Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen

Because it has been so cold in Florida and because I have been reading so many blogs from the more frigid regions of our country, I just had to pull out the slow cooker to cook something long and slow all day; something that would perfume the house and build an anticipation for the satisfying meal to come. I had a chuck roast freshly defrosted from the freezer and several different recipes for crock pot beef to choose from. I ended up combining several.   What I was looking for was intense flavor to offset the richness of the beef.  The balsamic vinegar went a long way in achieving that goal.  There are some recipes for slow cooker beef that include dried onion soup mix and cream of “whatever” soup.  I try to stay away from those recipes.  The additive ladened products just seem to intensify over long cooking, in my humble opinion. And not in a good way.

The ingredients I used were simple; beef broth, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar and a bit of ketchup.  The resulting beef was succulent and delicious.  The sauce was especially good.  It was so good in fact that for lunch the next day I made a “Dip Sandwich”.  The tender beef and juices made for a marvelous sandwich.

The sandwiches would be great for a super bowl party.

CROCK POT BALSAMIC SHREDDED BEEF

1 4 to 5 pound chuck roast
1 tablespoon of canola oil
1 large onion, halved and sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup beef broth
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
Red pepper flakes to taste, 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon

Place 1 tablespoon of oil in a heavy bottomed skillet.  When hot, add chuck roast and cook until browned on one side.  Turn, add onions and garlic to pan along with the meat.  Cook on second side until it is browned and onions are softened.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Place browned meat. onions and garlic in a slow cooker.  Mix together the remainder of the ingredients and pour over beef.  Cook the beef, covered in the slow cooker on a low setting for 7 to 8 hours.  Remove beef to a plate.  Shred it with two forks and return to slow cooker to combine with the juices.   Serve.

Printable recipe

The changing of the seasons seem to be speeding up in my life.  I want to hold each precious moment in the palm of my hand and grasp it greedily so as not to let it fly away.  I want to be here for my Granddaughter’s wedding someday.  I want to witness what my precocious Grandson becomes.  All of these thoughts intensify with the arrival of Fall.  There is an urgency to Fall.  Squirrels gather their acorns.  Farmers harvest their crops and gather hay.  Many of us can and freeze the bounty from our gardens.  Fall is the season for soups, pumpkins, stews and freshly baked bread.  Fall food is solace for the soul and gives us a reason to look forward to Spring and bright days ahead.

Few things smell as good as pumpkin and cinnamon baking in the oven.  One of my favorite pies is pumpkin.  But this pumpkin flavored quick bread has also become a favorite.  The recipe appeared in a 2003 issue of Bon Appetit magazine.  The article and recipe came from Ken Haedrich.  I have written about Ken before in this post.  By the way, I am still waiting for a guest post from you Ken.  He has a very informative website called The Pie Academy.

This is a dense and moist quick bread that is studded with cranberries and walnuts.  Eating a slice and sipping a cup of coffee while gazing at the changing colors across the lake is a celebration of all that is good about Fall.  The urgency and cold winds of Winter can wait.

CRANBERRY-WALNUT PUMPKIN BREAD

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter a standard loaf pan.  Line bottom and 2 long sides with waxed paper.  Whisk flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in medium bowl to blend.  Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy.  Gradually add 1 cup sugar, beating until blended.  Beat in eggs one at a time.  Beat in pumpkin, then vanilla.  Beat in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions each.  Fold in cranberries and nuts.  Transfer batter to pan.

Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes.  Cool bread in pan on rack 15 minutes.  Cut around bread at short ends to loosen from pan.  Turn bread out onto rack; peel off waxed paper.  Cool bread completely.

Printable recipe

This is one of my favorite ways to do baked potatoes for a crowd.  I have always done a version of these, but was able to update my procedure from a recipe that appeared on Pinterest.  It came from the blog Family Favorite Recipes.  I had always cut baking potatoes in half, added salt, pepper and spices or herbs, then put a pat of butter  on each cut side and cooked them cut side down on a cookie sheet in the oven.  This recipe had a few additions and tweaks  and that made all of the difference.  Crusty parmesan went a long way to take these potatoes over the top.

These potatoes are baked in a 9×13-inch pan which has been coated with melted butter, grated Parmesan cheese, garlic powder and any herbs or spices that you prefer.  The recipe can be adjusted to the number of people that you are serving.  Since I am a lone diner this week, I made 3 potatoes and plan to make several meals from them.  If you have a crowd you can double the recipe and do two pans.  Serve with sour cream and chives or do like I do and add a splash of vinegar.

PARMESAN BAKED POTATO HALVES

Ingredients

• 6 medium baking potatoes, scrubbed and cut in half
• 1/4 cup butter
• grated Parmesan cheese to taste,
• garlic powder
• other seasonings (to personal preference)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter and pour into a 9×13 inch pan and spread evenly across the bottom. Generously sprinkle parmesan cheese and lightly sprinkle other seasonings all over the butter. Place potato halves face down on the butter and seasonings. Place in preheated oven and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan. Serve on a plate with a side of sour cream for dipping.

Printable recipe

I have been in a cooking funk lately.  Nothing I have made has been blog worthy.  I just burned some honey glazed pancetta that was supposed to go on a salad.  Other dishes that I have made were just plain boring.  We are back in Lake Lure.  The weather is cold and windy and the cottage is in need of all kinds of fluffing and repairs.  Squirrels chewed the wires to the steam bath and made themselves a nest under the tub.  David was looking forward to satisfying his Finnish blood with a hot steam bath and was dismayed to discover what the critters had done.  They even feathered their nest with paint brushes from the basement.  I guess they were planning on remodeling.   We are planning on evicting them.  So when dinner time rolled around last night, I was in no mood to get creative with the salmon.  David said “Have you ever blogged about my salmon cooked in parchment paper?”  Needless to say, I was more than happy to turn the kitchen over to him while I snapped the pictures.

Here are the main ingredients.  It is important that the vegetables you use are sliced thinly because the salmon cooks for only 15 minutes.  You can use what you have.  I had carrots, peppers, onions and some cooked baby broccoli from another meal.  You could also use thinly sliced broccoli, scallions, snow peas or asparagus.

David is proud of this fillet knife that he got at an estate sale last year in our hometown of Dowagiac, MI.  It is engraved with the date and Trig Lund’s name.  Trig was an executive with the Heddon Lure Company a maker of fishing lures sold around the world. I wrote a whole post about the estate sale last summer.

We always remove the skin from our salmon before we cook it.

Each piece of salmon is placed on a piece of parchment paper and covered with the vegetables and seasoning.

You can actually see the salmon in this shot.

A little wine for moisture is always a good thing.  Also note that David has brushed the edges of the parchment paper with an egg wash to help seal the packets.

The packets are sealed.

The packets ready to go into the oven.  Notice he has also included pats of butter, along with some lemon juice.

After a brief time in the oven, dinner was served.  Along with the salmon I made a rice pilaf and a salad with that burned pancetta.  It actually wasn’t bad.  I will experiment with it again and give you a recipe when I figure it out.   David had no trouble figuring out a great salmon dish.  Here is his recipe.

SALMON EN PAPILLOTE WITH JULIENNED VEGETABLES

This is a very simple, delicious and fool-proof way to prepare salmon with vegetables. And, it looks fancy and festive, but it is so easy. You can use any combination of vegetables that suits your fancy. Listed below are some of the ones we commonly use, but you can substitute or include others such as, leeks, and snow peas, anything that can be cut into thin pieces so that it cooks rapidly. You can also substitute any other type of fish fillet that you might have on hand or can find, and you also might want to experiment with other herbs and spices.

Here are one possible set of ingredients per packet, i.e. per serving

one 8 oz salmon filet
¼ cup julienned carrots
¼ cup julienned green onions
¼ cup julienned broccolini
¼ cup julienned red or green pepper
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 tsp olive oil
2 Tbsp dry white wine
basil ½ tsp dried or 1 tsp chopped fresh
2 lemon slices
3 pats of butter
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg beaten-to seal the packets

Place a salmon filet to the right of the center of a 15” square of parchment paper. Salt and pepper the filet to taste. Sprinkle the olive oil, garlic, and basil over the salmon. Arrange the julienned vegetables on top of the filet. Place two lemon slices and three butter pats on top. Sprinkle the wine over the top and add a little more salt and pepper to the top of the vegetables. Use a brush and the egg wash to paint the edge of paper all the way around to help seal the packet. Fold the left side of the paper over the fish and vegetables and start at the top left corner making small overlapping folds all the way around the three open sides. When you get to the final fold, turn it under to help keep it from unfolding. Prepare as many packets as you want servings and place on a baking sheet in a 400 deg oven for about 18-20 minutes. The fish will actually be done in about 15 minutes, but the veggies will benefit from the extra time, and the fish will remain moist and tender from the cooking method. To serve, place a packet on each plate along with whatever starch you are serving, and cut the packets open with a sharp knife so the contents can be removed to the plate.  Enjoy.

Printable recipe

We love our seafood restaurants in Florida.  There are so many fresh and healthy options to choose from in any number of places especially from sushi restaurants near me to taste variety of fish recipes. David and I usually order broiled or baked fish when we are out.  But if fried coconut shrimp is on a restaurant menu, I can’t resist it.  Coconut shrimp, in my opinion, is the very best combination of fried shrimp with a hit of coconut sweetness.  It may not be the best choice, but I love it.

I was happy to see a recipe in Cooking Light Magazine for Thai shrimp Cakes.  One of the ingredients was unsweetened dried coconut.  This was mixed with panko crumbs for both the filling and the breading.  It sounded like it had all of my favorite coconut shrimp flavors.  The first hurdle was finding the coconut.  All that is available in our supermarkets is sweetened flaked coconut.  But we do have a wonderful health food store in town and they had unsweetened dried coconut in the bulk bins.  My 1 cup purchase cost me only $1.00. It was in tiny bits and had a heavenly coconut aroma.

This was an easy recipe to pull together.  Basically, all of the ingredients are chopped and mixed in a bowl.  They are formed into cakes and then coated with a combination of panko crumbs and dried coconut.  A quick saute in oil and you have succulent shrimp cakes with a hint of Asian flavors.  But what came through to me the most was the coconut breading.

This makes a great lunch with salad greens and a good viniagrette dressing.

THAI SHRIMP CAKES

2/3 cup panko crumbs, divided
1/4 cup unsweetened dried coconut, divided (minced if large)
2 tablespoons minced green onions
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons Sriracha (hot chile sauce)
1 1/2 teaspoons grated peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon lime juice
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 clove garlic, minced
8 ounces peeled and deveined shrimp, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 lime, quartered

Combine 1/3 cup panko, 2 tablespoons coconut, and next 8 ingredients in a large bowl.  Add shrimp; stir just until combines.  Using wet hands, shape mixture into 4 equal balls.  Comine remaining panko and coconut in a shallow dish.  Coat balls in panko mixture; press to form 4 (4-inch) patties.

Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add oil; swirl to coat.  Add patties; cook 4 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness.  Serve with lime.

I served this with spring mix salad greens and a vinaigrette dressing.

Printable recipe