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09 Jan 2011 Oven Baked Fries
Author:  |  Category: Appetizers, Rice and Potatoes, Side Dishes  | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,  | 2 Comments

It seems as if it’s been a long since I posted anything.  The kids have been home, some of their friends have been here for varying hours and days, and my grandson has been staying here, so I have been focused on big batch cooking of tried-and-true family favorites.  The few new things I’ve made haven’t been Great or, if they have been, they’ve been devoured before I got my camera focused!  It’s been a mad-house around here!  Thank goodness they’ve all gone for three days.  I can post!

One of the family favorites I’ve made repeatedly over the last few weeks has been our oven baked fries.  My friend Mary first made these for me about 25 years ago.  I was so impressed to go over to her house for lunch and she had a basket of home baked fries on the table.  Not only were they a big hit with me, but they were also a big hit with our preschool daughters.

Since then, I’ve seen recipe after recipe for oven baked fries.  I think America’s Test Kitchen has one that calls for blanching the sliced potatoes in boiling water before baking.  I tried it, and it didn’t work any better than Mary’s way.  Another recipe had me sprinkling a lot of Kosher salt on the baking tray to lift the potatoes off the tray a bit and help with the browning.  That didn’t work magic either.  Here are my “secrets”, as passed onto me by Mary: use a mixture of butter and olive oil [1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil on one baking tray], use smallish potatoes of equal size and cut each into eight wedges.

Oven Baked Fries

  • Approx. 1 small Russet potato for each person
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter for each baking tray
  • Kosher salt and freshly grated pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Spend sometime picking the right potatoes.  Choose potatoes on the small size, and choose potatoes that are roughly the same size. Scrub the outside of the Russet Potatoes to remove all the dirt and soil then dry.

Place baking tray in preheated oven to get hot.

Cut each potato in half lengthwise, then half again, then half again.  You should have eight wedges from each potato.

Remove baking tray from oven.  Place olive oil and butter on baking tray and swirl until melted and evenly coating the bottom of the tray.

Place the potato wedges on the preheated baking tray on top of the melted butter and olive oil.  Make it easy on yourself and place all the wedges going to same direction in equally spaced rows.  You should be able to get all the wedges from 3 or 4 small potatoes onto one baking sheet.

Place tray in oven and bake at 425º for 20 minutes.

Remove tray from oven and turn over each wedge.  This is why you put all the wedges facing the same way.  Now you know which wedges you’ve turned and which you haven’t! Return tray to oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes.

After flipping, your wedges should look like this:

After baking both sides your wedges should look like this:

Check your fries. Do they look brown enough?  Are they cooked through? (Taste one, but be careful, it’s HOT).  If necessary, flip wedges one more time and return to oven for an additional 5 minutes.

Remove potatoes to a paper towel lined platter to drain (if you wish). Sprinkle with Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.  Remove fries to a serving bowl.  Serve hot with ketchup or leftover blue cheese dips.

For years I made these for our “family night”.  We watched a family-friendly video, ate Chicken Nuggets, home fries, and corn-on-the-cob or broccoli.  Fun times! Oh my goodness, I just realized my Oven Baked Chicken Nuggets recipe has not been transferred from my facebook “Polly, Julie. and Julia” page.  I’ll do that right now.  I hope that an Oven Baked Chicken Nugget and Fries  family dinner is in your future soon!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today.  Hope to see you again tomorrow!

05 Jan 2011 Blue Cheese Dip
Author:  |  Category: Appetizers, Salads, Sauces, Dips & Spreads  | Tags: , , , , , , , ,  | Leave a Comment

My first post of 2011!  How exciting!

I think I’ll start with an appetizer.  I haven’t posted many appetizers in the past.  I’ve always been a bit appetizer challenged.  My Hot Bean Dip is good, but new Year’s Eve, champagne, and Hot Bean Dip?  I don’t think so.

This holiday season I  tried three of Ina Garten’s appetizer recipes from her most recent cookbook,  How Easy is That?:  Savory Coeur a la Creme, Stilton and Walnut Crackers, and Chunky Blue Cheese & Yogurt Dip.  One was OK, one was good, and one was very, very good.  The Savory Coeur a la Creme was a bit of a bust.  I took it to my Cookbook Club, and everyone liked the topping, which was purchased Major Grey Chutney, but they weren’t nearly as enthusiastic about the recipe-made Savory Coeur a la Creme under the chutney.  The Stilton and Walnut Crackers were good, and perhaps post-worthy, but I will have to give them another try first.  I think they might be better if I cut them a bit thinner, I’ll let you know. I fell  hard for the Blue Cheese Dip though.  Delicious!! It is made with Greek yogurt so it is lighter than many blue cheese dips (most of which are made with a few cups of sour cream).  I don’t know why I photographed the dip next to a sliced baguette.  I didn’t put the dip on bread. That would have been weird. I dipped celery sticks into it.  When they were gone, I dipped cucumber slices.  I finished up with the carrot sticks.  I think I had a month’s worth of veggies in the three hours leading up to New Year’s Eve 2011 🙂

I could see thinning out leftover dip and using it as a salad dressing, IF I had any leftovers…

Blue Cheese Dip

  • ¼ cup finely chopped shallot
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 7 ounces Greek-style yogurt (I used non-fat because I couldn’t find a whole milk version)
  • ½ cup mayonnaise
  • 4 ounces sharp blue cheese, crumbled
  • 5 dashes Tabasco sauce (more or less to taste, but I found 5 to be just perfect)
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
  • ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 tablespoons of minced chives
  1. Start at two hours in advance (making the night before is also acceptable).
  2. Place the shallot, garlic, lemon juice, yogurt, mayonnaise, blue cheese, Tabasco, salt and pepper in the bowl of a food processor.  Pulse the processor twelve times, until the mixture is almost smooth but still a bit chunky.
  3. Add the chives and pulse two or three more times.
  4. Transfer to a serving bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for at least two hours to allow the flavors to develop.
  5. Serve with raw veggies for dipping.

Thank you, Ina!  And thank YOU for stopping by my kitchen today!  Come by again tomorrow,  I have another appetizer recipe to share!

30 Nov 2010 Gringo Grandma’s Chili
Author:  |  Category: Main Dish, Red Meat, Soups, Teaching Boys to Cook Series  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  | One Comment

Gingo Grandma’s chili!  That’s me!  This is my chili!  You’ve probably guessed that this is NOT serious cook-off chili.  This is big pot, throw-it-all-together, family friendly, low-budget chili. Chili that everyone likes.  Chili with ground meat =:0 and beans =:0. A recipe that makes enough for a crowd or for three days of leftovers. A chili that reheats and freezes well. Rainy-day comfort food.  Game Day staple food. Chili Dog party food.  Must have camping food.

This is an easy recipe to remember, too.  Think threes!  Three cans of pinto beans, three cans of diced tomatoes, 3 lbs of meat, three onions.  I found the original recipe in The San Jose Mercury News food section years and years and years ago.  I’ve adjusted the quantities of ingredients a bit and changed the name to fit the dish…and made it mine.  I hope you make it yours. too.

Gringo Grandma’s Chili

3 16 oz. cans pinto beans

3 16 oz. cans diced tomatoes

3 onions, chopped

1 -2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

3 lbs ground meat (2 lbs. ground beef, 1 lb. ground sausage)

1/4 cups chili powder

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper

1 – 3 cups chicken broth (or water)

Pour canned pinto beans (with liquid) and chopped tomatoes into a large soup pot over a medium high heat. Bring to a light simmer.  Meanwhile, in another pan, saute chopped onion in olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes.  Stir in garlic and saute for another 2 minutes.  Add onions and garlic to bean and  tomato mixture.  To the same pan, now emptied of onion, brown ground beef and sausage, about 15 minutes.  Drain fat from meat. Stir drained meat into the bean-tomato-onion mixture.  add  in chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. If desired, stir in one to three cups of chicken broth or water until the chili meets your desired preference (some people like it thicker or soupier than others).  Simmer chili for 1 1/2  hours, covered.  Uncover and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve hot in deep bowls, in front of the TV, on a cold day…  I like to serve with grated cheddar cheese and corn muffins, but sliced green onions and sour cream would also be good toppings.  I think this chili is best the second day, and leftovers (or even the whole batch) freeze very, very well.

Makes approx. 16 cups, that’s one gallon of family friendly, easy to eat, chili.

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today.  Now remind me to post the recipe for corn muffins, they’re stellar!

26 Nov 2010 Baked Spinach Artichoke Dip
Author:  |  Category: Appetizers, Sauces, Dips & Spreads  | Tags: , , , , , , , ,  | 6 Comments

Remember the first time you went to Costco?  Did you come home with the gallon of mustard for $3.75?  A year later you were irritated by that l-a-r-g-e jar of mustard  taking up valuable space in your refrigerator, right? AND you were tired of the mini tizzy fits you kept having because you kept having to move that dang-blasted jar of mustard around to make room for other stuff, right?  AND, and you were laying awake at night wondering how in the world you were going to use up that much mustard before the expiration date, right?  A rookie Costco mistake; and one I made, yet again, last year. I bought a 65 oz. jar of Marinated Artichoke hearts.  I don’t even especially like Marinated Artichoke Hearts.  Fortunately the expiration date was not until December 2012, BUT, I’d had enough of storing it, moving it around, and wondering what to do with it.  The jar HAD TO GO.

Thank goodness for a Dining For Women dinner, a Thanksgiving food fest and a Christmas Party, all of which required an appetizer! I decided to hit the net and look for appetizers using marinated artichoke hearts. I remembered my friend Candace had swooned over a Warm Spinach and Artichoke dip she had ordered at Applebee’s recently and I stumbled upon a recipe that I thought might be similar, and it was on one of my favorite recipe websites, Brown Eyed Baker! BINGO!

I made and baked one-half batch for the Dining For Women dinner. I made and refrigerated another half-batch for three days and then baked for it for Thanksgiving appetizers. So there is no problem making this up and refrigerating a few days before baking.  I made another batch and froze it to defrost and then bake for the Christmas party.  One effort, three parties covered with about 15 minutes of prep time and about the same in clean up time.  I love the efficiency of batch cooking. Unfortunately, I only used half a jar of the Marinated Artichoke Hearts and the jar has moved from my cupboard to the refrigerator, not entirely solving my Large-Jar-of-Marinated-Artichoke-Hearts problem.  I’ll just have to get myself invited to more parties and offer to bring a hot appetizer!

I just wish I had a picture that turned out as well as the dip did 🙂

Artichoke Spinach Dip

from the Brown Eyed Baker

14 ounces artichoke hearts, drained and finely chopped
1 10 ounce box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained (s-q-u-e-e-e-z-e the liquid from the spinach)
1½ cups (6 ounces) finely shredded or grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1½ cups (6 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese, divided
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
Paprika, to taste (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

2.  S-q-u-e-e-e-z-e the liquid from the spinach.  Combine chopped artichokes, dry spinach, all but 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese, all but ¼ cup of Monterey Jack cheese, room temperature cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise, and garlic in a bowl and mix well.

3. Spoon the artichoke mixture into a 1½-quart baking dish. Sprinkle the reserved  Parmesan and Monterey Jack cheeses on top, and then sprinkle with paprika.

4. Bake in preheated 350º oven for 30 minutes. Edges should be brown. Dip should be cooked through.

5. Serve warm with desired dippers.  I served with a sliced sourdough baguette, but tortilla or pita chips, crackers or vegetables would all work.  Make it yours!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today!  If you have any more dynamite recipes using Marinated Artichoke hearts, PLEASE let me know!  Now I have an open jar in the refrigerator, and I am going to have to use them up pretty quickly. They won’t last until December 2012 now. OR…, you could just invited me to your next party!  Have dip will travel!!!

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