Ah, yes, yet another chocolate chip cookie recipe. Hope you’re not tired of them.

A post from Carolyn. Until recently I’d never heard of Zoë Francois. That is until I began watching Magnolia Network where she has her own show call Zoë Bakes. She’s a baker of high esteem and her shows are filmed (I’m assuming) in her home kitchen in Vermont (so quaint). 90% of her recipes are sweets. Some of them are quite fussy (well, they are to me, who doesn’t really like fussy cooking or baking). But hey, I’m always on the lookout for a new or different chocolate chip cookie recipe.

So what’s different about this one? (1) she uses some shortening in it – mostly butter as the fat quotient, and just a little shortening (which supposedly helps the cookies not spread); and (2) she has you chill the cookie balls, on the sheet, before baking. If you are at all interested in reading the ins and outs of chocolate chip cookies and the ingredients that go into them and how they make a cookie react, you should read the long intro to the recipe. It’s quite detailed and unless you’re a professional baker, I’d guess you’d learn something from it. I certainly did.

My granddaughter Taylor loves chocolate chip cookies. And if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you’ve learned that I do too. As I write this up, Taylor’s been home in Northern California for 2 weeks on a spring break and will hit the grindstone tomorrow with new nursing classes and two different hospitals where she’ll be learning clinical skills. I wanted her to be able to take a few cookies to school or to snack on when she’s studying here at home.

Who doesn’t like a good chocolate chip cookie? Maybe some of those rare people (I know one person – yes Kerry, that’s you) who don’t really care for sweets. I dug out my stand mixer and started in on these. I actually 1 1/2 times the recipe, but the recipe below is the original, which makes 36 cookies regular sized, or 18 if you like the giant ones. I did measure the ingredients carefully, even using my scale for the chips and flour.

For quite awhile I’ve not been doing any baking (trying NOT to), and when I dug out my brown sugar I discovered every speck of brown sugar I had was hard as a rock. Oh dear. I wasn’t about to make a trip to the grocery store. So I googled “how to rehydrate brown sugar,” and there are plenty of recommendations. The one that worked for me was to measure out about 1 cup of the hard brown sugar (first I had to break it up with a mallet) and it went into a sealing type plastic bag, then I added exactly 3/4 tsp of water. You just throw it in the bag and zip it up. It went in the microwave for 15 seconds, then you mush it around by hand, in the bag, breaking apart any of the hard chunks. Then back into the microwave for 10 second increments (it took just one more 10 second round) to make this brown sugar as soft and pliable as a fresh one from the store. At first there was a wet streak (that’s normal) in the middle of the sugar, but as it warms up, it absorbs into the whole lot. Just keep massaging it around. Who knew?

As it turned out, I was lazy and didn’t do the chill-in-the-frig part. I just scooped them and baked them. The recipe indicated 375°F for 8-9 minutes (using the chilled ones), but after making several trays straight from the bowl, I settled on 355°F for 12 minutes exactly. My oven runs a little on the hot side, I’ve learned. I made some of them without walnuts and some with them (the baker didn’t add them, but I prefer with walnuts). I added a measurement of walnuts in the recipe below, so you can choose to or not. I also didn’t add the flaky sea salt to the top. When I tasted the dough I thought they were plenty salty, so didn’t want to add more.

What’s GOOD: really good choc chip cookies. Are they better than others? I liked that they held their shape. They were a little on the brownish side underneath – that’s why I reduced the oven temp a little bit. Try a test batch when you make them. My favorite chocolate chip cookies still remain the ones from the Silver Moon Bakery. Click the link to read my post about them.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. These were delicious. Over the top? Maybe not. Certainly good, however.

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This recipe comes from my friend, Linda. 

A post from Carolyn. First off, I have to apologize to my readers . . . I’ve not been very “present” with my blog lately as I’ve been so crazy-busy – I’ve felt like I hardly have time to think. After four years, I’m finally going to be turning over my presidential gavel in my P.E.O. chapter to someone else. I’m hoping that’s going to free up a lot of my time. That happens exactly two weeks from today. I’ve hardly done recipe testing of late. My granddaughter, Taylor, the one who is in nursing school and is living with me, went home to Northern California on a 2-week break. Cooking a nice meal for her sometimes motivated me to try a new recipe or two. It’s not that I am eating out all that much, or buying ready-made food. I don’t really. Writing up a blog post about my usual evening green salad with everything in it but the kitchen sink wouldn’t be very noteworthy for you, my readers.

Anyway, my friend Linda offered to take a picture of a pork chop dish she made recently, these deviled pork chops. She said they were the best – the moistest – pork chops she’d ever had. Ever! That’s high praise, for sure.

As I was thinking about this recipe, the name for sure, how did anything get to be called “deviled” I wondered. Well, the web is certainly helpful: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1786 to “devil” a food meant to cook it with a spicy seasoning or over very high heat. For hard boiled eggs, it meant to garnish it with red (meaning from the devil), and that would mean using  paprika. Who knew?

So this recipe came from America’s Test Kitchen. Linda and I are faithful watchers of that PBS program. Linda’s comments: Made this tonight after seeing it on ATK. SUPER EASY! Takes about 15 minutes.  Brown panko crumbs in butter, make a paste of good stuff. Smear on chops, pat crumbs on & bake on a rack at 275 for 40-50 minutes. Sounds very straight forward! Easy. Do use THICKER pork chops – you probably can’t do this with the thin ones at all.

What’s GOOD: I’m paraphrasing from what Linda told me via email and phone that this recipe was just so very easy. The chops were extremely moist (often a problem with today’s lower-fat pork chops).

What’s NOT: only that you need to allow for 40-50 minutes of baking time. And be sure to buy thicker pork chops.

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Want to make salmon in a simple pan sauce? So easy and tasty.

A post from Carolyn. In trying to make salmon about once a week at my house, I search through the untried recipes in my file and this one popped up because I had all the ingredients on hand. That’s a win in my book!

The original recipe used lime juice, but I had lemon, so I used what I had. It would likely be even better with lime juice merely because of the coconut milk – they seem to make a common marriage in lots of recipes. Because I knew this would come together in a hurry, I got everything ready before I started. The veggies that went along with it (zucchini and yellow squash) plus a side of rice I started before I even began the salmon. It came together so very quickly. There is garlic, ginger and lemongrass (I had some in a tube) plus a tiny bit of brown sugar, and you could use any number of types of hot chili paste – I used Thai red chili paste (very little). One extra addition was a tiny splash of Vietnamese fish sauce which added a little more umami flavor. I totally forgot to keep some of the lemon zest for the top – – oh well.

My only caution – do NOT overcook the salmon. I had two pieces (one for my granddaughter Taylor and the thinner one for me) and one was much thicker than the other, so they required very different cooking times. A thin fillet as you see in the picture above will take just a couple of minutes on each side to cook through. Just be careful about that. I added some additional lemon juice at the end which gave the sauce even better flavor.

What’s GOOD: how easy this was, beginning to end. Loved the sauce that flooded over into the rice. Altogether yum.

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.

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Do you ever wish you could make something that is just bursting with lemon flavor? And garlic too? Throw in rosemary as well?

A post from Carolyn. Since I didn’t name this recipe, I guess I really shouldn’t re-name it; even so, it would be difficult to do, because these three flavors (lemon, garlic, rosemary) are just all there. Equally so. I think the lemon is predominant, however.

My friend Dianne made this chicken for the luncheon I told you about in my last post (for the classic rice pilaf – that went with this chicken). She told me that a few years ago her grown kids and grandkids were visiting and her daughter said “what’s for dinner,” and Dianne suggested they try one of the recipes from Zov’s (a local restaurant). It’s since become a favorite in her family and whenever they visit, it’s a regular on the menu. The recipe comes from Zov’s cookbook, Zov: Recipes and Memories from the Heart. It was published in 2005, (also updated in 2008) but it’s still available. Zov is Armenian by heritage and her recipes certainly reflect the Mediterranean and beyond culture and cuisine.

So, the recipe uses boneless, skinless chicken breast halves. Dianne pounds them to an even thickness (so you get even cooking on the grill). Then they’re marinated for about 24 hours. The recipe indicates you can marinate them a shorter period, or even longer, but Dianne likes the 24 hours as a regular benchmark. They are patted dry with paper towels, then grilled swiftly over a medium-high grill heat. Then she carefully slices them on the diagonal (so you get slightly wider slices than when cutting straight down). Put them onto a heated platter (because they cool very quickly) and serve immediately. Do put some fresh rosemary and a wedge or two of lemon on the platter when serving  – it looks so pretty.

Dianne made more than enough of this, so when we were divvying up the leftovers, she generously let me have a bunch. My granddaughter Taylor and I had two dinner meals with the leftovers, and still had more for some evening dinner salads with the chopped up cold chicken on top.

What’s GOOD: the flavors are, as I mentioned, just bursting through. Does that tell you enough – the lemon, the garlic and the rosemary. Absolutely delicious. So worth making.

What’s NOT: only that you must plan ahead at least 24 hours to get the most out of the marinating.

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Such a delicious side, great for a family meal or guests. The goodies on top included dried apricots, golden raisins and toasted pine nuts.

A post from Carolyn. On Friday, my friend Dianne and I hosted a luncheon at my house. It was a fund-raising event for my P.E.O. chapter. Eight of our friends paid $15 or more (it was a bidding process) to come have lunch with us (and the money is used to fund philanthropies that help educate women). Dianne and I slaved for the better part of two days to put together the menu (3 courses) and figure out how to make it fun. We served a cold pea soup (it was about 90°F outside and my A/C was running at full speed), grilled chicken, this rice pilaf, and then we prepared three desserts (coconut cupcakes, lemon bars and Viennese chocolate walnut bars). As we ate, Dianne and I explained the stories behind the recipes we served. Then, after lunch was over, all of our guests brought out their favorite cookbook(s) and/or a few special recipes and told stories about them. It was so very fun.

There’s my dining room table, all set up with a red Valentine’s theme. Dianne has tons of red tableware and décor, which she shared with me. Between us we had enough for ten place settings. Neither of us had 10 of anything, so we did a lot of mixing and matching, but hey, it worked.

The pilaf was actually very easy to make. The recipe comes from Zov Karamardian, a local chef/restaurateur. And the recipe is in her cookbook, Zov: Recipes and Memories from the Heart. I see that you can buy used copies of her cookbook for $1.90 plus shipping. Anyway, the recipe is the usual combination of rice (this time jasmine was called for) and vermicelli, with more than the usual amount of butter added, then broth, and the garnishes on top. If you get out everything before you begin, it comes together in a flash. While Dianne grilled the chicken outside, the pilaf sat quietly steaming on the stove until tender.

The only extra step necessary in the preparation was toasting the pasta – and it took exactly 5 minutes in my toaster oven. Do watch it carefully as it could go from just right, to burned in a matter of seconds. And do that well ahead of when you need it. Have all the garnishes out and ready too, so all you have to do is sprinkle them on top.

What’s GOOD: how easy this is to make, and oh-so tasty. This recipe is a keeper.

What’s NOT: nothing really.

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Found this on the Thermoworks website:

BAKED GOODS TEMPERATURE CHART

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Butter Chicken is a favorite of mine, and this version of it is SO very easy, you simply won’t believe it. Everything for this dinner is cooked right in the Instant Pot.

A post from Carolyn. My Instant Pot sits on a shelf in my laundry room (mostly because I don’t have room in my kitchen for it), but it gets a pretty good workout even so. And this recipe is going to make your day. It’s so very easy, and dinner is ready in a flash – truly, under 30 minutes. This recipe came from Food52, from Urvashi Pitre. She’s known as “The Butter Chicken Lady,” and rightly so. She’s a celebrated author of numerous instant pot cookbooks, and let me just say, this recipe is a winner. I’ve followed her blog for several years (called twosleevers.com), and have made a few of her recipes in the past, but it’s for this one that she’s the most famous. She even got a write-up in the New York Times.

Her title for this recipe is “Now and Later Instant Pot Butter Chicken.” That’s because when you make this, you’ll end up with about 1 1/2 cups of extra sauce, which you’ll save (and freeze perhaps) to use with some other leftovers another night. What I love about this recipe is that into the instant pot you combine the canned tomatoes, ginger, garlic, turmeric, cayenne (or Kashmiri chile powder in my case), paprika, salt, cumin and garam masala. You stir it just a bit, add the chicken thighs, stir that just a bit so the chicken is coated in the flavorful sauce.

Meanwhile, you will use a small glass or ceramic bowl (that will fit into the Instant Pot) to which you’ll add basmati rice, water, butter and salt. After placing a trivet (I used the instant pot trivet that has the two handles) on top of the chicken, you place the rice bowl on top. Put the IP lid on top and pressure cook the chicken for 10 minutes. Then you let it sit for 10 minutes, undisturbed. Release the pressure, remove the bowl of rice (now fully cooked) with the trivet handles, remove the chicken to a bowl (large enough so you can pull apart the chicken easily). The sauce on the bottom of the Instant Pot gets smoothed out with an immersion blender, which takes about 20 seconds or so, then you add cream (or coconut milk), 4 T of butter and some chopped cilantro plus another teaspoon of garam masala. Your butter chicken is done. Put the chicken back in the pot and stir it around, and serve with the rice.

What’s GOOD: how absolutely simple this is. It’s genius, as they say at Food52. This is going to become my go-to butter chicken recipe henceforth! Only thing I might do differently is add some chopped up onion to the mixture. Not sure that’s authentic, but I’ll try it that way next time. I served it with some steamed broccoli on the side.

What’s NOT: nothing at all – such a simple dish, easy and flavorful.

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Are you a fan of thumbprint cookies? I didn’t think I was, but these made me become one.

A post from Carolyn. These cookies, this recipe, comes from my friend, Linda T. My blog contains a number of her recipes over the  years. I visited her (she lives about an hour or so south of me, toward San Diego) a couple of weeks ago and she always makes me a lovely cup of coffee (she became a Nespresso fan too), and she always has some little sweet waiting for me when I get there. What a treat these were. Truly, I would never have reached for thumbprint cookies if there was a spread of cookies being served. They always seemed over-the-top sweet with the jam on top. Well, this recipe has turned me around completely. Maybe it’s just that this recipe comes from Ina Garten. Her recipes are always foolproof, just like the title of some of her cookbooks. Her recipes are reliable. And always good. This recipe comes from her 2002 Family Style cookbook.

What’s different about these is that instead of rolling the dough in chopped nuts, Ina has you do it in sweetened coconut. The making of these isn’t much different that most cookie doughs, although you do need to make time to chill the dough for awhile. It helps to have a kitchen scale, as she wants these to be 1 ounce each. The balls are placed on an ungreased cookie sheet, then you press a little thumb indentation in the top (not actually flattening the entire cookie). Ideally these are filled with raspberry or apricot jam, a mere 1/4 teaspoon. How do you even measure 1/4 teaspoon of jam, I ask? In other words, very little jam.

Speaking about Nespresso, as I was up above, I had to phone the customer service people there to have them walk me through why one of my machines wasn’t working quite right. They figured it out easily enough and we got it back in working order. While we were waiting for hot water to pump through to clean out the head, I casually mentioned to the nice guy, Ricardo, that I’m just a huge fan of Nespresso, period. That I now own three of them, and that I joke with my family (I do) that I need to be buried with my Nespresso machine, because it has to go with me to heaven. Ricardo just burst into laughter, telling me that was the funniest thing he’d heard all week, and could he share my story with his co-workers at their next staff meeting. I said yes, of course!

What’s GOOD: these cookies are just scrumptious. Just sweet enough. Not too sweet. Lovely with the coconut on the outside edges, with them lightly browned. Thank you, Linda, for making these. This recipe is a keeper, and perfect anytime, but particularly as Christmastime.

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.

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Another new way to use rhubarb. 

A post from Carolyn. On Saturday last, New Year’s Day, I was alone at home, content to watch the Rose Parade with the fireplace blazing, warm and cozy inside. I decided it was an appropriate day to make a nice dinner for myself. I’d had some duck in the freezer for a really long time (I’m not even going to tell you how long . . .). It was a duck half, partially cooked already, vacuum sealed. It needed about 25 minutes of heating through in a 350°F oven and it was juicy and bubbling. Originally the duck came with a packet of sauce to go with it, but I couldn’t locate it in the freezer, so I glanced at a shelf nearby (in the freezer) and spotted rhubarb that I’d chopped up and frozen some months ago. And sure enough, I had a chutney recipe in my files.

The recipe actually had you make it all in the microwave, but I decided to just do it stovetop instead. I sweated some minced yellow onion in apple juice (I used frozen concentrate diluted 1-to-1, not 1-to-3 as the package instructed), then added garlic and red pepper flakes to the mixture. The rhubarb had a little bit of sugar sprinkled over it already and was still partially frozen, but the cooking defrosted it in short order, especially since rhubarb is made up of a lot of water – the heat and steam took care of that in a jiffy. Golden raisins were added – nothing else – not even more sugar, nor salt. It was perfect. I didn’t cook it long as I didn’t want the rhubarb to disintegrate. My mother used to make rhubarb sauce and cooked it way too long – I like to see some definition in the rhubarb pieces. So it was simmered for a bare 3-5 minutes and it was done. I let it sit with the lid on it for about half an hour to blend the flavors a bit, then cooled it and refrigerated it to serve later.

The night before I’d made a vegetarian entrée (fresh Portobello mushrooms chopped up, garlic, onion, zucchini, some little dabs of cream cheese and grated Grana Padano) and had leftovers of that. So my dinner was complete with the roasted duck, the rhubarb chutney and the mushroom side dish.

What’s GOOD: loved the sweet/sour taste of the chutney. Easy to make, and I’ll use the leftovers for something with chicken, probably. It would work even on my morning yogurt, for that matter.

What’s NOT: only that you need to procure rhubarb. I try to freeze some when rhubarb is in season so I can use it at a later date.

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There’s no question, I do love tortilla soup. This one’s a little bit different, but certainly in the same genre.

This post from Carolyn. Over the holidays (two weeks before Christmas) I came down with a cold. A really awful cold that had me down and out for over a week. It had me cancel several fun things I was going to do which made me quite sad. It had me snuggled under a blanket watching too much television. I had a jillion Rachael Ray shows recorded, so one day I watched about 10 of them. This recipe came from one of those programs. Had I been well enough I would have made this while I was sick, but instead I made it after I was well. My cousin Gary drove down from Northern California where he lives. As it happened we’ve had a lot of rain in California in recent weeks, so his trip would normally take about 7+ hours, and it took him nearly 11 hours because of traffic issues, rain, road conditions and just jam-ups  in various places. This soup was his reward once he arrived.

Rachael said she was looking for a leaner, very green, vegetarian style tortilla soup. And she explained that the toppings are what make this dish. I totally agree. The soup itself is merely the “bed” or the sled to pile on the goodies. The more toppings the better. As it happened, I did end up adding some shredded rotisserie chicken to the soup, but that’s certainly optional. The soup was a bit on the hot side for my cousin, so I’ve tamed down the chiles in the recipe – Rachael used Hatch chiles (which are generally hotter than regular green chiles), so you can decide for yourself if you want hot, use Hatch mild, otherwise, the regular cans of Ortega green chiles will be fine too. For the leftovers I added a little bit of cream to the soup (this was to tame it down) and squeezed a bit of sour cream on top as well.

What’s GOOD: I loved everything about this soup. The texture of all the varied toppings IS what makes the soup. Tomatillos are the strongest flavor of the soup base itself. But the crunch of the various things on top give it so much variety. This recipe is a keeper.

What’s NOT: nothing, really. Easy to make. The hardest part is chopping up all the toppings!

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