Pioneer Woman Homemade Ranch Dressing

In the mood for salad and having all the ingredients on hand, but dissatisfied with store bought ranch dressing, Devin asked me to find out how restaurants make their ranch salad dressing.


I use a variety of salad dressings depending on my current mood, so maybe that is why I don't particularly pay attention to how a restaurant's ranch salad dressing tastes. In any case, store bought ranch dressing works for me, but in the interest in satisfying Devin's craving for restaurant-style ranch dressing, I turned to the Pioneer Woman's Homemade Ranch Dressing. Made of a base of mayonnaise, sour cream, and buttermilk (I had regular milk), with a few standard fresh herbs, this dressing can be easily suited to your personal tastes. On my first attempt, the raw garlic was a little too strong, so I don't add as much on my subsequent trials of this ranch dressing. In any case, Devin deems this homemade ranch dressing as pretty close to the restaurant version and it is deliciously creamy and flavorful with the fresh herbs, so it's a keeper. It can be made thick as a dip or thin as a dressing, depending on the amount of milk (or buttermilk) used.

In any case, I highly recommend the Pioneer Woman's website for amazing photos and witty posts.

Exquisite Pizza Sauce

Since discovering this recipe on AllRecipes, I have made this pizza sauce almost every single week and our consumption of commercially-made pizza has gone down significantly. On my first few attempts at making Exquisite Pizza Sauce, I deliberately omitted several ingredients: onion powder because I do not care for the taste of powdered onion (but have added finely chopped onion when I have it on hand) and anchovy paste because Devin will only eat seafood if it has been fried or if it is tuna from a can, and even then is seafood a last resort for him.


At this point, I think Devin will realize what I have been doing with that suspicious tube of anchovy paste in the fridge these past couple of weeks, SURPRISE! Yes, it is true that I finally started to add the requisite anchovy paste to this sauce, as directed on the recipe. When I omitted the anchovy paste, my tongue would start watering immediately upon tasting the sauce on its own because it was so sour. It's true that after allowing the sauce to rest and then baking it, the sourness toned down, but it was still off. I took the plunge in investing in a tube of anchovy paste when I happened upon it at the grocery store. I wasn't going to seek it out if I knew Devin would be strongly against it, yet there it was beckoning to me. Admittedly, anchovy paste from a tube sounds pretty gross (meat in solid form should not be mushed into a paste before it enters your mouth), it is an unappetizing shade of dark grey with tiny lumps of black, and it smells like it should, which is not to say it smells particularly pleasant. But it does wonders for the exquisite pizza sauce, mellowing out the sour tones and giving it richness. And come on, the recipe only needs 1 teaspoon, that hardly qualifies as ingesting fish. The 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste does wonders!


So what do I do with this Exquisite Pizza Sauce? Make pizza, of course! I know I fail as a true cook by using refrigerated pizza dough, but give me a break, I come home after 8 hours of work and have an hour to make and eat dinner before I am due in class. Making the pizza sauce the night before not only saves time when I actually assemble the pizza, but it allows the herbs and spices to fully flavor the tomato paste. With the pizza sauce prepared the night before and using refrigerated pizza dough, assembly and baking only takes a total of about 20 minutes. It is quicker, cheaper, and more delicious than ordering pizza for delivery. Additionally, adhering to the measurements as indicated on the Exquisite Pizza Sauce recipe provides the two of us with enough sauce for two pizzas using the refrigerated pizza dough. Quick, easy pizza two times a week? Yes, please!


Sometimes when we have string cheese in the refrigerator, I assemble the pizzas as cheese stuffed, pushing out the edges of the refrigerated pizza dough and inserting the sliced string cheese.


After flattening the edges of the pizza dough and placing the quartered string cheese along the edge, I simply roll the edges of the dough over the cheese and seal the cheese in by pressing the crust into the body of the pizza dough.


Devin doesn't like pizza that is heavy on the pizza sauce (this particular pizza looks a bit over-sauced), so one batch of Exquisite Pizza Sauce usually makes two pizzas with some sauce left over (good for dipping the crusts).


For the past couple of months, I have really been enjoying green bell peppers on my pizza. Even though Devin is an omnivore, we rarely have meat in the apartment (other than lunch meat), so when I make pizza, he often has a simple cheese pizza (maybe this is the reason he likes to go out to eat so often...).


A drizzle of olive oil along the crust and a bit over the cheese, twelve minutes in the oven, and it's done! This picture makes me crave pizza right now. Good thing I have some Exquisite Pizza Sauce in the freezer right now!

Fried Rice Restaurant Style and Honey Walnut Shrimp

My mother doesn't cook, but my grandmother definitely cooks, a lot, and all day long; you have to when you're feeding a family of eight. My Oma cooks Indonesian food because that's where she grew up, although we are Chinese. Unfortunately, I have not had the pleasure of learning how to cook from her, so I kind of have to wing it on my own when I want to eat dishes reminiscent of my childhood.


This is definitely not my Oma's nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice) which is sweet from the kecap manis and has chicken, pork, and sometimes shrimp. Deviating from the familiar fried rice that I grew up eating, I used the Fried Rice Restaurant Style recipe that I found on AllRecipes and altered that recipe even further by using brown rice and cooking it in vegetable broth. Although the recipe takes about half an hour from start to finish, I cook the rice the night before and then refrigerate it overnight to prevent the rice from getting soggy. From making this dish several times, I learned that using freshly cooked rice to make fried rice leads to clumpy and unevenly seasoned fried rice because of the moisture content of the fresh cooked rice. I love making fried rice because the dish is incredibly forgiving; you can put anything into it and it will usually turn out pretty good. In the version above, I tossed in whatever frozen vegetables happened to be in the freezer at the time, a crushed garlic clove, and an egg or two. Also, precise measurements aren't terribly necessary, as adding soy sauce and sesame oil is best to personal taste. Sesame oil is very potent in flavor, so I only add a very light drizzle at the end to provide flavor rather than using it to actually stir-fry the rice.


Okay, so my Oma never made Walnut Shrimp because it's a Chinese dish commonly found in Western-influenced and Hong Kong restaurants. In any case, I thoroughly enjoy Walnut Shrimp, which was not so good for my health when I worked at a Chinese restaurant during high school. So as I planned our weekly menu, I figured, "What would go better with the Fried Rice Restaurant Style than Honey Walnut Shrimp from AllRecipes?" I am not sure that the Walnut Shrimp I enjoyed while working through high school were battered and fried, but I decided to follow the recipe on my first attempt to make Honey Walnut Shrimp. The batter in the recipe was extremely thick and I think I went a little dunk-happy, so the fried crust was almost as thick as some of the smaller shrimp. The next time I make this recipe, I might just lightly dust the shrimp in mochiko flour or forgo the batter entirely to enjoy the full flavor of the shrimp and to make this very rich dish somewhat more healthy. Additionally, I don't particularly enjoy Walnut Shrimp that is too sweet, so I will cut in half the amount of honey that the recipe calls for. The creamy, mayonnaise-based sauce seems strange paired with shrimp, but I can never resist ordering it whenever I see it on a menu.

Spinach Quiche and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

When I found this recipe for Spinach Quiche on AllRecipes, I anticipated that it would taste very similar to spanakopita, one of my favorite Greek foods.


The quiche had the requisite ingredients of spinach and feta that are found in traditional spanakopita, but was missing the crisp phyllo dough of true spanakopita. Even with the 6 ounces of feta and 8 ounces of cheddar cheese this recipe requires, the bitterness of the spinach was very prominent. I love spinach, but it seemed the ratio of spinach to eggs was too high, even though I used a deep-dish pie crust. I would have preferred more egg flavor and texture, as the egg only seemed to present itself as a thin layer on the top of the quiche.


My family never ate brussels sprouts as I grew up, so when I saw them at the grocery store, I was enchanted by their cute appearance; they look like miniature heads of lettuce! I love lettuce! Additionally, the recipe for Roasted Brussels Sprouts that I found on AllRecipes had great reviews, so I scoffed at the tales I had heard of children and adults alike hating brussels sprouts. Lo and behold, they are actually quite bitter, even roasted, but the very roasted pieces that bordered on being completely burned were quite tasty. They tasted similar to slightly burned potato chips, the little gems that I search for on the occasion that we have a bag of potato chips.


Unfortunately, it will be awhile before I try my hand at making brussels sprouts again, especially when there are so many other vegetables that I already know I prefer. I don't think Devin would like me to try making another spinach quiche, but if I did, I would reduce the amount of spinach and increase the amount of egg so that it tastes like an actual quiche instead of spinach pie.

Meyer Lemon Gnocchi and Roasted Garlic-Parmigiano Broccoli

With the Sur La Table gift card that my brother gave me for my birthday, I also received a year's subscription to Food & Wine magazine. I have had too few encounters with gnocchi, but after having the Gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce from Villa Roma, I couldn't stop thinking of the pillowy, baby-skull soft (as the The Girl Who Ate Everything would say) gnocchi and it just so happened that the March 2008 issue of Food & Wine had Meyer Lemon Gnocchi on its cover.


The Meyer Lemon Gnocchi from the March 2008 issue of Food & Wine was a very labor-intensive recipe. I don't have a potato ricer, so I used a trick from Smitten Kitchen and used a cheese grater to get a fine mash of potatoes. I spent a long time in the kitchen and it was worth it. The sauce was very rich, as it calls for a stick of butter, so taking into consideration the labor and the calories, this is a recipe to be made and eaten in moderation.


This is Roasted Garlic-Parmigiano Broccoli from the November 2007 issue of Food & Wine. Wow, broccoli is probably my favorite vegetable and I didn't think it could be heightened any more than the countless number of ways I have already eaten it, but slathering it in garlic, Parmesan cheese, and butter and then roasting it is absolutely outstanding and pretty quick.


Unfortunately, as I was busy attending to the broccoli and gnocchi, I let the lemon sauce boil and you can see that it separated. Also, the gnocchi were not as tender as Villa Roma's, but I am definitely making progress from my first miserable attempt at making gnocchi. I'm telling you, I really fail at making doughs and I admit that I overworked the gnocchi dough. Gnocchi, one day I will conquer you...

Pizza Margherita

I am behind in posts because I was in France last week, so the next posts will be from several weeks ago and France posts will follow afterwards.

Much to my dismay, Devin doesn't often enjoy Italian dishes because he doesn't like most tomato-based sauces. When I came upon this sauce-less Pizza Margherita recipe in my Betty Crocker Entertaining Basics cookbook, I knew it would be perfect for Devin.


As I mentioned in an earlier post, I absolutely fail at doughs, so I cheated on this recipe and used a premade pizza dough bought from the grocery store. Although the recipe didn't call for any garlic, I crushed two garlic cloves and spread them over the pizza dough so the final product tasted like garlic bread pizza. On top of the dough and crushed garlic, I layered mozzarella cheese, sliced roma tomatoes, salt, pepper, basil, additional mozzarella cheese, and a drizzle of olive oil.


As much as I love, absolutely love, my carbs, I also enjoy a good thin-crust pizza. This was a fantastic pizza that was just as easy as frozen pizza and much faster than delivery.


And of course, being the dipper that I am, I always use this sushi plate to eat pizza because it has a perfect reservoir for holding olive oil and balsamic vinegar so that I can dip the crust.

Quiche

Men do eat quiche! At least, I know for a fact that Devin eats quiche.


As I started to prepare this quiche, Devin informed me that he doesn't like quiche. This is because his only prior experience with quiche has been an airline meal.


Well, the quiche that I made for dinner turned out to be as much a success as the Five Layer Tortilla Pie, because I was able to reverse Devin's prior negative opinion of quiche. I used a quiche recipe which called for eggs and half and half. I used egg substitute to make the recipe heart healthy and added one cup of swiss cheese, half a red onion, sliced mushrooms, one red pepper, and two crushed cloves of garlic. To top the quiche, I used cheddar-flavored Veggie Shreds.

Devin loved the non-airline quiche so much that I decided to make another one for dinner a couple of nights later. Another reason for making a second quiche was because I used pre-made pie crust (acknowledging my failure at making dough), which came with two pre-made crusts.


I used the same basic quiche base, using egg substitute, half and half, one cup of baby swiss cheese, sliced mushrooms, one red pepper, half a red onion, two crushed cloves of garlic, and this time adding broccoli.


For both quiches, I first sauteed the vegetables in a little bit of olive oil so they wouldn't be raw in the quiches. I love making quiche because it is so easy, delicious, and you can just throw in whatever you have on hand, so give quiche a chance!

Hummus & Pita

I love hummus. For Christmas, I had a Cuisinart Mini-Prep Processor on my Amazon wishlist, which Devin's father and step mother very kindly bought for me. There was only one thing in mind when I added this food processor to my wishlist: HUMMUS!


Hummus is so ridiculously easy to make and contains so few ingredients that I feel it is outrageous to pay close to $4 for the shallow containers sold at the grocery store. With my wonderfully powerful food processor, I can whip up a batch of Sun-Dried Tomato Hummus in no time! And I can add as many sun dried tomatoes as I want.


Using recipes from All Recipes, on the left is Sun-Dried Tomato Hummus and on the right is Hummus III. I usually halve recipes because I am only feeding myself and Devin, but in my eagerness to make hummus on this day, I enthusiastically opened two cans of garbanzo beans right away when I only needed one. Consequently, I just had to make two batches of delicious hummus. I haven't been able to get the consistency correct yet and may need to peel the skins off of the garbanzo beans next time to make a more smooth hummus.


What goes better with hummus than pita bread? Maybe falafel, but I actually prefer tzatziki sauce with my falafel. In any case, I made pita bread to accompany all the hummus I made. Unfortunately, I really fail at making breads, so my Peppy's Pita Bread from All Recipes did not puff up and had a texture closer to naan than pita bread. Although my yeast was not expired, I don't think I had the water at the correct temperature to active the yeast.


Trial and error. That's what this blog is all about.

Five Layer Tortilla Pie

Devin is a selective eater, so when I make a dish, using ingredients he has previously expressed dislike for, and he ends up liking the dish, then I consider it a success. I then proceed to gloat and he consequently regrets telling me that he likes what I've cooked.


The All Recipes Seven Layer Tortilla Pie is one of my successes. I have gotten Devin to try, eat, and enjoy black beans. This recipe is quick, cheap, and if one doesn't go overboard on the cheese, it can be healthy. It is the perfect meal for college students (even though I no longer am one!) and it is delicious.

Essentially, prepare one bowl of mashed pinto beans (or refried beans to make the preparation even easier) and add salsa and crushed garlic, and then another bowl of black beans, fresh tomatoes, and salsa. Then, starting with a flour tortilla in a pie pan, layer the pinto bean mixture on top, add cheddar cheese, top with another tortilla, then substitute the pinto beans with the black bean mixture. Continue adding layers, alternating between the pinto beans and the black beans with cheddar atop each bean layer, until there are no beans left to add.

Unfortunately, I use tortillas larger than those the recipe calls for, so instead of a Seven Layer Tortilla Pie, I only have enough beans to spread over five layers.

This gets baked for 40 minutes at 400 degrees.


Although it's not called for in the recipe, I top each serving with an avocado slice and then plain, nonfat yogurt on mine and sour cream on Devin's. We've been having this recipe every week since I discovered it.

Eggplant Bake

This year's Thanksgiving attendees included myself, a pescetarian, and my cousin's boyfriend, a vegetarian. Since Thanksgiving dinner was a potluck, I had the task of finding a substantial vegetarian main course. I knew in advance that my cousin's boyfriend was making Butternut Squash Lasagna, so I wanted to stay away from pasta dishes that I thought may be too similar to his lasagna.

With the positive reviews from both vegetarians and omnivores on the All Recipes submission for Eggplant Bake, I had found my vegetarian Thanksgiving contribution! The trouble was that I had never made this dish, so I didn't know how it tasted and didn't know how much work would go into making this dish.

Thus I began my eggplant adventure.


I began by salting the eggplant slices for 30 minutes and then rinsed them to draw out moisture and bitterness. I only made half of the recipe since this was a trial that only Devin and I would be eating.


This recipe is quite easy, except I chose to make my own Italian breadcrumbs by using store bought sourdough bread and both fresh and dried herbs. I baked slices of the sourdough at 250 degrees for 30 minutes and then allowed the slices to cool. Since I don't have a food processor, I used a rolling pin to crush the slices into crumbs. During this process, I learned that I need to cut the bread slices thinner to prevent large pieces of bread that refuse to crumble and to use a blender to crush the bread when I made the recipe again the next day.


The fresh herbs included sage, rosemary, parsley, and marjoram. I also used dried basil, dried oregano, crushed garlic, and cracked pepper.


Combining the breadcrumbs with the herbs.


Beaten egg to adhere the breadcrumbs to the eggplant slices.


The large pieces of breadcrumb proved to be a problem because they had trouble sticking to the eggplant and also resulted in uneven browning when I pan-fried the eggplant.


Sliced tomatoes to layer on top of the eggplant.


I altered the recipe by sauteing the onions before layering them in the baking dish. This gave the onions a mild and sweet taste.


I used as little olive oil as possible to fry the breaded eggplant, but this resulted in some eggplant slices being too hard and tough even after baking.


Letting the fried eggplant drain excess oil onto paper towels.


Layered from the bottom was the breaded and fried eggplant, tomato slices, sauted onions, shredded parmesan cheese, crumbled feta, and strips of Muenster cheese. The dish was then baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

I thought the dish would be dry, but the tomatoes provided moisture and the cheeses really made the dish taste great. Devin's only other taste of eggplant has been eggplant parmesan and he really enjoyed this dish, so I decided to use this recipe for Thanksgiving. I did do one more trial run the next day, just to perfect my process.