Ribs and mousse

I've never made ribs before, and neither has Ed, but we were thinking it was about time to use up the ribs that have been living in our freezer all fall. We took them over to Ross and Sam's place, and after a long day of playing in the snow, they were an excellent thing to have for dinner. I don't remember exactly what we put in the pot, but I don't think it actually matters that much. Ed chopped the ribs into rib segments, or maybe it was two-rib segments, and put them in the dutch oven. We covered them with a container of turkey stock (from thanksgiving, good stuff), a can of tomatoes, and a whole slew of other spices, including cayenne and bay leaves (and other stuff I don't remember). I think we also had an onion and some garlic in there, and a good bit of cumin.

After that simmered away for about two hours, maybe three, the meat was basically falling off the bone. Delicious.

Ed made a bbq sauce, and I have no idea what he put in that but it was quite tasty, and I'm sure you could use something store-bought to the same effect, more or less. He slathered the ribs with bbq sauce, and then broiled them in the oven until the sauce started to caramelize. I don't know if he flipped them, I don't think he did. Anyway, the end result was delicious. I highly recommend it.

We also took the leftover turkey stock juice stuff and used it as liquid for the rice, like a dirty rice sort of thing. That was also delicious.



Also, Ross and Sam fed us mousse. It was utterly delicious, and they used this recipe. They actually follow recipes, so you can just use the same one. So good. I seem to have it backwards, though, and I'm trying to eat the glass, rather than the mousse. Don't worry, eventually I figured it out. Turns out a spoon was easier.

Stuffed endive leaves

Ed had an idea to stuff endive leaves with stuff, and I thought it was a good idea, so took pictures as we did it. The filling was a mixture of ground pork, roasted red peppers, onions, and garlic, with a little salt and pepper. We put those onto the scoopy part of an endive leaf, and placed them artfully around a pile of rice. The rice got cooked with a spoonful of yellow curry paste, which made it quite tasty.

While the endives were pretty and all, the pork mixture really just tasted best when eaten with the rice. At least we tried it both ways!

To roast the red peppers, cut your pepper into strips, and place skin side up, on a baking sheet. Broil for 5-10 minutes, until the skin is all blackened and bubbled. Take out the peppers, let them cool, and then peel off the skin with your fingers.


On an aside, Ed put the weather station thingy that had been sitting collecting dust for a few years outside, finally, and in the process extracted a sweet icicle. Luckily, the tip fell off before he could attack me with it.

Espresso white chocolate macadamia nut cookies

I love these cookies. The espresso powder was a last minute thing, but I'd been scheming to make white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for a while, I had the macadamia nuts, I just needed to acquire a tasty enough white chocolate. The Ghiradelli chips I have don't taste quite right, I can't figure out what it is about them, but I'm not a huge fan. Anyway, Ed's mom came through in a big way for Christmas, and gave me some sort of chocolate-lover's pack from King Arthur Flour, it had fancy cocoa powder, mini chocolate chips, fancy chocolate chunks, espresso powder, and fancy white chocolate chunks. Perfect. Paired with the jar of macadamia nuts from my mom, I was all set.

The espresso powder made the cookies a bit darker than they'd normally look, but its tasty - adds a bit of a kick. I got the idea after eating one of Sam's truffles that she gave us for Christmas that was white chocolate and espresso. Not necessary, but worth it if you have it.

I found the recipe for these guys online, and decided to halve it, since I'm one person. It seems to have worked, so I'm posting my halved recipe.

Espresso white chocolate macadamia nut cookies
Made 12 big cookies

1C flour
1/4tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
6 tbs butter
1/4C brown sugar
1/4C white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp espresso powder
3/4C white chocolate chunks
1/2C macadamia nuts

Preheat your oven to 325F.


Cream the butter and sugar together.

Once the butter is light and fluffy, add the egg and the vanilla. Then stir in all the dry stuff on top.


Once you've mixed together your dough, dump in the nuts and chocolate - it was about equal parts dough and chunky things.

Spoon the cookies into 12 equal-sized piles on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10-14 minutes, and take them out before there is any goldenness around the edges - you want them to be soft and chewy.

These ones rose a lot, and I think I want them flatter. I'm going to try less baking soda next time, although I'm almost out of nuts, so there might not be a next time. Or I could flatten them a bit more. Either way, they are delicious.

Croque monsieur

When my mom was visiting last weekend, she bought me cheese, one block of which was some emmental. That made me think of grilled cheese sandwiches, so I went to the store to buy some bread. And then I decided that I wanted to make a croque monsieur, which involves ham (didn't have) and bechamel sauce (have never made before). Not one to be daunted by something as little as not having an ingredient, I used salmon pate (also courtesy of my mom) in place of ham. And then I looked up some recipes for bechamel, and it didn't seem that hard. In the end, it was a success! Deliciousness.

So the first task was to grate some cheese. Ok, grate a lot of cheese.


Then, I made the bechamel. It was hardly a traditional sauce, as I went for the kind with an egg in it, and you're supposed to just use the yolk, but I didn't have any immediate uses for egg whites, and I hate wasting food, so I just beat the whole egg and used that. I also put a bunch of garlic in the sauce. It made everything taste garlicky, which was a good thing. And the final change was that I didn't add any nutmeg - I didn't have any.

Bechamel (Alex's version...)
Made ~3/4C?

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
~3/4C milk
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste
1 clove garlic, minced.

Mince the garlic. Melt the butter in a saucepan (or frying pan, if you're me). Once its melted, add the garlic, and cook that for just a little bit until it smells delicious. Add the 2tbs of flour all at once, and whisk until its smooth. It should be a thick paste-like substance now, with a couple lumps of garlic. Add the milk, and whisk some more. The milk thins things out, but then you cook it for another couple minutes (less than 5), and it thickened up again. Take it off the heat, and season with salt and pepper, tasting.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg. Add a little (~1/4C) of the hot bechamel to the egg to temper the egg, then add the egg-bechamel sauce back to the larger quantity of it. Whisk some more. Done! Set aside until you're ready for it.

Melt the butter.

Add the flour and whisk - it turns into a thick paste.

Add the milk, cook for a bit, and when it pulls away from the bottom of the pan, its thick enough.


Meanwhile, spread your salmon pate (or ham, if you're being all traditional - I think ham would have been better in this position than salmon pate, honestly) on one side of the bread. Mustard would be good here, too. Put some cheese on the other half, and close into a sandwich. I ended up taking off some of the cheese shown here, because I ended up making two sandwiches, and didn't feel like grating more cheese, so had to share the cheese.

Butter a baking dish, and put your sandwich(es) onto it. Spoon the bechamel over the top, nice and thick and gloopy. Top with more grated cheese, and bake for ~15 minutes at 400F.

After 15 minutes of baking, turn your oven to broil, and check every minute. Once the cheese is brown and delicious-looking, its done. Pull out the sandwiches.

Yum. One of these bad boys filled me up quite nicely after a 2hr run this morning...

To continue with the non-traditional way of making things, I topped the sandwich with avocado. Avocado makes everything taste even more amazing, because avocados are awesome.


Leftovers heat up nicely in a toaster oven, to get that crunchy crispy cheesy top again.

Pecan Pie

I have never made a pecan pie before, and since I know that they're not good for you, its probably not a good idea to make one and leave it sitting around, where I'll end up eating 4000 calories of pie over the course of a day. I kid you not, they're heavy duty. And DELICIOUS. So, I figured, why not experiment on Leo and Jenny? It might turn out to be a total flop and never set up, but then we can pick out goopy pecans from the filling and eat the pie crust on its own, Leo and Jenny are those sorts of people. My sorts of people. But in the best case scenario, it'll all work! To help with my endeavors, I followed a recipe. Sort of. I'm just incapable of properly following one of those, but what I did, worked out. The recipe I tried to follow is here. But I've reprinted what I ended up doing.

Maple pecan pie
3/4C maple syrup
1/4C molasses
3/4C dark brown sugar
1/4C white sugar
3 eggs
3 tbs melted butter
1 tbs flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-3/4C pecans

Pie crust for one pie bottom.

Preheat your oven to 350F. Mix everything together except the pecans. Put the pie crust into a greased pie pan. Put the pecans in the crust, and pour the filling over the top. Bake for 1hr, until it puffs up, and a tester comes out clean. Let it cool a bit before you try and eat it, or it'll be runny.

Hearty turkey lentil stew

I was going to just make a lentil soup, today, but then I realized that I could totally put turkey in it. Still not nearing the end of the turkey leftovers, which have now migrated to the freezer. Anyway, this is quite glop-ish, but, its tasty and warm and fairly comforting, if you're at the end of a cold, rainy, exhausting December day.

Lentil glop stew
Made lots and lots, but that is because I put lots and lots of veggies into it. Basically three huge servings

~1/2C dry lentils
1 can diced tomatoes
1C turkey stock
1/2 broccoli
1/2 zucchini
1/2 eggplant
a bunch of mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1/2 green pepper
1C chopped kale
olive oil
1 bay leaf
salt
pepper

Start by putting on a pot of brown rice. This is a very brown-rice-appropriate sort of meal. Yea hippies!

Put the lentils, turkey broth, tomatoes, and bay leaf into a pot and bring that to a boil. Once it boils, lower the the heat to a simmer.

Meanwhile, in a frying pan, cook all the veggies. Once they're as done as you like them (i.e. cooked, but with some bite, still), pull that pan off the heat, and taste the lentils. Salt and pepper them, and if they're done, dump in the veggies, and serve. If they're not done, wait. (instructions for how to make lentils: cook until done).

It took about 20 minutes, total.

Enjoy with rice, or bread, or just on its own.

Turkey Thai curry soup

Yup, more turkey leftovers posts! In this one, I make a curry. With lots of lime and cilantro. All the other stuff that goes into it is optional, but I recommend going heavy on the veggies, it tastes better and is better for you. Pretty much everything in this recipe is optional except the curry paste, coconut milk, lime, and cilantro. So, go wild...

Turkey Thai curry
Made about three servings

1 can coconut milk
~2tbs Thai red curry paste (I have some Thai Kitchen brand kicking around, used that)
1C turkey stock
1 lime
~1C cilantro
~2C chopped, cooked turkey
1/2 jalapeno
2 cloves garlic
a bunch of mushrooms
1/2 broccoli
1/2 eggplant
1/2 zucchini
1/2 green pepper
Oil
Salt

Heat some oil in a big frying pan. Chop the garlic and the jalapeno, and throw those in. Chop all the other veggies into bite sized pieces, and throw it into the pan, but reserve about 2 tbs of chopped cilantro for garnish. Once its all in the pan, add the coconut milk and curry paste - taste as you go with the curry paste, you might not want that much if you don't like spicy things, but the more you add, the more it tastes like curry. Also, its not on the ingredients list, but I highly recommend putting in some fresh ginger, too. Zest the lime, and put the zest into the curry. Add the turkey broth and the turkey, make sure everything is mixed together, and let it simmer away for 5-10 minutes, until the veggies are at a state where you like to eat them.

Once the veggies are cooked, pull the pan off the heat, and serve over a heap of rice, or just in a bowl as a soup, garnished with some cilantro. Squeeze lime juice over the top. If you want it more soupy, add more turkey broth, if you want it more curry-like, add less broth.


Also, use all your leftover veggies tomorrow, in the hearty turkey lentil stew.