Ina does it again

Darn that Ina Garten for tempting me with nomtastic deliciousness yet again. Delightfully French, and maybe even somewhat healthy, a little, somewhere, if I try. But hey, French people are thin, so maybe it's okay.
Right?

Mustard Roasted Fish
4 (8-ounce) fish fillets such as red snapper
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 ounces creme fraiche
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
2 tablespoons minced shallots
2 teaspoons drained capers

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. (You can also use an ovenproof baking dish.) Place the fish fillets skin side down on the sheet pan. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

Combine the creme fraiche, 2 mustards, shallots, capers, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in a small bowl. Spoon the sauce evenly over the fish fillets, making sure the fish is completely covered. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish, until it's barely done. (The fish will flake easily at the thickest part when it's done.) Be sure not to overcook it! Serve hot or at room temperature with the sauce from the pan spooned over the top.

Parmesan Roasted Broccoli
4 to 5 pounds broccoli
4 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
Good olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons julienned fresh basil leaves (about 12 leaves)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Cut the broccoli florets from the thick stalks, leaving an inch or two of stalk attached to the florets, discarding the rest of the stalks. Cut the larger pieces through the base of the head with a small knife, pulling the florets apart. You should have about 8 cups of florets. Place the broccoli florets on a sheet pan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Toss the garlic on the broccoli and drizzle with 5 tablespoons olive oil. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Roast for 20 to 25 minutes, until crisp-tender and the tips of some of the florets are browned.

Remove the broccoli from the oven and immediately toss with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, the lemon zest, lemon juice, pine nuts, Parmesan, and basil. Serve hot.

Honey Vanilla Fromage Blanc
32 ounces fromage blanc
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup good honey
4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
Vanilla seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean nocoupons

Ripe stone fruit such as peaches, nectarines, plums
Berries such as raspberries and strawberries
Citrus fruit such as oranges, cut in segments
Raspberry Sauce (see below)

Stir the fromage blanc, cream, honey, vanilla extract, lemon zest, and vanilla seeds together in a medium bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use.

To assemble, spoon the fromage blanc mixture into shallow bowls. Place the fruit artfully on top and drizzle the dessert with raspberry sauce. Serve with extra raspberry sauce on the side. I find that some people like it less sweet with just a drizzle of sauce while others prefer more sauce.

Raspberry Sauce
1 half pint fresh raspberries
1/2 c sugar
1 cup seedless raspberry jam
1 tbsp framboise liqueur

Combine raspberries, sugar and 1/4 cup of water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 4 minutes. Pour the cooked raspberries, jam, and framboise into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade and process until very smooth. Chill.

Turkey Sausage, White Bean and Kale Soup

I made a yumtastic soup last night. Totally SB friendly, healthy, yummy, and super super easy.

1 medium onion; diced
2-3 cloves of garlic; minced
4 turkey sausages, sliced into disks (I used Aidell's sundried tomato)
1 huge can of chicken stock
1 bunch of kale - washed, large stems/stalks removed, and roughly chopped
2 cans of white beans (great northern, cannelini, whatever)
salt and pepper
olive oil

Heat olive oil (2 tbsp or so) in a large stock pot. Sautee the onion and garlic until soft, then season with salt and pepper.
Add the turkey sausage and cook a bit longer - I like to see the sausage a bit browned.
Add the stock and the beans. Add the kale bit by bit (as it fits in your pot!) and stir to combine. Cover the pot and let simmer for 15-20 minutes until kale is wilted and everything is heated through. Taste broth for seasoning and add any additional seasoning as necessary - maybe even a dash of red pepper flakes if you like it spicy.

Delicious, or horrifying?

I love my slow cooker. Love love love. I make stew and carnitas in it, and that's maybe. . . just. . . about. . it. I am torn on this recipe. I do like those little party meatballs that my Grandma used to make (you know, with the grape jelly barbecue type sauce?), and someone likens this dish to that. I don't know that I want to eat an entire roast with that flavor though, so I'm just not sure.
Thoughts?

Slow Cooker Cranberry Roast
1 (1 ounce) envelope dry onion soup mix
1 (3 pound) beef chuck roast
1 (16 ounce) can jellied cranberry sauce
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Directions

Place onion soup mix in the bottom of a slow cooker. Place roast in the slow cooker, and top with cranberry sauce.
Cover, and cook 8 hours on Low.
Remove roast, and set aside. Set slow cooker to High. Whisk together butter and flour, and slowly mix into the liquid remaining in the slow cooker to create a thick gravy. Serve with the roast.

Pineapple Upside Down Cakes

When I was planning for Iron Chef Battle Cupcake, my beloved Buzzie suggested an idea I had long since dismissed - pineapple upside down cupcakes. I couldn't think of how to get the pineapples in place - normally you flip the cake over so the fruit and goo that was in the bottom of the pan is now on top. I envisioned messy, sticky, burnt on sugar that would tear apart the cakes and stick in the bottom of the pan and be a bastard to clean.
I wondered if I could just make the cakes and then top them later with what would typically go in the bottom of the pan.
I decided against it.
Until I saw this recipe, and now I'm rethinking things. I did not get pineapple rings, imagining that the rings would never fit in the cupcake tins, so instead I got pineapple chunks. I think they'll work in the mini cupcake tins, so I might have to give it a whirl.

Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 (20 ounce) cans sliced pineapple
1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
12 maraschino cherries, halved
Directions

In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar and butter; mix well. Spoon into 24 greased muffin cups. Drain pineapple, reserving the juice. Trim pineapple to fit the muffin cups; place one ring in each cup.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, oils and 1-1/4 cups of the reserved pineapple juice; mix well. Spoon over pineapple, filling each cup two-thirds full. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Immediately invert onto wire racks to cool. Place a cherry in the center of each pineapple ring.

Mushroom Quinoa Risotto

Quinoa is a nice, South Beachy grain, and it's actually quite tasty, especially combined with the yummy, earthy flavors of wild mushrooms. Even if you cook too much of the liquid off (which I may have done) and it's not quite as soft and creamy as risotto typically is, the dish is still pretty damn fine overall. This is a great, easy, totally straightforward recipe. I loved the addition of goat cheese due to my severe goat cheese addiction. I typically use grated Parmesan or Romano cheese which are much more true to a standard risotto. This time around I used a little bit of both. This dish is much less labor intensive than a true risotto as well, since you add all of the liquid at once and leave it to simmer, rather than adding it ladle by ladle (though you can do that too!).

Mushroom Quinoa Risotto
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large shallot, finely chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound wild mushrooms, such as chanterelles, oysters, or porcinis, cleaned and chopped
1 cup quinoa
2 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)
1/4 cup white wine (I used a chardonnay)
2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled AND/OR 1/4 - 1/2 cup grated hard Italian cheese such as Parmesan

1. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter. When the butter has melted, stir in the shallot, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.

2. Add the olive oil and mushrooms, season again, and cook for another five minutes, or until mushrooms have begun giving off their water. (You can prepare the dish up to this point and set aside for an hour or two, or refrigerate overnight.)

3. Add the quinoa and the wine and broth, stir, and bring the mixture to a simmer. Cook at a bare simmer, covered, for 10 minutes, or until all the liquid has been absorbed. Stir in the Parmesan and the goat cheese until both have melted, season to taste, and serve hot. You could also stir in some additional butter at this point if you're more interested in richness than waistlines.

Roast Chicken - spatchcocked, of course

I have been reveling in my usual Food Network weekend morning watching ritual, and with it being a half second away from Thanksgiving, Thanksgivingy recipes are flying out of my idiot box nonstop.
One or two of these recipes introduced me to spatchcocking. Not only is "spatchcock" the most fun, non filthy word you'll see all day, it's an awesome technique for quickly cooking whole birds. My oven isn't the hugest and I know with a whole giant gobbler in there, there won't be room for a single other dish. I'm also concerned that by the time I get around to making my Thanksgiving dinner, they won't even have any turkeys in the stores and I'll have to go with chicken anyway.
A quick walk down to Whole Foods yielded a $15, four pound organic bird that was mine for the taking. I spatchcocked my little heart out and then got down to business (please note that the extra step of removing the breast bone is not always included in spatchcocking instructions, and I didn't do it myself. I just broke the bone with a nice satisfying crunch and moved on.).

Roasted Spatchcocked Chicken & Gravy
6 cloves garlic - smashed
1 yellow onion
fresh rosemary - we used 2 really long sticks ("skewers"), so maybe 4 regular sized sticks
1 3-4 lb whole chicken
6 -8 tablespoons of unsalted butter
olive oil
Kosher salt & fresh cracked pepper
flour
chicken broth

I served this with sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's (chips and gravy are the best thing in the world), and roasted asparagus (olive oil, salt and pepper and parmesan cheese). I poured the gravy on the bird meat and the fries and danced around triumphantly, took a photo for facebook to make all my friends jealous and then hooked in. Thanksgiving will be a piece of piss.

Heat the oven to 425 degrees F. Roughly chop the onion and put it in the bottom of a roasting pan, not one of those jobbies with the v shaped rack for a full bird, just a regular roasting pan with a flat rack.
Spatchcock your bird and lay it out flat. Lift the skin away from the meat by sliding your hand in and getting all nice and gooey. Place pats of butter, a clove of garlic, and a sprig of rosemary all over the bird; maybe one or two sets on each breast, one per leg and one per thigh.

Drizzle with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper, both sides.

Put the bird on the rack and pop it in the oven. Roast for 45-60 minutes. At about the 20 minute mark you can pop in and baste the bird with the buttery yummy goodness at the bottom of the pan to help crisp up the skin. Now is the perfect time to put the the sweet potato fries in as well.

Once the thigh registers close to 180 degrees and the breast near 170, your bird is done and ready to come out and rest. At this point flip the fries, and pop the asparagus in until done.

Break off the legs/thighs and wings, and cut off the breast meat. Slice that and separate the leg from the thigh to be served.

The gravy is tricky. Try to spoon off as much of the clear buttery juice as you can, leaving the yummy rich chickeny part behind. I poured about half a cup of pan juices/butter sauce with as many chunky chickeny scraping bits as I could find into a pan and fired up the heat to med-hi. I stirred in 2 and 1/2 tbsp of flour or so and let it cook for a few minutes to try to cook off the floury taste. I slowly added chicken broth up to about a cup and a half or two cups, plus 2 shots or so of bourbon, stirring constantly to try to prevent lumps. Once the gravy can coat the back of a spoon, Bob's your uncle and you're ready to go.

Banana cupcakes

With Iron Chef: Battle Cupcake on the horizon I had some serious decisions to make.
Blueberry Lemon?
My classic Pumpkin Spice?
Something more classic?
Chocolate and. . . ? (banana, peanut butter, raspberry. . . . )
The options are limitless. However, I landed on chocolate and peanut butter. And banana. And butterscotch. Um. . .I may have gotten carried away.

Banana Cupcakes
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
5 ripe bananas, mashed
2/3 - 1 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt
Add ins: nuts, semi-sweet chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, etc.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour 2 - 8 inch round pans, or prep cupcake pans. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter, white sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in the bananas. Add flour mixture alternately with the yogurt to the creamed mixture. Stir in nuts, or chips. Pour batter into the prepared pans.
I saw a lady on tv put the batter into a plastic bag and cut off the tip to pipe into the pans - this is my new favorite thing. I feel bad about wasting the bag, but it is so much cleaner and easier than spooning it in.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes (15 minutes for mini cupcakes, 20 minutes for full sized cupcakes). Remove from oven, and place on a damp tea towel to cool.

One batch I left plain. One I added semi sweet chocolate chips to. One I added butterscotch chips to.
Then I took a can of triple chocolate chip frosting and mixed 1/4 cup of peanut butter in. The results are pretty sweet; I may have to cut back on the sugar in the batter, or UCK make my own frosting so it's not so sweet. Of all the combos, I was the biggest fan of the plain cakes with the peanut butter and chocolate frosting; the boys like the chocolate chip with the peanut butter and chocolate frosting; we all agreed that while very tasty, the butterscotch chip version was just way too sweet.

I'm not in love with the results, but they're pretty damn tasty. I considered drizzling some bourbon caramel on top instead of frosting, but was too tired of baking to whip up a batch.

The next day I made the salted caramel frosting (which I added bourbon to, thankyouverymuch) I found on The Kitchn and this, my friends, was the winner. Definitely NOT on the butterscotch, but yes on the plain, and yes on the chocolate chip.
I think for my birthday I'll make my banana cake with the salted caramel bourbon frosting and maybe the drizzle of chocolate they mention in the recipe on Savour-fare.

**Update**
The more I think about it, the more irritated I am that these cupcakes were so DENSE and banana bready. This here recipe is incredibly similar, but they're promising light and fluffy results. . . maybe I'll give it a shot. Maybe instead of using so many nanas to get that nana flavor, I'll have to * gasp * use banana extract or something. I think it's the fruit that's weighing things down.
This one wants me to believe it's the best ever (some cakes are so full of themselves). We shall see people, we shall see. Now that I have to make them for Thanksgiving it seems I'll have plenty of time to experiment.