And for dessert.....

So what could be better than a quick Strawberry Cream Cake?!? BH&G yellow cake with a Strawberry Icing Fruit from CK Products and a strawberry whipped cream filling/icing with the same icing fruit.

I bought a few flavors of the icing fruit a while back from someplace online - I don't really recall who (I'm a junkie - I just buy the stuff!!) and, while it's tasty, I have to admit I didn't check for ingredients before I bought. It appears that, after reading the label, no strawberries died in its creation - or at least not very many. It's not your typical "all natural" product by any means... But - it does have a shelf life just short of plutonium, so if I'm in a pinch, it's available!

***edited to add:  I threw it out.


What's For Dinner?!?

I'll admit that when I go grocery shopping, I don't usually have a plan. I do the weekly shopping on Wednesday, and usually just buy what strikes me at the time. If it looks good, it goes into the cart. It can be just about anything. Heck, I'm easy when it comes to food. I like everything! So, it's not unusual to find a hodgepodge of items in the fridge or cabinets. It makes cooking dinner an adventure - and I can almost always make just about anything i want without having to head back to the store!

Naturally, there can be a downside... Fresh produce that's not going to remain fresh much longer, for example... That's where stirfry's come in. First off, I love them! An assortment of just about anything in a spicy, flavorful sauce is right up my gastronomic alley. Thankfully, Victor feels the same way - and knows his way around a kitchen, too!

I worked until 5:30pm tonight, and thought I'd throw something together for dinner when I got home. Instead, I was treated with "I have dinner all planned" when I walked in the door! The only thing better than cooking is having someone else cook for you! I was psyched!

Victor cleaned out the produce bin and chopped asparagus, red bell pepper, carrots, celery, onion, and mushrooms. Sauteed some chicken breasts, added the above veggies, and made the most delicious sauce with wasabi teriyaki sauce, peach jam, and chili paste! Juuuuust spicy enough, without clearing out the sinuses completely! Served over white rice... It was great! Cleaned out fridge, full belly... Life is good.

Now I have to figure out something for dessert! ;-)


Lidia Bastianich

One of my favorite cooks (after Julia, who is my idol) is Lidia Matticchio Bastianich. She is an Italian cook like no other I’ve ever seen. Tim and I had the pleasure of eating in one of her restaurants in New York, Felidia.

 

 

 

 

The food was so wonderful, the service so fabulous and the atmosphere so cozy that you either didn’t notice or didn’t care that dinner for two cost a weeks salary.

Every now and then she’ll do something on her show that makes me want to make whatever it was immediately. Today was one of those days. She made something called “Gnudi” which means naked dumpling. It’s like a good ravioli stuffing without the pasta.

 

 

 

  • 1 lb fresh ricotta, drained
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup dry spinach puree – (very dry)
  • ½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese
  • ¼ cup flour
  • A generous amount of freshly ground pepper
  • ½ tsp salt

Heat a large pot of salted water to boiling.

Blend all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Test the consistency of the dough by scooping up a heaping tablespoon, forming it into a ball and rolling it in flour. Drop it into the boiling water. If it does not hold its shape and rise to the surface within a minute, add more bread crumbs to your dough. When you’ve got the right consistency, shape all of the dough into balls the size of golf balls, roll them lightly in flour, and lay them out on a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Drop the Gnudi gently one by one into the boiling water and cook for about 2 or 3 minutes, until they rise to the top and come to a rolling boil. To test for doneness, scoop out a ball and press it with your fingers: the dumpling dough when cooked should bounce back.

Butter and Fresh Sage Sauce

  • 1 to 1 ½ sticks butter (to taste or to the amount you’ll need)
  • 10 whole fresh sage leaves
  • Hot water from the pasta cooking pot
  • Freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese grated

Melt the butter over medium heat and lay in the sage leaves. Heat until the butter is sizzling gently. Toast the leaves for a minute or so.

Ladle in 1 cup boiling pasta water, stir and simmer for about 2mins.

Transfer the Gnudi to the butter sauce and simmer for a minute. Just before serving top with grated cheese.


Chocolate Hazelnut Marble Cake

So... whilst I was back here in the office bloggng away about dinner, Victor was in the kitchen baking a cake for dessert! Just a simple recipe from Better Homes and Gardens - but with a Victor twist. He took half the batter and added Ghirardelli Chocolate Hazelnut Cocoa Mix to it! Oh YUMMY!!

And then added a simple cocoa and powdered sugar topping. No heavy buttercream icing tonight. We have to watch our figures!!

Yes... life is good!


Pork Chops Baked with Kasha and Wild Mushrooms

So - what's the Russian word for "WOW! That's really good?!?" Well, according to Babel Fish, it would be I'll take their word for it!

I guess you'll have to take my word for it, too - until you make it yourself, that is! This was one yummy dinner!

Back to perusing Please to the Table, and since I had the pork out, I thought I'd look for something new and different. I just happened to have all of the other ingredients in the house, so... it was one of those "meant to be" dinners!

Speaking of pork... I've been buying whole loins lately and cutting them into chops m'self. First, they're a hellava lot less expensive than buying chops, but I can also cut them the way I want them. It makes a big difference when making stuffed pork chops or breaded pork cutlets! It's great to have that versatility. But I digress... (how unusual!!)

It's an extremely easy recipe to prepare, and Kasha is one of my more favorite grains, so... away we go. I think next time I make it I may add some chopped apple or pear to the kasha. It is really, really good the way it is, but I like diced fruit in grains, too. Just another variation on a theme.

The recipe as written is a bit wordy, but I'm copying it the way it's printed, not the way I would write it. (I tend to assume people know to boil a cup of something in a small saucepan...)

Here goes...

  • 4 shoulder pork chops, cut 3/4 inch thick (about 2 pounds)
  • 1/2 teaspoon sweet Hungarian Paprika
  • Salt, to taste
  • 2 cups Beef Stock (see Index) or canned broth
  • 1 ounce imported dried mushrooms, preferably porcini, well rinsed
  • 4 slices bacon, chopped
  • 1 medium-size onion, chopped
  • 1 cup whole kasha (buckwheat)
  • 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
  • 1/3 cup sour cream

1) Rub the pork chops with paprika and salt and set aside.

2) Bring 1 cup of the stock to a boil in a small saucepan over high heat. Remove from the heat, add the mushrooms, and soak for 1 hour. Remove the mushrooms from the soaking liquid, pat dry with paper towels, and set aside. Strain the soaking liquid through a coffee filter and (you guessed it!) set aside.

3) In an heatproof casserole large enough to accommodate the pork chops in one layer, cook the bacon until it renders its fat. Using a slotted spoon, remove the bacon from the casserole and - are you ready?!? - set aside.

4) Brown the pork chops well on both sides in the bacon drippings, about 15 minutes total. Drain on paper towels.

5) Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat from the casserole. Sauté the onion in the remaining fat over medium heat until softened and colored, 8 minutes. Add the mushrooms, kasha, and caraway seeds and saute, stirring, for 5 minutes more.

6) Preheat oven to 325F.

7) Combine the reserved mushroom soaking liquid with the remaining stock.

8) Season the kasha mixture with salt and stir in the reserved bacon pieces. Add the liquid and bring to a boil. Arrange the pork chops on top of the kasha and bake, uncovered, until the chops are tender and the kasha has absorbed all the liquid, about 25 minutes. Stir the sour creams into the kasha and serve immediately.

Okay... so I made a bit of fun with the directions. It really was a great dish and I'm sure to make it (or at least a reasonable facsimile) in the future.

And now...

Victor's in the kitchen baking a cake for dessert.

Life is good!


Stuffed Flank Steak

I've said for years that some of the best cooking is just using the ingredients you have on hand. Unless you're really trying to replicate a specific dish or looking for an exact flavor, make do with what you have! Just put things together that you like. My Mom was queen of opening the cabinets and creating dinner - and trusting her instincts when it came to cooking. After all, the very worst thing that could happen would be that it's terrible and you throw it out and call for Pizza.

That being said, I had a flank steak that's been in the freezer for a while, and I wanted to use it up before it became a freezer burn-unit victim. I do try and clear out the freezer once in a while. I have a habit of buying what looks good at the time without a clear picture of what I want to do. It's great to have a stocked freezer (and pantry!) but ya have to use the stuff!

I have been negligent in getting gas for the grill, and I seem to be in a rut when it comes to flank steak. I almost always end up with a variation of my Oriental Flank Steak. I like it a lot, but, at some point, one has to move on... No gas for grilling. I needed an idea. Back to the fridge.

In the fridge was a pound of bacon, a head of escarole, lots of mushrooms. Stuffed Flank Steak, of course! My stuffing was right in front of me! I chopped 3 slices of the bacon and cooked about half way. Added about 8oz of sliced mushrooms and cooked about half way. Added the escarole, S&P and a shot of garlic powder and cooked until the escarole was really wilted.

While it was cooking away, I butterflied the flank steak. It was still partially frozen, which made for very easy cutting.

I then spread the filling on the steak, rolled up, and tied with kitchen twine. Browned it in the pan and into a 350 oven for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, I quartered some baby yukon gold potatoes, drizzled them with olive oil, s&p, and garlic powder, and in the oven they went, too.

Frozen roasted corn from the freezer, and dinner was ready in no time! Start to finish, one hour. And most of the time I was in the office doing other stuff!

Now, I usually make a bread-type of stuffing when I do something like this, but I used the only good bread for the bread pudding last night. I had the other stuff on hand, and I was NOT about to head back to the store - OR - chop up the baguette I brought home from work today. Grocery shopping day is tomorrow, so I can get my Senior Discount! (Don't ask...) ;-)

And there's leftover bread pudding calling my name right now.....


Peach Bread Pudding

Okay... It's no secret that we're dessert junkies. Almost every night we have something - from light to decadent - depending on our moods, pantry offerings, and what we had for dinner.

Tonight, the pantry seemed a bit sparse (shopping day is Wednesday) but sparse does not have to mean bad. in fact, sparse + imagination was the key to tonights success!!

I spied the three getting-staler-by-the-minute kaiser rolls on the island, so my first thought was "bread pudding." Preheated the oven to 350 right away!

Out came three eggs, 3 cups of milk, a half-cup of sugar and a splash of vanilla. I broke up the kaiser rolls and soaked everything. Back into the fridge, because I had some cream cheese in there. Broke up about 4 oz of cream cheese and dropped little balls into the batter. Back to the fridge...

Our friend Lori had sent us some homemade Peach Jelly over Christmas and we've been savoring it on our morning toast. It's a great, thick, full-of-flavor jelly that cannot even be compared to that weak, blah stuff one finds at the grocery. This is Peach Jelly the way Mother Nature intended it to be! Rich peach flavor, without that sickeningly sweet taste of the commercial stuff. It's like spreading fresh peaches on your bread. Did I mention how much I like it?!?

So... I thought... Peach cream cheese bread pudding! Of course!! I dolloped several spoonfulls into the batter, and poured it all into a buttered dish. 30 minutes later, I pulled it out of the oven, waited all of about 10 minutes for it to almost cool, and it was gastronomic heaven!

The kaiser rolls soaked up the liquid perfectly. The dollops of cream cheese melted, but kept their shape, more or less. And Lori's Peach Jelly?!? It became little pools of peach heaven in a creamy bread custard.

Damn, it was good!


Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate

The in-laws were over for dinner last night and I decided i wanted something for dessert I hadn't made in a while. I headed downstairs to peruse some of the older cookbooks and out fell a handwritten recipe I must have copied from somewhere years ago. No idea really where it came from. But it's definitely my scrawl... But oh - am I ever glad i found it! It may just be the best desset I've had in years!

It is the most rich, chocoaltey tasting, yet light chocolate roll I have ever had. No flour! Gluten free! Someone had to have given me the recipe and I just never made it, because I'd remember this! Delicious. Fantastic. It's like eating chocolate air... It was sooooo good!!!

So - here it is... Easy enough to make. A bit time consuming, but it's worth it!!!

  • 8 oz chocolate. I used Ghirardelli semi-sweet
  • 6 eggs, separated
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • pinch of salt
  • pinch of cream of tartar

Melt chocolate with 1/4 cup water. Beat yolks with 1/3 cup sugar about 5 minutes - until really creamy. Fold in chocolate. Whip whites with salt, cr of tartar and vanilla until stiff. Fold whites into chocolate. Spread in pan (I lined with parchment and sprayed with food release.) Bake at 350 about 12-13 minutes.

It raised up and then fell when I took it out of the oven, and it cracked like hell when I rolled it. It's supposed to. I filled it with whipped cream that I added powdered sugar and cocoa powder and vanilla. And I sifted cocoa/powdered sugar on top to make it look pretty!

Oh... and since I've done lots of baking in my life... after it cooled, I sifted some cocoa powder/powdered sugar on the cake, placed a sheet of parchment on top, and then flipped it over onto another sheet pan. Then I spread the filling on and used the parchment to help roll it up. The cocoa helped to keep the cake from sticking - and added even more chocolate flavor1


Mac and Cheese

My father hates cheese. My mother, on the other hand, loved it! Any and every kind. From a cow, from a goat, from Mary's Little Lamb, she loved her cheese. Fortunately for us, my father was a fireman, and worked those 24 hour shifts away from home. When he was working, cheese would almost always work its way into the dinner meal.

Growing up Catholic - and we're back in the 50's and '60's here - Friday night dinner when Pop was working would almost always be Macaroni and Cheese. And it never - EVER - came out of a box!!! Her Mac and Cheese was especially good, because it could contain any number of different cheeses! She would save up her little odds and ends pieces, and toss them all into the pot. It was always the same, yet always juuuust a bit different.

It is so simple to make, too. Make a basic white sauce - on the medium/thin side. Add a shot or two of worcestershire sauce and a shot of tabasco. A bit of garlic powder and salt and pepper. Stir in whatever cheeses you have. Tonight I used cheddar, provolone, some manchego, and some gruyere. Mix in your cooked pasta (while I really prefer elbow macaroni, I was out, so I used little raquettes that were on the shelf.) Put into a buttered casserole, top bith buttered bread crumbs, and bake for about 30 minutes, or until bubbly and the crumbs have browned nicely.

I've never quite been able to make it as good as Mom's. I think part of it is that she's not around to make it for me anymore. But I think she'd be pleased with tonights result!


Please to The Table

There's a new cookbook gracing our humble abode - Please To The Table The Russian Cookbook. What fun!

Now, I'm an Irish kid from San Francisco. My knowledge of Russian and eastern European foods is pretty much limited to vodka and caviar, so what a treat it is to see so many new foods to try! The book covers everywhere from "The Baltics to Uzbekistan" - and that's quite a lot of food! I mean - they're talking some 6 million square miles! The cuisine - and recipes - are as varied as the people.

In just a quick perusal, I've found dozens of goodies I want to try, but tonight I settled on the Pozharskiye Kotleti or, for the English-speaking amongst us, Chicken Croquettes Pozharsky, for the main reason that I had all the ingredients at home already! That, and I have a very vague recollection of a restaurant I worked in back around 1974/5 that served Chicken and Veal Croquettes with a Mushroom Sauce... The Red Chimney... But I digress...


From the book: "These fluffy, delicate ground chicken and veal croquettes are traditionally accompanied by smothered mushrooms. I often serve Mushrooms sauteed with Madeira alongside." I took the authors advice! They were fantastic!

The recipe makes 12 croquettes. I cooked up 8 - 2 each for dinner and the others for lunch tomorrow - and froze the other 4 uncooked.

I actually ground my own chicken and veal because, well... I have a grinder attachment to the KitchenAid, and I already had both chicken and veal in the freezer - but it wasn't ground! Besides, I haven't used the grinder attachment in a while, and I'm sure it was feeling neglected down there in that bottom cabinet! The croquettes were easy to form, but it was a bit of a challenge dipping them in the egg and then the crumbs - but, I had it down after the first few.

The recipe...

  • 3 slices whole wheat bread, crusts removed
  • 1/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1 lb ground chicken breast meat
  • 3/4 lb ground veal
  • 1 small onion, minced
  • 9 tbsp butter, at room temperature
  • 2 large egg yolks
  • 2 tbsp madeira
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh dill (optional)
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 large egg white
  • About 1 1/2 cups unflavored fine, dry bread crumbs
  • 2 eggs, beaten, for dipping the chicken
  • 4 tbsp light vegetable oil

1) Soak the bread slices in the cream for 10 minutes. Squeeze the bread to remove any excess cream. Then discard all but 3 tbsp of the cream.

2) In a food processor, combine the bread, cream, chicken, veal, onion, 3 tbsp butter, the egg yolks, Meadeira, dill (if using), and salt and pepper. Process for 3 or 4 pulses until well blended but not pureed. Transfer to a large bowl.

3) Beat the egg white until it holds stiff peaks. Gently fold it into the meat mixture. If the mixture seems too loose to form into croquettes, cover, and refrigerate to firm up, 1 hour.

4) have a bowl of cold water ready. Dip your hands in the cold water to prevent the meat from sticking to your hands. Shape the mixture into 12 oval croquettes.

5) Sprinle the breadcrumbs on a cutting board or other flat surface. Dip the croquettes into the beaten egg, then roll them in the breadcrumbs to coat well.

6) Heat 2 tbsp of the remaining butter and 2 tbsp of the oil in a large skillet. Fry 6 of the croquettes over medium heat until crispy and brown, 12 to 15 minutes. The juices should run clear when a croquette is pierced with a fork. Repeat with the rest of the croquettes, adding more butter and oil as needed. Serve immediately.

Serves 6.

I followed the basic instructions, except I mixed it all by hand, since I actually ground the onion and the soaked bread with the chicken and veal (I LOVE my grinder, I have to USE it more often!!) I also refrigerated it for a couple of hours, because I made it early in the afternoon.

Served with mashed potatoes, broccoli, and the mushroom madeira sauce and it was a pretty good nosh!


Painting and Cooking...


So we finally decided to paint the guest room - and move into it! Not a really big deal, other than the fact that we both hate to paint. But... change is good.

I mention this because, well... that's what kept me from going grocery shopping. And our quick trek to Boston messed up my normal shopping routine...

The nice thing about being a food fanatic, is there is always something to eat in the house! It may take a bit of imagination, but we could easily go a week or two before actually running out of things! So, it was off to the freezer for something quick.

A quick perusal of the freezer and out came a pack of Murray's chicken breasts (these, and the chicken at the Lancaster farmer's market are the only ones I buy!) and a pack of corn tortillas. Tostadas Tonight!!

I cubed the chicken and fried it up with an onion... added some enchilada sauce from the fridge, and let it simmer for a few. Opened a can of refried black beans and heated. Shredded some cheese.

I fried the corn tortillas until nice and crisp, spread on some beans, added the chicken, and topped it all off with the cheese.

It was dinner in under 10 minutes - and then back to painting. Life is good.....


Denny's and Diners...


We had to make a quick trip up to Boston this week - definitely not a pleasure trip - and after the 6 hour drive and checking into the beautiful Day's Inn Danvers we headed next door to the local Denny's Restaurant for a quick bite.

I think what I found most interesting was that we were 3000 miles away from the last Denny's I had visited, but here were the same employees - and the same customers! Talk about being the same everywhere you go! This would make a great sociological study! Are the same socioeconomic people attracted to the exact same places nationwide?!? Well - I guess that would explain shopping malls (the exact same stores and products in every city and town in America) and every other chain restaurant there is... Some folks really do need their predictability...

I guess we're a bit out of the loop because we rarely - if ever - go to chain restaurants. It's nothing personal, really - it's just that I never think to go to one. There's plenty of them around us (we're only a few miles from the huge King of Prussia Mall) and the area is rife with chains) but... there are too many other places around...

Back to Denny's... I had a Chicken Ranch Melt A golden-fried chicken breast on grilled ciabatta bread with a zesty garlic spread, lettuce and tomato. Topped with melted Swiss cheese and crispy bacon. Served with a side of ranch dressing. It wasn't bad - but I never did get my side of Ranch dressing.

Victor had the Spicy Buffalo Chicken Melt A golden-fried chicken breast covered in a spicy buffalo sauce on grilled ciabatta bread with a zesty garlic spread, lettuce and tomato. Topped with melted Swiss cheese and served with a side of ranch dressing. He did get his ranch dressing after asking... It wasn't bad. In fact, it was actually okay. Not something I'd make a habit of having every day - and something I could make better at home - but definitely not bad...

The Ciabatta bread was a sort of Ciabatta roll - standardized sizing, of course - and not the sort of Ciabatta I generally buy or make, but it definitely beat the rolls and buns chain sandwiches usually come on. And we upgraded - for an additional 39 cents - to the "Seasoned Fries" that really weren't worth it. All in all, it worked.

The following morning, our friend Dorrie took us to a little diner in Danvers for breakfast. (Portside Diner, 2 River Street, Danvers, MA 01923 (978) 777-1437.) She had passed by it for years, her mom had eaten there all the time back when she worked for Sylvania. But Dorrie had never been inside. It was a treat!

Typical diner in every sense of the word. It had charm that no chain restaurant could ever have - and really good food. I had eggs over easy with a great Greek Sausage (You ain't gonna find THAT at Denny's!) Dorrie had eggs sunny side up with bacon, Victor had French toast with a side of bacon. Breakfast for three, with coffee - $19.10. We sat for an hour getting our coffee refills and chatting away in a booth that could have been built around the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Beautiful old wood, stainless steel, and tacky Christmas decorations still up. I was in gastronomic heaven!

And therein lies one of the best reasons to eschew the chains in favor of local places. This sort of food and decor evolves over time. It can't be created in a test kitchen, nor can the decor be reproduced from a catalog - or by a restaurant designer/consultant. It happens naturally - slowly over time.

It was the perfect way to jump-start our drive back to Pennsylvania!