Posts Tagged ‘recipe’
Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp for Springtime
March 23, 2011 | 
Author 
A sure sign that Spring has finally come is the first sighting of rhubarb in stores or at farmers’ markets. Its gorgeous red is immediately attractive, and is so seductive that there is no way to resist buying it!
I’ve made rhubarb pies, quick breads, dessert bars, and all sorts of other variants, including a savory chicken dish once; but my favorite way to use those beautiful stalks is to make a simple crisp. It’s not particularly photogenic, I admit! But it’s easy to make and absolutely sublime with hints of sweetness, tartness, and spice all rolled into one luscious dessert … 
Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp
1-1/2 cups chopped rhubarb
1 quart strawberries, chopped
juice of 1 orange
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup white whole wheat flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup quick-cook oats
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9″ pie pan.
Combine the rhubarb, strawberries, orange juice and sugar; place into the pie pan.
Combine the flour, brown sugar, oats and cinnamon; pour the butter over the mixture and combine well. Spread the oat mixture over the fruit.
Bake for 35 minutes, until the topping is golden and the fruit is bubbling. Let cool a bit, and serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream … or both!
“floo·zie \ˈflü-zē\: a usually young woman of loose morals.” Thus a Food Floozie is not a woman who can be seduced by virtually any man, but rather a woman who can be seduced by virtually any food (other than sushi).
For more blathering about recipes, restaurants, beverages, ingredients, and anything else even tangentially related to food, please come visit me Monday through Friday at Food Floozie or check out my mostly-regular Tuesday posts on AnnArbor.com.
Posted in Blogging, Dessert, Recipes | 
Tags: Dessert, recipe, rhubarb, Spring, strawberry | 
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Valentine’s Day Spicy Red Humus
JL’s Spicy Red Humus
Makes 2 cups (approximately)
INGREDIENTS
*2 c kidney beans, cooked (I soaked the beans over night with a Kombu strip and then cooked them in the pressure cooker with 2 cloves of garlic, 1T olive oil and a bay leaf)
*1/2 cup sun-dried tomato (soaked for 1 hour), diced
*1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
*6 or so jalapeno seeds
* 3 cloves of garlic, minced
*Juice of half a lime
*1/2 t taco seasoning
*1/4 cup of olive oil + 2 T olive oil
*1/2 t sea salt (to taste)
METHOD
Place all ingredients, except the olive oil and sea salt, in the food processor (use S blade). Begin pulsing the ingredients, adding olive oil from the top until you reach desired consistency (I began with 1/4 cup and needed two more tablespoons). Salt to taste.
Original post: My Valentine to You: Spicy Red Humus + A Raw Beet-Lentil Burger.
JL blogs at JL goes Vegan: Food & Fitness with a side of Kale. You can follow JL on Twitter and Facebook.
Polish Dill Pickle Soup
One of my dearest friends in the world, Connie, is 100% Polish; she’s also married to a man who’s 100% Polish. They are some fabulous cooks, and make a kielbasa that is a true work of art and a most generous gift some years at Easter. (There are too many demands and insufficient quantity to feed all of the ravenous hordes, so I have resigned myself to not being on the “in” list every year … alas!)
Anyway, Connie is a great cook, as I’ve already said. So when I went to a horrendously bad Polish restaurant last year, where the one and only redeeming food was the dill pickle soup (don’t even ask how leaden and flavorless the blintzes were … with a filling made from canned mushrooms!), I asked Connie if she would share her recipe with me. (She did; here’s the post from AnnArbor.com. And that’s her son Andrew, one of my son Jeremy’s best friends, doing the “bunny ears,” fyi.)
Connie’s soup is very easy to make, and it is some seriously astounding comfort food. But the soup at the restaurant had some flecks of carrot, potatoes, and dill, which Connie’s lacked.
So I tinkered a bit by using the original recipe as a base but then adding the other ingredients. It’s still Connie’s soup, in my opinion, just with a bit more stuff in it.
And it was truly, wonderfully, amazingly delicious!
It may sound odd to pour in juice from a pickle jar, but why use plain ol’ water when you can add some depth of flavor? Connie’s late mother-in-law used to add a bit of vinegar in her version of this Polish classic; but there’s an entire jar full of brine just waiting to find a purpose other than swimming around cucumbers! Do it Connie’s way, which she learned from her own mother, whom we call Busha ([BOO-shuh] = grandmother). Busha is in her late 90s now … the woman knows a thing or two!
Polish Dill Pickle Soup
1 pound pre-cooked kielbasa
1 cup water + water to cover kielbasa
1 tablespoon bacon fat or butter
1 small onion, chopped
3/4 cup juice from a jar of dill pickles, preferably Polish
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 medium potato, cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 large carrot, peeled and grated
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup chopped dill pickles
1 teaspoon dried dill
slices of caraway rye bread, toasted and buttered, because as Connie puts it: “Of course, you have to have a good rye bread to go along with it.”
Place the kielbasa into a medium saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil; lower heat and simmer for 1/2 hour. Remove the kielbasa from the saucepan saving the liquid, and slice to desired thickness.
Heat the bacon fat in a small skillet and saute the onion just until translucent. Add to the reserved cooking liquid.
Add the 1 cup of water, the pickle juice, salt and pepper to the saucepan with the onion. Bring to a boil, then add the potatoes and carrot; cook for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork.
Combine the sour cream and the flour in a medium bowl, then slowly stir in 1/2 cup of the broth until smooth. Whisk this mixture back into the saucepan, bring just to a boil (small bubbles around the edge of the soup), then remove from heat.
Stir in the chopped pickles, the kielbasa and the dill. Serve hot, with the toasted rye on the side.
Makes 4 generous servings.
“floo·zie \ˈflü-zē\: a usually young woman of loose morals.” Thus a Food Floozie is not a woman who can be seduced by virtually any man, but rather a woman who can be seduced by virtually any food (other than sushi).
For more blathering about recipes, restaurants, beverages, ingredients, and anything else even tangentially related to food, please come visit me Monday through Friday at Food Floozie or check out my mostly-regular Tuesday posts on AnnArbor.com.
The Birthday of the Trees
The Jewish celebration of Tu B’Shvat [TOO bayshuh-VAHT] — The Birthday of the Trees — begins tonight at sundown. In recent years, it has been common to hold a seder with rituals protocols and readings; but I’m just planning to enjoy traditional treats like dried fruits, nuts, olives and citrus. I’m always there for the food!
A town like Ann Arbor , of course, is a perfect place to celebrate Tu B’Shvat! Planting trees and enjoying the fruits that they bear are two of the primary traditions for the day, perfect for my beloved town’s eco- and health-consciousness. Nurturing trees is so vital a tradition in Judaism that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai (who lived from 30-90 A.D./C.E.) is quoted as saying: “If you should be holding a sapling in your hand when they tell you the Messiah has arrived … first plant the sapling, then go out and greet him.”
According to MyJewishLearning.com: “The Bible expresses a great reverence for fruit trees as symbols of God’s bounty and beneficence. Special laws were formulated to protect fruit trees in times of war and ensure that the produce of trees would not be picked until the trees were mature enough and tithes were given from them. In order to calculate the age of trees, both for determining when they could be harvested and when they were to be tithed for the Temple, the Talmudic Rabbis established the 15th day (Tu) of the month of Shvat as the official ‘birthday’ of trees.”
As opposed to many Jewish holidays where it’s traditional to eat cholesterol-laden challah or latkes fried in oil (which is, of course, half the fun!), this is a party where you’re actually encouraged to eat nutritious fruits. So whether you eat a savory meal like the chicken dish I offer below, or enjoy fresh fruit out of hand, join me in celebrating Tu B’Shvat as we wait through the frigidly cold winter until all those beautiful trees bloom again in spring ….
Braised Chicken Thighs in Lemony Olive Sauce
3 tablespoons oil
3 pounds chicken thighs
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 small onion, halved, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons shawarma spices (available at Middle Eastern markets; substitute a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne, cardamom, and garlic powder if needed)
1/2 teaspoon ground sumac (available at Middle Eastern markets)
1/3 cup Sicilian Lemon Balsamic Vinegar (available at Fustini’s Oils and Vinegars, a fine Michigan-based franchise)
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup green olives with pimientos, chopped
Heat oil in a large, deep-sided skillet over medium heat. Season both sides of the chicken with the salt and pepper, and place into the skillet skin-side down.
Cook for 10 minutes until nicely browned. Turn the chicken over and cook for 5 minutes on the other side. Remove the chicken to a plate.
Saute the onion and the garlic until the onion is translucent. Sprinkle in the spices and cook for 1 minute.
Combine the vinegar and the broth; pour into the skillet and bring to a boil. Return the chicken to the skillet, skin-side up.
Cover the chicken, then turn heat to “medium-low” and cook for 35 minutes. Place the chicken on a serving platter and boil the sauce down to reduce it until it has thickened. Stir in the olives.
Pour the sauce over the chicken, and serve hot.
Makes 4-6 servings.
“floo·zie \ˈflü-zē\: a usually young woman of loose morals.” Thus a Food Floozie is not a woman who can be seduced by virtually any man, but rather a woman who can be seduced by virtually any food (other than sushi).
For more blathering about recipes, restaurants, beverages, ingredients, and anything else even tangentially related to food, please come visit me Monday through Friday at Food Floozie or check out my mostly-regular Tuesday posts on AnnArbor.com.