#9 March: Place or City
The Menu:
Main Course
Hungarian Chicken Goulash
Mandarin Chicken
Hawaiian Spare Ribs
Side
Georgia Peach Carrots
Dessert
Jerusalem Kadafe
Mississippi Mud Pie
It's that time again: Cooking Club!
This month I decided on a "place" theme. I thought it would be fun to explore a menu featuring various regions and cities. Sort of a twist on ethnic food. I wasn't sure how the other members would respond, but they seemed interested and excited.
All-righty then. Let's get to it.
I decided to bring a taste of The South to our plates with Mississippi Mud Pie. I love Southern food. It is my absolute favorite. Seriously. Some people prefer Italian, Asian, or French cuisine. Not me.
Give me some grits, fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy, soup beans and cornbread. Chicken and dumplings, a pot full of green beans and bacon, and peach cobbler any day. (Cough, in moderation of course, cough.)
As I've said before, I'm not really a chocolate kind of gal. I prefer my desserts to be fruity and cheesecake-y. (word?) But when I do choose chocolate, it's usually in the form of dark chocolate, Reese's, or ice cream. Yet, for some reason, when I came across this chocolate-y pie, it looked so delicious with the chocolate bottom and creamy whipped topping. Yum.
As I melted my chocolate it looked much like a ganache. I baked my made-from-scratch pie crust (this is an area I'm a little challenged in...pie crusts...grrr) in a cake pan because I forgot my pie pan at home. It shrunk a little but I was impressed with how it turned out. Then I poured my yummy chocolate into the pie shell and baked it off.
Then I whipped up some cream and plopped it right on top and served it to a hungry crowd.
I remembered, as I scooped up the last bite, that I completely forgot the chocolate curls. Oh no!
So much for presentation....
Isn't that the most boring pie you've ever seen? It looked so pretty and appetizing in the picture. I was so mad!
My dish was ruined.
Don't get me wrong, it still tasted good. But it could have been so much better!
Everyone laughed about how distraught I was, acting like it was the end of the world or something. But I take so much pride in making my dishes look good. I mean, we all know we eat with our eyes. Ugh....you can bet that won't happen again.
We laughed it off, and now it's a running joke.....making sure no one forgot anything before we dig in.
But everything turned out great, and some of my other menu favorites included
Kelly's Georgia Peach Carrots (another Southern item)
and Angelica's Mandarin Chicken.
The one interesting dish was Jenny's Jerusalem Kadafe. I guess this is what they have as a dessert over there. It was a couscous dish with lots of cheese. Definitely interesting and I'm still not sure how I liked it. One bite I'd think, this is quite tasty, and the next I'd think, yeah I'm not a fan. Hmmm...
Mississippi Mud Pie
*adapted from The Chocolate and Coffee Bible
Serves 8
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c butter
3 Tbsp iced water ( or more if needed)
3 oz semisweet chocolate, broken + 4 oz chocolate, shaved
1/4 c butter
3 Tbsp light corn syrup
3 eggs, beaten
2/3 c light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 c whipping cream ( or Sugar Free Cool Whip)
Preheat oven 425 degrees. Sift flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Rub in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle in water, 1 Tbsp at a time, and toss mixture lightly with your fingers until the dough forms into a ball. On lightly floured surface, roll out dough and line a 9" tart pan. Ease dough into pan and do not stretch. With thumbs, make fluted edges. Using a fork, prick bottom and sides of dough. Bake 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on wire rack.
In a heatproof bowl set over a pot of barely simmering water, melt 3 oz of chocolate with butter and corn syrup. Remove bowl from heat and stir in eggs, sugar and extract. Mix well.
Lower oven temperature to 350 degrees. Pour chocolate mixture into pie shell. Bake 35-40 minutes, until filling is set. Cool in pan on wire rack.
Whip cream into soft peaks. Spread over top of pie. Decorate with chocolate shavings, or curls.
*Don't forget the curls!!!
#10 April: Secret Ingredient
The Menu:
Main Course
Oven-Lime Pork Fajitas (Lime)
Side
Green Tea Couscous (Tea)
Dessert
Blondies with Maple Syrup (Maple)
Jenny and Jessica decided it would be fun to do secret ingredients this month, sort of Iron Chef style.
So we all chose an ingredient, wrote it on a piece of paper and threw it in a hat.
Enter mass confusion.
After everyone drew, they started sharing what ingredient they had. Hello? I thought it was a secret!
Apparently the "secret" part already happened. The "secret" was we didn't know what ingredients were in the hat. Huh? Everyone was confused, there were questions if we should come up with new ingredients and redraw.....ai yi yi. We finally decided on just finding a recipe to go with our assigned ingredients.
I put in maple and drew tea. (Actually, I put both maple and espresso on my slip, allowing the receiver to decide. I thought I'd be sneaky like that.)
So I went home and skimmed through my cookbooks. When nothing caught my eye, I headed to my beloved FoodNetwork.com. I found two recipes, a dessert and a side. I was craving couscous, and decided to go with the side, Rachael Ray's Green Tea Couscous.
I love tea. As I was steeping my green tea, I was sooooo excited for my dish. After adding in honey and a hint of mint (not a huge mint fan), I couldn't wait to taste this couscous! And then there were pieces of cucumber and lemon and lime.....and oh.my.goodness.
Giada's is still my favorite. But this was light and delicious. Perfection.
Actually, this was a fantastic Cooking Club meal (even though we were quite small this month). Everything was perfect and just the right amount. Jenny's Oven-Lime Pork Fajitas were mouth-watering, and I have made them for Mr. B multiple times since. So good. I'm not a blondie fan, but Jessica's maple dessert was pretty tasty as well.
Definitely a success!
[Oh, and it seems that if you can make it to Cooking Club, great. If not, we'll see you next month. So we never know how many people are going to be there!]
#11 May: Pizza
The Menu:
Cheddar-Apple Dessert Pizza
Berry Batch Brownie Pizza
Fruit Pizza
I apologize.
I failed.
Completely forgot to charge my camera, and it died during my first attempt at taking pictures during this month's Cooking Club. [However, we did get a few shots on Jessica's camera. When I get the photos I'll update this post! Promise!]
But that won't stop me from telling you how ah-mazing this pizza is!
Definitely my kind of dessert pizza...not too sweet, just right. Apples and cheese always go perfectly together to create the most mouth-watering bite. [One of my go-to snacks is an apple and Munster grilled cheese....yum.] So this pizza did not disappoint. The cheddar made a delightful crust, and paired with the apple-sugar-and-spice topping.....Let's just say I love nutmeg.
You must make this ASAP!
I think this would be great for a brunch, or even more perfect as the day after Thanksgiving breakfast.
Cheddar-Apple Dessert Pizza
*adapted from Taste of Homes recipe
Serves 12
1 1/4 c flour + 1/3 c
1 tsp salt +1/4 tsp
1/2 c shortening
1 c shredded cheddar cheese (I think any cheese would work here, so choose to your liking)
1/4 c ice water
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 c butter
4 medium apples, peeled, cored and sliced
2 Tbsp lemon juice
Preheat oven 375 degrees. In a bowl, combine 1 1/4 c flour with 1 tsp salt. Cut in shortening until crumbly. Add cheese and toss lightly. Sprinkle ice water gradually over mixture, then shape into a ball with lightly floured hands. Place dough in center of 13" round pizza pan and roll outward from center to cover pan. Pinch edges of dough upward to form 1" rim.
In a bowl, mix sugars with 1/3 c flour, spices and 1/4 tsp salt. Sprinkle half of sugar mixture over crust. Cut butter into remaining sugar mix until crumbly and set aside. Arrange apple rings on crust in overlapping circles (or slices). Sprinkle with lemon juice, then with sugar-butter mix.
Bake 35-40 minutes, or until apples are tender and crust is browned around edges. Serve warm.
*And be ready to eat more than one slice!
#12 June: Finger Food
The Menu:
Appetizers
Tomato, Watermelon and Basil Skewers
Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts
Savory Parmesan Bites
Dessert
Vegan Raspberry Scones
This month Kelly finally got to pick the theme. She got a bunch of cookbooks over the Christmas holiday and wanted to do an appetizer theme....which became a finger food theme...and then Kelly and her girls couldn't make it. But we enjoyed her theme for her.
I came across this fun skewer recipe....actually I have no idea where I got this dish....I just know I've had it for awhile. And it includes all of the things I love:
Cherry tomatoes (I eat these like they're candy), check.
Watermelon (one of the reasons I love summer), check.
Basil (my favorite herb), check.
Balsamic vinegar (love), check.
Even in bad lighting, these ingredients look delicious. I can smell the basil and taste the vinegar syrup as I type. I'd make these today if I didn't have to sell my right arm for the ingredients.
Trust me, you won't stop at just one, or two.....or five.
So, soooo good.
Tomato, Watermelon and Basil Skewers
Serves 8
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
1/4 c sugar
1 (4-5 lb) watermelon, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
32 small basil leaves
16 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 Tbsp olive oil
kosher salt
16 wooden skewers (about 16" each)
Combine vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved. Turn off heat and set aside to cool. Starting with watermelon squares, push a square to very tip of skewer. Then skewer a basil leaf, then a tomato half. Continue layers until skewer is full. Continue with remaining skewers. Drizzle skewers with balsamic syrup and olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and serve.
Even though there were only three of us this month, we have one, two, three, four...yes, four recipes. Jessica and I stumbled upon the Vegan Raspberry Scones recipe while killing time at work one day, and decided immediately that these qualified as finger food. So we split the cost of ingredients and made these tasty little things as a combined effort.
[However, ours didn't turn out as dark as theirs...]
I was able to score some beautiful raspberries.
I might have consumed more than went into the batter......
And I am
These were so flavorful with a different texture than your average scone.
Great for breakfast, warmed with a tiny drizzle of honey.
**I hope you enjoyed these Cooking Club snippets. There are more to come as I try to play catch-up before this month's meeting. I hope these themes, and even Cooking Club itself, inspire you to gather with your friends and family in the kitchen, and make sweet moments (and delicious food) of your own.
***I've only included the recipes to the dishes I made. Only because I'm unsure of where everyone got theirs...and hey, we gotta give credit where credit is due.
[If you have any questions about the other dishes, I'll ask the other members where they got their recipes and pass it along!]
[If you have any questions about the other dishes, I'll ask the other members where they got their recipes and pass it along!]
Check out our previous meetings!
Cooking Club #1-4
Cooking Club #5-8
With Love and God Bless,
Brindi
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