Hounds In The Kitchen » Recipes

Creamy Berry Tartlets

Rachel — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:57:56 +0000

Sometimes you have enough berries to make a pie or jam, but sometimes due to high prices or small harvests, you only have a few at hand. Whenever I have just a few of something I like to savor them fully in a recipe such as this.

Because of the simplicity of the preparation, the quality of the berries and crust are key. You can purchase tart crusts frozen from a store or make your own from phyllo, puff pastry, or pate brisee. I made these perfectly flaky crusts from home made shortening and flour pie dough cut with a highball glass and baked in stoneware muffin pan.

This recipe for tarts allows the fruit to really shine. I recently served it with blueberries as pictured for a cooking class dessert. Any very fresh ripe fruit such as raspberries, strawberries, or kiwi, can be substituted.

If taking this dish to a picnic or serving to a large crowd, make the crust, berry, and cream filling components separately. Combine only at the last minute before service to ensure that the crust doesn’t get soggy or berries leach their juice into the cream.

Creamy Berry Tarts

18 muffin sized pastry shells at room temperature
1 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2-3 cups washed fruit

Beat cream cheese, sour cream, sugar and vanilla until smooth with a wire whisk or stand mixer. Spoon cream into pastry shells. Top with berries.

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Creamy Berry Tartlets is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Overnight Marinated Kale Salad

Rachel — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:42:39 +0000

I could call this recipe the ‘convert kale salad’ for all the people who hate kale but love this dish. It could be named ‘Basi Italia Rip-Off’ because I first tasted the salad at the elegant Basi Italia restaurant in Columbus and have been recreating it in my kitchen ever since. Another good title would be ‘best salad ever’ as someone always declares as much when I serve it. It is refreshing in summer and useful to make with bountiful local kale in cooler months too.

Marinated Kale Salad

5-6 cups kale, washed and cut into thin strips. Any type works; the lacinato or dinosaur kale is best.

1/2 cup dried fruit. Basi uses dried currants; my version has dried cherries

1/2 cup nuts or seeds. Basi uses pine nuts but since my episode of pine mouth I substitute sunflower seeds

1 tablespoon honey

zest and juice of one lemon

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, shaved with a vegetable peeler (omit and add 1/4 teaspoon salt for a vegan dish)

Mix kale, fruit, lemon zest and seeds in a glass bowl. In a separate dish, mix lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and honey to make a dressing. Pour dressing over kale and toss to coat evenly. Refrigerate overnight or for six hours minimum. Before serving, toss in Parmesan shavings.

Recipe added to Fight Back Friday.

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Overnight Marinated Kale Salad is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Garden Garlic Scape Gazpacho

Rachel — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:48:33 +0000

Rising temperatures find home cooks looking for low-heat meal options. Gazpacho is a refreshing choice that requires only the use of your blender.

This version was made with what I had on hand during late spring: last year’s home canned home grown tomatoes, garlic scapes, fresh cilantro, and store bought jalapeno. Later in the season, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and fresh peppers would make great ingredients.

The process couldn’t be simpler: blend together clean vegetables and chill. The key is a balance of salt, acid, sweet, and spice. In this case, the acid comes from lemon juice in the canned tomatoes, sweet is from the carrot, and spice from the fresh jalapeno pepper. If you substitute ingredients you might want to add balsamic vinegar, honey, or hot chili powder if your gazpacho is out of balance.

Garden Garlic Scape Gazpacho

2 cleaned and trimmed garlic scapes
1 qt home canned tomatoes
Handful of cilantro, two springs reserved
1 inch piece fresh jalapeno
1 large carrot
2 teaspoons olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Puree all together in a blender until smooth, adding salt and pepper to taste. Chill for 1 hour minimum. Garnish with reserved cilantro just before service.

I served this gazpacho with some fresh made cornbread (baked in the toaster oven to save heating up the house with the big oven) and some skillet cooked Blue Jacket Gretna grilling cheese. It was a quick light meal prepared without heating up the house.

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Garden Garlic Scape Gazpacho is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Asparagus Relish Deviled Eggs

Rachel — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:00:22 +0000

When one of the Wild Goose Creative board members asked me to be part of the Asparafest cooking competition, I couldn’t refuse. I debated my options for a few days and entered with asparagus deviled eggs.

I decided to challenge myself not only with creating the recipe but sourcing the ingredients. In my entry, all ingredients excepting salt and pepper were produced by people I know. The eggs, garlic, shallots, and herbs came from my own garden. The asparagus was from Schacht Farm in Canal Winchester, Ohio. The cider vinegar is home produced by Charlie of Windy Hill Apple Farm. Roger’s Honey sweetened the relish and I made the butter myself from Vernon Yoder’s raw milk.

I didn’t win the competition and it’s debatable whether the eggs taste any better than if the ingredients were sourced from a big box grocery, but it was a fun exercise nonetheless. Asparagus the movie was entertaining and enlightening. If you have a chance, catch a viewing or buy it on DVD.

Asparagus Deviled Eggs

6 eggs, boiled and halved

2 tablespoons hand-shaken butter

3 tablespoons asparagus relish, see recipe below

salt and pepper to taste

optional: chili powder, paprika, asparagus tips

Remove yolks from eggs and place yolks in a medium sized bowl. Mix in butter until yolks are smooth and creamy. Stir in relish, salt and pepper. Fill egg white halves with the yolk mixture. Top with a sprinkle of chili powder, paprika, and/or roasted asparagus tips.

marinated asparagus (good on its own too!)

Relish (needs two days preparation)

Marinated asparagus:
1/2 bunch blanched asparagus
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup cider vinegar
3/4 teaspoon salt and pepper
1 tablespoon fresh sage

Mix all ingredients except asparagus. Pour over asparagus and refrigerate overnight.

Relish:
1 cup minced marinated asparagus
2 tablespoons minced garlic, sauteed in a little butter
1 tablespoon each fresh rosemary and oregano, minced
1 tablespoon honey
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients and refrigerate overnight.

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Asparagus Relish Deviled Eggs is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Leftover Cakes

Rachel — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:31:31 +0000

I have an unnatural obsession with using up leftovers. Even though the chickens now eat most of our food scraps, I still hate to waste. All that effort to source ingredients and cook them well just shouldn’t end up in the chicken bin or the trash in my opinion.

I find myself often making leftover cakes. Maybe one of you can come up with a more clever and appetizing name.

It starts with a few cups of a starchy leftover such as mashed potatoes, lentils, couscous, or risotto. I add in a little bread or cracker crumbs and egg to make the cakes hold together.

Then the mix is dropped into a skillet with a little olive oil and pan fried on each side.

I usually serve the cakes with homemade ketchup or chopped seasoned fresh veggies to add a bright dimension to the dish. They’re a nice thing to serve in the summer when no one wants to use the oven.

Leftover Cakes

2 cups leftover mashed potatoes, risotto, lentils, couscous or other starchy grain

1/4 cup bread or cracker crumbs

1 egg

2 tablespoons olive oil

Mix together leftovers, crumbs and egg. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium high and add olive oil. Drop leftover mixture into skillet. Cook five minutes and flip to the other side. Continue cooking until cakes are cooked through and browned on both sides.

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Leftover Cakes is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Healthier Strawberry Shortcake

Rachel — Sat, 29 May 2010 17:41:24 +0000

When we returned from a short vacation last week, there were plenty of ripe strawberries to pick. Lil asked sweetly, “Can we make strawberry shortcake please Mama?”

She is hard to refuse. But after four days of restaurants and treats, I wanted to make dessert a little healthier. I adapted a recipe my mother uses for shortcake by lessening the sugar, using white whole wheat flour, and substituting skimmed milk. The recipe might originally be from an old version of a Betty Crocker cookbook but I’m not sure.

Served with a heaping portion of strawberries, one eighth of this cake has 213 calories, according to Spark People online recipe nutrition calculator. It has 4 grams of protein, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 8 grams of fat, 50 mg of potassium and plenty of other vitamins. While still falling into the category of a ‘sometimes food’ in my opinion, this version of strawberry shortcake is reasonable to serve as a weeknight dessert.

Strawberry Shortcake

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup 2% milk

1/2 cup (local in season) strawberries per person, chopped

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream shortening and sugar with an electric mixer.

Add egg and vanilla and cream again.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder. Add to creamed shortening and sugar alternately with milk.

Spread in a 8 inch circular cake pan and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F. Allow to cool slightly and top with strawberries.

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Healthier Strawberry Shortcake is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Mother’s Day Rhubarb Crisp

Rachel — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:40:58 +0000

I went to the community market recently for local asparagus. They had none, but the local rhubarb looked fantastic. Such is the way of a locavore – go to the market searching for a vegetable side dish, come home with ingredients for dessert.

Some might say that rhubarb is a vegetable only a mother can love. It requires care to grow and lots of sugar to balance the sour. My own mother is well known for her fantastic strawberry rhubarb pie.

Having no strawberries, I remembered that my father’s mother, Grandma Joyce, makes a rhubarb crisp. I called her and she rattled off the recipe from memory:

Chop stalks of rhubarb into bite sized pieces. Lil helped me with this. We layered them in a quiche dish I inherited from Grandma’s mother, Great Grandma Leona.

Top rhubarb with sugar. Add as much as you think will balance the sour and then some. I stirred in a tiny bit of vanilla too.

Cut 6 tablespoons butter into 1 cup flower and 1 cup sugar. Grandma Joyce uses margarine but I only had butter on hand.

Stir one egg into the mix until it pulls together. Drop the topping over the rhubarb. Grandma says to dot the top with butter but I skipped this step. Why, to keep it healthy??

Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until the rhubarb is bubbling through the center and the topping is browned. Grandma says the crisp also bakes well at higher or lower temps if you have something in the oven; simply adjust the time down or up respectively.

I served this crisp on plates from my step Great Grandmother Guth. Her first name was Rebekka and somehow she ended up with these dessert plates with the letter R on them. I’m the only one with a ‘R’ name in the family so I inherited them.

I am lucky to know and have known so many food loving mothers. Happy Mother’s Day!

Rhubarb Crisp

4 – 8 cups fresh rhubarb, chopped (quantity depends on your desired topping to fruit ratio)

1 cup sugar (adjust according to your taste)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

6 tablespoons butter or margarine

1 large egg

1. Mix chopped rhubarb, 1 cup sugar and vanilla in a pie plate, 8×8 pan, or quiche pan.

2. Cut butter into 1 cup flour and 1 cup sugar.

3. Stir in egg until well mixed.

4. Drop topping onto sugared rhubarb.

5. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

Wow! Two recipes in a week? What is this, a food blog?!

There’s only one day left to enter the Nutro dog food giveaway! Follow the link and leave a comment to enter!

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Mother’s Day Rhubarb Crisp is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Curtido Recipe: Central American Cabbage Slaw

Rachel — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:01:25 +0000

Whoa I haven’t posted a recipe in forever. I like to test a recipe a couple times to ensure directions are correct. In this case, I made curtido and wrote this post the same night but wanted to see how it aged in the fridge before posting. Here ya’ go!

Tonight (by which I mean a night a few weeks ago) we went to my parents’ house for dinner. They were serving a make-your-own burrito bar. Fun!

I had half a red cabbage left over from making coleslaw for some barbecued pulled pork. The now-closed La Hacienda Real used to serve a cabbage slaw with refried beans to accompany chips and I wondered if I could use up my cabbage to make that.

A quick google survey revealed their dish was probably curtido. Curtido is a barely fermented cabbage and carrot slaw common in Salvador and Nicaragua. It often accompanies pupusas, thick corn pancakes.

My first try was a hit, as evidenced by above inclusion on Dad’s second or third taco. Here’s my recipe, based on one from Whats4Eats:

1/4 head red cabbage, shredded

1 carrot, shredded

3 onion chives, chopped (a few scallions were called for in the original recipe, but onion tops from the garden were the best substitute I had on hand)

boiling water to cover

1/4 cup Charlie’s apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup water

1 dash red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon salt

several turns of black pepper

Combine cabbage, carrots, and onions in a heat proof bowl. Add boiling water to cover and let sit for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, stir together the remaining ingredients.

Strain out the water. Press the vegetables to get out all the excess you can.

In a serving dish, combine vegetables and the vinegar mixture. Allow to sit at room temperature for a few hours before serving. Store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

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Curtido Recipe: Central American Cabbage Slaw is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

How To Make A Mint Julep

Rachel — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 02:08:11 +0000

Kentucky Derby coming up…

Forest of mint growing already in the herb bed…

A long day filled with appointments…

Bottle of Eagle Rare bourbon in the cabinet…

This afternoon, all signs pointed to a Mint Julep. Here’s how I make them:

Fill a low ball glass with a quarter cup or more fresh cleaned mint leaves.

Add a teaspoon of turbinado sugar.

Muddle well, then fill the glass with crushed ice.

Top it off with 2 – 4 ounces of high quality bourbon.

Cheers!

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How To Make A Mint Julep is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Great in Every Season Frittata

Rachel — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:39 +0000

One of our favorite meals year round is frittata. It makes perfect use of whatever vegetables are in season, is easily made with local ingredients, and can be served for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Essentially a crustless quiche, frittata is a classical dish that is dead simple to prepare.

Here’s a skeleton recipe that can be adapted for whatever ingredients you have on hand. The technique is always the same.

First, chop and sweat one half of a large onion in a drizzle of olive oil in a cast iron skillet. Add two cloves of garlic (or more to your liking), and four cups of chopped vegetables. In winter, try mushrooms and kale, spinach and peas are nice in the spring, tomato and beans are tasty in summer, and the fall bears chard and peppers. Cook vegetables until slightly caramelized.

Meanwhile, make the egg mixture. Whisk six eggs, local preferred, with one half cup milk, one teaspoon salt, and several twists of black pepper until foamy. Add one tablespoon fresh herbs or one teaspoon dried to the egg mixture.

Assemble the frittata by pouring the egg mixture over the vegetables. Top with one half to one cup of cheese (shredded cheddar or swiss, feta, goat cheese, or your favorite).

Place the frittata in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 – 30 minutes or until top is browned. Serve warm or cold with a simple salad and/or bread for a light meal.

Every Season Frittata

two tablespoons olive oil

one half onion, chopped

two cloves garlic, minced

two cups vegetables, diced

two tablespoons fresh herbs, chopped (one teaspoon dried)

six eggs (substitute three whole eggs and four egg whites to reduce fat and cholesterol)

one half cup milk

one teaspoon salt

black pepper (and cayenne if you like things spicy)

one half to one cup cheese

Cook vegetables over medium heat until wilted in a cast iron skillet. Add herbs. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, salt, and pepper. Pour over vegetables and top with cheese. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 – 30 minutes or until cooked through and browned on top.

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Great in Every Season Frittata is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.