recipes

A Salad Without Scandal

Nibbles
Watergate Salad

Watergate Salad

I’m so excited, I’ve already got 2 recipes to try out in my hunt for the essential summer dessert!

The first comes from an old high school friend via Facebook and it’s fitting in a way: I didn’t know what it was really called but I remember having it on occasion from the Shoney’s buffet when Mom would take us on kid’s nights (single mom with a teenager and 2 young boys, gotta take those nights when you can find ’em!).

Watergate Salad

2 pkg Pistachio Pudding Mix
1 20-oz can Crushed Pineapple
5 oz (half a bag) Mini-Marshmallows
1 8-oz tub Whipped Topping

Gently drain the crushed pineapple–just whatever is on the top of the pineapple mush; too much liquid will make a soupy salad, not enough and you’ll have paste. Mix the pineapple and pudding mixes together, add in marshmallows then fold in whipped topping. Refrigerate a couple of hours to overnight. Top each portion with a maraschino cherry or some chopped walnuts.

Back then we just called it Fluff and it came in green and pink. I didn’t eat it all the time and, honestly, I won’t be making this too very often because whoa is it sweet! Still, it’s nice and fluffy and sugar-laden, perfect for a pot-luck or picnic. It’s fairly stable* considering there’s whipped topping and not milk involved, though you should do your best to keep it cold–wilting salads just aren’t cool.

Oh, man, that’s a really bad pun. But a really good salad.

I’ve got a cranberry-raspberry confection coming up next week but whose recipe will there be to test after that? Why not throw your recipe into the ring-mold and see what happens?

[*ETA: After 2 days in the fridge the marshmallows will start to become one with the fluff–don’t make this too far ahead if you like your mini-mallows a bite apart from the rest. Maybe this is why I never remembered there being marshmallows in the restaurant version?]

Makin’ Gnocchi

Nibbles
Gnocchi

Pronounced NYO-kee... or something like that.

One of the recipes that is going into the cookbook is my Gnocchi Casserole with Pesto, Broccoli and Sausage. It’s a simple dish with a lot of flavor and great for beginner cooks since it uses ready made ingredients.

A goal of the book, though, is to have a little something for everyone–an impossible dream, perhaps, but there you go. To increase the skill-level of the dish you can do a few things: make your own pesto, make your own sausage, or make your own gnocchi.

I’ve made gnocchi before and it’s really not difficult (though a little finesse doesn’t hurt), but it’s not something most folks have tried and it’s a fun way to impress folks with your kitchen prowess. While gnocchi can be made with flour like any other pasta, the most common gnocchi that comes to mind is a product of  mashed potatoes bulked up with eggs and flour, formed into little dumplings and boiled briefly. There’s no special equipment required (unless you count a fork as special equipment) and the technique is very simple.

Potato Gnocchi

1 pound of potatoes
1 egg
3/4 c flour
1 tsp salt

Peel, cube and boil potatoes in salted water until tender, approximately 10 minutes. Drain and mash and allow to cool to room temperature.

Mix in egg, flour and salt gently until combined. Divide the dough into 4 portions and gently roll into a long, 3/4-inch-thick rope of dough. Divide each rope into 8 portions for a total of 32 gnocchi.

To form, take each segment, place one cut side against the fork at the base of the tines, smoosh down with your index finger, then roll the dumpling down the fork tines to create ridges on one side and a slightly concave shape on the back.

Place gnocchi in boiling water and boil until they float, just a few minutes unless you’ve chilled them before cooking them or have added a lot to the pot.

Sauce and serve immediately or top with sauce and cheese and finish in the oven, depending on your recipe.

Basic Gnocchi Formation

Basic Gnocchi Formation

These gnocchi end up rather large once cooked so you can also cut them in half before forming–that’s personal preference. The grooves created by the fork tines are great for catching sauces, same as the dent on the back where you finger was pressing. Finally, placing the cut end on the fork is my personal preference–I think the sides pushing out created a nicer, rounded end on the finished gnocchi than the blunt cut edges.

Having made them before, I was curious to know what different flours would do to the gnocchi. Obviously (just like in baking) whole wheat flour is going to taste and look different but what will it do to the texture. It’s a safe bet they might be a bit heavier or solid, less fluffy pillows compared to the all-purpose flour I’d used before. But what about cake flour? I had some in the pantry so I figured I’d give that a try, too!

A Tale of 3 Gnocchi--Cake, All Purpose and Whole Wheat Flours

A Tale of 3 Gnocchi--Cake, All Purpose and Whole Wheat Flours

Surprisingly enough, the cake flour gnocchi really were lighter in color and texture with a purer flavor than even the bleached all-purpose flour gnocchi. The whole wheat gnocchi was heavier, yes, but it had a great, nutty flavor and would pair very well with a thick, rich sauce. The wheat gnocchi were also amazing reheated the next day!

Not Exactly Beer Can Chicken

Nibbles

While discussing what we’d like to grill for the recent holiday we really were thinking a nice duck but said duck could not be easily found (is it not in season, perhaps?). Instead we brainstormed a bit and, on a laugh, I suggested beer-can chicken.

As these things tend to do, the silliest of ideas take hold and suddenly don’t seem so silly.

Only I don’t particularly like canned beer (enough to buy a 6-pack for a single use) and I still didn’t want just plain chicken. So I wondered, aloud, about game hens? And then, because a standard-sized can inside a poor little game hen seemed ludicrous, the small 6-oz cans of juice on the bar seemed ideal.

Pineapple juice, in particular. Which led to somewhat tropical thoughts, line and cilantro joining the mix.

And that’s how our 4th of July grill became:

Pineapple Can Game Hens

Pineapple Can Game Hens

Pineapple Game Hen

1 stick (4 oz) butter, softened
1 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1/2 Tbsp lime zest (approx. 1 lime)
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp rubber sage
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 Cornish game hens, approx. 1 pound each
salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste
olive oil
2 6-oz cans pineapple juice

While the hens are defrosting, combine the butter, lime zest, cilantro, salt, sage and pepper in a small bowl, transfer to a piece of plastic wrap and roll into a cylinder. Chill until firm (about an hour or so).

Prepare your pineapple cans by removing the paper labels and scrubbing off any glue left behind. It took a combination of hot water and steel wool to get the job done, but not much time. Open each can and pour out about half, then punch 2 more holes in the top.

Rinse and pat dry the hens once they’re removed from their wrappings. Sprinkle salt, pepper and garlic powder inside and out of each bird. Slice coins of the chilled butter and slip them under the skin all around the bird–don’t forget the back, too. Tuck the wings back, drizzle the birds with olive oil before settling them over the pineapple cans.

Carefully transport each vertical bird to the grill and cook over indirect heat for 45 minutes (in my case this meant cranking up the flame on either side, leaving the middle off and setting then hens there; if you’ve got a charcoal grill, scoot the briquettes over to one side or the other).

We paired them with grilled corn and blue-cheese potato salad (the latter we picked up from Fresh Market). They look small, but half a hen is totally enough for one person with the usual sides.

Pineapple Can Game Hen, Blue Cheese Potato Salad, Grilled Corn

Kitchen Fun!

Nibbles

During a manicure at the Nail Bar (literally a nail place that does your manicure at a wood-and-tile bar while you sip wine or cocktails) I offered to let a friend come over one Saturday and we’d spend the day in the kitchen, preparing awesome food and then have a small dinner party with our significant others. And lots of wine.

After many reschedules, we finally had our kitchen day.

Dinner is Served

Dinner is Served!

The Menu

Bacon-Wrapped Artichoke Hearts

Individual Beef Wellingtons with Onion Marmalade and Goat Cheese
Garlic Green Beans
Oven-Roasted Red Potatoes

Crullers with Vanilla Ice Cream

Q arrived just after 2pm and we donned our matching aprons and got to work.

Desserts were first (as they should be) since they needed to be prepped, piped and chilled before being fried. And then they could sit.

This was one of the Q’s requests, as the light and airy cruller is her favorite and she really wanted to learn how to make them herself. It’s a testament to our friendship that I agreed as I really don’t like to fry things and these are basically fried cream puffs, unfilled but topped with a glaze. We used Gale Gand’s recipe (via Food Network Online) which says it yields 12 (but I think a single batch will give more than that, based on our own yield). Well, we figured since it was early and we’d want to snack test them for quality we’d increase it by half and make sure we still had plenty for after dinner.

Crullers, pre-frying

There's a definite learning-curve with piping the dough.

To pipe the crullers you need a pastry bag and a large star tip, which gives you the traditional “tractor tire” ridges. Trace a 3″ circle while keeping even pressure applied to the bag and the same distance from the parchment-lined sheet pan (about half a inch). When you get back to the beginning, stop the pressure but continue to follow the circle around so that the tail hides in the rest of the grooves.

While those chilled, we got started on the next long project: the onion marmalade. Usually a wellington is topped with either pâté or a duxelles (minced mushrooms, etc. cooked down to a pâté-like consistency). Since neither of our guys are big mushroom fans, I decided it would be fun to try something new. A quick search yielded a recipe that seemed promising. It was also time-consuming, taking up most of the afternoon waiting for the liquid to reduce. It did give us time to start frying the crullers, though, and glaze them (tip: for all that’s good and flavorful, add some good vanilla to the glaze.)

frying crullers

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!

I want to try the onion recipe again because it’s truly delicious but almost too sweet (yes, I know, I can hardly believe I typed those words, myself) and I want to make it slightly quicker. Not instant, just quicker.

Meanwhile, we pre-cooked the fillets for the wellingtons according to this recipe. In the past I’ve always baked it just the once and been a little apprehensive about getting the meat done enough while not overcooking the pastry. This method of baking the meat til rare, cooling, assembling and then baking just long enough to heat everything and brown the pastry worked so well I’ve adopted it as my new favorite method.

The side dishes are the epitome of simple: steamed green beans sauteed with garlic, olive oil and a last minute addition of the bacon leftover from the marmalade. The potatoes are steamed first, then tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, sage and rosemary with just a dash of chili powder before going into the oven to get nice and golden-brown.

The last thing to be started was the appetizer: bacon-wrapped artichokes are, truly, as simple as they sound. Wrap half an artichoke heart with half a slice of bacon, place on a foil-lined pan and broil until crispy.

Let's Eat

Let's Eat

Glaze Upon Pastry Perfection

Dinner was lovely. It took us about 4 hours to cook and the meal lasted close to 3. Q & I had finished off a bottle of Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot while we cooked, served a bottle of my favorite Pinot Evil during dinner and then had coffee and Blackberry Wine from Chautauqua Winery with the crullers and ice cream (did you know Breyers has a Lactose Free version? I’m officially in heaven!).

Eclairs and lamb have already been requested for the next Kitchen Day.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gale-gand/crullers-recipe/index.html

Egg-cellent Egg Salad

Nibbles

Even though we’re all well past egg-hunting stage in my family, I still enjoy dying eggs for the occasion. The un-hunted egg is a prime candidate for egg salad sandwiches in the days after the holiday.

First, a tip for easy-peel eggs.

After the eggs have boiled (10 minutes is generally sufficient for a solid, yet tender, yolk) and you’ve drained off the boiling water, shake the eggs around in the pan enough to cause small cracks to appear. Then, as you cover the eggs with cold water to speed the cooling, water will seep in between the shells and the whites, making it easier to peel, later on.

I’ve also read that older eggs peel more easily than fresher ones.

Egg Salad

10 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
3 green onions, sliced
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp sweet relish
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp dill
1/4 c mayonnaise

A pastry blender makes short work of a bowl of shelled eggs, just make sure you’ve got a good grip on the handle. Mix in the remaining ingredients before adding the mayonnaise, only adding as much of the latter as it will take to make a smooth mixture. Depending on your eggs you may need less or more.

Other ingredients that would be tasty would be freshly diced bell peppers or celery for crunch, capers in place of the relish or tarragon instead of dill.

We went with fairly simple sandwiches on toasted sourdough bread with salad greens though sprouts would have been tasty as well.