Boxing Day Dinner

The beginning of any good meal starts with the making of croissants.

Because there were only four of us, we decided to make just a turkey roulade - recipe by Ina Garten.  She's awesome.  I have every single one of her cookbooks!

Cooked and yummy!

The roulade is stuffed with a fig and cranberry stuffing - it's delicious!

All pretty on the plate!

I totally forgot to buy green beans!  I had tomatoes and mushrooms in the fridge, so I did roasted tomato gratin stuffed with sauteed mushrooms, shallots and herbs de provence.  Not, bad.  Actually, I think they were the best part of the meal :)

Baked a turkey thigh for my Dad because he doesn't like turkey breast.

Boxing Day Dinner!  Hooray!  and Delicious!

Tonight For Dinner...

Tonight for dinner, I decided to use up some stuff I had in the freezer and fridge.  I also, picked up some stuff from the ward thingy.  I actually tried jicama for the first time today - it's alright.  I don't think I would ever crave it though.

 So, here's my leftover whatever is in the fridge and freezer meal.  In the left corner is one of those cool round zucchinis stuffed with chicken stuffing and sauteed portobello mushroom. 

Chicken wrapped in phyllo dough leftover from a berry tart I made yesterday.  There is a layer of some more sauteed portobello mushrooms with creme fraiche between the phyllo and chicken. Homemade mashed potatoes (before the potatoes go bad) with yummy homemade gravy just from a leftover half can of chicken stock with shallots and thyme, salt and pepper and a little bit of cream to smooth it out.

The carrots were YUMMY!  They are orange glazed carrots, because I have a little leftover orange juice and wanted the container out of the fridge and into the trash.  Just sauteed the carrots with butter, salt and pepper, then poured in the orange juice and let it reduce to a glaze.  It was a delicious meal for a bunch of leftover, get rid of this and that type of meal.

Halloween Rice Krispie Sushi

So, hilarious.  I don't dress up for Halloween, traumatic experience as a child...so I decided to dress up my rice krispie treats for Halloween.  Basically it's rice krispies, used as the "rice" in a fruit roll up with different colored twizzlers. I have no idea how they tasted, but it couldn't have been good.  I got the idea from a Martha Stewart magazine I think...could have been Country Woman.  And the "soy sauce" is chocolate sauce.  Hilarious!

Croissant French Toast

So, a while back, maybe in 2003 or 2004 Paul wanted French toast and I didn't have any bread except some leftover croissants - I thought, why not?  So I did :)

 It's not too difficult.  Slice the croissant where the tips come together all the way to the back but not through, like a hot dog bun :)  Make your basic custard to dip the croissant into.  I use eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, pinch of Kosher salt and cinnamon as an after thought. Open croissant up and dip both sides in custard then griddle on both sides. Fold back together again and then you can put whatever you want in the middle like stuffed french toast.

We used fruit, homemade syrup and a cream cheese filling.  For the cream cheese filling, I used: 8 oz cream cheese way softened, 6 oz creme fraiche, 1/4 cup sugar and a touch of vanilla and pinch of salt.  Mix up.  Yum!

Paul's Happy Birthday Dinner....Happy Birthday Paul!

I love watching cooking shows, although I don't do it so often.  I'm into this show on the Cooking Channel, French Food at Home with Laura Calder.  I was watching and Paul was fiddling with one of his laptops.  Laura made a Boeuf en Croute.  He stopped fiddling and said, "That's what I want for my birthday dinner."  This was Friday night, I shrugged and thought, yeah I can do that, simple.

 So, we picked up a tenderloin roast.

 Gotta salt, pepper and brown it.  Cover with foil and cool way down.

 Then in the same pan used for the browning of the tenderloin, saute shallot and cremini mushrooms, with thyme and a bay leaf.  I didn't have a shallot, which for the life of me, have no idea where they went, because I'm sure I have some, someplace.  They're probably in the pantry with a bag of chips or something.  Anyways, I used leeks instead.

 Finish off the mushrooms with 1/2 cup of beef broth, Italian parsley and creme fraiche. Put into a bowl and stick in the freezer for a little bit, until it's cool.  You have to put it on phyllo dough, so everything should be coldish.

 Lay out the bed of mushrooms and place the beef on top of it, then another sheet of phyllo dough.

 Brush all over with one egg yolk and press edges together with a fork or whatever, just make it look pretty.

 Bake in oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  While baking, start your sides.  I did a reduction of beef and chicken broth with thyme, bay leaf and leeks - then strained.  Herb new potatoes. Sauteed asparagus over high heat, seasoned with salt and pepper with white truffle oil.  And kale with bacon and onions.

 Plate and serve!  Then have the birthday boy do the clean up :)

Chicken Piccata....Caroline Style....

I love different types of lemon chicken - this one came out of a Barefoot Contessa cookbook by Ina Garten.  You brown the chicken then finish the cooking in the oven while you make the sauce.

 The sauce is just your basic reduction of lemon juice and chicken stock, salt and pepper.  You don't need a lot of sauce because the lemon is so strong.  Paul and I decided that we like it sweet, so I added an equal amount of sugar as the lemon juice...much better.

 As a side I used vermicelli with just a touch of white truffle oil and finished with Italian parsley and thinly sliced lemon.

Guava Cake

A few weeks ago I found out about a bakery in San Jose called Aki's Bakery.  They are sort of a Hawaii type bakery that has all the cakes we used to eat in Hawaii.  Guava, Passion Fruit, Dobash, Mango...etc, etc, etc.  YUM!!!

 We looked the place up on yelp.com and found out that you gotta get there early or all the good stuff is gone.  Just like in Hawaii!  We got up at 6:30am and were on their doorstep by 7am.

 We served the cake at our BYU football game party.  It was so delicious!

Pasta con sugo allo Zafferano

Brother Keeley gave us some tomatoes from his garden and I needed to do something with them.  I wanted it to be creative and I needed to do something with the saffron left over from the chicken bouillabaisse.  So I made up a recipe.  Yum!  The sauce is so rich and flavorful.  Anyways...

If you have fresh tomatoes, parboil for 10 to 20 seconds to easily skin and then seed, chop up and toss in with some sauteed shallots and mushrooms and garlic.  Push to the sides to let the water from the tomatoes easily move to the center and reduce.  Toss in your favorite fresh herbs...I have Italian parsley, basil and rosemary in here.  I took out half of this and saved it for another day.  You don't need more than a cup of marinara for this.  Do not use tomato sauce.  If using canned whole or chopped tomatoes - drain first.

Make the saffron cream - 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and a pinch or two of saffron bring to boil, then simmer until reduced by half - put through sieve.

Mix it altogether and add 1/2 cup each of Parmesan Reggiano and Pecorino Romano or 1 cup of one of them, grated.

Add your cooked pasta - looking back on it, because the sauce was so rich, I think I would go with a tagliatelle or pappardelle pasta instead of the ravioli.

You'd think that the fresh basil and tomato would take over the flavor of the saffron - not in a million years.  Saffron is delicate but has an intense flavor to go with the intense color.

Anything you can do, I can do better!

Anything you can do, I can do better.  Anything you can do, I can do better than you!  LOL!  So, I went to my Pacesetter's Luncheon, and we had a yummy lunch.  Anytime I have a yummy lunch I always look at it and try to figure out how to make it.

So, that's just what I did.  While out on my hunt for the best May strawberries I found some leeks and fresh looking oyster mushrooms. Have you ever seen better looking leeks?  Look at all that white stem!

This dish also made me move out of my comfort zone to make buerre blanc.  Butter whipped into submission with shallots etc.  So, my buerre blanc which was colored with the slight pink of the shallots on the bottom.  Then chicken breast stuffed with leeks, mushrooms and in this case Parmesan cheese (because that's what I had), rolled in bread crumbs and baked for an hour. I finished it off with mashed potatoes and freshly cut chives.  It was delicious.  It's a recipe to remember - that's for sure!

Strawberry Jam!!!

Well, I hit some of the Farmer's Markets in the Bay Area to find the best strawberries.  I think we found them and that only means one thing to me....It's jam time!

 

It doesn't take to long to make the Fresh Frozen Strawberry Jam - I think from start to finish it took an hour.

And then you end up with containers filled with deeply jeweled ruby deliciousness.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!  It's been a great day here in the Seguritan home!  Here's the story :)  Paul was supposed to make me breakfast this morning, steak and eggs.  But last night I had this dream - it was a dream about a hash brown omelet, lol! So we decided to split the jobs.

*Side note - a while back Paul said something to me that has stuck with me forever (at least 2 months - and that feels like forever :)).  He said, "Caroline" it's rare that he actually says my name it's how I know he's serious, anyways, "Caroline, you need to stop living in theory and start living in reality."  So, since I dreamed this "recipe" I had to put it into reality. Although, this is not what he was talking about.

So, the first mistake I made led to a frittata. LOL!  Next time I try this out (next Saturday) I will cook the eggs separately.

I had to flip this behemoth, luckily I'm relatively good at this.  Then I added the cheese, sauteed mushrooms and onions and bell peppers.  I didn't have any tomatoes - which by the way, if anyone is growing any and needs to rid of them - please let me know, I'll take them off your hands - especially if they're heirloom :)

So, this is what they ended up as.  Next time I will cook the eggs separately and slide them gently over the crisply browned hash browns, then the cheese and other fillings and I prefer the French three fold to the American half fold.  Anyways, it was still a great breakfast, it just wasn't what I had dreamed of. (That's what Paul had meant about reality - enjoying life even though it doesn't live up to my theories).

My Week & Chicken Bouillabaisse

Hi all!  Well this week has been a pretty tough one.  I severely hurt my back and have been under house arrest by my body for the past week.  Paul had to stay home also with me.  For the first couple of days I couldn't get up, walk and other things without him.  Luckily he helped me find an awesome chiropractor and now I've come down from a 10 on the pain scale to a 4 on the pain scale.  I still can't sit for more than a couple of minutes, but I'm on my way to recovery!

I do thank Paul for all his help.  Seriously, he is an amazing, caring and patient husband.  Thanks for staying home with me to help me through everything!  I love you!

Anyways as you can imagine I've had lots of time to stand and read while Paul worked from home.  What do I like to read?  Cookbooks!  I found a recipe for chicken bouillabaisse and today I was well enough to try it out.  Paul got the shopping done for me yesterday.  The shopping included Saffron!  I have never used saffron, it's so expensive and I just never had recipes which called for it...however $16 and 1 oz later....tah dah!

So it started with cutting up a nice little whole chicken.  It had been so long since I've done it.  It took me 5 whole minutes!  Salt, pepper and fresh rosemary.

On to browning!

Next I needed to add my whole garlic, saffron, salt and pepper and a little more rosemary.

De-glaze with chicken stock (recipe called for a dry white wine and pernot - however I don't cook with alcohol - so yep).  Then add a can of tomato puree.  Couldn't find tomato puree, so we went with crushed tomatoes in tomato puree :) Simmered for 45 minutes on the stove top.  Pureed everything in a blender, poured back into pan then added the chicken and a few Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced.

Brought everything to a boil, covered and stuck it in the oven for 1 1/2 hours.  The recipe said 45 minutes at 300 degrees, but I'm guessing they had a convection oven - because I did mine for that long, then hiked up the oven to 375 degrees for another 45 minutes and the 1/4 inch sliced potatoes were finally cooked al dente.

Anyways I served it with rice and it was yum!

I'm going back to  work tomorrow...wish me luck and let's hope that I can sit down for more than 3 minutes at a time!  Love to all!