Burn's Supper

So, as my readers will know, it is coming upon the 3rd anniversary of my semester abroad to Scotland.  Around this time of year, I'm always pensive and thinking of the time I spent there, the friends I made...

And the food I had!

One of the traditions I experienced was a Burns Supper.  Built on the foundations of haggis, neeps, tatties and Scotch, it is a celebration of Robert Burns, Scotland, friendship and generally having a good time. Robert Burns is probably the most celebrated Scot in recent history.  He was the national poet, wrote for the people and wrote in Scots which not a lot of people before or after him have done.  When he died, his friends would get together on the anniversary of his death and have a Burns Supper, read his poetry and toast his memory.

As time went on, this tradition was adopted by the country at large.  But instead of it being a celebration of his death, it's celebrated on and around his birthday, January 25th.

I had several friends over for dinner the other night and it was a vast success.  Here's the menu:

Haggis- Okay, so I couldn't get my hands on a haggis for a price I was willing to pay.  Instead I made a beef roast.  I made a rub mixture of salt, pepper, garlic powder, dried thyme and dried rosemary.  I seared it in a hot skillet and put it on a bed of onions and organic beef broth.  I then tossed it in a 350 degree oven with my handy dandy probe thermometer in it, set to 135.  Let it rest and cut it up.

Neeps- Neeps are turnips (rutabagas).  For those who haven't had a turnip, it's a strange cross between a potato, a carrot, cauliflower and cabbage.  I treated it just like a potato- peeled it, cut it up, boiled it and mashed it with salt, butter and milk.

Tatties- potatoes.  Basic mashed potatoes.

Carrots- A friend of mine who was coming over doesn't eat red meat.  I added in the carrots as an afterthought to make sure everyone was fed.  This is actually a recipe from my friend Allie.  She used to make these carrots all the time when we lived together.


Brown Sugar Carrots

2 lbs carrots, peeled and cut into uniform sizes.  Alternatively, baby carrots work just as nicely
Water
1/2 stick butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
Salt

Put the carrots in a skillet with about 1/2 inch of water in the bottom of the pan.  Boil the carrots until just about tender.  Add more water as necessary.

In a separate pan, melt the butter and brown sugar together with some salt.  Pour over the carrots.  Eat.  Nom.

Factoid:  Carrots are actually better for you cooked than raw.

Here is a picture of the lovely bounty we had before us.

Shawn really liked the carrots.


Now comes to the most important aspect of all, Cranachan.

What is Cranachan, you might ask?  It's deliciousness in a cup.  It's a traditional Scottish dessert consisting of 2 main elements- a whiskey flavored whipped cream and a raspberry sauce.  Mix with some toasted Irish oats and serve with shortbread.  Nom.

Whipped Cream

1 quart whipping cream
2 1/2 tablespoons whiskey
1 tsp vanilla
3 tablespoons confectioner's sugar.

Whip into soft peaks.


Raspberry Sauce

1 small bag frozen raspberries
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Puree the ingredients in a blender.  Add some water to loosen it up.  It'll need it.

Once it's pureed, run it through a fine mesh strainer to get the seeds out.  Enough crunch will be added by the oats.  We don't need seeds.

It was a lovely night and I need to thank Ben, Shawn, Ian, Ellen, Bob and Wes for sharing it with me.  A Burns Supper is about friendship and all things Scottish.  I get Palace-sick for my times abroad and it was a nice way to spend an evening.

Slainte mha and I should hopefully have another post up soon about an excellent dinner I went to last night that I'm dying to share.

Pizza Done Healthy

It's New Years Resolution time.  Of course.  It IS January, after all.

And, of course, my goal is to lose weight.  Where does weight loss start?  The kitchen.  You can't expect to lose weight if you're eating cookies, cake and greasy overindulgence.

During the course of the year, I want to help all of you, my readers, and myself, lose weight by giving some healthy recipes when I can.  Come summer I have a lovely blender sorbet recipe that I can't wait to share but with it being cold outside, I think I'll wait a bit on that one.

Today, however, I indulged in one of my favorites- pizza.  Pizza is delicious.  And amazing.  Here are some tips on making it something you won't feel bad about eating.

Tip1:  Crust selection.  There are plenty of ways to do crust.  If I'm making a big pizza, I usually stop off at the grocery store and get some premade dough.  It tastes good and requires minimal effort.  But if I'm trying to watch those blasted calories, I go straight for tortillas.

Tortillas?  You may ask?  Yes.  Tortillas.  My logic and most health gurus is that it all comes down to portion control.  I have a hard time getting everything perfect when I'm spreading out pizza dough and it really has more calories than you think.  In one slice.  My whole what tortillas hanging in my fridge only clock in at 160 calories for the whole thing.  I can make myself a whole pizza and eat the whole crust.  Delicious.

There are plenty of options when it comes to tortillas too.  Corn, flour, whole wheat, whole wheat with omega 3s....  Pick out your favorite. Once you have it selected, toss it on a cookie sheet into the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes to get it crispy.

Tip 2:  Measure measure measure.  Cheese has calories (much to my dismay).  If a serving is 1/4 cup, measure it out or at least be aware of it.  Lucky for me, a handfull is about 1/4 cup.  I have small hands.  Believe it or not, if you're using a tortilla, 1/4 cup is actually plenty of cheese.  Same goes for the sauce.  I usually have a jar of pasta sauce in the fridge.  A tablespoon is plenty for a tortilla.  And that's almost nothing when it comes to calories.

Tip 3:  Pay attention to your toppings!  Turkey pepperoni is fine.  And don't neglect those veggies!

My pizza for lunch broke down like this:

160: Tortilla
20: Sauce
45: Cheese
15: Bell Pepper (or so.)

Total? 240.  Not bad for pizza.

Playing with Potatoes, Leeks and Mirepoix

So I decided tonight was the night for potato leek soup.  I had planned on it one night this week and it was supposed to be last Sunday but things got in the way.  I had the leeks, I had the potatoes, it was time to cook!

Well, then I hopped online to find an actual recipe on food.com.  I found one that was good but I changed it a bit.  And I discovered I didn't have all the ingredients.  Then I was thinking about it and it's more than a potato leek soup.  The biggest thing is that the recipe involved carrots.  When I finished cooking the soup, it ended up orangey.  To me, a potato leek soup should be a light beige or green in color, not orange.  Time for an uplift.

A quick note about leeks:  Leeks grow in sand.  The leeks I buy are already trimmed and cleaned so I don't have to worry about sand.  If you're buying them whole, don't wash it before you cut it.  Fill a bowl with water and put it next to your cutting board.  Cut the leeks as you need them and drop them into the water.  Swirl it around and the sand will fall to the bottom.

A funny story about leeks:  Apparently some people don't know what leeks are.  They basically look like a really big piece of grass with lots of layers.  Over the summer I needed leeks for something.  I sent the boyfriend out to get the leeks.  He came back with fennel.  I looked at him.  "Why did you get fennel?"  "This is a leek."  "No it isn't.  It's fennel."  "But the guy told me it was a leek.  I couldn't find it so I asked him."  "But this is fennel."  Sure enough, the store didn't have fennel so we had to go somewhere else.  We ended up throwing the fennel away.  I don't like licorice.

Merry's Mirepoix Potato Leek Soup!

Carrots, celery and onion create the French mirepoix and the base for many many soups.  It was in the original recipe as well.  But there's so much extra flavor in a mirepoix that I thought it needed a change.  I also added some extra things.

Ingredients:

2 potatoes, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 leek, chopped
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped (I had really thin carrots so I used 3.  If you have regular sized carrots, use 2)
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tsp rosemary, dried
Salt
Pepper
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 1/2 cups stock or water

Directions:

Heat the oil and butter in a nice big pot.  Drop everything but the stock in.  Saute everything for about 10 minutes until the leeks and onions are softened and it's thinking about getting some color on it.

Pour in the stock or water and simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are falling apart.  Blend everything in a blender or food processor.  It should look something like this:

Eat with some bread and garnish with parmesan cheese.


Word to the wise:  Hot things don't like blenders... I learned this the hard way today....  I only made a little mess though.  If your blender has a cap in the top meant for drizzling things through, pop it open a little bit and aim it away from you.  Steam is hot water and the expansion causes an explosion when it all gets blended.  So make a little bit of a vent for the steam to escape.  Or your blender will explode.

That's it for today!  Enjoy!

I Should Open a Moroccan Restaurant

Okay, that may be exaggerating just a little bit.  But dude.  SUCCESS!!!

Dinner tonight was Chicken with Caramelized Baby Onions and Honey from Claudia Roden's Arabesque.  For the sake of copyright laws, I won't publish the recipe. If you desperately want it, email me and I will send it to you but I don't want a lawsuit.  :(

But here's the backstory behind this meal.

The boyfriend got me a Middle Eastern Cookbook that I fell in love with called, you guessed it, Arabesque.  After having the cookbook for over six months, I thought it was time to try out one of these recipes.

Being a fan of the savory/sweet combo, I decided this would be the perfect dish.

Grocery shopping was interesting.  Trader Joe's usually has frozen baby onions which would have been perfect. But they didn't this time.  They also didn't have regular baby onions.  Fortunately, the recipe suggested shallots if you can't find baby onions.  So onward to the shallots I went.

This recipe also calls for the most expensive spice in the world- Saffron.  Why is saffron so 'spensive?  Lemme 'splain.  Saffron is the stamen of a crocus.  There isn't a problem with the crocus growing.  It's that there are only 3 or so stamens per flower.  And it has to be harvested by hand.  My teeny tiny .7 grams of the stuff cost 6 bucks... and that's with the middle man cut out.  For example, a 13 gram container of oregano is 2 dollars.  The same amount at the regular store is about 4.

This is my first time using saffron and from what I can tell, I didn't find any taste difference.  But I used it and I have this little thing of saffron so I feel like a real cook now.  :)

Aaaanyway....  The recipe calls for a whole chicken cut up into pieces.  Way too complicated for me.  I used 2 chicken breasts.

Long story short, it was fantastic.  Soooooo good.  The sauce was nice and sweet and savory with cinnamon and ginger and the honey and the onion creating this nice light sauce.  Had I put in the shallots when I was supposed to, they would have been nice and squishy and tasty.  But it was still good.

What did I serve with it?  Couscous, of course.  I tossed it in the microwave and mixed in some parmesan afterward to give it a nice flavor.

But, lying awake last night, I needed to come up with something fresh and light to eat with it.  Then it came to me!  A tomato cucumber salad!  Since I mostly winged it, here's the recipe:

1 hothouse cucumber, chopped
3 roma tomatoes, chopped
1 small shallot, minced
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Salt
Pepper
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons olive oil
4 ounces feta cheese, cubed

Toss it all together.  It really is that simple.

Since I have my desk set up again and I have all the pieces of my camera, I can put up pictures.

Here's how it looked (and notice the fancy dishes!):

Leftovers are going to be lunch tomorrow.

Cooking is going to be pretty light this week with risottos and plain pastas.  I'm going to be creating a recipe for some lemon herb chicken on Thursday with whole wheat pasta.  I'll let you know how that all goes.

Well, until next time, keep playing in the kitchen and trying new recipes is always fun!!!!!