Ginger Lime Pork Tenderloin

So the grocery had pork tenderloin on sale today. And, of course, I didn't have anything figured out for dinner yet, so I grabbed one. Of course, I didn't know what I was going to do with it, beyond "cook, serve with zucchini" because that's the veggie I had in the fridge.

Then Hans comes home early.... So no time to marinate anything. I remembered this stuff that we got for Christmas and decided, "Hmmm.... Let's see what we can do."

So I tasted it. Too sweet to put on the pork by itself, though. I decide then that I would add some lime juice (that I just happened to pick up on a whim last week) and a bit of soy sauce. Voila! Instant success!


So that you can share in the deliciousness that is Ginger Lime Pork Tenderloin, here's the recipe:

2lb Pork Tenderloin
4TBS Ginger People Ginger Spread
3TBS lime juice (I used bottled)
1 tsp soy sauce.

Preheat oven to 350. Put pork tenderloin into a 9x13 baking dish.

In a small bowl, mix ginger spread, lime juice and soy sauce with a whisk until well incorporated. Spread half over the pork tenderloin, smearing it all over to coat. Pour remaining sauce onto top of tenderloin so that it creates a thick-ish layer.

Bake for 1:15. Broil for additional 5 minutes, or until sauce on top starts to bubble and brown, watching carefully to prevent burning.

We were hungry, and I wasn't 100% sure that it would be a bloggable dish, so the picture is of what remains.... You get the idea, though!

Culinary Explorations

Hans and I have gotten so bored with the same old same old for dinners, that, come evening, no one could decide on anything to make because none of the stand-bys were appealing. So, we (or rather, I) started trying recipes from Pinterest. So far, it has been wildly successful - I'll list and link all we've tried on another day. Tonight, though, I have to write up the rice pudding I created this evening... .

I took a little of this person's ideas, and a little of that person's ideas from a thread on Ravelry, and created something that my mind thought would work out. The results were bang on!

So, without further ado, Kerry's Rice Pudding! (Pictures tomorrow - It's too dark and the kitchen's too dirty for photography tonight):

Ingredients:

• 1 cup uncooked rice
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• Cinnamon to taste (I used about a tablespoon and a half - we like cinnamon a lot)

Directions:

• Mix one cup evaporated (not condensed! This is important!) milk, one cup water and one teaspoon vanilla in a measuring cup. Set aside.
• Put rice into dry pan, over med high heat, stirring constantly, brown slightly.
• Add milk and water to pan, bring to a boil.
• Add cinnamon, stir.
• Boil for 3 minutes, put lid on pan, turn off heat.
• Let rice sit for 20 minutes with lid on.
• Mix remaining evaporated milk and enough whole milk to bring to 2 cups. Add 1 tsp vanilla and 1 cup sugar, stir until sugar is dissolved
• Add sugar/vanilla/milk mixture to cooked rice. Stir to combine. 
• Bring to a boil, replace lid, turn off heat.
• Allow to rest for another 20 minutes.
• Whisk together egg and one cup of whole milk. Pour into rice pudding and mix well.
• Bring mixture to a simmer.
• Simmer with cover on for 5 minutes.
• Serve either immediately, or allow to cool, then serve.

Everyone declared it a success, too!

Ooooh, ya'll!!I

I haven't posted a lot here, but I have been cooking up a storm, and really finding my culinary feet! I've got pot roast, red beans and rice, jambalaya and gumbo down to a science! I've created a couple of dishes that we've really enjoyed, too.

Tonight is one of those dishes. No pictures because, well, I'm just too tired! Here's the recipe, though!

Oven "Fried" Coconut Chicken with Thai Peanut Veggies and Rice


Ingredients:
4 Chicken Breasts, boneless, skinless
Yellow Curry powder
Coconut milk
Veggies of choice
Oyster or fish sauce
Sesame Oil
Rice Vinegar
Crushed Red Pepper
Rice
Water 


Marinate chicken in coconut milk and yellow curry powder for a few hours, turning every hour or so. Then, combine panko breadcrumbs and sweetened coconut flakes. Coat chicken in breading, let rest 15 minutes. Bake at 350 until done (about 20minutes on each side), turning halfway through.


While that's baking, slice up whatever your choice of asian veg (tonight I just used zucchini and bamboo shoots because that's what I had). Put a little sesame oil into a hot cast iron dutch oven or skillet. Heat till hot, then pour the marinade in and stir well. Add more curry powder to taste. If you like a little heat, add in some crushed red pepper flakes. add in some rice vinegar and a dash of fish sauce or oyster sauce. Mix well. Add 1/2 cup of peanut butter. Mix well. Add veg. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cover.


For the rice, put a bit of sesame oil into a pot, heat to high. Add dry, uncooked rice. Brown rice until it emits a nice, nutty aroma. Add water (whatever you need for the amount of rice you're making) and a dash of rice vinegar. Bring to a boil, then put on lid and turn off heat. Let sit until liquid is absorbed.


Serve with sauce and veg over rice with chicken on the side.


Bon apetit! 

I'm back!

(I started this post about a week ago and never finished!!)

So I haven't blogged a lot lately, but I have been cooking a lot! With Hans back at work, the brunt of the food preparation and decision has landed on me, something that hasn't happened in years. Because of this, I'm remembering that I don't just bake, I actually enjoy cooking, too, and am good at it!

Watching Food Network doesn't hurt either. Take this morning, for instance - while I'm cleaning the downstairs, I have Chopped on in the background. For their appetizer round, the secret ingredients were boudain blanc, chanterelle mushrooms, baby artichokes and orange marmalade. All of the contestants were lamenting how they have no idea what they could possibly do with this combination, but in my mind, I had it figured out!

See, boudain blanc is sausage. A very mild, almost flavorless sausage. Perfect for using as a blank (ha!) canvas. So, to start out, I would cut the sausage into medallions and then sautee with shallots, sliced and blanched baby artichokes and the mushrooms. While that's sauteeing, I would take the orange marmalade, some fresh smashed garlic and a bit of white wine. Combine them, then reduce to a glaze. Toss with the sauteed sausage and veggies, plate with a cilantro garnish. Boom! Instant awesome!

Of course, it's all well and good for me to sit back in my recliner and play armchair chef. That's easy - in my imagination it all works out perfectly! The judges would fawn over how incredible I am, and I would walk away with the prize.

In practice, though, about 1/3 of the time, my experiments are misses. Hell, sometimes the "tried and true" recipes I get from places I trust don't always work out (I'm looking at you, Paula Deen's peach cobbler!!!). But you never know until you try them,, right?

So I'm back. And I plan to blog a lot more, especially now that I have my big, bad, awesome camera!

Crock Pot Baked Potatoes

I was on Pinterest the other day, and happened across a pin about making baked potatoes in the Crock Pot. Okay, well, "happened across" may be a stretch - I was searching for Crock Pot recipes - but I wasn't looking for a recipe for baked potatoes. However, Hans had bought a bunch of potatoes Sunday (they were on sale for $1.69/5# bag!!!) and decided that he wanted loaded baked potatoes for dinner one night, so this find was perfect! I have things to do today, and a brand new crock pot! Fate!

So I read the one technique for slow cooker baked potatoes. Then I read another. And another. And about three more. Finally, like I'm wont to do so frequently, I took the aspects I liked from each and married them. That is what you have here!

Okay, so first you decide how many potatoes you need. I did 6 even though there are only four of us because I wanted an extra for Hans to take for lunch tomorrow, and an extra I can take to Grandmommy. Then, you scrub your potatoes well. Remember, the skin is where all the vitamins are!!

Once you have your potatoes scrubbed, get out your ingredients:

You'll need either foil sheets (I just happened to have some) or aluminum foil, kosher or sea salt (coarse salt just works so much better for this sort of application), olive oil and clean hands. Oh - and a Crock Pot.

Get out a large bowl that you can fit all the potatoes into at once. Trust me - this will make your life easier! 

Next, you're going to want to drizzle olive oil over all the potatoes. You don't need much, just enough so that you can rub it over all the skins:

Then, one at a time, spread the olive oil over each of the potatoes, making sure that the entire surface is covered:

Once you have your potatoes all oiled up and lovely, you want to get your foil ready.

You want to be sure that the reflective side is against the potato, not the dull side:

Then sprinkle just a little bit - about a pinch - of salt onto the foil:

Put your potato on top of the salt, then sprinkle a bit more. You want to get an even, light sprinkling of salt covering the potato:

Once your potato is oiled and salted, you want to wrap the foil around it so that you seal in the moisture:
(there's no need to prick the potatoes)

In a crock pot set to LOW, place all your potatoes:

Cover, then let the Crock Pot do its magic for the next 8 hours.

Bonus - while working with all that olive oil and coarse salt, you've also given yourself a lovely manicure! Now don't you feel accomplished???

Serve the potatoes as an accompaniment to a meat dish, or as a meal in and of itself by setting up a "potato bar" - put out cheese, butter, sour cream, chili, bacon, or anything else you can think of. I may make some broccoli to go with ours!

LID Friendly Vegetable Soup

SO I haven't blogged in a while here. Partly because I hadn't been doing much of the cooking, partly because I didn't have a worthy camera after dropping mine last Halloween, and really, what's a food blog without pictures??

But, thanks to a wonderful husband, I got an awesome camera for my birthday, so now I get to photograph all my cooking adventures! And I'm back to being home, so I have more time to cook!

Right now, though, I'm concentrating on a specific type of recipes for the next few days - Low Iodine Diet cooking - because I'm on a low iodine diet in preparation for thyroid cancer treatment.

We've also moved since last I posted, and now live in a suburb of New Orleans! Fodder for so very much foodie fun!


Anyway, today's foray is LID Friendly Veggie Soup.

One of the problems with the Low Iodine Diet is that there is iodine hidden in so many places that no one would even think of, it can make meal planning quite difficult! Add to that the fact that, when you're on the LID, you're usually in a place mentally and emotionally where you just can't think creatively, and it can make the diet seem just unbearable.

This is the third or fourth time I've had to do the diet, and admittedly, the first time I have even attempted to make it enjoyable. The first couple of times I just couldn't be bothered, and lived off of homemade biscuits with fresh tomatoes. This time, though, I wanted to find some things my whole family would eat so I wasn't always eating alone, or eating something completely different. Granted, most meals I still have, but there have been a few nights that I've gotten share dinner!

The weather has turned a bit cooler here in NOLA, so I decided yesterday to get a bunch of veggies - fresh and frozen - so I could make some veggie soup. Admittedly, part of the reason I'm making it, too, is they discovered that the cancer has returned, and I just want comfort food. When my Granny was alive, she made the BEST canned vegetable soup, and it was my favorite thing when I was unwell, physically or emotionally. I wanted to make something that would taste like that.

So I took out my dutch oven, heated up a little olive oil, then cut up an onion. Threw that in the DO with some chopped garlic, sauteed with a little coarse Kosher (allowed! Yay!) salt until just translucsent. Then I put in a bag of frozen sliced okra, and sauteed that for about five minutes (sauteing the okra without liquid helps keep it from getting slimy). Next, I quartered about four or five "on the vine" tomatoes (kinda small little guys, between a Roma and a "real" tomato), keeping them big to preserve as much of their liquid as possible. Sauteed all that for another couple of minutes over medium heat.

Next, I added some baby carrots (fresh, halved), lowered the heat to med low and put my lid on my DO to "sweat" the veggies to help them create a broth of their own. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. Gave it all a stir, added a bag of frozen cut green beans and half a bag (because it's what I had! LOL!) of corn, a splash of white vinegar and a pinch of Kosher salt. Put cover back on to let it all cook some more....

Now I'm just going to let it all simmer for an hour or two, giving it a stir periodically. About an hour before I want to eat it, I'll peel (because potato peels aren't allowed on LID) a red potato and a white potato, chunk them, then throw them in and cook until tender. Should be super tasty for dinner with some LID approved biscuits!

Comfort Food

Ah, I've been neglectful. Forgive me. Anyone who knows me knows that I can be hit or miss with my blogging. I try, really I do, but I just don't get it all out of my head and onto the page....

And this will continue to an extent, because my camera is feeling a bit poorly at the moment.

However, I have to tell you about tonight's dinner!  Hans surprised me by having homemade, from scratch, red beans & rice and jalapeño corn bread ready when I got home. It was DIVINE!  Super tasty! So good that I stood at the kitchen counter and ate it all - every bite - before I had a chance to get to my chair!

He cooked it all day, too. All. Day. Started it at noon, we ate at nearly 7 (because that's how long it takes me to get home most evenings....). Then, the icing on the cake was, well, a cake. With homemade icing. More specifically, carrot cake with homemade cream cheese frosting. So. Good.

So after a day that wasn't awful, but that was full of pain, I came home to a nice, comforting meal that was like eating love and snuggles.

Now for love and snuggles....