Pan-Fried Scallops

So here are some scallops that I made recently:

I am a very big fan of scallops.  Love them, always have.  Baked, fried, cooked by pirates … there’s really no way I don’t like these things.

Martin, however, is not so big a fan.

But I took advantage of the fact that he graciously eats anything I make and decided to try to make them anyway.

So I researched a bunch of recipes, mashed them all up into one and fried them up one night.  They came out crispy and garlicky and not rubbery at all, perfectly cooked thanks to paranoid vigilance.

Martin?  Still not a fan.  Guess you can’t win them all.

But if your tastes are more like mine than Martin, then perhaps you will like these too. Here’s what you need to make Pasta with Veggies and some Pan-Fried Scallops.

Easy peasy, no?  That’s a lot of ingredients.  One of them is pappardalle pasta, which I have recently discovered and declare my new favorite type of pasta.  I like how it’s wide and thin, much like the noodles my dad uses to cook one of my favorite dishes.  I don’t know what kind of noodles they are, but it is known fact in my family that I hate thin noodles.

True story:  When I was little and we made our trips up to NY, we would always pack up noodles to eat on our journey down.  These noodles were those typical super-thin noodles, in broth, served with vegetables and either sliced barbecue pork or won tons.  I would always eat the toppings and take a couple obligatory bites of the noodles.  Leaving New York meant gross, thin noodles on the way home and I hated them.

Then, one year, my parents switched to wide, thin.  Same broth.  Same toppings.  My serving was demolished.  For the longest time, I thought I hated noodles.  Then I realized … I just hated those noodles.

That was a really long story just to explain why I am predisposed to like pappardalle.

So here we go.  Follow my three easy steps to success:

1.  Buy ingredients and assemble on counter.
2.  ???
3.  Profit!  Err, scallops!

Just kidding.

Here we go, for realz:

Pan-Fried Scallops

4 tbsp. butter, melted
1 lb. sea scallops
½ cup seasoned dry bread crumbs
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. paprika
1 tsp. seafood seasoning (like Old Bay)
½ tsp. dried parsley
3 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1-  Heat skillet with thin layer of oil.

2-  Combine all the dry ingredients in a shallow pan.

3-  Dip scallops into butter and coat with dry ingredients.

4-  Place on skillet and fry for 3 minutes.  Bottom side of scallops should be nicely brown.  Flip and repeat on other side.

5-  Serve hot.

Servings: 4

As a side note, I used panko crumbs because I thought it would create a better crunch.  Instead, they just decided to fall off the scallops.  So I think I might use finer crumbs next time.

For the pasta, I just boiled the pasta, steamed the broccoli, changed my mind about mushrooms, chiffonaded the basil and tossed everything in a big pot.

Rosemary Focaccia

When Martin and I were invited over to a friend’s house for dinner, I wanted to bring something over so I thought and thought … and thought and thought.  I probably spent way too long trying to figure out what to bring.  Dessert is generally my go-to, but Tara had already said she had it covered with a divine-sounding orange dreamsicle cake.  So … I decided to bring bread.  I hadn’t worked with yeast in a while up until that point and hadn’t made focaccia in an even longer while.

The first two times I made focaccia, I was completely new to the bread-making process and just blindly followed the directions of two different recipes.  One created a VERY dry dough I could barely pull into shape and one created one so wet, it was pourable out of the mixing bowl.

I don’t know if one of those ways was actually a right way, but I know I didn’t really like the bread it produced.  So I decided to go by my favorite method, the “slightly tacky, sticking to the bottom of my bowl but NOT the sides” method.  I mixed away and let it do its first rise before pouring it out onto a sheet pan.  I don’t actually have the size pan they were calling for … so I made do.

“Make do” is code for “ghetto-rigged something.”

Spreading it out was kind of a pain.  I had to stop once to let the dough rest for a few minutes before I could get it to fill the pan.

After the second rise (where I absolutely could not believe how much it rose again), I dimpled it with my fingers and brushed it with olive oil and rosemary from my herb plant:

And baked it:

Woah!  This actually kind of looks like focaccia!

Then I cut it up, arranged it prettily in a bowl and brought it to the dinner party.

Arun was there and when he saw the focaccia, he said that it was his favorite type of bread and immediately started digging in.  That made me feel so ridiculously happy, sort of like when you give someone a Christmas present and it turns out to be their favorite one of the year.

So there you go.  Rosemary focaccia bread, like the Gourmet cookbook taught ya.

Note:  I added the flour in increments and probably only used about 3.5 - 4 cups of flour.

Barbecue Ribs

I’m kind of a freak about not getting my fingers dirty.  Hate it, always have, always will.  So the best part about my dad’s ribs growing up is that they were so off-the-bone tender, I never had to dirty my fingers to consume them.  The second-best thing was that they tasted pretty good.

One day, I decided I too wanted ribs but didn’t want to wait until getting back to North Carolina to have them.  I’ve heard my dad tell my uncle hundreds of times how to make these, who claims every time that he will definitely try making these himself whenever he goes back to New York.  (Times he’s made ribs:  0).

I wanted to make sure I got the cooking time just right, so I did a little research on the internet and realized that there are two basic schools of thought:  to smoke or not to smoke.  Some people were positively  poetic about the importance of smoking the ribs for authentic flavor!  I didn’t have a smoker so the decision was made for me.  Decisions made for me are my favorite kind of decisions. 

Without a smoker, the key to tender ribs is lots of steam.  My dad boils his for awhile, but you can also seal the ribs up nice and tight and bake them in an oven for a long time (2+ hours) on low heat (300-degrees F or lower).  I didn’t have any barbecue sauce, so I was going to try to make my own, but each recipe called for ingredients I didn’t have on hand.

And this is how I found Alton Brown’s Who Loves Ya Baby-Back ribs, which used a dry rub and a white wine glaze.  These were my first glazed ribs, as opposed to saucy ribs, and I really enjoyed them.  I am definitely going to make these again, especially now that I have proven to Martin that ribs are meant to be enjoyed, not feared.

The only change I made to the recipe is using soy sauce, rather than Worcestershire sauce.  I could have sworn I had some in my pantry, but didn’t, and was forced to make a last minute adjustment.  I think the difference in taste was negligible and eight kinds of yummy.

So there you go.  I now open up the floor for “to smoke or not to smoke” debates.  What are your thoughts on this?

Sweet Tea

Last night, Martin and I had a couple of co-workers over for dinner. I tried out a few new things on willing bellies but failed to do any prep work the night before. So, consequently, on the day of the dinner, I was cooking a lot and efficiently freaking out. That’s why I failed to take any pictures. Food posts without pictures are sad, but sad food pictures are perhaps even worse. I guess you can’t win them all.

I thought I would devote today’s entry to sweet tea, which I made to go with our “barbecue” theme. For many, this beverage needs no introduction. But for others, like our co-workers, sweet tea is a drink served at McDonald’s and true southerners know that just ain’t right. I took a quick poll from all my friends who have experienced real sweet tea and happened to be available online and here are the results:

I asked, When you think of sweet tea, what do you think of?

Manveer: I think of Bojangles sweet tea!

Not quite what I was looking for but let’s go on:

Martin: Bojangles.

Okay … still not quite. I’ll cross my fingers with this next person:

Stuart: Bojangles.

Did I miss something?

Arun: Bojangles. Then the Rockford.

Obviously, yes.

Who knew Bojangles and sweet tea were so irrevocably tied in people’s minds? I was hoping for awesome adjectives like “amazingly awesome” or “summer” or “end-all be-all” of drinks, but these could also describe Bojangles biscuits so that’s good enough for me.

There is a lot of debate on the proper way to make sweet tea. Everyone has a different trick to getting that ever-important crystal-clear amber color.  I’ve heard a variety of techniques, from steeping the tea in a saucepan and pouring it into the pitcher for a natural cool down to not adding any cold water to the mixture. I do subscribe to the “don’t shock the tea” superstition and abstain from pouring cold water onto it, but that’s about it. Of course, everyone is different.

This is the recipe I use to make my sweet tea. I don’t think it compares to the Bojangles version (can anything?) but at least mine doesn’t come with a gross wedge of lemon. I always forget it and sometimes don’t follow the ratios (which I’ve learned one too many times is VERY VERY BAD) so now I’m writing it down where I’ll always know to look.

Sweet Tea

2 family-size or 6 normal-sized Lipton tea bags
2 cups hot (not boiling) water
3/4 cup sugar
6 cups lukewarm water

1- Add sugar to bottom of a pitcher. Place tea bags on top. Pour hot water over mixture and stir to dissolve.

2- Let sit, covered, for 15 minutes.

3- Add remaining water and let chill in the refrigerator until cold.

4- Serve in tall glasses over a lot of ice.

Servings: 4

Homemade Butter

Recently, I tried making butter. This was mostly prompted by the fact that I had half a gallon of heavy cream in my refrigerator that expired the day before our three-day trip to Santa Barbara. There was no way that stuff was going to be used in time. So … butter, anyone?

I’ve never made butter before and this was a real adventure for me. I stuck all that heavy cream in my KitchenAid and set the whisk a-spinning. At first, I left it on about 4 or 6, worried it would splatter everywhere. Then I realized that this really only jiggled the heavy cream and we needed to get this party started.

So I turned up the heat. And got a lovely mound of soft-peaks whipped cream:

It looks like billowy clouds. I couldn’t resist taking a taste. Without vanilla and sugar, whipped cream is surprisingly disappointing.

All the blogs I read about homemade butter included rapturous sentences about tastiness and also about how the whipped cream will just “seize.” I had no clue what that meant so I kept whipping.

This looks curdly and not so appetizing. I was not tempted into taking a taste.

Finally, I heard what I thought was a seize. But I was confused. Stuff at the bottom looked mealy. Stuff along the sides looked like whipped cream. Could this be right?

I can’t believe it’s not butter! Oh, wait, yes, I can. What is that?

I let it drain for a few minutes and the amount of buttermilk generated was weak-sauce. I slid it back into the mixer bowl and set it a-churning again. I repeated this step twice because I was unsure of what my final result should be. Then, suddenly, I got this:

They weren’t kidding about the seizing. Or even the EXPLOSION of buttermilk you will suddenly see.

And now I know. And I am passing this on to you so you know, too. And knowing is half the battle.

Note: Whenever food blogs talk about making butter, they never bring up washing the butter to remove it of all buttermilk, which will turn it rancid. I had to read a recipe for that. I think that’s an important, unsaid step. Because I totally would have stuck my butter in a bowl and put it in the fridge and wondered why my butter tasted like “gross.”

I mixed it with some honey and now I have lots of honey butter. Anyone want to come over for biscuits?

I understand if you don’t.

Ice Cream Sandwich Ice Cream

I know what you’re thinking. I bet it’s similar to the look on Martin’s face, when I announced I was going to make it.

“I don’t get it.”

Yeah, I too was once like you and didn’t get it. But a recent trip to visit Blaire set me on this path and now I realize how truly amazing this stuff really is. It is almost the perfect pairing! I love ice cream! I love ice cream sandwiches! Together, how can we go wrong?

Things like butter chicken + macaroni and cheese spring to mind. But this is neither here nor now. This is ice cream. Serious business.

True story: I wanted to write that in lolcats but didn’t know the best way. So I found a lolcat translator! No joke. Their translation was “serious busines.” Also no joke.

So today, I will show you how I went about making this.

First, I started with my very very favorite vanilla ice cream recipe as a base. Even Breyers Natural Vanilla, my first love, doesn’t hold a candle to the flavor (and, most likely, fat) packed in this.

Instead of vanilla extract, though, I added this:

It has real vanilla beans flecks and packs a nice, extra vanilla-y punch with the ease and cost of using plain ol’ extract rather over buying vanilla beans. It has a thick consistency. One might almost call it paste-y.

I know, I’m not that funny. So let’s move on.

Do you see all the flecks? I do love vanilla bean flecks in my ice cream. Reminds me of childhood.

Then I chilled the custard overnight and churned it up nice and pretty in my ice cream mixer. While I let Martin wrestle with scooping out the ice cream, I focused on a more important task:

I used my dough cutter to create straight lines that didn’t mush the sandwich too much. Then I started our reliable layer effect: a layer of ice cream, a nice layer of topping, wash, rinse, repeat. This time around, I think we used around 4 - 6 sandwiches (can’t remember the exact total). I thought there should be more, but Martin said no. He also physically blocked me from adding more. However, after tasting it, he agreed that we should have added more (HA!) to create a better “ice cream sandwich” feel.

I love the soft chocolate cookie-ness of the ice cream sandwiches in this ice cream. I also like the small pockets of ice-cream-sandwich ice cream. They’re white rather than a light yellow and have almost the effect of whipped cream in comparison to the richness of my base ice cream.

Martin still prefers the cookie dough to this one, but I know I will keep this one in steady rotation. This is one big carton of delicious, I’d say.

Pot Stickers, Take 2

I tried making pot stickers again recently.  I felt a little disappointed at my last attempt, mostly because my attempt at frying / steaming and steaming / frying did not come out so well.  I suspect it was because I didn’t put a lid on top of my skillet.  And, according to my dad, I didn’t use a nonstick skillet, which are the BEST for releasing those sticky pot stickers.

Well, I wasn’t going to run out and buy a nonstick pan just for pot stickers.  But I was going to try again.

This time, I tried a much simpler method of forming the potstickers.  I wanted them fat and plump and full of pork-and-mushroom goodness.  The squares, while pretty to look at, could not hold very much filling.  So let’s take a look at my second attempt, shall we?

Lay a nice chunk of your stuffing on top of your won ton wrapper.  Shape roughly into a triangle because you’re waiting for your boyfriend to take an in-focus shot.

While we’re on this picture, don’t my hands look really weird?  I mean, REALLY weird?  CLAWS!

Brush the bottom half of your triangle with water.  Growing up, my uncle and father finished the edges of their egg rolls with egg.  But the internet says water.  I guess you can pick it however you want.

Fold in half and pinch together to make plain and simple triangular pot stickers.  Not only do these take less time, but they store much more easily in the freezer, if you needed another reason.  My dad would wake up in the morning, take some out of our freezer, fry them on both sides and then steam ‘em.  In his non-stick skillet.

Build your army of pot stickers.  When I was finished, this entire cookie sheet was filled with them.

Then I had a conondrum.  My last attempt at one-stop steaming and frying didn’t work.  So I could either just steam them and save the calories - and the pain of frying.  Or I could suck it up and dirty that second pan, because ain’t nothin’ better than perfectly crisp pan-fried pot sticker.

You can guess which side won.

Carrot Cake

Right now, all I can think about is the fact that I have carrot cake in our refrigerator. Before yesterday, I didn’t even know I liked carrot cake. But the slice I had today … and the three I had yesterday … are convincing me that I do. It is lucky for my hips that 5 other people helped to consume two-thirds of the cake yesterday because this stuff is good. Blissful good. Makes-me-salivate-as-I-sit-here good.

Don’t believe me?

Check out the looks of sheer satisfaction on my fellow cake-eaters faces:

Okay, so I didn’t really take a picture of everyone partaking of my cake. So you’re going to have to trust me when I say they all really liked it. And, really, would I lie to you?

This cake was full of carrot-y goodness. It had nice hints of spice (though I would like more - maybe I will amp up the cinnamon and add some clove and allspice goodness next time). And, to balance out any good feelings you might be receiving from eating your daily dose of beta-carotene, it has loads of sugar and fat.

It pulls together in a snap - you don’t even have to worry about creaming butter for the batter! As for the cream cheese frosting recipe I used, it called for an easy 4 ingredients: butter, cream cheese, vanilla and powdered sugar. One pound of powdered sugar, to be exact. I don’t have a scale but I checked online and this appeared to be around 3-1/2 cups of sugar. (Yes, I said “Holy crap!” too when I read the recipe). I ran out of powdered sugar at around 1-1/2 cups, but I tried some and thought it tasted pretty sweet as is. My fellow cake eaters agreed and said they couldn’t imagine adding more sugar to the frosting. So there you go. You can add four cups if you want to induce people into a diabetic coma or you can show restraint. Whichever way floats your boat best.

And as a random side note, the original recipe called for 1 cup of finely chopped pecans to go into the frosting. I didn’t add any, because I didn’t have those on hand. And because I don’t really like nuts in my baked goods. But more because I didn’t have them on hand. So if you have pecans on hand and like them in your baked goods, add away!

Carrot Cake

2 cups sugar (I used scant cup measures with no problem)
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups packed grated carrots

1 stick butter, room temperature
1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar

1-  Preheat oven to 350-degrees and lightly grease and flour cake pan.

2-  Combine sugar, vegetable oil and eggs together in a bowl and mix together until smooth.

3- Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. Add to sugar mixture and mix until smooth.

4- Add carrots to batter and mix until smooth.

5- Pour into bundt pan and bake, approx. 50 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

6- To make frosting, combine butter and cream cheese and beat until smooth and fluffy.

7- Add vanilla and beat to combine.

8- Add sugar and beat until smooth. Frost cake and serve.

Servings: 12

Oooh, lookin’ good, baby.

Gimme gimme more, gimme more.

Tuna Melts and Penzey Sandwich Sprinkle

Lots of rye bread equals the perfect recipe for … sandwiches!  Were you expecting something more creative?

Me too.  Me too …

Everyone has their own way of making tuna salad, so I thought I’d throw mine out there too.  It’s got the usual suspects in there:  red onion and relish to add crunch, eggs for a touch of warmth and then something that not every tuna salad recipe has:  Penzey Sandwich Sprinkle.

Side note:  Penzey’s has been a great source of inexpensive, quality spices for me.  I was seriously impressed with how bright green the spices were, compared to the dull color of even organic spices.  These aren’t organic, but they have everything imaginable and for reasonable prices.  Go Penzey’s!

So there you go.  Tuna, boiled eggs, red onion, sandwich sprinkle and sour cream, all mixed to taste.  Put on lightly buttered rye, top with a slice of cheese and broil until melted.  I prefer provolone, because of its nicely stretchy quality when melted.  But just put on whatever you feel like putting on.  You’ll get something like this:

And receive something like this:

But only if you feed it to a Swede named Martin. 

Bacon Jalapeno Poppers

I know what you’re thinking. “Did she just say bacon? Didn’t they ban bacon from their kitchen?!”

Yes, astute reader, we did. We had every intention of living a sad, bacon-less existence. Maybe every now and then, I would take a chance and eat it if we went out to brunch but only then! I envisioned a future crying over the limp, floppy bacon that accompanies brunches rather than my preferred way - extra extra crispy. Emphasis on extra.

Then I realized that there are other ways to cook bacon that don’t involve pan-frying (our main complaint). So Martin and I agreed that bacon could make a small return back to our kitchen only if it was cooked in such a way that it would not send clouds of grease and smokiness up in the air.

And that is how I came about making this dish. I saw it on a blog and decided it was the perfect finger food to serve some company we were having over. Unluckily for my waistline, unforeseen circumstances caused a cancellation and Martin and I had to eat these.

These were tasty good in a satisfying way. The tasty part comes from all the fat. The satisfying way comes from the fact you didn’t spend a lot of time prepping these bite-sized pieces of food. Even Martin, who will go out of his way to avoid anything potentially spicy / hot, loved these.

Here’s what you need:

Don’t judge my bacon choice! I have no clue what the “best” bacon brand is and just end up picking one at random. This generally involves “eenie meenie miney mo!”

Just slather in the cream cheese all nice and neat and wrap with half a slice of bacon. Bake for thirty minutes until the bacon is cooked and crispy to your desired crispiness and eat. Here’s what you end up with:

I am making these for a cookout we have tonight and am thinking of rolling the top of the pepper (the cream cheese part) in a mixture of Parmesan and cracked black pepper. We’ll see how that goes.

Should I be ashamed of the fact that these weren’t difficult to make, life-altering, classier finger foods? Maybe so. Am I? Sadly, no.