Spiced-Rubbed Salmon

We made this salmon recipe for the first time quite a while ago--the recipe is from the December 2007 issue of Cooking Light, after all. We had to have made it not long after getting that issue. Even years later, I remember it being a really, really good recipe, and that I wanted to find an opportunity to make it again.

Well, that opportunity came last week. We purchased some wild salmon on sale at Outpost last weekend, and made the recipe for dinner last week. Since we had a smaller piece of salmon than what the recipe calls for (about 1.25 lbs) I halved the spices. I ended up adding a little bit more because it didn't look like it would be enough, and I'm glad I did.

The flavor was good, although not quite what I remembered for some reason. Plus, I don't know what it is, but I have a helluva time cooking salmon--I always overcook it. So, for next time, I'll set the timer for about 12 minutes, rather than 20, and keep checking the fish.

We served the fish with Near East pearled couscous. I've never had the pearled variety, and it was really pretty good.

Butternut/Pumpkin/Cornbread Bake

There is a lot going on in this bake, but those three items in the title--butternut squash, pumpkin and cornbread--are my favorite parts. The full title of the dish is Pumpkin Black Bean Bake, but, as you'll see below, I made a few changes (some on accident!). The bake is supposed to be similar to a tamale pie. Yum!

I ripped this recipe out of the October 2009 Better Homes and Gardens (my mom always passes on the magazines to me), and been wanting to make it for a while. I came across it about two weeks ago, and finally decided to set it aside and make it sooner than later. I'm sure glad we did--it's really, really tasty and pretty easy.

The recipe, as the title denotes, calls for chunks of pumpkin in the bake. I didn't have a whole pumpkin on hand, but I had plenty of butternut squash (I still have three or so to use up!), so I thought I'd go with that. Also, I accidentally bought and opened kidney beans--rather than black beans--without realizing it. It turned out to be fine and taste just as good.

I'm going to give it a new name--Butternut Squash, Beef & Kidney Bean Bake:

-1 lb. ground beef

-2 cups 1/2-inch pieces of peeled butternut squash

-1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

-1 15-oz. can kidney (or black) beans rinsed and drained

-1 cup frozen whole kernel corn

-1 4-oz. can diced green chiles

-1/2 teas. salt

-1/2 cup beef broth

-1 3-oz. package cream cheese, softened

-1 8.5 oz. corn bread/muffin mix (I used a 7.5 oz. box)

-1 egg, slightly beaten

-1/3 cup milk

-1/3 canned pumpkin

-I also added a few shakes of chili powder, garlic powder and habanero powder to the meat as I cooked it

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a (very) large skillet, cook ground beef, squash and onions over medium heat until meat is browned and onion tender, breaking up ground beef. Drain fat.

Stir in beans, corn, chiles and salt. Heat through. Stir in broth and cream cheese until blended. Transfer mixture to a 2.5-quart baking dish.

In a medium bowl, stir together corn muffin mix, egg, milk and pumpkin until just combined. Spoon over beef mixture.

Bake 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted into topper comes out clean.

I put the bake together on Sunday (everything other than the cornbread topping--I did that right before I put it in the oven) and kept it in the fridge until Monday evening. I upped the cooking time to about 45 minutes. It was warm in the middle and the cornbread was done.

This was a really, really good bake--I loved all the flavors and everything together was great. We served it with a small side salad, but the meal is so filling--and covers a lot of food groups--that it probably isn't necessary.

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

We had some leftovers from Thanksgiving at my parents' house--sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole--and needed a "main dish" to go with the sides. I intended to pick up some chicken breasts to have with it, but then I spotted a small Tofurky on super sale at Outpost. I've only had samples of it during Outpost's sample days, but I thought it was tasty, and Nate said he was game to try it.

The Tofurky was really easy to make. It was still frozen when I wanted to bake it, but I just needed to increase the cooking time. All you have to do is take it out of its wrapper, place it on a piece of foil on a pan, baste it with an olive oil, soy sauce and sage mixture, wrap it up and bake it for about 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Then you take the foil off, baste it with the rest of the mixture and bake it another 20 minutes uncovered. That's it!

It was really pretty good--it's stuffed with a wild rice stuffing, making the "meat" more moist. I'm not sure Nate loved it (he's quite the carnivore) and was a bit thrown off by the texture, but he did say the taste was good.

I wasn't sure if it would be dry or not, so I made a super easy vegetarian gravy. Here's the recipe.

Instead of 1 cup of water, I used 1 cup of veggie broth, thinking it would give it more flavor. It was really pretty good. Next time I might try the water--it was pretty salty, and I think it would have been flavorful enough with the water.

Thanksgiving: A Whole Lotta Dessert

For the past few years, I've been in charge of dessert for Thanksgiving at my parents' house. I always make the tradition pumpkin pie--never any other type of pies, for whatever reason. Also, for these last few years, I've been making another pumpkin dessert from a recipe my mother-in-law gave me for pumpkin pie crunch. It's been a hit at Thanksgiving, so I keep bringing it.

For the pies, my uncle's partner Roger sent me this recipe, from NPR, for crust, which includes vodka! (The crust ingredients are on the upper left-hand side, and the instruction are below.) According to the recipe/article, the vodka does two things: 1. It does not react with the proteins in the flour to form gluten, and 2. Because the alcohol evaporates, you can add more liquid, which makes the dough light and flaky.

I gotta say, as much as I love making things from scratch--and the crust does turn out pretty tasty--it is sure a pain in the butt! It's a long, tedious process. Like I said, it's worth it in the end, but boy oh boy ... getting there is another thing! Luckily, I mixed the dough together (for two pies!) on Wednesday and finished everything off on Thursday.

My makeshift pie weights:

For the pie filling, I've been using a different recipe. I'm not sure how I came across this one, but it seems standard and always turns out tasty.

For both recipes, I follow everything exactly. I don't want to do anything wrong and mess the whole thing up!

The pumpkin pie crunch is really, really tasty--and really easy. Here's the recipe:

-15 oz. can pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling)

-12 oz. can evaporated milk

-3 eggs

-1.5 cup sugar

-4 teas. pumpkin pie spice

-1/2 teas. salt

-1 box yellow cake mix

-1 stick butter, melted (I just realized the recipe calls for two sticks (!) of butter, and I only used one! Whoops! I think 1.5 sticks would work best.)

Blend together all ingredients except for cake mix and butter. Pour into cake pan (I use a 9x13 pan), and sprinkle cake mix on top.

Pour butter on top. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

Since I didn't use enough butter, there were parts of the "crunch" part that were still powder cake mix. Using 1.5 sticks would definitely work best. It's a really tasty dessert--the bottom tastes just like pumpkin pie, and then the buttery, crunchy top gives it a unique flavor.

Of course, serve both desserts with real whipped cream--just beat a small carton of heavy whipping cream with about 1 tbs. sugar and a dash of vanilla extract. YUM!

Before we had dessert, we, of course, and the traditional Thanksgiving meal: turkey, gravy, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, my new favorite Brussels sprouts, cranberries and salad.

As always, it was a delicious meal. And, as always, I stuffed myself silly!

Restaurant Review: Tulip

November's ethnic dining night out took me and my girlfriends to Tulip, Milwaukee's only (?) Turkish restaurant last week.

I was the only one who had been before--I had been for dinner a few years ago and for lunch with some work people about a year ago. While the food has always been good, the service has been a little shaky, ranging from slow (think 1.5 hour-lunch. On a weekday) to pretty rude. Luckily, the latter was years ago, and we didn't experience anything like that. While the service was fairly slow again--especially there were only about five tables on this Tuesday night--the food made up for it.

Since it was a chilly night, I ordered some tea. There is only one kind--black tea served in a pretty glass (sorry for the stupid picture, but the cup is too pretty not to post!).

To begin with, we ordered the Turkish empanadas with beef and herbs. There were two per order. They were tasty, and hit the spot. We also had warm, fresh bread and herbed olive oil.

For meals, Leah had the boneless chicken breast with crushed pistachio and apricot. Sun had a bowl of the lentil soup and a salad (unfortunately, I can't remember which one and nothing is jumping out at me on the menu). Lisa also got a salad, and added chicken to it (and, again, I can't remember which one!). I didn't try anyone else's meals--other than snagging a few olives from the salads--so I can't comment on them. All three ladies, though, said they liked their food.

I ordered something a bit different for myself: grilled meat patties, made with beef and lamb. I don't normally order lamb (actually, I'm not sure I ever have), but there was a lot of lamb on the menu, and I know it's a big part of Turkish cuisine. The patties came with grilled eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and pepper, plus bulgar pilaf and yogurt sauce. The plate wasn't huge--I even thought it might not be enough--but it ended up being a perfect amount of food.

All in all, we had a good time. The restaurant is beautiful and cozy with a fireplace. Like I said, the service was a bit slow, but the waiter was nice and personable.

"Quick and Easy" Potato Soup

I used the quotation marks because for some reason, while I like to think I'm at least a decent cook, this supposedly quick and easy potato soup from Cooking Light took me forever, and I had a few setbacks. But, luckily, the soup tasted pretty good.

The recipe is for Loaded Baked Potato Soup. A lot of the directions involve the microwave, which you think would make things easier, but I guess I rarely cook with the microwave and don't really know what I'm doing.

First of all, I followed the recipe pretty closely, except for a few things:

-I forgot the green onions (I used them all up when making the baos).

-We forgot to buy cheddar cheese, so we used the pepper jack we had. (Pepper jack and bacon for toppings:)

-I didn't have red potatoes, so I used a random combination of the potatoes I did have (including one purple/blue one, which looked kind of odd).

-I used skim milk rather than 1%.

Here's what I did wrong, and some words of wisdom:

-The worst thing I did was severely overcook the potatoes. The recipe calls for cooking the potatoes for 13 minutes on high. That was a mistake. I should have just used the microwave's potato setting. The potatoes were pretty dry, but at least workable. If you can, peel the potatoes before cooking them. I ended up with quite a bit of potato peel in the soup, which was OK. I'm not sure what was with the potato with the weird middle--I'm not sure if it was a dud potato or if I dried it out so much. The rest of the potato was fine.

-I didn't think there were enough potatoes--the soup seems rather liquidy--so I cooked two more potatoes. Well, I REALLY overcooked these two potatoes (below). I ended up having to throw them away.

-Once you put the milk in the saucepan, be sure to watch the soup VERY closely--it doesn't take much for the milk to boil over! This didn't happen to me, but it almost did.

-With cooking all those potatoes, the 20-minute recipe ended up taking me about an hour! I think it's for the better though--the soup had lots of flavor and thickened nicely.

Like I said, despite all this, the soup was really pretty tasty. It thickened up quite a bit as it sat on the stove. I think it would be even better with the green onions (and make for a better picture).

Bao Wow! Take Two

In March, I blogged about heating up the bao (steamed buns) we had made a few months before. The bao are so good, and we were waiting for an opportunity to make them again. It's quite the process, so you need a lot of time. A lazy Saturday at home with no plans for the night was the perfect opportunity.

We followed the same Cooking Light recipe as before, and did everything the same--except for one important thing. instead of making up our own Chinese five-spice, we purchased a container of it from the Spice House (if you have not been to the Spice House, please go there. IMMEDIATELY. It's fantastic!). This mix is much better and more pungent than whatever we used last time.



And just like last time, everything turned out wonderfully. The pork mixture has such great flavor, and steaming the buns gives the breading a great texture. But, like I said, the whole process takes quite a while, so be prepared to carve out some time.



Here's the play-by-play of what we did:

Made the dough, and let it rise, covered with a towel, in the bathroom (it really warms up in the bathroom when the heating vent is open). Takes about an hour.


Meanwhile, make the filling--cook the pork on the stove and mix the rest of the ingredients (green onions, soy sauce, hoisin sauce and more).


When dough is ready, divide into 12 equal pieces and roll out each piece. Fill with 1/4 cup of filling.

Twist ends together so bao closes up.


Place in bamboo steamer (be sure to use parchment paper--we didn't the first itme, and they stuck REALLY bad). I took the picture after the baos had been in the steamer for a few minutes. They were already getting big!


Steam about 15 minutes--they'll get REALLY big!




And enjoy!
We stir fried some veggies (box choy, mushrooms and onions) to have on the side. The baos are great dipped in hoisin sauce. Next time, I'd like to try a different filling. I think tofu would be good, or ground chicken, pork or beef with some different sauces.