Hold onto your hats guys, here’s a recipe that was a winner! I know, can you believe it? I made Meat Loaf Sandwiches with Tomato Relish on Garlic Bread from February Martha Stewart Living (page 158).  I was a little unenthusiastic going in, I admit. Another three part recipe, I sighed to myself.

First you make the meatloaf. It’s a pretty basic recipe, except instead of bread crumbs, Martha has you cut up some chunks of bread and soak them in milk. For meat, she directs you to use a mix of beef, pork and buffalo. Yes, buffalo.  My dirty little secret – I just used beef and nothing else. The meatloaf was easy to make, no problems there.

Then you make a tomato relish. God lord, I thought. How silly this sounds. You broil tomatoes (I cut the recipe in half, so I only broiled one) then cook up a mix of scallion, honey, balsamic vinegar, oil, sugar, and water. Once the tomatoes are broiled you chop them and add them to the mix. You cook it a little longer then strain it and discard the liquid. I was left with a very tiny amount (if you make this recipe you need to make much, much more of this – double or triple it).

Then you made garlic bread, but Martha directs you to use rye (off I ran to the store for that).

Ok, once you’ve got all that made, you assemble it into a sandwich. You’re supposed to add some mache to it, but I forgot (it would have been good though, so do add it if you make this).

Wow. This was really good!! It was just the perfect combo of sweet, garlic, meat, and flavors. I loved it. If you’ve ever had Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jelly, it is sort of like that.

This one is a good thing for sure!

Hold onto your hats guys, here’s a recipe that was a winner! I know, can you believe it? I made Meat Loaf Sandwiches with Tomato Relish on Garlic Bread from February Martha Stewart Living (page 158).  I was a little unenthusiastic going in, I admit. Another three part recipe, I sighed to myself. First you … Read more →

As part of Martha’s whole ‘meat and potatoes’ section in February Martha Stewart Living (p. 155), she has a recipe for Herb (can we all say “herb” with the ‘h’ sound at the beginning please?) Crusted Pork Roast with New Potatoes. This sounded like a great weeknight meal to me, since it is all made in one pan.

The first problem – Martha calls for a bone-in pork roast (5-6 lbs), frenched. Five to six pounds is way too much for this family and my store does not sell bone-in pork roasts. Yes, I know I should go to the butcher shop or order it at the meat counter, but goodness, sometimes it’s just all too much. So I opted for a boneless pork roast of a much smaller size.

Ready for the oven

First you create the herb crust -0 live oil, garlic, thyme, sage, and rosemary. You rub half on the roast and half on the potatoes.

I stuck this in the oven and ran to hockey practice. When I returned, the meat was done, but the potatoes were not as brown and crispy as I like them, so they went back in the oven on convection roast for a few minutes.

Potatoes

The potatoes were really good. I liked the herbs and garlic on them, but they needed some more seasoning I think.

The pork roast was moist and delicious, but the herb crust just does not do it for me.  Yes, it looks cute, but you end up with a slice of meat with a tiny bit of seasoning on one edge. I really want flavor all through my meat, which is why I usually stick

The roast

slivers of garlic and herbs down in the pork roast when I make it. The meat was just kind of flavorless in my opinion.

A sauce or gravy would have really helped this one. I’m really kind of disappointed with this meat and potatoes section – it’s kind of boring.

As part of Martha’s whole ‘meat and potatoes’ section in February Martha Stewart Living (p. 155), she has a recipe for Herb (can we all say “herb” with the ‘h’ sound at the beginning please?) Crusted Pork Roast with New Potatoes. This sounded like a great weeknight meal to me, since it is all made … Read more →

On page 156 of Martha Stewart Living (Feb issue) Martha has a recipe for Cote de Boeuf with Hash Browns. In case you’re wondering, this is a fancy name for a hunk of beef with some shredded potatoes.

The recipe calls for bone in rib eye. As if. I only buy organic meat. My grocery store currently is carrying 4 cuts and rib eye ain’t one of ’em. So there I am in the store asking myself do I sacrifice my principles and possibly my family’s health and buy the cut Martha requires or do I fool with the recipe. You can guess which won. I bought sirloin.

The real work in this recipe is the potatoes. Martha just wants you to sear the beef then stick it in the oven. Bah. I made mine on the Jenn-air grill and I also made a little Bernaise sauce because who wants just plain boring meat? Not I.

Ok, so moving on to the potatoes. You cook some bacon, then cook onion in the grease. You peel and shred potatoes, rinse and drain them so they are very dry. You mix them with the onion and bacon then smush it into the skillet and press down on it.  You let it cook 15 min then flip it (I was so proud of myself for using a pizza pan to flip it – I doubled this recipe and used a big ass skillet and there was no way I was flipping it with a spatula).

Hash browns

Once it’s flipped, it cooks another 15 min then you’re supposed to stick your skillet in the oven. Boys and girls, I have no idea if my skillets are oven safe (not sure about the handles), so I dumped it into a Corningware round dish instead and cooked it another half hour in the oven.

Results? Loved the hash browns! Crispy on the outside, perfectly cooked on the inside. Yum. You need a little sour cream to go on this one though. The meat was ok. Not sure why this is so exciting it needs its own recipe.  The hash browns are fab, so give those a try.

On page 156 of Martha Stewart Living (Feb issue) Martha has a recipe for Cote de Boeuf with Hash Browns. In case you’re wondering, this is a fancy name for a hunk of beef with some shredded potatoes. The recipe calls for bone in rib eye. As if. I only buy organic meat. My grocery … Read more →

Just to give you a little preview of where this is heading, other titles I considered for this blog were: Trail of Shrimp Bisque Tears, Shrimp Bisque Down the Drain, and Shrimp Bisque Gruel.

It all started out innocently enough. Shrimp bisque sounded like a lovely dinner and it is listed in Martha Stewart Living February in the index under “main dishes”.

Veggies and Shells

So I peeled my shrimp and roasted the shells. That sounded like it would give some nice flavor. I cooked the shrimp, then cooked my vegetables (fennel, carrots and shallot). No problems. I added the shells to the mix, then added tomato paste, then cognac, water, salt, pepper, bay leaf and parsley. By this time I was getting tired of this dish, but I brought it to a boil and let it simmer the required 25 minutes, then cooled it. By this time, half the day has gone by.

Adding Liquid

The next step is to puree it in a blender and then strain it. Here’s where things got a little wild. I decided to use the Cuisinart to puree. So there I am, emptying the pot into it, when I realize all the soup is running out the bottom of the Cuisinart bowl!!!! I have no idea why. We just bought a brand new bowl for that Cuisinart and it’s never leaked before. I quickly rip the bowl off and dump most of it back in the pot.  Then I have this

The Mess

giant mess all over the counter to clean up – which is when I realized it had dripped down onto my feet. I did have the presence of mind to stop and take a photo partway through the clean up, just because it was oh so much fun.

It was right about at this moment that the dog chose to throw up. Please can someone explain to me why dogs MUST throw up on carpet? We’re in the kitchen with a big open floor with just a couple rugs around and the dog has to throw up on the carpet.

So I clean up both messes and decide to dig the blender out to give the pureeing another try. Of course the blender is too full, and the soup starts to run out the top. This is where I start to think this recipe is just cursed. So I quickly dump some out and try again. I strain it, and puree the

Straining the Puree

rest and strain that.

Now what I am left with is a pot full of very, very thin broth. In my book, shrimp bisque is a thick, creamy soup with actual pieces of shrimp. I didn’t understand why the recipe says to strain it – all the good stuff got strained out. But I decided to have patience because I wasn’t done yet.

Martha then says to heat it up, but don’t let it boil. Then add the evaporated milk.  Once that is heated, you ladle the soup into bowls and put some pieces of cooked shrimp in the bowl (they promptly sank right to the bottom so you can’t see them in the photo).

The Final Product

By this point I am tired of this damn soup and am very, very hungry. I even broke out my nice cobalt soup bowls and matching plate set for this. We sit down to eat it and it is like dishwater. No flavor, no consistency, just nasty, tasteless dishwater.

I think this may be the absolute worst Martha recipe I have ever made. The entire thing was dumped down the drain and we had cereal for dinner.

This soup has so many things wrong with it. It needs to be much, much thicker. It needs pieces of shrimp. It needs some actual flavor.  It needs a complete extreme makeover to even be worthy of putting in a bowl. Just writing about it is making me mad, mad, mad. Excuse me while I go change my socks.

Just to give you a little preview of where this is heading, other titles I considered for this blog were: Trail of Shrimp Bisque Tears, Shrimp Bisque Down the Drain, and Shrimp Bisque Gruel. It all started out innocently enough. Shrimp bisque sounded like a lovely dinner and it is listed in Martha Stewart Living … Read more →

Martha was all about the Whole Living Challenge in January, then in February she sends out an issue filled with cupcakes. Intentional sabotage, I tell you. Not fair!

Batter Up

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I can tell you about the Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream from February Martha Stewart Living. So the cupcake part was not hard at all – basically whip up cupcake batter then add some chopped strawberries. Mini-Martha assisted. As usual, these took a little longer to cook in my oven than specified.

Mini-Martha scoops

Next I started the buttercream frosting. You whisk egg whites with sugar over hot water until it reaches 160 degrees. No problem there. Then, apparently, you put then under the mixer and whisk it until your motor runs out. Seriously. The recipe says 5 minutes at

Frosting Flop

medium and 6 minutes at medium high until you get stiff glossy peaks. Well, folks, I am sorry to say, I never peaked. I went a good 15 minutes and nada.  It was worse than a bad date.  It looked like a bowl of marshmallow fluff. I gave up and added the butter, then the pureed strawberries. Now, up until the strawberry puree went in, I was sitting pretty. It seemed fine. The puree, though, turned it into slop. Far too wet to frost anything with. I am sure this is because I never got those darned stiff peaks. So, I popped it in the fridge, hoping it would solidify a bit.

It did a little bit, but it was still really runny. I put the cupcakes back in the fridge after frosting them and this helped, but they’ve got to stay in there or you’re in trouble. Also, this frosting recipe makes WAY too much. If I had cut it in half, I would have still had plenty.

The verdict? So-so in my opinion. These cupcakes are moist and the frosting is a pretty pink color. The flavor? Well, have you ever tried to make strawberry muffins? Kind of the same deal – you can see the strawberries and sort of taste them, but for the most part, they don’t taste super-strawberry at all.  I wouldn’t make this one again. Besides, really, when you get right down to it, I would much rather just have chocolate cupcake and be done with it!

Martha was all about the Whole Living Challenge in January, then in February she sends out an issue filled with cupcakes. Intentional sabotage, I tell you. Not fair! Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I can tell you about the Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream from February Martha Stewart Living. So the cupcake … Read more →

On page 33 of January Martha Stewart Living, Martha has a page about making oatmeal.  The piece was actually about using aromatics in your oatmeal. I’m not so wild about that, but I do love to make oatmeal myself. I buy steel cut oats and follow the ratio on the package for oats to liquid. I usually use half water and half milk. The key is to bring your liquid to a boil first, then add the oats. Cook it over low heat until it’s almost to where you want it (because I make it ahead and it will cook more when I heat it up). I like the oats to be sliglty al dente. I add brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and butter. I keep a container of it in the refrigerator all week and it’s simple to just pop it in the microwave for a wonderful breakfast.

On page 33 of January Martha Stewart Living, Martha has a page about making oatmeal.  The piece was actually about using aromatics in your oatmeal. I’m not so wild about that, but I do love to make oatmeal myself. I buy steel cut oats and follow the ratio on the package for oats to liquid. … Read more →

On page 41 of the Feb issue of Martha Stewart Living, Martha has a Valentine breakfast – a piece of toast cut out in a heart shape with an egg cooked in it. I thought I would give it a try.

Well, ok, but not fab is what I think. First it was hard to find a cookie cutter the right size. I have 4 heart shaped cutters and only one worked, and then I had to angle it to get it to fit on the toast.

As I cooked the egg, it kind of ran out from under the toast.

This is cute though and is a fun thing to make for kids.

On page 41 of the Feb issue of Martha Stewart Living, Martha has a Valentine breakfast – a piece of toast cut out in a heart shape with an egg cooked in it. I thought I would give it a try. Well, ok, but not fab is what I think. First it was hard to … Read more →

Is it me or have the last few cooking school segments been really, really basic? The one about poaching and now rice? There must be people who don’t know how to cook rice, but aren’t those the people that just buy Minute Rice?Anyway, Wednesday on the Martha Stewart Show, Martha and Sarah Carey showed us three ways to make rice – absorption, rice pilaf and risotto.

Rice Steamer

I always use a steamer to cook my rice. It’s a Black and Decker multi-purpose steamer that I also steam vegetables in. It takes longer than a rice cooker – I would say about 45 minutes. I normally make only brown rice.

I did appreciate seeing Martha and Sarah make risotto. I love risotto and it made me crave it. I have this fabulous recipe that includes roasted butter squash, pancetta, and fontina cheese.  It’s so good, I swear, I could roll in it.

I didn’t have any butternut squash hanging around, so I made a mushroom and broccoli risotto.  First you start with cooking some onions in oil, then you add the rice and cook that until it makes a popping sound. Then you gradually add the broth and stir until your arm falls off. I admit I do not stand there and stir constantly. I will dump in some broth, mix it up and work on something else and come back to it. I also do not use 100% broth. I like to use some water. I think it can be almost too rich if you use just broth.

At the end, I added in butter, salt and pepper, parmesan cheese (oh yes!) and cooked mushrooms and broccoli.  This was delicious.

Finished Risotto

I am not a big fan of rice pilaf. I think it’s boring. I would rather have plain rice with butter and salt.

Is it me or have the last few cooking school segments been really, really basic? The one about poaching and now rice? There must be people who don’t know how to cook rice, but aren’t those the people that just buy Minute Rice?Anyway, Wednesday on the Martha Stewart Show, Martha and Sarah Carey showed us … Read more →

In the Jan/Feb issue of Everyday Food, there is a section of turkey recipes that caught my eye. I’ve been doing a lot of cooking with ground turkey and have made a few dishes with turkey cutlets. I decided to try the Pan-Seared Turkey Cutlets with Wine Sauce. It sounded pretty simple.

I bought turkey cutlets, so I did not have to slice up a turkey breast. I pounded them, then cooked them part of the way (they cooked most of the rest of the way as they sat on a platter as I made the sauce). The sauce is just pan scrapings, wine, dijon mustard and salt and pepper. I cooked the wine down and added the mustard. Yikes! Way too much mustard in this one! It was far too strong. I ended up dumping in some chicken stock to ease up on the flavor a bit. Then I needed to add a little Wondra to thicken it. I also felt like it didn’t taste like anything other than the mustard, so I added some sage.

Once the sauce was a good as it was going to get (which wasn’t much), I quickly stuck the turkey back in the pan to heat it up.

I was not wild about this one at all. I’m also not really a fan of the turkey cutlets in general. They really dry out when cooked, even though I was very careful not to overcook them.  The sauce was boring, plain and overly mustardy. Most of this went down the garbage disposal. Next!

In the Jan/Feb issue of Everyday Food, there is a section of turkey recipes that caught my eye. I’ve been doing a lot of cooking with ground turkey and have made a few dishes with turkey cutlets. I decided to try the Pan-Seared Turkey Cutlets with Wine Sauce. It sounded pretty simple. I bought turkey … Read more →

As part of my Superbowl snack-food-a-palooza, I made Martha’s Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Frosting (p. 152 Martha Stewart Living February).

The Batter

These cupcakes are a little more complicated than your basic cupcake. First of all, you need cake flour. This meant a trip to the store for me (if I could count the number of trips to the store Martha has resulted in for me…). You make your batter with butter and sugar, milk, vanilla, cake flour, salt and baking powder. Then you beat some egg whites until they have stiff peaks and fold that into the batter. Then you fold in chocolate chips. The batter tasted *really* good. Light and fluffy and wonderful.

I poured it into my cupcake pans. The recipe says it makes 30. Please raise your hand if you normally make cupcakes using two pans. I know I do. Who has 3? I made 24 and they were fine.

While they were baking, I made the frosting, which is buttercream with chocolate chips. I cut the recipe for this in half since it said it made 4 cups which seemed like a lot to me.

Mayhem slightly repaired

The cupcakes came out nicely. Frosting them was a bit of a situation though. It did not go well.  Mayhem might be the word. The cupcakes simply shredded when I spread the frosting on using my offset spatula. The tops were ripping off, the sides were collapsing. It was not a good situation. It took a lot of work and care to spread the frosting and repair the rips that happened. I gave up on several and did not even try to get the frosting all the way to the edges.

The Playing Field

Now for the taste test. The cupcakes were pretty good. This is really a very good concept. My son asked me how they are different from chocolate chip muffins and they are softer and lighter than that. The finished cupcake did not taste as good as the batter did though! It was a little dry I thought.  It was tasty, however.

There was one major flaw with this recipe. All of the chocolate chips sunk to the bottom of the cupcakes! This is not a good situation.

The Sinking Chips

My other problem is the frosting. I just didn’t like it. It was too sweet. Just grossly sweet. And somehow full sized chocolate chips seemed too big in the frosting. These almost don’t need any frosting at all in my opinion. So this one is kind of a mixed bag – good, not great.

As part of my Superbowl snack-food-a-palooza, I made Martha’s Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Frosting (p. 152 Martha Stewart Living February). These cupcakes are a little more complicated than your basic cupcake. First of all, you need cake flour. This meant a trip to the store for me (if I could count the number … Read more →