Isn’t that just the cutest tub you’ve ever seen? We’re still not done with the bathroom remodels . . . Well, 2 1/2 baths are done but the master is not finished. But it’s close . . . like about a week maybe. I took photos from my iPad and am going to upload this post from it to see how another blog posting program called BlogPress (iPad version) works. any of you savvy types out there do email me if you see problems.

There’s a shot of the master. Floors are still raw wood so far – to be stained dark and polyurethane sealed later this week.

That’s my sink. Nothing has been moved into any space yet. That’s a candle and a fancy bar of soap sitting on the counter waiting.

No showers taken in this. . . yet.

There’s a peek into the guest bedroom where we’ve been storing clothes and junk for the last several months. It’s a mess is all I can tell you. Not a pretty sight. The two twin beds are piled high. Bags on the floor. Numerous boxes stacked wherever there is space.

It’s been awhile since I’d made anything with quinoa (keen-wah). It’s a highly nutritious grain, with not a lot of flavor until you pair it with other things. It has a delicious chewy, almost crunchy but not quite, texture. It’s loaded with protein. Yes, protein, not just carbohydrates, although it has a rather high amount of carbs too! And with calories, also, actually. I was astounded when I totaled up this salad mixture and saw how many calories and grams of carbs were in a serving – most of them coming from the quinoa! So the lesson to be learned here is that you want small servings. I had it for lunch today and after eating little more than 1/3 cup, I was full.

This recipe came from the Los Angeles Times Food Section, back about 18 months ago, when the Times did a one-year retrospective (in January) of all their favorite recipes from 2009. This recipe was one of those. So does that tell you it’s something special? Yup, it is.

There are a few steps to making this, but if you take the time, you’ll be rewarded with a very special dish. For me, the star of the dish is the shiitake mushrooms. I didn’t use enough of them (didn’t use as much as the recipe called for), which was a mistake. Next time I’ll use the full 2 cups of shiitakes. They get cooked briefly in a hot wok (or frying pan), with some green onions added in at the end. Some fresh fennel gets caramelized too (separately, but in the same pan). The quinoa you make in a separate pan.  You probably can rinse it in a bowl loaded with water, and try your best to use your hand to keep the quinoa grains from going down the drain as you hold your hand on the bowl. Once the quinoa was cooked I was able to tip the pan a bit and spoon out the excess water (not very much was there). Do keep a watch on the quinoa – you don’t want to overcook it. I think mine took about 13 minutes.

The other star of this dish is lime juice. Fresh lime juice. And don’t skimp on that either. In fact, I added a bit more to the dish once I’d mixed it all up. The mixture does have a bit of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar, some garlic and peanut oil to start with. And once everything is done, you throw in some chopped Italian parsley, cilantro and I added some of the fennel fronds too. Definitely a keeper!

What I liked: the texture, the citrusy flavor that permeates it all, and the mushrooms. Oh, those shiitakes are just so good. It keeps for several days too with virtually no loss of flavor.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Great dish; worth making.

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It’s been years ago that Phillis Carey mentioned this cake in one of her classes. She didn’t make it, she just talked about it. About how it was a family favorite, and that she always makes it for her own birthday every year. She also makes it for her Super Bowl party every year, too. So when she uploaded it to her website, and sent out an email about it, I quickly copied it out and have been meaning to make it ever since.

The recipe isn’t a Phillis original – I found it at multiple places on the internet. Somebody thought it had been printed in some Safeway newsletter a couple of decades ago. Who knows. Doesn’t matter, though. If you’re a Coca-Cola fan, and you love sugar, you’ll swoon over this cake. It’s very sweet. And full of the carmelly flavor that makes Coca-Cola so unique.

Here at left you can see the progression. First you make a cocoa-enhanced cake. Nothing unusual looking, although it’s got a cup of Coca-Cola in the batter. It’s a bit different than some in its composition.

While the cake was baking I pulled together the frosting ingredients. I didn’t mix it up, though, until just before I was ready to take the cake out of the oven. While it’s piping hot,  you pour the frosting mixture over the top (it has mini-marshmallows and nuts in it) and you carefully spread it out to the edges and let it cool. Cut it up into bars and serve. If you eat very small servings (like large brownie-sized) you probably won’t need anything with it. Larger sizes – then make sure you have either some ice cream or a tall glass of cold milk nearby.

What I liked: the frosting/topping with the nuts and marshmallows in it, sweet as it is. This makes a cake rather than the really sweet rocky road candy we’re mostly familiar with. The cake is tender and tasty, and not overwhelming in chocolate flavor. Great for a crowd or a picnic. Take plenty of napkins for a picnic! Our daughter Sara and her two children came to visit and they could hardly keep out of the cake pan, so what does that tell you?

What I didn’t like: well, it’s sweet, that’s for sure. Most people will love it – in small servings. The calorie content is sky high, so beware of that when you cut portions!

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A couple of weeks ago my good friend Darci (who happens to be our decorator too, pictured below) told me about a grilled pork chop dish she’d made with a lemon shallot relish on top. She liked it so much, a week later she made it again and served it to 18 people. I asked more questions and since we have a lemon tree, I knew I wanted to try it. The recipe comes from the Food Network, from Aaron McCargo, the guy who won last summer’s Food Network star. His show appears on the online Food Network site, but it’s not showing at all on the West Coast. At any rate this was his creation, and it’s inspired, for sure.

At first, I didn’t think the topping was actually a chutney. But, after reading all about chutneys at wikipedia, I’ve had to change my thinking. What we, as Americans or Western Europeans, know as chutneys comes from the type of fruit-based concoctions that originated in India (like Major Grey’s jarred chutney). These are generally fruit, vinegar, and sugar cooked down to a reduction. That’s certainly my thought about the contents of a chutney. Wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but partly. Really, a chutney can be vegetables too, and they don’t have to be cooked. They can be savory or sweet, spicy or not. And they can be dry also.

So, back to this recipe, now that we’ve verified that yes, the lemon shallot mixture is a chutney. But, you can call it a relish. Or even a salsa. Whatever, just make it, okay? It takes but a few minutes to mix up, providing you have fresh shallots, lemons, some fresh tarragon, fresh chives (both herbs I had in my garden) and a little glug of olive oil. The recipe calls for Meyer lemons (they’re sweeter than regular lemons, remember) but am sure you could use regular ones – you’d just need to add more sugar or sweetener.

First you need to make the lemon supremes – that means cutting off the peel and gently slicing toward the center on either side of each membrane to release the little wedge of luscious fruit. I used just one Meyer lemon for our 2-person serving, but my Meyer lemons are very big (meaning I halved the recipe).

Then add the thin slices of shallot (yes, leave it raw), chop up some chives and fresh tarragon, sugar, salt and pepper. I tasted it at that point and added a bit more sugar because I thought it needed it (actually I used Splenda, but you could use any kind of sweetener like agave too). Then I added the olive oil, salt and pepper. That’s it. Easy, right?

According to Aaron’s recipe, this can be served on top of pork, fish or chicken. So I veered off a bit and used it on top of a nice thick slice of leftover pork roast. I cut it thick so it would sort-of replicate a pork chop. By the way, if you want to make the pork chop part of Aaron’s recipe, just click to the website for that part. I heated the leftover pork in the microwave for about 40 seconds (I didn’t want to cook the pork any further), then spooned the relish on top.

How was it? Absolutely delicious. And once I spooned the relish on top of the pork there was a bit left over, so I drizzled that over some fresh tomato slices I was serving with dinner. That was fantastic! With the juicy lemon supremes in the mixture, and the added olive oil, this was a vinaigrette. Delish. MAKE THIS!

What I liked: everything about it – piquant, sweet, savory all at the same time. The fact that the juice leftover made a delicious vinaigrette to drizzle on fresh tomato slices. Or any kind of veggie for that matter.

What I didn’t like: not much of anything, really. Adjust the sweetness to suit your lemon-tartness. And I think I’d cut up the supremes into maybe halves or thirds – just because eating a whole supreme of lemon could be puckery!

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Can you see those chicken breasts hiding underneath all those citrus slices? Grilled to perfection, moist and tender chicken breasts that were marinated in a nearly all-citrus mixture (orange juice, lemon juice and lime juice) along with some fresh chives, fresh mint, olive oil, and a little bitty glug of honey.

First, though, you need to remove the chicken tender(loins) for another use, then pound the chicken breasts (I used boneless, skinless) to a more uniform thickness . That assures they’ll cook evenly. The chicken breasts we had were really hefty ones, so I ended up cutting them in half to serve. Because once you pound them thinner, they’re really pretty darned big.

The poultry is marinated in a citrus juice mixture for about 1-4 hours (4 hours is better, obviously). You drain the chicken, pat it dry with paper towels, then grill them. Meanwhile, you’ve already sliced an orange, a lemon and a lime to grill (yes, really) toward the end of the cooking time. You do reserve a bit of the marinade – one to use for basting – another to pour over the chicken after it’s grilled. And if you really want to add some additional taste, calories and fat, take the 2nd amount of marinade, bring it to a boil, then add a couple of tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon at a time, then drizzle that over the chicken before you put all the citrus slices on top.

This rendition is a very healthy one. Assuming you use average-sized chicken breasts, it’s a little over 200 calories. Some people will eat the citrus slices (included in the nutrition count). And the nutrition calculator assumes you’re consuming the marinade, which you’re not. So, you see, the chicken is probably even less. And if you cut the chicken breast in half, it’d be even less!

What I liked: the bright, clean flavors from the citrus; the ease of marinating it; the pretty presentation with the slices all over; the mint.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Just be careful you don’t overcook the chicken – as you probably know already, that’s very easy to do.

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What about you – do you like chai? I certainly do, and order hot chai in the cold winter months when I visit a coffee store like Peet’s or Starbucks. I love the spicy foam from a hot chai that they’ve frothed for me. But I’ve not had iced chai, I don’t think. Maybe the coffee places make it, I just haven’t noticed or tried it. So many of those drinks are overly sweet to me, unfortunately. I do order sugar-free when it’s available. But the sweet ones – why do they DO that, I want to know? Even the blended and freddo drinks are too sweet. Sadly, these stores are just contributing to our dependence on sugar, and increasing the calories in those drinks by huge leaps. Oh well. . .

Anyway, over at Elana’s Pantry (a blog) she recently made a spicy ginger chai. And since we were entertaining a group of 15 for dinner, I thought I’d make a big pot of it for anyone who wanted something other than wine or soft drinks. Elana called hers just “Iced Ginger Chai,” and I suppose by my adding the word spiced in the title makes it redundant since chai means spiced tea. But I wanted you to know that this stuff is not just a chai, but it’s spicy (warm to hot) from a lot of ginger and black peppercorns. I’m enjoying  a large glass of it right now as I write this, and after sipping some a couple of minutes ago, I can still feel the residual heat in my mouth, on my tongue. It’s not unpleasant – in fact I LOVE the taste of it. (If you’re sensitive to any kind of spice-heat, you might want to reduce the quantity of ginger and peppercorns in this by about a third.)

I did make one change (an optional one) since I didn’t have any rooibos tea. Rooibos is that popular (and fairly new to the U.S. markets anyway) herbal tea – also called bush tea or red bush tea (because it makes a very dark reddish-brown colored tea) – made from a legume plant grown only in South Africa and it IS caffeine free. I’m not all that crazy about it as a straight tea (too grassy-like or tree/twig tasting for my tastes), and I gave away my can of it some months ago to someone who loves it. So I substituted a traditional black tea, thereby making it a caffeinated drink. Fine for daytime, maybe not at night. So, if you choose to make this with regular black tea (I used a black tea blend), do as I did – let the black tea soak in the mixture for about 7 minutes, then remove (I used tea bags so it would be easy to get them out). I actually did it after the 30-minute rolling boil – you don’t want to BOIL black tea, a no-no to tea aficionados as it quickly becomes bitter after that magical 5-7 minutes.

Nothing about making this is hard to do – but it does need to steep overnight. Making it the rooibos way, you bring all the ingredients (cardamom pods, whole cloves, peppercorns, the rooibos tea, and fennel seeds) to a boil – not the milk or any sweetener – reduce it to a rolling simmer and let it go for about 30 minutes. At a rolling boil the mixture reduces down some. Elana said hers reduced to about half – mine not that much, so I suppose I didn’t keep mine at the same high boil she did. Then you turn off the heat and let it sit overnight (at room temp – there’s nothing in it to spoil). Easy! In the morning strain out the ginger, tea and spices, and chill the mixture. Whenever you want to use it, either in a single glass or in bulk like I did, you merely use a cup of the chai concentrate and 1/4 cup of almond milk (chill it first) and pour it over an ample number of ice cubes. I added just a bit more of the almond milk (I doubled the recipe and used the full cardboard box of almond milk). Add some sweetener if you choose and you’re ready for a refreshing treat. Most traditional chai drinkers use sweetener, but you can decide that for yourself. When I served it, I didn’t sweeten it but left the sweeteners next to the tall beverage dispenser I served it in. Some people asked what it was, but most didn’t and I was way too busy to go around and tell everyone. Next time I’ll need to make a little sign to place conspicuously near it.

What I liked: the ease of making it; the spicy combo (you’d never know there are fennel seeds in the brew), and the spice-heat from the ginger and peppercorns; it only takes a little bit of almond milk to smooth out the flavors and make it a creamy chai.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all – loved it. It may become a regular thing in my summer kitchen. You do need to plan ahead, however – at least the day before.

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So the story goes, there’s a market (grocery store) in Houston called the Central Market. I’ve never been to Houston (except at the airport), so have no personal experience at this mega-market. But apparently they make something there call “Love Dip.” It’s a big favorite of a lot of Houstonians, and the market will not release a single thing about how they make it. So someone in the Food department at the Houston Chronicle decided to try to replicate it; hence, their version (no longer online) tastes quite similar. They called it “Mock Love Dip.” Lisa, from the Homesick Texan blog adapted it from their recipe, to remind her of her hometown (she lives in NYC now), and she wrote it up on her blog in 2007.

I made it back then – this was before I’d started my own blog – so I didn’t photograph it. Just fixed it, served it, and enjoyed it. A friend of ours (who spent a lot of years in Houston) asked me recently if I’d heard of Love Dip. Well, indeed I had. And I thought it probably was on my blog. But no, it wasn’t. We’re fixing that right now!

As so often happens, as I go about the prep for a recipe, I find I don’t have something in the ingredient list. In this case, I didn’t have any salsa. BUT, I had all the ingredients to make salsa, so I just added those in kind of willy-nilly to the food processor bowl, and I decided to use up a half of an avocado I had in the fridge. Now the avocado isn’t an original ingredient in this dip, so if you want to make Love Dip true to it’s Houston Chronicle version, eliminate that. And as luck would have it, I didn’t have 8 ounces of cream cheese either, but I did have 4 ounces, and a 5-ounce little log of soft goat cheese. So I used them both.  I also added lime juice, not lemon, but that’s a fairly easy exchange. I hope Lisa will forgive me for tinkering with her recipe!

Most likely I also added more of the salsa ingredients than she did too – here’s a picture of what I put in it. I didn’t exactly measure it, just tossed those things in the workbowl. I love cilantro anyway, so wanted more of that in any case. From the top: both yellow and red cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper, a part of an Anaheim chile, green onions and cilantro.

First, though, I whizzed up the two cheeses to get those blended before I added veggies. Then I added in everything else (except the lemon and lime juice). Lastly you add the citrus. I tasted it several times to add in a bit more salt and pepper, and another little squeeze of lime juice. I used more than Lisa indicated, but you use your own taste buds to determine what’s right for your palate.

What I like: how EASY this dip is to make. Well, especially if you have some salsa right on your refrigerator shelf. There’s nothing to it, really. I like the fact that there are a good amount of veggies in this – so you’re getting some fiber along with the cheese! It also keeps for a few days too, and it’s versatile – not only can it be a dip, but you can use it as a sauce for chicken or fish. I like it with fresh veggies, but you can also use chips, pita bread, baguette (toasted) slices, or crackers.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. It’s delish. Is it healthy? Well, probably not very, with all the cheese in it, but you could use low-fat cream cheese. I’d bet you couldn’t taste the difference. I just didn’t have any.

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Oh my goodness, was this good. Like liquid guacamole, in a way. Liquid avocado, piquant with lemon juice and a little honey. Crunchy with the bell peppers, green onions, corn and tortilla chips (my addition) and some freshly grilled chicken.

The recipe came from the August, 2011 issue of Cooking Light. Our daughter-in-law’s sister Janice emailed me to tell me how good this was and sent a scan of the page from the magazine. Since I had two avocados in the refrigerator, ready to be used, this was perfect. It’s a Mark Bittman recipe – he’s one good cook!

His rendition of this serves 4 people. If this were a prelude to a meal, or you were serving it with other things (I really don’t know what you’d serve with it, other than some kind of toasted bread), you could make this serve 4. But, as a full meal, it’s about right for 2, which is what I did. We had it for dinner. For 2 of us I used one ear of corn, less red bell pepper, one green onion and two very small chicken breasts.

As I was about to make the soup part, I went back to look at the recipe – as I stood over the blender with the water, lemon juice and honey in it, adding in the avocado cubes. My thought was that one avocado and 1 1/2 cups of water was going to make green water. I thought I must have missed something in the ingredient list. Surely that’s not the right amount? It was. It’s perfectly thick enough for a soup – trust me on this one. The recipe indicated just stirring in all the raw veggies (red bell peppers, corn, green onions) but I wanted it to be on top (like the photo shows in the magazine) so I added in those things as a topping instead. I forgot about the added lime wedge, but I didn’t miss it.

On the website several people commented about the use of orange juice (instead of lemon juice as I’ve done) – several thought it was too sweet. I’d think the same thing, so I’d definitely make it with lemon juice. But I did use Meyer lemons – they’re sweeter than regular lemons – so if you use regular ones, you might need to add just a smidgin more honey. Taste it and see. I barely added any salt and pepper – suit  your own taste.

This recipe is a keeper. If you’re fortunate enough to have an avocado tree, you’ll be in luck with this rendition. Do try it.

What I liked: just everything – the coolness, the avocado flavor, the fresh veggies on top, the piquant taste of the soup with the lemon juice. Everything could be made ahead except for the chopped avocado that goes on top – even grilling the chicken. Also really liked the silky texture.

What I didn’t like: nada, nothing. Will make this again for sure.

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With both cauliflower and carrots in my refrigerator, when I saw this soup prepared over at the TV Food Network, I decided I really needed to make it. Melissa D’Arabian made it sound so good. A friend of hers had served something similar and Melissa worked on the recipe to make it her own. This is a very healthy dish.

Onion is sautéed in olive oil, then you add chopped carrots and chopped-up cauliflower, along with a few red pepper flakes, some lemon zest, ground cumin (one of my favorite spices), a slug of chicken stock, and you let that simmer for about 30-40 minutes until the veggies are tender. I let it sit for awhile to cool down (using my blender with hot food is not one of my favorite things to do). It did take a couple of batches to do it all (actually I made a double batch, using up all of my cauliflower, so it took 3 batches in the blender to puree it all).

After the soup has chilled, add in some yogurt, pour out into serving bowls and top with more salt and pepper, if desired, a large dollop of yogurt, some minced onion, and I added some cilantro just to make it look pretty. It’s delicious. Solid and substantial, but since it’s chilled, it’s very smooth going down.

What I liked: the smooth texture, the coolness of it on a warm, summer evening, the fact that it’s a very healthy soup, can be made ahead. Also loved the cumin in it – if there is a secret ingredient, that’s it. I really liked the silkiness of the added yogurt. It tamed some of the red pepper heat. I couldn’t pick out the flavor from the lemon zest, but am certain it added something.

What I didn’t like: the recipe calls for too much red pepper flakes. I think it needs no more than a pinch, so I’ve changed the below recipe to that effect. A small pinch, if there is such a thing. Since it simmers for awhile, those red chile flakes just permeate the entire pot.

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My DH said to me as I came home from a morning out, “Kerry’s wife is out of town, so I invited him over for dinner; hope that was okay!” Well, sure, it was, but I needed to scramble to figure out what to make. I defrosted chicken breasts and made a quick grocery list. DH went shopping for that as well as for all the food we’ll need this weekend for family coming to visit. I’m preparing all new stuff for that, with only one recipe I’ve ever made before, and it’s not on the blog. So a bunch of new recipes to come.

Digging through my files I came across one from a cooking class I took eons (like 20 years) ago, taught by Alan Greeley, a well-known chef/owner of The Golden Truffle. An institution in our part of the world. For whatever reason, we rarely go there. It’s a distance to drive (30 minutes), but their food is good, so don’t know why it’s not on our go-out-to-dinner radar.

First I found a quinoa recipe that sounded good, and to me, the grilled chicken was perfect to serve with it. The quinoa salad had a slightly Asian twist to it (recipe to come), so this chicken rendition, which also contained a squirt of soy sauce, was a perfect accompaniment. The chicken didn’t quite get to marinate the full 5 hours (recipe said up to 5 hours), but it got about 2 hours, and I used my handy-dandy vacuum container to help the chicken absorb some of it.

The sauce has a myriad of ingredients – jarred chile sauce, fresh lemon and lime juices, brown sugar, soy, garlic, coarse ground mustard, salt, Worcestershire, chipotle chile and balsamic vinegar. And you know that if a sauce like this has sugar in it, (there’s sugar in bottled chile sauce too) it will tend to burn and/or stick to the grill. Cooking at a lower heat is your secret to success. The sauce is piquant (one of my favorite words when something is both sweet and sour), which comes from the sugar and the citrus juices. The original recipe also called for the zest and juice of an orange, but I didn’t use that part. What makes this recipe Belizean is probably the use of the fresh citrus juices and the chipotle chile. The original recipe also called for some habanero, but I thought it was hot enough with just the chipotle. You can add a jalapeno chile if you’d like – mince it up and add at the beginning. What’s probably not Belizean is balsamic vinegar. But hey, it’s one of those great umami tastes, so why not?

Save a little bit of the barbecue sauce just after you make it, as it tastes good as a dollop on top of the chicken when it’s served. Do not serve any of the sauce that has been in contact with the raw chicken! Salmonella fast track there!

Grill the chicken as you normally would – don’t overcook it – the chicken breasts I used were relatively thin and didn’t need pounding, and they cooked through in about 3 minutes per side. Then I put a spoonful of the sauce on top and served it. I happened to have some fennel fronds on my chopping board (that went in the quinoa salad) so I put that on top. Cilantro would be the more obvious choice if you have it. I have leftover sauce (I made the full recipe, but only marinated 3 chicken breasts) so will make this again in the next week or so and try grilling the chicken on the outdoor grill; we’ll see how that works.

What I liked: how easy it was to make the sauce (simmered for about 20 minutes). It’s a different kind of sauce – not your typical barbecue sauce – much of the flavor comes from the jarred chile sauce, a tomato-based one. Tasting the sauce by itself it’s hard to pick out what is in it. It was great – not necessarily the most flavorful I’ve ever made, but it was very good.

What I didn’t like: how quickly you can burn the chicken (because of the sugar in the sauce), so do use a low temp.

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