Italian Cream Cake

This is hands-down one of my favorite cakes in the world.  It is so old-fashioned.  Unless you're making this for a crowd, halving this recipe might not be a terrible idea.  Otherwise, you'll be eating it for a long time.  It takes only a small slice to fill up even the heartiest of cake-eaters.  Very straightforward recipe.

I usually do two 10-inch pans instead of three 9-inch pans.

My Enchiladas

Ok, so I think I can call this recipe my own, since it so little resembles the original recipe I learned years and years ago.

First, let's get one thing straight: My enchiladas are not authentic Mexican cuisine.  They fall squarely in the Tex Mex category.

Because I've made these so often, I no longer measure anything.  That will make writing the recipe a little difficult, but here goes.

1 1/2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (cooked and shredded)
small, fajita-size flour tortillas
1 can hot enchilada sauce
3 tbsp. chopped onion of choice (I use Spanish onions)
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup + 1/2 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
salt to taste


Preheat oven to 375.   Combine cooked chicken, onion, sour cream and cheese.  Add salt to taste.  Lightly brush one side of tortillas with enchilada sauce.  On sauced side, spoon on desired amount of filling.  Roll up and place in lightly greased baking dish.  After all have been assembled pour remaining sauce over enchiladas.  Top with remaining 1/2 cup pepper jack.  Bake uncovered for approximately 25 minutes.  Yields about 10 enchiladas.

Now, this is the version which I make to make the two of us happy.  I can't handle a lot of heat, so this is pretty tame.  Richard adds a little hot sauce and some jalapenos to his.  I used to put jalapenos in the recipe (I think the original called for green chiles), but it was too spicy for me.  It's a pretty good base recipe that can easily be adjusted to taste.  When I have the time, I let the chicken marinate for an hour in some oil, salt and a little fresh lime juice if I have it.

One of Richard's all-time favorite dishes.

The Unfortunately Named Sausage Balls

Most recipes for sausage balls are virtually identical, but I've been using Paula Dean's recipe lately.  Nothing special about the recipe, but the proportions are correct.

I use mild sausage and then add hot sauce to taste.  I prefer this to just buying "hot" sausage.  As with most recipes, I prefer to use an aged sharp cheddar like Cabot.   It holds its flavor much better than the alternatives.

These are very, very simple and quick to make.  If you're wanting to make them ahead of time, they do pretty well in the reheating process.  However, I would recommend that if you bake them and then refrigerate/freeze them, you leave them slightly undercooked.  This keeps it from getting too tough during reheating.  Pre-baking them seems a little unnecessary though.  They bake up in 10-15 minutes flat.

They aren't the most appetizing-looking things, but they are always a huge hit.  People love them.

Salmon En Papillote

I've been wanting to try this technique for some time, and then one night this week the stars aligned and everything worked out for me to do it.  Salmon was on sale and I had plenty of parchment paper, vermouth and vegetables on hand.

Originally, I was going to use this recipe from Alton Brown, but I couldn't find leeks (strange).  So, not knowing how much that would throw off the flavor palette I decided to go rogue.  I used zucchini, lemons, salt, pepper, a little garlic, shallots and vermouth with the salmon.  From start to finish the whole process took about fifteen minutes.  I stacked the zucchini on the bottom, then the shallots and garlic, followed by the salmon (seasoned with s&p) and finally the lemons and vermouth.   Wrapped it all up in the heart-shaped parchment paper and popped it in the nuker for four minutes.

For so little effort and time, the result was stupendous.  The zucchini was actually my favorite part.  Sitting on the bottom made it absorb all the flavors.  Good beyond words.

The fact that the zucchini absorbed so much flavor, made me reconsider my stacking technique for next time.  I placed the salmon skin-side down on the veggies.  Next time, I will probably do skin side up, so the fish can get more flavor.  The salmon had a great deal of the lemon flavor but much of the vermouth/shallots/garlic flavors sank to the bottom away from the fillet.

One other thing I love about this technique is that it makes clean-up so easy.  Just toss the parchment paper when done eating.  No pots. No pans. No fish stuck to a pan.  And the plates just needed a minimal quick scrub to get the juices off.

Sweet & Sour Pork with Fried Rice

Matt's enthusiasm for my continuing attempts at cooking Chinese food knows no bounds. He went grocery shopping yesterday - without me asking - and picked out flank steak and pork loin since he knew I needed those specific cuts of meat for Dunlop recipes I want to try. Then, in consultation with me via AIM (I was still at work), he found my recipe book and went through it looking for recipes that could be made without a trip to the Asian market - I am, sadly, still lacking some basic Asian pantry items like chili bean paste. And so the decision to make Sweet & Sour Pork for dinner was made before I had even left the office.

A note on the recipe linked in the post title - that's the best I could find online, although it is somewhat confusing since the ingredient list can't decide if it's in English measurements or metric.

Anyway, the recipe. The trimmed-of-fat pork pieces sit in a simple marinade of rice wine and salt for half an hour, before being mixed with a batter consisting only of eggs and cornstarch. This batter is fairly close to tempura - has a certain fluffiness when it hits the oil. Anyway, I got even smarter this time with the frying and used a small pot instead of my stock pot to fry in. My stock pot has a good 9-10 inch diameter, while this little guy is only 6-7 inches across. That translates to being able to fry successfully (i.e. have enough depth of oil) without going through an entire container of the stuff. I am kicking myself for not thinking of this earlier. I'm not spending the big bucks to get peanut oil, which is a joy to fry in but costs over twice as much as canola. However, whatever oil you use, you only get one use out of it before you chuck it (unless you're frying similar items a few nights in a row - in which case it's fine to strain and reuse). SO....long story short, my oil goes farther if I use a smaller pot.

A unique feature of this recipe is that it calls for the pork pieces to be fried twice: once at a lower temperature (about 300 degrees) then again at a higher temp (about 375). I was astonished at how the second frying made the difference in texture. Before and after pictures also tell the story: the one above is after the first frying, the one below is after the second.

While frying and double-frying the pork in one pot, I had fried rice going in the wok. I've been making a lot of plain white rice to accompany this or that Chinese dish, and there is always some left over. Day-old rice is no fun to eat, but it is ideal for fried rice - and in fact, day-old rice is the secret to fried rice. Perfect! My first attempt at fried rice, months ago, was so-so, so I went online and loosely followed the technique outlined on this helpful website. This time, I was making a very simple fried rice - with just garlic, scallions, and egg - so I skipped all the instructions for cooking and adding meat, etc.

First, I heated a few tablespoons of canola oil and about a tablespoon of sesame oil in the wok over medium-high heat. When hot, in went about 4 cloves worth of minced garlic. A few minutes of sauteing, then in went some finely chopped scallions. When those were just cooked, I added all of my leftover rice, stirred briefly, and poured some light soy around the edges of the wok. Some sea salt and pepper also were added. When the rice was thoroughly mixed and looking a little on the dry side, I pushed the rice to the sides of the wok, turned the heat way down, added a tiny bit more oil to the now-clear center of the wok and added a couple eggs - not beaten - but just barely stirred, enough to break the yolks. As instructed, I waited until the broken yolks were starting to set before mixing the whole thing together, rice and egg. This technique gave me the perfect bits of egg throughout that I was looking for, but had miserably failed at when I first tried fried rice without directions. Amazing how a little technique goes a long way! Anyway, more stirring - some tasting - a little more soy - and voila. This was way too easy. It could easily be done in a regular saute pan, too - just remove the rice to a different bowl when you first add the egg, and then add it back in when the egg starts to set.

Once the fried rice was removed to a serving bowl, and the pork pieces done with their second trip into the hot oil (hooray for multitasking, as I was doing this all at once), it was time to assemble the sauce in the wok. I even had some homemade chicken stock in the fridge to use. 5 minutes, max, and the sauce was thick and lustrous.

What a meal. The sweet-sour pork was, just like the Gong Bao, heads and tails above take-out Chinese. I don't know where that saccharin-sweet, candy-red sauce that usually accompanies sweet-sour in take-out orders comes from, but it sure isn't authentic. I wasn't sure if I was more proud of the pork or the fried rice, which was delicious in its simplicity and which I now see I can vary to infinity depending on what's in the fridge. The fried rice could easily be a meal on its own with a little protein added. The sweet-sour recipe would work just as well on chicken. Overall, a smashing success.

And my man was happy.

Note: I have included the "Super Easy Recipes" tag on this post because the fried rice is super easy. The sweet-sour pork is, of course, more intensive.

Take 2: Cinnamon Buns

Meghan already tried this recipe - so it was my turn. (Note about picture: yes, I put a bun in a ziploc and took it to work. It doesn't look the prettiest after the trip in a bag, but who cares? No, I don't feel guilty about subjecting my coworkers to the aromas of a freshly-microwaved homemade cinnamon bun.)

I tried my best to mess up the recipe - I really did. First I realized, after mixing, kneading, and oiling the ball of dough, that I'd forgotten to add the salt. Rats. Out comes the dough, and another 2 minutes of kneading to try to mix in the salt. Then the dough didn't rise in the first two hours. I used the right kind of yeast, but had forgotten to check the expiration date. (Cue groan from bakers in the audience.) I needed to leave the house, so I left the bowl with the dough on the counter with a towel over it. Returning at 2am, I saw that the dough - after 12 hours - had finally risen! Yay! Only by 2am I really was not interested in making filling and rolling out dough and constructing buns. Not to mention that, with sitting out all day, the sides of the ball of dough were dry and kind of crusty - which I'd never seen happen and didn't feel like dealing with at that moment. So straight into the fridge it went.

The next morning, I put bacon in the oven and set about assembling the buns. Thus I remembered too late about the "put buns in cold oven with a pan of boiling water and let rise" part - the oven was very hot with cooking bacon by this point. So I put the pan with the constructed buns on the stove, hoping some of the residual oven heat would rise them. It kind of did - kind of. Bacon out of oven, buns in. Buns out, icing on. Man oh man are these good, in spite of all of my multiple clueless and careless blunders. The cream cheese base in the icing is outstanding. Matt's comment: "This is how cinnamon buns are supposed to taste."

Step aside, Cinnabon! This recipe is foolproof.

Pseudo Tzatziki

So one evening I had planned to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner but after a weekend of heavy eating decided I needed something lighter.  Hence the great tzatziki experiment.

Many of the recipes I found called quite appropriately for Greek yogurt.  Unfortunately all those recipes required overnight straining of the yogurt and I just didn't have time.  Ina Garten came to the rescue once again with her modified tzatziki recipe.

I strained the plain yogurt for about two and half hours and had no idea that that much fluid was in yogurt.  I did not drain the cucumbers nor shred them because I like a chunkier tzatziki especially since I was eating it on pita and not meat.

It really was great.  Some commenters on the recipe said it wasn't authentic enough because it had sour cream in it.  However, I thought it tasted just as good as the tzatziki I've had in restaurants.  The sour cream is basically to enrich the otherwise rather bland plain yogurt and make it more like Greek yogurt.