Sponsored Schtuff
More Cooking Schtuff
RSS Schtuff
The Recipes
Main dishes. Side dishes. Desserts.
Over 155 recipes for you to peruse - and more coming all the time!
The Photographs
Pictures, pictures and more pictures.
Join me in my journey with a Nikon D90 (and a very tolerant family).
The Rest
Spin Cycle. RTT. Family.
Click here for a sampling of everything else. A little of this, a little of that...
Archive for the ‘Texas’ Category
I’ve been in a funk lately.
A funk I’m sure is hormonal; I’ll spare my male readers detailed descriptions of the increasingly bizarre fluctuations of my menstrual cycle – let’s just say it ain’t pretty. At any rate, yesterday afternoon my entire body, to say nothing of my brain, began screaming:
CHOCOLATE!!!!
Realizing that this hormone-driven chocolate obsession is neither going to fade any time soon nor be satisfied with several dozen a bite-size Snickers bar, my feverish middle-aged brain began to look for ways to enjoy some rich, chocolate-y goodness for more than 30 seconds.
The answer was nearly immediate, to say nothing of delightful:
Texas Sheet Cake.
Texas Sheet Cake is often known by other names, depending on your geographic location – simply Texas cake, Texas Brownies, Texas Brownie Cake, Texas Sheath Cake (no, we won’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole). What it is, though, is a pan of moist, sweet, chocolate-y goodness that is extremely easy and super-quick to whip up from scratch.
Which is the only way to make it, really.
This is my tried-and-true recipe – the way Texas Sheet Cake is supposed to be enjoyed. You don’t even have to get out your electric mixer; you can mix up this cake by hand in a jiffy. There are all sorts of recipes for this cake all over the internet, so if you find one you like better, that’s fine – but if it calls for sour cream and walnuts, it just isn’t the real deal.
Note: This recipe calls for regular, salted butter. I don’t normally use salted butter, so if you’re like me and use unsalted butter, add 1/4 teaspoon table salt (or 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, which is what I use).
Texas Sheet Cake
makes a big, wonderful cake
2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup canola or other vegetable oil
1 cup water
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease and flour a 13x9x2-inch baking pan.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda and cinnamon, and set aside. Stir together the remaining ingredients in another bowl. Gradually add the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, stirring until you have a smooth, rather thin batter.
Pour into your prepared pan, and bake at 400°F for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
While the cake is baking, prepare the frosting.
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk (whole, 2% or skim – doesn’t matter)
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup butter
1 pound confectioners’ sugar, sifted (about 4 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
Mix the milk and cocoa in a large, heavy saucepan, stirring very well to mix. Add the butter and, over medium heat, stir until the butter melts. Remove from heat and gradually stir in the sugar and vanilla until smooth. Stir in the pecans.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, carefully spread the frosting evenly over the hot cake.
So, here I sit in the hotel in French Lick, Indiana for the last time. Checkout is at 1 p.m. Beloved is coming to get me and I’ll join him at the client site for the remainder of the working day, then we are driving to Louisville, Kentucky for the night. Tomorrow, we drive home.
This is my last chance at room service, which I am convinced is the greatest invention in the history of all mankind. If I didn’t think the company bookkeeper would kill me, I’d order one of everything.
Oh, wait – I am the company bookkeeper.
Well.
Anyhoo, I can’t go a whole week without boring you all to tears with a new recipe, so here’s this weeks: Texas Caviar. Popularized by Helen Corbitt, the famed 1950s food consultant and cookbook author who directed food service at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, it isn’t really caviar, of course, it’s really more of a salsa. And my, oh my – is it tasty. Even if you’re not a fan of black-eyed peas – silly you! – you’ll like this. It’s absolutely marvelous with good, crisp tortilla chips.
Texas Caviar
serves me and Beloved if you’re not quick
2 cans black-eyed peas
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small can of chopped green chiles
dash – or two – of your favorite hot sauce
2 tablespoons minced onion
2 tablespoons minced celery
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup thinly sliced green onion
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro, minced
2 plum tomatoes, diced
Drain peas, rinse with cold water and drain again.
Combine olive oil, chiles, hot sauce, onion, celery, vinegar, salt and pepper, and mix well. Pour over peas and stir gently. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight, if possible.
At serving time, add the green onions, chopped tomatoes and cilantro, and stir gently to mix. Serve with tortilla chips.
I made cheese enchiladas this weekend. I had good excuses – I was craving good Mexican (to say good Mexican restaurants are scarce in my neck of the woods is a bit of an understatement) and Cinco de Mayo is tomorrow. And as we ate them with homemade pinto beans and some southwestern spoon bread (because I have yet to master good Mexican rice), Beloved and I were sort of “meh.”
“They’re okay,” Beloved said. “But they’re not as good as they usually are. I don’t know why.”
I do – there was no beef chili on them. The enchiladas I made Saturday were just plain cheese with a homemade chili gravy (note: I loathe, hate, detest, despise and am repulsed by canned enchilada sauces). Usually when I make cheese enchiladas, it’s because I have leftover chili to pour on top of them…and leftover chili makes a cheese enchilada extraordinary. In fact, when I’ve had Jolly someone request enchiladas, I’ll make a recipe of my chili without beans especially for it. A pain in the ass? Maybe, although they’re still easier than my Chicken Molé Enchiladas (a post for another time) but my, oh, my – are they good?
Yes. They are.
Beef and Cheese Enchiladas
serves 4 – 6
12 corn tortillas
1/3 – 1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 recipe beef chili, without beans
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Lightly spray a 9 x 13 glass dish with cooking spray.
In a small skillet, heat the oil – but not too hot. You’re going to soften the tortillas, not fry them. When hot, dip a tortilla into the oil for about 10 – 15 seconds with a pair of tongs, just enough to soften it. Remove the tortilla with the tongs, letting the excess oil drip off. Place the tortilla flat in the dish, place a handful of cheese down the center, sprinkle with the chopped onion and roll up, leaving the enchilada seam side down.
Repeat with the remaining 11 tortillas. Cover with the beef chili, and sprinkle with the remaining cheese (you should have about a cup or so left) and any remaining onions.
Bake for 10 – 20 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and the enchiladas are heated through. Serve immediately.
Friday is the first day of Spring.
Can I get an “Amen”???
AMEN.
And I’m not even religious. But, oh, I am sick to death of winter.
In Autumn, I begin to crave hearty, warm dishes like chili and turkey with dressing and sweet potatoes. Stew, freshly baked bread and warm apple pie. In the Spring, the opposite happens and I begin to anticipate the arrival of fresh sugar snap peas, rhubarb, blueberries and Spring lettuces. And while I daydream about tender young asparagus marinated in a light but lively vinaigrette or a freshly baked strawberry shortcake, mostly my thoughts stray to salads.
Wonderful big salads of mixed greens and nuts. Spinach salads with red onion and freshly sliced mushrooms. Hearty salads with grilled chicken, sliced apples and slivered almonds. Fruit salad. Coleslaw. Potato salad.
One of my favorite salads, and one of my family’s favorites, this is a hearty entree salad that is entirely appropriate for this time of year, when we are yearning for the lighter meals that come with the fresh greens of Spring…but they’re not quite here yet. I don’t know where she got the recipe, but this taco salad is one my mother served several times every summer when I was growing up – our kids love it too (with the exception of The Young One, who never met a leafy green vegetable he didn’t view with suspicion). It is tasty and filling (to say nothing of super simple), but fulfills my craving for salad when the real deal is still a few weeks away.
Note: Ranch Style Beans are mostly available only in the south and southwest – at least I’ve not been able to find them in the northeast. If you can’t find them, no matter what, you can substitute canned pinto beans, chili beans or kidney beans. It just won’t be quite the same…still good, just not quite the same. But use the Ranch Style Beans if you can find them.
Taco Salad
serves 6
1 pound ground beef
1 envelope taco seasoning (McCormick is good if you can find it)
1 bag pre-wahsed salad greens
1 can Ranch Style Beans, well-drained
1 medium tomato, diced
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Kraft® Catalina Salad Dressing
Fritos®
Prepare the ground meat with the taco seasoning per the package instructions; let cool to room temperature.
Empty the salad greens into a large salad bowl. Top with the drained beans, tomato, taco meat and cheese; toss lightly.
Divide into six salad bowls. Drizzle each salad with the Catalina and garnish with a handful of Fritos.
My sister-in-law, Tough Yankee Broad, spent the last week visiting a girlfriend and her husband who have moved to Missouri. They took her out to eat several times, mostly to eat barbecue (the husband is big on barbecue apparently). Our conversation (via Yahoo IM) went like something this:
TYB: They sure are big on BBQ out there, and so is M – personally I don’t care if I see anymore BBQ sauce till Labor Day – and that might just be too soon.
Me: ROFLMAO – I miss barbecue!
TYB: For me, a little BBQ sauce goes a long way and the places we went to seemed determined that the chicken had to drown in the stuff before it was cooked and then eaten! It was like it had simmered in in a gallon of sauce.
At that point I went, well, ballistic. If you think I’m picky about chili, you haven’t seen anything until I go off on a tangent about barbecue. I once wrote an email to a restaurant that claimed to have “authentic Texas barbecue” (because, excuse me, it wasn’t) that was apparently so scathing they took the claim off of their menu.
Just to be perfectly clear, barbecue is not a sauce; it’s a method of cooking. The sauce is almost incidental. To whit, the definition of barbecue that is accepted by most authorities is “meat or other foods, cooked in close proximity to a fire of coals or wood, usually with a sauce applied.” Note that it does not say “always” (to say nothing of “drowned in sauce”); in fact, I’ve had some damn fine barbecue meat only dressed with a dry rub or even just plain, with a little sauce served on the side if you want it. Even then, the sauce is usually not applied until the last 15 minutes or so of cooking – any good barbecue sauce is going to contain sugar (but not too much) and/or tomatoes. The sugar will burn and tomato can become bitter with long cooking.
Barbecue purist say you can’t call it barbecue unless it’s slow-cooked in a pit all day, but most of us are not quite that stringent (who wants to have to dig a pit in their back yard?) – a barbecue grill is certainly sufficient. Having said that, if you have a gas grill you’re stretching it – real barbecue should be cooked over a wood embers or charcoal.
As I mentioned earlier, unless you’re a Kansas City Barbecue fan (and I won’t hold it against you if you are…you poor thing), barbecue sauce isn’t supposed to be real sweet. It should have a good tang to it, and if you’re a hot head it’s perfectly okay for it to have a some kick. If you’re going for a bottled sauce, the original Sweet Baby Ray barbecue sauce is pretty good, although a tad on the sweet side (they also make some damn fine marinades/mopping sauces that the barbecue sauce compliments wonderfully), but if you want to make your own, this one is pretty damn good. It lends itself well to modification, too, and makes a ton. The original recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon dried mint, but I tend to object to mint in barbecue sauce. But give it a whirl, if you want.
Barbecue Sauce
3 cups chopped onion
1/4 cup honey
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup chopped, fresh parsley
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 cup dry white wine
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
2 cups ketchup
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce, or to taste
Place all ingredients in a heavy saucepan or Dutch oven and bring to a boil. Cover and cook, at lowest simmer, for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Slow cooking is the secret of this sauce. If your sauce should become too thick, thin it with a little white wine.