Sherry – Page 10 – Rosemary and the Goat

Balsamic Mushroom Panini

I love mushrooms and this little tapas is a winner to go with a glass of wine while you sit in front of your crackling fireplace (or any other time).

One of the things we do every year on the day AFTER Thanksgiving is to have our family “feast”. We have been doing this for almost eight years now. We have another couple and their family come over and with our three kids and two of their spouses, we have a blast cooking.

This is just one of our tapas we did last year.

The mushrooms sauteeing with the butter and olive oil gives off the best aroma.

The baguettes (or bread) gets spread with mascarpone cheese and topped with sliced fontina. Then these get toasted on the panini, pulled apart and topped with the sauteed mushrooms.

This is the menu from our Spanish Tapas Feast last year. The menu has everything listed that we cooked and who was in charge of making the dish.

We have had themes such as “all oysters” (7 ways), sushi, Mexican, Italian (After our trip to Italy, we were inspired to do an Italian theme), we have had French Country and last year we did Spanish Tapas. Everyone is in charge of choosing one (or more) recipes to try. My daughter-in-law, Brooke, puts together the menus so everyone has a copy and we set about making our recipe for the evening.

We had a Spanish flag last year to go with our Spanish Tapas theme and everyone got their picture made with the flag either in their chef’s hat or holding some utensil or food. Someone is hiding behind the flag and that may be me. We had all Spanish wines.

This recipe was out of a panini book I have and if you don’t have a panini grill, then you can just toast the bread on one side and finish this off in the oven. They are delicious and I’m going to try a variation of this using puffed pastry and adding some asparagus as a garnish. Hope you enjoy these as much as we did.

Balsamic Mushroom Panini

Ingredients

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil plus 3 Tbsp.
2-10 oz. pkgs. bella or crimini mushrooms cleaned and cut in quarters
1 c. sliced shitake mushrooms
8 cloves garlic minced and then divided
1 tsp. fresh chopped thyme
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. coarse ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 ciabatta loaf sliced 1/2" thick or other country type bread
1/2 c. mascarpone cheese
8 oz. fontina cheese thinly sliced

Instructions

Preheat panini grill to high heat. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter and add 3 Tbsp. olive oil. Wen hot, add 4 cloves minced garlic and bella and shitake mushrooms. Saute for 3 minutes, then add thyme, pepper, salt and balsamic vinegar and cook for 3 additional minutes or until mushrooms are tender but not soft. Remove from heat and set aside.
Combine remaining minced garlic with remaining olive oil in a small bowl. Brush one side of 8 slices of bread with olive oil/garlic mixture. Spread mascarpone cheese evenly on the inside of 8 slices of bread, then top with 4 slices fontina cheese. Place fontina topped slices oiled side down on panini grill, then top with remaining slices of bread, oiled side up. Close panini grill and cook until golden brown and the cheese is melted, about 10 minutes. Remove from grill and pull sandwiches apart, leaving cheese on both sides. Lay out on serving dish and top each with mushrooms mixture. Garnish with more fresh thyme. Serve warm.
*Note-- sometimes I use a mixture of 3-4 kinds of mushrooms.

October 16, 2009 By Sherry

Soup

Sausage and Bean Chowder

It feels like 100° outside today but I’m making chowder anyway!

I know I said before that I make soup no matter how hot it is here in Texas. I decided a long time ago that I couldn’t wait for snow on the patio to make a big pot of soup. Well, we had a cold front come through today, it’s 70° 🙂

This recipe is one that my twin sister put in our “Two Peas In A Pod” cookbook we did about 7 years ago. It has been one of her favorites. She lives in Missouri so she does get those nice snowy/icy nights when you want nothing more than a pot of soup, the TV and a glass of wine to go along with it.

I snuck a handful of small shell macaroni in the pot along with the potatoes. This is a delicious and hearty soup that I think you will enjoy.

All the ingredients you need and a few spices. You can use either Italian sausage or breakfast sausage in this recipe.

I know I have said it before but this is my favorite kitchen gadget. I put a quartered onion in and 5-6 pulls later I had the perfect size pieces of onion. Now look at the celery and green pepper below, they only took about 3-4 pulls.

Believe me, I get no kick backs for plugging this chopper. And there are not many gadgets that I think I can’t live without.

Sausage and Bean Chowder

Ingredients

1 lb. hot Italian sausage or breakfast sausage
2 - 16 oz. cans kidney beans undrained
1 - 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 onion diced
2 large potato diced small
handful of shell macaroni optional
1/2 c. diced celery
1 green pepper diced
1 qt. water
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 tsp. seasoned salt
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2-1 tsp. crushed red pepper

Instructions

Take the casings off the Italian sausages and brown in a skillet. Chop the sausage up with a spoon as it starts to brown. When it has started cooking, add in the diced onion and continue sauteeing about 5-7 minutes longer. Then add in the celery and green pepper. Saute another 5-7 minutes.
Add in the tomatoes, kidney beans, water, bay leaf and all the seasonings. Cover and simmer 1 hour. Now add the diced potatoes, and macaroni (optional), cover and simmer 20 minutes longer.
Serve with cornbread or your favorite bread.

Recipe Notes

Serves 4-6.

October 12, 2009 By Sherry

Dessert/ Ice Cream

Banana Pudding Ice Cream

Remember that banana pudding your grandmother use to make that was piled high with meringue and browned in the oven?

I remember my mother and grandmother making homemade banana pudding. I remember the smooth custard that they made from scratch. NO instant vanilla pudding and no whipped cream on top. Instead their banana pudding had that rich homemade custard, crunchy vanilla wafers on the verge of getting soft but still a little crunch left and oh, the meringue, piled high and browned in the oven.

Wow! Now you can have those same flavors in this ice cream. I know summer is over, but I’m slipping this ice cream recipe in because I know you will enjoy it. My daughter and I went to Charleston, SC over Labor Day weekend with my twin sister and her son. We had a great time and while there I saw this cookbook, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook and remember SmittenKitchenmentioning this book in her blog. So, I ordered it from our library and while drueling over almost every recipe in the book I came across the recipe for Banana Pudding Ice cream. It’s delicious.

I topped this with a banana slices and vanilla wafers. I think chocolate would be a great addition.

October 9, 2009 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Mimi’s Sticky Chicken

If you don’t know Mimi’s Sticky Chicken, you need to get acquainted.

If you google “Mimi’s Sticky Chicken” you will come up with 21,000 results. I came across this recipe probably about ten years ago. I never knew who Mimi was, I just knew I loved the recipe. If you haven’t come across the recipe in your Internet searches I would be amazed.

When I think of chickens (and we eat our fair share of the two legged creatures) a story my husband use to tell us always comes to mind. He remembers going out to his grandmother’s house (Ma Michie’s farm) and her chasing the chickens around the yard until she caught one. She would wring it’s neck, put it in a big black cast iron kettle in the yard (we now have that kettle in our back yard with flowers planted in it) and boil it just long enough that she could pluck the feathers off it. Then she would fry it up and I’m sure it was some of the best fried chicken my husband ever had. She was also known to bbq some goat.

October 6, 2009 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp

Cheese Stuffed Rigatoni Bites

I love anything made with pasta and these little tidbits make a fun appetizer.

I didn’t make this rigatoni pasta (I used one I bought in the store). I did make the filling and fill the pasta. BUT tomorrow I am teaching a technique class at Williams Sonoma, demonstrating our KA pasta press. I took our demo model home so I could try it out before the class so I could get the hang of making fresh pasta. It was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. In fact, I took it home on Wednesday and kept putting it off until late Saturday afternoon because I thought it might be complicated. I don’t know why I did that because I’m always up for a challenge.

I have the pasta roller attachment for my KA and have made rolled pasta but never thought of making pressed pasta shapes like rigatoni, spaghetti, macaroni, fusilli, or bucatini. Within just minutes, I had the dough made and was whipping out all of the above mentioned pasta shapes. It was really a lot of fun. Then I though, what the heck, let’s throw in some spinach and make spinach pasta. I was beautiful.

Three years ago we were in Italy and took a cooking class. There were six of us traveling together and our villa offered cooking classes in their restaurant. Our chef/owner was Fredrico and we made about six kinds of pasta that day. When we were using the roller for the flat pastas, it was like the I Love Lucy episode when she was on an assembly line for a candy company. Instead of cramming the candies in our mouths like Lucy and Ethel did, our strips of pasta kept getting longer and longer each time we took them through the machine (this was a BIG machine) and we had the pasta over our arms in folds. It was hilarious. That was one fun day of cooking.

October 3, 2009 By Sherry

Soup

Pumpkin Tomato Soup with Creme Fraiche & Parmesan Leaf Puffs

Fall is here and you may be seeing pumpkins pop up all over the fields and markets. Ever think of pairing pumpkins and tomatoes to make a delicious soup?

Doesn’t the below picture just make you want to grab your kids and take them out to a pumpkin patch? Hey, it’s the first of October and I think it’s time to start thing about soups and comfort food.

Not being a tomato soup fan. I’ve never had the urge to curl up with a blanket and a bowl of Campbells’ tomato soup on a cold winter’s night to take the chill off. I’m more inclined to turn the air conditioning down low and then turn on the fireplace so I feel like it is winter here in Texas and then have a bowl of soup.

This is a beautiful soup and is great served cold, room temperature or warm.

Several years ago, I ran across these two books, Morning Food and Cafe Beaujolais. They were written by Margaret Fox. She use to own and run this little restaurant, Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino, California. I found several recipes from these books that have become favorites of mine.

This recipe is from Morning Food and blends pumpkin and tomato together beautifully. You don’t really even taste the pumpkin, it just adds a nice sweetness to the tomato and cuts the acidity of the soup. I like to top this with creme fraiche hearts and Parmesan Leaf Puffs.

I saw these Cinderella Pumpkins at the market yesterday. I’ve never seen them before and had to stop and take a picture. These look like miniature pumpkins but there were very large — large enough to even have Cinderella inside along for a ride. This recipe doesn’t call for fresh pumpkin, but if you wanted to try using it, you would want to use the small pie pumpkins.

October 1, 2009 By Sherry

Bars/ Dessert

Cheesecake Brownies — The Best

I’m sorry, I’m prejudice, but these are the best cheesecake brownies I have ever put in my mouth!

I just got back from a trip to NYC with my husband and friends. We were celebrating our 40th and 25th wedding anniversaries and I really want to talk about everything we did and ate but I guess that will have to wait a few days until I catch up on things here.

I made these cheesecake brownies for a catering job I have this weekend. I have been making this recipe for at least 15 years and I feel like they are the best of the best brownies.

I have done them with the cheesecake topping, without the topping, with nuts only sprinkled on top, with nuts and chocolate chips sprinkled on top (my favorite way). And they still remain, one of my all-time favorite brownie recipes.

These are so truffle like you won’t believe it until you taste them. I have tried making the batter several ways. I have melted the butter and the chips together to add to the batter and I have also creamed the butter with the sugar and add to the batter. You need to try doing these both ways and find your favorite method. If you are like me, you will be standing with glass of milk, a potholder in hand and waiting for the oven timer to ring saying “eat me”.

September 26, 2009 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Bread/ ColdApp/ HotApp

Garlic and Oregano Naan

Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey-ey, my first naan!

The first time I ever heard the word naan I thought of the song “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey-ey, goodbye”. I had never tasted naan until Christmas last year. We were in Austin celebrating Christmas and awaiting the birth of our grandson. We did a lot of cooking while there for the week, but one night everyone wanted to go for Indian food.

Our kids have been trying to get us to try Indian food for years and we have always said, “we don’t like curry”. So, being Christmas and all, we gave in and went to the Clay Pit that night. We knew right away upon entering that we were going to like it. The aroma was unbelievable.

We had three kinds of naan that night. I don’t remember what they were or what we dipped in them but they were wonderful. I do remember having a coconut dish for my entree that was really good.

So this week I have decided to make Naan to go along with that, my fabulous White Bean Hummus which I like better than traditional hummus. I’ll be posting that recipe soon.

September 18, 2009 By Sherry

Salads/ Vegetables

Potato and Arugula Salad

I do declare! This is one of the best and simplest salads I have ever made.

As I have said before, I love arugula. Never thought of putting it in potato salad before but, believe me, this works.

I think I could live on potatoes. We probably eat potatoes about twice a month now that all my kids have moved on and left the nest. Seems like all three of our kids were pretty picky eaters when they were growing up. They would eat meat, potatoes, “box” mac and cheese, hardly anything green but fried okra and green beans. They have since outgrown that and have now developed an appetite for good food, good wine and a love for cooking and trying different things.

Who would know that these boiled little potatoes could turn into a fantastic, peppery salad.

If you have never tried arugula, run, don’t walk to your nearest market and buy some. Put it on sandwiches, burgers, in salads, use it in appetizers, and main dishes. I think you will fall for it like I did.

September 15, 2009 By Sherry

Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Shrimp and Cheese Grits

Charleston was a delight and the food was absolutely wonderful and shrimp and grits is one of my favorites.

Shut my mouth! I declare! Butter my biscuit! I feel like I should be saying all these things about these Shrimp and Cheese Grits.

My daughter and I just returned from Charleston. This was our 4th mother/daughter trip and this year we shared it with my twin sister and her son.

Born and raised in southeast Missouri, which is right on the Arkansas and Tennessee borders and the Mississippi river, I always thought of myself as a southerner. We ate southern food like black eyed peas, hog jowl, fried green tomatoes, fried pork chops, fried chicken (everything good and fried) but I never had grits growing up.

In fact, I didn’t have grits until I lived in Kansas City and a neighbor from Atlanta brought me over a bowl of buttered grits one morning. They were so smooth and creamy I fell in love with them. After that, I experimented with shrimp and cheese grits and they are my favorite to this day.

Upon arriving in Charleston we had a late lunch at Fleet Landing down by the water. I had a wonderful fried green tomato stacked with crab salad, which I plan to try to make soon. We got into the laid back pace of Charleston pretty quickly. Sailing, champagne, wine, oysters, shrimp, fried green tomatoes— ahhhh!

Our first night we all took a low country cooking class at Charleston Cooks. There were 11 of us in the class and we all pitched in and by the end of the class we had before us a beautiful plate of Lime, Tomato and Grilled Corn Salad, Pulled Pork BBQ with Sweet Mustard Sauce, Carolina Red Rice, Blue Cheese Slaw and the yummiest Fried Peach Pies with vanilla ice cream. We ate it all!.

This particular recipe for shrimp and grits came from a 1990’s Bon Appetit magazine in what use to be there RSVP section. Not sure if they still do this but back then people could write in and request a recipe from a restaurant they had visited. Usually one was printed either from the restaurant or one that the magazine tested. This recipe was a request from Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, NC. Only thing I changed was I used cheese grits instead of plain grits.

September 13, 2009 By Sherry

Cookies/ Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Coconut Macaroons

I’ve been in search of a great macaroon for years. Recently I tasted the best I have ever had at Katz deli here in Texas. It was big, moist and a heavenly cloud of coconut.

The unsweetened coconut is beautiful when it is in large pieces but not nearly sweet enough for a macaroon by itself. So you have to sweeten it with condensed milk. Have you EVER tasted anything with condensed milk that isn’t good? After making this recipe a couple of times I have since mixed the unsweetened (because I like the look) and sweetened coconut.

September 8, 2009 By Sherry

Salads

Emerald City Salad

What does the Emerald City, May, and Wicked have to do with a Salad?

My Emerald City Salad aka Crunchy Romaine Toss Salad!

This past weekend we went to see our kids in Austin and my daughter, Alexis and I went to see Wicked. She gave me the theatre tickets as a mother’s day gift. It just so happens, her birth month is in May (Emerald birthstone), the Crunchy Romaine Toss Salad is GREEN and sitting in the theatre in Austin this weekend watching Wicked with all the green lights, green costumes and green face on stage, I kept thinking what kind of blog could I do that would be about something green.

Well, Crunchy Romaine Toss Salad (aka Emerald City Salad) is a salad that I have catered for, I think, around 17 years. It is from a Jackson Mississippi Cookbook, “Come On In” and it has been one of my most requested salad recipes since I have been catering.

August 29, 2009 By Sherry

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