A Holiday Tradition - Nissua

Mmmm, been promising my Gram's nissua recipe. It's really pretty easy. You might recall I shared a recipe for home made rolls a little while ago. When you are adding the sugar (I add a bit extra sugar . . . maybe an extra quarter to half cup), add a couple teaspoons of cardamom.

Now smell the mix. You should be able to smell the cardamom. If you can't add another teaspoon. Part of the reason for this is that cardamom tends to lose its 'oomph' as it ages, so if it has been hanging around your spice cabinet for awhile, it may take a bit more to get the flavor to really come through in the dough, and you want the cardamom flavor to be noticeable.

Mix the remaining ingredients in as directed in the home made rolls recipe. Allow the dough to rise, and then punch it down. Split the dough into two to three parts (you want about a 4-5 inch ball of dough to work with). Roll the dough out. Spread the filling of your choice down the center of the dough.

There are several different prepared fillings that you can use. My favorite is apricot, but I'm also partial to poppyseed. Mom love almost filling. Whatever your preference. Fold the the side of the dough over the filling and lay, seam side down, on a baking sheet. Cover and allow to rise some (I'm impatient, this rising usually doesn't last long)..

Preheat the oven to 400F. Place in the oven and allow to bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown and baked through.

While it is cooking, make a simple butter frosting to put over the top. Cream butter and powdered sugar together, add a teaspoon of vanilla, and then milk to get the texture you like . . . I prefer it to be almost like a frosting, nice and thick, but if you like something more like a glaze, you can thin the frosting with more milk. Here's an easy buttercream frosting recipe that you can play with.

If you can wait, allow the bread to cool some before frosting. I usually can't, and the frosting ends up melting on top of the bread . . . not a bad thing, but it can get kind of messy!

What's your favorite holiday recipe?

How to Stretch Your Food Dollar

Well, they keep saying the economy is improving. I'm optimistic that we'll see a rebound here soon, but for most of us, things are still pretty darn tight, financially. Which begs the question, how can you stretch your food budget?

So here is another food stretching idea for you, and it should get you a couple of healthy meals. First, buy some chicken breast (you'll want a bit more than you think your family will eat, perhaps enough to have one breast left over). Of course, I recommend the chicken breast from the Market. It is nicely trimmed, and you can pound it out in the package. Preheat your oven to 350F.

I like the chicken for this to be about half an inch thick, so it doesn't take much pounding. Smear the chicken lightly all over with olive oil, and season it simply - maybe some tarragon, thyme, then salt and pepper to taste. place in a casserole with sides (you'll see why later) and bake until cooked through - 15-30 minutes, perhaps longer, depending on the size and thickness of the breast.

Here's another site for great tips on cooking chicken breast by various methods. I offer this because chicken is touchy to bake. For the meal I'm describing, I want a dry cooking method, but I don't want the meat to dry out. That is part of the reason that I recommend pounding out the chicken. It is important NOT TO OVER COOK the meat. Chicken needs to be cooked through (no pink in the center) but JUST cooked through. Over-cooking will dry out the meat.

When the chicken is done, it's ready to eat with whatever side dishes your family prefers. My family is a potato kind of family, but I like to throw in green veggies every once and awhile if only to hear the inevitable groans. Since you have the oven on for roasting the chicken, why not try roasting some veggies, like green beans. And rather than putting butter and salt on the green beans, try crumbling some feta cheese over them instead - yum! Leftover beans or other veggies are also great in the next dish!

Place the 'extra' chicken (and veggies, if you have them) in a container and refrigerate for the next day. Deglaze the pan that you cooked the chicken in using water, wine, or lemon juice. Lemon juice? Yes, lemon juice - it lends a wonderful lightness to the chicken soup we're going to make with the left overs. It's a traditional Greek addition to chicken soup. My friend, Marian, converted me when she made me try it. You can adjust the amount of lemon to your taste, but I've found that I like quite a bit. And you can also add the zest of the lemon to the resulting broth for some extra zing. Refrigerate the broth for use the next day.

I call this my left-over soup. I use this 'recipe' as an opportunity to use up all the odds and ends left from meals for the last few days. Have some left over fresh salsa - throw it in. Left over bulgur, couscous or pasta - great addition. Left over veggies - why not? Now there are a couple things you are going to want: an onion, diced; some red pepper diced (green pepper works, too, I just prefer red), a few stocks of celery chopped, and some carrots, chopped.

Place a stock pan over medium heat, and add a couple tablespoons of olive oil. sautee the onion, pepper, celery, and carrots until just softened. Add the broth you made the previous day, along with some additional chicken stock to make up the liquid to what you will need to feed your family (this is truly a 'stretchable' meal - need more soup, just add more stock). Again, I recommend the chicken base from the Market, which has no MSG and no added salt (unlike many of the cheap chicken bases you can find other places that are mostly salt).

Shred the chicken breast and add to the soup. Add any other left-overs you found in your fridge. Bring the mix to a simmer, and cook until all ingredients are heated through. If you didn't have left overs like the bulgur or couscous, you can add it, uncooked and cook it in the soup. Bulgur, or barley, or quinoa, or millet are GREAT and healthy whole grain additions to this soup.

Once everything is done, and the soup has had a chance to simmer all put together for awhile, taste it, and season as you like. This is the time when I might add some extra lemon zest or juice, maybe some fresh thyme or cilantro. It really depends on what you added and how it was originally seasoned, so you really do want to allow the soup some time to simmer, so all the existing flavors come together, then you can adjust appropriately. I would recommend leaving the salt and pepper to individual tastes.

There you go - a food dollar stretching exercise. But if you are feeling lazy, or just rushed, remember that we have home made soups at the Market, and we are starting to make MTO sandwiches. Stop by and let us know what you think!

Please, share what you do to stretch your food dollar!

Chicken Parmagiana

We had this for supper tonight, and it was so tasty I had to share. It's a pretty easy recipe. Here's what you'll need:

4 Chicken breast halves
3C Italian bread crumbs
1T Thyme
3 Eggs
2T Milk
1C Flour
Olive oil
jar of Spaghetti sauce (I used the Borelli mushroom sauce)
Parmagiana, grated
Mozarella, sliced

I use the chicken breast from the Market (of course) and pound it out flat in the package before I open it - you want the breasts to be ~1/2 inch thick.

First, put you fry pan on the stove to get it hot while youNow this is messy, get out three big bowls. Eggs and milk wisked together in one, in another put the flour, in the third stir together the bread crumbs and thyme and add salt and pepper to taste. First, dredge each chicken breast in flour, then dip it in the egg wash, then coat it in the bread crumbs. Now is a good time to pre-heat your oven to 400F.

Now it's time to cook the chicken. Don't overload your fry pan - in my favorite pan, I could only fit one breast at a time. Add one or two tablespoons of olive oil to the pan, and fry the chicken until it is golden brown (about 5 minutes on each side, maximum). Drain the chicken on a paper towel.

Select a baking dish large enough to put all of the chicken in a single layer (or maybe two), coat the dish lightly with olive oil. Add half the tomato sauce to the bottom of the dish and spread it out. Arrange the chicken in a single layer. Sprinkle parmagiana generously over the chicken, then cover it with a layer of mozzarella.

Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes at 400F - until the moz is bubbly and lightly browned. I heated the other half of the sauce on the stove top, so those of us who like sauce could add it to our side of pasta (the Kluski noodles make a nice liquine-type side, or if you prefer thinner pasta, the angel hair is a good choice). If you are a sauce lover, you can add the other half of the sauce over the chicken before putting on the cheese, but my family prefers less sauce on the chicken.

Now the recipes I looked at said that this would make 4 servings, but I did the four chicken breasts, and a pound of pasta, and it fed out family, so I'd say this was probably enough for 6 people to have pretty decent sized portions.

Chicken parm that beats a lot of restaurants, I would wager, and it really is quite easy. The kids love to help beat the chicken up, and mix the chicken coating, and sprinkle cheese. It's a very family-friendly recipe, and delicious to boot. Give it a try!!

Buffalo and Blue Burgers

I posted a photo of these little darlings on my Face Book page and was astounded by the response, so I thought I'd share the recipes I used in making them. They really are very easy, and once you bite into one, you'll think you're at one of those gourmet burger places - only better!!

First, you have to start with your burger. Now, if you're watching calories and fat, you can use buffalo, but be aware that when you are cooking buffalo burgers you must cook over a lower heat than you usually do with hamburger, and they don't take long to cook, so watch them.

I like to mix some spices into my meat before forming the burgers. I love the crushed garlic from the Market, because it mixes in so thoroughly. I also added salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper to the meat. That's all I used, but you can mix the spices of your choice into the meat, just don't overmix - it can make the meat kind of tough.

At best you can expect to get about 3 burgers per pound, but it depends on how large you like your burgers. I have experimented with a couple ways of forming them. One method is to take your burger for one portion, split it in half, and form two very thin patties. Place about a tablespoon of Cashel Irish Blue Cheese in the center of one patty and cover it with the other patty. Carefully pick the patties with cheese up and seal the edges, and form the final burger. Note that when you are using buffalo, the patties are very tender and tend to fall apart, so be careful, and patient. The extra fat in hamburger tend to make the meat easier to handle from that standpoint, so it is a tradeoff. But trust me, the buffalo is worth the extra effort!!

Another way to form them is to take your burger portion and form it into a ball. Poke a hole into the center of the ball and shove in the cheese, closing over the hole. Then flatten and form your burger as you normally would. This method makes it more difficult to really load the burger with cheese (maybe that's a good thing - lol), but you're also less like to lose it, as it is sealed in the center of the burger a little better.

Sautee the burgers over medium heat until cooked through. Some of the cheese may ooze out into the pan, but that ok. If you are feeling really indulgent, toast up your bun in the pan that you fried the burgers in - some of the cheese will crisp to the bun, making it extra yummy. If you have a working grill (we don't at the moment, darn) do the cooking on the grill!

As for the condiments, I think I've given you my guacamole recipe before, but here it is again for good measure:

2 avacadoes - ripe (they should give some, but offer resistence, when you press on the sides, we try to keep a few out of the cooler so they ripen. If it will be a few days before you make your guac, buy them out of the cooler, hard, and let them sit at room temperature and a day or so until ready. Guac really should be eaten as soon as it's made, thought I'm not above eating it the next day, though it isn't usually a real pretty green anymore, as the flesh of the avacado oxidized to a brownish green - still tastes great)
juice of one lemon (if you really enjoy the lemon flavor, add the zest, too)
Salt and pepper to taste

That's it, mash it all together and enjoy. Now avacados do have fat in them, but it's the good kind of fat, and they are also a great source of dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals, so don't turn your nose up because of the fat content. This is a much better for you spread than something like mayo. Give it a try!! By the way, if you want, you can add things to your guac - last night, I added about a tablespoon of finely chopped jalepeno, just because we like the heat, and since there was cilantro in the tomatillo salsa, I also added some to the guac (we love fresh cilantro;). My mom likes to add some of the Market prepared salsa to her guac. Experiment, and find what you like!

The Tomatillo salsa (actually, I'd call it more of a relish) recipe I used was from the Food Network is really good. I went a little heavy on the onion, and used the local candy onions from the Market. I also did NOT use a food processor, but just diced the ingredients and tossed them in a pot, but I tend to like my salsa chunky, so suit yourself.

Tomatillos, or husk tomatoes as they're also known, if you've never had them, are a little different to work with than their cousins, tomatoes. You'll want to husk them, and wash them (they have a waxy substance inside the husk, and it's sticky). The insides are much firmer, with little to no loose watery stuff like in a regular tomato.

You can add whatever other embellishments you like - a nice big slice of fresh, homegrown tomato and a slab of candy onion are two of my favorites - but forego the usual ketchup and mustard or mayo, and give these burgers a try. You won't be disappointed!!

Do you have any unusual condiments that you like on your burgers? Please, share!!