Poor Man's Cheez Its

Uniformity is not my strong suit when it comes to forming crackers ...

Baking, baking, baking

Ryan had company the other night, so I figured that I'd make something for him and his friend Derrick to snack on (because men cannot live on apple pie alone ...). I had found this recipe for homemade cheese crackers on About.com awhile ago and it was in my "to-make" pile.

Now I'm going to be honest - at first I thought these were a pain in the right ol' arse. Part of it was that I hadn't let the butter soften long enough and then there was the whole stirring aspect and then forming the crackers into little balls ... but after they had cooled down and I started eating these crackers in earnest, I realized that these were damn tasty - kind of like a poor man's Cheez It. And if I ever get into the organic thing and have a hankering for crackers, this would be worthwhile to make because you know exactly what is in the cracker that you're eating.

So without further ado - the poor man's Cheez It.

Cheese Crackers
from About.com

1/2 c. butter, softened (do NOT skip this step! The butter will know and will thwart you!)
2 c. grated cheddar cheese
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T. dried chives

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, combine the cheese and butter. Mix together until well blended. Add flour, salt and chives to butter mixture and mix until well blended. (HINT: This is where I got out my mini food processor and blended the ingredients that way ... seriously - do yourself a favor - use your food processor if you have it.) Form dough into one-inch balls and place on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten balls using the bottom of a drinking glass that has also been dusted with flour. (Again ... hint to be followed - otherwise the crackers will stick to your drinking glass and cause much annoyance.) Prick each cracker several times with a fork. Bake crackers for 12-15 minutes until very lightly browned around the edges (I left them in for about 20 ...). Remove to a wire rack to cool.

The recipe also claims that these freeze well - for some reason, I don't ever see these lasting to the freezing stage unless I make about 100 of them, which I probably will never do.

Variations: The recipe called for cheddar cheese - I had a chunk in the freezer and got sick of grating it, so I grabbed the pre-shredded bag of cheddar and Monterey Jack that was in my cheese drawer. Cheddar would have made it saltier overall, but I thought the cracker tasted pretty awesome. I'd also be curious to see what a Parmesan cracker would taste like.

I also did not have dried chives in my pantry, so I used dried thyme. Which I don't think really did anything ... maybe next time I would use rosemary? Also, I'd maybe do a dusting of sea salt on the top of the cracker prior to baking.

Oh, I'm a tasty and delightful cracker floating in a sea of chili.

Apple Turnovers

In the beginning there was really annoying puff pastry to be rolled.

Let me preface this post by saying: This dessert is a pain in the arse. But man ... as much as I griped at the time I was making this, I was stunned when these babies came out of the oven.

I found this recipe on a blog and that particular domestic goddess adapted this recipe from the mother of domestic goddesses: Ina Garten a.k.a. The Barefoot Contessa. Ms. Garten is not my favorite Food Network celebrity, but if I ever had the chance to meet her, I'm sure I'd make an embarrassment of myself because she is that awesome.

One of the particular things that I like about Garten's approach to cooking is that she's not afraid to use a shortcut. In this case, her shortcut is using puff pastry for the turnover. Another disclaimer: Puff pastry is kind of spendy, in my humble opinion. The stuff I got at the market was $4.50 for two sheets which translated into 8 turnovers. And while I was taken aback at first, I can say now that I'm probably going to use puff pastry in the future, even if it won't become a staple in my pantry.

Apple Turnovers
From Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa” (Food Network)

• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 1/4 pounds tart apples, such as Empire or Granny Smith (3 apples)
• 3 tablespoons dried cherries (I made do with Craisins)
  
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• Pinch kosher salt
• 1 package (17.3 ounces, 2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the orange zest and orange juice in a bowl. Peel, quarter, and core the apples and then cut them in 3/4-inch dice. Immediately toss the apples with the zest and juice to prevent them from turning brown. Add the cherries, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Flour a board and lightly roll each sheet of puff pastry to a 12 by 12-inch square. Cut each sheet into 4 smaller squares and keep chilled until ready to use.

Brush the edges of each square with the egg wash and neatly place about 1/3 cup of the apple mixture on half of the square. Fold the pastry diagonally over the apple mixture and seal by pressing the edges with a fork. Transfer to a sheet pan. Make 2 small slits, and bake for 20 minutes, until browned and puffed. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes: I've been reading a lot of The Pioneer Woman lately and she's been using a lot of whiskey in her cooking lately ... the orange juice and the zest really add to this, but I'm curious what it would taste like if I used whiskey instead of OJ. Hmm ... Another thought - what about walnuts or pecans in this dish? I think that would also be delightful.

Baked Spaghetti

Oh, I am a cheesy, melty pan of goodness!

This dish is one of my ma's recipes. I was in junior high or high school when she started making this and I remember that it became a staple. It's not my favorite spaghetti dish of mom's - my personal favorite is when she opens up the cans of Chef Boyardee, dumps them in with some browned hamburger and puts a ton of garlic powder in the concoction. Nothin' says lovin' like that particular recipe.

Baked Spaghetti
By Mama Sharon

1 lb. ground beef
1 3/4 c. milk
1 lg. jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce
3/4 c. shredded Velveeta (plus 1/2 c. more for topping)
12 oz. spaghetti
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese
2 T. butter
2 T. flour

Brown hamburger, add spaghetti sauce. Heat, break spaghetti into thirds and cook according to pasta directions. Drain and rinse. Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Stir in flour and gradually add milk. Cook until boiling. Add 3/4 c. shredded cheese, cook until melted.

Layer in a 9x13 pan - 1/2 spaghetti; 1/2 meat sauce; 1/2 cheese sauce. Repeat with remainders. Top with the remaining Velveeta and Parm cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

Eat. Love. Enjoy.

Cooking blog round-up

Disclaimer: When I was a journalist, I hated blogs. I found them to be unfounded sources of gossip and basically no better than your average tabloid. Then again, I used to live in a community with an active blog presence that had an ongoing ... rivalry? ... with the newspaper I worked for. I don't know if rivalry was the word, but I worked at a twice-weekly newspaper and the relationship I had with the bloggers reminded me of how much I hated radio broadcasts and TV broadcasters when I worked at dailies. This hatred probably stems from my competitiveness and hating to be scooped, etc.

Anyway - that was a weird rant ... back on topic! Now, as the proprietor of not one but THREE blogs, you can probably tell I'm something of a blog addict. And this cooking blog came from reading a lot of excellent ones that are out there on the blogosphere.

I thought I'd take today and share a handful of the really good ones that I like:

1) This one IS first because I wouldn't have half the recipes in my bookmarks without it: www.foodgawker.com I'm going to warn you right off - if you like cooking, you might become an addict after visiting what has to be classified as foodie porn. People from all over the world (I get aggravated by the metric system on a regular basis with this site ...) submit pictures and suggestions to the moderators of this site, who in turn post the creme de la creme of food recipes from the blogosphere on this site on a daily basis.

2) ThePioneerWoman.com is also an incredible web site that I access daily. I wouldn't go as far as saying the PW adheres to the "simple and lazy" mantra, but she has some of the most accessible recipes that I've found on the Net. She also has a wicked sense of humor and a writing style that I really admire.

3) Dragon's Kitchen. Again, not the "simple and lazy" category, but this person has some incredible recipes up her sleeve.

4) I include this one because I admire this person's tenacity: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/
This woman has vowed to post one recipe per day for a year using nothing but her collection of crock pots. Not every recipe is a winner, but there are some good things to be found.

Macaroni Redux

This is a pan of perfection

I told you all the other night that I am trying to perfect cheese sauce for my beloved macaroni. Well, my friend Mariah just made it easier for me by sending me her family's recipe for cheese sauce. And trust me ... it is perfection:

Cheese Sauce

(Note from Mariah: For your mac & cheese, here's a recipe for a cheese sauce. We used it for mac & cheese, on peeled, cubed & boiled potatoes, on peas, on broccoli, on cauliflower. My aunt makes sure there is some every Thanksgiving & Christmas to go on her mashed potatoes ...But, I admit, this recipe kind of sparks a battle between my Midwestern upbringing & my more recent desire to not eat super-processed foods (e.g. Velveeta))

(Ed. note: I hear you sista! But Velveeta is soooo goood! :)

2 T butter or margarine

2 T flour

1 C milk

Velveeta

Melt butter in saucepan over med heat, stir in flour. Add milk, a little salt & pepper. Cook until thickened, stirring frequently. Add 3-4 (or more) thick slices of Velveeta. Stir until melted into sauce. Pour over whatever you've got.

Apologies!

One of my goals when I started this was to have pictures when I posted recipes so you could get a glimpse at what something should look like. (Then again, if you don't know what a pancake looks like, I must ask what rock you might have been living under.)

But happy days are ahead. I took pictures of the baked spaghetti (I made that last weekend when the Swensons were over and before letting them dig in, I had to snap a couple of pics - I'm such a gracious host) and I even modified the awesome macaroni and cheese to make a decadent no-bake version. And yes, I took pictures of that - even before Ryan spooned his up he asked me if I had a chance to take pictures yet.

Thanks everyone for reading - it has been awesome to hear feedback and to even have my mom ask how one of her co-workers knew how this blog existed (thanks Facebook!). There's lots more coming ahead and I'm really excited.

Some things to look forward to:

• Interview with one of my favorite cooks in the whole, wide world! My buddy Erin is renowned for his corn bread, his olive flatbread, his homemade mac and cheese, his vodka penne pasta, his tres leche cake - hell, I don't think I've ate ANYTHING of his that I haven't adored. He's also great about handing out leftovers.
• An Italian dinner party with my friend Will. Hell, he hasn't scheduled it yet and I just volunteered to help if he needed (yeah - my Italian skills go as far as spaghetti and tiramisu - it will be the blind leading the blind.).
• More awesome recipes than you can shake a stick at.

Depending on how things go, I might increase the frequency of how often I post, because I have a lot of seasonal recipes up my sleeve and what's the point of giving you a pumpkin cheesecake recipe in April? So please stay tuned!

Ham and Bean Soup: Crockpot Style

This is another one of my mama's specialties although I have some pretty fond memories of eating this soup with my Grandma Boots. This is the ubiquitous Ewing recipe for ham & bean soup - grandma always made this in her stockpot, my mom modified it to make in her 6 qt. Crockpot. Mom always has a crock of this ready if I'm coming home for a weekend and leaves it on the "low" or "keep warm" setting until it's gone or until she's packing me some leftovers to take home. This is one of those soups that just gets better as it sits:

Ham & Bean Soup - crockpot method

1 lb. dried white beans (I use great northern, baby limas are also good)
1 ham hock (look near the chicken gizzards if you're having a hard time finding this rarity)
3 carrots, sliced (since this is overnight, kind of give 'em a medium density so they don't fall apart in your crock)
2 celery, sliced
**Mom has also been known to peel and slice a couple of potatoes into her crockpot ... it's good, but these days I'm trying to avoid carbohydrate overload. But I'm eating bean soup ... never mind.


Dump the lot together in a 6-quart crockpot, fill the rest of the space with water and start cooking overnight on the "low" setting. (No sense in rushing this awesomeness.) In the morning, the hock will be ready to strip the meat that's hunkering around the bone. It's kind of a disgusting process, but take a slotted spoon, take the hock out and use a fork to get the good stuff away from the fat and the bone and put it back into the soup. If you've cooked this for a good 8 or so hours, the beans will be tender enough to eat, but if you're from my family - why would you? Park your crockpot at the "keep warm" setting. This soup will be darn near perfect at around lunch time. It will be even better for dinner. (This is the point where Ryan is glaring at me to shut the crock pot off. So I will, my mom probably wouldn't.)

Bean soup freezes relatively well (if you have any leftovers ...), but I'm warning you - this needs a ton of salt. I usually let people add their own, but it definitely needs some sodium. You could probably toss a bay leaf in as well when this is cooking, but other than salt and pepper, I keep the spices to a minimum. This soup will stand on its own.