First signs of winter?

You know that one thing you keep putting off – telling yourself that you’ll get it tomorrow, then telling yourself that same thing again the next day and the next? Well that’s how I’ve felt about posting for the past few weeks.  I’ve been working on a cookie inspired by Starbucks’ Salted Caramel Mocha.  It’s still in the works, and not the subject of this post, but today was a reminder of how quickly a post idea gets dated.  It snowed!  I just carved pumpkins last night, I’m still deciding on what to be for Halloween, and I’m no where near ready to clean snow off my car again.  Soon I’ll be sipping peppermint mochas in festive red cups.

My taste testers have given mixed reviews of the Salted Caramel Mocha cookies.  But I’ve found the perfect remedy, salted caramel cream filled mocha cookies.  I’m baking a batch tomorrow after work and will post even if it turns out to be yet another failed experiment.

Fall inspired dinners that I will most definitely prepare again despite fall’s unofficial end:

Rachel Ray’s Welsh Rarebit-Style Mac ‘N Cheese: This recipe calls for 1 cup of beer.  I recommend drinking the rest of that one as you make the cheese sauce, then pouring another glass along side a plate of creamy and satisfying mac ‘n cheese.

Game Day Chili: I never really follow chili recipes step-by-step.  Instead I tend to just use everything I have on hand and improvise when needed.  If I were to make this again, I would probably use less, yes less, beer.  Maybe 1 cup instead of the whole bottle.  Cheddar cheese and sour cream toppings are definitely a must.  I also discovered that the beer bottles (same 12 pack from Mac ‘N Cheese night) have fortunes!  Can you make out the one in the picture?

🙂

Fresh Summer Corn

My favorite blog = Food52. I stumbled upon the blog a couple weeks ago while looking for strawberry butter recipes, and I’ve been going back every day (sometimes multiple times a day) ever since.  Every week they have a recipe contest.  Peppers was the theme for last week, which inspired me to give Jamaican Beef Patties a third try.  I get better at it each time.  The pastry was perfect, but the filling only so-so.  The next time I make these patties they should be just right (a post for the near future).

This week’s Food52 contest is “Your best corn off the cob recipe.”  A light and refreshing summer dish of crepes, shrimp, goat cheese, squash and, of course, corn off the cob was the delightful result of my second entry attempt. I don’t think I’m quite ready to post this on Food52 (especially since the crepe recipe is adapted from Michael Symon’s Live to Cook).  Maybe next week’s contest…

Corn Crepes (adapted from Michael Symon’s Live to Cook)
My twist of the Iron Chef’s recipe – I roasted the peppers on my grill, and used sour cream and 1% milk because I couldn’t find a small enough carton of whole milk.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup fresh corn kernels
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk (I used 1% because that’s what I had in my fridge at the time)
Heaping tablespoon of sour cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup chopped roasted red bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped roasted green bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped scallion, white and green parts

Put all crepe ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.  Refrigerate for 2-4 hours.  To cook, pour enough batter into a skillet to coat with a thin layer.  Cook on medium heat until the edges start to dry up, then flip to finish cooking the other side.

Should make about 6 crepes. It took me a couple of tries to figure out the right amount and how to flip without tearing the crepe, so I ended up with 4 good ones.

Stuff crepes with Goat Cheese and “Tandoori” Shrimp (recipe below)

Tandoori Marinade (for shrimp, or whatever meat you choose)
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon of freshly grated ginger
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
3/4 cup yogurt
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 lb large shrimp shelled and de-veined

Mix first 8 ingredients in a bowl.  Stir in shrimp.  Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour (I’m not sure if the marinating is really necessary, I just had to stop in the middle of cooking to go to a party – but I like to think that the marinating helped to infuse some of the sauce into the shrimp).

I wanted to grill these on shish kabobs but by the time I got back from the party it was too late.  So I cooked the shrimp in a skillet until they turned pink, then reduced the sauce.  Adding goat cheese to the sauce as it reduced would have been brilliant now that I think about it.  Instead I stuffed the shrimp and some crumbled goat cheese in the corn crepes and served with a dallup of sour cream and grilled corn and zucchini salad (recipe below).

Refreshing grilled zucchini, summer squash and corn-off-the-cob salad
Ingredients:
2 ears of corn
1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
1 tablespoon of salt
1 clove minced garlic
Juice of 3 lemons
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Grill and then chill corn, zucchini and squash.  Mix last 4 ingredients in a bowl.  Cut corn from the cob and dice zucchini and squash.  Pour lemon-oil mixture over veggies then serve along side “Tandoori” Shrimp and Goat Cheese Stuffed Corn Crepes.

Breakfast sandwich of my dreams

Before I get to the blueberry cookies I have to share a sandwich I made earlier this week. It came to me in a dream.  Really.  It starts with egg-in-the-hole.  I mastered this part of the dish about a year ago.  Tear a small hole in a piece of bread.  Drop it in a pan on medium heat with a little butter.  Then crack an egg in the center of that hole, season with salt and pepper and fry, flipping halfway through to cook the other side.

I prefer my yolks a little runny but you can cook it all they way through if raw eggs are not your thing.  This piece of toasted-bread-egg fusion with a side of mixed greens is delicious all by itself, but it’s even better as a grilled cheese sandwich.  Just lay a slice of cheese on top of the bread after you flip it.  Then layer that with another piece of bread.  After the cheese is melted and the egg cooked to your liking, flip to toast the other side and serve.

But just a layer of cheese was not enough for the “breakfast sandwich of my dreams.”  This sandwich needed a layer of tuna salad, then a layer of shredded mozzarella, then a layer of fresh tomato, then another layer of the mozzarella before I topped it off with another layer of honey oat bread.

The spatula from my cheep, starter kitchen utensil set was almost too flimsy to flip this monster of a sandwich, but I managed, so great was the desire to find out if this sandwich was all that I had dreamed.  It was.

 

 

Why did my strawberry cookies turn blue??

I had an idea to bake strawberry cookies dyed pink by nothing other than the natural juices of the berries.  All but a few of the recipes I found online use food coloring or jello mixes.  So I took bits and pieces from a strawberry cookie recipe and a strawberry cake recipe (both recipe designers had achieved pinkness without the use of artificial coloring) and blended the strawberry parts with my favorite butter cookie recipe.  At first I thought I too had achieved success.  The cookies had a slightly unappetizing tint of gray but were mostly pink.  To my dismay, less than 1 hour after I had placed the cookies on the rack to cool the entire batch had turned blue.  My patchwork recipe was an epic fail!  Why did my strawberry cookies turn blue??  With some more experimentation I may bake a perfectly pink batch, but for now I think I’ll focus on my next project – fresh blueberry cookies.

Recipe #1: Blue Strawberry-Flavored Cookies

Slice 1 cup of fresh strawberries.  Sprinkle strawberries with 1 tsp of granulated sugar and let drain in strainer over a bowl for 1 hour.  Save the juice.*

Blend strawberries with 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla until smooth.

Combine strawberry mixture with 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened, and 1 cup packed brown sugar.  Mix well.

Add 1 egg. Mix well.

Add dry ingredients: 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda.

Then add 1/2 cup white chocolate chips.

Bake at 375 degrees for 4-5 minutes.

*I later used the leftover strawberry juice as flavoring for a basic butter cream frosting (powder sugar and butter). So simple, but so good and a tasty addition to these cookies.