Too Much Basil? NEVER!

Last August, Food Network Magazine had a little blurb about making basil salt.  WHAT?  REALLY?  How cool is that!!  So I harvested my herbs & set to making flavored salt.  We've been out of basil salt for a while now, and my son has had to resort to using rosemary salt on his salad greens.  Yeah.  You read that right.

The basil was getting big (and wilty because I forgot to water in this dumb heat), and as we'll be gone next week, I thought it was as good a time as any to chop it off and make salt.

How to:
Big handful of basil, rough chopped, into the food processor.  I probably had about a cup & a half.  Pulse a few times.
Dump in kosher salt (I used generic brand,  which I accidentally bought thinking I could use it daily, but the grains aren't as big).  Probably a cup's worth.  Pulse.  Add more salt until it looks like the right mix.

Heat your oven to 225 degrees.  Cover a cookie sheet with foil or parchment (I even sprayed it lightly).  Spread the salt mixture out.  The idea  is to dry out the basil- I'm not sure of the 'exact', but I set the timer for about 5 minutes, stirred it around, gave it another five minutes.  Maybe a few more minutes.  You want it dried out.

And there you go.  Put into cute jars & give to your friends.  Like I said, it's really good as a salad topper.  and of course on pasta, or fresh mozzarella....  or anything!

So, you see the possibilities, right?  ANY HERB.  ANY MIX OF HERBS.  My favorite is roasted garlic.  This is fun.  Go.  Do.

Two to Try for Memorial Day!

1.  I love to make salads.  

2.  I love goat cheese.

3.  I love salads with goat cheese.

So when I ran across THIS recipe for a corn & goat cheese salad, of course I had to give it a whirl.  Grilled corn, tomatoes, peppers, a jalapeno, parsley  toasted walnuts and goat cheese with only a little lime juice for dressing. Kind of a lot going on all in one salad, but at first taste it's pretty good.  Crunchy & sweet, hot & tangy.  We'll see how it goes over at tonight's cookout.

 And, of course, my go-to-for-a-crowd potato salad - from Alton Brown.  This is a basic potato salad that doesn't taste basic.  I think the key is letting the potatoes sit in cider vinegar overnight.  This does not have eggs or mustard in it, but if you really felt you had to do it, I guess you could.  I, of course, would choose just a little Dijon to add flavor, because it's well known that yellow mustard is revolting.

 So I'm ready for  a holiday cookout, but I don't think the weather is in agreement.  More rain.  Ugh.

The Great Ham & Bean Soup Experiment

I grew up with ham & beans.  and cornbread, but that goes without saying.  I have only ever made it one way  until this fall, when I decided to kick it up a notch.  And then I found that the youngest kid loves this, so there you go- he's been  begging me to make ham & beans!

So here's the basic recipe I've been working on this winter.  I'm not great at recipes- I hate to measure.  And it's soup. Which pretty much means Do What You Want.

Ham &  Bean Soup/ Slow Cooker Style

1 package dried beans

Cover dry beans with 2 inches of water and bring to a boil.  Remove from heat and let stand for about half an hour.  I usually start this before I start preparing everything else, and then they will be ready.  Sometimes your beans will come with a ‘flavor packet’.  You can add it to the water & beans if you’d like. It's not usually the most flavorful flavor packet, but it certainly won't hurt anything either way.

In the meantime…  Add to the crockpot:

* 8+ cups ham broth (see below)

2 onions, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

Chopped ham -  about 2 cups  (you can use leftover ham or buy a chunk of ham or ham steak.  I’ve done all three)

1 t. Liquid Smoke

2 T. ham broth/soup base  (this is a dry product, sold in the aisle with chicken & beef broth)

¼ t. or more black pepper

1 t. Cajun seasoning - We use Tony Chacheres in everything.  You may have another favorite all purpose seasoning you like.  This one has just a little kick to it.  Nothing like that in your cabinet?  How about some Frank’s or Tabasco?  This is your dinner.  Do what you want.

 --  adjust seasoning as you like, of course

Prepare bacon:

4-5 slices bacon, roughly chopped

Put chopped, raw bacon in large glass bowl.  Cover with a few paper towels wadded up.  Microwave 1 minute.  Stir with a fork, cook about 1 more minute.  Drain partially cooked bacon on paper towels, then add to crock pot.  You want to render some of the fat from the bacon, but still want it to impart that yummy bacon flavor to your soup.  This is a great technique for any time you want to add bacon to a dish- like baked beans or if you are wrapping jalapenos for the grill.  I learned this technique years ago at a grocery store held cooking class.  It's one of my go-to kitchen tips.  

Add beans to crock pot.  Drain & rinse them.    You should be able to turn this on low and let it cook all day. 

*Ham  Broth

Ok. Every once and a while I cook ham for dinner, and I always buy a ham with a bone.  Put your ham bone in a big stock pot, along with a onion cut into wedges and a few cloves of garlic.  Maybe a celery stalk if you have some around (the leafy, center part, of course). Leave all that fat that you didn't eat off the ham on the bone, or throw it back in with it to cook. Cover with water, boil, then let simmer for a while.  An hour or so, on low.  Watch as you may want to add more water to it.  You can freeze the broth until you are ready to make soup!

Crockpot Chicken! WooHoo!

ok, ok...  I'm always a little leery of chicken in the crockpot, and when I saw this recipe for Simple Crock Pot Chicken, I figured it was too good to be true.  I was wrong!  This was good.  Really, really good.  no pics, sorry- as it was gone before I could even think about a photo.

I prepared this for the three of us, which gave us 4 servings (1 each for Darin & I, 2 for the kid)  with a long grain & wild rice.  Apparently they were disappointed I didn't make mashed potatoes...  I make mashed potatoes often enough, and they love rice, so I wasn't sure why the complaining.  but I digress...


Into the Crockpot for the day, on low:
3 large, bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, seasoned (I used a little salt & Cajun seasoning, you could use Italian)
1 can chicken broth
1 onion, wedged
2 or so cloves of garlic - peeled and whole

to serve:
1 package chicken gravy mix

Prepare gravy mix as directed on package- I used some of the liquid from the crockpot   Shred chicken off the bone, stir into finished gravy, and serve over rice, potatoes or noodles.

Adjust for family size.

This one is going into regular menu rotation!

Frosting Fail and Other Sunday Mishaps

Snowy Sunday morning, nothing going on.  so what do I do?  Decide to cook.  Cupcakes, Cinnamon Bread, and a one-pot supper in the oven .  Easy Peasy.

I'm starting a quest to find the perfect frosting- the whippy kind you get from the grocery store.  Sure, I can make buttercream, and that's needed to decorate cakes & cookies, but sometimes I want something different.  Something even worse for you than buttercream.  I think what I probably need to find is a recipe using marshmallow cream, but yesterday I went with a stabilized whipped cream version with unflavored gelatin.  It took two tries to get the gelatin dissolved (the first attempt smelled like a dog walker's shoe, and I was not putting that into my frosting).  and then, because I was making a sprinkle-y cupcakes, I added sprinkles to my whipped cream.

and then I put the frosting it my improvised decorating tip.

 and then I realized that sprinkles do NOT come out of a decorating tip.  

if you want to know, it comes out looking like this:

Lesson learned.

 In the mean time I'd thrown together Ree Drummond's cinnamon bread recipe, which I've made probably 20 times in the last 2 years.  It's simple to put together and turns out well.  Every time.  Except yesterday.  When I took it out of the oven before it was done (WHAT?  I KNOW better!).  It was completely NOT cooked inside and went into the garbage.  Yay.

It LOOKS good, doesn't it?  HA.

Supper was a recipe I'd seen on Pinterest about a year ago and finally got around to making - a casserole with veggies & sausages.  I bought some nice country and Italian links from the butcher.  Except for the fact I came within 5 minutes of overcooking the potatoes into mush, it was pretty tasty.  I will definitely  make this again.  The recipe calls for fennel bulbs- I couldn't get any, and used some ground up fennel seeds instead.  and more sausages, because life is better with more sausage, right?

Yes, I have a love affair with garlic

Thinking about dinner (Italian beef in the crockpot - easy peasy) led me to thinking I wanted to make some fries.  Maybe some garlicky fries.  Which led me to thinking I needed to roast some garlic - maybe for the fries, and definitely for some roasted garlic aioli to smather all over my Italian beef sandwich.  Then I saw a post from How Sweet It Is about roasted garlic oil, and I figured I could just do it all at once.  

I roast garlic often enough.  and I make a killer homemade garlic salt with a head of roasted garlic (don't worry, I'll show you how soon and then you'll be hooked, too).  Here's the garlic, all ready to go in the oven:

45 minutes later:  

Drain & cool....  then into a bottle.

and all this yummy roasted garlic

Garlic Aioli

1 cup mayonnaise

3-4 cloves roasted garlic, mashed with a fork

a little salt & pepper

a little lemon juice

Mix it all together & let sit in the fridge for while (an hour, anyway) to let the flavors meld.  Use on burgers, fries, sandwiches, crackers, chips, eat it off the spoon......

Soda Bread. Just do it... you'll be glad you did.

March is around the corner, which means St. Patrick's Day is almost here, which means everyone will be making corned beef.  I'm not really sure corned beef is particularly Irish, but neither is green beer, so we'll just let it go at that.  Soda bread is more Irish, but this is a recipe that deserves year-round love, not just in March.  It's moist & just a little sweet, and would perfect with any soup or stew.  This is a 'by hand' recipe, it goes together quickly and you probably have the stuff in your pantry.

Irish Rosie's Irish Soda Bread
3 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pint sour cream
2 eggs
1 teaspoon caraway seeds

1. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl.
2. In a small bowl, beat eggs and stir in sour cream.
3. Add egg & sour cream mixture to the dry ingredients.  Stir with wooden spoon, it will be really thick.
4.  Add caraway seeds.  Don't skip this part.  Even if you don't like them (I don't, really) it's just a little bit and they really add to the flavor of the bread.
5.You may need to knead with your hands a few times to get it incorporated
6. Place batter in a well-greased (I use parchment or foil in the bottom, too) 9" Springform pan.
7.  You may need to dust top lightly with flour so you can pat the dough into the pan.
8.  Make a shallow crisscross on the top.
9.  Bake 50 minutes at 350 F.
10.  Share with friends!

*I found this recipe online years ago.  You can find the original here.

Green Beans - Jacked Up

You know, like if you took regular green beans, added a veil & sparkly earrings, and sent them to stand in front of their bitchy friends.  or, if you don't get the Say Yes to the Dress reference, then just add some WASABI & GARLIC to them- and you'll be hooked. 

I ran across this recipe the other day and instantly went out looking for Wasabi Powder.  I've never looked for this before, I'm not even sure I knew it existed, but I can tell you I'll be looking for lots of ways to use it now.  

 

By the way, I found it at Wal-Mart, in the Asian food aisle.  

Go check out the recipe, and the whole Tasty Kitchen website.  We loved these green beans.

My New Favorite (Winter) Salad Dressing

I have a super simple salad dressing I like to make for summer.  It's light, easy, summer-y, tangy, and great on grilled romaine (our favorite summer salad treat).  BUT!  I just found a recipe in Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen cookbook that takes the basic buttermilk dressing to the next level.  It's easy and the perfect sidekick for a steak & baked potato & salad supper.  I've already made it twice.  In two weeks.
The secret ingredient:  Worcestershire Sauce!

Her recipe is found here : Blue Cheese Dressing.   Add the blue cheese or not.  That's up to you.

Sweet & Sour Chicken Success!

Ah, Pinterest...  you get me every time  with your pretty pictures  and a billion re-pins...  I figured this one was too good to be true but (ahem) I was wrong.  There are many, many repins on this recipe and they all seem to be almost the exact same, so I'm just going to link you to the one I used.  No, I didn't take pictures. After all, everyone else already did, so why bother?

My thoughts:
I used 3 chicken breasts, and had more than enough for the three of us.
This would be a great recipe to take a la crockpot to a Superbowl party.  Cook your chicken & throw it all in the crockpot.  Good to go.  Yes, I know you can buy pretty decent already cooked up & done chicken at Walmart.  Yes, the price would probably be about the same.  But the "yeah, it's homemade' factor is priceless, especially on something as easy as this.  And you know what's in it...  which does mean something.

I followed directions, against my better judgement (I have an fried egg issue, and hate the idea of eggy parts on my food).  I might have used a little less vinegar...  Do what you will.

Daydream Kitchen Sweet & Sour Chicken