Applesauce

It's definitely fall this weekend.  The leaf colors are vibrant, it's cool and sunny and the perfect day to make applesauce.

I picked up a couple of small bags of "seconds" from Farmer's Market yesterday.   There's no reason to use picture perfect apples in applesauce and seconds are so much cheaper.

I don't think I've made applesauce since I was a kid helping mom and I only have vague recollections of those times.  I think it was because we canned everything under the sun and it all blends together.

I peeled, cored and cut up a bunch of apples.  I didn't weigh them or anything, it was just a bunch.  Since the only ingredient in my applesauce is apples, I didn't really have to worry about how many apples I had, just the number of jars I had cleaned.   I made sure I had extra.  This is the icky part.  I hate peeling apples.  It's a tedious chore, thank god for the Packer game on TV.  I could get my frustrations out on the apples!

I cooked the apples in a little water for maybe 15 minutes, just until they are tender.  Now the fun part!  I bought something a while back, I don't remember what it was, some kitchen gadget I'm sure, and with that purchase I received a free meat grinder attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer!  So instead of using a potato masher, my food processor or my stick blender (I don't own an actual blender) I could use my Kitchenaid to make sauce of my apples!

This was so slick!  Drop the apples on top, out comes perfect applesauce!

So now I want another gadget.  Kitchenaid actually makes a Fruit and Vegetable Strainer that attaches to the food grinder attachment.  With this little toy I won't thave to peel the apples, just core them.  Christmas is coming!  Just sayin'!

I was able to fill 6 pint jars.  Three have  plain old applesauce and to the other three I added a little cinnamon.

I'm thinking pork chops for dinner tomorrow.

Kicked Up Breakfast Nachos

One of my favorite food bloggers, Noble Pig, entered a recipe contest put on by Smart Balance.  Her entry is Kicked Up Breakfast Nachos and when I saw the picture I just had to make them!

This is Noble Pig's plate of Kicked Up Breakfast Nachos

It's very cold here today.  Ok, not middle of January -40 cold but for October 6th, starting the day under 40 degrees is cold!  This hot spicy dish would make a great brunch.

Here's a LINK to the recipe.

This is not a recipe for those of you have a rule of three or fewer ingredients.  You'll just have to wait for me to make them for you!  The recipe was created to highlight at least one Smart Balance product, Cathy used five!  I didn't really want to go buy a bunch of Smart Balance products so I used what I had in the house.  I used my good Nocellara olive oil and skipped the cooking spray and I made homemade garlic mayo yesterday so I used that instead of the Smart Balance mayonnaise.

Step one, roast the peppers!  The mini peppers, bell pepper and a jalapeno are sliced thin, tossed with oil and roasted in a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  I didn't oil the pan, I used non-stick aluminum foil.  I love that stuff.  Makes clean up a breeze!

Don't they look delicious?

The second step is the avocado cream.  This I could eat by the spoonful!  There's a lot left and my brain is full of all kinds of ideas for it!  To make the cream jalapenos, avocado, cream cheese, chicken stock, mayonnaise, oil, cumin, salt and pepper.  I don't know if it really needed all of these ingredients but when they all came together in my food processor what came out was creamy and delicious!  I left about half of the seeds from the jalapeno in so it had a good kick and I think mine was probably a little thicker than Noble Pig intended but I like it this way.  I can dip a chip in it!  Then another and another...

Finally the eggs!  Brown up some sausage, I used a spicy pork sausage, add the eggs and cook them through.  Off the heat cheese is added.  The recipe called for Manchego cheese which I think would have been delicious but somehow that got left off my grocery list!  So I used mozzarella.  It worked.

To assemble place a layer of chips on a plate.  I used our new favorite chips from Whole Grain Milling company in Welcome, MN.  These chips hold up to dipping but aren't tough.  They have a great toasted corn flavor and have minimal ingredients!  And even better they're from right here in Minnesota.

Drizzle the chips with the avocado cream (I glopped... mine was thick!), top with the sausage, egg and cheese mixture then the peppers.  Lather, rinse and repeat with another layer!

To show how much I love my husband I even bought cilantro for his serving!  I hate cilantro.  I don't even like the smell of it!  And I contaminated my cutting board and my knife so he could have some on his nachos.  Am I great or what?  ;-)

Dave took a couple of bites, declared them good then left the table.  When he came back he had a beer.  It was 10:30 in the morning!  He said he couldn't eat nachos without a beer!

These were delicious.  And I would venture to say we will serve them for meals other than breakfast!  I may even make them for lunch!
Oh, and don't forget to vote for this recipe from Noble Pig on the Smart Balance Recipe challenge!
Link to Smart Balance Recipe Challenge

Mayonnaise

Brrr.  Ok, I got that out of the way.  Winter appears to have arrived in Minnesota this week.  The weather people are threatening flurries for tomorrow morning.  It's only October 5th!  

What does the weather have to do with mayonnaise?  Nothing.  I just had to get that out of my system!  Now on to the mayo!

For some reason a lot of the recipes I've been making lately call for a little mayonnaise.  I don't usually have it in the house because we don't eat it.  I buy a jar for a recipe that calls for a tablespoon then I throw the jar out when it's out of date.

A month or so ago I tried a salmon burger recipe.  The recipe called for 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise.  I didn't want to buy a jar of mayo for 3 tablespoons!  I've recently finished Michael Ruhlman's Twenty, a great kitchen resource with 20 techniques (hence the name) and 100 recipes (I've not met many recipes I didn't like) and I remembered he had a recipe for mayonnaise in the book so I pulled it out.

It sounded simple enough, beat an egg, some salt, some water and some lemon juice and slowly add oil until you have mayonnaise.  I could do that, right?

I will admit my first batch was a complete disaster!  Remember I was making the mayo to use in another recipe which was to be our dinner.  So I was doing all of this after a full day of work and a 3 mile walk with the dogs!  Patience was slim.

I started with my little immersion blender and the jar that comes with it.  The jar that comes with the immersion blender is maybe 3 inches in diameter at the base and maybe 5 inches in diameter at the top, and remember the blender has to be in there too.  The plan was to drizzle the oil in while blending with the stick.  Yea, well, that didn't work out too well.  My stick blender doesn't have an "on" switch, you have to hold it on so I'm holding the blender in one hand holding the on button down and trying to carefully pour oil into a small diameter opening with the other.  I ended up with a soupy mess inside the blender jar, oil all over the counter and no mayonnaise.

On attempt number 2 I got out a big bowl with a rubber base and a good old-fashioned hand whisk and started again.  It worked!  My arm was sore and it took a long time but I had mayonnaise!

Since then I've found my Kitchenaid mixer works best.  I only have to worry about drizzling the oil.  The bowl doesn't move and the Kitchenaid takes care of the whisking!

The other thing I've found is flavored mayonnaise!  I use infused olive oils from my friends at The Olive Grove Olive Oil Company instead of regular vegetable oil.  Tonight I made garlic mayo.  I started with the egg, salt, lemon and water and then added a cup of garlic infused olive oil.

Is that not beautiful? And it tastes terrific!  It has great garlic flavor.

I've gotten smarter in other ways too!  I plan on making Kicked Up Breakfast Nachos from the Noble Pig blog tomorrow and the recipe calls for mayonnaise.  I made it in advance this time!  Watch this space for my attempt at breakfast nachos!

Whoopie!

Pies!  Yes, Whoopie Pies.  I've made these delightful little treats before.  My mother made them for us when we were kids and we loved them.  But guess what?!  Just like there's an app for everything now, there's a gadget for these!  Wilton has come out with Whoopie Pie pans.

If you know me at all you know I had to have them.  Thank goodness Michael's is generous with those 40% and 50% off coupons!  I bought two so I wouldn't have to do batches and I found this cute Christmas whoopie pie pan on clearance for about four bucks!  I'm thinking gingerbread or maybe chocolate with peppermint filling?  There was only one of them so maybe the "bottoms" will just be round!

Wilton also has recipes for Whoopie pies.  Since it is the season for pumpkin I thought I'd try the Pumpkin Spice Whoopie Pies (even though they have a maple filling, I'm not a fan of maple!). The batter is simple to put together.  I put about 2 tablespoons in each cavity of the pan and baked them for about 12 minutes.  I was only able to fill 22 of the cavities with batter so maybe next time I'll do a little less in each.

 

They came right out of the pan and looked great!

 

 

 

While they were cooling I mixed together the filling.  In this case it's a cream cheese filling with maple flavor.  If memory serves the filling in the chocolate whoopie pies of my childhood had a fluffy white filling which probably included some marshmallow fluff.

I filled a pastry bag with the filling so they'd have pretty edges and in minutes I had 11 of these cute little "cookies". 

Dave liked them (he likes maple!) and we walked a few to a neighbor too.  Next time I'm making my favorite, chocolate with fluff in the middle.  Do you need a pan to make whoopie pies?  No.  Does it make making them easier?  Yes.  All of the cookies are the same size and they all have a nice flat bottom!

White Chocolate Cinnamon Pretzels

These are so addicting!  I had a five hour meeting at work today.  Five hour meetings should be banned, especially when the topic is foreign exchange as it relates to financial consolidations!  If I'm going to be stuck in a room for five hours, I'm bringing snacks!  I brought pumpkin doughnuts and these delightful little snacks.

These were yet another Pinterest find.  Here is the LINK to the recipe.

Here's what you do.  Mix up some oil, sugar and cinnamon.  Get yourself a 16 ounce bag of pretzels and dump them in a microwave save bowl.  The recipe used the hatched ones so I did too.  I obviously need a bigger microwave safe bowl!  Batches?  Who wants to do batches?

 

Toss the pretzels with the oil/sugar/cinnamon mixture and microwave for a minute.  Toss and microwave for another 45 seconds.

Spread the warm pretzels on baking sheets covered with parchment and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar.  The recipe didn't specifically state the ratio of cinnamon to sugar for the sprinkling sugar.  I like one tablespoon of cinnamon to each 1/4 cup of sugar so that's what I used.

Finally drizzle the pretzels with melted white chocolate chips or white bark.  I used Ghirardelli white chocolate baking bar.  You will want to keep the drizzle as light as possible (meaning no big glops) so it will stick to the pretzels and not just fall off when you put them in a bowl.  Of course that's assuming you don't eat them all before you have time to put them in a bowl!

I think butter would work just as well as oil if you prefer that!

These are so simple to make I know I'll make them again.  What a great party snack?  And I'm thinking I can add a little color to the white chocolate and make them for any occasion, red, white and green for Christmas, maybe orange for Halloween!

Oh, and my coworkers loved them too!

Sesame Quinoa Spring Rolls

This recipe is yet another Pinterest find!  I love quinoa and am always looking for new ways to prepare it.  This recipe called for sesame oil so how bad could it be?

Here is a LINK to the recipe.

Like much of what I've been making lately, this recipe is simple.  Quinoa is very easy to cook.  Much like farro or couscous, if you can boil water you can make quinoa.  So set your pot to boiling, add the quinoa, let it sit for 15 minutes and it's done.

While the quinoa was cooking I whipped up the dressing which is made of rice vinegar, soy sauce, minced garlic, minced ginger and sesame oil.  The aroma of the dressing alone told me this was going to be good!  I minced the ginger very well.  I like the flavor of ginger but if you get a piece that is too big, well, it's overpowering and, in my opinion, nasty.

The recipe calls for "two handfuls of greens".  I sliced up some romaine and tossed it with the dressing.  Once the quinoa is done it is added to this mixture.  I drained my quinoa.  The recipe didn't call for it but there was quite a bit of moisture left even after the quinoa was cooked and I didn't want that oozing out of my wrap! 

The rolls are made with rice paper wrappers.  I have never used rice paper wrappers before but they looked so pretty I just had to try.  Out of the package the wrappers have the consistency of a very thin piece of plastic.  They are hard!  The process calls for soaking them for 30 seconds to soften them up so that you can roll them.  The recipe warns not to soak them too long or they will fall apart.  Yep, they fall apart!

I found that I needed about one and a half times the filling that was called for to make a nice looking wrap.  I also found that once I took the won ton wrapper out of the water, placing it on a piece of paper towel helped dry it a little so it was easier to work with.

 Aren't they pretty?

But how do they taste.  I'll admit I tasted the filling before I made my first wrap.  It was delicious!  In the wrap it was good too, but the wrap didn't really add anything but 350+ calories.  My hubby loved them, he ate three!  I decided not to waste the calories on the wrapper and make lettuce wraps out of mine.  This I loved!  Next time I make them I will use less ginger.  I think it was a little overpowering and I wanted to taste the garlic and soy too.

For my vegan friends, this is a winner!
 

Spicy South Indian Cauliflower

This is another dish I made as a result of the cookbooker.com challenge to try and review the recipes of Martha Rose Shulman.  Many of the recipes in her book use lots of Mediterranean and Mexican spices and this one is no different.  That's one of the reasons it hit my short list of recipes to try!  That and we love cauliflower!

Here is a LINK to the recipe from the NY Times website.

The recipe calls for whole coriander and cumin seeds, toasted.  This recipe was a great reminder to toast my spices before using them.  I don't always do it and I don't know why.  Toasting the seeds really enhances the flavor.  And when I crushed them in my mortar and pestle I think you could smell them in the next room!

 

There is a little cayenne in this recipe but most of the heat comes from a couple of serrano chilis.  I removed a little over half of the seeds and the finished dish still packed quite a punch.  I did use gloves to chop the peppers and I chopped them on a board I could throw in the dishwasher.  I didn't want the next thing I chopped on my wood board to taste like serrano!

Like with the tomato sauce for the halibut (see Baked Halibut with Tomato Caper Sauce) out of this same book, the recipe called for tomatoes and again I used fresh.

The cauliflower is steamed which caused me a little concern.  I love roasted cauliflower.  Steamed just seems boring.  Then again there was going to be a lot added to the cauliflower so maybe steaming is ok.

This goes together pretty quickly.  The ginger, cumin and chilis are sauteed in peanut oil (or canola but I chose peanut!)  and then the cauliflower is added.  To be honest, if the recipe stopped right there it would have been a really good dish!  But don't stop there!

Next the tomatoes, ground coriander, cayenne, turmeric are added and everything is simmered until heated through.  To be true to the recipe you would add cilantro at this point but, well, I don't like cilantro.

It's a very pretty dish and I was hoping to love it.  I just liked it.  I think I still prefer a simply roasted cauliflower either finished with balsamic or tossed with herbs or maybe some Chinese Five Spice.  Maybe I left in too many seeds from the serrano pepper but the cauliflower was just hot.  I didn't really get the other wonderful spices that were in the dish, just heat.  So I'll chalk this on up as OK, but probably not something I'll make again.