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Pumpkin Ginger Crème Carmel
by: Renée via Baking Experiments on Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:54:00 -0500

Chris and I were going to have dinner at my uncle and his girlfriend's house a few weeks ago and I said that I would bring dessert. I decided that I wanted to have something autumnal. So I went searching through my many, varied cookbooks. A while ago I had subscription to Food & Wine and they randomly sent me a cookbook. I took a look at it and tossed it aside because I thought that Food & Wine's Best of the Best was going to be the best recipes from Food & Wine from that year and I already had all the recipes in the magazines taking up space on my shelf. Well, I pulled it down to see if I could find anything in there since I haven't looked in it and most of my Food & Wines got tossed when we moved. It turns out that it is the 100 best recipes from the top 27 cookbooks published in the year 2000. Wow. It's awesome.

So I found a recipe for Pumpkin Ginger Crème Carmel that is from the cookbook The Olives Dessert Table. It called for eight 5-ounce ramekins but I only have 8-ounce ramekins so I made 6. I think I should have left them in a little longer because they were a little soft.

I decided to decorate them with Pepperidge Farm Gingermen.

This one had a broken leg. I ate him so he wouldn't feel bad about it.

Looked mushy but tasted yummy.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread
by: Renée via Baking Experiments on Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:22:00 -0500

Keywords: Fall , Bread , Pumpkin

Saturday seemed to be the first day of fall that I could really enjoy. I opened up the windows and let the cool air in. I sat in the recliner and had a cup of hot tea. I was just thinking of the season, the leaves, the crisp air. It got me started on all things fall.

My favorite fall icon is the pumpkin. I love everything about it. It's shape, the warm orange color, the flavor, the smell. I especially love pumpkin when used in baked goods. So as soon as I realized that I had some pumpkin purée in the pantry, I went in search of a recipe. Now this took quite some time. I own a pumpkin cookbook. There are many websites dedicated to pumpkins. Many people seem to think they have the best recipe for pumpkin x. I settled finally on this recipe (second one down on the page) from the Pumpkin Patch website.

This recipe had promise. The ingredient list looked great and contained things that were already in my kitchen. It was easy to make. It smelled wonderful baking. It tasted....meh. There was definitely too much nutmeg going on here. I would cut it down to a scant teaspoon instead of the tablespoon requested. It was so over powering. There is no pumpkin, no chocolate, no pecans... just nutmeg. Its a beautiful bread. Golden. Moist. Just too much nutmeg.

Changes I made to the recipe:
1) I used pecans instead of walnuts
2) I used apple cider instead of water
3) I didn't have enough veg. oil so I used 3/4 c oil and 1/4 c melted butter.
4) I probably used a little more than 1c of choco chips because I wanted to finish off the last bit I had. I used a mix of Hershey's Special Dark chips and Ghirardelli Bittersweet chips.
5) I do not own three loaf pans. I have one. So I used one loaf pan and one Bundt pan. Came out great. I did lower the oven temp because my pans are dark. (325° for the first 45 min then to 300° for the last 15 min)

I will definately be making this again, but with the change to the nutmeg. I was thinking of using pumpkin pie spice mix instead of the nutmeg and cinnamon. I'll have to play with it a little to see how it comes out.
Chicken Soup - Grandma Katie Style
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:45:00 -0500

Keywords: Renée , Soup , Chicken

Growing up, Mom always made chicken soup. She says the smell reminds her of her Grandma Katie. I don't remember Grandma Katie, so the smell of chicken soup reminds me of Mom. I feel like I've known how to make this my whole life. I remember watching Mom boil the chicken and then letting it cool overnight, skimming the fat, cleaning the chicken off the bones and then heating everything up again.

Recently, Chris and I made Roasted Chicken. I decided (before we even cooked it) that we would make chicken soup out of the leftovers. So on Thursday night, after work, we set out to make chicken soup. A lot of the work was done for us already. I had saved the gibblies from the chicken, along with the juice that collected in the bottom of my roasting pan, the bones of the chicken and some of the pieces that we didn't eat (wings, some breast meat).

First, we started a pot with water and the juices that were saved, which I skimmed the fat off of before adding to the pot. I cleaned all of the meat that I could off of the bones, separating the good meat, the bones and the sinew. The sinew goes in the trash, the meat goes in the pot and the bones get tied up in cheese cloth and then go in the pot. Gibblies get tied up in a separate cheesecloth and thrown in too.

We added about a half of a large bag of baby carrots, an entire package of celery, chopped, and an onion, also choppped.

Next are the spices. We added some oregano, thyme, sage, salt, pepper and 6 cloves of garlic, minced. I used these spices because that was what I made my chicken rub with.

We simmered it for about an hour, until the veggies were tender and the gibblies were cooked through. Just lift out the cheesecloth bundles, let them drain, and throw them out.

I don't like to put rice or pasta into my soup and let it sit there. I like it much better if you make the rice or pasta separately and then add it to each individual bowl before adding the soup. That way it doesn't break down too much and get soggy. We made rice this time.

We served the soup with a crusty bread and some apple cider (thanks for the idea, Vina!).

It was so delicious. Perfect for a cool night and worth the time we put into it on a work night (we didn't get to eat until almost 9pm since I got home from work around 7:30ish).

The best part was lunch on Friday. If possible (Chris and I agree 100% that it is), it was even better the next day.

Our pot was big enough for us to make dinner, lunch the next day and put a huge container in the freezer for another day.
Renée's Roasted Chicken and Potatoes
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:40:00 -0500

Keywords: Dinner , Renée , Potatoes , Chicken

Whole chicken was on sale and I was sick so I decided to make a roasted chicken and then turn the leftovers into chicken soup. This is the roasted chicken part of the plan. Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead from the French Toast Experiment so there are not too many pictures for you here. I will narrate to the best of my storytelling abilities.

First you unwrap your lovely lady (the chicken, not your girlfriend) and give her a lukewarm shower in the sink (make sure your sink is clean on the bottom). Rinse out all cavities and crevices, also remove the bag that has the gibblies in it and put it in the fridge for later use in chicken soup making. (I call them gibblies, you got a problem with that?)

Now this part is a little bit hard but you can do it. Put your girl on a cutting board and get a small, sharp knife. Starting by the neck end, you are going to pull the skin up in one solid piece, cutting underneath at the stringy parts that make it stick to the chicken until you have a big skin flap that you can see the whole naked lady under (if you are really good you should be able to get the legs uncovered too, but that takes practice and if you can't do it the first time, its ok). Do not cut it completely free of the chicken! it should still be attached at the opposite side.

Now wash your hands. If you are smart you have made your spice rub ahead of time and can just start applying, but I always forget and have to make it after the de-skinning step. I just mix whatever I feel like in a little bowl. This time I used about a tablespoon of each of the following: sea salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary and sage. Mix them together well.

If you want at this step you can use your meat tenderizer or a fork to poke some holes in your chicken. I recommend NOT going through the skin, but hold it up instead and work underneath it.

Now the fun part. You are going to give your lovely chicky a nice rub down. Get some of that yummy spice rub and rub it under the skin of the chicken. Make a nice coating under there. Now you are going to stretch the skin back in place (don't worry it will stay). If you have left over spice rub, put it on the outside of the skin.

I baked my chicken in a clay baker (with lid on!) at 350° for 20 min/lb. You will be tempted to take the lid off and look - DON'T! Just let it bake and all the juices and steam will collect on the bottom. After its done you can take the lid off for a few minutes and let the skin get crispy if you want to. You want to keep that juice and bones and leftover meat for the chicken soup.

On to potatoes!

This part is super easy. Wash and quarter about 2lbs of baby potatoes (I prefer red, but white is good too, this time I used both). Put them in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle on some dried rosemary. Enough so that every potato will get some. Add about 1/4c of Olive Oil and toss until evenly coated. Then turn out onto a baking sheet.
Make sure that one of the cut sides is facing down. Bake at 400° for about 35-45 min. (If you want you can bake them with the chicken at 350°, but they will take around an hour or so)

Sorry for the bad plate picture but the lighting was bad and the flash reflected off the plate and then the camera died and I was hungry and didn't want to wait until it charged to eat. Yum! Perfect moist chicken and yummy crisp but tender potatoes. Don't mind the icky pile of green stuff. That was our adventure in frozen artichoke hearts. All I can say is, 'DON'T.'
Breakfast Monte Cristo - Cheesecake Factory Style
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:12:00 -0500

Keywords: Chris , Breakfast , French Toast , Eggs

A few weeks ago Chris and I were headed out for the day and decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. I wanted breakfast but since it was Sunday we were in luck because Cheesecake has an awesome brunch, only on Sundays. I decided to get the Breakfast Style Monte Cristo, which was scrambled eggs, bacon, Canadian bacon and Swiss cheese on French Toast. Let me tell you that it was so friggin' good. Their French Toast had corn flakes masterfully integrated onto the outside, forming a delicious crunchy crust on the French Toast. Upon seeing and tasting this, Chris immediately said 'I have to try and make that at home'. Fast forward a few weeks and here were are:

We decided to skip the two kinds of bacon and go for ham instead. Since the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashahna was coming up, we were able to get some beautiful, fresh Challah bread at our local supermarket. Along with your regular French Toast Fixins (a technical term) of vanilla, cinnamon, eggs and milk, we had our new additions of corn flakes, Swiss and ham. Don't forget your favorite tea!
We did the usual method of scrambling some eggs with a little milk, vanilla and lots of cinnamon, dipping in the bread and letting each side soak for a little bit (around 20-25 seconds since our bread was sliced pretty thick). Then it was a quick dip in the crushed up corn flakes and into a buttered, hot pan. We found that crushing up the corn flakes cooked more evenly and gave us a golden brown finish. See below:

Yummy!

It came out so good! Not exactly like the Cheesecake Factory but very close. Molto Bene! Note the finish of powdered sugar that Chris put on. It was VERY filling. I only ate one slice of the bread and most of the stuffing parts and I was absolutely stuffed. I cut up the rest and spread it around my plate so it would look like I ate more than I did. Shh! Don't tell Mom!