December 2020 – Cooking the Books

December 29, 2020

Queso syrah syrah

Well, if you’re following along, we’ve made it to the end of the year. Good riddance to 2020, and I’m sending it off with one final dip.

For some small frivolity in this downer of a year, my sweetie and I were bantering about who knows what when I stumbled onto the phrase “queso syrah.” As a regular crossword puzzler, I am shocked I’d not thought of it sooner.

But as soon as I spoke the phrase, I realized this could just be an adaptation of port wine cheese spread. I found several recipes for port wine cheese, and ultimately decided to mash up the pounded cheddar with port sauce from Amy Thielen with a more typical port wine spread from Rachel Ray.

The port syrup is a very simple addition of brown sugar to port to make a little syrup-y wine. Since I used the less sweet syrah than port, I thought this especially a good addition and added a little more sugar than called for, but your mileage may vary on how sweet you want your cheese spread.

I also think I overdid it a little on the garlic. Rarely, for me, has doubling the recipe’s amount of garlic gone wrong, but in this case, it tended to overwhelm the gentler flavors of wine and cheese. Still, it tasted good for garlic lovers, so again, YMMV.

Other than that, I used my small skillet to make the sauce and also to serve the dip rather than rolling it into a ball, like the traditional recipe. So, I got double use and still a nice serving platter (even if it was just me and my sweetie enjoying it).

Here’s hoping for a better 2021 and thanks for reading!

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

½ c. syrah
1–2 T. brown sugar
2 c. sharp white cheddar, shredded
4 T. butter, softened
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 t. Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
Pepper
Pinch of cayenne, optional
½ c. chopped walnuts, optional
3 T. fresh parsley, chopped, optional
Crackers or bread, for serving

Directions

Combine syrah and brown sugar in a small skillet or small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for about 3 minutes, until the mixture slightly thickens and all the sugar has dissolved. Pour into a large bowl and let cool.

Once the wine syrup is cooled, add in the cheddar, butter, cream cheese, mustard, garlic, and peppers. Stir with a fork or spatula until all ingredients are well combined.

In a cleaned small skillet, spread the cheese mixture. Press to create an even layer. Add the walnuts and parsley on top, if using.

Chill for at least an hour, or overnight, for the mixture’s flavors to combine, and enjoy!

December 18, 2020

Ham, apple, and a half-day quiche

The recipe for this ham & apple quiche from Food & Wine warns up front that it takes about 4 hours to come together, so I figure I should offer the same caution in starting this post. Granted, most of that time is passive, and none of it is all that taxing if you’re prepared. But this is not the dinner to start after work.

This is a good dinner for snow days, holidays, or other days off from work. *wink wink, nudge nudge*

Like with any good pie crust, this one should chill for about an hour in the fridge, and then another half-hour or so once it’s rolled out and put into the skillet. This one also calls for pre-baking the crust.

Once that’s all done, the next step involves trying desperately to create these beautiful little florets of ham and apple that are kind of a pain but do look quite nice if you can pull it off. (If not, honestly, getting thin slices and then chopping them up small will perhaps work just as well, if not as pretty.)

Then, finally comes the cheese, and then the egg and half and half mixture.

Oh, and then the baking. While it says to bake for 40 to 50 minutes, I found myself looking at upwards of an hour before the thing set, though I didn’t use the larger tart pan called for but rather my small skillet. The ingredients, with slightly fewer florets, otherwise worked in the differently sized equipment, but perhaps that was the reason for the time difference.

Either way, I quite enjoyed this one, even with all the work. It had a nice presentation and a better flavor.

Here’s what I did, altering the Food & Wine recipe to fit 9-inch skillet:

Ingredients

1 ½ c. all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 stick (½ c.) unsalted butter, cubed
Salt and pepper, to taste
Ice water, for crust
8 oz. thinly sliced Black Forest ham, cut into 1 ¼ in. strips
1 medium Granny Smith apple, quartered, cored, and very thinly sliced on a mandoline
1 c. shredded sharp white cheddar cheese
1 ¼ c. half and half
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1 t. fresh thyme

Directions

Mix together the flour and a little salt and pepper. Add the cubed butter and mix in using a pastry blender until you have chickpea-sized pieces. Drizzle in ice water until dough comes together. Work until it comes together and pat into a disk. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, about 45 minutes to an hour.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out chilled dough into about an 11 in. round. Fit dough into a 9- to 10- in. skillet. Chill rolled out and placed dough for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat oven to 375 degrees.

Line the pie crust with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for about 40 minutes, and then remove weights and parchment and bake until golden and crisp, about another 10 minutes. Let cool.

Place a strip of ham on a work surface. Arrange a row of slightly overlapping apple slices lengthwise on a ham strip; roll up loosely and place in the pie crust, spiral side up, and repeat as appropriate to fill up the pie shell. (I had to use other utensils to keep the florets from unraveling, but if you dear reader find a better way, please let me know!) Sprinkle cheese on top.

Whisk together the half and half, eggs, egg yolk, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour in and around the apple and ham rolls.

Bake at 375 degrees until the custard is set, about 50 minutes, loosely tenting with foil to prevent the crust from burning. Remove from heat, and let cool for about 15 minutes, and enjoy!

December 13, 2020

Simple dinner sans skewers

Given how close we are to year’s end, I have the rest of this small skillet year planned at this point, and I know that next week’s recipe is going to be time-consuming. So, I went with something simple this week.

I realized after the fact that though it was called “skewerless stovetop kabobs” from Taste of Home that it’s basically just fajitas with a few more vegetables. But, you know what, it’s been a long year and it’s fine.

This was in the vein of some of my favorite simple recipes, in that it uses fewer ingredients by including salad dressing. Easy flavor works for me.

I did change the recipe in one notable way: it called for pork tenderloin as the meat but that seemed like an expensive and fancy cut for something that was ultimately going to be smothered in Italian dressing. So, I just went with chicken, making it even more like a fajita. I also left off mushrooms, and added a little more vegetables.

While it wasn’t the most exciting of dinners, it did the job. It fed us, it was healthy enough, and it was quick and easy to pull together.

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

1 lb. chicken breast, cut into ¾ in. cubes
½ c. Italian dressing, divided
1 large green pepper, chopped
1 medium zucchini, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 c. cherry tomatoes, halved
Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

In a medium skillet, 8- to 9-in., cook the chicken over medium-high heat in half the dressing until cooked through. Remove from pan.

In the same skillet, cook the vegetables in the remaining half of the salad dressing until the vegetables are tender. Return the chicken to the skillet, heat through, and enjoy!

December 5, 2020

Orange you glad to have a well-stocked pantry?

I wasn’t on my A-game when my sweetie did his weekly grocery shopping this past week, so I completely forgot to get any ingredients to make something in my small skillet. If this weren’t a pandemic with worrying signs in Iowa, I would have said “no worries” and made a special trip.

However, with everything *gestures at Iowa’s mess*, I thought it best to forgo an extra trip and see if I couldn’t find something to make with what we had on hand.

Chocolate-orange shortbread ingredients.

Thankfully, we have a well-stocked pantry and a copy of my favorite cookbook “5 Ingredients” by Jamie Oliver. I managed to find three official recipes that would fit in a small skillet not including ones I’ve made before or ones that’d fit some other piece of equipment. We also had a few other things in the freezer where I could fake some sort of filo dough pot pie and enough eggs I could have managed a quiche.

However, I liked the idea of the 5 Ingredients, because it was guaranteed to be easy. After a short debate on pros and cons of any item, my sweetie and I thought the chocolate-orange shortbread sounded ideal.

I had to do slight alterations, using two mandarins instead of one navel orange and a mix of semi-sweet chocolate chips and a milk chocolate Hershey’s bar instead of dark chocolate. But all in all, with just five ingredients, it was pretty easy to have them all on hand, especially as someone who likes to bake and whose sweetie eats a lot of fruit.

And boy, for so few ingredients and so little work, it was a perfectly delightful dessert. Maybe I’ll have to wing it more often.

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

150 g. butter, at room temperature (about 1 ½ sticks), plus more for greasing
200 g. all-purpose flour (about 1 ¼ c.)
50 g. granulated sugar (about ¼ c.), plus more for topping
Zest from 1 navel orange or 2 mandarins (divided)
50 g. dark chocolate, chips or chunks (or however you can get chocolate for melting!)

Directions

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Grease a 9-inch skillet with butter. Line with parchment paper, and grease that as well.

Mix together the flour, sugar, and zest from ½ the orange (or 1 mandarin). Use your fingers to mush in the butter, without kneading; the texture should resemble a pie crust that just barely holds together. Press the mixture into the prepared skillet until it’s in an even and cohesive layer. Pierce with a fork throughout.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until lightly golden. Sprinkle with a couple pinches of sugar on top while still warm. Then, remove to a wire rack to let cool completely. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate on a double broiler with water underneath, or a microwave like I did, though it is unlikely to spread in a pretty manner if you do it my way. Spread the melted chocolate on top of the cool shortbread. Grate the remaining zest (or 2nd mandarin) on top, and enjoy with orange slices!