Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

Another one handed recipe! Just two, maybe three, things to do before you pick up that baby: crack the eggs, grease the loaf pan, and unless you are very adept open the can of pumpkin puree.  Feel free to play around with the spices in the recipe, I suggest 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon but you could use pumpkin pie spice, or your own mixture of ginger, nutmeg, cardamom…I’ve also mixed up the flours a bit too, occasionally I’ll replace 1/2C of regular flour with almond meal for a nice nutty flavor or replace up to 1C flour for the whole wheat pastry flour, when I feel like being healthier.

2 1/4 C flour

1 1/2tsp Baking powder

1tsp Baking soda

1tsp Salt

1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon

1 Egg

1 Egg white

1 C Brown sugar

1 1/2 C Pumpkin puree

1/4 C Oil

1/2 C Dried cranberries (soaked in warm water or cider for at least 5 minutes and up to 1 hour)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9x5in loaf pan. Soak the cranberries and set aside. Stir the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl stir together the wet ingredients. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, drain the cranberries and stir into the batter. Pour everything into the prepared pan and bake for about 50 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and a cake tester/toothpick comes out clean.

Roast Chicken and Crispy-Creamy Swiss Chard

Easy one pan dish, where the vegetable is smooth and silky from braising in the chicken juices, but also the tops of the vegetables get super crispy almost burnt, but in a good way!

 

1 Small chicken

6C Swiss chard, washed and roughly chopped

Olive oil

Smoked paprika 

Salt and pepper

 

Preheat oven to 450. Put all of the greens in a 9×13 baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Place the chicken on top of the greens, rub a little olive oil under and on top of the skin. Season with salt, pepper and life’s dashes of smoked paprika. Put into the oven and bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325. Cook until the juices of the chicken run clear, depending on the size bird the bird about 40 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before slicing. (Do your best not to eat all the crispy chard off the top of the pan while you wait!)

 

Holiday Entertaining Tips

 

1. Pick a theme:

I find it easiest to pick a theme: Italian, Mexican, Indian, American,…..That way you are more focused when choosing recipes, all the food tastes good together ( you won’t have chips and salsa mixing into your sushi), often recipes from the same general area use similar ingredients (saves you time and money by not having a long grocery list and using 10 ingredients that you only need 1 Tablespoon of)

 

2. Room temperature is your friend:

When serving only appetizers try to have the majority of them able to be served at room temp, that way you aren’t running around the entire party trying to keep hot food hot and cold food cold, and your guests won’t have to be worried about food poisoning! Really a win win for all. Sample appetizer menu: Mini buttermilk biscuits with honey butter, Black eyed pea dip with carrots and cucumbers, Spicy kale chips, Watermelon kebobs, BBQ mini meatballs and lemon shortbread cookies.

 

3. For a sit-down Dinner, stews and braises are your friends:

If you are serving a sit down meal, make a braised or stewed entree. These dishes usually are very forgiving time wise and don’t need any last minute cooking on your part so you can enjoy your guests instead of all your time in the kitchen.  Sample menu: Butter lettuce and snap pea salad with orange mustard vinaigrette and sliced almonds, Coq au Vin served with crusty bread, and pots de creme)

 

4. Dress up your food:

Make the food look as pretty as possible, we eat with our eyes first. Generous sprigs of Italian parsley or cilantro tucked here and there on a platter looks beautiful, plus it’s cheap!

 

5. Arrange your buffet thoughtfully:

When arranging a buffet have plates at one end and napkins and silverware at the other, that way your guests won’t have to hold onto forks and spoons while they try to dish up a plate. Arrange platters at varying heights not only to create a more visually interesting buffet but it can also create more space of platters. Use cake stands, upside down bowls, a stack of books to balance a plate on etc.

 

6. Guests are happy that they didn’t have to cook:

Last of all remember its only food so relax! The majority of your guests will be so happy that they didn’t have to cook that they will be very lax on judging your culinary skills.

Savory French Toast with Red Pepper-Tomato Maple Syrup

In my house we always seem to have half a loaf of partially stale French bread laying around. I can only save so much for bread crumbs and since I was sorta in the mood for breakfast for dinner but didn’t really want something super sweet I came up with this.

Since having the baby cooking has become a little more challenging in that I don’t have as much time, or the use of both hands while cooking. So I’ve started developing one-handed recipes. These are very forgiving recipes where if you have time to measure ingredients great! But if not, just eyeball it and everything will work out. A dash of this, a sprinkle of that and dinner will still taste wonderful.

6-7 Slices French bread, slightly stale
3 Eggs
3/4 C Milk
1tsp Mustard, dry ground or prepared
1tsp Favorite herb (thyme, oregano, marjoram etc.)
1/2 tsp each of Salt and Pepper
Dash of Cayenne pepper

Arrange bread slices in a single layer in a dish, 9×13 pan works well. Whisk the remaining ingredients together and pour over bread. Let it sit for at least an hour and upto overnight.

1 Tomato, diced*
1/4 C Red pepper diced**
1C Real Maple Syrup
1/4tsp Pepper

Put everything in a small pan and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the peppers are soft.

Heat a large skillet on medium heat, add a little oil/butter. Place the soaking bread in the hot pan, turn over when the first side is golden brown. When the second side is golden brown transfer to a plate and serve with the warm syrup.

( I didn’t have and arugula or spinach in my fridge last night, but I bet the bitterness of the greens would be a nice foil to the sweetness of the syrup. So if you feel like trying it, serve this dish on a bed of greens. If you do try it, please let me know how it is!)

Serves: 2

*I used a fresh tomato, but I bet canned diced tomato would taste just as good, maybe better depending on the season and your location
** yellow, red or orange peppers can be used for this recipe. I’ve seen frozen bags of grilled sliced peppers that I think would taste fantastic here. Or frozen corn would be a good alternative too.

How To Make Lefse

Note: This is a guest post from my sister Jamie. Just needed to warn you because the Norwegian culinary procedure outlined below is not recommended for small kitchens or for people pressed for time. Thank you Jamie for documenting the lefse process, and for forcing our Grandma to actually write down a recipe! And if you need fashion/etiquette/lady advice check out Jamie’s blog www.ladiesandtrampsblog.wordpress.com

How To Make Lefse – A la Grandma Chris

For those of you with Norwegian heritage you are likely familiar with lefse. It is a flatbread I guess but it is almost more like a potato and flour tortilla. It is extremely bland but when dressed up with butter and sugar it turns into something special and is usually only served during big family dinners or special occasions.

If you’re craving lefse you better learn to make it or learn to make friends with those who can make it because the stuff you buy from the store is just terrible.

This fall, my Aunt Heather arranged for my Grandma Chris to teach a few family members how to make lefse. The good news? It isn’t super hard, as I feared, but it is time consuming, you need the right tools and you must not try and cut corners. (We doubled the recipe below for our lefse training)

Recipe:

1. 10 lbs russet potatoes (you cannot use red potatoes and just to be safe, don’t use anything but russet)
2. 3 T Salt (for boiling the potatoes)
3. 3 Sticks of Butter (melted)
4. 1 C Cream
5. 1 T Sugar
6. Flour – (lots, you’ll see why)

To make the dough:

• Peel and boil all 10 lbs of potatoes in salted water. Drain. Mix in the melted butter, cream and sugar. Mix but do not mash completely as you would for mashed potatoes.
• Rice potato mixer through a potato ricer into a large bowl
• Take 5 C of the potato mixture and mix, with your hands, a scant 1 1/2 C flour until fully incorporated.

To roll out the Lefse:

Before cooking, turn on your special griddle (Bethany is the brand we used – see equipment needed section), place a bowl with extra flour for dusting near your pastry board that has been prepared with that pie-cloth cover, and make sure you have ample clean, cotton cloth kitchen towels near the griddle in which to place the cooked lefse.

You’re ready to go:

• Make a ball of lefse dough with your hands (see image)
• Coat ball of dough in flour
• Place ball of dough on lefse board that has already been dusted with flour
• Pat the ball down into a small disk to get started
• Gently roll out the dough in a circle
• Take your lefse (wand/stick) and loosen the dough carefully from the board
• Lay down the first half of the dough and then use your wrist and stick to roll out the rest (easy to watch, hard to explain in a recipe, easy to execute)
• Dust with flour and gently roll the other side of the dough, make it thin enough that you can just see a little of the red from the cloth beneath it (shoot for a diameter of over 10″-12″ but don’t go too crazy). You want it to be thinner than pie crust.
• Slide the stick under the dough (again, you are trying to release the dough from the cloth, if you’ve used enough flour, this isn’t hard) and gently lift the dough at the center.

Cooking the Lefse

Have your griddle at 500 degrees (note that all griddles are different so just be sure it’s really, really hot). Your lefse should cook quickly almost less than a minute for both sides.

• Gently place the first half (thinking of lefse as a circle, the first semi-circle) down on the griddle and using the stick to roll the remaining out flat
• When you begin to see bubbles, slide the stick under the center of the lefse, lift, and cook the other side using the same technique as above.

The cooked lefse should look “like paper with brown polka dots”. You must pay attention and you must not let it burn. Do not walk away or try to get the next ball of dough ready. You’re asking for trouble.

Finishing the Lefse

• Slide stick under the lefse at the center and lift
• Place lefse, folded in half, on a dish towel and cover with a dish towel. Dryness is the enemy of lefse.
• Allow to cool while covered

Lefse can be kept in the fridge for up to three weeks according to my grandma. To freeze, allow to cool completely, place in a plastic Ziploc baggie, remove as much of the air as possible (see notes for a trick) and freeze.

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Pumpkin Cream Cheese

Most pumpkin cream cheese spreads you can buy taste like frosting; way too sweet for anything but dessert (and this is coming from a girl who considers pie an appropriate breakfast). I want to be able to taste some of the tang from the cream cheese and a little bit of the earthiness of a pumpkin, not just have a creamy sugary cinnamony spread on my bagel. So that’s what I came up with. Enjoy!

1 Cup Cream cheese
1/4C plus 2T Pumpkin puree
1T Brown sugar
1/4tsp Ground ginger
1/4tsp Ground cinnamon
Dash of nutmeg

Whisk it all together and enjoy on bagels, crumpets, toast, graham crackers etc.

Lasagna Cheat

I love the way a bechamel* sauce tastes in lasagna, so creamy and rich, just makes the whole dish that much more decadent! But sometimes I get lazy and don’t feel like making it, or I just don’t have the time. Yesterday was a lazy day and I thought I’d just skip the bechamel, until I saw the buy one get one free pasta sauces and decided to try alfredo sauce as the white sauce replacement. So I did a layer of noodles topped with roasted eggplant and the alfredo sauce,another layer of noodles topped with ricotta-spinach-basil mix, and noodles, tomato sauce and cheese to finish it off. All I can say is yum!

*Bechamel sauce is milk thickened with a roux (flour and butter) Alfredo sauce is reduced heavy cream and cheese. Both amazingly delicious!