CLASSIC POUND CAKE

I have been in a total cooking slump lately. Just completely uninspired for some reason, and don't care. Weird how that just comes and goes. Like writer's block or something. Cooking block, I guess?

I really haven't made anything "post-worthy" in a long time and I have no idea when I'll get motivated again, but I didn't want the last post on here to be about stupid butter .... so here's a pretty picture of a super good pound cake I made last weekend - but the only reason I put out the effort was because it was my husband's birthday.

This version is dense and buttery. I like to sprinkle the top with a little bit of sugar before putting it in the oven, then it gets all caramelized and crusty.

Cake batter:

Cream 1/2 lb. of butter in mixer then slowly add 2 Cups of sugar, mixing on low-med speed. Next add 6 whole eggs, one at a time, mixing each in completely before adding the next. Add 1 Tbsp Vanilla to the batter and then stop the mixer. The last step is to fold in 2 Cups of sifted flour by hand. Grease your pan and fill with batter. Cook at 350 for 35-50 min depending on size of pan used. Test with toothpick after 35 min.

HOMEMADE BUTTER

When I was a kid, our babysitter moved out to the country and bought a farm. One weekend we went to go stay with them and I remember being fascinated when she made homemade butter. I didn't know you could make butter. And the taste was incredible. Of course she was using fresh cream from a just-milked cow, and the cream was unpasteurized. But still. You can still make it at home and it'll taste better than what we can get in the American grocery stores. 

You can use a food processor or a mixer. I personally have not used the food processor. I like the mixer. Anyway, you want to use heavy or very heavy "whipping" cream. If you can get "vat-pasteurized" cream, it has a better flavor. If not, you can use the ultra-pasteurized commercial type. 

Since I just grabbed some of the grocery store cream, I like to lightly sweeten it by adding about a teaspoon of simple syrup while mixing. It doesn't make it "sweet," it just gives it a richer taste, and enhances the sweet cream.  I also add a pinch of salt. Go light on the salt! You can always add more later. 

Mix on low-medium. It will first turn into whipped cream...

Then will turn yellow and you'll see the butter separate from the buttermilk.

When it looks like this, you can stop. 

Drain the butter from the milk (the milk is really good too! Sweet, not sour.)

At this point, you can do a couple of things. Eat it right away, or process further for longer term storage. I like to put it in a bag, then knead it to expel the rest of the moisture. If you're not going to eat it right away, then you should also "wash" it, by putting it back into the mixing bowl and mix for a minute with ice water. Drain the water and replace with clean water a few times until water stays clear. 

Washed or unwashed - storage should be air tight. Plastic bag or wax paper is OK. You can also cut into chunks and put them in a jar and cover with clean water and store in the fridge replacing water once in a while. This will allow it to keep it's fresh taste. Can also be frozen. 

Enjoy!

FROM THE FREEZER: PORK CHOPS: SLOW BAKED COUNTRY PORK CHOPS WITH FENNEL & TOMATO RAGOUT

I think the days of me making elaborate dinners is over for a while. I just don't have the time luxury anymore to plan, create and prepare food like I used to. I even resort to prepared frozen kid's dinners, frozen chicken nuggets and Spaghetti-O's way more than I'd like to admit, and I never used to buy that crap. This is what having a fussy 2 year old, a home business and a dog with special needs does to your schedule. I know some day I'll be back in "gourmet mode."  Just not this year.

Like a lot of people, I have a well stocked freezer. Meat, fish, veggies, herbs, homemade stock. Leftovers that I save for those times I need a fast dinner but never end up using. Once in a while things get pretty cramped in there, so I go on a mission to use the stuff up. Last night I pulled out a package of country pork chops. 

I needed something that I could stuff in the oven and forget about. Traditional baked chops are always good, but then you need to make a side. So I opted for a one dish meal. But the chops I wanted to bake slow and low. What vegetable can stand up to that without being wrecked?  Fennel! Fennel is awesome when slow roasted and would make a delicious ragout (think bouillabaisse). It gets sweet and buttery and I think it would be perfect. I had a large bulb in the fridge, so I sliced it, white and green parts, and put it into a casserole dish. 

Next I added a few strands of saffron. Then a can of tomatoes. (I was only cooking for 2 btw). Salt & pepper to taste.

For added flavor, I finely diced one celery stalk and 1/4 of an onion and mixed it in with the tomatoes. Small dices though, I wanted the fennel to be the star of the show and not have other vegetable textures mixed in. By dicing them really small they will just melt away.

Frozen chops. I don't bother defrosting them for something like this. I do the same for my roasted chickens. Put them in frozen. They turn out just fine, you'll never know the difference. 

The chops were added on top of the ragout, salted, then I added about 2 cups of semi-thawed homemade chicken stock. The pieces you see on top are chopped dehydrated garlic. It's one of my favorite new ingredients. I think they toast it lightly or something. The flavor is delicious, and tastes very fresh! I never do garlic in a jar though. I hate that stuff in it's "citrus" juice. Gross. 

Let's see... I cooked this for about 2 hours. I turned it on 350 for about 30 minutes to defrost the chops. Then I bumped it to 425 for another 20 or so minutes until they were browned a little bit ... then dropped the heat back down to 325 for the rest of the time until they looked like this. 

The chops were tender, and since they sat above the ragout, the fat around the edges was able to get brown and super yummy. The fennel was absolutely delicious, and the broth.... well.... fennel, tomatoes and saffron. What can I say. I could have bathed in it.

ENDIVE & BRUSSELS SPROUTS GRATIN with JAMBON (aka, Ham)

One of my favorite local restaurants is a Swiss-French little gem which I am not going to name because it's hard enough to get into as it is -- but they have this endive gratin appetizer that is just the bee's knees. I love the bitter of the endive along with the sweetness of the béchamel and the saltiness of the parmesan. So the other day when I was at the grocery and I spotted the endive, I thought immediately of the gratin. Even the thought of it made me start to drool, so although I had no recipe, I was pretty  sure I could make some sort of copycat that would at least be similar. I picked up a couple of the the endives, then I saw these super young, small brussels sprouts and thought, hmmmm.... I bet the sweetness of those would go really well in the gratin? 

Oh. My. Gosh.

The rest is yummy history.    

The basic recipe starts with equal parts of endive, which I thickly sliced and sauteed for about 1 minute in some butter along with a little bit of chopped ham, and brussels sprouts, which I steamed. I made just enough of a thin bechamel to nicely coat the brussels sprouts, endive & ham. You don't want it soupy because there is nothing to really soak it up, so you just want it nicely dressed. I put the mixture in a baking dish and then grated a very generous portion of fresh parmesan and it baked in a 400 degree oven just until bubbly and the cheese was starting to brown nicely. It made a great side to our Friday night NY strip steak! 

Go ahead - I know you want to. Click on the picture to supersize it.

FOR BREAKFAST TODAY we had Eggs over Crispy Potato Cakes, topped with Crumbled Bacon

Crispy pan fried potato cakes.

A fried egg.

Lots of crumbled bacon.

What I ate today: Baguette, buttered, with sliced radish

Channeling Jacques Pepin:

Crisp red radishes, sliced, and served with butter on fresh baguette, with a light sprinkle of fleur de sel and fresh pepper. 

I don't know who originally came up with this, but it is absolutely delicious.

MMMMMMMM!!!! Minty Margarita

Margarita season is upon us! Fresh lime. Crushed ice. Silver tequila. Triple Sec.

I love them traditional, don't get me wrong. But I'm ready for something with a twist.

So I added a bit of mint. And a splash of gin. And.... WHOA! SuperYUM!

Take a small handful of mint leaves, add it to a little bit of crushed ice and about a tablespoon of simple syrup and squish it around a little. I don't have a muddler, so I just used a fork. I guess a muddler would have done a better job and it would be way more minty - so keep that in mind. 

For one margarita: 

2 oz silver tequila

3/4 oz triple sec

1 lime - juiced by a super juicer (as seen below)

3/4 oz Hendricks Gin

small handful of fresh mint

1 tablespoon simple syrup

These juicers get probably 3x as much juice out of lemons and limes that you could ever squeeze by hand. You get what you pay for, and the cheap ones break, just a warning. I like the Norpro. 

After you muddle the mint, syrup and ice, add the rest of the ingredients, a splash of water, and more ice. Shake vigorously. Pour into glass and garnish with lime slice and more fresh mint.  I think you'll find this more tasty than any Mint Julep or Mojito you've ever had. Seriously.  

How to get your 2 year old to eat vegetables. No, really.

Hide stuff in mashed potatoes. 

When my daughter was a baby, she ate everything. Now that she's two, she eats nothing aside from goldfish crackers, pasta, tofu and eggs. No vegetables. Don't they all love mashed potatoes though? Heck, who doesn't. So I chop stuff up real small, and hide it in the potatoes. And she eats it. I can even go as far as crumbling some tofu in it and making it a one dish meal.

Now, I know you can still see the green mixed in with the white - but I swear, if you chop the vegetables up really super small, then mix them in, it's fine. You really can't taste them, even though they are there.  I like to use something without a strong taste, and that packs a huge nutritional punch -- my favorite is swiss chard, but spinach works too. Broccoli is hit or miss, but cauliflower is easier (although both kinda smell like farts if you ask me). 

If you have a ricer,  you're set. It takes only minutes. Cook the vegetable. Pop the potato in the microwave. Push it through the ricer. Add a little butter, enough broth to reach your mashed potato thickness preference, and then salt and pepper of course. Chop the cooked vegetable as tiny as you can get it and mix it in. That's it. I like to do no more than 20% vegetable in the mix. I don't want to push my luck, if you know what I mean.  

It's good for adults, too! :)

Anyway ... don't take my word for it. I have photographic proof:

Homemade Tomato Soup in 3 Minutes

All I wanted was a bowl of soup for lunch. I don't need a whole pot. Just enough for one person. 

I had half a container of tomatoes left from the previous night's dinner. I added that (about a cup) to a bowl. Then I added about 1/2 cup milk (you could use half & half if you have it and it would be SO YUMMERS!)  I also added a tablespoon of simple syrup, and then a pat of butter. Oh, salt and pepper of course. 

Microwave it until hot, which was 3 minutes at my house. Rich, hearty, cheap, fast and delicious. This makes a chunky tomato soup, but you could blend it first for a smooth soup. If you want it thick, you could add 1/4 teaspoon corn starch before microwaving it. 

Scotch Eggs - As it turns out, they couldn't be simpler to make.

I had picked up some spicy pork sausage while shopping one day, because it sounded good, but wasn't sure what to do with it. Sure, I could totally fry it up and have it for breakfast, but that's too dangerous because we'd eat the whole package since I'd have to cook up the whole package because you can't just use half - then you don't have enough left over to make anything else, so you might as well just cook it all. And I'd do it with the intention of saving some for hash the next day or something, but the reality is that it would never make it to see the next day. So, scratch that idea. I could add it to a pasta dish - that's classic and you can't go wrong there. But... pasta is my go-to thing for the times when I'm lazy and only have boring protein, like chicken. Then it hit me - Scotch Eggs! So, I made them from memory. And I left off the breadcrumb coating, only because I knew these would be fattening enough and the breadcrumbs (or in my case it would have been Panko) would have just held on to more of that fat. So just sausage. And really, isn't that enough?

These could not be easier. You take a hard boiled egg, then wrap it in sausage. There is a tip I can offer though; try to make the sausage coating as even as possible, and don't go too thin because it will "crack" during cooking since the sausage will shrink as the fat melts away. It's not a big deal I guess, but wouldn't look as pretty.  

I used my grill pan so that it would drain the fat a little as it ran off. I cooked these at 350 in the oven until the sausage was cooked through. If you overcook it, you will also have troubles with it cracking. The traditional cooking method is to deep fry these - and if you have a fryer - be my guest, I'm sure they'd be to die for! If you were going to coat them in breadcrumbs, you'd roll them in it after you apply the sausage. 

Fully cooked, golden brown. I served it with crispy potato casserole and a green salad.