Simple Spinach Meal (or Appetizer)
March 25, 2009
It’s rainy. It’s cold. We’ve both got this stupid flu that keeps coming and going and I really just want it to go away now. Had big plans to make dinner. The mind is willing the body is not. Gotta just try to make something simple, healthy and good. Gotta try to melt the crust on my mood. I thought about it for a bit and then I made this.
It would be very easy to change this around to whatever flavor profile you were looking for. A bit of crispy bread, fresh greens, creamy cheese, something sweet, crunchy and acidic and you’ve got a combo that will (more than likely) work. And of course if you blend it all up, you’ve got a dip.
Oh, and it takes about 7 minutes to make, total.
Spinach & Chevre on Crusty Bread with Balsamic Reduction
Balsamic Reduction
(Take 1 1/4 c red wine and 1/4 c balsamic vinegar and bring to just boiling. Reduce heat and simmer until liquid is reduced by at least half around 1/2 – 2/3 c. Cool and store until needed. Keeps forever in the refrigerator.)
1 baguette, sliced
You can just slice up the baguette and serve on that, or brush slices with olive oil and brown in a 400°f oven until browned. This is the best option if they’re going to sit around for awhile.
2 – 3 T apple juice
1 bag spinach (or similar amount)
1 – 2 oz chevre, crumbled
2 T lightly roasted almonds, chopped
salt, pepper & cayenne pepper to taste
Heat juice in pan until boiling. Toss in spinach, cover and pan steam until dark green and wilted.
Turn off heat. Let cool down. Drain out extra liquids. Mix in chevre, almonds and spices and stir until mixed in with some lumps. Top baguette slices with a couple of tablespoons of spinach mixture. Drizzle with balsamic reduction.
Serve with some fresh berries.
Leftover Biscuit Pudding
December 8, 2008
It never happens. There are never leftover biscuits. Never. And yet there they are: stale biscuits. In my defense, I’ve been alone in the house, and really not home much so there were almost a dozen biscuits that went uneaten. I figured I’d just take them to my meetup group and something would happen to them then. But no. So they came back home with me. ”Screw it,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just make bread pudding with them.” By golly it was tasty.
It might even be worth, dare I say it, letting biscuits go stale. (Huh, lightning actually didn’t strike me dead just then.)
Biscuit Bread Pudding
9 small biscuits, broken up
1/3 c dried fruit – apricots, chopped or golden raisins (if you got them/want them)
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c cream
2 c milk
1 T vanilla
2 T brandy
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 cream
1 1/2 T sugar
maple syrup
Preheat oven to 325°f.
Put biscuits with dried fruit mixed in in a loaf pan. Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Pour over the biscuits and dunk down the pieces that are sticking up. Place pan into a larger pan. Put into oven, pour enough water into the larger pan to make it half way up the bread pan.
Cook for 45 min to 1 hour, pudding is done when liquid stuff has solidified and looses it’s shine. When it’s done, take bread pan out of the water and place it on a wire rack. Let cool for 30 minutes to an hour. Whip cream and sugar together until the cream stands in hard peaks. Slice up slices of the pudding, drizzle with maple syrup and dollop with whipped cream. Enjoy!
Love always,
MrsMarv
Lemon Blueberry Bubble Bread
June 30, 2008
I love creating something out of nothing. It’s funny, because one could reasonably argue that my life is about creating nothing out of nothing. When the power goes out, my work no longer exists. Perhaps that’s why I’m so partial to baking bread. It’s something out of nothing – that brings people joy. You don’t need much in the way of resources. Bit of flour, water, heat and time and you’re good to go. I’m convinced that if you have a warm loaf of bread all is right with the world.
It’s love… really.
Um, yeah. This worked quite well.
So, perhaps my work is not nothing out of nothing. If (by incredibly abstract extension from bread-making) it’s love, then it transcends medium. A case that may prove this point is Figs With Bri creator and author, Bri Brownlow. She is one of the many kindly people who has invited the world into her life through the words that she writes and the food that she eats. The grateful people who read what she writes have answered back. When Bri wrote about her recurrence of cancer they arose out of the nothing to help. Which means that, while all is not right with the world, it’s not crap either.
Along with the fundraiser there’s a CLICK photo contest, in honor of Bri. Photos are to feature the color yellow which made me think of my chubble bread. Bri made this recipe of mine (with her own modifications) a few months ago and talked about making a sweet version. I’ve thought about this as well and while a most appropriate version would have featured figs and brie, I chose to go with lemon, blueberry, pecan and mascarpone cheese. (It’s decidedly lighter and healthier than it’s predecessor.)
CLICK – that’s the zest. Zest is good.
The bread worked well. When it was done, we (Marv and I) decided it was good, but needed a bit of glaze to polish it off. Yeah… that was more good.
Please, join me in sending your best wishes to Bri and eating good bread.
Love, always.
MrsMarv
That’s right, when life gives you lemons – make bread.
Sponge:
1 t active dry yeast
1/2 c warm water 105°f to 115°f
3/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour
Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a large bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until very bubbly and doubled, about 45 minutes.
Dough:
1 t active dry yeast
1 c warm water, 105°f to 115°f
3 T olive oil
Sponge, above
1/4 c honey
1/4 c dried milk
3 1/2 – 3 3/4 c unbleached all purpose flour
2 t kosher salt
Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a small bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 5 to 10 minutes. Using a heavy-duty mixer, add the dissolved yeast, honey, dried milk and olive oil to the sponge in the mixer bowl; mix in with the paddle attachment until well blended. Add in salt. Add in flour 1/4 c at a time – when you get to 3 cups add flour slower checking it until dough stops being very sticky and is only slightly sticky.
Change to the dough hook and knead at medium speed until the dough is soft, velvety and slightly sticky, 3 to 4 minutes. At this point you will be able to pull the dough up into peaks with your fingers. Finish by sprinkling 1 T of flour on your work surface and kneading the dough briefly. Transfer to a bowl lightly coated with olive oil and cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled 1 1/2 hours, or so.
Stuffs:
6 oz marscapone cheese, frozen then cut into small chunks
1 c pecans
1c blueberries
1/3 c sugar
zest from 2 – 3 lemons
3 T olive oil
1/4 t salt
Just before the rise is done, prep and toss together all stuffs ingredients in a large bowl. Coat the mixture with oil.
Stuffs & Second Rise:
Put a coating of stuffs in an empty wide bowl. Empty out bread on a non-sick surface. Shape into an flat rectangle, approximately 1/2″ – 1″ thick. Using a pizza wheel, cut loaf into inch wide strips. They do not need to be uniform. Then cut off one inch ends and put them into the stuffs bowl. Toss dough cubes into the stuffs mixture and gently coat them. Add in more stuffs periodically so that they stay separate.
Divide mixture into your baking pans. I generally do two pie plates but you can do loaves, cake pans or even muffin tins. Once you have dough in pans cover with plastic wrap and leave for second rise in a warm area. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Baking:
Preheat oven to 400°f. Brush top with olive oil and bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. (If top starts to brown too much, place on top shelf of your oven.
Glaze
1/4 c powdered sugar
2 oz marscapone cheese, melted
1 T lemon juice
Whisk all together and drizzle over bread. Enjoy!
Makin’ Other People’s Stuff
May 28, 2008
Several weeks ago, Marv made the observation that we never had a wedding cake. I really couldn’t believe that he didn’t remember the cake that he made, considering I clearly remember looking up to see the top layers slowly gaining speed as they slid off their base. Doing the whole wedding reception ourselves had seemed like a good idea. (We tend to do things like this.) For some reason, we also wanted to have it where we lived, in an illegal loft space in ghetto central, with bullet holes through the windows, prostitutes on the street and whatnot. We even briefly considered having a bbq out on the roof but there was no telling who or what would be wandering through the alley so we decided to have Sunday brunch inside. (Prostitutes, pushers and pimps generally sleep in on Sundays. Preachers have somewhere else to be. The street would be relatively hassle free for our people.)
Yep, this sign was in the alley. It is my all time favorite handmade sign. (This one is a close second.)
Regardless of our highly questionable logic, we did have the skills to pull this off. Marv had recently retired (at age 27) from being a chef. At his last cooking job he worked 80 – 100 hour weeks for almost a year at a bakery/cafe and had proven that he could cook brunch in his sleep – with a crazy woman screaming at him if need be. But not this crazy woman. I was running around getting everything else but food done. Oh, and it was 105°f out. I was having problems just wearing clothes, therefore generating more heat by screaming was absolutely out of the question.
Marv was a rock. Not only did he crank out a half dozen different kinds of muffins, several salads and sandwiches (on bread he baked, of course) but he also took on making a flourless almond cake he was going to make for a wedding while at the bakery. The wedding got called off, so he never made it and when we decided to do the reception ourselves, he said he wanted to make the cake that got away. My response was, “Dude, you’re doing the baking, make what you want.” Little did I know that chocolate ganache + 105°f = very slidey cake.
Chubble: Part 2
February 29, 2008
I pretty much only make chubble once a year; Christmas time. I give it away as presents and then it goes away for another year or two. I set aside a day and just go to town making about 12 loaves at once. It turns out that not everybody does a baking day, so I got a lot of questions after I posted the chubble recipe the first time about what to do if you don’t want to serve it that day.
Well, I really didn’t know. I could guess, but actual hands-on knowledge eluded me. I decided to change that. I basically ran through every iteration of bake/freeze/rise I could think of. Oddly enough, they all worked out pretty well. The results are listed below.
In order to not get bored, I decided to do a different variation, gruyere with the bacon, Marv makes and green onions. It was really good. You might want to try it. Enjoy!
Gruyere & Bacon Chubble Stuffs
Read the rest of this entry »
Food 2008. First up; Pizza.
January 22, 2008
Hi There! I’m Bent!
Well, first off sorry for taking so long to do my first post of the year (provided you’re one of the people who has been annoyed by this.) I’ve had a few things eating up my time. This cute little puppy being one of them. His name is Bent. And he lives up to his name extraordinarily well. Now that the kitchen is back in working order he’s sniffing up some good stuff, like homemade pizza.
There’s nothing sexier than a great pizza straight out of the oven – except maybe… nah, never mind, there’s nothing sexier. (Although, this is an excellent topic to ponder. But yeah, going with pizza.) Firm, chewy, crispy, crust dripping with lovely, warm, melty, cheese just waiting for you to tear off a piece and bite right into it.
Hey there pizza. Now that’s sexy.
photo update: Bring on the Chubble
November 10, 2007
As far as my recipes go – this is the recipe to have. Marv used to be head chef a a local famous bakery. This was a bread he made. They had stolen the recipe from someone else – and it has mutated a bit. However, in 15 years, I’ve never come across anyone who didn’t like this bread.
After the first rise.
This is the bread of breads. I’ve watched grown men eat an entire loaf in one sitting. It’s man bread; stuffed full of herbs and cheese and cheese. It could make them cry. Give a guy fist full of chubble, a beer and a football game and that would make his year. I’m not kidding.
For women, it’s even better…
Chubble* Bread
*cheddar bubble
Cranberry Orange Bread (Oh! with Toasted Almonds Too)
October 29, 2007
I’ve been wanting to play with fresh cranberries for awhile now. But it seems like by the time I get to it the season is over and they’re nowhere to be seen. So the second I saw them in the store this year, I jumped on them. I’m playing with fresh cranberries this year and nobody is going to stop me! (I have a bit of the over-dramatic in me today.) I’ve always liked cranberry things but I’ve never cooked with them. Decided to change that. Decided to start with figuring out how cranberries work. And decided to taste one raw. That was a mistake. They’re awful. (Or at least the one I tried was.)
I decided to proceed by making things that are known to work before I go getting all weird on the cranberries. (Seemed prudent, but the wierdness tends to leak anyway.) I started with cranberry orange bread. The first try was pretty good but there was too much contrast between the sweet and the tart of the cranberries. So, I upped the zest and added in some almond extract with the vanilla and Grand Marnier. That did the trick.
Zesty.
It seems, and please do correct me if I’m way off base here, that cranberries have an extremely tart bordering on bitter outer shell with a fibrous inside, which is not so appealing raw but when prepared in certain ways, the flavor from the outside leaches into the fibrous middle making them soft, tart and quite nice. So, baked goods will work, next I’m going to play with raw goods. If anyone has any suggestions, do let me know.
Cranberry Orange Bread
Thank you Ms. Judy French Toast.
August 26, 2007
Ms. Judy came over for dinner and she knew that we would have more than enough food for dinner so she brought us the prettiest bread I ever did see for our breakfast the next day. Ms. Judy is an excellent dinner guest.
See? It is pretty bread, isn’t it? I sliced it on up.
Mixed a lightly beaten egg with 3 T milk, 1 T Kahlua (I know, boozing before noon, can’t be helped, I’m afraid,), 1 t cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Dunked the bread in it.
Tossed the bread on to a hot griddle. Cooked it until it was brown.
Then served it up with some of the blueberry compote that went with the lemon sorbet I’d made for dinner the night before. (You’re going to have to wait a couple days for that recipe.)
It was super yum! Thank you, Judy!
It’s food on a stick season!
August 24, 2007
Food on a stick season is really the best season in Minnesota. It doesn’t last very long – a mere couple of weeks, but the sky seems brighter, the days seem happier and gosh darn it – people are nicer. It has to be the haze of fryer oil that wafts from Snelling Avenue rolling down among the denizens of this fair city making their eyes roll back in their heads as they shamble along in trancelike disarray whispering things like, “mini donuts,” “Sweeeeet Martha’s cookies with milk,” “cheeeeeeeeese curds,” and, of course, “Pronto Puuuups.”
While I’m with them on the mini donuts and to a certain extent cheese curds – Pronto Pups are just disappointing at best. Yes, they have quite the cult following because everyone sees them as this treat that they had to have when they went to fairs as kids. Well, this kid grew up in Chicago and that dog don’t fly. Granted, for ages I was way to snobby to even condescend to go to the fair, but eventually, curiosity won out and I now join the throngs of people who pass through the gates every year. There really are throngs. “The Great Minnesota Get Together,” as it’s called, is believed to have more people pass through it’s gates daily than any other fair in the nation. (Although, Texas has more over all people.)
Even though, I would go every year, I didn’t really eat there until a couple of years ago when Kyndell was in New Orleans shooting the Katrina aftermath and Mr. Kyndell was left all by his lonesome to think up all the terrible things that could happen to her. What gets your mind off your troubles? The fair does, that’s what. So, that’s where we had dinner every night for a week. I became a convert to the ways of fair food. For the most part, it’s chock full of good eats.
Except for the Pronto Pups. Every year I trick myself into trying one, and every year the inferior quality of the dog and the lack of flavor in the corn bread just makes me mad – and I throw a tantrum in the midway with crying and foot stamping and gnashing of teeth and swear up and down that I’m going to just make my own, then. Well, I finally did.
I created the hot-dog-love-child of chorizo and a really fine beef dog. Then, I just slid that dog into some sweet honey corn bread and fried it on up. Sweet, spicy, hot… oh baby, let’s get it on. We can make our own state fair right here.
Sexy Hot Sweet Corn Dog (Baby.)
Love Child Dog
4lb chicken thighs, skin on, deboned
1 1/2 lbs hamburger or ground beef
2/3 c powder milk
4 T ancho powder
2 1/2 T chipotle powder
2 T garlic powder
1 T salt (possibly more upon tasting)
1 T cumin
1 T dried oregano
1 T paprika
1 T white pepper, ground
1 T Amesphos
3 t mace, ground
2 t sugar
1 t pink salt
2 T wine vinegar
2 T cider vinegar
3 T water
sausage casing or aluminum foil
Stick chicken thighs in the freezer, and freeze for 15 minuts or so. Grind em up using the grinder attachment for kitchen aid mixer, or a proper meat grinder. Stick chicken back in the freezer and combine the spices. Add the spices, liquids and beef into the chicken and cook off a small patty to test spices. (Return meat to the freezer while testing.) Adjust spices according to your tastes, keeping in mind that the heat will diminish once the sausage is done – so if you want it quite spicy, add more.
Run the meat through the grinder twice more and stuff into casings. Or if you don’t have any casings you can shape it into a roll and roll it up in aluminum foil. (Apparently, this is called a chub.)
Smoke or roast sausages over low heat until the sausages are completely firm – no give, but before they burst. (Bursting is bad.) Once, they’re done you can go ahead and make the cornbread coating and make them immediately, or save them for later.
Sweet Honey Corn Bread
3/4 c buttermilk
1 egg
3 T honey (or more if you like things sweeter)
2/3 c corn meal
1/3 c flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
Mix liquid ingredients together and whisk in 1/3 c cornmeal. Whisk cornmeal for a few minutes to cream it a bit. Whisk together dry ingredients and add them in to wet slowly.
Transfer to a tall glass, leaving about 1 1/2″ free at the top of the glass.
Assemblage
popcicle sticks
flour or cornstarch
lots of peanut oil
Make sure that dogs are hot enough to eat. If they aren’t steam them until they are.
Heat enough oil to cover at least half the dog to 350°f – 375°f.
Insert popcicle stick into dog. Roll dog in flour or cornstarch. Dunk dog in cornbread. Swish dog around a bit and pull out making sure the dog is covered. Slide into oil and cook until very brown. Flip over if necessary and cook on the other side.
Serve and enjoy!
Feed me! 
