Chicken Salad (April 7, 2011)
Today my mom made the best chicken salad ever. We found it in a food network magazine and it’s made with marmalade, grapes, diced green apple, cashews, curry, and fresh cilantro. It’s SO good and it uses Greek yogurt instead fo mayonnaise so that it tastes lighter but has a perfect texture. Here’s the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/aarti-sequeira/lady-marmalade-chicken-salad-recipe/index.html
I used challah bread, but you can try any other kind of bread too. Enjoy!
Cooking with Grace on the Bill Edwards Show – 2/4/11 MP3
Valentine’s Day/Old Cookbooks (February 3, 2011)
Red velvet cupcakes are a cute and elegant treat for Valentine’s Day. Here’s a recipe that I made using the Culinary Arts Institute’s 1985 Encyclopedia cookbook that Mr. Edwards gave to me from his mother’s collection. The recipe is for “Spiced Red Devil’s Food Cake.”
In a large bowl, whisk together 1 and ¾ cups sifted flour, 1 and ½ cups sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon allspice, and ¼ teaspoon cloves. With a mixer, beat in a half cup of shortening, 1 and ½ teaspoons of vanilla, and 2/3 cup of buttermilk. Beat the mixture for two minutes and then add 1/3 cup of buttermilk, 2 eggs, 3 oz of melted baking chocolate, and as much red food dye as is necessary to color the batter dark red. Beat 2 minutes more, then bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until done.
I iced my cupcakes with a version of the cream cheese frosting recipe in Better Homes and Gardens’s Dessert Cookbook from 1960. In a bowl, beat together 6 oz cream cheese, 1 teaspoonvanilla (I used clear vanilla so that the icing would stay white), a dash of salt, and an egg white. When the mixture is smooth, beat in 3 cups of powdered sugar, little by little.
Another Valentine’s day cookie that I made is an Italian cookie called baci, meaning “kisses.” This recipe is modified from one in an Italian dessert book by Gina DePalma.
In a food processor, combine 1/3 cup slivered almonds with a Tablespoon of sugar. Pulse until they are crumbs. In a bowl, whisk together 1 and ½ cups (plus one Tablespoon) of flour, 1/3 cup coca powder, ¼ teaspoon baking powder, and ½ teaspoon kosher salt. In a different bowl, beat together 2 sticks of butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar. Beat in 3 Tablespoons of vanilla and then beat in the flour mixture and the almonds. Roll the dough into small balls, roll the balls in granulated sugar, and bake them at 325 for 10 minutes. When they are cooled, sandwich pairs of cookies together by spreading melted chocolate chips between them and pressing them together.
Enjoy! And happy Valentine’s Day!
Cooking with Grace on the Bill Edwards Show – 1/14/11 MP3
Slow Cooking (January 13, 2011)
So many Americans (especially moms with busy schedules) own and use slow cookers or crock-pots to make meals for their families. However, many people also do not know that slow cooking was one of the first food preparation methods ever invented. A long time ago, men had to go out hunting during the day and women were busier because they had to walk long distances to get water and carry it home or to wash clothes in a river. While there was no one at the house to cook elaborate recipes, women used to leave pots of food to simmer all day long, and braising was invented. Some very popular recipes started out this way, such as beef bourguignon, chicken cacciatore, and even the practice of simmering tomato sauce all day. When you braise meats, they’re more tender and the flavors are more well-developed than when you cook something quickly. I made chicken cacciatore for my family and it was so easy and really delicious! Here’s the recipe I used:
In a large, heavy saucepan, heat 3 Tablespoons of olive oil. Trim three chicken breasts of fat and cut each in half. Dust with salt and pepper and cook in the olive oil until the outsides are no longer pink. Remove them from the pan and put them on a plate. Pour the fat out and heat another 2 Tablespoons of olive oil. Sauté a package of sliced mushrooms (optional), a sliced half of an onion, two sliced bell peppers (I used red and green), two chopped cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper. Cook until slightly tender, then add a large can of chopped tomatoes, about 2 teaspoons oforegano, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, ½ cup of water, and ½ cup of chicken broth. Add the chicken pieces back and cook over low heat until the meat is cooked through and the vegetables are done (I cooked mine for about 2 hours).
Braising can also be used for recipes like beef stew. Just trim the meat of any fat, dust it with salt and pepper, brown it in a few tablespoons of oil, and then add vegetables, beef broth, and potatoes. Cook on low for a few hours until the meat is done and the vegetables are cooked. Chili is another food that’s great to slow-cook and fun for kids to experiment with flavors in too. Use your favorite chili recipe and try adding something unusual—it’s always good to have a little bit of a sweet ingredient in a chili. Some people like brown sugar or molasses, and my grandfather likes orange juice (I’ve tried it, and it’s delicious). The chicken and the beef stew can both be cooked in a crock-pot too if you want.
There are foods other than main courses that can be braised or slow-cooked too. You can make applesauce on the stove, and it’s really really easy to do:
Cut 4 apples (I used 2 Gala apples and 2 Rome apples) into chunks and put them in a large, heavy saucepan with ½ cup of water, ¼ cup of apple cider, ¼ cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, and ½ teaspoon of lemon juice. You can replace the cider with water if you don’t have any apple cider, but I find that it makes the applesauce sweeter and gives it a stronger apple flavor. I also added about a Tablespoon of brown sugar to make it sweeter. If you like smoother applesauce, peel the apples. I like mine chunkier, so I only peeled two of the apples in my recipe. I’ve also read that apple skins have a really high concentration of antioxidants, vitamin C, and other good things. So it may be healthier AND better tasting to make your own applesauce! Heat the ingredients over high heat and wait until it boils. Turn the heat to low and simmer until the apples soften and the liquid cooks away. You can add more cinnamon in the end if you want to. You can even serve it as a dessert with apple crisp topping sprinkled over it.
You can also use my baked apple recipe and cook them in a crock-pot on low instead of baking them in the oven. Or make paella in a large, heavy saucepan and cook it on low for a long time. In fact, Spanish people made the original paella recipe with a crust of caramelized rice on the very bottom (because the first paellas were cooked all day without stirring) called the socarrat. At cooking camp one year, we made paella without the seafood and just used rice, chicken, sausage, bell peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes. The kids loved it! And these slow-cooking recipes are a great way to teach them about the history of cooking and how humans started to (and continue to) cook the way we do. Enjoy!
Cooking with Grace on the Bill Edwards Show – 12/9/10 MP3
Cookie Recipes (December 8, 2010)
In the archives from last December of this blog, you can see some Christmas cookie recipes from a book called The Christmas Cookie Book by Virginia Pasley. I just recently made some of the recipes that I didn’t get around to, and they’re really fun. The first recipe is for “molasses cutout cookies” and they taste/look a lot like gingerbread (or ginger snaps, depending on how thinly you roll them and how long you bake them for):
Beat together a cup of brown sugar and a cup of butter (softened). *The original recipe said to use shortening but I like butter better. Add 3 eggs and 2 cups of molasses and beat. Then, in a separate bowl, whisk together 8 cups of flour with 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons of ginger, and 2 Tablespoons of cinnamon. Beat the flour mixture into the molasses mixture and wrap the dough in plastic wrap. Store it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use it. Roll it out on a floured surface And cut into shapes (like gingerbread men or angels). Make an icing by whisking milk into powdered sugar until just thick enough to spread, then fill a plastic baggie with the icing and snip a tiny bit of of the corner. This makes decorating gingerbread cookies with simple designs like faces and buttons really easy (see picture).
The second recipe is for a bar cookie called Christmas lights. It’s a chewy, sugar-cookie-ish bar with almonds and sliced gumdrops in it. The cookies are really pretty and kids will like all of the different colors of the gumdrops.
Beat 4 eggs until very light, then beat in 2 cups of sugar gradually. Add 3 Tablespoons melted butter (slightly cooled), 2 cups cake flour, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Stir in 2 teaspoons of vanilla and 1 1/2 cups each slivered almonds and chopped gumdrops. Pour into a greased pan and Sprinkle about 1/2 cup more gumdrops over the top. Bake at 350 until no longer gooey. Let it cool and then cut it into pieces. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the top.
The other recipe I made was from a book called Dolce Italiano by Gina DePalma. The cookies were called La Befana’s stars, and they come from the Italian legend of a woman named Befana, who rides through the sky on a broomstick during the Epiphany every year and gives presents to children. Some people think of her as a witch, but others believe that she comes from one of two Christmas legends: 1) La Befana was a housewife who was sweeping in the doorway when the three wisemen walked by and offered to take her with them on their journey. She said she was too busy but regretted it later, packed up some gifts for him in a cloth, tied them to her broom, and went on her own search for the baby Jesus. She still flies through the sky looking for him. Or 2) La Befana is the mother of a child who was killed when Herod ordered the death of the baby boys after Jesus’s birth. She was so sad that she refused to believe her child was dead and instead thought that he was just lost. She tied up all of his belongings in a cloth on the end of her broomstick and searched for him until she came upon a baby boy in a manger, at whose feet she laid her son’s belongings. The baby was Jesus, and God rewarded her by letting her give gifts to children on the Epiphany every year. Because of these tales, many Italian women keep a little doll with a broom (often with a bundle tied to the end) in their kitchens. This recipe makes orangey-tasting sugar cookies in the shape of stars (to remind us of Befana’s journey to the manger, guided by the star of Bethlehem). I used a different icing from the book’s recipe. I whisked powdered sugar with milk until it was spreadable and then I brushed it onto the cookies and sprinkled them with multicolored sprinkles:
For the cookies, cream together 3 stick of butter and 1 1/4 cups of sugar for 2 minutes. Beat in one egg, 2 egg yolks, 2 teaspoons vanilla, the zest of one orange, and 1 teaspoon almond flavoring. In a bowl, whisk together 3 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture and then roll out on a floured surface. Cut into stars and bake at 350 until just cooked (not quite golden). Brush with icing and decorate with sprinkles.
