Red Cabbage and Mango Slaw

I heard about this slaw on The Chew where they made it to put on BBQ Chicken sandwiches.  I'm not a big lover of chicken but I love fish and thought the slaw would go well with that too. I was correct.  I grilled some Wahoo (aka Ono) fish to have with my slaw and the meal was delicious.  If you haven't had Wahoo, it is pretty yummy, both in sushi and grilled.  I did marinate my fish in some olive oil, rice vinegar and garlic before grilling.

You can see from the picture that my slaw is kind of chunky.  It was good but I made it again later in the week and did a better job of shredding the cabbage and the mango.  Also, the riper the mango, the better, in my opinion.  I got my mango from Trader Joe's pre-peeled and sliced.  My first batch was not quite ripe enough.  The second batch, riper and shredded was even tastier.

Little Bites of Heaven

I apologize for the fuzzy picture but these little treats are all gone so I can't redo the photo. I will be making these again in various configurations and promise a better photo next time.  If I have gotten nothing else from Pinterest.com I got the recipe for these tasty, melt in your mouth, cheesy popovers.   I used this recipe for Gorgonzola Popovers but I used Brie instead of Gorgonzola.  I'm sure Gorgonzola will be just as good but I didn't have any.  I think almost any cheese would be good in these. Of course, I'm prejudice because I love cheese.  I also used snips of green onion because I didn't have parsley.  I may try it with parsley too but the onion was nice.

I always thought popovers would be hard to make but they are not.  Just mix the ingredients and put them in the mini muffin tins and then add a bite of cheese.  I guess the secret is in not opening the oven to check on them.  The whole process probably took me 30 minutes from start to beautiful golden bites of fluffy popover and melty cheese.  It took me a little longer to eat them but not much.  I did only make a half recipe and good thing because I probably would have eaten an entire batch.

Salt and Pepper Cookies

I saw these cookies on The Chew one day over the holiday. The show was sponsoring a cookie contest and there were 5 finalists featured.   These Salt and Pepper Butterscotch-Pine Nut Cookies (the eventual winner) sounded intriguing so I decided to make them.  It is a basic cookie dough (butter, eggs, flour and sugar) with butterscotch chips. The secret is the toasted pine nuts that you add 1 Tablespoon of salt and 1 1/2 teaspoon of pepper to before mixing them into the dough.  The cookies then have a salty sweet taste with just a hint of heat.  I find them just a bit addicting and I've been giving the cookies away so I won't eat them all myself.  I will definitely make these again.  I think I might reduce the salt just a tiny bit.  And, make sure to fully incorporate the salt and pepper nuts. I found I had a few spots of INTENSE pepper or salt and so I'll be mixing more thoroughly next time.  I also think these would be good with semi-sweet chocolate chips. 

P.S.  I recently purchased a  non stick silicone baking liner (generic, not Silpat) and used it for the first time with these cookies.  LOVE IT!  Less than $10 at Target - I'll be going back for more.

Happy Christmas!

And so this is Christmas

And what have we done

Another year over

And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

War is over over

If you want it

War is over

Now

-John Lennon

Coffee Spice Cookies from Food Network

I made coffee spice cookies just before my niece arrived. I wasn't sure about them. I felt they were okay, but nothing special. I was contemplating crushing them up and making a  crust for a lemon cheesecake with them, which I still think would be very good, but my niece liked them as is.  So we polished them off during her visit. I grew to like the coffee-spicey taste. I will make a double batch next time so there are enough to eat and enough to make cheesecake with. 

I left out the chocolate sprinkles on purpose and I am glad. It just didn't seem they'd add anything good, even though I do love chocolate. 

Also, these were super easy to make.  Just mix everything together, roll into two logs and refrigerate. Then slice and bake. 

Bonne Femme!

It was hard to decide which recipe to make first from my new cook book The Bonne Femme Cookbook but I finally decided on starting with a starter.  I chose Flaky Green Olive and Cheese Spirals.

Ingredients:

• 1 sheet frozen puff pastry
• 1 large egg
• 1 T water
• 1/2 C chopped pitted green olives (I used 14)
• 3/4 C (3 oz) shredded Pyrenees sheep's cheese such as Ossau-Iraty or Petit Basque
• 1 small garlic clove, minced

Preparation:

1. Thaw the puff pastry (see package directions).
2. Whisk the egg and water together in small bowl.
3. Unfold the pastry on a lightly floured board and brush with some of the egg wash.  Reserve the remaining egg wash.
4. Top the pastry with the olives, cheese and garlic.  (I mixed all together and them spread them on the pastry.)
5. Roll up the pastry, starting at the short side. ( My pastry was almost square so I just picked a side.)
6. Refrigerate the roll for at least 15 minutes or up to 2 hours.
7. Slice the roll into 15,  1/2 inch slices and lay flat on a parchment lined baking sheet.  I cut mine a little thicker and ended up with 12.
8. Brush the slices with reserved egg wash.
9. Bake 15 or 20 minutes, until golden.
10. Serve warm or at room temp.

Here is the result:

These were very easy to make and very tasty.  Flaky pastry, salty olives and mild cheese.  Delicious!  I got the green olives from the olive bar at Whole Foods so they were marinated which I think added some nice flavor.  I've never had either of the cheeses mentioned so I got both and mixed them.  They were quite similar but the Petit Basque has a little stronger taste; I will use it by itself next time.  The author suggests an alternate filling using one of her tapenade recipes and goat cheese.  I'll probably try that one too. And I might do one with blue cheese.  Yum!

I learned about this book over at verbatim. Karen was the copy editor on the book and she is mentioned in the acknowledgments.  Thanks Karen, I love the book.

Cookies!

 Our office has an annual cookie party and I decided to participate this year.  I did two different versions of two different cookies, both of which I found over on the web (yes, through pinterest).  The first was lemon pecan shortbread .  I made the dough the night before and then rolled it into a 1-1/2 inch diameter log and put it in the refrigerator overnight.  The next day, I sliced the roll into 1/2 inch thick cookies and baked them.  I didn't roll the dough and cut shapes as the recipe called for because I didn't have the patience.  This morning, I melted some dark chocolate kisses (used for my other cookies, added a little cream and then some warm water to get the consistency I wanted and drizzled it over the cookies.  In another bowl, I mixed about a cup of confectioner sugar, a tablespoon of cream and the juice from one lemon to make a glaze. I drizzled that over the other half of the cookies.  While I found the cookies a little dry, the drizzle helped.  And coffee helped even more.  Next time I might cut back on the flour a bit.

For my next trick, I made  pretzel hugs . This is really more of a construction project than a recipe because there isn't much baking involved. You buy some Snyder's Snaps Pretzels and some Hershey kisses.  I bought the dark chocolate kisses and the milk chocolate with caramel kisses. Lay the pretzels in rows on a waxed paper or parchment covered baking sheet and top each pretzel with a kiss.  Put them in a 300 degree oven for about 2 1/2 minutes.  Do a test batch first.  You don't want the kisses to melt but you want them 'squishy'.

Remove the pretzels from the oven and top with another pretzel.  The instructions say to wait a minute but I don't know if that helps or not.  I'm impatient and I put pretzels on top pretty quickly.  The dark chocolate came out looking pretty. As you can see by the picture on the left, the caramel ones got a little sticky.  Sticky but delicious!  I liked both versions but the caramel was the best, in my opinion. 

I thought the pretzel cookies would be an easy way for me to bring something but not spend too much time baking.  As it turns out, opening all the kisses, lining up the pretzels and watching over them for two minutes makes this one a little tedious.  But worth the effort.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust and More

I already liked cauliflower so I was ready to try cauliflower pizza crust as as soon as I saw it here.  I think even people who don't like cauliflower would like this crust because it is all cheesy goodness.  I baked my crust and then topped it with TJ's pizza sauce, some cooked mushrooms, cooked spinach and uncooked grape tomatoes.   I sprinkled some more mozzarella and a little grated Parmesan on top and broiled it for about 5 minutes. Just long enough to melt the cheese.  It was so good.  While I was exploring the web for more on cauliflower rice, I found this site.  The recipe there uses egg white instead of whole egg.  I've tried it both ways and I prefer the version with the egg yolk included.  I do use less cheese and egg than either site. Approximately half the cheese and only enough egg to hold everything together. 

The basis of cauliflower pizza crust is cauliflower rice.  Cauliflower rice is just grated (or food processed) cauliflower that has been seasoned to taste and sauteed in olive oil until it is tender.  I liked the recipe at the Secret Life of Cauliflower site that has the alternate pizza crust recipe.   I could eat bowls of this rice in one sitting but, as I mentioned, I like cauliflower.  Next time I make it I will brown it more.  At least when I plan to have it as rice.  Future plans include serving it as a side and also using it to make fried rice.  The pizza crust recipes say to skip the oil and seasonings when making the rice for crust but I ignored that and used my spicy rice in the crust mixture.

This is what my pizza 'crust' looked like before I put the toppings on it.  It looked good enough to eat plain and so tonight I made a new batch and, as suggested by the Secret Life site, made 'bread sticks'.  I just shaped the mixture into sticks on the baking pan.  I dipped them in the left over pizza sauce.   Very yummy!  I could just slice the pan of dough into sticks but then I wouldn't have enough crispy edges.  Next time I will flip the sticks to get some more browning.  I'll also use parchment to prevent sticking.  I predict cauliflower sticks will be cooked a lot at my house.  That and cauliflower rice.  And pizza.  And, oh yeah, I learned about cauliflower pizza crust on, you guessed it, pinterest.com. :-)

Crispy Shrimp AND Lemon Pull Apart Bread

This past weekend, I cooked two recipes I found over on Pinterest.com (if you want an invite just let me know).  The first was Crispy Shrimp Pasta, pictured to the left.  I used wheat rotelle from Trader Joe's but otherwise followed the recipe.  The shrimp was yummy and I ate several while I was finishing up the sauce for the pasta.  The sauce was also good, though I think I'll spice it up more in the future.  I also thought the sauce was a little thin.  The recipe says to add some cornstarch and water if you're not happy with the consistency.  I added the cornstarch and still thought the sauce was thin.  It did thicken up after it sat for a bit but I still think next time I'll see if I can't thicken the sauce a little more before adding the pasta.

For dessert I made Lemon Pull Apart Bread.  I loved this recipe and it will become a standard.  It was really pretty simple to make.  I made the dough Saturday night and baked the bread on Sunday.  Simply roll out the dough, butter it, and sprinkle on lemon/orange sugar. Then cut long strips which you stack and then cut again to make squares.  Put the squares in the pan and bake.  When it's done, pour a lemon glaze on and then try not to eat it all in one sitting.  I controlled myself and had a small piece Sunday and took the remaining loaf to work.  It went pretty quickly so I was limited to one good slice for breakfast with my coffee.  This bread is probably more a coffee cake rather than a dessert but I'd be happy with it as either. It is just slightly sweet with just the right amount of lemon flavor.  YUM!!