Creamed Spinach

I went to a dirty Santa party. I brought creamed spinach.

Creamed Spinach, adapted from the Barefoot Contessa
INGREDIENTS
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
4 cups chopped yellow onions (2 large)
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
3 cups half and half
3 pounds frozen chopped spinach, defrosted (5 10-ounce) packages)
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese

METHOD
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until translucent, about 15 minutes. Add the flour and nutmeg and cook, stirring, for 2 more minutes. Add the cream and milk and cook until thickened. Squeeze as much liquid as possible from the spinach and add the spinach to the sauce. Add 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese and mix well. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Transfer the spinach to a baking dish and sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan and the Gruyere on top. Bake for 45 minutes until hot and bubbly. Serve hot.

Monday Night Dinner

Kale, baked potato, acorn squash and a marinated pork tenderloin.

Butter and Light Butter

This is light butter's ingredient list:
Butter (cream, salt), water, modified tapoica starch, salt, vegetable mono- and diglicerides, lactic acid, potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate, pgpr, xanthan gum, natual flavor, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene.

Also it mentions all the ingredients in the list except the first one are not in regular butter.





This is the ingredient list in real butter:
Cream, Salt

So which one would you eat?

Menu For Hope

Menu for Hope


So if you have a foodie love: Menu for Hope has it for you. The great Pim has started a great project for those interested. It is a raffle with all sorts of fancy goodies from the world of food blogger.

I am all over the Sous Vide that Jaden has.

Dry Aging Meat

So I have mentioned a few times about how we dry age a standing rib roast. This is how we do it:

1) Wait for a standing rib roast to go on sale.



2) Unwrap it and put it on a rack


3) Stick it in the fridge and forget it.

That is it!

We do have a small dorm fridge (leftover from college days) we specifically use to dry age meat.

This is the roast we intend to eat for Christmas.

GO MEAT

So I was invited to meet chef Delilah Winder on behalf of Hillshire Farms. There was also a free lunch. Free food made me come. Delilah Winder is famouse for her mac and cheese. It has seven cheeses.


Here are three of them.

It was tasty. Hillshire Farms is promoting the Go Meat Mama's Kithcen program. Also, Delilah was here to cook for Nicholas House which is a charity I was unaware of but found to be a great cause.

Delilah was very nice and cheerful. Thanks for the invite Dre!

I was not paid for this post but I did get a lunch and a tee shirt.

Knife Sharpening

We got some wonderful knives when we got married FIVE years ago. It was time to get them sharpened.



It is such a satisfying sound to hear a knife sharpened.

Bakepaloozah 2009 ALL DONE

The end result

Bakepaloozah 2009 Part Three: Toffee

I do not own a candy thermometer. I should, but I don't. Yet I can make this toffee:


quite easily. I was afraid of candy making and hard crack or soft crack or whatever. But I can do this and so should you!

Toffee
1 stick of butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Before you start, line a cookie sheet with foil and brush lightly with melted butter.

Take the butter and sugar and melt it in a pot. Stir it until it makes a syrup. Keep stirring it until there are wisps of smoke coming out. This takes about seven minutes. You can tell it is ready by the wisps of smoke and it will get a shade darker.

Pour immediately onto the greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle the chocolate over it and cover with an inverted cookie sheet to keep the heat in. This stuff is HOT so I do not recommend doing this around children. Even though children want to flock around because you are making candy. When the choclate chips get shiny, spread them to make a smooth layer of chocolate. Sprinkle on the almonds and press down slightly so that they stick.

Let cool completely and break into yummy chunks.

Note: you can double this recipe but it seems to add two more minutes for the stirring.

Bakepaloozah 2009 Part Two: Gingersnaps

Gingersnaps are my favorite non chocolate cookie to make. It makes the whole house smell AMAZING. Also, it is an old school cookie. It is very yummy with a nice slice of triple creme cheese.



Gingersnaps

3/4 cup shortening (I know shortening but I have made it with butter and I LIKE THE SHORTENING ONES BETTER!)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses

2 1/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 Tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 Tablespoon ground cinnnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Sugar
Candied Ginger

Cream the first two ingredients until fluffy. Add the next two. It should still be fluffy.

In another bowl, sift the next six ingredients. Add the dry stuff to the fluffy stuff.

Roll into little balls, about the size of a big marble or a dice. Dip one side in sugar. Put a sliver a candied ginger in the middle.

Bake at 375 about ten minutes.

Makes about four dozen.

Bakepaloozah 2009 Part One: Spiced Nuts

So every year, I make a baked tin of goodies. I thought I would share with the internet what I do. Not to show off, but to show you internet that it does not take superhuman effort to make a nice baked tin of goodies. I start with a recipe that is, ironically, not a baked good. It is spiced nuts.



These are very easy to make. As in I made four batches of this (16 cups of spiced nuts) in 45 minutes.

Spiced Nuts

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 cups unsalted mixed nuts (I use pecans, almonds and walnuts)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Mix spices and reserve. Heat the nuts in a dry skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until they begin to toast, about 4 minutes. Add the butter and cook, stirring, until the nuts begin to darken, about 1 minute. Add the spices, the sugar, 1 tablespoon water, and the salt and cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens and the nuts are glazed, about 5 minutes. (Your house will smell AMAZING!)

Remove the nuts from the heat and transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, separating them with a fork. Let the nuts stand until cooled and the sugar has hardened, about 10 minutes. Store in an airtight container.

Dumplings

I love dumplings. Yohboh, who is so sweet, bought me a book on dumplings. So we had frozen dumplings:


I think I want to do a dumpling party. Interested?

Melding of junkfood

This is a burrito. What kind of burrito you ask?


A steak and cheese burrito. So that is TWO kinds of junk food in ONE!

Bar

If I was going to have a bar, I would name it The Volstead Act, because that is what drinking is all about. Ban it, and they will drink.

That is a really big Korean pear

My mother is an amazing purveyor of fruit:


She got us 5 kilos of pears. Or six pears.