White Bean Dip with Baked Pita Chips

I think that this is a perfect snack, or meal, if you get carried away. While watching one of our many PBS channels, there was a lady making what she called "healthy after school snacks". This was definitely the most grown up of each of her items, but pretty great looking. I don't remember what spices she used, but I instantly thought of the seasonings for the dipping oil at one of our favorite restaurants, San Chez. Last summer they changed their menu to no trans fat, and introduced a wonderful oil with parsley, cumin, sea salt, black pepper, and lemon juice. It is absolutely fantastic, and I decided to use these seasonings to try to re-create the flavor.

The only downside to this is that there is no recipe. I just added olive oil, cumin, a pinch of salt and pepper, and lemon juice until it tasted right and had a nice smooth texture. There was some method to the madness, though.

Method:

1 can Canenolli beans, rinsed and drained
1 lemon
olive oil
sea salt
black pepper
cumin
parsley

-Blend beans using preferred method (I love my stick blender, much less messy than a food processor for small jobs!)
-Add the lemon juice and a bit of olive oil, mix in
-Add a pinch of salt and pepper
-Slowly add cumin and parsley until you get your preferred taste


-Turn oven onto 400 degrees
-Cut a pita into 8 pieces, brush both sides with olive oil
-Bake for 15 minutes, flipping them over after 7 minutes
-Let cool

-Serve the dip cool.

-Enjoy!

Broccoli Cheddar Soup with Corn Bread

This 4th or July weekend was a bit cold and very rainy. What better weather for comfort food! Greg had a morning and afternoon off, so we got to spend our lunch hour making food together. Greg tackled the corn bread, while I made a new Broccoli Cheddar recipe. Our old recipe, though very tasty, had 1 brick of Velveeta in it (hm....). Not surprisingly, this soup was far superior to our old recipe! We found the recipe on the Food Networks website, courtesy of Emeril. We made a few minor changes based on what we had in the apartment, but it's more or less the same recipe. The corn bread recipe is actually from my Mom. Since Greg is a very precise baker (he often weighs and sifts his dry ingredients), he followed her recipe very closely, and as always it was wonderful!

The soup is very easy to make, and is really fragrant. Our apartment smelled like it for a day or so afterwards. I suppose we could have aired the place out, but it was just so humid that we left the air on so we wouldn't melt.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup Recipe:

5 TBS butter or margarine, cut into 2 and 3 TBS
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp thyme
salt and pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 TBS flour
3 C. chicken stock
1/2 C. skim milk
8oz shredded cheddar cheese
1 16oz pkg frozen broccoli

-In a stock pot, melt 3 TBS butter or margarine, add onion, nutmeg, thyme, salt and pepper. Cook until tender. Add the garlic and stir to combine.

- Slowly add the flour and stir to coat. Add the chicken stock to this mixture, whisking constantly. Boil and bring down to a simmer for 5 minutes.

-Add the broccoli, continue simmering for about 10 minutes.

-Add the milk, let simmer for another 5 minutes. When the soup has thickened, slowly add the cheese, whisking constantly while it melts. Serve warm, enjoy!!!

Corn Bread Recipe:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

1 C. cornmeal
1 C. flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 C. milk
1/4 C. melted butter

-In a large bowl, combine all of your dry ingredients. Mix well.

-Melt your butter. Add all of your wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Combine well. Pour into a greased 8x8 baking pan, bake for 20 minutes.

-Enjoy!!!

Jambalaya

"Hey y'all, here something that I know you're just gonna love!". OK, if you couldn't guess, this used to be a Paula Deen recipe. I love Paula because she loves food, and she makes everyone else love food. Well, this is all a bit of a digression. I say the recipe "used" to be Paula's because Greg and I changed just about everything about it. We roughly got proportions from her recipe, and a general season base. Instead of shrimp we used chicken ($), instead of dried onion and garlic we used the real deal, instead of beef bullion we used chicken, and instead of long grain rice we used brown. We also added a few spices: sea salt, sage, ground mustard, & ground coriander. I think all of the changes we made to this one really make up for the lack of creativity in the last few posts. It was really fun and energizing to take our time and dissect a new recipe again. I'll have to remember that feeling next time I just don't feel cooking anything fun.

We do thank Paula for her inspiration and her proportions, because we absolutely love this dish. The flavor and texture are great, and it really transported us to the South. It's also pretty healthy (again, I think this makes up for my last few posts, this was turning into a dessert blog!) and very filling. It's easy to cook, though it takes a bit of time since there are different stages.

What I think is most fun about this recipe is that it is a combination of Creole and Cajun cooking! I didn't realize we were mixing cooking styles until I looked them up afterwards. From what I can gather, Creole jambalaya has the tomatoes and the meat is not browned. In Cajun jambalaya, the meat is browned and the "trinity" is added: onion, celery and green bell pepper. In our recipe, we cooked the onion with spices, added our (yellow) bell pepper, then added our meat, browned it, then added our tomatoes, rice and chicken stock.

Recipe:


1/2 lbs Andouille sausage
1 lbs chicken
1 C. instant brown rice
1 C. chicken stock
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1 small bell pepper, chopped
2 gloves garlic, crushed or micro planed
14 oz. diced tomatoes
8 oz. tomato sauce
2 bay leafs
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sage
3/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp dried mustard
1/4 tsp ground coriander
Sea salt and ground black pepper
Olive oil

-In a large stock pot or dutch oven, add olive oil, onion, bell pepper, garlic, sage, thyme, ground mustard, ground coriander, cayenne pepper, sea salt, black pepper and bay leafs. Stir to combine, cook until the onion is transparent but not yet caramelized, medium heat, 5-10 minutes.

-Cut the chicken and sausage into small bit size pieces. Add these to the onion mixture. Stir to combine. Turn up to medium high heat. Let the meat brown on one side.

-Add the rice, tomatoes, tomato sauce and chicken stock. Stir it all and scrap any pieces of meat of the bottom of the pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes (or as directed for your rice). Once the meat is cooked through and the rice is tender, remove from heat and let stand. Serve warm and enjoy! Also goes great with a slice of chocolate cake!

-Enjoy!!!

Chocolate Cake

In the middle of last week, someone brought a cake to Keeneland. Greg said that it looked like a chocolaty hot mess, but it didn't have any flavor and was overall a bit disappointing. Since I love to spoil him so, I decided to treat him to a cake this weekend while he had to work!

This is a pretty classic recipe. It's not creative or unique, it's especially not healthy, but it is WONDERFUL! I found this recipe on the back of a Hershey's cocoa box, along with my brownie recipe. I haven't messed around with the cake batter, but I have made different frostings. My favorite alternative is a mocha frosting, and I would love to try a dark chocolate-orange frosting. Yum!

Recipe:

Cake:
2 C. Sugar
1 3/4 C. all purpose flour
3/4 C. Cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 C. milk
1/2 C. veg oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 C. boiling water

-Mix sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, and salt.
-Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla
-Stir in boiling water
-Bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees


Frosting:
1 stick butter, melted
3/4 C. cocoa
4 C. powdered sugar
1/3 C. milk
1 tsp vanilla

- Melt the butter
- Add the rest of the ingredients, mix with a mixer. Add more powdered sugar if needed to get a desired consistency.

Let cakes cool all the way, frost and eat up! Great with a cup of milk!

-Enjoy!!!

Layered Lemon Dessert

This post is for my sister-in-law Beth. Beth is soon to be a first time Mom, and last I heard, citrus had been among her cravings.

This week at work my office moved, and to "celebrate" there was a company bbq. Dan did a great job grilling, and everyone else brought something for a potluck. I volunteered a "summery lemon dessert", but needed a recipe. I wanted something super super easy, a little creamy, and with good lemon flavor. www.allrecipes.com ended up having just tons of different versions of lemon desserts. The ones that sounded best were all layered with cream cheese and lemon pudding. Most of the recipes called for a homemade crust using a food processor. Normally I'm all for being very homemade, but I just wanted something I could throw together without turning the oven on, and that would taste great. Instead of cutting flour with butter, pressing and baking, I bought ginger snap cookies, broke them into pieces, and made a "crust". A "first layer" may be more appropriate since they didn't end up covering the whole bottom, and got slightly incorporated into the second layer. The coolness of the rest of the dessert really cuts the heat of the ginger (good for those who don't like ginger that well), but the ginger and lemon make a wonderful flavor combination. I also wanted to really taste the lemon flavor, so I added the juice and zest of a lemon to "zest" things up a bit. I think it worked really well, and Greg agrees. There is so much sugar in here that the extra lemon doesn't make the dessert tart at all, but just really "bright".

Greg got to have a serving or two when I got home from work. This is one of those desserts that you can easily just take a forkful of, walk away, and come back again in 30 minutes. It seems pretty light, which is great, and it is cool, which is wonderful. We'll be making this again because it is so delicious, very easy, and can serve at least 20 people.

Recipe

2 1/2 C. of crushed/broken ginger snap cookies
1 package of lemon pudding
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1 tub of cool whip
1 lemon
1 C. powdered sugar
1 1/2 C. milk

-Spread ginger snap pieces on the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan
-In a mixer, mix the cream cheese, 1 C. of cool whip, powdered sugar, and juice from the lemon until smooth.
-Pour the cream cheese mixture on top of the ginger snaps, gently spreading across the pan.
-Mix the milk and pudding, pour over the cream cheese mixture and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
-Spread the remaining cool whip on top of the set pudding.
-Cover the top of the cool whip with the lemon zest.
-Cover and serve cold.

-Enjoy!!!

Gazpacho

This past week has been super hot. Each day has been in the mid to high 80's or low 90's, and only getting down to the 70's at night. It's hard for me to want to eat and cook (or anything else) when it is that hot. I know it will only stay this way or get worse, so I figured we needed to start acclimating, and that gazpacho would help!

My Mom used to make gazpacho in the end of the summer when we realized that there were way to many tomatoes and cucumbers for us to put on salads or sandwiches. I remember taking a large yogurt container full of this cool raw soup to football practice/training in August, and that it was always super refreshing.

Since we don't have a garden, Greg and I ventured out to the local farmers market this morning to gather our bounty. I figured that there would be a noticeable difference between store bought tomatoes and the farmers market ones, but I had no idea just how much better they would be! There was so much meat on these baseball and larger sized tom's that you could have easily eaten one like an apple! They were just wonderful!

Staying to form, I browsed as many gazpacho recipes that I could find, and saw that there are really only three main ingredients: tomato, garlic, and bread. Yes, bread; I don't remember my Mom putting any in hers, but every other recipe calls for bread! Other common ingredients included: cucumber, bell pepper, cumin and paprika. Celery, jicama, and jalapeños were listed on several recipes, but I don't like that the celery flavor overpowers other more subtle flavors, so I opted to not use any. My end result is really not so much a true recipe, but a "technique" as my Mom would say.

The end result was pretty good. I like that the bread adds texture and substance to the soup, without changing any flavors. Next time I would put more cucumber and less Worcester sauce, but try to keep everything else about the same.

Recipe:

2 pieces of bread
5lbs of tomatoes
1 large cucumber
1 red bell pepper
3 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 C. of tomato juice (I'm sure V- 8 would also work fine!)
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
2 tsp Worcester sauce (I recommend using less, though)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

- Chop up half of the tomatoes, cucumber, and bell pepper. Keep skins, juices and seeds. Place into a large pot. Thinly slice the garlic and add to the vegetables. Tear apart both pieces of bread and add to the vegetables. Add the tomato juice, paprika, cumin, Worcester sauce, salt and black pepper. Blend this mix until it has formed a smooth puree.

-Finely chop the remaining vegetables. Add to the puree. Chill and serve cold. Stirring a spoon full of sour cream through the soup is also a delicious garnish.

-Enjoy!!!

Cinnamon Rolls

Yummy!!! Cinnamon rolls are one of my favorite treats. They are good for breakfast, a mid day snack, a late night snack, any time really. I'm always surprised how infrequently I make or eat them, since I love them so much!

I guess the best and worst part of the recipe for these is that it makes 2 dozen rolls, and you can't really divide the recipe in half! So, we are either stuck eating 24 rolls and end up feeling awful, or I have to wait until I can bring these somewhere. This week at work provided the perfect opportunity to bring a treat in. Believe it or not, I actually bribed our maintenance crew to do their job. We are in the beginning of our busy season, and I said that if they stayed on schedule over the weekend I would bring in cinnamon rolls. They were ahead of schedule when I got back on Monday. They were a huge hit, and yes, they are still ahead of schedule. I was able to save a few for Greg, and he did snag one fresh from the oven during game 5 of the Stanley Cup. What a lucky guy.

Greg actually acquired this recipe from one of his old Kentwood co-workers, Rena. She would bake them every so often and bring them into morning briefing. I was surprised that she gave Greg the full recipe; a photo copy of the original! We've kept the base recipe the same, and just messed with the filling and glaze. We love these rolls because they are sweet and buttery, and stay soft and moist!

We've talked about making a chocolate version, with mini chocolate chips and a chocolate glaze, and possibly using a hazelnut drink powder instead of cinnamon. I think it would be fun to make a chocolate dough, too. I also found out the hard way that they bake much faster in a clear pan.

Recipe
Cinnamon Rolls:
2 packets of active dry yeast
1/2 C. warm water (~110 degrees)
8 C. flour
1 3.5 oz package of vanilla pudding mix
2 C. warm milk (~110 degrees)
1/2 C. Sugar
1/2 C. vegetable oil

Filling:
1/4 C. Melted butter
White Sugar
Cinnamon

Glaze:
2 C. powdered sugar
2-4 TBS milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 TBS melted butter

Disolve yeast in warm water. Add flour, instant pudding mix, warm milk, eggs, sugar, vegetable oil and salt. Mix well. Place in a grease bowl, turn to coat and let rise in a warm place until double (about an hour). Punch dough down, roll onto a floured surface. Divide the dough in half, make each half into a log and roll out into a 12x8 inch rectangle.

Melt the 1/4 C. butter. Brush on each rectangle. Now for the filling; sprinkle sugar on the melted butter so that it dissolves. Add enough so that it looks grainy. Cover with cinnamon. Rub the cinnamon and sugar together (yes, your hands get dirty).

Roll each rectangle into a log. Slice each log into 12 rolls, placing them into two greased 9x13 pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about another hour.

Once they have risen again, bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from oven, cool on cooling racks. Start making the glaze.

Mix all glaze ingredients together. Once the rolls are warm to the touch and the pan is not hot, cover the rolls with the glaze.

Enjoy!!!!