Chili from Leftover Taco Meat

On Sunday nights, I have practice with Acoustic Rooster, and my husband and sons are on their own for dinner. They have deemed it taco night -- and when they make tacos, there are no veggies and no fish. For them, tacos are comprised of shells (hard or soft), taco meat (ground beef with packet taco seasoning), cheese and taco sauce. That's it.

On most nights there's leftover meat, but not enough for a second meal of tacos (and when you're already having tacos once a week, do you really want them again?). Seeing that leftover meat go to waste makes me nuts so now I make the leftovers into chili. I've never measured the amount of meat I put in it from week to week but it always seems to turn out OK. Now, my husband has decided he likes the chili at least as much as the tacos, so he's threatening to make even MORE taco meat! I can't win!

Basic Chili from Leftover Taco Meat
(Makes two good-size bowls of chili)

1 cup (or so) leftover taco meat.
8-ounce can tomato sauce
15-ounce can petite diced tomatoes, undrained
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
A few twists of freshly ground black pepper
SPinch of sugar
Optional (my husband doesn't eat them): 15-ounce can kidney beans (with liquid)
Optional: cayenne pepper, if you like it hot. Add 1/4 teaspoon at a time until the spice is to your liking.
Garnishes: grated cheese, sour cream, etc.

In a large saucepan, combine the all ingredients, and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Taste and adjust seasonings until they are to your liking. Cook, stirring every few minutes, for a half hour or more. I keep it partly covered while it simmers.

If you like it really hot, use hot petite diced tomatoes with chiles, such as the various ones from Redpack. You can also vary the flavor by using petite diced tomatoes with sweet peppers or other variations.

Penfield Cupcake Shop on Cupcake Wars!

Trends -- whether they be food or fashion -- seem to be slow to hit Rochester. Case in point: cupcake shops. Cupcake shops had been around for years before they came to Rochester. Now, cupcake shops seem to be all over the place. In fact, the town of Penfield has three cupcake shops in the span of a few blocks. And one of them is going to be on Cupcake Wars!

Dollop was the first cupcake shop to arrive in Penfield -- it opened in June of 2010. (It's located on busy Route 441, which makes it hard to get a good picture of it.) It has an unusual take on cupcakes. It has a cupcake bar, where you pick your cupcake, frosting, topping and filling, and they prepare your cupcake to order. It's kind of like what Coldstone Creamery does with ice cream. The shop is pretty much a carry-out place -- there's not much seating.

Truth be told, we're not the kind of family to routinely go to a cupcake shop to spend about $10 for three cupcakes, because we do a lot of baking ourselves. But we did stop in awhile back to give Dollop a try. I had a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chunks. One son had a vanilla cupcake with cookie dough topping. The other son had a chocolate cupcake with coconut topping. Neither son recalls the flavors of their frostings. We all enjoyed our cupcakes, but it's not like any of us have been itching to go back.

I think the Dollop approach is great for fussy eaters and people who like things just the way they like them. I personally prefer a more artfully decorated cupcake with a perfect balance of textures and flavors. That balance is more likely to happen when a chef carefully prepares all the elements to work together. But that's just me. Coldstone Creamery is clearly a popular place, so Dollop may be on to something.

All in all, I want to see local businesses succeed, so I'm pulling for Dollop in Cupcake Wars. The episode is on a week from tonight, on February 19. (The name of the episode is "Monster Jam.") Best of luck to Dollop -- I'm hoping for a win!

Mandarin Pancakes for Moo Shu Pork: Step-by-Step Stand Mixer Directions

Happy Chinese New Year!

I love Chinese food, but truth be told, I just don't have a lot of good luck cooking it. My latest Chinese cooking adventure was Moo Shu Pork, which is probably my favorite dish to eat out. I used this recipe from Cooking Light with mixed results.

Napa Cabbage

I had trouble figuring out the directions for the filling. First, it called for 10 dried shiitake mushrooms. My bag of dried mushrooms was comprised of small shards. Ten of those made no sense, so I used about 1/4 cup. It also called for equal parts Napa cabbage leaves and Napa cabbage stalks. Look at the Napa cabbage to the right. is the thicker part of the leaves considered stalk? It's not apparent, so I ended up just cutting up the leaves. Finally, the sauce in the mixture never thickened -- I wonder if there was enough cornstarch. All in all, the recipe had potential but needed a lot of tinkering, so I won't print it here.

The mandarin pancakes, though, turned out great. I used my stand mixer to make it easier. Here's how I made them.

 I added boiling water to flour in the bowl of the stand mixer.

 I kneaded with dough hook until a soft dough formed.

 I kneaded by hand until the dough was smooth.

 When I weighed the dough, it weighed 1 pound. That made it easy to figure out how to divide it into 16 pieces.

 To divide into 16 equal balls, I just weighed them.

 Sixteen1-ounce balls of dough. 

I rolled into 6-inch circles on a floured surface. They weren't perfect circles.

 I brushed 8 pancakes with sesame oil.

 

I topped each of those with another pancake.

 I cooked one sandwich at a time in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. It took about one minute on each side to cook them.

 

They were slightly puffed when they were done. I used them the way you'd use flour tortillas in Mexican cooking.

Here's the recipe for the pancakes.

MANDARIN PANCAKES - Stand Mixer Version
Adapted from this Cooking Light recipe

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 tablespoons dark sesame oil

Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir, using the dough hook, until a soft dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic (about 3 minutes). Divide the dough into 16 equal portions. (I found the dough weighed exactly one pound, and weighed out 16 one-ounce balls). Roll each dough portion into a 6-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Brush 8 pancakes evenly with oil. Top each with one of the remaining pancakes, gently pressing together.

Heat a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Place 1 pancake stack in pan, and cook 1 minute on each side or until slightly puffed. Remove from pan, and cool. Peel pancakes apart.

Fill with your favorite Moo Shu filling. I don't have a reliable favorite to share just yet.

If you are on Weight Watchers, the pancakes are two Points Plus each.

Peanut Butter Blossoms and Other Christmas Cookie Favorites

45 Dozen Christmas Cookies

Last week, a group of coworkers gathered in the barn at Wickham Farms to bake cookies. In five hours, we baked more than 45 dozen cookies, and had a blast in the process.

I had agreed to coordinate the recipes, and when I got to the barn, I realized I had forgotten the recipes I had printed out. Not to worry -- my blog is my handy dandy online recipe box! I used my easiest cut-out cookie recipe as well as the peanut butter balls in this post. But I hadn't posted the recipe for my youngest son's favorite Christmas cookies -- Peanut Butter Blossoms. I found them on the Hershey's website, but I like to have my recipes here as well. So here's the recipe, even though I admit it's one just about everyone already has. For more unusual recipes, take a look at the 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies and Sweets blog event links below.

Peanut Butter Blossoms
From Hersheys.com (with minor adaptations)

Peanut Butter Blossom (aka Kiss Cookies)

48 Hershey’s Kisses chocolates
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Additional granulated sugar

Heat oven to 375°F. Remove wrappers from chocolates.

Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

Gently press those Kiss chocolates!

Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven, then quickly but gently press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

About 4 dozen cookies.

12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies: A Magical Bar for all Seasons

Awhile back, I signed up to take part in a blogging event called "Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies & Sweets." It seemed like fun to share our favorite holiday recipes over the course of 12 weeks. Sometime in October, I sat down to write my first post for the series ... and I just couldn't finish it. I felt that I was like one of those stores who puts up Christmas decorations before Halloween. It was too soon for me.

So I'm just now finishing that post and participating in the Blog Hop. I hope to make 12 contributions, just not over 12 weeks. The first is The Magic Cookie Bar, or Seven Layer Bar, or Hello Dolly bar, depending on where you're from. I go for the magical title myself.

I know they're in just about every cook's arsenal, but with some imagination, you can make them creative and appropriate for any season:
- They are fairly flat when they are made as written (shown above). If you like a thicker bar, just use a smaller pan.
- I have a friend who uses food coloring to color her coconut to make her bars more festive. You could also use other flavored chips instead of the butterscotch chips.
- You can also use different kinds of nuts (I don't like leaving them out because the nuts help keep them from being cloyingly sweet).
- Another great variation is this banana cookie bar recipe, created by Anna at Cookie Madness. She used a chocolate shortbread crust and adds banana to the topping.

Magic Cookie Bars

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (or try a different cookie crumb)
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips (or use different chips)
1 -2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup nuts -- I love whole walnuts but you can use pecans or another favorite nut

Preheat oven to 350°. Melt butter in a 13 x 9-inch baking pan. (If you like them thicker, try a 7 x 11 pan.) Sprinkle crumbs evenly over melted butter; pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumbs. Top evenly with remaining ingredients; press down firmly. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool magic cookie bars before cutting. My favorite way to eat them is refrigerated.

Aubergine Caviar (Michael Symon)

My Cooking Light Group recently had a dinner with the theme of cooking a dish from a favorite chef. I love that theme! I wanted to cook a Michael Symon recipe because the meal my son and I had at his Lola Bistro in Cleveland was outstanding. Plus, I like Symon's personality, and respect his choice of staying in the Cleveland area instead of heading to a bigger city.

The trouble is, very few of Symon's recipes are appropriate for a Cooking Light Group. I finally found one for Aubergine Caviar on the Food Network website. It doesn't seem like the food he's known for, but it fit the bill for the dinner. Plus, it incorporates a lot of the veggies that are in season now -- eggplant, tomatoes and peppers.

It turned out OK -- the flavor was pretty mild. To be honest, I prefer my own recipe for Melitzanosalata (Greek Eggplant Dip), which is ironic, since Symon is of Greek descent, as well as an Iron Chef. I suspect the dip tastes better when he makes it. 

Aubergine Caviar (Michael Symon)

Olive oil – enough to brush veggies with it
2 pounds eggplant
2 yellow peppers
2 tomatoes
1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 tablespoons ground coriander
A drizzle of olive oil
1/3 cup yogurt
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 tablespoons flat leaf parsley

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil the eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. Place them on a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper and place them in the oven. Roast until soft, about 20 minutes. (These weren’t soft at this point so I increased temp to 400 degrees and baked another 10 minutes. In the future, I’d do them at 400). Peel eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.

Saute the garlic and onions in olive oil (season with salt and pepper) over medium-low heat until they are translucent and aromatic.

Put mixture in food processor and add garlic-onion mixture, vinegar, orange juice, coriander, olive oil, yogurt and salt and pepper. Fold in chopped parsley.

Season, to taste, with salt and pepper, and serve with pita wedges. (I brushed the pita wedges with olive oil and toasted thems).