Super-Simple Crockpot Asian Chicken

This is stupid simple.

I LOVE it.

An easy-to-put-together sauce/marinade that can be frozen with or without the accompanying chicken parts or put together night before or morning of Dinner Day.  And it makes the house smell delicious and tastes yum.

I serve with rice (prepped ahead in a rice cooker on a delay timer) with steamed broccoli.  Super fast, super easy.

The OR calls for chicken thighs, which I like especially in the crockpot. Use whatever you like (I get this since I'm still married to the Chicken Princess who usually prefers chicken breast over dark meat), but whatever cut you pick...bone-in, thigh, breast, whatever...I would remove the skin or buy skinless.  There's no browning in this recipe, which is usually a bummer in a crockpot recipe anyway, and chicken skin will just be gross and flabby without that (troublesome) step.

Adapted from Blue Hill Slow Cooker & Family Recipes.

Pin It

Back to Basics: Sandwich Bread (GFCF)

2014 has brought evolution to our family and to our kitchen.  We're trying out a gluten-free, casein-free (read: pretty much dairy free) diet in addition to the dye-free efforts we've made over the last year or so.  Between my daughter's dairy sensitivities and my oldest son's ADHD/potential spectrum issues, we're trying whatever might work.

Initially, when we decided to try this GFCF thing, I felt...well...overwhelmed.  Like I might have to quit my part-time job (which I LOVE) and pull Boy #1 out of preschool (which we DID NOT want to do) to make it work.  Because it means giving up my easiest, no-work meals, it means having practically no backup take-out options when I, say, forget to put dinner in the crockpot, it means cooking and providing every single bite my kid is going to eat whether he's at home, school, a birthday party, soccer practice, what have you.

 <--this was me thinking about all of that

Given a few weeks to plan however, I'm back on the prep-ahead, freeze-ahead horse with some new recipes in tow, confidence that we can make this work and hope that it helps my kids and their various *stuff*.

There are many, many, many blogs out there dedicated to GF/CF/Whatever-F cooking out there.  I do not intend to duplicate those efforts.  My focus, as ever, is the prep-ahead aspect.  What works to make in advance. What works to prep in advance to finish later. How to plan and shop and work ahead to make dinner (and lunch and breakfast and snacktime) happen on time, healthfully (as we now define it), and without making your brain explode.

So here we are.  In some ways, doing the same-old-same-old (there are an awful lot of natively GFCF/DF recipes, many on this very blog...if I get a chance to breathe, I'm going to try to go back and add appropriate tags/pins), and in some ways relearning the basics.

Like bread.  The Holy Grail in many ways of GF baking.  When you think of "bread" (yeast breads in particular), you probably have the sense-memory of the chew, the toothsome pull of each bite.  That's the gluten.  Even with a soft yeast bread like a Parker House roll, there's a particular flavor that comes from the wheat.  Yes, wheat has a flavor...you don't realize it until you're eating a roll made without wheat, but wheat has its own distinctive flavor.  Wheat is such an omnipresent grain in our cooking culture that it's like wallpaper...you don't notice it until it's gone.

So the downside to GF baking is that it's just not going to be the same.  It might be close with a really good recipe and set of ingredients, but it's not going to be the same.

The upside, however, once you reset your expectations for the final product, is that there is no gluten to worry about.  No need for extensive kneading or long double and triple rises to develop gluten in a bread, and no worries about overmixing causing too much gluten development (and therefore toughness) in quick breads and cakes.  No pull-back when you shape dough.  No need to let a pizza crust rest before rolling it out.  It's really quite brilliant.

One of the "downsides" to GF bread--namely how quickly it dries out and gets stale at room temperature--is ideal for my purposes.  The solution is to bake bread ahead and freeze it (although so far, the bread I've made is eaten up by my family of 5 so fast, it hasn't needed to last more than 24 hours fresh anyway).

As far as shopping for this goes, you do need some "unusual" flours and ingredients.  Fortunately, it's not hard to find them.  All the major grocery store chains near me carry these items.  Bob's Red Mill is the brand that's most prevalent.  Some stores carry them on the regular baking aisle and dairy case; some have them in a "specialty diet", "organic/natural foods" or "gluten free foods" area.  If you don't see what you need, ASK.  I bet they have it somewhere.

One last thought...the first rule of GF baking is You Don't Talk About... No, that's not it, just kidding.

The first rule of GF baking is Don't Change the Recipe.  You can't just take a gluten-based recipe, sub in some GF flours and have it work.  You need thickeners, binding agents, extra leaveners and a lot of trial-and-error to start generating a workable GF recipe out of thin air.  You also need to be mindful about whether you inadvertently add gluten to a recipe by switching ingredients (there's a lot of hidden gluten in the world).

So I'm not changing anything about the GF baking recipes I try.  I'm going to link to the original recipe found wherever it originally lives on the interwebs, and post my notes about how it worked for me.  With pictures of course.

So off we go.  Please join us :)  And please point out my mistakes...I'm not new to allergen-sensitive cooking, but I am new to this particular (and rawther tricky) branch of food sensitivity.  So I'll try not to screw up, but if I do...holler!

Pin It

Cranberry jelly

My husband is a cranberry jelly fiend.  It's not a holiday meal (*a*n*y* holiday) without cranberry jelly. I love homemade cooking (duh, right?) but it's one thing he will not get on board with me making homemade.  Cuz nothing is as good as the slices of Ocean Spray canned cranberry jelly. Pthbthbthb.

This year, I found a game-changing recipe.  It's dye-free (important at our house these days, though I don't know for sure whether canned cranberry jelly typically has artificial dyes...didn't buy any this year, didn't check), and uses honey instead of refined sugar.  Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, loved it.  The baby, the boys, my husband, even the especially picky eaters at my table.  It does like strongly of honey, unlike commercial canned jelly which tastes like white sugar. So if honey's not your thing, you might try using a lighter-flavored sweetening syrup like agave or rice syrup.

I did not do this insanely genius thing from Food52, but the next time I make this recipe, I totally will.  It will make it an even better "copycat" of the store bought jelly.  I'm curious to try Food52's pectin-based recipe vs. this gelatin-based recipe, but either way, molding the jelly in a recycling tin can is brilliant.

After you simmer the cranberries for their juice, you're left with a fair bit of cranberry squish.  Use it again to flavor a simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar) for cocktails, or put the cranberry squish in with a bottle of vodka to make flavored vodka (also for cocktails).  Or add some to your next smoothie.  Just be advised that cranberries have very little natural sweetness, so you'll have to compensate with your other flavors and ingredients.

Original recipe from: The Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook by Pamela Compart

Pin It

Aloha Salad (kidney diet)

I found this recipe in a cookbook for renal patients.  A lot of fruits and veggies are actually off-limits for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) because they're high in potassium (a good thing for the rest of us but with impaired kidney function, potassium will build up to dangerous levels in the body).  So finding CKD-friendly side dishes can be tricky.  Especially since I also have to balance a number of food allergies, sensitivities and preferences within my family.  One serving of this salad (pay attention to serving sizes!) is 112 mg potassium and 26 mg phosphorus.

This "salad" proved to be quite a hit (and about the only way I've found to get my 3 year old to eat carrots without squawking).  I am not a fan of describing anything with Jello as a "salad" but it seems to be a thing here in the Heartland (and also in many 1970's era cookbooks...but I digress).  However, this "salad" was more fruit/veggie and less Jello so I'll let it ride.

Since it's a gelatin "salad", you need to make it in advance so it can set up.  My favorite thing ;)  You can also prep this in stages if you need to, like if your baby is teething and NEEDS you to hold her CONSTANTLY except for when she dozes off for a few minutes at a time.  Just a hypothetical example.  Grate the carrots, measure and mix the dry ingredients, measure the liquid ingredients, and fridge each part until you're ready to put it together.

We are avoiding artificial dyes at my house (in addition to all the aforementioned food restrictions...I told you it gets tricky to plan menus), so I got to experiment with substituting a homemade, dye-free mix for the box o' Yellow 6, er, Lemon Jello.  It turned out very well.

The tricky bit about applying this substitute widely in recipes calling for a box of Jello is figuring out what to use for flavoring that doesn't skew the liquid ratio but still gives a punch of flavor, especially if you try to create flavors other than citrus.  In this recipe, I used a bit of lemon juice in place of some of the water called for in the OR as well as a lot of lemon zest.  To substitute for other flavors, I'd look into dye-free flavoring oils over juices or extracts...you'll get more flavor without adding liquids.  If your recipe calls for water, you can swap some or all for a juice or puree but you might need to pay attention to how the acid from your flavoring liquid impacts leavening reactions.

Pin It

Cheeseless Pizza

It sounds like pure heresy, no?

Unfortunately, my little girl is dairy-intolerant.  She's also a little iffy with soy foods and I'm not a fan of pretend foods, so a store-bought cheese substitute (which is usually soy-based) is out.  And that soy cheeze stuff doesn't melt well anyway.

So I went looking for *something* that would give that rich, mouth-round texture and flavor to a cheese-less pizza and found this sauce here.  I have made this sauce a couple of different ways now, and I have to say, each way was worked wonderfully.

You really do not miss the cheese.  I mean, I am highly motivated to find alternatives to my favorite cheesy foods because of my daughter, but my other two kids will spit out anything they don't find up to snuff, and this pizza sauce passed muster with them.

Even though we don't need to be tomato-free at our house, I did not use any tomato sauce with this pizza.  The garlic sauce is, well, a sauce after all, not a firm cheese-like product and two sauces just seemed too much.  You could absolutely use some sliced tomatoes as a topping though.

Extra bonus, as a way to enjoy a cheese-loaded favorite without the cheese (and also can be tomato-free), it's a boon for the dialysis diet.  Feeding two birds with one stone, if you will ;)

As far as the garlic goes, I like this sauce both with roasted garlic and sauteed garlic.  The flavors *are* different, so I'd say use whichever you prefer.  To roast a head of garlic, slice the top third or so off the whole head, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, wrap in foil and bake an hour or more at 350F.  Or if you're grilling, put the foil-wrapped garlic on the top rack in your grill and leave it there while the grill cools.

Pin It

Oxtail Scrapple

Scrapple gets a bad rap.  Full disclosure: I've never had any but homemade, so maybe it's on account of packaged store-bought versions.  Full disclosure: I'm not squicked out by the idea of making foodstuffs out of all edible parts (like ears, feets and tails), and in fact, I rather think it's irresponsible consumership not to.  Full disclosure: I'm not from Pennsylvania (whence hails scrapple as a regional dish), so I haven't a clue whether what I make is anything like "the real thing".

I think it's largely a linguistic problem..."scrapple" is a hideous-sounding word.  I've successfully served this dish as "breakfast meatloaf" to people who squeal like five-year-olds at the word "scrapple".  When you frame it as "fried herbed polenta with braised pork", it sounds like something out of Food & Wine Magazine.  Words matter, yo.

At its core, scrapple is nothing more than a grain (like cornmeal) cooked with broth and herbs (this is called "polenta" if you're Italian or "cornmeal mush" if you're Southern American, and I never hear "Jimmy's in my AIR SPACE!" squealing about those dishes) and some finely chopped meat, usually from a very bony part that's hard to cook in any way other than boiling (i.e. the "scraps" of the animal), then chilled in a loaf pan, then sliced and lightly fried.  The exact blend of grains (sometimes buckwheat is used), the particular herbs and what meat "scraps" are used may differ.  

I've made this recipe with pork neck bones, pork shoulder and beef oxtail. I like oxtail the best...the more bony the part, the more gelatin is extracted in the cooking process and the richer the final dish is.  I've not done it, but I would imagine this would be an ideal way to use parts highly gelatinous parts like trotters or pig ears without the dish being too, well, trotter-y or ear-ish.

I also like getting the meat part cooked in a crockpot because who has time to sit around for 2-3 hours babysitting a simmering pot o' oxtail?  Crockpot-ing also keeps the meat especially tender and easy to pull off the bones.

Pin It

Michigan Dogs

This is adapted from Rachael Ray's recipe.  I don't know why she calls them Michigan Dogs...they're chili cheese hot dogs to me, and I suppose some people call this combination of toppings a Coney Dog?  The folks I know from Michigan certainly don't know what Michigan Dogs are.

I like that the cheese sauce and chili sauce can be made ahead (and even frozen), and the kiddos can opt out of toppings and just have plain dogs if they want.  Leftover chili and cheese sauce make excellent breakfast burritos by the way.

There's a lot of liquid that goes into the chili sauce and it needs to boil down to make a nice, thick, rich chili sauce.  Your choice of pot will significantly affect how long it takes for this to happen.  A tall, narrow pot will take longer whereas a shallow, wide pot will allow water to boil off much more quickly.

I used dehydrated (i.e. sun-dried) tomatoes instead of the tomato paste the OR calls for.  I finely minced them and used the same amount called for in Rachael Ray's recipe.

When it comes to the cheese sauce, I recommend using cornstarch instead of flour.  It makes a smoother sauce, it's gluten-free and thickens more strongly than flour.  I also add the mustard after the milk but before the cheese...once the cheese is in there, it's really difficult to mix in the mustard evenly.  Use whatever cheese you want here...I had a chunk of white cheddar and some parmesan leftover from another recipe that used up here.  Sharp cheddar, colby, even American cheese makes delicious cheese sauce.  I do not recommend using Dijon mustard...did that once and it was just too, too much.  If you really want to use Dijon, I'd use 1/4 cup instead of 1/2 cup.  I just stick to plain ol' French's.

One of my favorite tips from Rachael's recipe is to split the hot dogs down the middle before grilling/frying them.  They lay better in your bun (I prefer hot dog-sized lengths of French bread) and make a better "bed" for all the toppings.

Pin It

Prosciutto Jalapeno Poppers

This is the quick'n'easy version of The Pioneer Woman's jalapeno poppers (which is delicious).  I made these guys with half jalapenos and half sweet mini peppers to give my kids a non-spicy option.  Worked very well.

The OR calls for a cheddar-cream cheese-scallion mixture that I circumvent by using herbed cheese such as Boursin or Laughing Cow, or when I ran out of that, sticks of Brie (yes, Brie is my "backup" cheese LOL)

The OR also calls for wrapping the poppers in pieces of uncooked bacon which is scrumptious.  I happened not to have any bacon on hand, but I had prosciutto so I used that (yes, prosciutto is my "backup" pork product LOL).  The nice thing about using the prosciutto is that it's already cooked so the cooking time for the poppers can be (read: needs to be) shortened from the hour originally called for.  I think using long, narrow strips of thin-sliced ham could work too in lieu of prosciutto or bacon.

The OR also calls for brushing the poppers with barbecue sauce or jelly such as apricot jelly.  I think beer jelly or garlic jelly would be OUTSTANDING here, but no sauce/jelly on top is good too (and is what I did this go-round).

I have made these in vast quantities for parties and you can absolutely make them ahead and freeze them.  I dithered about whether to freeze them before cooking or after, and decided that after cooking was less likely to result in a squishy jalapeno shell (since freezing uncooked veggies tends to make them, well, squishy).  I "revived" them for the party by baking them again for about 30 minutes to heat through and crisp the bacon back up.  To make them in advance to freeze, pull them out of the oven about 10 minutes before the final cooking time.  That way, the 2nd round of baking doesn't overbrown or burn them.

You can use toothpicks if you need to get the bacon/prosciutto/ham to stay in place, but it's a lot less time-consuming and easier to eat if you just wrap them so that the ends of the meat slice are on the bottom of the pepper.  Gravity will do the rest to keep them in place.

Lastly, the OR offers a variation wherein you place a thin slice of peach on top of the cheese before wrapping in bacon. This sounds weird, but is ohmygawd good...I highly recommend it.

Pin It

Blood Mary Cocktail Bites

Finished in-tact celery ribs 

This is adapted from Time Ferriss' The Four Hour Chef.  His recipe uses a thickener called agar agar which I do not typically keep in my kitchen and would have to go a bit far afield to acquire, so I use the more easily found unflavored gelatin.

Agar agar is a vegetarian thickener, whereas gelatin is an animal byproduct, one reason to choose agar agar instead of gelatin if that's your thing.  Agar agar evidently sets up with a more solid, toothier, less jiggly texture than gelatin too (I think this is the reason Ferriss uses it...the section in the book on hunting game and cooking it in the field suggests to me that he's not a vegetarian LOL)  It may also set up somewhat more quickly than gelatin, but I've never actually used it so that's speculation based on what I read on the interwebs when I was trying to figure out whether I could successfully substitute gelatin for the agar agar.

I don't know what the exact conversion from agar agar to gelatin (or vice versa) should be, but I know 1 packet of Knox gelatin thickens 1 cup of liquid so that's what I used (the OR calls for 2 tsp of agar agar to thicken approximately 3/4 cup of liquid).

So my execution notes...
Pin It

Fettucine with (vegan) White Pesto

Oh my, this is my 300th post!

One of my pet peeves about special diet (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, whatever) cooking is the convention of naming a recipe after a foodstuff that it kinda sorta resembles if you pinch your nose and squint real hard while you eat (e.g. Mock Sausage, Sugar-Free Caramel, Scrambled You-Won't-Believe-They-Aren't-Eggs, and all those plant-based "cheeze" sauces out there).

C'mon (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, whatever) folks...you know these are tasty recipes that stand on their own without trying to stand on the shoulders of a "missing" ingredient.  The practice reeks of an inferiority complex and besides, you're inevitably setting your dining companions up for failed expectations if you tell them you will be serving something like is *almost* like sausage/cheese/eggs/etc. but isn't.

This is one such recipe.  It's from Christian Pirello of Christina Cooks and she calls it Vegan Fettucine Alfredo.  Actual alfredo sauce is buttered heavy cream, cooked down until it's super-thick and finished with fistfuls of parmesan cheese.  It's a heart attack in a pot.

This heart-healthier, plant-based "fettucine alfredo" is really NOTHING like real fettucine alfredo.  My husband made the snooty-face when he first tasted it because he was expecting something alfredo-y.

What it IS is awfully darn good once you get around that misnomer.  Once he got over his "this isn't alfredo" reaction, my husband loved it (ofc he did sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top of his, because pasta just isn't pasta until there's a flurry of parmesan on top in his world).

What the recipe IS is a white pesto...the only difference between this dish and a "true" white pesto is the relatively small amount of parmesan cheese which is understudied in the vegan production by miso paste.  No need to pretend like it's alfredo...it's pesto!

My one serious deviation from her recipe (aside from changing the name) is to omit sweetener.  I'm not quite sure why, but she feels the need to put brown rice syrup in everything.  This dish doesn't need it.

Lastly, the pesto (as with all pestos) can be made in advance and frozen. Just thaw it and add it to cooked pasta.

Pin It

Pepperoni-spiced seitan & veg packets

This is one post that can be read for 2 distinct recipes...the first is a dinner-in-a-packet recipe that works for both vegetarian and carnivorous proteins, and the second is for a pretty darn tasty (and new to us) vegetarian protein called seitan.

Say what??  Seitan (it's pronounced say-tahn).  It's made from wheat gluten (which is wheat flour with most of the starch removed...I don't know how they do this, but you buy it in "specialty flours" part of your baking aisle) which is the proteiny part of the grain.  You combine it with some flavoring ingredients and liquid, then shape it and simmer it in broth or bake it to make a product that can be used as a vegetarian protein substitute in any number of ways.

I really like it for two reasons...1) the wheat gluten is a little pricey (about $7/lb.) but one bag makes several batches and it winds up being a very inexpensive vegetarian protein (only beans are cheaper), and 2) you can throw it together out of pantry and refrigerator staples (beans are also a good pantry staple, but I know a lot of folks don't care for beans...seitan is a toothy vegetarian protein in the vein of frozen tofu or tempeh).  It is also a soy-free vegetarian protein, if one wants to avoid soy.

Seitan takes some time to make in the first place...you either have to simmer it for an hour or so or bake it (my preferred method) for 60-90 minutes, depending on the exact recipe.  But you can make several batches at once and freeze them for future use.  A good basic (i.e. seitan with a pretty plain, versatile flavor profile) recipe can be found here (there's also a recipe for using vital wheat gluten as an egg-replacement binder in bean burgers on this site...that recipe is good too!)

I've used seitan in stirfries, either just plain cut-up or "velveted".  I've grilled slices of it after basting with barbecue sauce.  And I've made these packets with it.  I've also made the packets with actual sausage and they're good both ways. For the purposes of these packets, I like the following seitan recipe which mashes up this seitan recipe with the seasonings called for in the pepperoni recipe in Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie.

Something that is obvious in hindsight is that wheat gluten is what gives bread its structure as it rises.  I prefer baking seitan to simmering it and you need to make sure to keep the seitan dough compressed by wrapping it very well in foil to keep it dense and chewy.  At least two full wraps around with the ends twisted or folded off.  If you wrap it so the ends of the foil overlap by just a little bit, the seitan will rise (like bread), bust out of the foil, make a mess and lose the dense, toothy texture you're after.  I screw up so you don't have to.

Last note...seitan is often a vegan recipe.  The recipes above call for something called nutritional yeast to provide a salty umami depth of flavor and a hit of vitamin B12 in the absence of all animal-derived products.  I'm not particularly invested in keeping my seitan 100% vegan, so I use parmesan cheese (the kind out of a can) instead of nutritional yeast.  It's been working for me.  Also note, if you are cooking for a vegan, the velveting process uses egg whites and will be not be suitable.

Pin It

Gumbo Z'herbes

I saw the original recipe in the May 2013 issue of Food & Wine magazine.  It's a meat 'n' greens stew, and takes advantage of all the tasty spring greens hitting the markets (or coming up in your garden) at this time of year.  As a stew, you can make it in advance very nicely...the first time I tried this recipe, I cooked it fully in the morning and put it in the crockpot to keep warm until we got home that night.  It also freezes beautifully.

Btw, "z'herbes" is shortening of "fines herbes"...a mix of fragrant, flavorful green herbs such as tarragon, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lavender and so on.  It's pronounced "zayrb", if you're a French linguistics nerd like me ;)

The OR calls for particular amounts of particular greens and particular amounts of particular cuts of pork...I think of it more as guidelines ;)  I LOVE that I can throw in that half a head of cabbage that's left after making cabbage 3 different ways for a regular side dish, the rest of the collard greens left over after making sausage-stuffed collards, the nubbin of romaine lettuce left over from 2 salads.  Use turnip greens, beet greens, mustard greens, chard, kale, spinach, collards, spring mix, romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce...about 3 lbs. of whatever is green in your fridge or garden.

And you can throw in handfuls of oddball greens like carrot tops (if you get carrots with the frondy greens still attached), second-year parsley (oddly, my parsley survived our winter and is coming back up and preparing to bolt as biennial plants do), watercress or arugula that you scavenge out of your early garden.

Clockwise from left: Ham hock, chopped hamsteak
with thyme, andouille

I'm also using up the last of our locally-raised hog.  When you buy a whole animal like that, you wind up with...well...weird bits.  Bacon ends.  Bony sirloin roasts.  Smoked hambones.  Tiny pork chops that are too little to serve by themselves.  I'm throwing all that stuff in this stew.  You can use fresh pork shoulder or loin, smoked pork, sausage links (andouille is traditional, and is the only thing I've bought special for this stew), ham hocks, hamsteak, chopped ham, neck bones...about 3 lbs. total.

When you chop up all those greens, it's a LOT.  You'll need an 8 quart or larger pot.  And then you only add 2 quarts of water to that pile.  It seems like too little.  It's not.  Trust me.  The greens cook down and give off their own liquid to make a flavorful broth that the stew is built on.  You do not want too much water here.  Here's how to tell if your tiny amount of water is boiling when you can't see it under a mess o' greens...put the pot lid on, turn the heat to high, and when there's condensation on the underside of the lid, you're good to go.

Lastly, the OR calls for file powder which I don't keep in my pantry.  File is a flavoring as well as thickening ingredient.  I add extra flour to compensate for the lack of file.  Use 2 tbsp flour instead of 4 tbsp and 1 1/2 tsp file powder if you want.  You can always add some beurre manie at the end if your stew seems too watery.

Pin It

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.

Pin It

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.

Pin It

Roast Redux Salad

Leftovers can sometimes be a hard sell.  Not many people like eating exactly the same thing for dinner then lunch, then dinner again.  Which can be a problem if you've made, say, a large roast and a LOT is left in the fridge.  For some reason, leftover roast (be it beef, pork or lamb) lingers at our house.  Maybe because no one wants to deal with slicing it once it's cold, maybe because reheated roast tends to get dry, or maybe because it can be just plain boring to eat the same meat-plus-two-veggies for back-to-back meals.

Interestingly, I couldn't persuade anyone to eat the leftovers of the roast I used to make this dish, but my husband took the leftovers of the repurposed leftovers twice for lunch.  This leftover salad is just that good.

This grain-based salad is inspired by a recipe from Julia Child's The Way to Cook for managing leftover lamb roast.  I did make this with thinly sliced leftover leg of lamb, but I think it would be good with beef or pork roast too.  I made it with bulgur as the grain base (per Julia's directions), but rice, quinoa or couscous would be good too...just be sure to cook the grain according to package directions.

Now the tomato and onion roasting is NOT a fast process and you don't really have to do it (Julia didn't, she just put these ingredients in her salad raw).  But it made the winter hothouse tomatoes de-lish-us and roasting takes that sharp, bitey heat out of the onion that you'll get if you leave it raw.

You can do all of this a day in advance, which is precisely what I did (if you roast the veggies, I'd fridge them for 2 or 3 days even, for as long as you fridge your leftover roast).  I got to walk in the door after work to a fully prepared meal.  And THAT, in addition to how good it tasted, is the real beauty of this meal.

Pin It

Pumpkin Gnocchi

Gnocchi are sturdy little bite-size dumplings that are often made with mashed potatoes, but other veggies can form the basis for them too.  They usually have an egg as a binder, and I like that this recipe uses an alternate (therefore allergy-free and vegan) binder that takes advantage of leftovers, if you have leftover rice.  There original recipe comes from a PBS vegan cooking show called Christina Cooks.  I choose to serve mine with a non-vegan browned butter and sage sauce.

The tricky thing about this recipe is controlling for moisture content...you can't.  Your pumpkin may have more or less water than average, and even how soon you puree and use your cooked rice alters its moisture content.  I made rice special for this recipe and (as usual) made too much.  I pureed all the rice immediately (thinking I'd freeze some as "rice cereal" for the baby) and clouds of steam poured out of the food processor.  By the time I finished the gnocchi dough, the rice left in the processor was dry and sticky...I suspect that if I'd used the rice at that stage, I would have needed less semolina in my gnocchi dough.  I also suspect using leftover rice rather than freshly prepared hot rice would have had the same effect.  So the amount of semolina you use is very approximate...keep adding until it's the right consistency.

Which, by the way, is like a soft cookie dough.  You want the dough to hold together when you boil the dumplings but you don't want the dough so stiff that the dumplings are like concrete when you cook them.  So you want a dough that can be controlled with a light dusting of flour on your hands and work surface when you roll it out, but not as stiff as, say, a pie dough or cutout cookie dough.

And the semolina...I don't know if you could easily substitute regular wheat flour for the semolina flour.  They're both wheat products, but the semolina feels like cornmeal.  It's also a higher-gluten flour than regular all purpose flour.  You can't substitute cornmeal either because cornmeal doesn't form gluten bonds and therefore won't bind properly.  I didn't have a hard time at all finding semolina flour...it was on the baking aisle at my decidedly non-fancy grocery store with "specialty" flours.  Bob's Red Mill was the brand available.  For what it's worth, I've made other gnocchi-type dumplings before from different recipes that used regular flour and I thought they were heavier and chewier than the gnocchi I made with the semolina.

Lastly, this recipe calls for 1 cup pureed pumpkin.  I used canned pumpkin.  1 cup is about 1/2 a 15 oz. can.  I HATE having half-a-can of stuff leftover.  You could double up the recipe (especially since you can freeze the uncooked gnocchi!) or make pumpkin muffins, pumpkin seafood chowder, or pumpkin pancakes.  You can use homemade pureed pumpkin or I bet even other types of pureed squash though, again, these changes will affect the moisture content of the dough and change how much semolina you need.


Pin It

Pear Muffins

Pears are available year-round, but fall really is pear season.  My favorite way to eat pears is actually a no-recipe dish...a fully, juicy, tender ripe pear sliced thinly with thin slices of Havarti cheese.  I'll eat that for breakfast, dessert, snack, you name it. 

Pears are a valuable addition to one's diet for reasons other than their deliciousness though. 

WARNING: things are about to get a little gross. 

Pears contain sorbitol which is a natural osmotic laxative (the type of laxative that "just makes it easier to go", as the commercials say).  So do prunes and plums, but I know a lot of folks are anti-prune even though you shouldn't be...but that's another post.

If you're thinking about prepping some snacks and meals ahead in preparation for having a baby, pears should be on your list somehow.  If you've just ejected another human being from your body, whether via the baby chute or through the "sunroof", chances are there's gonna be some issues in the osmotic laxative department (personal experience speaking here).  If you're helping someone who is laid up after a surgery or long illness, chance are they're having some issues in the osmotic laxative department.  If you're caring for an elderly person, chances are...well, you get it.  Medication (particularly pain medication), surgeries, inactivity due to injury or bed rest, dehydration from illness, normal aging all tend to cause constipation, and pears will help.

OK, enough poop talk.  Pears are good for what ails you.

I've frozen batches of these muffins before just as is.  They are gooood, but get a little soggy on top in the freezer.  I've played with different ways to freezer-fortify them, and what I've come up with is a good solution I think that can be applied to any type of muffin.  A streusel topping that incorporates nuts or coconut will stand up to the freezer pretty well.  The nuts/coconut doesn't lose crunch and keeps the otherwise-soggy muffin tops covered up.

You can always make the batter and freeze it for later baking which totally side-steps the freezer-sog problem, but it does require back-end time to bake.  If you freeze before baking, spoon the batter into paper cupcake liners in a muffin pan.  Freeze the whole pan, then remove the filled liners to a ziptop bag for storage.  To thaw, put the liner-cups in the muffin pan while still frozen and let thaw in the fridge or at room temp.

Pin It

Ham and cheese divan

If you are a fan of brunch, you will LOVE this dish at any time of day.  Like Chicken Divan, it's a casserole of vegetables and protein layered with a creamy can-o-soup sauce.  I really didn't feel like making my sauce from scratch for this, so I used a can of cheddar cheese soup plus a little milk but you certainly can make your own.  It was ridiculously tasty. 

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to make the stuffed eggs just for this dish again (although it wasn't hard).  But this is absolutely going in my post-holiday meal rotation as a way to deal with leftover deviled eggs.  Plain halved hard-boiled eggs will work fine if you want to save a little work.

Original recipe from my mom's 1970-something Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.

Pin It

The BEST vegetarian chili

Pictured with biscuits

I'm no stranger to vegetarian cooking.  I routinely incorporate vegetarian and vegan meals into our dinner rotations...in fact, one of my kids will only reliably eat vegetables when accompanied by tofu (or hidden in a smoothie, in which I have also used tofu).  I have a long-standing history of sneaking vegetarian proteins into meals without telling my soy-phobic audience (bad Daughter-In-Law, bad!)  I have happily tried cooking with nearly every meat substitute and vegetarian protein readily available at my grocery store, everything from tofu and tempeh to Fakin' and Garden Burgers and (oddest of all IMHO) Texturized Vegetable Protein.

But I do not like vegetarian chili.

I have tried many a recipe...the ones that use frozen-then-thawed shredded tofu as a meat substitute, the ones that use TVP, the ones that refuse to even try to sub anything in for the meat and go all-out with beans and vegetables.  They all lack something, well, *meaty*.  The texture, the depth of flavor, the way the tomatoes and spices of the chili play together...it just doesn't quite work as well without meat.

And then I saw the recent Cook's Illustrated issue (December 2012).  I adore Cook's Illustrated.  Geeky and science-y and culinarily outstanding all at once.  They have dedicated most of a 2-page spread to explaining why their newly developed Best Vegetarian Chili Recipe Ever works, but the important part is...it does work.  It makes the thing that meat does to chili happen but without the meat.  It also makes a vat of chili, which naturally makes it an ideal make-ahead sort of affair.

It's a good thing it makes so much (and that you can freeze some for another day) because, like everything Cook's Illustrated does, there are a lot of little steps that lead you to the perfection they offer.  Aggravating, but absolutely necessary.  The one step you could probably skip is toasted and grinding your own dry chile pods.  In fact, they suggest substituting 1/4 cup ancho chile powder for the at-home roasted-ground chiles if you don't want to do that step.  But everything else...grinding dry shiitake mushrooms, toasting and grinding walnuts, cooking a blend of dried beans from scratch...necessary.

They recommend a mixture of earthy beans (pintos, kidney, black beans) and creamy beans (navy, great northern).  I used navy and pintos in equal parts.  I also used 2 pasilla peppers and 2 sandia peppers (instead of ancho and New Mexico) because those are the dry peppers I have in my pantry, but next time I'll just use chile powder.

CI recommends cooking the chili in the oven to avoid having to stir the beans.  I think it just makes it take longer and produces a thinner chili than I like, so I'll be doing it on the stovetop from now on.

The recipe below is rewritten to streamline the steps and make the ingredient list make more sense to me LOL  I *hate* it when the ingredients are listed in a different order than you use them, so I've regrouped them into clusters that get added/handled all at once.  I also think this makes a LOT more than the 6-8 servings CI suggests, hence the range of servings.

Pin It

Creamed Greens

This recipe works for any type of cooked green...kale, chard, spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens, even collards as long as they're fully cooked first.  This is how I get leftover cooked greens eaten at my house...they go like gangbusters the first night, but tend to linger as leftovers so I recreate them as creamed greens.

The best recipe I've ever had for creamed spinach was a Barefoot Contessa colossus of cream, butter, cheese, more cheese and a lot of salt.  I do love creamy goodness, but not like that every day.  Using milk instead of cream, less cheese, less salt and less butter still produces a yummy dish.  If you want to lighten the sauce further, you could substitute some cooking liquid from the greens for some of the milk.

You can make this ahead up to the point of baking (it will probably take a little longer to brown if the dish is coming out of the fridge) or if you make the sauce and greens at dinnertime, you could skip the parmesan and further baking and just serve it out of the saucepan.

Pin It