I reeeallly like buffalo wings. Who doesn't? People who associate them with high calorie greasy bar food. Well, good news - they don't have to be bad for you. If you bake them and are sparing with the dressing (or find a good low calorie dressing, like fat free ranch) then they're pretty low in calories. How I make them is below.
2 lbs of chicken wings (around 20), I get them from Whole Foods 2 packets McCormick Original Buffalo Wing Seasoning Franks Original Red Hot 1 egg
So, we all know chicken isn't bad for you. The Franks Red Hot has ZERO calories per serving (unless you get mild, I once heard that the mild sauces are diluted with butter because the sauce is naturally spicy...but I can't confirm) and the seasoning has 150 calories a packet. Not bad, especially since you only end up using 1.5 packets. Also, use less if you're not too into the spice. I loooove spice, and these wings were so spicy it made our noses run. Just how I like it :-)
Dilute the egg with a little water and mix. Dip each wing in egg, then drudge in seasoning. Line the wings up in a baking dish and once all are drudged in seasoning, bake at 450 degrees for around 45 minutes. When out of the oven, sprinkle some Red Hot over them. Now take a whole bunch of paper towels to the table and enjoy!
My dad is a very good cook, and there are some things I always associate with him - dishes he perfected over time that were so delicious. A perfect example is pot roast. He gave me lots of options, depending on what I was looking for in my pot roast. This is how I made it:
Ingredients: 1 three lb chuck roast, tied Few tablespoons all purpose flour 2 yellow onions 3 cloves garlic 1 turnip 3 carrots 1 package diced portobello mushrooms (1 pint...could also use button mushrooms) 1 bottle of medium bodied fruity red wine (avoid using really something heavy on the oak flavor) 1 can of tomato sauce (just pureed tomato, different from marinara/pasta sauce), 29 ounces 1 can tomato paste - 6 ounces 1 fresh herb bouquet (parsley, thyme, oregano & rosemary - took a few springs of each, tied together) 1 package french onion soup mix
Roll your tied chuck roast in flour. Heat olive oil in a dutch oven (or large heavy bottomed saucepan with lid) over medium heat and brown roast on all sides - this will take around 20 minutes total. Leave on each side for a few minutes. Remove roast from pot, set aside.
Saute onions (add more olive oil if necessary) until wilted. Add crushed garlic and cook for another minute ish. Add mushrooms, carrots and turnip (all chopped). Cook for several minutes, then add roast back to pan. Add wine, tomato sauce, tomato paste, herbs and onion soup mix.
Cover the pot and reduce heat to simmer. Leave for 2-3 hours, however long it takes to easily stick a fork through the meat. Make sure to turn your roast half way through if it isn't totally submerged in the liquid.
Remove roast and set aside again. Cover with foil. Take out the herb bouquet and turn heat up and let sauce reduce to desired thickness. Slice meat, serve with mashed potatoes (recipe posted separately) and ladle sauce with veggies over the whole thing.
This is the roast, all ready to eat, out of the pot:
This is the sauce, after it has reached the desired consistency:
This recipe makes plenty of sauce, so ladle generously over your meat and potatoes!
I made mashed potatoes to serve with my pot roast, but I decided to start posting recipes separately, even if I make them together. My go to cooking gurus (Cooks Illustrated) usually recommend using Yukon Gold potatoes when making mashed potatoes, but I prefer regular old white potatoes...also known as Idaho or Russet. Recipe below (I made this up, no reference here!).
4 potatoes 2/3 cup whole milk 1/3 cup half and half 4 tablespoons melted butter 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella 2-3 minced/pressed garlic cloves salt and pepper to taste
A method I learned from Cooks Illustrated is to cook the potatoes in their skins, and peel later. Some think this is a pain as you're peeling when hot, but I've never had trouble preventing burning and I think it is easier than peeling the raw potatoes. The skin comes off much quicker. So, I cooked my potatoes in water in a covered pot over medium-high heat for around 25 minutes. You'll know when the potatoes are done when you can easily stick a fork all the way through. Drain water out of the pot and peel the hot potatoes. I do this by using two forks so I don't actually have to touch them.
Once peeled, return to pot and mash with 4 tablespoon butter (which will melt by itself, just add solid butter to pot), milk and half and half. The measurements are approximations, I just add little by little until desired consistency. Add garlic, salt, pepper and a little cheese. Stir, and serve!
I had a vision - pink cupcakes. Pink equals raspberries, and raspberries belong with chocolate. So, I turn to the Cake Bible for raspberry frosting, and Cooks Illustrated for the chocolate cupcakes.
You should always let the cake cool completely before frosting, and I find it is way easier to frost a cake when the frosting is freshly made. Just so you know.
Dark Chocolate Cupcakes, Cooksillustrated.com:
1 stick unsalted butter 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate 1/2 cup dutch processed cocoa 3/4 cup all purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 2 large eggs 3/4 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup sour cream
Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; heat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard-sized muffin pan (cups have 1/2-cup capacity) with baking-cup liners.
Combine butter, chocolate, and cocoa in medium heatproof bowl. Set bowl over saucepan containing barely simmering water; heat mixture until butter and chocolate are melted and whisk until smooth and combined. Set aside to cool until just warm to the touch.
Whisk flour, baking soda, and baking powder in small bowl to combine.
Whisk eggs in second medium bowl to combine; add sugar, vanilla, and salt and whisk until fully incorporated. Add cooled chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Sift about one-third of flour mixture over chocolate mixture and whisk until combined; whisk in sour cream until combined, then sift remaining flour mixture over and whisk until batter is homogenous and thick.
Divide batter evenly among muffin pan cups. Bake until skewer inserted into center of cupcakes comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes.
Frosting: from the Cake Bible, Neoclassic Buttercream with Raspberry Flavoring
6 large egg yolks ¾ cup sugar ½ cup corn syrup 2 cups unsalted butter, softened (really, really soft...butter can stay out of the fridge for a long time. Keep it out all day) 2 to 4 Tablespoons liqueur or eau-de-vie of your choice
Have ready a greased 1 cup heatproof glass measure near the range.
In a bowl beat the yolks with an electric mixer until light in color - this will take several minutes. Meanwhile, combine the sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan (preferably with a nonstick lining) and heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the syrup comes to a rolling boil. (The entire surface will be covered with large bubbles.) Immediately transfer the syrup to the glass measure to stop the cooking.
Pour a small amount of syrup over the yolks with the mixer turned off. Immediately beat at high speed for 5 seconds. Wait until batter cools - you don't want the eggs to get so hot that they scramble or something. Stop the mixer and add a larger amount of syrup. Beat at high speed for 5 seconds. Continue with the remaining syrup. For the last addition, use a rubber scraper to remove the syrup clinging to the glass measure. Continue beating until completely cool.
Gradually beat in the butter and, flavoring.
Raspberry flavoring:
Suspend 24 ounces of frozen, unsweetened raspberries over a strainer and let sit for several hours to collect juice. I used the help of a lamp: A lamp makes the process much, much quicker. Press the rest of the juice out with the back of a spoon - you should have around 1.5-2 cups by the end. Take 1 cup raspberry juice, reduce over medium heat until down to around a 1/4 cup. Mix back with the unreduced juice with 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and add to frosting to taste. I added around 1/2 a cup. You don't want to add so much that the consistency of the frosting will change.
Then, frost your cupcakes! My finished product, all ready to go:
As I'm full into the fall spirit, I wanted to make a pumpkin pie. So I did! It was delicious, and not too sweet. I like being able to taste the pumpkin! It annoys me when people dump tons of spices into the tasty pumpkin. I decided on the recipe from The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, Scribner 1998, page 198.
Again, I used the pie crust recipe that I learned in one of the classes I took with Leslie of Helen's Kitchen. I don't feel right sharing the recipe, but there are lots of good pie crust recipes out there! The good ones are surprisingly simple. I will say that the one of the tricks is that you have to keep the butter super cold, and don't process the dough too much. You should be able to see slivers of cold butter in your dough when you're done. When these slivers melts in the oven, it creates the flakiness. Yuum.
With my disclaimer out of the way, on to the pie!
1 pie crust recipe, rolled 1/4 inch thick
Drape over 9 inch glass pie pan, folding the overhanging crust under to make the walls of the pie crust thicker than the bottom.
4 (2-inch) gingersnaps 1/4 pecan halves
1 (15 ounce) can of unsweetened pumpkin puree (no added spices - the only ingredient should be pumpkin) 3/4 cup of light brown sugar, packed (author makes a note not to substitute dark brown sugar - will mask the flavor of the pumpkin) 2 teaspoons ground ginger 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 2/3 liquid cup milk 2/3 liquid cup heavy cream (make sure to read the ingredients of the cream, and if there is more than the one ingredient of cream, don't buy it and check a different brand) 3 large eggs 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Process the gingersnaps and pecans in a food processor until finely ground. Sprinkle over uncooked pie dough (in the pie pan) and press into dough with the back of a spoon.
In a medium saucepan, stir the pumpkin, spices, brown sugar and salt together and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Turn down heat to low and let cook for another 5 minutes (stirring constantly the whole time).
Scrape mixture into food processor and process for 1 minute. With the motor on, add milk and heavy cream. Add eggs one at a time, process for 5 seconds after each egg. With the 3rd egg, add the vanilla.
Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell and place on a cookie sheet as close to the bottom of the oven as you can. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until knife comes out mostly clean. Keep an eye on your pie and if the edges of the pie crust are getting too brown, cover with a ring of aluminum foil (just the outside, the center of the pie should be exposed).
I had some extra pie crust, so I rolled it out and cut out shapes (a leaf and a few pumpkins, to be exact) to put on top of my pie. I was a little overly excited to feed Doug some pie (after it cooled, of course) and I completely forgot to take a picture before I cut into it. Oh well, here is the pie - minus 1 slice!
Don't they look delicious? They are. I sometimes call them muffins, because the frosting (the Nutella) is on the inside. These are therefore really easy cupcakes to ship, so they were appropriate to send to NYC for oldest sister's bday. They were originally found by middle sister, Meredith.
Recipe:
1.5 sticks butter, softened 3/4 cup granulated sugar 3 large eggs 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour 1/4 tsp salt (omit if using salted butter) 2 tsp baking powder Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup
Preheat oven to 325F. Grease the muffin tin cups with some butter.
Cream together butter and sugar until light using hand held mixer, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains.
Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full. The batter will be thick. Top each cake with a dollop (a teaspoon or two) of Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick.
Bake cupcakes for about 20 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Makes 12 cupcakes.
I took my second class with Helen's Kitchen. It was called French Pastry and it was as awesome as it sounded! The baking instructors name is Leslie and the classes are out of her house in Belmont. Again, I won't share her recipes, except I will say that her buttercream is out of the Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It was the first buttercream I have ever really looooved and is absolutely my new and only buttercream recipe. I kind of want to make a cake right now.
Here are some pictures!
This is called a roulade - it was chocolate sheet cake that we layered with a coffee buttercream, rolled and then covered with chocolate ganache. Oh man it was delicious.
Next up - a Paris-Brest:
This is a very classic french pastry (apparently). Most are made very large, but we made ours small enough so that one oven could accomodate several at once. It was created by a french pastry chef in honor of a bicycle race between Paris and Brest. It is shaped after the wheel of a bike! So I liked it even more! :-) They're the same type of dough as eclairs and similar filling, but topped with chopped almonds and confectioners sugar. Some even put chocolate on top and raspberries in the middle. It was very tasty!
Finally - look what I can make!! Homemade eclairs and puff pastries!
Turns out, they're the same thing in different form. They were lots of fun, and not hard but lots of steps. Everyone should start being nice to me because I'm already planning my Christmas box of treats to give out :-)
