Category Archives: Recipes

Dining, Recipes

When Mushrooms Go Wrong + Recipe: Gruyere Cream Cheese Mushroom Soup

I love mushrooms. I love their earthy taste especially when roasted. I love that they are capable of absorbing and releasing flavors depending on the dish. Deep-fried, stir-fried, braised, stuffed, stewed, grilled, or even raw, I’ll add a fungus to my dish any time the opportunity presents itself.

I have several mushroom soup recipes in my collection in an attempt to squeeze out as much shroom flavor from the edible fungi. One of my fave varieties is the shiitake mushroom. Shiitakes cook very well, and have a sweet-smoky-earthy taste that I enjoy with herbs and especially garlic. Since I started off the 2018 year stricken with laryngitis, my food consumption options were limited. Liquids were the least painful medium to get some nutrition into me.

I’ve whipped up a couple of slow-cooker mushroom soup recipes, working with standard whites, baby bellas and shiitakes tossed in homemade turkey broth along with garlic and some form of dairy. In my most recent attempt, I roasted a 30oz batch of shiitakes then immersion blended it in along with aforementioned liquids.

The result was too strong to be edible for most folks. Shiitakes are already naturally earthy and smoky, but it seemed too much made for an overwhelming amount of acrid smokiness in a soup that should have been creamy-but-mildly earthy. Nearly 2lbs of shrooms resulted in a thick, gloppy concoction…and even my attempts to puree it in my Oster blender still left a slight grittiness to it.

Not good if your throat is still recovering from severe inflammation and is prone to irritation.

So let that be the lesson…there is too much of a good thing, even if it is mushrooms.

  • 2 tbsp Extra Light virgin olive oil
  • 3.5oz Neufchatel, 1/3 less fat cream cheese
  • 3oz gruyere cheese, shredded or grated or cubed
  • 16oz white mushrooms, sliced
  • 8oz heavy whipping cream (non-dairy: almond, coconut milk)
  • 24oz of homemade turkey stock (chicken, beef okay too)
  • .5 tsp xanthan gum (for thickener)
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • .5 tbsp ground black pepper
  • .25 tsp sea salt
  • 8oz baby bella mushrooms

Simmer turkey broth and cream in slow cooker over high heat for 15-20 minutes.

In a pan over medium heat, toss 16oz of white mushrooms in olive oil until softened and fat is absorbed. Remove from stovetop and pour into slow cooker. Using an immersion blender, puree mushrooms until liquid is thick and shrooms are incorporated. Take care, this mixture is hot!

Add the rest of the ingredients, including whole bellas, and slow cook for 2-4 hours.

When ready to serve, sprinkle with chopped parsley and shredded parmesan cheese, or make oven-roasted cheese crisps.

Nutrition calculator:
Calories 137 (per 4oz serving)
Total Fat 10.7 g
Total Carbohydrate 5.1 g
Dietary Fiber .7 g
Sugars 1.6 g
Protein 4.9 g

Dining, Recipes

Recipe…for Pasta Disaster

I don’t know what it is…but every few months or so I go back to cooking pasta in the slow cooker.

It never EVER ends well.

Most pastas just don’t take very well to long and slow cooking. And the type of slow cookersco use don’t have timers.

I get excited when I find the perfect recipe for bechamel or cream sauce, whip up a batch, dump it along with uncooked pasta in the cooker, then set it and forget it.

Two hours later…

The result is usually some cheesy sodden mush that would likely impress children, but not their parents. Which is a damn shame given the time and dollars I wasted sourcing the best ingredients…only to have it end in an ugly overcooked pile.

So this is a note to self: stop making pasta in the slow cooker.

And before I embark on that slow cooker lasagna recipe…do more research!

Dining, Recipes

Recipe: (Almost Great) Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Oh yeah…this is (almost) it. The perfect chocolate chip cookie is within my grasp…if only I can make it sugar-free, but there’s something marvelous in the chemistry of brown sugar + white sugar that results in the texture and taste of an awesome chocolate chip cookie. Sugar-free sweeteners just can’t compare, not to mention they can’t nail down the molecular magic that comes from using real sugar.

After poring over tests, photos and baking instructions in the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Guide and tweaking King Arthur’s gluten free recipe, I’ve come up with this list of ingredients and baking guidelines that is repeat baking-worthy, even if it doesn’t provide instant gratification (unless you’re the type to eat raw cookie dough).

There are some tools required for this endeavor to be successful: a stand mixer, a cookie scoop (1 or 2 oz), baking sheet and cooling rack (silicone mat optional), an oven that heats up to reliable temps, and fridge space to store the cookie dough overnight.

I’ve halved the King Arthur recipe to better suit the robust appetites of 2 cookie-loving adults, not to mention control batch sizes and reduce cookie scooping when baking.

  • 113g salted butter
  • 107g brown sugar
  • 37g coconut sugar
  • 40g stevia baking blend
  • 10g granulated white sugar
  • 1 teaspoons gluten-free vanilla extract
  • 2 jumbo eggs
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 181g King Arthur Gluten-Free Flour (ensure this mix has no xanthan gum included)
  • 1 teaspoons xanthan gum
  • 227g chocolate chips (I’ve used 4oz chocolate chunks and 4oz stevia sweetened chocolate chips)

In a stand mixer, beat the butter, sweeteners, vanilla and salt till runny. Add eggs one at a time, while scraping and beating until combined.

In separate bowl, mix flour blend, xanthan gum, baking powder, and baking soda.

Add dry ingredients into the wet mixture, then fold in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed.

Cover the dough and refrigerate overnight, which will solidify the dough mix. This part is also critical to fully developing the flavor of the cookie. 

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a baking sheet with a nonstick cooking spray (I used a coconut oil spray) or use a silicon mat.

I highly recommend baking 1 or 2 test cookies to account for oven temperature and rack placement before proceeding with batch baking. Once you’ve achieved your perfect test cookie, scoop balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheet, leaving space to spread between them.

Bake the cookies for 9-10 minutes, until golden brown. Again oven temps and baking surfaces may vary your results. But I’ve found that I can pull my cookies at the 9 minute mark and let them sit in the pan up to 5 minutes. Afterwards, I transfer them to a rack to cool. Don’t let it cool completely though…coz, there’s nothing more delightful to eat than a warm, soft-melty, crisp-around-the-edges chocolate chip cookie.

 

 

Dining, Recipes

Recipe: Smoked BBQ Ribs

It’s no secret that we’re in love with smoking on the Big Green Egg. And with our handy ThermoWorks gear, (i.e. DOT and Thermapen Mk4 both in screamin’ Green) smoking and grilling to temperature has gotten a whole lot more accurate.

So when I spotted a post on ThermoWorks blog about competition style BBQ ribs, I just had to put our BGE to work reproducing those delicious BBQ pork ribs.

We sourced our pork ribs from two vendors: our local Kroger grocery store (for back loin ribs) and a butcher shop, Matador Meats, in Plano (for St Louis cut ribs).

I applied our cajun-style dry spice rub to the ribs and refrigerated until we were ready for meat to hit the grill.

Here’s a reprint of my Cajun/Blackening Spice recipe:

  • 2-3 tablespoons paprika
  • 2 tablespoons chili powder
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes, ground cayenne, or a dash of ghost pepper
  • 1-2 tablespoons garlic powder
  • 1 tablespoon onion powder
  • 1/2 to 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon oregano
  • 1 teaspoon basil (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon cumin (optional)
  • 1-2 tablespoons brown sugar

We primed our BGE to cook low and slow at no more than dome temp of 250F, using oak chips and lump. We had at least 3 temperature probes monitoring meat temperatures during the 8 hour smoke. When the the temps hit 165F, we pulled them from the BGE for the wrap portion of the cook.

Our go-to sauce is Trader Joe’s Organic Sriracha & Roasted Garlic BBQ Sauce, and we slathered this on the ribs in their foil wrap, before returning them to the BGE for the final march to 200F.

The result: tender, pull-apart sweet-spicy pork ribs that easily fell off the bone.

 

Dining, Recipes

The Fried Onion Experiment Part 2

For the second fried onion experiment, I dabbled in a little potato starch, a potato starch/baking soda mix, and used coconut oil as a frying medium.

Also Texas sweet yellow onions and a batch of pre-cooked chicken gizzards would be objects to be dredged, egg-washed and fried up for testing.

Results: potato starch = bad for solo coating. It was clear that as soon as the potato-coated onion ring hit the oil that it wasn’t going to develop the crisp exterior that I aimed for. The potato simply began to flake away, almost like pastry bits, and never formed the crunchy shell I hoped for.

The potato starch/baking soda mix also had no effect on the final fried onion, neither puffy or crisp as I had predicted. Because of this, I relegated the potato starch as the first dredge in a 3-step process, with tapioca starch becoming the final dredge prior to the hot oil drop.

The outcome was similar to last week’s experiment with deep frying with tapioca starch, with onions and gizzards emerging from frying with light and crisp coatings. My only complaint was that the onions weren’t sharp enough for my liking.