Shrimp Mosca

Sweet Texas Gulf Shrimp are a treat whether you boil, broil, bake, or fry them.  This skillet of spicy shrimp served with rice is just as perfect for a special guest dinner as for a casual family gathering.  I cooked Shrimp Mosca first from a recipe found in one of my Louisiana cookbooks:  Shadows on the Teche.  In New Orleans everyone knows of  Mosca’s restaurant, owned and operated by the Mosca family. Its claim to fame is that it serves  THE BEST ITALIAN  food in the South.  It reminds me of my recipe for Singapore style Chili shrimp because traditionally the shrimp are prepared and served with the shells on, with the messy fun of peeling at the table and having the sauce to dunk your bread in. In this version of Shrimp Mosca, I peel and devein the shrimp before cooking.  The addition of bread crumbs does soak up some of the sauce but gives a delicious crusty topping.

2 lbs. shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 stick of butter,

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 1/2 teaspoon red pepper

5 garlic cloves, crushed and minced

2  teaspoons fresh thyme

1 Tablespoon fresh rosemary, leaves stripped and minced

1 teaspoon celery salt

1 cup bread crumbs

Set oven to 400 degrees.

Peel and devein shrimp and place in large baking dish coated with cooking spray.  Put all ingredients escept the shrimp and bread crumbs in a pan and simmer on low for about 5 minutes without bringing to a boil.  Pour sauce over shrimp and sprinkle with bread crumbs.  Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Serve with rice and crusty French bread.

Leek, Kale, and Red Pepper Quiche

I have always like to plan meals by using ingredients I already have in the refrigerator, freezer, or pantry.  I dislike wasting food, and try to be creative in using up our perishables.  So last Saturday when I was putting together a late breakfast, I made this quiche because we had leeks, kale and red pepper.  I have used leeks in quiche and tarts before, and certainly red pepper is a common enough addition, but I wasn’t sure how well we would like kale for breakfast.  Turns out we liked it very much.  This would also be a wonderful light lunch or supper with the addition of a salad.  The fresh vegetables were beautiful as I chopped and wilted them.

I used a prepared pie crust since I had one in the refrigerator, but you could certainly make your own.  The finished product smelled so good our mouths were watering as we sliced it.  I garnished with a nasturtium leaf and flower.

Leek, Kale, and Red Pepper Quiche

4 fresh eggs
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon dried French thyme
1 teaspoon dried mustard
1 cup shredded cheddar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large leek or 3 small leeks,  sliced very thin
3 cups kale, sliced very thin
1 sweet red pepper, seeded and chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
nutmeg

Saute the leeks in the olive oil for 2 minutes. Add kale and red pepper and saute another 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Whisk eggs, add to milk, flour and seasonings in a bowl, stir in cheese. Spread vegetable mixture in crust. Pour egg/milk/cheese mixture over. Sprinkle lightly with nutmeg.  Bake at 375 for 40 minutes, or until golden brown and knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Navajo Avocado Rice

There are versions of avocado rice in several cookbooks and a number of internet sites.   I made it the first time from a recipe in the Houston Chronicle in 1997, where someone  had won a recipe contest.  I have posted my adaptation of the recipe, with ingredients listed as I have cooked it for 26 years!  My youngest son recently called to ask me how to make it!  I always consider that a big compliment.

1 Tablespoon butter

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 medium sweet onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup uncooked Basmati rice

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon dried Turkish oregano

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

14 1/2 ounce can chicken broth

1 avocado

Heat butter and oil in 2-quart pan.  Saute onion and garlic until onion is tender. Add rice and stir constantly about 3 minutes, until rice looks milky and opague.  Add spices and broth and bring to a simmer.  Cover, reduce heat, cook for 20 minutes and all liquid is absorbed. When rice is tender, remove from heat and fluff with a fork. . Peel, pit, and dice avocado and add to rice mixture. Toss gently to mix, let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Pasta and Peas in Lemon Cream Sauce

Pasta and Peas in Lemon Cream Sauce

adapted from a recipe found in Bon Appetit magazine, 2003

3 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter

3-4  large shallots, minced

1 cup  chicken broth

1 1/4  cups whipping cream

2 teaspoons lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or more to taste

2 cups fresh or  frozen green peas, thawed

2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh mint leaves

2 tablespoons fresh Meyer lemon juice (I used frozen Meyer juice from last year’s crop of lemons. If using regular lemons, reduce to 1 tablespoon and add 1 Tablespoon orange juice)

16 ounces farfalle or penne pasta

12 thin slices prosciutto, may substitute with crumbled bacon

Shaved Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in large skillet, add shallots and sauté about 2 minutes. Add broth. Simmer over medium heat until mixture is reduced to 1/4 cup, 2-3 minutes. Add cream, lemon zest , and cayenne. Simmer until sauce thickens slightly, about 3 minutes. Add peas; simmer t until heated through, stir in mint and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

While preparing sauce, cook pasta al dente, stirring occasionally. Drain; return to pot and toss with sauce.

Divide pasta among serving plates. Drape prosciutto slices on top and sprinkle with shaved Parmesan.  This is a wonderful Spring or Summer supper served with crusty French bread and  fresh slices of melon or tomato quarters.

Lemony Cupcakes

Final touch for our Easter dinner!   Cupcakes have risen to new glory recently.  No longer plain flavors with plain frosting and a stuck on decoration, these hand held confections have delicous combinations for taste and some very fancy names.  Skye helped me bake two kinds* for our Easter celebration, and our cupcake wrappers made them even fancier.

First, we made lemon cupcakes with the addition of a surprise flavoring ingredient.  In addition to fresh lemon juice and lemon zest, these cupcakes have a bit of limoncello, an Italian liqueur, which adds another layer of mouth watering lemon essence.  I found several recipes online for these cupcakes, but most seemed to originate from one posted at http://www.browneyedbaker.com.  This lady knows good things about cupcakes!   My adaptation omits the filling several recipes included, lemon curd.  I love lemon curd, but after a huge meal, I thought that would be gilding the lily!  It also made the preparation much simpler. We used our home grown Meyer lemons from the freezer.  Here is our version.

For cupcakes:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 ounces butter

4 ounces cream cheese

2 cups granulated sugar

6 large eggs

1/4 cup limoncello

1/2 cup Meyer lemon juice

1 cup buttermilk

zest of 2 Meyer lemons

For frosting

2 ounces (½ stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tablespoon limoncello
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Set butter and cream cheese out to soften.  Combine flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

With electric mixer, beat the butter, cream cheese and sugar on medium speed 3 minutes, or until light and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add limoncello and mix briefly. On low speed, add flour mixture and buttermilk alternatively. Add lemon juice and zest and mix on low speed just until incorporated. Divide the batter between 2 twelve cup muffin tins. If you have extra, bake in a small loaf pan.  Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean. Cool.

For frosting,  beat the butter and cream cheese on medium speed until light and creamy. Add the limoncello and beat for an additional minute. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add sifted powdered sugar and beat until  smooth.

To frost, fill a quart size Ziploc bag with cream cheese frosting.  Cut a small tip off one corner and use this to squeeze a dollop of frosting onto each cup cake, refilling bag as needed.  If you wish, use a  pastry bag with a star tip to pipe frosting onto each cupcake. Decorate with a lemon slice or berries if desired.

* Our second batch of cupcakes were Red Velvet!  Another day, another post!  What is your favorite cupcake?  Why?

Herbed Roast Beef

I continue with more recipes from a wonderful Easter dinner with friends and family around the table.  I have made many different kinds of pot roasts.  Our old standby is chuck roast seared with lots of salt and pepper and cooked in coffee, along with potatoes, carrots and onions, baked long and slow in the oven.  But circumstances on Easter Sunday made the timing awkward  for cooking in that way. I wanted to serve a beef dish as well as our Easter ham, and I decided I would try slow cooking in a crock pot. This recipe is simple and delicious.  I prepared the top round roast and got it into the crock pot early Sunday morning, and when we walked in the door after church, a heavenly smell greeted us.

I adapted my recipe from one at http://www.food.com, which gives its credit to the

“Taken from The Everyday Low-Carb Slow Cooker Cookbook”

• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons dried thyme (I use Penzey’s French Thyme)
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped rosemary
• 2  tablespoon black pepper
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 5 pounds lean top round roast
• 8 –  10 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 4 pieces thick peppered bacon, cooked but not crisp

Directions

1. Pour the red wine and water into the crock pot.
2. In a small bowl, combine herbs, pepper, salt, and olive oil; stir to mix and make a thick paste. Rub the oil and herb mixture all over the roast. Place into the crock pot. Sprinkle the garlic and onions around the roast and lay the bacon strips over the top of the roast.
3. Cover and cook on High for 6 hours..,
4.  Turn the slow cooker off and let the roast rest in the slow cooker for about 15 minutes. Remove roast to a platter.
5. To serve, use a sharp knife to slice the meat against the grain.Dip the roast slices into the cooking juices before serving, or serve the cooking juices  in a small pitcher

If you have cooking juices leftover, this makes a wonderful addition to onion soup or a pot of Beef Burgundy!

 

Easter Panzanella

Easter lunch at our house was a success.  We combined a delicious make-ahead meal with the joy of celebrating Resurrection with family and good friends around our table.  Make that tableS because we had thirteen happy diners here last Sunday.  I learned a long time ago that the secret to making good food for guests while enjoying it myself lies in doing almost everything the day before.  Several parts of this meal will be featured in the posts this month, but today’s salad was my favorite.

Panzanella is a traditional dish made in various parts of central Italy, particularly Florence.  There are many variations but almost all use stale bread, cubed, and combined with tomatoes plus other summertime vegetables and basil.  This recipe combines several of those with inspiration from Ina Garten’s preparation for one she calls Greek Panzanella.  I like the addition of feta cheese and Kalamata olives as well her method of pan toasting the bread cubes which go well with the crunchiness of all the fresh vegetables. More traditional bread salad will have the bread cubes soaked in marinade, making a softer ingredient.

Easter Panzanella

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

6-8 cups of bread cubed from Ciabbata or Rosemary Bread

4 cups cherry tomatoes, halved – or  tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes

2 English cucumbers, sliced 1/2-inch thick

2 red bell peppers, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 yellow bell pepper,  cut into 1-inch cubes

1 green bell pepper, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 red onion, cut in 1/2 and thinly sliced

Kalamata olives pitted, 1 cups

Feta cheese, crumbled, 2 cups

Fresh basil for garnish, optional

For the vinaigrette:

4 garlic pods, minced 

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

6 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1  teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Wash all vegetables and pat dry.  Remove seeds from peppers, chop, and place in a large bowl. Add  sliced tomatoes.  Halve the cucumbers lengthwise.  Using the tip of a teaspoon, run  gently down the center to scoop out any seeds, then lay the cucumber halves down to slice and add them along with sliced red onion to the other veggies.  Toss to combine.  If you are making this ahead of time, place each vegetable in a zip loc bag and refrigerate until serving time. I prefer to slice tomatoes at the last minute as they tend to soften.

Prepare vinaigrette by whisking together red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper. Set aside

Heat olive oil in a large iron skillet. Add the bread ; cook over, stirring often, for 8- 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Add more oil if needed.   Add  crumbled feta cheese, olives, and  bread cubes to chopped vegetables, then toss with the vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper as desired. Garnish with a sprig of fresh basil.

Flavor improves by allowing this to sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Two Ingredient Biscuits

I confess, I very rarely make scratch biscuits these days.  Most of our breakfasts consist of Smoothies made with Greek Yogurt and fruit, a healthy cereal, or eggs with whole grain toast. OK, I confess to using Pillsbury Grands, or my new favorite and more health Immaculate Baking company refrigerator biscuits.  But my husband loves homemade biscuits, and I made these for him.  I was curious about using only the two ingredients, but it worked, and I used a biscuit cutter passed down to me which belonged to my grandmother, Mary Clyde Curley Terrell, or “Clyde” and she was called all her life.  Nothing fancy to have endured for so long – this biscuit cutter is simply a small tin can with holes punched in the bottom.  I love it.  And I loved Grandma.  She was born on March 25, 1887, so her birthday was this week, and I thought about her alot when I used her little tin cutter.

Two-Ingredient Biscuits
—
Yield: 24 biscuits

2 1/2 cups self-rising flour, divided
1 1/2  cups heavy cream, divided

Butter, because you will butter your pan, and also because you really need butter with hot biscuits!

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Lightly butter baking pan, or spray with cooking spray if preferred.

Whisk 2 cups of the flour in a large wide bowl,  and set aside the remaining flour. Make a deep hollow in the center of the flour with your fist. Slowly  stir in  1 cup of cream, reserving remainder of cream, into the hollow with a rubber spatula or spoon, using broad circular strokes to pull the flour into the cream. Mix just until the dry ingredients are moistened and the sticky dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. If it seems dry and crumbly and the flour is not being worked in, sprinkle reserved cream,a little at a time to incorporate the remaining flour. The dough will be sticky looking and not very smooth.. If the dough is too wet, use more flour as you begin to shape

. Lightly sprinkle a plastic sheet,tea towel,  or other clean surface with some of the reserved flour. Turn the dough out onto this , and sprinkle the top of the dough lightly with flour . With floured hands, fold the dough in half and pat it into a round, using a little additional flour only if needed. Flour again if sticky and fold the dough in half a second time.

If the dough is still clumpy, pat and fold a third time. Pat dough into a 1/2-inch-thick round for normal biscuits, a 3/4-inch-thick round for tall biscuits, or a 1-inch-thick round for giant biscuits. Brush off any visible flour from the top. For each biscuit, dip a biscuit cutter into the reserved flour and cut out the biscuits, starting at the outside edge and cutting very close together, being careful not to twist the cutter. The scraps may be combined to make additional biscuits, but the more the dough is worked, the less tender the biscuits will be

.Using a metal spatula, move the biscuits to baking sheet. Bake the biscuits on the top rack of the oven for a total of 10 to 14 minutes, until light golden brown. When they are done, remove from oven and lightly brush tops with melted butter. Serve hot.

Adapted from a recipe in  “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking,” by Nathalie Dupree

Spritz Cookies

My 10 year old granddaughter Skye has become quite interested in baking.  She turns out beautiful, delicious cakes. But she turned her talents to baking cookies last week as we readied for a visit from her aunt and cousins.  When she heard we would be having a tea party for Maddie’s 7th birthday while she was here, Skye wanted to make cookies that would be pretty as well as tasty, but Maddie does not like frosting (that is why we chose birthday cookies instead of birthday cake).  So we decided to bring out the kitchen tool which helps us make these shaped cookies: a cookie press.   A cookie press lets you change disks to produce many different shapes.Cookie presses work by pushing a small amount of dough through perforated plates directly onto the baking sheet, somewhat like a caulking gun. A ratchet-like press system means that the same amount of dough is used each time and the cookies are uniformly shaped. These can be made plain, sprinkled with decorations or sugars, frosted or dipped in melted chocolate!  We added food coloring to make ours pink and purple and sprinkled with some coarse sugar for sparkle.

Using the recipe on the cookie press box, Skye measured dry ingredients and whisked, then made a well for the vanilla and egg. She added the room temperature butter cut into small pieces

Then she mixed the dough with her clean hands.

Finally, the dough was colored and loaded into the cookie press and cookies were pressed out onto ungreased baking sheets.

Spritz Cookies Recipe

• Prep time: 25 minutes
• Cook time: 10 minutes

Important!  Let butter come to room temperature before making this recipe.

2 cups all-purpose or cake flour

pinch of salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (almond extract can be used if preferred)

1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into small pieces

optional for decorating

Colored sugar

Sprinkles

Frosting

Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk together the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl, then sprinkle over the vanilla extract. Crack egg into the center of flour mixture.then dot with the pieces of butter.

Mix everything together with your clean hands until it begins to come together. Do not to knead it too much, as you will then make tough cookies. You just want everything to come together so you can handle the dough.

 Put on the disc of your choice,  then load the press with the dough. Ratchet out the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet. This takes practice, so be prepared to mess a bunch up at first. Just return the not-so-good ones back to the dough ball and use it again.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. These cookies will not brown.  Remove from oven and sprinkle or garnish as you like. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, then carefully move them to a rack. Let cool  before storing. They freeze well.

Yield: Makes about 35 cookies

Do you own a cookie press? How often do you make spritz cookies?

 

Mango Salsa

Tomato salsa  may be our most frequent accompaniment to eggs, Mexican food, and tortilla chips – but fruit salsas compete strongly for favorites.  Among those, mango salsa is at the top of the list.  It may be hard to save a mango or two when I bring them home because we love them plain and with Greek yogurt.  Last week I used the last two out of a carton of six to make this beautiful topping for baked fish. I have also used it to layer over a roasted pork tenderloin or to dress up grilled chicken breasts.  If there happens to be any leftover, we pull out the corn chips and have a snack.

Mango Salsa

2 mangos, peeled and diced*
2 medium Jalapenos, seeded and diced
1/2 small red onion, chopped fine
2 tablespoon lime juice
1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro leaves
Salt and pepper
Combine the mango, , Jalapeno, red onion, lime juice and cilantro leaves and mix well. Season with salt and pepper, to taste
* I wash and pat dry the mango, stand vertically with stem end down, and with a sharp knife, slice down by the side of the large seed, repeating on the other side.  Then lay each mango half in the palm of my left hand, and with a small paring knife, carefully cut into the mango, making diagonal cuts in opposite directions. Then I turn the mango half inside out, and the cut sections pop out.  These can easily be scraped off with a spoon or the paring knife.