Breaking All The Rules

Ok, maybe not all of the rules...

But I did do some Christmas baking and candy making today.

I debated yesterday on whether or not to do it. 

And I caved this morning.

I took two recipes from A Whisk and  A Prayer: Snickers and Cookie Brittle.

They were both phenomenal.

She does a much better job at food photography than I do, so I'll let you head over there to check out the recipes and pictures. 

I will say a few things though:

1. The nougat in the Snickers stays pretty chewy and it has made the cutting of my large candy block difficult. I don't know how to remedy that, just a word of warning.

2. If you go ahead and eat all of the edges of the Snickers, you may go into a diabetic coma. I'm serious!

3. If you make the cookie brittle, I would get the butter to the almost melt stage, it makes it much easier to mix.

4. The longer you cook the brittle, the more brittle it will be. Seems logical, but I kept thinking that I was going to overcook it so I ended up with two very different things - a more chewy cookie and a real brittle-y cookie. I guess it depends on your taste.

Since I skipped the food photography this time, I took a few pictures of my kitchen in the process:

A completed pan of cookie brittle - with a combo of milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips.

 You can see the beginning of the snickers there in the foreground - it is the nougat layer.

 

Does anyone want to come clean for me?

Wow!

I know you thought that you were never going to read another post on this blog again.

I was beginning to think that was true.

However, tonight, all of that changed!

I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm a great cook!

Since I've been "working from home" since November, I am really trying to make my own meals and not eat out.

Yesterday, I roasted a turkey breast. I don't even like turkey, but this one was good and it is nice to have in the fridge for a quick snack or lunch.

But back to tonight.

I've had a couple of spaghetti squash sitting on the counter that need to be cooked.

Earlier today I was looking for butter in the freezer (to do some Christmas baking) and I found a bag of uncooked shrimp.

I decided that I would combine the two.

And combine I did.

First, I popped the spaghetti squash in the oven - it takes a long time to cook.

One of the things I've learned is that if I don't want to eat after 8, I need to start thinking about dinner around 4:30 so that I have time to get everything prepared. 

So, after about 30 minutes of the spaghetti squash cooking, I started preparing the makings for the shrimp. 

I diced up about 4 cloves of garlic. (What can I say? I'm Basque and Italian - I LOVE my garlic)

Then I heated some olive oil in a pan. No, I don't know how much - I just drizzled it in until it looked right - remember this is going to be the sauce for the squash.

Once it was hot, I threw in the garlic, after about a minute, I threw in some crushed red pepper.

I have a friend who LOVES crushed red pepper. Puts it on everything. One year, her brother and SIL got her this for Christmas:

Ok, I need to get better at my food photography.

Either way.

So then I threw in the uncooked shrimp.

I'm going to stop here and tell you that I hate cooking shrimp. It is such a delicate balance between salmonella and chewy protein.

But it is nice to add variety to my life and it was nice to use it from the freezer.

Once the shrimp was all pink, I turned off the heat and threw in some diced up sun dried tomatoes.

Then I added some salt.

I once took a cooking class and the teacher told us that the main reason people think they can't cook is because they don't use enough salt. I took it to heart.

Once the spaghetti squash was shredded, I put the shrimp mixture on top and then mixed it all together.

You can't really tell from this picture how great it all looked and tasted.

And even better with a nice glass of red wine.

Pomodoro Sauce

I made my first dish for this blog last night.


And even managed to take pictures. 


As you may know, I try to spend Sunday afternoons preparing food for the week ahead. It helps me to both eat healthy and save money on eating out.


Yesterday was no exception. 


After a morning/early afternoon full of Mother's Day celebration, I was a little tired when I got home, but decided that I needed to get my act together and prepare food or I would spend another week regretting my choices.


Dirty Shirley had some grape tomatoes on the counter that were just about to reach the end of their useful life. I looked at them all weekend thinking that I needed to do something with them, and last night it hit me! I would make some sauce for my spaghetti squash. 


One quick call to Match.mom verified that I could actually use grape tomatoes for this purpose and I was set to go. 

You can see in this picture that the tomatoes are starting to get wrinkly. (Some had to just be thrown away, but most of them were good.)

I started out with three cloves of garlic and approximately 4 Tbsp. of olive oil. I happen to really like olive oil and garlic, if you don't, you may cut it down a little, but I can't promise it will be as good as mine.


Two other things to notice:


1. My beautiful Calphalon stainless steel pot. (Thanks Match!)
2. The little bit of green in the garlic. Dirty and I got crazy one day at Costco and bought the big bag of garlic thinking that we use a lot of it. Some is starting to sprout. I'm not concerned.

While the garlic was heating up, I sliced the tomatoes in half. I wanted them to be small enough to eat easily, but not so small that you forgot there were fresh tomatoes in the sauce. 


After I sliced them all, I put them in the pot to cook down a little. I stirred them every minute or so for about 10 minutes. 


While I was doing that, I headed out to the back porch to get some fresh basil off of our plant. 

You can't really see it in this picture, but something is getting into my basil plant and chewing little holes in the leaves. If I find that thing, it will suffer!


Either way, I have to give a little shout-out to Dirty right now. Before she moved in I couldn't keep anything alive. Seriously, my plants that are on drip system were struggling. But now, we have a thriving basil plant and a thriving tomato plant! Thanks, Dirty!

I washed the basil and gave it a rough chop. And after the tomatoes had cooked down to a saucy goodness, I threw the basil in, and stirred it around, and let it cook for about three minutes before turning the heat off.


I wish that this was a scratch and sniff photo because this sauce smelled DIVINE! It actually reminded me of college when I used to eat at the OG all of the time with Peach because IT worked there. Until one night...well, never mind, I'll tell you that story on the other blog some day.


Once I turned the heat off of the sauce, I started taking care of my spaghetti squash, which had been cooking for about an hour.

On the left you can see what it looks like after I've used two forks to get the "meat" off of the sides. On the right, after I've removed the seeds, but haven't separated it.

The finished product!


SO good!


I would add a little freshly grated salty Italian cheese. I chose Parmigiano-Reggiano. 


I also seem to remember that at some point when I was in college, Match.mom made a bunch of this sauce and froze it. So I think this is a possibility, but I can not say for sure.


Enjoy!

Mmmmm

Tonight, I made something so delicious!

So flavorful!

So summery!

You are going to want to purchase all of the ingredients and make it immediately!

I'll start by telling you that I used to follow recipes exactly. If they said to use 1/2 cup of green onions with 1/3 of them coming from the green part, I would do it. (Damn me and my gold personality.)

However, since discovering my food limitations, I now base things loosely on recipes that I find.

Tonight's dinner is a great example of that!

About three weeks ago I found a recipe in one of my cooking magazines for poached chicken. This was an idea that I had scoffed at years ago. I figured that cooking chicken in water would taste about like eating a piece of cardboard cooked in water.

I was wrong.

How very wrong I was. (But more on that later.)

Recently, I have been on a spaghetti squash kick (see below for an example). Since I try to avoid carbs, this is a good way to trick myself into thinking that I am eating pasta.

So, I found a recipe online for a baked lemon pasta, which I'm sure is good, but since I don't eat pasta, I had to modify it.

And modify it I did.

First, I put my spaghetti squash in the oven. The one I got was a little bigger than I normally like and it ended up taking longer to cook than was desirable, but I made it work.

While that cooked, I poached my chicken breasts. In my poaching liquid I put one whole lemon, sliced; half of a red onion, quartered; 4 cloves of garlic, peeled; a couple of sprigs of thyme, sage, and oregano; whole peppercorns, and kosher salt. (I went a bit crazy in Match.mom's herb garden tonight - and I must say that fresh oregano is a whole different flavor and scent than dried oregano - you must try it sometime!)

If you've never poached chicken, here is the quick run down - put your aromatics in a straight-side pan or pot and cover with liquid (about a 1/2 inch above them), and bring the water to a boil. Add chicken and bring back to a boil - cook for 3 minutes. After three minutes, cover the pot and remove from the heat. Let stand for about 18 minutes - giving the chicken plenty of time to cook through. Remove the chicken from the poaching liquid and set aside to cool. (I cooked six chicken breasts, too many for this recipe, but they are nice to keep in the fridge for the remainder of the week.)

About 10 minutes before your spaghetti squash is done, melt two tablespoons of butter in a small pan. Add an equal amount of olive oil and saute. Throw in about three cloves of garlic, minced-ish. (I don't mind having my garlic a little bigger, it saves me time in the chopping process - I'm not very patient.) Squeeze one whole lemon into the pan (make sure and remove the seeds, I did not do a good job of this and was fishing them out.) Add about 1 tablespoon of lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of cream, stir and cook. (I didn't say it was low fat, but at least you aren't eating carbs...) I turned the sauce down to low while I tore up two chicken breasts and processed the spaghetti squash to get the "meat" out.

Put the strings of the squash and the chicken in a bowl, add 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley and a little less freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Salt and pepper to taste then pour the sauce over it. Mix well and enjoy!

You will think that there isn't enough sauce at first, but keep mixing - the flavors in the sauce are so strong that a little goes a long way.

Seriously, I'm still tasting lemony goodness on my tongue.

The parsley, the garlic, the lemon, they all come together in a brilliant combination that makes you think of summer!

I paired it with a red zinfandel that made my heart sing, but most people would probably go with a white wine (I just happen to refuse to drink white wine.)

Seriously - go try this.

You will hate yourself if you don't!

Holy Deliciousness!!

I made the most amazing spaghetti squash last night!

And I just had it again for lunch and decided that I needed to share the recipe, because it would be a crime to keep it to myself!

(Ok, in reality, it isn't that hard or profound, but it's good, so go out and try it!)

Noodleless Spaghetti (Squash)


1 medium sized spaghetti squash
1 medium sized onion
1 clove garlic
olive oil
kosher salt
pepper
dried parsley

Bake the spaghetti squash at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour (until easy to pierce). Cut in half, remove seeds, and get all of the stringy squash out with a couple of forks.

Place in a bowl.

Thinly (like as thin as possible) slice the onion and saute in olive oil with one clove of garlic, minced. Season with salt, pepper, and dried parsley.

When onions are transparent, add the entire mixture to the spaghetti squash and mix. Top with fresh grated Parmesan cheese.

Eat.

Enjoy.

Yep. That's it.

Super simple, right?

And super delicious!

Airplane Cooking

So I have decided that I am moving all of my recipes from my other blog to this one and it will be dedicated solely to the delicious food that I cook.

First order of business will be to move the previous recipes over.

Next will be to start giving you some new ones.

Get excited, readers. Get very excited!