Marvelous Pigs in Satin

I have to admit, I’ve always been a little suspicious of fish tacos. How could they really be good? (I feel the same way about fish soup.)

BUT

a couple months ago, The Man of the House made fish tacos. (I’m just now blogging about it because I’m a slacker like that.)

Those fish tacos were super tasty. He used this Alton Brown recipe.

He has made them twice now, and we think it is better to leave the cilantro out, or just use it as a garnish–and I love cilantro–it just makes the rub too watered down. Also, use tilapia or another white fish like Alton Brown says. Ahi Tuna wasn’t quite right.

The best part of the fish tacos that he made was that whitest sauce you see there.

AH! YUM! It was rich and good like hollandaise sauce. I can’t wait for June to try it on asparagus.

Mayonnaise, 1/2 cup
Plain Yogurt, 1/2 cup
Lemon juice, 3 tablespoons

I’m dreaming of fish tacos..why hasn’t he made them again???…maybe I should buy some more fish!

2 egg whites
pinch cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar – extra fine if you have it

Preheat oven to 250*F
Whisk egg whites until thick and frothy.
Add Cream of Tartar. Whisk quickly until whites form stiff peaks.
Continue whisking, sprinkling the sugar over the egg whites a little at a time.

Cover a cookie sheet with baking parchment or aluminum foil.
Spoon out 10 large dollops of meringue and push them with your finger onto the sheet, about 3/4″ apart.

Bake 1 hour or until crisp and dry. Turn off the oven and leave the meringues until completely cool.

1 1/4 cup whipping cream
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp rum flavoring

Whip cream until soft peaks form.

Sandwich meringues together with whipped cream.

Heaven in my mouth.

Maybe some day I’ll be brave enough to try this one:

I’m not a Sunday Cooker. All my life growing up, Sunday Dinner was a pot of pinto beans. Mom would put it on the stove to simmer on low while we were gone to church and when we got home, we had bean soup for lunch with bread and butter. On special days (or perhaps if there wasn’t bread) Mom made cornbread. We never ate supper on Sunday–just lots of popcorn or leftover beans later in the evening. This was so ingrained in me, that I don’t even think of eating supper on Sunday and am always surprised when someone else wants to eat at 5 or 6 Sunday evening.

What? Me? Cook a meal on Sunday Evening?
Surely you jest.
Go scrounge some leftovers from the fridge.
Fix yourself a dang quesadilla.
How about popcorn?

However, perhaps because we are spending more Sundays at home these days, where before we always went to visit my parents or his parents….

Or perhaps the sheer volume of requests for food has risen as my kids get older and are actually beginning to eat food….In fact the announcement that “I’m Hungry” seems like the #1 thing I hear these days and I feel like I’m fixing food constantly…

Whatever the reason, I have begun very reluctantly to fix supper on Sunday. Yesterday around 5pm, I faced the reality that everyone was hungry, despite the fact that I had already made Elephant Ears and re-heated yesterday’s Tortelini after church.

I had some chicken thighs in the freezer and offered to bake them one way or another. The Man of the House voted for something glazed and sweet-like, perhaps oriental? After a quick search through my cookbooks, because I didn’t want anything I make regularly, I found this marvelous recipe in a Taste of Home Magazine. It turned out deliciously!! Next time I’ll actually make rice and a vegetable to go with it, but it will be on the menu regularly from now on.

Chipotle-Marmalade Chicken

**(I didn’t have Marmalade, only Apricot Jam–I’m looking forward to trying it with the marmalade) so it is actually

Apricot Chipotle Chicken

**This is a slow-cooker recipe, so it could be done while you were gone to church for Sunday Lunch as well.

**I baked it in the oven and it was perfect

**The recipe that follows is my modification, which was basically more salt and apricot jam instead of marmalade. I do want to try the marmalade sometime.

**I thought it would be pretty spicy. Usually things we make with chipotle are, but it hardly had any heat at all. I might put in more chipotle sometimes when I want some burn.

7-8 Chicken Thighs-skin off or on as you prefer. I think Thighs work better in slow cooked recipes than breasts. Chicken breasts dry out so much during cooking.

salt & pepper

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.
Spray a 9×13 baking dish with olive oil and line up those pretty thighs in the dish–or put chicken in crock-pot.

Mix together
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup apricot jam (or orange marmalade)
1 Tbsp. canola oil
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp minced chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. (You find this in a can at the grocery store. You never need a whole can at once, but I put it in a little glass jar and it keeps FOREVER in the fridge. Like seriously a year and doesn’t go bad. Bacteria doesn’t grow well on chili peppers. Sadly the same is not true for roasted red peppers.)
1 Tbsp honey
1 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt

Pour that over the chicken, cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for 1 1/2 hours or at 250 degrees for about 3 hours or in your crock pot on low for 4-5 hours. (Those times are sort of guesses–in case you are like me and always doing things last minute, I’ll tell you what I did. My chicken was partially frozen still when I put it in the oven. So I baked it at 375 for 45 minutes. At that point, I checked it and it was still quite raw in the middles. We decided to go visit Grandma and eat later, so I reduced the oven to 250 and we left it baking for about 2 1/2 hours. When we got home, the chicken was done and falling off the bones tender. Perfect.)

So the chicken is done and tender. Remove it from the baking dish/crock pot and pour all the pan juice into a small sauce pan. Bring the liquid to a boil. The boiling will push the fat to the center and you can skim it off pretty easily.

Stir together
a heaping Tablespoon of cornstarch
2 Tblsp water

Stir into the boiling sauce and cook about 2 minutes until thickened. Ladle sauce over the chicken.

One last thing: If you taste it at this point and it seems a bit flat, add more salt. Yum 🙂

Really one last thing: I’m sure it’s good with rice and steamed asparagus or broccoli on the side. It was good with instant potatoes and grapes last night.

A magazine that I now wish to subscribe to is “Cooks Illustrated.”

I picked up a copy at my mother-in-law’s and read a delightful article all about the science of the perfect fluffy biscuit. Cook’s Illustrated was refreshingly free of advertising. No attempting to read a small article sandwiched between columns of ads. No scavenger hunt at the back of the magazine to find the second half of the recipe. (Take that, “Cooking Light!” I bite my thumb at thee.) Just recipes and a few good kitchen gadget reviews. I loved the process the author went through trying to discover the perfect biscuit. I learned a lot! I have tried this recipe 3 times and been rewarded with tall, fluffy, soft, and moist biscuits each time–even though I subbed whole wheat flour in for 1/2 of the flour called for.

2 cups all purpose flour (I used 1 whole wheat and 1 all purpose)
1 Tablespoon double acting baking powder
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 Tablespoons butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
1 1/2 cups lowfat buttermilk

1. Place dry ingredients in a food processor and blend until mixed (about 6 one second pulses.)

2. Scatter butter cubes over the dry ingredients and pulse eight to 10 pulses until the mixture looks like pebbly coarse corn meal.

3. Transfer to a bowl and stir in buttermilk with a rubber spatula until just blended.

4. Sprinkle 1 cup flour on a cookie sheet. Use cooking spray to coat a round 9″ cake pan and a 1/4 cup measuring cup. Scoop level dough with measuring cup and drop onto floured baking sheet. With floured hands, gently shape into a ball, shake off excess flour and place in pan. Fill the pan around the edges and then place the last 3 biscuits in the center of the ring.

5. Brush the biscuits with butter (or be lazy and just put a little pat on top of each one like I did.)

Bake at 500 degrees for 5 minutes, reduce oven temperature to 450 and bake an additional 15 minutes. Remove from oven, cool 2 minutes, invert on a cloth and break apart. Turn biscuits right side up and let cool 5 more minutes.

These biscuits are not flaky. They are tall and soft, similar to KFC biscuits, but not as dry. Flaky biscuits require different ingredients and a different technique. I have to go read “Cooks Illustrated” to find out how.

This sandwich makes the Man of the House very happy. He calls it “real food.” I love it because of the green peppers and the mayonnaise.

**caution Must be made with complete disregard for fat and/or calories, but I consider it healthy (sssh. don’t tell the Man of the House)

Ingredients

olive oil
1 pound beef round stake
1 large yellow onion
2 large green peppers
salt, pepper, garlic powder
oregano or Italian seasoning
mozzarella cheese
yellow mustard
mayonnaise
homemade bread sliced thickly or homemade french bread subs

Directions:

1. Slice steak thinly
2. Drizzle olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. Add Steak.
3. Sprinkle generously with salt, pepper and garlic powder. (but not too much salt)
4. Slice onion. When steak is pretty much done browning, add onion to pot
5. Wash, seed, and Chop green bell pepper. Add to pot
6 . Sprinkle generously with oregano or Italian seasoning.
7. Reduce heat and put lid on pot. Simmer about 5 minutes until onions are soft and peppers are tender-crisp
8. Cover with layer of grated mozzarella cheese, maybe some Parmesan too, and cook long enough to melt cheese.

9. Spread bread with mayo and mustard. Top with hot steak.

Serve to Man immediately. You can eat some too.

**This Blogger not responsible for resulting results.

Last night I created some tasty goodness.

Think apple pie

Think cream cheese Bearclaw

Put them together in a tasty dessert fusion.

Wait.

I did not just use the word *fusion*
Gack!

I meant …mixture, ensemble,

Whirling Cyclone of Apple Cheescake Pie Goodness!

Here is what I did —this would make 2 round pies, or one 8 x 11 casserole (which is what I did)

#1-Make a double pie crust recipe.

I think puff pastry would also be good, but I would make individual servings or a long bear claw, not 1 big pie if I used Puff Pastry. Moving On

This is my favorite Crust recipe
*********************************
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup butter
1 tsp orange peel zest
6 Tablespoons cold water or orange juice

Cut the butter into the flour and orange zest. Mix in water with a fork until the dough sticks together.
Divide the pastry into 2 disks, wrap in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator
*******************************

Next is the apple pie filling. If you can your own at home, that is a great filling to use.

I had some apples that needed to be used up (the impetus for this whole project). I just cut them up, tossed them with cinnamon and sugar and lemon juice.

A few of the apples didn’t seem cooked through after the whole thing was done, so I think this is one where you want to cook the apple pie filling first. But don’t use canned filling from the store. If you do, I will cry.

Cream Cheese Filling from my friend’s Cream Cheese Bear Claw recipe (HEAVEN!)
**********************
16 oz cream cheese
2/3 cups sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp butter flavor
1 tsp almond flavor (this is what I did–next time I would use less almond flavor. The filling tasted exactly like it was from a
bakery. But my personal preference is vanilla and I felt like it was overpowered by the almond flavor)
************************

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

Get out your pie crusts and roll them out into 2 rectangles–about 2 ” bigger all around than your 8×11 casserole pan.

Put 1 crust in the bottom of the pan, and add the cream cheese filling

Layer on the apple pie filling

Cover with the second crust. Seal the edges and cut steam vents in the top.

Brush the top with an egg wash of
1 egg
1 Tablespoon water

Sprinkle with pearl sugar

Bake 45 minutes -until crust is golden

Let the pie cool as long as you can stand it before you eat. It was good warm and good cold the next morning for breakfast. (Shhh–hey! apples, cream cheese, an egg, whole wheat–that makes healthy breakfast for sure!)

What is yummier than homemade doughnuts?

APPLE FRITTERS!

and they are easy to make too–even if you are not skilled at frying stuff in oil (like me)

First, the recipe:

What?

Never mind about the pizza and the fried chicken I made on those other days…

Yes, those are Lindt chocolate truffles hidden in my cupboard.

Obviously I’m going through a hormonal imbalance the last few days. Do you want the recipe or not??

Marvelous Apple Fritters

1 cup whole wheat flour (see, they’re healthy)
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder (shake the can before measuring)
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
2 eggs
1 cup milk (don’t do 2 cups of milk by accident: then you have to double the whole recipe…ahem.)

4 cups peeled, chopped apples–I used some sweet-tart jonathans that had been sitting on my counter for over a month and were a bit..okay alot… soft and wrinkly but not rotten. They turned out perfect. Chop them up pretty small.

1 cup powdered sugar for dusting, licking, inhaling and rubbing your face in

1: in a medium bowl, mix dry ingredients. Beat together eggs and milk in a separate bowl. Stir milk into flour mixture with a fork until smooth. Add apples

2: Heat 2 quarts vegetable oil in a deep heavy bottom pan to 375 degrees F.

Get a long handled scoop like this one:

not like this one

unless you like having boiling hot oil splattered all over your tender flesh. Then by all means, use the little scoop.

3. Drop batter in by dollops, not bigger than 1/4 cup. Fry a few at a time, turning, until golden brown.

4. Drain on paper towels. Put the powdered sugar in a brown paper bag. Drop in the fritters and shake to coat.

Then you stuff!

P.S. because I made a double batch, there were more than 2 adults and 5 children could eat–even though we had them for Sunday Supper with no other supporting food except milk. The fritters left over were pretty good at breakfast the next morning, however 24 hours later the few still remaining were yuck-o-la. So make sure you eat them up quick!