One of my favorite colors is green.  Just looking at these collards makes me feel so healthy.

I often have vegetables lurking about in the refrigerator, next to the butter, eggs, and cream (heh, heh), that need to get used up.  Traditional Southern-style collards are cooked a long time, with a ham hock and some butter.  Because of the high fat consumption around here due to my baking, I really try to cook as healthfully as I can, so a few years ago I started experimenting with collards, and this is what I came up with.

Clean and trim a bunch of collards (about 1 to 1.5 pounds), discarding the thick stalks.  Do not dry off the collards.  Chop coarsely and set aside.  Chop 3 cloves of garlic (more if you like a strong garlic flavor), and set aside.

In a heavy bottomed pot, over medium heat, preheat a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.  Toss in the garlic and a large pinch of red pepper flakes, and stir for about 30 seconds.  Don’t let it burn.  Add the collards, and enough vegetable or chicken broth to just cover them.  Add some kosher salt and pepper, and some garlic powder if you like. Bring to a low boil, boil for about 7 minutes, then turn down the heat to medium low, cover, and cook gently for another 23 minutes.  Check to see if the collards are tender (they won’t be mushy like traditional collards), and adjust seasoning.

Are you cooking frugally? If you are, and want to join me, send me an email  by noon on Thursdays, linking to something you made in the past week.  There are only three rules: (1) you made it in the past week,  (2) you made the dish (it can by anything – appetizer, baked good, etc.) with ingredients that you had on hand in your home or garden, and (3) link back to this blog and mention Frugal Fridays.  I’ll add the link to my post.  If somehow I miss you, or I’m out of town, or your email gets to me after noon, I’ll include you in the following week’s post.

This month, “You Want Pies with That?” bakers were asked by Natalie of Oven Love to create a pie based on a “Family Favorite” dessert.

Oh, dear.  This was tough.   Why?  Because my mom rarely made the same dessert twice.  I was the primary cookie baker, and I went through a phase where I made chocolate pudding on a regular basis.  But I wouldn’t call those “family favorites.”  We had ONE family favorite, and that was flan.  And I like flan plain – I did not like the thought of putting it in a crust.  The only other thing that my mom made on a regular basis (when we had a peach tree) was peach pie and peach ice cream.

The peaches in the store are pretty bad right now.  So I made one of my current family favorites:  blueberry pie.  I used scraps of leftover dough to make the lattice, and that’s why it looks so awful, but I’m not about to waste good, butter-laden pastry crust.

The Pies with That gang has baked some gorgeous pies this month – go check them out!
continue reading "You Want Pie with That? Family Favorite Blueberry Pie"

How do you participate in Tuesdays with Dorie when: (1) you’ve been gone for almost two weeks, (2) you feel like a giant ball of fat because you’ve been eating hotel food during that time, and (3) you don’t have much time to bake because your family is out of clean underwear?

You improvise.  Yes, you go to Trader Joe’s, pick up some lady fingers and mascarpone, and make one SMALL dessert.  SMALL.  So you don’t have an entire tiramisu cake around to tempt you, and add to the horror of looking at the bathroom scale.  Okay, I only gained one two pounds on my trip, but at my age, while it took two weeks to put that on, it will take a month to take it off.  Curses!

This week, Megan of My Baking Adventures chose Dorie Greenspan’s Tiramisu Cake on pages 266-268 from Baking: From My Home to Yours.  The verdict?  What’s not to like about tiramisu?  Chocolate, coffee, mascarpone . . . .  Oh, I’m soooooo glad I made one small dessert!

Now, check out what the other TWD bakers did this week!

Please, do not be deterred by the alarming color.  This food is safe for human consumption, and delicious!

I’m getting this up a bit late – just got back from a two week long, out-of-town trip.  Thanks for your patience with me these past few months, folks.  I was hoping it would turn out to be a quiet year, but the universe had other plans for me.

This month, Temperance of High on the Hog chose Coq au Vin from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking.  You can find the recipe here (my minor adaptations will be below the jump), as well as the R2R blogroll.  I followed the recipe pretty much to a “T,” with a couple exceptions.  First, I eliminated the pearl onions.  Master Chow, my honorable husband, will not eat them, so it would have been a waste of grocery money.  Second,  I made the dish with chicken legs and thighs.  Why?  Because I’ve made coq au vin before, and despite my best efforts, the breast meat turned out dry as a bone.

Temperance chose a great recipe – it’s easier than others that I have tried or looked at, and Bourdain broke it down to very manageable steps, although some of his instructions were a bit vague and required me to adapt a bit.  Reducing some of the red wine amped up the flavor, and adding a bit of flour to thicken the sauce really did wonders for the texture.

Another fun recipe from the R2R gang, and another lesson learned for me – just because you’ve made a dish before, go ahead and try it with a different recipe – the results just may be worth it!

Cooking Notes:  My husband really, really liked this dish – he said it was so much better than my previous attempt at coq au vin.  I used Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw brand Cabernet Sauvignon, and I marinated the chicken for . . . 3 days.  Yup.  You read that correctly.  I was so busy I couldn’t get to it, and I was afraid it had turned to mush.  Didn’t happen, and I think that was because I used thighs and legs.  Served it over brown rice.  This is definitely on the repeat list!
continue reading "Recipes to Rival – Coq au Vin"

Will be up later today!  Have to upload some photos when the computer is available.

So, what do you do when you just got off the red-eye, you’ve been gone for almost two weeks, and you’re jet-lagged, with a husband to feed?

You pull out and thaw the turkey breast that you bought in December.  Pat it dry, then drizzle it with olive oil.  Then you sprinkle kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper on the outside and in the cavity.  You sprinkle it with garlic powder and . . . oh, back there, waaaaaay in the back of my cupboard is some spice blend by Emeril.  You sprinkle that on, too.  You quarter an onion and stick it in the cavity, then roast the whole thing at 375 F until done (use a roasting thermometer to be sure – I roast mine to 165 F, and let it rest for about 20 minutes.  The internal temperature rises to 180 F).

This will feed one hungry husband for several days, while you reset your internal clock.

Awesome, if I do say so myself. I have to start giving myself a bit more credit for creativity.  Not decorating, mind you, but for making recipes my own. Pay no heed to the lousy picture – I am out of town at the moment, and I made this and froze it before I left.  Of course, I had to taste a bit and it was phenomenal.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Jenny gave us a basic cheesecake recipe, and set us loose, telling us to make it our own.  I did just that by (1) eliminating the crust – yes, I made this without a crust!; and (2) flavoring it like a creamsicle, that outstanding orange and vanilla frozen concoction hustled by our local Good Humor Man.  Those were the days.  I also used low fat cream cheese, and a mixture of cream and low fat sour cream because that’s what I had on hand.

I made this in a heart-shaped springform pan, which is the only pan I have that will allow me to use a water bath.  I also lowered the temperature to 325 F on convection bake, and the cake turned out creamy, smooth, and perfect, right on schedule.  It did not crack.  It did not burn.  No water leaked into the pan (I double wrapped in heavy duty foil). A shockingly successful endeavor, all around.

Be sure to check Jenny’s blog for the original recipe, and the BRAND NEW Daring Baker’s website!  I am without the internet at the moment, but when I get back in town, I’m looking forward to seeing what everybody made!  My adaptation after the jump.
continue reading "The Daring Bakers, and an Awesome Creamsicle Cheesecake"

When my husband, the Honorable Master Chow, started going out with me, I was a vegetarian.  I would eat eggs and some other dairy, but that was where I drew the line into the realm of animal products.  One of the things that he did early in our relationship was to search for vegetarian recipes that he thought I would like.  He struck gold with this one, and he continues to make it for me, eleven years later.  The original recipe comes from . . . who knows?  I’m not sure where, but I saw something similar in 1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recipes, 2nd ed.

The beauty of this dish is, in part, that you can make it with whatever you have on hand.  No barley?  OK, use brown rice.  Master Chow has even made it for me with wild rice and red quinoa (that one is the dish pictured on the left).  I have to say, there’s something magical about this casserole – not only is it tasty and low-fat, but when I eat it, it satisfies me to my very core, and I don’t feel a hunger pang for hours.  Not to mention that it’s loaded with vitamins, minerals, and heart-healthy fiber.  It makes a fantastic breakfast, heated up with two poached eggs on top (runny yolks, please!)  So, if you are looking to add more grains and vegetables to your diet, why don’t you give this a try, and tweak it to please your own palate.  Recipe after the jump.
continue reading "Frugal Fridays #2 – Vegetarian Courtship Casserole"

I saw the folks on America’s Test Kitchen make these, and what intrigued me was the graham cracker-less crust. This recipe uses animal crackers!  I love graham cracker crusts, but I think that the spice often clashes with the filling, and Master Chow really dislikes that they get soggy.  I also had a bunch of key lime juice that I’d frozen, and wanted to use up.

Verdict:  people LOVED these, especially large, muscular males.  Master Chow, a member of the aforementioned group, was particularly fond of the crust which remained crispy.  These bars also froze very well, just make sure to double wrap them.

In the future, I think I’ll experiment a bit more and throw some crystallized ginger in the crust, or maybe add a layer of white chocolate just to shake things up a bit.  And to give credit where credit is due, I found the recipe on line via Judy’s Kitchen, a baker who seems to make a lot of cheesecake, so I’ll be visiting her more often!  And she happened to find it over at Mac & Cheese.

My adaptations:  low fat cream cheese, and no coconut.  Recipe after the jump.  Finally, the beauty of the recipe is that you can make the whole thing in your food processor!
continue reading "Key Lime Cheesecake Bars, but no TWD – I’m Out of Town. Again!"

One of my little Cavaliers.  Just 12.5 pounds of sweet lovin’!

I rarely get political on this blog, and when I do it’s about animals or food.  My vet and I were discussing the huge problem of people abandoning their pets and skipping town, leaving the creatures who are completely dependent on their humans chained, and/or without food and water.

People, there is no excuse for that.  If you cannot care for your pet any longer, there are no-kill shelters in virtually every community who will not only find a loving home for your pet, but will also come out and pick it up if you can’t bring it in.  Do the right thing.

Starting today, I’m going to be posting most Fridays (life happens, so there may be a Friday that I miss) on a dish that I made with what I had on hand in my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer.  No running to the store for a last minute item, just doing what I can with what I have.  Most of these recipes are going to be healthy, and have a vegetarian bent, but not all of them will, since Master Chow looooooves chicken.  And beef.  And lamb.  And pork.

This week, it’s asparagus, which we are starting to see in stores in my neck of the woods.  Asparagus with thick stalks tends to be more flavorful, and if you cook it the way my mom showed me, you will end up with the tenderness that makes some folks fans of thin-stalked asparagus.

It’s pretty simple.

1.  Start by holding up a stalk and snapping off the base, then use that one stalk as a guide to cut off the base of the other stalks.  I save those bits (cleaned up) to throw into soup.

2.  Next, peel the thick base of the stalks with a vegetable peeler.  My mom often skipped step 1 and went straight to this step.  Sometimes I do, too.

3.  Steam of boil under tender – al dente – but not mush.  For thin stalks this can take 2-3 minutes, for thick stalks, it can take around 6.  Bottom line:  don’t walk away.  You have to keep testing to see if the asparagus has reached the right level of doneness for you.

4.  Drain the asparagus, and while it’s still hot, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar (or balsamic), and kosher salt or sea salt, to taste.

This is quick, easy, and delicious.  Enjoy!