Cookbook of the Gods

Hey family! Long time no cook, eh? Except no, I've totally still been cooking. My "cookbook" has gone from being a nice, self-contained binder to a mishmash of cookbooks and bookmarks and Pinterest pins and it's time to clean things up. I'm organizing them blog-style so I can easily add pictures and tags. The world is full of food blogs, so it isn't really meant for fame and fortune, but I figured friends and family might have a passing interest. To that end:

Cookbook of the Gods

Posole

We made posole tonight and it was delicious. Kind of chili-like but different enough to be worth the separate  recipe. Also, it's pretty much not spicy at all. The spiciest thing involved is smoked paprika, so it's great for southwestern flavor without the heat. We got our recipe from the Bon Appetit website, who got it from the Heard Museum in Phoenix. It makes a lot of soup.

If you follow the link, they want you to roast the pork all special-like, but we made pulled pork last week in the crockpot so we just cooked extra pork and took some out (before adding the barbecue sauce) and saved it. Worked great. Also, from what I read you can use any meat you want, so leftover chicken or beef would probably taste great, too.

Recipe:
If you want to slow roast your own pork, you need:
2 pounds boneless pork
1 Tbs ground cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 red onion, sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Just put it together and roast at 275F for 5 or 6 hours (or crockpot on low for 6-8 hours). Shred and cool. Totally fine to make ahead.

For the soup:
1/4 cup vegetable oil (less is fine)
1/2 red onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 plum tomatoes, diced
6 cups chicken broth
1 28-oz can pinto beans, undrained
1 28-oz can white hominy, drained
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a big pot on medium-low and saute the onion 5 minutes or so. Add garlic and cook 2 minutes or so, add diced tomatoes and cook 2 minutes or so. Add broth, beans, hominy, crushed tomatoes, oregano and cumin and bring to boil. Turn heat to low and simmer 30 minutes. Add pork and simmer 30 minutes more. Salt and pepper to taste before serving.

You can add some shredded cheddar and fresh cilantro before serving. It's also great with tortillas or crusty bread for dipping.

Teriyaki pork bowl

Again, hardly qualifies as a recipe, but hey.

1. Make slow cooker pulled pork according to this recipe. 

2. Instead of the barbecue sauce of your choice, use the teriyaki sauce of your choice.  I used Kona Coast Orange Teriyaki marinade.  It was perfect.

3. Serve in a bowl on top of steamed rice.

4. Top with any or all of the following:

green onions, chopped as thin as you can
black (roasted) sesame seeds
pineapple chunks

This was ridiculously tasty.

Tomatoey beef stew

I modified this so heavily from the recipe I based it on that I won't even bother to link to the original.  Here's what I did.

Ingredients:
1 yellow onion
lots of baby carrots (a couple of handfuls at least)
lots of new potatoes (a couple of handfuls at least)
1 pound stew beef
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp celery seed
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
6 oz can tomato paste
2 cups or so beef broth
2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup red wine
1 tbsp olive oil

1. Cut the potatoes in half.  I found a bag of mixed-variety new potatoes - red, white, and blue, actually.  The variety was nice.  Don't peel.  Don't cut too small.  Place in the slow cooker, arranged around the edge of the pot.

2.  Cut the carrots in half.  Put in slow cooker, arranged around the edge of the pot.

3. Cut the beef into chunks and coat with flour.  Brown in a skillet or wok.  Transfer to the slow cooker, spreading evenly over bottom of pot.

4. Pour the wine into the pan you browned the beef in and stir until the bits of flour are all taken up.  Pour into pot.

5. Chop onion into chunks, place in pot on top of beef.

6. Sprinkle thyme, Italian seasoning, celery seed, W sauce over veggies and beef in pot. 

7. Pour tomatoes (don't drain) and tomato sauce over what's in the pot.

8. Add enough beef broth to almost cover ingredients in pot.  More or less according to how soupy a stew you like.

9.  Cook on low for about 8 hours.

10.  Serve with good crusty bread.

This came out pretty good.  A little more acidic than I would have preferred, so it's worth fiddling with the flavorings.  But still pretty satisfying.

SUNOMONO

When I was growing up, my mother used to thinly slice cucumbers and onions, mix them together with some apple cider vinegar and sugar, and serve them as a freshly pickled salad for dinner.  Of course, your Grandmother Munroe had never heard of "sunomono" but I did after marrying Dad.  I have a favorite cookbook that is no longer in print called Japanese Country Cookbook.  Years ago, Carol Gardner recommended it to me.  In it, I found a very basic and simple recipe for sunomono dressing with just three essential ingredients: 6 T vinegar, 2 T sugar, and 1 tsp. shoyu (soy sauce).

If you use rice vinegar, keep in mind that it is weaker than other vinegars and you may have to use more to get the proper acidity.  I usually use the apple cider vinegar that I love and grew up on. (The only thing I use white vinegar for is cleaning!)  Adjust the ingredients to meet your taste preferences (I usually add more sugar, about 3 T instead of 2T) and experiment with using it on other fresh veggies if you like.  At some point in time, Dad and I started adding toasted sesame seed to the mix and we like it that way, too.  We always used yellow onions but  the only onions we could get in India were red ones that are a bit sweeter and we developed a taste for them.  Experiment and come up with something you like.  It seems better when it sits for a few hours or overnight.

Peel the cucumbers?  We did!  If you buy an English cucumber, you don't have to worry about the seeds and may not bother with the peeling either.  Make it your own and enjoy!

Tapenade

This is basically a recipe from allrecipes, a little modified.

Ingredients:
3 cloves garlic (peeled, but whole)
1 cup (a little more) kalamata olives, pitted
2 tbsp capers
3 tbsp fresh italian parsley
juice from 1 lemon (fresh squeezed is best)
2 tbsp olive oil

1. Put the garlic in your food processor and chop it.

2. Add everything else and chop it.

3. Careful, you want it to come out chopped, not pureed.

Eat on crackers, bread, raw veggies, etc.  Particularly good paired with brie.  This recipe came out quite strong tasting, between the capers and the fresh-squeezed lemon juice.  Bottled might mollify that a bit, but we liked the intense flavor.

I'm sure everybody's French aunt has her own home recipe for this, but this one was amazingly easy and tasty.

Five-Spice Pork with Snap Peas

We got this out of Fine Cooking magazine, which is our new favorite. It's a crockpot dish and really easy.

1/2 cup cooking sherry*

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 Tbs Sriracha or other hot sauce

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

1 tsp Chinese five-spice powder

2 lb pork, cut into 1-inch pieces

1/2 lb sugar snap peas, trimmed

Mix together everything but the pork and snap peas to make the sauce. You can mix them right in the crock if you want. Then stir in the pork, cover, and cook on low for 6 or 7 hours or on high 4 to 5. About 10 minutes before serving, stir in the snap peas and let them soften up just a bit. Serve with rice or bread. Feeds two adults and 3 kids with a bit to spare.

I used Tabasco instead of Sriracha and the dish wasn't spicy at all. The magazine also recommended low-sodium soy sauce but we didn't have any so we used regular and I didn't feel like it turned out too salty. I also think this would be awesome with some broccoli thrown in. 

*You could substitute with apple cider or add honey to vinegar; just use something with flavor (not plain water). 

Hoisin Glazed Scallops

These are so easy they're hardly a recipe. Which makes them extra awesome. I got the idea here: A Food Centric Life. I think I got a roasted tomato recipe from this site, too, so you foodies might want to browse a bit.

Step 1: Get some nice scallops and let them sit on your counter until they're room temperature. I live in the mountains, so I thawed some ridiculously expensive frozen scallops and they worked fine. I'm hoping you folks near the coasts can do better than that, though.

Step 2: Pour some hoisin sauce into a bowl. If hoisin by itself is too sweet for you, add a little soy sauce. We used Kikkoman hoisin* with a little Kikkoman soy sauce thrown in. Heat a large saucepan on medium heat and add some vegetable oil.

Step 3: Pat your scallops dry with a paper towel (it helps them brown) and put them in the pan. Cook them a couple minutes, until you can see them browning up on the edges.

Step 4: Turn the scallops over and brush/pour some hoisin on top of them. Cook them another minute or two until they look done. (They should be kind of but not super firm when you poke them with a spatula.)

Pow! Done! Great with stir-fried veggies and rice. You're welcome.

The first time I did scallops for the kids, I just cooked them in butter, and everyone thought they were too sweet. This time, the sweet scallops and salty sauce balanced pretty well and everyone was into the scallops.

*This isn't our favorite hoisin--I can't remember the name of our favorite but I know it when I see it. Kikkoman is easy to find here, though, and not crazy sweet. Kikkoman soy sauce is our favorite, though.

Slow Cooker Chicken Marrakesh (or Madras, or Matsumoto)

It's winter, so it's slow cooker season again.  (And it's winter break, so I finally have time to think about cooking again.  I swear I don't mean to let this project die!)  This is a recipe from allrecipes.com, modified according to what we had on hand, and it came out so well I wouldn't change a thing.

Ingredients:
1 large white onion
1 large or two medium sweet potatoes (preferably satsumaimo)
2 large carrots (or half a bag of baby carrots)
2 cloves garlic
2 large boneless chicken breasts
15-oz can garbanzo beans
14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley

1. Cut the chicken into chunks and place in one layer on bottom of slow cooker.

2. Peel the sweet potato(es) and cut into large chunks.  Place on top of chicken, near outside wall of slow cooker.

3. Cut carrot and onion into chunks, place in slow cooker.

4. Mince garlic and add to slow cooker.

5. Drain and rinse garbanzos and add to slow cooker. 

6. In small bowl mix together garam masala, parsley, and salt, then sprinkle over what's in the cooker.

7. Add tomatoes and stir.

8. Cook on high for 5 hours.  Stir near end.

9. Serve with couscous.

Lately supermarkets here have been stocking satsuma-imo, the Japanese sweet potatoes that are purple on the outside and yellow-white on the inside.  That's what we used, and they were perfect.  I'm sure yams or other Western sweet potatoes would be good too, but satsumaimo have a lighter, almost parsnip-like sweetness that really worked well;  plus, they get flaky and fluffy like a regular potato when you cook them, rather than soft and squishy like a yam. 

The original recipe called for 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp black pepper instead of the garam masala, but we didn't have all those things while we did have garam masala (which includes those things and more), so we used it, and it was awesome.  So this is the recipe. 

It went perfectly with couscous.

Fish Sunday: Part 1

So . . . we've decided to make Sunday "fish day" and we've been systematically trying whatever varieties can be had in the Rocky Mountains. So far tilapia and cod haven't been hits, but everyone approves of flounder, salmon, shrimp, and swordfish. It's pretty much all poached so far 'cause it's so foolproof, but one of these days I'll branch out. I promise.

This has gone on long enough that I feel the need to record the experiments so I can remember what worked and what didn't, and what better place than the family food blog? So here's what we did this week:

This week's fish was flounder, poached in olive oil with a little Caribbean Calypso seasoning. It worked great--the seasoning has kind of a lemony flavor that (of course) makes it a natural for fish.

On the side we had Artichoke Orzo Pilaf. I made it like the link says, except that I sauteed the leeks and orzo in browned butter instead of oil. Yum! The artichokes were great--they really brightened up the dish. The leeks were fine but not special in this one, so next time I'd probably use regular onion or shallots because they're cheaper out here.

We also roasted some cauliflower in the toaster oven--it was fine, but I didn't do any sauce or special seasonings, so it was kinda boring. But good for us, I guess. ;)

If you're following along, all this adds up to a dinner of white food.* We usually have more color, but this felt like comfort food. Also, I managed to time things so that everything was pretty much done at the right time so everything was at it's best. Go me!

*Except for the olives--the kids wanted to do olive fingers.

Shrimp and Cilantro

We made Moroccan shrimps. We put them over millet and that part wasn't that great, but the shrimps were great. Next time we'll just have them with salad or something. They're not spicy, but they have a nice bright flavor. One pound of shrimp is maybe 40 regular sized ones, so think of how many shrimp you want and judge your servings from that.

1 pound medium shrimp, deveined and peeled, tail on

16 cilantro sprigs

5 garlic cloves

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon tomato paste

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon (I cheated and just squirted in some lemon juice)

Sea salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Food process everything but the shrimp until it looks saucy, then put it in a large-ish bowl with your shrimps. Toss them together, then spread them out on a large baking sheet.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. 

Even after peeling my own easy-peel frozen shrimp it was a pretty quick dish to make. We totally bought our shrimp frozen because we don't live in shrimp country, but those of you near oceans can probably do better than that. ;)

Poached Fish

I'm learning how to oil poach fish because I've lost all meat-cooking talent I ever had and poaching sounded very forgiving. I pretty much did this but with dried thyme--fresh would have worked way better, I think. We couldn't really taste the herbs.

But the poaching part was easy and the fish turned out really moist. And even though it was totally cooked in oil it didn't feel too greasy. And it's so low temp it doesn't heat up the kitchen much at all, so it's a great summer cooking method. We shall definitely experiment further. We're thinking rosemary would be an interesting flavor to try. The kids weren't sold on tilapia but they love salmon and shrimp so I think I can get them sold on poached something . . .

Thoughts and feelings on poaching, anyone? Flavor ideas? Side dish suggestions?

Not our fish. Stole the picture from the NY Times.

Southwest Rice and Bean Salad

Not the catchiest name, but it's descriptive. :) I've been looking for more cold recipes for the hot, hot summer and this one's a nice one.

1 cup short/medium grain rice (uncooked)
1 1/2 cups cooked pinto beans or one 15-oz can, drained and rinsed
3 1/2 Tbs lime juice, divided
1 medium bell pepper (red or yellow for sweetness), diced
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
3 cloves garlic
2 1/2 Tbs olive oil
3/4 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1/4 cup chunky salsa, whichever you like

1. Cook the rice.
2. While the rice is cooking, toss the pinto beans, bell pepper, and tomatoes in a big bowl with about half the lime juice.
3. In a small bowl, press the garlic and whisk together with the oil and the rest of the lime juice, season with salt and pepper if you want, then pour it on your beans 'n' veggies.
4. Add a bunch of cilantro. Stir everything.
5. When the rice is done, rinse it with cold water to cool it off, shake out all the water you can, and add it to everything else. Add the salsa, stir and serve.

It makes a decent amount of food--enough for two adults and three kids to have plenty. They also say you can fill it out with some corn, avocados, and/or pumpkin seeds to make it a heftier meal. I think pumpkins seeds, especially, would be a great addition. We'll have to work on that.

Of course, the spice factor depends on what kind of salsa you're into. It's not really spicy besides that. We used a medium fire-roasted salsa and liked it, and most of us put a little extra on top after serving.

Pasta Caprese

Looks like I never put this one up, probably because it's really easy and I kind of assume everyone knows how to make it. But it's great to do while tomatoes are in season so I'm putting it up anyway. Here goes:

5 large tomatoes,small dice (except I usually use 1-2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes--makes it sweeter)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (go ahead and break out the good stuff--adds to the flavor)
1 tsp or so balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced (mandolin works pretty well--you can cheat with jarred garlic, makes the dish more mellow)
salt and black pepper to taste
pinch of cayenne pepper (or chipotle powder for funsies)
1 lb penne or farfalle pasta
1/2 lb mozzarella, cut into small cubes
15 or so fresh basil leaves, torn or shredded (yes, you have to go fresh here)

1. In a large bowl (large enough for your finished dish) whisk together olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Add garlic and tomatoes (if you use cherry tomatoes, cut them all in half) and toss together.
2. Let that all marinate while you boil your pasta and cut your cheese and basil.
3. Drain pasta, add it to tomato mixture, and stir in the basil and cheese. The heat from the pasta will melt the cheese slightly. Check for salt and pepper and serve warm.

Not edible but kitchen-related

Hello! It has been about a thousand years since I have posted and we have had the some recipe for clam chowder up for at least a month so someone seriously needed to post something :) This post is not about edibles but rather about kitchen things that have some pretty awesome applications outside of the kitchen.

Over the last few years I have become increasingly fascinated with home-remedies for things with specific emphasis on non-toxic and cheap fixes. Having been a graduate student up until a couple of short weeks ago, the cheap factor has been really important to me. Through a lot of putzing around on the internet, experimentation, and more focused research I have found a few things that have just totally blown my mind so I thought I'd share.

Baking Soda:
1. So I am pretty sure everyone has heard a million different things about baking soda but there are a couple of  more obscure ones I want to personally attest to. I recently tried a tip about using baking soda to wash hair. Sounds really weird but it actually works. I don't know if anyone else has this problem but I occasionally get an itchy scalp. This is not a malady that is common enough to merit dandruff shampoo or anything like that but I have tried of a few different things to fix it. It is largely related to living without air conditioning (both at middle school and at home) and therefore having a constant (albeit low) level of sweat...ew. So I did some research about scalp exfoliants and they all sounded scary. I had visions of hair falling out in chunks after the follicle was scratched to pieces by sharp little pieces of sugar or walnut but then I read about some lady using baking soda. It sounded significantly less scary so I gave it a try and lo and behold! No mas itchy scalp. In fact, my scalp was immediately as clean as it would be if I were bald. Basically you just wet your hair, slap some baking soda on it, rub it in, work it around, and then rinse. Shampoo and condition as usual and enjoy a happy scalp! :)
2. Shoes. I work on my feet as a teacher and my dress shoes don't always involve socks. Shoes without socks inevitably smell. Solution? Chuck some baking soda in there and leave it in overnight. Shake it out in the morning and don't worry about the remaining power because it makes your feetsies not smell either. Go forth and enjoy dryer feet to boot :)
3. Brushing teeth. Duh. I recently started dipping my toothbrush and toothpaste in baking soda when I brush and my mouth is now quite happy. Good times. Happy gums.
4. Facial exfoliant. Yup. Baking soda actually works as a mild but effective facial exfoliant that actually also has some antibacterial properties. It makes your skin nicely soft too. You can use it anywhere else as well actually. It's kinda a miracle substance like that.

Vinegar:
1. Hair again. So this is much less obscure than the baking soda thing but is still pretty cool. Recently there have been cider vinegar shampoos and things coming out on the market and they are capitalizing on an extremely old remedy: the cider vinegar rinse. Cider vinegar, when properly diluted, gently strips away product buildup and other crap from your hair and also cleanses and sterilizes the scalp. Evidently one of the main causes of dandruff and general scalp itchiness is a buildup of yeast on the scalp. This happens especially when the hair isn't washed every day (long hair actually shouldn't be), during hot weather, and in humidity...so basically if you are me :) Combine two tablespoons cider vinegar with one cup of cold water and pour it over your hair at the end of your shower. Don't rinse it out. When your hair dries the smell will be completely gone. I have been doing this for over two weeks now and my hair is happy. The scalp benefits are really what I do it for though, it helps to prevent grossness. The thoughts behind using cider vinegar instead of white vinegar have something to do with its acidity. Some people laud using organic unfiltered cider vinegar because it has the "mother of vinegar" in it which has all kinds of happy bacteria in it. I am not so concerned with that.

So there you go. Weird home remedy personal hygiene tips from the littlest sib.
END

Clam Chowder

A slow cooker clam chowder recipe, slightly modified from this one, and annotated. 

Ingredients:
4 slices bacon
2 medium white onions
4 cloves garlic
1/3 cup flour
3 6.5 ounce cans chopped clams
2.5 cups white wine for cooking
3 medium-large white potatoes
2 teaspoons instant chicken bouillon
1 tsp celery seed
1 tsp marjoram
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
3 cups half and half
1 cup cream

1. Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks (half inch to one inch cubes).  Set aside.

2. Chop onions.  Cut bacon into 1/2 inch pieces.  Mince the garlic or squeeze it through a garlic press.  Open the cans of clams, drain clam juice into a measuring cup, set clams aside (refrigerate).

3. In a wok or large skillet fry the bacon until it greases the pan.  Add onion, sautee until onion is soft.  Add garlic, sautee until the garlic smells nice.

4. Reduce heat to medium or so and slowly stir in the flour.  Fry until everything is coated.

5. Pour in clam juice and wine.  Stir until everything is blended.

6. Pour all this into the slow cooker.  Add the potatoes, chicken bouillon, marjoram, celery seed, and pepper.  Stir.

7. Cook on low for 7 hours.

8. Add clams, half and half, and cream. 

9. Cook on high for another 30 minutes.

Most slow cooker clam chowder recipes I've seen call for cream of mushroom soup.  The Boston snob in me is shocked.  This tastes more like what we remember.  The wine especially adds a wonderful tang to the taste.  This went perfectly with oyster crackers (natch) and a crusty sourdough bread. 

Notes:  Of course fresh clams would probably taste better than canned;  in that case you'd want to buy bottled clam juice to use, and I unfortunately don't know how much because I forgot to notice how much juice was in 3 cans of clams.  Also, a fourth can of clams wouldn't go amiss.  As for the wine, the cooking wine we used had salt added;  if you're using a normal white wine (i.e., made for drinking) you'll want to add salt to the recipe to compensate.  Finally, next time we might try reducing the liquid to make the broth just a little thicker - but what to cut back on?  Clam juice?  Wine?  Half and half? 

Coconut gouda

Okay, okay, I'm not dead either. Just swamped with school. And unlike T, I haven't been cooking much lately. We've gotten to know our local takeout/delivery places even better in the last month or so than we did before - which is saying something.

But one good cheese recommendation deserves another. Especially since it doesn't look like we'll be able to get a hold of that Monocacy delicacy without heading East. But this one is widely distributed, it looks like: Kokos Coconut Cheese. It's actually a gouda, if you can wrap your head around that. Made in Holland and everything. If you're like me, you read that and went, huh?, but then immediately went, hmm...

It's awesome stuff. Has the heaviness, the thickness, the chewiness of a gouda, but instead of the creaminess coming from butter it comes from coconut. It's not an overpowering coconut taste, but it's unmistakeable, and it's perfectly balanced with the gouda-ness. Just a wonderfully weird but tasty cheese.

Dilled Veal Stew

Yeah, it's veal stew, but veal is expensive and mean so I used stewing pork instead. But either way it was really creamy and good and totally worth the effort.

First You Need:
2 Tbs all-purpose flour
1 Tbs paprika
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

mix all these together in a little bowl and set them aside.

Then You Need:
3 Tbs butter, divided
2 lbs stewing veal (by which I mean pork), cut into 1-inch cubes and patted dry
2 onions, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine (or more chicken broth)

Heat a big pan on medium and melt 2 Tbs butter. Cook the meat 3 or 4 minutes, then sprinkle your flour mixture over it. Stir it up and add to crockpot. Then use the pan to soften up the veggies for 5 to 7 minutes. Add the chicken stock and wine and bring it to a boil, then add to crockpot.
Cook on high 4 or 5 hours or low for 8 to 10, until the meat is nice and tender.

Last You Need:
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill (or a generous sprinkling of dried)

Stir these in and serve. We ate it plain but I think it would be good with some rice or orzo to add some texture and starchy goodness. You could probably skip softening the veggies and just add them straight to the crockpot but I don't really know if you could do that with the meat-and-flour mixture. If anyone tries that let me know how it works.

After a long, long hiatus!

Hello! I am alive and still cooking :) Joanna knows this but my gmail stuff got all screwy and I lost access to the blog for a little while there. In addition to that I am crazy busy with school and tickling Veda as often as possible! This evening's discovery was too fantastic to procrastinate though so I am posting within 15 minutes of eating all of it....NEW CHEESE:

Cherry Glen Monocacy Chipotle Soft-Ripened Goat Milk Cheese

It's a local MD cheese made with "100% American Ingredients"

(Please see cheese above)

I love cheese. Cheese is a food group to me. It is a purpose for living. That being said, I have had a lot of cheese and really will eat almost any kind. I am pretty much an equal-opportunity cheese eater. This cheese however, is pretty darn remarkable for a few reasons. It's goat cheese and therefore has that familiar smokiness to it but in addition to that it has a nice chipotle heat that translates into a deeper smokiness. BUT there is a really surprising bleu quality to this cheese. Yes, it is stinky :) If you look at the picture you can see that there are two really distinct textures here: the familiar crumbliness of a goat cheese and the silky cream-texture of a brie. How awesome! The brie-like section has most of the stinkiness and has a nice oily-spreadable quality to it that yields to the creamy crumbly texture. Anyway, I am clearly waxing poetic on this cheese but it really is fan-freaking-tastic. Fellow Marylanders: go forth and eat. Westerners: find an analogue? Sigh... I don't know if you can.

German Pancakes

When I was young, one of my favorite breakfast items was something we called German pancakes. For the whole family, we used two glass pans full. In college, I mangled the recipe into something about equal parts eggs, milk, and flour, mixed in a blender until slightly thick. Then, after marrying a vegetarian and living for a few years without eggs in the house, I forgot about them.

A cookbook recently given to one of our children has a recipe for something it calls a Dutch baby pancake with buttery apples. I'm in charge of breakfast, and generally make some kind of pancakes or waffles every Saturday, so I decided one day that it sounded like fun. As the batter came together, I suddenly recognized what I was doing, and got very excited.

Sadly, the rest of my family fails to properly appreciate sautéed fruit, it's quite a bit of work, so I've left it out since that first time. Jams or jellies work just as well as a topping. I also enjoy honey or agave nectar.

• 1-2 Tbsp. butter
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tsp. vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup flour
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. cinnamon

Drop butter into a 13"×9" glass pan and place into oven. Preheat at 375°F.

In a medium bowl, beat together eggs, oil, and milk. Add remaining ingredients and beat until smooth.

When the oven is hot, remove pan, swish the butter around to coat the bottom, and pour the batter in. Bake at 425°F for 10 minutes, then at 350°F for ≈8 more minutes, until golden brown and puffy.

Slice into 6-8 pieces. Serve hot.