Eat it the way you found it: Apples

Harvest Pink Lemonade

Making applesauce is no extraordinary feat of cooking.  But figuring out what to do with all the peels and cores can be.  You could just chuck them into the compost, OR you could turn them in a delicious, refreshing pink apple lemonade. 

I like using store-bought lemonade to make life easy on myself and for the fact that I usually find store-bought lemonade to be too sweet and too lemony...when cut with the pink apple juice rendered from the "leftovers" of your applesauce endeavor, it is just right.

I prefer Jonagold apples for making applesauce.  The flavor is so spot-on that I don't add anything except apple cider while cooking.  Good produce ultimately means less work for a better final product, so it's worth finding a local orchard and finding out what good sauce apples they grow.

I don't sieve my applesauce, as I think it's wasteful and I happen to like chunky applesauce.  Most recipes give a yield of about 2 pints per 3 lbs of apples, but that's if you sieve.  Unsieved, I got 11 pints from 10 lbs, or about 3 pints per 3 lbs of apples.  I give the following recipe per 3 lbs. of apples, scale up as desired.  I needed a 12 quart pot for 10 lbs of apples, and it took about 25 minutes for them to cook fully.  The peels and cores from 10 lbs made 3 quarts of pink apple juice, or 6 quarts of pink lemonade.  I froze the apple juice in quart-sized amounts.

And today's I Screw Up So You Don't Have To...if you make loads of applesauce and plan to can it in a water bath process, keep waiting jars in a pot of warm water.  That way, when you put 2nd or 3rd batches of jars into the already-boiling water bath, nothing explodes.  Just a friendly tip.

Lastly...bonus cocktail recipe!  If you get cidered out, try a Chimayo...a surprisingly un-tequila-like mix of tequila, apple cider, lemon juice and cassis (and if you don't know what else to do with the cassis, try a kir or kir royale).


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Gingered scallops



Sea vs. bay scallops

This is stupidly easy.  Saute bay scallops with sliced ginger in butter and season with salt and pepper.  Really. There's the whole recipe. 

What makes this worth blogging about is 1) you rarely see a main dish recipe that calls for the smaller, less expensive bay scallops front and center instead of the large, spensy sea scallops and 2) the ginger does things to the scallops.  And to your taste buds.  I mean, things like you wouldn't believe.  Naughty, delicious, page 227 in a romance novel kinds of things.  Oh yeah, this one is a repeat.   

No picture b/c I was too busy having a gustatory climax.  Sorry, sort of ;)

I suppose you could make this into a freezer kit, but it's so simple to prep, it's probably not worth the storage container.

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Grape Pie

I've never had one of the world-famous Naples, NY Concord Grape Pies, so for all I know, I am suggesting absolute heresy here and have made a pie that tastes like mud compared to theirs.  But I think my attempt has turned out nicely.

All the recipes for Grape Pie I could find a) call for Concord grapes and b) call for peeling every one of those little boogers even though the peels go into the filling.  Oh hell no.  I did some reading on the interwebs trying to puzzle out why on earth anyone would want to be peel multiple pounds of grapes to make pie and the best I can figure is that 1) Concord grapes have seeds and they must be peeled in order to cook the pulp enough to deseed them without losing the color, flavor and volume of the peels (which would get sieved out with the seeds if left in the cooked mixture) and possibly 2) that the peels, when cooked, might impart a bitter flavor to the filling. 

Fortunately, I am cursed/blessed with a lack of actual Concord grapes at my local grocery and instead have "seedless black" grapes ("Midnight Beauty" variety).  As they are seedless, I have solved the first concern.  As I am willing to gamble a bit and they are ultra-sweet, I have dispensed with the second concern.  Awesome.

Depending on your variety of grape, how sweet they are and personal preference, you may want more or less sugar than what I used.  After simmering the whole but lightly crushed grapes for a bit to release their juices, I started with 1/2 cup sugar and added a few tbsp at a time until I reached a sweetness level I was pleased with.  I thickened with a combination of flour and cornstarch, adding a bit extra cornstarch at the last minute when the filling looked a bit runny.  To incorporate it nicely, I made a slurry with red wine (happened to have an open bottle) rather than the customary lemon juice.  I don't think I'd crack a bottle just for this purpose again, but it worked out nicely I think.  The grapes still had a bit of tartness and I didn't think it necessary to add to that flavor dimension with lemon while the wine did enhance the grapey-ness of the pie. 

The interwebs also suggested various ways to prepare the filling in advance of actual pie-making, as the residents of Naples, NY do (I mean, if you're gonna peel a bazillion pounds of grapes one by one, you might as well make it worth your while and save some of this stuff up).  One suggestion was to can the filling like jam.  Another was to freeze the filling in pie plates (without a crust), then slip the frozen pie-shaped jam disk into a fresh crust and bake as usual when you're ready.  I can't vouch for either of this techniques personally, but if you experiment, let me know how it goes!

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Low-carb Bang Bang Shrimp 'n' Chicken

Taking a favorite dish and tweaking it for my family's dietary needs. 

The original of this dish comes from the Bonefish Grill restaurant chain.  The copycat recipe I've worked with for some years now is ridiculously easy to prepare and slap-yo-mama good.  But it's pretty high in carbs between the Sweet Chili Sauce in the dressing and the cornstarch coating on the shrimp (about 43 g carb v. 9g in my recipe, per calculations from SparkRecipes.com).  So I'm setting out to make it much more diabetic-friendly and making a variation to serve those who have food sensitivities to shrimp.

As much as I care about my family and want to cook as healthfully as possible for them, I must confess that what really kicked me into gear about revamping this recipe was how hard it is to find the blasted Sweet Chili Sauce.  I really didn't want to have to make a special trip to an international grocery store 15 miles away for this one ingredient.  Boy was I glad to find out that you can make it at home, and moreover that you can make it sugar-free.  Thank you interwebs and shesimmers.com (original recipe)! 

I didn't search exhaustively for almond flour to use as a low-carb cornstarch substitute, but I know it's out there.  I used whole raw almonds ground finely in the food processor.  The result was a more textural crunch-coat on the shrimp and chicken than what you'll get if you use a superfine starch like cornstarch or commercially milled almond flour.  It was still good, but be aware of the difference in the final dish.

Lastly, the best way to avoid cross-contamination for folks with food sensitivities is to not prepare the problem food in the first place.  BUT since shrimp was on our menu, I did all the chicken-handling before even touching the shrimp (well, actually my husband did all the protein-wrangling this time).  So the chicken got cut, dredged and fried before doing the same with the shrimp.  They were plated on separate serving platters and handled with separate cooking and serving utensils. 

Sorry the "final plate" picture is of leftovers, but you're lucky there's a picture at all since what you see is all that was left!

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Moussaka

Pronouced "moo-sah-KAH", it's Greek for "lasagne".  Not really, but it's like Greek lasagne.  It's a meat-and-eggplant layered casserole with cheese souffle on top, but no pasta, and it is exquisite.

I first experienced this dish in Greece on a high school Classics Club trip (yeah, Latin nerd right here), later at Primo's in Alexandria, VA, the Trojan Horse in Bloomington, IN and the Greek Fest in Boca Raton, FL and have cooked it from the Frugal Gourmet's Three Ancient Cuisines recipe since.  I count moussaka among the first "real" dishes I learned to cook, and it has never disappointed.

You can make your own homemade tomato sauce (I don't) or use store-bought spaghetti sauce (I do).  The Frug's recipe for "Greek Tomato Sauce" calls for allspice which most spaghetti sauces don't use, so I simmer the moussaka meat sauce with a few allspice berries to incorporate that flavor.

Like all layered casseroles, you can build this recipe in a variety of sizes: 1 13x9 or 2 8x8 or 4 8x4 pans.

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Root Beer Sauce for Pork

I want to make this again just to have the house smell like A&W all night (I do prefer A&W for this, having tried it with Barq's as well). 
The root beer reduces to a slightly syrupy, but not overly sweet, jus that is intriguingly spicy and rich in flavor.  This sauce will top grilled chops, braised shanks, fried ham, sliced roast or pulled pork shoulder equally well.  You can measure and combine ingredients a day ahead of time (or freeze the mixture), or make the sauce to reheat up to a day ahead as well.

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April's Microwave Salisbury Steak

The original recipe is from a friend who writes a gluten-free cooking (and other stuff too) blog at An April a Day.  This recipe, she tells me, is not gluten-free thanks to the canned golden mushroom soup.  I'm not wild in general about using store-bought canned soups, but golden mushroom soup would be a PITA to recreate homemade (and I'm willing to go aways in the direction of homemade substitutions) so take that as you will.  And it's so good that it's worth it...my 18 month old would have licked his plate, if he had better hand-eye coordination.

This is an awfully fast dish to put together thanks to the store-bought help and use of the microwave for cooking, but it's EVEN FASTER when you prep it ahead and stash it in the freezer.  Plan ahead for your storage needs...the patties will  need to cook in a microwave-safe baking dish, so you'll either need to freeze in an appropriate container or be prepared to transfer the somewhat delicate patties between freezer container and microwave cooking dish.

I have also used this recipe as the basis for a crockpot roast.  Instead of making patties with ground meat, brown a roast on all sides, then put in a crockpot.  Combine the remaining seasonings (omit breadcrumbs and egg) and sauce ingredients and pour over.  Cook 8-10 hours on low. 

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