the ice cream gods

The Improv Cooking Challenge ingredients for this month were chocolate & chili. I decided to make Chipotlé Chocolate Fried Ice Cream. As I was beginning the task, I prayed to the chocolate gods that the process would be smooth.
The chocolate gods were smiling on me and I had a beautiful chocolate ice cream mix in the can!

I put the dasher in the can and the can in the bucket of the churn. (Sometimes I have a problem with remembering the dasher... :O )
It was when I went to start the motor that the ice cream gods began to frown upon me. There was noise in the electrical parts, but I've found that noise can't churn ice cream!

My ancestors were a resourceful lot, and I'll bet they made ice cream in a jar rolled in snow. If home-school mamas can make ice cream in a zip-lock bag kneaded with ice cubes; I could adapt & overcome!

So I did!

Thank the ice cream gods that I still own an orange Tupperware bowl. (it's great for dough-rising!)

It got quite cold

but never achieved true churned ice cream consistency, but after sitting in the freezer overnight, was usable for my recipe.

...and that was how I thwarted a curse from the ice cream gods!

Grilled Eggplant Caprese

August’s ingredients for the Improv Cooking Challenge are Tomatoes & Herbs. Which is unfortunate for my garden, ‘cause those items  burnt  were ruined  expired at the end of June with our extreme heat! (Actually, I do have one basil plant left, so I used that with tomatoes from the market…)
First off, I made what would be kind of a pesto salt. I chopped (and chopped and chopped and chopped…)  a cup (lightly packed) of basil leaves, 5 cloves of garlic, and half a cup of kosher salt. The mixture was spread in a baking pan and spent the day  at the spa  dehydrating under the oven light. The finished salt was then bottled to await its ultimate purpose. (BTW -- that stuff is awesome on olive-oil-popped popcorn!)
The morning of “recipe day” I put together the drizzle for the salad. Into the pitcher of my Blendtec went 1 tablespoon red wine, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons honey, a clove of garlic, 2 cups (kinda sorta packed) fresh basil leaves (weighed about 2 oz.) and a couple grinds each of Himalayan salt & black pepper (to taste). When that became all nice & relatively smooth, 1/3 cup of olive oil was trickled in to blend up a sweet basil vinaigrette. Sooooooo tasty -- mmmmmmm!
I sliced an eggplant and brushed both sides of each slice with olive oil. Then I lightly sprinkled on some of that pesto herb salt. Those pretty little rounds got grilled until they had some lovely stripes criss-crossing their surface. I put them in a covered dish to chill until the ultimate assembly before dinner.
I’ve had my share of good caprese salads at restaurants (I’ve had at least one not quite so good caprese…) But let me tell you -- the addition of those grilled eggplant slices sends this salad into a whole different stratosphere!
The subtle flavor just melds so deliciously with the tomato and fresh mozzarella slices.
…and the drizzle -- ah, that sweet basil drizzle…
It was good to the last, ummmmm, drip… (you probably can’t tell I spooned some more on, right?)

Check out what my friends created with tomatoes & herbs:

An InLinkz Link-up

Bacon-studded Honey Mustard Snaxx

This month’s Improv ingredients are pretzels & mustard. I love making mustard (like I did here) but one must do that not-at-the-last-minute for a challenge!

Anyhow, the wonderhubs has a life-long aversion to pretzels, & I am currently (involuntarily) participating in an aversion to gluten. My solution was to come up with a gluten-free snack mix, where he could pick around those nazzzty pretzel pieces.

I’d been seeing “Muddy Buddies” & “Chex Snack” mixes done in the crock pot on various blogs. That sounded so much more exciting to me than heating the oven/house for an hour or two while toasting the mix. (If your slow cooker, like mine, does not have a vent, you will need to use a towel to absorb the “perspiration” that comes off the mix as it cooks.)

Here’s my recipe:

¼ cup mustard powder

¼ cup water

½ cup butter

½ cup honey

3 cups Corn Bran Crunch™ cereal

3 cups Rice Chex™ cereal

3 cups Honey Nut Chex™ cereal

3 cups gluten free pretzels

2 cups gluten free rice crackers

1 cup sliced almonds

1 cup bacon crumbles

Mix mustard powder with water and let sit to thicken 10-15 minutes. Melt butter and stir in honey. Add thickened mustard and whisk until smooth.

Combine remaining ingredients into crock. Pour over honey mustard mixture and stir gently.Cook on “Low” for 2 hours, carefully stirring every 30 minutes.

Pour onto parchment paper to cool.Devour!

This makes you wish for a larger crock…

…because you want to TRIPLE the recipe!

Check out what my friends did with their pretzels & mustard:

An InLinkz Link-up

…were supposed to be crostinis…

but I was too forgetful lazy rushed famished to take the time to toast my baguette slices!  February’s Improv Cooking Challenge theme chosen by our leader Kristen was “Bread and Butter.” Sounds like a simple task, unless bread is your most favorite food group in all the world but now you’re gluten free and you haven’t found a bread recipe you can accept as a favorable substitute for your most favorite food group in all the world…I’ve long been a fan of Bob’s Red Mill products. Most of the flours and starches I buy are from his extensive line. I even use the many gluten free recipes on the site. I decided this was the time to try his bread mix.So glad I did! The bread was quite delicious & had a very nice texture. (thought I had taken a pic of the 2 baguettes, sorry… was in too much of a hurry to taste before dark!)So… that brings us to the recipe part of this post – my Sweet Red Wine Compound Butter. You will love me, forever! It is soooooo simple, but it tastes like a million dollars. It’s so easy a cave man could do it (if he knew how to milk a cow or stomp grapes) but makes the carnivore’s dream steak taste even dreamier! Beurre composé is what the French call this “finishing butter”.Serendipitously, I found this most delicious sweet red on sale at my local Sprouts. I poured a cup of it into my saucepan. (I might or might not have had a glass while cooking to ensure the flavor appropriate…)I stirred in a tablespoon each of freshly cracked pepper and minced garlic. Then I left the saucepan on a very low simmer for about an hour. It. smelled. incredible. the. entire. time.After the reduction cooled completely, it was scraped into the mixing bowl of room temperature butter. (You may use unsalted butter, but then you’d have to add a pinch of salt.) I beat the mixture until everybody was all happy together.I divided it and made two rolls. I wrapped them with plastic cling and stuck them in the freezer.You should stop reading here if you’re hungry. Just take my recipe and go your way.
But if you wish to see how I served up my bread & butter, keep reading to the end…Bread & butter might be a meal for some, but not for my household of carnivores!
Here are my baguette slices – fresh from the oven…

We top that with a bit of sliced mushrooms & onions, sautéed with a touch of our compound butter.Do you see what I did there?Yes, that is grilled and thinly sliced New York strip!And yes, I am going to eat it right before your eyes…close-up!Playing with the camera means the steak is now too cool to melt the butter; so this platter gets a quick flash under the broiler.

We loved this butter! So far we’ve tried it out on baked potatoes and then on scrambled eggs. No disappointments so far…

If you’d like to see some more bread & butter recipes, check out these links:

Black Bean Crackers with Jalapeño Popper Dip

That game above all games is set to be played in a couple weeks. My f.i.l. purchased a new TV before Christmas, anticipating his team being there.
Since I wouldn’t desire to be anywhere near MetLife Stadium in February, we will do our tailgating indoors!
What better time, Kristen, to try out new Cheese & Cracker recipes, huh?
As I was serving a crock of slow-cooker black beans to my sons the other day, I told them not to eat it all because I needed a little for the crackers I would be making with roasted red peppers. My youngest exclaimed, “You will be adding roasted garlic, right?!” So… credit given for inspiration, Harrison!For the crackers you can use a food processor to whirl all but the rice flour, then transfer to saucepan to heat. I thought it would be much simpler to just toss everything into my little pan then use the hand blender to chop.After the rice flour is stirred into the boiled ingredients, it’s time to roll the crackers out on the silicone baking mat. (or however you’ve prepare your pan)I simply score the dough with the pizza wheel before transferring pan to oven.After baking 15-30 minutes (it really depends on how thin you want to roll them & how crisp you wish the crackers to be) they are turned into another pan and toasted for about 5 minutes.
I love this dip/spread. Next time I have been requested by the hubs to use more jalapeños – I just didn’t want to offend anyone’s palate this first try…This topping is quite delicious! I will have to try it as a breading for something fried one of these days.
I will probably double this recipe next week; and prepare but freeze for baking just before the BIG GAME.Oh! and next time I bake crackers I’ve been requested to add chipotlé.
Such a delicious combo!Please check out some other cheese & cracker participants:

Lime Crêpe Cake (with White Chocolate Pastry Cream) GF

Ah, Kristen! As if I didn’t have enough sugar being thrown around my kitchen already… Despite the busy-ness of the season, it is fun to participate in the Challenge! Lime & White Chocolate are quite the festive combo – anyway.After a recipe for crêpe cake caught my eye, I decided to make one that was gluten free. And lime. With some creamy white chocolateness slathered between the layers.
I wanted to try a new process for pastry cream that I’d been reading about. (I figured if it “lumped” too much, I could always blend it smooth with my Cuisinart® Smart Stick, right?)
I mixed all the pastry cream ingredients {{gasp}} except for the butter & chocolate pieces into the saucepan. I whisked until all was smooth; then heated & whisked until the mixture thickened. Removing from the heat, I stirred in the butter & chocolate. Total delicious smoothness! Not a lump to be sieved out before cooling!I had to make a special trip all the way outdoors to our Mexican Lime in the back yard. I had worried that our little freeze last week might have damaged some of the year-round fruit and/or blossoms. But everything appeared to be well.I blended all the crêpe ingredients and then let the mixture set in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes. In the meantime I had my tallest son retrieve my vintage M’sieur Crêpe (first revealed here) from the upper cabinet.I set up my work station and got busy! Had a bit of trouble with the pan releasing the crêpes without cracking. Nevertheless, I stacked them on a plate with about two tablespoons of the white chocolate cream between. It was then that I found (in the cooled pastry cream) that I hadn’t either a) chopped the chocolate fine enough, or b) thoroughly whisked the chocolate enough before cream cooled. (I have a feeling the answer is c) both of the above!) Ah well – it tasted lovely!As I placed the final crêpe atop the stack, I decided to make a ganache to finish it all off. Here I ran into two problems: 1) I had no more white chocolate, and 2) I wished to impart a little lime flavor to the topping. How I solved my problems also became a bit of a problem: I 1) decided to use white chips instead of chocolate, & 2) decided to use lime juice to try to cut said chips awful sweetness.I also elected not to go to the bother of retrieving my double-boiler from the bottom of the back of the corner cupboard. I gently heated the half & half in a saucepan over a low burner. The chips blended tolerably, but certainly tried to seize as I mixed in the fresh lime juice.Here is the recipe:
What matters to my guys, ultimately, is how does it taste?They really could care less how beautiful, or otherwise, a dessert looks.Check out the links below for some more lime & white chocolate recipes: