Even though I’m a huge fan of Mexican food, I rarely make it at home because we have a plethora of good restaurants (from fast-food type to mid scale) to go to. But I had a bunch of leftover chicken begging to be made into something. This Sunset Magazine recipe (from May of 2008) was just the ticket. Enchiladas are usually corn tortillas rolled around a filling. Served individually. But this one is a stacked type – with each of these stacks serving 2 people. What you see in the photo above is a stack of 5 corn tortillas (supposed to be 6 but my package of tortillas only contained 11 tortillas – go figure) with the chicken filling and grated Jack cheese in between each layer. Then the top is finely sliced cabbage and cilantro in a light fresh lime juice dressing. Very tasty.

The prep for this dish took longer than I’d anticipated. The recipe said an hour, and yes, that’s true. Maybe even longer. You wouldn’t think so, but it did take awhile. The chicken chile sauce mixture took time – cooking onion, chopping up the chicken, gathering up all the other ingredients needed (raisins, pine nuts, spices, chipotle, tomato paste, brown sugar and white wine vinegar). Then grating the cheese, slicing the cabbage (I didn’t have any radishes called for in the recipe). But once you start assembling the stacked enchilada, it came together in a hurry. While the enchilada baked in the oven I made the cabbage slaw.

We liked it. I won’t say this was a stand-out recipe, but it was good. If you don’t have great Mexican restaurants in your neighborhood this might be very satisfying. The tortillas are dipped in canned Las Palmas chile sauce, and when they bake they don’t get firm or chewy – they stay soft. Actually I didn’t like the tortilla brand – you can see the tortillas were starting to fall apart in the photo. They were too flimsy, I guess. But it didn’t matter at all because the taste was fine. The Sunset recipe indicated a serving was 1/4 of the above stack. Uhm. No. We ate half (so 3 tortillas per person). Next time – I’ll add about 1 1/2 cups of frozen corn to the chicken mixture. I think it would add a nice texture change and a bit more substance.
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A year ago: A list of travel websites
Two years ago: Chocolate Scones (oh yes, these are delish)

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It was some months ago that this cake was served at one of my book group meetings. A friend, Ann H. brought the cake to our get-together. Just about everybody went nuts over it, and Ann kindly forwarded the recipe to many of us in the group who wanted it. It’s not a difficult cake to make – actually I’d say this is a VERY EASY cake to bake, even with the nice glaze on it. It’s moist. It’s not as dense as a pound cake, but it’s somewhat reminiscent of one. I served it, actually, with a drizzle of heavy cream on top (probably not more than about 2 teaspoons per serving).

The cake is a fairly standard recipe – eggs, flour, fat (in this case shortening – I used non-hydrogenated – but you could certainly substitute unsalted butter). The cake has almond extract in it, added in at the end. You could probably use a hand mixer, but I used my stand mixer. Once baked, you prepare a melted sugar-butter-water glaze with just a tad of almond extract in it. The glaze is spooned or drizzled all over the cooling cake. I poked holes in the cake so it would get down inside, but mostly the glaze stays on the outside and just absorbs into it slightly. The cake is tender (although not really soft), and very tasty. We all enjoyed it very much. And thanks to Ann H. for the recipe – she said it was given to her by a friend. I hunted on the internet and found no other cake even similar.
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A year ago: Avocado Cheese Roll
Two years ago: Mashed Potatoes with Mascarpone Cheese

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Do you ever have a magazine that gets misplaced? I certainly do. And for whatever reason I had a stack of three Cook’s Illustrated from 2007 in one of our upstairs guestrooms. They went from one place to another before I finally said to myself that I needed to get those three magazines back downstairs nearer the kitchen where they belonged. In doing so I glanced through them, leafing past numerous recipes that I had no recollection reading. And up popped this recipe for chicken and sausage done in an Italian style. With peppers and onions. Sounded perfect for dinner the other night.

First off, I DID read the article from beginning to end, to make sure I understood the instructions (of course, I’m the first one to not do this step under most circumstances). I read about how the recipe developer, Sandra Wu, worked from an old recipe for this chicken dish (in Italian it’s called scarpariello, which means “shoemaker style”). It’s not known whether the shoemaker means it’s a poor-man’s dish, or if it refers to the chicken bones sticking out of your mouth as you eat it, which reminds you of a shoemaker holding nails between his teeth. You choose! In either case, this is an American Italian invention, popularized by some of the early Italian settlers who opened Italian restaurants in New York City.

There is a bit of food prep here, but it’s not overwhelming. While you brown the sausage, you can cut up the chicken. While the chicken browns you can slice up the onion and pepper. And while the onions and pepper brown you can mince up the garlic. While that browns you can bring together the rest of it (some white wine vinegar, some chicken broth, and sugar). The recipe developer was stumped with how to get the chicken skin to stay nice and brown, so she finally resorted to browning the chicken, then once everything is assembled, the pan full of peppers, onion and sausage, with the chicken on top is baked in the oven. While THAT is baking you’ll have time to make a pan of creamy polenta, which makes a perfect bed for the onions and peppers. Once the dish is removed from the oven you do need to thicken the sauce with a bit of cornstarch, then it’s served over polenta (or you can make some orzo or mashed potatoes instead).

One thing this recipe calls for that I didn’t have (and had to buy) was (bottled) hot cherry peppers. They’re essential in this dish, although because I ended up using hot Italian sausage (instead of the sweet called for in the recipe) I used fewer of the cherry peppers. They’re hot little puppies, so be careful. I also didn’t have bone-in chicken breasts, so bought those especially to make this. The breasts were huge. I mean gi-normous, so I cut each breast into thirds (recommended in the recipe). That step also helps the chicken to cook more uniformly.

In the photo above you can see the bed of creamy polenta on the left side. And the result? Really delicious. The sauce makes it, to me. I might want to make more of it next time – there really isn’t all that much for all the quantity of chicken and peppers and onions. Just enough to drizzle over the top. The sauce has a piquant taste – meaning it’s a bit of sweet and sour (from the sugar and wine vinegar combo). And the thicker chicken pieces took a lot longer to cook through than expected. So if you have a meat thermometer, cook the thickest piece to 160 degrees F. We also liked the addition of the sausage – it gave the dish a stronger character, I think, than if it was just chicken alone. We enjoyed it with the polenta (I made creamy polenta – half water and half milk – with some butter and a bit of cream cheese and cheddar cheese added). But we liked this very much, and yes, I’ll make it again. Even for guests, although the recipe indicated it was more of a weeknight kind of dish. I didn’t think so. Quite worthy of guests, I thought.
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A year ago: Crockpot Chicken Paprikash
Two years ago: Hot & Spicy Tofu Herb Dip (you’d never know it’s made with tofu)

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Our rains have subsided, mostly. It rained again last night, and my DH was out in it trying to keep any one place from flooding.

In the picture at left is a view of our front entrance. The rear part you see is the parking area behind our house. (We can park about 8-10 cars back there if they’re arranged like sardines.) You come down those steps to get to our front door, where I’m standing under an awning so I don’t get soaking wet. And there’s my favorite Meyer lemon tree on the left.

It’s actually a bit hard to see, but these photos were taken during a very heavy rain a few days ago, and you can see the water gushing down the steps. It’s a rapidly flowing stream of water just rolling constantly off the steps. Because the drain way up in the back of the photo couldn’t take the volume of water pouring into it, all the excess water comes flooding down the steps. The pump is working away on the left (where the hose is connected just to the left of the lowest lemon) trying to take overload water off about 60 feet to our downward hill. Fortunately, the rain slowed down before it began to fill up like a lake again.

On the right  you can see one of the drains from our gutters which is just gushing out at a VERY fast pace. There is a drain just below the spout, but it also is overloaded, so the area by our front door was beginning to fill up. Fortunately, as I mentioned, the rain slowed down and we didn’t have an overflow anywhere. The water is about 1-1 1/2 inches deep there.

And finally at left, there’s a photo just outside our front door. With the sandbags standing sentry. I know these photos don’t begin to show the severity since my camera captured a quick moment in time. A moment when you can’t even see the millions of raindrops!

We still haven’t determined exactly what we’re going to do – to fix these drain issues. Yet. We’re working on it. We are having two very large trees (one behind the Meyer lemon) removed. It’s a ficus tree, and should never have been planted in an area with area drains or sewers. Ficus have invasive roots. We’d hoped to not have to remove them, as they’re really beautiful, mature trees. But we finally decided they have to go.

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Funny thing, I don’t think I’d ever eaten Italian Wedding Soup before. I’d heard of it. But never ordered it in a restaurant or made it myself. No time like the present. Nor did I truly understand the meaning of the title – it has nothing to do with weddings. Like a dish that’s served at an Italian wedding. No, that’s a misnomer. In this case it means you “marry” two ingredients – in this case the marriage of vegetables and meat. A food marriage.

The recipe comes from Ina Garten’s newest cookbook, Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics. The recipe is on the Food Network website, with about over a hundred comments from people who’ve made it and gave it the maximum ratings possible. In case you’re interested, you can read all about Italian Wedding Soup over at Wikipedia. And at about.com too. Some history about the dish in both places. So the story goes, the soup is an Italian-American invention, really, although some places in and around Rome now make it. The soup can contain other meat products like pancetta, prosciutto, even salami. In this case, though, (and it’s more American this way) it’s made with chicken. It’s called Minestra Maritata (meaning married soup).

So, what’s the soup all about? The garlicky chicken meatballs are extra flavorful – we both loved the flavor of them since they’re heightened with ample garlic, parsley, and cheese. I purchased some ground chicken and some turkey Italian sausage, which was just extra delicious. You make small rounds (meatballs), place them on parchment on a rimmed baking sheet (makes about 32-40 meatballs), and bake them for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, you make a fairly simple vegetable soup with onion, carrots and celery, in a chicken broth. Traditionally the soup has a bit of pasta in it (I  used orzo) and at the very last minute you add in some fresh baby spinach. And you can add the meatballs to heat them up again if you made them ahead. I served 4 small meatballs in each bowl of soup. Very satisfying, filling, and really good. Now, the soup part is sort of bland, really. The recipe calls for fresh dill. I didn’t have any, so used dried. Others who made it commented that the fresh dill made a big difference, so I’ll try that next time. Likely the soup flavor would be enhanced if made a day ahead. Just don’t overcook the vegetables, as you want them to still have some texture. And don’t overcook the pasta – you’ll want to serve it just when the pasta has reach that perfect peak of done-ness, with just a bit of bite. What this is, is an EASY soup. Start to finish in less than an hour, and it was certainly a full meal. Do note the low calories and fat too. A nice bonus.
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A year ago: Crockpot Chile Verde

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Our daughter Sara decided to take some time off from her family and come spend the day with us. We were thrilled, since we don’t get to see her very often because of the family business she and her husband run and two very busy children. Kids in sports. You young moms know all about that.

We decided we’d go out to dinner, so I wanted to fix something fairly light for lunch, but warm on the tummy (since it only got to about 50 as a high temp here that day, and that’s cold for Southern California). So I made some creamy broccoli cheese soup with some bacon and cheddar croutons on top.

Very easy soup. I had all the ingredients on hand (a good thing) and it took no time at all, really, to whip this soup together. An onion, a little garlic, chicken broth, 1 1/2 pounds of broccoli, a bit of heavy cream, a little bit of freshly grated nutmeg, some bacon and a bunch of cheddar cheese. Then I made some little croutons – thinly sliced baguette slices toasted under the broiler, then some more grated cheese and a little dollop of cooked bacon on top. Once those croutons were bubbling hot, I ladled soup into the bowl and floated two of those little hot toasts on top. Scrumptious. Easy to make. Even nice enough for a weeknight dinner. Perfect for a cold, blustery day.
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A year ago: Curry Pasta Salad (a recipe from Namibia)

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So, I was filing the other day. Filing recipes. You see, running a food blog gives the writer/owner free license to save infinitely more recipes than she ever did before. My stack of to-try recipes continues to explode, and if I don’t keep on top of it it would be out of control in a matter of a few months. At least I have a system. About 2 years ago I started a new regime – a recipe just HAS to jump out at me telling me it needs to be prepared. If it doesn’t yell at me that way, it doesn’t get clipped, copied or saved. I go through all the cooking magazines with scissors, pen and Scotch tape near me. If a recipe makes the cut, it’s clipped right then and put into the to-try pile. And the magazine goes out in the trash bin right away. The only exception to that rule is around holiday time when I might want to look at the magazine for ideas.

But, it’s only every couple of months that I get around to putting all those saved recipes into some binders I keep here in my kitchen. I save recipes from food blogs too. Lots of them, actually. This cooking community of food bloggers is a veritable treasure trove. And one learns that if you like one blogger’s recipes, you may like many from that blogger. I subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated, and one thing I really like is reading the commentary by the food developer about how he/she came to the final result. Like less salt, omit the sugar. Bake 5 minutes less. You know what I mean. And I like to read the final descriptive phrase about every recipe. If there’s not one – like “gee, this was a sensational dish at my dinner table,” “the final result was just perfect,” or “I’ll be making this again and again,” then I may go right on past.

Therefore, I’ve learned that I really like a lot of the recipes blogged by Cheryl Sternman Rule, over at 5 Second Rule. Cheryl is a food pro, and a very interesting and entertaining writer too. I always enjoy her stories. (I also admire her photography, but that’s another story.) So when I read this particular story last year I immediately saved the recipe. It went into the to-try file. So wouldn’t you know it, I was filing and this recipe just popped up in my hands and said “fix me today.”

What appealed to me about this recipe was that although these are pancakes, they’re composed mostly of protein (eggs and cottage cheese). The batter contains next to no binder (flour), so it’s a higher protein meal than a carb one. And the story, about how Cheryl came by this recipe (from a family acquaintance who attended her wedding, but it was passed on to Cheryl’s mother-in-law who prepared them often) just made these pancakes all the more endearing to me. They’re an Eastern European invention, called siriniki.

So, here’s the gist: you whip egg whites to stiff peaks with some cream of tartar, then set it aside. Then you mix the egg yolks, full-fat cottage cheese, a pinch of salt and a tiny bit of flour, then you combine the two. Carefully, since you don’t want to deflate the soft, tender stiff peaked-egg whites. Then you gently scoop small amounts of batter out on a nonstick skillet, slightly elongating each glob (you don’t want them to be too thick or they won’t cook properly) and cook them for 2-3 minutes per side. Then serve immediately with maple syrup.

You don’t have to use any butter in the nonstick pan. You don’t need any butter on the finished pancakes either. They’re perfect just as they are, but add some real honest-to-goodness maple syrup and you’ll be transported. Cheryl calls these Cottage Cheese Pancakes, but I added the souffle part because these pancakes are ever-so light in texture. They rise quite a bit, actually, but they’re SO tender. These are a must-fix. So there’s my analysis. And if you read my blog regularly, then you can take my word for it. These are worth making, even though you’ll use more than a few bowls and things in the making. Well worth the effort. We had them for lunch, actually, but ideally they’d make a delightful family breakfast anytime.
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A year ago: About Epicurious’ 2009 food forecasts
Two years ago: Carrot-Ginger Slaw

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This week, amidst our thundering rainstorms, I received an email from a friend, Yvette. She informed me that she’d not known about my page of Favorites on my blog. And after finding it, she made a New Year’s Resolution to, over the course of 2010, make every one of my TOP favorites – I haven’t counted them, but perhaps there are 25+ of them. She also told me that some of the links were broken on that page. And sure enough, she was right about that. In between sweeping rain into drains and keeping an eagle eye on the back door that could flood, I worked on fixing all those broken links. Gee, there were a lot of them. And in the process I added a few new sets of asterisks to the list.

When I started writing this blog I never did establish a way to give myself marks, or stars, or a grading system for my own recipes. Over the course of the nearly 3 years I’ve posted here, there are very few recipes I’d never make again. There are a few, but I was upfront about it and told you a recipe didn’t meet my expectations. And why.

But meanwhile, I do have a BUNCH of recipes that far exceed my critical taste buds. The kind that I can’t wait to make again and again. So when I had a new design done on my blog, I decided to create a favorites page (if you go to my home page you’ll see a tab at the top far right that says “Carolyn’s Fav’s”). That’s the one. When you follow through on that link you’ll find a list of about 60+ recipes that are my favorites, with some of them showing asterisks ****** at the end of the recipe title. Those are my absolute all-time favorites. Better than 5-star. Requiring lots of superlatives.

The other day I received an email from a long-time friend, Joanne, who lives in Geneva, Switzerland (her recipe for Syrian Pita Bread Salad is one of my top favorites, by the way). She was planning a big party for a group of friends and asked my advice about some of my appetizer recipes she wanted to make. I gave her some ideas from my list.  She ended up making the Coriander Lime Shrimp and the Crostini with Blue Cheese, Apples, Watercress & Honey. She emailed me after the party to tell me that those two recipes were the hit of the gathering. Warms the cockles of my heart to hear that!

So, if you’re new to my blog, or in need of some new inspiration, I’d suggest you head over to my Favorites page and find something there to try. Then let me know if YOU liked it.

A year ago: Wild & Brown Rice (not one of my stellar recipes, actually, so see, I do have some that don’t make the favorites cut)
Two years ago: Roast Pork Tenderloin with Fennel

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If you’d told me even a few days ago that I’d make a tomato sauce (without meat) for pasta and I’d be head over heels, I’d have laughed. I’m from that school-of-thought that says for any tomato or vegetable-based sauce to taste good, it’s got to have some meat in it somewhere. I’m definitely a carnivore. But something about the write-up at the Smitten Kitchen blog made me rethink my position. The original recipe is from one of Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (one I don’t own).

So, I actually made this a couple of days ago when we were in the midst of our rainstorms. I was inside the house, my DH was struggling outside for hours on end and I knew he’d be starving hungry for heavier fare than we usually eat for lunch.

Besides, I’d just read the blog post about this sauce. I had some canned San Marzano tomatoes in the pantry. I had butter. I had a yellow onion. And I had some Dreamfield’s pasta (the kind that’s a lower-glycemic carb). That’s all you need for this. The onion is peeled and halved, the large can of tomatoes and the onion are added to the pan, brought to a boil along with the 5 T. of butter and it simmers. The onion gets tossed out once it’s cooked (seems a shame, but it’s done its duty and out it goes). I happened to use San Marzano chopped tomatoes, but probably any kind of whole or chopped tomatoes would work here. The butter – well, obviously – that’s what gives it the supple smoothness.

I cooked up the pasta and spooned a glob of this sauce on top and sprinkled it with some freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and this was a mighty-fine meal. We really don’t eat pasta very much (not that we don’t love it, it just doesn’t love us), but oh my goodness, this may have to become a regular on some one of our menus. My DH loved it – really loved it. He asked questions about how I’d made it, so I knew he enjoyed it a lot.
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A year ago: Pork Loin Roast with Apricot Glaze

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Last night, as my very D (dear) H (husband) was out in the rain almost continually sweeping drains, plugging in the sump pump and unplugging it when it ran dry (so it wouldn’t burn up) I did need to feed us something.

I didn’t end up having to get out in the rain and muck very much yesterday. He did, and got himself thoroughly soaked from head to toe about three times. My job was to keep an eye on the one out-of-the-way back door where it can fill up fast if a sudden downpour occurred. We ended up using the sump pump in another location, so that back door needed to be watched. But I was able to do that from the warmth and comfort of the indoors. I kept my other eye on the Doppler radar screens on my computer, telling us when the next onslaught was due. We managed to get through yesterday’s storms without any more damage and the rains finally subsided about 7:00 pm. But the rains expected today are supposed to be the worst yet – 2 to 3 inches. So, I’ll report in tomorrow and let you know how we fared.

Meanwhile, last night, what I craved was comfort food. I had some natural, hormone-free ground beef to use, and finally settled on the casserole you see pictured above, a recipe I’ve made before. It’s a favorite, and just so – well – comforting. I’m delighted we’ll have leftovers for at least 2 more meals. This time, instead of buttermilk biscuits, though, I used a packaged dry mix for sweet potato biscuits that was at my local grocery store. They were quite good. I also used a combination of Jack and cheddar cheeses. But otherwise I stuck to the recipe fairly closely. And I managed to get dinner made and on the table in about 45 minutes. I wasn’t in the mood for any long food prep last night. We’re both tired from the stress. During one of the lulls yesterday I plopped down in front of the TV and actually fell asleep.

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A year ago: Sugar Snaps & Peas

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