i am a butterfly…

Posts Tagged ‘food’

I forgot all about these puffs until just now. I remember making them for Mabon a few years ago, and they were delicious. Some just commented on a photo of that Mabon dinner on Flickr, which reminded me of these puffs. I had to immediately dig out the recipe. These may be on the docket for this weekend.

2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 cup flour
1 cup chopped apples
2 tsp. baking powder

Beat eggs well, add milk. Add flour, sifted with baking powder and salt. Add cheese and apples; mix well. Drop by spoonfuls into hot deep oil at 375 degrees. Fry until golden brown. If desired, apples may be omitted and puffs served with applesauce. Makes 24 small fritters.

Down but not out. I will catch up, yes I will.

This photo is sort of an embarassment to me, because the comment I get from the most from friends about my photos is some variation of “wow! your food shots are great!”

This is not one of those great food shots. It is, in fact, a very crappy photo of an amazing piece of steak. A good testament to its amazingness is that I didn’t even think to get any photos of it until I was nearly done. So don’t let this photo fool you: this was one of the most amazing steaks I’ve ever eaten.

When we got to Lyons, we stopped at a tiny little grocery store to get some food for the cottage. The main reason we stopped, aside from this place being the only option as we later found out, was the hand-lettered sign outside that said “Colorado Beef.” What you see here is the remains of an almost 2-inch thick rib steak, hand-cut in store a few hours before we purchased it.

Barbara cooked them on the grill until they were browned on the outside and bloody on the inside. I made a really simple tomato and cucumber salad to go on the side, and we dug in. This was an incredible meal, and I get hungry even looking at this terrible photo. The steak was flavorful and delicious and juicy and wonderful.

J is, indeed, for Juicy.

My knitting has been nearly non-existent lately. This weather – even thought it hasn’t been super hot, for which I am deeply grateful – isn’t conducive to having a pile of wool on my lap. (Although, my current large project is in an acrylic/wool blend. Shhh. Don’t tell. And don’t judge me. It’s a heavy, bulky sweater and the acrylic will take away some of the weight in the finished product.) Add to that the fact that my favorite two circulars have gone missing along with the ball of Zitron Trekking I planned to use for my next pair of socks, and the knitting mojo is definitely in a waning period. Once I find those needles and cast on for those socks, I expect it to start waxing again.

What I have been doing, however, is cooking. A lot of cooking. And using a lot of fruit for desserts. I love summer fruits, and I think cobblers and crumbles are a great way to showcase them.

This recipe is from the July 2009 issue of Cooking Light magazine. The original recipe called for it to be topped with sugared sliced almonds, but that seemed to fiddly to me. And I didn’t have any sliced almonds. But still, even if I had, it would have seemed fiddly.

Ingredients
filling:
3 (6-ounce) packages fresh blueberries – I actually only used 1 package
3 (5.6-ounce) packages fresh blackberries – again, only 1 package
3 medium peaches, peeled and sliced – I used 4 peaches
Cooking spray
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt

topping:
4.5 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 cup) – since I started baking bread, I always weigh my flour and recommend it
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup half-and-half

Preheat oven to 350°.

Spray a 13×9-inch baking disk lightly with cooking spray. Add the fruit. Sprinkle the fruit with the remaining filling ingredients and gently toss to combine.

Combine the first 5 topping ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the half-and-half and knead dough until just moistened. This was messy.

Drop the dough evenly by spoonfuls over the top of the filling. Bake at 350° for 50 minutes until top is evenly browned. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Cooking Light recommends serving this with vanilla ice cream, which would be lovely. We just ate it drizzled with a little heavy cream, though, and it was delicious.

Sunday morning, as I was writing out the grocery list for the coming week, I got it in my head that I really, really MUST have a Cubano. As soon as the idea lighted in my head, I became obsessed.

The most important partof a Cubano is the roast pork, and since I already had a pork roast thawing in the fridge, I went seeking a recipe for Cuban-style roast pork. I found a recipe at Chronicles of a Curious Cook and followed it pretty much exactly. The result was a fantastic pork roast that we ate last night sliced thin with the last jar of homemade applesauce from last autumn and cloverleaf rolls I baked yesterday. It would have been better with black beans and fried plantains, as suggested in the recipe, but we were in short supply of plantains, so I made do.

2 Tbs minced garlic – I just used 4 cloves and put them through my garlic press
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 cup dark rum
3/4 cup orange juice – I used 2 large oranges, which seemed to give me a lot more than 3/4 cup
1/4 cup lime juice – I used 2 limes, which seems to give me a lot more than 1/4 cup
3 Tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp black pepper – I didn’t notice that it said the recipe calls for 1tsp, so I’ll add more pepper next time

1 pork roast, bone-in or boneless, 4-6 pounds – I used a 3-pound boneless center-cut pork loin

This really couldn’t be easier. Mix up all the ingredients except the meat. Put the meat into a large zipper bag, pour in the marinade, and seal, getting out as much air as possible. Then plunk the whole thing in the fridge and let it get yummy. I started marinating around 7pm on Sunday and cooked it around 6pm on Monday, so it had plenty of time to marinate. I bet it would be even tastier with a longer soak.

Take the pork out of the fridge about an hour before you want to cook it, to allow it to come to room temperature. Pre-heat the oven to 325°. Put the pork into a roasting pan with a rack on the bottom, then pour the marinade over it. Roast for 1.5 to 2 hours, basting occasionally. (I can’t recommend silicon basting brushing enough when it come to this kind of thing.) If the liquid dries out at the bottom of the pan, add a cup of water.

For pork to be cooked to medium, you want an internal temperature of 160°. I took my roast out when it hit 150°, covered it tightly with foil, and let it rest for 15 minutes. At the end of the rest period, it was at 160° exactly. Perfect. It took nearly 2 hours; I think I took it out at 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Tonight, this will be added to some nice long rolls with ham, Swiss cheese, mustard, and sweet & spicy pickles to make Cubanos. I’m already excited for tonight’s dinner.

I made this the other night using stale banana nut bread, and it was divine. The only thing I’ll do differently next time is to cut down on the sugar if using a sweet bread.

• 2 cups milk
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups bread, torn into chunks
• 1/2 cup dried cherries, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350.

Heat the milk to scalding. I just measured the milk into a Pyrex measuring cup and nuked it. Much easier than dirtying a pan to scald milk. Add the butter and stir it in so it melts. Cool to lukewarm.

Whisk together the eggs, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar. Slowly whisk in the milk and butter mixture.

Grease a 9×9 baking pan – it would have fit fine in a 9×11, instead – and add the bread. Sprinkle the cherries over the bread, then slowly pour the custard mix over everything.

Bake for 45-50 minutes. Serve warm. Or cold. It’s fantastic cold.

Is there a more versatile food than the egg? You can use it to prepare any meal of the day, and it can be fancy or plain. Anything from a quick dinner of scrambled eggs to a fancy brunch with quiche to a quick and dirty fried egg (particularly yummy if you calorie-plurge and fry it in bacon fat after cooking a couple slices of bacon).

Eggs are definitely a staple food around here, and we usually eat omelets for dinner once a week or so. Recently, thanks to Everyday Food, I discovered a new favorite way to serve eggs for dinner: Baked Eggs in Tomato-Parmesan Sauce. We tried this for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and it will definitely be staying in my repertoire.

That’s what I’m feeling right now. Why? Because of this:

I decided yesterday that I wanted to start baking all of our sandwich bread instead of buying it. While I have a bread machine, I don’t really like the shapes of the loaves it makes, and I hate the little hole the paddle leaves, so I decided that it would need to be baked by hand. It’s been years since I baked bread without a machine, but it turns out that it’s surprisingly like riding a bike.

White bread is always easier than whole wheat, so I decided to start with Susan’s Farmhouse White Sandwich Bread.

I followed that recipe almost exactly, except that I used melted butter instead of canola. Also, I ended up only making 2 loaves, rather than the 3 in the recipe, because I held out 10 ounces of dough to use as “old dough” in another recipe later on.

Even with 10 ounces taken out, it was too much dough for only 2 loaves, so they got pretty large! As a result, I think I could have baked them longer. I did add an extra 5 minutes, but they’re probably a smidge underbaked. Still, I bet they’ll taste wonderful.

Which I’m going to find out right now, when I go have a slice.

This was supposed to be fondue “for two.” It was more like fondue for ten! We were noshing on it for days.

I haven’t made this yet, but I plan to. This recipe comes from my friend Rich, and I’m posting it here so it’s easy to find later on.

Roasted Bacon Pecans

2 cups Pecan Halves
2 T. Butter, Melted
2 T. Brown Sugar
6 Bacon Slices, Finely Chopped
2 T. Sugar
½ tsp. Salt

Stir together Pecans, butter, brown sugar and bacon. Spread in a 15×10 jellyroll pan. Bake at 350f, stirring occasionally, 25 minutes, or until the pecans are toasted, and the bacon is done. Sprinkle with sugar and salt; stir to coat. Cool pecans, and store in refrigerator.