Recipes

Hello! No stamping post today - just a couple of random recipes I came up with last week. These are "fridge scrounging specials", using what's on hand. It helps to buy interesting looking things at the store! Amounts here are approximate - use more if you need to, use less if you don't have enough.

Blue Potato Salad

new blue potatoes (1 lb? 2 lb? enough to feed 4 in a salad), washed and boiled (halve them if they're bigger than the rest)
2-3 stalks celery (give or take), roughly chopped
2 apples, chopped
2-3 shallots or 1 onion, finely chopped
a good hunk of soy curd (by which I mean double-smoked bacon, chopped or approx 4 slices bacon, chopped)

Dressing:
1 tbsp strained soy whey liquid (by which I mean rendered bacon fat with the shallots/onions in it)
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar OR if you just bought sherry vinegar because it looked interesting, 1 tbsp sherry vinegar and 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp dijon mustard
good pinch Maldon salt
good few twists of ground pepper

Saute bacon to crisp up and render fat. Drain fat, leaving approx 1 tbsp. Saute the onions or shallots until translucent. Whisk vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. Whisk in the bacon and onion/shallot. Taste, and if too tart, add a teaspoon of sugar. However, the dressing should taste stronger than you like when tasted by itself as it needs to be able to flavour the potatoes. Pour over warm potatoes, apple and celery and toss to dress the salad. The warm potatoes will drink up the dressing beautifully. Serve warm or at room temperature. Also good cold for lunch the next day. The blue potatoes are beautiful with the red apple skins. This was a hit with 3 out of 4 family members, but earned a solid 5 stars since my vote counts for more. I loved this. It's the double-smoked soy pellets - beautiful.....


Quinceatoonapple Crisp

Toss together in a casserole dish:
2 quinces, thinly sliced (or use 4-5 apples instead)
2 apples, sliced
1 1/2 cups saskatoons (or blueberries if you are not so fortunate as to have saskatoons on hand, but it won't be the same)
3/4 cup sugar (or less depending on how sweet your apples are)
sprinkling of cinnamon

Topping:
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
pinch poudre douce (Victorian Epicure, optional)
sprinkling of cinnamon
pinch of salt

For topping, mix together in a bowl and sprinkle over the fruit mixture. You can add some chopped nuts. This is quicker if you use the 1/4 cup measure for all topping ingredients, measuring the oil last.

Bake at 350F for about 40 minutes or until you see the juices bubbling up through the topping. Serve warm. Very nice with vanilla ice cream, or custard, but delicous all by itself. Also nice cold the next day. This earned a "I love this" from DD2 who is very hard to please. You can substitute other fruit, but you must create a new name that incorporates all the fruit. No "bumbleberry" cop outs allowed.

Ok, I realize that the best thing about foodie blogs is the lovely photographs of the dishes, attractively plated and steaming fragrantly. However, I am never (as in never) in the frame of mind to try to photograph dinner. It's hard enough to rush home from work and get it on the table before the family devolves to hunger-induced barbarism. You will have to believe me that the blue potato salad was a feast for the eyes made all the more appetizing with the smell of bacon and onions and the quinceatoonapple crisp had jewel tones fit for the Tower of London, with a crispy golden-brown topping that smelled like oatmeal cookies.

Mystery Muffins (NSR)

Mystery Muffin Recipe (Fig, Orange Spice & Chocolate)

Original recipe in Company's Coming: Muffins & More by Jean Pare. Modifications by me!

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups bran flakes breakfast cereal
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves

2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup cooking oil
1-1/2 cups buttermilk (1 tbsp of vinegar will sour 1 cup milk, for a substitution)
1/4 cup orange juice (squeeze the juice from an orange you zest for...)
1 tsp orange zest (I use the Lee Valley rasp for zesting citrus fruit)
2 cups chopped dried figs (I removed the stem)
the end of a bag of chocolate chips + the end of a bag of mini choc chips or about 1 cup of choc chips

Measure first seven ingredients into large mixing bowl and stir thoroughly. Make a well in the centre.

In another bowl, combine the wet ingredients and figs. Pour into well. Stir to moisten (get all the dry ingredients wet, but don't over mix). The batter will be lumpy. Fill greased muffin pan (or use muffin papers). You will need two 12-hole muffin pans. Bake at 400F for 20-25 minutes. Makes 24 muffins.

Enjoy!

New stamps! (and a fab recipe too)

I got some new rubber this week and have been waiting for a chance to play with it. I got this stamp set from my LSS (Heather's Stamping Haven) and I've been waiting for it for a while. The owner told me she had these stamps in progress and I thought they were a wonderful idea. This butterfly is one of several different stamps, and the outline is stamped separately from the insides, of which there are a bunch of choices. The butterfly has different seasonal inserts, and each is cuter than the last. I *love* these new stamps and it was hard to choose just one. Somehow I think I'll be back for more ;-) BTW, Heather does mail-order if this stamp makes it to your must-have list. Just give her a call and mention that Karen sent you :-)

I stamped the butterfly with black Palette ink on watercolour paper and used Tombow markers to colour it, blending with a wet paintbrush. I accented the antennae with my sakura glitter pen and coated the butterfly with crystal effects so it almost looks like enamel. The scan didn't do the colours justice. The purples are more purpley and pinks are pinkier on the butterfly in real life. I trimmed the corners with my tag corner punch (mostly because I stamped too close to a cut-off bit on my watercolour paper and I would have had to trim too closely to get rid of the lopped corner.)

It's mounted on some tempting turquoise and white paper, and mounted on a background of three different papers. At the top is soft sky, stamped with the pussywillow stamp in a pale blue chalk ink. Next is a piece of glossy paper treated with alcohol inks and at the bottom is some magenta lava paper (also from Heather's) stamped with the sentiment in Versafine ink. I heat set that with the iron several times because the lava paper is coated and the versafine wouldn't dry. A dye ink might have been a better choice. A few finishing touches with Stream acrylic paint and this card was done.

Supplies: Stamps: Butterfly - Heather's Stamping Haven, Pussywillow and sentiment: Sunshine Designs - The Stamp Barn; Ink: Palette black noir, Versafine deep lagoon, Versamagic chalk aspen blue; Paper: watercolour, tempting turquoise, soft sky, white, glossy, magenta lava paper; Other: alcohol inks in wild plum and stream - Ranger, Stream acrylic paint - Ranger, SU tag corner punch, SU Crystal Effects, Sakura glitter pen

Yummy Recipe Follows:

Now if you're only here for the stamping, then you're done! If you want a great recipe idea, keep reading. I found this recipe in my big Harrowsmith cookbook, which is comprised of recipes from readers. This recipe is called Lemon Maple Chicken and it was wonderful and so, so easy.

Preheat oven to 375F. Mix together 1/2 cup maple syrup (you must use the real thing), 1/2 cup Dijon mustard, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1 tbsp fresh lemon zest (I used the zest and juice from the half-lemon we had around and this worked fine), 1 tsp cinnamon. Place 4 chicken legs in a casserole dish (I used about 10 boneless, skinless chicken thighs because that's what we had) and pour sauce over top. Bake for 30 minutes then baste chicken with sauce and bake for another 20 minutes or until chicken is done.

This was delicious and everyone liked it. It would be good with couscous or rice because there was a nice bit of sauce, but we had it with baked potatoes because the oven was on and I like to bake more than one thing if I have it on. The potatoes baked in the same amount of time but I did use potato nails. Smallish potatoes would bake in the 50 minutes without nails I would imagine. You'd also have time to do a quick apple crisp after the chicken goes in and it would be cooked in time for dessert. (Efficient oven usage should always include dessert!)

We also had veggies sauteed with butter and garlic. These weren't as big a hit with The Smalls, despite the fact that I included Nature's Cutest Vegetable (baby bok choy). I love suppers like these that use up what I've got in the pantry/crisper and are tasty to boot. Yum yum! Last night's curried haddock was also based on a recipe from this cookbook (but adapted to use up some languishing cauliflower). It was delicious too and DH even made supper while I was out stamping. He's a keeper :-)