Armadillo Eggs

Another "as seen as Pinterest, sort of" recipes.  Another Pin Win too.

This is one of those make-it-with-whatever-you've-got recipes...hot peppers or sweet peppers, ground meat of nearly any persuasion or combination, whatever cheese appeals to you and whatever sauce/glaze you can rustle up out of the fridge.

I had pork sausage, sharp cheddar, mini sweet peppers and garlic jelly in my fridge so here's what I did (though meatloaf mix, provolone and beer jelly or jalapeno jelly glaze sounds good too).  The original Pin also suggested grilling them...trying to keep 3 kids under the age of 5 supervised and clear of the grill is not my idea of a good time, so I baked mine on a rack placed over a lipped sheet tray.  But I bet grilled is good too.

I really, really, really wish I had made more of these and popped them in the freezer.

Last thought...this reminds me of a recipe from the 1973 Betty Crocker International Cookbook for "Scotch Eggs"...those are peeled hard-boiled eggs wrapped in breakfast sausage, then breaded and deep-fried.  I think the next time I make Scotch Eggs (which are outstanding post-Easter leftovers), I'll glaze them and bake them instead of breading and deep-frying.

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Pepperoni Broccolini Pasta

Adapted from the most recent issue of Food and Wine (March 2013?).  The pepperoni/garlic mixture will freeze nicely and is easy enough to make in double or triple batches.  Once it's combined with breadcrumbs, I bet it would make an outstanding breading mix on chicken breasts, pork chops or eggplant slices too.

Topping pasta with breadcrumbs seems like carb overload and isn't generally how most folks think of the "right" way to serve pasta.  But the breadcrumb finish is common in a pasta dish that uses seafood (as parmesan and its ilk don't go so nicely with fish).  And if you think about the "traditional" mac and cheese baked casserole, there are breadcrumbs all over the top of that pasta!  So it's not as odd as it seems.

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Baltimore Pit Beef

Some more lerve for Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/Chris Kimball.  If ever I could be persuaded to move full-time to the snow-barren Northeast, it would be to work for these folks. 

If I am ever going to make a beef roast for sandwiches, this will be my recipe.  

Now, it does call for (authentically) charring on the grill, but since my personal comfort range for cooking outdoors ranges from about 60F to 75F ambient temperature, this will only fly for about 3 weeks out of the year.  

On the recent Superbow...er, Big Game... weekend (during which the Baltimore Rave...er, East Coast Team...prevailed), I used a combination of oven-roasting and stovetop cast iron grilling to make this to very good reviews.

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Philly Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers

Total Pin Win!  The hubbie loved it, the kids liked it, it was awfully darn easy to make.  I saw this on Pinterest and here's how I did it...

If you want a "fuller" stuffed pepper, double the amount of corned beef, mushrooms or both.

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Shrimp 'n' Grits

This is Valentine's Day dinner at my house :D

In honor of the date, I attempted to make the bacon look like little hearts, a la Pinterest.  Mine came out heartish-shaped rather than heart-shaped.  Here is the pin I worked from. I highly recommend NOT using center cut bacon as it's somewhat shorter than "regular" bacon and you need the length to make the shapes...I screw up so you don't have to.

Note: you do not have to make heartish-shaped bacon snouts to make this dish.

This does not take long to make, but it does help if you prep some elements ahead.  It all freezes pretty well too.  I chose to cook the shrimp in the oven to keep kiddo hands away from hot pans on the stovetop but you could do it on the stovetop (or grill) as well...it will take a pinch less time.

You can also cook your bacon in advance (even in heartish-shaped forms) and fridge it until needed.  Just be sure to save the bacon grease for cooking the shrimp.  If you fridge the cooked bacon, just reheat it lightly in the microwave or put it back in the oven for a few minutes to warm up.

One last note...how much bacon you use is up to you.  You can go with "bacon as seasoning" and use just a couple of slices or you can go with "bacon as major protein" and use a half pound or even a whole pound if you want.  I used a half pound to make 8 heartish-shaped bacon pieces in the oven.  If you're turning on the oven, you might as well make a lot of bacon IMHO.  If you're doing this on the stovetop, less bacon works better.

To make this super-delicious, cook the grits in chicken or seafood stock.  Water is just fine though.  Tips on dealing with stock/broth for freezer kits here.

If you make a freezer kit, you could measure out the dry grits and freeze them (be sure to get all the air out!) but really, grits keep for-eh-ver in the pantry.

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Grapefruit beurre blanc

This is so the opposite of the kind of thing I usually recommend preparing.  You cannot make this sauce ahead of time and reheat it.  You cannot divert your attention while you're making it.  You have to serve it as soon as you finish making it.  You have to stand at the stove for a solid 15-20 minutes, whisking all the while,  timed to coincide with the rest of dinner being ready, and under no circumstances should you walk away or fiddle around with other dishes or pay attention to your screaming children while you are making it.

But it is so tasty that it's worth it.

The traditional beurre blanc sauce is made with white wine and white wine vinegar in addition to a small vat of butter.  The tanginess of the vinegar cuts the richness of the butter and compliments a simply-prepared but full-flavored dish, often a seafood dish like lobster.  Since I was making grapefruit shrimp on the grill, I had 2 grapefruits' worth of juice to do something with (having used the zest for the marinade).  I decided to make a beurre blanc, replacing the white wine vinegar with grapefruit juice.  I'm sure Martha Stewart is rolling her eyes in despair, but it was delicious.

You can get some of the work done ahead of time for this sauce.  In fact, the butter needs to be really cold so it's better to cut it up and put it back in the fridge for a bit.  You can make the wine/juice reduction ahead of time too.  Since it boils down to just a tablespoon or two of syrup, leave the reduction in the saucepan rather than transferring it to a container...you always lose a little liquid when you pour back and forth between pots and there's just not much to start with.  Put the saucepan back on the stove over low heat for a couple minutes to warm it back up, then proceed to whisk in the cold-cold butter.

Really, do not get distracted.  Not while you're boiling down the wine and juice, not while you're whisking in the butter.  Reducing the wine-juice combo is something that just takes as long as it takes...you can't set a timer and come back to it.  It makes a syrup, and like working with an actual sugar syrup, it goes from not ready to ready to burned in a flash.  Adding the butter gradually keeps the sauce, well, saucy.  If you rush things, or let the sauce sit around too long after it's finished, it will separate (or "break") and you'll have a melted butter swirled around with syrupy juice rather than a cohesive, thick, rich sauce.  Not the end of the world, but not what the point of the exercise was.

A quick tip about reducing liquids...I am terrible at estimating volume so if I have a recipe that calls for boiling a liquid down to a certain amount, I pour that amount of water into my pan before I start cooking so I have a visual target (and then of course, I pour out the water and dry the pan before starting the recipe).

Plan to serve this with either a quick-to-cook protein (like grilled shrimp) that you can do pretty fast after you've got the sauce made, or something that doesn't require a lot of babysitting (like baked chicken or fish) to cook without attention while you prepare the sauce..

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Green Tomato and Corn Soup

I had a boatload of green tomatoes at the end of the garden season this past fall. In the past I've done a variety of things with green tomatoes...pickles (meh), relish (meh), cake (yum but...) ...these just aren't dishes that move real well at my house.

The house favorite remains fried green tomatoes. You can slice, dredge and freeze green tomatoes for quick cooking later.  But at the time of our last garden harvest, I was 38 weeks pregnant and had ankles with the same diameter as my neck so I just didn't feel like doing it. I now have gallons of naked frozen green tomatoes that I still don't feel like dredging!

Some interwebs surfing turned up a suggestion to use green tomatoes in soup. This is my all-green-tomato version of what I found.  It is going on our menu until our green tomatoes are used up, and into next year once our garden starts producing tomatoes.

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