 1.5 quart greased casserole and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, until center is firm.  Serve warm.

I doubled this recipe and used a 9×13 glass baking dish with outstanding results.  The bread will be dense, very moist, and utterly delicious!

For our follow-up Thanksgiving dinner Sunday evening with a different group of family, I tried a bread pudding recipe from Penzey’s One magazine.  If you haven’t yet discovered the amazing world of Penzey’s Spices, I encourage you to go visit their website, subscribe to their magazine, and…most importantly…throw away every dried herb and spice in your cupboard and replace them all with Penzey’s.  You will be astounded at the difference in your tried and true receipes.  The magazine always has great receipes…many from readers…and I have never, ever, had a bad result using their recipes and spices.  Going Penzey’s has transformed our kitchen and our culinary life!

This recipe is over 100 years old and was contributed by a Penzey’s One reader whose family has passed it down.  I can see why it has endured, though I have modified it slightly to round out a few ingredients. It calls for a whiskey sauce, which I made the first night, but then made a non-alcoholic vanilla sauce the next night.  Both versions are included below.

Bread Pudding
Ingredients
16 day-old hamburger buns, torn in large pieces
(Leave them exposed to the air, opened up and spread out on a baking sheet overnight. You want most of the moisture out of the bread. Big pieces yield lots of texture, smaller pieces make a smooth, wet pudding.  I prefer the large chunks.)
1 14-oz can evaporated milk (not sweetened, not condensed)
4 cups milk (lower fat milks are okay, not skim)
2 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs, beaten
3 tbs cinnamon (oh, yes…go heavy here)
2 tbs plus 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup melted butter

Whiskey Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/8 – 1/4 cup whiskey

Non-alcoholic alternative is to substitue 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp imitation rum extract for the whiskey, or 1 tsp vanilla extract and leave out the rum extract altogether.

Instructions
Preheat over to 400 degrees. In a large bowl (I needed a punch bowl as my largest mixing bowl was too small), combine the ripped up buns, canned milk and evaporated milk and let soak for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, stir together the sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla to make a gorgeous goop! Add to the bread and milk and mix well with a wooden spoon. Take care not to mash the bread chunks too much.  Pour into an  ungreased 9×13 pan and drizzle the melted butter over the top.  If you have a larger one, you may want to choose it, or else place the pan on a lipped cookie sheet.  This will rise high in the oven. and some of the butter may spill out.  Bake until lightly browned and no longer wiggly, about 50 minutes.  Carefully remove from oven and let sit for 5-10 minutes.  Bread will settle and melted butter that may be pooled on top will soak in.

To make the whiskey sauce, combine all ingredients in a medium sauce pan and bring to a rolling boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Pour 1-2 tablespoons over individual servings of warm bread pudding.

Well, there you have it.  That oughta keep you away from the scale for a while!  I must confess, I’ve been going back for midnight snacks of this bread pudding…and I never do that!  Something about the warmth and the texture and the cinnamon flavor tastes even better snuggled in bed in front of the tv!  Note that I am not officially recommending that to you…it’s more of a confession, really.

Please comment…they are my favorite snack food of all!

Deuteronomy 16: 14 And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant and the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow, who are within your gates. 15 Seven days you shall keep a sacred feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord chooses, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you surely rejoice.

I’m a New Yorker, born and raised.  There, if you walk into just about any Chinese take-out restaurant, you can order Cold Sesame Noodles (sometimes called, “cold noodles with sesame sauce,”).  In my single years, a pint of that and a pint of roast pork fried rice made a perfect dinner for me.  I could pick it up on the way home, walking from the subway to my Queens apartment and it filled me up for very little cash.  In fact, that Chinese place on 108th Street in Forest Hills at about 65th Avenue made the best cold sesame noodles anywhere!  I wonder if they’re still doing that.

Since we moved to Jacksonville three years ago, not only is it really tough to find good Chinese to begin with, but my husband and I have never seen this culinary delight on any menu.  Three years is a long time to go without that kind of taste sensation.  So, I just got fed up about six weeks ago and decided I’d figure out a way to duplicate that flavor, by hook or by crook.  I knew I needed peanut butter and something with sesame flavor that was dark in color.  But what?

At Publix (the coolest supermarket in the universe, IMHO), I browsed the “Ethnic Foods,” aisle – the Chinese section in particular.  Soy sauce…terayaki sauce…chili sauce…fish sauce…AHA!  There is was, and I don’t know why I’d never seen it before.  Sesame Garlic sauce by “Iron Chef.”  Who knew that was a brand (then again, of course it is).  I read the ingredients and they sounded like exactly like what I’d need to make the famous, yet elusive sauce.  I picked up 2 bottles and headed home.

I already had angel hair pasta (a nice, big, 16-oz box from Mueller) and Jif creamy peanut butter in the pantry.  Seemed like I was set.  I put on my white lab coat and got busy (not really ).  I figured about 2/3 cup of peanut butter was right.  A full cup would be too much.  I started light, but ended up pouring about half the bottle of sesame garlic sauce in.  Then, I added a few tablespoons of HOT water until the consistency was thick, but not gummy.  Meanwhile, I cooked the angel hair in salted water with a little olive oil (this only takes about 4 minutes, so don’t get distracted!) after breaking it in half.  I drained the pasta and ran cold water over it to stop the cooking process and cool it off.  That’s why the sauce can’t be too gummy…you’re gonna try to evenly distribute it in the cold noodles without making mush out of everything.

Two tablespoons worked well for me to get the stuff properly mixed.  I don’t recommend using forks.  The pasta is delicate while still a bit warm and you don’t want to shred it.  Once mixed, I covered it with plastic wrap and put the whole bowl in the freezer for about 45 minutes.  Serve it in the bowl with bean sprouts and slivers of cucumber on the side or piled for guests to put on top.  I didn’t have any cucumbers when I made this for the second time last night, so we’ve just got the sprouts in this picture.

I also made Pad Thai using noodles and sauce from a box.  The shrimp goes with the Pad Thai, but since my stepson is allergic, I served them on the side.  It was certainly a noodle-intensive meal, but the hot dish with lime and cilantro flavors complimented the cold dish with peanut and sesame flavors perfectly!

Once again, the pictures are clickable to view full size.  I’d love to know if you make this.  I know if you do, you’ll be back here thanking me.  This stuff is heavenly!  If you want my Pad Thai receipe, just say so in the comments and that will be my next cuisine post, though I mostly follow box directions and enhance, enhance, enhance.

Genesis 19:1 Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. 2 And he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the open square.” 3 But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

This is what I made for dinner last night.  My mother always made an excellent meat loaf when I was growing up.  I stuck to her recipe faithfully until I became vegetarian in my 20s.  Let me just say right now that most vegetarian alternatives to meat loaf are to be avoided at all costs unless that’s all you have in the vaccuum-sealed bags in your bomb shelter and the alarm has sounded.  Seriously.  However, I did make a few interesting discoveries during that decade of my life that carried over to my kitchen life when I climbed back on the meat wagon.  One such thing is using oats in meat loaf rather than bread crumbs.  Of course, using oats when the other ingredients are tofu and sunflower seeds and…well…NO MEAT…doesn’t make for a very tasty dinner.  But, just swapping the bread crumbs for some oats works really well!And, I’m led to believe it may help reduce cholesterol if used for 30 consecutive days!

Truth be told, I had not done this for several years.  My meat loaf was still widely appreciated, so I stuck with Mom’s recipe most of the time.  But, yesterday afternoon I was hanging out with Rhett & LInk on UStream during their live broadcast and I mentioned my dinner plans.  Link noticed my comment in the chat window and said, “Meat loaf?  Don’t use bread crumbs…use oats.”  And, I figured, hey…why not use oats?

So, here’s my recipe, which is mostly Mom’s, slightly modified over the years, and most notably modified by the use of Quaker 1-Minute Oats,

Ingredients and Assembly

though, you can use long-cooking if that’s what’s in your pantry. (Images are clickable for full-sized view.)

Ingredients
2 lbs fresh meat loaf mix
(I use 2 parts ground chuck to 1 part ground pork)
2 eggs (beaten)
1-1.5 cups coarsely chopped onion
(I used Vidalia here)
1/2 cup worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup ketchup
(nothing labelled “catsup” has ever been in my pantry…who knows what that stuff is?)
2 cups dry rolled oats, very briefly processed (like, 2 pulses)
1/4 cup dried parsley (or 1/2 cup chopped, fresh, flat-leaf)
salt, pepper

Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.  I start with the meat, add the wet ingredients, then the dry on top, though I have no idea why.  Wash your hands well, remove rings and watches, then get in there with both hands and SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH until everything is uniformly blended.  Really, it’s the only way.  Then, pick up the whole meaty mess and slap it between your hands a few times to remove any air pockets that might make crevices in the loaf during baking.  Form it into a loaf and place on a prepared pan.

Voila! Gorgeous!

Here, you can see I’ve used my broiler ban with the bottom portion lined with foil for easy cleanup later and the top portion prepared with cooking spray.  I made a double recipe here, so there are 2 loaves shown.  I like to shape the loaves with squared ends and a flattened top because then all the slices come out about the same height and width except for the very ends.  I have found I get more bang for the buck that way.  I never use loaf pans.  I find the loaf is difficult to extract and all the fat is trapped on the bottom.

Bake at 350 degrees fahrenheit for 50-60 minutes until nicely browned.  Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

I served mine with mashed potatoes last night.  We ate very late, so there was no veggie, but I usually serve this with broccoli first steamed, then tossed in some olive oil with a little garlic and oregano.   I eat my meat loaf with ketchup which offends my husband nearly to the point of distraction.  If I haven’t remembered to heat up some jarred beef gravy, he will use A-1 Steak Sauce on his.

Please comment!  Let me know if you like meat loaf, if you have a cool meat loaf recipe, or of you think you might try this one!

Acts 10:9 The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. 10 Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance 11 and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. 12 In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. 13 And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” 14 But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” 15 And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.”