Sherry – Page 26 – Rosemary and the Goat

Brussel Sprout Salad with Pumpkin Seeds and Cranberries

A beautiful Christmas salad to go with just about anything.

A few weekends ago I was looking for a side dish to go with some burgers we were doing one night when my daughter came for the weekend. What started off as a sautéed Brussels with cranberries and pumpkin seeds and parmesan cheese turned into a crunchy salad with a citrus vinaigrette.

At first this salad was going to have pistachios in it because I had a bag full in my freezer then I thought pumpkin seeds sounds so much fitting for this time of the year and go great with cranberries.

Brussels sprouts are a little bitter I think and the addition of the dried cranberries and the citrus dressing balance the flavors perfectly. I tweaked the dressing after making it the first time because I thought it needed a little garlic and some Dijon mustard.

If you don’t care for the cranberries, try adding some dried figs and I loved adding the shaved parmesan cheese as a garnish.

December 19, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Ham, Mushroom, and Grits Breakfast Casserole

This is one good breakfast casserole and another grits recipe.

I love grits and I really love stone ground grits. The grits in this recipe are Charleston stone ground white grits. I thought I was ordering the mixed (yellow and white) grits but clicked a little too fast on Amazon. To me, stone ground grits are the best and if not stone ground then regular grits, not the instant variety.

The weekend we were getting our kitchen back together after the paint job, I decided to make something nice for breakfast. We had been eating out every meal for over a week even though the painting only took four days, we had a mountain of pans and dishes and stuff to go through before my kitchen was back in operation. Just getting my pantries (food & pan) back together was so great because I didn’t have that “hoarder” feeling any longer. I don’t think I could have looked at all those piles of pans, gadgets one day longer.

Were you raised eating grits for breakfast? We weren’t, in fact, I don’t think I even ate grits until I was older and my mother started making cheese grits to go with bbq. I remember when we were living in Overland Park, KS and one of my back neighbors was from Atlanta and I told her I had never eaten a bowl of plain grits with just butter and salt and pepper. I knew I loved cheese grits but not sure about the plain ones that looked like a bowl of gruel. Well, one morning she showed up at my back door with a bowl of hot buttered grits. We had no fences in this neighborhood so you could just walk over and visit with someone without having to go to front door or gates to get in. Those grits were so good. I don’t remember the girl’s name but I do remember her grits.

December 13, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Chicken Marbella

You will be smacking your lips by the time you get this in the refrigerator.

So, what are you feeding your family and friends during the holidays this year? Back when we were kids it seemed like we would have turkey and dressing for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, maybe throw in some ham and probably had the save side dishes. Over the years of being married (now 47) we started doing something beef — either prime rib, beef tenderloin and this year we are doing steak and I have ordered a “M” branding iron that we will use to brand each steak. I’m calling this our cowboy Christmas. We are renting a house over in Wimberly, TX and all three kids and spouses and 5 3/4 grandsons are all coming.

I’m trying to come up with some old fashioned games and plenty of Christmas crafts the kids can make for table decorations or place cards. Cowboy acrylic hat to use for chips and dip or ice buckets, bandanas for napkins and anything else I can come up to have a Texas themed “cowboy” Christmas. Our house (Wimberly) has a huge outdoor kitchen with even a pizza oven and a porch so long with rocking chairs to over look the hills of Wimberly.

December 7, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Salads

Asian Ramen Crusted Chicken Salad

Ramen noodles not just for soup.

With one major holiday behind us and another one speeding toward us like an out of control train, who’s not looking for some easy to make. I’m spending most of my time online shopping (as usual) and last night during cyber Monday I was up clicking away at the last minute at 11:00.

I use to buy Ramen noodles by the case when I catered because one of my favorite salads “Crunchy Romaine Toss” (aka Emerald Green Salad) used these as a topping. Toasted in butter either in a skillet or in the oven they add a buttery taste to any salad or even a pretty good snack.

I came across this recipe in Southern Living magazine and the had the chicken one side of the plate and the salad on the other. I added several ingredients to the salad and decided I wanted my chicken chopped up on top of the salad. One thing that I did not do enough was to crush the Ramen noodles. SL recipe said to put it in a food processor; that’s the best way to get a fine crush. I put mine in a plastic bag and beat it to death; but they did not get smallenough.

December 1, 2016 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Garnish

Smoked Cured Egg Yolk

A new culinary adventure!

Ok, so this isn’t much of an adventure but more of a “what else do I have to do with my time anyway” now that Thanksgiving is over and you are sick of looking at food.

My son, Scott, is always sending me some interesting food recipes to try; like his 24 hour No Knead Breadb or gravlax and now these cured egg yolks.

Like Scott, I didn’t want to waste a bunch of eggs the first time I tried making this yellow ball that looks like a dried apricot when you are done with it at the end of a long week. So at the end of this week, I had only one yolk to show for my 168 hours of watching and waiting and I grated it carefully not wanting to waste one speck of this yolk over some smoked salmon and sour cream that I put on top of my Herbed pizzelle. I can’t say that I thought it tasted any different than an egg but it was so pretty grated; like a big puffy pile of yellow.

Salt curing is the oldest method of food preservation that simply involves covering food with mixture of sugar and salt to draw out the moisture of the food. This method changes the egg yolk to a firm little flatten yolk that has the consistency of parmesan cheese; put it on your veggies (I tried some roasted asparagus), salads or spaghetti carbonara. Maybe put the grated yolk in your compound butter or wouldn’t it be wonderful on top of some avocado toast.

November 25, 2016 By Sherry

Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Pumpkin Biscotti with Chocolate and Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin and Chocolate were made for each other.

Don’t you just love Thanksgiving and all the special dishes that you, your mother, or even your grandmother make each year.

We all have our favorites. Just give me turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, and cranberry sauce (even the canned variety will satisfy me) and I’m good.

My friend Peggy has to make her husbands favorite cranberry salad every year or he would be boycotting dinner. My friend Linda has to do turkey whether they are at home or at a campsite and they spent Thanksgiving one year camping in freezing temperatures. And, my friend Janet reminded me of one of my favorites which I always forget — pimento cheese stuffed celery.

I’m not a fan of pumpkin pie but I love my Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins or my Pumpkin Bread Pudding and if you are looking for a breakfast treat over the Thanksgiving holidays, please try my pumpkin biscotti.

November 19, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Grits, Greens, and Egg

Get your greens early in the day.

Do you get enough greens everyday? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. With this recipe you can get some greens with your breakfast.

Originally I had planned on using fresh baby kale and sautéing it and putting that around my grits. But, the morning I made this I went to the refrig to grab my bag of greens and it wasn’t there. I forgot I used it a couple nights earlier to make my pork and kale dish. Luckily I had a bag of frozen spinach in my freezer.

I’m probably the only person reading this post that actually likes canned spinach. I always have a few cans in my pantry and always have some in the freezer and still buy fresh spinach when I want it in a salad.

This recipe turned out really good and looks oh so good in a bowl or plate. I love dishes like this one that combines a lot of flavor and fits neatly in a bowl. The bacon adds the saltiness you want, creamy cheese grits go so well with the spinach and the perfectly fried egg I did in my little pan I brought back from France makes the perfectly composed plate. And you’ll notice the grated yellow stuff on top of the egg. Well, that’s my cured egg yolk that took me 6 days to make. (More on that in another post.)

November 14, 2016 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp

Calico Shrimp Dip

Add this to Bubba’a list of shrimp things.

Bubba from Forrest Gump has nothing on me; how he can rattle off his list of ways to cook shrimp and eat it. Well, I can bake it, broil it, stir-fry it, sauté it, sushi it and fry it. I can serve you shrimp gumbo, a shrimp and corn chowder, a shrimp taco wrap a shrimp pintxos (tapas), stuffed into a pasta shell or an avocado cup. How about a Red Chard and Shrimp Artichoke Stir-fry or maybe coconut shrimp wontons or even some Crispy Salt and Pepper shrimp where you can eat the shells. Ya can get by without looking at my Honey Walnut Shrimp or my Shrimp Mussels Clams and Linguini; those are some of my best.

I had bought these beautiful jumbo (really huge jumbos) shrimp on sale one week and was waiting to use them for a simple shrimp cocktail and the more I looked at these I was trying to talk myself out of chopping them up for this dip just because they were at least a 3 bite shrimp and it seemed a shame to turn them into a dip. But company was coming and I wanted to make a few appetizers for the evening.

November 9, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Pork

Stir Fry with Pork, Eggplant and Greens

A quick, easy dinner, get out that wok or skillet!

Are you one of those people who likes cooking more in the Fall/Winter than the summer? I love cooking anytime of the year, but there is something about cooking when the temperatures start to drop a little and the leaves are falling/or turning colors (that doesn’t happen until later in the year for us here in Texas.) that makes me want to do a big hearty meal.

This isn’t a big hearty meal but actually a very healthy quick dinner you can throw together for a one pan stir-fry that will have you wanting to try your own variations.

Do you love eggplant as much as I do? It’s hard for me to pass up eggplant parmesan and I love eggplant caponata. I’ve fried eggplant chips and served with a drizzle of honey after having this tapas in Spain; and I’ve seen eggplant hummus at Trader Joe’s but have not tried that yet.

November 4, 2016 By Sherry

Candy/ Dessert

Honeycomb Shards

Shards of sweetness.

What’s your favorite type of candy? Is it chocolate, (or not), chewy, sour, salty, or hard? If it’s called candy I like it.

My mother always made the best pecan brittle and I remember watching her make it during the holidays. She would roast the pecans that she had picked up out of our yard, cook the sugar mixture until it was just the right temperature and then throw in some baking soda. That was my favorite part; I loved seeing it foam up and almost spill over the pan right before she would pour it up onto a buttered cookie sheet to cool and then be broken into pieces for either us to eat or go to a friend in need of some sweets.

Some recipes call this candy toffee, sponge toffee or cinder toffee; whatever you call it I think you will enjoy the amazing taste from this quick to make confection. I’m not really sure how it differs from a brittle but it isn’t nearly as hard to eat. My first attempt was using light corn syrup but then I wanted to try a recipe using honey. I couldn’t really tell the difference and in my third batch I used 2 tablespoons of syrup and the rest of the 1/2 cup filled with honey.

However you decide to make this, dip a few pieces in chocolate and sprinkle with a little flaked sea salt. My first attempt which was wonderful was from Buzzfeed but I chose to try A Cozy Kitchen’s version for the blog.

October 30, 2016 By Sherry

Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Chocolate Espresso Pizzelles

Out with the old, in with the new.

A person who likes to bake and cook can never have too many pans or utensils, can they? Maybe I don’t need three pans to make chocolate bouchons which are chocolate “cork” shaped cakes made by Thomas Keller; at the time I bought these molds I worked at Williams Sonoma and was catering and if I were to make these 12 would not have been enough, I needed at least 36 at a time. So is the story behind most of my pans like my 24 tiny 1″ x 2″ bread pans; and they are the cutest little loaves of bread you have ever eaten.

So, what is one to do when they are faced with a lifetime of cooking equipment when trying to clean out a kitchen to have it painted. Well, you go through one thing at a time and say “do I really need that” and 98% of the time my answer was yes and “this is so cute, I will use it sometime”.

I bought my first krumkake iron (or pizzelle) over 25 years ago and it was the kind that you put on top of burner, added the batter, shut the lid, cooked a few seconds, flipped and hoped that it did not burn before making a crisp delicious disk that you could form into a cone or cannoli shell.

Well, when I put my hands on my old krumkake iron I decided that it was time to replace and update the gadget/pan because perhaps I might want to make sone cones or pizzelles. I had bought my daughter-in-law, Missy, an electric pizzelle maker while we were in Chicago as few months ago and we made the Chocolate Tacos.

October 25, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Honey Chicken Roman Style (Poulet Apicius)

Brings back memories of Arles.

“A surprising and unusual chicken dish that harks back to the flavors of the Romans. Honey, spices and fish sauce. This is a dish inspired by the writings of Apicius”–

That’s the way this dish was described to us by our cooking instructor in Arles, France. It’s been four years since we were in France and I recently found this recipe while doing a cleanout of our kitchen before having everything painted inside and out. While visiting France (especially Provence) we wanted to take a cooking class and we came across this class in Arles. The kitchen looked at least 200 years old and it was such a fun class and much more interesting that some of the ones I’ve taken in kitchens all decked out with Viking equipment and sterile surroundings. Our instructor couldn’t speak English and his assistant translated everything we were to do while shopping at the street market and preparing the lunch/dinner.

I was reading up on Roman food saw where the Romans loved fish sauce that they made and that they used a lot of seasoning in their foods because a lot of the time the food would have turned rancid from improper storage and to keep their guest from tasting this, covered it up with lots of different spices. They also had no forks and ate either with their fingers or using spoons and knives. So, if you feel the urge, just pick the chicken up with your fingers and enjoy.

October 20, 2016 By Sherry

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