Friday, October 9, 2009
This is a super tasty meal I cooked back when I got my last crop of corn in my CSA box. I somehow forgot about it! While the pictures aren’t to-die-for (thank you, indoor lighting…) the meal was too simple, and too tasty not to share. Also, I was afraid if I didn’t blog it, I might forget it!
This sweet corn relish is a fresh accompaniment to the rich salmon. I cut the beautiful sweet corn right off the cob, and used fresh, juicy tomatoes. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate the end of summer.
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Salmon with Sweet Corn, Tomato, Avocado Relish
Ingredients:
2 ears of corn, husks and silks removed
2 vine ripened tomatoes, cored and cut into 3/4 inch pieces
2 avocados, halved, pitted, and diced
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley (I omitted)
3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
coarse ground salt and pepper
4 skin on salmon filets
1/2 teaspoon Creole seasoning
Directions:
In a large pot of boiling water, cook corn until tender, about 4 minutes. Cut off tip of each cob. Stand corn in a wide shallow bowl. Using a sharp knife, slice downward to release kernels. To bowl, add tomatoes, avocados, onion, parsley, 2 Tablespoons of oil, lemon juice, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; toss to combine.
Heat grill to medium high (I used the George Foreman, but didn't close the lid when cooking). Rub fish with 1 Tablespoon oil; sprinkle with Creole seasoning, and season with salt and pepper. Grill fish skin side down, until skin is crisp, 4-5 minutes (if fish does not release easily, cook a bit longer). Using a thin spatula, flip fish and cook until slightly pink in the center, anout 4 minutes more, depending on thickness of fillet. Serve salmon with corn relish.
Per serving: 580 calories; 37.2 g of fat (5.4 g sat); 42.7 g protein; 22.1 g carbs; 8.4 g fiber
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
I have an addiction. I’ve spoke on that before. By now, it should be no news to you, that I love pumpkin. The thing is, people know this and feed my addiction. Lindsay of Love and Olive Oil fed me some of her pumpkin recipes. One of which was this cookie recipe. I couldn’t resist making them. I changed the recipe up just a tad, as the original called for only chocolate chips, and I had some butterscotch chips I’d been itching to use.
These cookies had a great texture. Sometimes pumpkin baked goods can be too puffy and muffin like. These retained a great cookie chewiness. I baked them in two batches. One, after letting the dough rest for about an hour or two (the ones you see in the pictures), and a second batch I baked after letting the dough rest for about 3 days in the fridge. As with my favorite cookie dough recipe, the ones that rested longer tasted and looked better. The flour/dry ingredients better absorbed the wet ingredients with a longer rest. I’m really glad I used both butterscotch and chocolate chips, as they really balanced each other out and complimented the cookie very well. As I’ve mentioned before, The Boy is not the biggest pumpkin fan. But he was a big fan of these cookies! I’d come home from work and find the cookie stack quite smaller than when I’d left.
If you’re looking for a fresh, delightful cookie recipe to showcase some canned pumpkin you’ve been lucky enough to procure, then look no further. These would be great served up at a Halloween party, with their orange color and the dark brown chocolate chips; especially served up on a black plate like this!
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Pumpkin Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
3 cups all-purpose flour (I actually used 2 cups all purpose & 1 cup white whole wheat)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips
Nonstick cooking spray or parchment paper
Directions:
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray cookie sheets with nonstick spray or line them with parchment paper.
Using a mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Beat in the white and brown sugars, a little at a time, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time, then mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Slowly beat the flour mixture into the batter in thirds. Stir in the chips.
(Optional: This is when I would recommend pressing plastic wrap onto the dough and refrigerating for at least 1 hour and up to a couple days.) Scoop the cookie dough by heaping tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cookies are browned around the edges. Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and let them rest for 2 minutes. Take the cookies off with a spatula and cool them on wire racks.
Monday, October 5, 2009
I know what you’re thinking… Where’s the food? Where’s something to eat? I’ll get to that… But first, for some reason my wacked out sleep schedule had a little meeting with my body clock and decided it would be cool to wake up at 6am on Sunday morning. Did I go to bed early? No, went to bed around 1:30am. Since I was awake, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I live near a large hill that overlooks all of Nashville, called Love Circle. Ever since my first visit to this place, I fell in love with it. It’s one place I’m always advising people to go. I’d been at different hours of the day, and at sunset, and it’s pretty. But the sun doesn’t set over Nashville. From this hill the sun rises over Nashville. I’d always wanted to see the sun rise from there.
For some reason The Boy actually agreed to go up there with me. I figure, if I can talk him into this I can talk him into anything. Though we never actually saw the sun, the earliest pre-dawn minutes gave us a beautiful show. There’s just something so breathtaking about seeing a deep navy sky above with fiery red and oranges on the horizon.
Once we made it back down to the apartment, I knew I was hungry! I wasn’t quite sure what to eat for breakfast, but it needed to be something easy to fix, yet different from what I eat on a weekday (apples, oatmeal, cereal, breakfast sandwiches), and something I could fix just for me (The Boy ate a bagel). I knew I had some evaporated milk leftover from making this pumpkin pie fudge the day before. And we also had one of the small white french baguettes from Panera; the little serving size you get with your soup or salad. I did some googling for “leftover evaporated milk”, and saw suggestions for french toast. It was a perfect way to use up the day old bread, and the evaporated milk.
Sometime back mid-summer I bought a bunch of vanilla beans. I also bought some bourbon so that I could make bourbon vanilla. I’m thinking bourbon vanilla will be a great addition to any fall baking I hope to do! I keep checking the bottle, and giving it a good shake every week or so. Finally I think my vanilla is just about ready to use.
French toast is something that I usually consider to be somewhat decadent. I never want to order it in restaurants as it’s just way too much sweetness and carb-overload for me. But this was a perfect portion. I felt satisfied, but not stuffed. It was sweet and rich, but not overly so. A chicken sausage rounded out the meal nicely, and gave me the protein I need in the morning.
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Bourbon Vanilla French Toast
Ingredients:
demi french baguette (approx 2 oz), day-old preferred, sliced
1 egg
1/4 cup (2 oz) milk (I used evaporated milk)
1 tsp bourbon vanilla (or just whatever vanilla you have on hand)
cinnamon (as always, I used my freshly cracked cinnamon from this grinder)
dash of butter or cooking spray
confectioner's sugar (optional)
maple syrup (optional)
fruit preserves (optional)
Directions:
Combine egg, milk, and vanilla in a wide shallow container. Beat lightly to combine; add cinnamon. Soak bread for approximately 20 minutes, flipping over halfway through.
Heat skillet to medium high and melt butter. Cook french toast on skillet, 3-4 min; flip and cook another 2-3 min. Top with confectioner's sugar, maple syrup, or fruit preserves.
***And this time last year I was blogging about these great Chocolate Cookies with White Chocolate Chips, and my very FIRST experience with homemade Marshmallows***
Thursday, October 1, 2009
It’s truly embarrassing how long ago I actually made this. I don’t mean to be rude, and keep this delicious recipe to myself; it’s just that… I took so many dang pictures of it, trying to capture the BEAUTY and deliciousness of this, that it was overwhelming to choose which photos to post! If only all of life’s problems could be simple, right?
I bought these blackberries at a farmer’s stand and just couldn’t resist the beauty of them. I think some of God’s most beautiful creations are fruits and vegetables. These pictures still don’t convey the vivid color of this frozen yogurt. It was one of the brightest, prettiest colored food I think I’ve ever made (matched only in color with this roasted beet hummus). First I thought perhaps it would be better if I didn’t add in the dark & white chocolate chunks, but I went ahead and added them in. I think this would taste great whether you add them or not. But adding them in does give it a different dimension of flavor. The dark chocolate and the white chocolate both paired beautifully with this tart & creamy frozen yogurt. I knew I had something dangerous on my hands, and so to keep me from eating the whole thing, I took it into work and shared it with my night time coworkers. The following week my audio editor came looking for me to see if I still had any left over!
One thing I might change about this next time, would be to add in a touch of vodka. I know what you’re thinking “You just want to add alcohol to anything!” But it’s not for flavor. It would be to help keep the frozen yogurt from freezing so hard. It’s probably because our freezer at work is comparable in temperature to the North Pole, but this froze super duper hard. It required at least 20 minutes of sitting out before it was scoopable. Also, I found I preferred the chocolate pieces when they were cut up really small, as opposed to the larger chunks. Yummy yummy yummy, this was divinely delicious.
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Purple Cow Frozen Yogurt with Dark & White Chocolate
Ingredients:
3 cups Greek-style yogurt (I combined half whole milk and half nonfat greek yogurt)
3/4 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups blackberries
4 ounces of white Ghirardelli chocolate, chopped
4 ounces of dark Ghirardelli chocolate, chopped
1-2 Tbsp vodka (optional, to keep it from freezing hard)
Directions:
Mix together the yogurt, sugar, and vanilla. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Refrigerate 1 hour.
Puree the blackberries in a food processor and than strain through a fine mesh sieve to separate the liquid from the seeds. Stir 1 tablespoon of sugar into the berry puree and also refrigerate for 1 hour.
Thoroughly combine the frozen yogurt base with the berry puree and freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Stir in the chocolate chunks by hand at the end of the freezing process. Finally package in a tightly sealed container and leave in your freezer until completely frozen.
Also, though the pictures are pretty horrible, I like sharing some of my older posts with you. Around this time last year, I was enjoying one of my favorite seasonal vegetables, okra, in the Okra & Shrimp dish; and also, (anyone surpised) this Pumpkin Loaf I had eyed for over a year!
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