Macaroni Salad

Last week, we had a party at work. I won't go into the geeky, librarian-ish, too-much-information details about librarians throw parties. Suffice to say we had a Very Good Reason.

So one of the bosses sprung for 9 slabs of ribs. Before he turned away to allow me to make politely silent gagging noises at the thought of our entire ROOM smelling like bbq for hours (I hate barbeque), he told me that there would be ribs sans-sauce in case anyone would prefer that. I knew from the tone that I'd get a couple of cracks about the idea of someone eating ribs without sauce, but I didn't care. I love ribs.

However, I knew what the pot-luck part of our lunch would feature. Standard bbq fare - cole slaw, potato salad, greens, beans, cornbread. Here we go again with my crazy food preferences, but yuck, yuck yuck yuck.

So I made a macaroni salad that I would like. And I hoped that if I didn't tell anyone that there wasn't a lick of mayo in it, no one would ask.

They didn't.

Macaroni Salad Without A Lick of Mayonaisse.

1 lb elbow macaroni, uncooked
3/4 cup low-fat three-cheese ranch salad dressing, divided
3/4 cup fat-free sour cream
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped bell pepper

Cook pasta, drain and cool.

Whisk together 1/2 cup of the sald dressing and 1/2 cup of the sour cream.

Mix pasta, dressing and vegetables together until everything is well coated.

Refrigerate overnight, or until just before serving. Whisk remaining salad dressing and sour cream together; stir into pasta.

Notes:
There's an endless variety of vegetables that would go in this. I went with the green stuff I had in my fridge, but be creative!

I HATE HATE HATE ranch dressing, ranch flavored chips, and the very idea of a "ranch" flavor in general. This dressing tastes NOTHING like ranch - I think they just put that on the label to make it more marketable. And so this has taken the place of my beloved Parmesan-Romano salad dressing which is no longer to be found.

At the time, I really wished I had put some boiled egg in here, but I had three separate people tell me they were glad they finally had some macaroni salad without eggs. I guess everyone's crazy in their own little way, huh?

Veal Saltimbocca

For Valentine's Day, I was on a mission.

Now, in principle, I'm not a huge Valentine's Day fan. I dislike the "give me diamonds or I'll think you don't love me" mentality that the jewelry stores go hog-wild with, and I don't think that how The Professor treats me for one 24 hour period is indicative of his feelings more than any other 24 hour period.

I'm also a hopeless romantic.

And lately, I've been over-scrutinizing every penny I spend on food.

So for Valentine's Day, I decided to make up for my recent "we will save money at all costs" mentality with a meal I know he loves. And that I've never attempted.

It's not perfect. I have a hard time with sauces, and this didn't come out perfectly. But I told him I would keep trying - only on special occassions - until I get it right. He agreed to keep eating the results.

And that, my friends, is romance.




Veal Saltimbocca

• 5 pieces Veal Scallopini
• 2 tsp rubbed sage
• 3 oz Prosciutto
• Italian flavored bread crumbs
• 1 Tbsp oilive oil
• 1 Tbsp butter
• fresh ground pepper

Lay the veal out on a flat service. Season lightly with freshly ground pepper, then rub a sprinkle of the (ahem) rubbed sage into the top of each piece. Lay a piece of Prosciutto over each piece of veal and fold in half. Secure with a toothpick or metal skewer. Lightly dredge veal in bread crumbs.

Heat about a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a skillet, and add veal to pan. Cook for about two minutes per side, and remove to a plate.

Honestly, I don't think these need a sauce. But the Professor does, so:

Add another tablespoon of butter to the pan, and scrape up any bits on the bottom. Add another quick dash of pepper and then pour in a half cup of dry white wine. Simmer until reduced and spoon over the veal.

I served this with some wilted spinach and some angel hair pasta tossed with butter and Parmesan. The Prosciutto and Parmesan combination made for a slightly salty explosion - but the garlic bread made that heavenly.

Notes:
I'm going to try a thicker cut of veal next time. The saltiness of the Prosciutto overwhelmed the delicacy of the veal a bit too much for me.

Angel Hair Pasta with Spinach

The Professor and I both had "engagements" at work today that I needed to make a dish for. Recipes for Macaroni Salad and Asian Slaw will be forthcoming. But I also had to feed us, since I was out of refrigerated Tupperware containers full of tasty morsels to tide over our stomachs. I had some spinach and shredded cheese mix (a blend of Parmesan, Romana and Asiago) that needed to be used, and a half a box of angel hair pasta.

Waiting for two pounds of macaroni to boil never tasted so good.

Pasta? Did someone say pasta?

This is for Presto Pasta Nights - again, a last minute thing. And if you've never clicked through my little linky love to check these recipes out (sis, I'm talking to you), man are you missing out. But that's ok. I'm not missing out on anything.




Angel Hair Pasta

• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 yellow onion, large dice
• 1/2 green bell peper, large dice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 cups baby spinach leaves
• 3 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan, Romano and Asiago cheeses (or any combination thereof)
• 2 tsp dried basil

Cook pasta.

While pasta is cooking, sautee onion and bell pepper in olive oil for about 5 minutes, or until it's done the way you like it. Reduce heat to low and add garlic. Cook for another 3 or 4 minutes, remove from heat.


When pasta is done, drain and return to pot. Add onions and bell pepper, butter and spinach. Put the pot back on the stove with it turned off - I have an electric oven, so it stays warm for a little while. Toss the pasta until the butter is melted and the spinach is wilted. Add the basil and most of the cheese, and toss to combine. Serve with a little cheese sprinkled on top.

The Professor's Burnt Mushrooms

{I simply cannot get a good picture of sauteed mushrooms - all they do is reflect a sheen that does not in any way make them appear appealing.}

After handing over The Best Friend's scrum-diddly-umptious apple crisp recipe the other day, I thought I might as well go ahead and unveil The Professor's dish of choice when he gets to cook something. Anytime I come home with mushrooms, his eyes light up; the hope that I will let him blackify and crispify them in a skillet of butter and wine will never die in his heart.

Surpsingly, these mushrooms don't just taste like charred fungus of an unidentifiable sort. They're almost finger food by the time you're done cooking them.

Alas, this is one of the few things that he tells me I don't know how to cook. Any time I try, I get the same answer: "They're good, but they could have been burned a little more".

File this under: "The Professor, Cute Idiosyncracies".





Burnt Mushrooms, a la El Profesor

• 2 pounds button mushrooms, washed and sliced
• 1 stick of butter (yes, you read that right)
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp ground mustard
• 1/3 - 1/2 cup red wine (that's a complete guess, as I've never tried to measure - or even pay attention to - how much wine he uses)

Put the stick of butter in a large skillet, and turn the heat on medium. When the butter is half melted, add the mushrooms and stir to coat them in butter. They will soak it all up like a sponge, and I have more than a suspicion that The Professor throws some more butter in at some point.

Sprinkle the garlic powder and mustared over the mushrooms and stir to incorporate.

Turn the heat up to medium high and cook mushrooms in butter for about 10-15 minutes, until they've released their water and then are starting to dry out and blacken.

Pour in the wine, and indulge yourself in the steam bath that follows. Stir the mushrooms constantly for a few minutes, using the wine to deglaze the pan.

Turn the heat back to just under medium and keep cooking until all the wine has been soaked up/evaporated. Then cook some more. And when you think you're done, turn the heat down to low and cook for a few more minutes. You don't want the mushrooms to be completely dried and crispy, but you want the edges to definitely be black.

Notes:
This is an acquired taste, so I won't feel bad if you don't rush out to burn up two pounds of mushrooms. We won't tell The Professor, though, ok?

I Wanna Talk About Me*

*Kudos to the people that get the song reference. :)

Erika, over at one of my favorite blogs Tummy Treasures, tagged me for a meme. And it's the best kind: the kind where I get to tell you a lot of little useless trivia about me. Since I have a tendency to change the rules at will, I'm going to make this all useless trivia about me and food. Well, it's useless unless you're The Professor and occassionally feed me. OR unless you're a stalker who's been waiting for a tell-all post on the in-depth details of my food likes and dislikes. But that's disturbing, so let's move on.

So, here goes: 7 Things About Me And Food

1. I love peanuts. I hate peanut butter. I have often heard the argument that peanuts, unless swallowed whole, become peanut butter as you chew them. To these people I say "HA!" and "Oh no it doesn't!" The maturity level around here is soaring.
2. The above makes me very sad, because I love chocolate and it immediately removes about 49% of the world's chocolate from the list of "Things I Will Put In My Mouth".
3. I love fresh strawberries, but I hate any kind of strawberry syrup or strawberry-flavor-infused thing. Like the fake topping on frozen cheesecakes. It should be banned.
4. The exception to this strawberry-flavor-ban are those little strawberry candies wrapped to look like strawberries that have soft centers. I love them so much that they almost need to have a restraining order against me. If fake-strawberry candy could do such a thing, that is.
5. I love salads. I hate 99.9% of salad dressings, which means that the vast majority of the time I only use pepper to flavor my salads.
6. I have spent all of my 30 years in the Deep South, but I cannot stand the most Southern of foods: BBQ sauce, cole slaw, potato salad, baked beans, iced tea!! If it weren't for the Southern accent I throw out occasionally, I'd get my Southern Citizenship revoked.
7. I don't do any kind of bean - black, navy, lima, kidney, white, garbanzo...yuck, yuck and yuck. I do, however, love a pot of lentils. You can tell me all day long that they're all legumes, but I don't care. I'm ornery that way.
8. Bonus: I love chili, but because of number 7, I only eat it beanless. The Professor tells me this is not chili. I tell him to be quiet.

So there you go. If you read this far, you must be related to me. Or have way too much time on your hands. But I have to tag a few people so this train doesn't stop with me. Here goes:

• Mike, over at Mel's Diner makes me roll with laughter.
• Sara, at i like to cook, gets us going with weekend cookbook challenges and many other yummy things.
• Ruth, at Once Upon A Feast, is just plain inspirational.
• Kittie, she of Kittens in the Kitchen, is just an all around great cook.

Go forth and meme!

Apple Cinnamon Cobbler-ish Dessert

A month or so ago, I had an IM conversation with The Best Friend:

TBF: Oh, I completely experimented with desert

Me: :)

TBF: I baked some apples
and mixed some of the cereal you gave me with blackberry yogurt and an egg
and put it on top and baked it some more
yummmmmy

Me: mmm
very good
TBF: yes, I had an inspirational moment
TBF: it was as if you had come in and taken over my body

me: lol
that would be frightening

As you can see, I am even wittier in person than I am around here.

A few weeks later, after many evenings of me yelling after her as she left to go home "Hey! I didn't get my apple dessert yet!", we finally remembered that she was supposed to teach me how to cook something. After opening and consulting with a bottle of red, we remembered what it was.

It was worth the wait.

Apple Cinnamon Cobbler-ish Dessert

Ingredients:

• 3 fairly good sized apples (of whatever flavor/variety you prefer. I want to try it again with some really tart-y green-y ones)
• 2 eggs
• 6 oz yogurt*
• 3 cups of cereal (any kind of flake and/or nut cereal will work, Think Nut N Honey, or Oat Clusters)
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp cinnamon sugar
• 6 Tbsp butter, divided

Preheat oven to 350F.

Lightly grease a 9x9 baking pan.

Peel and thinly slice apples. Arrange in the bottom pan.

Melt 3 Tbsp butter.

In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and yogurt. Whisk in melted butter. Add cereal and brown sugar, and stir to combine.

Spread over the apple mixture and sprinle with cinnamon sugar. Cut remaining 3 tbsp butter into pieces and sprinkle on top.

Bake for 35-40 minutes*, or until golden and bubbly.

*Notes:

We used vanilla yogurt at my house; as mentioned above, TBF used blackberry the first time. She's firmly on the side of using fruit-flavored yogurt. I adored the vanilla. Toss a coin.

The baking time is approximate, as we were too busy laughing and carrying on with our plans of world domination for me to remember to look at a clock.

We were both firmly on the side of "more topping less apple" here, but you could easily add a couple more apples to make it a more equal ratio. If you're into that kind of thing.

Stuffed Mushroom - you can never fix enough

I needed an appetizer.
Mushrooms were on sale, buy one get one free.

Please, whatever you do, don't tell me that something involving fate, higher powers, and/or a universal plan had nothing to do with this coincidence. Because those mushrooms - those exact mushrooms that wound up in my kitchen and no other mushrooms - were destined to become Stuffed Mushrooms.

And I was determined to use whatever I had in my kitchen to make the filling inside them. What did I happen to have in my fridge? A half a cup of leftover queso dip from my local Mexican restaurant.

It's like fate moved into my kitchen and set up permanent residency.



Stuffed Mushrooms

• 1 pound white mushrooms, washed and stems removed (I saved them for something else)
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup queso dip
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup Italian flavored bread crumbs
• About 3 ounces mozzarella cheese, cut in tiny little cubes - small enough to fit in the bottom of the mushrooms

Cook your onions in your oil slowly, but let them get the beautiful brown carmeliz-y look that makes you almost forget about the mushrooms patiently waiting to be stuffed. Add the bell pepper and cook until it's starting to get soft.

Zap the queso in the microwave for about 20 seconds so it's softer. Stir in the sour cream. Add the onions/garlic/bell peppers, salt, pepper and bread crumbs and thoroughly combine.

Put a piece of cheese in the bottom of the mushroms, and spoon the filling on top, mounding it up a little high. The stuffing is the best part, so don't skimp!

Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet for 20-25 minutes.

Notes:

You could easily add the mushroom stems to the stuffing - I'd probably cook them a little with the onions and peppers. But I wanted to save them for a pasta dish the next night.

I wanted the peppers to be a little crisp, to have a little bit of crunch. But feel free to make them as soft and smooth as the onions.

If you don't happen to have leftover queso, you can use softened cream cheese, more sour cream, mayo or whatever tickles your fancy. Queso, as always, tickled mine.

Teriyaki Chicken Wings

In addition to some other rather strong dislikes, I cannot abide barbecue sace. This goes hand in hand with my dislike of hot wings. I've tried vinegar sauces, tomato based sauces, sauces that seem to have nothing but pureed chili peppers. And I dislike them all.

But I love me some chicken wings.

So for the Superbowl (yeah, old news, but The Professor is still recovering from the loss of his beloved Patriots), I wanted some good wings. I couldn't let it rest with some kind of plain old chicken, though. Oh no. This girl has to go all out, and flavor stuff.

And by all out, I mean about 5 minutes worth of prep. I'm giving like that.

These are so incredibly easy. And thanks to the 4 pounds of wings I found on sale, they were unbelievably cheap. Which makes for a touchdown in my book.

{groan}

I know, it was a bad joke.




Teriyaki Chicken Wings

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 inch fresh ginger, grated
• 2 pounds chicken wings

Combine all ingredients except chicken in a small saucepan and simmer for five minutes.

Rinse chicken wings, pat dry, and put them in a gallon size zipper bag or a large sealable container. Pour marinade over wings, seal and refrigerate overnight. In the morning either turn the bag over or shake your container around (note: if I had thought about how much fun shaking some tupperware with marinating chicken in it would be, I would've gone this route). Refrigerate until ready to bake (in my case, about another 8 hours, for almost 24 hours of marinade time).

Preheat oven to 375.

Lightly grease a baking sheet and place wings on it.

Brush wings with the marinade and put them in the oven.

Boil the marinade.

Bake wings for about 30 minutes, basting every ten minutes or so, or until they are completely done.

Notes: My wings were huge. I only had 9 wings - but since only three of us eat meat, that meant three wings apiece, which was a very happy number.

Every time I basted the wings, I made sure to move them around a little so that they didn't stick too much. There's quite a bit of sugar in this, so they'll stick. And your pan will be very dark when you're done. So I think I'd recommend lining the pan with foil and putting a rack on it, then cooking the chicken on top of that. But I never do things the easy way the first time around, so I had a hell of a mess to clean up.

Asian Glazed Salmon

Remember the other day when I mentioned that I can't cook fish at all, ever, anyway, no way, no how, not ever except breaded? It seems that I have proven myself wrong. So anyone who's keeping a mental file on my cooking abilities, first of all - I can now cook fish, and second of all - um...why are you keeping track of this? Dude, you're freaking me out a little bit.

Ok, "I can now cook fish" may be overstating the issue a little. I followed a recipe a couple of weeks ago - but last night, I made up my own. Which means you might as well just go ahead and call me a poissonier.

What did I concoct that was so good? Something there's a million recipes already floating around for. But that's ok. I'm confident in my non-creativity. You know why? Because I'm eating some more of this salmon as we speak.





Asian Glazed Salmon

• 2 six ounce salmon fillets
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp canola oil
• 1" piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp rice vinegar

Mix all of the ingredients except the salmon in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved and it is merrily simmering.

Remove from heat and cool for about 10 minutes.

Pour the marinade over the salmon fillets.

Marinade overnight in the fridge or for about an hour at room temperature.

Turn on your broiler.

Lightly grease a pan (I used a square pan, but a cookie sheet will work just as well - the marinade will just make a bigger burn spot you'll have to clean later).

Place salmon fillets (skin side down, if the skin's still on - mine had skin) in the pan.

Brush the fillets with some extra marinade (or be like me and decide that dirtying another utensil is too much work and just pour a little on each fillet).

Place pan in the oven, 6-7" from the broiler.

Cook for 15 minutes, or until the salmon easily flakes and is thoroughly cooked.

Boil the remaining marinade and serve on the side as a sauce.



Notes:
Last night, I just let it marinade for an hour on the counter while I went grocery shopping, then came home and popped it under the broiler. It was so good that I was glad I had only fixed half the salmon, because I used the leftover marinade/sauce to marinade the remaining salmon overnight. That extra time in the juices didn't really seem to change the flavor though.

Now that I'm looking at the recipe, that seems like a LOT of brown sugar to me. If I were just finding the recipe, I'd immediately plan on cutting that down. But it really wasn't overly sweet - although the fact that I used high-octane soy sauce (translation: I grabbed the wrong bottle and came home with the non-low-sodium version) may have helped to counter the sugar somewhat.

Round Table Review: Where Flavor Was Born

A while ago, the hostess of one of my favorite food blog events - Sara, aka the Goddess of Weekend Cookbook Challenge - contacted me and asked if I'd like to take part in a round-table review. Due to my extreme good manners, I managed not to reach across the Internets and kiss a total stranger at the offer. A cookbook? That I get to try for free? And cook from while talking to other cooks about the same recipes? Hi, I'm Deborah. Do you need a first-born child as collateral? I might be able to cough one up for you.

{Enter stage left}:



Where Flavor Was Born: Recipes and Culinary Travels Along the Indian Ocean Spice Route.

From the first time I picked up the book, I was in love. The pictures? XXX rated food porn. In suuuch a good way. The book is part cookbook, part travelogue, part food picture diary that I wondered if Mr. Andreas Viestad's looking for a personal assistant for his next book. To, uh, personnally assist him in the eating, travelling and writing. And stuff. But mostly the eating. And the travelling. And the eating.

Mr. Viestad spent time travelling around the Indian Ocean, exploring the spices and cultures in all their similarities and differences. Lucky for us, he wrote about it. Also lucky for us, there was a hell of a photographer along. Do you see the cover up there? Rest assured, that's only the tip of the iceberg.

He's also an incredibly personal writer - most of the recipes tell you where he first encountered the dish, stories about who taught him how to make it, and which version inspired his written recipes. The book is arranged by spice - there are sections on cinnamon, cumin, paprika, cardamom, tamarind, etc, which really appealed to me. It almost encourages you to do a study of the spice, moving from one recipe to another to see how it plays with the other flavorings in a dish.

So we, the humble food bloggers (otherwise known as Sara, Mike, Mary and Lis), set out to work our way through this book. We came up with a list of six recipes that we wanted to try. The list had a little tweaking later on, but the final list was:

• Yogurt Cucumber Soup with Coriander and Cumin
• Entrecote with Onion, Ginger and Tamarind
• Fish in Coconut Curry
• Stuffed Onions with Ginger and Lamb
• Bananas with Coconut and Cardamom
• Coconut Curry Cake

In typical "Jump in feet first without checking the depth of the water" fashion, I decided to make the stuffed onions and the bananas for a couple that we invited over for dinner. Luckily, they're also foodies and were just as drawn to the book - and the hilarity of me trying to stuff these onions - as the rest of my fellow cookbook bloggers. The lamb recipe made more than enough mix to stuff the onions (I made some little meatballs from the leftover mixture). And hollowing the onions and then poking the stuffing back into them was an adventure - and a housekeeper's nightmare - by itself. This recipe could have used a little more "how-to" in that onion department. The flavors, though, exploded when we tasted the finished product. There's a lot going on in this dish - the onions are cooked in tumeric, then the stuffing has cumin, fresh ginger, ground ginger, dried apricots and - yum! - ground lamb. But all of these ingredients played together very nicely for my guests, and we were all impressed with how well these turned out.







The bananas in coconut milk were so easy to make, that The Professor has actually made them on two more nights. By himself! The fresh cloves and cardamom that steep in the coconunt milk make the house smell yummy. And The Professor has learned how to make one more thing in the kitchen without asking me how to turn the stove on. Double Victory!






Sensing I was on a roll, I tackled the steak and onions next. The recipe calls for a walloping SIX onions to go with two 8 oz steaks. I began to suspect that perhaps onions are a tad smaller around the Indian Ocean? Or there's just a lot of people that smell fairly strongly of onions. Not being so open-minded where my breath is concerned, I cut that number in half and only made three. Tamarind paste is a brand spanking new item in my pantry - and I only used a couple of tablespoons, so I'm going to have to find some more recipes soon - and I was more than a little nervous about it. I shouldn't have been. The onions outshone the steak (although I'll never complain about juicy red meat, in case you ever need that piece of information. Hint Hint).





My favorite recipe by far was one that did not contain red meat! If you had told me last month that I would have picked fish over lamb or steak, I would have asked you what restaurant I went to, because I? Me, right here? Can't do anything more interesting with a piece of fish than put it in a bunch of bread crumbs and serve it with a sprig of parsely. But the Fish in Coconut Curry (I used Mahi) was almost too easy. And the sauce that was left made incredible leftovers over rice the next day.




The coconut cake universally underwhelmed us in coconut flavor. I used fresh ground whole spices - which I think made a big difference, from our varoius opinions - and the spice comination of cardamom, cinnamon, star anise, cloves, nutmeg and ginger was a star. The cake was very light, and fairly spicy. But there was no coconut flavor, so I think I'll be tweaking this recipe in the future.


There are quite a few recipes in Where Flavor Was Born that I'll be getting to soon, but I'll keep a few things in mind - the size of onions for one! For another, that there isn't enough tutorial-information for newbie flavor explorers (like moi). But I learned a lot about my spices from this book, and the pictures....well, the Best Friend and I would call them food porn. You're free to also, if you like.