Thoughts from Alison that might at least entertain you!

Asparagus-Wrapped Prosciutto and Wontons

From the dinner table at Prune Ridge, a recommendation for dinner! Tonight we had these wontons - chicken and cilantro - from the freezer section at Trader Joe's. They're extremely fast and easy to cook right from the freezer, and really good! The cilantro element was noticeable and impressed me from a frozen entree. I rounded out the menu with these prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spears, cooked up quickly and easily on our Foreman Grill. I long for a patio (which may actually come along at some point this spring or summer!) and a gas grill on which to grill up this kind of thing, but the Foreman makes it possible and fairly simple to grill things indoors for now. The asparagus are simply washed and then wrapped with thin strips of prosciutto. I brushed some olive oil (with a smashed clove of garlic in it) over the spears, ground some pepper over top, and grilled them on a medium-high heat for about 4 minutes. Yum!

Words from Christopher Kimball

Many people in my life will know that I absolutely adore Cook's Illustrated - a fantastic cooking magazine founded and edited by Christopher Kimball.  One of my favorite features in every issue is Kimball's editorial, often tales of his life past and present in small-town Vermont.  I recently re-read his words in the following paragraphs from the July/August 2011 issue column, and I found myself thinking about his set of thoughts today while I was laboring joyfully over homemade chicken and dumplings (a favorite recipe from Cook's Illustrated) for tonight's dinner at Prune Ridge:

"Unhappiness steps through the front door when we find our lives removed from the world, from the shock and pleasure of our five senses.  That's why we cook, to remind ourselves that we are alive, that we are connected to the food chain (the less fortunate become part of it) and to the ebb and flow of nature.

Breathing filtered, conditioned air, eating processed foods, and experiencing adventure while sitting in an armchair is certainly not what Homo sapiens was designed for.  I have no idea what life is really about or whether it holds meaning, but happiness is not to be found in a box of cereal, even if it does contain a prize.  Living with zero degrees of separation entails risk - yes, that glass of raw milk might contain pathogens - but nothing worth doing is entirely risk-free.

So we can either turn to our kitchens as a lifestyle, or we can do it to remind ourselves that we are alive, because we want to run our fingers across a silky side of salmon or grab hold of a bloody point-cut of brisket.  Damn it, don't talk to me about calories, saturated fat, or healthy choices.  I just want to experience life as fully as I can before memories of life outside my window fade forever.  And that's something that even our kids will understand."

Blessed Be, Friends.

Cooking the New Year in at Prune Ridge

Happy New Year, All!  I spent this January 1st cooking for the most part, and it's been a great day.  The wind is ferocious and blustery - which made today seem even more like the most perfect day for barricading ourselves inside while baking and cooking. 

I brought out a well-established and oft-tested favorite dish for dinner tonight: chicken and dumplings!  This dish is truly one of my most favorite things to make.  One of my most favorite ever!  It's a rather laborious set of tasks, but ultimately more worth the time than just about anything else I could put 3 hours into.  There was a time when I tried to make smaller batches since there are only two of us for dinner, but I've given that up.  We like this dish so much, it's one thing that never goes to waste as a leftover. 

I also made up a batch of key lime bars today.  This is a recipe I use from Cook's Illustrated.  This one also takes a bit of work, but again - totally worth the time!  This is kind of a hybrid of the standard citrus bar (think lemon bars), and a key lime pie.  It's a pretty simple recipe, but juicing key limes is no small feat.  It takes a lot of hand muscle strength, and for a single batch (8x8" pan), you have to juice about 20 limes plus zesting about 12 or 14 of those. 

I have thankfully discovered the single best tool for juicing key limes.  This cheery looking manual juicer does the job perfectly and pretty efficiently. 

I hope the start of this new year finds everyone happy and well.  I'm looking forward to the year ahead, and to more cooking in these colder winter months!

Stuffed Magic 8 Ball zucchini

There was also stuffed Magda squash, but I forgot to photograph before dining!  I made up this recipe, which turned out pretty good - sauteed ground turkey/mushrooms/squash (plus garlic and onion powders) with breadcrumbs, mozzarella, and basil.  Success with squashes and basil from the garden!

Dinner from the garden is awesome

So far this garden year (even though I'm a bit overwhelmed, the garden is out of control, and I'm not feeling certain that I want to have a garden any more), I'm having wild success with summer squashes in comparison to my entire squash season last year!  For dinner tonight we had some grilled 8 Ball Squash (a gorgeous round zucchini variety) and Magda Squash (a light green Mediterranean squash, shaped kind of like an eggplant) - with fresh tomatoes, purple basil, and provolone cheese on top.  This was super simple and soooo good!  I should mention that most of the tomatoes were not from the garden and I think we'll begin to see peak tomato harvest in about 2 weeks.  This was grilled inside on our little George Foreman Grill, which is a great tool for actually cooking something good in this unbelievably hot weather when you don't feel like cooking anything!

Yoda Watches Over Chicken and Rice

Dinner from the slow cooker at Prune Ridge tonight.  May the Forks be With You:

Chicken dinner, part 2:

This recipe is a winner!  It's simple as can be, and really great.  I will make 3 adjustments next time - slightly less chicken broth (there was too much liquid, it was more of a stew than chicken and stuffing), seed the chopped tomatoes better, and remove the skin from the chicken.  Otherwise?  Perfect!  It really is a simple recipe.  Let me know if you'd like it and I'll pass it along.

Happy Friday Evening, Friends!

What do you get when you combine these items?

Why, Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies, of course!

 

Chicken dinner, part 1:

Here's my chicken with sourdough stuffing in the slow cooker this morning before cooking.  Update to follow after we dine, but as of now - it smells divine!

Cooking On Tap

This Friday will be a cooking day at Prune Ridge, and I can hardly wait!  I've got my shopping list ready.  For dinner on Friday, I'm testing a new slow cooker recipe for chicken with sourdough stuffing.  I'll report back, of couse, and hope for something picture-worthy.  I'm also doing some cookie baking.  Cookies in the queue for Friday include a batch of my specialty cookies, as well as a batch of something sinful- and ridiculous-sounding but secret until I know if it works.  I'll also report back on the cookies, and especially on the secret experimental cookie if it's fabulous!

Happy Bloggiversary to me!

Yes, indeed - there have now been a full 4 years to date of my yammerings in this forum.  I could bore you with all kinds of statistics, but basically: I started blogging on this date in 2006.  I've offered a total of 736 posts in that time, with total views of my pages totaling 11,539!  And yes, I still believe overall the most number of random hits I get from web searches are from people doing image searches for "closet curtains." 

Completely separate, but marginally related since I often blog about food I create here at Prune Ridge, here is tonight's dinner:  

These are my first-ever homemade stuffed mushrooms (and a tomato-mozzarella salad with tomatoes from my garden)!  I worked off a recipe but changed nearly everything since I had certain ingredients I wanted to use.  Stuffing basically includes summer squash (from the garden), bacon, crushed crackers, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and some oregano.  Secret ingredient and biggest stretch from the recipe?  Cream cheese!  The recipe I was using called for ricotta that I don't have, but I decided cream cheese might be the way to go.  Score!  I now labor under the (most likely false) impression that I will be forever able to make up my own fabulous stuffed mushroom recipes with whatever I have on-hand.  To quote myself speaking to John after dinner:  "Name any ingredient.  I bet I can put it in a mushroom!!"

Juicy Weeknight Pork Chops

Well, dinner at Prune Ridge was a pretty resounding success on this beautiful and cool evening.  I tried out another of the myriad recipes I've listed for myself to test from the back issues of Cook's Illustrated mentioned in my Cooking Goal post from a couple of weeks ago.  The sub-headline of this recipe for Juicy Weeknight Pork Chops was "Dry, tough pork chops are the reality.  My dream was juicy, tender pork chops in 20 minutes."  They succeeded in creating something fantastic and true-to-goal, as Cook's Illustrated always does.  We feasted on this simple weeknight on delicious chops and a sweet potato.  Yum, dinner!  I feel I should also mention that my glass of Riesling was chosen as an accompaniment based on suggestion from the wine pairing website referenced in the post below.

More importantly, perhaps, than this picture and glowing review posted to make you jealous:  Today, I purchased an online membership from Cook's Illustrated to access all of their content, which includes all the archived recipes from the magazines.  The recipes are generally too long (as well as the fantastic accompanying articles) for me to share here or even type out in email, but now I have access to share them directly from my website membership by email to anyone I like.  Please feel free to either comment here or email me directly and let me know if I post about anything I'm testing that you'd also like to try.  I'm happy to pass along recipes, including these juicy fast pork chops - or the salmon, tomato relish, and/or key lime bars from last weekend. 

Happy Thursday evening, All!

Food & Wine Pairing resource

Good evening, Friends!  I'm cooking dinner (another Cook's Illustrated recipe on my list of things to try - Easy Weeknight Porkchops, which I'll report on later) and got to wondering about internet sources for simple wine and food pairing suggestions.  The first site I stumbled on is terrific!  E&J Gallo Winery (aka Ernest and Julio) has a great tool on this page.  Use the arrow slider on the right side of the screen to select your entree category, and presto - suggestions are highlighted on the right.  Enjoy!

Cooking for Fun and Nourishment!

I've tackled the first two - which turned into four - recipes from my newly-formed list of things to try on the menus at Prune Ridge.  John and I had a rather excellent (if I do say so myself!) dinner of Oven Roasted Salmon tonight.  Added recipes included a fresh tomato relish served on the salmon and fresh roasted garlic by my own hand!  Sweet corn on the cob completed the meal, with the roasted garlic spread on the corn.  Yum!  For dessert I tested out the Key Lime Bars I've had my eye on from another Cook's Illustrated issue.  They are awesome!  The bars were quite a bit of work (everything else was really easy), but well worth the effort.  They will definitely make return appearances to our fine dining menus.  

Next up on the plan to test new things is likely one of a couple of pork chop recipes I'm thinking about, or possibly a stew or chili.  I'll keep you posted.  Happy Sunday evening, All!

Cooking Goal

I have finished touring through all of my back issues of Cook's Illustrated - no small task since I've had a subscription for 9 or 10 years!  I've culled the stack down and identified a little more than 1/3 that I plan to keep - and picked out the recipes I've not yet tried but always wanted to.  My new goal as of this posting is to make one thing (at least) each week for us to try.  I've also got about a dozen favorite issues and/or recipes that I already know of.  Now I'll hope to finally make it through all the things I've thought about trying but never quite gotten to.  First on the agenda?  An oven roasted salmon recipe and some key lime bars.  I'll do my best to report back here as I work through my stack of magazines.  Get ready for dining, Prune Ridgers!