Strawberry Salad

When I take this recipe somewhere, I ALWAYS get asked for the recipe. It's so good. Sweet and delicate, with a hint of spice.




The secret ingredient, that separates my Strawberry Salad from all others, is cinnamon. Add just a few dashes (or a 1/4 of a teaspoon), and voila, your taste buds will rejoice.

Make sure and add the balsamic vinegar at the end, because once its added, it will start to cook the strawberries. And eat all of it in one night! The strawberries will be pickles by the next morning, mushy and sour.

Add the sugar at least a half hour before serving, placing the strawberries back into the fridge to sit. This will encourage them to make a syrup and absorb more of the sweetness.

Use nothing but fresh basil, too. I add basil more for a touch of color, but I can't imagine strawberry salad without the herb, either.

John ate the entire batch I made last night! I myself got only a few bites - I turned around and it was all gone. Which is just an excuse to make more, right?

Nebraska-style Beer Chili

Okay, so I'm not really sure if Beer Chili comes from Nebraska, but the chili I ate at home is most certainly not like the chili eaten in Kentucky. No, the folks in Kentuckiana's chili is darker in color, and, horror, they add PASTA to it, which confused me terribly when I first saw it.

Beer should be added to more food. It seems to be a running theme for me recently - I made a Guinness Chocolate Cake, and then Wednesday John and I went to a beer tasting, all of which served with beer infused food (see pic --->), at the Campbell Club here in town. Now beer chili!

The other 'secret' ingredient in this recipe is the Southwest Chipotle flavoring. Adds a further depth to an already very hearty, very flavorful chili.

I used 2 pounds of ground beef, 1 pound sausage, in this particular batch. Sometimes I use more sausage, sometimes turkey, venison, bison... Mom's version uses shredded porkloin and beef brisket smoked by Dad. Calls it her '$75 chili'. No joke, that.

Chili freezes really well. People also seem to appreciate receiving some, not sure why. ;)  (I tell you what I can't give away anymore - my deserts! Apparently it makes you fat, or some such thing. Pchah! I won't listen to such negativity!)

Chocolate Guinness Cake

St. Paddy's day is over, and I am (mostly) recovered from the holiday. I wouldn't call my celebrations wild, per se, but it wasn't sober. John and I headed to a friend's lake house, and stayed there most of the weekend, with plenty of beer, red wine (my favorite), and this Chocolate Guinness Cake!

I'd heard of using Guinness beer as an ingredient in food, in both main courses and deserts, before. Sounded like a unique challenge, and who doesn't want to try a cake with beer in it??? The finished product is not as sweet as your average store bought chocolate cake mix, but not bitter either. The beer adds a unique taste that is hard to describe, giving it depth.

I placed the batter in a 8" spring form pan when it reached the consistency of brownie batter. You can see a crack in the cake, where frosting dips down in the photo above. Cracking creates more space for holding the made-from-scratch cream cheese frosting on top!

One last note - I'd like to introduce you to the most expensive butter I have ever bought, ever.  I'm not going to tell how much I paid for my Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter. It's sinful expensive, like eating a cake with an entire bar of it inside! Feel free to use regular old plain butter, if this is bit much for the budget.

Curry Rice

This is the first dish I ever learned to make. Really. While studying abroad in Japan, I made an effort to set the kitchen on fire while making potatoes. Seeing that I needed help, the Japanese RA's, M and N, decided to show me how to do some stuff. The rest, is history!

Curry Rice is probably the most popular Japanese comfort food. Nikujaga is up there, too. And Omurice. YUM. I love them all. Japanese food has got to be the most delicious food in the world! Most Americans think that Japanese food is all sushi, but this just isn't true. (The Japanese DO eat a lot of sushi, however.)

Making Curry Rice is very easy. You need 3 large carrots, peeled and cut into pieces, 2 potatoes, PACIP (peeled and cut into pieces), half a yellow onion roughly chopped, and a meat of your choice. Chicken is the most traditionally used meat. The sauce is readily available in most major grocery chains, including Wal-mart. Just look for it in the Asian foods section. Comes in a shiny little cardboard box with 'Golden Curry' written on the side. English instructions! The curry comes in little blocks, and looks decidedly like chocolate. Funny smelling chocolate...

I've Americanized my Curry Rice. (The horror, the horror!) Instead of chicken or beef, I prefer Jimmy Dean's hot sausage. It is SOOOOO good. Adds even more flavor to a dish that is extremely flavorful to begin with. I'm lazy and simply break up the sausage while browning it, but a more ambitious person could form them into meatballs.

After browning your meat, set it aside and brown the potatoes and carrots, adding the onions when the potatoes start to turn translucent. I keep a glass full of water on the side, and have never actually measured out the quantity, but this recipe will call for around 3 cups total. After the vegetables have browned enough, I add a little water to continue cooking, then pour the rest in later.

Once the potatoes and carrots are soft, add the remainder of the water, until the vegetables are covered. Add the meat. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn the heat back down to a simmer. Take the sauce mix, and break up the curry cubes. Place the curry cubes into different areas of the pot, tucking them under vegetables. Slowly begin to stir, mixing the curry mix in with the rest of the ingredients. When it turns thick and stew like, the curry is done.

Serve with rice on the side. I know its odd, rice and potatoes (starch and starch), but you just can't have curry without rice.

Orange Juice Cake

So, that thing about John and me, being on a diet, losing weight, yadda yadda. Yeah... That was before we were introduced to this piece of heaven, Orange Juice Cake.

I was introduced to the concept of Orange Juice Cake (from here on, OJC) by a friend, CK. OJC is uber retro, and the subject of the cake came up in a conversation about CK's 84 year old mother making it. I'd never heard of the cake before, so I looked it up on the internet. I saw the words 'vanilla pudding' and 'poke the top', and I knew I had to try it.

Did not disappoint, OJC. I've made very few bundt cakes before, and felt nervous about using my nordic ware. Sprayed the hell out of it! I doubt that you really need to use as much spray as I did, because when you pour the orange juice glaze on, it will loosen the cake. But you DO need to grease it.

This cake is so easy to make. Yellow cake mix, box of vanilla pudding, oil, water, eggs, mix and bake. Butter, orange juice and sugar, boil, poke poke poke top of cake, pour on top while cake is hot. Unbelievably tasty.

When you flip your cake, make sure that A) your plate is set on top of the bundt, then flip, and B) be certain your plate has a lip. The orange juice glaze will make a huge mess if you don't! I flip mine over the sink.

See the little puddle of juiciness in the center of the cake? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It will spill out when the cake is cut, soaking your piece with goodness. Oh, yeah.

Eating OJC is addicting. I'm not kidding. Make it anyway!!

Uova in Purgatorio (Eggs in Purgatory)

Yesterday was Meatless Monday! If I'm observing MM, then it can only mean - I am officially on a diet! (This means John too. Well, maybe...He's not very obedient. He did eat this recipe like it was fatteningly tasty, however.)

John and I just got back from a vacation. We visited his brother J in Tallahassee, FL. No idea that the city and area were so beautiful! Northern, pan-handle Florida is an area of the US I'd never visited before. Would highly recommend the city for a visit. Interestingly we ate the best Indian food ever, at a restaurant called Essence of India. If you're in town, go.

On to the food! Eggs in Purgatory is a classic Italian dish. If you've never tried eggs in tomato sauce, OMG, you've got to. No, really. This is not a joke.

I used my Lazy Spaghetti sauce recipe. In this particular LS sauce I used a yellow bell pepper, half a large onion, 5 small fresh tomatoes and fresh spinach. Delicious, as always. And sooooo easy. I did use more than the normal quantity of wine in it, too. I pan-fried my garlic, onion and bell pepper, then added around 1/2 a cup of red chianti. Reduced to half.

This recipe comes from The Sopranos Family Cookbook, I'd never heard of placing eggs in spaghetti .sauce before find Uova in Purgatorio. I've changed it too my own tastes (of course!) There is so much to learn about cooking, it's rather mind numbing to think about.

Why is it called 'Eggs in Purgatory?' That's what I wanna know! (I've got this insatiable need to know ever more useless information.) Purgatory is a mostly defunct Christian belief, that involved this 'other' place, between heaven and hell, where dead souls went before judgement by Christ. (It's also a Kabbalah belief. Ever seen Lost, anyone?) Nowadays, I'd say that the belief is in pretty much instantaneous judgement - either your going down or up, based on your life's actions, on the moment of death. The eggs 'hang' in the sauce, just like purgatory. My poor eggs. Not sure what they did, I mean, they had such a short, short life, but it was sadly straight down for them! (And it was a quick journey, too.)

A few notes on making your uova:

Make the sauce first, in a wide pan like you see in my photo up top. Do two eggs per person eating. Place the first egg in a ramekin, like you see here. Holding a large serving spoon in one hand, egg loaded ramekin in the other, stand over your pot of bubbling sauce, set spoon in the spot you want the egg to go, and gently drop the egg onto the spoon. Slide spoon out from egg. Repeat for each egg. Voila.

Cover the pan, or else your eggs will cook completely from below. I cooked each egg for six minutes at medium heat. This left a runny yolk, which is how it should be. It can be adjusted for taste of course! You then mix the yolk in with your pasta and sauce, which is delicious and why you SHOULD NOT hard cook the egg. Just do as I say, m'kay?

I served this with whole wheat linguine on the side, mixed with a touch of Parmesan cheese.

Pozole

It is freezing outside! There is something about the Kentucky cold that affects me more than the Nebraska winter ever did. I'm thinking its the damp - Kentucky is the wettest state in the continental US. Owensboro is right on the Ohio river, too, which only adds to the pain. Sinks into my bones, this cold does!

The solution to cold days is soup, of course. Spicy soup, savory soup. Sunday turned out to be a very wet day in Kentucky. It rained, literally, the entire day! And the day before that, too. And the day before that... When the rain stopped, the temperature dropped to around 20 degrees - so, went from 60 degrees, to 20, in a day. Yikes! Shocked my system.

Pozole is a traditional Mexican soup. I found the recipe off another cooking blog - FoodWineThyme.com. A very cute blog, and full of good recipes! I'd never heard of Pozole until stumbling across it on FoodWineThyme. I've been wanting to try more 'authentic' Mexican recipes for some time now, and can never get enough of any food that is spicy, so I gave it a shot.

Finding the unusual guajillo chilies was the first challenge. I'd assumed I was going to have to order them online (available on amazon.com), but while exploring a grocery store I rarely-if-never-ever go to (Save-a-lot, which is kind of gross, but I'm never afraid to explore), I found a HUGE Mexican section. Had all kinds of unusual peppers, got my bag of 12 guajillos for $2.50! Loves me a good deal.

The guajillo chilies released the most amazing fragrance while roasting on the frypan. I'm trying to come up with a word to describe it - pungent, but in a way like Jamaican All-spice. Very unique. I loved it. Soaking them softens the peppers for blending. Mine were still a little tough after 25 minutes, it might be better to let them go for 30 minutes instead.

Roasted tomatoes are a delightful eating joy that I do not take advantage of enough. Roasting brings out flavors in a food in ways that no other cooking method can. The best form of roasting is over an open fire, aka grilling. My only wish was that I'd had fresh, from the garden tomatoes, instead of these store bought ones. Nothing could be tastier than home grown, uber umami garden tomatoes. (Umami, by the way, is a word to describe the unusual savory flavor in a tomato.)

John and I both really liked this soup. Not too spicy, just enough to warm you up. Make sure to blend the guajillos really well, if you leave large chunks, then you WILL be in for spicy shock! Removing the seeds from the peppers reduces spiciness, too. Guajillos are definitely not a hot pepper, however. Mild, with an unusual flavor. There are so many pepper types out there that are mostly unknown in American cuisine.

A very tasty dish! Time consuming, but worth it.