Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Pancakes

I love pancakes, but the mister is a pancake purist.  When he sees me pull more than one bowl out of the cupboard and move the box of Bisquick aside in favor of a variety of ingredients, he starts to panic.  I assured him this morning that plain pancakes would be his if he just indulged me momentarily while I tried a revised version of a recipe that I spotted in the December issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine.  He eyeballed the ingredients, shrugged and said that he’d try what I was having.  As it turned out, he was very glad he did.

The December issue of Rachael’s magazine featured a rather unique variety of pancakes.  Trying to get more whole grains into my diet, the oatmeal pancake caught my eye.  It was an altered version of the recipe in the magazine for “Classic Pancakes” (pictured below), that I further altered with excellent results.

Their recipe, simply called Oatmeal Raisin pancakes (also pictured below), I turned into Oatmeal Raisin Cookie pancakes, by adding a sprinkling of chopped pecans and a pinch of cinnamon (two ingredients that are musts in my oatmeal cookies).  These two ingredients made all the difference.

  

They really did taste like oatmeal raisin cookies.  Your kids (if not your husband) will love them!

Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes, St. Louis Style

That's one of my Homemade Dill Pickles on the side.  Yummy!

If you've read this blog with any regularity then you know that one of my favorite foods is the cheeseburger.  Yes, I do love lobster, shrimp, scallops, and steak, and all sorts of wondrous, time-consuming meals, but when push comes to shove, a cheeseburger is my go-to meal.  I always find the sign of a good restaurant is one that knows how to make a truly good burger.  Juicy, perfectly seasoned and cooked, that tastes like steak, is served on toasted buns and uses REAL cheese (cheese food does have its place, in queso, say, but NOT on a burger).

 

I also have a bit of a fondness for sloppy joes, something I've enjoyed since my Nancy Drew-reading youth.  This recipe combines the yumminess of a sloppy joe, with the deliciousness of a Philly cheese steak, made even better by a dash of St. Louis style in the use of Provel Cheese (rather than the traditional and readily available Provolone).

 

Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes, St. Louis Style

1 lb. ground chuck

1 onion, chopped
1/4 c. A-1 steak sauce
1 c. beef stock (Made with LB Jamison Soup Base)
1/2 green pepper, seeded and diced
1 8-ounce package button mushrooms, sliced
Provel Cheese, sliced (or in ropes), Provolone works if you’re not in St. Louis

Steak Seasoning mixture, to taste

Pinch of dried oregano

Pinch of garlic powder

Kaiser Rolls

Preheat broiler.  In large skillet over medium-high heat, brown the ground chuck, breaking it up as you cook, about 8 minutes. Add the onion, green pepper, and mushrooms, and cook until softened, about 5-7 minutes. Stir in the steak sauce, beef stock, steak seasoning, oregano and garlic powder, and bring to a simmer.  Cook until most of the moisture has absorbed.  Taste, and season with salt and pepper, if necessary. 

Split open rolls and toast under broiler. Place a scoopful of the meat on the bottom half of the roll, top immediately wth cheese, allow it to melt down into the meat mixture and then drizzle with additional steak sauce, if desired. Put top half on roll in place, serve with a dill pickle spear.

This post is linked to:

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Tasty Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday

& Foodie Friday

Fortune Cookies

I’m still in the recovery stage from last month’s holiday when another is in the offing.  No, I’m not talking St. Valentine’s Day -- I haven’t even begun to think about that -- I’m talking Chinese New Year.  Don’t celebrate?  Well, honestly, neither do I, but I’m all for any excuse to eat Chinese food, even when it’s more American than Chinese.

I’m talking about the dessert aspect of the meal, specifically the fortune cookie.  I turned to Martha Stewart for this recipe featured in Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share (Martha Stewart Living Magazine).

If you have this book (and if you don’t, buy it!), a word of warning about the recipe -- the taste was wonderful (even though I used light instead of heavy cream), and the batter is very easy to work with, BUT the directions were not good at all.

Martha suggests folding the cookie in half, pinching it closed, and then putting your two index fingers into either end and sliding your thumbs toward the middle. What?!  No! That is a lot of work for nothing, and time is of the essence here, you only have 10 seconds before the cookie hardens. The best way to make a fortune cookie is to indeed fold it in half, but then just bend it over a glass. You can see how beautifully mine came out in doing so.

Also, she suggested greasing a cookie sheet. Again, no. Use a Silpat Non-Stick Silicone Baking Liner, 11.75-Inch by 8.25-Inch, it is much easier to get the cookie off of it than a greased sheet. I tried the greased sheet, parchment paper, and a Silpat, and the later worked the best, the parchment second best, and the greased sheet not well at all.

She also doesn't mention something that will definitely determine a pretty cookie and that is that when you take the cookie off of the sheet and put it onto your clean kitchen towel, flip it over. With her instructions, the rough bottom of the cookie becomes the exterior; with my suggestion the smooth side becomes the exterior.

The cooking time is also wrong. Her suggestion of 8 minutes (turning the pan at four) yields a dark, overdone cookie.  I found that 6 minutes worked out perfectly. You need to test this with your own oven, but this worked best for me.

Making these small changes will help in making these fun cookies. It takes practice, so plan on trashing the first three or so, but after that you'll be a whiz, will have fun doing it, and will dazzle your friends!

Awk! The first one.  Obviously something went SERIOUSLY wrong.

My second try.  Not as horribly awful as the first one, but still not what it should be.

Martha's recipe.

This post is linked to:

Seasonal Sunday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Tasty Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday

& Foodie Friday

Shrimp Alla Crema

Sometimes it takes us a long time to try new recipes.  Sometimes a realllly long time.  Such was the case with this delicious, surprisingly easy, great for weeknight/perfect for company dish.  We have something we call an “agenda book.”  Essentially it’s a rather ratty three-ring binder that holds photocopies of recipes, divided by category, that we someday hope to try.  Since our everyday cookbook (also ratty, also three-ring – can you say “classy?”) is so full of recipes that we love and are tried and true, it’s not often that I ever reach for the agenda book.  Today I had a craving for shrimp, and was looking for a new way to prepare it when I found this faded recipe, placed in our book nearly six and a half years ago.  “Why did we wait?” I asked my husband, my mouth full of succulent delicious shrimp, “This recipe is amazing.”  Truly, it is.  But then why shouldn’t it be?  It’s from a restaurant that has been known to provide one delicious dish after another, some of which I’ve posted previously on this blog.  Originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, July 6, 2005 (See here), I cut it in half to serve two.  Give it a try; don’t wait six and a half years like I did.

Shrimp Alla Crema

Roberto's Trattoria

20 colossal shrimp (8 to 12 per pound), cleaned and deveined

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons butter, divided

2 cups mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

1/4 cup brandy

2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 pounds baby spinach

1 tablespoon minced garlic (about 2 cloves)

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided

Dust shrimp lightly with flour. Combine 2 tablespoons oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet. Place over medium-high heat. When butter melts, add shrimp; cook 1 minute per side. Remove shrimp from the skillet; set aside.

Add mushrooms to the skillet; sauté until they release their liquid, about 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat, add brandy, then return the skillet to the heat. Sauté for 1 minute. Add cream and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until the sauce has reduced by half.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil and the remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a large frying pan or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add spinach; sauté until limp, about 4 to 5 minutes, adding the garlic during the last minute of cooking.

Just before serving, add shrimp to sauce; as soon as shrimp are warm, remove from heat.

Divide the spinach among four plates; top each with about 1/2 cup sauce, 5 shrimp and 2 tablespoons Parmesan. 

Yield: 4 servings.

 This post is linked to:

Foodie Friday

Rosette Napkin Fold

As I mentioned in this blog post, the Holiday Home Tour came upon me before I was quite ready, and I forgot to put napkins on the table.  I was eager to try the rosette napkin fold that I saw on Yvonne’s Stone Gable blog (now, sadly, no longer being written, but still available online for viewing).  For our Boxing Day dinner, I did manage to add the napkins, and not only did they draw raves, but this is the easiest napkin fold ever! I knocked out ten of them in about 15 minutes, and the beauty of this particular fold is that the napkins don’t need to be ironed beforehand.

  Yvonne provided a wonderful tutorial, so have a look.  I can see how this fold would work for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter (think of the gorgeous pastels), or any type of spring luncheon. 

This post is linked to:

Tablescape Thursday
Seasonal Sunday

Tabletop Tuesday

Wrapping Presents

Like me, you’re probably all busily wrapping presents.  Hopefully, unlike me, you don’t feel yourself at the beginning of a cold, or (gasp) the flu.  At any rate, I’m not cooking much this week, but wrapping presents, so today I’m going to provide you with a holiday rerun in this post about wrapping pretty gifts the easy and inexpensive way. Press on everyone!  You’re going to make it!

A wrapped gift employing the use of florals, a glue gun, and a recycled bow.

 

I made quite a score at Michael's the other day when they put their florals on sale for half off and THEN had a coupon to get an additional 15% off of an entire order including sale items.  Can you say, giddy with excitement?

Just a fraction of the items I got ON SALE at Michael's.

Looking at all of the beautiful winter flowers and greenery gave me an idea (helped, no doubt, by being stuck in a long and slow-moving line next to a rack of glue guns).  Why not skip the ribbons and bows on wrapped packages this year in favor of flowers and greenery? And wouldn't using a glue gun be so much faster?

Do you know what? It is!  And not only faster, but the packages are prettier and it looks like you've spent hours on them when essentially you've just spent minutes (plus the time it takes to you  heat up the glue gun and try to remember where you put the wire cutters).

In order to expedite things, it helps to snip all of the leaves and flowers from their stems using wire cutters, or a sharp and powerful pair of kitchen shears (The kind that cuts through a chicken carcass with ease works particularly well.).  Discard the stems, and divide into "leaf" piles and "flower" piles, then sort by color.

Warm up your glue gun while wrapping gifts so you'll be ready.  Then, assembly-line style, hot glue flowers securely in place with dabs of glue in the center and on about half of the outside petals.  Then put a dot of glue underneath the base of the leaves and place them where desired beneath the flower, pressing down until the glue takes hold. Voila!  A beautifully-wrapped, professional-looking package in no time and on a budget.

I used a bit of sparkly gold curling ribbon on this package to bring out the gold on the flower.

After a while you'll develop both a rhythm and a real eye for design.  If you need some inspiration, I recommend Carolyne Roehm's book, Presentations: A Passion for Gift Wrapping.

Cranberry-Pineapple Sauce

Cranberries, I think, are highly underrated.  They tend to only show up on the Thanksgiving table and then are relegated to the back of the fridge until the following Thanksgiving when they are tossed out and replaced with new.  Sure there is the juice, and oh yes, the dried cranberries are very popular, but I’m talking cranberry sauce here.  Something that is most unappreciated.

Delicious and so beneficial to your health, did you know studies have shown that consumption of berries have potential health benefits against cancer, aging and neurological diseases, inflammation, diabetes, and bacterial infections?  Or that the juice can protect against E.coli?  The berries also are known to prevent tooth surface plaque, and are a good source of many vitamins like vitamin C, vitamin A, ß-carotene, and minerals like potassium, and manganese.

Now, throw pineapple into the mix with its anti-inflammatory, anti-clotting and anti-cancer properties. Not to mention Vitamin A, C, the B-complex group, and collagen -- yes, ladies, COLLAGEN! -- and you have one heck of a healthy snack!

This recipe for Cranberry Pineapple relish came from a flyer from one of the local markets.  We made it on a whim this year and it won hands down over the other two varieties (one a 12-year staple) we served at the Thanksgiving dinner.  Think of it as not only a side for turkey, but for chicken, pork and ham as well.  Blend it slightly and use it to glaze the holiday ham, stir it into your morning oatmeal, or make a delicious parfait by layering it with plain or vanilla yogurt.  As for me, I can just eat it with a spoon, it is that good.

To your health!

Aren't the jewel-tone colors of these fruits just fabulous?

Cranberry-Pineapple Sauce

1 fresh,whole, cored pineapple

1 bag (12 oz). fresh cranberries

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup dark rum, optional

1/4 tsp. salt

Cut pineapple into 1/2" pieces.  Place pineapple, cranberries, brown sugar, water, rum (is using), and salt into a medium saucepan; heat to boiling over high heat, stirring occasionally.  Boil 4 to 5 minutes or until most cranberries have burst, stirring occasionally.  Transfer cranberry sauce to bowl cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours or up to 1 week.

Copyright 2011 ShoptoCook Inc, NY via Schnucks Markets, St. Louis, MO

This post is linked to:

Seasonal Sunday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Tasty Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday

& Foodie Friday