Chickpea Stew with Pork

Apparently I am a glutton for punishment. My first punishment is this coming weekend I will run in my first and last 10K race. It is the Ukrop Monument Run in Richmond, VA. I will be running in the race with my 2 daughters Lynn and Ashlyn. Well let me clear something up I don't actually run "I walk with style" to paraphrase Woody from Toy Story. My second act of punishment will come after the race. I decided that after a couple years of walking one day and working with weights the next it was time to try something new. I started looking at different exercise equipment. On the NordicTrack website I was asked to fill out a survey. I did this even though I usually don't fill out those things and believe it or not I won a RIP:60 workout system. That should arrive next week, so if I don't die during the 10K I can kill myself by doing a new workout routine.

I bought myself some new cookbooksOne of them was The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone. Since we went from 80 degrees on Thursday to 38 degrees on Sunday I decided I needed to try a slow cooker recipe. The recipe I decided on was Chickpea Stew, but my wife is a meat and potatoes person so I had to modify it. I had a pork loin roast that I cut up and browned and added to the stew. Here is the recipe with my changes listed.

Chickpea Stew with Pork
3 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
5 medium carrots, sliced 1/4 inch coins
2 potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces
1 cup peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes, canned or fresh I used I 28 oz can with the juice
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped I put a sprig in and removed it before serving
1/2 cup chicken broth, I used 1 1/4 cups as 1/2 did not seem like much with all of the veggies and meat I added
3 tbs olive oil, separated
Salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 to 2 lbs Pork Loin Roast, cut into bite size pieces

Add 1 tbs of olive oil to a pan and heat it over medium high heat. Add the pork and brown. After the pork is browned add everything to the slow cooker. Cook for 6 to 8 hours on low. Serve with some nice crusty bread.

Amaretto Almond Pound Cake

My wife made a pound cake that was delicious, so she is going to write the post today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Ha Ha! I am taking over Greg's blog. Not really, it's just that I'm the baker and he's the cook. And sometimes you just have to have cake. So I was reading through my Southern Living magazine and they did a section on "Perfect Pound Cakes". This one just sounded really good to me: Amaretto-Almond Pound Cake. And trust me, with a cup of tea (maybe with a little Amaretto in it) this cake is delicious. Greg even ate a small piece. I made a few small changes, taking the cake out of the pan before glazing it, and using a little bit of almond flavoring instead of all liqueur in the batter. I hope you enjoy it.

Amaretto-Almond Pound Cake
1 1/4 cups butter, softened
1 (3 oz) package cream cheese, softened
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 Tbsp almond liqueur (I used 2 Tbsp Amaretto, 1 Tbsp almond flavoring)
1Tbsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
6 large eggs
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1. Preheat oven to 325. Beat butter & cream cheese until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add almond & vanilla flavorings/liqueurs, beating until just blended. Gradually add flour, beating until just blended after each addition. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until just blended after each addition.
2. Sprinkle sliced almonds in the bottom of a greased/floured 12 cup Bundt pan; pour batter into pan.
3. Bake at 325 for 1 hour and 5 minutes to 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until a wooden pick comes out clean.
4. During the last 10 minutes of baking, prepare Amaretto Glaze (see below). Remove cake from oven and flip onto wire rack.
5. Spoon hot glaze over cake. You can also poke a few extra holes in the cake to get the glaze to soak down in.
6. Cool cake completely.

Amaretto Glaze

Bring 3/4 cup sugar, 6 Tbsp butter 1/4 cup Amaretto & 2 Tbsp water to a boil in a small sauce pan over medium heat, stirring often. When it begins to boil, reduce heat to medium/low and boil, stirring constantly, 3 minutes. Remove from heat and use immediately.

Salmon with Grilled Veggie Salad

My week in a nutshell: Run, Work, Work, Work, Run Work, Run, Work watch basketball. Michigan State lost :-( Duke won :-). At work I have been working on 3 projects since January. Each project had 4 parts and every time I would work on 1 part of one project for a couple of days an emergency would pop up and I would have to switch to another part and work on that. Then someone decided they all had to be done last week. So after a lot of hours I finished them all. At least all of them are done and I can move on to something new for now and catch up on some food blogs.

This is a healthy recipe that can be made quickly and is very tasty.

A couple of notes before you start. You can use any veggies that you want the ones listed ate the ones I used. Cook the salmon to your desired doneness, I like the salmon crispy but not over cooked. I usually cook the salmon over high heat to crisp it up on the outside, but not long enough so the inside is over cooked. I got a little hand held mandolin a while back and with the remodel I kind of ignored it. I cut the veggies with the mandolin for this and discovered the thinnest setting was not the best setting for grilled veggies as they became kind of a mushy. In my mind the thinly sliced veggies looked gorgeous in the picture. You can cut them any way you heart desires, but I suggest at least 1/4 inch thick.

Salmon with Grilled Veggie Salad
1 salmon fillet or steaks
1 zucchini, sliced into ribbons
1 yellow squash, sliced into ribbons
20 to 30 cherry tomatoes
5-8 mushrooms, sliced thinly
Asparagus, I grilled about 14 spears because they were so small if you get larger ones use less
1 garlic clove, minced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil

Turn the grill on high to preheat.

Cut the veggies. Drizzle with olive oil and slat and pepper them to taste.

Drizzle olive oil on the salmon and salt and pepper it. Place the salmon on the grill and cook to desired doneness.

Add the veggies to the grill and cook until done. Place veggies in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil, I use a better grade than what I cook with. and squeeze the lemon on it. Toss the veggies to coat with oil and lemon juice. serve as a side dish or top salmon with it.

Shirred Eggs

These are the genuine thing, Frodo made them for Samwise, Merry and I. After breakfast he showed me how to make the eggs and then muttered something about returning a ring. I didn't want to go to the mall so I stayed back and did the dishes. My apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien.

For those that have never had shirred eggs, they are simply baked eggs. This is a recipe I have thought about making for a while, but because it takes more time than fried or scrambled I haven't got around to making it. Today, it is rainy and I couldn't go for morning run so I decided the time had come to give shirred eggs a shot.

Shirred Eggs

No stick cooking spray
1 slice Canadian Bacon per person
1 egg per person
1 tsp of half and half per person
1 tsp grated parmesan cheese, per person

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Spray ramekin(s) with no stick spray. Put Canadian bacon on bottom of ramekin. Crack egg into ramekin. Put half and half on top of egg. Sprinkle grated cheese on top. Tip: I put ramekins on cookie sheet and assembled the eggs, then put cookie sheet in oven rather than trying to put individual ramekins in oven.
Bake for about 15 minutes, eggs should be a little jiggly, if you cook until eggs are set, they will be overdone. I cut up a chive and sprinkled on top for some color.

Salmon with Bacon and Maple Glaze

EatingWell magazine published a recipe for a Spinach Salad with a warm Maple Dressing. I stumbled across this recipe for trying to come up with a new salmon recipe. My version is listed below, as I thought theirs needed a little work. The maple got me thinking and I decided to do a maple glaze on the salmon. Now what would I add to bring it all together? Obviously bacon, but I think bacon is the answer to a lot of things.

Salmon with Maple Glaze and Bacon
1 salmon steak for each person
1 slice of bacon for each salmon steak
1 tsp of maple syrup for each salmon steak

Spinach Salad with Maple Dressing
2 tbs chopped walnuts
2 oz chopped spinach per person
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 tbs cider vinegar
1/4 cup maple syrup
salt and pepper to taste

Salmon Instructions
Preheat grill to medium high.
While grill is heating up place bacon in microwave on paper towels and cover with a paper towel and cook for 1 minute. This will make bacon partially cooked but not crisp. Pat excess grease off bacon and set aside. When Salmon is almost cooked to desired doneness, drizzle syrup over the salmon and place bacon on top. Remove when salmon is cooked to desired doneness.

Spinach Salad
Put spinach in bowl, if frozen defrost and drain first.
Heat nuts in a dry skillet, over medium heat, until they are fragrant about 2 -3 minutes. Put nuts in bowl with spinach.
Add oil and shallot to pan and cook until soft, about 4 minutes. Add vinegar and syrup heat until boiling. Add the salt and pepper. Poor mixture over the spinach.

Put spinach mixture on plate and top with salmon steak.

Tilapia with Romesco Sauce

Today was another freakishly warm days, for winter, so I definitely wanted to grill out. Looked in the fridge and had a few veggies that needed to be eaten. Then off to the freezer and I see several packages of Tilapia. Now what can I do to tie this this altogether? Grilled fish and veggies are just a little to boring for my taste. Off to the pantry to figure out a sauce or something to bring this together. Almonds, hmm I have some roasted peppers...Romesco sauce.

This recipe is based on the Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health Romesco Sauce recipe. It makes about 1 1/2 cups of sauce, more than you will need for this recipe. Leftover sauce can be used as a dip, a sandwich spread, thin with pasta water and use as a pasta sauce or put some on a veggie omelet.

Tilapia with Romesco Sauce
1/3 cup Olive Oil
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 slice whole wheat bread, lightly toasted and crumbled
3/4 cup fresh tomatoes, chopped
1/3 cup toasted almonds, put in fry pan and heat until fragrant
2/3 cup roasted red peppers, drained
1 tbs red wine vinegar
salt and fresh ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and heat until it starts to turn color. Then add the pepper flakes, bread and tomatoes.Cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently to coat the bread on all sides and the tomato starts to soften. Remove from heat.

In a food processor place the nuts and pulse until they are roughly chopped. Add the other ingredients and process until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. This sauce will last in a refrigerator for a week. Just remove from fridge and bring to room temperature before serving.

I grilled the fish with a just a little salt and pepper and olive oil. The veggies were chopped, tossed with olive oil and dried herbs and grilled until they got some color on them (don't look to close at the picture the color was mostly black...oops).

Ribs and Grits

My wife decided that she wanted crock pot ribs for dinner. Typically we would have baked potato wedges with ribs, but I was in the mood for something different. Actually, I am almost always in the mood for something different or this blog would have stopped after seven recipes. I read recently that the average American household rotates between 10 different recipes, I am glad I am not average I would think that would get a little tiresome. Back to my story, as I was making the ribs I realized I only had Honey Chipotle barbecue sauce. If I wasn't going to make them in the crock pot I would have made my own sauce. So I am thinking the barbecue sauce is southwestern what would go with that, corn. How do I make corn a hearty side dish? Well you make it into polenta. Now polenta is very southwestern sounding, so I better go with the grits/cornmeal name instead. My wife was originally put off by the idea but loved it after she tried it. Next time I might add corn or jalapenos to the grits to give them an extra kick.

Ribs and Grits

Ribs
2 to 3 pounds ribs, trim off any large pieces of fat, I used pork ribs
2 tsp olive oil
1 small onion, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices and broke apart to make rings
1 bottle of barbecue sauce, I hold back 1/2 cup to cover ribs at the end
water enough to mostly cover the ribs (they don't need to be submerged just mostly covered)

Over medium high heat olive oil. When the oil is shimmering add the ribs and brown them on all sides. While the ribs are browning slice onions and place them in the crock pot. When ribs are browned place them on onions in the crock pot. Add the barbecue sauce and then enough water to mostly cover the ribs. Put the lid on turn crock pot on high for 5 to 6 hours. On low this takes about 8 to 10 hours. The ribs will be falling off the bones when they are done. You can remove them and put some extra sauce on them or you can serve the extra sauce as a dipping sauce. I plate the ribs on the polenta on a large platter.

Grits
Follow the directions on the package or make your favorite recipe. remember the only difference between cornmeal, polenta and grits is how fine they re ground. If you have one on hand you don't have to run out and buy grits just for this. When the grits are done stir in about 3/4 cup of cheese, I had cheddar and Jarlesburg on hand so that is what I used, just about any cheese or combination will work as long as they melt. You could add 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of corn and or some jalapeno slices to taste. After cheese is melted spread out the grits on a platter and place the ribs on top of the grits.