Burgundy Mustard Pork

Tags

burgundy, dijon, dinner, Fall, food, Pork, roasted, savory, squash, yum

So yummy!I got this recipe from a Williams Sonoma catalog of all places. The catalog came into my work and a friend of mine who also likes to cook (as well as fantasize about all the cookware in said catalog) told me that she had made the recipes from the catalog before and that they were pretty good. I decided to give this one a shot and am really glad I did, so is Jason.

It’s been modified a bit, for example the actual recipe uses white wine and Burgundy mustard. I had neither at the time so I used red wine and dijon. It was delicious. So here goes. You will need a dutch oven to make this or some kind of oven proof pan with a lid. I used my cast iron dutch oven and it was perfect as it put a nice sear on the meat.

3/4 cup red wine
1 TB packed brown sugar
2 Tb olive oil
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 Tb rosemary
2 chopped garlic cloves
1 boneless pork loin roast
salt/pepper
1/4 cup heavy cream

Whisk together the wine, brown sugar, olive oil, mustard, rosemary & garlic. Brush the pork on all sides with the mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for about an hour. Put the rest of the marinade in a saucepan and reserve.
Preheat the oven to 475 F. Place the pork in a Dutch oven, season with salt and pepper, cover and roast for 20 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 400 and continue roasting with the lid on for about 30-40 minutes. (Meat thermometer should read 145 when done). Remove from the Dutch oven and let sit while you make the sauce.

Pour the marinade into the Dutch oven and add the 1/4 cup cream. Bring to a boil on the stovetop until reduced (about 5 minutes). I’ve made the sauce without adding it to the roasting pan but it’s not as rich and delicous that way. The juices and browned bits from the pork add a depth of flavor, so I highly suggest you try it like that.

I served it with roast squash, I figured since the oven was on for the pork I might as well roast squash. I added the squash when the temperature was turned down to 400 and it took about 40 minutes for it to finish, which was how long the pork needed so that was good.  I served the squash with coconut oil and Fleur de Sel, yummy!

Amish apple individual pies

Tags

apple pie, baking, dessert, Fall, holiday, sweet, yum

A friend of mine recently moved to Pennsylvania and she described these Amish individual apple pies.  Once I heard what it was I had to make one!  You wrap an apple in pie dough and bake it!  Well it’s a tiny bit more involved than that but not much. 

The other night the stars aligned and I had a craving, an apple and some pie dough in the fridge left over from a pumpkin pie I had made.

Pie dough (you can use your favorite recipe or possibly even the kind you buy in the store, although I can’t guarantee how good that will taste)

• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup shortening or butter
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 Tb sugar
• 3 Tb ice water

This makes enough dough for a decent sized pie so it would probably make about 6 apples I think.  Whisk the flour, salt & sugar together, cut in cold butter or shortening until the mix looks like crumbs. Drizzle in the ice water 1 Tb at a time and mix with a fork until the dough comes together.  Wrap the dough in plastic and let it sit in the refrigerator at least 1/2 hour.  Roll out the dough.

Core the apples, I don’t core all the way through. I used a red apple I had sitting around but use your favorite baking apple, some people prefer the tart green Granny Smith for baking. I use a red apple like a Gala because I don’t like to add alot of sugar and the red apples have their own sweetness.  Put a pat of butter, brown sugar, sprinkle of cinnamon, ginger & clove in the core of the apple.  I don’t measure this I just eye it but I suppose it would be about a tsp of butter, and a tsp of sugar.

Meanwhile in a saucepan combine 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of water, 2 Tbs butter and some spices.  I used cinnamon, ginger & clove because that is what I like in my apples,  you can use whatever spices you prefer.  Bring this mix to a boil and then remove from the heat.

Wrap the apples in the pie dough, place in either individual ramekins or a baking pan with sides and pour the syrup over the top of them.  Bake in a 350 oven for about 45 minutes.  If you have enough syrup left, baste again at the half way point.

I must admit I shared this with my husband but next time I will make two so I don’t have to share!

Stuffed Turban Squash

Tags

dinner, Fall, food, holiday, idea, Pork, sausage, stuffed, turban squash, yum

The first time I saw a turban squash I knew I had to possess one!  They are so gorgeous.  But I had no idea what to do with it. Internet search here I come (what did we do before the internet?)  This is what I found and I’ve never looked back.  My husband LOVES this dish and every fall whoever sees the striped beauty first always brings it home.

The recipe is super easy and open to lots of adaptation.

Ingredients

• 1 turban squash
• 2 Tb butter or olive oil
• 1/2 onion chopped small
• 2 carrots diced
• 2 stalks celery diced
• 1 lb pork sausage
• 1/4 c breadcrumbs
• 2-4 TB brown sugar (depending on your taste)
• salt & pepper
• any herbs you want to experiment with, hot chili? sage? etc

Preheat the oven to 350 F. First you must cut the top off the turban squash and remove the seeds from top & bottom (keep the top). Brush the cut edges with olive oil and put cut side down on a foil wrapped cookie sheet.  Roast the squash until mostly soft, depending on the size it will be at least an hour.  You want to be able to scoop some out but it will also cook a little more when you stuff it so you don’t want it to fall apart.

Saute the onion, celery & carrots in a saucepan in the butter or oil until tender.  Add the sausage and cook, drain any fat.  Mix in brown sugar, bread crumbs, salt/pepper and herbs if you want to use some (I usually like it as is).  Scoop out some squash and add to the sausage mixture.  Stuff the mixture into the squash, cover with the top and bake at 350 F about 25 minutes so the flavors can blend.  Serve!

I completely forgot to take a picture of the finished meal until it was …much…too…late………….

I was lucky to get a picture of these last remains.

My apologies, I’m a terrible food blogger but a wonderful cook! 

 

 

Kale, Quinoa & cheese casserole!

Tags

casserole, cheese, clean eating, dinner, Fall, food, gluten free, healthy treat, idea, kale, quinoa, savory, side dish, yum

So is this a “clean” recipe you might ask?  Somewhat.  Too much cheese can be a bit heavy but I think the other ingredients make up for it and what’s a little cheese between friends?!  The other ingredients are kale and quinoa, plus some eggs and I even added Greek yogurt….so there’s lots of protein and the kale is healthy right?  I’m totally justifying.  What the hell?  Let’s eat some cheese! Lots and lots!!!!  Cheesy goodness.  Whew! That’s out of my system.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 c quinoa
• 1 bunch kale
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 eggs
•  1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 cup cheddar cheese
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• salt/pepper
• panko

Cook the quinoa, I get mine in the bulk section so I always soak in cold water for about 10 mins and rinse until the water runs clear.  Then add 2 1/2 cups water to the quinoa, bring to a boil, cover & simmer until the water is absorbed. While it’s cooking, cut the kale into bite sized pieces and either stir fry or saute until wilted.

In a bowl whisk together the eggs, milk, yogurt, spices, salt/pepper and the chopped garlic.  Mix in the quinoa, the kale and the cheese.  Pour into a greased 13 x 9 baking dish and sprinkle panko or bread crumbs on top.  Bake in a 350 oven for about 30 minutes.  Like all recipes you can adjust the amounts of anything including the spices to your taste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And done!

Not your usual Blackberry cobbler

Tags

baking, blackberry, cobbler, dessert, Fall, sweet, yum

Blackberry season is upon us up here in the Pacific Northwest.  The blackberries are at their prime and might last another week or two!  I love this time of year.  You can feel fall in the air but it’s still warm during the day and the blackberries are bursting out everywhere!  The blackberry bush is considered a weed and a pest to some. It will definitely take over a space if left unchecked and that is one of the things I like about living here. I can find blackberries most everywhere.  The trail I take my dogs walking on….blackberries, the empty lot across the street, blackberries, the walk around our block….you got it…blackberries!

I use this recipe every year (this is my second one this year so far)  and diet be damned, I will eat this and enjoy it mightily!  Oh and why is this recipe different from other cobblers I’ve seen?  The biscuit starts out on the bottom, the fruit on top and then a whole lot of water is poured over everything. It looks like it will be a disaster but it has worked every time.

Blackberry Cobbler  (You could probably use other fruit as well but I’ve only ever done it with blackberries)

Biscuit topping

• 1/4 c butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 c flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 c milk

Filling

• 2 c berries
• 1/4 – 1/2 c sugar (depends on how sweet the berries are)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 c water
• 1 tsp tapioca powder (optional)

Cream the butter & sugar together.  Sif the flour, salt & baking powder together and add to the butter mix alternately with milk.  The batter will be stiff, spoon into a greased 2 qt baking dish.  Preheat oven to 375F.

Spoon the berries over the biscuit dough. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and the tapioca powder.  Pour the water into the baking dish. Bake for 45-50 mins.  Fruit will sink, the biscuit will rise.  It’s done when golden brown on top.

Semi disaster…eaten

Tags

apple, apple pie, baking, Fall, gingersnaps, sweet, yum

I had bought a package of gingersnaps. I don’t usually buy cookies, whether they are in a bag or not (because I’d rather make them). But the fact they they come in a bag makes them highly suspect.  I NEEDED them for a recipe. I really did. The recipe which turned out rather ok was for Pumpkin Cheesecake Stuffed Snickerdoodles by Willow Bird Baking which you can find here  I’m not gonna post them because she did such a great job the first time out, why bother? Also I only used the stuffing part of her recipe as I already had a snickerdoodle recipe.  But back to the gingersnaps and the reason I’m posting at all!

The bag says "The Good Cookie" - debatable.

Jason is EATING the gingersnaps that were left over from the snickerdoodle affair! NOOOOOOO.  I must make something out of them….. I had recently attended an office party and someone’s wife donated a big box of apples.  Donated is a kind word, I think she actually just wanted to get rid of them.  So I took 6 last week and made an apple coffee cake for my friend’s birthday. It was really good but I don’t think I took pictures and I didn’t post it.  It was moist and delicious and I even used concentrated apple juice with brown sugar to make a drizzle for the top! Yum.  But I digress, as usual, you try living in my head!  I was back at that office this week and no one really took any apples…so I took a few (or 5) more.  APPLE PIE with Gingersnap crust?!  Why not?  People make graham cracker crust don’t they?

The apple looked about like this.

Internet research here I come!  See, I usually will check around and see if others have made what I’m trying to make (which is usually yes or some version thereof) and I found a few gingersnap crust recipes.  So it has been done. Perfect!  But…I forgot the research part.  I usually read through quite a few versions and decide what way I want to try it. But this time I went with the first recipe I came across and just started right in. BIG MISTAKE.  I KNOW this, it’s happened before, why did I do it again?  I guess I thought it would be pretty basic and easy.   Hahaha.

So here is how you should NOT make gingersnap crust…

• 2 cups crushed gingersnaps
• 1 stick butter, melted (WAY too much)
• 1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350.  It said to mix all the ingredients together and press into a pie pan and up the sides. I should have known when the sides didn’t really want to stay put. But I perservered, put it in the oven for the recommended 15 mins and when I looked in….Oh no….oh no….(just look at the picture)  pools of butter, fallen down sides. *@#! (Insert all the swear words known to man) I tried pressing the sides back where they should be with a spoon and stuck it back in the oven for probably another 15 minutes….same result.  So I persisted anyway, I don’t admit failure easily….I’m making a d#*! pie.

Puddles of Butter....so wrong.

The filling…the filling was very good if I say so myself.

• 4-5 sliced apples (peeled)
• juice of a big lemon
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 Tb flour
• 3/4 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

As you’re slicing the apples into a bowl squeeze lemon juice on them.  The lemon brings out their flavor, don’t worry, you won’t really taste it. (I used the cuisinart slicing blade attachment and got really small, thin slices of apple).  Mix together the sugar, flour & spices and sprinkle over the apples, mix it up.  Smell the Chinese 5 spice powder first to make sure you’ll like it.  I put in 1/2 tsp and then added more so the 3/4 tsp is just an approximation. I like how it smells, kinda clovey and almost licoricey from the star anise.  If you don’t want to be daring then use cinnamon & some ginger, clove, allspice (whatever you like really) DON’T leave out the pepper.  You will not notice it, but it does add something. Try it!  Anyway, I placed the apple slices in the messed up pie crust. (Hopefully you will have a better crust to put it in, do some research).

Then I made crumbles for the top so it was like a dutch apple pie. 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar & 1/2 cup butter. Mix them toether with your hands until it’s very crumbly and then put over the top of the apples.  Increase the oven temp to 375 and bake for about 45 mins depending on your oven.  You want the top to be golden and the apples to be tender.

The pie tasted wonderful.  It was a bit too buttery for my taste but the friends I had over to experiment on loved it and had seconds! Slicing the apples so thinly made the filling soft and almost custardy, instead of the usual apple chunky slices in most pies.  So…. keep the filling, work on the crust. I still want to do a gingersnap crust.   (Sorry only got a picture of the outside, it got eaten before I thought of taking an inside pic!)

I am not defeated, maybe a bit bruised.

Buttery but good.

Apfelpfannkuchen

Tags

Apples, Breakfast, Fall, german, pancakes, sweet, yum

I came across a recipe for the Apfepfannkuchen which is a German Apple pancake type thing.  But I didn’t really trust the site where I came across it because the last thing i made from her site was not very good and because she had baking powder in the batter and wanted it to sit for up to an hour.  Now if you know anything about baking and baking powder, you have to use it pretty quickly otherwise the leavening effect of the baking powder goes away.  So I researched some more. Ugg…. Every recipe was a little different.  I decided to just combine a few things and use my own knowledge. To explain.  My mom gave me a recipe for a Bismark.  which is an AMAZING souffle type pancake.  Made in an iron skillet in the oven.  That’s what this apple thing basically was.  So this is what I did and it turned out pretty well.

Put about 3-4 Tb of butter in a hot skillet on the stovetop, med heat.  Slice apples thinly and place them in the skillet.  Add about 1/3 c of brown sugar, sprinkle cinnamon, allspice, pepper & salt over and let it cook until apples are soft.  Preheat oven to 475. Meanwhile whisk together 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk and two eggs.  Pour the batter over the apple mixture and put in the oven.  Cook for 12 minutes.  The batter will puff up and it will get cripsy on the edges and sugary on the bottom!

The start.

Add the batter and pop in the oven

It iwll look like this!

Et viola! Eat it up!

Pumpkin Creme Brulee

Tags

creamy, creme brulee, dessert, Fall, food, pumpkin, sweet

This is a cheese pumpkin!

Start the Brulee

I went to Central Market and they had a display of Cheese Pumpkins! Well what is that I wondered?  Kinda sounds disgusting…but the sign read, creamy and makes good soups or pie.  So I decided to try it.  When I cut it open it had the most amazing sweet smell, almost like a cantalope. I roasted it cut side down for about an hour and it released alot of liquid, alot.

Decisions, decisions, pie or pumpkin creme brulee?  Well I’ve never made a brulee so…decision made!

Recipe as follows:

3 egg yolks

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup cream

1 cup pumpkin

spices of your choice (I chose 5 spice, cinnamon and nutmeg)

salt

Mix it all up, pour into the ramekin (big or small individual).  Put the ramekin into a baking dish and pour hot water until it comes up halfway up the outside of the ramekin.  You have to let it cool after it’s finished baking for about 4 hours in the fridge. Then comes the fun part, sprinkle the top with sugar, preferably brown cane and use a good amount.  Then Brulee the top with a blow torch!  You want it to get brown and even a little burnt over parts.  It will harden into a candy shell of deliciousness with creamy goodness inside!  You can either eat it warm (the torch warms it up) or put it back in the fridge for a bit. I prefer warm, that way there’s no more waiting!