Italian-Style Chili Mac

I know it's been a while since I've posted but meetings and traveling makes me a busy person. Due to extreme weather this past weekend, my flight from LA to Philly was delayed by 4 hours. Snow in Denver, it's a killer. So what was already going to be a long flight turned into a REALLY long flight. We landed at 3am then with the 3 hour drive, made it back into town around 6. Boo. After a few hours sleep, I made myself wake up at 10am.

I was pretty much spent the rest of the day and going out of the house to the store was out of the question. Therefore, diving into the freezer and pantry is the name of the game. I had frozen beef, canned tomatoes and pasta. My first thought was a meat sauce over pasta. So I started like I usually do - saute chopped onions, carrots, celery and brown ground beef (don't forget the salt) . Add a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste to the pot and saute until fragrant. Add some garlic. Then add 1 28 oz can of whole tomatoes and 1 16 oz jar of homemade tomato sauce (thanks to Ann for the sauce!!). Break up the tomatoes and the beef with a potato masher. I used tomatoes from Trader Joe's and I was NOT happy with them. There were skins on my tomatoes!!! Boo.

For some sweetness, I added some PA table wine (always tends to be on the sweet side) and Italian seasoning. Since I was bumming around the house, I let this simmer for an hour and reduce. After that, I tasted the sauce for seasoning and added salt and sugar. At this point, I was just going to package up the sauce and serve it over spaghetti or something later in the week. Then I looked more closely at my pantry and found alphabet shaped pasta. So I thought adding the pasta directly to the sauce to cook would make this somewhat like a one pot meal. I cooked the pasta according to package directions and voila! Dinner!

I call this creation Italian-style Chili Mac because Chili Mac is made with a base of chili then you add macaroni to cook into the chili. So this is similar to that. I was tasty and the alphabet pasta was cute. All in all very yummy! Score for a stocked pantry!!

Corned Beef and Colcannon

Happy St. Patty's Day all! I am a lover of corned beef, I'm not sure exactly why I only make it this time of year, probably because it's easily available at the store...and on sale! I usually make corned beef in the crock pot - with lots of water to draw out the salt.

Crock Pot Corned Beef
1 corned beef, rinsed
spice packet from corned beef
1 T dijon mustard
1/4c cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 can beer
water

Place rinsed corned beef in the bottom of the crock pot. Mix spice packet, mustard and vinegar in a small bowl and pour over beef. Add beer, bay leaves and enough water to cover beef completely. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. Take out of crock pot and let sit for 15 min or so. Scrape off fat top and slice into thick pieces.

I know the "classic" combination is with cabbage of some sort. For a while we usually went with cole slaw, mainly because boiled cabbage is just gross. Then last year I found a recipe for Colcannon - a mashed potato, cabbage and cheese creation that is wonderful!

Colcannon
1 lb red potatoes
1/4 head of cabbage shredded
1 c grated cheddar cheese (I used Cabot Sharp Extra Light but Irish cheddar would be good here too)
1/4c light butter (like Brummel and Brown)

Boil potatoes in lots of salted water for 20 minutes or until soft. While potatoes are boiling, add shredded cabbage to crock pot with corned beef. This adds a somewhat beefy flavor to the cabbage and since the crock pot isn't boiling, the cabbage doesn't get gross and smelly. I kicked up the heat on the crock pot to high at this point and let the cabbage swim until just after it stops being bright green, about 5 minutes.

Once potatoes are done, drain and mash with butter, salt and pepper. Add grated cheese and cabbage and stir to combine. Adjust for seasoning. Serve with cabbage.

Yum! Now you can't make corned beef for one person with out having left overs. So this morning I made corned beef hash, after dragging my butt to the gym to make up for all of this. This is where planning is a very good skill when it comes to cooking. I knew that I wanted to make hash with my left overs so before I mashed my potatoes last night, I set aside a few for the hash this morning.

Now when it comes to hash browns, my step father is the best. He really has an understanding about what makes good hash browns and great breakfasts in general. When I lived at home, Saturday morning breakfasts were the best! So I'm taking some of my pointers for this hash today from him. The important thing to remember about hash is that you cannot use raw potatoes, since they are bigger chunks than the shredded hash browns.

Corned Beef Hash and Eggs
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 green pepper, chopped
3 small red potatoes, boiled
2 slices corned beef
2 eggs

Place onion and pepper in a skillet with olive oil, salt and pepper over medium to low heat. Let sweat. Meanwhile, chop potatoes into medium sized cubes (about 1/8-1/4 of the potato). Add to pan. Chop corned beef into cubes that are about the same size as the potatoes. Boost heat and allow hash to brown. This step takes a while, more so, because I'm impatient but it is very important. A hash isn't a hash without browning. Once the hash starts to brown, cook eggs in a separate smaller skillet to your liking - I'm a over medium sort of person. Plate up the hash with eggs on top and enjoy!!

So these aren't that brown either, but I think that's pretty good for me!!

Smoothie Fixings

It's the weekend and that means getting ready for the week to come. That means doing those laborious things that take all day - like Green Ice Cubes. For these, there is really no recipe, more like a method.

See my sorry looking spinach? I've been making smoothies all week off this 1 pound container of organic spinach. Now it's starting to turn bad. Time for ice! Fill the container of your blender with spinach and add enough water to allow the mixture to blend. The more water you add, the easier the ice cubes will come out of the tray but then you have a little less spinach per cube. I went for more spinach and ended up having to basically pry each cube out of the tray. In the end, I had about 4 trays worth of cubes. I usually use 3 cubes per smoothie and the bag of ice cubes usually lasts me about 4 weeks. So I got 1 week of fresh spinach plus 4 weeks of spinach cubes so that's 5 weeks of smoothies!! Well give or take. I usually cook breakfast on the weekend so I have a smoothie 5 of 7 days.

Another part of my smoothie ritual is 1/2 a frozen banana. I'm not really a banana fan. They add a creaminess and texture to the smoothies that I can't deny. So a half usually works well and I try to use a banana on the greener side. I have found that freezing a banana in the peel makes it REALLY hard to peel (and really cold, like instant freeze to the fingers) so I peel all the bananas in a bunch and put them in a bag in the freezer. Nom nom nom. Now every morning I just go to the freezer and get my ingredients out and off I go.

Girl Scout Cookie Creations

I'm a sucker for a good cause, especially since in years gone by I was a Junior Girl Scout for a time and had to sell the stupid things. Thankfully in the past few years I haven't been in one place long enough to get asked to buy the cookies for someone's kid. Also I can usually resist the cute girls screaming to buy cookies at the grocery store. Not so this year. I somehow got hit twice and ended up with 4 boxes. Ugh.

So in order to keep the boxes from calling to me from the pantry, I was looking for recipes that use the cookies and found some. Most recipes use Thin Mints, which were part of the original 4 boxes I had but they didn't make it...

The opportunity arose when I was thinking about what to make for International Dinner 2.0. I thought this would be a great way to get rid of the cookies (and not by ME eating them all). So the first recipe I found involved using the crushed cookies as a base for chocolate pudding. Sounded good to me!

Chocolate Cookie Pudding

• 1 (5.9 oz) package instant chocolate pudding mix
• 2 cups milk
• 3 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 (8oz) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 1 package Trefols Girl Scout Cookies(shortbread), crushed
• 3/4 c sliced almonds

1. Whisk together pudding mix with milk until smooth. Cover and chill for 5 minutes
2. Stir together cream cheese and whipped topping
3. Place 1 cup crushed cookies evenly over bottom of serving bowl. Layer 1/2 of whipped topping mix and 1/2 of the almonds. Then layer all of pudding. Then top with remaining whipped topping, almonds and crushed cookies. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Now the real star is this recipe for Gooey Cookies. These started, ahem, with Thin Mints, but since those are gone, I made a version with Dulce de Leche...yum!!

Gooey Girl Scout Cookie Cake Bars

• 1 Cinnamon Toast Crunch Muffin Mix
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup Caramel Bits
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 1 package Dulce de Leche Girl Scout Cookies, broken into pieces

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, prepare a 9 x 13 in baking pan with cooking spray
2. Place muffin mix, strusel topping, butter and egg into a bowl and mix together with hands until a dough ball forms. Press dough into bottom of prepared pan
3. Top with chocolate chips and caramel bits. Drizzle sweetened condensed milk over top and top with broken cookie pieces. 
4. Bake 30-35 min, until baked through. Once out of oven, take a knife around the edges. Let cool completely then cut into squares.

Deadly!!! I used the muffin mix because that was what I had on hand and I'm in a "clean out the pantry" kind of mood. I really like the idea for this bar and may be experimenting in the future...but for now, thank goodness, the boxes of cookies are gone.

Here's the spread from our dinner:

Fun was had by all and we were all STUFFED!! Will be doing this again in the future. 

Limoncello is done!!

After 9 weeks of waiting, the limoncello is done! Take a look at the progression from start to finish:

It looks like limoncello, that's a start. Last night I doctored it up with simple syrup. I had about 3 cups of finished lemon liquor and I added about 3.5 cups of simple syrup (1:1 ratio of sugar to water). This is all to taste, but after those first few sips of just about pure alcohol, my taster was burned. So I put it in the fridge and will do another taste test tonight before the party, the tasting party that is. Will let you all know how it turns out in another post. Now off to clean the house for that party...

P is for Portland

Am having a wonderful time in Portland. I flew in on Thursday for my interview on Friday at Providence Health and Services. Very nice facility and a very interesting place, but what is really selling me is the city its-self. Portland is amazing. The more I read about it, the more interested I am in it!!

Also, I believe in signs...first, when I was getting off the interstate in Philly to get to the airport, I turned onto Oregon St. The second is that I was re-reading my recipe for my limoncello (to be finished next week) and I realized that the restaurant the New York Times interviewed is in Portland!! Well it was then on my list to try this limoncello. It was bright and very lemon forward and not a lick of bitterness (trust me, I will pick out any little wisp of bitterness)...my mom was with me and said the limoncello I started for her around Thanksgiving tasted very similar, so I'm hoping mine tastes similar!!

Overall the trip was just what I needed, a break from residency. Last night, we went to Pok Pok, a pan-asian restaurant that was packed! The chef won the James Beard Foundation award in 2011, otherwise people would not be happy to wait a hour for a table. We were lucky and sat at the bar. Food was awesome!! I had their spicy wings and mom had a glass noodle and prawn clay pot, very delicious. They also have "drinking vinegars" there and, of course, I had to try one. I had a meyer lemon flavored one, which had a nice lemon flavor with only the very slight tang of the vinegar. Of course, before this we had drinks at our hotel, the Heathman, which seems to be a Portland institution. Very nice, boutique hotel, which has recently undergone a multi-million dollar renovation, which shows. The rooms are very nice, and they asked what kind of mattress I wanted to sleep on (temperpedic, of course!!). The hotel restaurant is very nice and we had lovely cocktails - mom went for the Old Fashioned and the Sazerac, I went for TLC (thai lime and chili, which was very spicy!) and 50 Shades of Gin (milder with nice citrus). After Pok Pok we had our limoncello at Nostrana then headed back to the Heathman for dessert and live music.

Today we met with a real estate agent to have a drive around the city and a wake up call about housing prices in this area. Oh well. Then we walked from our hotel to have lunch at the Picnic House. Wonderful food. We each had 1/2 sandwich, 1/2 salad and a cup of soup for $18. Pretty reasonable and the food was delicious - I had citrus poached shrimp sandwich, mushroom soup and a tomato, lardon and avocado salad. Mom had a blueberry turkey and apple sandwich, tomato soup and mixed fruit on greens salad. Next, we walked to the Pearl District, a nicely renovated area of downtown with cute shops and loft apartments. I would totally live in this area if I had the chance!! We walked to REI and I found a pair of hiking boots for our upcoming trip to Peru and some backpacks. Next it was off to Voodoo Donuts. The line was crazy, but what else were we going to do? Also TOTALLY worth the wait!! That's the classic voodoo donut (with raspberry filling and a pretzel stake!) and a maple bacon bar.

Had a wonderful time with my mom and am NOT looking forward to being on a plane all day tomorrow then in the car, but perhaps I will see you again Portland...