Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding

Here is another midwestern dish that I grew up on. My mom's was the best ever! But this is the best I can muster.

This pudding's custard layer isn't very eggy. It's creamy, but it will slice fairly clean when chilled. Part of me wishes the custard layer was thicker because it's my favorite part, but this recipe has a nice balance of creamy custard and the rice layer. Almost like a sweet and creamy frosting for the rice.

I like to sprinkle cinnamon and shaved nutmeg over mine when serving. Yum!

Let's start with how to make perfect fluffy rice:

Pour 2 cups of uncooked rice into a large saucepan with a tight fitting lid. Fill the pot up 3/4 full with water (no need to measure the water). Bring to a boil and simmer with the lid on for 12 minutes. Tipping the lid slightly over the sink, pour out as much water as you can from the pot, leaving the rice in. Cover again and set aside off the heat for 15 minutes. Remove lid and fluff the rice with a fork. Makes about 4 cups of cooked rice. Perfect every time!

Old Fashioned Rice Pudding
The perfect use for leftover rice. This recipes serves a large family or lasts several days.

In a large saucepan filled with 4 cups cooked rice, add a half cup of brown sugar, a pinch of salt and 1/2 (or up to one) teaspoon cinnamon. Pour half and half over to cover the rice by a half inch. Heat over medium until it's at a low simmer then reduce the heat. Simmer very gently for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring often, until it is very thick. Stir in one cup of raisins (or more to taste) and spread the rice mix into a greased casserole dish.

To make the custard:
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring 3 cups milk, 1/2 cup honey and 2 tablespoons flour to a simmer, whisking together as it heats up. Continue stirring with a whisk often until it simmers and thickens a bit. In a medium bowl, beat 2 eggs. Add half of the milk mixture to the eggs, whisking rapidly. Pour this back into the pan and stir at a low boil for one minute. Pour your custard over the rice in your greased casserole dish.

Bake at 350F until the top of your custard is beginning to color and crack in a place or two. This should take 30 to 45 minutes.

If you want your rice pudding to slice clean, cool completely and chill before serving. Otherwise, serve it however you like after it's cooled for at least a half hour. Try serving with a sprinkle of sugar, cinnamon and fresh ground nutmeg. Yum! Comfort food!

Oven Baked Apple Chips

This recipe was my little Sophie's idea. We had fun making these and our family really enjoyed them.

In they go.

And out they come!

Be sure to slice your chips thin and uniformly. Some of our chips were more like apple sauce, some were over baked and some were like dried apples- and some were perfect! Part of the fun of cooking with kids!

Oven Baked Apple Chips:

Slice apples thinly. We used green, yellow and red apples and they were all equally delicious. Grease a clean sheet pan with flavorless oil such as vegetable. Toss your apple slices in a little oil as well to coat both sides. Lay them out in a single layer and sprinkle with a bit of white sugar. Bake at 325F for about 20 to 30 minutes until the bottoms are beginning to brown. Flip once and bake another 15 to 30 minutes or until the chips are a nice chestnut brown. Remove from the pan with a thin spatula and cool on wire racks. Some may seem soft but as they cool they will firm up a bit.

Your baking time will totally depend on how thin you slice your apples. The really thin slices crisp up beautifully and don't take long to bake at all. My sheet pan was a little rough and I didn't grease it (I only tossed my slices in oil) so I had troubles with the well-done chips sticking. We also didn't slice the apples uniformly so the chips that were over-done stuck worse. I wonder if sprinkling the sugar over them made them stick a little so next time I plan to sprinkle the sugar just when the apples come out of the oven. I'll also experiment with a little cinnamon in my sugar. My kids weren't into it but I bet it's yummy!

Bacon Fried Sauerkraut with Country Style Ribs

I wish you could smell this dish frying! I can promise there is no way these photos do the flavors of this dish justice. You've got to try it!

Begin with putting some country style ribs in a crock pot with lots of garlic and an onion. These ribs are one of my favorite things to eat in the whole world. I love them over buttered rice or rich mashed potatoes, but today I was in the mood for sauerkraut!

This is my "before" photo after I browned the ribs and placed them in the crock pot to cook. They will cook for several hours until the sections of meat begin to separate.




Then I took a couple minutes to make a batch of homemade thousand island for a simple sauce. Just writing about it makes me do a little happy dance. And I'm kind of drooling.







Bacon Fried Sauerkraut with Country Style Ribs:

Ribs:
One large family size package of country style pork ribs (bone in or boneless)
One medium onion, thinly sliced
At least 5 large cloves of fresh garlic, roughly chopped
One cup broth
Flour, salt and pepper and oil

Sauerkraut:
1/3 to 1/2 pound bacon, diced
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
One large bag or jar of kraut (about 25 oz)
Pepper
Red pepper flakes (optional)

Dust your ribs with flour, salt and pepper. Brown over medium heat in several tablespoons of hot oil. You will have to do this in batches, placing the ribs in a crock pot as they are browned. Pour your broth into your hot pan and scrape the bottom of the pan while it boils for about minute. Pour broth over the ribs and spread your onion and garlic over the ribs. Cover and cook on high for several hours or until the sections of the meat begin to separate. Bone-in ribs will take a little longer than boneless. You may also cook them on a lower heat for longer.

When your ribs are done and resting, fry a half pound of diced bacon over medium heat until the bacon is beginning to brown. Add 2 medium thinly sliced onions and stir often while the onions brown. Pour off pooled up excess bacon grease once they are done. You need it a little greasy to fry the kraut, but too much grease will make the dish too rich. Add a large bag of drained sauerkraut and stir it all together until the kraut begins to dry and brown slightly in areas. You may want to turn your heat up a couple notches for this step. You probably won't need salt but I recommend lots of pepper. I also like a little extra spice to most everything I eat, so I add a couple pinches of red pepper flakes to my sauerkraut in the final minute of cooking.

Serve the ribs over the kraut and use this thousand island dressing as sauce.

Enjoy!!

Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie

This isn't your classic chocolate chip cookie but it has all the elements that we love in the original: it's got the chocolate, of course, and it's sweet and chewy. And the recipe isn't complicated at all.

There are no nuts in this version, just a hint of coconut, and it's flavor is perfected with butterscotch chips and scotch whisky (just a couple splashes for flavor).

This is my family's version of The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie. We love it.

Not Exactly Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies:

3/4 cup butter flavored Crisco
1 and 1/4 cup brown sugar or white sugar with a couple splashes of molasses
2 tablespoons scotch whisky or a similar brown liquor, or milk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 egg
2/3 to 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 and 3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips

Heat oven to 375F. Cream Crisco, sugar, whisky and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the egg and coconut and mix well. Add the flour, salt and baking soda and stir with a spoon until combined. Fold in chips. Place walnut sized scoops two inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes until the edges are browning slightly and the tops are just beginning to color. Cool for a couple minutes on the pan then cool on wire racks before eating. These cookies keep very well when covered. They also freeze well.

Alternately, to bake them into bars, pat the dough into a 9 by 13 pan and bake about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Run Smelt Run!

happy crow. Monthly Art Theme: Green

It was a very "green" day for us last weekend- Earth Day and the Run Smelt Run second line parade in Duluth! The event was organized by Jim and Anton of the Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe and they did an amazing job of recruiting creative friends to plan and participate in this first annual event.

I made Jim this slick green Neptune costume which he wore on very tall stilts and acted as a sort of a grand marshal.

If you've never been to or heard of Duluth, you're missing out! I'm a super fan of this extraordinarily beautiful city.

This event started in Canal Park and traveled up the Lakewalk toward downtown Duluth. We marched to an awesome band called the Brass Messengers up to the Zeitgeist Cafe for a dance party and smelt fry!

Funny, for a food blogger, I took no photos at the smelt fry...By that point I just wanted to eat and dance and be merry. And I was!

If Steve and I and our fellow parade goers get our wish - Join us next year for the second annual Earth Day Run Smelt Run second line parade!

Armenian Sweets (Daring Bakers Challenge #10)

Sweet Almond Nazook

and Armenian Walnut and Honey Nutmeg Cake

We've been eating some fancy sweets in my house this week (with pleasure)!

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.




Nutmeg can be a bit overwhelming and scares me into decreasing its amount often when it's called for. Today's recipe called for 1 to 1.5 teaspoons of the stuff! I went with 1.5. Normally I'd go maybe 1/2...drum roll...No Regrets! This cake is nutty, fragrant, mildly sweet and very impressive.

And the nazook, for as beautifully difficult as it looks, was really very simple and satisfying to make.

I enjoyed the texture of the nazook dough. It was very stiff and on the dry side so it didn't stick to my hands or the counter much as I kneaded. When it was finally really smooth, I stuck it in the fridge overnight. In the morning to my surprise the dough was really dense like a block of heavy clay. It took some work to round it out and roll it flat, but I found it to be a wonderful dough to work with.

And the results are so pretty! The almond flavor in these was delicious. The nazook did not last long in my house!

Both were best fresh from the oven, yet both kept surprisingly well. I preferred my leftovers reheated in a toaster oven for a minute-that brought them right back to life for days!


These recipes are based on my experience with some changes to the original recipes. You can find Jason's original recipes here.

Nazook makes about 40 pieces
Pastry dough

• 3 cups all-purpose (plain) flour, sifted
• 2½ teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter (room temperature)

Filling

• 1 cup all-purpose (plain) flour, sifted
• 1 cup ground almonds
  
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup softened butter (room temperature)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
  

Wash

• 1 egg mixed with 2 tablespoons plain yogurt
  

Directions:

Make the Pastry Dough
1. Place the sifted flour into a large bowl.
2. Add the dry yeast, and mix it in.
3. Add the sour cream, and the softened butter.
4. Use your hands to work it into a dough.
5. Once the dough starts to clump together but is still shaggy with some loose pieces, turn it out onto your counter. Continue to mix and knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough no longer sticks to the counter or your hands. If it remains very sticky, add some flour, a little at a time.
6. Cover the dough and refrigerate for 3-5 hours, or overnight if you like. Your dough will be very stiff and will harden up like dense clay overnight.

Make the filling
7. Mix the flour, ground almonds, sugar, and the softened butter in a medium bowl.
8. Add the vanilla and almond extracts.
9. Mix the filling until it looks like clumpy, damp sand. It should not take long. Set aside.

Make the nazook
10. Preheat the oven to moderate 350°F/175°C/gas mark 4.
11. Cut the refrigerated dough into quarters.
12. Form one of the quarters into a ball. Dust your working surface with a little flour.
13. Roll out the dough into a large rectangle or oval. The dough should be thin, but not
transparent.
14. Spread 1/4 of the filling mixture across the rolled-out dough in an even layer. Try to spread the filling as close as possible to the edges on the short sides, but keep some of pastry dough uncovered (1 inch/2.5 cm) along the long edges.
15. From one of the long sides, start slowly rolling the dough across. Be careful to make sure the filling stays evenly distributed. Roll all the way across until you have a long, thin log.
16. Pat down the log with your palm and fingers so that it flattens out a bit (just a bit).
17. Apply your egg/yogurt wash with a pastry brush.
18. Cut the log into 10 equally-sized pieces. Put onto an ungreased cookie sheet with about an inch or a half inch between each piece.
19. Place in your oven for about 30 minutes, until the tops are a rich, golden brown.
20. Allow to cool a bit and enjoy!

Armenian Walnut and Honey Nutmeg Cake

Ingredients

• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup honey
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 3/4 cup (1½ sticks) butter, preferably unsalted, cubed
• 1/2 cup toasted walnut pieces (for top) plus 3/4 cup ground toasted walnuts for the batter
  
• 1 to 1-1/2 teaspoons fresh ground nutmeg
  

Directions:

1. Turn your oven on to moderate 350°F/175°C/gas mark 4. 2. Place 1 1/4 cup walnut pieces on a baking sheet and place in oven for 5-7 minutes. Stir a time or two. Cool on a separate tray to help speed things up. 3. In a medium bowl, mix the honey and eggs into the milk. Add baking soda and mix. Set it aside. 4. Sift together the flour and the baking powder into a large bowl. 5. Toss cubed butter into the dry ingredients. 6. Mash the butter into the dry ingredients with your hands. You want to achieve a more-or-less uniform, tan-colored crumbly mixture. 7. Add nutmeg to the crumbly mixture. 8. Pour 1/3 to 1/2 of this crumbly mixture into a 9" spring form pan. Press a crust out of it using your fingers and knuckles. 9. Set aside 1/2 cup of toasted walnut pieces. Once fairly cool, pulse the remaining walnuts in a food processor until uniformly fine. 10. Fold ground walnuts into your remaining crumbly mix. 11. Give your liquid ingredients a good stir. Pour into the dry mix and mix well. 12. Pour the batter over the base in the spring form pan. The batter will be very thin. 13. Gently sprinkle the remaining walnut pieces over the batter. 14. Bake in a preheated oven for about 40-50 minutes. You'll know it's done when the top is a deep golden brown, and an inserted skewer comes out clean. 15. Allow to cool in the pan, and then release.

Enjoy!

Our Favorite Lasagna with 10-Minute Red Sauce

This lasagna recipe saves time by using store bought egg roll wrappers and includes an incredibly easy red sauce that you will never forget. And it's the best lasagna I've ever eaten!

This is a crappy photo, but the sauce will blow you away. It calls for 6 ingredients and takes 10 minutes to make! I love it not just because it's easy. It's really, really good. I especially love it over gnocchi and I tend to serve it to guests or on special occasions.





For the lasagna, I use large square egg roll wrappers, my simple red sauce, hamburger that's been cooked with a few pinches of spices, cottage cheese and mozzarella. This recipe comes out with the perfect amount of moisture. It's not too dry, it slices clean and it's gooey and perfect.

YUM!

Start by making the red sauce. I am pretty sure I learned of this technique for cooking tomatoes for a sauce or soup on Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals...

Simple Red Sauce (for many uses)

Olive Oil
5 large cloves roughly chopped garlic
Generous pinch red pepper flakes
One anchovy fillet
One large handful kalamata olives, crushed by hand
One large can whole tomatoes, drained and crushed by hand

Cover the bottom of a skillet with olive oil. Add chopped garlic and heat over medium-low. Add red pepper flakes and the anchovy fillet and stir together (the anchovy will break up and melt). Once it's sizzling, stir often and cook until the garlic is golden brown and the pieces are shrinking and browning but not close to burning. Crush the olives into the pan and stir. Cook for a minute or two, then crush the tomatoes into the pan and stir. Turn the heat to a couple notches over medium to bring to a boil. Keep it at a boil, stirring often until the mixture is thick and fragrant, 6 to 10 minutes. Depending on your use, leave a little extra liquid (for using with pasta) or cook it down a little more (for lasagna). Try adding chicken stock, simmering for a couple minutes more and throw in some fresh basil for a simple soup.

But for today, cook it down to a nice thick sauce and meanwhile, cook up your hamburger and get ready to assemble your lasagna. To your cooking hamburger, add 2 pinches dried oregano and one small pinch each of dried thyme and rosemary. Take the meat off the heat when it's almost browned through.

Easy Lasagna for 4

One batch Red Sauce (recipe above)
Egg roll wrappers (large square)
1/2 pound hamburger, cooked
Cottage cheese (flavored with chive if they have it at your store)
2 cups shredded mozzarella

In a greased 8 inch square pan, spread a thin layer of red sauce on the bottom and place a wrapper on top of that. Spread a quarter of the remaining sauce, a dollop of cottage cheese, one quarter of the meat and a handful of the shredded cheese. Place another wrapper over this and repeat 3 more times. You will end with "stuff" covered with cheese and will have used 4 wrappers and 4 layers of stuff. Try to end up with a little extra mozzarella on the top, covering that last layer with cheese so not much stuff is showing through.

Bake covered with foil for 30 minutes at 375F. Remove foil and reduce heat to 350F, baking 15 to 20 minutes more or until the top is browned to your liking.

Cool for 20 minutes and enjoy!

Updated notes: Last night I doubled this whole recipe and made it in a big greased 9x13 pan. To double the sauce, I added extra of everything except the anchovy and instead of adding another large can of tomatoes, I used 2 small cans of tomato sauce flavored with roasted garlic and basil and oregano. It was so good I might just change the way I make my red sauce from now on! I also added a couple layers of thinly sliced fresh zucchini. And I would definitely recommend this to anyone. I like it better even than adding chopped spinach, which is also awesome. One more thing-when I doubled the recipe I did not double the dried spices. I am not a big Italian spice person and I liked it with the spices reduced.