Cooking

Granola Just Doesn’t Go Well With Salmon

Posted on by Amy

Remember these little guys? 

My husband went to Iowa this weekend and one of these yummy fellas is now in our freezer. I love that we are fully stocked with venison and pork for the year (and beyond).

We missed him while he was off butchering our pig, but the girls were happy to have plenty of Daddy time when he got home this morning.

Since my husband was home I felt like I could spend a little extra time cooking dinner tonight. I mentioned I’m my last post that we would be resuming our at-home Chopped Challenge soon. I picked my ingredients a few days ago and decided tonight would be a good night to work my magic with them. The ingredients?

1. Salmon. Not too bad.

2. Lentils. Not too good.

3. Granola. Oh dear.

I managed to pull together a decent dish, though it certainly wasn’t anything to write home about.

Presenting Salmon Granola Cakes with Lentils Three Ways:

Now doesn’t that sound yummy?

It ended up looking pretty good, but was not the most tasty food I’ve served. Lass looked at it and said, “That’s yucky.” I can sum up the dish in two sentences.

1. Lentils are gross.

2. Granola does not belong in a salmon cake.

In all seriousness, the dish wasn’t that awful. I made the salmon cake with pureed lentils and crushed granola as the binding (other ingredients were egg, dill, garlic, scallions, salt, and melted butter). The idea was pretty good, but I used too much granola, which made the cakes too sweet and too dry.

The best part of the dish was the sauce. I pureed lentils with melted butter, lemon juice, and salt. It was quite good and the lemon was a needed touch of acid to cut the sweetness of the granola when paired with the salmon cake. My husband pulled out some dijon mustard for his, and that actually ended up being the perfect complement. I should have added some mustard (or lemon juice or some other acidic flavor) to the salmon cake itself and it would have been much less overwhelmed by the granola.

The third preparation of lentils was an afterthought. I had cooked way more lentils than I needed for the cakes and sauce, so I added lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to the left over lentils and served them on the side of the cakes, just because I had them. The flavor wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t get past the texture. I have never liked lentils for that reason.

Overall, I’d say the dish was a C+.

Although my dinner wasn’t stellar tonight, it was really fun to get back to this cooking tradition that my husband and I enjoy. It’s so fun to debrief the dish once I complete it. I don’t like to talk about what I’m planning to do before hand. That feels like cheating to me. But after it’s done, we talk through the whole process from the idea to the execution – what was good? what went wrong? etc. We talk about other ideas I had but didn’t pursue. He doesn’t care that the food I serve might be kind of bad and most certainly will be odd. I don’t care that he gives his honest opinions about what wasn’t good in the dish or what he would have done differently. I’ve learned a ton about cooking each time we’ve done this challenge. It’s a really fun family activity. The girls helped me cook a bit tonight, and I hope when they’re old enough they’ll want to do their own Chopped challenges.

 

 

Cookies

Posted on by Amy
Recently, Miss has been showing a real interest in helping me in the kitchen.  Every night she comes in and asks to help me make dinner.  I love this.

Not only does she learn some good stuff, about cooking and measuring and following a recipe (or not), but also about the joy of cooking and spending time together in the kitchen.  That’s my favorite part.

That, and the pride she shows in the finished product, hearing her family tell her how delicious her dinner is and being able to taste a yummy dish she helped create.  Her proud smile is priceless.

Tonight, before making dinner, we got decked out in our aprons and baked cookies.

The girls helped measure and stir the dry ingredients,

then the wet ingredients,

Miss painted my finger nails this afternoon 

Lass is smelling the combination of maple syrup and vanilla 

This was her first time cracking eggs.  She loved the feeling of the shell and just kept squeezing and crumbling it.  I had to pry it out of her fingers, very carefully to keep the whole shell from going into the bowl.  I couldn’t stop laughing as she just kept squeezing and squeezing it. 

Miss is a pro at the eggs now and just needs a little bit of help. 

And finally, the chocolate chips get added.  Of course, they have to be sampled first.

Lass was not pleased at having to wait her turn to stir the cookie dough once the chips were added.

Not happy at all.  Don’t worry, she didn’t draw blood.

And she did eventually get her turn.

Her face when she realized we had to bake the cookies before she could eat them:

Dessert after a yummy dinner.

Spending time in the kitchen with my girls is so fulfilling.  Admittedly, I am kind of neurotic about my kitchen, but I really do try to push myself to not worry about stuff and just let them have fun.  I want them to have great memories of cooking.  I certainly have some wonderful memories from today.

Paleo Progress

Posted on by Amy
We have been doing pretty well with our attempts to shift our eating habits to the Paleo diet.  Dinner has been easy.  We’ve eaten a Paleo friendly dinner every night for the past few weeks.  As I predicted, breakfast and lunch have been a bit more of a challenge.  In an attempt to get my girls to eat more Paleo friendly breakfasts and not spend a ton of time cooking in the mornings, I made these cheesy egg muffins using a recipe I found on a website my brother sent me.  Here’s the link to the recipe.  

I actually messed up the recipe because I doubled it, but forgot to double the amounts of any of the ingredients other than the eggs.  Duh.  They were still pretty good, but a bit dry for my taste.  I also used the same recipe (again, doubling only the eggs) to make another dozen egg muffins, but this time I used blueberries (I smashed them up a little bit when stirring them in) instead of cheese.  I thought my girls would be more likely to enjoy these, and I was right.  They were pretty good, though again, a touch dry for me.  I think next time I’ll skip the coconut flour, yogurt, and baking powder and make these more like mini frittata muffins, with just eggs, a little coconut milk, and whatever other ingredients I decide to add.

The girls did eat up the muffins, and they also enjoyed to smoothies I made to go with them.

My favorite smoothie recipe:

2 bananas
2 handfuls of blueberries
8-9 frozen peach slices
Approximately a cup of unsweetened coconut milk (I like So Delicious brand, it comes in a carton like milk, rather than in a can)
Blend.
Drink.
I half this recipe for a 3-year-old-sized smoothie.

So, we’ve had some success with breakfasts.  I also made these pancakes last weekend.  The girls loved them.  There were enough leftover for a quick breakfast on a school morning, but I think next time I’ll at least double the recipe and then have some to refrigerate and freeze.

Unfortunately, though I had plans for sausage, hard-boiled eggs and fruit, and a few other good breakfasts, Miss has been asking every morning since the pancakes have been gone for oatmeal.  I guess I just have to let the oatmeal run out and then get back into the good stuff.

Lunch has been similar.  We’ve had good days (chicken and corn today, ham and fruit the other day, etc) and not so good (PB&J, mac and cheese for a play date).  Surprisingly, I have learned that Miss really likes to eat “sandwiches” wrapped in lettuce.

This from the girl who really won’t eat a sandwich otherwise, unless the bread is stuck together by it’s contents (PB&J, grilled cheese).  If it’s not, she just takes it apart and eats each component separately, so we don’t do ham or turkey sandwiches here.  Unless they are wrapped in lettuce now.  I guess her lack of interest in bread sandwiches has turned out to be a good thing, since I don’t have to try to get her out of the habit of eating bread so much.

We’ve done well with snacks, mostly eating different types of fresh and dried fruit, and Miss has discovered a love for cashews.  We have only resorted to bunny crackers once or twice when at the store during snack time.
I even developed my own yummy recipe for Paleo friendly hash, which we had for dinner last night.
I had some huge daikon radishes that I thought would substitute nicely for the potatoes in a hash, so I chopped one of them up into pretty small cubes (about a quarter inch to half inch square), browned it up with some onion and combined it with some browned ground venison. 

And it worked!  The hash was very yummy.  My husband even said it reminded him of the yummy greasy corned beef hash breakfast he used to get at the hospital where he used to work and has craved since.  I’ll take that as a compliment, since the result of my efforts was actually not greasy at all.

Here’s the “recipe,” though I’ll warn you in advance it’s not terribly precise with measurements.
Paleo Daikon Radish Hash
One huge daikon radish, chopped into 1/4 to 1/2-inch cubes (it probably ended up being about 3-4 cups once chopped, if you’re using several smaller radishes. I included the photos above, so you could kind of see how much).
One pound ground venison or beef
One medium yellow onion, chopped
Low sodium chicken broth (about 1 cup)
2 Tbsp butter
S&P to taste
Brown your meat.  Remove it to a bowl but leave the fat behind.  The venison had very little fat, so if you are using beef you might need to drain some of this off.  I probably had about 2 Tbsp of fat left in the pan.  Add the radish and onion, along with about 1/2 tsp kosher salt.  Stir to coat with fat, add the butter, then cover and let soften.  After a bit I thought it started to look a bit dry, so I added about 1/2 cup of low-sodium chicken broth.  When the veggies start to soften, take the cover off and stir frequently until they begin to brown (you should have the pan on medium high or hotter).  It took about 20-30 minutes for things to get softened up enough and begin to brown (this might go faster if the lid of your pan has a good seal to keep in the steam, mine doesn’t).  Add the meat back into the pan along with another 1/2 cup or so of chicken broth.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the radish and onion are soft and nicely browned.  Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

It was a great warm comfort-food dinner on a super cold night.

And speaking of super cold, I have not really been all that interested in taking the girls out for the past few days because it has just been so cold here.  Today it snowed as well, so we had a stay-in-the-house-and-in-our-jammies day.  It was nice, though I did start to feel a little bit cooped up after two days of not going anywhere.  I felt the need to spice things up a bit, so I brought out the play-dough.

I’ll be honest and just say that I really hate play-dough.  It’s just messy and I find it annoying.  What can I say?  It’s not the most frequent activity in our house.  Okay, it’s a very, very infrequent activity in our house.  But, that makes my girls love it all the more!!

 This was her very special creation – A fish!  She said she made it for Grandma.

And I’ll be honest, now that we have this little plastic picnic table that I can easily bring into the kitchen for them to play on, the play-dough really wasn’t that bad.  In fact, I could see us doing it a bit more often.  Maybe.  The girls loved it, so that made it worth it.

The girls also got creative with their dry erase crayons.  These things are awesome, BTW.  A friend of mine found these for her kids and got some for us too when she learned of my lack of enthusiasm for dry erase markers with a 17-month-old.  These are so easy to wipe off most surfaces and they don’t rub off nearly as easily as markers, so if you brush against the board you don’t wind up with crayon all over yourself.  But, they do clean up relatively easily with a wet cloth.

Miss kept asking me what I wanted her to draw with her blue (her favorite color).

This is the look she gave me when I asked her to draw a square.  She said, “I already drawed a square Mama.”

Well then.

It’s supposed to warm up a bit this weekend so we’ll be venturing out some.  Stay warm!

Going Primal

Posted on by Amy
I have set a goal for myself and my family for the next few months.  In that time, I plan to transition our food consumption nearly entirely to a paleo style of eating.  All that means is that we will be eating the types of things that could have been available to our long-ago hunter-gatherer ancestors.  Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts and things made form these (i.e. coconut oil, almond flour, etc.).  No processed stuff.  We had gotten pretty good at eating only “real food” a few years ago after I read Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food.”  But over time, some old habits have returned and the desire for convenience has led me to rely on some easy foods that don’t quite fit into the “real food” ideal, and certainly not into the paleo plan.  In general, we do eat pretty well and stick mostly to relatively unprocessed foods.  But I have gotten back into eating pasta and bread and cereal, when once I had stopped buying and using these foods.  It has been easier to make quick cereal or oatmeal for my hungry girls in the morning, rather than cooking eggs and/or bacon or something similar.  My girls do love their breakfast “O’s.”

And for a long time I was pretty good about making lunches of various types of meat, cheese, and fruit or veggie.  But my kids started to get sick of lunch meat and chicken, and rather than spend the time getting more creative, I have begun to rely on PB&J or mac and cheese a few times a week.  These girls will chow some mac and cheese.

Snacks are usually fruit or yogurt, though when we run out or if I’m out somewhere with the girls, I usually rely on the always-loved bunny crackers.

Though it takes some planning and a few changes to some of the ways we have been eating lately, doing dinner in the primal way is pretty easy.  Meat and vegetables.  Done.  Cut out bread, legumes, cheese.  I can do that (cheese is hard, but manageable).  The hardest part, and what I really need to put some effort into will be breakfast, lunch, and snacks.  Bottom line is, I need to get more ideas and start using them.  I can make scrambled eggs in the morning, and Lass ate them up this morning along with some fruit, but Miss isn’t a huge egg eater and I know they will get sick of scrambled eggs and hard-boiled eggs.  I have come across some recipes for paleo-friendly pancakes (Oh how I love thee Pinterest), using almond flour or butternut squash.  So I’ll definitely try those too.  I have some plans for lunches and snacks as well.

Today I grocery shopped and almost everything I bought was a vegetable or fruit.  I got some meat (though not a lot as we have a freezer full of venison), some nuts and a few spices, etc.  I did buy some non-paleo friendly items, like a couple of boxes of mac and cheese and some peanut butter and jelly (in case of a melting-down-at-lunch-time emergency!).  I feel good about trying to feed my family in a more healthy way.  That has always been my goal, and even now I think I do a pretty good job of it.  I just want to challenge myself to do better.  The past week we have eaten only paleo-friendly dinners, at least, so I’m making progress.

Eating a paleo diet seems to have lots of benefits.  I’ve read about it, but have also seen it at work in my brother.  If you want more information about what a “paleo” diet really consists of or why it is a good thing, you can check out the website of Robb Wolf, who seems to be the paleo guru, or that of Sara Fragoso, who has lots of recipes on her blog and whose cookbook “Everyday Paleo” is great.  I’ve also found lots of good recipes by searching “paleo food” or “paleo recipes” on Pinterest (which is my newly-found crazy addiction, by the way!!).  This way of eating just makes sense to me, so we’re going for it.  Though I’m not giving up milk.  That’s just asking too much.
 

Rainy Day Ride and a Recipe

Posted on by Amy
Today was rainy.  The girls were a little stir crazy after dinner tonight, so the Daddy brought in their wagon for a little ride.

They thought this was just about the coolest thing.  Then it broke, and they had fits.  But we colored and read books and did puzzles the rest of the night, and all was well.

On a totally unrelated note, several weeks ago I posted about my last “Chopped” ingredients.  If you recall, these were Duck breast, Avocado, and Gouda cheese.  I used the ingredients to make dinner a couple of weeks ago and have forgotten to post about it.  I made Duck and Gouda Hoagies with Avocado Spread.  I didn’t write down the recipe, thinking I would post about it while it was still fresh in my memory.  I have a pretty good memory, but this one might be a little fuzzy.

My ingredients:
4 duck breasts, skin removed
1 avocado
Gouda cheese, sliced
Salt and Pepper
Flour
Vegetable oil
1 Shallot, finely chopped
Maybe one or two cloves of garlic?
About a half cup of dry white wine
Mayonnaise
Hoagie Buns
One apple (optional)

I started by slicing the duck breasts crossways into about 1/2 inch-thick pieces.  Then I dried these, sprinkled them with salt and pepper on both sides, and coated them with flour.  I heated my pan over medium high heat, added about a tablespoon of oil, and put in the first batch of duck pieces.

I browned the duck pieces on both sides, then removed to a plate and continued with the other pieces in batches (adding a bit of oil with each batch).

After I got all the duck pieces cooked and set aside, I put the shallot in the pan to soften.  I can’t remember if I added a couple of pressed cloves of garlic after the shallot was soft.  I think I did.  If so, I would have waited until the shallot was soft, then added the pressed garlic and stirred it around until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Then I added the wine and scraped all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.  I let this reduce a few minutes.  Then I put this mixture into the blender with the avocado, some mayo and some salt and pepper and tried to puree it to a really smooth texture.  I should have used my Magic Bullet, because the blender didn’t do a very good job of pureeing the small pieces of shallot.  So, the final outcome of this avocado-mayo spread was a little lumpy.  While I was working on this spread, I preheated the broiler, put some duck meat into a each of two hoagie buns, topped it with slices of gouda, and put it in the oven.  Once the cheese was melted, I pulled them out, put the avocado spread on the top of the bun, and it was done.  I should have used a lower heat to melt the cheese, because my buns ended up getting burned, but the result was still good.  I also should have toasted the buns beforehand, because the bottom bun was a bit soft relative to the super crispy top bun.  Oh well.  I was in a hurry…

On my hoagie I put slices of apple, which I thought added a crunch and sweetness that was very yummy.  My husband is not a fan of apples on sandwiches, so I left them off his.

This was a successful meal, if not the most dazzling thing I’ve created.  The best part was the way I cooked the duck.  I relied on a strategy learned partly from my dad and partly from my cooking class in coating the duck with flour.  This really helped to hold in some of the moisture and the result was very flavorful, tender, and moist duck meat.  Score.  The least successful part of the dish was the avocado spread.  It ended up a little bland, and the chunks of shallot didn’t do anything for it.  If I made this again I would probably skip the shallots and pan deglazing all together and just use the avocado, some mayo, and some fresh herbs, maybe a little lemon or lime juice to brighten the flavor of the spread and keep it smooth.  My apologies for the haphazard “recipe.”  This is the best I can recall, several weeks later.

My husband has been working nights for the past two weeks, so we have been neglecting to select the ingredients for my next challenge.  Tonight is his last night to work (hooray!!), and we finally remembered to choose the goodies.  What did I end up with?  Tuna (canned), Panko bread crumbs, and Tomato paste. I already have a good idea what I’m going to do.  If it works, I’ll try to bring you that recipe with a bit more precision.

Spaghetti Squash with Spinach Meat Sauce

Posted on by Amy
I tackled my latest Chopped ingredients the other night: Spaghetti Squash, Spinach, and Merguez Sausage.  My husband made the merguez, and it was delicious.  I was correct in my belief that the sausage would be smoky, sweet, and have a little heat.  Honestly, it was probably the best sausage I’ve ever eaten.  I was pretty excited to create a yummy dish with these more reasonable, normal ingredients.  I decided to make a sort of “Spaghetti” with Meat Sauce, of course using the squash as the spaghetti and making the sauce using spinach instead of tomatoes.  It turned out great.
Here are my little sous chefs.

Spaghetti (Squash) with Spinach Meat Sauce
1 Large spaghetti squash
2 Merguez sausages (if you can’t find this type of sausage, you could use chorizo or Italian sausage)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
Salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 11-oz pkg spinach
1/2 cup heavy cream

Pierce the squash several times with a knife.  Put it in the microwave on high for 6 minutes.  Turn it over and microwave it for another six minutes.  Let it sit for a while to continue steaming.

Remove the sausage from the casing, crumble and brown it over medium high heat.  When it’s nice and browned, remove it to a paper-towel-lined plate. Leave the drippings and browned bits of sausage stuck to the bottom in the pan.  Cover it with foil to keep it warm.

Return the pan with drippings to medium high heat.  Add the onion and about 1/2 tsp of salt to the pan and cook until onion softens, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute.  Add wine.  If there are any browned bits of sausage or onion left on the bottom of the pan, scrape them up into the sauce.  Let the wine reduce for a minute or two.  Add 2 Tbsp butter and stir until it melts.  Add spinach and stir to coat with sauce.  Cook until it is nicely wilted (photo below is only partially wilted).

While spinach is cooking, slice open squash (you’ll probably need an oven mitt), scoop out seeds, and then pull out strands of squash with a fork or spoon and set aside.

Once spinach is wilted, put the entire contents of your pan into the blender.  When pan is empty, return it to medium low heat, add the remaining two Tbsp butter, let it melt, and put the squash strands in the pan.  Add about 1/2 Tsp salt.  Stir to coat with butter and cook for several minutes.  The main purpose of this is to try to evaporate some of the water that comes out with the squash so it’s not super wet when you put it on your plate, as well as adding a bit more flavor to it.  Puree the spinach mixture.  Add cream and continue to blend until smooth.  Add S&P to taste.  Put sauce, “spaghetti” and sausage on the plate!

This dish turned out really well.  The sauce was delicious.  The only thing I might have done differently was to use one more sausage, because there wasn’t quite enough for two servings plus what we gave to the girls.

Next up: Gouda Cheese, Avocado, and Duck Breast!

Tofu Chocolate Pudding

Posted on by Amy
We went to PetSmart today to get some dog food and I happened to see some fancy “chocolate” dog treats. I got a package of them for our dog, and Miss immediately started saying, “I want some chocolate treats too!” I explained to her that the treats were only for dogs, but that wasn’t quite going to cut it with my chocolate-loving two year old. I remembered a recipe I have for chocolate pudding with tofu, so I told her we’d make that when we got home. She wasn’t happy about having to wait a while for it to chill after we got it made (though she was pacified a bit by being able to lick the leftover melted chocolate from the bowl), and it was the first thing she asked for when she woke up from her nap. It only took a few minutes to make, and it was fantastic.




I even let Lass try a little bite.
She had to think about it for a second.
She liked it.

Tofu pudding sounds kind of weird, but it really was delicious. I had never used soft tofu before (I’ve only ever used tofu once before, in fact). I ate a portion of it and so did my husband. He called it, “Ridonkulous” which means super-awesome fabulously yummy. Here’s the recipe, which I changed a little bit from a recipe in the July issue of Parenting magazine.
1 12-oz pkg shelf-stable soft silken tofu
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1/2 cup ultrafine granulated sugar (the recipe called for powdered sugar, but I didn’t have any)
2 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt
Combine all ingredients in a blender and mix until creamy. Put it into small cups or bowls and put into the fridge to let it set up. Done.
I was really happy to give Miss a snack with nutritious, protein-packed tofu in it. Of course, this pudding is also sugar-packed, so it is certainly a treat. I’ll make it again, but only once in a while, and next time I’ll probably cut the amount of sugar in half. However, I am now convinced of the wonders of this soft tofu for use in puddings, smoothies, etc. I’m thinking of all sorts of other, less sugary things I can blend with it next time, like bananas, berries, orange juice, honey, and on and on.
And speaking of tofu, my next at home “Chopped” ingredients are plantains, bacon bits, and yes, tofu. It has taken me a while to get going on this one because I’ve not been able to find plantains in a store here, so I just ordered some and will get on it when they arrive. I think I know what I’m going to do. I have to redeem myself after my pickled herring failure. I’ll let you know how it goes.

So It Turns Out I’m Not a Cooking Goddess

Posted on by Amy
Damn. I was really hoping that I would be able to transform pickled herring into something delicious. If I’m honest, I was fairly confident in the plan I had come up with for using the herring, sweet pickles, and bran cereal for this week’s home “Chopped” challenge. Unfortunately the plan was no match for pickled herring. Who knew that its taste was so strong? So persistent? So… pickley? Part of the problem was probably that I didn’t even taste the herring until I was getting ready to cook it tonight. Remember how I said I wouldn’t even be able to come up with a plan for it until I tasted it, since I had no idea what the taste and texture would be like? Well, I threw that out the window and came up with a plan, sans tasting, to make a Bran-Cereal Crusted Pickled Herring Po’ Boy with Sweet Pickle and Onion Puree. I’m going to spare you the recipe, because it’s not worth typing out, but here’s what happened:
I was so confident in my plan. I thought for sure if I rinsed off the herring to get some of the pickled flavor off, and then coated it with crushed brand cereal seasoned with some strong flavors (I used chili powder and a bit of cayenne pepper), and then pan fried it to give it a nice crispy crust it would be fabulous on a nice baguette with a caramelized sweet pickle and onion puree sauce. Unfortunately, this plan was based on my expectation that the herring would be salty and maybe a little sour, rather than sweet. Imagine my surprise when I tasted it and discovered the herring tasted like sweet-pickle fish! I had sweet-pickle fish and sweet pickles to put in one dish. This gave me pause, but I decided to push ahead with my original plan and make a few seasoning changes rather than taking the time to change things entirely (two small children fussing for dinner helped with this decision).
Like I said, I pulverized the bran cereal and added chili powder and cayenne pepper, rinsed and patted the herring dry, then coated the herring in the bran powder and put it in a hot pan with some oil to get crispy. For some reason instead of getting crispy, the bran “crust” just fell off in the pan. A few pieces did get a little crunch to them where the crust stayed on, but most just ended up kind of soggy. I’m not really sure where I went wrong here. Maybe my pan wasn’t hot enough or I had a little too much oil. Maybe I should have used some egg to dip the fish into first to get the crust to stick better? If I had any desire to try this recipe again ever, I’d try that next time. . .
The sauce ended up okay. I did the usual, sliced the onions and put them in the pan with the chopped sweet pickles to get soft and caramelize a bit. I used a little bit of wine to get all the crust from the fish off the bottom of the pan. I added a diced ancho chile to try to cut the sweetness of the pickle. Then I pureed it. It was tasty by itself, but added to the still-sweet-pickley tasting herring, it was too much. Oh yeah, and I didn’t have a chance to get a nice crusty baguette for my po’ boys so I ended up using regular hot dog buns, which I didn’t even remember to toast a little. Mush on top of mush on top of mush. . . It wasn’t pretty (served with roasted Brussels sprouts).

I did have a small victory though. My husband actually ate all of his po’ boy, as did I. It wasn’t super delicious, but it wasn’t awful either, and he did say that my pickled herring was more palatable than any other he has ever had. That’s saying something, right? Right?

Home Run

Posted on by Amy
Raisins and cherry tomatoes were my at-home-“Chopped” ingredients this week. I thought and thought for a week about what to do with them. Initially I was going to cook them with some onions and broth and spices and then puree them into a sauce for some pork tenderloin medallions. Then I realized that the skin and seeds of the tomatoes would probably not work well in a pureed sauce, so I scratched that idea. I finally settled on making a pan sauce for pork tenderloin using the raisins and then doing a side dish by caramelizing some fennel bulb (my new favorite vegetable since I learned how to cook it in my cooking class) with some raisins and then adding in the tomatoes. I wanted to use caramelized onions and raisins in a sauce (topping might be a better word than sauce, because the raisins and onion made it chunky) for the pork but add in just a bit of heat to compliment, brighten, and balance the sweetness of these ingredients. Similarly, I thought the tomatoes would balance the sweetness of the caramelized fennel and raisins in the side dish. Yeah. I hit a home run with this one. Here are both of the recipes.
Pork Tenderloin with Spicy Raisins and Onions
1 Pork Tenderloin (about 1 lb)
Salt and Pepper
1 Tbsp Vegetable oil
1 Onion, halved and sliced thinly
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup white wine
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1 Tbsp pieces
Trim fat and silvery skin from the tenderloin. Slice it into 1-inch-thick medallions. Season with S&P on both sides. Then press the tenderloins (with your hands or the flat side of a knife) until it’s about 3/4 inch thick. Heat your pan over medium high heat. Put in the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add half of the pork pieces. Sear them on one side for 2 minutes, then flip them using tongs and sear the other side for about 2 minutes more (they should be firm around the sides). Remove to plate and cover with foil. Repeat with the rest of the pork. Add the onion and cook until it starts to get soft, stirring occasionally. Add the raisins. Let the onions and raisins cook together for a while so the onions get nicely caramelized. Add wine, cayenne and paprika. If you don’t like spicy, you can reduce the amounts of these, but I would recommend still adding them, maybe at about 1/2 of the amount I used. Let the wine reduce by about half. Pour in the chicken broth and any juice from the tenderloin pieces that has accumulated on the plate and continue to simmer for a few minutes longer. Off the heat, add the butter, 1 Tbsp at a time, swirling each Tbsp piece around until it melts. Serve the sauce over the pork medallions.
Fennel with Raisins and Cherry Tomatoes
1 tsp Vegetable oil
2 Fennel bulbs, julienned
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 cup raisins, chopped
1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
Sprinkle of salt
Heat a pan over medium high heat. Add oil, then fennel. Stir fennel to coat with oil and add sugar. Stir, then add raisins. Cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally, to let the fennel soften and start to caramelize. I can’t remember how long this took, but the fennel will start to darken and get soft, but still have a little bit of bite to it. Add the tomatoes and stir them in. cook for a few more minutes to let the tomatoes start to soften, but don’t let them get too mushy. Sprinkle a little salt on, stir, serve.

I was so happy with the way these dishes turned out. Lots of flavor and great textures. The only thing I might have done differently would be to add more wine, chicken broth and butter to the pan sauce to have more of the liquid part of the sauce. It was yummy.
We have already decided to go to 3 ingredients this next week and I drew them from our spreadsheet. I do it like the old game Battleship, picking coordinates that my husband matches up the the spaces on his spreadsheet. The one way that we limit what comes up is that he makes sure at least one of the ingredients is a protein. So, next week? Sweet pickles. Bran cereal. And Pickled Herring. Yes, you read that right. Pickled Herring. My husband told me this and then said, “I hate pickled herring.” What?! This freaked me out a little, because I thought I was doomed from the start if he hates it (I’ve never had it, so I have no idea, though I can imagine, how vile it is). I was prepared to go ahead with it, but I think he felt bad for including such a horrendous ingredient on his list. He suggested we draw a different protein, and we did. The next one that came up was Canned tuna. But after thinking about it for a bit, I told him that I wanted to go ahead with the herring. That’s the challenge, right? Taking something crazy, and potentially kind of gross, and making it fabulous? *gulp* Hubby did point out that it’s actually a win-win situation for me though. If the dish I make is horrible, I can blame it on the herring. If it’s delicious, I become a cooking goddess. Score. I told him I can’t even begin to plan what I’m going to make though until I go to the store and get some herring and taste it. I have no idea what it’s texture or consistency or taste is like, so I can’t figure out what I’ll do until I know that. Wish me luck!!
In other exciting news from the weekend (and to get on to the cute pics), we got our swing set delivered on Friday! The Hubby and I started putting it together during nap time yesterday.

Naturally we couldn’t get it all done while the girls were sleeping, so they joined us outside while we continued to work on it.




We had to put in some more time this morning, though it was mostly the hubby getting it done today because the girls were awake the whole time. Finished product:
We have to trim up the landscaping and the dead stuff underneath a bit and put down some soft mulch, but the girls didn’t care about that. They went right to it after they woke from naps.






This one continues to amaze me with her climbing. My mom says she gets it from me.



And no, she didn’t actually climb all the way onto the platform by herself, but she did climb the ladder all the way to the top, until her hands reached the platform and she wasn’t sure what to do with them to keep climbing. I don’t have photos of that part of her performance, because I was hovering around her as spotter just in case. She never even faltered though!
I love this swing set and I know the girls will get so much fun out of it. According to my husband, who had to deal with most of the inevitable frustrations of putting such a contraption together, they’d better!
As a last note, please excuse the status of my header right now. I thought it was about time to change up the photos, but for some reason could not get the far left photo to fit in the header correctly. Also, some of the photos in this post have a bit of a foggy look to them. It’s because my camera lens fogged up when I took it from inside the air conditioning to the muggy outside. Sorry!

Grits with a Twist

Posted on by Amy

Yes. Today’s ingredient for our home version of “Chopped” was grits. I hate grits. In trying to figure out what the heck to do with them, I remembered that there was actually one time when I had grits and liked them. It was in Charleston when my husband ordered Shrimp and Grits. For once they weren’t, well, gritty. So, I set out to do something similar, but different, so it would be my own creation, rather than just trying to copy another dish.

With this in mind, I thought about the jambalaya recipe I sometimes make, and decided to make a southwestern version of jambalaya, with grits. Weird? Yep. Stay with me.
I planned to brown some sliced chorizo sausage, then saute some onions in the drippings from the sausage, add some garlic, coat the grits with the fat, then add the liquid to cook the grits and some other stuff to make it flavorful, and voila! Super yummy and ingenious dinner, hopefully not too gritty. Didn’t quite work out that way, but close. Here’s what I did:
Southwestern Grits

Canola Oil (about 2 tsp)
8 oz chorizo sausage, sliced about 1/4 inch thick
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 bell pepper, finely chopped
salt
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed through garlic press
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 cups low sodium chicken broth
1 can diced tomatoes
3/4 cup quick grits (I couldn’t find regular grits up here in Yankee land)
1/2 roasted poblano pepper, chopped
1 tsp minced chipotle pepper from a can of “chipotle peppers in adobo sauce” (I squeeze the excess sauce off the pepper before mincing it and make sure I don’t include any seeds to minimize the heat)
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 Tbsp minced fresh cilantro
1/2 cup sour cream
Things started out the way I had planned. I got my pan hot over medium high heat, added about a teaspoon of the canola oil, threw in the chorizo, browned it up, then removed the sausage to a paper-towel-lined plate. Added about another teaspoon of oil, threw in onions and bell peppers with about a half teaspoon of salt to get them softened and browned up a little bit (I hadn’t initially planned on using bell pepper, but decided to throw it in when I grabbed one while grocery shopping).
Everything was going according to plan up until this point. Then I became indecisive. I had planned to use a little bit of wine to deglaze the pan. But I also had planned to put the grits in with the onions and fat to get them coated with fat before adding in their cooking liquid. I couldn’t really do both of these things properly, so I made a quick decision to go ahead with the wine and deglaze the pan, then reduce it quite a bit and add in the grits at that point. In the confusion about this step, I forgot to add in my garlic before the wine, which isn’t a huge problem, but I usually like to add it before I put the liquid in. Anyway, I put the wine in, deglazed the pan, remembered to throw in my garlic, and reduced the wine about half. Then, like a dummy, I forgot that I wanted to put in the grits first, and I poured in the can of tomatoes and the chicken broth before stirring in the grits. Oh well. I stirred, brought it to a boil, lowered the heat to medium, and put the cover on the pot to cook the grits for about 5 minutes (as indicated on the package). I’ll add here that the package also said to use 3 cups of water (though I wanted to use chicken broth instead) with 3/4 cups grits, and I’m not sure why I just used 2. Maybe because I thought the little bit of wine left and the sauce from the tomatoes would make up for that last cup?? Whatever, I probably should have added a bit more broth.
Anyway, after the grits cooked for about 5 minutes and started to thicken, I took the pan off the heat, added the lime juice and cilantro and tasted it. The grits were still a bit gritty. I didn’t love the consistency of the dish, and it needed more salt. So, I added salt and threw in a half cup of sour cream to improve the consistency. What I ended up with was a good, though not great, dish for dinner. It was kind of spicy, but not too much. It had good flavor, if not wonderful texture. It still needed more salt, but I tend towards under-salting everything since Miss eats what we eat and we can always add more salt at the table.
What I would do differently:
I would probably skip the wine altogether and put the grits straight in with the onions and peppers and fat. I am so curious if that would have helped get rid of some of the grittiness.
I would also skip the bell pepper. It added a little bit of sweetness and some interesting texture, but it seemed out of place and just didn’t really work.
I would remember to put my garlic in before adding the grits. Oil, sausage, oil, onion, garlic, grits, then liquid.
I would use more chicken broth. I think too little liquid is the other contributing factor to the grits still being a little gritty. I think I’d use 2.5 cups. I’d also make it regular rather than low-sodium broth, to help with the need for more salt.
I’d wait longer before serving to let the grits absorb the liquid better. Though this wasn’t an ideal dish, my husband and I both had seconds, and I think they were less gritty after sitting a little longer.
Overall, the dish was a success I’d say. It was edible. It was even tasty. Like I said, my husband and I both had seconds, though Miss took one bite and said, “I want a beenah (banana) pweese.” It could have been better, but I’m pleased with my first attempt at cooking something that I don’t even like. I initially told my husband that I would not make the dish again, just because I don’t like grits. But I have a nearly full container of quick grits in my pantry, so I might as well try it at least one more time. I’m curious if it will be better if I do it with the changes I mentioned.
I don’t know my next ingredient yet. My husband mentioned maybe flank steak. But we’re traveling next week to the Farm and I told him I was not ready to take this show on the road yet, so he has some time to decide.