Cinnamon Cider Swirl Bread

When I was growing up, my parents would take me into the Pat-A-Cake Bakery in our hometown. We went to church with the owners, Dean and Jolene, and they made the most amazing breads and desserts. It was always an occasion to go in and look at all the treats behind the glass. They would let me hang out in the back and I was always mesmerized watching Dean make bread. These huge bags of flour being poured into the big mixer, turned out and kneaded, racks of risen loaves put into the rotating oven. I loved that bakery and, to this day, I find myself wishing I could bake bread the way Dean did, every loaf so delicious and perfect.

Since I am a woman in my own kitchen these days, from time to time I try my hand at baking different kinds of breads. I could never match the level of production that the bakery did; I make mine one golden loaf at a time. But I am always trying to think of ways to liven up the dough and bring something new and fragrant out of my oven. I had some leftover raisins in my cupboard and had just picked up some cinnamon, so I thought a swirl bread might be in order. And then I remembered the cider in my fridge, and I had a bit of inspiration. Cinnamon Cider Swirl Bread was born.

To make this bread, get these ingredients together:

1 active dry yeast package
1 Tbs. shortening or vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup and 1 1/2 Tbs. sugar
1 Tsp. salt
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup and 2 Tbs. hard apple cider
1/4 cup and 2 Tbs. cinnamon

Not pictured:
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup warm water
1/2 cup milk

To make this bread, I played around with a basic bread recipe. Here is the link to the original recipe:
http://breadbaking.about.com/od/yeastbreads/r/1loafbread.htm

The recipe is attributed to Elizabeth Yetter and I suggest checking out her other articles on About.com. She has a lot of good advice and recipes.

Start off dissolving your yeast in the warm water. Once it is fully dissolved, toss in your shortening/oil, milk, 2 Tbs. cider, 2 Tbs. cinnamon, 1 1/2 Tbs. sugar, and salt. Stir it up and begin adding your first two cups of flour. Once the two cups have been mixed in, add your third cup by the tablespoon. Keep adding flour until the mixture is no longer wet and as the original recipe states, "chases the spoon around the bowl." This is not an exact science and it depends heavily on paying attention to what you are doing. You may use a little more or less than three cups, that's OK. The most important part is achieving the right consistency.

Turn your flour out onto a lightly floured surface and knead your dough. Feel free to toss in some extra pinches of flour if you feel like it needs it. Swipe a bowl with some butter and put your dough in it, letting it sit covered for an hour.

While it rises, get your raisins and cinnamon swirl mix ready.

In a small plastic container (with a lid), combine 1 cup of cider and 1/2 cup of raisins. Cover and let sit until you are ready to roll into the bread.

If you don't want to use hard cider, non-alcoholic cider is fine. But if you want to booze it up, I used Hornsby's:

In a separate bowl, cream together your cup of sugar, 1/4 cup cinnamon, and 1/4 stick butter. Creamed, it should look like this:

After an hour has passed, heat the oven to 375 degrees and punch your dough down (a good solid fist to the middle of the dough followed by punches to the dough on the sides of the bowl until it rolls easily out of the bowl) and knead on a floured surface. Instead of making a loaf at this point, roll it out to 1/2 inch thinkness. Spread your creamed cinnamon sugar mix on the dough. Drain the cider from your raisins, and spread them evenly over the top of the creamed mix.

Roll the dough tightly from one end to the other and tuck the ends under the loaf. Place in a buttered loaf pan. Pop in the oven for 45 minutes.

And now for the "Peggy Makes A Mistake" portion of this blog. I cannot stress enough to you the importance of place a baking sheet below the loaf pan. The creamed mix can bubble up and spill a bit over the sides...causing a fire in the bottom of your oven like it did in mine. Oops! It went out on its own, but I had my fire extinguisher on standby in case it didn't. Scariest moment in my kitchen to date. But the bread came out beautifully!

I would love to show you a picture of the inside of this loaf, but my computer hated the picture I took, said it was corrupted, and cut it in half. Very extra lame, but I am praying you take my word for how amazing it looked, full of plump raisins swirling in sugar and cinnamon. This recipe begs to be made over and over, and I hope that it finds a place in your recipe book. Until next time, eat well and invest in a fire extinguisher, friends!

Lazy Spaghetti 'N Sprouts

Happy April, everyone! This is one of my favorite months of the year. Some days are hot, others are cool, and the thunderstorms are sporadic. My wildflowers are coming along nicely; a lush bed of little green sprouts at this point. I find myself wanting to cook things that are either really comforting or really fresh, so it is a really good time to eat at my house!

A week ago or so, my best friend, Jenny, texted me asking for a dinner idea that was fast and yummy. My mind immediately went to lazy spaghetti. An incredibly fast meal, this pasta dish takes advantage of egg noodles and cream cheese. It has got comfort totally covered.

I get another text about a half hour later, this time asking what I would do with Brussels sprouts. When I was a kid, I was all about fresh, green vegetables. Very strange, I know. Brussels sprouts were my favorite of the green variety because they were tiny versions of cabbage. I don't know how to explain this very well, but as a little girl, I liked anything that was a miniature. An object's size was inversely proportional to its cuteness, in my mind. Tiny cabbage=exponential adorability. As a child, I usually ate them boiled with a bit of salt. Now my favorite method is sauteed in a skillet with olive oil and garlic and shallots if I have them on hand.

Yes, garlic and shallots. I am having a love affair with the Genus Allium and I make no apologies.

After these texts, I couldn't get the idea of lazy spaghetti and Brussels sprouts out of my head, so I made a quick run to the store and made a date with my kitchen!

For lazy spaghetti, these are your ingredients:

1 jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce
1 lb. ground chuck
1 half bar cream cheese
1 bag egg noodles

Now, I know that isn't a jar of spaghetti in the picture. It is totally plain tomato paste and sauce. That is because I personally do not eat store bought sauce. I am not being elitist when I say that, I just really cannot stand dehydrated onions and I haven't ever found a ready made sauce that doesn't include them. Some brands have excellent flavor, but those onions are a deal breaker for me. I make my own sauce at home, so I included the tomato bases I use in the picture. I promise to do a post on my sauce at a later date, but for now, just use whatever sauce you like best!

Before I tell you how to throw this together, I want to give credit to the person who introduced me to it. There is this very sexy, sultry, A&M Texas mama named Eva Mikeska who is a great friend of mine from when I lived in Texas, myself. I was at her house one night, and she threw this together while carrying on a conversation with me and taking care of her young son. I have made a lot of other pasta dishes, but I had never tried cream cheese in the sauce and egg noodles instead of the traditional spaghetti pasta. It was delicious and I was over the moon with seconds and thirds. I never got her exact measurements, but I just put in the amount that tasted good to me. I always send her good vibes whenever I eat this because it is just so tasty and satisfying!

Ready for the easiest cooking directions of your life? OK.

Brown your ground chuck.
Heat your sauce and add the meat.
Boil and drain your egg noodles.
Add your meat sauce and cream cheese to the noodles, like this:

Stir.
Serve.
Eat like a whale.

It is genuinely one of the easiest meals with such a big YUM factor I have ever partaken in making or eating. Please do yourself a favor and make this.

Now, for the Brussels sprouts. I normally have a picture of the ingredients, but I completely forgot to get that done until they were already finished, so I just have a few instructions. If your sprouts are fresh, clean them. If they are frozen, thaw and clean them. Get a tablespoon or two of olive oil heating in your pan. Throw some minced garlic and/or shallots in the oil first, move them around a bit, and then add your sprouts. Stir them from time to time, letting them brown up in places without getting burnt. When they have a good green and caramel color, remove them from the heat and serve.

Together, this is what your plate might look like:

I swear, I am drooling looking at this picture and remembering how good it tasted. I really hope you get a kick out of how quick and delicious this meal is. Let yourself be lazy in the kitchen every once in a while and make a great meal without breaking your back! Have a great weekend, friends, and always eat well!

Hash, Hash, Baby.

I have had a lifelong love affair with the potato. Fried, mashed, baked, twice-baked, au gratin. Shredded, cubed, julienned, chipped. If there is a way to cook a potato, chances are, I will eat it. There is nothing like that starchy high, the comfort of perfectly executed spud heaven. The potato grounds a dish, gives it substance, and acts as a vehicle for other flavors. It is the great unifier in western meals, as rice and pasta are in so many other parts of the world. We love us some potatoes, but we tend to look down on hash. It is often seen as cheap and associated with poverty, but it shouldn't be! It is an amazing way to bring new flavors to your plate, and can really add variety to your dinner menu.

Hash is as fancy as you choose to make it, and there are as many ways to make hash as you can think up. It need not be relegated to being a breakfast dish only, as my face-melting curry hash can attest to. A good potato paired with fresh vegetables and meat and a little invention with the spice rack are the keys to turning a poor man's meal gourmet. I looked through my cupboard and these are the items I started with:

With these few ingredients, you can make:

Chorizo Hash with Roasted Red Peppers and Mushrooms

4 medium potatoes
4 large white mushrooms
3-4 garlic cloves
1 lime
Dried rosemary
Dried thyme
Parsley flakes
5 oz. roasted red peppers
2 Tbs. EVOO
2 large chorizo links

A word about chorizo:

Chorizo is badass tasty. It is spicy and a little greasy but not chewy and grisly. It is good in so many dishes and should be used on a regular basis. It is also usually made out of pork. We don't eat pork in this house because we are Muslim, but I converted, so I had a whole history with tasty swine for most of my life. I had found really good substitutes for bacon and pepperoni and even Italian sweet sausage. But I truly thought that chorizo was lost to me forever. Until I went to, you guessed it, the most badass spectacular gorgeous Mexican grocery store of all time! There it was, two fat, spicy links of tasty goodness labelled, "chorizo pollo". It was one of the best days of my life. I brought it home and got right to making this lovely little hash with it.

Speaking of that hash, start by cleaning, peeling, and chopping up your vegetables. Potatoes should be cubed, garlic minced, mushrooms sliced, and the peppers roughly chopped. Aren't my mushrooms pretty?  

Set your vegetables aside and start warming a large non-stick skillet to mudium-high. Thrown in your chorizo, squeeze half a lime over it, and let it sear a little bit on each side. Remember to turn it and not to leave it in too long; sausage of any kind rarely takes long to cook through. Sometimes, when you buy your sausage handmade and fresh, the tubing or intestines the meat was packed in might split. It may not look pretty, but there is nothing wrong with the sausage. Just roll with it. My chorizo split in a few places, so I took a sharp knife and continued the split down the side of both sausages. I turned the opened side of the sausage down and let it sizzle away. Once you have a little brown on each side, remove your sausage and set aside. With the grease from the sausage still in the pan, add a few dashes each of the rosemary, thyme, and parsley. Add your potatoes, squeeze the other half of your lime, and stir until they are evenly coated with the oil and spices. If the spices char to the bottom of the pan, add about 1/4 cup of water and stir it around. It will pull all of the cooked on flavor from the pan and give your potatoes a beautiful light brown color. After a few minutes of crackling and browning, add your mushrooms, peppers, and garlic. This is what mine looked like:

I just love the way the potatoes look in that picture, like they own the pan! Saute your vegetables until the mushrooms tighten up a bit, and when you are done, spoon them into a butter-lined baking dish. Nestle your chorizo into the hash and bake in a 375 degree oven for a half hour. I like to do this with the hash because I want the sausage and potato flavors to really mix together, so it becomes a more cohesive dish. When the half hour is up, your hash should look something like this:

This is what mine looked like when I plated it up:

Look at the steam rolling off that baby! I have to say, for all the spice of the chorizo, this was definitely a comfort food kind of meal. It was supremely fast and easy to make, and the result was incredibly savory and smooth. The best part was the potatoes, small and soft, full of zesty goodness. They got the attention they deserved, and it really paid off! I hope you love this recipe and make it for yourself and your family soon. Knives down and aprons off! It's time to dig in!

Fajita, Fajata!

There is an amazing restaurant chain I used to frequent when I lived in Texas called Casa Ole. Among other things, they make what I consider to be the best fajitas I have ever had. They come sizzling and popping to your table, the onions soft and sweet, the meat charring on the cast iron platter. I would get a fajita food baby at least twice a month from that place. Amazing.

Since I moved to North Carolina, though, I haven't really found any Tex-Mex restaurants that knock my socks off, and the fajitas I have tried, while good, have missed the mark. When restaurants fail you, it is time to get in the kitchen and satisfy your own craving. What I found is that, at home, I can make the second best fajitas I have ever had. Being in second place never tasted so good, people, I'm telling you.

This is a picture of the ingredients you will need:

1 package chicken breasts (whole or tenderloin)
1 package medium flour tortillas
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 red bell pepper
1 whole medium onion
2 cups Mexican or fiesta blend shredded cheese
8 oz. sour cream
3 Tbs. vegetable oil
1/3 cup water
3 Tbs. fajita seasoning

You will also need 2 large non-stick skillets for this.

Stir together your oil, water, and fajita seasoning in a bowl until it is well blended. This is technically a marinade, so you can pour it on your meat and let it soak in overnight, but it really isn't necessary to do so. You can also use it as a marinade for other meats if you are looking to give a meal some punchy savory flavor.

Before I move on to the rest of the recipe, let me speak for a few minutes about the la tienda Mexicana, a.k.a your local Mexican grocery store.

Do you see the chicken breast in the picture above? It was butchered shortly before I bought it, because at our tienda and in most stores like it, they butcher their own meat on site. Don't like chicken? How about live red snapper? Because they had a whole tank there. Freshly made sausage? Tender cuts of beef steak? Blue crab, scallops, shrimp? All fresh and all for prices you will never see in any chain grocery store. I paid a few pennies over $3 for those two huge, fresh chicken breasts. It isn't just the meat section, although that alone is worth the trip. Everything I saw in this grocery store was great quality, including produce, which is lacking in so many supermarkets. What really got me going though, was the spice section. A wall of every spice imaginable and at least half the cost of what other stores are asking. Do you want to make the tastiest fajitas? Then you need to go find this:

McCormick makes a perfectly good fajita seasoning, but it doesn't come close to the gusto this seasoning packs. You will relish every bite you take if you slather your veggies and chicken (or beef) with this stuff, I promise. Also, you can take pride in shopping at a store that is owned and operated locally. Check out your nearest Mexican or Latin American grocery store; you will not regret it.

Anywho, back to my easy fajitas. Set your marinade aside and get to chopping your peppers and onions. I like to cut mine into thin strips, but you can certainly do it the way you like best. I like my fajita veggies to get really soft, and thinner strips take less time to get tender. Throw your chopped vegetables in a bowl and pour half your marinade over them. Mix them together until the marinade is evenly distributed, and then throw them in a pan on medium-high heat. Let them sizzle and saute while you slice your chicken breast. I slice mine long and thin at an angle on the breast. I like the look of the diagonal slices:) Take your marinade bowl from before, and toss your chicken along with the remainder of the marinade. Put the chicken in the pan when your peppers and onions are just starting to get really tender. You don't want them to be cooked all the way because your chicken is going to take a few minutes to cook and you don't want a veggie mush at the end.

While your chicken is doing its thing in the first pan, start heating up your second skillet. This is for your tortillas. They are ready to eat out of the package, but giving each side about 30 seconds on high heat makes them nice and warm and gives them a slight, pleasant crispness. You can do this in between stirring your fajitas. Just set them on a plate to the side until you are ready to fill them with deliciousness!

Once your chicken is cooked thoroughly, you can remove it from the heat and spoon everything into a bowl. I know, these fajitas aren't the popping, sizzling kind. I just don't have the cast iron accoutrements to make that happen:( I take comfort in the fact that these fajitas are amazingly luscious without them. This is what my fajitas looked like when I got them out of the pan:

I don't know about you, but...YUM!!!

Get yourself a warm tortilla, fill it with fajitas, top it with sour cream and cheese, and eat until your appetite is appeased. Black beans, spanish rice, and any salsa you prefer can be added, as well. You can make some really good refried beans to go on the side with a regular can of refried beans and a half cup of milk. Mix it up, scoop them into a baking dish, and bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Top with a little queso fresco and you are in business, folks. This is what the finished product looked like:

I hope you really love this meal and add it to your regular at-home menu. The best testament to this dish I can give is that my husband's plate was empty five minutes later and he was making man-grunts to tell me to make him some more.

I just realized that I posted fajitas on St. Patrick's Day. I guess I will have to make potato and leek soup for Cinco De Mayo! Erin go Braugh, kids!

Everything's a salad! I swear!

I have always loved food. Good food. I was lucky and grew up with a dad who would hang out in the kitchen as a hobby. He had a full spice cabinet that smelled like secrets and faraway places. From an early age, I wanted to know what they did and why they did it. I would watch him move in front of the stove. He was a calm and measured man; every move he made was deliberate. He would let me watch and learn while making barbecue sauce, home fries, chili, swiss steak, or any of the many things he made for my mom and me. Once I had learned how to NOT burn myself with the stove, he allowed me to start experimenting. I made some awful things when I was 10, but a long time has passed and I have had many years to tweak and develop the food I make. I even live by a food philosophy...

My best friend and mega-awesome-super-lady, Jenny, shares my love of food. We have done a lot of eating together over the years, and we are good at it. One late evening, we were tucking into a meal at Trumps, the best all-night diner in central Iowa, when I had a revelation. We had just come from exercising and I was feeling guilty about eating this beautiful fried fish sitting in front of me, when I was overcome with inspiration-everything is a salad! If you can somehow trace your food back to plant form, it has to be a salad. Cheeseburger? Salad. Veggies aside, the bun comes from flour which comes from wheat which is a plant. The beef comes from a cow which ate corn or grass (I hope!) which are plants. Ketchup? Tomatoes. Plant. Salad. This rule can be applied to almost everything. I'm not sure if this is an original idea; so few ideas are. But when this idea floated into my mind, it was fresh and liberating and invigorating. Jenny thought so, too, and we have embraced the salad mindset since 2006.

A few words for the health-obsessed: This blog may not be for you. I love fresh ingredients. I love "healthy" foods, because lots of "healthy" food is tasty food! I believe health is important, and I acknowledge the power of portion size and exercise. But this blog is not about losing weight or cutting calories or addressing the obesity epidemic. This blog is about making, eating, and enjoying good food. A lot of people have given Paula Deen a heavy dose of crap lately for loving butter and being diabetic, but I don't ever remember her presenting herself as making anything but great home cooking. I hope to make some tasty food and tell my adventures here without telling anyone how they should eat it.

My dad has been gone for many years now. Sometimes I think I have forgotten what he smelled like or the sound of his voice. When I really miss him, I put my apron on and I look for him in the kitchen. I have noticed that my hands move like his at the chopping board, and I stick my tongue out when I am concentrating on a difficult dish like he always would. But these are just habits; a style I learned from watching him when I was a kid. No, I always find him when I open the spice cabinet. It's there that I smell the past and the possibility of future food, and I am cooking with him once again.

So, welcome! I promise to always try hard to give you tasty ideas and to publish my real mistakes so you don't have to make them. Let's make something SO good today we have to talk about it tomorrow. Aprons on, people!