Southwestern Grits

Grits fall into the category of foods that either you love or hate; there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.  I love grits!  One of my favorite childhood food memories is eating grits and boiled wieners for supper with my grandmother; that was one of her favorite combinations.  My mother often prepared a Reba’s Grits Soufflé, a recipe she got from a friend.  The following recipe is my take on Reba’s dish; it called for 1 stick of melted butter or margarine, but leaving it out doesn’t hurt a thing.  The original recipe called for garlic-cheese or other grated cheese.  I like to add green chilies and a bit of cayenne.  Dusting it with paprika improves eye appeal.

Southwestern Grits

1 cups grits

1 cup Mexican blend grated cheese (Cheddar, Monterrey Jack, Asadero, and Queso Quesadilla)

1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chilies, drained

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 eggs  

Milk

Paprika

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Spray 2-1/2 quart casserole with nonstick pan spray.  Prepare grits according to package instructions.  When the grits are done, stir in grated cheese, chopped green chilies, and cayenne pepper.  Beat eggs in a liquid measuring cup and add milk to equal one cup.  Temper egg mixture with a spoonful or two of the hot grits mixture; add egg mixture to the grits.  Whisk well to blend.  Turn into prepared dish and dust with paprika for color.  Bake for 45 minutes; the internal temperature should reach 155°F. 

Spinach - Veggie Lasagna

This recipe had its origins in a spinach lasagna recipe from Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service's Cooking Well with Diabetes series.  I modified the recipe to include more vegetables; added an egg to the ricotta; and increased the amount of tomato sauce.  It is a very easy dish to prepare; chopping vegetables is the most time consuming part.  It’s just as easy to make two batches at the same time; make one for immediate use and one for the freezer!



Many lasagna recipes are very high in salt and fat.  Using vegetables rather than meat as the main ingredient lowers the fat content, and making sauce from no-salt-added tomato products rather than commercially made sauce reduces the sodium content.  Of course, cooked and drained ground beef ,  turkey, or Italian sausage can be added for a meaty dish, and commercial spaghetti sauce can be used if that is your preference.  I prefer ricotta to cottage cheese in lasagna because the texture is more appealing, and ricotta is much lower in sodium than cottage cheese.

Spinach - Veggie Lasagna

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 ounces fresh mushrooms, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon dried oregano or 2 teaspoons fresh oregano

½ bunch fresh spinach (or half of a 10 oz. bag of fresh spinach)

1 (14.5 oz.) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes

2 (8 oz.) cans no-salt-added tomato sauce

1 (15 oz.) container reduced fat ricotta cheese

1 egg, beaten (optional)

8 oz. part-skim milk mozzarella cheese, grated

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

12 no-boil lasagna noodles

In a large skillet, sauté onions, garlic, mushrooms, and green pepper in olive oil until the vegetables are wilted and the onion is translucent.  Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, and oregano.  Simmer until heated throughout.

Mix egg and ricotta cheese; set aside.  (Leave out the egg, if you wish.  Adding an egg makes the ricotta easier to spread).



Layering order really doesn't matter!

Spray a 9x13 casserole dish with nonstick cooking spray.  Layer the lasagna as follows:  a little sauce in the bottom of the pan, followed by noodles, spinach, ricotta, mozzarella, and sauce; repeat layers, ending with noodles, more sauce, more mozzarella, and the Parmesan.  Don’t stress about the order of the layers; as long as you have three layers of pasta and use up all the ingredients, it will turn out okay.   Cover tightly with foil and bake for 1 hour.  Yield:  8 servings.  To freeze for later use, freeze lasagna unbaked; wrap pan tightly in heavy duty foil.  Thaw 3 or 4 hours in the refrigerator, then bake 1 hour and 30 minutes at 375°F.

One to freeze for later and one to bake now.

Variation:  Use vegetables other than spinach.  I have made this dish with a combination of sliced yellow and zucchini squash and broccoli florets, about 4 cups total. 



The finished product.

Pumpkin-Ginger Cake

While this cake is an adaptation of the Fresh Apple Cake blogged about earlier, I decided it deserved its own identity because it is really is a completely different product.  This cake is moist; it can, of course, be made as bread loaves.

In the course of making this cake, I discovered that my new Bundt cake pan does not hold as much as my old Bundt cake pan!  To prove this, I placed 8 cups water in each pan, and here’s what the experiment revealed:



Old Bundt Pan

New Bundt Pan

 

When using the smaller Bundt pan, there was enough batter to make a 3x6 inch loaf, as well.  Moral of the story:  don't assume all Bundt pans are the same size, and avoid over-filling.



Comparison

Pumpkin-Ginger Cake

1 cup canola oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup molasses

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 teaspoons ginger

1 cup buttermilk (if home-prepared pumpkin puree seems extra juicy, reduce buttermilk to ¾ cup)

2 cups canned pumpkin or home-prepared pumpkin puree

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350° F.  Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan.  Sift together flour, ginger, baking soda, and baking powder; set aside.  In large bowl, mix together canola oil, sugar, molasses, and vanilla, using medium speed of mixer.  Add eggs to this mixture and mix well.  To this mixture, add dry ingredients and buttermilk alternately, mixing well to blend, using low mixer speed.  Blend in the pumpkin and pecans.  Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, and the top of the cake bounces back when lightly touched.  Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and continue cooling.

Fresh Apple Cake

Cake drizzled with Butterscotch Glaze

For years, I searched for the perfect apple cake recipe.  My Aunt Mildred’s recipe was pretty close to perfect, and I used it most of the time.  Apple cakes made with cooking oil tend to have a slight oiliness to them.  I stumbled on an apple cake recipe that contained buttermilk; buttermilk makes everything better!  I hoped that the addition of buttermilk would yield a cake without the oiliness.  I tried the recipe, with a few modifications (of course), and it was very good, with a texture I liked!  On closer inspection, I realized that it the recipe’s proportions for the major ingredients (sugar, fat, eggs, flour, buttermilk) were double the amounts in the banana nut bread recipe that I have been using since college days. 

Apple Mini-Loaves

 

This was a light bulb moment! I had often used chopped apples or grated zucchini or grated carrots, either alone or in combination with bananas, in the banana bread recipe.  Armed with this knowledge, I continued to try different combinations of ingredients in the apple cake recipe.  As often as not, it is baked in loaf pans or mini-loaf pans.  However, it makes a gorgeous cake when cooked in a Bundt pan or two adorable cakes when made in two small, vintage tube cake pans.

Fresh Apple Cake

1 cup canola oil

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup buttermilk

3 cups chopped apples (peeled)

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350° F.  Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan.  Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and baking powder; set aside.  In large bowl, mix together canola oil, sugar, and vanilla, mixing well using medium speed of electric mixer.  Add eggs to oil and sugar, and beat well.  To this mixture, add dry ingredients and buttermilk alternately, mixing well to blend, using low speed of electric mixer.  Stir in chopped apples and pecans.  Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, and the top of the cake bounces back when lightly touched.  Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and continue cooling.  When cool, dust with powdered sugar or drizzle with Butterscotch Glaze.

Butterscotch Glaze

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons milk or buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter.  Add milk or buttermilk and brown sugar, dissolving brown sugar.  Bring to a boil and boil vigorously without stirring for 1 minute.  Remove from heat and add vanilla.  Stir in powdered sugar and beat until smooth, 3 to 5 minutes.  Drizzle over cake.

Variations:  This is a very versatile cake!  Here are some alterations I’ve tried; surely there are more out there that haven’t been tried yet.  I don’t see why you couldn’t use grated carrots or zucchini alone or with apples or bananas.

·        Bake in mini-loaf pans or regular sized loaf pans, or bake in two small, vintage tube cake pans.   Yield for mini-loaf pans:  22 to 24 loaves.  Bake mini-loaves for 30-40 minutes at 350°F.

·         Have overripe bananas that need to be used?  Add 2 or 3 bananas in place of part of the apples.  As long as you have about 3 cups fruit, it should be okay.

·         Instead of apples, use 2 cup canned pumpkin to make pumpkin bread.  This yields a tasty but pale product, which led to the next variation. 

·         Pumpkin gingerbread:  instead of apples, use 2 cups canned or home-prepared pumpkin; 3 teaspoons ground ginger in place of cinnamon; and use 1 cup sugar and 1 cup molasses rather the 2 cups sugar.  (Why 2 cups pumpkin when the recipe calls for 3 cups apples? There are about 2 cups pumpkin in a can; it turned out fine). 

·         Substitute plain yogurt for buttermilk, or use a combination of buttermilk and yogurt to equal 1 cup. 

Oatmeal Bread



This is not an original recipe, but it is one that I have used almost weekly for five or six years.  It came off the back of a bag of King Arthur Bread Flour; it also appears on the King Arthur website:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/oatmeal-toasting-and-sandwich-bread-recipe 

 

I use a bread machine to make the bread, but it can be made conventionally.  It is a nice, basic yeast bread.

One purpose of this blog is to get all my favorite recipes in one place; I have a fear of losing the original well-worn recipe and not being able to find it again.  The only modifications I have made are:

Substitute 1 cup whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the bread flour; so, 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup oatmeal. I have never added currants. Cane syrup or molasses may be used in place of the honey. Substitute canola oil for butter (for convenience).

 

9 Bean and Sausage Soup

Cold weather makes me want to cook beans, soup, chili, stew - anything hot and substantial.  There is nothing particularly unique about this recipe - it is pretty standard procedure for cooking dried beans.  I love any kind of dried beans!  They are filling, nutritious, full of fiber, and economical.  Recently I bought a couple of packages of 9 bean soup mix (or was it 16?) at the grocery store.  It came with a seasoning packet, which I did not use because I suspected that it would be excessively salty.  Adding sausage gives the beans a nice flavor, but I wanted to reduce as much as fat as possible.  The only salt in the beans came from canned tomatoes and sausage.  They mixture was pretty soupy by design; it will be served over rice, perfect fare for a winter's day!

9 Bean and Sausage Soup

1 lb. link sausage

2 cups mixed beans

1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes

1 small onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 teaspoons cumin

6 cups water

Slice sausage into bite-sized pieces, about 3/8 inches thick.  Transfer to a skillet, browning both sides.  If you want to remove more fat (which I did), cover with water and boil for a while to release most of the fat.  Drain in a colander; rinse with hot water to remove more fat. 

Sauté onion, garlic, and jalapeno in olive oil.  Combine beans, sausage, tomatoes, sautéed vegetables, seasonings, and water in slow cooker.  Cook on High power a couple of hours, making sure that the temperature is above 140°F.  Reduce to Low power and cook several hours, until beans are tender.  Yield:  about 10 cups soup.

During the cooking process, taste to adjust seasoning.  The salt from the sausage and canned tomatoes was adequate for my taste; I added no extra salt.  Of course, the beans could be cooked in a pot on the stove. 

Cornbread



My first food memory is sitting in a high chair as a toddler, eating mashed up blackeyed peas and cornbread, and asking my great-uncle, “Potlikker, Joey?”  (Potlikker is the cooking liquid from the blackeyed peas).  I still like blackeyed peas, cornbread, and potlikker mixed together.  Cornbread is equally good dunked in pinto beans or any kind of stew or soup.  The following recipe is the one used in ninth grade homemaking class, with a few tweaks.  The secret to a good, crunchy crust is a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.  I have my grandmother’s cast iron skillet, and I feel a connection with her and my mother every time I use it. 

Cast iron skillet - the secret to a crispy crust!

CORNBREAD

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar (optional)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

2 cups buttermilk (scant - a bit less than 2 cups but more than 1-3/4 cups)

3 tablespoons cooking oil (divided)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Sift cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda into a meduim sized bowl. In another bowl, beat egg, buttermilk, and 1 tablespoon cooking oil.

Pour 2 tablespoons cooking oil in 10 inch cast iron skillet and swirl around to coat skillet. Place skillet in preheated oven and heat until oil is hot – a couple of minutes. Don’t let oil smoke or over heat!

While the skillet is heating, add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients and mix with wire whisk until well blended; do not overbeat.  Pour into hot skillet; the batter should sizzle around the edges. Bake until brown, 25 to 30 minutes.



Batter in cast iron skillet, ready to bake.

Variations: If you don't have a cast iron skillet, use a prepared 7x10 baking pan. To prepare pan, coat with shortening, or use nonstick pan spray. The sugar may be omitted; with sugar, the cornbread's texture is more moist and cake-like. Leaving out the sugar results in a more crumbly product, which may be more desirable for dunking in beans or stew.