Tangy Shrimp Pasta

Two days before payday menu selections can get a little interesting with supplies on the low side, and they're even lower than usual because I was a bit of a slacker when it came to grocery shopping this past month.  One thing I never slack on is going to the Amish stand on Saturdays and a few weeks ago I got a crate of sweet red and green bell peppers for $6.00 so I've got -several- bags of those chopped in the freezer but didn't really know what I was going to use them other than etoufee.  I thought about making etoufee until I realized that I was out of crawfish, and I prefer both shrimp and crawfish in my etoufee, so while looking at the shrimp and peppers I decided to get creative and this was the result:

ingredients:
2 cups diced bell pepper, red and green or whatever you have
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 cup chopped green onion
1/2 - 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I tend to over spice things, but I like it!)
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
2 cups chicken broth divided
2-3 lbs raw shrimp (de-headed, de-shelled and de-veined)
1 8oz bag Italian cheese blend
pasta of your choice

In large, deep skillet (or pot if you don't have a deep skillet) sautee peppers, onion, garlic and cayenne till soft, add 1 cup of the chicken broth and reduce heat.  Mix corn starch with fork in remaining chicken broth and add to skillet when blended smooth.  Allow mixture to come to boil in order to thicken then add preped raw shrimp.  Stirring constantly cook only till shrimp curl and turn opaque and remove from fire.  Stir in cheese, cover skillet/pot and let sit for 10 minutes then serve over pasta.

It's very easy to over cook shrimp, when cooking in a sauce like this as soon as the shrimp curl and turn opaque TAKE THE POT OFF THE FLAME, the heat from the sauce will continue to cook the shrimp till it is thoroughly cooked through.

It's National Pancake Day!

Today is National Pancake Day and I had planned on celebrating by making Dutch Baby pancakes for the family, but I ran into a road block when I realized that I didn't have a pan that would work to bake it in =(  This is a major problem because for as long as I can remember I've NEVER been able to make a decent batch of pancakes.  I can make awesome batter, but when it comes to cooking them I'm a total failure.  A moment before I gave up I decided to check trusty Alton Brown's site and see if there was anything else I could make that would work when I found his recipe for crepes.  Now, I may not be able to make a traditional pancake to save my life but apparently I was a crepe maker in a former life!  These were SO easy, and even for this pancake killer they came out perfect!  Anyone that has had bad luck making pancakes, give crepes a try - they're a lot easier than snotty french restaurants would have us believe!! I served the crepes rolled up with the Buttermilk Syrup recipe from the Dutch Baby page and it was one of the best meals I think I've ever made! I didn't get a chance to take pictures of them but I -did- manage to get a video of my youngest, Nathan, licking his plate clean afterward =)  Happy Pancake Day everyone!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Cheesecakes were the first thing I ever noticed I had a talent for making, and this one is ALWAYS a crowd pleaser.  Most people tend to only think of pumpkin as a holiday flavor, but I think pumpkin is great year round! Try making one in the middle of the summer, it's just as tasty then as it is at Thanksgiving =)  The thing that I find makes or breaks a cheesecake is the crust.  Many will tell you that the only way to go is graham cracker, but I honestly am not that big a fan of them so I experimented with other things and for the pumpkin I find that ginger snap cookies bring out the flavor of the pumpkin even more and give it a little zing.  Traditional ginger snaps are hard enough to use as a bulletproof vest, but gluten free ones have more flavor AND they're pliable rather than being rock hard.  Enjoy!

crust:
1 1/2 cups gluten free ginger snap cookies
5 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar


filling:

1 cup sugar
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pumpkin (canned or from scratch)
3 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice

directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine the graham cracker crumbs with 1 Tablespoon of sugar and then drizzle the melted butter over the top.
3. Mix this together well enough to cover all of the crumbs with the butter. Do not let it turn into a paste.
4. Press the crumbs onto the bottom and about two-thirds of the way up the sides of the springform pan. It’s ok if it doesn’t go all the way up the sides.  You want part of the cheesecake to extend above the crust.
5. Bake for 5 minutes, then chill it in a refrigerator for up to 24 hours.
6. Combine the cream cheese, 1 C sugar, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.
7. Mix until smooth using an electric mixer (remove the lumps but don’t over-mix).
8. Add the pumpkin, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice and continue beating until smooth and creamy.
9. Pour the mixture into the graham cracker crust.
10. Bake for 60-70 minutes.
11. The cake will rise and turn a nice golden brown on top.
12. Remove from the oven and allow to cool at room tempurature.
13. When the cheesecake has come to room temperature, put it into the refrigerator (the longer you let it chill the better the flavors will combine - up to 24 hours)
14. When the cheesecake has chilled or you’ve lost all will-power, release the spring and romove the sides of the pan.

cheesecake WILL pick up other flavors in your fridge, so make sure there is nothing pungent in there or that you keep the cheesecake in a sealed container, also, no matter how good it smells cheesecake does not taste good when it's warm so resist the urge to cut a slice as soon as it's done!

Mini Pumpkins Stuffed with Lamb and Wild Rice

One of the few things I'm going to miss about where we're stationed now is this little Amish farmer's stand that sets up every Saturday with the most amazing fruits and veggies.  Now that Fall has arrived they've started having my favorite thing in the world, Fall squash!  I got a whole box of assorted squash for $5.00 and miniature pumpkins for $.50 each.  The mini pumpkin is one of the greatest things ever in my opinion.  Most people think of them as decorations, but they're a wonderfully versatile food.  Last year I came across this recipe for stuffed pumpkin shell potatoes, which I originally was going to make again but then I decided to get creative instead.  I had some wonderful Minnesota wild rice that we'd gotten from the boy's other Grandma, Julie, last time we saw them and a package of ground lamb in the freezer and a plan began to form.  I prepared the wild rice, which is nothing like the regular rice you get in the store - one cup of uncooked wild rice makes almost 4 cups of cooked rice and it never gets gummy or otherwise funky.  While the rice was cooking (it takes about 45 minutes) I prepared the pumpkins for roasting.  These pumpkins are larger than the  "mini" pumpkins, but not as big as a sugar pumpkin (the smaller jack-o-lantern type pumpkins) so I thought they'd be perfect for the meal I'd planned.  Preheat the oven to 350 and slice the tops off the pumpkins then use a spoon to scoop out the insides without piercing the shell.  Using a paper towel rub down the inside of the shells and the bottom of the "lids" with a little olive oil, then lightly dust with salt and garlic pepper and place on a cookie sheet and put in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes - just enough to start them softening, but not done all the way.  While the pumpkins are roasting I diced one small onion (also from the Amish stand) and a clove of garlic started cooking them in about 1 Tbsp of olive oil.  As soon as they began to get soft I added the ground lamb and browned all of it together.  By this time the rice was cooked and I added about 2 cups of the cooked rice to the meat mixture and cooked together for a few minutes.  Next I retrieved the pumpkins from the oven and placed about one tablespoon of feta cheese crumbles in the bottom of each bowl then filled the bowls with the lamb and rice mixture and placed the tops back on and put them back in the still warm oven for 30 minutes.  The finished product was a wonderfully filling fall treat that even the baby loved!

(note:  the pictures I'm using on here were never meant for this, they were only snapshots I took with my phone to send to a friend that I was telling about what I'd made!)

Marshmallows

A few weeks ago I was scouring blogs looking for new things to cook when I cam across this recipe for marshmallows and all I could think was how cool it would be to make the boys marshmallows!  Both boys have become addicted to s'mores when we're up in MN camping and visiting family and they both love marshmallows so I thought this would be a great treat to make for them.  Their love for this treat and an introduction from my friends Jesse and Lily to something they call "goo" (that's made from a ton of marshmallows) convinced me to find a way to make my own.  After checking that recipe a bit closer I found that it called for a raspberry liqueur and raspberry powder that I didn't have so I went on the search for a recipe that I have all the ingredients called for.  First I checked joyofbaking.com, which is a great resource for sweets, and found this recipe and then went with my standby, Alton Brown, and found his recipe to be almost identical so I went for it.  I did stick with the original raspberry flavor since that was where the original idea came from, using almost a teaspoon of raspberry extract and about 10 drops of red food coloring (so they'd be pretty) rather than the vanilla extract Alton's recipe called for.  These went over so well that I'm planning on making several flavors up for the holidays and giving them as gifts - I've got chocolate, vanilla, raspberry, mint, almond, lemon and coconut extracts in the pantry right now, that's a TON of marshmallow possibilities!  Word of warning, remember which direction is OFF on your mixer or else you run  a hazard of coating your kitchen in sticky goo, like I did!

chocolate

A couple of weeks ago Kevin (my oldest) asked me if I could make "homemade" chocolate.  I instantly said, "WHY?  We can buy awesome chocolates from all over the world at the commissary!" but, of course, before the night was over I began looking for ways to "make" chocolate at home.  First, I am NOT going to spend the money to make REAL chocolate bars at home, you need roasters, grinders and all sorts of time and space that I just don't have or even have a desire to have.  After a while I came across this gem on instructables.com for chocolates made from cocoa powder and this morning I decided to make it.  Thanks to a WONDERFUL gift of a Kitchen Aid stand mixer from my friend Ashley I've lately decided that I can do just about anything in the kitchen.  My confidence does open creative cooking doors, but is often comes back to bite me in the ass.  I gathered and measured out all the things I needed, read the recipe a few times and set out toward my goal.  The very first line of this recipe should be this warning: YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE AN UNHOLY MESS WHILE MAKING THIS!!!  I'm pretty sure there is was cocoa powder on every available surface in my very tiny kitchen.  Also, when using a european recipe, the measurements aren't exactly the same, so I played around with it a bit.  I added some pure vanilla and pure almond extracts and added a bit more powdered sugar to the mix and then put regular sugar on the top of 3/4 of the dish and cayenne pepper on 1/4 (I love the bite of chocolate and pepper) and the result was a not too shabby, truffle consistency chocolate according to my taste testers.  Next time I'll actually use a mold and not just made a big block so it'll look pretty =)

Who Needs Martha Stewart Anyway?

I've always wanted to be a whiz in the kitchen, but other than a bizarre talent for making sweets, which I've never been a fan of eating, I've always let me convince myself that I'd never be a great cook.  A few years back I started making cheesecakes for people and after coming up with a few amazing recipes on my own I talked myself back into learning to cook more than desert.  At the urging of my most wonderful best friend Laura I'm going to attempt to do this blogging thing - it'd be nice to have some record that I've actually accomplished these kitchen feats in case I get hit in the head with a rock and lose my memory!