Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Tomato/Basil Topping for pasta, brushetta or chicken

1 C. chopped fresh basil- measure whole
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 C. olive oil
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
6 med. tomatoes diced large
6 cloves closed garlic- crush the clove and put it in whole -take it out before you serve
1 T. dried oregano 


Mix everything in a bowl and let it sit 3-8 hours on the counter at room temp.  The longer it sits the  better the flavor.  I have made it and served it right after and still tasted great!!  I will post a picture later.   
 
You can serve it on sliced french bread with fresh grated parmesan cheese on top, over any pasta and can add chicken or shrimp.  Enjoy!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Oven Fried Chicken

We Loved this, made it with fresh, not frozen chicken because Fry's was having a killer deal this week. Has a little kick to it because of the Dijon and Cayenne. It's from a nutritionist's food network show, so it's also really healthy!

Oven Fried Chicken (we really liked this)
Ingredients

* 1/2 sleeve (about 20) whole-grain salted crackers, pulsed in a food processor until fine (about 1/2 cup)
* 2 1/2 cups corn cereal flakes, pulsed in a food processor to fine crumbs (about 1/2 cup)
* 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
* 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
* 2 egg whites
* 1 cup lowfat, plain yogurt
* 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* Olive oil cooking spray
* 4 medium sized skinless chicken breasts and 4 skinless chicken thighs, rinsed and patted dry (about 3 1/2 pounds chicken)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly spray a baking sheet with olive oil.

Combine the crackers and corn cereal crumbs, sesame seeds, cayenne, and garlic powder in a shallow bowl. Reserve.

In a large bowl, combine egg whites, yogurt, Dijon mustard, and salt. Add the chicken pieces and coat thoroughly with the yogurt mixture.

One at a time, dip the chicken pieces in the cracker mixture, packing crumbs onto chicken. Arrange the chicken on a baking sheet and spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until juices run clear when chicken is pierced with a knife.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Elf-antastic

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Monday, December 15, 2008

Broccoli and Cheese Soup

I made this for a Christmas Party last week, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it so I thought I'd share with you.


Broccoli and Cheese Soup

1/2 cup butter
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons (ish) of minced garlic
2 pounds of Fresh Broccoli
Bullion Cubes (enough to make 6-7 cups of water)…crush so that they dissolve easier
6-7 cups of water
1 (1 pound) loaf processed cheese food, cubed (I used Medium Chedder..but you can use whatever type you want)
2 cups heavy cream (can also use half and half or mild)
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2/3 cup cornstarch
1 cup water

DIRECTIONS

1. In a stockpot, melt butter over medium heat. Cook onion and minced garlic in butter until softened and translucent. Add Bullion Cubes. Stir in broccoli, and cover with 6-7 cups of water. Simmer until broccoli is tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
2. Reduce heat, and stir in cheese cubes until melted. Mix in milk and garlic powder.
3. In a small bowl, stir cornstarch into 1 cup of water until dissolved. Stir into soup; cook, stirring frequently, until thick.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Cafe Rio Meal!! - darby

we made this tonight after i've been wanting to make this for months!! i loved it. it was so tasty. the only annoying thing is presoaking the beans. i made the dressing late so i stuck it in the freezer to quickly chill. jonathan even ate some lettuce! (i got this from anna p., it's taken right off her blog.)


Sweet Pork Mex Salad (Cafe Rio Style)



So I received a few requests to blog this recipe so here it is. Is it just like Cafe Rio's yummy salads..no, but pretty darn close. The other great thing about it is if you get pork butt roast(which is not literally butt ..had to research that as I wasn't sure I could go there) on sale you can feed a group for the cost of a salad a drink at the restaurant. Here Goes:

Sweet Pork Fresh Mex Salad

LAYER
Tortilla
Black Beans
Cilantro Lime Rice
Chopped Romaine Lettuce or Spinach
Sweet Pork
Guacamole
Pico De Gallo
Tortilla Strips
Lime Wedge
Tomatillo Ranch Dressing

SWEET SHREDDED PORK
5 lbs Butt Pork Roast (bone in)
1/4 c. ketchup
1/4c. soy sauce
1 1/3 c. brown sugar
2 fresh garlic bulbs minced
1/2 c. chicken broth

Cover bottom of crock pot with water. Place pork in crock pot. Cook on low for 8 hours. Or place pork in a 9x13 pan and cover w/ aluminum foil. Bake @ 325 for 5-6hrs. Take pork out and shred. In a sauce pan combine the rest of the ingredients and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Pour over pork and serve.

CILANTRO LIME RICE
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp. grated lime peel
1/8-1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
2 c. chicken broth
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

Combine rice, garlic, lime peel, pepper and broth in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, stir, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in cilantro.

TOMATILLO RANCH DRESSING
2 c. mayo
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 bunch cilantro leaves
2 Tbsp. white vinegar
1 jalapeno seeded
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp salt
2 toamatillos (take off outside paper)

Blend all ingredients together in blender or food processor. Refrigerate for an hour or two.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Homemade Pretzels and Nacho Cheese

I am so excited to try this combo this week or next week.

I have a blog I love, it's here
www.thefreshloaf.com

not only is it really informative, but they have fun unique recipies. One I found is for

Homemade Soft Pretzel's

I also have been searching high and low for a Nacho Cheese recipie that doesn't use Velveta Cheese. Not that there's anything really wrong with it, I just wanted to see if there was a good more natural version. Well I came across this website
www.ilovenachocheese.com
in my hunting and while I was there stumbled upon the recipie they devised

Homemade Nacho Cheese

I am so so excited to try these both out. i'm a bread fiend, so I think this'll a winner at our house!




Pretzels

pretzel shapingThe other day I was reading Jeffrey Hamelman's recent book Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes when I came across his pretzel recipe. His recipe requires a pate fermente overnight, a long fermentation, and a bath in a solution of water and lye, which means rubber gloves and goggles are required.

"Rubber gloves and goggles and caustic fluids to make a batch of pretzels?!? You've got to be kidding me," I thought.

The next day I found myself flipping through another baking book when I stumbled across another pretzel recipe. No caustic bath. No preferment. Not even an initial fermentation: simply mix everything together, shape the pretzels, and bake them; beginning to end, under an hour.

So which is it? Is it necessary to make the preferment and use lye to make decent pretzels at home? Do you even need to ferment the dough to make passable pretzels, or can you just jam them into the oven?

Find out below.

By the way, the other baking book I was looking at was Breaking Bread with Father Dominic 2. Not a bad little book. I gather that it is out of print, but if you see a cheap used copy at the local bookstore it might be worth picking up.

I didn't follow his recipe exactly, but it provided a nice balance to Hamelman's recipe.

The Experiment

There was no way I was going to try the lye bath at home. Maybe to make world class, authentic German pretzels that is necessary, but for a half dozen pretzels at home? Forget about it.

I decided to try make pretzels with an initial fermentation and without. I also tried boiling them briefly in water, egg washing them, and just baking them dry. If any of those methods could produce something reasonably like the soft pretzels I've had before I'd be happy.

The Recipe

I buy my yeast in a jar so that I can measure out as much or as little as I want (well, that and it is cheaper when you bake as often as I do). If you are using yeast from a packet, you can either use half a packet or double the recipe and use an entire packet (at least the packets they sell in the grocery stores in the US... international bakers will have to do their own conversion).

If you are using instant (AKA Rapid Rise or Bread Machine) yeast, you can just mix the yeast in with the rest of the dry ingredients before adding the warm milk and it'll activate fine. If you are using active dry yeast, mix it into the warm milk along with the malt powder (or brown sugar) and give it 5 to 10 minutes to activate before incorporating it into the dry ingredients.

Pretzels

Makes 6 large pretzels
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon malt powder or brown sugar
2-3 cups all-purpose unbleached or bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm milk (approximately 110 degrees, which is 1 minute in my microwave)

Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix together until it forms a ball. I start with 2 cups of the flour and mix it together until it forms something like a thick batter, then add more flour a handful at a time until it'll form a nice ball that I can knead by hand.

Either use an electric mixer to mix the dough for 5 minutes or remove it from the bowl and knead it by hand for 5 to 10 minutes until the dough begins to get smooth and satiny.

If you are going to ferment the dough (more information on whether this set is necessary below), return the ball of dough to a clean, greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set it aside to rise until it has doubled in size, approximately an hour.

If you fermented it, degas the dough gently before moving on to the next step.

Before shaping, start preheating the oven to 425 degrees.

Cut the dough into 6 pieces. Roll each one into a short log, cover with a towel, and let the dough relax for 5 to 10 minutes. After it has relaxed you should be able to roll it out and stretch again fairly easily.

pretzel logs

After taking this photo, I let them relax again and then gave each a third roll and stretch session before they were as long and thin as I wanted (about 15 inches long and about as big around as my index finger). They'll nearly double in width while baking, so it is ok to roll them out quite thin.

pretzel shaping

Shaping pretzels is simple, once you get a hang of it. Place a rope of dough on the work surface in front of you. Take each end in a hand, loop the dough away from you, and bring the ends back toward your stomach, crossing them about an inch above the rope. Apply a little bit of pressure to make the loops stick together, but not too much because you don't want then to flatten out.

Pretzels don't appear to need to rise again before baking, so you just need to figure out how you want to prep them for the oven. Here are the options I tried:

To boil them: If you want to boil them, bring a pot of water to a boil. Dunk each of the pretzels into the boiling water for 5 seconds, then place them onto a baking sheet and sprinkle with coarse salt (I use the kosher stuff that is easy to find at the grocery store) or other toppings.

pretzel shaping

I used a pair of spatulas to hold the pretzel in place while holding it under water.

To eggwash them: Simply place them on a baking sheet, brush them gently with an egg that has been whisked, then sprinkle with coarse salt or other toppings.

To bake them (mostly) dry: Sprinkle or spritz them with a little bit of water so that the toppings will stick, then sprinkle with coarse salt or other toppings.

Place the baking sheets into the oven. It took around 15 minutes for my pretzels to get golden and brown. Remove from the oven and eat immediately.

Results

pretzels done

We definitely thought the boiled pretzels (on the left) were better than the pretzels that had just been spritzed with water (on the right). The spritzed ones were dry and had a slightly french bread like crust. Crust like that is good on french bread but not so good on soft pretzels.

I liked the boiled pretzels more than the eggwashed pretzels, my wife preferred the eggwashed pretzels better. The eggwashed ones rose considerably more in the oven than the boiled ones, so they were quite soft and fluffy. The boiled ones were still soft, but they were a little denser and chewier.

Truthfully, I couldn't tell the difference between the batch that I let ferment for an hour and the batch I baked immediately. If I were tasting them side by side with no toppings I probably could detect a slight difference. But at least when I eat soft pretzels they are a medium for other flavors (salt and mustard), either method produces an adequate pretzel.

pretzel alone

And the lye bath? At least for the home baker I can say with confidence that you can skip it.




The Official ILoveNachoCheese.com Recipe

Officialcheese
We've posted various recipes. We've conducted taste tests. We've delivered the very best nacho cheese related news anywhere on the Internet. Now, we're going to contribute something truly original to the nacho cheese community - An official recipe.

A couple weekends were spent in the kitchen creating literally dozens of different nacho cheese sauce variations. We experimented with ingredients and tweaked quantities until we came up with something we were proud to share. In the end, we settled on this original recipe and hope you like it as much as we do. After all, we created it for you! So give it a try and let us know what you think.

Click here for the recipe.

The Official ILoveNachoCheese.com Recipe

Serving Size: Enough for one bowl of nachos (1-2 persons)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. corn starch
1/2 cup milk
1 oz. cream cheese, cubed
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1/8 cup monterey jack, shredded
1/2 tsp. Busha Browne's Pukka Hot Pepper Sauce. (Any habanero/scotch bonnet pepper sauce will do. We recommend anything with a "use with descretion" warning on the bottle.)
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. paprika


Directions:
In a small saucepan over low-medium heat, melt butter and stir in corn starch.
Pour in the milk, add cream cheese, and continue to stir until mixture is fully incorporated.
While stirring mix in cheddar and jack cheeses, chili powder, paprika, and hot pepper sauce.
Continue to stir until cheese has melted and all ingredients are well blended.
Pour over tortilla chips.

Simple delish smoothie

i made this smoothie this morning and it was oh so good... the measurements are all approx because i just kind of guessed! the best part was i didn't need to add any sugar or honey!



I had some peach nectar frozen in the freezer just waiting for the right smoothie to come along. I broke of a chunk or about a cup and a half of that and tossed it in. I poured in around two cups of milk (1% because that's what we had). Then I tossed in a heaping spoonful of frozen orange juice concentrate and about a cup and a half of frozen presliced strawberries I picked up at frys. That's it, then I blended the crud out of it and it was done. it was really sweet, due to the peach nectar and creamy thanks to the milk!

-darby