‘Tis the season for watermelon. And if you haven’t tried one of the salads mentioned here on my blog, with watermelon and Feta, well, here’s another one. If I had to rank them, I still think the plain one with just watermelon and Feta is the best, but this was good too. Different.

It’s just a combo of watermelon cubes or balls, Feta (the recipe calls for ricotta salata, but I wasn’t going to drive 10 miles to get it), red onion slices, arugula, walnuts and a citrus dressing. The most time consuming was cutting the watermelon. Once that was done, it was fairly quick work preparing the rest of the mixture. The recipe is Sardinian. Can’t say that I’ve cooked much from Sardinia. Have you? I assumed not. Anyway, this was written up in Food & Wine Magazine in 2007. The recipe come from a gentleman named Efisio Farris, and I think he owns a winery there. What he said about this is that in his country watermelon and arugula grow next to one another, so putting them together in a salad was a natural combination.

The original recipe called for orange juice. I didn’t have any, so used pineapple juice instead. Farris said that raspberry vinegar is a regular staple in his region, and that we’d find the dressing (orange juice, raspberry vinegar, lime juice and a little olive oil) a never-to-forget combination. Uh, well, okay. Maybe I’ll need to try this with the orange juice to verify that statement. Anyway, everyone liked the salad. It’s refreshing, perfect for a warm summer evening. I will tell you, though, don’t plan for leftovers because the dressing just kind of mutilates the salad after sitting in it for a couple of hours – what was left the other day was mostly mush, so had to toss it out. I suppose I could have whizzed it up in the blender and called it watermelon soup, but I didn’t. Anyway, I’d make this again, but I’d likely use MUCH less dressing. It doesn’t need hardly any, anyway. And, I think this serves far more than 4 people – there must be a typo in the recipe – each person would be eating nearly a pound of watermelon. Noooo. Too much. I didn’t weigh the watermelon, so I really don’t know how much of 3 pounds I used. I served 10 people with a double recipe and had leftovers. So judge it yourself and definitely taste as you add the dressing and use less . . . rather than more.
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A year ago: Shrimp Avocado Salsa
Two years ago:Baked Brie & Apples

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Thank goodness for the internet. Otherwise I’d have made Dorie Greenspan’s rice pudding recipe straight out of the cookbook and not known it contained two typo’s. And I’d have been very disappointed to have made a sweet rice and milk soup rather than a more solid rice pudding. Years ago there was no way to ever know about typographical errors in cookbooks.

My friend Norma was ready for another dessert, and after going through some ideas she decided rice pudding sounded the best. I have several recipes for it, but knew Dorie Greenspan’s ought to be the best out there. How chagrined she must be to have such major typo’s appear in her wonderful cookbook. Whatever happened to proofreaders at publishing houses? I’ve made a couple of errors on my recipes here on this blog, but I don’t have a proofreader (except for moi), so you get what you get when you read it here! This recipe is from her book: Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Anyway, this recipe is different than some. My mother used to make rice pudding. I’m sure yours did too. I don’t know what recipe my mom used, since I didn’t find one in her recipe box. But because Dorie used Arborio rice (the type used to make Italian risotto), I was intrigued with it. Then in reading her recipe I discovered that you parboil the rice in water first. Parboil means to cook briefly, partially – it’s a culinary technique that can be used for other things – like vegetables. To parboil means to partially cook something, for continuing to cook it later. It’s just a method of submerging the item in boiling water and cooking it for a minute or two. In this case the rice is cooked for ten minutes (the parboil part). So here, you simmer the rice in water first. Then it’s drained and rinsed (the rinsing of cooked rice was something I’d never done) before combining with the milk and sugar and simmering it for nearly an hour. 45 minutes to be exact. Then you add vanilla, or the chocolate, or divide the batch in half and do both, as I did.

This rice pudding is not a firm pudding – it has no eggs or cornstarch to thicken it – just milk and rice. That’s it. Even after chilling overnight, the pudding is not firm. I liked it this way. It’s also not overly sweet, either. I liked that part of it too. Most of the others who have made Dorie’s rice pudding agreed that both the chocolate and the vanilla types were good. Neither one was better than the other. Combining them – as I did for the photo above – looked pretty – but I’m not sure I’d actually serve it that way because the chocolate version overpowered the vanilla. But this way you could easily make 2 chocolate puds and 2 vanilla puds. Or 3 and 1. Whatever. I used more rice, and I added some half and half instead of milk for part of it (I made a triple quantity), and I cooked the milk-rice mixture for about 45 minutes before cooling it; all of these alterations are included in the recipe below.
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A year ago: Eggplant – everything you always wanted to know
Two years ago: Herbed Biscuit Ring (an easy, but delish biscuit made from tube biscuits)

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It’s been a year or so since I made this salad. It’s SO darned good. And SO darned EASY. My DH loves it besides! He was a very happy camper that we had this for dinner the other night. I’m fortunate that Dave enjoys and relishes having a salad for dinner – a dinner with nothing BUT salad. Usually the salad has some kind of protein in it – in this case a small amount of bacon – but any way I make it, he likes it. I had a fresh baguette, so I made some garlic croutons to go with it. Enjoyed the bit of crunch.

In case you didn’t read it when I posted this recipe back in 2007, I highly recommend it. This recipe is in my “Carolyn’s Fav’s,” one of the tabs at the top where I’ve listed my very favorite recipes.

A year ago: Wellesley Chocolate Chip Cookies
Two years ago: Lumpia (a Filipino appetizer)

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Since I made Melissa d’Arabian’s salmon cakes, I also made her recipe for orzo risotto. Now she calls it Orzo with Thyme & Lemon Zest, but during the 30-minute Food Network segment, she mentioned more than once that it’s kind of like risotto except it’s pasta, not rice.

The cooking of this is just a tad different than usual. Instead of using a big pot of water, and cooking the pasta in it and draining out the water when it’s done, you cook the pasta in just enough chicken broth (and water) to reach that peak of just-barely-done al dente, but also creamy enough to make you think it’s risotto. Throw out that old-school thinking that says you have to cook pasta in a whole lot of water and that bit of starch in the water must be tossed out. All the starch stays IN the pot and helps make the pasta sticky.

There’s nothing fancy about this. In fact, I’ve made a similar dish even recently, but not prepared this way which uses twice the amount of liquid as pasta and no draining needed or desired. This one is flavored with red pepper flakes, garlic, lemon zest (I used lime because I didn’t have any lemons) and some thyme. I used dried thyme, not fresh, only because Ina Garten explained recently that she thinks fresh thyme is too strong, so she prefers dried. Or was that about oregano. Oh dear,  I don’t remember now. I also added in a bit of butter at the end, too, but it probably wasn’t needed. I liked this, and it certainly was EASY. All made in one pot.

If you go online to read about the recipe at the Food Network, you’ll find lots of comments from people that there was too much water in the recipe. I agree – I used just the chicken broth and added about another 2 tablespoons (not 2 cups) of water at the end because the pasta wasn’t quite done and the broth was all gone. So, you need to watch it very carefully at the end so it doesn’t burn and stick in the pan. I used a nonstick pan because there really isn’t any oil or butter in this to keep it moving around the pan without sticking. My recommendation is that you make it more soupy than you think it should be because once you put it on the plate, it’s still absorbing liquid. By the time we ate it the first time it was too dry. I’d whisked it over to my kitchen photo location and snapped a couple of pictures and by the time I put it on the table about 60 seconds later – well, it was a bit too dry – too dry to be called risotto-like, anyway. But the taste was good. Certainly good enough for a weeknight dinner. My recipe reflects the changes I made – click on the link in the first paragraph if you want to see Melissa’s original (with too much water) recipe.

If you make this with the salmon cakes like I did, just have everything else ready before you start cooking everything, because you need to pay attention to both the orzo and salmon almost constantly at the end. I will make this again just because it’s SO easy. So quick.
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A year ago: Ginger Ice Cream
Two years ago: Siciliana Sauce

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I’m hoping that you’ve been recording Melissa d’Arabian on her new Food Network show, $10 Dinners. Melissa has just really gotten into the whole TV stuff, with her easy conversation and helpful hints. She makes one dinner for four people for under $10. She relies on us being able to buy most meat on sale. Or produce in season when it’s at its cheapest (like asparagus). But reasonably-priced dinners, nevertheless.

This last weekend she did a dinner of salmon cakes, a creamy orzo risotto, and the asparagus with a lemon vinaigrette. Now, it’s been years since I’ve cooked with canned salmon, but I just happened to have some in my pantry that I’d purchased recently at Costco. They have a stack of 6-ounce cans (6 of them,  I think it was). This recipe requires you to use two of them. These cans are wild salmon to boot, which makes me a happy camper, with my Omega-3’s.

The SECRET to this recipe is the bacon. Oh yes, bacon, bacon, bacon, as the commercial goes. What a difference a bit of bacon goes. I’d never have thought to use it with canned salmon. So that’s why Melissa’s on TV and I’m not!

These salmon cakes aren’t exactly quick – considering that you start with already-cooked salmon. But, it probably doesn’t take more than about 15-20 minutes to get the salmon cakes ready to cook. I made the orzo (also from the show) at the same time, and learned that I needed to have everything all ready to go because once you’re cooking, I felt like a one-armed paper hangar. Also trying to slice a big red tomato and make a caprese salad at the same time.

First you need to cook the onion and bake the potato. I cooked a potato in the microwave oven for about 3 minutes, drained it, then mashed it. Then you start adding the other things. The cooked bacon, the cooked and cooled onion, the egg, mayo, lemon zest, Dijon, and a dusting of sugar (I used Splenda). Then you add the crumbled salmon. It’s a very wet mixture at that point. Meanwhile, you mix up some bread crumbs (I used panko) and grated fresh Parmesan. I probably used more than 2 tablespoons. Very carefully you make small mounds of the salmon mixture into patties and coat them with the panko mixture. They’re quite fragile, so you must be gentle with them. Actually I used less potato than the recipe called for, so that’s likely part of the reason.

I think you can use less vegetable oil to fry these little puppies (the recipe indicated 1/2 cup, or at least 1/4 cup), adding more when you do the 2nd batch. Supposedly the concoction makes 12 small patties. I thought mine were small, and I got 8 out of them. But no matter, two patties was plenty for us as a serving.

The result? Just delicious. I liked them, and so did my DH. I topped them with a cucumber raita (yogurt and chopped cucumber) and we gobbled them right up. And now we have enough for a second dinner. Yes, I’ll be making these again. Maybe not for guests, but certainly for a weeknight dinner!
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A year ago: South Seas Salsa (a Caribbean-type salsa)
Two years ago: BLT Salad (one of our favorites – like the sandwich, but in a salad instead)

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Really, I’ve always liked garbanzo beans (chickpeas). Love them? No. But that was until I tried a recent recipe for them (the utterly unbelievably delicious garbanzo bean salad with Feta and Cilantro, that came from Farmgirl Fare’s blog, and she got it from a book called Falling Cloudberries). So, my antennae are on alert now for anything garbanzo beans. Therefore, when I read this garbanzo bean salad recipe at 5secondrule’s blog, I knew I had to try this one too.

Using canned garbanzo beans makes any chickpea dish easy. I know it’s no trouble to boil beans, for goodness’ sake, but they’re so inexpensive in a can. And the canned ones are at the perfect peak of softness. Or firmness; whatever bite descriptor you prefer! And, I didn’t have to heat up my kitchen. I almost always have canned garbanzos in my pantry, so it was no problem for me to pull out the ingredients for this salad. I had all the ingredients on hand (some Thai red curry sauce, cilantro, fresh mint from the garden, fresh lime juice and fresh tomatoes). Oh yes, some light coconut milk too. Who would think that a garbanzo bean salad would have coconut milk in it. This isn’t a hot dish, but a cold, perfect-for-summer salad. It takes just a few hours of merging the flavors and it’s ready to serve. There is just a hint of heat to this. The original recipe called for Thai red curry paste. I didn’t have that, but did have a bottle of a sauce from Trader Joe’s. I knew it was good because I’ve used it before for something else. I do, now, have a partial jar of red curry sauce in the refrigerator, so will have to figure out what to do with it. Meanwhile, we’ll have eaten up all of this salad in no time. It’s good. It’s a tiny bit spicy. It’s a tiny bit creamy, but you don’t realize there is coconut milk in it. Above all remember that this salad comes together in a jiffy.
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A year ago: Noodles in Jade Sauce
Two years ago: Caramelized Apple Gingerbread

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My friend Norma was in the mood for another soft and smooth kind of dessert, so I turned to one of my ancient cookbooks with Jell-O kinds of recipes in it. Sure enough, this one sounded good to her and good to me, too. It was very, very easy, although I dirtied up a bunch of mixing bowls in the making.

Back in the olden days – we’re talking the 1940’s and 50’s – buying a half pint of whipping cream was a big deal – meaning it was expensive and just not sensible in those frugal times. My mother certainly didn’t buy it. Somebody figured out that you could whip evaporated (canned) milk and it tasted somewhat like whipped cream if you mixed it with other things. If you whipped up partially-set Jell-O, you could combine them and make a frothy light dessert. This just has the addition of a chocolate cookie crumb crust (and some sprinkled on top too) with added sugar and lime juice. That’s it. See, I said it was easy. You probably could make this in a chocolate crumb pie crust (ready-made), in which case you’d likely need at least 2 of them (that’s a guess). In a 9×13 pan, it would generously serve 12 people. Do note the low fat in this (9 grams per serving) and relatively low calorie too (249 per serving).

It’s a refreshing dessert for a hot, summer evening. Once it chills and sets completely, you cut it in squares to serve it. Garnish with some chocolate curls if you’d like it to look a bit more elegant. With each bite, dip down and get some of the cookie crumbs – the sweetness is there, rather than in the whipped Jell-O, even though there is sugar in both the gelatin and the recipe calls for another cup of sugar to be added, but the frothy filling doesn’t taste all that sweet. Next time I think I’d substitute a large tub of Cool-Whip instead of the evaporated milk. It’s be easier, and maybe more tasty too. I liked this – so don’t get me wrong when I say that there was one thing I didn’t like – the filling was too much like foam, rather than substantive. That’s why I’d try the Cool-Whip. The lime and chocolate combination is surprisingly tasty. I wouldn’t have thought to pair them. Anyway, it’s a fun dessert and definitely retro.
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A year ago: Peanut Butter Pinwheel Cookies
Two years ago: North African Grilled Corn on the Cob

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Sugar snaps are a regular in my veggie drawer. Normally I add them raw, to salads, or nibble on them as a healthy snack. I forget that they can also be a side vegetable – served hot. The other night when I made Mongolian Pork Chops, I decided to spice up a big pan full of sugar snaps and mushrooms to serve along with it. This is SO easy, it’s hardly worth creating an actual recipe. It’s nothing but sugar snaps, some sliced mushrooms, a little bit of butter, some rice wine vinegar (seasoned type) and a tiny dribble of dark sesame oil. And a sprinkling of salt and pepper. I know, you ask, butter is not used in Asian cuisine, but I heard a quote from Wolfgang Puck today – he was preparing Asian lobster, and he added butter. His explanation – he said “I’m not Asian, so I can add butter.” Sounds good to me! If you prefer, you can substitute extra virgin olive oil.

We served these to guests two nights in a row and they were heartily devoured. The few leftovers we had were grabbed up the next day by me. Cold. Right out of the plastic baggie I’d put them in.

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A year ago: Asian Baby Back Ribs
Two years ago: (EASY) Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

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As I was starting to work on this post, Dave walked by me here in the kitchen, and said, “tell them DH says [see, he even knows his nickname] this is great, and it would even be good as a complete meal.” Yup. I agree. But then I’d have eaten way too much of this, and it’s not exactly low calorie. So maybe I should stick with just a serving and enjoy it twice.

We had meatloaf with it. We’ve had a catastrophe (a refrigeration type) here at our house, that, as I write this, isn’t yet rectified. A 10-month old Kenmore refrigerator/freezer quit freezing. The refrigerator part works fine. Just the freezer went on the fritz. Everything in the freezer was defrosted. This unit lives in our garage. About $200+ worth of frozen meats (mostly) that lives in that freezer had all reached 32 degrees. I discovered it nearly 10 days ago. A quick trip to a local grocery store to buy dry ice at least kept the worst scenario from happening. The next day I was on the phone to Sears about our 1-year warranty. They informed us that they couldn’t get here for 11 days. ELEVEN DAYS! I said. What do you mean, eleven days? I have hundreds of dollars worth of meat that’s going to go bad. This is under warranty. You can’t do this. You know, yada yada. They had no sympathy. I escalated my request to a supervisor. I don’t know what country the Sears customer service people are from, but I had a very hard time understanding every person I spoke to. After all the ranting and raving, we’re right back to where we were – 11 days wait.

So, every day or two my DH, bless him, has been making a trek to the grocery store for more blocks of dry ice. As I write this we’ve spent well over $100 on dry ice to keep the entire lot from defrosting again. We have no idea whether they’ll even have the part that will be required to repair it. Truly I don’t know what I’ll do if they tell us we’ll have to wait for them to ship replacement parts. Maybe I can take them to small claims court. You think? For the cost of all the dry ice. Think I’d win? I can tell you for sure I’m never – EVER – buying another appliance from Sears. Period.

So anyway, I had to move as much of the frozen stuff as I could into our kitchen freezer. Which is huge. But full. I decided to start SERIOUSLY using some of the frozen meats. So far we’ve had 2 packages of pork chops, 4 packages of chicken breasts. Some breakfast sausages, and tonight we devoured some meatloaf that I’d made a year ago into serving sized “loaves.” So I’m working on it.

The weather here is stinkin’ hot. There’s no other word for it – it’s dreadfully hot. So a comfort meal of hot meatloaf and a hot veg didn’t exactly appeal. But it’s what we had ready to fix. It was so hot we had to eat dinner in the house in the A/C. It was close to 100 today. I probably won’t post this story until next week. I’ve got too many stories lined up. A good thing, really.

So, back to cauliflower. I remembered I’d saved a cauliflower recipe recently but had to find it. Why or how I ever even GOT this recipe baffles me. I had the web link in my recipe software – from a radio station in New Zealand. Huh? Why was I looking at recipes online at a radio station in New Zealand, I ask you? Guess I’ll never know. Someone must have mentioned it. I do read a couple of bloggers from down under. Anyway, the author must be a chef somewhere there.

Basically this is steamed cauliflower covered in a cheesy cream sauce and topped with some pan-sautéed bread crumbs and parsley. The latter absolutely MADE the dish, so don’t get lazy and not make that part. They provide some lovely crunch to it. But they won’t be crunchy on leftovers since they absorb too much moisture. I used a whole passel of pots and pans to make this (too many, really, but it turned out to be worth it). My DH can tell you all about that since he washed them all for me. I’m SO lucky to have a hubby who likes to wash dishes!

You could certainly steam the cauliflower ahead (and reheat it), make the cheese sauce ahead (and reheat it). You just pour the hot sauce over the hot cauliflower, sprinkle on a bit more grated cheese and the crispy crumbs. I’ll definitely make this again. Delicious!

First I started out with the hot steamed cauliflower. I poured the florets into a bowl just large enough to contain them.

I’d already made the cream sauce: An onion (halved) goes into the pan with milk, plus garlic cloves, bay leaf and whole peppercorns. That’s simmered awhile. Strain out the onion and spices. Then you make the actual cream sauce with some butter and flour, adding in the strained milk. The grated cheddar cheese went in after the sauce was thickened and as soon as it melted (off heat) it was poured over the cauliflower.

Then you sprinkle the reserved cheese over the top and it melts almost immediately. Salt and pepper it lightly.

The parsley breadcrumbs were made in a separate pan, sautéed with a bit of butter until they turned crispy brown. Oh are they ever yummy. Sprinkle them all over the top and serve absolutely immediately. To raves.
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A year ago: Peach Galette
Two years ago: Southwest Eggs Benedict

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It’s been several months since I’ve made any cookies. My friend Norma hasn’t been able to eat cookies for several months, and I had successfully convinced myself that I didn’t need to eat any if I wasn’t giving more than half of them to her! But we were having guests for dinner, and banana gelato was on the menu. I needed a cute cookie to stick in the top.

I have a copy of Martha Stewart’s newest cookie book, appropriately named ‘>Martha Stewart’s Cookies. What’s unique about this cookie cookbook is how it’s divided into chapters. There’s one for Light & Delicate; another for Soft & Chewy; yet another for Crumbly & Sandy; and Chunky & Nutty; also Cakey & Tender; and Crispy & Crunchy; and lastly Rich & Dense. This recipe came from the Crispy & Crunchy chapter. At the beginning (the table of contents, if you will) are pages (with the above titles) with photographs of each and every cookie. It makes deciding on a cookie SO much easier. You don’t have to read the recipe, or flip through dozens of pages to find pictures. You can see on just 8-10 pages at the beginning exactly what each cookie looks like. There’s a picture of two of the pages from the Soft & Chewy section. Don’t want a sandwich cookie? No problem, you can gloss right over those. Anyway, it’s a cool method. I’ve had 2 or 3 cookies from this cookbook so far, and have been very pleased.

Perhaps I’ve mentioned it here before, but I have a real lack of willpower when it comes to cookie dough – eating it straight out of the mixing bowl. My favorite is chocolate chip. But this one, oooh, I’ll admit, this cookie dough was mighty tasty. From the brown sugar that sweetens them, plus the delicious spices throughout (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves). I licked the spoon and promptly put all the prep parts in the dishwasher so I wouldn’t be tempted to continue searching for smidgens of batter somewhere.

Once you mix up the dough, you pack it into two smaller sized loaf pans (lined with plastic wrap), gently press it down evenly, fold over the wrap to seal it up and put them in the freezer overnight. Here’s what the pans looked like, at right.

After freezing them overnight, let them sit out for about 10 minutes so the dough is a bit easier to cut, then use a sharp knife to cut thin, thin slices. 36 of them out of each little loaf. They go onto Silpat-lined baking sheets, are stuck with a few sliced almonds and baked. That’s it. VERY easy.

The cutting and slicing is a bit tricky. Doesn’t matter a bit as far as the taste is concerned, but it’s difficult to cut even slices. Leaving the frozen dough out that 10 minutes does help a lot, though.

My cookies were not as perfect looking as in the Martha Stewart style. Now that I know more about the difficulty in slicing them evenly, I’ll hopefully do better on the next batch. Yes, there will be a next batch. These are good – would be especially good for Christmas.
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