The Quest for Biscuits Continues: Red Lobster Style

So for any of you that have read my little food blog from the beginning, know that I orginally started this whole adventure in the quest to return to my baking roots. My first attempt at making biscuits ended up being a complete failure, as far as biscuits are concerned since I ended up with some sad looking crackers instead of fluffy and delightful biscuits.

So I left the baking world for a while, and busied myself with soups, salads, and entree style dishes instead, with a dessert thrown in here and there for good measure. Recently however, my fiance's mother sent over a recipe for biscuits that was styled after the ones that are served at Red Lobster. For any of you who have had the pleasure of eating a biscuit from Red Lobster, know that these cheesy fluffy little dinner rolls are quite delightful.

So this morning I made a second attempt at making biscuits with this easy recipe, and they came out...well...freaking awesome. Give these a try. They will go good with any meal in my humble opinion.

Ingredients

2 cups Bisquick
2/3 cup of milk
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 tsp. garlic powder

Preparation

Preheat oven to 450 F. Mix the Bisquick, milk, and cheddar cheese together in a bowl until all combined. Consistency will be a bit sticky. Don't over mix though, as too much mixing can cause the bisquick to not bake properly and make the biscuits heavy instead of fluffy and light.

Using a tablespoon, place drops of the biscuit mixture on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes (sometimes less depending on how big you've made your drops of dough, just keep an eye on them.)

Melt the butter in the microwave and then stir the garlic powder into the melted butter. Once you remove the biscuits from the oven, brush the butter/garlic mixture lightly over the top of the biscuits. Serve warm. Makes 10-12 biscuits.

Flippin' Good Fruit Smoothie

Warm summer mornings often call for something cool to drink to start your day. Especially if they are pretty damn good for you. I often use this beverage as a full breakfast. With the fruit, yogurt, orange juice, water and then the addition of the nutritional supplement I throw in, its just plain health in a glass. However, because fruits do have a lot of natural sugars in them, this may not be the drink for those who are diabetic or need to watch sugar levels in general.

With the wonders of modern day technology when it comes to keeping foods frozen, this can actually be enjoyed year round. You can freeze fresh fruits you have picked in the summer, or you can buy bags of frozen fruit at your local grocery store.

Ingredients

1/2 Banana, frozen
1/2 cup Frozen mixed berries (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries)
1/2 cup Frozen peach slices
1/2 cup Orange Juice
1/2 cup Nonfat Yogurt, plain
Water

Optional: 1 Tbs. Super Green Max Plus (available at www.swansonvitamins.com)

Preparation

Add all the ingredients to a blender. The amount of water you use will vary. After adding the orange juice, I usually add just enough water to reach the top of the fruit so that it blends easier and doesn't end up being overly thick. Blend the mixture. Pour. Enjoy.

Nutritional Information

Serving Size: 2 1/2 Cups
Calories: 233
Fat: 0
Cholesterol: 2.5 mg
Carbs: 49 g
Fiber: 5 g
Sugars: 36 g
Protein: 9 g

Acorn Squash Soup

So here it is the end of July and I'm writing (and cooking) a recipe for acorn squash soup. Doesn't quite sound like summer fare does it? Acorn squash, butternut squash, pumpkins, etc., are usually more associated with the fall or winter months, as they kind of fit into that warm comfort food genre. However, my dad was kind enough to bring me a bounty from his garden this past week that included six acorn squash. Having never made anything with them previously, I decided to give it a try.

Acorn squash is actually indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, and wasn't known to Europeans until after Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Originally, when the Europeans first found it, they only ate the seeds of the acorn squash since the flesh was thought to be to hard to deal with. Later on the European settlers learned that squash in general was easily stored for winter and became pretty big fans of this hardy vegetable.

So while you may not think that acorn squash soup is your idea of a good meal on a hot summers night, it is still good eats at any time. But if you don't make it until fall or winter, you will still enjoy this delicious soup.

Ingredients

6 Acorn Squash
6 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 small onion (about 1 cup, rough chopped)
3 Tbs. Olive Oil
1 Stick of Unsalted Butter
4-6 cups of Chicken Broth depending on how thick you want your soup. Can also substitute vegetable broth.
1 tsp. Ground Sage
1 tsp. Savory
1/2 cup 2% milk
1/2 cup Nonfat Plain Yogurt
1/2 tsp. cayenne (or 3 dashes of red pepper flakes)
Salt
Black Pepper

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350F. Cut the acorn squash at the equator. Remove the seeds with a spoon and discard. Place the acorn squash, cut side up, on a baking sheet pan. Put two garlic gloves in the center of three of the squash. In the other 3 squash halves divide the 1 cup of onion. Drizzle the squash with 2 Tbsp. of the olive oil, then sprinkle lightly with salt and ground pepper. Place the squash in the oven and bake for approximately 1 hour. (May take a little longer or shorter time depending on thickness/size of the squash. They should be very soft when ready, nearly ready to cave in).

Remove the squash from the oven and let stand until cool enough to handle. Once cooled, remove the onion and garlic cloves and set aside. Scoop the flesh of the squash out into a separate bowl and discard the skins. In a large pot, add the stick of butter, the remaining Tbsp. of olive oil, and the garlic and onion that were in the center of the squash. Cook on medium to high heat until the butter melts and just begins to foam. Add 1/2 cup of the chicken stock and stir to remove any bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium. Then add the remaining stock, all of the squash, milk and yogurt. Continue to stir and bring to a light simmer.

Once the soup has come to a simmer, use a stick blender to puree the mixture. If you do not have a stick blender, you can ladle it into a blender and puree it in batches and then add it back to the pot. Once the soup is pureed, add the savory, sage and cayenne or red pepper flakes. Stir until the spices are fully incorporated. Serve hot.

This soup has a creamy and buttery flavor. I didn't have the cayenne, so I used 3 dashes of red pepper flakes, which gave it a nice spice kick at the end.

Nutritional Information

Serving Size: 2 Cups (information below is based on using low sodium chicken stock).

Calories: 336
Total Fat: 16 g
Cholesterol: 16 mg
Carbs: 48 g
Fiber: 16 g
Protein: 16 g

The Portobello Push

Portobello Mushrooms, the vegetarians steak. Mushrooms, Portobello's in this particular recipe, are quite versatile and can be used in all manner of cooking, baking and grilling. Many of you remember the scene in Forrest Gump, when Bubba was reciting all the different ways to make shrimp. Well the Portobello could just as easily be inserted there. Portobello sandwiches, Portobello salad, grilled Portobello, stuffed Portobello, so on and so forth. And with vegetarianism being much more chic these days, Portobello's and the rest of the fungus family have become quite the rage.

There are a few variations of the history of the Portobello and how it got its name, but the one that I like the best (and the one that seems most feasible to me) is that the portobello in Northern Italy is called "cappellone" which means "big hat". Whatever its name origination, the only thing we need to know is that it is some good eatin'.

I have dabbled in the past with stuffing Portobello Mushrooms and grilling them on a charcoal grill, which came out quite good, but this is a newer revised recipe that I threw together a couple weeks ago. Hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients

8 medium to large Portobello Mushrooms, stems included.
2 or 3 green onions
1/2 Cup Feta Cheese
1/2 Cup Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese
3 to 4 pieces of white bread
1 egg
Dried Sage (2 or 3 pinches)
Salt & Pepper to taste
Olive Oil

Preparation

Remove the stems from the mushrooms and set aside. Then using a small spoon or butter knife, scoop out the dark inside of the caps and discard. Dice up the stems that you had set aside along with with the green onions. Add the stems and green onion to a frying pan with enough olive oil to grease the pan and sautee over medium high heat until the onions are soft and most of the liquid has been cooked out of the stems. Set aside and let cool a bit.
In a bowl add the Feta and Cheddar Cheese, two or three pinches of sage, and salt and pepper to taste. Toast the slices of bread until they are very dark (but not burnt) and then crumble them into small bits into the bowl with the cheese. The bread bits should be pretty small, to basically make your own bread crumbs. You can substitute store bought bread crumbs here as well, but I didn't have any on hand and this worked out great. Beat the egg, and then add it to the mixture. Add the sauteed mushroom stems and onion and stir the entire mixture until it has all blended well.

Rub the backs of the mushroom caps with olive oil and place oil side down in a large baking dish. Then using a spoon, scoop the mixture into the mushroom caps. It is completely fine to overstuff them! Once all caps have been filled with the mixture, place in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. Serve hot. We had this with corn on the cob and grilled chicken and it was an excellent dinner!

Snow Comfort Food: Creamy Potato Soup

So we all know that the potato is a pretty popular comfort food these days. Baked potatoes, french fries, potato au gratin, potato soup and everything in between. Potatoes seem to be also normally associated with us Irish with the whole potato famine thing. But these wondrous tubers didn't originate in Ireland.

As history goes, potatoes were being cultivated in Peru as early as 3000 B.C. They didn't come to Ireland until somewhere between 1665 and 1685 (there are some conflicting stories there). And as with many of the fruits and vegetables we eat today, potatoes were something to fear by those silly Europeans who thought that the potato could cause leprosy, syphillis and was even a dangerous aphrodisiac.

Sir Walter Raleigh is often credited with bringing potatoes to Ireland when he was given land there by the queen to grow tobacco and potatoes. One story said that when Sir Walter Raleigh presented potatoes to the Queen as a gift, the Queens cook didn't know what to do with them and threw them out and cooked the leaves instead!

All history aside, I'm a fan of soups during the cold weather months. Earlier this week as a snow storm moved into the northeast, I decided it was a good time to make a soup. So I rummaged around the kitchen and came up with the recipe below. Hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients

6 cups water
5 stalks of celery cut in half
6 carrots peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces
1 onion diced
8 - 10 medium yukon gold potatoes (cut into 1 or 2 inch cubes)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup 2% milk
1/2 stick of butter
3 cloves of garlic (minced)
Salt
Black Pepper
Dried Sage
Additions:
1 package of butter & herb instant mashed potatoes
additional sour cream for garnish
cilantro leaves for garnish

Broth Preparation

Add the six cups of water to a large pot over high heat and season generously with salt and pepper. The amount of salt and pepper you use is up to your desired taste. I put in a couple of large pinches of each and added some more as I went along with the soup until I got the taste I was looking for. Add the carrots, celery and onion. Bring to a rolling boil and then back the heat off until it is simmering. Let simmer about 20 minutes, or until all ingredients are soft. When complete, remove the celery with a pair of tongs or a slotted spoon and discard. I find that celery can end up being a bit stringy when making a cream soup, so I only add them to the broth to extract flavor and then remove them.

Soup Preparation

Once the celery has been removed, add the potatoes and garlic and a few pinches of the dried sage. Bring back to a boil for a minute or two and then reduce heat and let simmer until the potatoes are soft (about 15 minutes).

Turn off the heat and add your soup mixture to your blender or food processor in batches. For this part I have a hand blender (that I call my motorboat). I added my mixture to a large plastic pitcher and ground it all at once with the hand blender. Blend until it is a smooth consistency.

Pour the blended mixture back into your pot and add the sour cream, butter and milk. Stir until all is combined and heated through. It was here that I found that my mixture was thinner than I wanted. At the suggestion of my girlfriend I added about a quarter package of the butter and herb mashed potato mix to thicken it some. If you use this technique, don't add very much, just a little at a time until you get your desired consistency, otherwise you will just end up with some well seasoned mash potatoes.

This soup is creamy and has a nice buttered yellow color with bits of orange from the carrot. Topped with a dollop of sour cream and cilantro leaves and a side of crusty bread and you will have some serious comfort food. Enjoy!

Wednesday Night Chicken

I just realized it has been over four months since I have posted a cooking blog. It's not that I haven't been cooking, it just that I have been either cooking recipes I already posted, mixed up a few things that weren't worth writing about, or just didn't get around to it. So today I finally decided to add a recipe for a pretty decent chicken dish I made a couple months ago.

I highly suggest using a cast iron skillet for this one. If you don't have one, go buy one. Besides being pretty handy for searing meat, making stir fry or transferring dishes from stovetop to the oven, they also make a pretty good home security device. I remember reading a story in the paper when I was younger while living in South Jersey, about the demise of a would-be robber. He had broken into some little old ladies house in a nearby town in the hopes of making off with some jewelry or petty cash. While he was rifling through her drawers, grandma retrieved her handy cast iron skillet from the kitchen, snuck up behind him, and with one blow, ended not only his career in B&E, but he died almost immediately.

I never did understand why people feel the need to break into a house for such a low payout. The risk versus the reward didn't seem worth it. But maybe to the meth-addled brains of some of these jackwagons, making off with a ruby necklace is worth a stretch at the local pound-me-in-the-ass facility or ending up dead on the floor as a result of blunt force trauma to the cranium. But I digress, back to the recipe.

Originally I made this with a 1/4 cup of lemon juice. The ending result was borderline sour jacks candy tartness. I suggest starting with a couple of tablespoons and working up from there for your desired result. Other than seizure-type twitching from my eyelids from some of the sourness, the dish turned out to be pretty damn tasty.

Ingredients
4 chicken breast halves with skin (bone in or boneless will work)
5 teaspoons ground cumin
4 Tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Preparation
Preheat your oven to 425. With your fingertips or a small sharp knife, lift the skin of each chicken breast to loosen. Sprinkle each chicken breast with a teaspoon of cumin and some salt and pepper to taste. Rub seasoning both beneath and on top of the skin.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in your cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Put the chicken breasts, skin side down, in the pan and cook until the skin browns, approximately 5 minutes. Turn chicken over and turn off your stove. Place the cast iron skillet containing the chicken breasts in the oven and roast until the chicken is cooked through. Should take about 15 minutes, or you can use one of those handy meat temperature gauges to make sure it is done.

Transfer the chicken to a plate. Then put the cast iron skillet back on the stove. Make sure you use a pot holder to grab the handle since it is piping hot out of the oven. Add your remaining olive oil to the pan drippings and then add the garlic and saute for 30 seconds or so, until it begins to turn translucent. Add the chicken broth, orange juice, lemon juice, orange peel, lemon peel, and about a teaspoon of cumin. Boil the mixture, stirring occasionally, until it is reduced to about a cup. Poor this sauce over your chicken breasts and then sprinkle with the cilantro. Serve. This dish goes well with some wild rice or a yellow rice pilaf. Throw in some steamed spinach or other green on the side and you got yourself a pretty sweet Wednesday night meal.

Holy Freaking Fettucine

Fettucine, and most other pasta for that matter has a long history in Italy. And while Fettucine Alfredo is a hugely popular dish in the United States, it was devised by a Roman restaurateur named Alfredo di Lelio in 1914. His original contribution was to double the butter before it was poured with the pasta which effectively made it "triplo burro", a triple buttered pasta. While he originally made it this way for his wife who was pregnant at the time, he began serving it in his restaurant, naming the dish after himself. About 13 years later, a couple vacationing from Hollywood stopped in and fell in love with it. So as usual, once Hollywood falls in love with something, the rest of the world soon follows after.

The dish below isn't a general Fettucine dish. While I love pasta smothered in butter, salt and pepper, it doesn't quite make for such an interesting plate. But adding lemon, shrimp, cream, parmesan, basil, parsley and pancetta can sure make you say Holy Freaking Fettucine! While I have measurements listed below, as always, it is up to you to create something that is most pleasing to your palate. You will find this is a great meal for week nights, and unless you have company, there will be plenty of leftovers! Serve with a fresh salad, buttered bread and a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 box fettucine
2 packages of pancetta
1 lb shrimp, deveined and shells removed
2 cups portabello mushrooms
1 1/4 pounds asparagus, woody ends removed and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 bag frozen peas
1 bunch green onions, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese plus additional for serving
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup of white wine (I used a Sauvignon Blanc)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon peel
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation


Cook pasta in pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to pot.

Saute shrimp in a little olive oil until pink, but just under cooked. They will finish cooking when you add them to the pasta, and if cooked too long in this step, you will end up with rubbery shrimp...resembling perhaps a seafood flavored eraser.

Meanwhile, cook pancetta in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Using slotted spoon, transfer pancetta to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 teaspoon drippings from skillet. Add asparagus to drippings in skillet; sauté 3 minutes. Add peas, mushrooms, green onions, and garlic; sauté until vegetables are just tender, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Add vegetable mixture, 1/4 cup pasta cooking liquid, green onions, shrimp, white wine, 1/2 cup Parmesan, cream, olive oil, lemon juice, lemon peel, half of parsley, and half of basil to pasta. Toss, adding more cooking liquid by tablespoonfuls if needed. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Transfer to large bowl. Sprinkle pancetta, remaining parsley, and basil over. Serve.