Posts Tagged: Recipes

Eat

Cherry-Almond Chocolate Clusters

August 7, 2013

I’ve been making homemade chocolates – by which I mean melted chips sprinkled with various things that sound like they will probably taste good together and then poured onto wax paper to harden – for a couple of years now. They’re one of my go-tos mostly because they’re so easy to make, but also – let’s be honest, now – because they’re virtually guaranteed to elicit impressed oohs and aahs from anyone who has not themselves made homemade chocolates (and is thus unaware that the process involves a microwave and approximately three minutes).

It’s completely unjustified showing-off, and I am okay with that.

The chocolates that I made last weekend and brought over to my friend Amy’s place pulled the double-duty of being very delicious (basically a DIY version of one of my all-time favorite chocolate bars, Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut) and providing a nice little boost to the skin. They contain ingredients that taste great and are specifically targeted at protecting your skin from damaging UV rays and inflammation: antioxidant-packed cherries and almonds filled with Vitamin E.

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Eat

Slow-Cooker Orange Chicken

August 1, 2013

My slow-cooker doesn't see the light of day a whole lot during the summer, partly because the kinds of meals I usually like to use it for (pot roast, ribs, stew) are too heavy for these hot days, but also because we spend a lot of time cooking and eating outdoors. And slow-cookers are an "indoors" kind of thing.

Still, though: when you're pressed for time, there's nothing like letting your kitchen go ahead and cook your dinner for you...and that's what a slow-cooker does.

This recipe is inspired by one I found on Pinterest, and is sort of like a tangy twist on shredded BBQ chicken. I served it over rice (the steam-in-bag kind, because I'm lazy), but it would also be delicious piled onto sandwich rolls for a picnic.

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SWEETS

Homemade Raspberry Jam

July 24, 2013

We have raspberry bushes in our front yard!

This is incredible news.

The city kid in me didn't actually believe that they could possibly be for-real raspberries and had to google "poisonous berries that look like raspberries" before I'd eat a single one, but nope: as it turns out, they're real. And great.

On Saturday, Kendrick spent awhile walking up and down our street picking as many as he could find, and we ended up with enough that my Aunt Jo-Anne suggested we try making jam.

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SWEETS

Lemon Angel Food Layer Cake

July 12, 2013

I am about to blow your mind, because I BAKED SOMETHING and it was GORGEOUS and DIDN'T FALL APART IN THE OVEN and did not taste bad AT ALL.

That's a whole lot of caps and a whole lot of self-congratulation, but really: given my baking history, I'm allowed a little back-patting, I think.

OK, so maybe this recipe was adapted from a "semi-homemade" one courtesy of Sandra Lee (via People), which vastly limited my opportunities to screw up. And maybe I actually did end up screwing it up anyway, just a little bit. I mean, obviously. See, I realized too late that a cake topped with whipped cream might not enjoy hanging out in my kitchen on a hundred-degree day with thousand-percent humidity and no air conditioning (our house is ancient and has small windows and low-voltage sockets and I haven't yet found an air conditioner that works downstairs, and I don't want to talk about it because it is so hot). And there were still about twelve hours to go before I could serve the cake to our guests, and that very pretty plate that you see in these photos does not fit anywhere in our refrigerator. So I tried to sort of slide it onto a smaller plate, and discovered that angel food cakes do not slide; they collapse. Sigh.

Anyway, I fixed the patchy spots with more frosting, propped up the slightly collapsed side with a few lemon slices, and solved the melting-in-my-kitchen problem by magically rearranging our freezer in a way that enabled me to slide in the cake, plate and all. It was actually even better cold (angel food cake also, apparently, does not freeze - perhaps because it's plastic? possible, but let's hope not - so it ended up being just chilled cake with an ice-cream like frosting and frozen lemon slices, yum). Let's look at some photos, because I'm proud.

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Eat

Salt Potatoes With Butter

July 9, 2013

Apparently this is a thing.

My friend Katie - who is from way-upstate New York - served salt potatoes at a BBQ last weekend, and I was pretty confused by the fact that I've never heard of them (as I'm fairly certain I've heard of most things involving too much butter and salt). So I ate quite a few - all in the service of research, of course - and then looked them up.

"Salt potatoes" are young potatoes that you cook in super-salty water (about one pound salt per four pounds of potatoes) and then serve with drizzled butter. The point is that the salt creates a kind of crust on the potatoes, so they don't get waterlogged the same way normal boiled potatoes do, and end up tasting more like they've been baked. They're apparently popular in Syracuse and the surrounding area mostly because the region has a big salt production industry.

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ENTREES

Lemon-Rosemary Spatchcock Chicken

June 21, 2013

That is my very own rosemary that I grew.

(Don't be too impressed. My basil has drowned.)

The return of the summer has brought with it the return of local farmer's markets, and because we live right next to the Stone Barns Agricultural Center that also means the return of spatchcock chickens. I've written about how amazing these things are before, but basically what they are is chickens with the backbone and sternum removed; the flattish result means that the parts on the inside (the breasts) cook slightly less and the parts on the outside (the legs) cook slightly more, which is exactly how a chicken cooks in a perfect world. It also cooks faster, which is awesome.

You can spatchcock a chicken yourself, but honestly: it seems like a pain, and isn't something I'd bother with; I just buy a couple whenever I come across a place that sells them and consider myself lucky. (This recipe, incidentally, also works for a regular roast chicken; just adjust the cooking time as noted below.)

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SIDESSALADS

Baby Bok Choy with Garlic Scapes

June 12, 2013

What are these crazy-looking things?!

They're very pretty and twisty, but I honestly had no idea what to make of them when I spotted them  at our local farmer's market last Saturday. It turns out that garlic scapes are a late spring/early-summer thing - they're the part of the garlic that grows above ground, and that gets harvested so that the bulb below can mature more fully.

What do they taste like? Garlic. Except lighter and fresher and milder, so you can use lots of them.

How to use them? Apparently pretty much any way you'd use the regular stuff, but the subtle flavor means they're extremely versatile: people pickle them, make them into pesto, blend them with white beans to make crostini, add them to soups and pastas, and even eat the younger (milder) ones raw.

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SIDESSALADS

Chinese Chicken Salad with Soy-Ginger Dressing

April 16, 2013

Alright, guys: this is really good.

Morgan introduced me to this recipe years ago (so long ago that the original photo I took of it pre-dates the launch of Ramshackle Glam and is thus MIA...which is probably a good thing because my food photos back then were several levels south of "terrible"). For awhile I made it all the time, but then I kind of forgot about it.

And whenever it did occur to me, I thought, you know: "Salad. Ehhh. Steak would probably be more delicious."

But it's not salad, it's SALAD. With exclamation points! Tangy, garlicky, a little sweet, phenomenal. And it includes avocado and crunchy noodles, and let's get real: that's all you really need to know.

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