Tinfoil Chef

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Jambalaya is A Cajun and Creole dish that’s made up of rice, smoke sausage, cubed ham, aromatics, and pretty much any meat the cook likes or has available.

In spite of how it sounds, Jardiniere isn’t a French drug rehabilitation facility. Instead it’s a main course made up mostly of new spring vegetables such as lettuce, peas, green beans, carrots, turnips, and flavored with bacon or salt pork. It could also contain baby artichokes and young celery and fennel hearts, or cauliflower. Now doesn’t that sound more appetizing than a drug rehab? I thought so.

To Julienne something is to cut it into long thin matchstick size strips, such as French fries.

Jus is the natural juices released by roasting meats and poultry. Some sandwiches are served “Au Jus”, which means “with the meat juices”, it just sounds better in French.

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I’ve enjoyed seafood as far back as I can remember. Everything from canned tuna and frozen fish sticks to baked Cod, fish & chips to things like lobster and crab. Heck, I’ve even had shark! (hey, on a plate is the only place to encounter one of those without needing to run after fresh term life insurance quotes first.)

This recipe is built around using a marinade to give the fish additional flavor and moisture before it’s cooked. This makes it a good meal to plan ahead for because you’ll want the salmon to soak in the marinade for up to eight hours or so.

The marinade is made up of 1/2 cup soy sauce, 2 teaspoon dark sesame oil, Juice of 2 oranges, 2 tablespoons of honey, 2 tablespoon ginger that’s been peeled and minced, 1/2 cup of chopped scallions, 2 teaspoon of minced garlic, 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame seeds. Mix everything in a large bowl and then refrigerate for at least an hour before using it.

After the marinade has chilled, put a couple of 1/2 inch thick salmon steaks in a large zip lock bag, add the marinade and seal the bag tightly. Put it back in to the refrigerator. Ideally for eight hours but if time is a factor try to let it soak for as long as possible. Certainly no less than 15 minutes.

Preheat your grill and give it a good coating with non stick spray to make sure the fish doesn’t stick to it. Grill the salmon on a medium high heat for three to four minutes and then turn it over and give it four minutes or so on the second side.

When you turn the salmon onto the second side, take half of a pineapple, cut it into spears and add it to the grill. You’ll want to turn it fairly often but not so quickly that grill marks don’t show up. Cook the Pineapple for about two or three minutes or until the grill marks are pretty much on all sides without letting it get dried out.

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If brownies are a long time favorite then Banana Brownies will quickly be in competition for the favorite variety. Yes, with actual fruit in it they’re going to be a bit better for you than the standard fudge brownies but don’t let that fool you into thinking you can just go nuts with them. Eat too much of these and you’ll be scrambling for your best acne treatments just as if you’d loaded up on the fudge kind.

That said, it’s time to make some. *grins and ducks*

Get the oven going at 350 degrees to preheat and coat a 9 x 9 pan with a non-stick cooking spray.

In a bowl combine 1 cup of All Purpose Flour, 1/3 cup of unsweetened Coca, 1/4 cup of powdered Nonfat Dry milk, 1/4 teaspoon of Baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon of Salt.

Put a large ripe banana, a cup of Sugar, the whites from 2 large eggs, 1/4 cup of buttermilk and a teaspoon of vanilla in a food processor and puree until the mixture is smooth.

Add the dry ingredients and pulse the food processor until everything is just nicely blended and pour it into the pan.

Bake ‘em for 25 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test. Cut ‘em into 2 inch squares and stand back, the won’t last long. (be sure to get one out for yourself *before* you tell the family they’re ready!)

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Losing weight can be one of the hardest things to do. Even the strongest willed is going to eventually start thinking “If I keep this up, I’ll never get to have the ‘goodies’ again.”

The best thing to do is find things that allow you to have some of the tastes that you’re craving only without some of the unwanted parts. For example a longtime favorite of mine is French fries. I don’t have them at all often and that’s probably a good thing, otherwise I’d have to have a pack of fries in one hand and a bottle of alli weight loss pills in the other.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way to have the fries and leave the grease out of them and still have something that’s really good.

Start out with a couple of medium potatoes. Don’t bother peeling them, just give them a good scrubbing. Make sure to get rid of the ‘eyes’, any sprouts or the occasional bad spot. The reason to prep potatoes this way is because a large part of the nutritional value in potatoes is within 1/8 inch or so of the skin and normal peeling generally puts this part of the potato in the trash.

Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise, then slice each half into lengthwise pieces, finally slice each piece into however many 1/4 inch wide pieces that you can. Don’t worry about being accurate, it’s just fine if you make some larger or smaller.

Soak the potato slices in cold water for twenty minutes or so, then drain and dry them.

Put the potatoes in a large plastic bowl with a tight fitting lid (or a plastic zipper bag works good too). Add some vegetable (or Olive) oil and shake well to coat the potatoes.

Spray a cookie sheet with your favorite non-stick cooking spray and then arrange the potatoes in a single layer. Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for twenty minutes, stirring them once in a while.

To season them, Just before they’re done sprinkle with salt, pepper and / or whatever your favorite seasonings are. Paprika, celery salt, chili powder, onion powder are just a few possibilities that would work well (though probably most wouldn’t want all of them at once.)

They’re sure to be better than anything you can get at any fast food outlet.

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Ever wonder how some foods got their names? This recipe is one such case. Not having made these before I actually assumed from the name that they would be something bright and somehow sunny in appearance, though I couldn’t see how the recipe could work out that way.

Partly out of laziness and partly out of not having several ingredients on hand I decided to search out a picture of them just for the heck of it. I found one quickly enough on flickr (I’d have included the pic here but it had ‘all rights reserved’ for it’s usage terms).

That pic confirmed that these don’t LOOK sunny at all. Instead they remind me of home made chocolate chip cookies that were packed across country because somebody forgot to get ‘em out of the kitchen before the moving companies took over.

However, regardless of how they look, they still sound great. Not only that but they’re also diabetic friendly as well.

Start out sifting together 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, a teaspoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Cut in 1/2 cup of shortening until the mixture has a crumbly consistency. Then, all at once add 1/2 cup of rasins, an egg, 2 tablespoons of orange juice, 2 teaspoons of grated orange rind and 1 1/2 teaspoons of Sucaryl. Mix well and then make into 1 inch balls and flatten them on a cookie sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes at 375.

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Here’s an unusual variation on the basic brownies that we’ve all learned to crave. What makes these especially different is the addition of apples. If you’ve ever had caramel apples you can pretty well guess that it’s guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser. Just throw this together and bake off a batch and they’ll be gone quicker than you can apply for auto insurance online.

The basic recipe is probably what you’d expect. A half cup of soft butter, a cup of sugar and two well beaten eggs all thoroughly mixed until it’s smooth and creamy.

Then sift together a cup of flour, two teaspoons of cinnamon, a half teaspoon of baking powder, one teaspoon of baking soda and a half teaspoon of salt.

Stir the creamy mixture into the dry ingredients, add two cups of finely chopped apples and mix well. Either grease or use a non-stick cooking spray to coat a 9×9 pan and spread the mixture in it and Bake for 25 minutes at 350.

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Martha Stewart has a blog contest going on “The Martha Blog” that’s going to get some blessed folks a shot to have their blogs featured on hers.

From what I’ve seen so far, this will probably include a “do-follow” link to the blogs featured which is pretty cool because it isn’t every day that you get a shot at a free link from a high visibility blog like that one.

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Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m not always after the best of the “good for you” kind of things. Sometimes you just want something that while it may not be good for you, it may even be a good way to give yourself an acne problem if you do too much of it but once in a while you just need to splurge. The key is in not making it a habit.

Combine 3/4 cup of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and set it aside for a few minutes.

In a microwave-safe bowl, mix 1/3 cup butter, a half cup of sugar and two tablespoons of water. Cook this in the microwave for for 1 minutes at full power, stirr it and cook for another minute.

Add a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and a teaspoon of vanilla and stir until it’s smooth and the chips are melted.

Add two eggs, one at a time, beating after each one. Blend in the flour mixture and stir in the rest of the twelve ounce bag of chocolate chips.

Pour the mixture into an 8 or 9 inch microwave-safe baking pan. Cook it at about 70% power for 10 minutes turning after 5 minutes. (microwave times and power settings may vary depending on your oven and altitude.)

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After spending some time reading through a host of goodies of all kinds I’d have to say that not only does The Pioneer Woman Cook, but she’s also got a way with words that’s really refreshingly “just folks” and often funny to boot.

She also uses a lot of pictures to illustrate every step of a recipe, something I’d like to do but up until recently haven’t had access to a camera with enough system memory to take a decent number of sufficiently high resolution pics that still look good when you crop out everything but the star of the food show.

A great example is a recipe my wife found there for Biscuits and Gravy. This down home favorite is one that has eluded many an otherwise good cook for a long time in spite of the fact that it’s actually pretty simple (sometimes simple isn’t enough is it?).

She takes the whole thing step by step with a picture or two for each one. I honestly believe that most, if not all, of the people who have difficulty with making a basic white gravy would do a lot better after reading that recipe. It’s definitely a site I’ll be revisiting as there’s a bunch of great looking dishes that my wife and I would like to try.

Btw- The only changes I’d make with the Biscuits and Gravy would be to crumble the sausage into the gravy and use good old fashioned homemade cat-head biscuits to host generous ladles of the sausage gravy.

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I’ve gone and managed to be so occupied with other projects that I haven’t done anything here in a week. It’s also been quite a while since I did one of those posts that talk about cooking terminology so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and get back into some terminology.

Bouillabaisse, with it’s fancy French sounding name isn’t nearly as ultra fancy as it sounds since it’s really a Mediterranean seafood soup.

Bouillon is French for broth. Specifically the liquid that results from simmering meats, vegetables, and aromatic herbs and spices in water until all the nutritional value of the meat is cooked out into the water and the broth jells whenit cools.

Bouquet Garni Is one that I haven’t heard before. It’s A bundle of parsley stems, dried thyme, and a large bay leaf, tied together and left to float freely in broth, stock, or sauce.

To Braise something (usually meat) is to cook it in a small amount of liquid (This is also called stewing or pot roasting). Unlike poaching in which the food is submerged in simmering liquid, braised dishes use a smaller amount of liquid. Usually, the reason for braising is to concentrate the food’s flavors in the surrounding liquid so that it can be made into a sauce, or allowed to reduce so that it coats or is reabsorbed by the foods being braised.

To Bread something is to coat things that are going to be sauteed or deep fried with flour or a breadcrumb mixture to create a crust.

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