When I read a column in Gourmet magazine that mentioned these waffles from Brown Sugar Kitchen in California as “the best I’ve encountered in over 80 years of dining,” I knew that I had to try them. The reader that wrote the letter said that they’re so light that they almost float off the plate.
We did, in fact, love these, but they didn’t rise up quite as much as I expected them to. I think that I determined the problem to be faulty yeast (not past its expiration date, but close to,) rather than a problem with the recipe.
They were flavorful and crusty and delicious, though, and I will be eager to try them again soon, now that I’ve acquired some fresh yeast.
Gourmet magazine doesn’t have the specific article online that I read (one where readers can write in to request their favorite restaurant recipes and the mag will track them down,) but here are two articles that I found about the waffles (the second one has the recipe):
Gourmet review of BSK
Carmen Cooks: recipe
Spicy Chicken Chili and Cornbread
When time allows, my whole family sits down on Sunday afternoons to look through cooking magazines and cookbooks and recent printouts to plan our menus for the week. We look at our schedule for the week to see what we’ve got to do on any given night. We consider if it’s a day when the kids have lots of after-school activities (so I will be driving and hence, not home to cook,) or if we need a recipe that can be made ahead. We consider who will be home that night and choose recipes based upon their preferences (for example, Girl *hates* seafood and peanut butter, but Girl will be at a sleepover tonight, so we’ll be having Salmon with Lentils, because Boy *loves* seafood and Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie, because Boy *loves* peanut butter.)
Recently, as we were having one of our planning sessions, Boy picked this recipe out and *begged* for me to make it. It was easy and quite yummy. Hubby loved it, too, because he LOVES chicken thighs and much prefers them over breasts. Girl got canned vegetarian chili, which was fine, to eat with her cornbread.
I can’t remember which cornbread recipe that I used, but I really wish that I could, because it turned out beautifully! I think that it might have been this one from Allrecipes.com. You could use any cornbread recipe that you like, but I know that this one had buttermilk in it. If anyone has a recipe that they really like, please share!
To Die For Blueberry Muffins
We recently had our niece and two nephews over to spend the night with Boy and Girl. I asked the kids what they would like for breakfast in the morning and niece suggested blueberry muffins. She sweetly said that she was sure that any I would make would be fabulous. Ruh-roh! That’s when I realized that I really didn’t have a “go to” blueberry muffin recipe…so I went searching. When I found this one on AllRecipes, I hoped the muffins would live up to their name. Luckily for me (and all 5 of the little morning cousins!,) they did. They were wonderful! I used frozen blueberries, because I had them on hand and the muffins were fine; just toss them in directly out of the bag – no need to even thaw them.
This photo doesn’t really do them justice, but they were VERY tasty and the crumbly topping was divine. Be sure to have a glass of cold milk or juice (or hot cup of coffee) ready to go with them!
Steakhouse Birthday Dinner for a Carnivore
Boy LOVES meat…just about any kind, so when we celebrated his 12th birthday recently, only a nice hunk of red meat would do. So, we made him some beautiful ribeyes, mashed garlic Yukon Gold potatoes and The Pioneer Woman’s easy and delicious creamed spinach. I made him a lemon birthday cake with raspberry frosting for dessert. He was VERY happy.
Multigrain Pasta with Pistou Forestier
Finished dish (missing the creme fraiche…if you make it exactly according to the recipe, yours will be “creamier”)
Mushrooms, before roasting
Finished pistou
I found this fabulous recipe (recipe here) on Serious Eats. It was written by Kerry Saretsky, whose recipes are a never-fail for me. This girl knows her stuff. My favorite Salmon with Lentils recipe is hers, too.
The Girl has recently become a vegetarian, so it has required some creativity to please her at the dinner table, while keeping my two resident confirmed carnivores happy. This dish is rich and hearty enough to be a vegetarian main course (round it out with some salad and a nice dessert,) but is light and healthy enough to be a first (pasta) course, if served in small portions.
OK, now confession time…I didn’t do the prosciutto crisps and the herb chips, because it was just too fussy for your ordinary weeknight. If, however, I were serving this for a dinner party, etc., I would absolutely do them. I also completely goofed up and forgot to add the creme fraiche. At all. And it was still fabulous. Obviously, if I do it again, I will definitely add it, because…pass up creme fraiche? Intentionally? I don’t think so.
Oh, also? I used linguine pasta because I couldn’t find the brand that I wanted in spaghetti pasta.
Tilapia Tostadas
This recipe from Cooking Light magazine is a definite winner. To adapt it for The Girl, who is now a vegetarian, I added some black beans (canned, drained and rinsed) to the corn relish (she made her tostadas without fish.)
These were delicious. A little messy (to cook, not to eat), because I fried the tortillas, instead of oven-broiling them, but VERY yummy and still healthy.
We also added some Rosie’s fresh tomato salsa. Because it is awesome.
Milk-Chocolate Cookies with Malted Cream
Milk-Chocolate Cookies with Malted Cream from Food & Wine magazine
Holy cow! These were perfection. Delicious, with wonderful consistency. I have had problems in the past with making sandwich cookies and having the filling be too soft for cookies that were too hard, so that filling squished out in the middle when you bite into them, but there were spot-on. The filling had the EXACT consistency of Oreo cookie filling and stayed put exactly as it was supposed to. Definitely have a glass of milk handy. Be really careful with the way that you roll the dough out – I should have rolled mine a little thinner to have thinner completed cookies, but these were still pretty fabulous.
Jamaican Jerk Chicken (two versions) Gallo Pinto (Congri)
Jamaican Jerk Chicken, from Food & Wine magazine
click here for recipe
I recently bought Food & Wine’s new “Quick from Scratch Chicken” magazine/cookbook (there are lots of versions of this cookbook available from different years, some are hardback and some are magazine-style, but this is BRAND NEW and can be found at a magazine stand – it has an olive green cover with chicken and corn-on-the-cob on the front….I can’t find an online photo) and have been making all sorts of yummy things from it (Chicken with Avgolemono, Pad Thai and I’m planning to make Fusilli with Chicken Sausage and Rustic Garlic Chicken soon).
Well, last night was my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary and since, due to 2.5 week old Baby Jack Henry, they’re still not back into full-fledged “going out” mode, I offered to make them a nice dinner over here (with the stipulation that they MUST bring the baby, of course!) It wasn’t really 100% intentional (Boy had already seen the recipe in the book and had requested that I make it, so it was already in my “make soon” folder,) but I decided to make this, because Little Brother and his wife went on a cruise to Jamaica (and other destinations) for their honeymoon, so I thought this was fitting for their anniversary.
Boy, was that ever a great idea. This stuff was lip-tinglingly DELICIOUS. It was saucy and moist and flavorful without being butt-kicking spicy. I didn’t do the leg quarters, but instead did some whole, boneless, skinless breasts and some boneless, skinless thighs. I wasn’t sure what the baking time should be, so I just used a thermometer and pulled them out when the temperature registered 175 degrees. Man, oh, man… I sliced the breasts up so that we could all taste a little bit of everything. The thighs absorbed more of the sauce and were a little spicier than the breasts. The allspice flavor was very strong, but not overpowering. If it’s not a spice that you really love, you might want to dial that down just a tiny bit. Boy, this was easy, too. Just blend it all up and then pour it over the chicken and bake. Simple and definitely do-ahead. Perfect if you’re having adventuresome dinner guests. I marinated for 24 hours for maximum flavor and I doubled the sauce, because I was cooking extra chicken pieces. If you don’t want it to be extra saucy and spicy, then I would pour off any excess marinade before baking, or simply remove the chicken pieces to another pan, and then I think the sauce would be more like a glaze, as is in the Food & Wine photo.
For the Congri/Gallo Pinto, I basically followed this recipe, but cooked the beans myself, and added a little epazote and, if you ask Little Brother (although he was polite about it), a bit too much cilantro (to me, there is no such thing as too much cilantro…)
All in all, a delicious and fairly simple dinner. Will definitely be a repeat, although I’ll need to tone down the cayenne for the little people that live with me…
For another kid-friendly Jerk Chicken variation, try this.
Fresh Orange Sorbet
This recipe from Cooking Light magazine is a HUGE winner. Big hit with all four of us and pretty simple to make. I had a hard time getting the sorbet to freeze very firmly in my ice cream freezer, but I got it to be at least slushy and then just put it in a Tupperware in the freezer and gave it a thorough stir about every 15 minutes for the next hour or so, until it was at the right consistency. Another hint: use a vegetable peeler to get the orange rind strips off the orange.
Lemon Cream Spritz Cookies
It seems that I’ve been having some trouble with recipes lately. I hadn’t thought of it that way until I actually started typing up the last few things that I’ve made and I realized that I’ve done a lot of “Plan B” cooking lately (as in, “Oh, that didn’t work so well…let’s go with Plan B.”) These cookies are not an exception. When I first saw them on the amazingly beautiful website Cannelle et Vanille (that’s Cinnamon and Vanilla for you francophobes,) I knew that I had to try them. Citrus desserts (orange, lemon, lime…I’m not picky) are my absolute favorite. I can pass up any kind of chocolate VERY easily, but offer me Key Lime pie and I’ll NEVER say no.
Well, it didn’t seem that this cookie recipe would make very many cookies, so I tried to double it, but when I did and tried to load the (VERY STIFF) dough into a pastry bag, it was too hard to squeeze out into the spritz shapes. It’s also possible that my metric-to-standard conversion attempts were incorrect and I added too much flour, but, what did I do? You guessed it. Plan B. I rolled the dough into logs about 2 inches in diameter and then wrapped them in wax paper and refrigerated them until they were firm enough to slice, and then I baked them as little “coins” instead of spritzes. They were easy and they tasted delicious. The only problem was that the cookies were pretty firm (kind of a shortbread texture?), so the filling had a tendency to squirt out the sides when you eat the cookies. I will definitely try to make these again, but will need to play around with them a little.
The very best thing about this recipe is that it gave me an excuse to buy some lemon oil. This substance is the best thing on the planet. Now that I have some in the house (refrigerate after opening,) I will be finding all kinds of new reasons to use it.
Conversions, for anyone that might be interested in trying this recipe, as-is (I’ll post an updated version if I figure out how to make these work a little better):
For cookies:
110 grams of butter = 1 stick
90 grams of sugar = 1/2 cup minus 1 Tbsp
180 grams of flour = 1 1/2 cup minus 1 Tbsp
2 grams of salt = 1/2 tsp’
For buttercream:
75 grams egg whites = about 2 large egg whites
150 grams sugar = scant (not quite full) 3/4 cup