Archive for the Category ◊ Guest Recipe ◊

15 Nov 2010 Poached Pear Salad

Poached Pear Salad is ideal for any fancy meal and also be good for a light lunch when paired (peared! now there’s a joke in the making… ) when paired with a bowl of soup or a sandwich. The salad looks elegant, tastes great, is endlessly customizable and is dead easy to throw together at the last minute (as long as the pears have been made and chilled ahead of time).

Poached Pear Salad

For the Poached Pears:

  • 6-8 Bosch Pears, with stems left on, peeled (Bosch pears are the ugly brown skinned pears.  I’d suggest using smaller pears so your guests aren’t too full after the salad to enjoy the main meal)
  • 2 cups Port, Shiraz or Zinfandel (The choice of wine will affect the taste of your pears.  If you can afford it, a good port is great.  I often the poach the pears in Zinfandel)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 slices orange
  • 4 star anise

For the Salad:

  • 1 bag of salad greens (I usually cut up my favorite lettuces, I don’t like the smell or the taste of bagged salad greens)
  • Cheese of choice, about 1 T. per plate (feta, blue, goat)
  • Extra toppings of choice, if desired: chopped nuts, candied nuts, dried cranberries, pomegranate seeds…

For the Dressing:

  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 3 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar (OK to sub champagne vinegar)
  • 1 Tablespoon whole grain mustard
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or 3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 3 tablespoons reserved poaching liquid
  • salt and pepper to taste
  1. Poach the pears: In a large pan with a lid, combine wine, sugar, water, and star anise.  Turn heat to high and bring mixture just to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar.
  2. Add peeled whole pears-with stem intact-to hot liquid turning to coat well.
  3. Stir in orange slices
  4. Cover pan and simmer pears on low for 10 to 15 minutes, turning pears occasionally, until pears are tender, but still hold their shape.
  5. Discard star anise.  Remove pears to a bowl and set aside to cool.
  6. Turn up heat under the wine mixture, heat to boiling, and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes.  Liquid should thicken and reduce to 1 ½ cups. (Pour liquid into measuring cup every once in awhile to measure progress).
  7. When pears are cool, cut in half lengthwise, and carefully remove core.
  8. Pour reduced poaching liquid and the orange slices over halved pears.  Cover and chill overnight and up to two days. (Poached pears actually keep quite well for a week or more)
  9. When ready to serve, drain the pears from the poaching liquid. (Reserve the reduced poaching liquid. You will need 3T for the salad dressing.) Cut pear into a fan and the bottom, and keeping intact at the narrow top end.
  10. Make the Salad Dressing: Combine all the ingredients–except for the olive oil- for the salad dressing. Mix thoroughly. Gradually whisk in the olive oil. Use immediately. If necessary, if the dressing has separated, shake well before using.
  11. Prepare the Salads: Place pear in the middle of a salad plate, and over a pile of salad greens.  Carefully and artfully  spread out the fanned bottom part of the poached pear. (Sometimes I don’t mess with this, I just cube or slice the pears and arrange on top of the salad greens.)
  12. Sprinkle pear and greens with approximately 1T. of the crumbled cheese of your choice and any desired toppings. Don’t overlook pomegranate seeds, I think they make the salad look especially attractive. I don’t like nuts, but my friends seem to love some candied pecans on this salad.
  13. Drizzle salad with the salad dressing.

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today.

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30 Oct 2010 Doggie Cupcakes

No recipe with this post, I just wanted to brag on my daughter Abby.  Look at the cute “Pupcakes” she made for her nephew’s second birthday party!  Isn’t she talented?  She got her inspiration from Martha Stewart’s book, “Cupcakes”.  BTW, these cupcakes were not cheap.  By the time she bought the ingredients to make the cupcakes and to decorate the cupcakes, she had spent $50.  (I know because she charged it on my credit card.)  $50 divided by 24 cupcakes is just over $2 a cupcake!  (But there are enough leftover ingredients to make another batch or two.) They also took a lot of time, it took her and a friend about 4 hours, just to decorate the pupcakes.

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17 Oct 2010 Roasted Rosemary-Garlic Chicken with . . .

. . .  New Potatoes and Seared Asparagus Spears!

My friend John, the rugged he-man, Lake Superior Chef (of Asian Glazed Thigh fame), has submitted another recipe.   I am posting this now because it sounds like it’s just the thing for a Sunday supper.  Go now! Get a chicken! You can have this for dinner tonight!

John says: “I adapted the chicken and potato recipe from Williams-Sonoma.  The recipe for the asparagus spears is my own.  I like this recipe for a number of reasons…, you only have to use two pans and one bowl, your kitchen smells wonderful when you’re done, you can drink chardonnay while you cook and the recipe is so easy.”

Roasted Rosemary-Garlic Chicken

with New Potatoes and Seared Asparagus Spears

Ingredients:

3 cloves garlic (diced)
2 sprigs fresh rosemary (rough chop)
1 roaster chicken (3 to 5 lbs)
1 ½ lbs small red potatoes, quartered
Olive oil
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Asparagus spears, washed and trimmed.

Directions For Cooking the Chicken and Potatoes:

Preheat oven to 400º.
Pour a glass of cool (not cold) chardonnay to enjoy while you cook.
Mix olive oil, garlic and rosemary in small bowl.
Coat chicken with olive oil mixture, reserving about ¼ of the mixture for the potatoes.
Place chicken in a large oven-proof fry pan, breast side up.  Tuck wings behind back, and tie the legs together.
In another bowl, stir together potatoes and remaining olive oil mixture.
Arrange the potatoes around the chicken, sprinkle both chicken and potatoes with salt and pepper, and transfer pan to oven.
Roast until instant read thermometer (inserted into thickest part of the breast, away from bone) registers 160º F, about 60 to 70 minutes.
Transfer chicken to carving board and cover loosely with foil.  Let rest for 10 minutes.

Directions for Roasting the Asparagus:

Rinse asparagus and pat dry.
Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Heat ribbed skillet over high heat until “screaming hot”.
Sear asparagus, turning frequently.
Transfer skillet to oven (still hot from cooking the chicken) for five minutes.

To Serve:

Carve the chicken and serve with potatoes and asparagus.  Another  glass of chardonnay wouldn’t hurt either!

Now doesn’t that sound good?  I think a slice of the Chocolate-Pumpkin cake–I just posted the recipe–would round off this meal quite nicely!

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23 Sep 2010 Asian Glazed Thighs

My friend Anne, has a brother John.  He’s a rugged Man’s Man from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  He canoes.  He scuba dives.  He sports shark tattoos. He swims in Lake Superior  (In the winter.  I don’t know why. Something to do with Polar Bears.) John also cooks.  Often on a grill.  John offered to be my guest poster today with this recipe for Asian Glazed Thighs (Note to John, you might consider revising the recipe title…the mind does tend to wander a bit…)

John  found this recipe in Parade Magazine a few years ago.  Damn.  He reads the newspaper, too.

John said, when introducing this recipe to me, “Too often, very tasty Asian cooking is drowned in soy sauce.  Not so with this dish.  The orange flavor really comes through because you’re using both the zest and the juice of the orange. You’ll taste the soy sauce, but just a hint of it.”  Now, I did mention that this man swims in Lake Superior, right?  In fact, he took his scuba check out dives in Lake Superior in April.  He had to wade through the ice floating in the lake before submerging…makes you wonder a bit about his judgment, doesn’t it?  🙂  So…, just to be on the safe side,  I tested this recipe before I posted it.  YUMMMMmmm.  I knew, with the first stolen tester off the grill, that he had a GREAT recipe.  I was licking my fingers and moaning, impatiently waiting for the rest of the chicken to be done.

Just to be on the double-safe side, I took the chicken to Yoga-Massage night to share with my friends and to get their feedback.  To keep their minds on the food, I didn’t mention the name of this dish.  I know them. If they knew they name of this dish they would have gone where we don’t want to go…

We all loved the chicken.  I got multiple requests to post the recipe ASAP.  So here it is.

Thanks, John.  If this recipe is well received, John has promised to share his Coffee and Soy Marinated Pork Chop recipe.  Double damn.  He likes coffee, too.

Asian Glazed Thighs

Eight boneless/skinless chicken thighs
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil (I used regular sesame oil)
Finely grated zest of 2 oranges
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
¾ c fresh orange juice (juice from about 3 medium oranges)
1 tbsp minced garlic
3 tbsp soy sauce
¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
¼ c honey
Salt and pepper to taste
Sesame seeds (for garnish)

1.       Rinse thighs and pat dry.

2.       Combine rest of ingredients for marinade.  Reserve 1/2 to 1 cup of the marinade, cover and refrigerate (you’ll be using this to baste the chicken later).  Toss the chicken in the rest of the marinade.  Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours or overnight.

3. Remove chicken and basting marinade from fridge 30 minutes before cooking.

5.       Grill  thighs, basting often, for about 15 minutes. (This is the fun part.  Toss the thighs on a very hot grill-hot enough to char the outside a little.  Then baste often and flip often.  John moves the thighs onto and off of the heat, assisted by a glass of wine, and finds he usually grills the meat for about 15 minutes.)

6.       Sprinkle with sesame seeds before serving.

John says,  “The honey caramelizes very nicely on the grill. You can bake the thighs in the oven (350° for about 45 minutes), but why?  The grill adds a very nice smoky flavor.”  John  also grills some sweet peppers (coated in olive oil and sprinkled with Kosher salt) and often  serves over a bed of rice.  See his picture above.  Looks like he eats veggies, too…

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today, especially you, John!

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