Smashed Reskins with Kale

I bought a bag of Kale last week, which is another reason you should never grocery shop after a 14 mile run.  I also bought a giant bag of Redskin potatoes.  And a thing of cheese puffs.  Seriously, don't do it.  We had some leftover cream from New Year's that I wanted to use up, so this recipe came from some googling (mostly of the "I wonder if people ever put Kale in mashed potatoes" variety) and also some haphazard "just use it up" testing.

Ingredients:
1 cup kale, washed, de-stemmed, and chopped into small pieces.  The smaller the better. 
4-5 redskin potatoes, cut up into 1 inch pieces
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup heavy cream (if you don't have any, just use milk)
1/2 cup milk
salt
pepper
olive oil
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Procedure:
1. Boil a pot of water, toss in potatoes.  Let cook for 20 minutes or until tender and mashable.  Drain.  Mash (you can mash them later, but as I was mashing them later, I thought, "gee, I should have mashed these first.)
2. Heat a big pan (or use the mashed potato pan) with olive oil, saute garlic until slightly golden. 
3. Add kale, saute until bright green. 
4. Add potatoes, heavy cream, and milk.  Stir together until everything is well mixed.  If you did not mash the potatoes before, mash them now. 
5. Add salt and pepper to taste, serve topped with Parmesan and enjoy! 

Extra Fluffy Quinoa

I like my quinoa super-fluffy.  Almost cous cous like in it's fluffiness.  If you haven't tried quinoa, or have been disappointed that it just...doesn't taste good, you might want to try it the Barefoot way.

Ingredients:
1 cup Quinoa
1 3/4 cups water
salt
bullion or other vegetable stock seasoning (or you can use veggie stock instead of the water)

Process:
1.  Wash quinoa in a strainer.  This is definitely, totally, necessary.  If you don't wash the quinoa, it tastes like eating sand.
2.  Combine quinoa, salt, bullion, and water in a pot, or in a rice cooker pot (I think the rice cooker is my secret to great quinoa, but if you don't have one, you can do it on the stove.)
3.  Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes or until super fluffy.  If quinoa seems to be cooked but not fluffy at the end of the 15 minutes, add more water.

Chard and Red Cabbage

We had chard and red cabbage to use tonight, so I made these:

Chard Risotto (really good - the chard doesn't taste bitter at all. I'm not sure how that happened.  I used less chard than this called for.)

Sauteed Red Cabbage (I liked this a lot, but my entire kitchen is now red.)  It had a sweet, crunchy taste to it.

Happy eating!

New Project

So I started a new project.  We'll see how it goes, but the idea is that once a week, for however long it takes, I cook a new recipe out of a cookbook.  I keep going until I have made something from every single cookbook, or tried a new recipe from some old standbys.  We have so many cookbooks that I've never even cracked that this seemed like a good way to at least decide which cookbooks are good and which ones might get passed onward.  

Week One: The Working Wives' Cookbook.  

This vintage cookbook was a gift from my good friend Amy, and since I am now a working wife (although it does specify "salaried or otherwise"), I thought I would try to make something from this cookbook, which is filled with recipes that you can make ahead and then reheat the next night.  I picked Honeyed Carrots, since we had carrots and we needed to use them.  

 The ingredients list was pretty simple - take a bunch of (sliced) carrots, 4 tablespoons of honey, some salt, and some lemon juice, put them in a pan. Add water to cover, boil until the carrots are al dente and the liquid is half gone.  Refrigerate.

The next night, take 1 tbsp flour and 1 tbsp butter, combine in a pan to make a roux.  Add the carrots and stir the flour into the water until it thickens.

These were pretty good, and a way of eating carrots that has probably gone out of style.  The recipe was quite labor-intensive for something I was supposed to do at 8pm the night before, so I probably won't make them again.  I am encouraged to try to do more things with carrots though.

"Who Brings the Sprouts?"

My father in law is a difficult man to impress.  I try very hard but the best I get is an ironic smile and a compliment I'm never sure is genuine on food I'm not sure is good.  So early on, when we began sharing holidays, he asked who in my family brings the sprouts on holidays.  Ever since, I have made an effort to be the one who brings the sprouts.  I tried cooking them in cream; I tried cooking them with maple syrup.  They were...edible.  Mr. Barefoot and his sister preferred them to the usual steamed brussels sprouts, but FIL Barefoot seemed unmoved.

Undaunted, and refusing to allow steamed sprouts a place at my table, I'm searching for sprouts recipes.  I think maybe these golden crusted sprouts.  Or, since I'm a sucker for anything with balsamic, I might give these a try.  

Cornbread

Tonight I made cornbread and chili for Mr. Barefoot while I went to a job thing.  I made the Pioneer Woman's Skillet Cornbread.

It came out just fine, if you like your cornbread dry and tasteless.  I like sweeter, moister cornbread, so I will continue hunting for a recipe that mimics the #10 cornbread I had in the Caymans.  

Do you have a good cornbread recipe? Is it moist and delicious? Please share.  

Green Beens Sauteed with Radishes and Rosemary

This recipe is delicious.  Not enough people use radishes.  Try 'em! This recipe got rave reviews when I made it for a dinner party.  From "Cooking from the Garden".
Ingredients:
-3/4 lbs green beans, snapped in half
-5 lg red radishes
-1 tbsp butter
-1 tbsp olive oil
-1 1/2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
-3 scallions, finely sliced
-1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
-1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

1.) Blanch beans in approx 6 cups salted water (put beans in boiling water for 4 minutes)
2.) Drain and put in ice water bath
3) Cut radishes into matchsticks - a mandoline is helpful for this.
4) In a nonstick saucepan, melt butter on low heat and add olive oil.
5) Increase to medium and add rosemary.  Let cook for 3 minutes.
6) Add beans, radishes, scallions, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.  Saute for 4 minutes and serve immediately.

Spinach-Artichoke Quiche

I made quiche for Easter last weekend - I picked it because it was easy to make it, and doesn't need to be kept warm.  I used pre-made crusts, but if you're ambitious, you can make your own.  I actually filled two crusts and just added extra cheese.
Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag frozen spinach
• 1 can of artichokes, drained and minced
• 5 eggs (or any combination of egg whites and yolks that adds up to 5 eggs)
• 1/2 cup of milk (a lot of recipes call for heavy cream, but that's really not necessary)
• 1 bag of cheddar cheese (or parmesean)
• salt, pepper, garlic powder

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 425. 
2. Saute spinach until thaw and cooked.  Add artichokes to the pan, and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder. 
3. Put in a bowl and add the eggs.  Mix together, either with a spoon or an electric mixer.  
4. Line the bottom of the crust with cheese.  Pour in egg mixture.  Top with more cheese.  
5. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes.  
6. Lower oven temperature to 350 and bake for an additional 30 minutes. 

Quiche is a great vegetarian party dish, and never fails to impress people, particularly topped with cheese.  Quiche also isn't nearly as bad for you as everyone says - particularly if you omit the cream, and maybe leave out a few egg yolks. 

Plantain & Black Bean Fritters

I tried these at a tasting for the wedding and decided I had to learn to make them myself. I tried this recipe from Sara Moulton and modified it a little.

Ingredients:

• 3 black plantains
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 1 can of black beans, drained
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• minced garlic

1.) Start by mincing the garlic and sauteing it a bit, then add the black beans and cover with water.

2.) Add the plantains to a pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil.

3.) Eventually the plantains will start to split. Pull them out and mash them up. I would probably do this with a food processor next time. Add bread crumbs until dough is manageable. I used flour because I ran out of breadcrumbs, but I don't recommend it because it didn't cook entirely.

3.) Drain the black beans and onions. Put into a food processor and pulse into a paste.

4.) Mash into a kind of circle.

5.) Spoon black bean filling and shape into a fritter. Make more.

6.) Put oil in pan, fry fritters until delicious.

7.) Eat! Yummy!

(I think next time we might deep fry them. mmmmm.)

Rosemary-Balsamic Onions

I tried this recipe from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker - Entertaining for a dinner party with a few friends a little while ago.

Ingredients:

• 4 medium yellow onions (sweet ones are fine)
• 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 1/2 tbsp evoo
• 3 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1/2 tsp dried
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Procedure:

1. Wash the onions, paying special attention to the root ends. Peel them, then trim the pointed, but not root, end.
2. Place onions in slow cooker with the cut end up. Drizzle in vinegar and olive oil. Tuck fresh rosemary in among the onions, or sprinkle on dried rosemary. Sprinkle very lightly with salt and pepper. Cover and cook on High until tender and easily pierced - about 2 - 2 1/2 hours.
3. Using a slotted spoon, carefully transfer onions to plates or serving platter. Pour the liquid from the crock over the onions.

Verdict: These were pretty good, but a little weird. It's a whole onion, so it's just kinda odd, and bulky to eat, but the onion itself was pretty good. I probably won't make this again though.

Pods of Joy!

Radishes are my new thing. They are interesting and new and don't taste much like anything else. I have been using this recipe from my new favorite cooking blog. Today I made them a little crispier than last week, and I like them better when I let them saute longer and get a little caramelized. I also tried them with parsley instead of tarragon the first time, and I think I preferred that.
Go forth and enjoy!

Meatless Monday: Pumpkin Stuffing

I made Pumpkin Mac & Cheese for thanksgiving dinner on Friday at my parent's house, so for Thursday at my grandmother's, I used some of the extra diced pumpkin I had to do a roasted pumpkin cornbread stuffing.

I've taken this recipe from the Food Network, and combined it with slow cooker stuffing techniques from the Authority on Slow Cooking. I started by roasting the pumpkin and mushrooms in the oven on about 325 degrees.

Ingredients:

1 bag cornbread stuffing

1 onion, diced

1 cup celery, diced

1 box of sliced roasted mushrooms

1 cup sliced roasted pumpkin (cut up into 1/2 inch pieces or smaller)

1 can veggie broth

1 can water (just fill the veggie broth can with water once you're done with it, don't call me from the store telling me you can't find a can of water.

sage, thyme (fresh if possible), salt, pepper to taste

ground up pumpkin seeds
1 egg (optional)

Procedure:
1) Dump everything dry into slow cooker, mix well.
2) Add liquid, mix more.
3) Cook on high for 2-4 hours, or low for 4-6 hours, depending on how broken your slow cooker is. (Ours cooks too fast, so it takes 2 on high or 4 on low.)

Enjoy! Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.

Beer Mac & Cheese

This is, I believe, the 6th macaroni and cheese recipe I have posted here.
Some foods are good foods. Some foods are fantastic. And some foods are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, to paraphrase Ben Franklin. Since Franklin said that about beer, then the same must hold true for beer macaroni and cheese.
I hate beer but I love to cook with it - so awhile ago, I thought about making beer macaroni and cheese, but I hadn't gotten around to it. I'm making mac & cheese for thanksgiving, so I thought for my friend's thanksgiving last night, I would do a different variation, and decided to try this out.
I looked around for recipes but a lot involved bacon. I found this one from Scrumptini and altered it a little.
Ingredients:

• 1 lb penne pasta
• 3 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp flour
• 2 leeks, chopped up (just the white and light green parts)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 12 oz bottle of beer (I used yuengling but Mr. Barefoot recommends a stout)
  
• 3 cups cheddar cheese
• 1 cup parmesean
• 1/2 cup parm (for topping)
• breadcrumbs
• salt & pepper
• Tabasco sauce

Procedure:

1. Saute leeks and garlic over medium-low heat in just a little bit of butter until soft and delicious smelling. Add 3 tbsp butter and stir until melted.
   
2. Add in 3 tbsp flour slowly, allow to cook for 1-2 minutes.
   
3. Pour in milk, allow to cook until thickened and bubbly.
   
4. Add beer. Beer will bubble at first, and then calm down. Cook until entire mixture is thick, about 10 minutes.
   
5. Meanwhile, cook pasta in a separate pot. Drain and put in a greased pyrex dish.
   
6. Once beer - milk mixture is thickened, add cheese slowly. Once cheese is all melted in, add salt and pepper and a little bit of tabasco sauce (to taste - you can try it and see what you like).
   
7. Pour sauce over pasta, stir to combine.
   
8. Mix breadcrumbs, parmesean cheese, and some salt and pepper together, sprinkle on top.
   
9. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes until top is brown and cheese bubbles.
   

Yum!

Meatless Monday: Red Wine Marinated Mushrooms

We have a few bottles of red wine hanging around the apartment, and it turns out that when you cook mushrooms in red wine, they come out delicious.

Ingredients:

• Mushrooms - we didn't use enough, because Mr. Barefoot always forgets how much they cook down. I would use about 20 next time, or really, the entire box.
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 1/2 cups red wine (or just pour until they are covered. You can also add some water.)

Procedure:

1. Slice and prep mushrooms.
2. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat.
3. Saute mushrooms in butter until soft and cooked. Add garlic and cook for until garlic is slightly cooked.
4. Pour in red wine. Allow to come to a boil, then simmer.
5. Simmer until wine becomes a thick sauce (5-10 minutes).

We had ours over salmon, but they would be fantastic with just about anything, or just served over cous cous or rice. Or risotto. Man that would be amazing.

Cheating.

I want to eat all good, local ingredients. I want to make the sensible financial decisions. I want to make delcious, transcendant meals. But sometimes, you just can't.
Today I'm trying to make this using this recipe. Reader C. sent me the recipe as a possible thing to do with a pumpkin, but since I already mashed my pumpkin up, I decided to just buy butternut squash.
Have you ever tried peeling a butternut squash by the way? It's very very hard. So I totally took the easy, cheating way out. I bought 2lbs of pre-cubed butternut squash at Costco. I used about a quarter of it for this, meaning I have plenty left for Moroccan spice butternut squash and butternut squash soup.
Yeah, it's cheating and it's not local and it's probably kind of expensive (I think I see BNS for $3 at the farmer's market, but arguably, this is two squashes worth and so $6 is pretty reasonable.) But I just made risotto in 5 minutes. It probably won't taste like transcendance in a bowl, but it probably will taste pretty darn good. I'll let you know.

No Mayo Potato Salad

A few years ago my friend Tess made a potato salad with some kind of Italian dressing or vinaigrette or something. I just remember it didn't have mayonnaise in it, and that was the only way I could be convinced to eat it. For those of you new to the blog: Mayo is Disgusting.
The other night, I decided to make some potato salad for myself and Mr. Barefoot. It came out pretty good - it could probably be spiced up a little bit, and I'll keep tweaking the recipe some. Suggestions for spices are appreciated.
Ingredients:

• 4 yellow potatoes (in Ann Arbor, all the potatoes have a really thin skin). Redskins would probably work well as well. I peeled the potatoes and then diced them, but peeling is definitely optional. I diced them into about 3/4 inch squares.
• Olive Oil
• Salt, pepper, Italian seasonings to taste
• Balsamic vinegar

Procedure:

1. Boil a large pot of water. Add potatoes. Boil for about 10 minutes, until soft.
   
2. Drain in a colander.
3. Put in a bowl with some olive oil (just pour it until it looks wet.) Add some balsamic vinegar, and a lot of spices. I used Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and anything else I could find on the windowsill that looked edible (I miss our spice rack...). Fresh herbs would probably be even better.
4. Chill for approximately 2 hours.
   

The best part was we fried the leftovers up for breakfast and ate them as home fries. Also, if you took this to a picnic you wouldn't have to worry about food poisioning.

Good idea/Bad idea.

Okay. So we have some asparagus. So I put in asparagus to allrecipes' search engine, and it came up with a number of suggestions. I thought this one looked particularly horrible. If anyone wants to try making it, take a picture, and then eat at least one bite and report back to me, you will win a prize straight from the Barefoot kitchen to your house.
This one looks more interesting/edible, but we don't have brie right now, so I think its asparagus with garlic and butter for us.

Dinner Party at the Treadhoffigans

We had one of my law school friends and his wife over for dinner tonight. I got to play with some of my new toys - namely my new rolling pin and my Le Crueset baking dish.
I made - breaded and sauted talipia, green beans with garlic and butter, spinach pinwheels, sweet potato casserole, and salad.
Spinach Pinwheels - super easy, super delicious. Buying crescent roll dough in bulk at Costco is a smart move, because you can make so many great appetizers out of it at the last minute which end up being delicious and tasting like they are harder to make than they are.
Ingredients -
1 8 oz package crescent rolls
4 oz cream cheese, softened
fresh or dried herbs (I used fresh thyme and oregano, and powdered garlic)
5 oz (1/2 square package) frozen spinach, thawed & drained

Equipment:
Cookie sheet
cutting board
rolling pin

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Open crescent dough and break in the middle (there is a perforation there).
3. Roll the dough out into a rectangle (about 8" by 10")
4. Combine cream cheese and herbs, spread on dough.
5. Sprinkle spinach on top of the cream cheese - try to make sure it is even
6. Roll dough widthways into a log. Cut log into 3/4 slices and place them on the cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 12 minutes.

The green beans were pretty easy - just chop up some fresh green beans and put them in a small baking dish with slices of butter on top and some minced garlic - my new le Cruset pan was a great size for this - less awkward than a 9" square baking dish, plus it looked nice on the table. Bake at 350 or 400 until they look done, stirring a couple times through to redistribute the butter and garlic. I cooked them a little too long, but my friends said they were good.

Next up: Sweet Potato Casserole!

Mr. Barefoot's First Guest Post!

[Editor's note: I didn't write any of this, except where indicated.]
Alright, after many dropped hints, I've finally gotten around to writing my first guest post, and the funny thing is that I didn't even end up preparing this dish. In any case... Beer cheese dip was brought into our life by my grad school buddy Brad, now returned to his homeland in the cheese state of with his wife and 1.5 kids and sadly missed by all. This dip is great because it is a) delicious; b) incredibly easy to make; and c) again, delicious. Everybody loves it. It's one of those dishes that we have to refrain from making because it's so easy and nobody wants to be a one-trick pony. Unless it's a really good trick.

We had a big family party today, for which Ms. Barefoot was responsible for obtaining the lion's share of the food. As a recovering student leadership slut, she's learning to delegate, and my one task was to make the beer dip. Then I discovered we were out of cheddar cheese, and wound up waiting fifteen minutes in the express lane at Shopper's an hour before a Ravens away game. We were supposed to be at the party 35 minutes away in an hour, and I hadn't showered yet. So when I got home, she made the dip and I showered. But I had every intention of actually making it myself, I promise. So here it is:

Ingredients

2x 8oz pkg cream cheese

1x 1oz pkg ranch dressing mix (typically the brand the stores have is Hidden Valley. The little envelopes are usually in a display tray near the bottled dressings)

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1/3 cup your favorite beer

Equipment

Mixing bowl

Serving bowl (if you consider yourself too sophisticated to serve your dip in a mixing bowl)

Spoon or other utensil for mixing

Procedure

-Let the cream cheese soften on the counter for an hour or two. Cream cheese straight from the fridge is hard to mix.

-Mix the ranch dressing into the cream cheese, then the beer, then the cheddar. Use all the cheddar. It may look like a lot, but if you don't you're just eating ranch cream cheese and that isn't nearly as good.

-Cover and refrigerate if you have time, because it's probably a little mushy.

-Enjoy the rest of the bottle of beer and reflect on your culinary prowess. Wasn't that easy?

[Editor's Note: Best when served with those flat pretzel chips that are so delicious. Otherwise regular pretzels or even potato chips will do. You can also use low-fat cream cheese and cheddar.]

Cooking with Rum

Having just gotten back from a week in the Carribbean, I'm eager to try some new recipes that will hopefully mimic stuff I got to eat while I was there. Caribbean cooking is great because they use rum in everything. My three favorites were rum cornbread, honey rum beans, and rum cake. I'll be working on the cornbread first.
I found this recipe via Recipe Zaar for Rum Laced Caribbean Cornbread. I'll be trying it while I'm still out of school and reporting back.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons rum or 1 1/2 teaspoons rum extract
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup flaked coconut
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Equipment:
8 Inch Square Pan, greased
Oven at 400 degrees
Procedure:

1. Combine butter, milk, eggs, and rum in a bowl. Whisk until combined.
   
2. Add remaining ingredients, stir until moist.
   
3. Spread in pan.
   
4. Bake 40-45 minutes.