Teriyaki Chicken Made with Orange Marmalade

This simple recipe is from runnyrunny999 on YouTube.  Its just 3 ingredients all of which I had on hand and thought it would be a good way to use up my last jar of homemade marmalade and a few chicken tenders.  The teri is the shine and the yaki is the grilling and hence teriyaki is barbequed chicken but for a quick preparation you can do this in a non-stick skillet in about 15 minutes.  Its caramelized sweet soy and tangy orange glazed chicken without all the basting and waiting.  Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and scallions.  Serve with jasmine rice and your fav veggie.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb chicken boneless thighs or tenders
• 1/2 cup soy sauce (I like Kikkoman)
• 1/3 cup Orange Marmalade (homemade is best)

Method:

1. Salt and pepper chicken and heat 1 Tbsp vegetable oil in a non-stick skillet over medium high heat.
2. Saute chicken until lightly browned on all sides.  Remove chicken to a plate.
3. Add soy sauce and marmalade to the center of the pan and stir until smooth.  Cook sauce until it thickens and add back the chicken.
4. Continue cooking and turning the chicken pieces in the sauce until the chicken is done and the glaze is shiny.

Spinach Soup with Greek Yogurt in a Mug

You can’t get much healthier than fresh baby spinach soup with Greek Yogurt laced with plenty of fresh dill.  This is pure comfort food and all homemade!  Often I grab a mug of some soupy concoction for a quick lunch.  It may be tomato soup, chicken noodle or minestrone but always homemade so I know what is in it.  Fresh vegetables in season are just the ticket to a quick, delicious and nutritious soup like this spinach soup… loaded with iron and vitamins.  A mug lends a little portion control which is my major food challenge.  Even healthy food can be fattening if you over-do-it.

Spinach was pretty common in our house when I was a kid.  The Popeye cartoon series was all the rage then and parents exploited it so we had no choice but to eat it and learn to like it.  Mom drizzled a little vinegar on canned spinach to give it a little bright flavor and she  made fresh spinach frittatas (quasado) and spinach salads which were full of flavor. Early exposure is the trick to teaching children to eat vegetables.  Growing your own vegetables with the kids is another way to develop their taste for vegetables.  They’ll love eating what they have helped to grow…back in the day, we certainly did.

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Spaghetti Frittata – Pan-fried Leftovers

Spaghetti Frittata – Pan-fried Leftovers

Baked frittata is magnificent for a crowd but this quick pan-fried frittata, which takes less than 15 minutes to throw together and cook, is perfect for one or two servings as a light dinner with a green salad and glass of wine.  Its just a little less than one serving of leftover cooked spaghetti pasta, about 1/2 cup of leftover marinara sauce, leftover mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses plus 2 eggs.  The outside is crusty and buttery, and the inside is tender with lots of Italian flavor.  Garnish with fresh basil before serving.

Here’s how to do it:

Blend the leftovers in a bowl with the eggs, don’t forget the cheeses.  You shouldn’t need anymore seasoning if the marinara sauce was adequately seasoned when cooked. Use a 10-inch nonstick skillet and melt a tablespoon of butter or more over medium high heat, then pour in the pasta/cheese/egg mixture.  Let it cook undisturbed until the eggs set and the bottom is nicely golden brown.  The top will look slightly undone, not runny but not totally dry.  Slide the whole thing in one piece onto a plate bigger than the skillet.  Using hot pads or kitchen towel, invert the skillet over the plate.  Then flip the plate over so the frittata lands upside down in the skillet.  Return the skillet to the heat and cook 3 minutes more or until the bottom is nicely browned and crusty.  Slide the finished frittata onto the same plate you used for flipping and garnish with fresh basil.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Sourdough always makes me think of San Francisco or Anchorage.  After all it was the gold prospectors of the early 1900′s who made sourdough a staple of the last frontiers of our nation.  Often times the miners kept a ball of sourdough in their pocket so they’d always have the yeast to make a batch of bread or biscuits.

Not only is sourdough bread one of my true eating pleasures but growing my own sourdough starter and making other sourdough goodies is right up there on the accomplishment scale.    I love sourdough biscuits, pancakes, crepes, pizza crusts, sourdough spice cake and this basic sourdough cookie recipe.   It’s perfect for making oatmeal raisin cookies with crisp outsides and soft insides.  There’s just a tad of tang that plays nicely with the blue berry raisins and a hint of brown sugar that caramelizes on the outside.  The pecans add a bit of crunch.

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Cherry and Almond Loaf

Cherry and Almond Loaf

This was a spur-of-the-moment quick bread made with leftover frozen cherries and toasted almonds.  It turned out so moist and flavorful with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg along with the crunch of the almonds and sweetness of the cherries.  This recipe is adapted from a Hawaiian Mango Bread recipe I picked up a zillion years ago while traveling through Honolulu.  Just add chopped mango, coconut and macadamia nuts in place of the cherries and almonds and you’ll have Hawaiian Mango Bread.  Actually, you can use any fruit and nut you desire and come up with your own version.  Be sure to use the yogurt as it activates the baking soda and baking powder giving you a super light crumb instead of a dense and heavy mass.

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Homemade Dijon Mustard

After much research I found a recipe for homemade German mustard and just had to tweak it for my version of a Dijon mustard. Dijon is the mustard most often used in gourmet recipes and making it at home will save money and guarantee quality plus you’ll always know what is in it. Making your own condiments just couldn’t be easier when you start with a tried and true recipe. There’s lots of room to adapt this recipe to your particular tastes, so play around with it and make it your own. You might like to try tarragon vinegar or regular granulated white sugar, maybe some onion juice or garlic powder. I like to use this mustard in my homemade mayonnaise for some real zip.

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How to Make Sauerkraut in a Jar

I have a new batch of sauerkraut that will be ready next week, probably Thursday.  Easy Peasy method:  just shred cabbage on a mandolin, add salt (3 Tbsp per 5 pounds of cabbage), bruise the salted cabbage with your hands and pack it really, really tight into a jar. You want the juice to float above the cabbage at least 1 inch.   Place another jar inside to hold the cabbage under the juice…or use giant glass marbles (sterilized of-course).  Set it on your counter on a plate with a tea-towel covering.  Wait 10 or 12 days and voila, old world “sauerkraut”!  Refrigerate to stop fermenting.  Will keep in frig up to a month or longer.

 You can add Juniper berries to the fermenting cabbage for a real old-world flavor. Once the sauerkraut is ready, cook up some sauerbraten and add to a pot of hot sauerkraut cooked with chunks of apple and a teaspoon of caraway or fennel seeds.  Serve with mashed potatoes and homemade Dijon mustard.

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Homemade Papaya Jam Over Fluffy Pancakes

Papaya is available nearly year round here in Puerto Rico.  Unlike Hawaiian varieties, Caribbean papaya tend to be large…2 pounds or more is not uncommon. It’s a versatile fruit that can be used in all its stages of ripeness.

Drizzle lime juice over slices of fresh ripe papaya for a cool and refreshing breakfast…so good and loaded with vitamins and minerals.  Over fluffy pancakes papaya jam is to die for.  Green papaya makes a terrific chutney as piquant as you dare and even a pickled salad Filipino style.  A popular dish in the Polynesian South Pacific is lo’i lesi.  Its a papaya filled with coconut milk, a little cinnamon and raw sugar. Then it is wrapped in banana leaves and baked in an umu (underground oven). What a treat! Like pudding.  Polynesians also use shredded green papaya to tenderize lamb, beef, giant clams, octopus and conch.

This jam is even better with a few of the seeds thrown in.  The seeds become tender and have a slight peppery flavor when cooked.  They add a little more character to the jam, at least in appearance.

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Gingerbread Men Cookies without Molasses

Gingerbread cookies are a tradition at Christmas time.  They make terrific gifts for school parties, hostess gifts and neighbors.  So cute all dressed up in royal icing and candy hearts.  Molasses is typically used to make the dough but here in Puerto Rico its next to impossible to find Gramma’s Molasses and the Blackstrap Molasses available here in health food stores yields nearly a black cookie rather than a golden brown cookie.  Honey makes a terrific substitute as long as you use dark brown sugar which has a higher molasses content than light brown sugar.  After making a couple sample batches of dough I’m really pleased with the flavor and color achieved with honey and dark brown sugar…these cookies are just like Mom made way back when.

The El Coqui Rincon magazine was kind enough to advertise my cookies for sale in the November issue (check out http://elcoquirincon.com).  Each cookie is 4-inches tall, wrapped in a cellophane bag and tied with a red ribbon.  Orders are pouring in this week and I expect they’ll continue to come up until Christmas week.

The dough is quite soft so to roll it out I use parchment paper dusted very lightly with flour, then dust the top of the dough with a bit more flour and place plastic wrap on top.  Once the dough is rolled to about 1/8-inch I remove the plastic wrap, cut the cookies with a floured cutter, remove the excess dough and place the parchment with the cut-out cookies on a cookie sheet.  Pop the whole baking sheet of cut-out cookies into the freezer until they are firm.  This will prevent the cookies from spreading too much.  I got this idea from Laura Vitali’s video and I thought it was so clever.  When the oven is up to temperture 350° F. (180° C.) I bake the cookies for 18-20 minutes.

Do try this recipe and method.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1-1/2 cups butter (salted) (3 sticks as room temperature)
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 whole egg

Method:

1. In a medium sized bowl whisk the first 6 ingredients together and reserve.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter with the dark brown sugar until fluffy, add the honey and egg, beat well.  Gradually add the reserved flour mixture to the butter mixture.
3. Scrape the dough onto a large piece of plastic wrap sprinkled with flour and using the plastic wrap shape the dough into a rectangular package.  Refrigerate for 2 hours or up to one week.  Remove dough from frig when it is quite firm.
4. Preheat oven 350° F.  Roll dough 1/8″ thick and cut out gingerbread men using parchment paper as detailed in blog post above.  Chill cut-outs 20 minutes before baking.  Bake until golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes for my oven but your’s could be only 10 or 12 minutes.
5. Remove baking sheets and let set 5 minutes before removing cookies to a cooling rack.
6. Decorate cookies with royal icing when they are completely cooled.

 

Ginger and Starfruit Jam

Starfruit and Ginger Jam

Hurricane Sandy did a number on some of the beaches in Rincon, taking away the sand right down to the bedrock in some areas.  My friend, Judy, lost several beautiful fan-palms on the beach side of her home leaving an eight foot drop off.  Fortunately the rest of the property was intact and the fruit trees were unharmed.  Judy had one starfruit tree loaded with fruit so I brought home about 10 pounds of fruit for chutney and this jam.

Tropical fruits are very sweet when ripe with delicate flavors and its important not to overcook them or add ingredients that will overpower their intrinsic flavors.  A couple tablespoons of fresh grated ginger was all that was needed to turn a batch of starfruit into a jam with just a hint of sparkle.  Starfruit tastes like a strawberry with apple tones and has the texture of watermelon or ripe pear depending upon the ripeness.

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