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

POURfect Measuring Spoons & Curry Pho with Veal & Veggies

October 16, 2015 by Mary 7 Comments

My mother used to say, “You must have the right tool to do the best job.” How true that is – for anything! Well for cooking, there are measuring spoons and then there are these POURfect measuring spoons. Completely accurate – perfect for bakers where that accuracy really matters – a dream to use in that each spoon easily snaps on and off of the holding ring so you don’t have all of these dangling spoons all around while you’re trying to measure something, and all the sizes!!

First, there’s the 2 tablespoon size! Simple, but genius, because how often do you use 2 tablespoons? All the time!! Then, there’s the 11/2 teaspoon size and ¾ teaspoon – again genius. And I haven’t even gotten to the dash, pinch, smidgen, or drop measurements. Who knew there were real standard measurements for these? All these years, I just guessed!

And then there’s the leveling tool and the shiny surface area of the interior bowl of the spoon so ingredients slip out easily yet the rest of the spoon is matte so you have a better grip on it. The depression in the middle of the spoon is also so clever – a pourfect thumb grip! (couldn’t resist.)

Do I like these spoons?

You bet!

These spoons were designed when owner, Randy Kaas,unfortunately lost his sight in 2001. He had been in the kitchen utensil business since 1978 and was inspired by the TV show, The French Chef starring Julia Child. The need for a mixing bowl that wouldn’t spill when you couldn’t see what you were doing was recognized. POURfect Products solve common cooking problems making your life easier, less messy and more enjoyable.

POURfect measuring spoons are the only, Made in USA, 100% accurate spoons that snap off one at a time, have markings in English, Metric and Braille and are comfortable to hold. There isn’t another set of 12 measuring spoons that include all of these hard to find sizes.

Take a look at this luscious recipe I made recently featuring these spoons upfront as this has a lot of different ingredients, yet this soup comes together very quickly. I made this on a weeknight and it was perfect!

CURRY PHO WITH VEAL AND VEGGIES – serves 5 – 6

1 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, cut into quarters and then 1/4” slices
1 lb. ground veal
2 Tbs. curry powder
Salt to taste
10 cups vegetable broth or vegetable pho
5.5 oz. brown rice udon noodles
4 kale stalks – main artery removed, rolled and cut in a chiffonade
1/3 of a bunch of beet greens, stalks separated from greens, greens sliced thin
¾ of an orange pepper, cut in 1/3” squares
¼ cup chopped oil-cured black olives
1 tomatilla chopped
Handful of sorrel leaves, leaves sliced, stems chopped for garnish, or use sliced scallions

Warm the olive oil with the onions in a large skillet. Cover and sweat the onions for 5 minutes on low heat. Add the ground veal and brown partially, until just pink and broken up into small chunks. Add the curry powder and salt to taste. Stir well to combine.

Meanwhile pour the broth into a large soup pot and bring to a boil. Add the udon and cook 2 minutes less than the package directions.

Turn heat to low and add the meat and all the rest of the vegetables, except for the sorrel stems. Stir for a minute or two. Add the chopped olives and the very end.

Serve immediately in bowls with chopsticks and LOVE. Garnish with the chopped sorrel stems, or you could use thinly sliced scallions. Enjoy!!

POURfect 13-piece measuring spoon set was one of the products in our MARY’s secret ingredients fall box. You can get your winter box here! Make a great gift and helps us in our support of Feed The Children.

Chipz Happen Cinnful Sweet Heat Ice Cream Sandwiches

July 13, 2015 by Mary 17 Comments

Spicy, sweet, crispy and cinnamony, Chipz Happen Cinnful Sweet Heat Ice Cream Sandwiches have it all going, using these spicy cinnamon flavored corn chips!! This is the first product I want to talk about from the MARY’s secret ingredients summer box and it’s neatest company with the most interesting background story. This is the story of a mom who made homemade chips for her kids and extended family as just a part of their life. Then at the age of 73, with the urging of her children, together they set out and decided to spread the great taste of their mother’s creation to the rest of the world and formed this company, Chipz Happen! All flavors of Chipz Happen have no artificial ingredients, no trans fats, are made with all non-GMO ingredients, gluten-free, vegan and use only antioxidant rich rice bran oil. Whoa – that’s a whole good mouthful!!

Of course you can eat these chips right out of the bag – and with summertime grilling, they’ll go great with anything! But I created this super easy delicious dessert with them to beat the summertime heat.

Crush your chips, follow instructions, add some LOVE, and you’re all set!! (and enjoy the compliments!)

CHIPZ HAPPEN CINNFUL SWEET HEAT ICE CREAM SANDWICHES – serves 6

12 chocolate wafer cookies or any other thin, sturdy cookies you like
1 pint vanilla ice cream
1.5 oz. bag of Chipz Happen Cinnful Sweet Heat Tortilla Chips
Strawberries for garnish

Remove tortilla chips from the bag and crush.

Scoop out a good spoonful or 1/6 of the ice cream on a chocolate wafer, top with the other wafer, press down gently so you don’t break the cookies and then roll the ice cream sides in the crushed chips to coat. Place in a covered plastic container and freeze until ready to serve.

Serve with LOVE, on a plate, garnished with 2 strawberries.

Enjoy!!

I also used these chips, crushed, to garnish my Smoked Tomato Soup that I served at room temperature. The cinnamon flavor with the smoky soup was truly wonderful – and so different. The crunch of the chips added a great extra texture.

Experiment and have fun!! No matter, these chips are great!

Let’s talk about temperature

July 5, 2015 by Mary 16 Comments

I hope you all had a great July 4^th holiday weekend! We certainly did and the weather is glorious today, not too hot, actually amazing for July 5^th, with the temperature in the low 80’s accompanied by cool breezes. We are here in upstate New York and had our friends Margaret and Wayne over for dinner last night. Margaret said she had even turned on the heat yesterday in her house!!

For our meal, I followed my own instructions, if you got our recipe email from MARY’s secret ingredients for dinner suggestions for the 4^th. I made Barbecued Ribs, Corn on the Cob, Sweet and Sour Coleslaw, and I started our dinner with my Smoked Tomato Soup, (minus the Nueske’s sausage and Flathaus Cheese Straws) but decided to serve it at room temperature, which turned out to be a fantastic idea. Some time ago, I remember reading an article in Food & Wine magazine about famous chefs and their mentors. This one focused on April Bloomfield and she said her mentor taught her the most about temperature. Something she was making, she served way too hot. Her mentor said, in so many words, that all of the flavors were not blossoming with all that heat.

Well my soup, because the tomatoes were smoked and it contained smoky bacon, was actually intended to be served hot, but who wants hot soup on July 4^th? So then, I thought, I’ll serve it cold and it’ll be a different form of gazpacho. But no, I said to myself, that won’t work. Serving it cold would obliterate the beautiful bacony, smoky flavors that I had worked so hard to create. So after I pureed it, I just let it sit on a cool burner on the stovetop, letting it come to room temperature – and it was divine!!

I made this decision to take a leap of faith – fortunately we were with good, forgiving friends if it turned out to be a really bad idea. However, this was a really great idea! So I just thought I’d share.
This soup also contains one of our new ingredients from our summer box. You’ll find it to be surprising so stay tuned for the upcoming posts where I’ll reveal all of the great new products!

Let’s all appreciate our freedom and give thanks!!

Broth Bowls at Panera Bread

January 26, 2015 by Mary 22 Comments

Right before the holidays, I received an email invitation from a sweet Emma at Panera Bread to a Broth Bowl tasting. Hmm, broth bowls… sounded interesting. And now with this frigid weather we’ve been having, what could be better? The formal invitation arrived, positioning the event as “An Evening of Umami.” A small group of folks interested in food, nutrition and cooking gathered in this lovely loft in Chinatown. We were treated to a terrific presentation from their Culinary Institute-trained and former teacher, Dan Kish. Dan and his colleague, Mark McDonough, (Director of Product Development) traveled the world (wouldn’t I love to be them!) to research and pull together umami tastes, spices and fresh ingredients to create the newest four dishes, these broth bowls at Panera Bread. Then they served us our choice of broth bowl(s) for dinner, along with some lovely wine.

Here’s what I knew about Panera Bread. They started in St. Louis as the St. Louis Bread Company! I am originally from St. Louis, so you know, they have to be good.

Here’s what I learned. They’re now huge (1,845 cafes) and an incredible company! I mean, having Culinary Institute trained chefs create their dishes and also be concerned about their green footprint, is BIG. For instance, they’ve considered the repercussions of transporting the broth (water is heavy) to all locations or deliberated if it should it be concentrated and then concerned if it can it retain the taste, as well as, considered how to efficiently make the bowls out of components and achieve the desired consistency, using the least amount of energy through all of the processes. Their ingredients are nearly all organic – no antibiotics in the chicken and nearly all cage-free eggs. That’s huge! This “fast casual” food has been designed to be genuinely healthy, even low calorie and totally delicious! I mean this company is really doing amazing things to feed our bodies and take care of our planet. It is not easy to create healthy food available in about 5 minutes after you order at their counter. But boy if they can change our fast food culture into something this great, wouldn’t that be way cool? Really!!! Having healthy energetic people walk the planet exuding wonderful positive energy is just what we all need.

The problem is, is that I never knew any of these things about Panera. (I think they need us to do their marketing and to spread the word, don’t you think?)

So what exactly is Umami? I wanted a succinct answer. Here’s what the Umami Information Center says. (Yes, it’s true, there is one. Just Google it.) Taking its name from Japanese, umami is a pleasant savoury taste imparted by glutamate, a type of amino acid, and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products. As the taste of umami itself is subtle and blends well with other tastes to expand and round out flavors, most people don’t recognize umami when they encounter it, but it plays an important role making food taste delicious.

Could it be that fake Umami is monosodium glutamate – MSG? Well there’s none of that here.

Check out these broth bowls – they’re delish!!!

I particularly liked the quinoa lentil one with the hard boiled egg on top!

Roasted Vegetable Soup and Meat Buns

January 6, 2015 by Mary 27 Comments

For my birthday, back in November, one of the gifts from my boys was a meat grinder to attach to the KitchenAid that they gave me last year. This thing will grind meat, vegetables and even hunks of hard cheese – think Parmesan for pesto! I’m excited about that. So my husband has had this fantasy of recreating his grandmother’s meat buns. He’s talked about it for at least 20 years. I have no idea what he’s talking about, never having had a meat bun, nor did I grow up with knishes. So this was his project. I knew to get out of his way and spent the afternoon in my painting studio, working on a new canvas. He did, however, ask me to make a vegetable soup to complete our dinner.

Here he is grinding away. He used ground chuck and corned beef!

So I took out 4 cups of homemade chicken broth from the freezer and gathered a variety of vegetables from the fridge. I decided to oven roast the beauties first, to bring out their natural sweetness. Besides, I love making pretty arrangements on the baking sheet.

Look at this – so pretty!

And then at the very end, I threw in several handfuls of escarole. I LOVE escarole in soup, as long as it’s still bright green with a little crunch.

The meat buns, as Steve claims, were pretty good, not yet ready for prime time as they were not like his grandmother’s. So I’ll let him practice some more before turning over that recipe.

Do you have dishes from your grandmother that you long for?

After all the richness of holiday food, this soup can bring you to your senses with some good clean cooking. It is healthy deliciousness that will warm your innards and satisfy. To make, this soup was simple and quick. Can’t go wrong with that!

ROASTED VEGETABLE SOUP – serves 4

4 cups of chicken broth, preferably homemade
4 plum tomatoes, cored and cut in half
3 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and cut into 3” long pieces
2 parsnips, peeled, halved lengthwise and cut into 3” long pieces
5 cremini mushrooms
Handful of green beans, cleaned
Handful of okra, cleaned and top ends trimmed
1 shallot, peeled and cut in half, lengthwise
1/2 of a red bell pepper, cut into 1/2″ strips
1/4 of a fennel bulb, cut into strips
2 stems of rosemary
3 stems of thyme
4 leaves of escarole, washed and cut into 1” ribbons
1 Tbs. chopped Italian parsley

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Warm chicken broth in a medium sized saucepan.

Arrange all vegetables, except for the escarole and parsley on a baking sheet, along with herbs, drizzle on some olive oil, season with salt and pepper, toss to coat. Roast until not quite fork tender, about 12 – 15 minutes. You may want to remove some vegetables before others.

On a cutting board, cut the vegetables into bite size pieces, and add to the chicken broth, scraping all the juices and olive oil into the soup as well. Discard the herbs. Taste and correct seasoning.

Warm everything until it’s nice and hot. About two minutes before serving, stir in the chopped escarole to wilt. Portion out into 4 bowls, garnish with chopped parsley and serve with LOVE!

Happy New Year 2015!!! Porchetta with a Persimmon, Pomegranate and Frisee Salad

January 2, 2015 by Mary 20 Comments

Lunch the next day with leftovers!

It’s been a whirlwind year. I feel very blessed to have all of you in my life. It would be so grand to meet you in person one day. Perhaps some day!! But for now, being “blog/pen pals” is just great too.

Thank you for your support of MARY’s secret ingredients. It is my dream to make MSI into a really big business to be able to feed folks on both ends of the spectrum. To inspire home cooks of all experience levels with exciting new ingredients to spice up their cooking and to be able to help eradicate worldwide hunger, as we will donate 10% of our profits to Feed The Children, is what this business is all about. I hope we can succeed.

We all want to eat great food and making it at home assures that we know exactly what we’re putting into our bodies. My boys, having been raised around home cooking from all sides, are now quickly surpassing and teaching me new things every day. You know, when you’re young, you’re totally fearless and that’s where they both are now. They text me pictures of what they’re making, what they’re eating, how to do something better. It’s exciting to be constantly pushed by them to do new things. Now one of them is deep into bread making and trying to teach me actual “tests” to see if the dough has risen enough, rather than my seat-of-the-pants “feel” I learned from my mother.

And then don’t forget that intentions are just as important as actions. If you make your food with loving intentions, it will always taste better. It’s a bit of magic. Try it and you’ll see.

Our Christmas day dinner was shared with Agata’s family (Zach’s girlfriend). Her father came here from Poland in the early eighties when breadlines were the norm over there. He speaks English, the mother, not so much, so Zach said. And my Polish is limited to a few choice curse words that Zach says I even pronounce those wrong too, along with a few common phrases, learned from my parents. Agata, kind as she is, says I speak “old Polish.” (Zach has learned to speak Polish fluently.) This was our first meal of both families together and nervousness was running high, which was all totally unnecessary. It was a delightful evening without a pause in conversation. Her mom understands (seems to me) everything and was totally engaged the entire evening. Her father loves to tell stories and was a fan of my cooking. Her sister has a five year-old boy, named Justin, who couldn’t have been better behaved. Angelic, (which I’m told is not always the case) and just delightful!! He spent some time on the floor by the Christmas tree, drawing, explaining that there are green emeralds and red emeralds and that he was drawing a red emerald. (don’t you love it?!) A great time was had by all!

I made a fake porchetta, somewhat following a Melissa Clark New York Times recipe, but my older son recommended this method of cooking – and you know what? He was right. This pork was tender, juicy and delicious!! Some of us had thirds!

PORCHETTA PORK ROAST – serves 12

One 9 lb. bone-in, skin-on pork shoulder roast
¼ cup chopped fennel fronds
¼ cup chopped fresh rosemary
2 Tbs. chopped fresh sage leaves
7 garlic cloves, minced and mashed to a paste with the salt
1½ Tbs. kosher salt
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 heaping tsp. fennel seeds
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
½ tsp. black pepper
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Score skin and fat all over pork, taking care not to cut down to the meat.

In a food processor, combine fennel fronds, rosemary, sage, garlic, lemon zest, salt, fennel seed, red pepper flakes and black pepper. Pulse together. Pour in oil. Pulse again until it forms a paste. Rub all over pork, making sure it gets into all crevices. Cover the roast with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Remove pork from refrigerator 2 hours before you want to cook it. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Unwrap and transfer pork to a covered Dutch oven and roast for 2 hours and check on the moisture level in the bottom of the pan. You may need to add a little water. This method produced the juiciest meat! At approximately 4 hours, check with a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat. It should read 180 degrees, and the roast should be fork tender or check with a paring knife. Uncover the roast and place under the broiler to crisp the skin – watch carefully.

Transfer pork to a cutting board or platter and let rest 15 to 30 minutes before serving. Skim the fat off of the juices left in the pan. Taste and correct seasonings. Serve the juices warm with the meat. Make sure everyone gets some of the cracklings.

And then I served this salad with the pork, which was really divine. Persimmons are in season right now so find these flat bottomed beauties and be sure to make this soon as it will not disappoint. Different, with the bitter greens contrasting with the sweet sugared walnuts, pomegranate seeds and persimmons, this was an exciting alternative to sautéed apples with pork. This was also originally a New York Times recipe from David Tanis, but I have changed the greens to be mainly frisee replacing a lot of the chicory he calls for, as I thought that would just be way too bitter. Young chicory from the summertime might work, but not now – too tough and bitter for my taste. Everyone LOVED this salad so give it a go.

PERSIMMON, POMEGRANATE AND FRISEE SALAD – serves 10

4 oz. walnuts, about 1 cup
4 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. fleur de sel or other coarse sea salt, crumbled
2 shallots, finely minced
¼ cup sherry vinegar
Salt and pepper
6 Tbs. walnut oil
6 – 7 medium Fuyu persimmons, peeled
12 – 14 oz. frisee and radicchio leaves including a handful of chicory leaves, chopped into bite size pieces
1 cup pomegranate seeds

Make the sugared walnuts: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Put walnuts in a small bowl. Pour very hot tap water over the walnuts for 1 minute, then drain. Add sugar and fleur de sel. Mix to coat nuts evenly, then spread them on the parchment. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes, until crisp and caramelized. Cool, then break walnuts apart. (May be prepared up to 5 days ahead; store in the cupboard in an airtight container.)

Make the vinaigrette: Put shallots in a small bowl. Add a pinch of salt and the sherry vinegar. Let mixture steep for 10 minutes. Whisk in walnut oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Core and cut persimmons into 1/2-inch-thick wedges and transfer to a large platter with a well. Salt persimmons lightly, then dress with some vinaigrette. Add the frisee, radicchio and chicory leaves and gently toss with hands to coat leaves, pulling persimmon pieces to the top. Scatter pomegranate seeds over the top, along with any collected juices. Garnish with sugared walnuts and serve.

Our plate was rounded out with a sautéed polenta square.

We started with a bowl of Carrot Ginger Soup and finished with

a plate of Holiday cookies, Polish Poppyseed cake and Gingerbread. It was a great meal!!

Happy New Year to all!!!