Category Archives: recipes

little old italian lady in training 

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I became a bit of an Italian cliché today, or a little old Italian lady in training, take your pick.

I made sauce, I made gnocchi, and I made a ricotta pie.

I will give you the recipe below I used a roll out store-bought crust this time –Pillsbury  brand.

Deep dish pie plate required.

Preheat oven to 350°

Follow instructions on premade piecrust – I like using my own pie plates so I get the Pillsberry brand piecrust when I don’t feel like making my own crust. 

So I laid my piecrust in my pan, fluted the edges of the crust and tossed in the freezer while I mixed up the ricotta mixture.

Beat 5 eggs and  1 tablespoon vanilla together. (my mother bought me back this amazing Mexican vanilla on her last trip there and that is what I use today – the flavor is better I think than regular vanilla.)

Mix in with electric mixer 1/4  cup of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, the grated rind of one fresh lemon and one fresh orange. (I had some blood oranges and so that is the grated orange rind that I used today.)

Mix in with electric mixer 1 cup of white sugar and beat together well.

Beat in 3 1/2 cups of whole milk ricotta cheese. When mixture is well mixed, you next stir in 1/3 cup candied minced orange peel and 1/3 cup candied minced lemon peel.

Get out your pie shell in your deep dish pie plate and carefully pour the creamy ricotta cheese mixture into the piecrust.

 Bake at 350° until firm and light brown on top approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes.

You can either serve this at room temperature or chilled.

Enjoy!

chorizo black bean chili

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2 – 1 pound packages of chorizo sausage sliced into bite-size pieces
1 – 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 – 14 1/2 ounce can of fire roasted tomatoes
1 – 6 ounce can of tomato paste
1 – 1 lb. 13 oz. can of goya black beans (drained)
One large red onion and one small white onion
Six cloves of garlic
One cup of Ricatito cilantro cooking base
Goya adobo or salt and pepper to taste
Three carrots sliced or diced small
Three medium size potatoes sliced or diced small
6 ounces of frozen corn kernels 
One cup roasted red peppers (drained and cut into uniform pieces – not too small or it will disintegrate. If I don’t have time to make fresh roasted peppers I will buy roasted bell pepper strips “deli sliced”)
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon basil
Salt and pepper to taste
4 teaspoons Mexican style chili powder
3 teaspoons dark chili powder (I have to get this via mail order from Whole Spice )
You want a large Dutch oven for this or pasta sauce pot – which in my house are basically one and the same. I use a stainless steel pot for this because black beans can stain enamelware.
Start by browning your sausage in a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil,and then add onion and garlic . 
When onion and garlic is starting to turn translucent add potatoes and carrots.
Add the black beans followed by the crushed tomatoes and Ricatito
Add spices, and tomato paste. Allow to cook for about an hour on a very low flame and then toss in  frozen corn kernels and roasted red pepper strips.
Allowed to cook down on low lid cracked off with a splatter guard over your pot and then the lid on top of splatter guard. 
After a couple of hours of burbling away on low burner, check your chili for spices and salt and pepper or add Goya adobo. I don’t cook with a lot of added salt because so much of our food has sodium content.
Turn off the stove and let this come to room temperature and refrigerate overnight. The next day skim off any fat that may be on the top and bring to room temperature and heat thoroughly. 
You can serve over rice or just eat plain with a little shredded cheese or even plain Greek  yogurt  or sour cream on top.
You can get a few meals out of this and it freezes well.

growing up pumpkin bread

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I love pumpkin bread, it is probably my favorite of the quick breads.  I wanted to do something different with it and have worked on a quick  bread recipe that was without nuts and raisins, but not boring. The other day I decided to make it with molasses and not just sugar. I think that made all the difference. I have a very moist quick bread that has some depth to it. Molasses is definitely something fun to experiment with.


New Pumpkin Bread Recipe
2 cups canned pumpkin
1 cup oil (canola of olive)
2 cups sugar ( can use all white or half white, half brown)
1 cup molasses at room temperature
4 eggs beaten in a small bowl
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice 
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon table salt 

Mix together with  mixer the following: pumpkin, oil, molasses, and sugar. Add eggs. Mix really well. Add vanilla mix a little more.

  1. Add remaining ingredients and mix just until all dry ingredients are well incorporated and there are no flour lumps.
  1. Pour into 2 well greased and floured 8 or 9 inch loaf pans. Use butter or oil or Crisco as the grease, not a baking spray.  Baking spray just doesn’t work as well as the traditional grease and flour for baking pans. Dust the batter in the top of the pans with sugar – either turbinado or plain white – it gives you a nice little crust.
  1. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean, and depending upon your oven it may take slightly longer than an hour to cook. I found they cooked perfectly in an hour.

When you remove the loves to cool on a rack let them sit in their pans for about 20 minutes to half an hour, then remove them from the pans and allow to cool completely. These loaves freeze nicely. 

* you can serve this pumpkin bread plain or for breakfast with  a little almond butter or whipped cream cheese or Greek Cream Cheese which has lower fat and calories.

snow food: mushroom and pea risotto with chicken and sausage

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Okay who doesn’t love risotto? I(I guess if you don’t love risotto then you don’t want to read this post….)

Anyway comfort food doesn’t have to be the same old same old. Risotto makes some awesome snow food. However, if you don’t have the time to devote to making risotto, don’t because the enemy of a risotto his time and adding the ingredients wrong. Risotto is a dish that requires babysitting from start to finish.

Here is my go to recipe. I will alter the ingredients depending on what I have in the kitchen on hand at the time. Usually a risotto is what I do with leftovers.

If I don’t have chicken or sausage I might use ham or shrimp or something else. Sometimes I do it with just mushrooms and pick a bunch of mushroom varieties, not just one. In other words …..lots and lots of mushrooms (yum). If I do it an all mushroom risotto I also add roasted sweet peppers and a small log of goat cheese about 4 – 5 ounces or a similar size container of crème fraîche in addition to the Parmesan.

6 cups chicken stock (hold back one cup until towards end of recipe)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 vidalia or sweet onion, chopped
12 ounces baby Bella mushrooms, sliced thin
2 grated medium sized carrots
3 medium-size ribs of celery diced small
1 teaspoon each of thyme and sage and tarragon and basil and smoked paprika
3 cloves of garlic minced
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
1½ cups arborio rice
3/4 cup dry white wine
1 fresh tomato (medium and round) diced
1 cup fresh or frozen peas
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Zest and juice of ½ small orange
1 pound of sweet sausage cut into small chunks (you can also use ground sausage without the casing)
1/2 a roast chicken shredded- no skin from chicken!

Put the stock in a pot over low heat. Or if you’re pressed for time you can warm a couple cups of the time by microwaving in a microwave proof measuring cup. Meanwhile, put the 1/4 of the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. You may have to add a little more than a quarter cup just depends on your pot.

When it’s warming up but not hot, add the garlic and onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to soften. This might take 5 to 7 minutes. Add the mushrooms, celery, carrots and season with salt and pepper. Add herbs.

Cook, stirring occasionally, maybe an additional 8 to 10 minutes.

Add the sausage, and when of the sausage starts to cook and turn color, add your shredded chicken. I originally started making this recipe to use up leftover chicken. Adding small bites of sweet sausage only makes it better!

Add the rice and stir until it looks sort of translucent and begins to stick together, about 5 minutes. Add the wine and cook, stirring once or twice, until it’s mostly absorbed by the rice.

Start adding the broth about 1/2 to 3/4 cup at a time, waiting until each stage of broth is pretty well absorbed into the rice before adding the next bunch of broth. Stir frequently and keep an eye on the heat so the liquid simmers gently NOT boils into oblivion. When I start adding the broth, I cover the pot a couple minutes at a time in between stirring.

After you add 5 cups of broth you were ready for the next step which is when the rice is tender, (after about 30 minutes of adding 5 of the 6 cups of stock), add the frozen peas along with last 1 cup of stock and cook, stirring frequently, until tender, 5 to 7 minutes.

Turn the heat to low and stir in Parmesan cheese.

Turn off the heat and stir in an additional 2 tablespoons olive oil and the orange zest and juice. Taste and adjust the seasoning, and serve hot, garnished with parsley.

The feeds 4 to 6 and trust me there won’t be much in the way of leftovers. Even teenagers will eat it! Any leftovers you have should be stored in the refrigerator in a covered container. It’s only good for a few days after cooking so don’t let it hang around more than that.

Thanks for stopping by.

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coffee butterscotch bread pudding

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Winter means comfort food desserts as well as comfort food entrees. Here’s an easy bread pudding that you will like.

My friend Linda makes homemade extracts so I use her coffee extract in this and I have approximated how much regular espresso you would use in place of the extract.

1 package of potato rolls (about 12 oz) cubed into bite sized pieces and left sitting out a couple of hours to get stale

3 eggs beaten
4 cups whole or 2% milk
1/2 cup butter melted
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons coffee extract or half a shot of espresso
1 1/4 cup of butterscotch chips

Preheat oven to 350°.

Butter a 9 x 13″ baking dish. I have a deeper square one I like to use that accommodates the same amount of liquids and food. It’s a vintage Pyrex that is square and deep.

Melt the butter in the microwave for only as long as it takes to melt it which is under a minute and set aside.

Separately in a large bowl beat eggs, milk, sugars, coffee extract/espresso together.

Stir in butter that you have melted into egg/milk/sugars mixture.

Put cubed potato bread and butterscotch chips in buttered baking dish and mix together evenly. Pour the liquid mixture over the bread and chips and give an additional stir. The whole thing will be a big goopy mess.

Place pan that you have put the pudding in into a Bain Marie (fancy name for a larger pan with hot water and at the water should only go about half up side of your baking dish) and place entire thing in oven.

Bake for between one hour and one hour and 20 minutes. Pudding will be nearly set coming out of the oven or have a good jiggle to it.

Serve warm or cold.

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all about the pot pie

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Yes yes…continuing my quest to get vegetables into a teenager.

I make pot pies all the time. They aren’t that complicated. It’s basically meat, vegetables, gravy and the crust. Today I just didn’t feel like doing a double crust and a pie pan, so I opted for the crust on top kind of pot pie. A biscuit topping.

Preheat your oven to 350°.

First I made the filling. I used leftover roast beef that I had cubed into bite-size pieces and frozen for just this purpose. I would say probably about 2 1/2 cups was what was in the bag. I had let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight.

I also used a container of leftover beef au jus I had made with mushrooms. This has been in the freezer in a container as well. I let that also thaw overnight in the refrigerator.That was also about 2 cups. I turned that into a traditional gravy after creating a rue with a little bit of flour and maybe 2 tablespoons of butter in the bottom of the pan.

As for vegetables it was a combination of fresh and frozen. One cup each frozen peas and corn thawed, one sweet onion diced, three smaller but not mini carrots diced small, and a handful of fingerling potatoes sliced thin. (You may wish to slightly parboil potatoes first. )

I mixed that together with a little salt and pepper to taste, paprika, garlic powder and rosemary, and put into a good-sized baking dish that I had greased- a 12″ x 9″ baking dish that is a little over 3 inches deep.

The biscuit topping was really simple. Get out another mixing bowl.

One cup of buttermilk, 1 1/2 cup plus 4 tablespoons of flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 generous teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 cup melted butter, a 1/4 cup of grated Italian blend cheese out of the shaker (Parmesan and Romano blend), and fresh ground pepper.

Mix biscuit ingredients all together and it will be goopy and not the kind of biscuit dough you roll out. Put it on the top of your pot pie mixture in your baking pan evenly. Bake at 350° for 45 to 55 minutes depending on your oven.

Allow to cool slightly when you remove it from the oven because it will be really hot.

Enjoy!

quiche with ham, broccoli, and spinach….and a side of teenager

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Yes….how to get more vegetables into your teenager. Of course my teenager has just decreed that he’s not eating any quiche.

(Deep breath…..deep breath…..)

As parents is incredibly frustrating when you are going out of your way to try to make things that will be appealing to them, and then they won’t even try things if they are in a teenage mood. Well the teen can try it, right? Not everything can be of the favorite teenage boy food group of starch sugar and more starch. He was much easier to feed when he was 10, and he was actually open to trying new things and allowing things that were green and vegetable like to pass his lips regularly.

Of course if I had a show on Food Network like Nancy Fuller or Martha Stewart or Ree Drummond or Ina Garten everybody would sit magically around the table which would be set beautifully to perfection every night and eat everything that I made and rave….LOL reality is far different!

Okay enough venting my frustration over the eating habits and mercurial moods of the teenage male! I just have to keep repeating “I love my teenager I love my teenager I love my teenager I love my teenager“.

I think out there somewhere there must be a 12 step program for surviving the teenage years. They really aren’t mutant ninja secret agent super gamer teenage cave dwellers who have taken a vow of silence. My brother-in-law humorously noted recently that the average teenage boy doesn’t really start conversing with adults again until they hit 18 or 19.

Anyway I know this quiche will be delicious. The wine depicted in the photo is for adults in the house.

So how this recipe came about: I had ham leftover from New Year’s. I had frozen the bone for an upcoming lentil soup, but decided to go quiche with the remaining ham meat.

First I made my crust – I am into these herbs and savory crusts these days, so the recipe for this particular crust is below the rest of the quiche recipe.

Once I had rolled out my crust and fit it into my 9 1/2 inch vintage glass dish pie plate, put that in the refrigerator to keep cool well I got to work on the rest of the quiche.

Somewhere during the crust making process I preheated my oven to 375°.

My next step involves the ingredients below:

1 1/2 cups cubed ham
1/2 cup grape tomatoes sliced thin
1 medium onion chopped small
1 cup fresh broccoli diced
Dash of salt fresh cracked pepper
Dash of Cumin

For all those ingredients listed above, sauté with 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter over medium heat for about 10 minutes, maybe 15. Turn off heat and set-aside.

Okay now that that part was complete and the crust was chilling, comes the next step before assembly. It involves the ingredients below:

1 3/4 cups shredded Swiss and Gruyere cheese
5 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dry ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
Dash sriracha sauce

1/2 cup fresh baby spinach stems removed

In a mixing bowl whisk together the eggs milk salt, pepper herbs and spices. Add your dash of sriracha sauce.

Fold in the cheese. Take your piecrust out of the refrigerator and place in the center of a rimmed baking sheet – I use a professional jellyroll pan. First layer in the ham mixture from your sauté pan, then add baby spinach – the leaves are so small I don’t bother to chop up. Finally add your shredded cheese.

Place quiche on your baking sheet and your preheated 375° oven. Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let sit at least 10 minutes before serving. I don’t like eating boiling hot quiche so I will let mine sit 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve with a green salad.

Oops, I almost forgot, here is how I made the crust:

1/2 teaspoon each rosemary, marjoram, tarragon
1 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
8 Tbs. (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
3 Tbs. very cold buttermilk

Directions:
To make the dough by hand, in a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar and salt. Using a pastry cutter or 2 knives or yes your fingers, cut the butter into the flour mixture until the texture resembles coarse cornmeal, with butter pieces no larger than small peas. Add the water and mix with a fork just until the dough pulls together. Form dough into a ball and flatten slightly on a floured surface roll out. Put in your pie plate crimp the edges, and refrigerate why you assemble the rest of your quiche.

hamburger pie…or how to get veggies into a teenager

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Hamburger Pie
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound ground beef
1 onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, finely chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 sweet red bell pepper chopped fine fine
1 cup frozen peas thawed/drained
4 or 5 mushrooms sliced thin
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup plain tomato sauce
1/2 cup brown gravy
1/2 cup shredded sharp Cheddar
1/2 cup shredded Italian blend cheese
Salt and pepper
Oregano, basil, and cumin to taste
Chili powder to taste

Pastry for 1 double-crust 9-inch pie (recipe below)

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Line a baking sheet with foil.

2. Warm oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook beef, breaking up large pieces with a wooden spoon, until no longer pink, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add herbs , chili powder, and cumin, garlic, onion, pepper, mushrooms, carrots and celery; sauté on medium about 5 or 7 more minutes. Turn off pan.

In a large mixing bowl stir together tomato sauce and gravy and then add Worcestershire. Season with salt and pepper if needed. Let cool slightly. Use a slotted spoon to lift contents of skillet into gravy-tomato sauce in mixing bowl and fold together. Add peas.

3. (*pie crust recipe below*) Roll out 1 sheet of pastry and fit into deep dish pie plate. Spoon filling into crust and add cheese lightly and evenly on top. Roll out second crust; place on top of pie. Fold top crust over bottom crust; crimp edges to seal. Brush top with egg wash if you want. Cut steam vents in top. Place on cookie sheet and put in oven.

4. Bake for 15 minutes at 400°F. Reduce oven temperature to 350ºF; bake until crust is golden and filling bubbles at steam vents, 20 to 25 minutes longer.

5. Slice like a pie after allowing to cool about 20 minutes. Serve with a small dollop of sour cream on top of each slice.

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Slightly Savory Pie Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 cup vegetable shortening or butter
1/2 cup buttermilk

Sift flour and salt together in a bowl. Add pepper, garlic powder, basil, oregano. Cut in shortening until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add milk until dough forms. Split dough in two even balls and keep wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated until you are ready to roll out.
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the french onion soup project

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The French Onion Soup Project is now in day 2.

Roasting the bones made a huge difference before starting broth. So did adding fresh rosemary, chives, chervil, Herbes de Provence and 3 kinds of onions (Vidalia, red, plain old cooking onions.)

The recipe just popped out of my head as I tried to pay homage to the soup my childhood friend Karen’s mom used to make. And oh, my her soup was so amazing that none of us ever forgot it ….only none of us got the recipe either!

This started a day ago when I roasted eight big marrow bones at 425° for like 20 minutes. Then I reduced the heat to 375° and roasted approximately another 15 minutes.

Then I turned the oven off and ignored them for a little while well I got the big stockpot ready – handful of bay leaves, salt, a bunch of carrots cut into chunks a few ribs of celery, the juice I had taken out of the pan and frozen from the Christmas roast, two large yellow cooking onions chunked. Then I added my roasted bones and filled the pot to within an inch and a half from the top.

After bringing everything to a boil, I reduced to a low simmer and let the soup cook away for about two and a half hours.

I let the stock cool to room temperature and put the lid back on and put into the fridge overnight.

This morning I got the stockpot out of the refrigerator, pulled the fat off the top and discarded and then
cooked the bones in the now broth for another three hours on low.

I let that all cool so I could remove the bones, broth making veggies, and any other fat that I could get out from the pot and then added all the onions (I think ten or eleven onions total all sliced as uniformly as I could manage), and added the herbs and amended the other seasonings, added fresh ground pepper, added a couple dashes of Worchestershire sauce , a cup and a half of wine, an 10 ounce pack of fresh mushrooms sliced very thin (don’t use presliced mushrooms they don’t taste as fresh), and a little balsamic vinegar. And one small dash of soy sauce.

The soup will sit one more overnight in the fridge after cooling and will be served with either Swiss or Gruyere cheese tomorrow.

I have been doing this two to three day cooking the soup thing and it has led to much tastier soups. Also when you’re working with meat and poultry it means you have more than one opportunity to get as much fat as possible off the soup as there is nothing worse than greasy soup.

So while some like doing soups in crockpots including French Onion, I still think nothing beats making soup old school.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bon appetit!

taramasalata

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My mother has a Greek friend named Kula who also happens to be mother and aunt to people I am friends with from high school. It was Kula who introduced us to this wonderful traditional Greek dip called Taramasalata many, many years ago. We always had it at Christmas.

The base for my recipe came from St. Luke’s Greek Orthodox Church Women’s Auxikary cookbook “Greek Cooking in An American Kitchen.”

The church is located in Broomall , Pennsylvania and this is Kula’s church and she worked on the edition of the cookbook I have which is the 1997 edition. They started printing this book in 1973. I am imagine they still produce the book. It has fabulous recipes and I refer to it often.

This is a delicious dip. I just made a batch so I thought I would share the recipe. If you you not have a Greek or Mediterranean food store local to you it is possible to mail order the Tarama. Krinos foods sells it and I buy mine from Prima Foods in Baltimore.

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Don’t be all cheese and crackers for Christmas, this is simple to make and tastes delicious. I am bringing it to two Christmas parties and serving it myself Christmas Day. I made my first batch today. Usually I use a blender or food processor, but today I just used my handheld blender and it worked fine!

Thanks for stopping by!

Taramasalata

4 small onions (2 red 2 sweet)
1 10 oz jar Tarama
Juice of four good-sized lemons (make sure no seeds)
16 slices of white bread crusts removed (stale preferred)
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup canola oil
1/3 cup Italian flat leaf parsley minced
6 drops Tabasco sauce – which is about two small shakes
fresh cracked pepper to taste

Finally chop onions and throw into food processor. Further process onions with a couple pulses of food processor. Add Tarama and process thoroughly until smooth. Add lemon juice and continue blending. Tear up the crust free white bread into small pieces and feed a couple slices at a time into your mixture while blending some more until bread all incorporated. Add parsley and process more. At Kino oil in a small stream followed by the olive oil. Add the Tabasco and cracked pepper. The dip will be creamy colored with little green flecks from the parsley.

Refrigerate until ready to serve. I generally make this one to two days in advance. Serve with cut up wedges of pita, garnish if you would like with lemons and cucumbers. I also like to serve some nice olives alongside.



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