soft whole-wheat dinner rolls from EatingWell

And again, another non-modified recipe (I must be getting lucky finding all these great recipes online!). These dinner rolls are super easy if you are familiar with baking your own bread, and definitely easy enough for a total novice to try. I guess the only modification I made was to only make half a recipe (the original makes 2 dozen). So, I’ll list my half recipe here, with directions pretty much copied from the original post on the EatingWell website.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup warm (about 120°F) low-fat milk
2 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp canola oil
2 large eggs, divided (use one in dough, one for egg wash)
1/2 package quick-rising yeast, (about 1 heaping tsp)
1.5 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cup white cake flour, divided into 3/4 cup and 1/4 cup portions, plus more for dusting
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp wheat germ

DIRECTIONS

1. Whisk milk, sugar, butter, oil and 1 egg in a large bowl. Whisk yeast, whole-wheat flour, 3/4 cup cake flour and salt in a medium bowl. Gradually stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients using a wooden spoon. The dough will be very sticky.

2. Sprinkle 1/4 cup cake flour on a work surface. Turn out the dough onto it and knead until all the flour is incorporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Coat a large bowl with cooking spray. Transfer the dough to the bowl, coat the top with cooking spray and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise at room temperature (about 70°F) until doubled in volume, 1 1/4-2 hours.

3. Coat a 8- or 9-inch metal baking pan (I used a round 8-in, but a square pan should be ok too) with cooking spray. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface; pat into a rough 3.5-by-10-inch rectangle. Cut lengthwise into 2 equal strips using a bench knife or butter knife. Then cut each strip crosswise into 6 equal portions. (Each portion will weigh 1 1/4-1 1/2 ounces.)

4. Working with one portion of dough at a time, gather and pinch the edges together, shaping the dough into a rough ball. The spot where the edges come together is the bottom of the ball. Place each ball, bottom down, on a clean work surface. With a slightly cupped hand, move the ball around in a circular motion, keeping the bottom in place while tucking the loose edges into it and stretching the surface of the dough tight. (If the outer skin breaks, set the roll aside and let it rest while rounding the remaining rolls. Reroll once the dough relaxes.) Arrange the rolls in the prepared pan. Cover with plastic wrap. (If following make-ahead instructions, refrigerate the rolls now.)

5. Let the rolls rise at room temperature until almost doubled in size, about 1 1/4 hours.

6. Preheat oven to 400°F. Whisk the remaining egg in a small bowl, and brush the tops of the rolls with it (you’ll have some left over); sprinkle with wheat germ. Bake the rolls until light brown on top, about 20 minutes.

Tips & Notes

Make Ahead Tip: Prepare through Step 4 and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the refrigerator and let rise until almost doubled in size, about 3 1/2 hours. Continue to Step 6.

Nutrition

Per roll: 154 calories; 5 g fat ( 2 g sat , 2 g mono ); 25 mg cholesterol; 23 g carbohydrates; 4 g protein; 2 g fiber; 137 mg sodium; 83 mg potassium.

twice-baked cauliflower from Kalyn’s Kitchen

So – here’s another recipe that I tried pretty much exactly as it’s written: twice baked cauliflower from Kalynskitchen.com. It just looked so good as is that I didn’t end up making any modifications. Turned out great and was a highlight of our Christmas dinner for two!

As I did before – I’ll post the ingredient list, but then add the link to the original post below. Thanks Kalyn – and great pictures, too!

Ingredients:
1 large head cauliflower
4 oz. low fat cream cheese (do not use fat free)
1/2 cup low fat sour cream (do not use fat free)
1/4 cup minced green onions
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (If you only have finely grated Parmesan, use a bit less)
6 slices bacon, cooked until very crisp, fat blotted with paper towel and then crumbled
1 cup reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese
(I used Kraft 2% milk sharp cheddar)

For directions on how to prepare this delicious side dish, go to Kalyn’s blog.

cranberry sauce, part deux

Just a tweak to our former cranberry sauce recipe. This one is more jelly-like in consistency, and preferred by Mike!

Cranberry Sauce, Part Deux

Ingredients
3 cups fresh cranberries, separated into a 2-cup portion and a 1-cup portion
zest and juice of 1 large orange
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Directions
Place 2 cups of cranberries plus orange zest, orange juice, cinnamon, sugar, and water in a medium sauce pan over medium high heat. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil and then lower heat, simmering and stirring until most of the cranberries have broken apart. Add last cup of cranberries and continue to simmer until most of new cranberries have broken open. Transfer to container and chill for at least 2 hours in refrigerator. Remove cinnamon stick before serving.

electric roaster turkey

I’ve struggled with cooking a turkey in the electric roaster for a few years now. I guess the fourth time is the charm – this one turned out perfectly!

This recipe and these tips were adapted from the original post found at this site:  http://www.food.com/recipe/perfect-turkey-in-an-electric-roaster-oven-339453#ixzz1eZwZNSDD Check it out for a great basic turkey recipe!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 whole turkey, thawed up to 20 lbs
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• fruit stuffing from the Filipino Turkey recipe
• kosher salt
• coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 large bunch celery, for lining pan
• 2 cups chicken broth

DIRECTIONS

Brine your turkey first – better if it’s overnight. Then, about 1 hour before you want to start cooking, start prepping. Remove turkey from brine mixture. If you want to get really fancy, place ice packs on the breast side of the turkey to keep it cooler than the rest of the bird. This will help prevent it from drying out (ah, thermodynamics!).

Spray entire roasting pan with cooking spray. Line the roasting pan with the celery stalks. Add chicken broth to the bottom of pan as well.

Prep the turkey by rinsing and patting dry. Sprinkle salt and pepper in the cavities. Stuff your turkey with fruit stuffing.

Place the bird in the roasting pan on top of the celery.

Rub the entire bird with olive oil. If you’re really worried about the breast meat drying out, you can slip some pats of butter between then skin and meat of the breast. Or heck, just inject it with melted butter as some of our friends did. Sprinkle with a little more salt and pepper. Tuck wings under bird, tie/secure drumsticks as you like.

Turn on your roaster to the highest setting. Once it reaches that temperature (the light should go off, I think), start a 30 min timer.

After 30 minutes, turn the oven temperature down to 325.

The bird will self-baste if you do not lift the lid, so you don’t have to baste it every 20 minutes like you do in your conventional oven. DO NOT LIFT LID during cooking time! Lifting the lid will increase cooking time because roaster ovens lose their heat unlike regular ovens.

Check your Bird – Figure your total cooking time from the time you first put the bird in the roaster. FINAL TEMPERATURE FOR SAFETY AND DONENESS IS: 180 DEGREES IN THIGH AND 165 DEGREES IN BREAST AND STUFFING. Juices should be clear, not pink.

Your turkey will almost certainly be done at the earliest of the suggested times on the chart. Lift lid only slightly and use your meat thermometer. If necessary, check after another 30 minutes, but I doubt you’ll have to do that. I say check after 30 minutes because it’s really OK to let the bird roast a little extra – you won’t dry it out using my method if you let it go for 1/2 hour.

Figure your total cooking time from the time you first put the bird in the roaster. Check your bird at the EARLIEST of these times:

8 to 12 pounds 3 to 3½ hours.
12 to 14 pounds 3½ to 4 hours.
14 to 18 pounds 4 to 4¼ hours.
18 to 20 pounds 4¼ to 4¾ hours.

When done, remove the bird from the roaster, tent with foil, and let rest for 20 minutes. Carve and enjoy!

roasted beets with balsamic glaze

I rarely endorse recipes without any modifications. This one, however, needs no improvement! It was delicious exactly as it was. I’ll post the ingredients here, but then add the link to the simplyrecipes.com website so you can check out the original source. Thanks to the simpyrecipes team for the fantastic recipe!

Roasted beets with balsamic glaze

Ingredients

• 2 pounds red (I used red and gold) beets, medium sized, scrubbed clean, green tops removed
• Olive oil
• Salt
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• Freshly ground black pepper

To see how to make them, head to the page on the simplyrecipes.com site!

Amy’s candied squash

I made this recipe for Thanksgiving, and even my non-squash eating husband enjoyed it! I named it after my CSA-sharing buddy Amy, who always inspires me to eat more squash. And pumpkin. Also, I adapted this recipe from the recipe found at http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/vegetables/r/butternutsquashpuree.htm

Amy’s candied squash

Ingredients:

4 small to medium winter squashes (acorn, buttercup, butternut, etc.)
~4 tbsp olive oil
kosher salt
3 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
Kosher salt and ground white pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Slice all squashes in half lengthwise – please be careful when you do this!  Scoop out and discard the seeds.

Lightly grease 2 9×13 pyrex glass pans with some of the olive oil. You’ll want enough space in the pans to set the squash halves flesh-side-down, so you may or may not need an additional small pyrex. Place squash halves in pyrex pans, starting flesh-side-up. Drizzle lightly with olive oil, and sprinkle very lightly with kosher salt (one pinch per half). Flip over halves and then bake in pre-heated oven for about 45-60 min until outer skin can be easily pierced with a knife.

Remove squash from oven, allow to cool for a few minutes, and then scoop the roasted flesh out of its shell and into a large glass bowl.  Mash lightly with a potato masher until the desired consistency is reached for puree.

Melt butter and add brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well. Add enough of mixture to puree until it tastes the way you like it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

holiday eats 2011

Hello everyone,

Hope the holiday season has been treating you well. This year, we’ve had a trend of smaller holiday meals on the table, with just a few folks here for Thanksgiving and Mike and I are flying solo for Christmas. But, I still have some recipes to share, including:

Candied Squash
Roasted Beets in Balsamic Glaze
Cranberry Sauce, part deux
Electric Roaster Filipino Turkey

“Twice Baked” cauliflower (VERY tasty for those avoiding tons of carbs)
Soft Whole-Wheat Dinner Rolls
Petite Holiday Ham

I’ll try to schedule a bunch of posts for these recipes over the next few weeks… thanks for your patience and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

“choose your own adventure” baked pasta

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of posting since April. No excuses! Just more attempts at posting from now on.

Over the summer and fall, I’ve made several versions of baked pasta (probably because I had a gazillion tomatoes from the garden and CSA and I needed to get creative). I’ve been meaning to write down the actual basic recipe, which is pretty much the same. Here it is, at long last. The cool thing is you can use pretty much whatever sauce and pasta combo you like – the basic method is the same.

“Choose your own adventure” baked pasta

Ingredients
2 jars of spaghetti sauce, or approximately 1.5 quarts of homemade sauce
1 package of pasta (rigatoni, penne, fusilli, even broken spaghetti would work)
1 tub of cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 package shredded mozzarella cheese
2 tbsp fresh parsley, separated
black pepper, garlic powder, other seasonings to taste

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350. Prepare pasta according to directions. Drain and return to hot pot on stove.
2. Stir in about 3/4 of the total sauce that you have (i.e. 1.5 jars) into the hot pot. Mix until pasta is coated.
3. Lightly beat two eggs. Stir in cottage cheese and 1 tbsp parsley.
4. In 9×13 pyrex pan, pour about 1/2 of remaining sauce into bottom of pan. Pour 1/2 of coated pasta from pot into pyrex, spread out.
5. Pour cottage cheese mixture into pyrex pan, spread into even layer.
6. Pour remaining coated pasta into pan, spread.
7. Pour remaining sauce on top. Cover with mozzarella cheese.
8. Cover pyrex with non-stick foil. Cook for 40 minutes. Remove foil, cook for 10 more minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes outside of oven before serving.

Enjoy!

beef stroganoff

Last summer I went to a conference in downtown Chicago and ended up having lunch at the Russian Tea Room. We ordered three dishes to share, and one of them was the stroganoff. It was incredible, and much more subtle and elevated than what you might normally consider your average stroganoff to be. I’ve had a hankering to recreate this dish, and after several weeks of searching on google, I settled on a modification of Tyler Florence’s recipe, which you can find here.

Oh – and with a last name that ends in -sky and not -ski, you can bet the stakes were pretty high. I’m happy to report this turned out pretty good, though!

“My last name ends in -sky” Russian Stroganoff

Ingredients

* 2 cups beef stock
* 1 cup white wine, chardonnay
* 2 carrots, chopped
* 2 tsp dried thyme
* 1 bay leaf
* 2 pounds chuck roast, cut into 2-inch cubes

* 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 cup flour
* 1/2 tsp garlic powder
* 1/2 tsp black pepper
* 1/2 tsp salt

* 1 medium onion, chopped

* 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 1 pound mushrooms, sliced
* 3 cloves garlic, chopped
* 1 tsp thyme

* 2 tablespoons sour cream, plus more for garnish

* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves, plus more for garnish
* 1 (1-pound) package wide egg noodles

Directions

Heat the beef stock with the carrot, 3 thyme sprigs, and bay leaf. Pat the beef dry and season it with salt and pepper. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet over high heat. Fry the meat in batches so that it is browned on all sides. Lower the heat to medium and return all the meat to the pot. Add the onions and cook until they are soft, about 5 minutes. Pour in the wine and cook until the alcohol has burned off, about 5 minutes. Add the beef stock, discarding the carrot, thyme sprigs, and bay leaf. Cook, partially covered, over a very low flame for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt 3 tablespoons butter in the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil. Add the mushrooms, garlic, and remaining 3 thyme sprigs and cook until the mushrooms are browned and cooked through. Remove from heat and set aside.

When the meat is done, remove it from the heat and fold in the mushrooms, 2 tbsp sour cream, mustard, and 2 tbsp parsley. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling, salted water until tender. Drain the noodles well, toss with the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, and season with salt and pepper. Serve the stroganoff over the noodles; garnish with more sour cream and chopped parsley as desired.

new year’s eve cast-iron steak

Hi everyone!

I’ve been meaning to get some new posts up here since the first of the year (as indicated by the title of this post!) On New Year’s Eve, I decided to make a steak dinner for the two of us, but wasn’t sure how to best prepare steak indoors as typically we only do them on the grill during the summer. Since I wasn’t about to unearth the snow-buried Char Broil at midnight, I turned to google for some advice. I found this recipe from Alton Brown, and it was awesome.

I did do a tiny bit of modification, which is included in the recipe below. Now that it’s already mid-April, you probably won’t need to employ this method for a while, but be sure to keep it in your bag of tricks when the weather turns cold again.

Ringing in the New Year Cast Iron Steak

Ingredients

* 1 boneless rib eye steak, 1 1/2-inch thick
* Canola oil to coat
* Kosher salt and ground black pepper
* OPTIONAL: Tony Chacherie’s Creole Seasoning and/or granulated garlic (Gina’s additions!)

Directions

Place 10 to 12-inch cast iron skillet in oven and heat oven to 500 degrees. Bring steak(s) to room temperature.

When oven reaches temperature, remove pan and place on range over high heat. Coat steak lightly with oil and season both sides with a generous pinch of salt. Grind on black pepper to taste.

** Add a light sprinkle of Tony Chacherie’s and/or granulated garlic as well.

Immediately place steak in the middle of hot, dry pan. Cook 30 seconds without moving. Turn with tongs and cook another 30 seconds, then put the pan straight into the oven for 2 minutes. Flip steak and cook for another 2 minutes. (This time is for medium rare steaks. If you prefer medium, add a minute to both of the oven turns.)

Remove steak from pan, cover loosely with foil, and rest for 2 minutes. Serve whole or slice thin and fan onto plate.