Sometimes my life feels like a marathon. There’s just never enough time in the day. Finding time to eat healthy and exercise on top of the day-to-day responsibilities can be difficult. 
Sometimes I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave and “presto” dinner would be served. Although Wegmans hasn’t patented said-magic wand yet, last night’s dinner miracle was made possible by the grocery store chain’s Naan bread.
I rushed home from the gym and stepped into the kitchen at 6 p.m. This gave me 30 minutes to prepare two meals before heading over to a friend’s house for dinner. With Sean’s help, we did some prep work for the following night’s meal – Spicy Honey Chicken and Creamy Carrot Casserole. We rubbed the chicken with seasonings to marinate overnight and chopped the carrots for the casserole. Keep an eye out for that blog soon.
Next up was the meal for the present evening. On the menu were two varieties of Naan Bread Pizza – one classic Margherita style and the other a white, garlic style. Here’s what I used:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lay the naan bread on baking sheets, spraying the bottom with a little olive oil.
The first variety of pizza uses the garlic butter, artichoke hearts, broccoli and mushrooms. Spread the garlic butter as your base and then add your toppings. Lastly, add your cheese. For this variety I used the shredded parmesan and mozzarella cheeses.
The second variety entails the pesto, plum tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella and shredded parmesan for the cheeses. Begin by spreading your pesto as the base. Next, add the sliced tomatoes, followed by the cheeses. Lastly, add the basil leaves.
Bake the pizzas for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the naan bread gets crispy. Be careful not to burn the bottoms. Allow the pizza to cool for about 10 minutes before slicing.
Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese is one of my favorite comfort foods. Then my friend Jennifer had to go and make me this homemade Roasted Tomato Basil Soup from the 
Food Network. As huge of a fan of soup as I am, I don’t make it that often. With this recipe in my arsenal however, I can see myself cutting out the middleman and probably quite a bit of sodium.
Obviously the best time for this recipe is late-summer when tomatoes and basil are practically free (from your local gardener). I was happily surprised to find a great deal on some plum tomatoes at the market this weekend. They were a bit beat up, but I trimmed out the bad spots. The soup probably cost me a total of $10 to make, only because it requires four cups of basil, which is about $2.99/bunch at Wegmans right now. I had the rest of the ingredients around the house. It yielded about 10 cups of soup. I broke half of the batch up into single-serve containers for lunches and froze the other half.
Also, I used up some old bread I had in the freezer to make up some homemade croutons. I basically just cut the bread into bite-sized squares, coated them evenly in olive oil and tossed in garlic powder and fresh herbs. I baked them on a cookie sheet for about 20 minutes on 350 degrees, flipping them about half way through, until they were crispy.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Toss the tomatoes in ¼ cup olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread the tomatoes in one layer on a baking 
sheet and roast for 45 minutes.
In a stockpot over medium heat, sauté the onions and garlic with the remainder of the olive oil, the butter and red pepper flakes for ten minutes or until the onions start to brown. Add the canned tomatoes, basil, thyme and water (or stock). Add the oven roasted tomatoes, along with the liquid leftover from baking.
Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer uncovered for 40 minutes. The recipe calls for passing the mixture through a food mill fitted with the coarsest blade. Seeing as though I don’t have a food mill, I just used my blender. Be sure to remove the centerpiece of the cap on the blender and cover it with a towel to prevent the heat from forcing the lid off. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot or cold.
As a delayed Valentine’s Day/Anniversary dinner treat, my boyfriend and I went out for dinner with our friends Mike and Kelli. Inspired by a $10 Rochester Dining Card coupon, we 
decided to try The Rabbit Room in The Lower Mill Restaurant and Galleries Honeoye Falls. I’ve heard really good things about the restaurant. And our experience exceeded my expectations.
For starters, the building is breathtaking. You can just feel the history as you approach the entry way of the large limestone structure. According to the website, The Lower Mill was built on the banks of Honeoye Creek in 1827. In its prime capacity, the mill produced 200 barrels of flour, and was considered one of the finest flouring mills in western New York. In 1901, the interior of the mill was destroyed in a fire. After the Depression, it was used as a creamery to store aging cheese and then sold to the Village. It was sold to the Elmer family in 1977, restored and is now used as shops, art galleries and The Rabbit Room.
The restaurant is only open for lunches Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Dinner is only available on Thursday nights. The bulk of th
e business is centered on catering and special events. I think that’s what drew me, knowing you can’t just enjoy this cuisine any night of the week. I called about a week in advance for reservations and it was already so booked up, we had to settle for an 8 p.m. reservation.
We arrived shortly before our reservation, giving us a chance to check out their beer list, which included a bunch of my favorites including imports like Rogue Dead Guy Ale from Newport, Oregon, as well as local favorites like Brooklyn Brown Ale and a plethora of Honeoye Fall’s very own Custom Brewcrafters. I started off the night with a tequila-based El Diablo martini.
I really began to feel “at home” when I turned to my right and saw my old and dear friend Michael Belmont. Michael and I met back in my days as the Penfield Post Reporter, when he was the 
President/CEO of the Charles Finney School. He’s now president of his own company SkyPillar. Later, on a visit to the bathroom, I noted a poster for a project by another friend from the paper. Kris Dreessen’s photojournalism surrounding the humanitarian effort “Rebuilding El Sauce” in Nicaragua will be on display Tuesday, February 21st from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in the Lower Mill Gallery.
Dinner was absolutely fabulous. The meal began with homemade herb bread and honey butter, a half order of Parisienne Gnocchi with cherry tomatoes and local roasted mushrooms sautéed in butter with fresh herbs, lemon and truffle oil accompanied by an order of Arancini, which is fried risotto balls with smoked mozzarella and roasted garlic marinara sauce.
For my dinner, I opted for the Roasted Beet Salad. The flavor of the winter root, roasted golden and candy striped beets perfectly complimented the toasted almonds, Lively Run Feta cheese and curried honey vinaigrette.
In addition, I ordered the special oyster soup.
Sean got the braised pork shank with rosemary pan sauce, sweet potatoes and fresh vegetables.
Mike got the grilled, brined chicken breast with garlic mashed potatoes, braised kale, black oak ham and caramelized onions.
Kelli opted for a special as well – a four cheese ravioli with vegetable pan sauce.
Everything was incredibly delicious, the service was top-notch, and we came up with some classic one-liners such as “shady friends”, “My drink is fancy, but I’m not”, and “Sure, I’ll spend $150 to save $10.”
I have to confess, finding time to cook and blog now that I’m back to working 40 hours a week is going to be a challenge. With recipes like this Thai Jasmine Rice with Shrimp from 
Wegmans though, I might actually be up for it! If you notice me opting for some less time-intensive recipes, or a little more brevity in my writing, it’s because I’m adjusting to my new schedule. And goodness knows, with the hectic lives we lead, it’s best to just cut to the chase.
With a mere seven ingredients, this dish is quick, easy, and the end result is delicious. You will need:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Heat the basting oil in a braising pan or Dutch oven on medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook for three or four minutes or until the onion begins to soften. Add the rice to the pan. Let it toast for about two to three minutes, stirring it in the meantime. Add the Thai stock, season with salt and pepper, cover and bring to a simmer on high. When the stock comes to a boil, transfer the pan to the oven for about 10 minutes.
Remove the pan and arrange the shrimp over the rice. Light
ly season with salt and pepper, cover and return the pan to the oven for another five minutes or until the shrimp reaches 130 degrees. Remove the pan from the oven. Let the dish set for 10 minutes, stir in the green onions and serve alongside some Asian-style vegetables.
Here’s a video if you prefer visual instructions.
I discovered the trick to the most delicious chicken fingers on earth while working as a line cook at an area restaurant. Soaking the chicken in buttermilk and some sort of Cajun seasoning overnight before breading and cooking them results in the the most tender, melt-in-your mouth chicken fingers you’ll ever eat. In doing some research, I learned that the acids, enzymes and calcium tenderize and flavor meats, poultry and seafood and can even be safe for those who are lactose intolerant. This blog post validates what I already discovered…
“Southern cooks have long known that chicken fries crisper and is more tender and juicy if soaked in buttermilk before cooking.”
Here are some more guidelines for using buttermilk to marinate meats, poultry and seafood. I used the technique to create Buffalo Chicken Salads this week.
Here’s what you’ll need:
· 1 to 1 ½ pounds of chicken breasts
· Buttermilk
· Cajun seasoning of some kind (I used Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Cajun Foreplay Spice Rub)
· Panko bread crumbs
· Romaine lettuce
· Carrots
· Celery
· Blue cheese dressing (I used Wegmans Yogurt Blue Cheese dressing)
· Wing sauce (I used Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Wing Sauce)
Marinate your chicken the night before you’re ready to cook. Cut the chicken breasts into uniform strips, removing any fat. Place them in the container or bag and cover them in buttermilk and sprinkle at least 2 teaspoons of Cajun seasoning into the mix. Combine the chicken, buttermilk and Cajun seasoning and marinate overnight.
When you’re ready to begin cooking, place about 1 cup of panko bread crumbs into a medium bowl. Remove the chicken strips one at a time and coat them evenly in the bread crumbs. Place them on a greased baking pan or roasting pan with a rack in it. Cook the chicken fingers at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until they are cooked throughout.
Meanwhile, prepare your salad. Chop the romaine, celery and carrots (or use shredded carrots). Place them in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
When the chicken fingers are done cooking, cut them into bite sized pieces and place them in a medium bowl. Add as much or little wing sauce as you’d like, keeping in mind the golden rule - you can always add more, but you can’t take it away. Toss the chicken in the sauce until it’s thoroughly coated.
Toss the lettuce, carrots and celery in the large bowl with as much blue cheese dressing as you’d like. Plate the salad and top with the chicken fingers. For those looking for a non-breaded version of this recipe, you could probably just skip the breading. Or here’s a similar recipe I also really enjoyed.
As promised, I made nachos with the leftovers from the Cheesy Tex-Mex Rice I made for a potluck dinner. Nachos are a great way to use up pretty much any ingredients you’ve got lying 
around. In this case, I used:
Cook the peppers, onions and mushrooms in a skillet for 15-25 minutes. Add some barbecue sauce to the veggies when they are almost done cooking for an extra layer of flavor.
At the same time, cook your meat in a different skillet. For you vegetarians or heart-healthy folks, soy crumbles will do the trick too. I used Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Cajun Foreplay Spice Rub to flavor the meat.
Cube the Velveeta and heat it in a sauce pan with a little milk. Add more milk depending on how thick you like your nacho cheese.
Get all the other ingredients ready to serve. Fill your plate with tortilla chips and layer on the toppings to your liking. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to nachos. That’s why they are such a fun dish to make with children. You’ll get your hands dirty making them and eating them!
I was recently a guest at a delicious pot luck dinner. Naturally, everyone wound up making starches. Thankfully someone made a salad. I decided on this Cheesy Tex-Mex Rice recipe 
from the kitchn, which I found on Pinterest. I picked it because it looked colorful and it gave me an opportunity to use my new cast iron pan. I learned to love the recipe because it entails leaving something cooking on the stove and forgetting about it for five minutes at a time. As an added bonus, I immediately knew what to cook with all the leftover ingredients – nachos. Stay tuned for that blog.
This recipe is for eight to 10 servings. Cut the recipe in half if you aren’t feeding an army.
Optional extras: 1-2 diced sausage links, 1 cup of shredded chicken, 1 cup black beans, 1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1-2 teaspoons of chiles en adobo. I used black beans and the chiles en adobo which gives the dish a nice smoky flavor.
Cook the rice ahead of time according to the ingredients on the box. I used the measurements for four servings. While the rice is cooling, assemble all your ingredients. Open and drain the corn and black beans, or shuck the corn on the cob if you’re using fresh corn. Dice the green pepper. Mince the black olives. Open the cans of tomatoes and chiles en adobo.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Be sure to taste it and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Remember, with seasoning, always go easy because you can always add more, but you can’t take it away.
Set your cast iron or nonstick skillet over medium heat. If you’re using a cast iron pan, coat it lightly with oil. Add the rice mixture and spread it evenly over the bottom of the pan. You’ll want to cook this for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring it every five minutes. According to the kitchn..
“Be patient and don’t be tempted to stir more frequently! The cheese will melt and start to form a burnt-looking crust on the bottom of the pan. Every time you stir, scrape up this crust and mix it back into the rice. The whole dish will gradually pick up a deep, almost chocolate-like flavor from the seared cheese.”
If you see or smell smoke, reduce your heat and scrape a little more frequently. Taste the rice as it cooks, adjusting the seasoning if necessary. It is recommended that the rice cool before being served and is best if served slightly warmer than room temperature. I cooked the rice the morning of the pot luck so the flavors would have a chance to mingle. The rice can be reheated in a slow cooker, a low oven covered with aluminum foil, or in the microwave for a few minutes on high.
As for the rest of the pot luck offerings, here’s some photos for you to “sample.”
Salad in the cutest dishes ever.
Mushroom, spinach, bacon, scalloped potato goodness.
Cheesy stuffed shells with sausage.
Caprese pasta with garlic basil oil.
Ice cream cupcakes from Cold Stone Creamery
And the crew! Love Pot Luck!
My Phish-inspired title is perfect for this blog about a quick, healthy, yet filling salad which my friend Jesse Hanus recently shared on Facebook. With the start of a new job this week 
comes the need to get even more creative about healthy, quick, blog-able meals. This recipe fits that criteria, and is right in line with my mantra, “you are what you eat.” The salad simply consists of avocado, cashews, Wegmans Mango Vinegar Spritzer and mangoes. Turns out, I had almost all the ingredients in my fridge to make it, save the mangoes.
I’ve actually had a real issue with finding mangoes lately. It wasn’t even until recently that I developed a liking for the tropical fruit. And now that I have, I’m finding it’s difficult to find them at just the right ripeness. The mangoes from Price Right took so long to ripen I forgot about them, and the ones I bought at the market were overly-ripe and awful tasting. I finally just picked some up at Wegmans that made the grade.
The reality is mangoes aren’t in season right now, so I really shouldn’t be complaining. It makes me feel guilty knowing how much gasoline went into getting me the perfect mango in the middle of February, but that’s a topic for another blog.
If that isn’t simple enough, here’s some step-by-step instructions, seeing as though this is a food blog:
Base your proportions on how many people you’re feeding. If you’re going to eat this immediately, you can put the mangoes, avocados, cashews and spinach in a large bowl, spray it with the spritzer, and toss it until the flavor is to your liking.
If you’re going to bring this for lunch, you can cut up the mangoes ahead of time and store them in an airtight container. Trust me, you don’t want to have to wrestle with the mango at work.
You will want to cut the avocado when you’re ready to eat to prevent it from turning brown. If you don’t have a place to prepare lunch at work, you can watch this video to see my approach to dicing an avocado 
and packing it to-go. Excuse the poor quality of the avocado. I couldn’t get the pit out of it as neatly as I would have liked. The point of the video is that keeping the pit in the avocado will prevent it from going bad for at least a day. And when you’re ready to put it in your salad, you can just use a spoon to scoop out your pre-diced avocado.
Today’s blog post is kind of a do-over. In September 2011, I wrote about my attempts to re-create a sweet potato quesadilla which was offered at the former Atomic Eggplant in Rochester. My first attempt included sweet potatoes, black beans, caramelized onions and Queso Fresco, a Mexican cheese.
Thanks to a helpful reader named Luke who happened to work for the former restaurant at one point, I was able to pin down the ingredients. On my second attempt, I added cumin and curry spices to the sweet potatoes and replaced the black beans with blackberries. I think the members of my book club liked both versions. I’d love to hear if anyone has suggestions for a fresh, non-tomato based salsa that might compliment this dish for the next time I make it?
You will need:
· 2 or 3 medium sweet potatoes
· 2 medium white onions
· Whole wheat flour tortilla shells
· 1 pint of blackberries
· Butter
· Cumin
· Brown sugar
· Curry powder
· Queso Fresco
· Cilantro and sour cream for serving
UPDATE:
Yet another Atomic Eggplant employee has divulged the secret to these quesadillas:
-Add nutmeg cinnamon cloves and lots of Brown sugar to the sweet potatoes.
-Use corn tortillas and Monterrey Jack cheese and frozen blackberries.
-No butter or margarine if it’s for a vegan, and soy cheese instead of real cheese if you swing that way.
The potatoes and onions will need to be cooked first. Both can be baked at 400 degrees. Wash the sweet potatoes, pierce them with a knife and wrap them in tin foil. Be sure to put a baking sheet underneath the potatoes so they don’t leak sugar all over our oven. The potatoes could take about an hour depending on the size. You want them mashable, but not over-baked; remember, you’ll be baking the potatoes again inside the quesadilla shell.
Next, caramelize the onions. Cut the onions into uniform strips and place them in a baking dish with about three squares of butter and some salt and pepper. Cover with aluminum foil and cook for anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. Stir them halfway through and take them out when they start to look the color of caramel.
Drain and rinse the blackberries. You can give the blackberries a rough chop, being careful to retain some big chunks of berry, or you can just use your hands to break them up as you distribute them among the quesadillas.
Once the onions and sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, reheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Peel the skin off the sweet potato (it should come off easily) and place the insides in a medium bowl. Add cumin, curry powder, brown sugar and butter to potatoes and mash to combine. I did not measure out the spices and brown sugar. I just added a little at a time and kept tasting it until I liked the flavor.
Lay out your ingredients in front of you – sweet potatoes, onions, tortilla shells and blackberries.
Now begin assembling. Spray one side of the shell with some cooking spray and lay it down on a baking sheet. Mash sweet potato on half the shell. Then add some onions, blackberries and cheese, and fold the top of the shell over to close the quesadilla. Continue until you run out of ingredients.
Bake the quesadillas for about 15 minutes on each side or until golden and crisp on both sides. Once they’ve cooled, slice them like you would a pizza, serve with sour cream and cilantro, and enjoy!
Saturday mornings are all about going out for breakfast (at Jim’s or the South Wedge Diner) in between my runs to the market and grocery store. I call this my “hunter-gatherer” time
. With a full refrigerator on Sunday, it’s all about stay-at-home breakfast. The possibilities are endless, from homemade waffles, quiche and strata, to my all-time favorite, buttermilk pancakes.
After my chicken fingers last week, I had some buttermilk to use up, as well as some blueberries that were on their last leg. This recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes comes from the Better Homes and Garden’s New Cook Book. The cover claims it’s been “America’s #1 Cookbook Since 1930”, and I believe it.
Here’s what you’ll need for 12 standard-sized pancakes:
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, use a fork to combine the egg, buttermilk and oil. Add the egg mixture all at once to the flour mixture.
You can use a stovetop griddle or an electric griddle for best results. You need to 
get the griddle to about 375 degrees, according to Aunt Jemima. I usually go with a medium to high heat and let the pan warm up for a good two minutes. Grease the griddle with butter. Pour your batter onto the griddle, add blueberries or chocolate chips, and wait until the pancake begins to bubble before you flip them. This is the key to getting a nice uniform golden brown pancake. You can observe the technique demonstrated about 42 seconds into this video.
At this point in the recipe, it’s time to say move over Aunt Jemima. If you’re going to make the pancakes homemade, in my opinion, you’re just defeating the purpose by topping them with regular syrup, so shell out the extra cash for real maple syrup. You won’t be disappointed.
Sometimes cooking can seem like such a chore. Blogging about my kitchen adventures holds me accountable though. Just when I think, “I can stop blogging and no one will notice,” I get 
oodles of positive comments and feedback. It’s your inspiration and encouragement that keeps me creative in the kitchen.
This blog is about my continued experiment with gluten-free recipes. I’ve been doing this more out of curiosity and a quest for eating better rather than a necessity. I have no plans to omit gluten from my diet completely. Last week, I needed to bring a vegetarian, gluten-free appetizer to a friend’s house. After some research, I settled on this Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip.
You will need:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Steam and drain your spinach, or thaw and drain it if you’re using frozen. Drain and roughly chop the artichoke 
hearts.
In a bowl mix the spinach, artichoke hearts, veganaise, sour cream and about ¾ cup of mozzarella cheese. Combine the ingredients well and put the mixture in a casserole dish or pie dish. Top with remaining mozzarella cheese. Bake the dip for about 25-40 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown.
Cool and serve on crackers. Don’t expect this to taste just like the real deal. The vegan sour cream had a peculiar flavor and an even stranger smell when cooked, but it tasted fine. We actually tried the dip on a regular baguette and to be honest, it went better with the gluten free crackers.
If you’re not a vegan, I would recommend you just make this dip with regular mayonnaise and 
dairy-based sour cream and mozzarella cheese, but if you’ve got a friend or family member who’s vegan, gluten-free, or eating a heart-healthy diet, you could possibly make their day by whipping up this appetizer for your next get together with them. Warning, the cost of all the ingredients totaled close to $30. I never said eating healthy was cheap!
I am so excited to welcome my very first guest blogger at Diaries of a Foodie. This post is brought to you by Shelley Manley, a freelance writer, copy editor and graphic artist based in Upstate NY. Here’s a recipe similar to the one she writes about.
My husband never cooked until: one, we got a microwave; two, going out to dinner became too expensive; and three, he got tired of my meat ‘n’ potatoes Irish-American-style winging-it family cooking and decided he could do better.
So he learned to grumble his way through recipes (“How the heck do you fold food?”) and slowly gained confidence until one day he decided to tackle veal, which as everyone knows is a fine line away from shoe leather.
So he was cooking away one night and I was off in a corner writing until he called me over for advice.
“This gravy won’t thicken.”
I took a look at the recipe which stated, in brief, (this is important): “Coat veal in flour, brown veal in frying pan, remove veal, add onions and mushrooms, stir in more flour, heat and stir until thickened.” Presto, tender veal with mushroom gravy.
The frying pan held a grayish substance with mushroom lumps. I took the spoon from him and took over stirring. It just didn’t look or “feel” right. I scooped and poured a bit a few times with the spoon. Seemed sort of thin and grayish for flour gravy, even if it hadn’t thickened yet…
“Which flour did you use?” He pointed to a white substance in a measuring cup. It looked kinda shiny and granular and suspiciously like… I tasted it. Sugar!
I laughed, “You can heat and stir this from now until Doomsday and the only thing you might end up with is mushroom frosting!!!” One of my blue Tupperware canisters was sitting on 
the counter. I checked it. Sugar indeed.
“I *thought* the veal didn’t brown very well!” he said, disappointed. “Aw, and now I’ve got sugar all over the veal, and that was the last can of mushrooms, too!” He
knew veal wasn’t cheap.
“Wait — we’ll salvage it.” I washed off the veal, dumped the “frosting” into a strainer and rinsed the sugar off the mushrooms.
He started all over — with flour this time — reusing the rinsed veal and mushrooms. The resulting meal was actually the most tender veal we’d ever eaten, and surprisingly not sweet at all. I told him maybe he was onto something and cooking the veal in sugar had actually tenderized it and made it more juicy and flavorful.
A short time later I recounted the whole incident in my newspaper column and he protested that people he barely knew now stopped him on the street to tell him how much they’d laughed over his “Veal & Mushroom Frosting” experience.
Later I realized the whole scenario was due to gender stereotypes.
Any typical female head of her household’s typical kitchen probably has a typical canister set. I was no exception. Canister sets come in sets of four in descending size: flour, sugar, coffee and tea. Even though I store in mine, in descending order: flour, sugar, brown sugar and powdered sugar, “everyone” knows the biggest one is always flour, not sugar.
Husband wasn’t in on this stereotypical inside female secret, but my daughters and I were, and so was Tupperware, so none of us bothered to label the canisters.
Husband learned a lot that night.
I never did label the canisters.
Shelley Manley is a freelance writer, copy editor and graphic artist based in Upstate NY.
Inspired by a dish at Hogan’s Hideaway and driven by the need to use up some feta cheese, I tied together some ingredients (literally) in two pork tenderloins and topped it with a creamy cheese sauce. I have another confession to make which might disqualify me as a foodie for some. Up until this meal, I had never used cooking twine. It was easy to work with and the end result looked and tasted just as divine as the dish which inspired me in the first place.
For the pork you will need:
· 2 pork tenderloins of similar size (you can get a club pack of four tenderloins at Wegmans for a steal)
· ½ to ¾ cup of balsamic vinegar
· 1 tablespoon of fresh rosemary, removed from stem and roughly chopped
· 5-6 slices bacon
· One green apple
· 1/3 cup of dried cranberries
· Cooking twine
For the feta cheese cream sauce:
· 1 tablespoon of butter
· 1 tablespoon of flour
· About 1 cup of feta cheese
· About ½ cup of milk
Marinate the pork loins a day or two before you cook. Place them in a Ziploc bag or sealed container with the vinegar and rosemary. You’ll need enough vinegar to almost cover the meat.
Begin by partially baking the bacon in the oven at 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and put the slices of bacon on it. Flip the bacon after about 5 to 8 minutes. Cook it until it begins to get crispy, but remember, it will cook up even more inside the pork loins. When the bacon is almost cooked, put it on a plate covered in a paper towel to remove the excess grease.
Remove the pork loins from the marinade and dispose of the excess juices. Butterfly both pork loins lengthwise. On a flat, clean surface, lay the two tenderloin side-by-side, with them slightly overlapping in the middle. Your goal is to create a channel that you can place the stuffing into. When you wrap the tenderloins together, you want them to be able to contain the ingredients.
Chop your apple up into bite sized slices. Crumble or chop your bacon into bite sized pieces. Place the apples, dried cranberries and bacon into the center of the two tenderloins. Flip half of the tenderloin over the top of the ingredients, kind of like as if it were a quesadilla.
Next you will wrap the tenderloin with the twine. Carefully tie the string around one end of the tenderloin. Now carefully run the string around the tenderloin in a spiral shape. To do this, barely lift the tenderloin up to slip the twine underneath it. Avoiding allowing too much of the fruit and bacon on the inside escape, continue weaving the twine over and under the tenderloin until the entire thing is wrapped up fairly tightly. Tie off the string at the end of the tenderloin.
Bake the stuffed tenderloin for about 45 minutes or until the thickest part of the meat wrap has reached a temperature of 145 degrees. I cooked the pork in a baking pan with a roasting rack but you can use a baking sheet, metal cake pan or oven-safe glass cake pan. Remember, the meat will continue to cook for a few minutes after it is removed from the oven.
Meanwhile, about 10 minutes before the pork is finished cooking, mix together the butter and flour in a sauce pan over medium heat. When the butter and flour are combined, begin adding the feta cheese and milk gradually. You may not need the entire cup of feta cheese depending on how strong of a flavor you want, or you may need a little more or less milk depending on how thick you want your sauce. Just keep adding the milk and feta, stirring constantly and tasting to obtain the right ratio of milk and cheese to create a creamy cheese sauce with a consistency and flavor of your liking.
Remove the twine from the tenderloin and slice it carefully so as not to lose the shape or insides. Serve over mashed potatoes and top with the cheese sauce.
Welcome to my first attempt at using video on Diaries of a Foodie. You can check out my YouTube channel for videos to come. These two short snippets are what you might call silent films. If you can follow along, you’ll observe some of the easiest techniques for cleaning and slicing green peppers, and dicing an onion, both of which I picked up over the years working as a line chef. Next time I’ll try giving some more verbal cues.
The idea behind the technique to dicing an onion is to utilize the onion’s built-in “slices." You want to slice off the ends of the onion. Place the onion on one of the flat ends and slice it in half going in line with the grain. Next, place half of the onion flat onto the cutting board. Cut uniform slices across the onion half. Bring the slices close to one in the shape of an onion half and make uniform cuts against the grain of the onion. Separate the onions and you’ll find you’ve got a lovely dicing.
When slicing a pepper, you basically want to make three slices lengthwise down the pepper, removing the stem. Hold the stem while you slice it and rotate the pepper as you cut it.
Today’s blog post is kind of a do-over. In September 2011, I wrote about my attempts to re-create a sweet potato quesadilla which was offered at the former Atomic Eggplant in Rochester. My first attempt included sweet potatoes, black beans, caramelized onions and Queso Fresco, a Mexican cheese.
Thanks to a helpful reader named Luke who happened to work for the former restaurant at one point, I was able to pin down the ingredients. On my second attempt, I added cumin and curry spices to the sweet potatoes and replaced the black beans with blackberries. I think the members of my book club liked both versions. I’d love to hear if anyone has suggestions for a fresh, non-tomato based salsa that might compliment this dish for the next time I make it?
You will need:
UPDATE:
Since this blog post was published, yet another former Atomic Eggplant employee has divulged the secret to these quesadillas:
-Add nutmeg cinnamon cloves and lots of Brown sugar to the sweet potatoes.
-Use corn tortillas and Monterrey Jack cheese and frozen blackberries.
-No butter or margarine if it’s for a vegan, and soy cheese instead of real cheese if you swing that way.
Thanks Pete and Luke for weighing in. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from this one!!
The potatoes and onions will need to be cooked first. Both can be baked at 400 degrees. Wash the sweet potatoes, pierce them with a knife and wrap them in tin foil. Be sure to put a 
baking sheet underneath the potatoes so they don’t leak sugar all over our oven. The potatoes could take about an hour depending on the size. You want them mashable, but not over-baked; remember, you’ll be baking the potatoes again inside the quesadilla shell.
Next, caramelize the onions. Cut the onions into uniform strips and place them in a baking dish with about three squares of butter and some salt and pepper. Cover with aluminum foil and cook for anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. Stir them halfway through and take them out when they start to look the color of caramel.
Drain and rinse the blackberries. You can give the blackberries a rough chop, being careful to retain some big chunks of berry, or you can just use your hands to break them up as you distribute them among the quesadillas.
Once the onions and sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, reheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Peel the skin off the sweet potato (it should come off easily) and place the insides in a medium bowl. Add cumin, curry powder, brown sugar and butter to potatoes and mash to combine. I did not measure out the spices and brown sugar. I just added a little at a time and kept tasting it until I liked the flavor.
Lay out your ingredients in front of you – sweet potatoes, onions, tortilla shells and blackberries.
Now begin assembling. Spray one side of the shell with some cooking spray and lay it down on a baking sheet. Mash sweet potato on half the shell. Then add some onions, blackberries and cheese, and fold the top of the shell over to close the quesadilla. Continue until you run out of ingredients.
Bake the quesadillas for about 15 minutes on each side or until golden and crisp on both sides. Once they’ve cooled, slice them like you would a pizza, serve with sour cream and cilantro, and enjoy!
This is my take on the Waldorf Salad, only my version includes chicken. According to Wikipedia, the first Waldorf Salad was created in New York City between 1893 and 1896, by Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf Astoria. There is no recipe for my version. I just kind of make it up as I go.
You will need:
· 3 chicken breasts
· 1 apple, sliced
· 2 cups of grapes, washed
· ¾ cup of crushed pineapple (fresh or canned is fine)
· 3 stalks of celery, thinly sliced
· Walnuts
· Mayonnaise and/or Wegmans Yogurt Curry dressing
· Honey
Cook the chicken ahead of time so it will have time to cool. Coat the chicken breasts with some olive oil and salt and pepper. I cooked the chicken using a roasting pan with a meat rack to keep the recipe as healthy as possible.
After the chicken has cooled, dice it into bite size pieces. In a large mixing bowl, combine the chicken, apples, grapes, pineapple, celery and walnuts. Heck, if you’ve got them lying around, you can even add some golden raisins or dried cranberries for a little zing. Add about ¼ cup of mayonnaise and maybe 3 tablespoons of honey to start. Go light on the mayo. There’s a golden rule in cooking, when it comes to salt; you can always add more, but you can’t take it away. The same goes with any ingredient that you are unsure of how much to use.
Mix the ingredients together. You can use a spoon, but I recommend using your (freshly washed) hands. That way you can mush the ingredients together with your hands as you mix. Add more honey, mayonnaise and salt and pepper to taste. Serve over chopped romaine lettuce topped with the Wegmans Yogurt Curry dressing, or in a sandwich.
I discovered the trick to the most delicious chicken fingers on earth while working as a line cook at an area restaurant. Soaking the chicken in buttermilk and some sort of Cajun 
seasoning overnight before breading and cooking them results in the the most tender, melt-in-your mouth chicken fingers you’ll ever eat. In doing some research, I learned that the acids, enzymes and calcium tenderize and flavor meats, poultry and seafood and can even be safe for those who are lactose intolerant. This blog post validates what I already discovered…
“Southern cooks have long known that chicken fries crisper and is more tender and juicy if soaked in buttermilk before cooking.”
Here are some more guidelines for using buttermilk to marinate meats, poultry and seafood. I used the technique to create Buffalo Chicken Salads this week.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Marinate your chicken the night before you’re ready to cook. Cut the chicken breasts into uniform strips, removing any fat. Place them in the container or bag and cover them in buttermilk and sprinkle at least 2 teaspoons of Cajun seasoning into the mix. Combine the chicken, buttermilk and Cajun seasoning and marinate overnight.
When you’re ready to begin cooking, place about 1 cup of panko bread crumbs into a medium bowl. Remove the chicken strips one at a time and coat them evenly in the bread crumbs. Place them on a greased baking pan or roasting pan with a rack in it. Cook the chicken fingers at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until they are cooked throughout.
Meanwhile, prepare your salad. Chop the romaine, celery and carrots (or use shredded carrots). Place them in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
When the chicken fingers are done cooking, cut them into bite sized pieces and place them in a medium bowl. Add as much or little wing sauce as you’d like, keeping in mind the golden rule – you can always add more, but you can’t take it away. Toss the chicken in the sauce until it’s thoroughly coated
Toss the lettuce, carrots and celery in the large bowl with as much blue cheese dressing as you’d like. Plate the salad and top with the chicken fingers. For those looking for a non-breaded version of this recipe, you could probably just skip the breading. Or here’s a similar recipe I also really enjoyed.
I have some sad news to report about one of my Christmas presents. The Terra Cotta Dutch oven unfortunately didn’t produce the results I was hoping for. In fact, I actually had to 
make an emergency switch to my Le Creuset Dutch Oven about 45 minutes into cooking this Honey Lemon Roaster Chicken.
The reason – it emitted a terrible, perfume-like smell. I followed directions, soaking the clay cooker in water for 15 minutes and not preheating the oven. In the heat of the moment, I didn’t have time to do additional research. Now that I have been doing some Google searches, I see there may be some solutions. It was second-hand, so perhaps the previous owner had a similar issue with it. Worst case scenario, maybe it will make a nice potter for herbs this summer.
Despite having to abort mission mid-way through, the recovery was successful and the end result, melt-in-your-mouth goodness. I wish there was a little more zip in the overall flavor of the dish, but served over potatoes with some veggies on the side, this is a nice comfort food dish that will help warm the house on these cold winter nights (while they last).
You will need:
If you’re using a clay roaster, you’ll want to prep it by soaking it in cold water for 15 minutes. Wash the chicken inside and out under cool running water, 
being sure to remove the bag of giblets.
Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and rub it with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Place the reserved lemon shell inside the chicken cavity and put the chicken in the clay roaster. Brush it with melted butter ((I added fresh oregano and thyme to my butter) and salt and pepper all sides. Cover the roaster and transfer it to a cold oven. Set the oven temperature to 400 degrees and cook for 45 minutes to an hour.
Combine the remaining ¼ cup of lemon juice, 2/3 cup of honey and (1 ½ to 3 tablespoons) soy sauce in a small saucepan over 
medium heat until heated through. In a small bowl, make a paste from the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter and flour. Whisk the butter-flour mixture into the melted honey-lemon butter mixture and continue cooking until the sauce has thickened slightly.
Remove the clay cooker from the oven and pour the honey-butter mixture over the roaster, being sure to cover any exposed areas. Cover the roaster and return it to the oven for another 45 minutes or until it is cooked through and very tender.
Serve this with some mashed potatoes and vegetables, topped with the gravy and you won’t want to leave the couch to do the dishes afterwards.
How could I resist? Since the day I added this Black-Eyed Vegan Burgers recipe from Chow to Pinterest, every time I see it I think of the Black Eyed Peas. I had to end the mystery. Would they taste as good as the ingredients list led me to believe they would?
This recipe calls for something called Tamari. If you’re not familiar with this, according to Chow, Tamari is wheat-free soy sauce. You can substitute regular soy sauce in this recipe instead, but it will be saltier.
To make these you will need:
· 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
· 6 medium cremini mushrooms, cleaned, stemmed, and sliced 1/4 inch thick (I used more like 10)
· 1 medium shallot, finely chopped (I used two…which may have been overkill)
· 1 medium garlic clove, minced (I used two)
· 1 (15-ounce) can of black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed
· 1 medium scallion, thinly sliced
· 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and stems
· 1/2 teaspoon tamari (or more as needed)
· 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco Sauce (or more as needed)
· Rolls for serving
· Salt and pepper to taste
Heat about one tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the mushrooms, a few dashes of salt and pepper, and cook. Stir the mixture occasionally for about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the shallot and garlic and cook until fragrant and softened.
Remove the mushroom mixture from the heat, put it in a small bowl and wipe the pan clean. Put the black-eyed peas in a large bowl and mash them with the back of a spoon or potato masher, being sure to keep a few of the peas intact. Combine the mushroom mixture, scallion, cilantro, tamari, and Tabasco and mix. Taste and season the mixture with more salt, pepper, tamari, and tabasco as needed. Using your hands, form the mixture into patties (about 1/3 cup each).
Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the patties and fry until the outsides are browned, about 5 to 6 minutes per side. Try to just flip these burgers once as they will want to fall apart on you if handled too much.
I found the burgers to be decent, but I might add more tamari and tabasco next time around to give them a bit more “zing." Get creative with how you serve these patties. This recipe even suggests whipping up a vegan mayonnaise as your condiment. Maybe I’ll try that next time.
You’ve all heard of an “aha moment” before, right? How about the “oh crap moment” that typically proceeds the “aha moment”? More often than not, when I’m cooking, at some point in the process of following the recipe, I realize “oh crap,” I should have marinated the meat for an hour before I started this.
In the case of this sweet recipe for Creamy Blackberry Frozen Yogurt, the “oh crap moment” came when I realized I don’t own an ice cream maker. Thank goodness for Google. For those who live in Rochester, I highly recommend you go to the Public Market and find the guy with the blackberries on sale 2 for $5. Otherwise, the recipe may be cost-prohibitive.
This recipe is super easy. It requires:
· 3 cups fresh blackberries
· 3 cups yogurt cheese (or Greek yogurt)
· 1 can sweetened condensed milk
In a blender, puree the blackberries with the sweetened condensed milk. In a medium bowl mix the puree with the yogurt cheese. I also added a few more whole blackberries to the mixture before freezing it. This is where if you have an ice cream maker, you’d pour the mixture in and follow the manufacturer's directions.
And if you aren’t so lucky to own an ice cream maker, here are the instructions that I attempted to follow. According to this blog, you’ll want to use a custard, Greek yogurt or drained yogurt-based recipe for the smoothest texture possible.
While it seemed my crisis was averted, I wasn’t in the clear yet. There were two more “oh crap moments” to come – one when I realized the side by side doors on my refrigerator weren’t wide enough to put the cake pan into the freezer without coming dangerously close to spilling it all over, and again when I realized I’d forgotten to stir the ice cream every 30 minutes while it froze. Clearly, this recipe can stand the test of user-error.
When I took the ice cream out to serve, it was hard as a rock. After being left out to thaw for about 20 minutes, it scooped nicely. This should be eaten soon after making and it goes dangerously well with a scoop of Turkey Hill’s Vanilla Bean All Natural Ice Cream (http://turkeyhill.com/products/all-natural-recipe-flavors.aspx?pID=100) and some dark chocolate syrup.
Also worth checking out, these 6 Ways to Make Ice Cream Without an Ice Cream Maker by the Huffington Post. I guess I technically chose method #3, minus the actual baby-sitting part.
Diariesofafoodie is equal parts journalist and line chef, a dash of public relations, topped with a passion for keeping you inspired in the kitchen. Author Amy Cavalier has been living, eating and writing in Rochester, New York since 2003.
