Fans of bread pudding will stand up and cheer, especially if you/they like pumpkin. The bread pudding is VERY easy to make – truly – although it does need to rest overnight before baking.

This recipe had been in my to-try file for several years. It came from Diane Phillip’s cookbook, Happy Holidays from the Diva of Do-Ahead: A Year of Feasts to Celebrate With Family And Friends. I own one of her cookbooks, but not this one – I think I found it at my local library and had made photocopies of recipes that sounded right down my alley. This was one. I needed a dessert that could be made ahead. Yes, you can mix it up ahead – and make the sauce that goes with it ahead too – but you do need to bake it somewhere close to serving time. I baked it a few hours ahead and then kept it heated in a very very low oven for an hour. The sauce I made the day before, which was good, as it said it will keep chilled in the refrigerator for up to 72 hours ahead. Diane Phillips is a master of the do-ahead meal. She and Phillis Carey teach a duo class at least once a year, near Christmastime.

The only problematical ingredient in making this is challah. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it at any of my local markets, but was surprised to find Trader Joe’s has it. I will say, however, that their challah is very dense. I expected it to be lighter in texture, but it was not at all. If you can’t find challah, you could use King’s Hawaiian Bread instead – it’s a spongy, eggy bread, but it’s also very sweet, so I would reduce the sugar some in the recipe – by about a third is a guess. The bread gets torn up into a bunch of small pieces, bite-sized is best. Then you mix up the pumpkin stuff – eggs, brown sugar, canned pumpkin, cream and lots of good spices and it’s mixed into the bread. Stir it around a bunch, then pour it all into a 9×13 pan (I would use glass or nonstick, not metal), press any bread pieces down into the liquidy mixture (there won’t be much), cover and chill for at least 12 hours (or up to 72). You do have to bring it back to room temp (about an hour) before baking. Keep it covered and bake for 35-40 minutes.

IMPORTANT: I’ve included notes in the recipe below about the bread – if the challah is very dense, you may need more of the pumpkin mixture to soak into the bread – increase those ingredients some to compensate. You want the bread pudding to have ample gooey-ness and it won’t if the bread is dense or dry.

Ideally, serve this warm. I baked it a few hours ahead and just reheated it in a 175° oven for about 30 minutes before serving. Whatever you do, don’t let it dry out.

What absolutely MAKES this dessert is the sauce. It’s not hard to make, but it does take a bit of time to do. It’s 3 parts whole milk and 1 part cream, so it’s not all that bad in the fat department. You steep the milk with crystallized ginger pieces and the zest of an orange. Those are strained out, then you make the sauce part with egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and some orange liqueur and cream added in at the end. BE SURE to strain the sauce at the end as you’ll invariably get some egg white solids in there, and it’s not so fun finding those in your super-smooth pudding or sauce when you serve it! I prepared it the day before, which made for easy reheating. Actually I warmed the sauce on the stove – watching it carefully so it wouldn’t burn, then I placed the saucepan right in the 175°oven with the bread pudding I warmed.

I had ample sauce left over – because people didn’t take enough of the sauce when they served themselves – but I found this sauce is absolutely wonderful as a pudding! I gave some to a friend and we had some of it a few days later. It’s not totally firm like most puddings, it’s looser, but you can see in the photo above, it’s still almost pudding consistency. If you want to make this AS a pudding, reduce the milk quantity down to 2 1/2 cups rather than 3.

What’s good: the sauce is the best part, but I like pumpkin anything, so I enjoyed that too. I liked making this because most of the work is done ahead of time.
What’s not: really nothing. I’d make this again – but I would increase the pumpkin and egg mixture so it’s more gooey. That’s it.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding printer-friendly Cute PDF
Pumpkin Bread Pudding MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file (and remember where you put it), run MC, then File|Import

Orange Ginger Custard Sauce printer-friendly Cute PDF
Orange Ginger Custard Sauce MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file (and remember where you put it), run MC, then File|Import

. . .

Tweet

An easy sauce – relatively speaking – to make to fancify a lovely grilled steak.

Deciding that we would have a really nice dinner, I planned ahead a few hours and marinated the steak first. I can’t say that the marinade was all that memorable, although it was a bit different because of some additional spices used (from Ree Drummond’s website, Pioneer Woman). She served the marinated steak with canned beans. I wanted something a bit more sophisticated, but next time I wouldn’t mix the two (the marinade and the mushroom sauce). So, I’m just giving you the recipe for the sauce. Truth to tell, I liked the sauce a whole lot better than the marinade!

Anyway, the sauce is fairly straight forward – have mushrooms? Can make! You will need a shallot, a little bit of cream, some good Scotch whiskey (I have a bottle of Dalwhinnie single malt that I bought about 12 years ago at the Glasgow airport that still has about 1/3 remaining – it was almost a waste to use that good single malt for a sauce – but it’s the only Scotch I had in the liquor cabinet!). Lemon zest adds a nice piquant addition – you really won’t quite know it’s there, but it adds a bit of flavor depth.

The rest of the dinner came together rather quickly – Brussels sprouts, parsnips and a nice green salad. Sometimes it’s the right thing to have a plain steak – my DH’s go-to version utilizes garlic salt and that’s it – but this time I wanted it to be something different. Nice. Fancy. It was.

What’s good: the mushroom flavor, and you can distinguish the Scotch, so if it’s not your thing, you can leave it out. Use a little medium or cream sherry instead. Yes, I’d make it again, but I would try to do it an hour ahead – it’s a bit labor intensive at the last minute. Not for long, but I wouldn’t want to be making it when I have a house full of people.

What’s not: really nothing – next time I would try to find some of the more exotic mushrooms, though. Am sure the flavor would be enhanced!

printer-friendly CutePDF

MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file (and remember where you put it), run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

What I had on hand were tangerines. Other than eating them out of hand, I didn’t have many thoughts on what to do with them. Aha! Dressing. And I found a recipe in my collection that I’d never made, although I’d had it at a cooking class some years ago.

Some years ago my friend Cherrie and our respective husbands attended a wine tasting event at our local Bristol Farms market (a very upscale grocery store here in So. California). At the time (and perhaps still) a gentleman named Bruce Jacobs was the Executive Chef there, and he and his staff served a dinner paired with the wine. An early course was a lovely salad with a warm round of lightly sautéed goat cheese (lightly breaded with Panko, I think) and the greens were drizzled with this dressing. It was absolutely perfect for that salad.

With the tangerines I had, which came from a tree we have at our desert house, this seemed the right thing to do with them. What I will tell you is that when you mix a lot of fruit juice in a salad dressing, and you dress your salad – it will more quickly wilt the fancy lettuces (like leaf lettuce or soft spring greens). My recollection is that he served this with a curly endive salad, which is a sturdy green that can hold up against a citrus juice dressing. I used Romaine. Spinach should work too. The dressing was made in the food processor, but it may not matter because the dressing doesn’t emulsify very much (there isn’t any egg or mustard, or sour cream to bind it). Although as I type this I made the dressing yesterday, and it is still holding together just as in the photograph above. So maybe it does emulsify more than I think it does.

My only advice: serve this with some kind of fruit in it – like the mandarin oranges I used, or some dried cranberries. Sliced almonds would be nice too. You could also make the salad with some cabbage added, or spinach (certainly very sturdy greens). If you don’t like rosemary, certainly any other fresh herb would work (tarragon, thyme for instance).

What’s good: the tangy tangerine flavor – and it’s a very light dressing. I did use extra virgin olive oil (it calls for “olive oil,” so the extra virgin really isn’t necessary, but I didn’t have anything else). You don’t want the oil to overpower the delicateness of the tangerine juice, that’s all. Adjust the sweetness to your own tastes – and it may depend on how tart the tangerines are too!

What’s not: don’t keep it too long – I’d suggest using it up within about 4-5 days if you can.

printer-friendly CutePDF

MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file (and remember where you put it), run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Do you have a pressure cooker? I don’t use mine enough, but when I do, I’m so delighted with the results. Usually parsnips take a good long time to cook. Not this way!

It was last Sunday afternoon. I went to a concert at our church – to hear the Male Chorale from Cal Baptist (a college in Riverside, 40 miles or so east of where we live). What a performance it was, and I loved every minute of it. But when I got home it was later than I’d planned and I’d not done much preparation for dinner! My DH helped me some – he prepped the Brussels Sprouts with Maple Syrup. I had made a new salad dressing (I’ll post it soon). I’d marinated some steaks and just needed to make the sauce to go on them, chop the salad and pan roast the Brussels sprouts. I’d also wanted to use the parsnips too, that were growing feathery roots in my vegetable bin. I did a quick search on the internet and found something immediately that sounded good. I had oranges from our trees and I had the pressure cooker all ready!

First I peeled the parsnips, which took about a minute. I sliced them into smaller pieces, threw them in the pot, added a little bit of butter, zested the orange (and set that aside for later), then squeezed the juice. The recipe indicated some sugar, salt and that was it. They were pressure cooked for 5 minutes and I did a quick cool-down under the faucet and into a serving bowl they went with a sprinkle of Italian parsley and the orange zest. Delicious. It’s not really a “sauce,” like I think of sauce – to me sauce means something thickened – not a jus. This was just orange juice that permeated the parsnips like magic. It was very low calorie – 104 calories and 2 grams of fat per serving.

What’s good: how easy and quick it was to make. I may try this same recipe with carrots. You could make it with no butter (the original didn’t have any added fat), but I did use a little bit. Altogether delicious. My DH could hardly get enough of them.

What’s not: nothing! Just be careful and don’t over cook them.

printer-friendly CutePDF

MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file (and remember where you put it), run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Do you ever wish you had something to serve with or on sausages? Sausages are kind of – sort of – bland and plain if served all by themselves. Mostly I serve them with good mustard. Well, here’s an easy gravy that goes well with just about any kind of sausages (here it’s with German Bratwurst and a Nuremburger sausage).

It’s just amazing what you’ll find on the internet nowadays. I wanted something to serve with sausages, so I did a search for “what to serve with sausage” and up came a long list of links, mostly to something called sticky onion gravy. Having never heard of sticky onion anything, I took a look at nearly all the recipes. This is a British sauce that is a favorite in pubs. If you’ve ever been to Britain, you know about bangers and mash (bangers just means sausages – but they’re nothing like American breakfast sausage or raw Italian sausage, nor are they anything like German bratwurst either). Usually they are served with mash – mashed potatoes. And in some pubs they spoon on an onion sauce or gravy to go with it. I would assume it’s called sticky because this sauce is thickened with cornstarch and one hopes it will stick some to the bites of sausage.

Finally I settled on a recipe at ask.com and after making it and tasting it, I made some changes to it. Ideally you would serve this with mashed potatoes. We try to limit carbs – particularly white carbs – so I served this with braised red cabbage and apples on the side.

The onions do need to cook awhile – and you particularly don’t want to brown them. That point was stressed in most of the recipes, including Jamie Oliver’s version. So you cook them long and slow (about 30 minutes or more), then you make the sauce part (beef broth, some wine, balsamic vinegar, a little sugar, and I added some Worcestershire and sherry vinegar also). It can sit on the stove over very low heat for awhile – just add a bit more water if it gets too dry.

Mine did just that, so I didn’t have all that much sauce. If you don’t want to use wine, just add more water. The taste of the beef stock or broth will determine how flavorful it is – I used Penzey’s soup bases for the broth and with 2 cups water with it and a cup of wine.

We’d purchased some really good sausages from a deli – they were already cooked, so all I had to do was simmer them in water for 6-8 minutes and they were ready to serve. The onion sauce is spooned over them – about 1/2 cup per serving. If you have mashed potatoes, it would make one delicious morsel with a bite of sausage, an onion draped over it, then pushed into a little bit of potato. Yum.

What’s good: that it goes really well with sausages or some kind of meat. It’s not rich. It’s not some “wow” sauce you’ll want to make for special occasions – this is a simple saucy gravy to give some  extra flavor, texture and moisture to a protein you’re serving or as a sauce for mashed potatoes. I think it would be great with left over roast beef or roast pork.

What’s not: it does take some time to make – at least 45 minutes.

printer-friendly CutePDF

MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file (& remember where you put it), run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Oh gosh, was this cake ever good. And lick-your-lips tasty. And easy! And, and, and. All the superlatives you want to use. Chocolatey, yes. Light in texture, yes. Can I repeat the “easy” word?

At the cooking class a few weeks ago with Phillis Carey, she did 4 soups and a dessert. She always says that people (us, the students) complain if she doesn’t make dessert. Well, I’m so glad she did make dessert, because this recipe is a real winner. I think Phillis has shared this recipe before – probably before I started writing a blog, because it seemed very familiar when she made it and served it. It’s all mixed up in a bowl, baked a short period of time, really, and while it’s baking you make the frosting which needs to be poured onto the warm (not hot) cake and allowed to cool for at least 30 minutes. The frosting begins to set up almost immediately. Oh, it was SO good!

There’s only one really big “condition” about making this – you need a 10×15 sheet pan (jelly roll pan with a 1-inch height). It’s got to be a 10×15. You could make it in a 9×13 cake pan, but it will be a thicker cake and require longer baking. I suppose that would work. I actually ordered the cake pan Phillis used – a Parrish Magic Line 10 x 15 x 1 Inch Jelly Roll/Cookie Sheet. She brought the pan from home because most cooking schools don’t have this cake pan size! Don’t get confused with the pans – the company (and amazon, at the link above) also sells a 10×15 deeper 2-inch cake pan too (which probably would work), but this recipe just plain works perfectly in the 10×15. The pan has a flat side lip on the edges – a flat edge that makes for easy grabbing right out of the oven. NOTE: when you click to the actual pan through the link above, it SAYS it’s an 11×15 pan – and if you measure it edge to edge, it is 11×15, but the interior is 10 inches. And make sure you get the one with the 1-inch depth – they also have a cookie sheet (no edges). Read the description carefully.

So, now, back to the cake. You melt butter, coffee, cocoa powder and oil and add it to the dry ingredients with some buttermilk and eggs. Just whisk well and pour into the greased or sprayed cake pan. It bakes for about 18-20 minutes. During the last few minutes before the cake comes out of the oven make the frosting: cook milk, butter and cocoa, add powdered sugar and vanilla. It can sit for about 10 minutes, so in that interim the cake will be cooling and then you pour the frosting over the still-warm cake, spread and sprinkle on the pecans. Allow to cool. See, I said it was easy!

What’s good: gosh, the cake was so full of chocolate flavor. The coffee or espresso you add to it isn’t discernible, but the food scientists say coffee brings out the best in chocolate. And the frosting is delicious – not too thick and not too sweet. Just right.

What’s not: really, nothing. It’s so easy. Make it!

printer-friendly CutePDF

MasterCook 14/15+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

When I glanced at this recipe, before Phillis Carey’s cooking class started, I can’t say that I was very intrigued. Dill pickles on top of a soup? And old-fashioned mustard? Oh, was I mistaken, big time! This soup is SO good. So interesting! So different! And believe it or not, it’s also EASY.

You might have to look hard at the photo – right in the center is a little squirt of regular (hot dog) mustard. And you can see the little chunks of dill pickle, along with the shredded Cheddar. I added the little bits of chopped tomato (not in the original recipe, but I thought they sounded like a fun addition).

When I tell you this soup is easy, just read how easy: sauté the ground turkey (dark and light meat for best flavor), add veggies (onion, celery and carrot) and cook. Add flour, broth, milk and some potatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer until the potatoes are done. Off heat add the cheese, ladle into bowls and sprinkle on the condiments for your delish “soup burger.” Tops, this takes about 30 minutes to make.

What else can I possibly say about it? It’s easy to make, it’s very tasty, it’s relatively healthy. If you want to make it more healthy, use olive oil in place of butter, and use 2% milk rather than whole. Don’t skimp on the Cheddar cheese – use the grate-it-yourself type (you know, the packages of shredded cheese have some kind of covering on the shreds so the cheese doesn’t stick together in the package). Use sharp (not extra sharp as it’s too dry, Phillis said, and won’t melt well).

What’s good: just everything about it – the ease of it, and the comfort food flavor.
What’s not: nothing whatsoever!

printer-friendly CutePDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Black bean soup with nice crunchy chewiness from bacon and sun-dried tomatoes, with a soothing, cool sour cream (or yogurt) cilantro dollop on top. Super easy too!

You’re going to be seeing some new soup recipes here. And this one is the best of the bunch. It may not look like it’s something noteworthy, but it is. Trust me on that. A couple of weeks ago I attended a class with Phillis Carey, and it seems like every year about this time she comes up with a new repertoire of soup recipes. My friend Cherrie, who’s now on the radiation part of her journey with breast cancer, and I went to a class with Phillis. The first class we’ve been able to go to in quite some time. We’ve missed seeing Phillis, but mostly we’ve missed new Phillis recipes! She made 4 soups and a dessert (a mocha cake). I’ll be posting the recipes in the next couple of weeks.

This recipe could almost be a throw-together one on a weeknight, IF you have bacon on hand, a can of black beans, the sun-dried tomatoes, sour cream or yogurt and cilantro. Most of those are staples I keep all the time. Oh, forgot – fresh lime juice too. I don’t always have that! Limes seem to go south so soon. Not like lemons that will keep on my kitchen counter for a couple of weeks.

I’ve only made one change to Phillis’ recipe – she pureed the soup in the blender (you could use an immersion blender too) – but the bacon (thick-sliced) left lots and lots of little hard nuggets in the soup – so I’ve altered the recipe to cooking it fully from the beginning, then reserving it to add the bacon crumbles later. The bacon grease will flavor the soup and the bacon will be in little crumbles with a different (better) texture than doing it the other way. I also added some more chicken broth to the soup at the end (because I barely had 4 servings – it seemed fine with that addition).

Phillis explained that this soup has been one of her favorites for years and years. She wasn’t sure, but thought she might have shared it a decade or two ago in a cooking class. She serves this to guests too, even though it’s a casual kind of heart-warming one dish meal; she makes it in really large quantities and says it will keep for a couple of months in the freezer. I made it as is, and will just barely have enough for 4 servings. Next time I will definitely need to double the recipe!

The only advice Phillis gave us was to make sure when we buy the sun-dried tomatoes we get the ones that are soft and pliable, not dry and brittle or flaked. Hers came from Trader Joe’s. She also recommended we make this ahead – at least one day – because it tastes so much better. She made it in about 30 minutes or less at the class, and I thought it was fabulous. So don’t hesitate to do it at the last minute if that’s all the time you have.

What’s good: just the overall taste and texture. Loved it altogether. It’s not vegetarian, but almost – except for the bacon, of course. I don’t suppose it would be anywhere near as good without the bacon, but you could try it.
What’s not: not a single thing.

printer-friendly CutePDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Oh my. Oh my. Yes, this was SO wonderful. Can’t wait to eat the left overs, which will be gone by this evening. This is a quick dinner, as long as you have all the ingredients (shrimp, heavy cream, chives, parsley, FRESH lemon juice, angel hair and zucchini). If you love pasta, and shrimp – well, this dish is IT.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll already know that I don’t make pasta very often. Even though I love it, it’s not good for my DH (Type 1 diabetic) and probably not all that great for me, either. But sometimes, for a splurge, we have it. And oh, am I ever glad. This dish was downright sensational. And EASY. Our granddaughter Taylor was here, and although she professes to not like fish or shellfish, she ate all but one shrimp on her plate. Her Dad, Todd, loves shrimp, so he had no trouble downing all of his own plus any of Taylor’s discards.

The inspiration for this recipe came from Simply Recipes, a blog I read regularly. As long as I’ve been reading food blogs, Elise’s has been one of my favorites. I love her easy-going writing style and her stories about her family’s recipes. I also love her recipe index. That might not sound so important to you – if you don’t write a blog, but recipe indexes aren’t automatically produced – nobody (that I know of) has written code to create recipe index entries when you post something new. I did use one for awhile, but it’s not meant for recipes and it was dreadfully hard to read. So when I go to Elise’s website I can easily find what I’m looking for. My recipe index here on my blog I created myself using the minimal amount of WordPress coding I know how to do, and I have to update it regularly. I do it about every 2 weeks or so. It’s tedious.

Anyway, back to shrimp and angel hair. The huge shrimp were defrosted first. Then I cut them up into manageable (and different) sizes. Some I chopped. Some I sliced in half lengthwise and then I left one whole for each serving.

These shrimp were huge, and probably not the ideal size for this dish as the whole (or even the half) shrimp required a knife and fork. But the whole and halves looked so pretty on the dish.

Even though there is heavy cream in this, I was almost surprised when I looked at the nutrition analysis to see that to serve 5, each serving has 20 grams of fat. Not too bad considering . . . We had a green salad to go with this, which added a few grams of fat also, but not much. So this dish wasn’t as wicked as you might think. Just so you know . . .

Elise’s recipe didn’t call for zucchini. I added it just cuz I wanted some veggies in it (although to tell you the truth – and you can see from the photo – you can’t even SEE the zucchini). I chopped/sliced up the zucchini in tiny little pieces. I also added some additional seasonings (thyme, oregano). I used fish stock (or you could use clam juice too) because I have some of Penzey’s soup bases in my frig, but Elise suggests chicken stock, which would be fine too. I also added a couple of cloves of minced garlic to the cream as it simmered with the zucchini.  When you simmer garlic in a sauce (not sautéed in oil, for instance) it mellows out. I grated just a bit more Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese than the original. And lastly, because I was using Meyer lemons (which are sweeter than regular lemons), I added just a bit more lemon juice. Oh yes, I also used more lemon zest too – half of it I put into the cream as it simmered, and the remainder I added just at the end.

What’s good: oh, everything! I just loved this dish. The lemon, you might think, could overwhelm the dish, or be acidic. It was neither. Even our son-in-law, who says he doesn’t love lemon particularly, thought it was very nicely balanced. I agree. Definitely a make-again dish. Nice for guests too.
What’s not: absolutely nothing at all.

printer-friendly CutePDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

If you’ve read my blog for long, you know that I’m not a public health militant by any means. But I do like to be aware, maybe more than the average home cook, about what’s in the meat and produce we eat. I don’t like produce that comes from genetically engineered seed (GMO), but here in California the state recently voted down a bill that would have required fresh produce(rs) to tell us the origin of the seed and whether it was GMO. Sad.

In the last several years I’ve made more of an effort to buy organic beef (particularly beef, but not pork or lamb) because of the possible problems with mad cow disease. I still eat beef some, but when I buy it myself I try to seek out organically grown meat. So, when I read this little blurb the other day in Consumer Reports (February 2013 issue), little red flags went off. It’s scary. Here’s what it says:

Some 80% of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on food animals, mostly to make them grow faster or prevent disease in crowded, unsanitary conditions. That overuse promotes the spread of drug-resistant superbugs and makes antibiotics less effective for humans.

Kim Howland [pictured in the article] from Enid, Oklahoma, knows how devastating that can be. She believes she carried home a MRSA infection from the hog-farming facility where she worked. The antibiotic-resistant superbug sickened several members of her family, including her husband, Cole, who needed emergency surgery to remove the flesh-eating MRSA infection.

Kim Howand has teamed up with Consumers Union‘s Meat Without Drugs campaign. “Grocery stores can make a real difference to public health by stopping the sale of meat raised on antibiotics,” she says. For more information, go to Consumers Union’s website notinMyFood.org

We all make choices about food, and the trade unions and marketeers know only too well how easy it is to befuddle us with information or write legislation that makes it look like we’re voting for something, when you’re really voting against. The bottom line, buy ORGANIC when possible!

Tweet