Family Crepe Night

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Cindy

When I was little, my parents sometimes threw super fancy dinner parties for their friends and business clients. Among the dishes my mom would cook were crêpes. Sometimes they were destined to hold a creamy sherry chicken filling; sometimes they held Grand Marnier, butter and orange flavorings. My brother and I were rarely at these fancy parties, but we were nevertheless always excited to find out that crêpes were being served. Whenever my mom made crêpes, we would hang around in the kitchen and wait. Inevitably, a few of the beautiful thin little pancakes would break, develop holes, or just not turn out perfectly round. And whenever that happened, my brother and I lined up to eat those delicious mistakes, topped with butter and jelly or cinnamon sugar. It was such a treat!

So, with kids of my own, and not really a lot of fancy parties to throw, I just make them whenever I feel like it. We line up a huge variety of toppings, both sweet and savory, and just like when I was a kid, my children line up to take the latest crêpe from the pan, and top it with whatever they like, and gobble it up before returning to the line. I hope I’m creating memories that my kids will treasure as much as I have.

This week, some of our crêpe toppings included: smoked salmon and sour cream; ham and gruyere; strawberries and goat cheese; fresh balsamic blueberry jam (recipe below); asparagus, gruyere and balsamic pan-roasted tomatoes (recipe below); cinnamon sugar; and, of course, Nutella.

CrepeToppings

Balsamic Pan-Roasted Tomatoes

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 Tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper
2 Tablespoons Tavern on the Green International Citrus on the Green balsamic vinegar,

  • Toss tomatoes in the olive oil and cook in a sauté pan over a low heat for 20 minutes until tender and starting to brown at the edges.
  • Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle balsamic over the tomatoes and cook an additional 5 minutes.BalsamicTomatoes

Balsamic Blueberry Jam

2 pints fresh blueberries, stems removed, rinsed
1 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons water or lemon juice
¼ cup Tavern on the Green International Blackberry Ginger balsamic vinegar

  • Combine blueberries, sugar and water in a heavy pot. Heat over low heat until sugar has dissolved.
  • Increase to a medium heat and simmer for 40 minutes. It should reduce by nearly a half, and get slightly thicker (it will thicken as it cools).
  • Add balsamic vinegar and cook an additional 5 minutes.
  • Allow to cool.BlueberryJam

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Balsamic Rhubarb Cherry Chicken

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Cindy

Hurrah, it’s finally cherry season! Cherries are my absolute favorite fruit. I love taking the kids out to the orchard to go pick the cherries fresh off the tree. We eat as many as we can until we’re totally sick, and then take the rest home to either eat later or to pit and bake them into something delicious. Sometimes I make a pie or crumble, sometimes I make jam, but one of the best things to do with cherries is to make a sweet and sour type sauce for chicken or pork.

cherries 

For fun here, I mixed some rhubarb, some cherries and some Tavern on the Green International Blackberry Ginger Balsamic vinegar to make a sweet and tart sauce. It was so delicious, served with some basmati rice.

Sad side story: I originally planned two dishes with the rhubarb, since it’s only around for a short time. The other dish was a mixed sauté of rhubarb, fennel and celery, finished with some balsamic—fun because they’re all from the same family. But I completely forgot how rhubarb changes its texture when you cook it, and the finished dish was so hideous that I couldn’t possibly blog about it. Oh, well, I’m always learning something about food here!

rhubarb

Balsamic Cherry Rhubarb Chicken
2 cups pitted sweet cherries
2 cups chopped rhubarb
½ cup sugar
3 Tablespoons water
½ cup Tavern on the Green International Blackberry Ginger balsamic vinegar
2-3 pounds chicken thighs, preferably boneless
salt and pepper
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil

  • Combine cherries, rhubarb, sugar and water in a heavy pot. Cook over low heat until sugar melts. Increase heat to medium and cook for 40-45 minutes until reduced and partially thickened. Add the balsamic vinegar and mix thoroughly. Set aside.
  • Season the chicken with salt and pepper. In a large lidded skillet, heat oil and butter over high heat. Add chicken to the pan. Cook 2-3 minutes and turn over. Cook an additional 2-3 minutes (in batches if necessary).
  • Pour the cherry rhubarb sauce over the chicken. Reduce heat to low and cook for 20 minutes (30 minutes if the chicken has bones).
  • Serve over rice.BalsamicCherryRhubarbChicken

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Teriyaki Turkey Tetrazzini

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Cindy

Sometimes the best part of the meal is the leftovers. Thanksgiving has always been a little bit like this for me. That’s because it’s a pretty exhausting meal to prepare, with so many different dishes to juggle to put on the table, hot, at the same time. For the person doing the cooking, by the time you sit down to eat, you’re too tired to really eat, and just happy to sit back and watch the pleasure on your friends’ and family’s faces. And inevitably, you discover afterwards that despite all your worries about not having bought a large enough turkey, or enough potatoes, or about not having made enough kinds of desserts, you’re left with a ton of leftovers. Which is good, because you often don’t want to see the kitchen again for a long time!

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to my mom’s turkey tetrazzini with the leftovers. I always thought this was an Italian dish—with a name like tetrazzini, what else could it be? I recently learned that this is a completely American dish, named after an Italian opera singer, by the chef at an American hotel she lived in. It is usually made with leftover turkey, noodles, peas and mushrooms, in a creamy sauce, baked with some sprinkled breadcrumbs over the top.

I make this almost every year. For fun this week, I thought I’d give this classic recipe a tweak, and make it a teriyaki turkey tetrazzini. Go ahead, say that a few times, it’s fun! I switched plain white mushrooms for shitake, peas for edamame, and used a creamy teriyaki sauce. In the pictures you’ll see that I sprinkled panko crumbs over the top, but honestly, it would have been better without, because the teriyaki sauce made the top layer of noodles turn sweet, crispy and delicious.

TeriyakiTurkeyTetrazzini

Teriyaki Turkey Tetrazzini

16 ounces shitake mushrooms, sliced thinly
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup mirin or sake
2 Tablespoons flour
½ cup chicken or turkey stock
1 cup light cream
½ cup Tavern on the Green International Golden Ginger Teriyaki sauce
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups frozen shelled edamame, defrosted
2-3 cups leftover turkey, cut into bite-size chunks
12 ounces wide or extra-wide egg noodles, prepared according to package

  • Sauté the mushrooms and garlic in oil over medium heat until cooked thoroughly.
  • Add mirin, and increase heat to high, stirring until the mirin reduces down.
  • Lower the temperature and sprinkle the flour over the mushrooms. Stir for 1-2 minutes. Gradually add stock, cream and teriyaki sauce, stirring. Add salt and pepper.
  • Add the edamame and turkey, and allow to heat in the sauce for 3-4 minutes.
  • Combine cooked noodles, turkey and sauce, and pour into a greased casserole pan.
  • Cook in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, or until the edges of the noodles on top become brown and crispy.TeriyakiTurkeyTetrazzini
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Wasabi Breakfast Potatoes

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Cindy

Sometimes, when you’re a food blogger, you make amazingly delicious fig balsamic basted bacon, and your family eats it all up, and then your good friend sees it on your blog and says “Ooooh, that looks amazing, I wish I had some!” And then you feel like a really terrible person, because you’ve taunted your friend with this amazing thing, shown her pictures of it (okay, and maybe you even texted her more pictures and told her how amazing it was), and then have not shared it with her. When this happens, you sometimes have to invite yourself over to her house for brunch, and offer to make a new batch of fig balsamic basted bacon and bring it over.

And while you’re at it, you take advantage of a captive guinea pig—I mean recipe-tester— and you bring along some wasabi country potatoes for her to try out. And you politely suggest that she should make an omelet. Because your friend is a really nice person (or perhaps because she really, really wants to try that bacon), she agrees. And that, my friends, long story short, is why my car smells like bacon.

WasabiBreakfastPotatoes2

Wasabi Country Breakfast Potatoes

2 ½ pounds white skinned potatoes, diced very finely ( ¼” cubes)
1 large yellow onion, halved and sliced thinly
1 red pepper, julienned
3 Tablespoons olive oil
½ cup Tavern on the Green International Wasabi Wonder sauce
salt and pepper to taste

  • Put the diced potatoes into a microwaveable bowl with a little bit of water. Microwave for 4-5 minutes. Drain.
  • Sauté onions and red pepper over medium heat until translucent. Add partially-cooked potatoes. Cook 5-6 minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently.
  • Add wasabi sauce and salt and pepper. Turn heat up to medium-high. Cook an additional 4-5 minutes, until potatoes are cooked through and brown a bit at the edges.WasabiBreakfastPotatoes1
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Potato Leek Salad (with Fig Balsamic Bacon)

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Cindy

I actually cannot believe that I waited this long to do this: I basted bacon with Tavern on the Green International balsamics!!! I used the Autumn Fig, although I’m sure the others would work just as well. But WOW!!! This was a great idea!! You know those maple candied bacons you always hear about? This was a lot like that, but with a bit of tanginess, not just pure sweetness. It was amazing!! (I’m sorry for all the exclamation marks, but the smell and taste of this just was fabulous)

FigBalsamicBacon

I really wanted to use the bacon in a salad—in fact the bacon was sort of an afterthought in what was supposed to be a cute twist on potato and leek soup, turned into a salad. But then it was extremely difficult to keep the children away from the bacon—honestly I was pretty surprised the neighbors didn’t show up demanding some too, the smell was that incredible. So my salad probably doesn’t look like it has quite as much bacon as it should. In fact, if you’re going to try to make this salad, I’d advise you to double the bacon recipe so everyone can eat their fill first and you’ll still have enough for the salad.

Potato and Leek Salad (with Fig Balsamic Bacon)

12 ounces thick cut bacon—use the best quality you can afford
¼ cup Tavern on the Green International Autumn Fig balsamic vinegar
2 pounds small red potatoes, cut into bite-size chunks
2 pounds leeks, sliced
2 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons mayonnaise (or sour cream)
salt and pepper to taste

  • Place bacon slices on a wire rack, on top of a tinfoil-lined cookie sheet. Place in a preheated 350 degree oven. Cook for ten minutes. Turn the slices over and cook for an additional 5-7 minutes.
  • Remove from oven and brush balsamic vinegar on the bacon slices. Return to oven and cook 5 minutes. Remove from oven, turn the slices over and repeat the basting on the other side. Return to oven once again, and cook an additional 5 minutes, or to desired crispness. Remove from oven and cool.
  • Meanwhile, slowly sauté the leeks in the butter over a low heat until they are tender. This should take about 10 minutes. Allow to cool.
  • While the leeks are sautéing, cover the potatoes with cold water in a heavy pot. Salt the water. Bring to a boil and boil gently for 10-15 minutes, until potatoes are tender and are easily pierced with a fork. Drain and allow to cool.
  • (Note: this salad can be served with all ingredients cool or while still warm, depending on your preference)
  • Toss together the potatoes and leeks. Crumble in the bacon. Salt and pepper well. Add three or more tablespoons of mayonnaise, depending on how dry you like it. Snip a little fresh parsley or other herb on top.PotatoLeekSalad

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The Fake Justin Bieber Sextortion Case

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Cindy

A recent child sextortion case in Alabama and Mississippi demonstrates the lengths that child predators will go to, the lies they will tell, and the critical importance of monitoring your child’s online activity and discussing issues of Internet safety and privacy with them.

Christopher Patrick Gunn used two different tactics to lure in and then threaten hundreds of girls ages 9 to 16 across the United States as well as internationally. The first ruse was to create a fake online persona on Facebook and social media, pretending to be a new student in town who was trying to make friends. He would “friend” a number of girls, get them to trust him, and then start asking them personal questions about their bodies, their sexual history, etc. If the girls answered the questions, his activities would escalate, and he would ask them to take sexually explicit pictures. If the girls refused to send him pictures, he would threaten to reveal the personal information that he had obtained to the school principal or on Facebook. This usually resulted in the girls complying and sending naked or partially dressed pictures.

The second scheme he used was to pretend to be teen superstar, Justin Bieber, and to contact the girls through chat rooms, Skype and other social media. He would offer them concert tickets or backstage passes in exchange for topless photos. Once they had complied, he then demanded that they take video of themselves performing sexually explicit acts on themselves. If they refused, he would threaten to post the topless photos.

After more than two years of getting away with this sextortion, a group of junior high school students complained to their local police department in Alabama, and an investigation was started. The police found computers with extensive evidence. He has been sentenced to 35 years in prison. Because the crimes were committed across multiple states, he was tried in federal court, where there is no parole; thus he will likely serve a minimum of 30 years.

It is a good idea to share this story and others you read with your children, so that they can be aware of the types of dangers that exist on the Internet, and so that they can be alert to the risks of interacting with people they do not actually know, especially interacting by sending photos or videos or chatting live. The FBI suggests the following tips:

  • Don’t assume that your computer’s anti-virus software serves as a full protection against hackers or other intruders.
  • Turn off your computer when not in use, and cover the webcam (better yet, do not buy a computer with a webcam at all).
  • Never open email attachments from anyone that you don’t know, or even if it’s from someone you do know if you are not expecting an attachment from them.
  • Be suspicious and alert. Assume that strangers you “meet” on the Internet are not who they say they are. If something seems to be too good to be true (a prize you’ve won, a superstar who wants to meet you, someone who wants to put money in your bank account), it probably is.
  • If someone is sextorting you, report it immediately to your parents, to someone at your school, and/or to law enforcement.

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Balsamic Brussels Sprout Wheat Berry Salad

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Cindy

I have a love affair with grains. Yes, it’s true. In the fall and winter, I love warm bowls of risotto, or baked winter squash halves filled with grains. When spring and summer roll around, I turn to vegetable-filled pilafs, and lightly dressed grain salads. There are a million combinations! Pick one grain from among: quinoa, spelt, brown rice, or my favorite, wheat berries. Cook the grains. Mix in whatever vegetables are most fresh and in season at the moment. Throw in some nuts or some cheese or tofu bits or meat. Toss with olive oil and your favorite balsamic vinegar, and you’ve got yourself a super nutritious , delicious, perfect meal!

BrusselSproutSalad

That’s all I’ve done here. This salad is a mix of wheat berries, goat cheese, pickled red onions, and roasted balsamic Brussels sprouts. I should warn you about these Brussels sprouts though—if you like kale chips, these are your next favorite food!! They come out crispy and a little bit caramelized by the balsamic vinegar, and you literally can just munch them straight off the baking sheet. And you will, trust me!

BrusselsSprouts

What is your favorite grain?

Balsamic Brussels Sprout Wheat Berry Salad

1 pound Brussels sprouts, sliced thinly
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons Tavern on the Green International Citrus on the Green Balsamic Vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 red onion, halved and sliced thinly
1 cup apple cider vinegar
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup wheat berries
2 ½ cups salted water
4 ounces goat cheese

  • In a medium-sized bowl, toss the Brussels sprouts in the oil and balsamic. Spread into a single layer on a cookie sheet (lined with aluminum foil for quick cleanup if desired). Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast slowly in a 400 degree oven, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes or until crispy and turning brown. Remove from oven and set aside.
  • Place sliced onions in a small non-metallic bowl. Bring apple cider vinegar, sugar and salt just to a gentle boil, remove from heat, and pour over onions. Let rest for 30 minutes and drain.PickledOnions
  • Combine wheat berries and salted water in a small pot. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat and simmer covered for 40 minutes. Drain any excess water. (You could use a broth or stock here if desired for extra flavor). Set aside to cool.
  • In a large bowl, toss together cooked wheat berries, pickled onions, and roasted Brussels sprouts. If desired, drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the salad and mix well.
  • Crumble the goat cheese into salad and serve.

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My Best Friend is a Food Blogger

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Cindy

My best friend is a food blogger. She was a food blogger long before I decided to try my hand at it, and is a million times better at it than me. What this means is that sometimes I get her kitchen hand-me-downs, like the Oxo cherry pitter that she gave me a couple of weeks ago. And sometimes I buy her unusual ingredients, and try to get her to make recipes out of them. We very often exchange blog food leftovers for lunch, which is nice, because there are only so many times you can eat your own leftovers. Once in a while we have a cooking duel, to see who can make a tastier mushroom and noodle dish (me!) or who can make a better savory pie with a Wasa cracker crust (her!). Sometimes she talks me out of some crazy cooking idea that I’ve gotten into my head (most recently wasabi scones).

And sometimes she brings me a tupperware of tvorog.

Tvorog

Tvorog is apparently a Russian cheese, sort of a cross between cottage cheese and ricotta. Her Russian grandmother used to make it, and she made it for her blog this week, in her grandmother’s memory. My grandmother was Russian too, but I am pretty sure she never made tvorog for me. In fact, I’ve never had it before. But I was intrigued! So I sweetened the tvorog a little and combined it with some cherries that I cooked down with some Tavern on the Green International Blackberry Ginger balsamic vinegar and spices, and hello sweet and delicious breakfast!

Now, you may not be lucky enough to be best friends with an amazing and generous food blogger. In which case, you could probably substitute cottage cheese or ricotta cheese in this dish and it would still be pretty tasty.

 Cherries

Balsamic Cherries over Russian Cheese

2 cups tvorog (or ricotta or cottage cheese)
¼ cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
4 cups cherries, pitted
½ cup Tavern on the Green International Blackberry Ginger balsamic vinegar
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon powdered ginger

  • Mix together tvorog, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a bowl.
  • Serve several spoons of the tvorog topped with the cherries. If desired, sprinkle some shredded coconut or sliced almonds or pistachios over the top.
  • Leftover cherries (if you come out uneven) are delicious over ice cream!TvorogwithCherries

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Mango Butter on Monkey Bread

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Cindy

I bought a giant box of mangoes at my local Asian market last week, and for some reason, we couldn’t quite eat them fast enough. One morning I looked, and three of them were all ripe at the same time—and I mean really ripe, with little globs of syrup oozing out the top!! I’ve been on such a jam/jelly kick lately that I just had to try making one with mango! So I cooked them down, added some seasoning, including Tavern on the Green International Citrus on the Green balsamic vinegar, and voilà, mango butter!

MangoButter

Of course, once you’ve made mango butter, you have to make bread to put it on (this is starting to sound like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!). So I made my favorite—buttery Monkey Bread. This is a pull-apart bread that most people seem to make a sweet version of, with cinnamon sugar glaze running through the pieces. But in my family, it was always just made as a buttery bread. It was a special occasion bread that my grandmother made, and we ate it at dinner parties and holidays, usually spread with chopped chicken liver. It took me years to get the recipe to taste like my grandmother’s bread, but I’m so happy that I can make it for my kids now.

Have you ever had to figure out on your own how to recreate your grandmother’s recipe?

Mango Butter

3 ripe mangoes, peeled, cored and diced
½ cup orange juice
1 cup sugar
2 inch segment of ginger
¼ cup Tavern on the Green International Citrus on the Green balsamic vinegar

  • Place mango and orange juice in a heavy pot with a lid. Cook over medium heat for 40-45 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding water if the fruit is sticking to the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat and mash well with a hand-held immersion blender.
  • Add sugar and return to a low heat. Cook 5-10 minutes until sugar has dissolved completely.
  • Grate the ginger, and squeeze the juice from the grated ginger into the mango puree (do not use the actual pulp of the ginger). Add balsamic vinegar and mix thoroughly.
  • Cook over medium high heat for 20-30 minutes until thick, stirring occasionally. Be very careful, as it will bubble and splatter, so keep it covered while cooking and remove from heat briefly before stirring.
  • Let cool. Store in refrigerator for a week or so.

 MonkeyBread

Monkey Bread

2 cups white bread flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 ½ teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 ½ cups low-fat milk
1 Tablespoon instant yeast
6 Tablespoons butter, melted

  • Put all the ingredients except the melted butter in your bread machine, in the order suggested by the manufacturer. Choose a whole wheat dough only cycle.
  • Lightly oil a 12 cup Bundt pan.
  • When dough is ready, punch down on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a long thin strand, about 18-20 inches long. Cut into about 32 small pieces. They do not have to be round or exact slices, or any particular shape. Different shapes are more fun.
  • Dip each piece in the melted butter and layer in the Bundt pan. Try to leave a little space around the pieces, not to squish them in too tightly.
  • Allow to rise again in a warm place, covered with a towel, for 45 minutes or so (more if it’s cold in the house).
  • Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven, and when slightly cooled, place a plate over the top and flip upside down to invert. MangoButterBread

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Red and White Salad

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Cindy

Last week we had a mini heat wave, and of course, since it was the first time since last summer that I’ve turned on the air conditioning, I didn’t know that it had stopped working in the meantime. So it was pretty hot and muggy in my house. And I really didn’t feel like cooking anything too complicated. What does that mean? One word—salad!!!

For me, it’s really important that a salad not only taste good, but be visually appealing on the plate too. For this salad, I thought it would be fun to be just red and white foods. So I mixed some of my favorite whites: hearts of palm, lychee nuts, and scallops; and some of my favorite reds: radishes, red leaf lettuce and radicchio. I wanted a very light and fruity dressing, so I mixed some Tavern on the Green International Citrus on the Green balsamic with some grapefruit juice, olive oil and a little of the lychee syrup. Fruity, sweet and tangy all at once!

 RedWhiteSaladDressing

What are your favorite summer salad combinations?

 Red and White Salad

1 pound sea scallops, thoroughly patted dry
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
salt and pepper to taste
1 small head radicchio, roughly torn
1 head red leaf lettuce, torn
1 can lychee nuts, drained with syrup reserved
1 jar or can hearts of palm, sliced thickly
1 bunch radishes, trimmed, washed and quartered
½ red onion, sliced thinly
¼ cup Tavern on the Green International Citrus on the Green balsamic vinegar
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup reserved lychee syrup
juice of one ruby grapefruit
dash of salt

  • In a large sauté pan, heat oil and butter over high heat.
  • Season the scallops with salt and pepper. Add in a single layer to the hot oil and butter. Reduce heat slightly, and cook for 2 minutes.
  • Carefully turn the scallops over, and cook an additional 2 minutes on the other side. Remove from heat and set aside briefly while composing the salad.
  • Arrange lettuce and radicchio on plates. Top with radishes, lychee nuts, hearts of palm and onion.
  • Combine balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lychee syrup and grapefruit juice in a small bowl. Drizzle over salads.
  • Place scallops on the top and serve.

 RedWhiteSalad

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