Ricotta Gnocchi

Because we had fresh ricotta to use that we made I didn’t want it to go to waste so I decided to have a go at gnocchi.  I hadn’t made it before but it was on my list!  I found this recipe online and used it as a guide.  I was pleased with the results and it was something the family enjoyed.

It is quick and easy and you can have dinner done in an hour from start to finish.  In a large bowl mix a cup of ricotta, 2 eggs beaten, 1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, herbs of your choice (about a tsp), and 1 cup flour.  For this I used marojam, sage, and thyme.  Mix it all together until if forms a dough.

The dough will be soft but you don’t want it overly sticky so add flour if need be.  Take about a third and roll it out into a rope.  Cut them into inch long pieces and use the fork to put grooves in.  Place on the plate.  Do this for the rest of the dough.  Once done place it in the fridge while you do the sauce.

I just did a simple sauce for this with our tomato sauce and veg.  Once that was made up I brought the water to a boil and tossed in the gnocchi.  It will sink but once it is done it will float.  About 4 minutes or so.

Once it is cooked toss in the sauce and it is ready to serve.

It is a great meal for when you want something tasty but easy.

Slow Cooked Lamb with a Red Wine Reduction Sauce

Earlier this year I cooked my first piece of lamb with a mushroom rub with a shoulder cut.  I had commented that while the flavour was amazing the meat didn’t come out as tender as I would have liked.  There were a few recommendations stating that a shoulder cut should be slow cooked.  As we had more shoulder cuts that is how I chose to do it this time.  The results were much better with really tender meat.

Preheat the oven to 275F/135C

I salt and peppered the lamb then heated up a skillet with olive oil to sear the lamb.  Sear both sides for about 4 minutes each.  If it is a thicker piece then do it for longer.

Chop up several cloves of garlic and some fresh rosemary.  We have a plant that survived all winter so I was able to use that.  And for someone that is horrible with houseplants, this is huge!

In a shallow baking pan put in 1 cup stock of your choice.  I used turkey stock and added the garlic, rosemary, and the lamb.

I decided to use this red wine as it’s a great drinking wine.  Not very mellow so I think in hindsight I would choose a mellow Italian but this wine was really good with the roasted potatoes and parsnips I served with this.

I added about 3/4 cup of wine to the dish.

Cover and slow cook for about an hour and a half.  If it is a thicker cut cook longer until it is done the way you want it.

Remove the lamb and over with tin foil and keep in a warm place while you finish the sauce and the rest of the dinner.  I put the plate on top of the toaster oven that I was roasting the veg in.  Pour the liquid into a sauce pan and bring to a simmer.  Add a bit of flour to some water and add to the sauce to thicken.  Because the wine was a strong flavour I added a bit of veg bouillon to give a bit of depth to the sauce.  Reduce down.

Once the veg is done, plate and drizzle the sauce over the lamb.

I really enjoyed this dish and will definitely experiment with the slow cooking of this meat.

 

White Soda Bread

Years ago I thought I would try soda bread.  Can’t remember the recipe but it is just as well as that attempt produced something closer to concrete than delicious bread.  You could do some serious damage with that thing!  A few years ago my mum and dad gave me a cookbook called “Irish Traditional Cooking” by Darina Allen.  It’s a lovely cookbook with tidbits on the history of recipes and ingredients.  I had some buttermilk left over so I thought it was as good as time as any to try my hand at this again.  Really glad I did.  So much better than the previous attempt. 

Preheat the oven to 450F/232C.  In a mixing bowl add 4 cups flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking soda.  Mix that well.

The recipe calls for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of buttermilk.  Basically start with the lower amount and add if you need to as it depends on the flour if it needs more moisture.  You don’t want it overly wet or sticky as a dough.

Mix it all together.  You can tell if it needs more buttermilk as mine did.  It looked very clumpy.

After adding another 1/4 cup of buttermilk the dough came together.  It needs to be kneaded a few times to, as Darina said in the book, “tidy it up”.

When preheating the oven I put in our large pizza stone that we also use to bake bread.  So for the next step I laid the dough out on parchment paper for ease of transfer.  Work the dough into a round disc.  About 2″ thick or so.  Then, and I love this part, “cut a cross on it to let the fairies out!” 

Bake for 15 minutes at 450F/232C and then lower the temp to 400F/204C for 20-30 minutes until it sounds hollow on the bottom.

It says to cool but I love hot bread with butter melting into it.

This is a great quick bread and it will be wonderful with homemade soup.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

When I was growing up there were two special treats mum would make.  Lemon meringue pie and lemon curd.  They were amazing.  Poor mum would be over a hot stove making the curd, canning it, etc and I would come along and just gloop the stuff on my toast.  It was the best!  I’ve had store bought but I gave up buying it as it wasn’t the same.  And the pie was just cool looking to a little kid.

So when I was pinning various stuff on Pinterest I came across this recipe for Lemon Meringue Cupcakes from King Arthur Flour and knew I just had to make them.  It flashed me back to when I was small having the lovely treats.

Now the recipe calls for making the lemon curd in the microwave.  I was sceptical to say the least but Maria Dernikos posted the other day about this method and said it worked.  So I gave it a try.  It is very tasty.  Not the same as mum’s homemade mind you but it does the trick.  I made the whole recipe today but I recommend doing the curd the day before.  Nothing is overly difficult but there are many steps to this.

First I baked the cupcakes.  So I pre-heated the oven to 400F/204C and lined a muffin tin with cupcake paper.  The recipe calls for a light spray of oil so I did that as well.  Not sure whether that is needed but as these are my first real cupcakes (not just using cake batter in muffin tins and keeping fingers crossed) I followed the directions.

In a mixing bowl add 1 1/2 cup flour, 1tsp, baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup butter (room temp), 1 large egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/3 cup buttermilk.  Mix all together.  It will be dry at first and you’ll need to scrape the sides as it mixes.  But it will smooth out.  Then add another 1/3 cup of buttermilk and mix until smooth and blended.

Spoon batter into the cupcake paper filling about 2/3s full.

Bake 15-18 minutes until you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.  Put the cupcakes on a cooling rack to cool fully.

Next I made the lemon curd.  I bought some lovely organic lemons from our new local co-op for this.

You will need one cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, one cup sugar, 1/2 cup of melted butter, and 2 large eggs.  Use a fairly large bowl for this as the curd tends to expand near the end of cooking.  Mix all of this together.

Now King Arthur recommends cooking in the microwave one minute at a time with stirring in between.  This is because every microwave is different and it could be done quickly or if your microwave is old like ours it can take awhile.  But you need to stir each time.   As it gets close to being done it will rise up quickly in the bowl so I found towards the end I was doing 20 second intervals.

The curd should coat the back of the spoon like a syrup.

This needs to chill for a few hours to thicken.  Another reason to do it the day before.  Once the curd is ready it should look a bit like this does.

The recipe mentions a cupcake corer.  Clearly I need to learn more as I had never heard of such a thing.  I just used a knife to take out plugs of cupcake which left little cones for the curd.

Spoon in the curd into the little cones.

I then put the cupcakes into the fridge to set some more while I did the meringue.  For the meringue take 3 egg whites and 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar and put it into a clean mixing bowl.

Whip until you have soft peaks.

Add 1/8 tsp of salt and mix it in.  Then add 6T of sugar, one at a time, as the mixer whips it into a lovely meringue.  I did this on high speed until I got the stiff peaks and it was “light and billowy” per King Arthur.

It mentions then piping it onto the cupcakes.  One that just leads to more dishes and two I like the random peaks, just like the pie.  So I spooned the meringue onto the cupcakes and created the peaks.

Then place under the broiler until golden.  This happens very quickly as I learned today as, ahem, some came out more toasted than the others.  Oops.

Once you slice into this lovely lemony dessert the curd should be slightly runny but not too much.

Well worth the effort.  Though the only bad part about this is it only makes 12!  Sigh. 

Roasted Mushroom and Parsnip Ravioli

It is spring break from school this week for the kids and I set up yesterday to be a bake day for them as they like to get into the kitchen.  While they were making cookies and congo bars I thought I’d make raviolis for dinner.  I hadn’t made them in awhile as it is somewhat time consuming.  Question was, what to make?  I knew I wanted mushrooms but wasn’t sure what else to do.  As my gaze wandered round the kitchen I saw the parsnips my husband pulled from the garden.  This is a great treat as we planted them last year.  So I decided to do a roasted mushroom and parsnip mixture.  I was really pleased with the results!

I bought oyster, baby bellas, and shiitake mushrooms.  I coarsely chopped them along with the parsnips and tossed them with olive oil and salt and pepper.

These were roasted at 400 F/204C stirring occasionally as they roasted.  About halfway through I added some fresh thyme.

Once they had browned nicely I set the veg aside to cool completely.  While this was cooling I prepped the pasta to rest.  Once the mixture cooled I put it into the food processor and grated some Jarlsberg cheese.  It was about 1/2 cup of cheese.  I also added a couple of splashes of dry sherry.

I pulsed the processor until it was a coarse mixture.

Now I haven’t gotten round to getting ravioli molds yet so I am still doing this by hand.  Well I do have a Kitchen Aid to roll it out so we’re halfway there.    I roll out a sheet at a time and fill as I go.  All that is needed for the filling is about a teaspoon of mixture then brush a beaten egg round the mixture to help seal the pasta.

It is important to get the air out! Though that isn’t always easy but you could end up with burst balloons if there is too much air.

Before I cooked the ravioli I sauteed up some garlic and mushrooms and prepared this cream and butter sauce to complete the dish.  The ravioli only needs to cook for about 4 minutes in boiling salted water.

Drain and toss in the sauce and serve.

It had a lovely earthy flavour and it was great on a cool night.

Jarlsberg and Chive Souffle

Cheese souffle is one of those dishes that is considered difficult enough to use as tests on cooking competitions.  Contestants dread them.  So I thought it was high time to try one.  And I stressed through it enough that my husband thought I was being a bit nutty.    The result is that it is time consuming but not overly difficult.

I found a recipe on epicurious.com for this and used Jarlsberg and some garlic chives that are just starting to come up on our garden.  Easy to follow but why does it have to be another recipe that uses 4 egg yolks but 5 egg whites?  Tiny pet peeve of mine.  The first part of the recipe through adding the egg yolks can be made a few hours ahead of time if need be.  Helpful when the dogs need to be walked. 

It called for 1 1/2 quart dish, which I used, but I think in the end it was too big so next time I’ll try something a bit smaller.  Butter the dish and then coat with finely grated parmesan cheese.  A tip from Alton Brown is to freeze this for about 5 minutes to set it.

To start warm a cup of milk in a small sauce pan.  Warm it to steaming but not boiling.  Their recipe called for whole milk but we used 2% and it was fine.  Also all we had.  In a larger sauce pan melt 2 1/2 T butter.

Once the butter is melted add 3T of flour and whisk it all together.  Cook this roux until it isn’t raw anymore.  Don’t brown it.  Mine turned beige but it was ok.

Remove from the heat for about a minute then whisk in the warmed milk.  Whisk until it is blended.

Put it back on the stove and reheat on low to medium while whisking the mixture.  You want to keep stirring until it thickens.  This will take a few minutes.  And when it thickens it happens quickly.

Remove from the heat once again.  Add 1/2 tsp of paprika and 1/2 tsp of salt.  Just a sprinkle of nutmeg then blend it all together.

Add one egg yolk at a time and blend well each time.  Again this calls for 4 egg yolks.

Set this aside to come to room temperature.  Then coarsely grate a cup of Jarlsberg.  Like brown sugar this should be a tightly packed cup.  And chop the chives.

When you are ready to do the second part of the souffle pre-heat the oven to 400F/204C.  I did it on convection but I don’t recommend it as it browned the top well but the very centre of the souffle was a bit undercooked.  So next time I will do it regular to the browning and the centre will finish together.

Take 5 egg whites and use a mixer to whip them until “stiff but not dry” according to the recipe I was following.

Take a 1/4 of the egg whites and gently fold into the souffle mixture that has cooled.  For these final steps you don’t want a heavy hand.

Gradually add the cheese, chives, and the egg whites gently folding as you go.  You want a light airy mixture.

Pour it into the dish and place it into the oven.  Turn the temp down to 375F/190C.  Set the timer for 25 minutes.  As the recipe states “Do not open the door for at least 20 minutes!”  That is really hard for me not to do!    When it is golden brown remove from the oven.

Again I would use a smaller dish for this.  Also as I did it in convection I removed it a few minutes before the 25 minutes was up so the centre was just undercooked a bit.  This recipe served 4 of us and we served with salad.

It was a delicious light meal.

 

Easter Cake

Over the years I had wondered about the Easter Bunny and eggs.  I mean, bunnies don’t have eggs.  And having gone to church until I was about 8 or 9 I had a pretty good grasp on what Christians thought Easter was about.  No mention of bunnies or eggs.  Strange.  Recently I’ve discovered the history and it makes sense now.  Original Easter was all about the bunnies and eggs.  Way back when you had Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex.  Woman would put out red eggs about the time we celebrate Easter. There there is the Goddess Eostre and people also celebrated with eggs and also bunnies because bunnies breed like, well you know. 

My Grandma was a huge fan of Cadbury Creme Eggs and she passed that addiction on to me.  Cadbury licensed the eggs to Hershey.  Sigh, not the same at all.  They are smaller and not as creamy.  Fortunately I have a source for the real stuff.  I love the mini eggs as well and as far as I can tell there isn’t any difference.  Yay!

Easter happened to be the day where the whole family could get together to celebrate my birthday and my mum’s so I decided to make an Easter cake as we’d have all the kids together.  I was going to do gum paste eggs but my daughter had a better idea of using the mini eggs.  Smart cookie. 

I made the fruit cake ahead of time for this.  And I did the marzipan and royal icing the same as I did it at Christmas.

I wanted spring flowers for this cake so I used gum paste for this step.  I mixed in the colour I wanted and rolled it out thinly and used the cutters to cut out the shapes.  You need to work somewhat quickly with gum paste as it starts to dry out.

I then shaped the flowers and decorate the centers.  I used sugar and sugar pearls for the flowers.  I also shaped an Easter basket.

Once all the gum paste decorations are done I prepped the cake with jam and the marzipan.  I whipped up a batch of royal icing and spread it on the cake.  I wasn’t worried too much about how smooth it was as it was representing grass.  I placed mini eggs around the base and in the basket.  I then placed the flowers on the top of the cake.  My son picked out the Easter bunny. 

As a finishing touch I dusted the flowers with pearl dust.

It was a hit with the kids.    It was hard not to eat the royal icing as I did this cake.  I love royal icing!  But the sugar rush is a bit much. 

 

 

Delicious!

Our 12 year old daughter baked me an amazing flourless chocolate cake for my birthday. So good it could be served at a high end restaurant, I kid you not.

Tomato Soup

Years ago I had a wonderful tomato soup, the best I’d ever tasted.  I wanted the recipe.  Unsurprisingly it was refused to me.  Her son smuggled the recipe out to me.  Yes!  I made it once and lost the recipe.  Facepalm.

I have been in the mood for it so I thought I would see what I could recreate.  My husband is not a fan of tomato soups.  Too tomato-y.  I took that as a challenge.  I was going to make the best soup and convert him!  Yes he is patient with my quirks. 

To start I chopped some garlic and bacon and sauteed them in the pan.

Next I added 2 cups of my tomato sauce.  Then I added a chopped tomato.  I know!  It will make it too tomato-y.  But I forged ahead anyway.

As this was coming up to a simmer I chopped a bunch of fresh basil and tossed it in. I seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper to taste.

I added about a cup of cream and warmed it back up.

Once it was heated through I used the immersion blender to blend all the ingredients together and it is ready to serve.

I added a bit of basil to garnish and then I grated Parmesan cheese to top.  Most cheeses will go with this simple soup.

I loved this soup as I love the tomato flavour but it was too much for my poor husband.  Ah well.  You can’t win them all!    This is really good with grilled cheese sandwiches like the jalapeno cheddar or the tomato avocado sandwiches.

Duck and Andouille Sausage

Our store finally had duck!  The kids had been asking for it for awhile now but I couldn’t find it so they were very excited when I came home with one.  I wanted to do something a bit different than the usual roast duck with roasted potatoes and we had some andouille sausage to use up.  It has some kick to it but our kids seem to do ok with a bit of heat so I figured it would be worth a try.

First I had to butcher the duck.  Since I only needed one breast, everything else gets frozen for later.  Including the bones so I can make stock like this turkey stock.

In a small skillet I put a bit of olive oil and got it nice and hot.  I seasoned the duck breast with salt and pepper on both sides then put the breast skin down in the oil.

I kept the heat up for a couple of minutes to sear the skin then I turned it down to render the fat.  This takes several minutes depending on how much fat you want to render.  Once it is rendered enough I turned the duck over to sear the meat side for a couple of minutes.

I like to make sure all sides are seared before removing.

This gets set aside in a warm spot to rest while I make the rest of the dish.  Because there is a lot of fat that gets rendered out I save some fat for later use.  Otherwise this would be a very fatty greasy dish!

While the duck was searing I prepped the rest of the ingredients.  I chopped mushrooms, onion, garlic, and the andouille sausage.

This all gets tossed into the skillet with the duck fat and sauteed.  Once this heats through I added a cup of turkey stock.  Turns out I was out of duck stock!  As it comes up to a simmer I added some frozen peppers from last year’s garden.  I also chopped a tomato and some cilantro and added those to the dish.  I also added a few splashes of lime juice to brighten the dish and a bit of creole seasoning.

While this was simmering I sliced the duck.  As you can see it is still a bit rare which is good because it gets added to the dish and you don’t want the duck overcooked.

Let it simmer for a few minutes then serve over rice.  I did rice pilaf for this dish.

The kids loved it.  Though our son’s face was a picture when the spice hit the back of the throat!  But he said he loved the flavours and how they are layered.  Not bad for an 8 year old. 

On a side note.  I’ve noticed that I’ll get a note on my phone of a comment left for me but when I go look for it to reply I can’t find it. If I don’t respond to a comment it is because I can’t see it to say anything.  I hope I can get this sorted because I like the conversations!