Recipe: Blackberry White Chocolate Scones

Blackberry White Chocolate Scones




2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 sticks cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks

2 large eggs, beaten
1/2 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup white chocolate chips
3/4 cup blackberries, frozen

Combine dry ingredients in food processor.  Add butter and mix until consistency of graham cracker crumbs.

Add in eggs and cream and combine until just blended.

Mix in berries and white chocolate chips. 

Turn out onto a well floured surface (dough is SUPER sticky), form into a circle approximately 8" in diameter.  Cut into 8 pieces, like slicing a pie. 

Place a well-greased cookie sheet and bake in a 400 degree oven for approximately 20 minutes.


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I use the basic scone recipe above and mix in other ingredients depending on what I have around: the mister likes blueberries and I think cinnamon chips make for good scones.  A little lemon juice and some lemon zest is pretty tasty.  It's good if you leave them plain and spread a little jelly or jam on them too.

Mama Buster's 10 Pound Mostaccioli

When my brothers and I were in high school we were that house, the one that had a revolving door. Neighbors, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, our house was constantly full of people that didn’t live there.

Looking back, I realize how huge a pain in the ass this was for my parents. My mother worked nights and my dad’s work schedule was non-standard and they must have just wanted their evenings to themselves, to be quiet and relax. After a few years of working, a couple of rounds of houseguests, and a more grown up life, I understand how incredibly precious quiet time can be. My poor parents never got any.

Instead, the driveway was full of other people’s cars, the house was full of teenagers, and there was no quiet to be found ANYWHERE. There was never any Coke in the fridge, the toilet paper was always gone, and somebody was always squabbling with someone else. Our six-person dinner table nearly always had a couple of folding chairs or barstools snuggled between the normal chairs to make room for visitors.

I am grateful that we were that house, that my parents were so welcoming when they didn’t need to be, that my mom treated all my friends like her own children, nagging and laughing, and my dad cracked jokes and talked cars and told boys to get their damned hair cut already.

Dinner time must have been an adventure for my mom. She never knew how many people would be showing up at the table. It could be 3 out of our family of 5, it could be 12. Who knew? I did a lot of quick-fast running to the grocery store to get a salad or some more vegetables so she could extend whatever dinner offering she had, but she got really good at cooking meals that made for great leftovers if we had fewer than 12 people eating.

One of them was mostaccioli. I’ve taken the recipe and adapted it a bit, making the red sauce from scratch rather than use Ragu, but it’s still pretty much hers.

Mama Buster’s 10 Pound Mostaccioli

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. hot Italian sausage
2 lbs. mostaccioli noodles (2 boxes)
1 lb. shredded mozzarella
2 28 oz. cans crushed tomatoes
1 can diced tomatoes
3-5 cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, diced
5-10 leaves basil, chopped
1 tsp. sugar
salt and pepper
olive oil

Brown Italian sausage and ground beef, drain and set aside.

While meats are browning, pour 2 tbsp. olive oil into a large pan (HUGE pan). Sauté garlic and onion until onions are clear. Pour in crushed and diced tomatoes. Salt and pepper to taste, adding sugar to cut acid in sauce.

Allow sauce to simmer while you heat up pasta water and cook pasta according to package directions.

When noodles are nearly done, add meat and basil to sauce and heat through.

Drain and rinse noodles.

Toss noodles, meaty-sauce, and cheese together until it’s a gooey mess.

Serve with garlic bread and salad. And extra vegetables if more people show up than you were planning on.

Couscous Stuffed Squash

Taken shamelessly from a meal my friend Kate made for me. It was so good I copied it a couple of days later.

Ingredients:

1 Buttercup squash, washed and seeded, halved or quartered depending on size

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, diced into bite sized pieces

½ small onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Olive oil

1 box Near East Couscous (I used garlic and olive oil flavor)

Parmesan cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place halves or quarters of squash onto sheet cake pan, put sheet into oven, pour approximately one cup of water into baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes or until fork tender.

(Note: I cook squash this way. I think the water keeps the squash from getting dried out. I put the water in after the baking sheet is in the oven because otherwise I spill water all over myself trying to maneuver. If you’ve got a favorite way to bake squash, by all means, do it your way and pretend like I never mentioned the above. Cooking squash is a very personal thing.)

When squash is roughly 10 minutes from being done, sauté onion and garlic in olive oil for a couple of minutes, throw in chicken and cook through.

While chicken is cooking, prepare couscous according to package directions. When both chicken and couscous are done, mix together, spoon into hollows of squash, top with shredded Parmesan and toss back into the oven until cheese is melted.

Recipe - Chocolate Frosting

I baked a cake and went to frost it when I realized my collection of tubs of frosting (all bought at the 10 for $10 sale) was gone.

Faced with a fully baked, yet naked cake, I did some googling and some improvising (we were out of milk) and came up with my own recipe for frosting. It’s very, very tasty.

Ingredients:
1/2 c. butter (1 stick)
2/3 c. cocoa powder
3 c. powdered sugar
1/3 to 1/2 c. cream liqueur (I used Cruzan Rum Cream, but Bailey’s or any other cream liqueur will work. Hell, even spiced rum or amaretto, if your kitchen and liquor cabinet are as sad as mine) – start with 1/3 cup and add more at the end if you need it.
1 tsp. vanilla

Instructions:
Melt butter. Add cocoa powder and mix. Add 1 c. powdered sugar and 1/3 of the cream liqueur. Mix. Add second cup of powdered sugar and another third of the cream liqueur. Mix. Add final cup of powdered sugar, vanilla, and last third of liqueur. Mix. Add more liqueur if necessary to get frosting to spreadable consistency.

Spread on top of chocolate cake or eat straight out of the bowl with a spoon. There’s no judgment here.

Recipe: Marinated Flank Steak

I saw a recipe recently for marinated flank steak that sounded interesting. The marinade, though, was not to my taste, using a lot of soy sauce and sesame oil, so I made up my own recipe. Really tasty!

Flank steak is actually a very tough cut of beef, so there are two tricks to making it tender. One is to marinate it in an acidic marinade for at least 6 hours. The other is to slice the flank steak very thinly against the grain.

Marinated Flank Steak

One flank steak
A bottle of decent red wine (I used Black Opal Cabernet Sauvignon; it has a screw cap. Don't judge me.)
1 medium to large onion, chopped
Half a dozen baby carrots, grated
4 gloves of garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
¼ to ½ teaspoon thyme

I discovered it is impossible to find an unfrozen flank steak. I found a frozen one at Von Hanson’s, a local butcher shop. Allow 24 hours for the steak to defrost in your fridge. Remove steak from packaging, rinse, and pat dry. I don’t know if this is actually necessary, but I’m kind of grossed out by the juices in the shrink wrapped package, so I rinse.

In a baking dish or bowl large enough to hold your steak (a 9x13 cake pan almost always works), throw in the onion, carrots, garlic, bay leaf, and thyme, and enough wine to cover your steak (most of a bottle in my case). Give it all a stir, being careful not to break the bay leaf. Put the steak in and roll it over a couple of times. Cover and let sit in your fridge for at least 6 hours. Flank steak is really tough, so you need to let the acid in the wine tenderize the meat for a while.

Get your grill SMOKING hot. Hot hot hot. Remove steak from marinade and toss on the grill. Cook for about five minutes on each side. The goal is to cook it really quickly over really high heat.

Remove meat from grill and let it rest for at least five minutes before slicing.

This part is key: slice the steak very thinly across the grain.


A couple of slices of the steak, served with some steamed asparagus and some fresh bread is a very nice light dinner.

The leftovers, though, are what make this wonderful. Don't slice the entire steak right off the grill - just slice off what you can eat and wrap the rest up for leftovers. Then slice off a little bit at a time and try steak and cheese quesadillas or steak sandwiches. Or steak and eggs on Sunday morning.

Smoothies

The mister has been on a health kick lately. By “health kick” I mean he talks about eating good food but still stuffs his face with red meat, cheese, and Taco Bell. But he’s decided he wants to start every morning with a smoothie.

Since I had visions of him coating my pretty butcher block counter top with sticky juice and crushed up berries, or doing that thing where he forgets to put the top on the blender and sprays smoothie all over the place, I decided I would make him his breakfast smoothies.

(Who’s a good housewife?)

Enter the Magic Bullet. My parents got me one of these for Christmas a couple of years ago. I might have laughed at them for it a little bit. It’s handy, though. I’ve used it to make hummus and salsa a couple of times, and it does a good job.

I’d never really bothered to read the instruction manual, though, and all the extra pieces, well, I stuck them in a basket and forgot them.

In preparation for smoothie making, I pulled all the bits and pieces back out of the basket and actually read the instructions and, holy shit, this thing acts as a juicer! I live for fresh-squeezed orange juice, so I immediately ran out and purchased a huge bag of oranges at Sam’s Club and made myself a pitcher of orange juice. Tastes like Mexico!

And it makes AWESOME smoothies. It gets all those little ice chunks broken up way better than a blender and it gets the whole thing nice and smooth, which, for those of us with texture issues, is key. Getting a weird chunk of fruit would gross me out.

I start with the important parts of the Magic Bullet: the base, a blade, and a top.



Then, into the top, I throw 1/4 to 2/3 cup (depends on how hungry I am) each of whole milk yogurt and kefir, both purchased at The Wedge Co-op. Then I pour in a splash of the orange juice I made using the Magic Bullet’s juicer attachment.


Then I throw in the fruit. The mister likes a mix of all kinds of berries. I prefer just one kind. We used fresh today because I just went to the store, but frozen works too. Frozen peaches with a couple of raspberries is a really, really good combo.



Then, in a smoothie for the mister, I add a little honey and some milk to thin it out, and a scoop of protein powder. In a smoothie for me, I add a splash of vanilla, some ice cubes and a little water, and sometimes, depending on the state of things, a little fiber supplement.

Then, I screw the blade to the top, upend the whole thing and press it into the base to mix. Ten seconds later, smoothie!

The mister drinks his right out of the top (which has a handle like a coffee mug, just for this purpose). I prefer to put my in a glass, though.



End result: breakfast in a cup, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 calories.

Potato and Ham Soup

The one thing about winter that I really, really enjoy is the food. In the summer, we eat things like corn on the cob and grilled chicken. In the winter we get hearty food. Thick stews, pot roasts, meat loaf, hearty, warm food that takes some time to cook and scents the whole house. Coming into a warm kitchen that smells of simmering herbs and baking bread is one of the best things in winter time.

This is one of the recipes I got ages ago from my mom, probably out of a dusty binder she keeps behind the microwave, and tweaked as time has gone on.

It’s great for dumping in the crockpot in the morning and letting it heat slowly all day, but you can do a quick and dirty version on the stove, too.

Potato and Ham Soup

Ingredients:

5-7 medium sized russet potatoes, peeled and cut into ½ inch cubes

A couple of tablespoons of flour

2 leeks, well rinsed and chopped (using the white portion and most of the tender green part)

3 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped (or 1 and ½ tablespoons dry) If you don’t have or don’t enjoy dill, I kind of like rosemary or sage; use less, though, as these are slightly stronger than dill.

One box of chicken stock (what are they, quart sized?)

¾ cup heavy cream

About a cup of cooked ham, cubed. I never actually cook ham, so I buy ham steaks at the grocery store. I find that two of the medium sized ones do nicely.

Instructions

Toss the cubed potatoes and flour together until potatoes are coated. Put potatoes, leeks, dill, and chicken stock in crock pot and leave on low setting for 8 hours, until potatoes are tender (8 hours is a guess. I put them in when I leave for work and figure they’re done when I get home). Or, put on stove and simmer for significantly less time until potatoes are tender.

Blend with a traditional blender or with an immersion blender. I like to leave the soup kind of chunky, so I don’t blend very thoroughly.

Add cream and ham and heat through (5 or 10 minutes).

Serve.

The leftovers are even better than the original, I think.

A cooking failure and two cooking successes

It’s taken me a while to get over this, but I think I can post about it now.

I am actually a decent cook. I mean, It’s not rocket science. I can read and follow a recipe like any idiot and I’ve got a basic understanding of what foods go well together if I feel like taking a recipe and tweaking it a little. Garlic and onion = good. Garlic and maple syrup = bad.

Several weeks ago I saw a Rachel Ray show where she made a hummus/baba ganoush (I can’t spell that) inspired pasta sauce.

I was immediately fixated on the recipe and had to try it. I mean, I love hummus, I really like baba ganoush and I love pasta. What could go wrong?

So, I invited my brother and his girlfriend over for dinner and set to work. I drained a can of chick peas, I sliced an eggplant, and I doubled the amount of garlic in the recipe because there’s never enough garlic in anything. I added tahini paste (mmmm). I added some red pepper flakes. I cooked it all together with some olive oil.

I put together the food processor we got for our wedding and processed the whole mess.

You guys, it was like eating paste. Thick and tasteless. How 8 cloves of garlic and a full tablespoon of red pepper flakes just disappeared into that tasteless mush, I’ll never understand.

I had one bite and immediately called Papa John’s and ordered a pizza. The mister manfully cleared his plate, and my brother tried to follow suit. My brother’s girlfriend and I made due by eating dessert until the pizza guy showed up.

Ick.

I’m not going to post the pasta recipe I tried. It was terrible and I don’t want any of you to suffer what I went through. Instead what follows are a couple standbys.

The mister loves to grill but always forgets that I’m going to want more than a hunk of meat for dinner. A nice salad, maybe some pasta.

So, I make the following frequently, as the leftovers make for good lunches at work.

Cheesy Orzo

2 cloves garlic, minced or run through a garlic press
1 small shallot, chopped
Olive oil
1 c. orzo (pasta that looks like rice)
1 c. chicken stock
1 c. shredded mozzarella

Drizzle olive oil into bottom of pot. Add shallot and garlic and sauté until garlic is soft and shallots are clear, about 3 minutes. Add chicken stock and orzo. Cover pot and simmer until all liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, add cheese, stir until combined and cheese is melty. Serve warm.

For leftovers, add a small splash of stock to the container so the pasta doesn’t dry out when you reheat.

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The mister has a pathological hatred of mayonnaise, sour cream, cream cheese, and nearly every salad dressing known to man. I can fake him out on the sour cream/cream cheese thing pretty often.

Is there cream cheese in this?

Nope, plain yogurt.

He has no idea.

But the salad dressing thing drove me nuts! I mean, if I make a fancy salad for dinner (the kind with shrimp or steak or chicken on top of it) I expect him to eat the damned thing, so it’s been a challenge to find salad dressings he will eat. Standard oil/vinegar combos gross him out (apparently he hates vinegar too). Honey mustard thinned with some olive oil works in a pinch, but it’s not my favorite.

The following salad dressing recipe works, though. He likes it, I like it, and it takes about 2 minutes to make.

Summer Salad Dressing

¾ to 1 c. olive oil
Juice of 2 lemons, plus about 1 tsp. lemon zest
2 cloves garlic

Combine olive oil, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Using the same grater/zester you used for the lemon zest, grate the garlic into the same bowl. Watch out for your knuckles. Whisk together. Easy-peasy!

Recipe - Frosted Lime Wafers

Frosted Lime Wafers

Ingredients
For Wafers
1 c. butter or margarine, softened
1 c. granulated white sugar
½ t. baking soda
½ t. finely shredded lime zest
1/3 c. lime juice (approx. 2 limes)
2 ¼ c. all purpose flour

For Lime Glaze
1 c. confectioner’s sugar
3 T. melted butter or margarine
1-2 T lime juice
Green food coloring (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

For the wafers, mix butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar, baking soda and lime juice; beat until combined. Beat in lime juice. Beat in as much flour as possible with mixer. Stir in the rest by hand.

Drop the dough by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake until the edges are beginning to brown, 10-12 minutes. Remove cookies and cool on wire racks.

For the glaze, mix confectioners’ sugar, melted butter and enough lime juice for glazing consistency (I think of this as really runny frosting). Stir in food coloring, if you have any (I never do) for more color. Dip the tops of the cookies in the glaze.