Share your recipes or cooking tips!

[Sxy Rdr]

So for Easter Sunday, I was tasked with bringing a dessert to the family gathering. With my sugar sensitivity and knowing a few of the other family members also watch what they eat, I searched the internet for some ideas. I found 3 potential recipes for "lighter" desserts and took bits/pieces from each, made some minor changes to come up with a dessert that everyone really liked and got tons of praise:

Blueberry Cream Tart with a Nut Crust

Crust:
1 cup of mixed raw nuts, leaning towards cashews and walnuts because of their "creamier" nature
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup sugar
6 TBSP chilled butter, cut into pieces
1 egg yolk

Preheat oven to 350. Prep a 12" tart pan that has removable sides. (I don't own a tart pan so I just used my large springform pan.)
Spread nuts in single layer on a baking sheet, roast for 10-12 mins... do not burn them!
Put nuts, oats and sugar into food processor and make into a "flour." Drop in the butter, a piece or 2 at a time, pulsing in between. Should look like coarse meal. Add in the egg yolk and pulse to make moist clumps.
Press mixture evenly into prepped pan. Aim for a crust about 1/4" thick. Pierce bottom in a few places with a fork. Put into freezer for 30 mins.
Up oven to 400.
Put crust straight from freezer into oven, bake 12-15 mins until golden.
Allow to cool completely. (I put mine in the fridge overnight and finished assembling the tart the next morning.)

Filling:
8 oz block of reduced fat cream cheese (feel free to use regular if you want)
1/4 cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt (use sour cream or regular or flavored yogurt in any level of fatness you want)
1/4 cup real maple syrup
2 cups fresh blueberries (or whatever fruit you want would probably work, too)

Mix together the cream cheese, yogurt and maple syrup until smooth and creamy.
Carefully spread mixture over crust (crust at room temp can be a bit delicate).
Sprinkle blueberries all over the top and press into the cream cheese mixture slightly.
Place in fridge for at least 1 hour to allow cream cheese mixture to set.

Enjoy!

[WoodstockJeff]

NecroThread!

Got a Crockpot "slow cooker/pressure cooker/rice cooker/roaster oven" gimmicky gadget back before Christmas, and I started using it to cook things the last 10 days (no one else wants to give up their old, individual gimmicky gadgets for the combined gimmicky gadget). Beef stew with lots of vegetables, roots, and potatoes first, then a pot roast with lots of vegetables, roots, and potatoes, and today was Chicken stew (with lots of vegetables, roots, and potatoes; There's a theme going on here).

I have learned that: The way I stacked the ingredients for the roast was sub-optimal; That what looks like the "right amount" of salt is slightly less than half what I need; Forgetting to add either soy or Worcestershire sauce is also sub-optimal; Even adding 2 pounds of potatoes isn't enough for some people; It's 1/4 cup flour to 1/2 cup juice for thickening, rather than the other way around (at least it didn't turn into a big dumpling); 8 hours at low temp is better than 4 hours at high.

My sister asked, "How did you learn to cook this way?"
"I'm still learning."
"Where did you find the recipe?"
"I looked around online at what other people used for spices, and used many of them."

"Warning: Use of these ingredients in ways other than described in the recipe is called COOKING. Be prepared to eat the consequences!"

[NORTY]

Tip~
Get someone else to clean up the kitchen!
(I’d likely do it wrong, anyway!)


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[Joseph Hanna]

I’ll keep this thread revival alive with a great, albeit indulgent, recipe I got directly from the restaurant of whom made it famous. The restaurant is a long standing fixture located in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. This recipe remains on their menu as it has since 1957 and is called Greek Spaghetti.

Ingredients for 2:

6 or 7-Cherry Tomatoes, halved.
6 or 7-Baby Bella Mushrooms, Sliced, Stems on.
1/2- Large Yellow Onion, Chopped.
1/2- Green Pepper, Julienned.
3 or 4. Cloves of garlic. Smashed.
4- Thick cut Bacon Strips, cubed.
Parmesan Cheese, Sprinkle for finishing.
12- (or more to taste) Quality, pitted Green Olives, Halved.
1/2- Stick, Unsalted Butter. You won’t use it all.
1/4- Cup Olive Oil.
1- Box of Linguine

Directions:

1) Sauté bacon until cooked but not overly crisp, drain and set aside.

2) Prep tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, green pepper, olives and collect in a large bowl. All of these will go into a skillet at the same time, no need to separate.

3) Melt butter in a sauce pan. Half way through add smashed garlic cloves. Continue melting butter until fat separates. Skim fat off the butter (clarified). Discard fat.

4) Add 1/4 cup Olive Oil to the clarified butter and the smashed garlic cloves. Continue heating butter/olive oil/garlic until the garlic infuses the mixture.

5) Remove smashed garlic and discard.

6) Start the pasta cooking to al dente. Salted water.

7) Pre-heat skillet for vegetables.

8 Add two tablespoons (or to taste) clarified Butter/Olive Oil.

9) Add vegetables coating with Butter/Olive Oil mixture.

10) Cook vegetables until sweetened but still retains some crispness.

11) Drain pasta, curl on plate and add vegetable mixture.

12) Top with shaved Parmesan

[WoodstockJeff]

Revisiting the "slow cooker/pressure cooker/rice cooker/roaster oven" after a year (or so)... I haven't used the crock pot function since I played with the pressure cooker function. They sure have removed the "exciting" parts of pressure cooking over the last 30 years!

To Norty's point about clean-up, once I learned I could saute in the pot, there's a lot less clean-up. Sure, there's the cutting board and knife, but most everything else cleans up easy.

A quart of water + about 5 ounces of soy sauce + 1 ounce of olive oil makes a good replacement for beef or chicken broth, with less fat, and the olive oil gets used for the saute anyway.

My older sister won't eat it any of my soups, though, because they have too many vegetables in them. More for me.

During this period of having to avoid other people, it's nice that my reserves of frozen chicken, vegetables, and bags of rice can make about 3 weeks of meals, if you don't mind eating chicken most days!