Pages, Pucks and Pantry

Easy Ricotta Dessert Creme

Years ago when the South Beach Diet was all the rage I bought many of their cookbooks. The first "phase" of the diet had a wonderful little dessert that I made quite a bit....ricotta cheese with a bit of non-sugar sweetener, some vanilla extract and chopped nuts. It was a great way to get rid of that sweet craving after dinner without too much damage (i.e. too much sugar or calories).

I still make that little dessert every once in a while, but since it was in the first phase of the program, fruit wasn't allowed so I never added it. I had a 'duh' moment when I saw this recipe in the Plugged In cookbook by Lara Brody...just add fruit to the mix to make a quick dessert!

I don't know about you, but I always seem to have a bit of leftover ricotta cheese after I've made some recipe...this is a great little way to use it up.

EASY RICOTTA DESSERT CREME

1 cup ricotta cheese

2 tablespoons honey

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

2 to 3 drops pure almond extract, to your taste

Fresh berries of your choice

Place all the ingredients except the berries in a blender, cover, and blend on medium speed until smooth. Refrigerate for 1 hour, then spoon over the berries and serve. Makes 1 serving.

Note: I added fresh peaches to the blueberries instead of using all berries. I used all 3 drops of the almond extract.

Note: I was lazy and didn't bother putting everything in a blender. I just mixed it well by hand. I had no problem with the texture.

Jerk Chicken

When life is crazy busy I tend to turn to my crockpot for meals. Doesn't matter if it's the dead of winter or the hottest days of summer, my crockpot is my friend.

So in the crazybizzies of life recently I decided to make a crockpot recipe from the Plugged In cookbook. Seems like a cop-out since there were so many other appliances I could have tried out, but I really wanted to make a dish I didn't have to think about.

I've come across many recipes for Jerk Chicken online, in my cookbooks, and magazines. For some reason I always thought of the recipes using a dry rub, the meat being barbecued and that the chicken would come out pretty much coated with the sauce. This recipe is much more of a marinating type, and with the way it's presented, you kind of pour what sauce there is on the chicken.

The finished Jerk Chicken had really nice heat to it. Mr. L said that it didn't burn your lips, mouth, and tongue all the way down...it just had a nice heat in the back of your throat. I added more of the chipotle chilies than they suggested.

The chicken did come out a bit dry. The recipe called for the dish to be on the low setting for six hours. I'm thinking that my newer crock pot was probably hotter than the one she used 16 years ago while writing this cookbook so next time I'd try this at five hours. Even though the chicken wasn't as moist as I would have liked, the meat did fall from the bone. When I went to serve it, I only had one breast that was left whole, the rest disintegrated into the sauce.

JERK CHICKEN

1 large onion, cut into 8 pieces

1 generous tablespoon candied ginger

1 1/2 tablespoons minced canned chipotle chilies, or more to your taste

1/2 teaspoon ground  allspice

2 tablespoons dry mustard

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons garlic oil

One 3 1/2 pound chicken, skin removed and cut into 8 pieces, or 3 1/2 pounds chicken tenders

To prepare the sauce, place the onions and ginger in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and process to chop into very fine pieces. Add everything but the chicken and pulse to combine.

Place the chicken in a slow cooker and coat with the sauce. Cover, set on low, and cook for 6 to 8 hours or set on high and cook until the chicken is tender, 2 to 3 hours. Serves 4

Note: I ran out of candied ginger so I added some ground ginger. I put in two large of the adobo chilis (no extra adobo sauce). I didn't have any garlic oil so I just chopped up some garlic and added some olive oil. I used a regular chicken cut into pieces.

Note: I'd really watch the time on this. If I had let it cook on low for 8 hours the chicken would have been rubber. Of course if you have an older crock pot that might not be as hot as mine even on low, you might want to go longer.

Since the chicken sort of disintegrated in the sauce, this would have gone great over rice, potatoes, cauliflower, noodles, quinoa or any other grain. Even if the chicken had stayed in whole pieces, there was enough sauce to wish I'd made one of the above starches to serve it on.

Simple to throw together which is nice. But I'm thinking I may want to try other jerk chicken recipes for variations. I'd make this again though.

Current Cookbook - Plugged In

PLUGGED IN - The Definitive Guide to the 20 Best Kitchen Appliances by Lora Brody

This cookbook has a copyright of 1997. I don't know where I got this cookbook. I have never cooked from this before.

This book was written with the premise that you may have as many as "ten" appliances in your kitchen and that you may not know how to fully utilize them. It then lists 80 appliances you could possibly own (along with standard appliances like a blender, the list includes cotton candy makers, knife sharpeners, a raclette grill..and things I don't necessarily consider an appliance...like a teakettle or a sifter). Lora then picked 20 of these appliances to include in this book. Her intention is to help you find recipes that incorporate the use of said appliances.

The appliances she deals with in this book are: Blender; Handheld Blender; Bread Machine; Deep Fryer; Food Processor and Mini Food Processor (covered in one chapter); Electric Grill; Ice-Cream Maker; Microwave Oven; Hand Mixer; Stand Mixer; Rice Cooker, Skillet and Wok (these are combined into one chapter); Slow Cooker; Electric Steamer; Tortilla Press; Waffle Maker; Electric Water Smoker; and Computer.

The introduction to the book includes comments and suggestions from her "team" who list their favorite appliances and why they consider them favorites, and the preferred brands of these appliances (since this book is 13 years old I'm sure some of these might have changed). There are also several pages with general tips for using appliances (such as "use the plug, not the cord, to pull from the outlet").

Each chapter deals with a specific appliance (except a few which combine like machines such as the full and mini food processors). It tells you what the appliance does and doesn't do, why you might need the appliance, care and maintenance, which version might be right for you (say getting a deep fryer with a replaceable filter), and a list of tips for using the appliance. This information is followed by recipes.

A lot of the information on the chosen appliances is old and outdated. In the past thirteen years since this book was written, many of the appliances have become smaller and easier to use (think how big the microwaves of thirteen years ago were). The computer/internet section is completely out of date (it explains what a web browser is and lists Usenet groups! I did get a kick out of being pointed to "alt.food.grits".) But if you're like me, you still may have one of these older, bulkier appliances sitting on your kitchen counter. My Osterizer blender is at least twenty years old so all the tips and instructions in the blender section still hold true. But I would be careful and double check some of the recipes (like my crock pot is much hotter and cooks faster than the older versions, so I'd be careful of the time).

The recipes are pretty straightforward and though some of the ingredients might have been difficult to find when the book was written, I don't see a problem with that now. I'm not sure any of these recipes would be considered out of the box for each appliance (seriously, do I need to be given recipes that use my stand mixer since so many call for its use these days?). But I admit I might not have thought to use a tortilla press to make pizzas and crepes. The one big complaint I have with this book is the recipe count for some appliances. While the bread machine section lists 26 different recipes*, the deep fryer section only lists 9.

Recipes I'd like to try (even though I don't own all these appliances):

Blender: Fruit-Rum-Cream Frappes, Popovers, Blender Rocky Road Ice Cream, Homemade Fudgesicles. Handheld Blender: Puffed Pancake, Avocado Soup, Zabaglione. Bread Machine: Whole Wheat Sourdough Beer Bread, Herbed Onion Focaccia, Killer Sticky Buns, Soba Noodles. Deep Fryer: Radiators, Pesto Cheese Pillows. Food Processor: Smoked Tomato Ketchup, Trouble in Tahiti (think fruit salsa), Chili Cheesecake, The Dish Formally Known as Meatloaf, Parmesan Cheese Scones, Espresso Mocha Bars, Tropical Sorbet. Mini Food Processor: Indonesian Chicken Wings, Spicy Yogurt Marinade. Electric Grill: Grilled Sweet Corn, Asian Steak Salad. Ice Cream Maker: Key Lime Ice Cream, Tiramisu Biscotti Gelato, Burned Sugar Gelato. Microwave: Sugar Nuts, Polenta with Pesto and Parmesan, Sour Cream Chocolate Icing. Hand Mixer: Smoked Corn Bread, Brown Butter Pecan Frosting, Broiled Coconut Frosting. Stand Mixer: Savory Cheese Biscotti, Blueberry Buckle, Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Pound Cake. Rice Cooker: Rice Ole, Smoked Corn Chowder. Skillet: Soft Tacos with Scrambled Eggs and Green Chilies, Sloppy Joes, Shrimp Fried Rice, Reggibars. Wok: Cocktail Spiced Pecans, Pad Thai. Slow Cooker: Caramelized Onions, Caramelized Onion Soup, Chili Mole, Jerk Chicken, All American Barbecue Sauce, Soused Strawberry Sauce, Grape Nuts Pudding. Electric Steamer: Blue-Eyed Paul's Shrimp, Steamed Pears with Raspberry Sauce, Bananas Amaretto. Tortilla Press: Chili-Cheese Flour Tortillas, Devil's Food Crepes. Waffle Maker: Ham and Cheese Waffles. Electric Water Smoker: Smoked Butternut Squash, Smoked Flank Steak.

*I believe Lora Brody has written several bread machine cookbooks.

 

 

Free Slurpee Day!

Today is 7-11's birthday and they are giving out free Slurpee's at participating stores between 7 AM and 11 PM.

Should you require a bit more Slurpee than the free stuff they are giving out be sure to check out the new "Cowboys and Aliens" cups they have.

Alas there are no 7-11's near me (the closest one burned down over a year ago and though they just started rebuilding, it will be a while before it's up and running) otherwise I'd get my staple...a cola slurpee. I've tried some of their new flavors over the years, but nothing stacks up to just a plain old cola version to me.

A Strawberry A Day Recap

So, I consider my A Strawberry A Day challenge, where I made everything the June 2011 issue of The Food Network magazine listed for the month of June, a success. Though if I put something with strawberries on the table anytime soon, Mr. L might get up from the table and not eat. Love strawberries, but too much of a good thing, is, well, too much.

Would I do this challenge again? Probably not. Not because of the food (Mr. L did suggest that should there be a month of pork and pork related products, he could deal with that) but because cooking and posting every single day is hard! I don't know how these prolific bloggers do it, but I'm still recovering.

I did enjoy discovering new ways to use a food that, up until the challenge, I had boringly just pretty much eaten raw. Not that there is anything wrong with that, because a good, fresh, ripe strawberry is heaven on earth. But it was nice to cook out of the box for a bit.

What was my favorite strawberry day? At first I thought that was going to be a tough decision. I love using frozen strawberries in drinks and dipping strawberries in sour cream and then brown sugar is a regular occurrence for a quick dessert. But even though there were many good ideas, the simple Strawberry Soup won me over. Easy to make, it's a dish that I probably wouldn't have made without the challenge and something that I really did enjoy. It's also given me a desire to experiment with different fruit soups in the future.

The funny thing is, I keep finding strawberry recipes I'd like to try! Maybe it's the season, maybe I just became more aware of strawberries in general, but there are so many new strawberry recipes on blogs everywhere that sound enticing. Except maybe not right away. Maybe I need to wait a bit. Or find a strawberry recipe that is mainly bacon...

Strawberry Cupcakes

Since I wasn't interested in making tarts for Flag Day during the A Strawberry A Day challenge last month, I figured I'd make some cupcakes. I'd had such good luck with the Mocha Cupcakes from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes cookbook, I checked to see if it included some sort of strawberry type cupcake. Martha didn't disappoint.

These cupcakes came out very light and with enough strawberry flavor that you tasted the strawberries but it wasn't overly sweet. Though I didn't top them with Martha's recommended Strawberry Meringue Buttercream (I used a cream cheese recipe I found online that included fresh berries), the combination of the cake, frosting and strawberries made for a delicious dessert after a heavy meal. I really enjoyed these. They went well the next day with some tea so I'm thinking I may have to make these next time I have a tea party.

These weren't that complicated to make (some of the cupcakes in the book can take a ton of time and energy to complete) and the result was better than most of the more expensive cupcakes I've bought at fancy cupcake stores.

 

STRAWBERRY CUPCAKES
(from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes)

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 large whole eggs plus 1 egg white
1 cup milk
2 cups finely chopped fresh strawberries (about 20)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together both flours, baking powder, and salt.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter, sugar, and vanilla until pale and fluffy. Add whole eggs and the white, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the milk, and beating until well combined. Fold in chopped strawberries by hand.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until golden and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 15 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto rack and let cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored up to 1 day at room temperature in airtight containers. Makes 34 cupcakes.

Note: She gave instructions to frost with a pastry bag to make a nice peak of frosting and then to add thinly sliced strawberries on top. Since I was traveling with these cupcakes I just frosted them flat and put a flag in the middle.

Will definitely make these again next year when fresh strawberries are in season.