National Pancake Day

March 22, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

For the first time ever we celebrated National Pancake Day. I have an unreasonable love of pancakes. Do I lay awake on Wednesday nights because I am so excited about having pancakes on Thursday morning in the corporate cafeteria at work – yes, yes, I do.

It’s embarrassing that we haven’t participated in this holiday and the FREE buttermilk pancakes IHOP gives away every year.

Needless to say FREE pancakes brings out a lot of people. So many in fact we were given a celebrity to mark our wait in line.

This was my first time ever having IHOP pancakes and I have to admit I wasn’t expecting greatness, flavorlessness was more like it. And after waiting with the crazy crowd, I was expecting a very dry, cold stack of pancakes.

I am happy to report that I was sadly mistaken- they were good, quite good. Moist, warm, buttery and all the dough-wonderfulness a pancake should be. I feel foolish to have doubted The International House of Pancakes- never again my friends.

Jessie’s Kale Salad

March 10, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

We had this amazing kale salad at our best friend Jessie’s house. She said she got it from a magazine, but I’m giving her all the credit because she is an excellent cook.

Jessie’s Kale Salad- serves 8

1/2 a lemon- you need the juice
1/2 a shallot chopped
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 bunches of de-stemed kale
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup sliced almonds
8 dated, pitted and chopped
A sprinkle of Parmesan cheese

How-to:
In a bowl whisk together lemon juice, shallot, honey, salt, and pepper flakes.
Add kale and toss well. Let it sit 20 minutes. Mix in oil. Refrigerate for up to 1 day or serve immediately. In a dry pan, toast almonds over medium heat, tossing constantly until color turns golden (1-2 minutes). Add almonds, dates and cheese to kale and serve.

We had our kale salad with fried potatoes.

Reheated mixed grain casserole (which we sprinkled on the potatoes).

And honey corn bread!

Thanks for the yummy recipe, Jessie!

Hot Cocoa Buffet

February 21, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

So a couple of friends and I felt the winter time urge to spend the afternoon drinking hot cocoa. I couldn’t help but think if you’re going to spend the whole afternoon doing that then why not have a hot cocoa buffet!

We had three different kinds…

Nutella Cinnamon

For one serving you heat 1 cup of milk almost to a boil in a saucepan, stir in a 1/3 of a cup of Nutella, and a pinch of salt and cinnamon.

Fluffernutter Hot Cocoa

For one serving you bring one cup of milk almost to a boil thin whisk in 1/4 cup Fluff, 1/3 cup chocolate chips, 1/3 cup peanut butter chips and continue whisking until smooth.

The last cocoa was a Ginger Spice that I had to fudge some of the ingredients (has anyone ever found 5 spice powder at the store??) It wasn’t as cocoa-tastic as the other two, but we did drink it last and by then the bar had been set very high.

Heat 1 cup of milk almost to a boil then whisk in 2 tablespoons of honey, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 1/4 teaspoon of ginger and a pinch of 5 spice powder.

My favorite was the Fluffernutter even though I have been making the Nutella recipe for years. The peanut butter chips just put it over the top (think melted peanut butter and chocolate ice cream). The group was split pretty evenly between the two.

Everyone brought their favorite treat to have with hot cocoa. I made miniature chocolate Pilsbury crescent rolls by simply cutting the precut dough in half and adding mini-semi sweet chocolate chips.

(There were some non-chocolate ones too. I ended up eating them with pasta the next day. They would be great with soup. We were very chocolate focused that afternoon).

My all-time favorite food to have with hot cocoa is Saltine crackers. The salty and sweet are so good together when you dip the cracker into the frothy cocoa. I thought my mom gave me this combo when I was little, but she says that I remember wrong.

Thankfully the memory goes before the taste buds!

Homemades

February 21, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

Yes, I saw Silver Linings Playbook too and asked myself “What are homemades?” because for some reason they sound really good.

After doing the tiniest bit of research (1 google search and listening to 1 radio show interview) I found out homemades can be anything from tiny chicken salad sandwiches to homemade egg noodles.

The Super Bowl was rolling around again, so I decided homemades at our house would be tiny homemade pizzas. Think Bagel Bites but even smaller.

I had been thinking for the crust mini-bagels would work, but they turned out to be too big. Cutting English muffins into smaller disks were next on my list until John had the brilliant idea to get Pilsbury canned pizza dough.

All I had to do was crack open the can, spread the dough out on a floured surface, and use a circle cookie cutter.
A glass or a lid would work too.

I lined them up on a greased cookie sheet.

And put a 1/2 a tablespoon of pizza sauce in the center.

I thought it would be fun to use miniature mozzarella balls to keep with my theme.

And sprinkled them with cheddar.

I did bake them a few minutes less than the can instructions advised, but just watch them if your oven runs hot!

I think Bradley would approve.

A polenta newbie recipe

February 17, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

Cooking confessional- I had never cooked with polenta until a few months ago. I know this may seem crazy because I’d eaten it many times in restaurants, but I had never even thought about cooking it myself.

Weird, I know.

I found a recipe for cheesy polenta topped with simple sautéed mushrooms and decided to give it a whirl.

It was a weeknight dinner so I bought the pre-made polenta to make this easy recipe even easier.

Slice the polenta a 1/2 thick. Add a table spoon of butter to the pan and melt over medium heat. Add the polenta disks!

While your waiting for them to mush and turn golden brown, slice a handful (or a whole package) of baby portebella mushrooms and 2 cloves of garlic.

Add two more tablespoons of butter to another pan and melt on medium to low heat. Once butter gets melty add your mushrooms and garlic!

Sprinkle with garlic salt and pepper to taste. Cook until mushrooms soften and the garlic is fragrant. You can even put a lid on them and turn the heat off until your polenta is done.

While the polenta was cooking I kept mushing it and flipping it until it softened into on giant yellow mat.

Once it appears crispy-ish sprinkle cheddar cheese on the top! And it’s done.

The cooking time for the polenta probably took 15 minutes total.

When the polenta is done, add a sprinkle of parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice to the mushrooms.

Then all you do is dish up the polenta and top it with the mushrooms. We had it with fried potatoes and carrots.

And we also tried “dragon” cheese at dinner.

Who knew we could be so brave and fearless in one night!

Celebrating Burns night (sort of) in the Midwest

February 3, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

John and I happened to be in New Castle on on Robert Burns Night a couple of years ago. We had never heard about the night and the meal to celebrate the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

We quickly learned about it though because all the restaurants were booked up to feed people haggis!

Burns night happened to be labeled on our 2013 calendar this year and we decided to give it a vegetarian celebration. I know– how? Well, we tried out a few of the rituals and had some good scotch whiskey courtesy of Josh.

Hold on to your socks- my honey, the teetotaler, had a sip during our toast to the laddies and the ladies.

Can you guess which scotch is John’s?

We had veggie Cornish pasties and made a to-do as you would for the haggis when we took them out of oven.

If only we had some bagpipe music in the background!

The whole house smelled like malt vinegar due to our salty pub-style roasted potatoes.

I’m not a huge scotch drinker so we moved on to ale. This one had hints of maple syrup, rye and bananas.

Before eating we read a very short poem by Robert Burns and felt like we gave the night a good go of it!

For dessert we had dark chocolate Digestives which tasted amazing with the beer (who knew?)

To cap off our trip down Northern England memory lane we watched The Trip which is all about the North and food…Cheers.

National Pie Day 2013

January 27, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

National Pie day rolled around this year and I decided to have pie all day once again. I stretched lunch a little, but I think it still counts!

Breakfast: Apple tart with cheddar cheese.

I spread a little pie love with a free pie stand at work.

Lunch: Leftover cold pizza pie

Dinner: Spaghetti Pie

Dessert: Chocolate Pecan Pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Happy Pie to All!

Pizza Night with Emily

January 20, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

Our Friday night routine is to make homemade pizza. As a Farris, I love my themed cooking nights! I use to make the crust from scratch, but then I discovered Whole Foods bulk pizza dough and you really can’t beat it.

A couple of Fridays ago our dear friend Emily came over to join us.

Emily had peppers, mushrooms, spinach and olives on her pizza.

John and his pizza- cheese as always.

And I had all of the above plus roasted spicy brussel sprouts- you’ve got to try it if you like brussel sprouts.

She brought us our nifty Union Jack napkins that I will only use for special British occasions to make the last as long as possible!

Thanks Emily!

Comfy Saturady

January 13, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

This winter day just called for being curled up on the couch all day. What do you eat when you chose to do nothing but snuggle in?

A toad in the hole for breakfast of course.

A bowl of cozy Italian bean vegetable soup for lunch.

And finally another round dish of baked spaghetti with kale and fresh tomatoes.

Now if I could only fit inside a bowl, the day would come full circle!

Savory Apple and Cheese Pie

January 6, 2013sfarrisyoung Leave a comment

I’ve been wanting to make this recipe for Apple and Lancashire Cheese Pie for about a year, but it always gets lost among all the other things I decide to make– Well, no more!

The first problem I ran into was I couldn’t find in Lancashire cheese in my local international cheese department. Since it’s a type of cheddar I decided to mix to cheddars together:

It worked out fine, but I’m still curious as to what Lancashire cheese tastes like…

Ok here’s the recipe!

Preheat oven to 375.
Peel and thinly slice 3 potatoes (1/5 pound-ish)

Add them to a saucepan of boiling water. Add a dried veggie broth cube to the water. Boil for 3-4 minutes then drain and set aside.

Thinly slice 4 apples into disks. I used honey crisp, because why the heck not?

And then slice 2 shallots.

Grate or buy pregrated 8.8 oz’s of Lancashire or sharp cheddar cheese.

Earlier in the day I thawed out a box of puff pastry (16/17oz) 2 sheets. Roll one sheet out until it’s 1/2 to a 1/4 inch thin. Set aside on a greased cookie sheet (or a cookie sheet covered in parchment, which is what I used) and roll out the other piece of pastry. You’ll want the stretchier, biggest piece for the top.

You’ll then layer your slices. Add a layer of potatoes to the pastry dough on the cookie sheet. Leave enough room at the edge for sealing later. Season with sprinkles of thyme, garlic salt and pepper.

On top of the the first layer of potatoes and seasoning, add a layer of apples and shallots.

Then add a layer of cheese and more seasonings. The seasoning measurement is really up to you and how flavorful you like it. I like flavor, so I kept sprinkling.

Repeat all layers again until you use up almost all your potato, apple, shallot, and cheese. Don’t add the second piece of puff pastry- that’s for the big finish!

I had two layers, almost three.

Slightly beat one egg. Brush the edges of both pastry pieces with a little egg. Save the leftover egg for later.

The Big Finish – Lay you other puff pastry crust on top of your layers.

Seal the edges and brush the top of the pastry with the leftover egg.

Voila!
I laughed because it kind of looks like a mammoth ravioli!

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden and puffy.

Then it’s ready!

We had ours with a warm lentil salad and a spicy mustard based dressing and glass of stout ale.

Melty cheese and apple wrapped in pastry warmed up our winter cold night. I’m glad I finally tried the recipe!

Hearty Eaters

sisters sharing meals & cooking long distance

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Author: sfarrisyoung