Weekend Cookbook Challenge 32 Roundup

A great big Thanks to Carla at Chocolate Moosey for hosting
WCC 32 - Garlic.

She got some fantastic entries, as you can see here.

Garlic Jelly from Megan's Cookin.

October's WCC will be hosted by Lisa from Confessions of an Apron Queen.

The theme is Fall Vegetables and the deadline is October 31.

Please email your posts to Lisa at winnx5 at yahoo dot com.

Presto Pasta - Chicken Tetrazzini

I can't believe it's been a couple of months since I last took part in Ruth's Presto Pasta Nights! And speaking of time flying, summer is over! And how the hell is it October??? The time, it really do fly.

Anyhoo, this week I am sharing a dish I learned how to make when I was just a young lass. I don't know where my Mom got the recipe from, but it has always been a favorite of mine. Chicken Tetrazzini. I love this, especially in the fall and winter. It's hearty, warming, tasty and easy. And you can have it on the table in around an hour.

I've made a few changes since I first copied down this recipe in my Sara's Cookbook #1 all those many years ago. My tetrazzini, let me show you it.

Ok, heat 1 tb of oil in a medium or large pan over medium high heat. Chop up a small onion and 2 or 3 garlic cloves. When your pan is hot, add the onion and cook, stirring, until starting to soften. Add the garlic and cook a couple more minutes. Then add some skinless chicken - this dish is going to make 4 servings, so I usually use 2 breasts or 4 drumsticks - and brown the chicken on all sides.


Then add a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, 3/4 of the soup can of milk, and a can of mushroom pieces (drained). Whisk until smooth. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes, turning chicken pieces once or twice.


While the chicken and sauce are simmering, cook yourself up some pasta, enough for 4 people (maybe 1/2 lb? I never measure). Stir the pasta into the sauce. Pour the pasta into your baking dish and top with the chicken.


Top with grated parmesan cheese.


Bake at 400' for 20 minutes.


Slice up the chicken breasts, plate up and enjoy!



Check back with Ruth next Friday for the weekly Presto Pasta Roundup!

Bread Baking Babes - Sukerbolle

It's end of the month time and that means it's time for this months bread from our Bread Baking Babes. This month Monique of Living on bread and water chose our bread, and she chose a bread from the Friesland area of Holland. It's called Sukerbolle, or Sugarbread in English. It's a sweet bread with ginger syrup and sugar lumps mixed in. Doesn't that sound good?

Guess what? It is! I had to make a couple of changes as some ingredients are not sold here, but I think that my bread is not too far off the original. Here's the recipe from Monique.

I couldn't find ginger syrup and ran out of time to try to make my own before our holiday, so I subbed ginger marmalade instead. I also used instant yeast instead of fresh, and used bashed up sugar cubes instead of sugar grains.


After the dough had risen it was time to mix in the cinnamon and sugar. It basically rips apart your pretty dough, but soldier on. It's what has to happen. Make sure you grease the hell out of your pan, this gets sticky.


Let the bread cool for a while in the tin after baking. You don't want to be burned by the hot sugar. Like I was.


This bread was really fun and tasted fantastic. Most of the sugar melted into the bread, and I loved the faint ginger taste the marmalade left behind. This is a perfect breakfast bread, and I've decided there's a good chance this will appear on our breakfast table Christmas morning.

Check out the rest of the Babes (listed over on the right) and see how they did with the bread. Cheers!

It's a mouthful - Curried Chicken and Endive Sandwiches with Pancetta

I had the tv on the food channel Saturday morning while I did some stuff around the house. This dish caught my eye and I made it for dinner tonight - Curried Chicken and Endive Sandwich with Pancetta from Giada De Laurentiis. I couldn't find a recipe for it online, so here's some vague directions for what I made tonight. And you should make them too, these were mighty fine.

Here's what you need:
endive, washed and chopped, like cabbage for coleslaw, or however you like
cooked chicken, I used one breast half to make sandwiches for the 2 of us
buns
mayonnaise
curry powder
salt
lemon juice
honey
pancetta, one slice per sandwich

Chop up your chicken and endive. I'd go somewhere between equal parts and 2 parts chicken to 1 part endive, whatever floats your boat. Toss them together in a bowl.

In a small bowl, mix together some mayo (I use light), curry powder, lemon juice, honey and salt. Make it taste good. I can't really tell you more than that, I didn't follow a recipe. The add it to the chicken and endive. Mix it up. Taste it. Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Meanwhile, cook your pancetta slices, 1 per sandwich.

Put your chicken mixture on your buns,

Top with pancetta,

Eat, and wish you'd made more than 2 sandwiches.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge 32 - Garlic

September's Weekend Cookbook Challenge is being hosted by Carla at Chocolate Moosey and garlic is her theme, which is fantastic; garlic is one of my favorite ingredients.

Garlic made it into my ABC's of food, and is just as good for you as it is tasty. Carla asked that our dishes for WCC feature garlic as a key ingredient, and this one sure does - garlic salad dressing.

I found the recipe in Quick Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin. This book is a real treasure, there are so many wonderful recipes.
Before I share the recipe with you, look at this little mixer I bought from the grocery store. It was in the discount bin and I paid about 3 bucks for it. It's from Starfrit, but I can't find it on their website. You toss all your ingredients in, put on the top, and squeeze the little tab on the top to make the blades spin. It's no more effective than a bowl and a whisk really, but it does have measurements on the side, and it provides a nice workout for your thumb while you mix.
So! This dressing could not be more simple. Whisk together 1/2 cup mayonnaise (I used low fat), 1/2 cup low fat plain yogurt (I used non fat), 2 chopped garlic cloves (I used 4!), 1 tsp Dijon mustard, and 2 Tb lemon juice. The recipe as written didn't call for any salt or pepper, which I thought wasn't right, so we added some S&P.
Mix it up, and then let it chill for a while for all the flavors to blend.
Pour it over your salad, or serve as a dip for veggies, or even chips.
This was so nice, very creamy, and VERY garlicy. But that's not a complaint, that's a complement! This is definitely a keeper.

Get your garlic filled recipes to Carla by September 30. Her email is mooseymoosecc at hotmail dot com.

the end of the garden, and a recipe for broccoli

We pulled out most of the garden yesterday, and overall, it was pretty disappointing. We aren't able to dig out an area of grass to put in a garden (due to underground sprinklers), so we planted our veggies in the existing flower garden.


You may remember we had a fair amount of success with our garden last year in Calgary. I was certain that this year would blow that away, Kamloops has generally better weather than Calgary. It wasn't, but there were 3 reasons - a late spring, some extremely hot weather, and not really great soil. So this was a learning year, I need better soil and a little more water for next year.

Total failures included: lettuce (which was first attacked by caterpillars, and then the heat killed it), squash plant, watermelon, many basil plants, mint, fennel, zucchini. Partial successes came from: rhubarb plant (looks pretty bad but is hanging in there), raspberry bushes (this is their first year so they haven't produced yet, hopefully they will survive the winter), celery (grew nicely but is quite tough), the rest of the herbs (hung in there but never produced much), and potatos.

The winners in the garden were the tomato plants and the kale. If there is anyone out there who lives in Kamloops who would like some kale, email me. Seriously. There is so much kale I don't know what to do. I am going to have to start leaving it on peoples doorsteps.

This tomato plant has given us a lot of tomatos this year, and has looked half dead the whole time. I am pretty sure it's on its last legs now.


Our sad little potato plot.

2 heirloom tomato plants. They were late bloomers but now have many green, although small, tomatos.

The kale. It grows even as we speak.

The celery.

Herbs for drying. Rosemary, sage, mint and basil.

Our potato harvest. That's all of them, and that's as big as they got.

I found a copy of the Christmas 2007 Bon Appetit in my magazine rack last week. I pulled out a couple of recipes to try, and one looked like it would go with the schnitzel I was making for dinner on Saturday night. It was easy to make ahead and was delicious.

Broccoli Pecorino Gratinata

I used half the amount of broccoli as there were 4 of us. I cut back the butter to 2 tb, and sprayed the dish with nonstick spray instead of buttering it. I also used 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese. It was a great dish, only lightly cheesey so the broccoli could really shine through. Next time, I'm adding garlic!

Market and Fair

I'm getting bummed out; the market will close next month! How can it possibly already be September??? The bannock people weren't there today (boo!) but we got a nice haul:


Leeks (I'll be making Potato Leek Soup tomorrow), chives, lemon cucumbers, plums, peaches, honey and squash. And look what I found at the grocery store:


Tim Tams! I first read about these on a food blog and I've been wanting to try one for years. And now I have a box.


After the market and grocery shopping we went to the Knutsford Fall Fair. We saw some kids riding around on little pony carts (god, I really wanted to do that!), and checked out all the winners for food and crafts.




Have a great weekend!

Wordless REcipe - Grilled Peaches with Raspberry Sauce

Weekend Cookbook Challenge 31 Roundup

Our 31st Weekend Cookbook Challenge was about capturing the last days of summer with some grill time. Let's see what we got:

This is my contribution, Teriyaki Style Beef Bulgogi.


This one made me laugh, check out the name - Oink Ointment! But then I stopped laughing and started drooling, wow does that sauce sound amazing. Here's Oink Ointment from Mrs. L at Pages, Pucks and Pantry.


Something I never thought of grilling - meat loaf! Check out Grilled Mini Meat Loaves from Judy's Gross Eats.


Mary sent us two recipes for Weekend Cookbook Challenge - Tri Color Pasta Salad and Jan's Chicken from The Sour Dough.


This fabulous pictures says all you need to know about these ribs. BBQ Ribs from Lisa at Confessions of an Apron Queen. Thanks Lisa!


Mike has got me itching to do some bbq on a major scale after seeing his Lexington Barbecue at Mel's Diner.


Honey and Chipolte make this dish sound delicious - Honey Barbecued Chicken from Cynthia at Diary of a Glad Housewife.

Thanks to all of you for taking part this month!

September is going to be hosted by Carla at Chocolate Moosey. Her theme is GARLIC. Get your smelly entries to her by September 30. Email is mooseymoosecc at hotmail dot com

I done broke my eyeclares!

Well sit right down,
yes sit right there,
let me tell you all about
Sara and her eclair

Oh the day looked good
and it seemed like she had luck,
but by dessert-time
it was clear that she was f-

Oh hi! I didn't see you there. Let me just put down my poem. So you're here to check out my Daring Baker post for August. Well Meeta and Tony sure picked a fun recipe - Chocolate Eclairs by none other than Pierre Herme himself. Yum.

I was going to make these on some lazy Sunday, but then early in the month we invited some people over for dinner. Perfect - I could make the dessert and have extra people around to eat it.
Because Meeta and Tony are benevolent hosts, they allowed us to alter the recipe slightly. The eclair recipe as written called for chocolate cream in the pastry and chocolate glaze on the tops. M&T allowed us to change one of the components if we wished, as long as one stayed chocolate.

I decided to make them a little more summery and change the filling to simply whipped cream mixed with vanilla, a little sugar, and some raspberries.

And then I broke my eclairs.

The day of: Thank God the recipe is easy and fast. Got home almost an hour late from work. Instead of 2 hours until the guests arrive, I've got just over an hour to make the eclairs, filling and glaze, as well as get started on the rest of dinner. The choux pastry came together easily and with my plastic-bag-turned-into-a-piping-bag I got 24 eclairs.

We baked the pastries, and when the were puffy, golden brown and seemed firm, we removed from the oven and let cool. I turned my attentions to other parts of dinner, but a few minutes later I walked by the cooling rack. Almost all of the pastries had deflated. We cut one open and decided that they might be a little undercooked; perhaps that was why they sank. Back into the oven where they got a little browner and puffed up again. But again, as soon as they came out of the oven, flat city. I don't know why. We followed the recipe exactly, our size was right, our oven temperature was good. Last year cream puffs were an element in a different DB challenge and they were fine. Could it be the altitude here in Kamloops?

There wasn't time left to fuss with them any longer, so I started gathering the ingredients for the glaze for the tops.

Wait.

Was that the doorbell?

Crap.

I ran out of time. We'd hardly done anything for dinner, and now everyone was here. While I got drinks and put out some chips and salsa, Scott made a fast glaze of chocolate and cream, and drizzled the tops.

After dinner I squished some raspberries up, and mixed them into cream whipped with vanilla and powdered sugar. I used another plastic-bag-piping-bag to fill them, and look how lovely they looked:

Lovely!

Ok, so I didn't really break them. They just didn't go as planned. Were they warmly received by all diners? Yes. Were they yummy? Yes, although I found them to be more eggy than I am used to. Were they fairly easy to make? Yes. Would I make them again? I'm not 100% sure. We don't eat a ton of dessert anyway, and I was pretty bummed about the flatness. Which may or may not have anything at all to do with the recipe.

Head over to Meeta or Tony's to get the recipe. And over in the right column there's a link to the Daring Baker blogroll, all eleventy billion of us.