Sherry – Page 36 – Rosemary and the Goat

Bacon Wrapped Brussels Sprouts

Sprouts with a surprise.

As I’ve said in past post, it’s just been in recent years that I even tried Brussels Sprouts. I always thought it was too much trouble chasing these little balls of cabbage like vegetable around a plate before spearing it and trying to eat the whole thing in one bite.

Then along came my Brussels Sprouts Salad and my Fried Brussels Sprout leaves with raisins that changed my mine about this little golf ball like vegetable.

I happened upon Rick Souder’s website while looking for some food photography pictures and found the best of both worlds, food pictures and recipes all in one location. What a gold mine. His recipe for the sprouts looked interesting and the fact that they were wrapped in bacon made them even more appealing. I decided to add a little sweetness to his recipe though and added dried figs hiding under the bacon and they also got a drizzle of a good balsamic vinegar to finish them off.

If you are looking for a new appetizer to try out this Spring or Summer for a party, please give this a try and if you do leave a comment below and let me know what you think or if you have any changes. (The comment section is at the bottom of the recipe below the Facebook and Pinterest logos.) You can also use those buttons to post my recipes to Facebook or Pinterest.

April 1, 2015 By Sherry

Salads

Garlicky Greens

Beautiful salad and so fresh tasting.

When I first saw that Nancy Fuller was having a show on Food Network (Farmhouse Rules) I didn’t want to watch because I felt she was taking over Paula Deen’s spot. After watching a couple of her shows I grew to like it. What’s not to like about a grandma making food for her kids and her grandkids and then watching them run all over the farm.

She catered for 20 years (hey, I did too), a chef, business woman and co-owner of Ginsberg Foods. Her farm is in Hudson Valley, New York and I love seeing the farm and her outings to get foods.

I changed just a few things in her recipe. I really like radishes and her recipe calls for 4; I used the whole bunch. Also, I didn’t want to cube my cheese or use yellow cheddar so I used a white cheddar and shaved it with a vegetable peeler. I also wanted a little bacon taste so I baked 8 slices of proscuitto until it was crisp and crumbled that into the already tossed salad. The salad dressing had three ingredients, sour cream, buttermilk and roasted garlic. Now, you can’t get much easier than that. Her recipe called for two whole heads of roasted garlic. I roasted two heads thinking there was no way I would need that much. So, at first I put only one head, tasted, (I hardly even tasted it) and it wasn’t garlicky at all so I added the second bulb of sweet roasted garlic. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you only need 2 cloves — roast the two “heads” and use them all.

March 27, 2015 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

Peach and Raspberry Enchiladas with Creme Fraiche

Cobbler like with some crunch.

A while back, with nothing to do, I was looking around on Pinterest. I know there are probably a million things I could be doing but not many I want to be doing. An Apple Enchilada recipe just jumped off the page at me and I was held hostage long enough to find the site it came from and “Pinned” this into my “try” list.

I’m not a huge apple fan and it’s probably last on my list of fruit favorites. So when I saw that Cornfed Momma‘s recipe suggested substituting peaches or cherries, I knew where I was going with the recipe — peaches and raspberries since I probably still have about 25 packages of frozen raspberries I bought back in the fall.

I love making creme fraiche and always wonder why anyone would pay $5 for it from the grocery when with a cup of cream and a little buttermilk and 24 hours you can have a cup of the delicious topping that can be used for anything; and instead of serving with ice cream like CM did, I’m using a cinnamon cream fraiche.

March 22, 2015 By Sherry

Side dish

Grilled Asparagus with Egg and Bacon

Let’s hear it for St. Pat’s and a green vegetable recipe.

First day of Spring is March 20 but I couldn’t wait to make this recipe using one of Springtime’s favorite vegetables.

And, besides, it’s St. Pat’s Day and I had to do something green. Back in my husband’s college days at University of Missouri-Rolla St. Pat’s Day was a really big deal. Everyone started growing their beards months in advance for the big green holiday. At the time I would say the majority of the campus was engineers; so you imagine what their floats looked like, all mechanical with a different theme each year. I even remember one year stuffing tissue paper in the float to help. The fraternity he was in served up green milk, green mashed potatoes, green beer; you name it, it was colored green.

So, what would St. Patty’s Day be without a green vegetable.

I happened up on this recipe after I download a new app “Tasting Table”. On that site I read about bar food not to miss….. and Dirty Habit in San Francisco was one of them and I found this recipe from one of the chefs on the site. This is Chef David Bazirgan’s recipe and the sauce is his take on a gribiche sauce. A sauce gribiche is a mayonnaise-style cold egg sauce in the French cuisine. David did his version of a deconstructed gribiche and I really like the results which look much better than pictures I saw of a gribiche sauce which has pickles in it.

March 17, 2015 By Sherry

Side dish

White Mash with Crispy Shallots

White Mash, and you thought I was talking about white lightening I bet.

I wanted to make my Osso Buco again that we made for a dinner party a few months go, but without the potatoes. I still had stashed away in my refrigerator a rutabaga,turnip and half head of cauliflower that I picked up at the market last week.

Ina Garten was just on Sunday Morning news program and since I hadn’t looked at her blog in a while I scooted over to it and looked around for something that resembled potatoes. Ina has a recipe called Mashed Yellow Turnips with Shallots and I decided to hijack that recipe and use my turnip, cauliflower and rutabaga for a mash topped with crispy shallots.

March 12, 2015 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts

The Ivy Berry Melt

What’s not to like about Hot White Chocolate!

I’m sure most of you (wherever you live) are absolutely, unequivocally sick of all this snow, ice, rain, dampness, cloudy and gloomy days we are all experiencing this winter.

Well, I have a recipe for you. The frozen fruit will remind you of what you want to leave behind and that you are ready to move on to Spring. And the warm white chocolate smoothly flowing over and coating the frozen fruit, thawing it has it runs down the dish, should bring promise of all that melting snow you may be experiencing now. So, a little bit of winter, hopefully in our rear view mirrors, and Spring ahead of us.

What would I do without Ina Garten. I love watching her show and watching her gather her ingredients at her local markets. I had this dessert at my friend, Peggy’s, and knew I would be making it again; and I did, again, and again, and again. You can change up your fruits. My favorites are raspberries, blueberries, cherries, and blackberries. Any fruits can be used, just make sure you freeze them. (Strawberries freeze a little too hard for me, almost like ice cubes.)

The day I served this to my craft circle group (only seven of us in my section) I used frozen cherries, peaches, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Anyone that can’t eat the seeds simply use fruits without seeds like the cherries and peaches.

March 7, 2015 By Sherry

Soup

Posole (Mexican Soup with Pork and Hominy)

Another soup recipe for your cold winter nights.

Ok, I’m probably the only person looking at this blog that loves hominy. I don’t care if it is the white or yellow. I like it. If you have never tried it then I’m sure you are wondering what the heck is that stuff that looks like corn on steroids.

Hominy is basically dried corn that has been soaked in mineral lime bath and the alkali process loosens the hulls from the kernels and softens the kernels. The process can cause the kernels to double in size. I’ve read that sometimes the lime is replaced with lye (that is what I had always heard). So, long story short, without hominy, no tortillas, no tacos, tamales or masa. So, anytime you eat any of these products, then you have eaten hominy.

I remember as a kid, one of my favorite meals (our mother cooked everything homemade so don’t know when we ever ate this) was mashed potatoes with “canned” Krey sliced roast beef in gravy that we put on top of the mashed potatoes and then some white hominy on the side with some butter and salt and pepper.

March 2, 2015 By Sherry

Bread/ Breads/Biscuits/ Morning Foods

Loveless Cafe Style Biscuits

Voted one of the best biscuits in the U.S.

How many times while we are traveling do we eat at a great restaurant and then soon forget about it? Well, I never do. I have talked about Loveless Cafe several times here and this is one restaurant that we actually made it back to again and for the second time enjoyed their wonderful biscuits for breakfast. I always knew if we got back to Nashville we would eat at Loveless again, and we did on our way back from Asheville last summer. Loveless Cafe’s Biscuits have been voted one of the best restaurant biscuits in the U.S. and of course they aren’t going to share their recipe.

For over 60 years guests have been sharing meals with family and friends at Loveless Cafe. LC is located in southwest Nashville at 8400 Highway 100 and has been serving meals since 1951. It use to be a 50’s style Motel and still has that sign by the roadside. You can’t miss it and if you pass it by, you will be sorry.

To me, there’s nothing better than a hot biscuit out of the oven with room temperature softened butter. Now, my husband would disagree because he loves to put either honey or molasses on his biscuits.

I changed a few ingredients in Mother’s Kitchen copycat recipe. For one, why use buttermilk powder when I can use 2 cups of buttermilk; and since I had some Lard in my pantry I used that in place of the vegetable shortening. Also, I decreased the sugar to 1/8 cup because I don’t think any biscuits needs to be sweet. This recipe sounds similar to the Angel Biscuits we use to make back in the 70’s. Whether it is or not, I think it measures up to Loveless Cafe’s biscuits.

February 25, 2015 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp

Shrimp Cocktail Sauce

And you thought you knew everything about cocktail Sauce!

I had been planning foot surgery for a few months. No big deal, just a bone spur taken off. So, I decided for dinner the night of my surgery I wanted a g bowl of shrimp with cocktail sauce of course. (Update: boot finally off after 4 weeks and my left shoe welcomes back its mate.)

Six shrimp teetering on the edge of a glass filled with cocktail sauce is not my idea of shrimp cocktail. I want a lot of shrimp because that is probably all I’m going to be eating other than something to dip them in.

This recipe is from Rick Souders and I happened upon his site looking for food photography. If you have a minute, look around his website and he also has two blogs which have some beautiful recipes.

Normally when I make a cocktail sauce, nothing gets measured; goes something like this — bowl of ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce and a little hot sauce, stir it up and serve. I though Rick’s recipe sounded interesting because of the sweet chili sauce (which I use all the time in other things) and also the balsamic ketchup which I just happened to find at the grocery. The ketchup was about $5 a bottle and if I had not found that I was going to add a tablespoon of balsamic to regular ketchup. So, you know what you can do now if you don’t want to spend the money or cannot find the balsamic ketchup.

February 20, 2015 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Chinese Orange Chicken

AND THE WINNER IS…. (see below for “giveaway” winner.

I made cauliflower rice with this dish but any kind of rice would be wonderful.

Chungah at Damdelicious.net blog uses simple fresh ingredients to make elegant easy meals. She had two chicken recipes I found interesting so I merged them into one. I love eating Chinese food and I use to make it more often. I have been wanting to use some of the beautiful chop sticks (washable ones, of course) that I ordered for a friend’s ‘China Going Away Party’ a year ago and I thought this recipe with its larger cuts of chicken would work great with my little sticks of art.

One of Chungah’s recipe is fried and the other is baked. I made the chicken nuggets as suggested in Baked Honey Garlic Chicken but liked the ingredients in the Chinese Orange Chicken. So, I took pieces of each recipes and changed the technique to suit what I wanted the outcome to be — a non-fried Chinese Orange Chicken.

Dam Delicious has some beautiful recipe and you should spend a little time over at her site looking at some of her things. She definitely inspired me to cook up some Asian flavors.

Update: So, I’m hoping this new recipe card format is working out. Looks like you can leave a comment for the blog (which is at the bottom of the post) or if you try the recipe you can leave a comment or review about the recipe. Hope you will try both.

February 15, 2015 By Sherry

Entree/ Pork

Pork Tenderloin with Shiitake Mushroom Sauce

My Open Table Experience at Kona Grill

I received an invitation from Open Table to do a post for their blog. I have been using Open Table for years to make restaurant reservations both locally and while traveling. I love it.

Many restaurants use Open Table. Go to their website or put their app on your phone then you simply put in the date you want to eat at the restaurant (or it will give you a list of restaurants that have open tables) and the approximate time and you will get a choice of 3-4 different times. Pick the one you want and reserve. You will be sent an email and if you have the app you can go to it and check any upcoming reservations. If you need to cancel for any reason, do it on the app. Looking back at my account, it looks like I used Open Table when we were at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville last summer and also at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC (for tea), and again while in Vancouver last summer.

So, we had planned to go to Kona Grill on a Saturday night. I went to Open Table’s site, put in the date and 3 or 4 times came up; I chose the 6:45 slot and that was it! No getting to the restaurant and wondering if we would get a table.

We started with drinks and potstickers. My husband ordered the sea bass with pan-asian ratatouille, which he said was delicious. I’m glad we didn’t order a salad because the entrees were so large that I could not finish what was on my plate. I chose the almond crusted pork tenderloin with shiitake mushroom sauce. That, I knew I could recreate in my own kitchen.

Pork tenderloin is one of my favorite cuts of pork to cook; it is tender and cooks very fast. I cut my tenderloin into three pieces to cook and then sliced after removing from the oven.

I’ve included a picture of my dish from that night so you can see how they compare. I made my mashed potatoes much thinner than they did and I plated the bok choy a little different. The restaurant mounded the mashed potatoes on the plate (the thickest potatoes I have ever been served) and laid the steamed (or sautéed) bok choy over the potatoes to cover them; it kind of looked like a green igloo. I decided to use a ring mold to mold my potatoes and set them on top of the baby bok choy, which I think giving the dish a much prettier presentation.

February 10, 2015 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Bread/ HotApp

Hushpuppies My Dad’s Way

My Dad — The Renaissance Man.

Maybe I should have saved this story for Father’s Day but after doing my Savory Pecan post, I started thinking about all the things I remember about my dad and his life. Growing up, my mother did most of the cooking unless it was bbq, fish or game and then that was my dad’s department. But, as they got older and retired, and my mother’s health declined, our dad started sharing the kitchen with our mother. He would experiment with all sorts of cooking and gardening techniques. At one point he came up with this hushpuppy recipe on his own and that’s the recipe I have decided to share.

Long before my parents got into cooking up their own recipes, they would buy frozen hushpuppies; the ones that looked like hard little football shaped things that seemed even harder once they were fried. Then my mother started making homemade hushpuppies which I always thought were the most delicious ones ever, especially with a little butter smeared on them. Then in my dad’s later years, he added some yeast to the recipe and the rest is history. Sometimes I might add a little corn or even jalapeño to the puppy mix but they stand alone without any of the extras as the best hushpuppies I’ve eaten.

I don’t know about you but I can shut my eyes (I really don’t have to do that) I can hear my dad laugh, picture my mother’s smile which she had for everyone, hear my grandfather clearing his throat when he came in the door for lunch (they lived next door to us) and hear my grandmother saying “you need to put t-shirts on those babies”; we never forget those who meant so much to us do we.

Hope you will enjoy reading some of my memories about my dad, The Renaissance Man. And, if you are not tired of reading, there are a few pictures of him at the bottom of this post.

THE RENAISSANCE MAN

Gardening and Cooking: He would try to grow just about anything; one year he grew Jerusalem artichokes just to see how he could use them. They pickled everything, made his own dry rub for years, grew, dried and ground his own peppers and he loved to talk about his garden. He dehydrated all kinds of fruits, veggies and made his own jerky. When it came to canning he even canned some fish once and used to make fish cakes (I never tried those).

February 5, 2015 By Sherry

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