Caramelized Onion and Garlic Pasta

 Caramelized Onion and Garlic Pasta

 Recently Brian decided to sign me up for a free preview of Taste of Home. Of course, the free magazine had a bill attached to it, I guess they think I MIGHT pay it to continue my subscription, but I am one of those people that  has stopped all subscriptions, including the newspaper. Anyway, I thought I would take a look and I was pleasantly surprised by the caliber of the recipes. In one magazine I found 4 recipes that made the "try" pile.

I made this on a Sunday night that was the end of a very busy swim weekend and it came together quickly.  I used half leeks, half onions and chopped regular tomatoes since I had them and not grape tomatoes.

The family all liked this but all felt the balsamic vinegar overpowered the dish. In the future I would use red wine. The other comment was that they would have preferred the onion mixture to be more saucy as the onions tended to clump.

This is definitely a twist on a typical pasta dinner...definitely will be repeated.

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Leek Tarts

It must have been a great year for leeks.  Wow!  We sure seemed to get a lot of them in the CSA box this year.  Leek soup seems to be my usual use for them.  I got a huge bunch last week in the box and decided I needed to come up with another use for them. I decided on leek tarts but really made them the easy way by purchasing some puff pastry.  Sendik's looks like the locusts have been through it lately with many items completely off the shelves; I'm attributing this to the Packers winning ways.  For awhile this fall the Brewers were still playing, the Badgers were doing really really well, and our Super bowl champions were winning and winning.  But, I'm not so sure what's going on now...but maybe it has to do with the Green Bay Packers.

Anyway, puff pastry sheets were out of stock but the puff pastry tart shells were still on the shelf, so I nabbed those.  Eleanor hadn't seen those before and thought they were about the most awesome thing.  I baked them and popped out the middles (which she got).  I sauteed leeks in butter slowly over low heat.  When the shells were done I sprinkled a bit of bleu cheese in the bottom and topped them with the leeks.

So, probably the soup is a bit healthier than the puff crust, but we did enjoy these decadent treats!

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Molasses Cookies

Another find in my Taste of Home magazine, these molasses cookies were in an article about baking and sending cookies to our Troops abroad. The recipe is actually called Giant Molasses cookies and it claims to make about 2 dozen cookies. Making average sized cookies, this recipe made just shy of 7 dozen! The recipe is easy to throw together and I decided to bake 3 dozen and freeze the rest.

When I freeze cookie dough I actually make cookie drops, freeze them on a cookie sheet and then put them in a ziplock bag. It is a little extra effort up front that makes cookie a batch of cookies in a couple weeks a breeze.  Below is a picture of the cookie drops ready to go into the freezer.

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Chicken Curry

How is this different than the chicken curry I posted on 10/10? Good question, since they are similar. That recipe comes together a bit quicker but I got this recipe from my friend Linda. I like them both but probably wouldn't make both in the same week. Curry recipes...always good to have a few in this house since we all like curry dishes.

The day before I made this I chopped about 1 lb chicken breasts into bite size pieces and marinated in plain yogurt (no picture since that is a bit ugly).

The spice list is a bit long, so I took a deep breath and combined them before making this so the recipe could come together quickly.

2 t cardamom

2 t cinnamon

1 t turmeric

2 t ground coriander

1 t ground cumin

1/2 t cayenne

2 large onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2" piece ginger, chopped

Saute onion, garlic and ginger in 2T oil until soft (about 10 minutes). Add spices listed above and cook 10 more minutes or so.

Add chicken/yogurt mixture and cook another 10 minutes or so. Add 1/4 c or so of water. Add 1 T shredded unsweetened coconut and stir. (The recipe from my friend had 1 chopped tomato added at this point, but I omitted it).

Add 1 T garam masala or curry powder and stir well(see below for more information.

Serve with:

Additional unsweetened coconut

raisins

cilantro

bananas

mango chutney

Also good: Peanuts and sliced apples.

I hadn't made this in YEARS but Paul and Eleanor both liked it (and so did I).

Curry powder and garam masala are both blends of spices, so they are different within each kind depending on what brand you buy. Either one contains some of the spices that I mixed together the previous day. I have read that curry powder and garam masala shouldn't be used interchangeably. I respect that opinion and would not interchange them if I was making an authentic dish. That being said, at our house, when dinner needs to get on the table quickly, I do use them interchangeably...GASP! It seems like garam masala has cinnamon and cloves while curry has turmeric. From my research for this post it sounds like garam masala is used at the end of cooking and curry earlier in the recipe preparation, in general.

The blend of curry powder I used is from an Amish store in Princeton, Wisconsin. When my co-worker Sue goes there to visit friends she likes to stop in the store and typically offers to pick up herbs and spices for anyone interested. It seems like I'm nearly always interested since plastic containers of both are inexpensive and fresh. I will give her a list, receive a plastic grocery bag from her with my requests, and owe her $5.00 or so. The curry blend is tasty too.

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Reorganizing the Recipes

Recently, Karen shared her method of collecting and managing her recipes. I thought it was appropriate that I share my method.

Several years ago, I found myself with a Recipe Card Box, a Recipe Book that was a ring binder, a Recipe Journal that I was given by a friend in France, and an online account at MyRecipes.com.  Whenever I went to find a recipe, I couldn't.  I would have to think back on when I acquired the recipe and usually I would remember which recipe system I was using and I could find it, but I was always searching and was often forgetting great recipes.

To try to streamline the recipes, I entered frequently used favorite recipes into Myrecipes.com. The website has an option to add your own recipes. I also started two other online files, the first held recipes from the website we had tried and liked which I labeled Keepers! and the second was filled with recipes I wanted to try.

Over the years, Myrecipes.com updated their website, but in the process, many of my recipes were duplicated or moved.  I began to have as much trouble finding my recipes with this system as I had with the old system. On our first cold and snowy day last week, I set about to figure out a better system.

First I looked for a new online recipe file for my recipes from all the cards/books I  had with hard copy recipes.  I came upon RecipeThing.com.  I was able to cut and paste my recipes from Myrecipes.com fairly easily. Once I had done that, I emailed all the recipes to myself and created a backup file on my computer in the event the website ever closes.

The next challenge was how to create a database of all the online recipes I have collected over the years, from Myrecipes.com and other websites. Google Bookmarks was the solution.  I was able to make a List on Google Bookmarks and divide it into sections.  The sections were categories, ie Appetizers.

Now all the recipes I have deemed "worthy of a card", in Karen's lingo, are safely housed in one of two locations, RecipeThing.com or Google Bookmarks.  I know if I was given the recipe by someone else, it is probably on RecipeThing...otherwise it is probably on Google.

Now you may wonder what I will do with all the cards/books/journals...I still have them.  I still have recipes I haven't tried that I still want to try. Once I make the recipes, they will either become "worthy" and be entered online, or they won't and the card will be tossed.

While the day seemed to be "wasted" on this project, I am glad everything is more streamlined.  During the process I also came across recipes I haven't made in a while which will help with meal planning.  I also came across some recipes I thought sounded good that haven't been made, so I will have options when I get into a cooking slump.



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Quiche of a Different Kind

I have recently posted about my family's aversion to squash. Unfortunately, I have a lot of squash to use.

On a recent walk with Karen, she told the story of a friend who had her hardwood floors sanded and the company refused to take the sawdust away. Completely ridiculous! Her solution, since she couldn't just dump all the sawdust in her garbage was to add a cup or two to each bag of garbage that made it to the dumpster. Karen's solution to my squash dilemma was to use the squash 1/2-1 cup at a time by hiding it in recipes. Brilliant!

In addition to having a lot of squash to use, also have greens in the freezer to use up and way too many hot peppers. I set to work on a Quiche for dinner. I will admit that as I put this together, I was expecting a complete failure, but it was honestly delicious!

4 strips thick cut bacon
1/2 jalapeno pepper or 1 medium heat pepper
1 cup chopped and cooked mixture of cabbage and red cabbage
1/2 cup pureed squash
8 eggs
1/2-1 cup milk
shredded cheddar cheese
Ready made pie crust.

I sauteed the bacon and added the finely minced peppers toward the end of cooking. After lining the pie pan with the crust, I added the cooked bacon and pepper and the cabbage mixture. I beat the eggs with the milk and then whisked in the pureed squash, seasoning with salt and pepper.  I sprinkled the top with shredded cheddar cheese.

Meghan's first comment was, "you better not have ruined the quiche by adding squash". Even she thought the quiche was very flavorful and she couldn't "detect" the squash except by the color of the egg mixture. I was also a bit concerned about using cabbage(especially red) in place of spinach, but it worked...I wouldn't use more than a cup, but if you have stuff to use up, hide it in quiche!


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Tomatillo Guacamole

Last year the CSA box gave me ground cherries and I made luscious salsa...this year I got a larger variety of the paper-skinned dark shade family, the tomatillo.  I have never cooked with a tomatillo, so I set to work looking for a recipe.

This is from the New York Times and I made a bunch and will freeze some of it. I did alter the recipe by adding about 1/2 of a large onion for a double batch.

Because we like a chunkier guacamole, I only pureed part of the avocado, using a knife to cut up the remainder.

The double batch made about 2 cups of guacamole, the dish pictured above was gone in about 15 minutes.

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