literally a 15 minute meal …

and probably because the crockpot did most of the work and i wake up at ungodly hours of the a.m. (the ambien never lasts quite long enough, i find) and am able to do some prep work at those crazy hours. i’ve been craving something barbecue-ish for awhile now, and now that i don’t have special holiday meals to make, i can throw myself back into weekly meal planning with a vengeance. i had a freezer-saved package of pork chops (the big, honking cuts with really nice fat marbled all through them) and decided to make barbecue pork sandwiches. totally the easiest meal ever and since work is just … ugh these days, i’m all for super easy things in my life.

Crock Pot Pulled Pork Sandwiches

You Need:

either a small pork roast or some of those chops i mentioned up there
salt, pepper, garlic powder
onion, roughly chopped
bottle of your favorite barbecue sauce, or make your own
pickle slices
buns, toasted

toss your onions into a crockpot. season your roast or chops with the salt, pepper, and garlic powder. set them in the pot, set it to low and cook for about 5-6 hours. when you get home from work the meat should be practically melting in the pot. shred it up and discard any bones or unappetizing hunks of fat. mix with your barbecue sauce (the amount is up to how saucy you like things). dollop your meat onto the toasted buns, top with a pickle (or any vegetable of choice). serve with:

Cornmeal Onion Rings
recipe from Barefoot Contessa at Home

You Need:

a couple onions, cut into rings
buttermilk
salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup cornmeal (i like the finer ground cornmeal)
more salt and pepper
oil for frying

soak your onion rings in buttermilk, sprinkled with some salt and pepper. i did this part in the a.m. and popped it in the fridge so they’d be ready to go by dinnertime. mix the flour, cornmeal, and some more salt and pepper together. heat some oil in a large pan. dredge your onion rings in the cornmeal mixture. fry until golden brown on both sides. drain. i find i don’t need to add more salt and pepper to these post frying, but if you do, by all means, salt away.these are probably my favorite way to make onion rings, short of the much more time consuming (and vastly messier) tempura-ing method.

Shop Pimping

this isn’t food related, but my husband finally (after much nagging on my part and some encouragement from people whose opinion he trusts) opened up a shop at Etsy. He makes things. Nice things out of recycled/repurposed wood. Go to his shop. He has two really lovely cutting boards up for sale. Why are you still here? Go ! Go!!

new year’s fun

because we are old now and because we are boring (and frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way), for new year’s, erik and i stayed in and played several heated games of Scrabble while watching a Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci Fi channel. the only thing that would have excited us more would have been a Law & Order SVU marathon. but we capped said games with chicken wings (super yum) and this lovely drink. erik didn’t make it until midnight and i barely held on in time to watch the ball drop. it was a good time. for new year’s day, i decided to only engage in one food tradition and that was to make my mom’s version of bunuelos. basically, you take this recipe for flour tortillas (or whatever your favorite is), heat some oil in a large pan, and fry the tortilla dough (don’t cook the tortillas first – place the freshly rolled dough into the oil) until they’re puffy and brown on both sides. sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar on both sides of the tortillas and serve hot.

for the past few years i’ve alternated between dishes like Hoppin’ John, black eyed peas, etc. for good luck, but this year we simply found a really good sale on some nice new york strips  that were cut by the butcher up in Jackson. we grilled those and invited erik’s parents and our niece over for dinner. my mother in law brought her amazing twice baked potatoes and i made a batch of the Pioneer Woman’s macaroni and cheese (from the latest addition to my cookbook collection, given to me for christmas by my sister in law). carb-a-rific and all around comforting meal to usher in 2010 …

Mistletoe Kiss Cocktail
recipe adapted from the link above

You Need:

2 ounces gin (i loooooove Beefeater’s gin)
1 ounce grenadine (you can use 2 oz, but i think it’s too sweet)
4 ounces pomegranate juice
squeeze of lime

combine all of this together in a cocktail shaker with some ice. shake it up and pour into a glass with ice in it.

Pioneer Woman’s Baked Macaroni and Cheese
recipe from the Pioneer Woman Cookbook

You Need:

4 cups elbow macaroni
1 beaten egg
about 4 Tablespoons butter
about 1/4 cup flour
2 1/2 cups milk (i eyeballed this – i have no idea if i actually used 2 1/2 cups)
a teaspoon or so of dry mustard
2 cups shredded cheddar
2 cups shredded gruyere
salt and pepper
a cup or so breadcrumbs
a couple Tablespoons butter

bring salted water to boil in a large pot. cook the macaroni until barely al dente. drain and set aside. heat the oven to 350. grease a large baking dish. in a large pan or pot, melt the butter. whisk in the flour. let it cook for a few minutes. stir in the milk and mustard. cook this until it’s thick. pour (slowly) some of this mixture into the beaten egg to temper it. then add the egg mixture back into the sauce. stir the cheeses into the sauce. stir in salt and pepper. in a small pan, melt the couple of tablespoons of butter. cook the breadcrumbs in the butter. stir the macaroni into the cheese sauce. pour into the baking dish and sprinkle some more shredded cheddar onto the macaroni. sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the macaroni. bake for about 20 minutes or so until the top is golden.

many games of Scrabble (three of which i won) and his crowning glory is this:

sigh. men. they never grow up do they?

why the hell am i still baking!?!

i have no idea! but the aforementioned cans of pumpkin are still sitting in my pantry and i got it into my head to use some and some blackened bananas AND chocolate chips, then stumbled across a recipe from Cramped Kitchen for pumpkin banana bread. i love when good google karma rewards me with a good recipe … this is really tender, not overly sweet, and just plain good quick bread…

Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Chip Bread
recipe (sans chocolate chips) from Cramped Kitchen

You Need:

2 mushed bananas
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 Tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

heat the oven to 350. grease a loaf pan (i had to use my big one). in a mixer, mix together the bananas, pumpkin, eggs, oil, vanilla. in a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. stir this into the wet ingredients. stir in about a cup or so of chocolate chips (i read another recipe somewhere else where the person stirred in chopped crystallized candied ginger and that sounds magnificent). add in nuts too if you want. pour into the prepared pan. bake for about an hour or so until a tester comes out clean.

christmas dinner!

cranberry chutney (with apples, cranberries, cloves, cinnamon, allspice – wonderful!)

Alton Brown’s Best Ever Green Bean Casserole

World’s Best Dinner Rolls – the recipe title does not lie. these are mothereffing AWESOME.

we also had a great ham, mashed potatoes from my mother in law, and mashed sweet potatoes – none of which i got pictures of. oh well.

more last minute christmas baking

so i didn’t want to make pie and i didn’t exactly feel up to baking and decorating an entire cake (or even cupcakes) so i decided to pillage the blog Our Best Bites and found a dessert that is very … wow. if you’re not up to another pumpkin pie i think a nice pumpkin dump cake is just as good. plus, i have at least four more pumpkin pies i can get out of the cans of pumpkin that are currently sitting in my pantry. i panicked when i heard there was a shortage and purchased 4 of those big cans of pumpkin. :/

Pumpkin Crumble
recipe courtesy Our Best Bites

You Need:

a box of yellow cake mix (i used betty crocker butter recipe yellow)
16 oz can of pumpkin (i only had the giant 29 oz cans so i just measured out 2 cups from it)
butter
2 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
chopped pecans
1/2 teaspoon additional cinnamon

take 2 cups of your cake mix and with your fingers or a pastry cutter, cut in 3 Tablespoons cold butter until it’s well incorporated. press this mixture into the bottom of a 9×13 baking pan. oh and preheat the oven to 350. in a mixer, combine the pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, and the spices. mix this together. pour over the cake layer. with the leftover cake mix, stir in the 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. measure our your cake mix because according to the recipe (and i didn’t know this) cake mix boxes often have differing amounts of mix in them. with my box, i got about a cup and a 1/4 of leftover cake mix. sprinkle what’s left on top of the pumpkin mixture. sprinkle your pecans (original recipe said 1/3 cup – that wasn’t enough for me. i used a whole cup). drizzle 3 Tablespoons of melted butter per cup of leftover cake mix sprinkled on your pumpkin mixture. if you had about a cup leftover, use 3 Tablespoons. If you had more, like me, I used about 5 Tablespoons. It worked just fine. anyway get the butter drizzled all over the cake. place it in the oven and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle is (mostly) clean and the topping is golden brown. serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Chocolate Cherry Loaf
recipe courtesy Everyday With Rachael Ray

You Need:

1 3/4 cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 10-ounce bags of frozen, pitted cherries, thawed (drain one of these bags and coarsely chop it up. the cherries, not the bag)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
3 eggs
6 Tablespoons melted butter

heat the oven to 350. grease a 5×9 inch loaf pan. in a bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and baking soda. in a pot, combine the bag of whole cherries with 1 cup sugar. crush the cherries while cooking over over medium heat. let this cook together for about 15 minutes. let this cool. after it’s cooled, whisk in the sour cream and the eggs. stir this all into the flour mixture. fold the chopped cherries and the butter into the batter. spoon the batter into the prepared loaf pan. bake it for about an hour, or until a tester comes out clean. let it cool in its pan about 15 minutes, then turn it out to cool completely

I also made this recipe from the OBB blog but i’m an idiot so i messed up the brownie part. I usually make mine in an 8×8 pan and i sped read through the part of the recipe that says put the batter in a greased 9×13 baking pan. so of course my dumb butt put it in the 8×8 and had MAJOR BROWNIE BATTER SPILLAGE in the oven. everything burned. there were no survivors. so i started over with a different brownie recipe that belongs in an 8×8 pan, cut the frosting recipes in half and well, here you go.

some of these are un-frosted because erik balked at the idea of frosting brownies. party pooper.

Sunday Sweets (i.e. more christmas baking)

because it just doesn’t feel right – it doesn’t feel holiday enough to me – if there aren’t piles of cookies and candies around. even though it’s just me and erik, the nut candy, caramels, all the cookies from a super successful (and exceptionally fun) internet (by way of the usps) cookie exchange have been in my pantry for a whole month and a half … and now joining them are the cookies i made today. i make mexican wedding cakes every year and usually using the same recipe, but since Joyful got me the Tex Mex Cookbook, I’ve been breaking it out again this week and ran across a recipe for these cookies. since it’s one of my top 5 favorite cookies, i had to try it out. everything else in the book i’ve tried has been utterly delicious. (so why are you still reading this? go buy that book). i also made up a batch of pecan brittle for my father in law. he loves pecans and i wanted to test my candy making skills by making some without using a candy thermometer (mine broke. boo). it’s easy enough to do without one so long as you know what consistency you’re looking for in the type of candy you’re making. just keep a small, cold glass of water around to test and you’ve pretty much got it made. for example, when making caramels or the nut candy, drop a little bit of your cooked mixture into the water and it should form a soft little pliable ball. when making something like brittle, drop a bit of the mixture into the water and if it forms a hard little crystalline piece of candy, it’s at the right stage. of course, if you want to be completely precise and make your candy foolproof, you definitely should use a thermometer… anyway, on to the sweet stuff …

Mexican Wedding Cakes
recipe from the Tex Mex Cookbook by Robb Walsh

You Need:

2 sticks softened butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans
2 1/2 cups flour
more powdered sugar for dusting

heat the oven to 350. butter cookie sheets or line with parchment. in a stand mixer, beat the butter with powdered sugar until it’s fluffy. beat in the vanilla, salt, and pecans. scrape the batter off the paddle into the bowl. stir the flour into the mixture with a wooden spoon. don’t beat the tar out of this stuff, by the way. it helps the texture of the cookie if you don’t. shape the dough (Tablespoonfuls or so) into crescents or balls. bake for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned on the bottom. let the cookies get cool enough to handle. roll your cookies in the powdered sugar. let them cool some more. then roll them again in more powdered sugar.

i really love this recipe. these are so buttery and rich with a really pronounced vanilla flavor. major yum.

Pecan Brittle
recipe found here

You Need:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 1/2 cups pecans
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 Tablespoons butter

Mix together the sugar, corn syrup, and water in a heavy bottomed saucepan. cook on medium low until the sugar has dissolved. over medium heat, cook until it reaches about 260, or until a drop of the mixture in cold water is literally hard and brittle. stir in the butter and the pecans. immediately pour onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment and buttered. let it cook for awhile. once cool, break it into small pieces.

a note on the brittle: i don’t think i cooked my mixture long enough. that is, it’s not at browned as i’d like. and while this came out perfectly fine, i think next time i’ll use a recipe with baking soda in it.

no meat sunday

i usually hate my own spaghetti or marinara sauces. they’re way too bland for me. i don’t know what i’m expecting when i make/eat pasta but i furiously do not like my version of it. so i’m experimenting with sauce recipes from different places and expect i’ll be trying one of these “simmer for hours” recipes to see if i can come up with that phantom flavor i keep going for and missing. sunday night was meatless night and a very simple recipe for penne all’arrabbiata was tucked away in Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes in the World book. that’s a spicy sort of sauce and if anything makes stuff taste better, it’s red pepper flakes.

Penne all’Arrabbiata
recipe adapted from Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes in the World

You Need:

salt and pepper
olive oil
garlic cloves, cut in slices or chunks
white mushrooms, chopped into small pieces
shallot, diced finely
red pepper flakes
plum tomatoes, cored and rough chopped, or a 28 ounce can of tomatoes drained and chopped
penne pasta
parsley, chopped
fresh oregano, chopped
fresh basil, sliced
grated parmesan or pecorino romano

heat the olive oil (he uses 1/4 cup – i don’t think i used quite that much). cook your garlic pieces and pepper flakes together until the garlic has browned. stir in the shallots and mushrooms. cook until softened. salt and pepper all this. add in your tomatoes. add in the basil and oregano. cook until everything gets saucy, something like 15-20 minutes. cook the pasta al dente. drain and serve with the sauce. garnish with parsley and grated cheese.

leftovers, part 3

so i still had thanksgiving turkey sitting in my freezer. and since tamales are currently taking up space in said freezer (both actually), i needed to get rid of something. turkey it was. my friend Emily said she made a turkey shepherd’s pie that sounded awfully intriguing. i generally am not a fan of shepherd’s pie (something about the way the ground beef tastes all mixed together with everything else reminds me of meatloaf. ick. erik however, loves shepherd’s pie). but i do like roasted chicken and i do like to mush it with mashed potatoes and peas and this was pretty close to that. i made a few modifications based on some stuff i needed to use up in the fridge but otherwise this idea: all Emily. make it. then thank her. with kisses and gold dubloons … thanks Emily!

Turkey Shepherd’s Pie
recipe adapted from Emily Cooper

You Need:

leftover chopped up turkey
onion or shallot, chopped
celery, chopped
carrot, chopped
frozen peas
garlic, minced
mushrooms, sliced
parsley, chopped
butter
red chili pepper flakes
leftover mashed potatoes
salt and pepper
shredded cheddar cheese (she suggested white cheddar, but since i can’t get that very often (if ever) here, i used yellow)

heat your oven to 350. in a large pan, melt some butter with some olive oil. saute the onions until soft. stir in the garlic. cook for about 30 seconds. stir in the celery, carrots, and mushrooms. cook for a few minutes. add in the chopped up turkey. season with salt and pepper. sprinkle with parsley. add in the peas. cook to let them warm through. spoon the mixture into an 8×8 or 9×9 baking dish. spoon your mashed potatoes over everything and smooth them out. place these in the oven and cook until the potatoes are slightly browned along the edges. sprinkle the cheese on top; cook until the cheese melts.

this is a true 30 minute meal, ya’ll. matter of fact, i knew i’d be working until 7 p.m. tonight (and this seriously cut into my Top Chef watching time by the by) so i assembled it the night before. all erik had to do was bake and melt.

cooking music: a shuffled playlist on my kick ass new ipod stereo thing, including but not limited to Kris Kristofferson (Casey’s Last Ride), Ugly Casanova (Cat Faces), and Modest Mouse

birthday dinners

so i turned 28 yesterday (cue the balloons and confetti yayi’msooldugh). in honor of the momentous occasion erik ate a stir fry and didn’t complain about it! best birthday present ever, seriously. i think i’ve mentioned before that I picked up this book and have since then dog eared almost all the pages (sorry local library ::sheepish look::). it has SO. MANY. ASIAN. RECIPES. i died and went to stir fry heaven reading it … when i think of birthday dinners though, i remember things like pizza or eating at some restaurant because i was young then and didn’t realize that cooking one’s own birthday dinner could be a really great time if you’re making your favorite thing. stir fry never entered into the equation. but i think from here on out, they’re going to, because if i’m going to continue inching my way into old lady-ville, i’m going to make the occasion a happy one for my stomach, dammit.

Ginger Chicken
recipe adapted from Mark Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World (the recipe amounts are in parentheses. bear in mind the amounts given feed about 4 people. i don’t measure but if i had to guess, i cut it in half)

You Need:

boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into smallish cubes (1 pound)
2 Tablespoons oil
garlic cloves, minced (2 Tablespoons worth)
red chili pepper flakes (amount depends on how spicy you like things. a shake or two usually does it)
ginger, peeled and grated or minced (one 3-inch piece of ginger)
shallot or onion, chopped (3 shallots or 1 medium onion)
mushrooms, sliced (3)
scallions, chopped (2)
soy sauce (2 Tablespoons)
nam pla (2 Tablespoons – this can be optional, i think. i’ve made many a stir fry recipe that called for this and not had it on hand so i omitted it and it tasted just fine)
1 teaspoon sugar (or just a pinch, really, is all i used)
lime juice
black pepper

heat a wok or deep skillet over medium-high heat. add the oil and stir in the shallots or onion. cook until softened. add the garlic, some of the ginger, and the chili pepper flakes. add the chicken breast and raise the heat to high. cook, stirring occasionally, until it cooks through. add the mushrooms and scallions and cook for a couple of minutes. stir in the soy sauce, nam pla and sugar. cook a couple minutes more. squeeze in the lime juice and pepper. check your seasonings and garnish with the rest of the ginger. serve over rice or softened maifun noodles.

post dinner, we had birthday cake. it was an awesome monkey shaped rainbow cake that my wonderful, talented husband made for me.