Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

March newsletter coming out!

March 28, 2013 by Mary Frances 8 Comments

Just in time for Easter! Sign up for the March newsletter in the upper right hand corner of this blog for a fantastic, never before seen (here) recipe for roasted duck and some other suggestions for your holiday meal.

And just to brighten up this post, I’d like to share with you my lunch salad from yesterday. It’s some frisee with red leaf lettuce topped with tomatoes, tomatillos, radishes and a half of a leftover pork chop with some toasted pepito seeds on top. Red wine vinaigrette finishes it off and voila! This is a healthy, satisfying lunch that carries you through to dinner!

LOVE’s Guest Post on Orgasmic Chef

March 26, 2013 by Mary Frances 12 Comments

We are excited to say that our LOVE blog has made a guest posting appearance on the most delicious Orgasmic Chef blog, down in Australia! We’re conquering the globe!

Her blog is a great source for “orgasmic” recipes – you’re reading that right – so go check it out (and say hello to Maureen for us while you’re there! Thank you, Maureen!).

Here is our post down under. Hint: Silky Chocolate Cake is the topic.

Vanilla pots

March 24, 2013 by Mary Frances 14 Comments

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks with Zach home on Spring break and many dinner and birthday parties. Our oldest celebrated his birthday on Friday with friends and today with us. He wanted to cook and just asked me to bring his favorite dessert, Vanilla Pots. A delicious, rich dessert but a little tricky to make and I really could have done a better job on these.

But first I have to tell you about his Friday night party where his friends cooked for him! His brother Zach made some exotic carrots and Zach’s girlfriend, Agata, made my artichoke dip recipe with some of these homemade pita chips I’ve been making recently. For some reason I was still up when they came home at 2:30 am. (I’ll tell you why – I had a straight up martini starting at 6 pm and then promptly fell asleep for 4 hours!!! I guess I was just a wee bit exhausted.) Anyway, Agata was so thrilled that her artichoke dip was such a hit. She couldn’t stop talking about it when they got home. People kept asking what was it, what was in it, putting it on their meat and vegetables, where could they get the recipe and on and on. Bottom line is, she made something that people LOVED and in turn, she felt the love back. All warm and fuzzy. You give it, you attract it.

That’s what it’s all about!

VANILLA POTS de CRÈME – adapted from Mark Bittman at the The New York Times
– serves 6

Mark says, as with all custards, this is best when removed from the heat when the center is still jiggly. It’s a leap of faith, but it’s the only way to get a perfectly creamy interior.

My additional note is to remove the cream from the heat just when tiny bubbles start, as I said, start to form. You do NOT want the cream to scald and certainly not to simmer or boil. If you do, start over because then you have broken the molecules to a degree that you have lost the sweetness and creaminess of the cream.

2 cups heavy cream, light cream, or half-and-half (I always use heavy cream)
2 vanilla beans or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Pour cream into small saucepan. Split vanilla beans in half lengthwise and scrape seeds into cream. Put pod in cream and heat cream until tiny, tiny bubbles start to appear around the edge of the pot. Cover pan, turn off heat and let steep for 15 minutes. If using vanilla extract, just heat cream and let it cool while you proceed.

Beat yolks and sugar together until light. Pour about a quarter of the cream (remove vanilla bean pod) into this mixture, then pour sugar-egg mixture into cream and stir. If you are using vanilla extract, add it now and stir. Pour mixture into six 6-ounce ramekins and place ramekins in a baking dish; fill dish with water halfway up the side of dishes. Cover with foil.

Bake 25 to 45 minutes, or until center is barely set. (Heavy cream sets fastest; half-and-half more slowly.) Chill, then serve.

I know I baked these too much – they were in for 28 minutes. Plus I divided them up into seven ramekins as we had seven people so maybe 23 -24 minutes would have been perfect. Mine still tasted great – but could have been even better.

Chicken goulash with biscuit dumplings

March 20, 2013 by Mary Frances 14 Comments

If you want to make something so fulfilling, creamy, and dreamy, make this dish. The flour coating of the chicken, which I normally don’t do (too fattening) and the sour cream in the dough and the sauce (also fattening) makes this so rich and satisfying. Combine all that softness with the crispness of the biscuits and the spiciness of the sauce — so so good.

This is more of a weekend dinner as it’s a bit more time consuming. And with another possible snow storm on the way, this is perfect cold weather food. You know you made a good dinner when your husband rolls over in bed the next morning and the first thing he says is, “That was a damn good dinner last night!”

Alright!

So here you go – this recipe is based on a recipe from Food and Wine magazine, but I have altered it. Their recipe calls for 2 tbs. of hot paprika. Well I made it like that the first time and we were all oozing sweat from the top of our heads!! I thought for sure it must be a typo but apparently not, as they just reprinted it as a favorite recipe in the recent March issue. Along with that, I have made other changes as well. Don’t be frightened by the dough – it’s really easy. Enjoy!

CHICKEN GOULASH WITH BISCUIT DUMPLINGS
– serves 4

2 lbs. skinless, boneless chicken thighs, (about 4 or 5) trimmed of all fat
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
5 tbs. cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
2 tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp. baking powder
2 1/2 cups homemade chicken stock or low-sodium broth
1 cup sour cream, divided
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs. hot Hungarian paprika
1 tbs. sweet paprika
3/4 tsp. caraway seeds
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme leaves

Preheat the oven to 425°. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and dust lightly with flour. In a deep skillet, melt 1 tbs. of the butter in the olive oil. Add the chicken and cook over high heat, turning once, until browned on both sides, about 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a plate.

Meanwhile, in a food processor, pulse the 1 1/2 cups of flour with the baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Pulse in the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Drizzle the 1/2 cup of the stock and the 1/2 cup of the sour cream over the dry ingredients; pulse until a dough forms.

Add the onion, bell pepper and garlic to the skillet and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, 3 minutes. Return the chicken to the skillet. Stir in the paprika and caraway seeds and cook for 30 seconds. Add the remaining 2 cups of chicken stock and 1/2 cup of sour cream and stir until smooth. Sprinkle the thyme over everything and bring to a boil.

Scoop twelve 3-tablespoon-size mounds of biscuit dough over the chicken. Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and the biscuits are cooked. Turn on the broiler and broil for about 2 minutes, until the biscuits are golden. Serve the goulash in bowls, spooning the biscuits on top.

St. Patty’s Day!

March 18, 2013 by Mary Frances 6 Comments

How was it for you? I hope you all enjoyed the celebration and showed your Irish LOVE!

When I was growing up, my very best friend, Beth, was 100% Irish. And here I was, 100% Polish. While everyone was wearing some green with their school uniforms, my mother wouldn’t let me. No siree. I was not Irish. I should be proud to be Polish and wear red on St. Patty’s Day!

Yeah, she made me wear red.

But, for dinner, she gave in and always made corned beef and cabbage. So I kept up the tradition and made it for lunch yesterday while we were still with Zach and Agata in the country.

So now Agata (who is from Poland), looks at my platter and says, “It looks like Polish food.”

No wonder my mother made it!

Corned beef and cabbage on a plate with a hroshradish cream sauce from Mar 17, 2013.

I made this nifty horseradish cream sauce (mayo and sour cream) with a little lemon zest that was really nice and cut the salt from the beef.

Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches

March 16, 2013 by Mary Frances 28 Comments

I have so much to write to you about. I’m really back logged. There is no lack of food or stories to share with you, just time to write and post them. And then there are some recipes that I really want to get to you now because they are cold weather dishes that are so yummy and while we still have it, before Spring descends upon us, I think you should have them available. But now I want to tell you about our lunch today. Our son Zach, with help from his lovely girlfriend, Agata, made it. Just look at this photo of chunky tomato soup and a two cheese (sharp cheddar and provolone) grilled cheese sandwich. This was so yummy!!! And this was something he wanted to make completely by himself with not a comment or an ounce of help from me. Of course I had to blow it and offer my two cents here and there and I was shooed out of the kitchen – he wanted no part of my advice as well as he should. He doesn’t need me, sad as I think it is, he is more than capable in the kitchen and for that I am so grateful. He never looked at a recipe. I did, before we went to the grocery store together. But he had his own ideas – damn good ones at that!

His tomato soup had onions, celery, (3 stalks), carrots, thyme, red pepper flakes and homemade chicken stock.

It was divine.