I realize it has been a while.  I’ve actually been following recipes more often lately.  I took the ratios from a macaroni and cheese recipe and made my own version, but it still could use some improvement and it might be a while before I get back to it.  I made a different version of potato soup with blended carrots, but it’s basically the same recipe.  How many versions do you need to publish.  I like soup.  I’ve made it many times.  I will make it many more.  This is a recipe I based on a buttermilk blueberry bread.  Basically I just needed a sweet bread to accent and be a house for the jam.  On to the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 5 cups cake flour
• 5 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 10 tbsp butter
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup jam or jelly
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tsp vanilla

Instructions:

1. Mix together sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl.  Whisk until incorporated.
2. Melt butter and allow to cool.  Set aside.
3. Beat 3 eggs in medium bowl.  Mix in buttermilk, milk, vanilla, then sour cream, then cooled butter.
4. Pour, in thirds, liquids into dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly after every pour.
5. Butter two 10″ x 5″ loaf pans.
6. Pour half of the batter in each pan.
7. Take a half cup of jam and spread it over the top of each pan full of batter.
8. Take a butter knife and mix the jam into the batter going from one end of the pan to the other for both the length and the width in a zigzag motion.
9. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven 55-65 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

With the holidays I’ve been silent for quite a time.  I’ve got several projects that aren’t quite ready for publication, but here’s one I tried today that I got right on the first try.  I’ve always been a big chocolate fan.  I have specialty cocoa powders, so up until now those are the only thing I had used in a chocolate ice cream.  These were ok, but nothing special.  I needed to up my game in chocolate ice creams.  I did some reading of chocolate ice cream recipes and think I have come up with the best chocolate ice cream I have ever tasted.  On to the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 2/3 cups skim milk
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 3.5 oz 86% cocao bar
• 3/4 cup miniature marshmallows
• 3/4 cup raw almonds

Instructions:

1. In 2 qt saucepan heat sugar, milk, cream, and cocoa mixing to incorporate.
2. Heat til steam rises from surface of mixture.
3. Remove from heat.
4. Mix and melt chopped candy bar into mixture until homogeneous.
5. Cool mixture until able to place in refrigerator.
6. Place in refrigerator for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
7. Blanche raw almonds at least twice so that outer shell comes off with a pinch.
8. Remove outer shell and toast raw almonds in 325 degree oven until golden, about 30 minutes, stirring every 5 to 10 minutes to ensure almonds don’t burn to pan.
9. Roughly chop almonds.  Set aside.
10. Prepare chocolate ice cream from refrigerated mixture according to manufacturer’s instructions.
11. Add almonds and marshmallows.
12. Stir with rubber spatula until well mixed.
13. Portion either for immediate serving or storage in ice box.

 

 

 

So I am a big fan of grapefruit amongst other fruits.  They seem to have very few uses.  There’s juice and there’s split it in half and sprinkle it with sugar or salt.  There are like a thousand things you can make out of strawberries.  What happened to the grapefruit?  I realize its a New World fruit but that still leaves a period of 500 or so years in which to write recipes.  I thought long and hard about what would be a good pairing for grapefruit.  I came up with honey.  It seemed better than vanilla and more special than sweetened cream.  On to the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 batch of red grapefruit jam

Red grapefruit jam

• 1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 2/3 cups skim milk
• 3/4 cup honey

Instructions:

1. Make red grapefruit jam according to recipe in link above.
2. Put in refrigerator for 2 hours.
3. Pour milk and honey into medium saucepan.
4. Dissolve honey.
5. Remove from heat.
6. Add cream.
7. Stir well.
8. Refrigerate for 2 hours.
9. After cooling make cream, milk, and honey mixture in ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
10. Add red grapefruit jam and stir in with a spatula.
11. Either serve soft now or package and place in freezer to serve harder later.

 

 

This recipe took two tries to get.  I bought a candy thermometer to be more precise in my candy making.  However the only thing I ever made that was candy with a candy thermometer was peanut brittle.  This was as a kid as my contribution to the family Christmas goodies.  I knew I didn’t want the sugar to go to hard crack, which is used for peanut brittle.   My first guess was to go to hard ball.  This made a descent treat or candy, but the glue was hard on the teeth in my opinion.  I was the child who dissolved my entire life saver, even when it became sharp and pointy and you keep poking yourself in the side of the mouth.  Anyways, I  guessed.  There’s no handbook when what your doing is more along the lines of writing the book.  It still might not be what others want to read, but I am writing here, not reading like the majority of food preparation.  Anyways fail, so what do you do?  You guess again.  You know you were too hot, so that narrows it down a little.  So hard ball was 245 degrees Fahrenheit, I was thinking 230 but based on the look of the candy in the pan and on the spatula I stopped at 220.  Anyways this derivation was one of the things that entertained me this weekend.  On to the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Karo syrup
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 5 limes
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• 1 cup unsalted peanuts
• 10 cups cereal, I used half rice Chex half corn Chex
• 1/2 cups dried fruit, I used craisins, apples, pineapples, and apricots

Instructions:

1. Place blueberries and juice of 5 limes in blender.
2. Blend until incorporated.
3. Pour into medium saucepan.
4. Add butter.
5. Bring to a boil melting and stirring in butter.
6. Add sugar and Karo syrup.
7. Stirring regularly bring mixture to 220 degrees Fahrenheit.
8. Remove from heat allow to cool for 5 minutes.
9. While cooling mix cereal, nuts, and fruit in large bowl, leaving some room for mixing.
10. Pour sugar mixture over cereal, nuts, and fruit.
11. Mix to coat all material as evenly as possible.
12. Pour onto large sheet pan.
13. Spread evenly on pan.
14. Allow to cool.
15. Cut and serve.

Here’s one I wonder why I’ve never seen before.  Grapefruit juice and grapefruits are traditional breakfast food, so why not make a jam out of them.  In terms of prep time grapefruits take more human manipulation than the average fruit, but typically I would think if something is easy to make it tastes easy as well.  Anyways this is more work than peaches or strawberries, but it really does make excellent jam.  Plus it had the added payoff today when I ate grapefruit jam on homemade english muffins that I felt like a truly eclectic person.  On to the recipe.  Note it’s jam so it shouldn’t be too complicated.

Ingredients:

• 4 regular sized red grapefruit
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar

Instructions:

1.  Peel the grapefruit.  Take the pulpy portion out of the individual sections, avoiding as much pith as possible.
2. Place prepared grapefruit, water, and sugar in medium saucepan.
3. Bring to a boil and simmer over medium heat.  I used 5 1/2 out of 9 on an electric stove.
4. Stir occasionally until thickened.  I set a timer for 17 minutes and did something else until the timer went off.  Four to five iterations of the 17 minute timer and the recipe needed more attention.
5. Decrease heat and stir more often.  I use one of those high heat spatula spoons made out of rubber.  You will know you are close when you can see the bottom of your pan in the trail of your stirrer.
6. Continue to heat and stir for another 5-10 minutes more based on how congealed you want the final product.
7. Take off heat, pour into jelly jar, and preserve in your favorite manner.  I used a ball jar and lid, pouring the jam in when it was hot.  It sealed and according to the packaging should be good for 18 months.

I’ve been trying to make pineapple jam.  I’m not even sure it’s possible.  I think pineapple might have an enzyme that prevents you from making any type of candy like jam.  Anyways project for another day.  It was suggested to me to blend fresh pineapple as the starter for jam.  Since it’s November I can get cranberries in Texas.  Pretty much the only time of the year it’s possible.  Anyways I took the blending idea and made my own version of cranberry sauce, which led to ice cream.

Ingredients:

Cranberry sauce:

• 1/2 small lime
• 6 oz fresh cranberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup water

Ice cream:

• 1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 2/3 cups skim milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup raw almonds
• 1 1/4 tsp almond extract

Instructions:

1. Remove stem from lime
2. Blend lime, cranberries, and water until pureed.
3. Place puree and sugar in 2-3 qt saucepan.
4. Heat on medium heat decreasing as volume decreases until you can see trails on the bottom of the pan as you stir.
5. Leave on heat stirring for 5 to 10 more minutes depending on how jelled you want your sauce.
6. Blanche raw almonds, then place in ice water, then blanche again, finishing with an ice water bath.  This will allow you to remove the skins on the almonds.
7. After the skins have been removed place on cookie sheet in 200 degree oven to toast.  You can let this take an hour if you desire.  They are probably toasted in about 30 minutes.
8. Chop toasted almonds.  Add to jelled cranberries.
9. Mix almond extract, sugar for ice cream, cream, and skim milk.
10. Make ice cream according to manufacturer’s instructions.
11. Stir in nuts and cranberries with a spatula.
12. Portion and serve or store.

 

Growing up I was not a fan of butter pecan ice cream.  I don’t really know what it was I didn’t like about it.  Call it the craziness of childhood but it seemed like you just had a bad impression.  Some foods like liver and onions I remember feeling like I was nauseous just smelling, but some I just decided they just weren’t great so I wasn’t going to like them.  I wasn’t extremely picky, but something in me decided if there weren’t things I didn’t like then I was just eating, or masticating followed by swallowing.  Anyway my adult self that basically is a fan of all the ingredients of this ice cream on their own doesn’t see why as a group they’re bad.  They’re not rocky road or a dark chocolate, but I guess we need more categories than ‘like’ and ‘not like’.  On to the recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
• 1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 2/3 cups skim milk
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp molasses
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp butter

Instructions:

1. In frying pan over medium heat melt butter and salt mixing well until butter becomes brown butter or the milk solids have separated from the fat and become brown, not black in color.
2. Add pecans to frying pan.  Pecans will absorb most of the butter.  Cook pecans until toasted, but not burnt.
3. Remove one cup of buttered pecans from pan.  Save for later.
4. Add milk, brown sugar, molasses, and vanilla to pan.  Turn heat to medium low.
5. When sugar is dissolved and everything but the nuts is incorporated remove from heat and allow to cool.
6. Transfer to blender bowl and blend until homogeneous.
7. Mix in heavy whipping cream and place in refrigerator until no warmer than room temperature.
8. Prepare in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions.
9. With spatula mix in buttered pecans, which were saved for later, which has become now.
10. Either serve immediately as soft serve or place in freezer to become hard serve.

With cooking to keep it interesting I like to do things I haven’t before, some new flavor combination, some new cooking method, or some new ingredient.  This means the recipe might not turn out.  No risk, no reward is of the essence.  If there is no risk I’m not moving forward.  Now I’ll read up on the new idea if there is literature.  I still want to succeed.  The first time I heard of a risotto was on “The Gilmore Girls” and Sookie was being Sookie cooking something way more elaborate than I dared.  I researched a risotto in the literature and it sounded like something I could do, but I never tried it until now.  It seems to have one large advantage in that you do not need as large of a pan to realize your result, because you don’t have to have a pan which will accommodate the entire volume of the water necessary to cook the rice at one time.  I also enjoyed the flavor and the texture, but I like the flavor and texture of rice to begin with.

Ingredients:

• 1 14 oz smoked sausage
• 2 chicken thighs cooked and shredded
• 1 32 oz chicken broth
• 2 jalapenos
• 1 cup rice
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 8 oz tomato sauce
• 1 15 oz diced tomatoes
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 small avocados
• About 1/2 cup water

Instructions:

1. Thinly slice jalapeno and smoked sausage.  Set aside.
2. In large frying pan brown smoked sausage.
3. After sausage is fried, add jalapenos and soften.
4. Add previously cooked and shredded chicken.
5. Add oil, stirring to coat everything.
6. Add rice, coating in oil and allowing to heat up.
7. Open cans of tomatoes and chicken broth.  Set near your cooking space.
8. Add 8 oz of chicken broth and 2 oz tomato sauce to pan.  Cook until all liquid is absorbed.
9. Repeat for a total of 4 times.
10. Add 8 oz of chicken broth and 5 oz of diced tomatoes.  Cook until all liquid is absorbed .
11. Repeat for a total of 3 times.
12. Blend avocados, garlic, and about 1/2 cup water until pureed during one of your times when the rice is absorbing liquids.  Set aside.
13. Add remaining 8 oz chicken broth to pan.  Cook until absorbed.
14. Remove from heat.
15. Fold in blended mixture while still cooking off burner.
16. Let set 10 minutes to thicken.
17. Serve.

I became interested in cajeta through dulce de leche ice cream.  First with Homemade brand ice cream in the midwest, then later through HEB creamy creations in Texas.  I realize cajeta and dulce de leche aren’t quite the same thing.  One to my knowledge is Mexican and one is South American.  I researched recipes and then made up my own using as many Hispanic ingredients as possible.  The recipe makes a lot and I have a hard time finding uses for it.  Of course there is the use of ice cream topping.  There is also just eating it with a spoon.  I have tried to add it to coffee, but have not really liked the combination.  It was brought to my attention by a friend and coworker that in convenience stores in Mexico they sell cajeta between two sheets made of a thin carb, so my next exploration will be into pizzelles, which are a thin Italian waffle type cookie.  I’m going to try to make a sandwich cookie with two pizzelles and cajeta in between.  Anyways I’ll let you know how that goes when I’m making up a recipe for pizzelles.  And now the recipe,

Ingredients:

• 3 8 oz cones of piloncillo
• 1 64 oz 2% goats milk
• 1 tablespoon real vanilla
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 tablespoons Mexican desert blossom honey

Instructions:

1. In large pot, I use a copper pot made for boiling down jams, mix together goats milk, piloncillo, honey, and vanilla.
2. Bring mixture to a boil, while melting and breaking apart piloncillo.
3. When mixture starts to visibly boil, remove from heat and add baking soda.
4. Stir soda in well.  You should see a visible chemical reaction and the mixture should be foamy for the duration of the recipe.
5. Place mixture back on heat.
6. Allow mixture to boil down.  This will be a process of conduction and convection.  This mean that as the viscosity of the mixture increases you will either have to stir more, reduce the heat, or both.
7. When you can see ‘trails’ behind the spoon as you stir, the mixture is thick enough.
8. Remove from heat.
9. Allow to cool.
10. Package.  Refrigerated should last at least 3 months.

I’ve gotten along fine when it comes to cold foods for breakfast or lunch, but when it comes to supper I want something hot like what I would imagine the meaning of the word supper to be.  A soup or stew that has literally cooked all day and the heat has already started the breakdown or what is known in the body as digestion.  An alternative to soup has always been a salad, but a salad was salted lettuce in Rome.  Adding heat would have just melted the lettuce turning it into goo.  The meal of northern Europe was always meat and potatoes.  What if you had hot thinly sliced meat along with potatoes and other vegetables?  The salted lettuce idea has gone through many iterations.  Oil and vinegar have at times been popular.  You can choose salts fit for a king on a Ceaser salad with parmesan, anchovies, croutons, and more.  More often than not our salt has become an oil based dressing with acid, salt, and other flavors.  Anyways that was long winded.  For this dish I made hot meat and potatoes tossed with a dressing I made up.

Ingredients:

Meat and potatoes:

• 1 lb smoked sausage thinly sliced
• 3 medium sized zucchini
• 10 medium sized potatoes
• 1 bag of sliced carrots

Dressing:

• 1 small avocado
• 1 8 oz sour cream
• 4 clove garlic
• 2 8 oz tomato sauce

Instructions:

1. Cut all ingredients for the meat and potatoes into bite sized easily cookable portions.
2. Place heat into these items in your favorite way.  If you can’t choose your favorite, pick a way you can live with.  I fried mine in olive oil.  Boiling would probably be healthier.
3. Place in large “salad” bowl.
4. Blend avocado, sour cream, and garlic with about 3 oz water until everything has been incorporated.
5. Mix cans of tomato sauce with blended mixture until homogeneous.
6. Pour dressing over your bowl and toss.
7. Add additional heat if desired and serve.