Beef Pot pie

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that I often buy a package of refrigerated pie crusts for something (ie making a tart, etc), and only use one and then I'm stuck with one left in the package.  Or I'll make dough from scratch, and end up with one left over afterward.  That happened yet again this week, so I decided to see what I could throw together from that crust and a few other things I had around the house

Beef Pot Pie

1 pie crust
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium white onion, chopped
1 pound beef stew meat (or chuck steak cut into bite-sized pieces)
2 medium red potatoes, cubed
2 medium carrots, sliced
1 beef bouillon cube
1 roma tomato, chopped
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 packet gravy mix


1.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Spread pie crust into a cool 9" pie pan and set aside
2.  Put the olive oil in a pan over medium heat.  Add stew meat and onions, and cook until browned, stirring occasionally.  Salt and pepper to taste
3.  Put potatoes, carrots, and bouillon in small sauce pan with enough water to cover by 1" and bring to a boil.  Cook until tender
4.  When stew meat and onions are cooked, put them in crust, spreading to cover the bottom.
5.  Put the tomato and celery over the meat and onion mixture, then drain potatoes and carrots and add to the pie pan.  Sprinkle salt and pepper over all.
6.  In the pan that you used to cook the meat, prepare the gravy mix as directed.  Spread 1/2 cup of gravy over the pie and put in oven.
7.  Cook for approximately 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown
8.  Enjoy!

Feel free to use this as inspiration for other types of pot pies, or even just as a more basic prompting to try to adapt something like a leftover pie crust, which some people might throw away, into the base (literally), for a great meal!

A Pleasant Surprise

If someone invites you to a bar in a college town, you're likely going to expect burgers, nachos, wings, etc.  If so, The Headkeeper in Greensburg, PA will come as an absolute shock.  The first thing that most guys will notice will be the wall of beer.  To quote our bartender, it's an "adult candy store."  But don't waste your time even thinking about beer until after you peruse the menu.  How often do you see words like balsamic reduction or truffle oil on a bar menu, especially in a town that is home to four different colleges and a variety of trade schools?

My friends and I were absolutely thrilled when we saw the menu, and we had some trouble deciding what to order, so we decided to each get something different and let each other try them.  The first thing we had was prosciutto-wrapped roast asparagus with a balsamic reduction.  While the asparagus was properly cooked, and the prosciutto was nice and crispy, the key here was the tips of the asparagus.  They had crisped up during the cooking and tasted of roast pumpkin seeds.  The effect, especially with a bit of the balsamic reduction, was delicious.

Next up was a five-spice pork tenderloin with chipotle beurre-blanc.   This item was suggested by our bartender.  I haven't used five-spice in a couple of years, and never would have paired it with chipotle, but man did it work.  The pork was succulent, the spices just right, and it was all balanced well, no one flavor overpowering the rest.

Last up was my favorite, which also happened to be my first exposure to truffle oil.  Petite filet mignon, medium rare, with crisp straw fries drizzled with truffle oil.  The presentation was great, as you can see.  These straw fries weren't just on the plate as a side, but were part of the presentation and taste of the dish.  Unlike I often see, the fries were actually crisp and flavorful.  The steak itself was seasoned and cooked excellently, and the truffle oil just capped it all off.

All in all, these are better dishes than I've gotten in expensive and upscale restaurants for a lot more money.  Good recipes, well executed, and great presentation.  All with the little touches that separate a chef from a cook.  Definitely stop by the Headkeeper if you're ever in Greensburg.

Burrito Casserole

I know that a lot of my readers are mothers who are always looking for a recipe that is simple but tasty and healthy, to allow them time to chase their kids and still know that they're feeding them right.  Another whole group of you are single working people who are interested in dishes that can be made on the weekend and then frozen in single servings to warm up later in the week.  This one works for both of you.  Like most casseroles, it's not the most photogenic thing in the world though, so I couldn't get a picture I liked.  You'll just have to imagine it.  Until you make it yourself, of course.

Burrito Casserole 

1 cup white rice
1 can tomato soup
1 pound ground beef (or other cooked meat)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tsp mexican oregano
1 tsp cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced
1 package taco seasoning
1 can sweet corn
1 can Rotel tomatoes with diced chiles
1 can of black beans, drained

Preheat oven to 350F

1.  Wash the rice and put in 9x13 casserole dish. Add fluid from tomatoes to the tomato soup, and if necessary, add enough liquid from the corn to make 2 cups, add then add this all to the casserole dish.

2.  Brown the ground beef with garlic, oregano, cilantro and onions.  Then cook the meat in the taco seasoning according to package instructions.  Add to casserole dish.

3.  Add the tomatoes, corn and beans to casserole dish, and mix everything together. Top with shredded cheese.

4.  Cover with foil, and cook for one hour at 350. Remove foil, and cook for another 15 minutes, or until fluid is absorbed and rice is tender.

5.  Enjoy! 

Note:  If you use something besides ground beef (cooked round steak works GREAT), then you can of course skip the browning step.  Just put the meat, seasonings, garlic and onion in saucepan with the taco seasoning and follow the instructions from the taco seasoning packet.

A Foodie Review

Every time I've been in Pittsburgh, my foodie friends have asked whether or not I've been by Primanti Brothers yet.  For those who don't watch the Food Network or the Travel Channel, Primanti Brothers is a famous restaurant here in Pittsburgh.  They are known for their sandwiches, which are huge concoctions with everything on them, completed by a handful of french fries. 

Heading up to the door, you can hear music playing.  They had the radio tuned to a classic rock station, which is always a plus in my book.  Heading inside, you see a sandwich counter on the right for carryout orders, a bar area on left, and then regular restaurant seating past a wall behind the bar.  In general, other than the sandwich counter, it looked just like any neighborhood sports bar. 

The hostess came over and sat me, and then a minute or two later my waitress came by to get my order.  Being the person I am, I had already looked at their menu online and knew what I was going to get.  I ordered the Pitts-Burgher Cheese Steak sandwich, which is labeled on menu as their #2 best seller and has the top and most prominent position in the sandwich section of the menu (I forgot to ask what the #1 was).  This consists of a sirloin beef patty, provolone cheese, fries, cole slaw, and tomatoes on fresh italian bread. On my waitress' suggestion, I also added onions to the sandwich. 

As you would expect in a sports bar, there were several big screen TVs around the room showing various games.  As a nod to their position as a food destination, there was also one TV that was tuned to Bizarre Foods on Travel Channel.  I didn't have much time to watch TV though, as my order came out surprisingly quickly.

As you can see from the picture, this is one massive sandwich.   You might think that this was done just for the sake of notoriety, or in interest of being different.  I certainly thought so when I first saw these sandwiches on television, but I was pleasantly surprised.  The combination of the saltiness and starch from the fries, with the sour/sweet vinegar cole slaw and the sweetness of the tomatoes made for a great compliment to the grilled meat.  The meat itself was a rather typical grilled sirloin patty, but had just the right amount of salt and tasted great.  The tang and sweetness of the onions completed it all perfectly. 

Now, would I eat at Primanti brothers every day?  Certainly not.  This single sandwich was a huge meal.  Do I recommend that everyone try it at least once?  Absolutely.  Besides just being a well known food icon, this was a very good, very reasonably priced experience.  I highly recommend that anyone coming through the Pittsburgh area stop at one of the Primanti's locations and try one of their sandwiches.

Rabbit-Mushroom Risotto

Rabbit-Mushroom Risotto

4 cups chicken stock
4 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp butter
1 large onion, medium dice
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 cups rice
2 cups champagne
1.5 tsp fresh rosemary, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced
1/2 cup shredded parmesan
1 cup cooked rabbit (or chicken), cut into bite size pieces
salt
pepper


1. Heat the stock in an electric teapot set on low.
2. In a large pan, heat 2tbsp of olive oil and the first 2tbsp of butter. Add onion and mushrooms and cook for fifteen minutes on medium-low, taking care not to let the onion to brown.
3. Turn heat up to high and add rice. Cook 2-3 minutes, stirring continuously. The rice should be coated with the oil/butter mixture during this process. 
4. Carefully add champagne, rosemary and thyme. Cook until champagne is almost all absorbed, stirring continuously
5. Turn heat down to medium-low and add 1/2 cup of stock and the salt.  Continue stirring the rice as it cooks, as this helps release the starch, which makes the risotto creamy.
6. Continue adding the stock 1/2 cup at a time, stirring continuously until the stock is absorbed.  Do not add the next batch of stock until previous addition has been absorbed
7.  Once all stock has been added, and you taste rice to ensure that it's properly cooked, remove from heat.  Stir in remaining butter, rabbit, and parmesan, as well as salt and pepper to taste.  Cover and let sit for 2-3 minutes.
8.  Enjoy!

Something New - A Review

My lovely wife has been telling me for a while now that I should start doing restaurant reviews as part of the blog.  We don't eat out often, so I kept putting it off, but I'm finally giving in and admitting that it is a good idea.  I figured the most appropriate place to start was with a review of the restaurant where we had our wedding reception just recently. 

Salutos Italian Restaurant- Gurnee

This is one of those places I'd driven past countless times, but never actually been in the restaurant.  I asked my sister to find a place for our dinner/reception after the wedding, and she chose Salutos.  I'm glad she did, as it was a great experience.

As soon as we walked in, we had several people congratulate us on our wedding. The staff seemed genuinely happy and friendly, and that always is a nice way to start an experience at a new restaurant.  The menu itself is pretty typical of what you would expect in an Italian restaurant.  While not cheap, everything was reasonably priced. The wine options were nice and reasonable too.

As our group began to order, a couple of people chose the Steak Salutos.  This dish uses their special sauce, which is not to everyone's taste, so our waitress brought out samples for everyone at the table to try.  This allowed the people who had ordered it to decide if they wanted to change their order (I couldn't tell what all was in the sauce, but I really enjoyed it personally, though I ordered something else).  No one changed their order though.

I ordered the Shrimp Alla Frankie.  This dish has shrimp (tail-on), artichokes and olives in olive oil over angel hair pasta.  The sauce had a nice bit of zip, and the pasta, while not perfectly al dente, was not soggy.  Portions were definitely on the larger side.  We also had brought along our wedding cake, and our waitress was more than happy to put the cake in the fridge while we ate our meal, and then bring it out and cut and serve for us.

Overall, we were very happy with the whole experience.  At the end of a long week, and the most important night of our life, it would have been easy for things to go badly at the restaurant and have things end on a sour note.  Everything went great though, and Salutos is definitely on our list of restaurants we will continue to go to.

Red Wine Brownies

Red wine and chocolate are a classic combination, so I've decided to combine the two.  You can't taste the wine distinctly, but it adds a savory component to the results (I've made these brownies with both wine and water, and I can tell the difference)

Red Wine Brownies
3/4 c. cocoa
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2/3 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. boiling red wine
1 c. sugar
1 c. light brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 1/4 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt

1.  Preheat oven to 350F
2.  Stir cocoa and soda together.
3.  Blend in oil and add wine. Stir until mixture thickens.
4.  Add sugar and eggs, stir until smooth.
5.  Add flour, vanilla and salt. Blend completely.
6.  Pour into lightly greased 13"x9" pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

Note:  For a nice change on this recipe, try adding 1/4 cup of flavored gelatin (cherry or raspberry work great) in with the cocoa at the start of the recipe.

Meat in a can?

A couple of months ago I was working on a Spam recipe for a contest.  Every time I mentioned it on Facebook, I always got a ton of comments/responses.  Outside of Hawaii, most people think of Spam and just cringe.  I figured I'd share this recipe to show that you can get great food out of that famous can.  To make it a little safer for the rest of us, I used cooked ham (country ham, in this case), instead of Spam.  If you want the original effect though, replace the ham with a 12 oz can of low sodium Spam, cubed.  One advantage of the Spam, or most processed ham products, in this recipe is that they will carmelize a bit during the sauteeing, which really helps improve their taste.

Ham and Asparagus in Sparkling Cider Sauce

1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1 medium onion, large dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1.5 cups cooked ham, cubed
1 cup sparkling cider
18 stalks asparagus, cut into 1 inch pieces

1.  Put oil in pan over medium low.    Add onions, garlic and seasonings and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally (don't let the onions burn!).
2.  Add the ham and turn the heat up to medium.  Cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring regularly.
3.  Remove pan from heat and carefully add the cider.  The cider will splatter a bit when it hits the hot oil, so be careful.
4.  Put pan back on burner and turn heat to high.  Add asparagus and cook for 4-6 minutes until asparagus is cooked, but still firm.
5.  Serve!  This dish is great with brown rice, or served over an end of crusty bread, as I did in the picture (though you can't see it under the meat and asparagus)

Defending a dirty word

I bet you want to know what word we're talking about here.  Sorry if it disappoints, but the word in question is buffet.  In modern parlance, buffet has become a dirty word.  I'm sure your first thoughts on hearing it were cheap, low quality food, all you can eat options encouraging gluttony and laziness.  I'd like to present some arguments that support the institution of the buffet though.  Try to have an open mind and bear with me on this one.

Buffets can offer some definite advantages, and not just the ones that you think of.  Sure, you get more choices and options when you're at a buffet.  This advantage in itself can mean a night without arguments if you're dining with kids or whiny adults.  :)  There are other advantages you should consider too, though.

Freshness:  When you order a regular entree at a restaurant, you hope that it was freshly prepared, but don't know.  When you're eating at a buffet, you can look at a tray, see it's almost empty, and assume it has been out there for a while.  Then you can choose to pass it by until they bring out a fresh pan (you might have to be quick if it's a really popular item, though).  You can also see freshness on things like wilted lettuce in salad bars, congealed sauces on dishes, etc.

Quality:  One of my pet peeves is ordering food that is fried, but instead of having a nice crisp bite, I get something soggy.  Buffets let me avoid that.  It is easy to tell with a quick tap of the spoon or tongs whether the food is still crispy, or if it has gotten (or always was) soggy.  Vegetables are the same way.  Before putting them on my plate, I can test to see whether they are still crisp/firm, or if they've been overcooked.

Spontaneous Choices:  How often have you seen or smelled something someone else was eating and instantly wanted some?  Pictures and descriptions on a menu just aren't the same thing.  At a buffet, you have the extra input of sight of the actual food, not a picture, and the smell to go with it. You might suddenly realize that while you thought you wanted chicken, the only thing that would really hit the spot is that delicious smelling mongolian beef you see on the other side of the buffet.

Now, are buffets perfect?  Of course not.  But try to consider the previous points next time you're in a buffet, and realize that there are some real advantages to this way of selling food.  As to the amount of food?  Just use some self restraint.  I'm bad about that myself at times, but you have no one to blame but yourself.  Find the best items they have and enjoy quality, not quantity, even if it is a buffet. 

Quick Pork and Beans

We're coming to the end of barbecue season, and one good standby is always pork and beans.  I'm not a big fan of pork and beans from a can though.  They tend to be too salty, often use mediocre hot dogs, and not enough of them, and the sauce is never my favorite.  This is a simple solution to all of those problems

Easy Pork and Beans
2 16 oz cans baked beans
1 1/2 cup chopped, cooked ham
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
1/2 tbsp chili powder

1.  Put all the ingredients in a medium sauce pan over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2.  Serve!

Didn't I promise you easy?  :)  Of course, if you use homemade baked beans or barbecue sauce, the results will be even better.

Asian Mayo

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of Alton Brown.  So of course when I needed a mayo recipe, I started with Alton's recipe and worked from there. 

Asian Mayo
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp garlic powder
2 pinches sugar
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/3 cup sesame oil
2/3 cup vegetable oil
 
1.  In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolk, salt, sugar, ginger and garlic.
2.  Combine the vinegar and lemon juice in a separate bowl.  Add half of this to the yolk mixture and whisk it thoroughly.
3.  Combine the oils in another bowl.
4.  While whisking the yolk and acid mixture briskly,  start adding the oil a few drops at a time.  The mixture will begin to change color and consistency.  When this happens, you can start adding the oil a little faster  Once you've added about half of the oil, add the rest of the vinegar and lemon juice mixture.
5.  Keep whisking until all the oil has blended in.  Let sit on counter for 1-2 hours, and then refrigerate. 

Notes:  This recipe was written for straight sesame oil.  If you use a blended oil, you'll want to change to ratio of sesame to vegetable oil to 50:50, due to the lighter flavor of the blended sesame oil. 
Using whisk attachment on your mixer will make this whole process easier.  Some people may consider it cheating, but it definitely makes things easier on your arm. 
There is some risk of salmonella, of course, due to the use of a raw egg yolk.  Always buy fresh eggs and keep them properly refrigerated to help reduce this possibility. 

OK, now that we have some mayo, we need something to do with it.  I used mine on a simple grilled tuna sandwich.

Grilled Tuna with Asian Mayo
4 ahi tuna steaks
1 cup white wine
1 tsp honey
4 slices of cheese
2 tbsp asian mayo
8 slices bread

1.  Combine white wine and honey, stirring well to dissolve the honey (if needed, you can warm up the wine a bit to help dissolve the honey).
2.  Pour white wine mixture over tuna in a container and put in the fridge to marinate for 3 hours.  If need be, turn the tuna over halfway through to make sure both sides get marinated (or you can just use a zip-top bag)
3.  Bring up the heat on your grill to high.  Cook tuna for 3-4 minutes on each side.
4.  Use 1/2 tbsp of mayo on each sandwich as you put them together.
5.  Enjoy!

Shrimp Fajitas

Why yes, I'm still here.  Give this one a try for a nice tasty meal.

Shrimp Fajitas
Marinade Ingredients
3/4 cup seafood stock
1/2 tsp ancho chile powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 lb frozen shrimp, thawed
juice from one lime

1 green pepper, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
1/2 tsp ancho
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

1 package burrito tortillas

1.  Put shrimp and marinade ingredients in the fridge for 15 minutes in a covered container (if you leave it in there too long, the lime juice can "cook" the shrimp and turn your fajitas into ceviche).  Remove the shrimp from the fridge and drain, saving the marinade.
2.  Put 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat.  Add onion, pepper and spices into pan and cook for 3 minutes.
3.  Carefully add 1/2 cup seafood stock from the marinade to pan (you may want to remove pan from heat while you do this), and then turn heat up to medium-high.  Cook for 6 minutes.
4.   Add the shrimp to the pan and cook for another 3-5 minutes, until cooked (do not overcook).
5.  Serve out into tortillas and enjoy!

Day 53

Did you guys forget about this wine?  Since it's been sitting on my dining room table, I couldn't forget about it.  That also led to my house being nicknamed "The Winery."  Clearly, I'm running this process a bit longer than the 30 days it claims on the package, but that only helps.  I normally actually take 90-120 days from time I start a wine kit until the time I get it into the bottle.  That changes the process a bit too, but I will detail that in a future series of posts.

The fermentation has now completed, and the wine is starting to clear up a bit, as you can see.  But if we leave the clearing to happen naturally, it will take a long time.  To speed things up, most wine kits come with some type of clearing agents.  Clearing, or fining, is the step we are on now.  There are three causes of cloudiness that this step will deal with; those are positively charged particles, negatively charged particles, and gas (specifically, dissolved carbon dioxide).

If you remember my very first post on winemaking, you will remember Kieselsol and Chitosan.  These fining agents will bond with the positive (or negative) particles, and create heavier molecules that more easily fall to the bottom of the carboy, instead of continuing to float.  Because Kieseolsol has a negative charge, and chitosan has a positive charge, they allow you to clear out both kinds of particles.  That being said, make sure you pay attention to the directions in the kit.  You will NOT be adding these to the wine at the same time, or they'll just bond to each other, and leave the cloudiness behind.  Generally, you will add the Kieselsol first, which will take care of the positively charged particles (as the song says, opposites attract), and then after thirty minutes or so, you will add the Chitosan.  There's nothing complicated about these items.  Just add them in the proper order, stir well, and make sure you wait between them as directed.

Now let's talk about dissolved gas.  As we discussed previously, yeast releases carbon dioxide as part of the fermentation process.  Most of this just escapes from the top of the carboy as bubbles.  It can be soothing to watch (and listen!) to the bubbles of carbon dioxide escaping from the airlock (if you've forgotten, this is the S-shaped plastic piece filled with water that allows carbon dioxide to escape, but keeps air out).  Some of this carbon dioxide will stay dissolved in the wine though.  This may sound a little strange, but you've seen this before when you opened a bottle of soda.  After the cap is removed, you see some bubbles rising to the top of the soda, but not a lot.  Shake that same bottle, and the release of bubbles will generally make a mess that someone is going to have to clean up.  Those bubbles being released after the shaking are carbon dioxide that was dissolved in the soda.  Shaking allowed the particles of gas to join together into large enough bubbles to escape from the hold of the soda.

You're obviously not going to pick up and shake a 6 gallon carboy of wine, as it weighs more than 50 pounds.  Also, if you just shook the wine as it was right now, you would expose it to too much oxygen, which will damage the taste of the wine.  These issues will actually be dealt with in reverse order.  To start, you will be transferring this wine from the carboy it is currently in, which has sediment at the bottom from the fermentation.  Obviously, you want to leave this behind, as no one wants a cloudy wine in their glass.  Once the wine has been transferred to the new carboy, you will add potassium metabisulfite.  This powder helps protect the wine from oxidation during storage, and during the degassing (removing of the dissolved carbon dioxide).  This process, at least when you first start making wine, is accomplished very simply, by just stirring the snot out of the wine.  This stirring process, like shaking up a bottle of soda, allows the dissolved carbon dioxide to gather into larger bubbles and escape.  Be careful when you're doing this, as it can explode out the top of the carboy, just like the soda.  This makes a big mess, but more importantly, wastes wine, which is a travesty!  The simplest tool for degassing is just a big plastic spoon or paddle, but you can progressively get more complex, including power drill attachments or vacuum setups.  Those are objects for another day though.

Your wine has now entered the final stages of clearing, and is almost ready to bottle.  If you're trying this at home, please make sure you follow the directions from your kit.  Every kit works a bit differently, and I have reorganized some of the steps you will take here to make it easier to read and group together like topics.  Any questions, of course, are always welcome.  We'll have wine in the bottle soon, then it's just a matter of seeing how patient you can be before you open the first bottle and pour!

Tex-Mex Lasagna

As everyone knows by now, I love lasagna.  It is one of my favorite foods, and I love the versatility of it.  Change your meat, change your sauce, change your cheese, even change the noodles, and you can change the whole meal.  So when I came across a recipe contest that wanted a recipe using tortillas, lasagna was one of the first things that came to mind.  A bit of thought, some input from Jen, and this is what I came up with:

Tex Mex Lasagna
1 lb lean ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper
1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
juice from 1 lime
1 tsp cilantro
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ancho chile powder


15 oz requison cheese
1/2 tsp mexican oregano, crumbled
2 oz shredded queso quesadilla cheese
1 large egg

1.  Preheat oven to 350F
2.  Brown ground beef.  Drain fat.  Add onion, tomatoes, garlic, salt, pepper, jalapeno, lime juice, cilantro, cumin and ancho chile powder.  Simmer for 15 minutes
3.  In a large bowl, combine requison, 2 oz of the queso quesadilla, egg and oregano.  Set aside
4.  Trim three sides of tortillas to fit in a 9x13 pan.  Fourth side does not need to be trimmed, as overlap in the middle is fine.
5.  Spray 9x13 pan with non-stick cooking spray.
6.  Put down two tortillas to cover pan.  Cover this with 1/3 of the meat and sauce mixture.
7.  Put down two more tortillas.  Spread 1/2 of the cheese mixture on top of these tortillas.
8.  Put down another two tortillas, and repeat, alternating layers, until you end up with last layer of the meat and sauce mixture on top.  Over this, sprinkle the remaining 6 oz of queso quesadilla.  Cover with foil, and put in oven on center rack for 40 minutes. 
9.  After 40 minutes, remove foil, and cook for another 5 minutes.
10.  Enjoy!

Pork Chops with Cranberry Mushroom sauce

1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 thick cut boneless pork chops
1 cup cranberry juice
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sage
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp sea salt



1.  Put vegetable oil in a pan, preferably stainless steel, over medium heat.  Once pan is hot, put in pork chops.  Cook chops 3-4 minutes per side, until cooked.  Remove pork chops from pan and put on plate covered with foil to rest.
2.  Set heat to low, then CAREFULLY add cranberry juice and scrape bottom of pan to deglaze.
3.  Set heat back to medium and add rest of ingredients.  Cook for ten minutes or so, stirring regularly, until most of liquid is gone.
4.  Enjoy!

This recipe goes great with wild rice

A Cookie for a Contest

 As a lot of you know, I've been submitting recipes to various contests lately.  I've only done two or three so far, and no success yet, but it's kind of fun.  With this particular recipe, I had already planned on a banana nut cookie, since I love banana nut bread, but then came across a contest for recipes using California walnuts just a couple of days before I planned on trying this recipe out.  So it worked out perfectly.

These cookies are inspired by banana nut bread, of course, but the recipe itself is based on my mom's persimmon cookies recipe.

Banana Walnut Cookies

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
1 cup chopped walnuts

1.  Preheat oven to 350F
2.  Mix together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.  Set aside
3.  Cream together shortening and sugars.
4.  Add eggs and bananas.  Mix
5.  Add dry ingredients to bowl approximately 1C at a time, mixing each until combined.  Do this with all of the dry ingredients.
6.  Add the walnuts, mix until thoroughly combined.
7.  Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet.  Bake 11-13 minutes, until golden brown.
8.  Enjoy!

Rabbit on a Roll

Prosciutto-wrapped Rabbit Roulade

1 large onion, finely chopped3/4 cup mushroom caps, chopped
1 large carrot, shredded
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup raisins or zante currants, chopped
1/2 cup red wine
1 tsp fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh thyme
4oz package of prosciutto, thinly sliced
2 tbsp dijon mustard
2-3 lb rabbit, boned
Cooking twine

1.  Combine onion, mushroom, carrot, garlic, raisins, wine, rosemary and thyme in a bowl to make the filling.  Put in fridge to marinate for 30 minutes.
2.  Preheat oven to 325F
3.  Lay out the prosciutto on a piece of wax paper, overlapping each slice 1/4-1/2".  Slices should be laid vertically, and line up horizontally, so that final layout is longer than it is tall.  After you have laid out all the prosciutto, spread the mustard over it, taking care not to pull up the pieces of proscuitto.
4.  Tenderize the rabbit, flattening to approximately 1/4" thick.  Lay pieces flat (trimming if necessary), to cover the prosciutto.  The mustard will act as a type of glue to hold these two layers together.
5.  Spread the filling over the rabbit.  Carefully begin rolling the roulade. The easiest way to get it started is to actually pick up the edge of the wax paper, and begin rolling the dish about one inch.  Then peel the wax paper back, and do this again, repeating until the whole dish is rolled up.
6.  Use cooking twine to tie the roulade firmly and put in a roasting pan.  Cover with foil.
7.  Cook for 1-2 hours, until center reaches 165F.  Cooking time varies based on density of the filling, how tightly the roulade is rolled, and how thick your roulade is.
8.  Slice into 1/2" thick slices and serve over brown rice.
9.  Enjoy!

Note:  This recipe can also be made with chicken (though you really should try it with rabbit :) ).  Try it with some boneless chicken thighs though in place of the rabbit, and you will still have a great dish.

Cooking with Leftovers, again

So if you're  like me, you'll often have food leftover after a big meal.  Maybe some grilled chicken, an extra steak, etc.  One of my favorite uses for leftover meat (as long as it's not really strongly seasoned in some way that would keep it from tasting good in this recipe), is to make a stir fry.  Since leftovers also tend to mean I just cooked, and probably want a break from that, I use mostly canned and frozen ingredients on this one to keep it quick and easy. 

Leftover Stir Fry

1 tbsp sesame oil
1 cup cooked meat
15 oz can baby corn, including liquid
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

1 1/2 cups frozen mixed vegetables
1 cup frozen brocolli
1/2 cup frozen soybeans
8 oz can sliced water chestnuts, drained

1.  Put sesame oil in wok or large pan set to medium-low.
2.  Cut meat into bite size chunks and put into pan.  Stir for 2-3 minutes until hot
3.  Carefully pour contents of can of corn into pan (the liquid will sizzle when it contacts the hot oil, but this avoids having to add stock, which I normally use in my stir fry.  Again, keeping things simple and quick)
4.  Add rest of ingredients to pan, turn heat up to medium.  Continue to stir for 8-12 minutes, or until everything is hot through.
5.  Serve with slotted spoon to leave behind any remaining liquid. 

Obviously, this is one of those recipes that you make up as you go along, and use whatever you have in the kitchen that day.  If you have a frozen stir fry blend, that will obviously work and will be more traditional than mixed vegetables.  If you have some mushrooms or green onions around, chop them up and throw them in.  The combinations are endless, as are the flavors, so whip some up and have fun with it.  I generally will serve this over rice or soba noodles. 

The End of the Blueberries

It seems that blueberry season is ending in my house.  To be exact, I just used up the last of the large batch of blueberries that I had bought a few weeks ago.  To finish it up, I figured I would share two final blueberry recipes here, a breakfast and another blueberry cookie.  Now, these blueberry cookies are based on a recipe I got in email from Dominicks (for those who don't live in Chicago area, this is a grocery chain), so I don't really claim it as my own, but man are they good.

Blueberry French Toast

4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon blueberry schnapps
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
10 to 12 slices of bread
2 cups blueberries
Powdered sugar
Maple Syrup


1.  Whisk together eggs, milk, schnapps, vanilla, cinnamon and salt.  Put in a shallow dish or pie plate
2.  Put a pan over medium heat and lightly cover with butter or margarine
3.  Soak each bread with egg mix, flipping over halfway through.  How long this will take depends on the kind of bread.  Don't prepare all of the bread ahead of time.  Only do as many slices as you can cook at one time, and then start the next slices while the first ones are cooking, and so on.
4.  Cook the french toast until golden brown, then flip it and cook the other side. 
5.  Put french toast on plate with approximately 1/8cup of blueberries per slice.  Dust with powdered sugar and pour maple syrup to taste.
6.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Covered Blueberry Cookies


1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup blueberries (frozen)
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 tablespoons blueberry schnapps

1.  Preheat oven to 350F
2.  Cream together butter and sugar.  Add egg and vanilla and mix well.
3.  Add flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda and baking powder.  Mix until combined.
4.  Roll dough into 1" balls.  Put on greased baking sheet and push thumb into dough.
5.  In a saucepan, melt condensed milk and chocolate chips, then add blueberry schnapps.
6.  Put a blueberry in the thumbprint, and pour 1 tsp of melted chocolate mix over the blueberry.  More schnapps can be added as you go if needed to keep the mix a spreadable consistency.
7.  Bake for 10-12 minutes
8.  Enjoy!

Dumplings, Empanadas, What's in a name?

Empanadas, dumplings, potstickers, I love them all. Any time you take a tasty filling, wrap it in pastry and cook it, count me in. Seafood is always a winner when I'm choosing a meal too, so I put the two together. If you want a slightly lighter and fluffier version of this recipe, replace the pie crust with puff pastry dough.

Seafood Empanadas

* 1 pound salmon fillets
* 2 cups water
* 2 cups dry white wine
* 2 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
* 1 carrot, peeled and minced
* 1 leek, well rinsed, dried, and minced
* 1 ripe tomato, seeded and chopped
* 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
* 1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
* 1 egg white
* 1 Tablespoon Pernod or 1 tsp anise extract
* 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
* 1/2 cup heavy or whipping cream
* Pinch cayenne pepper
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* 4 ounces fresh bay scallops, halved
* 2 packages refrigerated pie crust (they're over by the refrigerated biscuits, generally in dairy section)
* 1/2 cup sweet and sour sauce
* 2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Preparation:
Poach the salmon fillets in the wine, and water in a large skillet just until cooked through. Cool and flake the salmon meat, removing all the bones. Refrigerate covered until cold.

Melt the butter in the skillet over medium-high heat. Add the carrots and leeks and saute for 7 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes more. Remove from heat and stir in the dill and bread crumbs. Process the salmon in a food processor fitted with a steel blade until smooth. Add the egg whites and process until blended. Add the Pernod, lemon juice, and cream and process until very smooth. Season with the tarragon, nutmeg, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove to a large mixing bowl.

Add the vegetable mixture and the halved bay scallops to the salmon mixture and stir to combine.

Preheat oven to 400F and spray baking sheet or glass baking dish with cooking spray.

Dust a clean, dry surface with flour. Roll out the pie crust dough to 15" with rolling pin. Cut into 3-4" rounds. Repeated with 3 remaining crusts, then roll out the scraps and continue until you are out of dough. Arrange 1 round on a clean, flat surface. Lightly brush the edges of crust with water. Place 1 heaping teaspoon of filling  in the center of the round. Fold the dough over the filling, pressing the edges with a fork to seal. Repeat with the remaining rounds and seafood mixture. Arrange the dumplings on the baking sheet. Mix sweet and sour sauce with red wine vinegar, and brush on dumplings. Cook for 19 minutes.

Enjoy! I served mine with a bit more of the sweet and sour sauce, they tasted great!

Tequila Lime Chicken Sandwich

So when I bought this house I had a housewarming party.  As part of the drinks for that night, I bought a bottle of tequila.  Two years later, there's still most of the bottle left, so I decided to come up with a recipe to use some of it.  Tequila and lime of course always go together, and I had them both, so I figured I would just make a simple, tasty, sandwich.

Tequila Lime Chicken Sandwich
1/3 cup tequila
2 boneless chicken breasts
Juice from one lime
2 slices colby-jack cheese
Fresh Spinach
1 tbsp mayo
1/4 tsp ancho chile powder
1/4 tsp dry cilantro
4 slices whole wheat bread (or other bread of your choice)
Fine sea salt

1.  Put chicken, tequila and lime juice in a bag and set in fridge to marinate for 4-8 hours
2.  Heat grill (gas or charcoal, whatever you prefer)
3.  Remove chicken from bag, sprinkle lightly with salt on both sides, and put on grill
4.  Prepare the mayo by mixing mayo, cilantro and chile powder, set aside
5.  When chicken is finished cooking, assemble the ingredients.  Bread, mayo, a layer of fresh spinach leaves (stems removed), chicken, cheese, bread.
6.  Enjoy!

I don't particularly like tequila to drink, but it sure makes for a great sandwich!

Christmas in July

Growing up, my Mom always made the best Christmas cookies and treats. My personal favorite was always her peppermint bark. She would make white chocolate covered pretzels, and then use the remaining chocolate and crushed candy canes to make peppermint bark. The combination of those two flavors is AMAZING. Every year she had a challenge trying to keep me away from these long enough to get them in the containers to go to people. I decided that I would take these same flavors and make a cookie. Besides tasting great, this can be a fun recipe to make with kids or grandkids. Girls will enjoy the pink color of the cookies, and boys can enjoy smashing the candy canes.  You'll want to keep an eye on them to make sure there are no smashed fingers, though

Peppermint White Chocolate Cookies


1 C butter
2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 C buttermilk
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 C flour
1 1/3 C crushed peppermint candy (candy canes, starlight mints, whatever)
12oz white baking chocolate

Preheat oven to 375F

1. Beat butter until fluffy. Add sugar, beat until mixed. Add eggs and buttermilk, beat until smooth. Add vanilla, baking soda, beat until mixed. Mix in flour 1C or so at a time until combined. Use spatula to fold in crushed candy.

2. Drop onto cookie sheets in approximately 1.5 tbsp size

3. Cook 10-12 minutes

4. Put on rack to cool.

5. Melt white chocolate per package instructions (I used the microwave instructions). Dip the top of each cookie into the chocolate.

You can now find these cookies on our Etsy store!

Date Night

This is a relatively simple meal that I've always had guests find impressive.  Hence, it makes a great meal to whip up for date night.  Unless of course you're dating someone who doesn't eat seafood.  You'll do better to make a good steak then.  :)

This recipe serves two

Pan Seared Scallops with Asparagus Tips in White Wine Sauce
6-8 large sea scallops, rinsed and patted dry (nothing ruins a meal like sand in your teeth)
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup seafood stock
1 cup asparagus tips
2 tbsp rice flour
1/2 tsp thyme
6 oz penne pasta
Salt and pepper

1.  Prepare pasta per package instructions, toss in olive oil, set aside
2.  Put butter and olive oil in pan over medium heat.
3.  Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper and put in hot pan to sear, 3-4 minutes per side, until a nice caramel color.
4.  Remove scallops from pan and put on a plate, covered with foil to retain heat.
5.  Add white wine to pan and deglaze.  Then add seafood stock and turn heat up to medium high
6.  Stir 1 tbsp of rice flour into sauce, and add asparagus tips and thyme.  Cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.
7.  Stir in rest of rice flour and cook until sauce reaches a creamy consistency and asparagus are cooked as desired (I prefer them slightly firm).
8.  Put pasta on plate, followed by sauce, then scallops on top.  Normally you might want the sauce over everything, but scallops have such a wonderful sweet taste alone, it would be a shame to cover them up.
9.  Enjoy!

Note:  If you don't have rice flour (I didn't), and would rather not buy a whole bag for a single recipe, you have two easy options.  One is to use regular flour, but the flavor won't be the same.  The second is to make your own.  I ground the rice in my coffee grinder, 2/3 brown rice and 1/3 white.  The leftover is in the freezer to use another time.

Is that Cider? Winemaking, Day 9

 So 8 days have gone past, and it's time to check on our wine again.  This is one is a quick, simple step.  All we're doing today is transferring the wine from the plastic fermenting bucket into a glass carboy.  If that's a new word for you (I know it was for me when I started making wine), a carboy is really just a big glass bottle with a rubber stopper.  In this rubber stopper you put an airlock, which is a simple S shaped piece of plastic that you fill with water or vodka.  The airlock lets out the carbon dioxide from the fermenting wine, but doesn't let oxygen get back in and ruin the wine.  Since I'm sure some people are wondering, the vodka is to keep things sanitized.  If bugs do get into airlock (attracted to smell of the wine), the vodka will make sure nothing contaminates the wine.  They won't actually get in the wine though, don't worry. 

You'll also notice that the wine looks REALLY cloudy right now.  Don't worry about that, that's just the bubbles and the suspended yeast working away, turning your juice into wine. 

White Chocolate Blueberry Cookies

I figured I should preface this recipe with a couple of notes, and credit where needed.  First, many of you will think this recipe seems somewhat familiar, and you're right.  This recipe is very similar to most chocolate chip cookie recipes out there, including the traditional Tollhouse cookies.  I looked at a bunch of recipes to try to get ideas, see if there was anything unique I could introduce, but hey, there's a reason 90% of chocolate chip cookies use a recipe close to this one.  It creates a tasty, soft cookie.  

Second, some of you may wonder why I call for frozen blueberries when we are in the middle of blueberry season.  To begin with, I wanted to create a recipe that could be made any time of year, so I knew I wanted to use frozen or canned blueberries (My first failed experiment used canned blueberries, though that's not why it failed).  But I was watching an episode of "Good Eats" on blueberries this week, and Alton Brown pointed out that if the blueberries were frozen when you added them to the dough, you have less problems with the berries bursting.  It struck me as very good advice, so I took it.  I actually did buy fresh blueberries though.  These were spread flat on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer.  After they froze, I put them in another container and have already used them to make these cookies and some cinnamon blueberry pancakes. 

White Chocolate Blueberry Cookies

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup frozen blueberries

1.  Preheat oven to 375F
2.  Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl, set aside
3.  Cream the sugars into the butter.  Add eggs and vanilla extract, mix until combined.
4.  Add dry ingredients 1 cup at a time, mixing each addition in fully.  If you add them all at once, you'll get flour all over the kitchen.
5.  Stir in white chocolate chips and blueberries
6.  Drop these on cookie sheet in 1-1 1/2" balls, making sure to leave room around them as they will spread.  Bake for 9-11 minutes, then remove and allow to cool
7.  Enjoy

Rice for Dessert?

So I think most people have probably seen one particular celebrity chef who insists that contestants on his show know how to make risotto. To be fair, he's probably right, risotto really is a dish that any chef should know how to make. The only problem is that  until a few months ago I'd never made it. For my first batch, I found a couple of recipes online, took the best parts of each ingredient list, and started cooking. I was happy with how it came out, but I felt like I needed more practice (and I probably still do). A few days later I got out the arborio rice again and decided to make up my own recipe. Using the ingredients I had, I came up with this dessert recipe.

Apple Cinnamon Dessert Risotto

3/4 Cup champagne
3 Cups apple juice
3/4 Cup Arborio (or other medium white grain) rice
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1/2 medium apple, chopped
1/4 cup walnut chips
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Place the apple juice in a teapot and bring to a simmer.

In a medium saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter. Add the Arborio rice and stir to coat in the butter. Continue toasting the rice, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes. Add the Champagne and simmer until the liquid has almost evaporated, about 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of the simmering juice and stir until almost completely absorbed, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking the rice, adding the juice 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and allowing each addition of juice to absorb before adding the next, until the rice is tender but still firm to the bite and the mixture is creamy, about 20 minutes total. Remove from the heat. Gently stir in the apple, remaining butter, walnuts, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Spoon into serving dishes. Serve with a champagne/apple juice cocktail made of equal parts of each (chilled, of course)

Winemaking, Day 1

There are many ways to make wine, and it really can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make it. Over the next few weeks, I am going to walk you through the basics of winemaking from a kit. For this set of posts, I will be following the kit directions pretty much to the letter. That means that in approximately 28 days, wine will be in bottles, and 30 days later, I will open the first bottle. As you follow along over the new couple of weeks, I hope that you will see how easy this is, and that some of you will consider trying this yourself.

Day 1

Today, you will need a brewing bucket of 6.5 gallons or so, a large spoon/stirring rod, and your wine kit. If possible, you should also have a hydrometer. This is used to measure the specific gravity of the wine must, or liquid. This tells you the amount of sugar in the liquid, which in turn can be used to figure out the potential alcohol level of the wine. But more simply, measuring the specific gravity is also just a way to track the progress of the fermentation. Regardless, this isn't a necessity, just a nicety.

Start out by reading through all of the instructions. Not just those for day 1, but for the whole process. We will be following the instructions from the kit I'm using, which is a Semillon-Chardonnay kit from Amazon.com.

Step 1, put 2 qts of warm water in your fermenting bucket. Slowly add the bentonite, stirring thoroughly, until it is fully blended with no lumps.

Step 2, pour the contents of the juice bag into the fermenter. Refill the bag with 2 cups of hot water, close, and shake. Pour this into the fermenter too. Repeat a second time, and you should have gotten all the juice concentrate out of the bag and into your fermenting bucket.

Step 3, fill the bucket the rest of the way up to the 6 gallon mark with room temperature water. This is the time that you should take a reading with your hydrometer if you have one. Follow the instructions that came with it.

Step 4, Carefully pour the yeast over the top, and then cover the bucket. This is what you see in the picture. Now, just cover the fermenter and let the yeast do its work.

We'll be back in a week to take the next steps. 

Pita Pizza, a Guest Spot

Every once in a while I come across a recipe which is so good that I have to add it to my regular repertoire. I do give credit when I steal a recipe though, and this is one of those cases. A few months ago my girlfriend was making dinner and came up with this recipe. It tasted great and was extremely easy to make, so I've made it a ton of times since then. So, thanks to Jen, here's a great snack or meal that you can make at home. For reference on the picture, one on the left is the original recipe, one on the right is made with shredded parmesan.

Flatbread/Pita Pizza

2 pieces of pita bread
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp fresh basil, finely chopped
1 roma tomato, sliced thin
2 oz crumbled feta

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Drizzle 3/4 tbsp or so of olive oil on each piece of pita bread
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Err on generous side with the salt.
4. Sprinkle fresh basil over the pizza
5. Slice the tomato very thin, and spread tomato pieces out to cover the pita bread. Do not layer the tomatoes.
6. Spread crumbled feta over the tomatoes.
7. Put in oven for 5-10 minutes, or until cheese starts to glisten
8. Remove and enjoy

Notes: You can use other cheeses if you want. A quality, aged, parmesan works great, as does your regular cheap parmesan from a green bottle. Dried basil can be used in place of fresh. Other flatbread, naan, etc, can be used in place of pita.


Want to see something in particular here on Joel's Food Blog? Looking for a recipe for a dish but don't want to take the chance on an untested recipe? Send me an email to Joel at joelsfoodblog.com and let me know and I may post the recipe for you in a future edition of Joel's Food.

Lasagne takes a Mediterranean Vacation

One of my favorite foods through the years has always been lasagna. The layers of meat, cheese and pasta all blend together into something amazing. My friend Scott gave me a recipe for Moroccan meatballs and sauce last year that was great. One day while working on something else and thinking idly of food, I wondered how that recipe would work as the basis for a lasagna. A bit of research and experimentation later, and this what I ended up with. Tastes pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. If you want something a bit more authentic than the mozzarella, find a middle eastern grocery store and get some Akawi cheese instead.

Middle Eastern Lasagna

8 oz mozzarella cheese
3 oz crumbled feta cheese
1 large egg
1 tsp chopped parsley
10.5 oz package goat cheese
1 lbs ground lamb

Sauce ingredients
2 Tbsp ground coriander
2 Tbsp Ground cumin
1 tsp curry powder
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
¾ tsp ground mustard
¾ tsp paprika
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp chili powder
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp parsley, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 29 oz can tomato puree

1. Preheat oven to 375F

2. Sauté shallots and garlic in olive oil. Add lamb to pan, and sauté until brown. Add the rest of the sauce ingredients to pan, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Combine goat cheese, egg, 1 tsp parsley and 2 oz mozzarella cheese. Set aside

4. Spray bottom of 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Put down 3 sheets of phyllo dough. On top of dough, put 1/3 of the meat and sauce mixture. Put 3 sheets of phyllo dough over the meat sauce. Dot this with 1/2 of the goat cheese mixture. Do not try to spread the cheese mixture, as it will just tear the phyllo dough. Repeat these layers until you run out of dough, meat sauce and cheese. On the top layer of phyllo dough, spread the crumbled feta, and then cover all with the remaining 6oz of mozzarella cheese

5. Cover pan with foil, and put in middle rack for 35 minutes

6. Remove foil and turn oven down to 300F. Cook another ten minutes, until edges are golden brown.

7. Remove from oven. Let lasagna sit for ten minutes before cutting.

8. Enjoy!

Readers, meet Winemaking

As I've mentioned previously, I enjoy making, and of course drinking, wine at home. I’m sure many of you are having images of crates full of grapes, maybe stomping them to get the juice, etc. The wonders of modern technology make things so much easier. To prove this, will introduce you to the wine kit.

A wine kit gives you all the ingredients you need to create 6 gallons (30 bottles), of nice drinkable wine at home. There are varying levels of quality in the kits, but if you follow the included instructions, pretty much anyone can make a decent wine at home, often in less than a month. With some relatively simple tweaks, and a bit more time, you can make it even better, at little or no additional cost.

The ingredients you will find in any particular wine kit will vary by manufacturer and product line, but the basics will generally include, but not be limited to, the following:

Juice concentrate: This of course is the actual grape juice that becomes the wine. This package (generally a double walled plastic bag with large plastic cap), will contain anywhere from 5 to 23 liters of grape juice. This juice will already have been balanced as to acidity, tannin, sugar content, etc, to make a quality batch of wine. It will also tend to conform to levels in previous batches of that wine kit made by the manufacturer in the past. This lets you make a consistent product, and if you find a wine you like one year, it will (hopefully), taste the same if you buy another kit of the same wine the next year.

Yeast: This of course is the workhorse of the whole process. Yeast is a living organism that consumes sugar, and releases the ethanol that changes that grape juice into tasty wine. This process, which is known as fermentation, also releases carbon dioxide, which is helpful in beers, but can be annoying in winemaking.

Potassium Metabisulfite: One of the primary enemies of wine is oxidation. An oxidized wine will taste rather flat or stale. This is why wine is sealed under a cork or screw cap when it is in the bottle. While the wine is being made though, sulfites protect the wine from oxidation. Potassium metabisulfite also works with Potassium sorbate, which is next up on the list.

Potassium sorbate: When wine is fermenting, the yeast releases carbon dioxide. If this is still happening after you cork it, you will eventually end up with a wine explosion. This is because the mounting carbon dioxide will raise the pressure in the bottle until the cork bursts out. Not exactly something you want to happen, especially with a red wine. Potassium sorbate, along with potassium metabisulfite, helps combat this problem. It doesn’t stop fermentation, per se, as so many people think. What it does do though is keep the yeast from reproducing. So once the current yeast in your wine dies off, the fermentation will stop.

Clearing Agents: As the name would indicate, clearing agents help clear the wine. The fermentation process, and even the grape juice itself, contains various impurities, contents, etc, that keep you from having that wonderful clear glass of wine that you are used to. While they may not affect the actual taste of the wine, they aren’t attractive, and can put you off a glass of wine.

Bentonite: The first clearing agent you will generally see and use is bentonite. This is generally added at the start of fermentation, before anything else. This is because the yeast will cling to the bentonite and drop out of suspension faster. The alcohol will still be formed, but the yeast won’t hang out floating in the wine and leaving it hazy. When you open the package, your first thought will probably be that it looks like kitty litter. This idea isn’t far off. Like many kitty litters, bentonite is a type of clay. Don’t worry though; your wine won’t taste like a litter box.

Kieselsol and Chitosan: Chitosan is a shellfish derivative, so be aware of this if you have any type of allergy. Impurities that make your wine cloudy will have either a positive or negative charge. These clearing agents each bond with impurities of a specific charge, and pull it out of suspension. You do want to make sure that you pay attention to the instructions as to which order and how to add them. If you get them reversed, the two clearing agents will just bond to each other, rather than the impurities in the wine, and then you’ll still have a cloudy wine.

Optional items: These are some other things you might find in your wine kit

Grape pack or raisins: More expensive red wine kits will often include these. Grape packs or raisins help add more body and flavor to the wine. This of course goes along with fact that most red wines are fermented on the grape skins, at least for a short time.

Oak: Many wine kits will have oak with them. This may be in the form of sawdust (yes, this looks exactly like you’d expect), chips, cubes, or spirals. These helps impart an oaky flavor to the wine, and can also absorb some of the sharper flavors. Not all kits will have them, or can even benefit from them, so don’t add oak to a kit that doesn’t have it unless you’re sure it will be an improvement.

Elderberries or elderflowers: These add to the flavor, and help round out a wine’s flavor profile

Starting next week, I will chronicle making a batch of wine from start to finish. If you'd like some more information before that though, check out the following sites:

Tim's Wine Blog Tim is the Technical Manager for Winexpert, one of the largest wine kit manufacturers in the world, and the maker of the kits I first started out with. A very interesting character and one of the nicest and most knowledgeable people on the Internet when it comes to wine kits.

Winepress.us Wine Forums These forums are a great resource for research and asking questions. A great group, they're always happy to answer questions and help someone out with an issue.

Tuna Noodle Casserole, Improved

Most of us at one time or another have had the ubiquitous tuna noodle casserole. Some spaghetti or macaroni noodles, a can of tuna, a can of cream of mushroom soup, some green peas, maybe cheese melted over the top. The very idea brings up memories of camp chow lines or school cafeterias. Does it have to be this way though? Why can't we take the idea of tuna noodle casserole, and turn it into a gourmet dish? After asking myself this, I felt that I wanted to take the challenge, and here's what I came up with.

Seared Ahi Tuna and a Mushroom Pea Cream Sauce

4 Ahi Tuna Steaks
1 cup soy sauce
2/3 cup rice vinegar
5 tbsp butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups half and half
1 cup seafood stock
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 cup sliced shiitake mushroom caps
3/4 cup petite green peas, frozen
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
8 oz angel hair pasta
1 1/2 tbsp sesame oil

1. Mix soy sauce and rice vinegar, and put over the tuna in a covered container. Put in refrigerator to marinate for 20 minutes
2. Cook pasta al dente, following directions on package. Drain, toss with sesame oil
3. Melt butter over medium-low heat. Add flour, stir until smooth. Turn heat up to medium, and cook for 5-6 minutes, until sauce reaches a nice tan color.
4. In another pan, or electric teapot, mix half and half and seafood stock. Heat, but do not allow to boil
5. Slowly add half and half/stock mixture to sauce, 1/2Cup at a time. Whisk each addition until smooth, then add another 1/2 cup.
6. Add onion, garlic, mushrooms, peas and seasonings and turn heat to high. Cook for ten minutes, stirring continuously. Remove from heat and cover.
7. Grill tuna to order. I prefer the tuna just seared, about 3 minutes on each side for my grill.
8. Put pasta on plate, pour some sauce over it. Then add sliced tuna and some more sauce. Enjoy

Serves 4

Orange Cinnamon Cookies

One of my favorite snacks long ago was orange cinnamon rolls. A few months back, while trying to come up with ideas for a new cookie recipe, I remembered how good these tasted. I figured that I could make cookies that have the same taste, but weren't as messy to eat. A bit of dabbling later, and you can now share the wonderful results of this strange thought process

Orange Cinnamon Cookies

1 C butter
2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 C buttermilk
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp orange extract
4 C flour
1 C cinnamon chips

4 tbsp butter
2 C powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3-6 tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 375F

1. Beat butter until fluffy. Add sugar, beat until mixed. Add eggs and buttermilk, beat until smooth. Add vanilla, orange extract, baking soda, beat until mixed. Mix in flour 1C or so at a time until combined. Use spatula to fold in cinnamon chips.

2. Drop onto cookie sheets in approximately 1.5 tbsp size

3. Cook 10-12 minutes

4. Put on rack to cool.

5. Melt butter in saucepan over medium-low heat. Add vanilla extract and powdered sugar, stir until smooth. Add water 1 tbsp at a time until reaches desired consistency. Use a pastry brush to spread icing on each cookie.

Enjoy!!

You can now find these cookies on our Etsy store!

Paging Doctor Sauce

Most people I know of scoff at the idea of making their own pasta sauce. At most, it seems they'll be willing to open a jar of sauce, put it in a pan, and warm it up. Some won't even warm it up, and just eat the sauce cold.

Rather than just accept this state of affairs, I thought I'd lay out a simple method to greatly improve the taste of that store-bought sauce, with very little work required. This works with your cheap cans or your most expensive jar sauces, or anything in between.

1 cup red wine (I used some of my homemade Barolo. More on winemaking in a post soon)
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1 jar pasta sauce of your choice
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Put wine, onion, garlic, basil, thyme and oregano in a saucepan on medium-low heat and reduce*, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't burn to pan.
2. Add olive oil, sauce and parmesan cheese and turn heat down to low. Simmer for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. If you want meat sauce, this is the time to add the meat too, to let all the flavors meld together.

For best meal, cook your pasta to not quite Al dente (which means still somewhat firm, but not hard), and drain water. Then stir the pasta into the sauce and remove pan from heat. It will complete the cooking process from heat of the sauce, avoiding the problem of overcooked pasta.

* This means to slowly simmer it and let the liquid evaporate off, leaving just the tastiest parts of that red wine soaked into your onion and spices.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies

Everyone loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and peanut butter cookies have always been a favorite of mine. So why not combine the two?

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
Jam or Jelly of your choice

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Mix first six ingredients
3. Add rest of ingredients (except for the jelly/jam)
4. Mix well
5. Roll into balls and press thumb into center
6. Fill thumbprint depression with jam or jelly
7. Bake 8-10 minutes on ungreased cookie sheet

Note: Sprinkle top of cookies with sugar to add a bit of extra sparkle and sweetness

You can now buy these cookies from our shop on Etsy!

Bourbon Banana Cake Filling

I love bananas. They’re tasty, they’re useful when you get muscle cramps, and they come with their own wrapper so you can easily throw them in your bag as you leave the house and have a snack later. But I rarely see any recipes for them. Banana bread, bananas foster, banana splits, one or two others, but not a lot to choose from. Last week I decided I would add one of my own to the list:

Bourbon Banana Cake Filling

4 Bananas, smashed
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
1/3 cup bourbon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp vanilla extract
Pinch sea salt
2 tsp corn starch (to thicken)

Put all ingredients but cornstarch in a saucepan on low heat. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until combined into a nice caramel color. Add cornstarch and continue to simmer and stir until thickened.

Makes enough filling for a full sheet layer cake. Adjust amounts as needed

Note: If bananas are particularly sweet/ripe, reduce sugar to 3/4 cup.

I used this as filling in a devils food layer cake and it was great. You could also use this as an ice cream topping. Vanilla ice cream, bourbon banana topping, and hot fudge would be heavenly. Or skip the hot fudge and sprinkle walnuts on top for a banana nut sundae.

Cooking with Leftovers

Everyone ends up with leftovers at one time or another; whether they’re something you cooked yourself or something you bring home from a dinner out. The simple answer to leftovers of course is to just warm them up again the next day. The problem is that then you’re eating the same thing, likely somewhat the worse for wear. Not exactly culinary excellence, no matter how good the food was the first time around. Plus it’s a quick path to boredom. Instead, I thought I would give some examples of ways you can use the leftovers as building blocks for something new.

Last Tuesday I decided I wanted something simple, and didn’t want either of us to have to cook. So I decided to use a jar of homemade canned turkey breast (canning will be discussed in a future article, don’t worry), and make up some tacos. At the end of the night we had leftovers, including shredded Mexican cheese, chopped lettuce, seasoned taco meat, and a roma tomato. A couple of days later, I was looking for something to do with these leftovers, and a story about a restaurant in Cleveland inspired me to make up grilled cheese. I gave it a try, and just LOVED the results. So here’s how I went about it.

Butter two pieces of bread, and put them on a skillet on medium-low heat. While this is browning, thinly slice tomato, enough slices to cover the sandwich. Warm up the leftover taco meat in microwave or in pan, depending on how much is left. After one side of bread is done, butter other side and flip. Spread shredded cheese on each piece of bread, and cover the pan (this allows the cheese to melt fast enough that the bread doesn’t burn). Once the cheese is melted and other side of bread is cooked, remove from heat. Put one piece of bread on plate as a foundation. Put a single layer of tomatoes, then a layer of the reheated taco meat. Follow these with a layer of chopped lettuce, and then put the last piece of bread, with cheese, on top. Enjoy this immediately. The alternating hot and cool layers, and the combination of flavors, are great, and still very indicative of a taco.

Another night last week, dinner was a beautiful medium-rare London broil, rice cooked in homemade lamb stock, and sweet corn. Clearly, a lot fancier dinner (also, clearly not something I’m responsible for, though was I thrilled to eat it). The next night I was cooking for myself and saw these leftovers, so I stuck with something simple, and decided to make burritos. First I opened a jar of seasoned burrito beans. Then I warmed up the beans, steak, corn and rice in microwave. I thinly sliced the steak, and then put all of these in a large flour tortilla. To this, I added some of the chopped lettuce and cheese leftover from the previous meal. Burrito was folded up (though they did come out somewhat square), and put in non-stick pan, just long enough on each side to brown them up a bit and add a little crispiness. Maybe ten minutes all told, and I had a great, filling dinner.

I suspect this is a subject that I will revisit more than once. I hope that even if you don’t ever try these particular recipes, that the ideas here helped kick you out of a rut, and remind you that leftovers don’t have to just be used as-is, but instead can be building blocks for something completely new.

Do you measure up?

While the kids in our family (actually all adults) were preparing Mother’s day dinner, one of my sisters asked me whether or not I felt that it was important to measure ingredients when cooking. She and her boyfriend disagreed on this, and she wanted me to weigh in on the subject. As I have rather strong opinions on this question, I figured I would discuss it here.

To answer the question, it depends on whether we’re talking about cooking or baking. When I’m baking, particularly breads, I am VERY careful with my measuring. For me, I look at baking as a science and cooking as an art. In baking I have a set goal, and I purchase and measure the ingredients to match the formula to make that product. If I’m not careful measuring properly, breads end up too dense, cakes don’t end up right, etc.

Cooking on the other hand is much more flexible. When cooking, I’m more likely to start with an ingredient, and then create a recipe from it. The recipe often changes every time I make it, depending on what I have around the kitchen. Take my rabbit stew. The basic ingredients are rabbit, bacon, red wine, rosemary, stock, garlic and onions. How much red wine? Enough to cover the meat, or until the bottle is empty if I’m using a bottle of wine that was previously opened. How much rabbit? Rabbit isn’t something I can just go out to grocery store and say I’d like three pounds of rabbit breast. So the amount ends up being however much meat is on the rabbit I was able to find. Rosemary? I chop and add until the stew tastes and smells right.

This makes my cooking more vital, and lets my personality shine through, which I enjoy. I love how dishes are almost alive, and will taste different every time I make them. A small change, like using 2/3 cup of wine instead of ¾ cup, or a large change, like substituting chicken for rabbit, it all just adds to the adventure that is food.

I’m sure some of you are wondering why I include measurements in my recipes if they’re not important. This is just so you have a starting point. In all my cooking, measuring or not, I had some starting point to give me an idea. Whether this was a recipe, past experience, or even just adding an ingredient until the flavor is what I want. You might feel that you don’t have the necessary experience to cook this way, but that’s something you can only build with time. Don’t be afraid of failures. I’ve had more than my share, and they make fun stories to tell later.

As to adding an ingredient until it tastes right, this idea might intimidate some of you even more. But if you think about it, this is the same thing you’ve done all your life when you were adding salt or pepper to your dinner. All I’m suggesting here is that you try it with other ingredients too.

To measure or not has no single answer. You have to discover what style of cooking works for you and follow that route. But don’t let fear keep you from experimenting with your measures, or rather, without them. The worst thing that will happen is that you might have to remake a dish. On the other hand, you might improve the dish and fall in love with the new results. Either way, I can guarantee that you’ll feel a lot more ownership of a plate of food where you made your own decisions, rather than blindly following a recipe to the letter. So put that fear aside, and the measuring cups along with it.

Two for Tuesday

Yes, that’s a tired old slogan, and I don’t know that I’ll make it a habit, but I figured that I’d share two recipes with you guys today.

We’ll start with a side dish, and an easy one at that, Red Wine New Potatoes. This particular recipe I started using about a month ago because I had new potatoes in kitchen and I wanted to use the grill. Some random browsing of the internet gave me ideas to work with, and I took my first stab at cooking in a foil packet. It worked well, so I adopted it as one of my regular ways of making potatoes. Normally I make this recipe with Italian style seasonings (basil, oregano, etc), but my girlfriend suggested I try some fresh rosemary. So I picked up rosemary at the store, paired it with tarragon I already had, and the results were amazing. That’s the version of the recipe I’ve decided to share here.

For our second recipe, I figured I’d go back to one of things I’ve become known for, and that’s my cookies. As with all of my cooking, I’m rarely satisfied with simply getting a recipe and just making it as directed, so I spend a lot of time browsing books and the Internet for interesting or unique recipes. When this doesn’t work, I just let my mind wander, and try to come up with something original. This recipe was one of the second instances. I wanted to cook something new and was looking at the contents of my pantry when I saw a bag of cinnamon chips. After a few of the strange connections my mind always makes, I settled on the idea of Cinnamon Raisin oatmeal cookies. Realizing I didn’t have a recipe for oatmeal cookies in my repertoire, I asked my mom for one she uses, tweaked it a bit, and ended up with this recipe.

Red Wine New Potatoes

6 new potatoes, cubed
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 ½ tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
¾ tsp dry tarragon
2 ½ tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2/3 cup dry red wine (NOT cooking wine)
Salt and pepper to taste
Aluminum foil

Put all the ingredients in a foil packet. Double the foil over if it’s not heavy duty. Put packet on a medium-hot grill for 20-30 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Open up packet (be careful not to burn yourself on the foil) and serve. Delicious side that is dead simple to make.

Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 large egg
1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
3 cups quick oats, uncooked
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup raisins
1 cup cinnamon chips

1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Beat butter, shortening, sugar, egg, milk and vanilla at medium until well blended.
3. Combine oats, flour, salt, baking soda, cloves and allspice. Beat into butter/shortening mix until smooth. Stir in raisins and cinnamon chips.
4. Cook for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned. Let cookies remain on cookie sheet for five minutes, then remove to wiring rack to complete cooling.
5. Enjoy!

Now you have a dessert and a great side. Pair these with something like a good steak and some asparagus, or grilled chicken and broccoli (which is what I did this past Saturday), and you should have a simple, tasty meal that you can be proud of.