Another item on the March Martha Stewart Living “What’s for Dinner” menu is spring onion soup. I simply adore French onion soup, so I was definitely interested in making this.

Now, of course, I could not find spring onions. So I substituted the yellow onions recommended. My store has them labeled as “sweet yellow onions” so that encouraged me.

There is not a heck of a lot to this soup. You slice your onions thinly then cook for about 15 minutes until they are translucent, but not carmelizing. Then you add chicken stock and water. The next step is to put it in a blender. If you recall my Shrimp Bisque in My Sock post, you will know I had some trouble with this in the past! This time, I tried to use my hand blender (the ‘boat motor’ as Emeril calls it). It didn’t work. There were too many onions and not enough liquid. I bypassed the Cuisinart (since I didn’t want spring onion soup in my sock) and went straight to the blender. It worked beautifully.

I put the soup in bowls and drizzled with oil. I didn’t have any flatbread, so I served it with some stoned wheat crackers.

The soup had a nice flavor – very sweet and a very creamy texture. My biggest beef was that it was not hot and I would have preferred it hot. By the time you put it through the blender and then into a bowl, it’s not hot anymore.

It needed pepper, so we added that as we were eating it. I would recommend putting it in as you cook. This was good, but I would rather have French onion soup!

Another item on the March Martha Stewart Living “What’s for Dinner” menu is spring onion soup. I simply adore French onion soup, so I was definitely interested in making this. Now, of course, I could not find spring onions. So I substituted the yellow onions recommended. My store has them labeled as “sweet yellow onions” … Read more →

The March “What’s for Dinner” main entree in Martha Stewart Living is Scallops with Wilted Spinach and Arugula. I love scallops and was ready to give this a try. This is a very simple recipe. You pan fry your scallops in a little oil. I love cooking scallops this way – the outside gets brown and crunchy. Once the scallops are done, you take them out and cook some garlic and add spinach and arugula and cook until wilted. You serve the scallops over the greens.

My biggest beef with this recipe was that it really needed some lemon, so we ended up squeezing lemon over it. I loved the greens and will definitely try those two in combination together again. What is truly shocking is Teen Martha ate the greens and liked them and usually she will turn and run at the sight of spinach.

The best part about this dish was the presentation. The scallops looked just gorgeous against the greens.

The March “What’s for Dinner” main entree in Martha Stewart Living is Scallops with Wilted Spinach and Arugula. I love scallops and was ready to give this a try. This is a very simple recipe. You pan fry your scallops in a little oil. I love cooking scallops this way – the outside gets brown … Read more →

Hi all. Yes I am alive. I left on vacation and had all these posts ready to go – put in dates for them to go up on, but then never actually published them! So I’ve just now gone in and got them all up. I guess you’ve got a lot of reading to do:) Thanks to those of you who emailed me to find out if the Martha project finally killed me! It’s back to business as usual on Monday — I hope my March issue will be waiting for me when I get home! Happy reading!

Hi all. Yes I am alive. I left on vacation and had all these posts ready to go – put in dates for them to go up on, but then never actually published them! So I’ve just now gone in and got them all up. I guess you’ve got a lot of reading to do:) … 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).

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.

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.

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.

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 →

All month long Martha Stewart has been showing us her “must-haves” on The Martha Stewart Show. I’ve enjoyed seeing what she considers essential, even if I find most of it out of my price range! Yesterday though she showed some kitchen tools and I fell off my chair when I realized I had every single one!

I love the microplane and use it for cheese and zest. I just bought the Asian strainer a couple of weeks ago and have not used it yet. The reamer has gotten a lot of use, but Mr. MarthaAndMe bought me an electric juicer for Mother’s Day, so I’ve since retired it. I have to say I was surprised Martha included the reamer since she is always raving about that little plastic juicer tool she uses on the show.

I would have to say that if I were to make a list of my essential kitchen tools it would not include the strainer and the reamer. It would however include a good pair of tongs, a rubber grip to open jars, a thin sturdy spatula, a rubber scraper, a rubber grip veggie peeler and a plastic liquid measuring cup (the ones with the special markings so you can read them from the top, not the side). What are your essentials?

All month long Martha Stewart has been showing us her “must-haves” on The Martha Stewart Show. I’ve enjoyed seeing what she considers essential, even if I find most of it out of my price range! Yesterday though she showed some kitchen tools and I fell off my chair when I realized I had every single … Read more →