Blueberry Coffee Cake - my redemption

     After the huge FAIL of my fresh blueberry muffins the other night, I was more determined than ever to make an awesome recipe with blueberries in it.  I found Ellie Krieger's Blueberry Coffee Cake recipe on the Food Network website.  I made it today and I must say, it is awesome!

My (very few) modifications are in ().  You will need:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour or regular whole-wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I omitted because we were out.)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp room temperature butter
2 tbsp oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plain nonfat yogurt (I used lowfat)
1 cup fresh blueberries or frozen ones that have been thawed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray an 8-inch square cake pan with cooking spray (I used a round springform pan.).

Whisk together the all-purpose and whole-wheat flours, the baking sode and salt.  In a small bowl, stir together the granulated sugar, cinnamon and walnuts. In a large bowl, beat the brown sugar, butter and oil until fluffy.  If necessary, use a spoon to press out any lumps in the brown sugar.  Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time., beating until fully combined.  Beat in the vanilla and yogurt.

Add the flour in two batches, stirring until just combined.

Spread half of the batter into the prepared pan.  (I sprayed my spatula with cooking spray to make it easier to spread the thick batter.)  Sprinkle half of the nut mixture over the batter and top with the blueberries, gently pressing them into the batter.  Spoon the rest of the batter into the pan, smoothng the top.  Sprinkle the remaining nut mixture over the cake, pressing gently.  Bake until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes.  Let cook slightly and then invert and unmold to allow complete cooling on a cooling rack (this is optional, but I did do that with the springform pan). Makes approximately 12 servings.

1 ingredient - 3 recipes

     Have you guys tried this yet?  I bought some last week on a whim and used one container for 3 different recipes.  It's really good!  I try not to buy a lot of processed items, but hey, when can you ever go wrong with cream cheese?  Here's how I used it:

Rigatoni with sausage and creamy tomato sauce:  I added a large spoonful of the cooking creme to my tomato sauce to give it a creamier consistency and to change the taste up a little.

Pizza with turkey kielbasa and grilled artichokes:  For this one, I spread the cooking creme directly onto the pizza crust before I added any other sauce or ingredients.  I just used a little, but it definitely added flavor!

Pasta Primavera with roasted garlic and cream sauce:  Tonight I was looking for something to make that had very little acid...I wanted something comforting and not very spicy.  SO I cooked a box of penne pasta, sauteed some broccoli, the rest of the jar of grilled artichokes and the oil they were in, red pepper, onion, and roasted garlic.  I then added about 1/2 cup of the cooking creme and topped it all with toasted panko bread crumbs.  It was super!

I'm definitely a fan of the Philly Cooking creme - the Italian herb flavor at least.

Spicy Summer Soup

     Yes, I know it's summer.  I know summer is not usually the time to make soup...unless you're making gazpacho, which I'm not.  However, it was cooler yesterday than it has been in recent weeks and I found this recipe in Runner's World that I really wanted to try.  It. Was. Great!  Believe it or not, the only thing I did differently was to double the recipe.  WARNING: It is spicy!  I added homemade pico de gallo, avocados, and grated cheese.  You could also easily make this a vegetarian dish by using black beans in place of the chicken.

     To see the recipe, click here!

Cobb Salad and a new Green Goddess Dressing

     Yesterday my friend Penny brought me some Shiso.  Also known as Perilla, Shiso is a leafy herb.  There are two varieties:  green and red.  Penny was growing the red kind.  It's more of a purple color and has broad leaves.  Penny had done some research and knew that for the most part, Shiso is used in Asian cooking.  I researched a few recipes and saw a sidenote that caught my eye:  If you don't have Shiso around, you can substitute Tarragon. 
     When I was on my walk by the river today I got to thinking about what I wanted to make for dinner.  It was hot today; who wants to cook when it's hot?  I thought a big cobb salad would be good...I could grill shrimp to go with it.  More importantly, I could make Green Goddess dressing to go with the salad, and I could use Shiso in it!
     I got home tonight and got started with dinner:  First I started thawing the shrimp.  I like the raw e-z peel shrimp that you can get in the frozen foods section.  They are almost always on sale!  I also put some eggs on to boil.  While all that was happening, I started the dressing:

I took liberties with the Green Goddess dressing recipe.  It didn't call for garlic or lemon grass.  Still, I was using the Shiso, which is more of an Asian ingredient, so I threw in a few more.  I started with:  1 cup of mayo/sour cream (mostly mayo), 1/4 cup of parsley, several (3-4) shiso leaves (it's the purple stuff on the right), about 2 tsp chives, and 1 tsp lemon grass puree.  I also added 1 clove of garlic.  I pureed all this in the food processor.  From there I just added parsley and shiso until the flavor was strong enough for my tastes.  I also added about 1/2 tsp black pepper.  Then, to thin the dressing out a little, I added 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar (add more if you want) and about 1/4-1/2 cup milk.  Start with 1/4 cup and add until it's the consistency you want. 

Here's my finished product.  Creamy, cool, and herby.  I put this in a container in the fridge while I readied everything else (that I forgot to take pictures of during the process).  The wind was too gusty for me to light the grill, so I broiled the shrimp with olive and sesame oil (like 1 tsp sesame oil) for about 5 minutes or until opaque. 

Here's my beautiful salad sans dressing.  I knew it wouldn't look as pretty once I added that!  From top to bottom:  a mix of spinach and red leaf lettuce, blue cheese, sugar snap peas/carrots/tomatoes/vidalia onion, boiled egg, and shrimp.  It was a great dinner on a hot, windy night.  Experiment and make your own Green Goddess dressing tonight!

Chimichurri and Chipotle

   *Excuse the photos.  I couldn't find my camera and had to use Voodoo Biker's. I'm not used to it!*  Ok, I'll admit it - I like Guy Fieri.  I think he's hilarious and I love watching "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."  Even the Voodoo Biker likes that show!  Therefore, last night before bed we found ourselves watching an episode in which he visits a place that only cooks fish.  One of the things they make a lot of?  Fish tacos.  Here in the condo, we love fish tacos.  All day today I craved fish tacos.  So I thought, "well I guess that's what we're having for dinner!"  I also decided that I wanted to make chimichurri sauce.  I had seen a recipe on the NYTimes website recently and then saw another on the Food Network.  I had had it before and remembered really liking it, so I thought...why not?

     I had 2 flounder fillets in the freezer and a whole bag of raw easy peel shrimp.  I find the pre-cooked shrimp seem too watery and they have a weird texture.  The raw ones seem much better to me.  Anyway, I set out about 2 cups of shrimp and the 2 flounder fillets to thaw and got started on the chimichurri because it needs a little time to set and kind of infuse itself with flavor.
     

So, you'll need 1 cup (packed) chopped parsley

1/4 cup chopped cilantro (you can see I used a little more)

2 peeled cloves of garlic; 1/2 cup olive oil; 1/3 cup red wine or white wine vinegar; a sprinkle of red pepper flakes, cumin, and salt

Blend everything in the food processor and then taste.  I added a tad more oil and herbs to mine. 

I spooned a little chimichurri on my fish and shrimp and then grilled them for approximately 2 minutes on each side.

In the mean time my corn tortillas got all toasty in the oven.

I melted cheese on my tortillas and then added shrimp to one and flounder to one.

Next, I topped each with chimichurri sauce, chipolte cream sauce (chipolte in adobo pepppers and sour cream mixed in the food processor), chopped onion, and coleslaw mix (cabbage).

Fish tacos are much better with a "diet" margarita!  1 shot of tequila and triple sec (3/4 tequila, 1/4 triple sec), a big squirt of lemon juice, and diet 7-up.  Don't frown on my cheap tequila - if you're adding all that stuff to  it you don't need the super expensive stuff ;)

These fish tacos were SO good.  The sauces were good, the grilled fish was great, and my craving has been taken care of for another week or so...

A new twist for rice

     That's right - rice.  We love rice here in the condo...in fact, right now we have 4 kinds of rice:  brown, medium-grain white rice, arborio rice and calrose rice.  Brown is our go-to rice when we have the time to cook it.  White is, of course, what we use when we're in a hurry.  Arborio is used for making risotto - it is a very short-grained rice.  Calrose is used for sushi.  So see, they're all necessary!  Tonight I was in a hurry.  I'd gone biking after work and was, of course, starving!
     Everyone knows 1 cup of rice is cooked in 2 cups of liquid...but what liquid to use?  Regular old chicken broth?  Maybe.  BUT I looked in the cabinet and found a can of lite coconut milk.  Hey, why not?  We'll take a Thai twist on dinner.  So I measured out 1 cup of rice (had to use a little Arborio because I was about 1/4 cup short of regular white).  I heated the can of lite coconut milk and enough chicken broth to equal 2 cups total liquid in a pan.  When it came to a boil, I added the rice, turned the heat down, and set the timer for 20 minutes. In the meantime...
     When I left to go biking, I got a package of chicken tenders out of the freezer to thaw.  I took those (once thawed) and coated them with Thai spicy peanut sauce (I used enough to cover the bottom of a plate) mixed with about 1 tbsp soy sauce.  While they were hanging out, I fired up the grill.  These cook SO fast!  Once the grill was hot (it's propane so it gets hot pretty fast) I put the tenders on the grill for 2 minutes.  Then I flipped them and cooked for another 2.  I added a little more peanut sauce on top (from the bottle, not the raw chicken plate) and cooked for 1 more minute.  Seriously, that's it!  They were done.
     The rice turned into a wonderfully creamy dish in its 20 minutes of cooking.  It needed a little something else, so, in sticking with my Thai theme, I added about 1/4 cup of cilantro.  You could also add chopped roasted peanuts (like pad thai) or even a bit of lemon juice or lemon grass. 
     I also made a spinach salad, but it had nothing to do with the Thai dishes... ;)
     So there you have it - Coconut Rice and Chicken Satay in 30 minutes! 

How I spent my lunch break

It's feast or famine some days at my job...today is a famine day...until the next RFP comes in or something...anyway.  I headed home for lunch today wondering, among other things, what I was going to make for dinner.  Today is one of those days when I have plans to bike after work and therefore don't have much time to cook dinner.  But I am determined to continue my efforts to cook something on these nights - not call Nick and Willy's or Papa Murphy's for a take-and-bake pizza.

I decided to make some pesto.  It's fairly quick to whip up in the food processor and you guys know how I love pesto!  I'm calling this one "Four Herb Sunflower Pesto."  So when I get home tonight I'll cook some pasta, sautee some cherry tomatoes with garlic just until they pop (might throw in some anchovies) and then I'll add some feta cheese to it all and mix in the pesto.  Ta-da!

Clockwise from Top Left:  Curly leaf Parsley, Italian Parsley, Basil, Tarragon

Throw a bunch of it in the food processor.  This probably equals 1 1/2 cups. There is also a clove of garlic in there.

Once you pulse that a bit, add about another 1/2 cup of herbs, 2 tbsp each parmesan cheese and sunflower seeds (or walnuts, or pistachios, or pine nuts...)

Ooooh.  Ahhhh.  This is after you've streamed in at least 1/4 cup olive oil.

I added about 1 tsp lemon juice to help keep it from getting brownish before dinner.  It's such a pretty color!

Then I made cinnamon iced coffee.  This is 3 heaping spoonfuls of coffee and 1/2 tsp cinnamon.  I added about 10 oz water and let it steep for 6 min.  Then I poured the coffee over a travel mug full of ice with 1/4 cup of vanilla soy milk added.  Perfect pick-me-up after lunch!