Week 15: One Pot - Paella

While it traditionally includes seafood, there is a restaurant near us that does a veggie paella that Andrew and I love. I decided to try and recreate it for this one pot challenge. It was pretty easy and flavorful and we had leftovers for days which is always awesome. This stuff just got better as it marinated in its spices. I modeled my recipe after the Easy Paella recipe found on the Martha Stewart site but definitely took liberties with what to ingredients add (like I said, I went with lots of veggies) and also went a little heavy with spices since several of the reviews said it was bland. 

I started by sauteing chicken sausage and onion in a deep saute pan till the onions were clear and the sausage was slightly browned. 

Next, I added green pepper and the rice for just a few minutes till the rice started becoming opaque. 

I wasn't thinking when I added my rice and forgot that I was using brown rice which needs more liquid and  takes longer to cook so I had to adjust throughout the cooking process. I really love brown rice though, so the end result was great, it just took longer than I had anticipated. 

Next, I added a can of diced tomatoes...

2 Cups of chicken broth (later I added a third cup when the rice had soaked up all this and still wasn't tender - again, the brown rice issue)...

and a small can of green chilies, paprika, chili powder, tumeric, salt, and pepper then mixed it all up. I brought it to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, then covered it for about 40 minutes stirring occasionally. 

I waited till the rice was pretty much done before adding zucchini and mushrooms. I wanted them to hold their shape and texture somewhat and didn't want total mush. 

About 10 minutes later we had paella! We ate it on some awesome handmade (though not handmade by me!) chipotle tortillas.

It was filling and flavorful and I think we finally just finished those leftovers - 5 days later!

Week 14: Rainbow - Rainbow Cone Ice Cream Cake

I'd like to preface this post with an apology for the length and extensive use of pictures.  I went a little nuts. But, I am quite proud of myself with this creation and so far in these challenges, this is my favorite thing I've made, so bear with me. 

For those of you who are not from the Southside of Chicago, there is a magical place there called Rainbow Cone.  It is the most delicious ice cream treat I've ever had and on a hot, sticky, summer night there is just nothing better than a rainbow cone. Rather than scoop the ice cream they use a spade and sorta slab on the rainbow of flavors you see below. 

On the heels of several birthdays, including my fabulous mother and my loving husband, I found myself looking for something that was half birthday cake half Easter dessert. The rainbow theme could not have fallen on a better week!

While I didn't use a recipe exactly, I will share with you my process and give you tips to help you avoid my pit falls -of which there weren't many thank goodness. This is a day-ahead process so start early and make sure you have freezer space.

First, buy a yellow cake mix (or make your own, you show off), whole walnuts (maybe 1/2c. depending on your love of walnuts), a small jar of maraschino cherries, and the following ice creams:

• Orange Sherbet (any vanilla/orange mix will not do. You must get the good stuff which means buying a tub of it... for some reason it is next to impossible to get orange sherbet in a reasonable sized container)
• Pistachio 
• Neapolitan (chocolate, strawberry, vanilla) in the rectangular box for easy cutting

Make your cake and let it cool. While it is cooking or cooling cut your Neapolitan into three flavors -allow some of the vanilla to be in the chocolate and strawberry since it will blend right in, but try to get your vanilla to be just vanilla. 

To make the Palmer House - which cannot be bought that I know of, throw the whole walnuts into the vanilla as it is getting melty...

then add about a handful of rough chopped maraschino cherries and mix! I put this back in the freezer to chill and to try and hope the flavors would meld a bit. It totally worked, but I've never done it any other way, so who am I to say!

 I used 9" rounds same as the actual cake size so the layers would fit on top. If I'd had parchment or wax paper I would have used that to line the pans, but the tin foil worked just fine.  I was nervous but the ice cream came out  of these easily. This whole process of melting and spreading the ice cream reminded me of making ice cream soup as a kid.

I wished I'd had an articulated frosting spatula to get a flatter surface, but the back of a spatula worked fine for spreading. I stuck this in the freezer and brought out the strawberry to melt.

The melting doesn't take long - maybe 5 to 10 minutes - and that was long enough for the chocolate layer to harden enough to make spreading the strawberry layer fairly easy.

SO pretty! The strawberry and chocolate are the only two layers in this cake pan. I would add a third layer to this cake pan if I had it to do over. Any Rainbow Cone enthusiast knows that the orange sherbet needs to be the thickest layer so I would only put two layers in that pan next time. 

Palmer house out of the freezer while the strawberry and chocolate layers harden up.

Palmer house on the bottom of the second pan then threw it in the freezer to harden while the pistachio melted.

I used Ben and Jerry's pistachio ice cream and it is a boring natural cream color so I had to dye it green. I went a little over board but it turned out a nice green in the end.

Here is the dye all mixed in.

Pistachio on top of the now frozen Palmer House.

And, finally, the orange sherbet! This melts the weirdest due to it's sherbet-ness, but it just required a bit more patience.

Mmmm. I'm drooling now the way I was while making this. 

Again, the orange sherbet is the thickest layer so it really filled the pan.  

At this point I put it all in the freezer and started investigating how to travel with this still frozen. I forgot to mention Easter was going to be celebrated at my Mom's house 2 hours away. Saturday night I ended up putting the ice cream into a cooler,  putting a cardboard box upside down over them to insulate them, pouring an entire bag of ice on top of and around the cardboard box, then putting dry ice on top of that. The dry ice basically keeps your ice from melting and keeps the air cold. There are several dry ice protocol you'd want to pay attention to if you are going to do this,  but won't bore you with them here. 

I was nervous about the ice cream traveling but we had NO problem at all! It was frozen - not solid but very firm - and when we got to my Mom's we put the cake together and then put it in the freezer to harden before frosting it. Here is where I discovered I should have built the ice cream layers in reverse order so getting them onto the cake would have been easier. But with a friendly pair of hands and a amazing helper, we managed a flipping system to get the layers in the correct order. 

Right here is where I started kinda freaking out - in a good way. I couldn't believe it was all coming together and working out so perfectly. I was really prepared for this to be a total disaster, but as you can see - it's a butte. The scene in our house went a little something like this.

I didn't want to mess around too much with frosting so I decided to go with a simple, light layer of whipped cream. Nothing should distract from the rainbow cone flavor. 

We decorated it with a rainbow of jelly beans just to really get into the theme and as soon as we sang Happy Birthday to Andrew and Mom, we dug in.

The knife smeared some of the layers so it was hard to specifically see all 5 layers, but you sure could taste them and it was still so fun to look at and eat. The fact that you couldn't necessarily distinguish the layers wasn't an issue.  For any one experienced in trying to eat a rainbow cone on a hot sunny Chicago summer day, you know that eventually they all sorta melt together anyway and that is part of the delicious fun.

I want more of it right now. What a treat. 

Whew, thanks for hanging in there and indulging my excessive description and post. Can you tell I'm really excited about this creation? :)

Week 14: Sandwiches - BLATs

There are so many great ideas for good sandwiches out there. Mmm I love sandwiches. After a busy weekend, we wanted to make a low key but tasty dinner.  We tossed around the idea of making some french dips, but Andrew brilliantly suggested BLTs. 

When we were standing at the bacon looking for what we wanted, a fabulous butcher came over and offered to season some thick cut bacon straight from his butcher block.  We briefly looked at each other and said "DUH. Yes." We went with the chipotle seasoning and it smelled fantastic. 

Fresh tasty ingredients are the trick.  The lettuce has to crunch, the avocado has to be soft, and the tomatoes have to be juicy.

We bought a nice loaf of artisan bread and it toasted beautifully.  It had a nice crispy edge with a soft warm middle.

I used grapeseed mayo and while I generally take objection to mayo, on toasted bread for BLTs is one of my few exceptions.

Bacon on top of the tomatoes.

A few slices of the avocado.

The lettuce on top to hold it all in.

And you have one amazing sandwich. 

Such an easy quick dinner I don't know why I don't make these more often. 

Week 13: Cheesecake - Cheesecake Bars

I was a tiny bit behind on making this one, but I don't think anyone can blame me. I was busy pulling off the surprise of the century and entertaining guests! So, a few days late, but here they are. I found the recipe on the  King Arthur Flour site and left out the lemon rind and juice but other wise followed the recipe closely but half agained it in size to fit into a 13x9.

The crust is the classic butter, graham cracker, sugar, cinnamon mix. Pressed into a 13x9 and baked briefly.

The filling was pretty easy.  Cream cheese, eggs, sugar, plain greek yogurt (substituted for the heavy cream/sour cream called for in the recipe), and a scraped out half of a vanilla bean.

Costco has the greatest deal on vanilla beans and they are quite long. I cut one in half then split it down the middle and scraped out the insides. My goodness it smells so good. 

After the crust was cooled slightly, I poured in the filling and baked it at 325 for about 30 minutes. 

I cooled it over night in the fridge and cut them into small squares in the morning.  My coworkers couldn't stop talking about how great they were. They are light and fluffy and I've already had requests for a redeux. 

Week 13: Russian - Piroshkis

It was hard to get in this week's challenges.  It was Andrew's birthday weekend and I had a few tricks up my sleeves.  Two of Andrew's dearest friends (and one amazing significant other!) and I arranged a surprise weekend visit and it went off without a hitch! He was overwhelmed by the fun, love, and kindness and we really had a blast.  One night I made dinner for us all and these Russian piroshkis soaked up the beer just perfectly. 

The recipe I found called for the ground beef filling but I wanted to mix it up a bit so I whipped up a few other fillings as well. The ground beef was added to some cooked onions and seasoned with salt and pepper and dill. 

The second filling was potatoes and cheese.  We used a mix of parmesan and mozzarella. 

Lastly, I made a sweet potato filling.  I seasoned this with butter, salt, and pepper and kept it pretty simple.

The dough was very simple and turned out beautifully.  It rose like a dream and was easy to work with.

The fantastic Cristal helped me stuff all the piroshkis while the boys played games and relived the good ol' days. 

The recipe created about 25 piroshkis and we tried a variety of dough sealing since neither of us had ever done this before.  Some were shaped more like calzone and others like mini bread loaves with the seam tucked on the bottom. 

The recipe called for them to be deep fried in 3 inches of oil and I just couldn't stomach it. I baked them at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. 

My oh my.  They were fantastic.  The potato and cheese needed a bit more seasoning but the beef and sweet potato ones were total hits.  The 8 of us devoured all 25 quickly and, of course, we paired these doughy delicious buns with none other than brussel sprouts. :)  These are easy to make and just fantastic. You have GOT to try them.