Mango & Tomato

12/13/12

Nutella Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies & AirBake Review

Check your twitter stream, Pinterest boards or Facebook pages and you'll notice that 'tis the season for baking! Whether you are making chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, or macaroons, the types of cookie sheets you use is quite important.

My cookie sheets, I'm slightly ashamed to admit, are not in a pristine condition. They are stained from curried potatoes and carrots and no longer shine. But they do still work, so I keep them.

Last week, however, I got a chance to test out new shiny cookie sheets made by T-fal: AirBake! {Make sure to read to the bottom of the post to see how you can win your own set!}

These cookie sheets promised even baking and browning, not to rust, and to even decrease the amount of time you'd have to bake the cookies in the oven. How do they do that? Well, they have Micro-Dome technology: fancy terminology, yes? :)

"Two heavyweight aluminum sheets surround a layer of air. The air reduces the temperature of the metal that comes in contact with the food."

Plus, they look cool!

I decided to test these with some of the leftover Nutella cookie dough I had in the freezer.

Nutella Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
{Cookie dough recipe Mike Isabella's Crazy Good Italian}

Ingredients

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup Nutella
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 cup raw sugar
jar of crunchy peanut butter {you will not use all of it}

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Have two nonstick baking sheets ready or line baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the brown sugar, sugar and Nutella on the second-lowest speed for 1 minute or until the ingredients are fully incorporated. Add the butter and mix on the third-lowest speed for 2 minutes, or until whipped and light in color.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking soda. Slowly add the flour mixture to the mixer on the lowest speed setting. Mix all ingredients for 2 minutes, stopping halfway through to scrape down the inside of the mixing bowl to incorporate all the ingredients. The dough will come together and pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl. It will look a little crumbly — that's okay.

4. Dust a work surface and rolling pin with flour to prevent sticking. With your hands, scoop out one-third of the dough and mold it into a small brick on your work surface. Rolling from the center out (north, south, east and west), gently roll the dough into a 1/16-inch thick sheet. Dust the surface of the dough with a little flour before rolling. If the dough starts to tear or stick to the rolling pin, dust with a little more flour.

5. Using a 2-inch ring mold or 2-inch circular cookie cutter, punch out cookies and place them on nonstick or parchment-lined baking sheets.

6. Add some dough from the mixing bowl to what's left over on your work surface and pull it together and roll like you did in Step 4. Punch out more cookies and repeat until all the dough has been used.

7. Placing the cookie sheets on the middle and lower oven racks, bake the cookies for 5 minutes, remove them from the oven, and sprinkle evenly with raw sugar. Put the cookies back in the oven, then rotate the baking sheets 180 degrees and switch the upper and lower cookie sheet positions so they bake evenly for 5 more minutes.

8. Remove the cookies from the oven, let rest on the baking sheet for 1 minute, and use a clean offset spatula to transfer them to a cooling rack.

9. Once the cookies are cooled, spread one half with the crunchy peanut butter and top them with the rest of the cookies.

As you can see, a tiny bit of the cookie dough did stick to the AirBake cookie sheets, but overall they performed well! Even though these cookie sheets are dishwasher safe, I decided to wash mine by hand, just to be on a safe side.

The combination of Nutella and crunchy peanut butter was great! These cookies are quite large, so feel free to share them with those you ♥: I'm sure they will appreciate it.

~~And now YOU can win your own set of two AirBake cookie sheets.~~

RULES:
~~1) You must have a US address~~
~~2) You must have your own food blog {I will disregard all of the professional contest commentators}~~
~~3) Leave a comment telling me what kind of a cookie you'd like to bake on these cookie sheets OR a link to your own favorite cookies.~~

~~I will choose one random winner on December 24th!~~

And the winner is EVI!!!

Disclaimer: I was provided with a two piece set of AirBake cookie sheets but was in no way compensated for this post. All opinions are my own.

12/11/12

Charleston Wine & Food Festival Recipe Contest: Lamb Tacos

It's time for round #3 of the recipe contest for the Charleston Wine & Food Festival. See my recipes for round 1 and 2 to catch up.

Guess what? I did not win either round, and I very highly doubt I'll win this round either, but I thank all of you for your support and votes. If that sounds a bit snarky, so be it. But you can still VOTE if you want ;)

I'm just going to make the food I want to eat and be grateful for the great products I get to work with (in this case it's lamb from Craig of Border Springs Farm).

The challenge was to make a dish with a lamb shoulder. Right away I decided to make Lamb Tacos. The recipe below explains how to roast a shoulder of lamb, but when it comes to toppings, I trust you can figure out on your own the amounts of each ingredient you want to use.

Lamb Tacos

Ingredients
4 large garlic cloves, microplaned
1 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon chipotle pepper
salt to taste
5 pound bone-in lamb shoulder
1 cup water

5 1/2" yellow corn tortillas
radishes, thinly sliced
pickled onions
avocado, sliced
feta, crumbled
cilantro, chopped
lime wedges

Directions

1. Combine the garlic, lemon juice, chipotle pepper and salt and rub all over the lamb shoulder. Cover and refrigerate over night.
2. Preheat the oven to 350. Add 1 cup of water to the bottom of a baking pan, put the lamb on top and cover with aluminum foil.
3. Roast the lamb for 3 hours. If you have more patience (and time), you could roast the lamb for an extra hour or 2.
4. Allow the lamb to cool and remove as much of the meat as you can.

5. Heat the tortillas: you can do this directly on the gas stove, on a skillet, in a microwave or in the oven.
6. Top the tortillas with pulled lamb and the rest of the toppings.

These were seriously restaurant quality tacos. I loved the combination of colors, textures and flavors. You get the crunchy radishes and pickled onions paired with the buttery avocado and tender lamb not to mention the salty firm feta. Feel free to use queso fresco instead of feta if you can find it at your grocery store.

If you like this recipe, please give me a VOTE.

With the rest of the lamb I ended up making Lamb & Potato Enchilada Casserole, which was awesome. I will publish a recipe for it next year. Y'all come back now!

12/9/12

Happy Hanukkah: Recipe for Tri-Colored Latkes with Horseradish Sour Cream

Happy Hanukkah!!! Go light a menorah ;)

One of the things I love most about Hanukkah, since my family doesn't really exchange presents, is the latkes!! I've made them over the years using regular potatoes and sweet potatoes (separately), but this year decided to do something slightly different!

Not only did I added shredded beets to my latkes, but I also spiced up the regular sour cream with horseradish!!

Happy Hanukkah: Recipe for Tri-Colored Latkes with Horseradish Sour Cream

Makes about 8 latkes

Ingredients
1 Yukon potato, peeled
1 sweet potato, peeled
1 beet, peeled
1/2 onion, peeled
1 egg
salt & pepper to taste
1-2 teaspoons chipotle chile pepper
neutral oil for frying
sour cream
horseradish

Directions
1. Shred all the vegetables.
2. Add the egg and spices and mix to combine.
3. Heat enough oil in a large pan to cover the bottom while forming the latkes.
4. Cook the latkes 3-5 minutes on each side. Be really carefully when you flip them over because they are pretty tender. {You can add an extra egg and a bit of flour if you want sturdier latkes.}
5. Mix sour cream and horseradish to taste and serve with cooked latkes.

How gorgeous is the combination of beets, Yukon gold potatoes and sweet potatoes above!?

What's your favorite way of making latkes?

12/7/12

What To Do With Leftover Rice: Kimchi Fried Rice

Happy Friday! The weekend is almost here! Do you have any plans? I will be cooking a lamb shoulder, testing out new cookie sheets and trying to dehoard. What else is new?

Two weekends ago I woke up still not feeling a 100% back to normal after a week of dealing with a cold. I opened my refrigerator and saw a container of rice from a Chinese take out and decided to make fried rice. I actually rarely order fried rice and have never made it before, but the timing just seemed right.

This is not really a recipe. It's just a little description of what I did. Hope you are fine with that ;)

Kimchi Fried Rice

Ingredients
canola oil
carrots, peeled, diced
defrosted peas
leftover rice
kimchi, chopped
egg, scrambled
soy sauce to taste
sesame oil to taste
scallions, chopped
toasted sesame seeds

Directions
1. Heat canola oil in a skillet and add carrots. Saute until they become golden brown.
2. Add peas and rice and cook to heat through.
3. Add kimchi, scrambled egg and season with soy sauce and sesame oil.
4. Serve in a bowl garnished with scallions and toasted sesame seeds.

This was SO incredibly good! Comfort food in a bowl and pretty healthy too! The kimchi gave a nice kick to the dish, but if you want even more heat, add sriracha.

If you haven't realized by now, I ♥ kimchi. Here are two other recipes I made with it.

Oatmeal with Kimchi
Kimchi Soup

Hope you all have a great weekend! What are you cooking?

12/4/12

Almond Lace Cookies: Not Every Recipe Is Perfect

Last month I received a little care package courtesy of Wayfair and Peapod. I will donate the $25 gift card from Peapod to a local charity, but am keeping the kitchen tools from Wayfair.

How cute is this Jessie Steele Oven Mitt? It's so pretty I might not even use it for fear of getting it dirty ;)

I will, however, get great use from the Switchit Spatula. It's 650F heat and stain resistant and is made from very flexible silicone. Plus, it's a two in one tool because one end is larger than the other. AND it's the same color as my kitchen: green! And since you know how much I love anything red in my kitchen, I liked these red bowls.

Since the holiday season is upon us, I decided to use these new kitchen toys to make something I've been meaning to make for quite some time and something that would be perfect for a get together with friends: Almond Lace Cookies from Nick Malgieri's Bake!

Almond Lace Cookies
Makes about 30 cookies

Ingredients
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, very soft
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/3 cup finely ground blanched almonds

3 cookie sheets or jelly-roll pans, buttered with soft butter or a silpat

Directions
1. Set a rack in the middle level of the oven and preheat to 350F.
2. In a small mixing bowl, use a medium rubber spatula to stir together the butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add the egg and beat until smooth.
3. Add the flour and almonds and stir smooth.

4. To save time, deposit all the batter on the pans right away. Drop level measuring teaspoons of the batter onto the pans at least 3 inches apart in all directions.

So far so good, right? Easy enough! That's what I thought.

But you just wait! The cookbook instructed to bake cookies until they have spread, came to a simmer in the pan and turned a deep golden color, 5-7 minutes. You then were supposed to remove the pan from the oven and immediately place another pan in to bake.

The cookies were supposed to be allowed to cool for 20 seconds, and then you had to REALLY FAST slide a wide thin-bladed spatula (I used a fish spatula) under the edge of the cookie and gently work the spatula back and forth to remove the cookie and place it on a parchment-covered wire rack.

Well, let's just say I did not have the same results as the recipe implied. I was able to remove some cookies from the cookie sheet in one piece, while the others fell apart.

What I found to work the best was to use a silpat to bake the cookies for 6 minutes, then let them sit for 1-2 minutes and only then to attempt to remove them. Is this 100% fool proof? Hardly! But that's what worked for me.

The great thing about this recipe is that these cookies taste AMAZING and the ones that do come off the pan in one piece are absolutely adorable.

Of course I had to take photos of these almond lace cookies with some of my favorite tea cups and on top of some lace ;) Classy, right?

Have YOU made almond lace cookies before? What did you do to make sure they were easily removed and stayed in one piece?

12/2/12

Greek Patty & Feta-Yogurt Sauce from The Meat Lover's Meatless Celebrations

Last month I received a preview copy of Kim O'Donnel's newest cookbook: The Meat Lover's Meatless Celebrations. I've known Kim for over ten years because I used to read her food chats on WA Post before she moved to Seattle. Although I'm far from being a vegetarian, I was excited to see what this book had to offer.

The cookbook is divided into seasons, and each season features recipes for specific celebrations such as Halloween, Diwali, Hanukkah, The Big Day, Easter, etc. Of course you can make recipes from Hanukkah section any time you want, but it's nice to have a sample menu to work from.

Even if you don't eat a meatless diet 24/7 or don't celebrate certain holidays or occasions, you'll want to make many recipes from this book not only because Kim provides a back story and helpful hints for her recipes, but also because of beautiful photographs by the talented Clare Barboza.

I bookmarked quite a few recipes, but decided to start with Greek Patty & Feta-Yogurt Sauce.

Greek Patty & Feta-Yogurt Sauce
Recipe from The Meat Lover's Meatless Celebrations

Ingredients

for the patties
1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked in water for 6 hours at room temperature, drained
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 cup fresh dill
zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon dried oregano {I left this out}
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 to 1/2 cup neutral oil

for the sauce
1/2 cup 2% or full fat plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cup feta cheese
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced finely {I used my beloved microplane}
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano {I left this out}
pinch of cayenne

Directions {I rewrote some of the directions to fit my own style of recipe writing}

1. Using a food processor or stand blender, pulverize the chickpeas using the pulse function, until the beans form a paste that sticks together when you squeeze it in your hand. Be careful not to overprocess; too smooth, the batter will fall apart when cooking.

2. Add the remaining ingredients (except for the oil) and process, using pulse function about 20 times. {Remaining ingredients refer to the ones for the patties only! Leave the sauce ingredients alone for now!}

3. Divide the mixture into 8 equal parts and form the patties. Cover the chickpea patties and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or until firm.

4. Preheat the oven to 350F.

5. Heat the oil in a shallow skillet over medium-high heat. Gently place the patties into the hot oil and cook 2-3 minutes on each side. You might have to do this in a few batches.

6. Transfer the patties onto a baking sheet and bake for about 7 minutes.

7. To make the sauce: add the yogurt to a blender and process until it's creamy. Add the rest of the sauce ingredients and process till it reaches the consistency you desire. Taste and add more lemon juice and salt if necessary.

I served the patties with dill, cucumbers and tomatoes. Kim suggested cucumbers, spinach, pickled peppers, and hot sauce.

This was a really simple recipe to make. The patties are filling and can really be eaten for any meal of the day. I think it'd be fun to make them into falafel or make them into appetizer size! My favorite part, however, was the feta-yogurt sauce. Not only was it good with these chickpea patties, but it can also be used as a salad dressing or a dipping sauce for vegetables {I hate the word veggies!}.

I look forward to making more recipes from this book!

What's the last vegetarian dish you've made?

11/30/12

Summer in the Winter Time: Frozen Berry Buttermilk Smoothie Recipe

Happy Friday! The winter is almost here (for me it starts December 1st), the cold weather is settling in and it's harder and harder to get out of my warm bed in the morning. But even in the middle of the winter, you can still have a hint of summer with this Summer in the Winter Time: Frozen Berry Buttermilk Smoothie Recipe.

Why on Earth would I use buttermilk in a smoothie? Because I had too much buttermilk left from a cake recipe I made for Thanksgiving and did not want it to go to waste. I came up with an idea of mixing buttermilk with some of the frozen berries I had picked in the summer and adding a bit of brown sugar to sweeten the deal.

Frozen Berry Buttermilk Smoothie
Serves 1-2 (makes 1 1/3 cup total)

Ingredients
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup frozen berries (I used sour cherries and blueberries)
brown sugar to taste (I used about 1 tablespoon)

Directions
1. Add all ingredients to a blender. Blend them up ;)

How gorgeous is this color??? You can adjust the amount of berries and buttermilk to get the texture you desire: add more berries for a thicker consistency, or more buttermilk to make this into a dessert soup.

For other ways to use buttermilk check out Buttermilk Pancakes with Boozy Persimmons, Roasted Pear & Buttermilk Sorbet, Buttermilk Panna Cotta, and Adobo Buttermilk Chicken.

How do you use buttermilk??

11/28/12

Shuba Recipe: Russian Recipes Revisited (RRR)

It's time for another Russian Recipes Revisited post! Are you excited!? I hope you are, because this is a stellar recipe. Shuba in Russian means winter coat, usually made from fur. No, I'm not going to tell you how to make a winter coat...no worries.

Shuba is a traditional layered salad served usually for New Year celebration: it has layers of herring, potatoes, hardboiled eggs, beets and mayonnaise. Some people add boiled and chopped carrots, or raw onions, or even apples. Below is my version of this dish.

Growing up in Russia, fish was often on our menu. My maternal grandmother loved fish and often fried it, made fish soup and even made her own gefelte fish! My paternal grandfather loved herring. Whenever we visited him and our paternal grandmother in Ukraine, herring was often on the table for zakuski: appetizers before the meal. The problem was, my twin and I HATED herring. Our grandfather would often say What kind of a Berman are you if you don't like herring!?

Oh, sweet memories!

Turns out, I don't hate all types of herring: just the salted one. I actually really like marinated herring and smoked herring.

Shuba is usually made with salted herring, but I decided to use the kind sold in jars in wine sauce. You can do whatever you want.

Shuba
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 large potato cooked in its skin till tender, peeled and mashed
12 ounce jar herring in wine sauce
2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
1/3-1/2 cup mayonnaise {I used homemade kind, but you can use whatever you like}
2 beets, cooked till tender, peeled and grated
dill

Directions
1. Make a layer of mashed potatoes on a flat plate.
2. Add a layer of herring {I also used the onions that were in the jar for a bit of crunch}.
3. Spread around chopped eggs.
4. Add mayonnaise. {I used my mom's trick and put mayonnaise in a plastic bag, cut off the corner and used it as a piping bag.}
5. Pile on grated beets and add another layer of mayonnaise, spreading it carefully so it covers all the beets.
6. Cover the salad with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours.
7. Before serving, add fresh chopped dill.

My friend Cindy came over to try this dish and LOVED it, as did I! I'm sure the herring will scare quite a few of you, but I dare you to try this anyway. You could also technically leave out the herring or use good quality tuna, but you will miss out on the briny flavor.

For next month's installment of Russian Recipes Revisited, I'm planning on baking my mom's sour cream cake! She sent me a recipe in the mail and I can't wait to recreate the cake I fondly remember from many celebration! {That's my mom's handwriting :) }

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