Batter-Splattered

Delicious culinary thoughts

Today …

... trading someone half of my extra goat cheese for half of their extra shallots...

... spending my lunch hour in a soft chair, the sun shining in through the window, reading my book, and sipping a cappuccino from Sidestreet Espresso alongside a square of very dark chocolate with a message on the inside of the wrapper: “Count the stars.”

... hungering over a menu hanging in a restaurant window while walking through blustery downtown: warm mushroom salad with butternut squash, steak and Guinness pie, bangers and mash…

Taco Salad

I have this guilty pleasure of a salad that I crave on a regular basis -- my favorite version of it includes crushed Doritos and Kraft Sweet Honey Catalina dressing.

I KNOW. Gasp.

It's just so good.

I am obviously not a food snob (not every day anyway). But at least I'm not hooked on the taco salad recipe with the tater tots.

Although.

I do love me a tater tot.

Last night, I cleaned the recipe up a little -- added lots of organic vegetables, crumbled cheddar Pop Chips instead of Doritos, sauteed up the leanest ground turkey, stirred in kidney beans BUT! I'm still clinging to that catalina dressing (it's the high fructose corn syrup that calls to me). I can't help myself. I don't pour it on anything but this salad and it makes me all nostalgic when I do -- it reminds me of all those steak restaurant salad bars I went to as a kid in the 1980's.

Taco Salad

6 servings

1 lb lean ground turkey

Taco seasoning, to taste (this mix will make more than enough -- 1 T chili powder,  1/4 t garlic powder, 1/4 t onion powder, 1/4 t crushed red pepper flakes, 1/4 t dried oregano, 1/2 t paprika, 1 1/2 t ground cumin, 1 t sea salt, 1 t black pepper)

One can of beans, drained and rinsed (kidney, black, etc)

3 heads organic romaine lettuce, sliced or torn, then rinsed and spun dry

One bunch of organic green onions, sliced thinly

One organic green bell pepper, chopped

6 organic carrots, peeled and sliced thinly

3 organic tomatoes, chopped

3 c shredded cheese (cheddar, monterey jack, etc)

Tortilla chips

French dressing

Cook turkey in large skillet over medium heat until evenly browned, then add beans and stir in taco seasoning to taste. cook until heat through then remove from heat.

While turkey is cooking, chop and slice all of the vegetables and place in separate small bowls.

Let everyone build their own salad, crush tortilla chips over the top, and toss with dressing.

Photos Friday

Beautiful things that passed my kitchen counter this week but didn't necessarily make it into a post about a recipe... sometimes seasonal, always delicious.

Organic pears that were meant to go into a pear crisp but they looked so tempting sitting there, we ate them plain and un-crisped. Who needs a crumb topping and vanilla ice cream anyway?

Not so delicious, but very handy:

And a sunset thrown in for good measure. We have such good sunsets here this time of year. And beautiful light -- the pears and eggs above were photographed in the late afternoon light that comes pouring into my kitchen this time of year, making everything look as if it's lit from within.

Not a bad view to look at while eating dinner.

Smothered Chicken -- a reason to exercise

As I was telling one of my readers Val the other day in my comments section (if ever there was a person who needs a blog, it's Val -- she's a hoot. Hey Val!), I will gladly hike miles uphill if it means I can come home and indulge in delicious food without doubling my size.

The other day that's exactly what I did (hiking, not doubling). And I did it all for a heaping bowl of Smothered Chicken. Here are scenes from my hike which, as you will see, was hardly a chore when surrounded by so much beauty:

A word to the wise: if you ever get a chance to eat one of these, DON'T DO IT:

They're soapberries (at least I think they are) and my berry book says they're edible 'but not preferred.' Whatever could they mean by 'not preferred,' I wondered to myself. So, ever the adventurous eater, I popped one in my mouth. Big mistake. They tasted like a combination of stink bug and soap. I couldn't spit it out fast enough. But aren't they pretty?

Juniper berries:

Eklutna Lake in all it's glacier-y glory:

Highbush cranberries:

We also found a fully-loaded bush of late-season red currants. They were ice-cold and their juice was a bit slushy with frostiness. We scarfed down handfuls of them. So GOOD.

See the sun's rays filtering lightly through the thin clouds?:

It was absolutely gorgeous that day. And we hiked up and up and up. I slept really well that night and my legs ached for days afterward.

But now, enough about me and my hike. How about that smothered chicken...

Smothered Chicken is the second recipe I've tried out of my new favorite library cookbook, Back to the Table by Art Smith. Art calls this dish 'an icon of Southern cooking... it is the perfect comfort food.'

I would agree with him on that. It was wonderful to come home to these leftovers after that hike.

There's chicken, turkey sausage, a brothy sauce, and you can serve it over rice or mashed potatoes. It's an excellent choice for this time of year. Hearty and warming and wholesome. I made the recipe as written with a whole chicken cut into parts, just for the sake of accuracy. Next time, I'm going to use boneless, skinless thighs as I'm somewhat averse to picking meat off bones -- I'm funny that way.

Here's the recipe:

Smothered Chicken

Serves four

5 T vegetable oil

Four-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces, skin removed

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/3 c all-pupose flour

3 fresh turkey sausages, casings removed (8 oz.)

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 celery stalk, finely chopped

1 small green bell pepper, seeded and chopped

2 c chicken broth

1 medium tomato, seeded and chopped

Chopped fresh parsley for garnish

Cooked white rice or mashed potatoes on the side

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until very hot. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Place flour in a shallow bowl and roll chicken in flour to coat, shaking off any excess. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the flour for later. In batches, cook the chicken, turning occasionally, until browned on all sides, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat in the skillet. Add onion, celery, and bell pepper to the skillet. Cook, stirring often, until the vegetables are browned, about 8 minutes. Sprinkle with the reserved flour, mix well, and cook until the flour is browned, about 2 minutes. Gradually whisk in the broth, and return the chicken and sausage to the skillet. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the chicken shows no sign of pink when pierced in the thickest part, about 40 minutes. During the last 5 minutes, sprinkle the tomato on top.

Transfer the chicken to a deep platter. Skim the fat off the surface of the sauce and season with salt and pepper to taste. At this point, I stirred in a couple more tablespoons of flour to make the sauce more like a gravy. Pour sauce over chicken and sprinkle with parsley.

Serve with rice or mashed potatoes.

Turkey Shepherd's Pie

Weekends, lovely weekends. I spent mine winnowing clothes from my closet and listing a whole bunch on eBay (so I can go out and buy something new?). Buying new work clothes for the husband. Oh, and a new cellphone too -- note: cellphones and the washing machine do not mix. Laughing, as he takes his new work clothes out of the dryer and snuggles up with them happily and warmly on the couch like a kid who insists on sleeping with his new shoes resting on his pillow. Apparently, new Carhartts for him, it's like new cashmere for me.

What an appropriate time of year to cook up something like a shepherd's pie. This recipe is from that library book I keep talking about -- one of these days I'll move on to the second book I checked out, but not quite yet. I'm still lingering over this one.

I just looked shepherd's pie up at Wikipedia and, boy, did I ever open a can of worms, wiggly and wriggly enough to rival even the pasty/pastie post a few days ago -- Finnish, Cornish, Irish, English, they all lay claim to cooking up the pasty first. Well, there's no controversy over where the so-named shepherd's pie comes from -- it's a traditional English dish, traditionally made with lamb. Meat and vegetables on the bottom. Mashed potatoes on top. Roasted in the oven. A good way to make leftovers more appealing. Just as good when starting from scratch. What's not to like about the shepherd's pie?

So the British have their sheperd thing going on and people all over the world riff on the pie and give it a new name. In North America, it's traditionally made with ground beef and corn and called a cottage pie or a cowboy pie. The British concur -- if it's made with beef, it's a cottage pie. If it's made with fish it's called a fisherman's pie. If it's made with a cream sauce then it's an admiral's pie (I think the admirals are onto something -- must look up a recipe for that). French Canadians have their own version called a pâté chinois. And then you have your shepherdess pie which is vegetarian.

To further muddy the waters, my shepherd's pie is made with ground turkey. Certainly not a sheherd's pie to a traditionalist but don't knock it till you try it. Ground turkey is less expensive than lamb, and less fattening than beef. It's packed with lean protein and vegetables.

The filling:

The cheesy mashed potatoes:

Assembled and sprinkled with more cheese and ready to go in the oven:

All finished:

Twas good! Here's my version of Art Smith's recipe -- I cut the recipe for the filling in half but made a whole recipe of mashed buttermilk potatoes, added some rutabaga because I had one in the fridge, added cheese to the mashed potatoes and sprinkled more on top for good measure... there are endless possibilities for this recipe! And call me crazy (go ahead) but I think boiled cubes of rutabaga taste pretty good all on their own. A few made it into the frying pan. I scarfed down the rest.

Turkey Shepherd's Pie

Serves four

2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

1 small rutabaga, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

1 pound ground turkey

1 cup chopped onion

1 carrot, peeled and cubed

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

Two roma tomatoes, chopped

1 c frozen peas

1 t chile powder

1/2 t cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 c buttermilk

1 c shredded Cheddar cheese

Bring a pot of salted water to boil and add rutabagas. Cook until just tender. Remove from pot  with a slotted spoon and add potatoes to same boiling water, cooking until just tender. Drain in a colander and set aside. I boiled the rutabagas separate from the potatoes because they're kind of hard to tell apart if they're all thrown together -- I wanted the rutabaga in the filling and the potatoes mashed. I chopped the rutabagas into smaller chunks once they cooled off a little.

Meanwhile, cook turkey in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until turkey  loses its pinkness, about 7 minutes, breaking up meat with your spatula. Add onion, carrots, celery, and garlic and cook until vegetables soften, about 5 minutes. Sitr in tomatoes, peas, rutabaga, chile powder and cumin and bring to a simmer. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spoon turkey mixture into a large pie plate. Mash the potatoes with buttermilk, add some shredded cheese and season with salt and pepper. Spread mashed potatoes over turkey and sprinkle with more cheese. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until cheese is melted and browned.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge -- Quick and Easy Pumpkin Pie Bars

   

Michelle at Je Mange la Ville is hosting the October installment of a monthly event called Weekend Cookbook Challenge and this month's theme is, appropriately enough, Halloween. Anything goes -- pumpkins, root vegetables, snacks for a Halloween party, etc. She's not picky.

It just so happens that pumpkin is one of my very favorite foods in the whole wide world so I plopped down on the floor next to my shelf of cookbooks and cracked each of them open one by one in search of a recipe I hadn't tried before. I was feeling adventurous and wanted something new.

I found just the thing in a cookbook I scored for $3.99 years ago in the bargain books at Borders -- Heartland Baking from the Midwest's Best Cooks.

I removed the price tag from the cover right before taking the photo, by the way -- I didn't want you thinking I was a walking encyclopedia of prices paid for each and every book I own. I can do that with my clothes though! Everything I've tried out of this book has been top-notch. Not surprising, considering each recipe won some prize or another at some state fair or another. This is one of those cookbooks you pick up and even though it's nothing slick or fancy, just looking at the photos and the recipes assures you it's going to be good. Lovely-sounding sample recipes:

Sour Cream Nutmeg Softies

Minnesota Wild Rice Bread

Linda's Lemony Prairie Cake

Mary Todd Lincoln's Cinnamon Cake

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

Go-Anywhere Rhubarb Squares

The recipe I baked was Quick and Easy Pumpkin Pie Bars. Ordinarily, if a recipe calls for a starter ingredient of a boxed cake mix, well, I just keep on flipping those pages -- it seems like cheating to me.  I'm more of a make-it-from-scratcher. But I made an exception here because the recipe sounded so good and the photo looked even better.

You add melted butter and an egg to the cake mix to make a thick dough -- almost like cookie dough. Spread most of it into a crust on the bottom of your pan, add a layer of pumpkin pie filling...

... then dot the top with more of the cake mix dough. I'm embarassed to say how much I enjoyed the faux-vanilla-butter scent of the cake mix wafting from the oven as this baked. It's official -- if loving the smell of yellow cake mix is wrong, then I don't wanna be right. The scent dimishes after awhile though and -- well, this is an excellent recipe. The crust and the topping gets plump and crispy and chewy while still maintaining its crustyness on the bottom layer.

The recipe recommends serving it with whipped cream sprinkled with pumpkin pie spices. Instead, I whipped the spices into the whip cream along with powdered sugar, so the result is studded prettily with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.

These bars won first place in the children's bars category at the Harvest Baking Contest in New Albany, Indian. And they got a ringing endorsement from my husband who said, "You can make this any old time."

Quick and Easy Pumpkin Pie Bars

1 package 2-layer-size yellow cake mix

1/2 c butter, melted and cooled

3 eggs

1 15 oz. can pumpkin

1 5 oz can (or 2/3 c) evaporated milk

1/2 c packed brown sugar

2 T sugar

2 T butter, softened

Whipped cream

Pumpkin pie spice, as follows:

1 T cinnamon

1 t ginger

1/4 t cloves

1/4 t nutmeg

Combine dry cake mix, melted butter, and ONE egg. Beat until combined. SET ASIDE ONE CUP of the cake-mix mixture.

Spread remaining cake-mix mixture in an ungreased 13x9x2 baking pan. Press to form an even crust.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat together the remaining eggs, the pumpkin, evaporated milk, brown sugar, and 2 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice. Pour pumpkin mixture over the crust in prepared pan.

Combine the reserved cake mix mixture, the sugar, the 2 T softened butter and the cinnaomon. Dot evenly over the pumpkin mixture. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes or till a wooden toothpick inserted neart the center comes out clean.

Cool in pan on wire rack. Cut into triangles or squares. Serve with whipped cream with pumpkin pie spice whipped in or sprinkled on top.