Blueberry Pancakes

Few things make me jump around excitedly in the morning. Blueberry pancakes (or Burberry pancakes if you're lucky enough) are one of those things. I was thrilled that the beanheads over at America's Test Kitchen put a link to a video for perfect blueberry pancakes in today's email. (Beanheads because if they send me ONE MORE of those damn cook books I might burn their offices down).
So, with full credit to them for coming up with the recipe, and full credit to me for scribbling it down and typing it into my blog. . . and you know me - this recipe will not even closely resemble the original when I'm done making it. Between whole wheat flour, skim milk, Splenda and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, I have no idea what these will be like once they're South Beached up. But as soon as I can try it, I'll be sure to let you know. Perhaps we'll do a side by side test comparison to see if they're tolerable in "diet" format. Those beanheads seem to be rubbing off on me.

Blueberry Pancakes

• Frozen blueberries - Seems they prefer Wyman's frozen blueberries based on their rigorous testing procedures, so I'll trust them, but whichever frozen blues you have are fine I'm sure.
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 c whole milk
• 2 c unbleached all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp melted butter
• 1 tsp + of oil

Thaw, rinse and drain the berries on papertowels. Set aside.
Whisk the lemon juice into the milk and let sit to thicken.
In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients.
Whisk egg and melted butter into the milk mixture.
Pour the liquid into the dry and whisk - be sure not to overmix! Leaving some clumps of unmixed flour is not only okay, it's preferable to ensure that your cakes don't get rubbery.

Heat a nonstick skillet on medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add 1 tsp of oil and try a small sacrificial pancake (1 heaping tbsp or so) to make sure the pan is ready.
Create cakes using heaping 1/4 c scoops of batter - the size of your pan will dictate how many you can fit, but you don't want them to touch. Once you see bubbles forming and it looks like the cake is firming up, sprinkle 1 tbsp of blueberries onto the cake. Flip when ready (approx 1 1/2 to 2 minutes per side, but it's more important to look for color and doneness than to rely on time alone, so keep an eye on them).

Serve with REAL Vermont maple syrup if you don't want to hear about it, or eat alone - given the butter and sugar in the batter, they don't actually need anything additional. Or so they say. Syrup I say!

Oh, and crispy bacon. Crispy bacon would be nice too. Or maybe turkey sausage - the patty kind because it's better. Yum!

Greenbeans a la Aylene

My stepmother is the Pied Piper of greenbeans. They line up outside our kitchen, cutting in line, hopping around eagerly hoping, praying, begging that she will dain them worthy of preparation. The best ones actually appear to be lining up outside her mother's house in the backyard (thanks Kay!), but I know they're hoping to make the trip to Aylene's kitchen too.
Seriously, I can eat an entire batch of these and I have yet to master making them exactly right.

She preps the beans, as you do (washing, cutting off ends, cutting into two inch pieces, etc.).
Then boils them until JUST tender and rinses.
A knob of butter into a pan until it starts to brown. In go the beans to be tossed in the butter and now doused in garlic powder (not garlic salt). And she must mean DOUSED. Toss and stir, stir and toss.
Take off the heat and add in lemon juice to taste - I'd say about a third of a cup for a big batch of beans.

I try it with olive oil too, but I think it really needs the butter. Maybe I'll do half and half to cut back on the butter a little. Or maybe I'll just do it like she does and stop wailing about how mine never turn out as good.

Prosciutto wrapped asparagus

That reminds me. Prosciutto wrapped asparagus. Another stupid easy dish, but people request that I make it at potlucks, so there you have it.

Clean and snap (you know that trick, right? If you believe the folks at America's Test Kitchen - that's totally unnecessary and a waste of plenty of good asparagus - they'll tell you just to cut an inch or so off the ends. The controversy rages on.) a bunch of asparagus or two, depending on how big a batch you're making.
Get enough prosciutto for each asparagus spear. You can use one large piece two spears (just tear it in half) but that's just wrong. More bacon!
I put my clean asparagus in a shallow baking dish and toss with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic powder. I let it marinate in there for a little while as I do something else. Drink some wine, wash a dish, stare out the window, make whatever else I'm making to bring to the party. . . whatever.
Then I wrap a piece (or a half, if you must) of prosciutto around the asparagus - kind of like a barber pole; starting at one end and wrapping diagonally to the other.
I put these on a baking sheet and chuck into a 450 degree oven until the prosciutto looks brown and crispy and delicious, and Bob's your uncle.

Be prepared to fight off the hordes.

Asparagus Soup

Cribbed from South Beach recipes, this soup is so easy to make it's not even funny. I don't think they can even take full credit for it it's so easy.

2 pounds or so of asparagus
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
4 c chicken stock/broth - I tend to go with the low sodium kind so I can add my own salt later
s & p to taste
parmesan cheese for garnish

In a medium stockpot, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Once hot, add the veggies (asparagus, onion & garlic). Sautee being careful not to let the onion get brown, until it's soft - about 5 minutes or so.
Add the chicken stock/broth and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the asparagus is just tender.
Use an immersion blender (if you're lucky and happen to own one) or regular blender to puree the mix. I have to do two batches in my blender.
Pour it back into the pot, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese (and a big hunk of warm, crusty sourdough if you're not on the South Beach diet).

If you'd like to turn this into cream of asparagus soup, I'd follow the same steps as above, but then I'd add maybe some unflavored Greek Yogurt & TJs fat free half and half to the mix (you know, til it looks right) and stir until blended.

If you want full flavor and full fat, start with butter rather than olive oil, and serve with a crispy BLT. I can't stop thinking how perfect bacon would be with this, probably given my penchant for prosciutto wrapped asparagus.
Here is a good cream of asparagus recipe from All Recipes.

Deep Fried Olives

The deep fried testicles portion of the Zombie-que (sorry Dad).
Because there is a chance my father may read this (sorry Dad) - I will forgo any salty ball jokes (sorry Dad), except to say that deep fried olives are indeed incredibly salty. Be ready.
Perhaps experimentation is in order; I'm sure there must be varieties that aren't as salty as others (ugh, those awful awful ones Q got from the Olive Pit are coming to mind - black and capable of sucking every drop of moisture from my mouth. Those things were awful.).
I just grabbed a jar of green olives with pimentos from TJs and used a toothpick to poke most of the pimentos out. Why you may ask? Well, to make room for the mozzarella cheese of course!
And that's pretty much it.

Drain the PITTED olives of your choice
Stuff with whatever you'd like - I used mozz (you can even keep the pimentos if you choose)
Toss in a flour mixture (I added garlic and chili powder), knock off any excess
Dunk in a mixture of beaten egg and dash of milk
Then dredge in an equal parts mix of bread crumbs and the best crispifying invention ever: Cornflake crumbs (or Panko)

Put a cup of veg/canola oil in a heavy pot and heat up. Q taught me a good trick for knowing when it's ready. Toss a little piece of bread in, and if it browns up fairly quickly, it's hot enough.

Fry those bad boys until they're nice and golden brown all over, then drain on paper towels. Serve to your friends with plenty of water and other, non salty food.

Arancini

Zombies don't just eat brains you know. In fact, if they had the choice, I'm quite sure they'd also go for deep fried eyeballs. Q thinks so too and give that the dead eat people parts, and the living love anything deep fried, he's asked that I make arancini for his upcoming Zombie-que. BYOF (Bring Your Own Flesh) to this three corpse meal and all that good cheesy stuff. Speaking of cheese - arancini! I love these things; in fact I had my stepmother slave away making them for my 29 1/2th birthday party.
You can make these with any kind of risotto you like; here is one option from All Recipes.

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoon olive oil 1 small onion, finely chopped 1 clove garlic, crushed 1 cup uncooked Arborio rice 1/2 cup dry white wine 2 1/2 cups boiling chicken stock 1/2 cup frozen green peas 2 ounces finely chopped ham salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese 1 egg, beaten 1 egg 1 tablespoon milk 4 ounces mozzarella cheese, cut into 3/4 inch cubes 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup dry bread crumbs 1 cup vegetable oil for deep frying

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic, and cook, stirring until onion is soft but not browned. Pour in the rice, and cook stirring for 2 minutes, then stir in the wine, and continue cooking and stirring until the liquid has evaporated. Add hot chicken stock to the rice 1/3 cup at a time, stirring and cooking until the liquid has evaporated before adding more.
2.	When the chicken stock has all been added, and the liquid has evaporated, stir in the peas and ham. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat, and stir in the Parmesan cheese. Transfer the risotto to a bowl, and allow to cool slightly.
3.	Stir the beaten egg into the risotto. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining egg and milk with a fork. For each ball, roll 2 tablespoons of the risotto into a ball. Press a piece of the mozzarella cheese into the center, and roll to enclose. Coat lightly with flour, dip into the milk mixture, then roll in bread crumbs to coat.
4.	Heat oil for frying in a deep-fryer or large deep saucepan to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Fry the balls in small batches until evenly golden, turning as needed. Drain on paper towels. Keep warm in a low oven while the rest are frying.

Now, so far I've made the risotto. I made it last night and put it in the fridge to make the balls today. We'll see how that goes. . . I thought I should probably form the balls last night, and then freeze or refrigerate them, but there just wasn't any room. Besides, this dish was created as a way to use leftover risotto, I see no reason why I can't refrigerate the whole batch as leftovers and make the dish the next day. We shall see. I'm having visions of a cold, crumbly mess, which would not be good.

UPDATE!
No cold crumbly mess in sight. This means you can even forgo the egg mixed into the risotto (which I did) and it'll still hold up just fine. I fried these bad boys up - golf ball to racquetball sized and they flew off the plate. The deep fried testicles (olives) not so much.
This is an ooey gooey mess, so be prepared for it, or watch Alton Brown and let him learn ya some battering tips. Start watching around 9:10 for the part I'm talking about.

TasteBook

Screw FaceBook - who cares what the kids are up to today?! It'll be at least another month before I cave and open and account, and I've been resisting for well over a year ( * pats self on back *). I caved immediately upon discovering TasteBook however. Wait - not true. I found it once, thought "Wow, what a great idea, I need to do this," and then promptly forgot the name. Food Network (bless its heart) reminded me the other day when I seriously thought I heard them say they had a new FaceBook application. "What is the world coming to?!" I moaned. "Is EVERYTHING going to have a FaceBook app?!" Then I realized the announcer said TASTEBook.
Oh.
Never a fool twice (okay, rarely) I went straight to the site and signed up. I've already created four books, although none have any recipes yet. I'm just not sure where to start and haven't had the time to play with it any further than picking out the pretty pictures that will be the covers of these amazing books. There are so many recipes in the world! This could either take forever, as I slowly select only the best, tried and true recipes; or I could do it in a day - plunking in every recipe sitting in my kitchen, even though I haven't attempted most of them. I'm even doing a See Jen Eat one, so that once I'm famous on the interwebs I can sell them for a ridiculously high profit. I'm sure you'll all want one. I have one for entertaining, one for family recipes (I've got Big! Plans! for that one), and one for healthy eats.
The upside is you can put all your recipes in, label them, they get filed under their own little tabs et voila. Instant organization. The part that bothers the cheap bastard in me is having to pay for the recipes from their partner, Epicurious. I got a lot of recipes from there and their affiliated sites. And they're free. Now I need to pay 50 cents for the convenience of selecting them from a list to put into my book? I can save myself that 50 cents and copy and paste! I am totally admitting that my time is worth less than 50 cents. But really - that could add up. The books can have up to 100 recipes in them!
Other awesome points - the recipes are in a ringed binder that opens so you can take recipes out to read while cooking, take shopping, or add new recipes later as you think of them! I am seriously so excited. If you could see my "recipe collection" right now you'd understand. I have about thirty different systems, none of them working. In fact, the best cookbook I've ever gotten (and the one I use the most) is that old reliable picnic patterened BH&G one (thanks Dad!). I feel like this is the next best thing - still a reference, still easy to use, still a binder, but now it houses all my faves. There is even a notes section where I can suggest a wine pairing or maybe even a story about why this recipe is important to me. Love it.
A 25 recipe book is only $20, 50 recipe book is $30, and 100 recipe book is $34.95. If you opt to purchase one of the smaller books, it's 50 cents per recipe later - then they're printed out and delivered to you to pop into your book.
Now if only I could remember then name of the company that allows you to send all of your handwritten recipes and scraps of paper in and they compile a book for you that way.