Beet Pesto Spread

*GUEST ENTREE ENTRY*

Visit the Roasted Sweet Potato & Beet Salad blog entry for instructions on how to roast the beets for this...

3 red beets, roasted
6 cloves of garlic *recommend scaling this back to 3 cloves in the future*
3/4c walnuts, roasted (~7 minutes)
3/4c grana padana cheese, shredded
1/4c oil olive
zest of a lemon
juice of a lemon
1 tsp salt

Add the ingredients to a food processor and pulse several times until the ingredients are well combined. It should be a spreadable paste consistency (like hummus). Serve over crackers, toasted italian bread, on a sandwich, etc.

The texture of this was great... however, the garlic truly overpowered this spread. I would recommend using 1/2 the garlic or even 1 clove of garlic to 1 red beet. There was A LOT of this spread & unfortunately, it didn't all get used.

Paleo Crock Pot Chili Recipe

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I literally followed this recipe from http://www.paleonewbie.com/paleo-crockpot-chili-recipe/ but with a few SMALL variations in the ingredients. Other than that, I followed her instructions, so visit her website. But I'll still document my efforts... 

2 lbs. of ground sirloin

1 onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 red and 1 green bell pepper, both diced

1 cup of carrots, finely diced

1 cup of celery, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

(1) 28-ounce can of crushed or stewed tomatoes (from Bob's garden)

(1) 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes

(1) 15-ounce can of tomato sauce

3 Tbsp. of chili powder

1 Tbsp. of oregano

1 Tbsp. of basil

2 tsp. of cumin

1 tsp. of salt

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. onion powder

1/2 tsp. of cayenne

About 4 strips of cooked bacon, crumbled

1 or 2 avocados, diced

Browning stage... 

Chopping stage...

Mixing stage...

Eating stage...

Yes! This chili is SOOOO good! It has a super hearty feel without the beans. The vegetable blend in here works so well & the avocado on top helps balance out the heat (without the need for adding cheese/sour cream). Definitely worth repeating! 

Roasted Sweet Potato & Beet Salad

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Of late, I've had a fascination with beets... probably because I don't ever remember eating them as a child, so they are a "new" thing to me.

"They don't really taste like dirt. When your kids turn their noses up at beets, tell them it's not the soil that gives beets their earthy flavor—it's the geosmin. An organic compound produced by microbes in the soil, geosmin gives off a smell like freshly plowed earth or a field after a rainstorm." - http://grow.cals.wisc.edu/agriculture/five-things-everyone-shoud-know-about-beets

So beets taste like how a rainstorm smells... cool!

Anyway, I have done a ton with beets lately... I'll start with the one I am most proud of...

3 red beets (beetroot & greens)

1 large sweet potato

chardonnay garlic grapeseed oil

rosemary

salt

walnuts

creamy Boars Head feta cheese

cranberry pear white balsamic dressing

Optional: drop with grilled/roasted chicken breast

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Cut the beet stem/leaves off close enough to the beet to give yourself enough to grip. Scrub the beets and then wrap the wet beet in aluminum foil (I've been using parchment paper as a barrier between the foil and the beet... because aluminum foil has been getting bad press). Transfer to a cookie sheet and bake for like 50-60 minutes.

While the beets are cooking. Quickly prepare the sweet potato. Scrub the sweet potato and then cut into centimeter size cubes (leaving the skin on). Transfer to a bowl. Toss with some chardonnay garlic grapeseed oil, just enough to lightly coat each piece. Sprinkle in rosemary and salt (seasoning to your preference). Transfer the sweet potato cubes to a cookie sheet, spreading out so it's all one layer and not touching. Pop in the oven & every 10-15 minutes stir around/flip over the cubes. This will bake for about 45 minutes.

While the beets & sweet potatoes are roasting, prepare your beet greens. Separate the greens from the stem. Place the greens in a white bowl and run cool water over them, washing them thoroughly. Drain out the water and repeat until you only have clear water in the bowl. This may take several cycles. Then chop up the greens for the salad.

Once the beets are done and have cooled off to a temperature where you can handle them, put on some gloves! Take the beets out of the foil and literally peel the skin off with your fingers using light pressure. The skin will come right off. Then cut the beets into centimeter size cubes (similar to the sweet potato).

Assemble the salad. Greens, beets, sweet potatoes, walnuts, and cheese. Drizzle cranberry pear white balsamic dressing on top & enjoy! 

Chocolate Almond Butter Cups

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I wanted to make homemade peanut butter cups around the holidays to give out as gifts. As I was reading up on various recipes, I stumbled across one using almond butter and honey. This sounded very interesting to me so I gave it a try.

5 oz Toll House dark chocolate 53% morsels

3 oz Toll House milk chocolate morsels

1/2 cup natural almond butter

2 Tbsp. honey

1 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. fine grain salt

sea salt flakes for topping

assorted mini cupcake liners

Before you start in on the chocolate, combine the almond butter, honey, sugar, vanilla, and salt together. I believe I had to end up adding a little more confectionary sugar to get everything to stick together and "ball up". After that, break apart a teaspoon of the mixture and roll it in your palms until you have a small ball. Repeat until gone. I popped these into the fridge to keep their form while I prepared the chocolate.

Melt the chocolate in a double broiler (which is a bowl resting on top of a pot of simmering water). Stirring until smooth.

Place your liners on a cookie sheet. Spoon enough chocolate into the bottom of the liner to coat it along with some of the edges. Tilt and twist the liner around as to completely coat the bottom of the liner and the edges. Then place the mixture ball in the center of each of the chocolate lined liners. After that, spoon more chocolate over the ball as to completely cover it in chocolate. Once all the chocolate is spooned out, I lightly tapped the cookie sheet on the counter, using the vibrations to even out the chocolate on top. While the chocolate was still wet, I sprinkled the sea salt flakes for topping. Then pop it in the fridge to set.

I was amazed at how easy it is to make a homemade almond/peanut butter cup.  I handed them out as Christmas presents this year. Honestly it was so long ago, I cannot remember if the recipients liked them or not... but I did! 

Eggplant Dirty Rice

There's quite a backlog of recipes to enter... just because we haven't posted anything in a good while doesn't mean we haven't been on our culinary expedition. We've just been having too much fun to officially document our experiments. 

Eggplant Dirty Rice with Slow Cooked Chicken Thighs

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4 chicken thighs, bone-in, skinless, organic

1.5c chicken stock

salt and pepper to taste

Put the above ingredients in a Crockpot and cook for 6 hours on low.  At 5 hours in, pull chicken apart to let sit in the juices and discard bones & gristle.

1/4c canola oil

1/2 tbsp chardonnay garlic grapeseed oil

5 celery ribs, finely chopped

2 small/medium yellow onions, finely chopped

salt to season

2 small/medium Italian eggplants, cubed (3/4-in)

1 tbsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 tsp cayenne

3 garlic cloves, diced

1 tbsp ketchup

1/4c soy sauce

1.5c jasmine rice

2.5c chicken broth

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large sauté pan, heat canola oil until shimmering. Add celery, onion, and salt. Cover and cook over low heat until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Uncover and cook over moderate heat until the vegetables are lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

Add the eggplant, thyme, peppers, and season with salt. Drizzle the grapeseed oil.  Cook over moderate heat until the eggplant is softened, about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic and ketchup and cook for 1 minute. Add the soy sauce and mix well. Stir in rice and broth and bring to a boil.

Transfer to a lightly greased casserole pan, cover, and bake for 17 minutes, until the rice is just tender. Remove from the oven and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes. Fluff the rice and serve with the chicken.

(Is it even) Optional: Crumbled feta cheese (a must!)

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I absolutely love this recipe & have made it a few times now, but not recently so my immediate thoughts about this dish are gone with the wind.

key lime pie

last week, i was at the grocery store and saw a cart of rewrapped produce.  there were bags and bags of limes, avocados, tomatoes, and other things, and it was all dirt cheap.  jackie's assumption (a good one, i think) was that it was remnants from super bowl sunday where they were trying to get rid of guacamole ingredients.

at any rate, $0.98 for a bag of about 15 key limes was too good a deal to pass up.  i decided it was time to attempt a key lime pie.  i made use of the joy of cooking for the recipe, which turns out to be surprisingly easy.

for this attempt, i did a two-pronged approach.  i was really only interested in making key lime tartlets (is that a good description of a mini-pie?), but i was willing to make a crust from scratch.  however, i also found some pre-made graham cracker crusts in two inch pie tins.  so i decided to do both.



ingredients:
- 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
- zest of about four limes
- about 1/2 cup lime juice (about 5 limes)
- four large egg yolks

- one cup graham cracker dust (about 5 oz of pre-dusted crackers)
- 1/2 stick butter

preparation:
for the crust, i pulverized the crackers in jackie's magic bullet.  in retrospect, though, it would've been far easier to put the crackers in a bag and simply use a rolling pin.  live and learn, i suppose.  i also threw a little nutmeg and cinnamon into the dust.  i melted the butter, mixed it into the dust, and formed the crust.  i spooned the mix into a pie pan and pressed it into a crust.  to set things, i baked the crust at 350°F for about ten minutes and let it cool before adding the filling.

for the filling, i mixed the milk, the lime juice/zest, and the egg yolks together and scooped it into the pie crusts.  with six tartlets and one regular pie, the regular pie didn't get a whole lot of filling (but that's okay).  the recipe book says to bake at 325°F until it looks set; given the smaller size of the tartlets and the thinness of the regular pie, it only took about 10 minutes to cook properly.

verdict:
i am very happy with this result.  there was a good amount of citrus flavor to the filling, and it was nicely creamy.  the premade tartlet crust was decent, and i was surprised (in a good way) with the homemade graham cracker crust.  even though it's annoying to get the crust properly spread out in the pan, i think i'll continue with that for larger pies.  i might even use a muffin tin to make mini pies in the future.

Clementine Chicken

**Guest Entree Entry**

Clementine Chicken

I've been thinking I'd like to try to make some orange chicken (like the kind from an Asian restaurant... is there another kind? I'm not sure...).  Anyway, so investigating some recipes online to see where I'd need to start... we starting thinking about how we could "probably" substitute "this" for "that" and that all I'd really need to get was an orange... As I was about to head off to work today, saying, "Ok, I'll get an orange on my way home..." I eyed a bag of clementines I picked up last week!  Scratched the orange off the list and realized we had everything we needed to make "Orange Chicken" in the house already!  Sweet deal! 

Ingredients in the order of how they appear in the masterpiece

1.5c water

2 tbsp freshly squeezed clementines (2 clementines)

1/2c lemon juice

1/3c white vinegar

2.5 tbsp soy sauce

1/2c canola oil, heated to what I'd call "deep frying" temperature

1 tbsp grated clementine zest (3 clementines)

1c packed light brown sugar

1/2 tsp ground ginger powder

1/2 tsp freshly minced garlic (1 clove)

2 tbsp chopped yellow onion (1/2 medium)

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast (1" cubes)

2 eggs, beaten

1c all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

2 tbsp corn starch

Instructions

In a sauce pan, add...

1.5c water

2 tbsp freshly squeezed clementines (2 clementines)

1/2c lemon juice

1/3c white vinegar

2.5 tbsp soy sauce

and bring to a simmer...

While that's heating up, get your deep dish cast-iron skillet prepared for the chicken...

1/2c canola oil, heated to what I'd call "deep frying" temperature

**Turn your stove vent on!**

Now, back to the sauce pan, add...

1 tbsp grated clementine zest (3 clementines)

1c packed light brown sugar

1/2 tsp ground ginger powder

1/2 tsp freshly minced garlic (1 clove)

2 tbsp chopped yellow onion (1/2 medium)

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

...and bring to a boil for 2-4 minutes and then remove from heat...

Meanwhile... toss cubed chicken in beaten eggs...

1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast (1" cubes)

2 eggs, beaten

... set aside for a minute

Mix the following and then transfer into a bread bag or gallon sized ziplock bag

1c all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

Now, add the chicken cubes to the flour, shake to allow for an even coat.  Place chicken on a plate in preparation for frying.  Get a second clean plate ready with 2 paper towels on it to soak up some of the grease from the fried chicken.

Add the floured chicken to the hot oil in the skillet. Allow for one side to lightly brown before flipping so that the breading stays intact.  Cook thoroughly.

While the chicken is cooking, bring the sauce pan and its ingredients back up to a simmer. Stir in...

2 tbsp corn starch

... and stir for about 5 more minutes (it will thicken).

Keep an eye on both pans.  Once the chicken is cooked through, move it to the toweled plate to soak up the grease.  Then add the chicken to the sauce pan to coat in the sauce.

Serve over rice and with vegetables!

It's absolutely delicious and the best part about the whole meal is that we had everything we needed to make it right in our pantry/refrigerator!  Definitely worth a repeat in the future!