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Sherry

Salad Dressing/ Salads

Spinach, Chicken and Blueberry Salad with a Touch of BBQ

And a touch of BBQ!

We are 100% unpacked in our new house and everything has a place either hung, in a drawer/closet/on a shelf. I love this house and having everything on one level is great and having a big kitchen makes me want to start experimenting with new recipes

. One of my last boxes I unpacked had a collection of menus from restaurants we had visited over the years. Some from Italy, one from Spain, (Casa Botin which is suppose to be oldest restaurant in the world dating back to 1725), even an old Elvis menu from a restaurant in Memphis. This recipe was inspired by a menu item from a Houston restaurant.

When we lived in The Woodlands a friend and I would shop and eat in Houston often and one of my favorite lunch places back then was the Empire Cafe on Westheimer and I absolutely loved one of their salads that had a bbq dressing. So this is my version of a salad that holds a lot of fond memories.

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Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Savory Dutch Baby with Gouda and Crispy Prosciutto

Dutch babies whether sweet or savory are so much fun!

In case you have never make a sweet or savory Dutch baby pancake you are in for a treat if you try this savory version.

What is a Dutch baby pancake you say? Well it is a cross between a pancake, a popover, Yorkshire pudding and maybe a crepe and it is baked rather than pan fried in a skillet  I’ve made a sweet version before and when it came out of the oven it was scattered with fresh blueberries and sprinkled with powdered sugar. 

This savory version I made recently when friends visited during the antique show here in Round Top. This version has gouda cheese and some crispy prosciutto and garnished with micro greens.

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Entree/ Poultry

Chicken with Pesto and Bowtie Pasta

Easy to make with a rotisserie chicken!

Recently I bought this beautiful bow tie pasta made by Good Hair Day. Don’t ask me why any food product would have “hair” in the description of any product but the packaging was pretty cool. Beautiful girl with long hair and the clear opening of part of the package where her hair is has the pasta shape showing through. This pasta retained its beautiful color after cooking and there’s nothing more I like than color.

It’s been a while since I have posted a recipe. We are in our new house and after two weeks of unpacking we have about 95% of things put away. Organizing all that stuff will come later.

My daughter came to help one weekend and even though there were still a few boxes and pictures around that had not be put away or hung we cooked our first meal in our new kitchen. I have not read any of the manuals to my new equipment and I just guessed on some of the new features on the double ovens which are suppose to proof, air fry, dehydrate, convection and steam; I’ll read them on some rainy day.

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Beef/Veal/ Garnish/ Sauces

Cowboy Butter

Yee-haw! for cowboy butter.

For my birthday last November we went over to Columbus, Tx to a new restaurant, Magnolia Society (isn’t that a cool name) and even though I never get steak out because we do really good steak at home I ordered the steak with cowboy butter and balsamic demi glaze.

The steak was delicious. I can’t say I could identify what the cowboy butter was but put together  the flavors were great and it made a very nice entree. I knew I’d be looking up a recipe for cowboy butter. I found two and ended up combining the two. One had horseradish and the other didn’t so I divided my mixture in half and added horseradish to one and not the other so I could decide which I really liked better; split decision because both were delicious on the steaks.

What is a compound butter you say. Well, it’s made by taking softened butter and adding herbs and seasonings. Then it gets formed into a log and refrigerator until firm and then it gets sliced and then tops your meat, fish, chicken,  or vegetables. It will keep in the freezer for several months. Once we get into our new home with a nice big freezer I plan on keeping several different butters frozen so that will be ready to fancy up any entree I may prepare.

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Entree/ Poultry

Grilled Spatchcocked Greek Chicken

Spatched what?

So what does spatchcocked mean? Well, it’s when the backbone of the chicken is removed and you flatten the chicken out. It looks pretty and also helps the chicken pieces all finish cooking at the same time on the grill.

Occasionally I will do a recipe exactly as it is written and then the next time I make it maybe tweak it with some extra ingredients. This night I told my husband (GA or Papa G as he’s know around the brewery) that I had a whole chicken we (he) could throw on the grill. He searched around the internet and came up with this recipe from Food Network. It was delicious and he went to the store to buy the extra ingredients  that we didn’t have on hand. He did it all, spatchcocking the chicken, of course, making the marinade, cooking it, carving it, and when we were finished eating, he deboned the remaining chicken and put in the refrigerator. What a guy!

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Dessert/ Desserts

Cherry Pistachio Cheesecake with Tuile Leaves

Red and green couldn’t taste any better!

Hoping everyone had a very Merry Christmas and looking forward to the new year 2024.

Our Xmas dinner this year was tamales (made by me and my sister) that I had in the freezer from last spring when my sister visited and we made our homemade tamales. I had made 12 dozen to begin with and by Christmas I was down to just 3 dozen. We cooked 2 dozen leaving me with just one last dozen I’m holding on to for a while. Mexican rice, some good guacamole and Paul’s chili rounded out our dinner.

I wanted an easy dessert and one that looked Christmasy and decided on this cheesecake with a cherry topping, salted roasted pistachios and I made some tuile leaves for decorations. It was absolutely mouthwatering delicious, the cherries were a tiny bit tart and the saltiness and crunch from the pistachios added to the deliciousness of this dessert and the leaves were just thrown in because I’ve been trying out my tuile molds for the third time.  

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Entree/ Poultry

Chicken In A Pot

Ooh la la! Chicken in a pot with a touch of Herbs de Provence.

Don’t you just love the hint of lavender in herbs de provence? I do and in this pretty easy recipe I’ll have you wanting to get out and buy the spice if you don’t already have it.

The recipe instructions for this dish are different than the pictures I took the night I made it because some things I should have done in a different order to get the results I wanted. End results of my dish just as delicious but I browned my chicken a little more with my torch. You don’t want to have to do that.

I love one pot dishes and especially this one because after getting it in the pot you pop it in the oven and just forget about it until ready to serve. Great dish to have around the holidays and any type of pasta will be delicious. Hopefully we will be in our new home early January and I will be cooking up more mouth-watering recipes since I will have a bigger kitchen; more space to spread out and also to have friends come over and cook.

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Side dish

Dijon and Bacon Mashed Potatoes

I like mustard and I cannot lie!

I’m sure everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving feast and probably mashed potatoes of any kind is the last thing you want to think about. BUT, this is such a simple recipe and it goes well with fish, beef, pork or chicken.

I eat mustard on almost anything. As a kid, my sister and I would make mustard sandwiches on really soft white bread (light bread we called it) and smash it before eating it. Don’t ask me why because our mother always had plenty of food made for us to eat.

I have some weird eating habits when it comes to mustard though. I’ve only ever dipped French fries in mustard. I have never used ketchup on a fry, never. I love to put a little mustard on the edge of my bowl of white beans and ham and with each bite drag a little into the spoonful of beans and ham. Doesn’t that just make your mouth water and especially if you think of a nice piece of cornbread to go with that bowl of beans. I love fried pork belly sandwiches on some nice soft white bread and lots of yellow mustard.

So when I was cruising the internet, not looking for mashed potatoes, I came across several recipes for mustard mashed potatoes. I added cream instead of milk and topped with some crispy bacon bits and green onion slices and have to say they were quite good to go with our oven baked catfish and then I used the leftovers with our steak and cowboy butter the next night. Recipe for cowboy butter coming soon.

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Salad Dressing/ Salads

Fig, Prosciutto and Burrata Salad

Oh yeah, some spicy arugula too!

Who doesn’t love fruit of any kind on a salad! Whether it’s summer fruits like berries and peaches or fall fruits like apples, pears, dates, cranberries and of course figs, all these fruits add a little sweetness to your salad and ups the wow factor for your guests. I like salads that make me anxious to make them or  come up with additions that may make them even better and I like to think of people eating them and loving them (ok that is a little weird.)

This salad happened to come about when friends came to Round Top for the Fall Antique Show. We spent the day shopping, lunch at Round Top Brewing, blackberry lime scones and champagne at my house to celebrate all the help they have been to me with building our new house. Believe me, I had a ton of questions. (Also, Brooke’s mom and sister received tons of questions from me -thanks for your help too.) So, after a long day shopping they returned to The Woodlands and the next day they shopped the day in Houston and had lunch at a restaurant where they had this salad. They recreated the salad for their dinner the next night. I’m recreating it from their version.

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Appetizers/ Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Food Stories/ Game/ HotApp/ Pork

Friday night fights!

Friday night fights!

(There isn’t a recipe today but just a little story about how we love frog legs and our fried fish and another look at a few of our family favorites.)

On any given Friday night when we were kids (my twin sister and brother) we would probably be in front of a black and white tv watching The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (Boxing). I guess that was my dad’s favorite sport to watch. (I learned a lot about Gillette razor blades every Friday night.)  Many of those Friday nights would  involve a fish fry with family friends or if my dad had gone frog gigging then he would have taken out his boat that he made to float ditches and gigged us some frogs. This boat was made from welding two car hoods together and was perfect for going down some of the bayous like Black Island or Wolf Island or any of the ditches full of rain water and overflowing with croaking bull frogs ready to give it up for a delicious dinner for our family.

Our dad could pretty much do anything. I’ve called him a Renaissance Man in one of my post about his hushpuppy recipe (which is the best hushpuppy you will ever put in your mouth.) Even though a lot of our meals were things like fried pork chops, fish, meatloaf, duck and other game, delicious stews and soups; just simple good food, there was a lot of love and care that went into preparing all those meals. Our mother was a stay-at-home mom and had lunch ready for my dad every day and then a nice meal ready every night about the time he came home.

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Salad Dressing/ Salads

Fall Slaw, Ya’ll

Fall Slaw Y’all!

I actually made this slaw for Labor Day and I was thinking summer slaw. But, now it is Fall I’m calling it a Fall slaw. Even though it is still very hot in our part of Texas it’s still Fall. When I was a kid I always associated Fall with going back to school and  little plaid dresses with ties in the back or in high school with long plaid skirts and “bobby socks”.

The more I thought of this recipe I thought of Fall fruits. Cranberries and apples are Fall fruits, so this should be my go-to FALL SLAW recipe. The pistachios along with the apples add a tasty little crunch to a sometimes boring cabbage slaw. The hot honey adds a little hotness to balance out the sweetness of the fruits.

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Morning Foods/ Pastries

Rose and Pistachio Crinkle Cake

Ruffles and pink rosebuds!

This is a pretty little dessert to have with your morning pot of tea or coffee. It’s not really a cake or a pie it’s just ruffles of phyllo and a few other ingredients. 

My daughter use to say that she doesn’t like to wear pink because I had her wearing pink most of her childhood. Not really maybe when she was a baby and toddler she had a LOT of little onesies and outfits that had little pink rosebuds on them and pink ribbons etc. I do really like pink; so much that in our new house being build will have a pink bedroom. Not girly or baby girl pink but one wall is going to be a nice pink shiplap (maybe grayish pink, not mauve but just the right shade that it will remind me of her being a little girl who didn’t like her hair combed before school and I always had to turn it into a contest too see how fast I could get it fixed. And as far as the room goes, it’s only one wall and maybe a little pink in the bathroom wallpaper Why not, it’s only paint and I like color.

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