Ingredient of the Week: Marshmallows

I picked this one!

I made green jello salad. 

I used to die for this when my Aunt Anne made it and I was fortunate enough to be there.

 

So sinfully good. It actually doesn't contain any jello. The green stuff is pistachio pudding mix.

 

A fun retro bowl for a fun retro recipe.

I am currently into faux cut glass. {The bowl is plastic in case you can't tell.} 

~

Green Jello Salad

 

1 box pistachio pudding
 mix

1 carton cool whip 


1 can crushed pineapple, drained


1-2 cups mini marshmallows

 

Mix pistachio pudding mix with cool whip. Stir until it all turns green. Add pineapple and marshmallows.  Stir and then chill. Serve chilled.

Coffee-Chipotle Oven Brisket

I have fallen a little behind with my cooking group. Last week's ingredient was coffee; yesterday I finally got around to making Coffee-Chipotle Oven Brisket from The Homesick Texan Cookbook.

It was a marathon cooking day. I made brisket, barbeque sauce, potato salad, coleslaw, and Pioneer Woman dinner rolls. I started out fresh and alert, but by 3pm I was pretty much disheveled.

 

Here's my 1 cup brewed coffee, for the sauce.

Spices for barbeque sauce.

Yay for my wonderful new vintage prep bowls.

 

I like this prep bowl too. It's Fire-King, one of my very favorite retro brands. It's holding ketchup, vinegar, lemon juice, worcestershire, and a minced chipotle chile for the barbeque sauce.

 

Here's the meat.

   

It cooked for 6 hours.

Coffee-Chipotle Barbeque Sauce

This sauce is good! I half-way thought it was going to be gross for some reason, but it was like my favorite part of dinner. {It's got a kick to it.}

~

Coffee-Chipotle Oven Brisket

from The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons chipotle powder

1 teaspoon mustard powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 3- or 4-pound brisket, the flat cut, preferably with a bit of fat still on it

4 slices of bacon

1/2 medium yellow onion, cut into slivers

4 cloves garlic, cut in half

1 cup Coffee-Chipotle Barbeque Sauce (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 325° and line a baking sheet with foil.

Mix together the salt, black pepper, chipotle powder, mustard powder, and cumin. Rub both sides of the brisket with the spices. Place brisket on a large sheet of foil, fat side down, and top it with the bacon, onion slivers, and garlic. Wrap the brisket tightly in the foil, and then wrap it with another piece of foil to ensure that no juices leak out. Place foil-wrapped brisket on foil-lined baking sheet (bacon side up) and cook it for 6 hours.

After 6 hours, remove the brisket from the oven and let it sit in the foil for 20 minutes. After it's rested, open up the foil (be careful, as very hot steam will escape) and remove the brisket from the foil. Add 1 tablespoon of the brisket juices to your barbecue sauce.

To serve, take off the bacon, onions, and garlic from the brisket and cut slices against the grain. Serve with the barbecue sauce on the side. If you want a bit of a crust, place the brisket under the broiler 5 minutes before serving.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Coffee-Chipotle Barbeque Sauce 

1 tablespoon bacon grease or vegetable oil {use bacon grease, it's fantastic!}

1/4 medium yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 or 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo, minced

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup tomato paste

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup molasses

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 cup brewed coffee

1/2 tablespoon black pepper

1 teaspoon dry mustard powder

Pinch of ground nutmeg

Pinch of ground clove

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt, to taste

Heat the bacon grease in a sauce pot on medium and cook the onion for 10 minutes or until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

Stir into the pot the chipotle chile, ketchup, tomato paste, vinegar, lemon juice, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, coffee, black pepper, mustard powder, nutmeg, clove, and smoked paprika. Turn down the heat to low and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add salt to taste. If it's too thick, add a bit of water to make it thinner. Will keep for 1 month in the refrigerator. 

Yield: 2 cups

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Tea

So I've decided to implement a new life strategy, which involves me making homemade flour tortillas at least once a week. Also homemade refried beans with bacon grease. 

 

Anyway, the Culinary Capers ingredient of the week is tea. Interesting choice, right? I made chai-spiced fruit compote with yogurt.

 

I used dates instead of prunes and craisins instead of apricots.

It was OK-ish.

{OK I didn't like it.}

But I do like the concept of infusing fruit with chai tea and honey. I just think it would be better with fresh fruit. I don't know what fruit. Peaches maybe? Yeah, peaches. Honey-chai peaches served over frozen yogurt sprinkled with toasted almonds. That sounds nommy.

So Marta's got me thinking...

Now that we've done tea, someone needs to make coffee the ingredient of the week!

Holy Crap I Made an Omelet

And I did a good job too! I didn't think I could make an omelet...

 

But let's back up. The Culinary Capers ingredient of the week is mushrooms. I couldn't think of anything mushroom-y that I really had a taste for, except maybe a spinach and mushroom omelet. So that's what I made.

I started with some baby spinach and some mushrooms.



I sauteed the mushrooms in a tiny bit of olive oil until they looked like this.



I threw in the spinach.



And a few seconds later it turned into this.

I salt-and-peppered this stuff and put it in a little bowl. Then I went and walked on the treadmill. {I had eaten 2 s'more cups by this point, so I wasn't really that hungry.} Then a little while later I came back and made the omelet.
 

See, look! It didn't turn brown. It didn't break. I didn't freak out and turn it into scrambled eggs. It wasn't even raw on the inside.

Here are my secrets to omelet success:

• I melted 3/4 Tablespoon of butter in a small non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Then, I turned the heat down to medium-low (or "4") and poured in 2 salt-and-peppered and beaten eggs.
• Then I stood there and watched the action for a while. When parts of the egg would start to look cooked, I would jostle that part a little bit with a rubber spatula. 
• Right before it was time to put the stuff on and fold the egg part over, I tilted the pan so that the little bit of remaining raw runny egg was on the side of the circle that was going to stay on the bottom (still touching the pan). I figured it was more likely to finish cooking that way.

BTW, there's mozzarella and goat cheese in there too.
Pretty good.

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Hey crazy lady, why so early? The assignment isn't due until a week from now.

Because. This evening, I was literally in the middle of making something with sun-dried tomatoes in it, when I checked Facebook and saw that sun-dried tomatoes had been announced as the Culinary Capers ingredient of the week.

{Is that cheating?}

So. In my latest attempt to replicate a Mellow Mushroom pizza at home (I could never replicate the wonderful buttery crust, but I can at least try to recreate the delicious toppings), I took a shot at my own version of the "Coco" pizza. 

The "Coco" pizza is a Mediterranean-type pizza that features hummus as its base. It also contains sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese. (At least it tasted like goat cheese to me.) Why is it called the Coco? I don't know. Probably some hippie reference that I don't understand.

To this I added my signature pizza ingredient: ever-so-slightly sauteed slices of red onion.

 

I made two pizzas, and the first one was not as good. Why? Because I was too stingy with the toppings. Hummus has a mild flavor, so you need plenty of colorful bits of flavor sprinkled over it.  {That's what I love about sun-dried tomatoes. They're just so darn flavorful.} For pizza #2 I made sure to pile on the sun-dried tomatoes and onions. Yum, yum.

 

Ever had blackened sun-dried tomatoes? They're not so bad!

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Basil

I think my first Culinary Capers challenge was a flop. Only one person besides me made something with poppy seeds. And that was Michelle TL, the die-hard participator. Alls I can say is...

Someone could have made this and it would have been awesome.

Moving on, no one can accuse Carrie of making a poor choice. Basil is one of my favorite fresh herbs (rosemary and dill are the other 2). And so far, the whole group seems excited to have an excuse to get their basil on.

I love me some pesto, but you know... Been there, blogged about that. So, for this challenge I went with an intriguing recipe I ran across a while back. It's Giada De Laurentiis' asparagus lasagna.

I've had sun-dried tomatoes on the brain lately, so this seemed like the perfect thing to make. For the "sauce" you pulse the basil with 2 jars of sun-dried tomatoes in a food processor until combined.

 

 

{I saw a cute food photo montage on this post over at Salad in a Jar, and was inspired to make a montage of my own!}

 

This was an interesting recipe.

It would have been better had I not tried to "cheat" and use oven ready lasagna noodles. 

{The top layer of noodles didn't get cooked. :(}

But other than that, I think I like it. It's very flavorful. I'll have to make it again sometime, using the correct noodle procedure.

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Poppy Seeds

Today was a very special day because I turned 28 on the 28th. And later this year (in June), Josh will turn 29 on the 29th!

Anyway, this week is not only my birthday week. It's my first week to pick the ingredient for Culinary Capers! I chose poppy seeds, and I did a fruity salad with homemade poppy seed dressing.

Success!

This fruity, nutty, sweet and salty salad is almost better than birthday cake. {It's definitely better for your arteries.} I don't like to eat strawberries/blueberries/any berries plain, because they're not sweet enough. But this sweet poppy seed dressing makes them go down easy. And a little bit of it goes a long way.


 

This recipe for poppy seed dressing is totally easy to make. And for the salad I used:

• red-leaf lettuce
• baby spinach
• fresh strawberries
• fresh blueberries
• salted pistachios, chopped

The first time I made this salad I used honey-roasted almonds, and the result was too much sweetness. The salted pistachios suited my taste more because they cut the sweetness of the dressing. Also with the second salad, I made sure to be more generous with the fruit and less generous with the dressing. {And perfection was achieved.}

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Yeast

Yeast is kind of my thing, so I had to make this one good.

I remember ripping this recipe for Cherry-Almond Babka from a magazine a while back, and stuffing it in the back of my recipe binder. The bottom of the page says "Country Living / May 2009." {Surely I haven't been sitting on this recipe for that long!} I'd never had/seen/thought about babka, but this recipe just caught my eye. I adore almond.

As with most things involving yeast, the road to babka was a long, involved process. The good news is: it's really good!!! The filling is a buttery, brown-sugary spread that contains finely ground toasted almonds and a little almond extract. There are also dried cherries inside.

~

I kneaded you, so make me proud.

I like to set my dough on the stove top to rise. It gets warm under that light.

All rolled up and ready to go.

Second rise, then an egg wash and a generous sprinkling of sugar.

Josh: "That looks like a big ol' grub worm!"

Cavern.

I'm exhausted, but delighted. This little venture has been one of my proudest kitchen moments. I love it!

~

{ kitchen tip }

Take your bread's temperature. 

Use a thermometer to check yeast breads for doneness; it's the only way to know for sure. Soft, pillow breads that contain fats should read 180-190º. Drier, crusty breads should read 200-210º. {This guy got done 15 minutes early!}

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Cherries

{ Technically, Robin and I made this last week. 

But I'm blogging about it this week. }

Cherry-Vanilla Layer Cake

I've been wanting to bake a cake with my buddy Robin. When I ran across this little beauty on Pinterest, I thought it would be perfect for us. I liked the bold colors, and I knew that Robin liked to "pipe". 

The cake recipe called for 2 seven-inch baking pans. Which apparently don't exist. I suggested that we use 1 eight-inch pan and 1 six-inch pan as an alternative. (Seemed mathematically feasible...) We kept a close eye on our layers as they baked, and were successful in not under-cooking or burning either. 

 The icing recipe called for 1 pound of butter, which grossed us out. But we made it anyway. And it still grossed us out. We both agreed that the cake would be better with a more moderate icing. Robin thinks cream cheese, I think basic butter-cream with less butter.   

The "from scratch" cherry cake batter was over-the-top flavorful. It called for a whole jar of maraschino cherries (finely chopped) and 1/2 cup of maraschino cherry juice. It also called for 2 teaspoons of almond extract (yum). We liked it!

{ lessons learned }

1. Sometimes imitation vanilla is better.

2. The little layer is not supposed to be taller than the big layer.

3. Friends like Robin are awesome! (Actually I didn't learn that one, 'cause I already knew it.)

{ quote of the day }

Robin: Wow. That was involved.

Culinary Capers Ingredient of the Week: Pineapple

Yes, I own The Sopranos Family Cookbook.

I used to cook from it way back in the day. I would make the baked ziti and the ricotta-pineapple pie. I took the Culinary Capers pineapple challenge as an opportunity to revisit this old favorite.

You can find the ricotta-pineapple pie recipe in the "Carmela" section.

But just in case you don't have this book lying around... I will type it out for you.

Ricotta-Pineapple Pie

from The Sopranos Family Cookbook

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, softened

1/4 cup fine graham cracker crumbs

1/2 cup sugar

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

One 15-ounce container ricotta

2 large eggs

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Topping

One 20-ounce can crushed pineapple in syrup

1/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

• Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Spread the butter over the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie pan or springform pan.  Add the crumbs, turning the pan to coat the bottom and sides.
• In a large bowl, stir together the sugar and cornstarch. Add the ricotta, eggs, cream, lemon zest, and vanilla and beat until smooth. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.
• Bake for 50 minutes, or until the pie is set around the edges but the center is still slightly soft. Cool to room temperature on a wire rack.
• To make the topping, drain the pineapple well, reserving 1/2 cup of the liquid. In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar and cornstarch. Stir in the 1/2 cup pineapple juice and the lemon juice. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened, about 4 minutes. Add the pineapple. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.
• Spread the pineapple mixture over the pie. Cover and chill for at least 1 hour before serving.

1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs.

Lemon zest.

Bada bing!

Yous ah bettah make ah this pie!

 Just kidding, I don't care if you make it.
I just wanted to say "yous."

Okie-Dokie Artichokie

So, I recently joined "Culinary Capers," which is a fun Facebook group that challenges its members with a new ingredient each week. This week's ingredient was artichokes. I decided to go with canned, and I chose to make The Way the Cookie Crumbles' spinach artichoke pizza.

I'm into TWtCC lately. This girl has got some tricks up her sleeve, I tell you what. I tried out her pizza crust recipe, using her special technique for adapting any bread recipe to whole wheat. {I mean, she didn't make it up, but she was kind enough to share it.}

The basic gist of this technique is that you make a "pre-dough" the night before, using whole wheat flour, water, and a little salt. Letting the moistened whole wheat flour ball sit overnight softens the whole wheat fibers. When you incorporate the whole wheat pre-dough into the remaining ingredients of your desired bread recipe, you get a dough that is remarkably soft and pliable for whole wheat. Neato!

Pre-dough.

Going in.

Coming out.

Crust porn.

This was good!

What I liked most about this recipe:

1. It calls for fresh spinach instead of frozen.

2. The crust is hand-formed. {Bridget recommends not using a rolling pin.}

3. Béchamel. {Need I say more?}