Barefoot Bloggers: Tuna Salad

This one was chosen by Kate at Warm Olives and Cool Cocktails. This is not your typical canned tuna + lots of mayo tuna salad. It uses fresh tuna steak, no mayo and a vinaigrette dressing.

I halved the recipe. Although I do like tuna, it is probably unwise for me to eat 2 lbs of it all at once. The one thing that I don't like about this recipe is that the acid in the lime juice cooks the tuna too much so it has to be eaten right away. All of it. Maybe I just put too much lime juice in it, I was juicing limes when I remembered that I was halving the recipe so there is a bit more than the recipe called for. If I were to make it again I would just toss the part I know I'm gonna eat right away in the dressing. Also, I might not cook the tuna at all. Slice it sashimi style and dress it and eat it. That would be better in the summer anyway because my stove was radiating so much heat just to cook this for a minute.


Here's the recipe.

Pasta, Peas and everything else

This was my attempt at a light spring type dish. Or something like that. I was having a really lazy day but needed some food so this was what I ended up with. It only took a couple minutes to make. It's got a relatively light cream sauce and assorted random items from the fridge/freezer so I'm not really sure how this is a spring thing but just go with it. It's quick, easy and actually pretty good.

1/2 lb fettucine or other pasta
frozen peas
ham, chopped into small pieces
1/2 container grape tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 medium onion, chopped

Put the butter and flour in a pan on low heat and stir until coated. Toss in the onions and saute until they are translucent. Add the milk and chicken stock and stir until it bubbles and thickens. Check the seasoning and add the tomatoes and drop the heat to low. Meanwhile, boil a pot of salted water and cook the noodles. A couple minutes before the pasta is done add the peas and ham to the sauce and stir through to warm. Add the pasta and toss. Sprinkle on a little parmesan cheese.

Tomatoes

I'm rather excited. I bought a few plants to attempt to grow my own. First I started with some herbs that just didn't work out. I tried to start from seeds and they never really sprouted. Next I had a rosemary bush that K gave me. I used a few sprigs of it but it slowly has turned brown and tree like and the leaves fell off.... I'm not quite ready to call it dead yet although I can't really say that it's thriving.

Anyway, so spring comes along and they have stuff in the gardening section at Walmart and Lowes that I walk by every time I go in the store. So one day I decided to try this again. I like to buy plants in the rain. Don't ask me why. But the only time I decide to go look at the plants they have outside it is really rainy out.

So I got some chives, parsley and basil. The other thing that I was kinda scared of was a tomato plant. I stood there in the rain and pondered and thought about it and wavered a whole bunch. In the end I decided it was $5 so at worst I'd lose $5 and I bought it. I used the same logic and bought a blueberry bush a couple weeks later except that was $10.

Well these are doing better than my first attempt. Tomatoes suddenly appeared on the plant. I don't know where they came from. I was watering it every day and suddenly one day I looked and there were tomatoes growing on there. I had chosen a Sweet 100 plant figuring hopefully I'll get lots of tomatoes. Well I'm not quite sure what I got but I don't think it is a sweet100. The tomatoes are about 2 inches in diameter right now, which is bigger than sweet 100's should get ever. And this is only about a week after they showed up. So this should be interesting. I just hope I got a real bright sweet type, whatever it is.

Anyone know what I got? The tomatoes are currently about 1 1/2" across.





Is it sad that I finally got the motivation to find my card reader and hold the stupid thing while copying the pictures for this rather than any of the posts I've done in the last few weeks? Also, I've finally put the rest of my pics in some of my old posts.

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake

I know, I know. I'm a sucky blogger. I can't seem to keep up with this any more. Not really sure why either. Not like I'm doing anything else really.

This was another relatively easy challenge. I've made cheesecake before. Though actually, this is the first time I've done it with my stand mixer. Usually I've done it all by hand in a bowl.

Once again, probably the hardest part was deciding what flavors I wanted to go with. I was thinking about entering a blackberry recipe contest but 1. blackberries were really expensive so I didn't want to spend $5/container and 2. I didnt' really have a recipe worked out.

Well I went to the grocery store and they had blackberries on sale. $1/container. That's so doable. So I bought 5 containers. Which was all the ones they had on sale. Then it was figuring out what I was going to do with them..... Well I had this cheesecake recipe sitting there waiting for me to figure out what I was going to do with it so they went into that.

I used two 8-1/2" round cake pans.

This was probably my most popular creation I've brought to work. And that says something because I bring some form of baked goods usually 2-3 times a week. It's also possible that they liked it because I was out of town and this was the first item I'd brought in in over a week and they were suffering withdrawal. Either way.....


Edit: Here's the pic

crust:
1 pack graham crackers, crushed

3/4 cup slivered almonds, finely chopped or ground
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 container blackberries, pureed and strained

1 orange, zested and juiced

1/4 cup each, orange marmalade and seedless blackberry jam

1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream. Split the batter evenly between 2 bowls. Mix the blackberry puree into one and the orange zest and juice into the other.

4. Pour blackberry batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Then pour the orange batter over and tap on the counter again. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill.

6. When they have chilled, heat the blackberry jam and orange marmalade together and stir until well combined. Pour over the cheesecakes. Sprinkle with toasted almonds.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Barefoot Bloggers: Croque Monsieur

This is a perfect leisurely weekend lunch where you eat this and take a nice afternoon nap. I halved the recipe so it made 4 sandwiches. I ate 2 and fell asleep in about an hour.

I used Asiago instead of Gruyere because they had pregated Asiago and I was feeling lazy and didn't feel like grating up a hunk of cheese.


Here's the recipe. Pics to come. Eventually. Maybe.

Edit: Here's the pics

Barefoot Bloggers: Chinese Chicken Salad

I know, I know, I'm late. And it's been almost 2 weeks since I've posted anything on here. It's not that I died or anything. Just been busy. I have made a few things, I just haven't blogged about them. Here's a hint. I took a pastry making class a couple weeks ago. Since then I've attempted to remake and tweak recipes I got from the class. I didn't take any pics. But the coffee cake came out really good. One day I"ll blog about it.

Anyway, I did make the Chinese Chicken Salad. Well a half recipe. It wasn't bad. I left almost all of the salt out. And I added some sweet chili sauce to give it a little bit of a kick. Possibly because I left out the pepper and just realized it as I'm writing this.

I made quite a few adjustments, 4 chicken tenders instead of 2 breasts for a half recipe. Left out the bell peppers and garlic because I didn't have them and didn't feel like running out for them. Besides which, bell peppers have become ridiculously expensive.

It was decent. Lots of people thought there was too much peanut butter but I was OK with it. I like peanut butter. Maybe not the most authentic chinese food but still good.

Hit up one of the other barefoot bloggers or food network for the recipe. I'm lazy.

Edit: Here's the pic that has sat on my camera for a month or so now...

Heart Attack Biscuits

I had a rough day. My allergies started going strong, which resulted in a massive headache for the last few days, which resulted in me popping motrin like candy so that I could function and tolerate sound and light.

Then I got home and wanted to finish up another blog post. Only to find out my card reader does not seem to work any more. It looks like it's the card reader because chunks of plastic are coming off of it. I can get it to read if I hold it together but rejects when I try to delete anything off of the card. The gist of which is that there are no pics and I needed to make something to make me feel better.

Well I kinda made a mess making these. I don't know how to make biscuits without flinging flour all over my kitchen. And that's if I'm lucky and it's just flour not dough that gets caked on everything. One day I'll figure it out.....

Oh and don't take my approach and jump between recipes. It does not work well. You end up forgetting to add leavening and only realize it after you have scooped all the dough into the pan so you have to scoop it all back out and clean the pan which means you have also over worked the dough.

So here's the recipe. Don't blame me if you end up in the hospital with a heart attack if you make these.


Heart Attack Biscuits
based on Touch of Grace Biscuits in Bakewise, by Shirley O Corriher

1/2 lb bacon, cut into small chunks
2 cups cheddar, shredded
a few branches of parsley, finely chopped
green onion, finely chopped
2 cups White Lily AP flour, sifted
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup AP flour, for shaping
3 tbsp butter, melted


Cook the bacon. Remove the bacon bits and allow the remaining fat to cool in the pan until solified.
Sift together the White Lily, salt and baking powder.
Scoop up 1/4 cup of the solidified bacon drippings and cut into the flour until you have small pieces the size of peas.
Stir in the cheese, bacon pieces and herbs.
Pour in the cream and about 3/4 of the buttermilk.
Stir just to combine.
Add more buttermilk as necessary until it looks like cottage cheese, at least in texture.
Put the flour in a very large bowl.
Pour the dough on top of the flour.
Dust your hands with flour.
Pull off chunks and toss in your hands to coat in flour.
Place in a greased pan.
Repeat until you run out of dough, pressing the balls up against each other in the pan.
Bake at 425 for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Brush with melted butter once they come out.
Call a doctor ahead of time so that they are ready for you once you start eating and have a heart attack.