recipes

Post Rewind: Not Exactly Beer-Can Chicken

Nibbles

Todd made us roasted Cornish game hens the other night and I was reminded how, back when I was in my early 20s, I thought Cornish game hens were just the height of chi chi food. I mean, what’s better than having your own little mini-chicken, right?

Granted, my culinary landscape has greatly expanded since then, but game hens are still fun food in my book, and I was reminded of the not-exactly beer can chicken Todd and I made 3 years ago around this time and thought it’d be a perfect time to dig that old post out of storage and give it a refresh.

And, hey, if you take out the garlic powder (just sub for a bit of garlic-infused oil) this still totally works on a low-FODMAP diet!

So without further ado, here’s Pineapple-Can Game Hens, courtesy of the way-back machine from July 2010!

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

Tuesday Reviews-Day: Tequila Mockingbird, Cocktails with a Literary Twist

Sips

tequilamockingbird

***This is a sponsored post. I received a copy of Tequila Mockingbird by Tim Federle for purpose of review. All opinions expressed are my own. Now, with that out of the way…***

Unlike the last cocktail book that I expected to love and was somewhat disappointed by, I had a few misgivings about Tequila Mockingbird from some of the early information. That the first two parts were titled “Drinks for Dames” and “Gulps for Guys” had my inner feminist cringing but the ill-named sections actually did make sense as each featured works either by or featuring characters of that gender.

But it’s not all femme versus fella. The punny titles are non-stop, with such gems as

  • Love in the Time of Kahlua
  • The Turn of the Screwdriver
  • Lord of the Mai-Tais [that would have been a much more interesting read, I’m thinking]
  • The Phantom Tolljuice
  • Prawn Quixote [this one a snack]

And if you enjoy my occasionally witty turn of phrase in the directions, you’ll enjoy Federle’s all the more.

Of all the works subjected to cocktail creations, I admit I was surprised to see children’s books in the mix–but there was no cause to worry, those are the non-alcoholic drinks. And then there are the edibles found in Bar Bites for the Book Hound and even a smattering of drinking games for those with a masochistic streak.

And then there are the illustrations by Lauren Mortimer. Wonderfully detailed pencil drawings grace many of the cocktail recipes and do a wonderful job of enhancing the humor throughout the book.

I read the first half of the book while sitting in the Jury Selection room–I was almost sorry I had to put it down and go to work when they released us!

Tequila Mockingbird, Cocktail with a Literary Twist is a small book, perfectly gift-sized, and a fun read. Bonus? A lot of the cocktails are built in a Collins glass so are truly a pour away from drinkable. And if you skipped any of the classics mentioned in this book, Federle’s descriptions might just pique your curiosity enough to pick ’em up.

Cheers!

Recipe | Low-FODMAP Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Nibbles

One of the biggest challenges for me, starting off this Low-FODMAP Lifestyle (especially since we started just after Thanksgiving so I was facing Christmas without cookies, etc.), was finding high-quality, good-tasting bread products that didn’t include wheat, barley, rye, or any of other high-FODMAP ingredients.

Thankfully (though I consider it a bit of a double-edged sword–but that’s a topic for another time), gluten-free foods and products are a lot easier to find these days, and those products are an excellent place to start when you’re going low-FODMAP, but gluten-free doesn’t automatically mean FODMAP-free (or, rather, low-FODMAP–FODMAP-free would be really tough). Many times a gluten-free cookie or break will include high-FODMAP fruit-derived sweeteners like apple and pear juice concentrates, fructooligosaccharides (aka FOS), high-FODMAP fiber additions like inulin, or even simple ingredients like honey or agave nectar that are no-nos for those of us on this diet.

Consequently, I found myself getting better results baking from scratch than using mixes–even pre-made gluten-free flour blends–but sometimes you really do want that convenience factor. So I keep trying whatever I can find.

One product I’ve been fairly happy with the is Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Mix.

I bought it on a lark one shopping trip and then heard from a Facebook friend that it makes a fabulous banana bread, so had to give it a try.

Fun Fact: February 23rd was National Banana Bread Day

Low-FODMAP Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Mini-Loaf

Low-FODMAP Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Mini-Loaf

The same friend mentioned upping the bananas a bit more than the recipe on BettyCrocker.com called for, so I added a third banana to the mix just to see what happened. I also kept in the vanilla from the box instructions, even though the recipe didn’t call for it, and left out the nuts but added some chocolate chips. Upon hindsight I also used the amount of butter the box called for (2 sticks or 1 cup) instead of only half of it–oops! It sure did turn out to be a moist quick bread, though!

Low-FODMAP Banana Bread
adapted from BettyCrocker.com

1 box Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Mix
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe Bananas (3 medium)
1 cup Butter, softened
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
6 oz. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

  1. Preheat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit.
  2. Combine cake mix, bananas, butter, eggs, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix on low 30 seconds, and then medium to high for up to 2 minutes–you’re usual cake-mix method. Stir in the chocolate chips.
  3. Butter only the bottom of a loaf pan (or a set of mini-loaf tins–I managed to make 8 small loaves with one mix) and pour in the batter, smoothing the top as best you can. For a single loaf pan bake for 1 hour, for mini-loaves start checking on them after 30 minutes. Once a toothpick or knife inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean it’s done.
  4. Let cool for 10 minutes in the pan(s), then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Wrapped in plastic this banana bread will last at least 4 days on the counter–that’s as long as ours lasted, but seems about right. Gluten-free foods do sometimes tend to dry out more quickly than those containing wheat, so storing it in the fridge would be a good idea for longer storage.

Look at those chips!

Look at those chips!

Since the Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Mix uses a combination of rice flour and potato starch to replace the wheat flour and sticks to plain sugar instead of substituted and other additives it qualifies as Low-FODMAP. Bananas are one of those tricky ingredients–some IBS sufferers can tolerate the 1/2 banana that’s cleared by the FODMAP gurus, others find even that much too much. Ripeness is a factor, too–too ripe and the sugar balance gets thrown off. To work around that, freeze some bananas when they just have the tiniest specks of brown on their peel (perfect ripeness) and then defrost to use in recipes. This also has the benefit of making the banana easier to mix in to the batter, since the freezing process does the heavy lifting of tearing through those cell walls for you!

As to the chocolate chips, make sure you read the label and select a brand that does not include milk or lactose as an ingredient to keep this banana bread low-FODMAP overall. So far I’ve found the Nestlé Tollhouse and Enjoy Life brands are good for this.

A common malady of GF mixes is a gritty texture to the finished product. This is generally because of the type of flours being substituted and a hard thing to work around when mass-producing this sort of product and needing to give it a decent shelf-life. All of my GF flours suggest keeping them refrigerated after opening, though the only thing I really do that with is the xanthum gum since it’s so blasted expensive! Whether because of the superiority of the mix itself of the addition of several “softening” ingredients (butter, eggs, and bananas) is hard to say, but we didn’t have that problem with this particular recipe.

We enjoyed our banana bread warm from the oven (quality control, you know), at room temperature the next morning for breakfast, I sliced up a few loaves to serve to guests one evening and then we split the last loaf between us and topped it with some ice cream (Bryer’s Lactose Free Vanilla) for a Friday-night dessert.

Even though it wasn’t quite as quick as mixes can be (the only time savings was the measuring of the flour, sugar, and leavening, really) it was nice to find a mix that yielded a nice end product that even folks not on restricted diets enjoyed. It’s something I wouldn’t hesitate to keep on hand for those quick-fix moments when I want something sweet without too much fuss.

——————–

This is not a solicited review of any kind. I purchased the items referred to above and received no compensation from the brands or manufacturers. Opinions of the brands listed above are based on personal experience and indicate no relationship with the brands other than any other consumer would enjoy.

Giving Thanks for Resourcefulness

Nibbles

Our oven quit 3 hours before dinner on Thanksgiving day.

Oh, yes, friends, it was one of those holidays.

Strange thing is, the oven worked fine that morning. I’d gotten up in time to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as I prepped the sweet potato pie, cornbread for dressing, and chicken stock (also for the dressing).

About noon I was done with my prep (dinner wasn’t until 5:30, so we had plenty of time) and shut off the oven.

I kinda wish I’d kept it on for those 3 hours, maybe then Todd wouldn’t have had to “bake” the corn casserole and rolls on our propane grill.

Todd using the gas grill as an improptu oven on Thanksgiving

And I wouldn’t have had dressing cooked on some antiquated cross between a hot plate and a crock pot.

But at least our turkey goes into a counter-top roaster oven (leaving the oven free–in this case free and clear to up and die) so that wasn’t a problem.

Though, in a very strange twist of fate the top of the bird was registering done after 1 1/2 hours but when we went to carve it the thighs–the part of the bird closest to the heating elements–was still underdone. Still haven’t figured out the how on that one, but a few minutes in the microwave solved that one pretty quick.

So this year’s Thanksgiving was a true learning experience. Here are some tips I thought I’d pass along:

  1. If you make Alton Brown’s Sweet Potato Pie, don’t use Greek-style yogurt, it’ll be too strong.
  2. But if you do, a slice warmed and served a la mode (with or without Torani Pumpkin Pie Syrup) will still taste just fine and dandy.
  3. If you run out of vanilla and the stores are closed, both vanilla rum and vanilla vodka made quick substitutes.
  4. Make sure to remove both the giblets packet AND the neck from the cavity of the turkey (I caught the error before we put the turkey in to roast).
  5. You can use your propane grill as an impromptu oven, but you might want to prop your casserole dish up on a couple of bricks to allow air to circulate under the dish, too. (If not you’ll end up with a more-than-toasted bottom of the casserole, but it did give it a nice grilled-corn flavor!).
  6. You can also finish dressing in a slow-cooker/hot-plate sort of device, just don’t expect the top to get all nice and brown (seriously, I don’t know what this contraption of Todd’s is, but it worked and that’s all that counts).
  7. Counter-top roasters are the bomb for speed-roasting a turkey. (That’s not new, but still true.)
  8. Placing a towel under the cutting board when carving the turkey may not be enough–you might want to tuck one into the cabinet door below the counter and let it rest on the floor. Just be happy you have a juicy turkey.

And if you have a doggie guest for Thanksgiving, don’t be surprised if they offer to “mop” the floor under the carving station for you. Molly was committed to getting that floor spotless 😉

We also tried a new hors d’oeuvres this year for pre-dinner noshing.

Apples on Horseback appetizer

I could swear I got an email last week with a recipe for apples on horseback (either that or I totally misread Angels on Horseback and hallucinated the rest of the article). When I couldn’t find my reference email, I decided to just go with it.

Apples on Horseback

3 Apples, small to medium-sized
18 cheese cubes
12 slices thin bacon, cut into 3rds

Quarter and core the apples and then slice each apple into thirds, lengthwise. You should have 36 apple slices.

Slice each cheese cube in half. I used a combo of pepper-jack and colby-jack (what I had on hand) and the pepper-jack makes for a decidedly spicier end product, but either are tasty ways to go.

Pair up an apple slice and a bit of cheese and wrap with the piece of bacon. You don’t want thick bacon here as it’ll take too long to cook. Dividing each slice in thirds (I just slice through the whole package, makes it easier) means this recipe takes just under a pound of bacon.

Broil the packets until the bacon is crisp on top. Some of the cheese will cook out, but enough will be left behind to lend flavor.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

This was, incidentally, the step in the days process that showed the oven for the fickle fiend it is. It had worked fine that morning to bake pie and cornbread, and I’d turned it off by noon. Come around 3:30 and I guess it resented being woken from its nap or something, as it refused to heat/broil/or do anything of use.

Thankfully we have a toaster oven. If it had been larger we could have cooked the casseroles in it, but it’s on the smaller side (just large enough for 2 hamburger buns, split, to give you a mental picture). It took 3 batches to finish the apples, but it got the job done.

Once we found counter space for everything and sat down to eat the rest of the evening went as usual. Everyone eats, we settle in to watch a movie (The Avengers, this year), and someone makes a goofy comment or 2 that has us laughing days later.

That someone is usually Mom.

It’s good to have traditions.

Recipe | Apple Mallow Sweet Potato Bake

Nibbles

Among other things, November is Better Nutrition Month and sweet potatoes are one of the easiest–and tastiest!–ways to get some solid nutrition on your plate.

Sweet potatoes are a good source of fiber, vitamins A & C, and Potassium. They’re also a complex carb–the “good” kind of carbohytrate–that your body takes its time breaking down so you feel full longer. And I think they take a lot less work to taste good compared to a russet potato.

But just because I can eat a baked sweet potato with absolutely nothing on it and be perfectly happy with its natural sweetness, doesn’t mean I don’t like to mix it up with sweet potato dishes.

For Thanksgiving it’s tradition, at our table, to serve candied sweet potatoes: planks of boiled sweet potato layered with butter and cinnamon, then covered with a brown sugar glaze and baked until nice and gooey. You might be a little more familiar with the ubiquitous sweet potato casserole topped with toasted marshmallows.

This recipe (courtesy of Princella canned sweet potatoes) put a different spin on that sweet potato casserole, interleaving sliced apples and pecans with the sweet potatoes, adding a fun texture change to the usual casserole.

Apple Mallow Sweet Potato Bake

Apple Mallow Sweet Potato Bake

1/2 cup Brown sugar, packed
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
2 Apples, sliced
1/3 cup Pecans, chopped
2 15 oz. cans Princella or Sugary Sam Cut Sweet Potatoes, drained
1/4 cup Margarine
2 cups Miniature marshmallows

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In large bowl, mix brown sugar and cinnamon. Toss apples and nuts with combined brown sugar and cinnamon.

Alternate layers of apples and sweet potatoes in 1 1/2-quart casserole. Dot with margarine. Cover and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Sprinkle marshmallows over sweet potatoes and apples. Broil until lightly browned.

This casserole made a fabulous side dish to an open-faced sandwich supper. And I really enjoyed the toasted marshmallow topping–we had some pumpkin-flavored marshmallows leftover from Halloween and combined those with the usual mini-marshmallows and it gave the topping a different flavor.

For more tasty recipes, check out the resources at Allens Vegetables.