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Mr. Cleaver and I tried quinoa for the first time this morning, we used the Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa Recipe from Chef MD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine via 101 Cookbooks and it was definitely tasty and filling. I'm looking forward to trying quinoa in more savory and salad dishes too.
In other news, it looks like spring is finally making it's way to Maine!
While I failed at my last cookie baking attempt, I've had a bit more luck in the vegetarian cooking department. First off I wanted to thank everyone for their recipe suggestions, I'm still looking through some of the ones posted last week, but there are several I can't wait to try - keep 'em coming!
Two things I've learned quickly, chickpeas (and beans in general) are my veggie-cooking friends and that taking pictures of food in my kitchen lighting at night is less than ideal.
Also, not specifically related to the vegetarian-eating thing, but banana and nutella on toast may be my new favorite breakfast.
Recipes used this week:
Also made (not-photograghed) Chana Masala, which I improvised with a bunch of veggies, chickpeas and a jar of Masala sauce from Trader Joes.
Back to work today in something a bit more subtle pink than yesterday's outfit.
Necklace: Cameo locket, gift
Tank: Express, gift
Cardigan: Express Outlet, purchased a bazillion years ago.
Skirt: Granny skirt, drafted and made by me.
Wool Tights: Warmlegwear.com
Red Shoes: Clarks
I'd also like to give shout-out to Mr. Cleaver for being super helpful in this Lent challenge, from taking photos minutes before work, to giving second opinions on shoe choices. (You're right, the red is better here).
In other pink-related activities, inspired by a how-to article in the April 2011 issue of Everyday Food, I cooked my first risotto tonight. I added about two slices of shredded prosciutto and about a cup to 2 cups of frozen peas to their basic recipe. It was delicious, if a tad salty (when Martha says low-sodium chicken broth, Martha means it!)
Both Mr. Cleaver and I really enjoyed this dish and are thinking of countless other ways to enjoy it (shrimp and asparagus anyone?)
When Mr. Cleaver and I went apple picking a few weeks back, we came home with 21 pounds of apples. For two people. What did we do with them all?
2 Quarts Apple Sauce and 1.5 Pints Apple Butter;
3 Fat Apple Pies;
3 apples for my mother-in-law and 3 apples for my lunch.
All in all not a bad haul! It took one day to do all the canning and another day for the pies. It was a lot of work, but I'll happily be eating apples until next September!
Though this is my fourth year making apple pies, this is the first year I worked out a recipe that I was totally happy with. In the past, my pies had ended up too watery, but with a few tweaks to some recipes from family and friends, I think we've ended up with something delicious!
Streusel Apple Pie
Crust:
Filling:
Streusel
Preheat oven to 400°F
Make crust by mixing together flour and salt. Cut shortening into flour mixture with a pastry cutter or some forks. Add cold water until dough holds together. Form dough into two flattened balls, wrap in plastic wrap and store in fridge until filling is prepared.
Peel, core, and slice apples. In a large bowl, mix apples, lemon juice, sugar and spices. Add flour until a thin sauce is formed from the juices. Set filling aside.
Removed chilled dough from fridge and roll out into a top and bottom crust.
Place bottom crust in 9 inch round pie pan (metal or glass) and fill with apples, heaping up in center. Cover apples with top crust. Top can be latticed or vented with several cuts through the top.
For streusel, cut together softened butter, flour and brown sugar with a fork until crumbly. Sprinkle streusel over top of pie.
Bake pie at for 40-50 or until filling bubbles and top is brown.
Cool, slice and enjoy!
So good, if we weren't already married, my husband would marry me for it.
Like pretty much all of America, I grew up on the Kraft "Blue Box" Mac 'n' Cheese. My first taste of the homemade stuff was when my brother attempted to make some while I was in high school. I not sure what happened, but it was notthe best, shall we say. I retrospect, I think it needed salt.
Years later, I came across this recipe in Real Simple Magazine and thought I'd give it ago, but I was a little put off by the called for 6 cups (!) of milk, and using the full quarter cup of oil on the bread make my crackers waaaay too greasy, so I did a few mild changes, as listed below.
And its really good. This is maybe one of Mr. Cleaver's favorite things I cook, and every so often (as with the Cherry Pie), he'll just "happen" to the buy the ingredients and if I just "happen" to want to make it, it would "happen" to be swell. I love it too, so it's not too hard to convince me.
Mac 'n' Cheese, adapted from Real Simple, Nov. 200.
Herbed-Crumb Topping
Heat oven to 400°F and grease a 9x13 baking dish.
Cook the macaroni for slightly less time than the package says, so it's still a little firm. Drain and rinse.
While the mac is boiling, combine cracker crumbs, oil, herbs, salt and pepper. The oil should be just enough to coat and make the crumbs slightly stick together.
In a saucepan, melt butter. While whisking constantly, add the flour and cook for about 3 minutes. The mixture will clump. Still stirring, add the milk and cook for another 7 minutes, the mixture will start to get thick. Add the cheese and salt and stir until all the cheese is evenly melted.
Mix together the mac and the cheese, pour into the prepared dish and sprinkle with the crumbs.
Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden and delicious.
It'll sit like the brick of cheese and pasta it is in your stomach, but it'll be so worth it.
Reheats really well in the oven too!
It is 5:30pm in Chicago, sunny and 58°F. This is a cause for celebration.
And there's no better way to celebrate good weather than by pulling out the ice cream maker - one of the many wonderful and incredibly useful wedding gifts Mr. Cleaver and I received. We use our ice cream maker at least once a month, even throughout the winter, so to those who think an ice cream maker is that wedding gift that gets used twice and never again, I prove you wrong in this instance.
Now in interest of full disclosure, I made this sorbet a week ago when it was 35°, but after a long Chicago winter, when it finally hits 35 people start pulling out their shorts.
I had previously made a dark chocolate sorbet from that most wonderful of food-centric websites, Chocolate and Zucchini. It definitely a make again, but the sorbet, I think is really suited to the lightness and sweetness of fresh fruit. So, to bring a ray of sunshine into my kitchen, I opted for a Sunny Lemon Sorbet.
Lemon Sorbet is maybe the easiest thing to make ever.
The ingredients:
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and place in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours, again - I always let it sit over night before I put it into the ice cream maker. This will allow the sugar to dissolve and the mixture to cool, so the machine doesn't have to work as hard.
Pour sorbet mixture into the ice cream machine and churn for about 30-45 minutes for a smooth, sweet and refreshing treat! Would pair well with shortbread cookies.
A bit blurry, but you get the idea...
Back in the day, when I was interning at the Goodman Theatre, I brought in a slice of my BBQ chicken pizza for lunch. I was walking from the microwave to the room where we were having a lunch meeting and several other interns started hovering over my lunch, as hungry interns are often wont to do.
Now, I like to think the admiration of my pizza was due to the pizza and not just the noon-time hunger striking, but the world may never know. Unless, that is, you try out the recipe!
This is another one of those I-kinda-stole-this-from-a-Portland-restaurant recipes. For backing when I was interning in Maine (Yeah, I've done a lot of internships, five in fact. Six, if you count the two seperate summers at NVSF), my roommates and I fell in love with a pizza called the "Harbor Master" at Portland Pie. I'd never been much for chicken on pizza before, but man - this one was good. And now that I'm approximately 1,086 miles away from a Portland Pie, I had to start making them on my own. My biggest change is the removal of a standard pizza sauce for straight-up BBQ sauce goodness.
Depending on what I have around the house this shifts around a little: sometimes they'll be bacon, sometimes basil, sometimes just chicken and cheese. Pizza's good that way.
BBQ Chicken Pizza (adapted from Portland Pie Co.)
Preheat the oven to 400-425°F. Sprinkle your pizza pan/stone/cookie sheet with some cornmeal to prevent sticking and place rolled out dough on top.
If using, brown the diced onions in a little butter, just enough to the the raw taste off. Remove onions and cook bacon in same pan.
At this point, I usually put the crust (sans anything) into the oven to pre-bake for about 5 minutes.
After the bacon is cooked, remove and drain any fat. Cook the chicken bits until throughly cooked through. Shred any large chicken pieces with a fork. Coat the shreed chicken with BBQ sauce.
Take your pre-baked crust and cover with BBQ sauce like you would any thin pizza sauce. (see below).
Once you're all sauced up, add the cheese. Then top with the chicken, bacon, onion, and basil, and maybe a little more cheese (I never said this was healthy). Put it all back in the oven and cook for another 5-7 minutes or until the cheese is all good and melty.
Let cool a tad (I'm notoriously bad for burning my mouth on food), slice and serve.
And see if a couple of interns don't start sniffing their way over :)
See that texture? It's "rustic." And making me hungry.
As in, "Rustic Potato Soup."
When it comes to cooking, I have a number of solid family-inherited recipes that I use (many posted here) and as I get more adventurous I've begun to add some of my own, like the Chicken Satay. My process for making up new recipes, pretty much always follows the same pattern.
And that's pretty much the process. A month or so ago I decided that I needed to try my hand at making soup. Mr. Cleaver makes a lovely chicken/turkey soup/stew whenever we roast a bird, but I had yet to delve into this food category myself. I decided to start with one of my favorites, potato soup.
Here's what I came up with, please note that it owes a lot, like a lot a lot to this recipe from Nook & Pantry.
I love it when there are so few ingredients, it's like that 5-or-fewer episode of Everyday Food. I also love cooking shows on PBS.
Rustic Potato Soup (serves 4-6)
In a large stockpot, cook the bacon bits. At this point you can either cook the potato peels in the bacon fat for crunchy potato skins or you can drain the fat.
Chop the potatoes into about 1-inch cubes. Toss the potatoes, diced onion and half the bacon bits into stockpot and add the chicken broth. Add enough broth so it just covers the potatoes. Boil the potatoes until soft about 6-7 minutes. I usually test the potatoes by sticking a fork into the largest potato piece and if it slides off it's good.
Mash the potatoes with a whisk or a potato masher. Add the milk, stir and boil until the soup thickens some. The potatoes are so starchy that it's totally unnecessary to use any thickener (ie flour).
Divide into bowl sand top with cheese and remaining bacon bits, or other garnish of choice.
This soup is rib-sticking good and Mr. Cleaver-approved!
One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the advent of peppermint ice cream, but now since I own an
- I thought I'd give a shot at making my own this year. I meant to post this recipe before Christmas, but I left for Maine and didn't bring the recipe with me. So now it can serve as a way to use all those leftover candy canes!
Peppermint Ice Cream
4-6 candy canes depending on how minty you like it
slightly less than 1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Crush candy canes until broken into fairly small bits (see photo). Combine half of the candy cane crumbles with the remainder of the ingredients and mix well. Put the mixture in the the fridge for a minimum of 6 hours up to leaving it overnight - this will allow the candy cane to dissolve into the mixture and I've found that it gives the ice cream a better consistency when you churn it.
After chilling the mixture, stir well and pour mixture into ice cream maker, making sure to scrape all the sugar and remaining bits of candy cane out. After the machine has been churning for about 15 minutes, add the remaining half of the candy cane, which will end up as crunchy bits in the finished product - if you're not a fan of crunchy things in your cream, add all the candy cane at the beginning. Churn the ice cream until desired consistency, mine ice cream maker usually takes a total of 45 minutes. Pour the ice cream into a container and put into the freezer until solid and enjoy - goes especially well with chocolate!
Meatloaf has a bad rap.
It is, for sure, a loaf of meat - something that doesn't quite sit well with our well-intentioned ideas of better modern eating (any reality aside). And like cheese balls and Jell-O molds, meatloaf has that aura of 1950's food that's trying a little too hard.
Of course, this being the Ms. Cleaver Chronicles, I'd be somewhat amiss if I didn't proclaim love for the meatloaf. I like meatloaf so much, it's what I ate on my second-first date with Mr. Cleaver. I can only think of one other person who truly appreciates this dish as much as I do (hi Winnie!). But if you haven't eaten meatloaf recently, you really should because it is tasty. And with a few minor modifications, better for you than a hamburger.
A few years ago, I decided to jettison beef from my diet, except for "when it really mattered," meaning I like a good steak every now and again, but by and large ground beef almost never makes it into my kitchen. And really, I don't miss it - most of the things I formerly made with hamburger (or hamburg as Mr. Cleaver says) like tacos, chili and this dish, have enough seasoning that it doesn't make much difference when I use ground turkey meat instead and I feel a little better about eating it. I do what I can.
And so, like the Chili I posted earlier this week, I make my meatloaf with turkey, but feel free to use beef if you want.
Mmm-mm Meatloaf : (Serves 3)
1- 1½lbs ground turkey meat (or beef)
½ onion, finely diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp thyme
½ sleeve of butter crackers (ie Townhouse or Ritz - not Saltines)
2/3 cup of ketchup
1 egg
Preheat oven to 350°F. If desired, lightly grease a loaf pan.
Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl using a sturdy spoon or your hands. transfer to pan and make into a "loaf "shape. [Note: To really make a good sized, loaf you'd probably need at least 2 lbs of meat, but I'm only cooking for two here.]
Put in oven and cook for 45 min- 1 hour or until internal temperature reaches 160°F on a meat thermometer.