Updates

Parmesan Crackers.  Well done this time! (no pun intended)

The diet (now known as the "eating plan") is still up and running.  12 pounds lost so far; not enough and not fast enough, but hey, I can live with this. 

Dinner tonight?  That would be at Cakes and Ale in Decatur cakesandalerestaurant.com.  I had a lovely escarole salad with olive oil, parmesan and anchovies and then the "vegetable bowl" with farro, turnips, cabbage, African squash, hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and baby kale.  Simple, amazing and relatively healthy.  My friend Billy Allin (who owns the place) is there every single night. 

It's a chef-driven restaurant and he drives it well.  If I were ever to open a restaurant (which will not happen), I would model it after this one.  It's the perfect blend of casual neighborhood (you can wear your jeans) and beautiful, simple, locally fresh food. 

Okay, I'm done now.  See you around the cake baking marathon next week!

Chicken Tetrazzini

       

   
Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, I make turkey tetrazzini with leftover turkey meat. The creamy goodness of a casserole is always a good cold weather relief. Tetrazzini delivers, along with a nuttiness that can come from the almonds and parmesan cheese. Roasting a chicken yesterday inspired me to try chicken tetrazzini for all the same reasons. While I have a Joy of Cooking recipe I use for the turkey version, I pulled a different recipe to try something new. Giada De Laurentiis always delivers tastey, easy-to-follow recipes and I own several of her cookbooks. The recipe below is largely hers and came out so creamy and good it was hard to stop eating. Try it and you’ll find out why. Serves 4.
 
Ingredients:
5 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts worth of chicken meat, cooked or uncooked
1 6 oz. can button mushrooms, sliced
6 oz. fettuccine
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
1/4 cup dry white wine
3 tbsp flour
2 cups whole milk
1 cup chicken broth
1 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1/3 cup frozen peas
½ cup grated Parmesan
2 tbsp bread crumbs
  
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Shred any cooked chicken from a previous recipe into bite-sized pieces. Cut into bite-sized pieces any uncooked chicken and saute in a medium saute pan in 1 tbsp each butter and oil over medium heat. Cook a few minutes on each side until light golden. Transfer chicken to a bowl. Add another 1 tbsp each butter and oil to the saute pan and cook the mushrooms until light golden, about 8 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil.  After the mushrooms are cooked, add the onion, garlic and thyme and saute until the onion is translucent, about 8 minutes. Meanwhile add the fettuccine to the boiling water and cook until still firm, approximately 9 minutes. Drain pasta and set aside. Add the wine to the mushroom mixture and simmer down until reduced by half. Transfer the mixture to the bowl with the chicken. In the pot used to cook the fettuccine, melt 3 tbsp of butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.  Allow the roux to cook a minute to cook off the flour taste.  Add the milk, stock nutmeg, salt and pepper and bring to a boil, stirring the mixture to mix out the lumps. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes to allow the roux to thicken the sauce.  Turn off heat, stir in the peas, mushroom mixture, chicken and pasta. Pour the casserole into a 9 inch square baking dish.  Top with the grated Parmesan and bread crumbs.  Bake, uncovered in the preheated oven until golden brown on top and the sauce bubbles, about 25 minutes.

Nerd Gear!!

Be jealous! Yesterday I received my impulse online purchase from Wednesday (time off work = online shopping danger!)...a Garmin 305!

What is a Garmin 305, Nicole?

I'm so glad you asked! 

(Is it bad I not only talk in 3rd person, but to myself...in writing...online?)

A Garmin 305 is not only a heart rate monitor but a GPS forerunner! This gadget knows where I am, what I'm doing, and how far and fast I'm doing it. As I was driving to boot camp last night, my Garmin 305 was telling me I was driving at a 1:44 min/mile pace! 

Ahhh, neat-o!!

THEN I got to boot camp and we were told we were running a timed mile. Hello, high school gym class all over again, right?

So, I line up with my class and start running. I was leading the pack until the instructor ran up beside me and was like, "Great job, Nicole! You're at 11 minutes, girl!" ::blink:: 11 minutes? My fitness is DECLINING since starting boot camp? ::head scratch::

I glance down at my Garmin which has clocked my workout at 1.3 miles. Duhhh. 

1) Why didn't I think to look sooner? 2) 1 mile runs should be one mile...not 1.3 miles.

I finished with a time around 11:45, I'm not really sure. After my health scare, I was fiddling with my Garmin and not running up to speed.

After our "mile" run, we did a push-up test. UGGGGGGGH. Add push-ups to the I'd-rather-be-rubbing-Tabasco-in-an-open-wound-list...right up there by planks. I knew my chest and shoulders would feel like they went through the grinder today. And, I was correct.

After my workout my Garmin 305 told me this: 

- my workout was 55 minutes and 36 second

- my fastest running pace was 8:15 mph (it calculates your pace AS you're running...should be helpful in the Guinness Challenge tomorrow, right!?)

- I burned 229 calories (based off my gender, age, and weight)

Side note: I know the Garmin 305 is pretty nerdy looking, but I think I like it... :)

Knowing I had Boot Camp last night, I planned a favorite crock pot dinner last night. Before I left for work in the morning, I threw into a crock pot:

1 cup 99% fat-free chicken broth (low-sodium)

1 cup salsa

1 can corn, drained and rinsed

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 packet of taco seasoning

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (raw or frozen)

Cook on low 6-8 hours.

Before serving add:

1 cup sour cream (I used 50/50 fat-free and light)

1 cup 2% shredded cheese (I used Colby...cheddar is good, too!)

Voila...Hearty Mexican Chicken Soup

Husband gave the dish a thumbs up!

Any fun weekend plans, folks?

We're going to a friend's birthday tonight, watching the Illini game tomorrow morning and running the Guinness run in the afternoon, and on Sunday I have back-to-back hockey games. It'll be a busy (but fun and active!) weekend for us! TGIF...have a good one!

Birthday Cake Times Three

You may not like Paula Deen of Food Network fame, but you have to admit her boys are downright adorable.  On one of their "Road Tested" episodes, Bobby asks "What's better than cake?"  And then he answers his own question with "FRIED CAKE!"  Sure enough, they visited some place or another (no doubt in the South) where that was the specialty.  I personally think it sounds disgusting, but whatever. 

With that in mind, however, here's MY question - what's better than birthday cake? 

I was recently asked to make a birthday cake for a friend's 40th birthday party next week.  Flushed from my recent hummingbird cake success, I quickly said yes.  Of course, that was before I found out there would be approximately 60 attendees.  Keep in mind, I'm a one-woman show here (and my kitchen isn't so great either - I love this new house of ours but the prior owners didn't care about cooking so the kitchen isn't much).  There is no way I can pull off a cake big enough (or pretty enough) to feed sixty people!

So I broke it down.  "Alright," I thought, "I'll just make a regular-sized layer cake for the birthday boy and a couple of sheet cakes to serve everyone else."  I pondered that one for awhile but came to the conclusion that it just didn't sizzle enough.  After all, this is a BIG birthday.  There should be some BIG cake to go along with it.

You know where I'm headed with this.  If one birthday cake is good, then 2 are better.  And if 2 are better then why not THREE show-stopping cakes??????  I can do that!

This is the Mile-High Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

I made recently

I'm still working on it, but I'm thinking of a hummingbird cake (of course!), a mile-high chocolate peanut butter cake and then ... well, that's where I'm stuck.  Coconut, maybe?  Caramel?  Caramel with Chocolate?  Red Velvet?  And possibly cupcakes to scatter around for the kids?

If anyone out there wants to weigh in on this, suggestions would be welcome.

Next week will be a baking marathon around here.  If I manage to burn anything (like those Parmesan Crackers) or screw up (which I will), I promise to take pictures and post them!

Wish me luck and stay tuned.......

Lion House Rolls and Honey Butter

John had a birthday last week, and knowing he has a thing for the Lion House Pantry restaurant, Katie and I grabbed him and made a bee-line to the home of these famous rolls! We all swore to pass up all the delicious entrees next time and fill our plates with nothin' but these rolls and honey butter. :-)

Use this recipe to make them at home! Wait. That might not be a good thing....

Lion House Dinner Rolls

4 points per roll

2 cups warm water (110 to 115 degrees F)
2/3 cup non-fat dry milk (instant or non-instant)
2 Tablespoons dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup butter, shortening or margarine (butter is best for flavor)
1 egg
5 to 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, or bread flour
oil for bowl

In bowl of stand mixer with flat attachment combine water and milk powder; stir until milk dissolves. Add yeast, then sugar, salt, butter, egg, and 2 cups of the flour. Mix on low speed until ingredients are wet, then for 2 minutes at medium speed.

Add 2 more cups of flour; mix on low speed until incorporated, then for 2 minutes at medium speed. (Dough will be getting stiffer so switch to kneading attachment at this point). Work in the remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is soft, not overly sticky, but workable and not stiff. (You probably won't use all the flour).

Scrape the dough off the sides of the bowl and pour about a tablespoon of vegetable oil down the sides. Rotate the dough ball so that all sides are covered. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm place to rise til double in size (about 45 minutes).

Flour a surface for rolling out the dough and turn the dough out. Roll and cut as desired and place in a greased pan. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and place in a warm place to rise again until double in size, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place the rolls in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden. Brush tops with melted butter immediately when removed from the oven. Serve warm with honey butter.

NOTE: The Lion House cookbook suggests rolling the dough into a rectangle that is 8 inches by 12 inches then cutting that once down the middle the long way, then cutting that into two inch wide strips (to make 12 2 inch by 4 inch strips). Then just roll the strips up from their short end and place into the pan seam side down. It will look like you rolled individual cinnamon rolls and placed them in the pan on their sides.

Makes 1 to 1 1/2 Dozen Rolls

:::

Lion House Honey Butter 

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup honey

Whip softened butter. Add vanilla and honey gradually. Beat for 20 minutes or until light and fluffy. Makes 1 cup.

 

credits:

Lion House Bakery book cover

Lion House rolls rising

Lion House rolls recipe

Eccles Cakes

A while ago I wrote a brief manifesto centred on making the world a better place through the introduction of mandatory elevenses.



Should I ever be appointed ‘Food Tsar’ in order to help see the successful passage of this essential legislation, the Eccles Cake would almost certainly be the official flagship treat.

The finest example of this Lancastrian delicacy can be found not in their hometown of Eccles but at Restaurant St. John close to the City of London. Tightly packed with spiced currants and served warm, with a cup of tea on the side, I can think of no better way to ward off winter ills than taking 15 minutes out of your day to have your cake and eat it.

These are loosely based on the St. John recipe and should make six decent sized cakes.

Be sure to slightly overfill each one and pack it in tightly to full appreciate the glory of these delightful wonders.

NB - If you want to make a smaller or larger quantity just use the ratio one part butter to two parts sugar to four parts currants.

















Half a block of ready-made puff pastry (oh, how convenient)
250g currants
60g unsalted butter
120g golden caster sugar
Nutmeg
Allspice
One egg white
Extra caster sugar, for dusting.


Heat the sugar until it starts to melt and colour slightly then remove from the heat and add the butter. Allow to melt then add the currants. Stir well so each is coated with some of the caramel. Flavour with allspice and nutmeg – keep tasting it until it is slightly Christmassy and comfortingly warming – then leave to cool.

Roll out the pastry to about half a centimetre’s thickness then using a 9cm cutter press out as many discs as you can. Re-roll the leftover pastry and repeat until you have 12-14 discs. Top each with a spoonful of the filling and sandwich them together, making sure to press the sides together tightly.

(You can make the circles larger and fold the pastry together underneath. Either way works fine)

Turn them over and neaten them up with your palms. Flatten the top and cut three times with a sharp knife (supposedly to symbolise the holy trinity). Brush with egg white and dip into caster sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes until they are an inviting colour and the filling is oozing out of the top.