Walnut White Bean Dip: A Daring Cooks Challenge

I have to admit, this months Daring Cooks Challenge left me a little concerned. I’m not a huge nut fan in general and most nut butters I’ve tried have been…well…..boring. This months challenge was two fold: First you have to make the nut butter. Okay, this sounds kind of complex. It’s not. Nuts go into the food processor for about 3 minutes and BOOM! Nut butter. Probably one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.

The second part of the challenge is only a tiny bit more complicated. The challenge gave a few different options regarding what to do with your nut butter. I opted to make the dip since it’s just a little too hot to really cook and I’m always looking for tasty dips that involve something other than hummus or cream cheese. In addition to the fact that this turned out amazingly well, it is also fairly healthy.

My camera decide to go kaput today leaving me with no pictures. So, this will be a picture-less post. But, the recipe is simple and I have faith in the fact that most people don’t need pictures (even though they help).

Blog Check Lines: The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

This recipe was adapted from  Cooking Light

Walnut White Bean Dip

What you Need:

½ Cup walnuts ( processed in food processor as described above)

½ Cup dried cannellini beans, cooked, and cooled

2 cloves of roasted garlic

2 tbs fresh rosemary, chopped

1 tbs lemon juice

1 tbs olive oil

What you need to do:

After you have made your nut butter and your cannellini beans have cooled, add all ingredients together in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until smooth.

Serve with pita chips or baguette rounds.

So this is my first month as a Daring Cook. The way it works is that there is a challenge posted every month and all the Daring Cooks are supposed to make it (or some variation of), photograph it, and post it on their food blogs. Sounds simple enough right? Lets just say that deadlines and I do not get along. Therefore, I am posting this super-late. However, this whole Daring Cooks thing sounds fun and will (hopefully) guarantee that I’ll post something tasty at least once a month.

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

You should know that there really is nothing terribly complicated about risotto as long as you have the time to baby-sit it. One of the requirements for this months challenge was to make your own broth and while I was very seriously tempted to use the stuff in the pretty box with a picture of the jolly Wolfgang Puck egging me on, I decided to bite the bullet and make my own. You can really use just about any broth you’d like. I opted to make vegetable broth since I had an over abundance of fresh vegetables in my fridge. I’m not going to post a recipe on here for the broth since I a) didn’t measure and b) there are a bazillion other broth recipes out there. Basically, I just threw everything into a big pot and let it simmer on the stove for about two hours. If the prospect of having the smell of homemade broth wafting through your house isn’t enough to convince you that homemade is better then you should know that risotto made with the canned stuff doesn’t hold a candle to the good stuff. Sorry Wolfgang.

What you need:

About 1 ½ cup broccoli florettes, cut into manageable bite-sized pieces

1 tbs olive oil

Pinch of salt

Pinch of pepper

2 tbs butter

½ small onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup risotto (I used Arborio)

¾ cup white wine (you could use red if you were feeling fancy I suppose)

Pot of simmering broth

Salt

Pepper

Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 325 degrees (f) and line a large sheet pan with foil. In bowl, toss broccoli with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Dump broccoli onto sheet and roast in oven for about 20 minutes or until the broccoli is dark and very slightly beginning to brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly.

While your broccoli is in the oven, begin risotto. Heat butter in medium saucepan and add onion and garlic. Sauté until onion is soft and translucent. Add risotto and stir. You want to make sure to coat each grain of rice and brown it every so slightly.

Add wine and stir. Do not be alarmed by all the steam. The objective here is to evaporate most of the alcohol. There will still be a little liquid in the pan. Add the stock about one cup at a time. You want the broth to just cover the rice. When all the broth has been absorbed it’s time to add another cup or so. Same process as before. Repeat this process until the risotto is the desired consistency (which is soft). Turn the heat off and stir in about ½ cup Parmesan cheese. You may add more or less depending on taste. Add salt and pepper. Then add in the broccoli.

Serve immediately. Sprinkle some Parmesan on top if you want it to look a little bit fancy.

Honey Blueberry Pound Cake

I have no idea what possessed me to purchase blueberries in the middle of winter. Perhaps because 2 for $5 appeared to sound like a deal (even though when blueberries are in season they are 2 for $1.50). Anyway, these out of season blueberries were sitting in my fridge for about a week before I decided last night to do something with them. I was torn between muffins and pound cake. Due to the lack of muffin papers and my distinct fondness for pound cake, I opted for honey blueberry pound cake. The recipe is loosely based on the Honey Vanilla Pound Cake from Ina Gartens’ Back To Basics cookbook.

Ingredients:

2 Sticks Unsalted butter (Room temperature)

1 Cup Sugar

4 Extra large eggs

3 ½ tbs honey

2 ½ tsp Vanilla extract

2 Cups sifted cake flour, plus 1 tbs to dust blueberries.

1 tsp kosher salt

½ tsp baking soda

2/3 cup fresh blueberries

What you need to do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (f) . Prepare loaf pan by greasing bottom with butter and lining bottom with parchment.

Using the paddle attachment on your mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy- about 4 minutes.

While your butter and sugar are mixing, put eggs, honey, and vanilla in separate bowl. Do not mix

Turn mixer to low speed and add eggs one at a time to bitter/sugar mixture. Scrape sides of bowl between eggs.

Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda and gradually add to wet ingredients until just combined.

Scrape sides of bowl to incorporate any remaining flour.

In small bowl, gently toss blueberries with tablespoon of flour. Fold blueberries into batter. Be careful not to over mix or smash any of the berries (unless you want a purple pound cake).

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for about 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean.

Cool for 15 minutes before removing from pan.

Butternut Squash Risotto

When I bought the squash for the Butternut Squash Apple Soup below I went a little crazy and bought 2 of them knowing full well that I wouldn’t use both of them. So for the past week or so that stupid squash has just been sitting there. Perhaps it’s just mocking me for being stupid enough to buy two of them. Anyway, I had a bag of risotto just sitting in the pantry and I figured that I might as well use it. So Butternut Squash Risotto was clearly the way to go.  Traditional risotto uses white wine and Parmesan cheese. In this recipe I opted to use red wine based entirely on the fact that it was the only thing I had and I was not about to go out in a blizzard to get a bottle of white. Also, I left the cheese out, which is typically added at the very end of cooking, and replaced it with goat cheese, which I sprinkled on top.

            All in all, I was impressed with the outcome based on the fact that 1) I had never made risotto before and 2) I didn’t quite follow any specific recipe. Don’t worry if you don’t either. I promise that the risotto police will not come after you.

 

Ingredients:

For the roasted squash-

1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped

2 to 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut into quarters

1/8 cup olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (f). Place squash, garlic, oil, and salt/pepper into glass Pyrex dish or roasting pan and toss to coat all pieces. Cover with foil and bake for about 45 minutes or until squash is easily pierced with fork.

Allow to cool slightly. Then, lightly smash pieces with fork or potato masher.

For the risotto-

4 tbs butter

½ medium onion

2 ½ cups risotto (aberro rice)

4 cups vegetable broth

1 ½ cups water

½ cup wine (red or white)

2 tsp salt

Combine all liquids and salt in a mixing bowl.

Melt butter in medium saucepan. Add onions and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes. Add risotto and stir for another 5 or 6 minutes. Make sure the risotto is coated evenly in the butter and onion mixture.

Add liquids to risotto and onion mixture using ladle. Add slowly making sure all liquid is absorbed before adding another ladle. Cook on medium low maintaining a low simmer. Stir constantly.

After about 20 to 25 minutes all liquids should be absorbed. At this point, you should remove the risotto from the heat and mix in the mashed squash and garlic mixture.

Serve immediately with goat cheese sprinkled on top.

 

Polenta and Goat Cheese Salad

Giant Eagle (A grocery store in these parts) had a giant box of Cornmeal on sale for 89 cents. I stood in the asile thinking of all the fantastic things I could do and I realized that I could make an awful lot of polenta. And so I did. Cypress Grove makes the best goat cheese and there is just something so right about polenta and goat cheese. Really though, any Chevre will work.

For the Polenta:

3 Tbs Butter

1 tbs olive oil

2 Cups of water

1 Cup of Milk or Half and Half

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp Black pepper

Rosemary, chopped, as much (or little) as you’d like

1 Cup or Cornmeal

Melt butter and olive oil in medium saucepan. Add water, milk, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Heat on medium low stirring constantly for about 10 minutes. Do not boil.

Add polenta and stir with a whisk until thick and stirring becomes difficult.

Pour into *very* lightly greased cake pan. Allow to cool and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

Cut cold polenta with a cookie cutter or biscuit cutter and fry until golden brown on both sides.

 

For the salad:

Any kind of lettuce you would like. We used a Mediterranean blend

Goat cheese. Purple Haze Chevre is pretty much the best and is what we used here.

Balsamic Dressing or Balsamic Reduction. We made a balsamic reduction with a smidge of brown sugar.

Brave New Blog

So this is my shiny new blog. All kinds of cooking adventures will be documented here for the worlds viewing pleasure and hopefully I will have much more stuff posted in the next week or so.

In case anybody is wondering, the name of this blog stems directly from what I’m fairly certain most of my friends think of me as: a foodie call. I am always willing to cook and create something tasty for anybody who chooses to grace my kitchen.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!