Tag: Recipe

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Pie for Dinner

Today’s quiche features cauliflower, carrots, kale, onion, and bell pepper, with a mix of monterey jack and parmesan cheese.

So, you are at home and out of harm’s way, good.

Now what’s for dinner? We came up with a new take on an old classic … Deep Dish Quiche.

By cooking it in an eight inch spring form pan, there is more room for the vegetables, cheese, and other fillings. Same amount of egg custard, just more of everything else. JQ never really liked the egg part anyway.

We’ve always used the Quiche Lorraine recipe out of Beard on Food (see attached). But we totally change out the fillings to suit whatever is in the fridge. This makes a perfect quarantine meal.

So the basic custard or crust ingredients are the same. However, it took about twice as long to bake … hey, it’s twice as thick! The results are a nice slice of dinner (or lunch) goodness.

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Quiche (Lorraine)

Classic quiche uses bread dough, but this is a pastry shell and then fridge raid to fill.

Ingredients

Pastry Shell

  • 2 cups AP flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 lb unsalted butter cut in small pieces at room temperature
  • 1 egg
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Filling

  • 3 egg yolks
  • 2 eggs
  • 2/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • pinch pepper or more, if you like
  • 1 cup shredded cheese some or all Parmesan, we like a mix of cheeses
  • 1 to 2 cups lightly steamed vegtables and / or cooked meat

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 425º. LIghtly butter the bottom of an 8 inch spring form pan (Beard uses an 8 to 9 inch tart tin) and cover bottom with a round piece of parchment.

Pastry Shell

  • Place flour in a food processor and add butter, then pulse until butter is cut into flour. Whisk egg with lemon juice and add to processor. Run processor until a ball forms. You can add additional cold water if dough is too dry. Turn out onto lightly floured surface, form into a ball. Chill for 30 minutes.
  • Roll dough out between parchment sheets to about 1/8 inch thick and transfer to the spring form pan. Be careful not to stretch the dough as you form it to the sides of the pan. Crimp the top edge. Fit parchment to the inside of the pan and weigh it down with a couple cups of uncooked beans. This will keep the pie crust from puffing up. I also add a foil shield around the top of the shell crust to prevent it from browning too quickly.
    Bake at 425º for 18 minutes. Remove the beans and brush the inside of the shell with a thin coat of mustard. Return to oven and bake an additional 3 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before filling.

Egg Custard and Filling

  • Beat yolks and eggs along with cream, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
  • Chop and saute onion in skillet until soft. Add chopped vegetables and cook no more than two minutes. Place this mixture on the bottom of the shell.
  • If you are using cooked meat, add that to the shell.
  • Cover with grated cheese, then pour egg mixture to cover all of the ingredients. I like to top with a sprinkle of pepper.
  • Bake in a 375º oven for about 60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Near the end of bakiing (last 10 minutes), remove the foil shield to allow crust to brown. (If you are using a shallow tart/pie pan, cooking time is about 25 minutes.)
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Biscuits with Fruit Compote

Berry Cobbler featuring a mix of tired blueberries and raspberries. WOW! This biscuit is great!

It is recommended you eat more fresh fruit and veggies as part of a defense against the virus. That is all well and good, but what is fresh about a stay-at-home scenario?

In these times, going to the grocery store has been reduced to a once in a month activity. This requires suiting up before you go, sanitizing along the way, and disinfecting upon return.

Perfect for breakfast, second breakfast and tea … okay, delicious anytime of the day.

The few remaining apples we got on the last supply run are starting to show their age. Grocery re-stock is a week off. So, I core, peel and slice the apples, cover with some sugar and cinnamon do a light saute and serve them with a biscuit.

These aren’t just any biscuits. These morsels came as part of a cobbler recipe. We’ve found that you don’t need berry cobbler to enjoy a really tasty treat. It’s kind of healthy … and they are delicious slathered with butter and jam.

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Blueberry Cobbler

Ingredients

filling

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp corn starch
  • pinch cinnamon
  • pinch salt
  • 6 cups berries
  • 1 1/2 tsp lemon zest
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Biscuit topping

  • 1 cup unbleached AP flour
  • 2 Tbsp stone-ground cornmeal
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 4 Tbsp unsalted butter melted
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 tsp sugar

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 375º and adjust rack to lower-middle.

Filling

  • Stir the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the berries and mix gently with a rubber spatual until evenly coated; add the lemon zest and juice and mix to combine. Transfer the berry mixture to a 9- inch glass pie plate (8-inch square works too). Place on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake until the filling is hot and bubbling around the edges, about 25 minutes.

Biscuit

  • Whisk the flour, cornmeal, ¼ cup of sugar, baking powder, soda and salt in a large bowl to combine. Whisk the melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla together in a small bowl. Mix the remaining 2 tsps sugar and cinnamon in a second small bowl and set aside. One minute before the berries come out of the oven, add the wet to dry ingredients; stir with a rubber spatula until just combined and no dry pockets remain.

Assemble and Bake

  • Remove the berries from the oven. Increase the temp. to 425º. Pinch off 8 equal pieces of biscuit dough and place them on top of the hot berry filling, spacing them at least ½ inches apart. Sprinkle each mound of dough with cinnamon sugar. Bake until the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are golden brown on top and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool the cobbler on a wire rack for 20 minutes and serve.
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A Peanut Butter Cookie

If you don’t like peanut butter … well that’s just wrong … but also you won’t like this post much either.

We’ve long been fans of Alton Brown and “Good Eats” … even saw his stage show in PDX a few years ago.

Brown’s take on cooking and food is unique and always entertaining. Check out his YouTube channel.

As the days at home stretch out, you might be looking for a treat and this recipe has five ingredients, is quick, flourless and full of peanut goodness. Enjoy!

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Alton Brown's Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

  • 268 g smooth peanut butter
  • 120 g brown sugar
  • 120 g white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp soda
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350º and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
  • Cream peanut butter together with sugar(s) until fully incorporated.
  • Add egg, soda, vanilla, and salt. Beat until smooth.
  • With a 1 ½ Tbsp scoop (1 oz), measure and transfer balls of dough to cookie sheet. Leave 2 to 3 inches of space - that is 8 dough balls on each sheet.

With a fork press to flatten the balls and then slide the fork off, first in one direction and then 90º to those indents to create the classic cross hatch pattern.

  • Place both sheets roughly in center of oven and bake for 5 minutes. Turn the pans and bake an additional 5 minutes (10 minutes total).

Cool on sheets for 5 minutes and transfer to racks. Allow to cool completely before storing in cookie jar.

    Notes

    Here is the YouTube video with Alton making these cookies.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nalyEGpuSs&t=0s
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    If Not Cake?

    When you start to write a post about cheesecake, the first thing to do is research this tasty dessert.

    Further study reveals a startling fact … 

    Cheesecake is NOT cake!

    We’re crazy for that graham cracker crust.
    So is it pie? Round, custard filling with crumb crust …
    sounds like pie.

     

    *”Despite the confusing terminology, cheesecake is by no means a cake. Also, since cheesecake isn’t topped with pastry, it cannot be a pie. Cheesecake is, and forever will be, a tart”*.

    Our baking experiments continue with these little guys. We tried three sizes and found we liked this small cupcake shape. The ratio between graham cracker crumb to cheese filling was great!

    An early form of cheesecake was served to Olympians in 776 B.C. But it didn’t resemble what we now think of as cheesecake. Romans took the “recipe’ from the Greeks, made some changes, but all of these early forms of the dessert used a Ricotta-style cheese.

    Immigrants brought it to America.  In the late eighteen hundreds a Philadelphia Dairy man invented cream cheese which found its way into what is now commonly called the new york style cheesecake.  This is what most think of when we say cheesecake.

    It may not be cake, or pie, or a tart, but we can agree . . . it is a great dessert.

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    Mini Cheesecake

    These little cheesecakes are baked in a muffin pan just like cupcakes.
    Servings: 16

    Ingredients

    CRUST

    • 6 graham crackers, broken into pieces We used cinnamon graham crackers.
    • 2 tsps sugar
    • 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
    • 1 pinch salt

    FILLING

    • Two 8 oz pkg cream cheese, at room temperature
    • 2/3 cup sugar
    • 1/4 cup sour cream
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 2 large eggs
    • 1 tbsp flour

    Instructions

    Prep

    • Preheat oven to 325. Line 16 cups (of two muffin pans).

    To make crust

    • In bowl of food processor process the graham crackers to fine crumbs. You should have 2/3 cup.
    • Pour crumbs into bowl and add sugar, melted butter, and salt.
    • Use a fork and stir until crumbs are evenly moistened.
    • Divide mixture evenly among the prepared muffin cups (about 1 tablespoon per cup).
    • Press crumbs into bottom of cup.
    • Bake until lightly golden, about 4 minutes. Set on wire racks.

    To make filling

    • In a clean food processor bowl, process the cream cheese until smooth, about 3 minutes.
    • Add the sugar until smooth, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the bowl.
    • Add the sour cream and vanilla until combined.
    • Add the eggs one at a time, processing well after each addition.
    • Add the flour and process until combined. Scrape down the bowl and process one more time.
    • Divide the filling evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each three-fourths full.
    • Bake until the cheesecakes puff and are set, about 23 minutes. Let cool completely in the pans.
    • Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.
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    Burritos Quick and Easy

    This year we’ve been doing a lot of meal prep … that is, building multiple meals at one time and packaging them for later.

    Usually these meals are lunches, the meal we are most likely to eat on the go.

    There’s scads of online info and recipes about meal prep so we’re not going to recreate that here. However, we would like to share a favorite make ahead lunch … Quick Chicken Burritos.

    The best meal preps require only simple food techniques and ingredients. These burritos are super easy to prepare and make a satisfying and delicious meal. The recipe is very flexible, allowing you to add or substitute ingredients.

    One final note, you are making multiple meals which will need to be packed and most likely frozen. Amazon is full of systems and it is actually interesting to check out what they offer.

    For these burritos we use squares of aluminum foil. It is a simple deli style wrap and the burritos are ready for oven reheat which is the best way to serve. If you’re in a real hurry they do microwave.

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    Chicken Burritos

    easy multi-meal prep

    Ingredients

    • 2 tsps olive oil
    • 1/2 red onion chopped
    • 2 cloves garlic minced
    • 1/4 red pepper chopped
    • 1/2 jalapeno pepper chopped
    • 15 oz low-sodium black beans one can
    • 1/2 cup water
    • 1/4 tsp dried urfa chili
    • 1 tsp taco seasoning
    • 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast 2 - 12.5oz cans
    • 2 cups kale chopped
    • 1 cup cheddar cheese grated
    • 2 Tbsp cilantro minced
    • 1/2 tsp lime zest
    • 1 Tbsp lime jucie 1 small lime
    • 1/.4 tsp salt
    • 8 10-inch tortillas

    Instructions

    • Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook, stirring often, until the onion starts to soften, about 2 minutes. Add beans, water and dry seasonings; bring to a simmer, mashing beans slightly with the back of a spatula. Stir in chicken and kale; cook until thickened, 1 to 2 minutes.
    • Scrape contents of skillet into a large mixing bowl. Add cheddar, cilantro, zest, juice and salt. Mix until well blended. Measure 1/2 cup filling onto a tortilla and roll, folding over the ends burrito style. allow to cool. Should make 8 burritos.
    • Tear off four 6 inch strips of aluminum foil and then tear these in half. Lay a burrito diagonally on a foil square, fold up the lower third over the burrito and roll once, then fold over the far corner. Roll once more and fold over the near corner, and then complete the wrap. Place in freezer for up to a month.
    • Reheat burritos by placing in a cold oven set to 350º. When the oven comes to temp wait about 5 minutes and burritos should be nicely warmed up. Alternatively you can un-wrap and place in microwave for 3 minutes on high