Breakfast Apple Granola Crisp Remix

It's not dessert, but it feels like it!  Today marks my third batch after recently stumbling upon the recipe at SmittenKitchen.  I love the story behind the creation of this crisp almost as much as I love the crisp itself—new mom exhaustion requires something spectacular to look forward to in the early early mornings with baby.  I share this philosophy and for the first year of my son’s life ate raspberry almond coffee cake almost every day.  Alas, I've had to cut back on my coffee cake because I'm the only one who will eat it (it's pretty decadent).  A huge perk of this crisp is that I’ve gotten my son addicted to it as well. He skips the yogurt and mostly eats the apples, but if I’ve gotten a bit of fruit, oat, and flax in him then I’ve done my job.

I tweaked her recipe significantly since I have 2 mothers-in-law that are experts at 1) apple pie, and 2) granola.  I had to pay homage to the family recipes by swapping out cornstarch for flour in my fruit.  The other big change was reducing the lemon to make it tasted more like “less sweet apple pie.”  The lemon tartness may also have something to do with the level of sweet vs. tart in the apples.  I adore Fuji's and they're pretty tart, hence the lessening of the lemon.  I also added raisins and flax because those are my favorite parts of making homemade granola.  I’ll potentially try subbing maple syrup for the honey, but only it just depends on what’s in the pantry.

Breakfast Apple Granola Crisp Remix        

3 lbs apples (giant Fuji’s require less peeling and coring), sliced medium

¼ C raisins

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp lemon

1 tbsp flour

1 tsp cinnamon

Granola topping

¼ C honey

1 stick butter

2 C rolled oats

½ C flour

½ C sliced almonds or chopped pecans

2 tbsp golden flax seeds

Preheat oven to 375°.  In a 13x9x2 Pyrex, mix everything but topping together with your hands.  In a medium saucepan or medium microwaveable bowl, melt butter and honey together.  Pour melted butter/honey mix over remaining ingredients and stir until coated. 

Spread topping mixture over apples and cover evenly.  Don’t leave apples exposed or they’ll dry out.  Bake for 45-55 minutes or until apples are tender and topping is browned.  Tent with foil if granola browns to early.

This dish keeps well in the fridge, just reheat and top with some greek yogurt.   You can go for a sweetened yogurt since there’s not much sugar in the recipe.

Fench Lentil Soup

French Lentil Soup

Let me preface this by saying that I have never ordered lentil soup at a restaurant nor have I really had a good version from a can.  Annabel Karmel’s First Foods introduced me to lentils when I was madly making mini lentil cakes for my son.  They are absolutely delicious and I’m sure everyone can’t wait until Baby W gets old enough for them to go back into the rotation.  Logic follows that if lentils are delicious in cakes, they would be delicious in a soup. 

After some cookbook and internet research, I discovered that of the 3 kinds of bulk lentils that I had purchased, only one was soup-worthy.  The others would disintegrate.  The winning lentil was the French green. 

After a rinse, a pick-over, and a cross-reference between Epicurious.com and Cooks Illustrated, I made every effort to follow the spirit of the traditional recipes with a few changes.  The key ingredients that I would not have added off the cuff were diced tomatoes and balsamic vinegar.   These sound like a strange addition, but disappeared completely in the final product and only imparted a slight acidity.           

The other odd-ball thing in the recipes was to puree a portion of it.  If other types of lentils disintegrate, why not use them to make it heartier instead of dirtying another utensil.  I went ahead with it because I was trying out a smoked sausage that I hadn’t tasted before.  The idea being that I could cook the sausage in the smaller portion of the soup and if it was awful, not ruin the entire batch.  2 dirty pots and a dirty emersion blender later, sausage tasted fine and we added the heartiness.  I doubt I’ll do it in the future because it ends up with a chili-like heaviness and I wanted something more delicate.  The smokiness could have had that effect as well.

French Lentil Soup

1-2	slices bacon (only if you’re not using sausage)
1	large onion , chopped fine (about 1 1/2 cups)
2	medium carrots , peeled and chopped medium (about 1 cup)
3	medium cloves garlic , pressed through garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
	1 can (14 1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes , drained
1	bay leaf
1	teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1	cup lentils (7 ounces), rinsed and picked over
1	teaspoon table salt
	ground black pepper
1/2	cup dry white wine
4	cups low-sodium chicken broth (I used homemade stock but would save the stock for something that’s not going to compete with bacon next time)
1	cups water
1 1	cup diced smoked sausage teaspoons balsamic vinegar
3	tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves

INSTRUCTIONS [adapted from Cooks Illustrated]

1.     1.  Fry bacon in large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until fat is rendered and bacon is crisp, 3 to 4 minutes. Add onion and carrots; cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to soften, about 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in tomatoes, bay leaf, and thyme; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in lentils, salt, and pepper to taste; cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook until vegetables are softened and lentils have darkened, 8 to 10 minutes.

2.     2.  Uncover, increase heat to high, add wine, and bring to simmer. Add chicken broth and water; bring to boil, cover partially, and reduce heat to low. Simmer until lentils are tender but still hold their shape, 30 to 35 minutes; discard bay leaf.

3.    3.   Add sausage if using and simmer 10-15 minutes more to heat through.

4.     4.  Puree 3 cups soup with emersion blender until smooth, then return to pot; stir in vinegar and heat soup over medium-low until hot, about 5 minutes. Add Stir in 2 tablespoons parsley and serve, garnishing each bowl with some of remaining parsley.

Lemon Caper Chicken, Spinach, Rice

This one isn't a splashy meal, but it epitomizes what's important to me in a dinner: 1 meat, 1 starch, and one veg.  My husband prefers to sauce everything on his plate, so he'd include the sauce as a prerequisite.  But if I add sauce to the pre-req's, I may as well add bacon because it's always on hand and almost always makes it into a meal in one form or flavor.  It's funny that I didn't realize how tied I was to this "nutritional trinity" until I had to flake out on a side dish or two due to lack of time or ingredients.  It's so disappointing to have a lonely starch with no veg.

Lemon Caper Chicken
This meal does not require any prep earlier in the day (i.e.,no naptime chores) and allows us to eat dinner at a reasonable hour after the kids are in bed.

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp EVO

1/4 C flour

Salt and pepper chicken. Pour flour onto a plate.  Press chicken into flour on both sides, shaking off excess.  Heat butter and oil in a large skillet (12") on medium high heat.  Saute chicken for 4 minutes on each side and remove to plate to stay warm.

Pan Sauce

1/2 small onion

1/4 C white wine

3/4 C chicken broth

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp capers

Saute onion in same skillet as chicken until softened.  Deglaze with white wine. Add broth, lemon nad capers.  Reduce for 10 minutes. Add chicken back to pan to cook through, another 10 minutes.


Sauteed Spinach with Bacon
Giant box of baby spinach (think it's 1-2 lbs)
2 slices bacon
2 cloves garlic
lemon squeeze


Rinse spinach.  Fry 2 slices bacon in a large dutch oven with lid.  Remove bacon when crisp and drain on paper towels.  Add garlic and cook 1 minutes.  Add damp spinach to pot with bacon drippings and toss to coat. Cover and let steam for 5 minutes until wilted.  Remove lid and allow water to evaporate.  Salt and pepper and squeeze lemon juice. Serve immediately.

Rice in a box
Why on earth would I chop and prepare ingredients to jazz up rice when it is one of the easiest and tastiest modern conveniences?  I love Far East Pilafs and rice  mixes.  They are never mushy and if you start them at the beginning of your prep time, you have a hot easy side in 30 minutes.  I learned that the rice/starch is always the time intensive factor in any meal so it always gets first priority on the stove.

Which reminds me, this whole meal was very stove intensive.   I long for the day when I can have all 4-5 burners raging without wonting for space.  The fact is, my pots and pans often encroach onto other burners and I have some flames that are more reliable than others.  So, I made the rice and then re-used that burner for the spinach when it was done.

Bouillabaisse (aka Fish Stew)

Fancy name and apparently it can be much more fancy and time consuming than what I  made. Call it fish stew, call it bouillabaisse, or cioppino, but call it delicious. I scanned several recipes until I found ideas of what I already wanted to do.  I mostly just looked for the secret ingredients that showed up in most of the recipes:  fennel, saffron, and fish stock.   I will say I agree with Cooks Illustrated that you must combine some sort of firm fish (halibut/grouper), flaky fish (snapper), and shellfish (mussels, scallops, shrimp) to get the right textures in play.  I also learned that the fish counter keeps frozen fish stock so that I will never have to buy or deal with fish bones and shells (hooray!).

The leftovers were absolutely devoured by my toddler. He even sopped up all the juices with the garlic bread and ate fennel without knowing it.  (Big parenting win!)

Bouillabaisse

4 small Snapper fillets (thanks to Uncle Stanley's fishing success!)
4 scallops
5 shrimp (keep stocked frozen)
3 leeks or 1 small onion
1 small fennel bulb, slice thin
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 pinch saffron
4-6 C fish stock (can substitute a fortified version of clam juice if not available)
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

In a large Dutch Oven, heat 1 tbsp olive oil.  Add leeks and fennel and cook over medium heat until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 more minute.  Add stock, saffron, and tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Simmer 20 minutes until veggies are soft.

Heat broiler and make garlic bread while you simmer.

Add snapper, cook 2 minutes. Add shrimp and scallops and cook 2 more minutes.  Turn off heat. Serve.

Pizza plus Baby bread

Made the dough during nap so that it could rise for 2 hours.  My son was so excited that he couldn't wait for the pizza to cook and kept eating all the ingredients (not unusual).  We started rolling dough at 4pm and all the pizzas were done by around 6pm since we made 4 personal-sized pizzas.

Pizza Dough

The dough was from Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe.  I used all-purpose flour instead of bread flour and let it rise in a cold oven to get it out of the way.  I think it's a solid dough recipe, but I'm not bound to it.  I'd like to find a less fussy version that I could get a bit thinner or even roll out.  I will say that this Master Recipe is much more forgiving and sturdy than the quick version that rises in a warm oven.

It's important to have a pizza peel because it's relatively impossible to move the dough to the baking stone without it. I also use cornmeal all over the peel to keep it from sticking.

Toppings:

pancetta

pineapple

bulk Mild Italian Sausage

thinly sliced red pepper

chopped Sun-dried Tomatoes

Mozzarella

Baby Breadsticks

Another great thing about making this homemade dough is that I was able to make perfect little breadsticks for my 7 month old.  She uses them as a spoon (since she has to do everything herself) and dips the crust into her baby food.  I dipped the dough in EVO and threw them on the baking stone next to the pizza.  They cook for about the same length of time and get pretty hard like a teething biscuit.

Dessert Pizza

For the last pizza, we all opted for a dessert pizza rather than leftovers of the other kind.  I reasoned that if you brush all of the crusts with EVO for savory pizza, then butter would work for a dessert one.  Nope.  I'll leave it dry next time.  The butter didn't brown so I left the crust in the oven for extra time causing it to get too crunchy.  I'll have to figure out if the butter caused it or if it's because that dough ball rested for about an hour while we made all the rest and the recipe says rest for 5-30 minutes.  Only a Cooks Illustrated scientist could probably solve that mystery.

Dessert Pizza

1 C confectioner's sugar

1-2 tbst milk/half n half

1/2 tsp vanilla

cinnamon sugar

chocolate chips

Sprinkle chocolate chips over dough right out of the oven so they can melt.  I'll use some nutella next time.  Mix confectioner's sugar and milk to make icing.  Drizzle on top of chocolate. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.  yum.

Kid's Gnocchi

We were stuck inside on a rainy weekend and I couldn't make it to the grocery store on Friday.  So I checked the pantry and we had some russet potatoes. Checked the freezer and we had some pancetta.  Plus it was Friday night and we need an excuse to drink nice wine....So begins the gnocchi experiment!

So I googled a recipe from the pasta master--Mario Batali.  His food and restaurants can be really complicated, but I'm pretty sure he got famous from making his grandma's old recipes. Surely she didn't sit and fret over mixing techniques and measurements.  Here's the starting point recipe for our gnocchi adventure.  I also cross referenced the recipe with one in the 'Silver Spoon' which is supposed to be the encyclopedia for Italian cooking.  I mainly took Batali's proportions because getting 1 3/4 C of potato seems ludicrous.

I should mention that the only time I ever tried gnocchi in the past it was a total disaster.  I made it from straight semolina which was like cornmeal.  Cornmeal texture and gnocchi should not even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Gnocchi
2 small russet potatoes (I used 3 but will cut back next time. See notes below)
2 C all purpose flour
1 egg
pinch salt

Boil a large pot of water.

I boiled the potatoes whole for 30-40 minutes and then let them sit on the counter for about an hour to "cool."  Refill your pot with salted water for the gnocchi.

Rice  or food mill the potatoes onto a giant work surface or cutting board where you're going to roll out your pasta.  Make a well in the middle.  Sprinkle all of the flour over the potatoes.  Crack the egg in the middle and prepare to get your workout.

Mix the egg into the potato/flour mixture with a fork in a circular motion, incorporating more and more of the potato and flour as you mix.  Once you get almost all of it mixed in, knead the rest in by hand and continue to knead for another 4-5 minutes.  [This is where it was beneficial that I had ever seen the Molto Mario episode so I had a clue how to mix it all in]

Divide dough up into baseball-sized balls.  Then the fun!  Rolling it all into long snakes and then cutting them into 1" pieces.  I would actually make the snakes about 1/2" and then cut them into 1" gnocchi. I had my toddler help:

All of the fork-flicking and ridges you're supposed to to for gnocchi didn't really work. That may have been because they had too much potato in the recipe. I noticed that the over-worked pieces of dough that my son had played with actually turned out more al dente than the fluffy-soft first batch.

These only take about a minute to cook and you'll know when they're done because they float.  So, have your sauce ready to go.  Simpler is better because gnocchi are pretty rich and only need a light tomato, EVO, basil-type sauce. My pancetta-tomato-spinach sauce was way too much for these little guys.

I put all the cut gnocchi on parchment on a cookie sheet so they would transfer to the pot easier.

Aunt Anne's Chicken

This recipe combines a love of two Aunties--my sister-in-law in Seattle and my husband's Great Aunt Lee. Aunt Lee's chicken contributes the evaporated milk and Aunt Anne the melba toast. The original Aunt Lee Chicken is made with Post Toasties (which I can't even find in the store anymore) and I have only had Aunt Anne Chicken once. So you see where the need to modify comes from. This is so simple and so good that I don't know why I don't make it more often.

Aunt Anne's Chicken

1 package any flavor Melba toasts (I used Sea Salt)

1 lb chicken thighs

1 can evaporated milk

s+p

Pour evap milk over chicken thighs and refrigerate for several hours. Good to start it during naptime. Then when everyone is awake, I get my toddler to help push the button on the Cuisinart to make the Melba Toasts into bread crumbs. Leave some small chunks of toast.

Preheat oven to 350. Drain off excess milk and toss chicken thighs with some salt and pepper. Dredge the thighs in the breadcrumbs and place on rimmed baking sheet. It's fine if they are touching because they shrink significantly during cooking. Cook for 30-40 minutes.