Coffee Ice Cream: BAKED Sunday Mornings

Coffee is essential to me in the mornings.  Especially as the new school year approaches my two cups a day will be critical.  I am odd though in that I like my coffee as a vehicle for carrying other flavors.  I am all about the tasty flavored creamers, syrups and such.  I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of pumpkin spice flavors at the coffeeshops this fall.  Coffee is also one of the foods that Zach used to 'hate' but now enjoys (add to that list hot dogs and olives).  I'd like to think I had a little to do with his change of opinion.  If I would have made this ice cream previously he probably would have made a disgusted face and said ew.  Now he will gladly help me eat it!  It is rich and delicious and perfectly coffee-y.  The small addition of Kahlua is perfect.  I made just one change -- reversing the amounts of cream and milk.  I opted for 2% milk instead of whole since it's what we normally drink, so I used 2 cups of cream to offset the loss of fat in the milk switch and did 1 and 3/4 cups of milk.  It still turned out perfectly creamy and with great texture (not icy!).

You can find the recipe here and see how the other bloggers fared here and here.

Summer Succotash: Secret Recipe Club

For this month's Secret Recipe Club I was assigned Sweet Flours written by Allison.  Allison is a young mom with a sweet tooth!  Her lovely blog (such a great, simple, elegant design -- you should really check it out!) is filled with tempting sweets and treats.  So many that it was impossible to decide on just one, so I went the other direction and chose one of her savory dishes.  When I picked this recipe Zach was shocked.  I don't do lima beans, one of the typical main ingredients in succotash.  Limas and succotash were always one of my sister's favorite sides growing up (as were peas -- ick!) so I only ever thought of it as lima beans and corn.  I love that Allison's recipe got me to open up my mind about succotash!  


It was such a great recipe for summer -- it highlights the veggies at their best, barely cooked and so fresh.  We used corn that Zach bought that day at a farmer's market and the farmer said it was picked that morning.  Unless you're lucky enough to grow corn in your backyard it can't get much fresher than that!  It was delicious and quick.  The leftovers made a satisfying lunch.  I'm already envisioning a mexican version -- swapping in black beans and spices like cumin, paprika and fresh cilantro.  I did make a few changes -- I switched out cannellini beans for the butter beans, throw in some peppers, use an extra ear of corn, used all yellow summer squash and to double up on the seasoning since I had added in the extra veggies.

Summer Succotash
slightly adapted from Sweet Flours

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 large onion, chopped
5 ears sweet corn, cut off the cob
2 large yellow summer squash

1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 can (15 oz.) canellini beans, drained
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup chopped basil

Directions:

• Heat the butter and olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. 
• Add the onion, corn, squash, salt and pepper to the pan.  Saute until tender, 5-7 minutes.  
• Add the beans and cook until heated through, 2-3 minutes more.
• Remove pan from heat and stir in the tomatoes and basil.
• Serve and enjoy!

Check out these links to see what other fantastic recipes were posted today in the Secret Recipe Club!

Orange Olive Oil Bundt Cake: BAKED Sunday Mornings

I feel like I should start referring to these posts as BAKED Sunday Afternoons, since I never seem to get my post together in time.  Ahh well, such is life.  I'm jumping back in this week after missing the last couple challenges.  This was partly due to spending most of those weekends away from home, and partly that the two recipes didn't appeal to me that much.  I'm not a fruit girl, so blackberry or peach pie didn't really make the cut of things-to-shove-into-the-48-hours-I-spent-at-home-in-three-weeks list.  


But, anyway, on to this week's recipe -- Orange Olive Oil Bundt Cake.  Unfortunately I can't even say that much about it yet.  I made it this afternoon to serve as a dessert this evening.  Even though it's in the Baked cookbook under 'Breakfast' I'm serving it after a spanish meal of paella, and I think the olive oil and citrus will pair nicely with the dinner.  I wasn't all that excited about the cake to be honest.  As I said, I'm not a fruit girl, and typically I don't go for citrus based flavors.  So, I expected not to like it, but after tasting the batter I'm pretty intrigued.  The olive oil really came through and the citrus was more of an afternote.  We will see what the finished cake tastes like, but I have high hopes!

Head on over to BAKED Sunday Mornings to see everyone else's cakes and to get the recipe!

Cilantro Shrimp Scampi

So.... I wrote this back in May but never got around to uploading the picture and posting it.  I am a bad blogger.  But, now that I am on summer vacation and finally home after three weeks of travelling I hope to get back to a regular posting schedule.  Most importantly, I hope to knock out the vast majority of over 40 draft posts I have sitting half-composed, and make major progress on my 30 in 30 list.  I wrote it up back in November, and actually have made quite a few things, but just haven't gotten them posted yet.  I've got just under 4 months to go and at least 30 posts to get up in that time, so watch out for lots of new recipes!!

This is the second recipe I'm posting from my Cookbook of the Month, the Foster Harris House Cookbook.  When I decided to make this the pick for the month, I did what I usually do for my monthly pick, stick post-it notes on the recipes I'd most like to make/highlight in the month's posts.  Then I hand it over to Zach and ask him to pick what he would like.  My choices are like the first round and his are the second round, since he will usually pick one or two of the 10-12 I've chosen.  As soon as I saw this recipe in the book I knew it would make it past Zach's second round.  He loves anything with cilantro, so you don't have to look much further than the name of the recipe to know he's going to pick it. 

This was super easy and quick to put together on a weeknight.  The notes on the recipe in the book say that while most people serve scampi with pasta, they prefer it with basmati rice to soak up the sauce.  We served it with a parmesan orzo and it paired really well together.

Cilantro Shrimp Scampi

from the Foster Harris House Cookbook

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil

1 pound large peeled, deveined shrimp

4 tablespoons minced garlic

pinch of cayenne pepper

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons lime juice

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons chopped, fresh cilantro

6 tablespoons butter

Directions:

• Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Saute shrimp, turning over once, until just cooked through, about 3 minutes.  Transfer to a plate with tongs, leaving the oil in the skillet.
• Add garlic, cayenne, wine, lime juice, salt and pepper to the remaining oil.  Cook over high heat, stirring occasionally until reduced slightly, about 1 minute. 
• Add butter to skillet, stir until melted, then add shrimp.  
• Serve on top of pasta or rice, whichever you desire.

Salt and Pepper Oven Fries: Secret Recipe Club

Last month I read on one of my favorite blogs, Beantown Baker, about The Secret Recipe Club.  Basically, you join up and at the beginning of the month you are randomly assigned a different blog.  You peruse that blog and pick a recipe from it to make.  Everyone in the Secret Recipe Club posts their chose recipe on the given date and time.  It sounded like a great way to see a few new blogs and try a few new recipes.  So, I joined!

This month I was assigned This Mama Cooks!  There were lots of great recipes to chose from, but I chose something fairly simple, yet I can never get quite right -- oven fries.  Sometimes mine turn out crispy, but sometimes mushy, sometimes burnt even!  I think it's because I don't really rely on a recipe, I just wing it hoping it will turn out okay, but it doesn't always.  So, I figured this was a good chance to follow a recipe, hoping it would give me a foolproof result and it did!  These were crispy and crunchy and delicious!  They would be a great side dish to just about anything -- what doesn't go with fries really??  I cut the recipe in half since there are only two of us, and leftover fries really aren't that great, but otherwise I kept it almost the same.  I did up the amount of pepper, since we like black pepper, and omitted the parsley since we were out of it.

Salt and Pepper Oven Fries
slightly adapted from This Mama Cooks!


Ingredients:

1/2 pound potatoes, cut into wedges
2 Tablespoons oil (canola or olive, I used olive)
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground


Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  On a medium baking sheet, spray cooking spray to coat the bottom surface.
• Cut potatoes into long wedges.  In a medium bowl, toss potato wedges with 1 tablespoon oil.  
• On prepared baking sheet, lay out potato wedges in a single layer.
• Bake for 15 minutes, flip the wedges over and bake for 15 more minutes.  Potatoes should be golden brown and crispy.  
• When you turn the wedges over, heat the remaining tablespoon oil in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Add garlic and cook over medium-low heat until golden, about 4 minutes.
• Pour the garlic oil over the wedges, adding in the salt and pepper.  Toss to coat and serve.  

Cowboy Cookies: BAKED Sunday Mornings

I was a bad blogger and skipped out on the last BAKED Sunday Mornings recipe.  This time of year is my very busiest at school and I had so much going on I had no time for 'extra' cooking.  But I'm back in the game for this recipe.  These are called Cowboy Cookies, but as the description in the book says, there's no real reason they are associated with cowboys.  They are basically oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (which are some of my favorites -- when you put a whole grain like oatmeal in, then you can try and convince yourself that the cookies are healthy!) with the addition of salty, crunchy bits of pretzels.  Being someone who adds salt to just about everything, even watermelon and buttered toast, I welcomed the pretzels. 

The cookies are delicious!  Chewy and chocolaty and salty, and with that bit of oatmeal you can count them towards your whole grain count for the day.  ;-)  I didn't read the recipe thoroughly beforehand and therefore did not realize the dough should be chilled for 4 hours prior to baking.  I didn't really have time for that on a weeknight, so I let them chill about an hour and a half and went for it.  I knew it meant they would spread a bit, but I was okay with the consequences.  I could taste the bit of coffee in the dough, but not in the final cookie.  They are a great variation on the basic chocolate chip cookie and we'll definitely be making them again.  

Head on over to BAKED Sunday Mornings to see everyone else's cookies and to get the recipe!

Mushroom Provolone Patty Melt

I cut this recipe out of a fall copy of Cooking Light.  It had been in the back of my mind since then, always as a menu idea, but never quite making it on the menu.  Then we bought some ground beef in bulk and I was looking for something else besides the standard burgers or meatloaf to do with it and this recipe came to mind.  It also uses beer, which is never a bad thing in a recipe in my opinion.  

It made a quick and pretty tasty weeknight dinner.  I really enjoyed it and it will definitely show up again in our meal rotation.  The flavors were great, the earthiness of the mushrooms paired well with the dark beer and the beef patties.  I really liked it and I took one of the extra sandwiches with me the next day for lunch.  I prefer the fresh out of the pan version, but it worked well as a leftover, cold sandwich as well. 

Mushroom and Provolone Patty Melt

slightly adapted from Cooking Light

serves 4

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup thinly sliced onion
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
8 ounces mushrooms (white or cremini), sliced 

1 1/2 teaspoons flour
1/4 cup dark beer (such as porter or stout)
8 slices bread (I used sourdough, but you can use your preference.)

Spreadable butter or margarine
4 slices provolone cheese

Directions:

• Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Shape beef into 4 (4 inch) patties. Add patties, cook 4 minutes on each side or until done.
• Heat oil in a medium skillet over medium high heat. Add onion, salt, pepper, and mushrooms, cook for 3 minutes. Sprinkle flour over mushroom mixture and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in beer and cook 30 seconds or until thickened. Remove from heat.
• When patties are done, remove from skillet. Wipe pan clean and reheat over medium high heat. Coat 1 side of each bread slice with butter or margarine. Place 4 bread slices, coated sides down, in pan. Top each with a patty, cheese slice, and one quarter of mushroom mixture. Top with remaining bread slices and then spread with butter or margarine. Cook 2 minutes on each side or until browned.

Asparagus Risotto

This recipe is the first from my Cookbook of the Month, the Foster Harris House Cookbook.  I chose it because we always have arborio rice on hand and all the other ingredients except the asparagus.  Asparagus was on sale for 1.99 a pound at a local grocery store so I picked some up with no specific plan.  I flipped through this book and decided it would be a perfect match.  This was a fairly straight-forward risotto recipe, except for the first few steps  You cook the asparagus in chicken stock that you then keep simmering on the stove to use as the cooking liquid for the rice.  This maximizes the asparagus-ness of the risotto and makes for one less pot to clean!  It was delicious and had a great spring flavor.  I hope to make it again soon as we start to get our weekly CSA boxes and can use some of the farm-fresh asparagus we will get early in the season.

Asparagus Risotto 

from the Foster Harris House Cookbook 

serves 4

Ingredients:

1 quart (4 cups) chicken stock

1 pound asparagus

4 tablespoons butter, divided in half

4 tablespoons oil, divided in half

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cups Arborio rice

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish

salt and pepper

Directions:

• Trim ends off asparagus.  Cut on the bias into 1/4 inch pieces, saving the top 2-3 inches as whole spears.  
• Heat the chicken stock to a simmer.  Cook asparagus in chicken stock for 5 minutes, or until al dente.  Remove from stock and keep in a cool water bath.  Return stock to a simmer.
• In a large pot, heat 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat.  Add onion and cook until softened, about 10 minutes.  Add rice and stir, cooking for 2-3 minutes.  Add wine and cook until liquid is absorbed.  
• Add about half a cup of stock at a time to the rice and onion mixture.  Stir frequently until liquid is absorbed.  Continue adding the stock, half a cup at time, stirring in between and adding more stock once the last addition is absorbed.  The rice will get thick and creamy.  Taste the rice towards the end of the process, you are looking for it to be al dente, with just a bit of bite in the middle.  
• Add the chopped asparagus, 1/2 cup of cheese and the remaining butter and olive oil.  Stir to combine, then season to taste with salt and pepper.
• Serve risotto, topping with spears and extra parmesan.

Cookbook of the Month: May 2011

This month I am picking a cookbook we recently got on a weekend trip.  We went to Washington, Virginia and stayed at the Foster Harris House.  It was a great bed and breakfast, the highlight of which was a four course breakfast!  I planned the trip as a surprise getaway for the 5th anniversary of our first date.  Washington is about an hour and a half away from our house, so we left mid-afternoon, stopped at a few wineries along the way and then arrived at the Foster Harris House.  I picked Washington so we could have dinner at the fabulous Inn at Little Washington.  We've seen it on the Travel Channel and knew of it's prestigious reputation.  It is often ranked on lists of the top restaurants in the country and even the world.  It was absolutely phenomenal, exceeding our expectations, which were high to begin with!  It's definitely one of the top three meals I've ever had, ranking up there with our Table 21 experience at VOLT and a tasting menu at Graham Eliot. 

One of the best parts of our stay was getting to take this cookbook home with us!  I added it to my collection, close to 60 cookbooks now, and it's gotten some use so far!  I'll be sharing a few recipes over the course of the month, and hope to recreate our four course breakfast as well!

Baked Chicken Parmesan

This recipe definitely caught my eye the first time I flipped through ATK's Healthy Family Cookbook.  Chicken parmesan is delicious, but not great for you when it's fried.  A version that is baked and is easy for a weeknight meal -- awesome!  This is simple and fabulous.  I think it has a great balance of ingredients and the strips of basil on top really brings out a fresh flavor.  I went light on the sauce on mine, I don't like chicken parmesan smothered in tomato sauce -- the whole point is the crispy crunch of the chicken, right?

Baked Chicken Parmesan

from America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook

serves 6

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups panko bread crumbs
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
3 large egg whites
1 tablespoon water
vegetable oil spray
6 boneless, skinless chicken cutlets, pounded 1/4 inch thick
salt and pepper
2 cups tomato sauce, warmed
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil


Directions:

• Preheat oven to 475 degrees.  
• Combine the bread crumbs and olive oil in a non-stick skillet and toast over medium heat until golden.
• Set up a breading station.  Let the toasted bread crumbs cool in a shallow dish, then mix in the parmesan.  Whisk the egg whites and water in a second bowl.  In a third bowl combine the flour and garlic powder.  
• Place a wire rack over a baking sheet and spray with the cooking spray.  
• Pat the chicken dry, season with salt and pepper.  Take one piece of chicken at a time through the breading stations -- first in the flour, patting off any extra flour.  Then coat in the egg whites, letting the excess drip off.  The last step us to coat with the toasted bread crumbs, making sure to pat them on to stick to the chicken evenly.
• Place the coated cutlets on the wire rack, then spray with the cooking spray.  
• Bake about 8-10 minutes or until any juices are clear.  You can also use a meat thermometer to check that the chicken reaches 160 degrees.
• Top with desired amount of sauce and 2 tablespoons of the shredded mozzarella.  Bake until the cheese has melted, 3 to 5 minutes more.  
• Sprinkle with basil and serve.