Sherry – Page 11 – Rosemary and the Goat

Peanut Butter Shadow Cookies

If you like nuts, these are for you. If you like peanut butter, these are for you and if you like chocolate and especially Nutella, you cannot walk away from these.

I found this huge can of Planter’s mixed nuts in my pantry this morning. They were left over from our anniversary party a couple of weeks ago and I started thinking “peanuts” “mixed nuts”, what can I make today for the guys working so hard on getting our master bathroom remodeled? They need a treat to keep them motivated.

When I was a kid (I usually say when “we” were kids. Must be twin talk). We (my sister and I) would go to Memphis with our grandparents to shop. Back then (50’s/60’s) we shopped downtown. I remember how fun it was to “window shop” especially at Christmas when all the store fronts had Christmas scenes and we would stand there with our noses pressed to the window and watch Mr. Bingle do his Christmas magic. I don’t remember ever going to a mall, I don’t think there were any back then. Anyway, my grandfather always had to go to the Peanut Shoppe on Main Street. It’s still there and my husband and I went a few years ago and there, sitting on a shelf, was a peanut cup like I use to have as a kid. I want one!

I remember when walking towards the Peanut Shoppe we could smell the nuts roasting from blocks away. To this day when I see the little Planter’s guy I think of this peanut shop. My grandfather always got a bag of cashew nuts for himself and some peanuts or popcorn to feed to the squirrels in the park where he sat, forever, waiting for the “girls” to shop. I remember this little shop also selling coconut brittle which I’m going to try soon.

I have had this recipe for Peanut Butter Shadow Cookies for about 20 years. So today I decided to try my Peanut Butter Shadow cookies, substituting Nutella for the melted chocolate chips that is usually folded into the cookie dough. I also thought to roll them in the mixed nuts I need to get rid of. (Hard to believe but I have never tasted raw cookie dough – I would much rather wait for the finished product.)

August 27, 2009 By Sherry

Dessert/ Pies/Tarts

Lemon Meringue Tart

It’s not a birthday cake but it’s what my husband is getting this year for his birthday.

After 40 years of being married and cooking 98% of the meals we have ever eaten, I have yet to make a decent lemon meringue pie.

In the first couple of months of marriage I think I probably made at least 7 lemon meringue pies. Or, should I say attempted. My husband always liked the clear type filling instead of the creamy custardy type. I just never mastered that pie, so I gave up trying and I moved on to other cooking endeavors.

I ran across this recipe 10 – 15 years ago, clipped it, thinking one day I would try my hand again. Never got around to trying it, I guess because I thought I’d have to chalk that up to another failure.

Then, I took another look at the recipe, and with 40 years of cooking experiences since my first attempts at pleasing my husband with some kind of lemon “delight” I decided to try something different from the traditional lemon pie.

With the thin slices of lemon covering the crust and the absolutely wonderful curd and meringue this was everything he wanted.

Now, what other things are out there that I want to master?

Next time, I will watch my meringue a little more closely because it got a tad too brown.

Lemon Meringue Tart

Ingredients

Lemon Curd:

6 tablespoons lemon juice
4 1/2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons whipping cream
3 large egg yolk

Crust:

1 cup flour
6 tablespoons sugar
1/4 Teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chilled unsalted butter
3 Tablespoons ice water
1 large lemon cut into 1/16″ slices, quartered

Meringue:

3 large egg whites
6 tablespoons sugar

Instructions

Curd: Combine lemon juice, sugar, cream and yolks in heavy small saucepan and whisk to combine. Cook over medium-low heat until mixture thickens and just begins to bubble, stirring constantly about 7 minutes.

Immediately transfer to a bowl. Press plastic wrap onto surface of curd to prevent skin from forming. Chill until cold, 2 hours.

For crust: Combine flour, 2 tablespoons sugar and salt in food processor. Add the chilled butter and process until mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually add 3 tablespoons water and blend using on/off turns until mixture forms moist clumps. If dough is too dry, add more water by the teaspoonfuls. Gather dough into a ball. Flatten to disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for about a hour.

Preheat oven to 450. Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to 12″ round. Transfer to large baking sheet. Sprinkle dough with 2 tablespoons sugar. Place lemon pieces on dough, leaving 1 1/2″ border. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over lemon pieces. Fold dough border in over lemon pieces; press edges lightly to seal. Bake until crust is golden, piercing through lemon pieces with toothpick if crust bubbles, about 25 minutes. Cool tart completely. Can be made 4 hours ahead

For meringue: Preheat oven to 450. Using mixer, beat egg whites in medium bowl until soft peaks form. Add sugar and beat until mixture is stiff but not dry.

Spread lemon curd over lemon pieces in crust, covering completely. spread meringue over, covering curd completely and sealing to crust edges. Bake until meringue is golden, about 5 minutes. Transfer tart to platter.

August 24, 2009 By Sherry

Side dish/ Vegetables

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato Four….

One Potato…..

Remember that rhyme for picking who is going to be “it”. Everyone would put out two fist and whoever was doing the taping would start — One Potato, two potato, three potato four, five potato, six potato, seven potato more. Each time “more” was said whoever got their fist tapped would have to put that hand behind their back. Last one left holding out a fist was “it”.

I don’t think kids play these games anymore, any more than they play kick the can, Mother May I or even pinch lightening bugs tails off and make “diamond” rings from them.

Well, today, I’m picking three of my favorite baked potato recipes.

This potato is great for all those people who don’t like to eat the potato peel plus they are so much prettier without that big blob of aluminum foil sitting on your plate.

Crusty Baked Potatoes -- One Potato

Ingredients

4 medium potatoes peeled and dried
4 Tbsp. butter
1 cup seasoned bread crumbs
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. paprika
sour cream cheese and chives to garnish

Instructions

Peel the potatoes, wash and dry really well. Melt the butter and set aside. Mix the bread crumbs with the salt and paprika. Take one potato at a time and dip in melted butter to coat thoroughly, take the potato and roll in the seasoned bread crumbs and put on a greased cooking tray. Continue with the remainder of the potatoes.
Cover and bake at 350° for 1 hour. Uncover for the last 20 minutes. Any butter left can be added to the serving dish. Split open, and top with your favorite potato toppings such as sour cream, chives, cheese, or bacon bits.

Two Potato….

Crab and Shrimp Baked Potato —

For those of you who love seafood, this recipe has some added to the potatoes. Years ago I used canned crab and shrimp. Living in Texas for the last 20 years, I wouldn’t think of getting any kind of seafood out of a can. So for this one I bought a set of snow crab legs and a few shrimp. I had a professor once in one of my cooking classes that said you should never cut a potato in half for twice baked potatoes. So after baking, just cut a 1/4 or so off the top and scoop out the potato pulp.

After baking the potato I scoop out the potato pulp, mix in some butter, sour cream, crab meat and the shrimp and a little salt and pepper. I still have some of my Williams Sonoma Chili Lime seasoning left so I sprinkle it on my raw, peeled shrimp and saute it to go in the potato. I chop it up and leave a couple to garnish the top of the potato.

I rub the potato with shortening and then sprinkle with Kosher salt. I like the look of the crunchy salt on the outside. Just be careful not to knock it all off when you start scooping out the potatoes.

Crab and Shrimp Baked Potatoes

Ingredients

4 baking size potatoes
1/2 lb. raw shrimp season with you choice of seasoning
1/2 cup butter or more if desired
1/2 lb. crab meat 2 sets of crab legs would be enough unless you want to buy it already picked out
1/2-3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Wash and dry the potatoes. Grease the outside of the potatoes with shortening then sprinkle all over with Kosher salt. Bake in 350° oven about an hour or until done. Remove from oven. Slice off about 1/4" or so from top, leaving most of the potato intact. Scoop the potato pulp being careful not to knock of the salt from the outside. Mash the potatoes with butter and sour cream. Add the salt and pepper to taste and the cheese. Fold in the crab meat and also the shrimp that you have sauteed earlier. Fill potatoes with this mixture and you can top with more cheese. Put these back in oven for about 15 minutes right before serving time. Garnish with chopped chives.

Three Potato….

Herb Crusted Fanned Potato — I’m a fan of this one for sure. These are also called Hassleback potatoes.

One technique to keep from cutting too deep is to put a chop stick on each side of the potato so that the knife does not go all the way through. I find it easier to do without the sticks. Just be careful not to go all the way to the bottom. But, the deeper you go the more the potato will fan out.

You can see that the slices are pretty thin. My kids always liked these because they could pull off the thin slices with their fingers and eat them.

Fanned Potatoes

Ingredients

Small to medium size baking potatoes
melted butter
fresh or dried herbs
Parmesan cheese

Instructions

Cut the potatoes as explained above being careful not to cut all the way through to the bottom. Put potatoes on baking sheet and drizzle with a little melted butter. Salt and pepper and bake at 425° for 30-40 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with fresh herbs and Parmesan cheese and drizzle with more butter. Continue cooking another 15-20 minutes until peel is crusty and the flesh is nice and soft and fanned out.

August 21, 2009 By Sherry

Entree/ Sandwiches

Southwest Open Faced Sandwich

A delicious grilled sandwich for a summer cookout.

I love anything that can be grilled outside in the summer so our kitchen does not get as hot as blazes. We grill out 12 months a year here in Texas. In fact, when we lived in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas and Kentucky, if we wanted BBQ we didn’t care if there was 1″ or 6″ of snow on the ground, my husband would crank up his grill and get a fire going.

This sandwich is great because there is only one slice of bread which kind of fools you into thinking it is good for your waistline. The chicken is grilled and it has all the flavors of the Southwest. Of course all the veggies toppings are good and healthy and full of color.

We have been trying to decide what kind of outdoor kitchen we want since putting our pool in five years ago. My husband has our original cast iron grill that we bought back in 1970 and it is still one of his favorites. He has a barrel smoker where he BBQs all his delicious pork butts and ribs and just recently he bought what he calls a “throw away” gas grill until he decides what equipment he really wants for doing some the best BBQ you have ever put in your mouth.

For this sandwich, he did not have the new gas grill yet and he used his turkey burner with a cast iron griddle on top. It was really kind of funny to look at considering his bbq skills and here he was with this “thing” rigged up to do the chicken breast.

This is a delicious topping for the chicken sandwich. The Orange and Black Bean Salsa has a nice bite to it and really enhances all the flavors of the sandwich.

August 18, 2009 By Sherry

Cookies/ Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Coconut Shortbreads

Tea time and the shortbreads are ready!

I got up this morning with a major decision hanging over my head. Do I roll up my sleeves, take off my shoes, get in my 20 year old shower and start scrubbing down the walls trying to get it somewhat clean before our demo guy comes tomorrow to tear everything out for a remodel of our master bath.

Or?

Do I make coconut shortbreads which I can feed to our demo man?? That decision took me all of one second to make. Shortbreads it is!

I have convinced myself that our bathroom marble is beyond ever looking good again and I would rather put my time to better use and that would be trying new blog recipes and feeding the workers during this 3-4 week bathroom remodeling project. So with a dining room piled high with clothes and everything we have had stored in our bathroom for 20 years, I decided to start my shortbreads. After all, I have to have a snack for whoever shows up this week to work on our bathroom. It just wouldn’t be right to NOT have some homemade snacks for them.

August 16, 2009 By Sherry

Dessert/ Fruit Dishes/ Pies/Tarts

Peach Melba Crunch

Summer’s best peaches put to good use.

This is the third peach recipe I promised in last week’s posting. After buying a sack full of peaches at the market, I had three recipes in mind. These peaches were not only beautiful, they were very tangy and sweet. The other two dishes I made were Peach and Arugula Salad with Pancetta Chips and a Peachy Raspberry Ice Cream. This recipe has two of my favorite fruits — peaches and raspberries.

As a kid, I remember picking mulberries and dew berries but I don’t think I remember eating fresh raspberries until I was an adult. Raspberries, blackberries, figs and blue berries go great with cheese and nut trays and I have also thrown in some dried fruits which makes for a nice presentation.

Years ago I remember making my first Peach Melba. It was an ice cream dessert and had vanilla ice cream, and poached peach halves and a raspberry sauce. You poached the peaches, cooled and then made ice cream balls, topped with a peach half (upside down) and then drizzled the raspberry sauce over all. I remember the recipe saying it will be as bright as the Pope’s hat. It was, and I think this dessert is just as delicious and vivid in color.

The raspberries were bought earlier in the season when I picked them up for 99¢ and of course I bought about twenty cartons to put in the freezer. I tend to go overboard when buying berries when they get down to 99¢. Last year I had a freezer full of blueberries I lost during the power outage from the hurricane. You would think I would learn my lesson but I’m always looking for a bargain.

August 13, 2009 By Sherry

Bread/ Breads/Biscuits/ Morning Foods/ Pastries

Ruby Tea Biscuits

Ruby Tea Biscuits and our 40th (Ruby) Anniversary

What do Ruby tea biscuits have to do with our anniversary? Well, Ruby is the symbol of the 40th wedding anniversary and that is what we celebrated over the weekend (actual anniversary on 16th).

We met when we were around 15 and I don’t remember where. I do remember going to a baseball game and him throwing a ball over the fence to me. I remember sitting in the bleachers at a football game that he was quarterbacking, waiting for the game to be over so we could go “ride the loop” around town for a few hours.

August 11, 2009 By Sherry

Salads

Peach and Arugula Salad with Pancetta Chips

Anything with pancetta on it just has to be good.

Several years ago we were in Italy and had some of the most wonderful food. I packed a little menu dictionary to translate menu items from Italian to English. We kept seeing “rocket” salad on the menu and finally ordered it and found out it was arugula. We had been eating arugula for years, but “rocket” salad sound so much more interesting.

It was so much fun trying to pronounce things from the “Italian” menu (we never asked for the English menu), and all the waiters were so patient with us trying to work our way through reading the menus. If we pronounced something wrong, they would just smile and tell us the correct way of saying the item.

August 4, 2009 By Sherry

Dessert/ Ice Cream

Peachy Raspberry Ice Cream

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches… Three peach recipes this week. And this one is Peachy Keen!

I was at the market today and found some peaches for 77¢ lb. and couldn’t resist getting a bag full to try a few new recipes. These were Texas peaches and very flavorful. Nothing disappoints me more than buying peaches that smell, look, and feel good only to get them home and they are either mushy or flavorless.

So, this week I’m making three peach recipes. First, this Peachy Raspberry ice cream, then a Peach Arugula Salad with Pancetta Chips and finally a Peach Melba Crunch.

Peaches and raspberries are two of my favorite fruit combinations. I have tried a couple of Sugarlaws.com yogurt recipes and really enjoyed them. She uses Greek yogurt in many of her recipes, which might make for an interesting addition to my ice cream recipe. She also adds some vodka to her ice creams to keep them from freezing too hard. Since there just happened to be some peach flavored vodka laying around that I bought for cocktails tonight, I added a splash to my Peach Raspberry Ice Cream recipe.

August 2, 2009 By Sherry

Salads/ Side dish/ Vegetables

Kumquat, Corn, And a Few Other Things Salad

There are so many summer vegetables out now, it would be a crime not to try something different with all those wonderful things you may be picking up at your farmer’s markets in your area.

Kumquat, corn, avocado and a few other things makes this a great summer salad to serve with your steak which I am making tonight for my daughter along with a chimichurri sauce.

I teach technique classes at Williams Sonoma and earlier in the week I saw that I was suppose to make a roasted corn salad that tomatoes and feta. As usual, I started thinking of ways I was going to tweak this and I have made my version twice this week.

July 26, 2009 By Sherry

Dessert/ Ice Cream

Watermelon Basil Mint Sorbet

Beautiful and delicious!

I promised this recipe to go with the Watermelon Cookies I posted yesterday. I didn’t think there was a better way to eat watermelon than with a fork and a salt shaker, but this Watermelon Basil Sorbet takes the prize.

A friend of mine recently made a lemon sorbet that used simple syrup that had been infused with basil and mint. I have made my watermelon sorbet a few times this summer and it is really yummy, but this time I decided to try adding the mint and fresh basil to my simple syrup and it resulted in an even more delicious sorbet.

I made this last night when our neighbors came over for dinner. We had brined bbq pork chops, a corn, avocado, and cucumber salad, homemade onion rings and to top it off this Watermelon Sorbet with the watermelon cookies.

I used about half a large watermelon. What was leftover I froze to use in watermelon mojitos which I had over the 4th of July and they were fantastic.

You will need 8 cups cubed watermelon. Cube the watermelon, removing the seeds. Put the watermelon in your food processor and puree.

To make the simple syrup I used 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water. Bring this to a boil and stir until sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat and add 24 fresh basil leaves and 12 mint leaves. Let the leaves infuse for 3-4 minutes then strain and pour your simple syrup into a jar and refrigerate until needed.

You are going to add some lemon juice (2 tablespoons) and 1 cup of the simple syrup.

Pour this into your ice cream maker and freeze until firm. Pour into freezer container and freeze until ready to serve. Do not make this a day ahead as it may get too hard. I usually make it about 4-5 hours ahead of serving time. If you have the Cuisinart ice cream freezer that is 1 1/2 quarts, you may not be able to use all the mixture. I usually have about 2 cups left over that I can do another small batch.

Now serve this with some of those watermelon cookies and you have a refreshing summer dessert.

Watermelon Basil Mint Sorbet

Ingredients

8 cups of cubed watermelon
1 cup basil/mint infused simple syrup
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Basil/Mint Infused Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
24 basil leaves
12 mint leaves

Instructions

Cube the watermelon and remove all seeds. Put this in your food processor and puree until you have no chunks. Add the 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice and 1 cup of the basil/mint infused simple syrup. Pour this mixture into your ice cream freezer and freeze until thick. Pour into freezer containers and freeze 4-5 hours before serving. I would not do this a day in advance because it gets too firm. I like to do mine in the afternoon and serve it the same night.
For the simple syrup: Put the sugar and water in saucepan and bring to boil, turn down and stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat and add the basil and mint leaves. Let them set in syrup for 3-4 minutes, then strain and put in jar and refrigerate until needed.

July 24, 2009 By Sherry

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