Happy Valentine’s Day

I don’t know what it is, but I love Valentine’s Day. Not for the “go out for a big, fancy dinner and get dozens of roses” part of the day. I love the pinks and reds. I love that everyone is sweet and giving. I love giving small gifts to brighten up a friend’s day. I also absolutely love the chocolate part of the day.  My husband and I have a new favorite dessert…Baked Hot Chocolate. They are perfect little molten chocolate cakes.

I made it with my sister over Christmas and we’ve made it at least five times since. It tastes like you spent hours slaving over it.

It’s delicious.

And the middle is perfect, ooey, gooey, deliciousness.

 

The recipe is from Scharffen Berger’s The Essence of Chocolate. It is a must buy type of cookbook.  We put ice cream on top, but a little homemade whipped cream would be great too.

 

And, if you want to peruse some Valentine loveliness, hop on over to our Pinterest page.

Have a wonderful Love Day!

Recipe:

Ingredients:
9 ounces 62% semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
4 large eggs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
Whipped cream

Directions:

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Arrange ovenproof coffee cups or mugs or 8-ounce ramekins in a baking or roasting pan.
2. Place the chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler set over gently simmering water, and whisk occasionally until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and set aside.
3. Stir the eggs and sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer then set over the simmering water and stir until warm to the touch. Place the bowl on the stand mixer and, using the whisk attachment, beat for 3 to 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Remove from the mixer, and fold the eggs into the chocolate mixture until it is light and smooth.
4. Spoon the batter into the cups. Add enough very hot water to the baking pan to come halfway up the sides of the cups. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. The baked hot chocolates will be done when the tops lose their glossy finish. A wooden skewer inserted in the top will emerge clean, but batter toward the bottom of the cup will still be very moist.
5. Carefully remove the cups from the pan. The cakes can be served warm, at room temperature, or covered and refrigerated for up to 1 day. To reheat, bring to room temperature and place in a preheated 350-degree F oven for 5 minutes, or until warm.
6. Serve topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

Homemade Calzones

Do you have those people in your life that just amaze you in the kitchen? That just whip up something delicious like it’s nothing? For me, it was always my mom. I wouldn’t really notice or appreciate it until she wasn’t there and my dad was in charge of dinner. Those nights we either had grilled cheese sandwiches or hamburgers.

But as I get older, it’s kind of fun to see which of my friends are that way. Especially now that we are all growing up, getting married and having kids. Maybe it’s the kids thing that does it for you. On our trip to Colorado for Christmas, I got to stop off in Nebraska and spend some time with my best friend from high school. We got into town right before dinner and my friend, who was also packing up the family for their trip to Colorado and making sure her precious little kid was fed, washed and put to bed, whipped up a delicious dinner of calzones.

I always thought calzones were something super difficult and should be left to the pizza professionals. But she made it look so easy that I made her give me the recipe to share with you guys.

Let’s start with the filling. She uses her mom’s spaghetti sauce (sweet, right?!) as the base. Some things to remember as you make the sauce:

1. Letting it simmer for an hour is the key! I am really not patient enough to do this usually, but it was definitely worth it.
2. If you are a big garlic fan, chop the garlic up at the beginning and add it in with the onions as you brown the meat. If not, or if it gives you heartburn, add in a whole clove as the sauce simmers and remove it with the bay leaf at the end.
3. If you don’t eat red meat, or want a variation, it’s great with ground turkey or you can add in more diced tomatoes as a substitute for the meat. It’s great either way.
4. Lastly, since it was going into calzones, I chopped up a pile a mushrooms and bell peppers to add in at the end.

 

Candy’s Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:
1lb ground beef
1/2 onion, chopped
2-3 (14.5 oz) cans tomato sauce (I used 2 cans tomato sauce and 1 can crushed tomatoes)
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp salt
Pepper to taste
1 garlic clove
1 bay leaf

Directions:
Brown ground beef with onions, drain. Add tomato sauce, italian seasoning, salt, pepper, garlic and bay leaf. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Now, on to the crust. My friend started out with a recipe from allrecipes.com, but has tweaked it over time as she figured out what works best. This recipe is great as regular pizza dough too. Some things to think about:

1. If you are using it as pizza dough, allow the dough to rise for 20 minutes, roll it out and then let it rise for another 20 minutes. You don’t have to let it rise for the calzones.
2. For pizzas, pre-bake the crust for 10 minutes before putting on the toppings.
3. I didn’t add the sugar and it still tasted great.
4. My friend has a great Mexican pizza variation. She first bakes the crust completely and then instead of typical red sauce and mozzarella, she puts refried black beans, Mexican cheese mix, and chopped bell peppers and mushrooms. Then, after she bakes it again to melt the cheese and heat the toppings, she tips it off with chopped tomatoes, cilantro, salsa and a little dollop Greek yogurt…sounds delicious, right?

Ok, now on to the actual recipe.

Pizza Dough

Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp white sugar
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)

Directions:
Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. Mix in oil and warm water. Spread out on a large pizza pan. Top as desired.
Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

 

I also ended up throwing together a salad to go with the calzones. Want to know my secret to a quick and easy salad? Caramelized almonds.

They are quick and easy to make and you can store them in an air-tight container in the pantry. I like to make mine in a non-stick pan because I dread cleaning dishes. I don’t really have a scientific way to make them. I add just enough sugar that I think will coat the almonds. So, say for a 1/4 cup of almonds, I would use 2 tablespoons of sugar. You can always add more later. In a nonstick skillet, combine the almonds and the sugar over medium-hi heat. Stirring frequently, allow the sugar to melt and caramelized until it is golden. Remove from heat and a place the almonds on wax paper or in a glass container with a lid. Allow to cool. I like to put them in a glass container. That way I can shake them up when they are cool and break them up into smaller clumps. Store in an airtight container. You can also add them to the tops of desserts.

Comfort Food and Itty Bitty Grilled Cheese

So, I had a post ready that was all about nutritious snacks and how one of my goals for the year was to eat lighter,especially after the holidays and a week in Texas that was filled with sour cream enchiladas and margaritas. But, now that the sun has officially left Chicago and the news said the snow will probably keep falling for another 12 hours, all I want to do is make comfort food. Oh, and yes, the photo to the left is today, the one on the right, is a typical sunny day here. That is a lot of snow coming down.

Back to comfort food, I made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Itty bitty ones. I had grabbed a demi-baguette from Trader Joes yesterday for garlic bread and put the left-overs to good use as mini-grilled cheese sandwiches. And, it’s official. I am in love with Edmond Fallot mustard. I’ve put it on everything lately. I made paninis the other night for dinner just to have the mustard. I also had a couple different kinds of cheese around, so one of the sandwiches had sliced gouda and the other sandwich had a mild goat cheese on it. But, the trick to amazing grilled cheese sandwiches is actually the topping. First, spread a little butter on the bread, and then sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on top. It makes a perfect crust.

I also grabbed out some of the spiced jams I have around here. I love a good savory and sweet mixture. I paired the goat cheese sandwich with the cherry fennel…delish. I paired the gouda sandwich with the strawberry basil…not my favorite. I couldn’t let the strawberry basil not get any love, so I made a couple extra pieces of bread with just the butter/parmesan mixture and put them in the Panini press until they were nice and crispy. Now, the parmesan/butter mixture with the strawberry basil…ooh yum.

Oh, and by the way, those paninis I made the other night were delicious. I grilled some red peppers and mushrooms on the Panini press first, then grilled some chicken with a delicious herb mix, and then layered them all on bread with spinach and mustard and cheese. And, I used the grilled cheese trick with the parmesan crust on top. To make a vegetarian version, just grill a portabello mushroom instead of the chicken.

I think you all get the idea that snow and me in the house with a lot of food do not mix well. I am now off to make a pot roast. It seemed fitting for today. While the roast is cooking I really will start thinking about my “eating light” resolution. I’ll probably make the carrot/ginger/miso dip that I mentioned for New Year’s Eve. I would say that it would take the place of the peppermint bark and peppermint truffles that I’ve been snacking on lately. But who am I kidding? I’ll eat all of them.

A New Year…

First of all, Happy New Year! I don’t know why, but to me, a new year is like that feeling you get on an early Saturday morning when you are staring out to a bright and sunny city, sipping a delicious cup of coffee and nibbling on a freshly baked muffin. It’s that invigorating feeling where anything is possible today. Everything feels fresh and new and full of opportunity.

So, with that feeling, that’s exactly what I did today. I actually made a couple of cappuccinos. My sister gave us a Nespresso machine for Christmas and I am in love with it. It’s so easy. But now I just need to get a couple of lessons from the baristas at Intelligentsia on how they do the cute hearts and flowers on the lattes. And, I baked the gluten-free, sugar-free muffin mix from the shop. I personally think it’s hard to have all of the right flours around to bake gluten-free items, so having the mix makes eating gluten free so much easier. It is a basic mix so that you can add whatever you fancy. I fancied some blueberries and added in some lemon zest. I thought about making them plain with a little sugar baked on top. I know that defeats the sugar-free part, but I was going to add some of the cherry-fennel jam too, so sugar was already in the picture. Oh, and for the bright and sunny city, I snapped a picture for you from my apartment. Everyone keeps telling me that the sun doesn’t exist in Chicago during the winter, but I haven’t quite experienced that yet. But still keeping my fingers crossed it stays this way for a bit longer!

We have gotten a lot of great press on the mix too. Check out the post from The Gluten Free Girl’s Guide To Chicago. She made her’s with cinnamon and walnuts. Have you all tried another variation?

Happy New Year!

Hope you are all enjoying the holidays! With New Year’s Eve this weekend, I’ve been perusing pinterest for delicious, festive, bubbly drinks to make. Do you have any drinks that you’ve been waiting to try until this weekend? Or a typical concoction you make every year? Like I said last week, we’ve been making pom-poms on a regular basis lately, so I’m trying to branch out. I can’t wait to try this Frizzante Mojito from Martha Stewart. You can get the recipe here. For other recipes I’ve been looking at lately, you can check out my pinterest board here.

And, while I love all of the decadent foods at holiday parties, I tend to try and find at least something healthy on the table, which seems to be few and far between. So, here’s a carrot, ginger, miso dip that is healthy, yet delicious so you can it bring to any party. My sister found it on Goop and I’ve been making it for every social gathering ever since. It’s always a big hit and I usually keep some aside so that I can snack on it throughout the week. It was meant to be a salad dressing, but I use it as a dip all the time. We’ve also made lettuce wraps with julienned veggies and this as the sauce. You can find the full recipe here. Enjoy!

Sugar Cookies

We are headed home to Colorado this week for Christmas and my dad’s #1 request was sugar cookies. I think that might have been his favorite part of being Santa Clause when we were little…he always got an entire plate of cookies all to himself on Christmas Eve. Since we are driving this year, I figured it might be easier to make them before we go so that while we are there we can focus on all of the other cooking and baking that usually accompanies Christmas with my family. So that’s what my weekend held for me…and my amazing husband.

I used to always use the recipe out of the Alpha-Bakery Cookbook from Gold Medal Flour. Don’t judge. My mom gave me that cookbook when I was little and it has the best banana bread recipe ever. I also thought that it had the best sugar cookies too, until my husband’s aunt gave me her recipe. They have just the right balance of butter and sugar, making them not too sweet since you’ll be adding piles of frosting on later. And, if you make them a little thicker, they stay nice and soft. Here’s the grandmother trick to soft, fluffy cookies – be sure that your butter is super soft and take the time when creaming together the sugar and butter to get it really fluffy.

The only downfall is that I not only made them thicker this year, but I also used larger cookie cutters, which really cut down on the number of cookies the batch made. I might bake another batch before Christmas…so with that thought, do you all have a recipe you’ve used for years? Do you have a gluten free version that is still nice and doughy and not too flaky? I’ve been tempted to use a Thomas Keller recipe but I actually might make those as a slice and bake with a little vanilla bean sea salt on top of them. Doesn’t that sound delish with a cup of tea on a cold afternoon? Or mulled wine…

I’m also open for suggestions on the frosting. Per my dad, it must have almond in it. So my go-to is the tried and true powdered sugar frosting. You know the one…a bit of melted butter, a bit of milk, a bit of almond extract and then enough powdered sugar to make the consistency you want. Very scientific.

My go-to sugar cookie recipe is below. Enjoy and let me know if you have another oh so delicious recipe.

Oh, and if you want to add a little bubbly while you work, we created a new drink last year…the Pom-Pom…a bit of pomegranate juice with champagne and add in pomegranate seeds. They continue to bob up and down in the bubbles and look oh so festive.

Cheers!

Sugar Cookies

1 stick butter – softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon half and half or light cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, with electric mixer at medium speed (I use my Kitchen-Aid because it’s easier) beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg, cream and vanilla. Beat until well mixed.

At low speed, gradually beat in 1 cup flour, baking powder and salt. With wooden spoon, stir in remaining flour until smooth and well blended (This is where my husband comes in handy).

Form dough into a roll and cover in wax paper or saran wrap. Refrigerate dough several hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease cookie sheets (or I like to use my silpat). On a lightly floured surface, cut a portion off of the ball of dough and roll it out to 1/8 inch thickness. Using cookie cutters, cut out the rolled dough.

Place cutout on prepared cookie sheets, 1 inch apart.

Bake 7 minutes, or until lightly golden and firm, remove trays. Cool on wire rack, store in airtight container.

Repeat to bake other half of dough. Re-roll all the trimmings of dough and cut and bake.

Makes about 3-4 dozen, depending on size of cookie cutters.

And We’re Back

Well hello friends. You’ve probably noticed that we took a bit of a hiatus from the blog. But have no fear–we.are.back. And, we come bearing good news. We have lots of good stuff lined up for you. Right now, we are here with some great ideas for the holidays. We will first tackle the most important recipe of the season…sugar cookies…and we will then dive into some party essentials. But as for the new year, we have some big surprises up our sleeves. And, it doesn’t stop there. We also want to hear from you. What would you like to learn? What is your inner foodie dying to cook? What kind of baked goods have you been wanting to eat, but need them in a gluten free version? Let us know in the comments below!
From the team at Serious Gourmet, we hope you enjoy the holiday season and we look forward to this exciting new year with you.
Salut!

A Sauce Of My Own

Over the last few years I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the different supermarket pasta sauces. I feel like the Goldilocks of ready-to-eat sauces: this one is too bland; this one is too sour; this one is…not meant for human consumption; and so on it goes.

I started to experiment. And for the same time as it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta, you could have a sauce that is delicious and flavorful. I’ve chosen to use canned crushed tomatoes with basil for the ease and time-saving factors. You could substitute regular tomatoes and chopped basil, but I’m just not that hardcore a cook.

There will be no going back to supermarket sauces because this pasta sauce recipe is juuussst right.

Sauce
2 28-oz. cans of Meijer Organics Tomatoes, Crushed, with Basil
1 tablespoon grapeseed oil
1 to 2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 to 2 tablespoons onion powder
1 to 2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon ground or crushed oregano
¼ cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground black pepper

In a Dutch oven or an 8-quart stockpot, heat the grapeseed oil for 1 minute. Take caution when adding the crushed tomatoes (the hot oil may splatter). Add all the remaining dry ingredients and stir. Cover the pot but leave the lid slightly askew to control the steam venting from cooking. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring often. Continue to taste the sauce and adjust the flavor to your liking.

Unless you like A LOT of sauce on your pasta, this recipe should yield plenty for one pound of cooked pasta plus allow you to store a batch or two for later use.

An Inexact Science

Do you have a person in your life who doesn’t cook with a cookbook, but everything comes out delicious? The a-little-pinch-of-this, a-skosh-of-that cook who leaves you befuddled when you try to copy her recipe?

My great confounder is my mother. (That is such a loaded statement, but for my purposes here, I refer to her culinary talents.) There is this baked chicken drumstick dish she makes that is just so simple and yet delicious. It is such a comfort food for me and my children enjoy it tremendously. When my daughter was much younger she had corn on the cob, and in her toddler-minded logic when she requested this drumstick meal, she asked for the “chicken on the cob”—and that’s how this dish got its name in our house.

Chicken On The Cob

4 lbs. chicken drumsticks (about 15 medium to large drumsticks)
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
¼ cup oyster sauce

Mix all the ingredients in a Ziploc bag and let the drumsticks marinate in the bag overnight. Spread the drumsticks on a baking sheet. Discard any extra marinade. Bake at 400º F for 1 hour 15 minutes, and be sure to turn the drumsticks half way through the cooking time. Depending on your preferences for a more crispy chicken or not, you may want to let the cooking time go a little bit longer.

What is your favorite comfort food?

Contingency Plan

With wood to knock upon nowhere to be found, it was inevitable that when I said, “Oh, I haven’t been sick in a really long time. I feel like Typhoid Mary because I’m the carrier who doesn’t get sick, but everyone else around me falls ill,” Karma would see my braggadocios ways and smite me…and smote me good She did.

My 2-year-old had a fever for several days and then an ear infection. After that I caught her little bug and my illness manifested into strep throat. The radiating pain in my throat was so sharp and intense, and my glands were so swollen that I couldn’t move my neck. My neck!

For those of you who do not have small children or are not around small children, what you need to know that we veteran parents know is despite their diminutive statures, little kids are thee most efficient uber germ incubators, able to turn an innocuous singular germ into a weapon of mass infection. To you I say, approach with a hazmat suit, or at least a face mask.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But I remember 15 years ago babysitting for a neighbor’s toddler. He had the sniffles (just sniffles, mind you). He started to sneeze but I wasn’t able to turn my face away fast enough and got a straight-on shot of all his germy goodness. After a few days, I was down for the count…for a week!

So, back to present day. My daughter finished her course of antibiotics last week and I continue to take mine. So far the older two kids haven’t shown signs of illness and I breathe a sigh of relief. Until, that is, the dreaded note from school that a case of strep was confirmed in my son’s classroom. Now I am back to holding my breath. (Karma, if you are listening, pretty please don’t strike twice.)

It’s coming up on a decade since I’ve been a stay-at-home mom, and it’s a no-brainer that when the children get sick, it is my duty to take care of them while my husband continues to go off to work. My friends and I have often kidded that moms aren’t allowed to get sick because then everything just stops functioning. Of course, that’s not true—it functions, just not as efficiently as what we’re used to.

The arrangement of my nursing the kids back to health while my husband does his work has been fine because it’s worked, but what happens when it doesn’t? (See the aforementioned Typhoid Mary statement.)

What’s my contingency plan? My back up plan? My Plan B? Huh…it seems I don’t have one because I am Plan B (and Plan C, Plan D, etc.). I’m going to have to rethink this one.

And while I ponder a solution that works for my family, I put it out there to you: who cares for the primary care provider in the family when s/he is the one to fall ill?

What is your Plan B?

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