Penne a la Betsy

Happy Mother's Day!

We had both families over yesterday to celebrate mother's day and I used it as an excuse to make something wonderful and fattening that I've been wanting to try.

If you haven't been to Pioneer Woman's cooking blog, you're missing out. Check it out. Then buy a case of butter at Sams, because your adventure is about to begin! For Mother's Day dinner I made her famous "Penne a la Betsy," a tomato cream sauce with shrimp and penne pasta. It was a huge hit. I might try it again at a later date with half and half or something, but most likely I'll just save it for very special occasions.

This picture is from PW's site, mine got eaten too quickly and I forgot to take pictures!

Penne a la Betsy

Full credit for the recipe and the photo go to Pioneer Woman

Since there isn't a printable recipe on PW's site for this, I copied the instructions from Dinner and Dessert. Thanks!

Ingredients:

¾ pound penne pasta

3 tablespoons butter, divided

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 pound large shrimp

1 small white onion, finely chopped (I used shallot)

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup white wine1 (8-ounce) can plain tomato sauce

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped

basil leaves, to taste, chiffonaded

salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Boil water and cook pasta according to package directions.

Meanwhile, while water heats and pasta cooks, make the sauce. Melt 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet. Add the shrimp and cook for a few minutes, until opaque. Remove to a plate to let cool. Heat 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in the skillet. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally.

While the onion and garlic are cooking, chop the shrimp into small, bite-sized pieces.

Add the wine (or chicken broth) to the pan and allow to reduce for a few minutes.

Stir in tomato sauce. Add the heavy cream and stir well to combine. Add shrimp back to the skillet and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add the parsley and basil and mix well.

Drain pasta and return to pot. Add the sauce to the pot and stir well to combine. Serve.

Million Dollar Peanut Butter Cookies

Pillsbury holds a bake-off every year and gives away $1 million for a great new recipe using their products. This year's recipe was from Carolyn Gurtz in MD for her Double-Delight Peanut Butter Cookies. The recipe looked so simple, I was kind of blown away that she won. Until I made the cookies.

These were so great! It's essentially a peanut butter cookie wrapped around a smooth peanut butter filling, and nothing could make my peanut-butter-lovin' husband happier. I've been on a cookie binge since I got my baking stone, and my not-so-chocolate-lovin' husband has given mediocre reviews to my last several batches of chocolate, chocolate chip, and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. These were a HUGE hit.

The only changes I made were to omit the peanuts on the outside, and I used a break-and-bake pillsbury cookie dough with reese's pieces instead of the roll of dough.

Million Dollar Peanut Butter Cookies

Adapted from Carolyn Gurt's $1,000,000 prize-winning Double-Delight Peanut Butter Cookies

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup Creamy Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Confectioners Powdered Sugar
1 package Pillsbury® Ready To Bake® refrigerated peanut butter cookies with Reese's mini pieces, well chilled (24 cookies per package)

DIRECTIONS
1. Heat oven to 375°F. In small bowl, mix granulated sugar and cinnamon; set aside.
2. In another small bowl, stir peanut butter and powdered sugar until completely blended. Shape mixture into 24 (1-inch) balls.
3. Shape 1 cookie dough piece around 1 peanut butter ball, covering completely. Repeat with remaining dough and balls.
4. Roll each covered ball in cinnamon sugar mixture. On ungreased large cookie sheets, place balls 2 inches apart. Flatten each ball to 1/2-inch thickness with bottom of drinking glass or measuring cup.
5. Bake 7 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Store tightly covered.

Balcony Herb Garden

My newest adventure, or my "babies" as James has taken to calling them are my herb plants on the balcony. I find myself wanting fresh basil ALL the time, especially as we get into summer, and I got two full plants for the same price as a small semi-fresh package from the grocery store!

The lady at the nursery where I got the seedlings had only one piece of advice "FULL sun, all the time!" So I installed this window box (from walmart) over the side of the balcony. It's really my first experience growing anything, so we'll see how long I can keep them alive! I'm watering every day. I read that you can skip a day with basil, but they instantly got wilty and sad the day I tried skipping.

So far I've got basil:

Rosemary:

Cilantro:

and some thyme that I didn't a great picture of.

Pancetta Frittata

I tested the following recipe out last night because I want to make it for easter brunch. James's comment "That's one of the best flavored things you've made in a long time!" Sorry, pictures to come after I make it for Easter!

Pancetta Frittata
by me! :)

1 1/2 cups of egg beaters (or 6 eggs lightly beaten)
2 oz of deli counter pancetta, sliced thick, diced fairly small
2 oz of crumbled feta cheese
2 oz shredded cheddar cheese (I used the 2% milk sharp cheddar)
1-2 Tbs chopped fresh basil
Black pepper
8 inch oven/broiler safe skillet

In a dry 8 inch skillet, crisp up the pancetta over medium heat. It has plenty of its own fat so I didn't add any oil. The pancetta from the deli is really already cooked, so you're just browning it up and drawing out some of that salty ham goodness. This would be a good time to add some onion too, but then James wouldn't have eaten it.

Turn heat to medium low and pour all of the eggs over the pancetta. Sprinkle with the feta cheese and black pepper to taste. (I didn't need salt because the feta is so salty).

Turn on your broiler.

Let it cook on the stove for a minute or two, and when the bottom is starting to set, lift all the edges with a spatula so the uncooked egg floods underneath. Do that a couple of times until the egg is mostly set, but still fairly wet.

Sprinkle cheddar cheese and basil on top, move to oven 5 or 6 inches from the broil. Broil for 3 or 4 minutes until cheese starts to brown and everything sets.

The frittata should slide out easily onto a cutting board so you can cut it with a pizza cutter. For easter, I plan to do 12 eggs with a large shallow saute pan.

Nutrition facts for 1/4 of the frittata (not a huge serving, but we ate it with veggies, etc)

Nutrition Facts
4 Servings
Amount Per Serving
Calories 193.1
Total Fat 12.1 g
Saturated Fat 5.7 g
Cholesterol 27.2 mg
Sodium 595.8 mg
Potassium 321.1 mg
Total Carbohydrate 0.9 g
Dietary Fiber 0.1 g
Sugars 0.6 g
Protein 17.8 g

Confession & new recipe

My name is Carla and I have a problem. I start things and then quit them. Unfinished scrapbooks, frames without pictures, halfway reorganized closets, this is my life. But I've missed food blogging so I'm posting again, although I'm fairly sure no one except me and my husband (who I force) are reading it. Guess I need to do more advertising :)

Since I've been gone I've had lots of ups and downs cooking. I made my first prime rib, my first passable bechamel sauce, and had a whole Christmas season of cookies and baked goodies. Since mid-January I've been calorie counting like a madwoman. I have a daily allowance, and that's all I get. Because of that, I'm discovering lots of healthy new recipes, and lots of great substitutions. Mostly I'm learning about portion control. Everything's bigger in Texas--including our chicken fried steaks and, therefore, our thighs.

So for now, just one new recipe. This pumpkin bread was dense, but still very soft and sweet. Perfect for a quick breakfast! And 200 calories a slice means I'm allowed to eat one.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Adapted from CookingLight.com

Ingredients
1 cups sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 large egg whites
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Dash of ground nutmeg
Dash of ground ginger
1 pinch kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Cooking spray


Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture, stirring just until moist. Stir in chocolate chips. It helps to dust the chocolate chips in flour so they won't sink to the bottom. (I obviously didn't!)

Spoon batter into 1 (8 x 4-inch) loaf pan coated with cooking spray. (I used 9x5 loaf pans and my slices came out pretty short and fat, almost the shape of a biscotti cookie). Bake at 350° for 40-50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on a wire rack, and remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.

Yields 1 loaf, which I cut into 10 servings. The suggested 16 from Cooking Light would have been really small.

With my changes, SparkRecipes calculated the following nutrition facts:

Nutritional Info
Servings Per Recipe: 1
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 2,040.6
Total Fat: 27.9 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 2,464.4 mg
Total Carbs: 433.3 g
Dietary Fiber: 21.1 g
Protein: 34.0 g

The Barefoot Contessa

I met Ina Garten yesterday at Central Market. She signed my cookbook! :) I'll try to make something Ina-ish this week and post it in honor of her. See her friend who frequents the show in the background??

Happy Thanksgiving!

In the excitement of hosting my first Thanksgiving, I completely neglected to take any pictures, oops!! I worked on my menu, grocery list, and day-of schedule for several weeks, and still managed to have a few bumps in the road, but in the end we had a wonderful, tasty Thanksgiving with my husband's family.

As for the bumps in the road, here are a few things I learned:
1) Reynolds cooking bags, while BIG enough for a turkey are certainly not STRONG enough for a turkey. After putting 2 gallons of brine and an 11 lb turkey into the bag, I attempted to pick it up. Before my husband could get the words out of his mouth to tell me what a bad idea that was, my entire body and my entire kitchen were covered in garlicy brine, not to mention salmonella poisoning, as the bag busted and the turkey splashed back into the sink. I just stood there and laughed, what else can you do?? On the second attempt, we put a large glass bowl under the bag.
2) You don't need a large house with an island kitchen and a dining table that seats 20 to have a home. I've been a little house crazy lately and looking around our small apartment filled with family I realized that for now, this is our home. We have an open door policy,we want our friends and family to feel welcome any time. Come over for lunch, come over for dinner, come over for coffee and pie. We're so blessed, and so thankful, for all the wonderful people we're surrounded with.




Anyway, sap aside, here is the menu!





Roasted Turkey
Sausage Dressing
Sweet Potato Casserole
Mashed Potatos
Macaroni and Cheese
Challah
Cranberry Applesauce
Apple Pie

Roasted Turkey Brine:
Adapted from allrecipes.com

INGREDIENTS
2 gallons water
1 1/2 cups kosher salt
6-8 peeled whole garlic cloves
1/4 cup whole black peppercorns
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar



DIRECTIONS
In a saucepan, boil 2 quarts of water and salt, garlic, peppercorns, worcestershire sauce, and sugar until salt and sugar are dissolved. Add remaining cold water and cool brine, then add to turkey. I used a Reynolds cooking bag set inside a really big glass bowl to contain my 11 lb turkey. Soak turkey in brine for 12-24 hours.



Roasting Turkey
I used Kidd Kraddick's brown bag turkey instructions!

INGREDIENTS
1/2 large onion, cut in large chunks
Several stalks of celery (I use the leafy inside stalks that I usually throw away for veggie trays)
1 whole head of garlic, with the top cut off
Olive Oil
Turkey



DIRECTIONS
Rinse turkey after brining, both inside and out to remove any remaining salt. Place turkey in a roasting pan on a rack breast side up and put the vegetables inside the large neck cavity. Rub the entire outside of the turkey with olive oil, be sure to get inbetween the wings and legs and the breasts. Place a probe thermometer into the turkey breast, make sure it does not touch the bone. Slide the roasting pan with the turkey inside into a brown paper grocery sack. (If the sack has a logo on it, be sure the logo is on the bottom or the ink will bleed onto your turkey.) Sprinkle water over the top of the bag so the moisture can get out. Roast at 375 degrees for approximately 15 minutes per lb, or until the thermometer reads 170 degrees. At the end, I tore the top off of the bag and allowed to the top of the turkey to brown a little more for 15 minutes.





It turned out really great! Every single scrap of turkey was eaten. There was SO much flavor from the brine and the turkey was really moist.





I put the whole carcass, with the vegetables still inside, into the crockpot to make broth after dinner.



That's all for now, I may post more of the recipes later.