Experimenting with a new ingredient

Glazed Lemon Loaf
Cakes: 1,001 Classic Recipes From Around The World Copyright 2003

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup potato starch
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest I only used about 1 tbsp. lemon and orange zest
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
Lemon Glaze

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9x5-inch loaf pan. My pan was more like 10x4. Line with waxed paper. Butter the paper. Sift the flour, potato starch, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl. Beat the butter, sugar, and lemon zest in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, until just blended after each addition. With mixer at low speed, gradually beat in the dry ingredients. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan for 15 minutes. Turn out onto a rack. Carefully remove the paper. Drizzle the glaze over the cake while it’s still warm.

Lemon Glaze
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
4-5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice I used lemon and orange juice
1 ½ teaspoons finely grated lemon zest I used about 1 tsp orange and lemon zest

Place the confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl. Beat in 4 tablespoons lemon juice and zest until smooth, adding the additional tablespoon of lemon juice as needed to make a good spreading consistency.
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I was drawn to this recipe because of the potato starch. I was anxious to see what the result would be using this ingredient, since I had never used it or even seen it in a recipe before now. I'm not usually a huge fan of lemon cake but curiosity got the best of me. I actually used lemon and orange. I think any citrus would be fine. BTW, how many lemons would one have to zest to get 2 tablespoons of grated lemon zest? I grated one orange and 4 or 5 lemons and I only netted about 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of zest. And that was plenty.

There was definitely a difference in the texture of this loaf, compared to loaves I've made with other flours. I don't know how to describe it. It was a bit more crumbly, almost seeming dry but it melted in my mouth. Next time I would poke the entire loaf with a long skewer before pouring the glaze on. The parts where glaze met cake were the best parts.

I got my groceries last night and I think I got everything I needed for next week. I saved a lot of money last week by not making multiple grocery store visits. Well, I did end up going back only once, to get diapers, and amazingly I walked out of there with only the diapers, a newspaper and some Pez for my son. Actually I went back twice - the other time I walked out of there with just the rolls I needed. Truly amazing. Oh wait, I had to go back a third time because I dropped my cell phone in the parking lot and I didn't buy anything that time. Wow! Who knew I could restrain myself? It's not easy, that's for sure.

I almost forgot, this is my last chance to remind you about this month's cookbook giveway. Saturday is the deadline.

A Blast From The Past: Brown Sugar Meat Loaf from October 2005. I made little meat muffins using this recipe the other night.

Question of the Day: What's the last new (to you) ingredient that you worked with?

Simple and delicious

Chicken Piccata
Everyday Italian Copyright 2005

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, halved crosswise I flattened them a bit too
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
all-purpose flour, for dredging
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 2 lemons)
¼ cup drained capers, rinsed I omitted these
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Sprinkle the chicken with the salt and pepper. Dredge the chicken in the flour to coat lightly. In a large sauté pan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter with the 2 tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook just until brown, about 3 minutes per side. Using tongs, transfer the chicken to a plate.

Add the broth , lemon juice, and capers to the same pan. Bring the broth mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, scraping up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan for extra flavor. Return the chicken to the pan and simmer until just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Using tongs, transfer the chicken to a platter. Whisk the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter into the sauce. Pour the sauce over the chicken, garnish with parsley, and serve. I strained my sauce before I poured it over the chicken.

4 main-course servings
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This wasn't the first recipe for chicken piccata I've tried. I made a version back in March but this version was much simpler to get on the table. I left the capers out of this recipe since the other recipe was fine without them and I was really trying not to add to many extras to my grocery cart last week. I still haven't gotten over breaking that last jar of capers I bought.

This is really a simple dish - basically some broth, some lemon juice, some butter - but, wow! I really like this stuff. I served it over Dreamfields spaghetti. The sauce is so good over pasta.

I test drove both of Giada's cookbooks by checking them out of my local library. I went on to purchase both of them. I have to admit, when I first saw her on Food Network, I wasn't that into her show. You know what they say - never trust a skinny cook. I've grown to love her recipes but, as someone pointed out to me, why are there so many pictures of her in this cookbook? Page after page of Giada and 'her girls' peeking out at me. She is not featured as much in Family Dinners but both cookbooks, while loaded with pictures of Giada and her friends and family and pictures of recipe elements, lack pictures of the finished dishes. Why include all those photographs and only throw in a few handfuls of pictures of the actual recipes?

A Blast From The Past: Easy Spicy Applesauce Muffins from April 2006. A really good muffin that would be great for this time of year (just think of how wonderful your how would smell after making these).

Question of the Day: Who are some of your favorite 'celebrity' chefs?

Delicious beef and stale noodles

Braised Beef with Sun-Dried Tomatoes
The Good Carb Cookbook Copyright 2001

1 pound extra-lean stew beef
½ cup water
1/3 cup dry red wine
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
2 teaspoons instant beef bouillon granules
¼ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 cups halved fresh mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes (not oil-packed)
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1. Rinse the meat with cool water and pat it dry with paper towels. Set aside. Place the water, wine, brown sugar, rosemary, bouillon granules, and black pepper in a small bowl, stir to mix well, and set aside.
2. Coat a large nonstick skillet with cooking spray and preheat over medium-high heat. Add the meat and cook, stirring frequently, for several minutes or until the meat is nicely browned. Remove the skillet from the heat, add the mushrooms, onions and sun-dried tomatoes, and stir it mix well. Add the wine mixture and stir to mix well.
3. Cover the skillet with aluminum foil and bake at 325 degrees for 1 ½ hours or until the meat is very tender. My meat was perfectly tender after 1 1/4 hours.
4. Serve hot over brown rice, noodles or whole-wheat couscous, if desired. Sprinkle some of the parsley over each serving.

Yield: 4 servings Per serving: 213 calories, 12 g carbs, 64 mg chol, 4.2 g fat, 2 g fiber, 28 g protein, 391 mg sodium, 32 mg calcium
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The Good Carb Cookbook is a picture-less, rather plain informational cookbook but the recipes look surprisingly good. This first recipe surely was a winner. The only negative was that there was hardly any liquid when this was done cooking. I cooked it the day before and I just added more water when I reheated it and that worked out fine. If you were eating it right away, the lack of liquid would probably not be a real problem.

I had a problem outside of the recipe - my noodles tasted stale. This is the third time I've had a stale pasta product recently. The whole-wheat couscous, some Dreamfields macaroni and now these whole wheat egg noodles. None of the products were expired or even close to it. And because I didn't know the noodles were stale-tasting until after I cooked them, I combined what was left in the bag with another partial bag of the same noodles. Now I'll have to toss them all. I'd take them back but I don't think I kept the bag from the stale noodles. Grrrrrr.

A Blast From The Past: Old-Time Beef Stew from February 2006. Another one of my favorites but much heavier than this recipe.

Question of the Day: Do you return 'bad' grocery products?

I have to start checking the extended forecast

Sauerkraut and Sausage
Southern Living Slow-Cooker Cookbook Copyright 2006

1 (32-ounce) jar sauerkraut
3 large garlic cloves, pressed I just peeled the cloves and added them
1 onion, chopped
1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled and coarsely chopped
¾ cup apple cider
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 (14-ounce) package smoke beef sausage, cut into 2-inch pieces I used turkey kielbasi

Combine first 10 ingredients in a 3-quart slow cooker. Add sausage. Cover and cook on LOW 7 hours.

Makes 4 servings.
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Last Wednesday, when I was planning this week's menu, a cold front had just come through. I thought that fall had finally arrived and I selected a few cool weather recipes. Well, summer wasn't quite finished and the temps have creeped back up into the 70s. I should be grilling, but I'm sticking to the menu.

Being of Polish ancestry, this type of dish is no stranger to me. Although, if my mother had put this together it wouldn't have included caraway seeds, apples, apple cider and probably not even garlic or brown sugar. But you know, it would have been good even without all the extras. A good smoked sausage cooked with just good kraut and onions is still pretty flavorful.

I wasn't sure if I should rinse the cabbage or not. The instructions didn't mention it and the package didn't mention it. I know some people do rinse it but I didn't. The kraut was a bit on the tart side but that's what the mashed potatoes are for - to balance out the tartness of the sauerkraut.

This is my contribution to Sweetnick's ARF/5-A-Day Tuesdays. I just learned an interesting tidbit from the World's Healthiest Foods Site - "the breast cancer risk of Polish women triples after they immigrate to the U.S., rising to match that of U.S.-born women". Polish women who consumed 4 or more servings of cabbage or sauerkraut during adolescence,were 72 percent less likely to develop breast cancer as adults. So feed your young daughters lots of cabbage. You'll protect their health and their innocence (since after eating all that cabbage, boys probably won't want to get to close to them).

That statistic is kind of scary. Although I know that anyone can get breast cancer, I've always felt a bit of relief that there was no family history of it, yet my parents were the first generation raised outside of Poland. They still ate a lot of cabbage while growing up. I probably ate more than the average non-Polish American in my lifetime but not several times a week, not even every week.

Only one more week until the the drawing for the cookbook giveaway!

A Blast From The Past: Here's another good cabbage recipe, one for Cole Slaw from July 2006.

Question of the Day: Is there a history of breast cancer in your family?

Welcome, Fall

Maple Walnut Cupcakes
The Artful Cupcake Copyright 2004

7 ½ oz. flour
5 oz. brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
4 oz. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 eggs
¼ cup pure maple syrup
¼ cup milk
I also added 1/2 teaspoon of maple flavoring
1 cup chopped walnuts I omitted these

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and prepare a muffin pan with paper baking cups.
2. Place the first four ingredients into the bowl of an electric mixer with paddle blade.
3. Cut in the butter, and beat until combined.
4. Add the eggs, maple syrup and milk.
5. Once mixed, add the walnuts.
From here, the recipe in the cookbook became Maple Walnut Streusel Cupcakes so I summarized how I finished them.
6. Fill the muffin cups and bake 15 to 20 minutes.

Maple Frosting
Favorite Brand Name Old-Fashioned Holiday Recipes Copyright 2004

4 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
¼ cup maple or pancake syrup
I also added approx. 1/2 teaspoon of maple flavoring
3 cups powdered sugar

In small bowl, beat butter and syrup until blended. Gradually beat in powdered sugar until smooth.

Makes about 3 cups.
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I bought these little leaf-shaped sprinkles last week and I had it in my head that I wanted to make maple cupcakes. I bought some maple flavoring so I knew I could turn just about any cupcake recipe into maple but I really wanted a recipe that also used maple syrup. Surprisingly I couldn't find anything in my cookbook collection (although I didn't search in every single book of course, just the obvious suspects). I did find this recipe at the library but it was for a streusel topped cupcake. I definitely wanted frosting so I just used the base and left out the walnuts, since we can't have nuts here.

I found several maple frosting recipes in my cookbooks. Several were for cooked versions and I admit I chickened out on trying one of those. I've never made a recipe like that, where everything is basically cooked and then cooled to spreading consistency, and recently I've read a few semi-horror stories of this frosting being difficult to work with (hardening too quickly).

For some reason, they only gave ounces for the flour and sugar yet in just about every other recipe, they're measured in cups. Sorry, I should have measured it out into cups after I weighed it but I didn't think of it. There are probably sites out there that will convert it for you if you don't have a food scale. I find a food scale to be valuble tool, though.

The leaves aren't very tasty, as pretty as they are, but I liked everything else, especially the frosting. These are very maple-y, since I used maple flavoring and maple syrup. The frosting is so flavorful, that it would have worked well over a plain yellow cake too. The frosting recipe actually went with a spice cake. That seems to be a popular match - maple frosting and spice cake. Personally, that doesn't appeal to me.

A Blast From The Past: Maple-Glazed Salmon from March 2006. A very different maple syrup recipe yet also very delicious.

Question of the Day: Do you own a food scale?