Tag: recipe

This recipe is based on the Easy Chocolate Covered Cherries recipe from the National Cherry Growers & Industries Foundation. My wife and I spotted the recipe in the December 2007 issue of Everyday Food. We did go for an optional variant of the recipe that they mentioned and increased the size. We made this for a holiday get together with some friends and I have to say: “This was a triumph. I’m making a note here: huge success. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.”1

Ingredients

  • 4 – 10oz bottles of maraschino cherries
  • 1 – 750 ml bottle of vanilla vodka2
  • 24 oz chocolate chips

Directions

  1. Drain all the juice from the jars of cherries.
  2. Pour in the vodka over the cherries.
  3. Allow cherries to soak overnight or up to a week3.
  4. Drain the vodka.
  5. Pat the cherries down with a paper towel to dry them completely.
  6. Melt the chocolate chips over low heat in a medium sauce pan. Take care not to burn the chocolate.
  7. Once the chocolate is fully melted, dip the cherries into the chocolate.
  8. Swirl the cherries in the chocolate to get a good coating.
  9. Place the covered cherries onto a wax-paper covered cookie sheet.
  10. Refrigerate until the chocolate sets.
  11. Share and enjoy!

1 Portal rocks!
2 We used Smirnoff’s Twisted Vanilla.
3 Our cherries soaked in the vodka for approximately 12 hours and had a nice zing to them when we ate them.

This recipe is a favorite of Mark’s and mine that I got from the Everyday Foods magazine.

Indian-spiced Braised Chicken

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs (I use white meat)
  • 1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
  • 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes drained
  • 2 Tablespoons of tomato paste
  • 1 Tablespoon grated ginger
  • 2 minced garlic cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • course salt and ground pepper
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt (8 oz)
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/2 teaspoon garam masala (optional)
  • cooked white rice for serving

Directions

  1. In a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker, stir together chicken, onion, tomatoes, tomato paste, ginger, garlic, coriander and cayenne; season with salt and pepper.
  2. Cook on high 4 hours (or on low 8 hours) until fork-tender.
  3. Stir in yogurt, cilantro, and if using, garam masala.
  4. Serve with rice.

Alternative Oven Method

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Follow step 1, using a 5-quart lidded heavy pot.
  3. Stir in 2 cups of water.
  4. Cover; bake until tender, about 2 hours.
  5. Stir in yogurt, cilantro, and if using garam masala.

Notes

  • Serves 4
  • Prep time 15 minutes
  • Total time is 4 hours and 15 minutes

This rated a 10 out of 10 with Mark. If you can’t take spiciness then lessen the cayene pepper. I will have more recipes appear at Ariesna at live journal. Since I plan on more experimenting with new recipes. 🙂

A long time back my wife found a recipe for cooking up tilapia. It was fabulous. We thought the recipe had been added to this site but when we went to find the recipe to make dinner tonight; it was missing. Now I’ll be amoung the first to admit the search on this site doesn’t work as well as it should1. But I work with MySQL databases for a living and I poked around in the database this site runs off of without being able to find any trace of that recipe. So we did some searching and ended up using a different recipe tonight. To make sure we don’t have this problem again, I’m adding the recipe right now.

Parmesan-Crusted Tilapia

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • 2 teaspooons paprika
  • 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
  • 4 tilapia fillets (about 1 pound total)
  • 1 lemon, cut into wedges
  • Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground pepper

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400º.
  2. In a shallow dish, combine the cheese with the paprika and parsley and season with salt and pepper.
  3. Drizzle the fish with olive oil and dredge in the cheese mixture.
  4. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake until the fish is opaque in the thickest part, 10 to 12 minutes.
  5. Serve the fish with the lemon wedges.

© 2007 The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

1 I’ve even installed plugins specifically to try correcting this, without much luck.

Chocolate Brunch Waffles

Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup NESTLE® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
  • 3/4 cup butter
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • Toppings (whipped cream, chocolate shavings, sifted powdered sugar, fresh fruit, ice cream)

Directions

  1. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl.
  2. Microwave morsels and butter in medium, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH (100 percent) power for 1 minute; stir.
  3. Microwave at additional 10- to 20-second intervals, stirring until smooth.
  4. Cool to room temperature. Stir in milk, eggs and vanilla extract.
  5. Add chocolate mixture to flour mixture; stir (batter will be thick).
  6. Cook in Belgian waffle maker* according to manufacturer’s directions. Serve warm with your choice of toppings.

[Editor’s Note:] As a child one of my favorite things to have for breakfast was waffles. Unfortunately, we didn’t own a waffle iron so I almost never got to have them. Ariesna and I have had a waffle iron for a while now but our attempts at making waffles have been… less than entirely successful. We had been buying those box mixes at the store but the waffles made from them always sat like lead in our stomachs. Yesterday, we were talking about trying to make waffles again. Since I’ve had such good luck with AllRecipes.com; I went to their site to search for waffle recipes and found bunches of them. I copied several into an email and forwarded them to Ariesna. This morning she went through them and decided to make these Chocolate Brunch Waffles. They turned out scrumptious. Though I do have a couple of caveats about this recipe.

  • Be very careful not to overcook them or they come out crunchy.
  • The recipe makes a great many of the waffles. Come hungry or have something you can freeze them in.
  • While very tasty, these waffles are still have something of a bread-like texture and aren’t as light/fluffy as the ideal waffle should be.

The apartment complex Ariesna and I live in is located directly behind a grocery store. The store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except for a couple of holidays). Given it is only about a 5 minute walk to get inside the store; we tend to leave the decision of what to have for dinner till it is time to make dinner. The upside is we don’t have to keep a lot of food around the house and we can get fresh meats/fruits/veggies for dinner. The downside is we are frequentally tired after work and just grab some sort of box meal, like Hamburger Helper, as we don’t always feel up to doing real cooking. Tonight, like many nights, neither one of us knew what we wanted for dinner. I started poking around online looking for a recipe to try and found the following recipe AllRecipes.com.

Beef Peach Pie

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup chopped onion
  • 1 cup soft bread crumbs
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 pinch pepper
  • 1 (15 ounce) can sliced peaches, drained
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon ketchup
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. In a medium bowl, mix together the ground beef, egg, milk, onion, bread crumbs, salt and pepper. Press into a 9 inch pie pan like a crust.
  3. Prick meat all over using a fork.
  4. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven.
  5. Remove from the oven, and pour off any excess fat.
  6. Arrange the sliced peaches over the beef.
  7. Mix together the vinegar, ketchup and brown sugar, and spoon over the top of the peaches.
  8. Bake for an additional 20 minutes.
  9. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before serving.

NOTE: This recipe is copyright 2006 Allrecipes.com and not CC licensed like all of my works on this site.

I think Ariesna mostly made this dish to humour me. She hates peaches. But from the moment she pulled it from the oven, I was sure we had a winner. The scents coming off the pie were mouthwatering. Then I got myself a plate, a fork and took a bite.

Oh. My. Gawd. It was GOOD! The brown sugar mixture carmelized over the meat creating a heavenly glaze. And the juices of the peaches soaked throughout the meat, every bite was delectable.

AWelkin, does this dish sound good to you? We’re thinking about making it again when you and Bryon come over on Friday.