12th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Crawfish Quiche

Again - sorry there are no pictures! Too busy setting up a fun brunch with some of my favorites to wrap up the Christmas holidays...

I had crawfish quiche during my bridal shower brunch in Orange at the Old Orange Cafe (if you are ever in Orange, go there for brunch on a Sunday!). Loved it. I wanted to do something that would remind Laura and I of home and something I could just put in the oven and not worry about for brunch.

Recipe

vegetable oil
3 oz. crawfish tails
1 oz. diced onion
1 oz. diced green bell pepper
1 tbs. minced jalapeno
1 tbs. minced chives
1/3 to 1/2 cup pepper jack cheese
splash of milk
5 large eggs
salt & pepper

Saute diced onion, bell pepper and crawfish tails in a small amount of vegetable oil (enough to cover the bottom of your pan) until vegetables are tender. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set aside to cool.

Whisk together eggs, milk, cheese, jalapeno, chives and cooled crawfish, onion and bell pepper. Pour into a glass pie dish (I used a pyrex dish) sprayed well with cooking spray. Bake at 400 until cooked through. I think ours took 15-20 minutes but keep an eye on it. Cooking times will depend on how thick your quiche is. You want the quiche to be cooked through and a little golden on top.

11th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Black Pepper & Cheddar Popovers

I was not a good photographer while cooking for a post-Christmas brunch with Mike, my bestie and her boyfriend but I've got a couple of yummy recipes for you guys anyways!

Popovers are really versatile and easy to make. I made these black pepper & cheddar popovers to go with quiche (recipe tomorrow!) and salad with champagne vinaigrette.

Recipe
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing the pan
2 large eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/3 cup cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 450 and thoroughly grease pan. (Pan can be an actual popover pan or a muffin pan can be substituted although the popovers will not be tall and skinny.)

Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly.

Crack eggs into a bowl and whisk gently. Stir in flour, salt, milk, melted butter, pepper and cheese until blended, a few lumps are ok (better to not overbeat the batter).

Fill the 6 to 10 cups 2/3 to 3/4 full and bake at 450 for 15 minutes. Do not open the oven door! Opening the door will cause the popovers to collapse during baking. Reduce oven temperature to 350 and bake for an additional 20 minutes until brown and crusty. Again, do not open the oven door. The first 20 minutes are crucial but the door can be opened close to the end of the baking process to check whether the popovers are brown and crusty.

Once removed from oven, cut a small slit in the popover to allow steam to escape.


If you are in Dallas, go to lunch at Zodiac Room at Neiman Marcus. They serve delicious popovers with strawberry butter... YUM!

10th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Mashed Potatoes

Another one of Mike's favorites is mashed potatoes. I got this recipe from my Cooking Light cookbook...

3 lbs of potatoes
salt & pepper
3 tbs chives
6 oz. white cheddar (recipe actually calls for goat cheese)
2 tbs butter
1 cup 2% milk

Boil potatoes until tender in well salted water. Drain and smash along with butter and milk. Stir in cheese and chives. Salt & pepper to taste before serving.

9th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Corn Maque Chou

Growing up, my Aunt Brenda always made corn maque chou during the holidays. I'm not a fan of corn, however, Mike is so I made this as part of our Christmas dinner. (This recipe only makes 2 to 3 servings)

3 ears of corn
1/8 cup diced tomato
1/8 cup diced onion
1/8 cup diced green bell pepper
enough vegetable oil to cover bottom of saute pan
salt & pepper to taste

Peel husks from corn and pull away corn silk. Scrape kernels into a bowl using a knife. Using the back of your knife, scrape all of the "juice" into the bowl also.

Pour vegetable oil and tomato/onion/bell pepper into small saute pan over medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Pour corn into saute pan and stir. Cook covered until corn is cooked through (may take up to 30 minutes). Salt and pepper to taste before serving.

8th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Oatmeal Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I was watching Saturday's Giada episode, it dawned on me that I had all the ingredients in the kitchen to make these cookies and that they would be great bagged up for the girl's as a small Christmas gift. So with two hours before the fondue party, I printed out the recipe and got to work!

Here's a trick - I had been running the oven to make my other goodies that day so to quickly soften the butter, I sliced it and put it on a dish in the oven and shut the door. The residual heat softened it really quickly!













I packaged them in a simple brown paper bag and off Mike and I went to the fondue party!

7th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Soft Pretzel Sticks

For another fondue party goodie, I made these soft pretzel sticks using this Bobby Flay recipe for soft pretzels. They are made using a pretty basic dough that you let rise for only an hour. After cutting or shaping your dough, they are boiled for a short period of time then baked with plenty of salt on top. They are great dipped in the cheese fondue or in the mustard (also in the recipe) that I brought along!

active yeast

dough after rise

cut dough

after bake

6th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Orange Marshmallows

When I started talking about making marshmallows, I always got the same response... "what do you mean make them? don't they come from... well, i don't know where they come from."

Well. Way back, people actually used a marshmallow plant. It didn't grow actual marshmallows but Egyptians did use an extract from the root to make confections and later the French used the extract in meringues. Today's marshmallows actually use no marshmallow. They now "come" from unflavored gelatin, sugar, water and the kitchen-aid basically.

I saw this Giada recipe during a Halloween episode and thought orange marshmallows would be great for dipping in chocolate at the fondue party. The recipe is not hard per se... it just takes great patience which I generally do not have in the kitchen. Waiting for the mixture to come to 240 degrees on the stove took a while! Once the marshmallows are whipped into a frenzy - it dries very quickly! Basically the reason Mike and I are calling them abstract marshmallows. No perfect square ones here! Some commenters said they tried to flatten the marshmallows into a 13x9 pan instead of having giant marshmallows from an 8x8 pan. I was not quick enough to flatten it all out before it started drying but I got them somewhat smaller than I would have had otherwise.

I'll definitely make these again and work on the technique as well as try out new flavors!

unflavored gelatin & water

condensed milk, sugar & water

getting there...

whip on high!

marshmallow!

beater after scraping

attempting to make them in a 9x13 pan... almost made it!

use LOTS of powdered sugar while cutting the marshmallows... they are STICKY

final result... can you see the orange zest in it??

5th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Brown Butter Rice Krispy Squares

I posted a blog about the new cookbook I got for Christmas last week - FLOUR. The first recipe I made from it happened over the weekend for the fondue party at the Tsuk's...

Brown. Butter. Rice. Krispy. Treats.

vanilla bean

butter

browning butter with vanilla bean seeds

dump in marshmallows

finished treats

close up of the treats - see those tiny brown flecks? vanilla bean seeds!

The vanilla bean and browned butter make these treats ever so slightly classier than the treats we ate as kids. Great recipe!

4th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Sea Salt Caramel Brownies

I ran across this recipe while doing my usual lunch-hour blog reading... recipe. Its a blog that I am now checking up on frequently! I even adore the name :)

I thought the recipe would be great to make for Mike's birthday. For a quick recap - I took him to Tillman's Roadhouse (which, by the way, was DELISH and quickly became another thing we love in Bishops Arts District).

As for the brownies - I have no "in process" shots unfortunately since I was trying to not burn the caramel. I definitely over-baked it a bit as the corners were a bit tough (I just trimmed the edges off and ended up with really pretty brownie squares). I am having a really hard time adjusting to our new oven! I think next time I will increase the brownie ratio and decrease the caramel just a bit! I also could let the caramel cook a bit more next time because my inner layer of caramel did melt into the brownie layers as noted by the author.

Overall, a pretty straight-forward recipe! Its one you do need to keep any eye on for the majority of the time so don't multi-task while baking these brownies!

Water for Elephants Trailer

A while back, I posted about reading the book Water for Elephants and that it was being made into a movie with Reese Witherspoon and Rob Pattinson. Well, I stumbled upon the trailer this morning!



Looks good!

Flour

I got an early Christmas gift this week - the Flour Bakery cookbook! I first heard of this bakery when it was featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay for its sticky buns (top left of the picture). If I ever make it to Boston, you can bet that I will stop by this place for a treat!

I can't wait to get into this book! There are recipes for the sticky buns, creme-filled donuts, homeade pop-tarts and homeade oreos. Now... what to make first!?!

3rd Dish of Christmas 2010 - Minestrone

First - Today is the hubs birthday! Happy Birthday Mike!

I found yet another recipe on the kitchn's website - minestrone soup. This soup is an easy one-pot dish that has a lot of ingredients that you probably have on hand. I made this because we haven't had a lot of time for good, healthy meals between Mike's long retail hours and my hours at work lately. I am going to bring a couple of extra servings to keep in the fridge at work so I don't have to order out every time we stay late over the next week or so! If we're having it at home... I'll probably make a grilled cheese to go with a warm bowl of the soup!

Quick side note - the recipe says that you can leave out the bacon to start and use olive oil instead... if I said the hubs is a bacon fan, it would be quite the understatement, so I of course started with the bacon! I, however, did only use 2 slices of bacon instead of the 3 the recipe called for to decrease the amount of grease. What was left in the pot cooked out really quickly as the vegetables were softening and there is no greasy reside to the end product!

2nd Dish of Christmas 2010 - Chocolate Dipped Peppermint Biscotti

For my second dish of Christmas, I made chocolate dipped peppermint biscotti (basically a twice baked cookie) from the kitchn website. This was a really easy recipe and I'm pretty interested in the other biscotti recipe listed in that post. I bet it smells great!

The smell of the peppermint extract in this recipe is still lingering in our kitchen 10 hours after baking. The smell + Christmas tree and stockings mean Christmas is in full gear at our house! For our tree, I stuck with the mini tree I have been using the past few years and am going with a silver/gold/white theme. I already had some silver and white ornaments from prior years and picked up a few gold ones today. Mike got a camera ornament from Laura and my mom brought us a "new home" ornament over Thanksgiving so we are all decked out! Next up is to decorate the outside for the neighborhood contest :)

Recent Reads

I noticed I've been writing about what I'm reading about every six months so it looks like its time to put out another list!

I wrote last time about debating over whether I should purchase a Nook or not. Well, I took the plunge and absolutely love it. I love not having to tote multiple books around with me. (Especially during our long wedding weekend where I brought half the apartment to Spicewood and on our honeymoon in Mexico where our goal was to bring one suitcase between the two of us!) I also got a great turquoise cover for it. Love it!

The Summer We Fell Apart by Robin Antalek

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer

Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


I know I'm a total eternity behind everyone else by just now reading the Twilight series. Its not really the typical type of book I like to read but I felt totally out of the loop since all of my friends and co-workers have read it and I felt like since I'm an avid reader I should have read this series. I liked the story more than I thought I would but I did have few reservations about some parts.

The Summer We Fell Apart was an ok story but nothing special. I was also semi-disappointed in Nanny Returns. The heroine was a little blah in the story sadly!

I really liked Heart of the Matter (probably not the best book to read on our honeymoon though) and am really enjoying Never Let Me Go (also now a movie with Kiera Knightly and Carey Mulligan). I'm going to finish the book before seeing the film and I'm really looking forward to it! The story is really interesting and a bit strange (in a good way). Don't read any commentary online because they give away the plot!

Read anything good lately? Share! Somewhere Inside and The Great Gatsby are next on my reading list!

1st Dish of Christmas 2010 - Something Like Pecan Squares

I love to make family members homemade gifts at the holidays. My mom and her sisters are particularly easy because they love all kinds of sweets... chocolate, pecan, coconut etc. This year I wanted to make something like these pecan squares by Ina Garten. I started out with grand ideas of making everything in this recipe and quickly figured out I wanted to find a short-cut. I had an extra deep-dish pie shell in the freezer and decided to cut the recipe in half and substitute the pie shell for the crust portion of the recipe.

Everything came out great... my mom had a few leftover pecans to munch on and said the flavor was really good! What I ended up with looked like an overstuffed pecan pie but its the thought (and taste) that count right? Haha!

Kozmo just checking up on us!

Cabo San Lucas

Mike and I went on our honeymoon a few days after closing on the house... a very well deserved honeymoon I might mention. I was going through a serious lack of sleep due to the wildabeast and I slept SO much on our trip thankfully!

We went to a beautiful resort on a cliff-like side of Cabo San Lucas called Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach. While the beach water wasn't swim friendly, it was quiet, sunny and incredibly relaxing!

Here are a few of our shots from our trip - You can see more on Mike's new facebook page (search for Michael Hardisty Photography) or check his blog in the next few weeks!