Sunday, January 8, 2012 Kettle Corn in the Dutch Oven

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways... Of course, I'm talking to both my dutch oven and my kettle corn.

When carnival season arrives it's the kettle corn that drives me out of the house and into the general public. I love the sweet and salty. I can eat a whole large bag, the size of a first grader, within a day or two.

With my New Year's diet in full swing I needed to abandon microwave popcorn. It's cancer anyway, why expose myself to all that crap when I have the tools to make my own awesome popcorn.

The dutch oven.

Heavy lid, heavy bottom, heavy all around. This isn't the popcorn making from my youth, burning kernels and shaking pots on electric stove tops. I barely have to move it, I probably don't have to move it at all but I burn a few more calories in the prep and I don't feel so bad eating the entire bowl.

I followed Rachael Ray's recipe for the most part. I halved the amount of sugar so it was...

1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
1/8 cup white sugar
salt sprinkled over the top <-- That I did not measure

Put the pot on the stove at 7 1/2 (electric stove.) Put in the oil, the popcorn, put the lid back on. When the oil starts to sizzle sprinkle the sugar in there and put the lid back on. Then you just wait for it to pop, pop, pop. I haven't been too good at judging when it's done, it seems I have a lot of leftover kernels. But I'm pretty sure that's not the end of the world. The whole two pound bag only cost me $1.50, so wasting money is not an issue.

YUMMY!!!

I am thrilled at the prospect of never having to go to another sub-par street fair for a taste of kettle corn. Never again will I be forced to hang with the commoners in order to experience the salty sweetness. Thank goodness.

I can see lots of experimenting on this front. Colored sugar, candy flavors... And popcorn is a whole grain so I'm not totally blowing my diet. YAY!

How do you rock your popcorn?

-HH

Friday, January 6, 2012 Roast Leg Of Lamb Dinner

I've been promising my friend Marc a roast leg of lamb dinner for a while. Last night I delivered. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the final product, so you're looking at a raw piece of meat.

My husband picked up the ingredients of the way home. First he went to Fairway where the lamb cost 130 bucks! Then he went to Grade A where it was 45 bucks. I know, I know, good meat costs more, but 130 bucks was way out of our budget. Maybe I need to start raising lamb out on the porch.

He also got a bunch of baby potatoes and a handful of big carrots along with rosemary and garlic. Everything I needed to make lamb...for the first time.

I've never liked lamb, but at a friends wedding this year I went for it during the cocktail hour and I LOVED IT! It was roasted to perfection, almost bacon like in it's crispy-fattyness. Reminiscent of my childhood holidays spent at "The Hungarian's" eating what he'd shot. DDelicious.

To make this lamb I started off by removing all the netting keeping it together. I gently rinsed it in the sink and flipped it over onto a cutting board. I made numerous incisions in the underside with a boning knife and stuffed the holes with garlic and rosemary sprigs. In a 6 pound roast I made 6 well spaced incisions. I carefully arranged the peeled (yet whole) carrots in the center of a roasting pan along with about half an onion sliced into 4 pieces and a few more rosemary sprigs. I put the potatoes around the edge and placed the lamb right on top of the carrot/onion bed. I dusted it all with sea salt, pepper and powdered rosemary and put it in the oven at 450 for 15 minutes. Then I turned it down to 325 for the remainder of the cooking time, approximately 1 1/2 hours.

For rare lamb the internal temperature should be 145, 160 for medium rare. Meat can be taken out of the oven 5 degrees before the intended temp, carry-over heat will keep the temperature going up even after it's out of the oven. When I checked the temp the first time it was barely at 130, the second time (15 minutes later) it quickly soared to the 160 mark. I quickly took it out of the oven to rest. The veggies I put on the platter and covered them up to help retain the heat.

While the meat rested I put the finishing touches on some gravy. Veggie stock, rosemary, small amounts of apple butter and the pan drippings deglazed with a spot of Pinot. It was a nice, rich sauce. Beautiful color with a deep, caramelized flavor.

My husband carved the lamb. I was afraid it was overdone, but no one complained. Maybe they were just being polite. I thought it tasted amazing. It wasn't pink, it wasn't tough. It had a real nice flavor, texture. Actually, I'm not sure why I didn't like lamb before. It was real good, yo!

Dessert was one of my fabulous concoctions. Semi-cheesecake, semi-pumpkin pie bruleeish... 1 cup pumpkin pureed with 2 eggs, 1/4 cup sugar, vanilla bean, cinnamon, nutmeg and two generous spoonfuls of ricotta. Shame on me for not measuring, but whatever the ratios it turned out just scrumptious.

A very nice dinner. I think this year will include many more of these small dinners for four. And I'll document them better, maybe even make a video :)

Rock on! \m/

-HH

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 Light Italian Fare

In my house I don't attempt to make "sauce" - an interchangeable word with "gravy" which is Italian code for tomato sauce. My husband is Italian, he makes the sauce in this house. When I want to make sauce I have to make a conscious attempt to NOT make sauce. It's all very confusing. When Arcane Malevolence came for Italian Night my husband made his sauce and I made mine, a roasted pepper/tomato sauce that is different enough from regular sauce to elicit a "good sauce" compliment instead of a "good sauce" comment. See, it's confusing.

So yesterday, when I was in the mood for some spaghetti, I had to go outside of the sauce-box yet again. Diced tomato (from a can), onion, garlic and a basil cube. I let it simmer on the stove for close to an hour. While that was going on I marinated some organic chicken breasts in olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, dried oregano, granulated garlic and onion powder.

As the dinner hour approached I put a big pot of water on the stove to boil the pasta. Smart Taste angel hair, I do love that brand, I'll admit it. I set up the George Foreman Grill to cook the chicken. As soon as that heated up I put the chicken on for 9 minutes. When that was done I put the pasta on for 4 minutes, giving the chicken time to rest. See how nicely this meal times out?

I plated the pasta, poured the chunky sauce over the top, shredded the chicken and topped it all with a dash of Parmesan.

It was really good, filling. All the familiar flavors but in course form, a hearty yet light meal. I felt no guilt. Small amounts of olive oil were the only sources of fat. My husband ate a whole chicken breast, I ate about half, but the leftovers (they come three to a package) will end up in a Smart Taste pasta salad today.

Rock healthy, yo!

-HH

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Collard Green Chips

The year has started off good for me. I've already lost 2 pound in 5 days of seriously watching what I eat. It is TORTUROUS not snacking myself to death at night, but the payoff is the nightmares that were plaguing me are gone.


These delightfully crispy chips are made with collard greens. I've made kale chips before, but the spines always got painfully stuck in my teeth. I took the time with these to cut around the larger spines.

I washed the greens in warm water very thoroughly twice and then spun it dry in the salad spinner. I transferred it to a larger bowl and then tossed it with some olive oil, salt, pepper, chipotle powder and smoked paprika. I probably put too much salt on it, but it helps take out the bitter taste of the greens. Be careful though, too much salt will burn your mouth, it's a delicate balance. You can add Parmesan cheese, too. Use your imagination. I bet it would rock with some Old Bay.

Bake in as single a layer as possible on parchment lined cookie sheets at 300 until they dry. It took about 1/2 an hour for these guys. Stir them up every once in a while so they dry evenly.

I think they're really tasty. My neighbor loves them. But other people have said they're too bitter. Not everyone is going to like these, that's what I'm saying. But they're worth a try.

-HH

Saturday, December 31, 2011 The End of 2011

With all the Hanukkah posts on Facebook last week I had to make me some deep fried latkes. Twice. And as DDelicious as they were, it's time for me to put away the deep fryer and focus on finding my waist line.

You've heard this before. Last year. And I wrote an article for this month's Alternative Control on the issue. I'm fat, that's my issue.

But, I am determined to lose some weight and get back into some of my old clothes. How will I do this? Eat better, move more. That's it.

Over the last few days I've begun the process. GoLean high fiber cereal has 18 grams of fiber in a serving. Fiber is key, and back in my skinny days high fiber cereal was the cornerstone of my diet. I could eat anything I wanted, as long as I ended the day with a big bowl of high fiber everything would come out okay, if you catch my drift. But, these days that trick no longer works. I'm assuming my digestive tract is too old to perform the way it used to. And, in my defence, I move way less now than I used to. I used to have to learn choreography and execute it, now my musical theatre days are over and I spend all that time sitting on the couch instead of moving to the music.

I've been making soup for lunch with my homemade stock. Add a little high fiber pasta (Smart Taste in the purple box) a little broccoli, maybe some beets or purple cabbage. It's filling, low fat (if there's any fat at all, the veggie stock I make is fat-free) and packed with the veggies and fiber my body needs.

I played around with a stuffed manicotti recipe a few times in the past couple weeks. I had a ton of ricotta cheese that I needed to use before it went to waste. Since there's obviously fat in the cheese, I wanted to try to leave it out of the rest of the prep. The pasta was cooked for about 7 minutes in boiling water. I mixed about 1 1/2 cups of the cheese with one egg and one thawed cube of basil. The basil was actually pureed with olive oil and frozen in an ice cube tray, so there is some additional fat in the recipe, but it's a good fat.

While the pasta cooked I sauteed another cube of basil (more olive oil) with some broccoli, carrots, onion, garlic and stock cubes. This time it was ham stock, but you can use veggie stock. I let it cook for a while to let the carrots get soft. Then I thickened the whole pan with a little cornstarch in water.

I assembled the whole thing in a casserole dish. One layer of raw baby spinach on the bottom of the dish, then pipe the cheese mixture into the manicotti (you can use a cake decorating bag or a ziplock) and arrange them on top of the spinach. Top with more baby spinach and then pour the sauced veggies on top of it all. Put the lid on and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

It was really fantastic. Almost like pesto and primavera had a baby. A great way to get some veggies in me without the usual fat from sauteing. I'll continue to perfect the recipe and experiment with lots of different veggies and fillings. Someone suggested cottage cheese instead of ricotta, and I'd like to try using a vegan egg (1 tablespoon milled flax seed with 3 tablespoons water) to add more fiber to the recipe. We'll see what happens.

I've cut the extra calories from some of my favorite side veggies as well. I usually saute my purple cabbage in butter before I braise it in red wine vinegar and water until tender. I left the butter out the other night with no discernible difference. And my mashed sweet potatoes were just scrumptious, even without the added milk and butter. I used the cooking liquid instead to get them to the right consistency. Just as tasty. I'll save a lot of calories if I prep all my food this way. Plus, the leftovers will end up in the next days soup. More veggies in my tummy and less in the trash. Good all around.

As I head into the new year I'll be writing down everything I eat. The last two days I didn't do too badly. A soft boiled egg on plain toast is just about 150 calories and it fills you up. All I have to do is get my neighbor to stop bringing me candy and it should all work out.

By keeping track I hope to get back on track. I'll be a hot Headbanging Hostess by Spring! Boo yeah!

Have a wonderful New Year, everyone! Be safe! Rock on!

-HH

PS - My Headbanging empire is ever expanding (like my ass). Check out The Mercurial! You'll love it! \m/