You've Got To Taste This

If all you think of when you hear "lavender" is the color of the walls at your aunt's house or body care products, you might want to think again.  The aromatic herb lavender is a relative of mint and adds a lovely flavor to a variety of foods. It's one the herbs used in the blend Herbes de Provence.

I recently sampled the Lavender Vinaigrette and Marinade from Montebello Kitchens and do believe that it's my new favorite marinade of the year.  It's often hard to find bottled marinades that aren't loaded with sugar; this one has no sugar added but is sweetened with organic agave nectar.  It also contains grapeseed oil, which is considered one of the "healthy fats" because it's high in vitamin E and omega-6 fatty acids.

The lavender in this marinade is nice and subtle and not too "perfumy". It's only slightly sweet, and has a tang from lime juice, Dijon mustard, and balsamic vinegar. You can use it as a marinade for meats, fish, or chicken, or as a dressing on salad or fresh vegetables.

Steven Lynch, the owner of the family-owned Montebello Kitchens, recommended that I use the marinade on either lamb chops or salmon. Generally I find that simple grilled salmon with just a bit of sea salt and freshly ground pepper is hard to beat. But this marinade added a whole new flavor dimension to salmon. I just brushed it over the salmon and let it stand about 10 minutes before broiling. I think I'm in love!   Can't wait to try it on lamb chops.  I'll keep you posted.   

This weekend I'm headed to New Orleans and am already anticipating lunch at Mandina's Restaurant.

My friend and colleague, Kim Sunee, introduced me to Mandina's a few weeks ago. We were there with the MyRecipes studio team shooting an episode of Kim's new series, "Local Flavor."

Meeting Tommy Mandina and the restaurant team was wonderful, but the highlight of the morning was a po' boy.  Specifically, a soft shell crab po' boy.

I love po' boys.  Their simplicity calls for the freshest, highest quality ingredients: crusty bread with a super-light body and fillings that are only limited by our imaginations.  The two most common are classic, fried shrimp po' boys dressed with mayo, tomato and lettuce, and roast beef po' boys (a delicious, messy feast).  I also like them filled with fried oysters or a combo of oysters and shrimp.  I've had them stuffed with spicy, fried catfish and even French fries with gravy.

Thanks to the Mandinas, crisp-battered, soft shell crab is my new favorite.  And I've already called to confirm that they're still available this weekend.

What's in your favorite po' boy?  Or better yet, who makes your favorite?  I may plan a pilgrimage based on your recommendations.

It’s been a little over a year since we moved into the new house, and it has taken me that long to break out the slow-cooker. Although it had been unpacked, it ended up being tucked away in a closet very soon after, and you know how it goes … out of sight, out of mind. Until this past weekend. With the kitchen still hotter than ever, slow cooking is a great alternative when you want to keep it cool, but even so, I don’t use my slow cooker often enough. Clearly. When I do, I usually resort to two recipes, Slow Cooker Thai Chicken and Melt In Your Mouth Sausages.

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken is a recipe that I got from the Cooking Light Bulletin Board a few years ago. Originally posted by Claire797, it quickly became a favorite of the message boards, and The Husband. Although it has a slightly unusual mix of ingredients, the end result is very tender and moist chicken with a delicious peanut butter flavored sauce, and it’s perfect over white rice. For something that takes a grand total of five minutes to prepare, it doesn’t get much better than that. And hey, I scored bonus points with The Husband for making another one of his favorite dinners. Seems like a win-win to me.

And those Melt In Your Mouth Sausages? That recipe came from a co-worker and is another family favorite. The title says it all, and it’s fantastic over spaghetti or hoagie style in sandwich rolls. Keeping your kitchen cool … one slow cooker recipe at a time.

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts
3/4 cup salsa
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 cup peanut butter — (use crunchy and leave out the peanuts)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon grated gingerroot or ginger paste
1/4 cup chopped peanuts
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro

Place chicken in crockpot. Mix other ingredients except cilantro and peanuts. Pour over chicken. Cook for 4 hours on low. Garnish with cilantro and peanuts.

Now that we are officially in the back-to-school grind, parents across America are once again faced with the ongoing dilemma of what to pack their child for lunch. Sure, a plain turkey sandwich on white or wheat with a spread of mustard works fine and a PB & J on soft white bread is a classic but these options get boring fast. Try these dressed-up sandwiches to expand your child’s palette and make you look like a hero at their lunch table.

Turkey Sandwiches with Apple and Walnut Herb Mayo gives the plain turkey sandwich some spunk with thinly sliced green apple for a tangy bite. Stir chopped walnuts into mayo for a creamy spread.

Mini Bacon, Tomato, and Basil Sandwiches are kid-sized sandwiches that use extra-thin bread and fresh flavorful ingredients.

Turkey Vegetable Wraps feature chopped turkey breast, corn, bell pepper and lettuce tossed together with ranch dressing and rolled in a flour tortilla.

PBJ Special takes peanut butter and jelly a step further by combining natural peanut butter with honey and cinnamon, spreading the mixture on white bread and then topping with sweet cherry preserves and sliced banana. This sandwich is also fun as a wrap.

Cobb Clubs are for kids with a more adventurous palette. Try these club sandwiches packed high with turkey, cheddar, avocado, bacon, and tomato. Dress one side of the bread with light blue cheese dressing and then top the club with olive oil vinaigrette if desired.

Rosemary Chicken Salad Sandwiches are a quick and tasty dish that combines chicken breast with almonds, green onions, and fresh rosemary in a tangy Dijon mustard and mayonnaise sauce.

Another quick tip when you don’t have the extra time to prepare one of the recipes mentioned above--vary the bread options. Try pita pockets, flavored tortilla roll-ups, extra-thin white or wheat, pumpernickel, rye, hoagies, focaccia rounds, ciabatta loaves, or seedy whole grain.

Just remember that lunch is a crucial part of a child’s daily nutrient needs so aim to build complete sandwiches that include whole grains, a lean protein source, veggies, and low-fat cheese.

Have other tips for lunch? Let us know. If you need snack ideas, see Smart Snacks for Kids.

I have a problem.  I've been given 9 delicious gourmet cookies and I can't eat them. 

I got engaged a few weeks ago and was given a cookie basket from Cookies In Bloom in Bellevue, Washington as an engagement present.  "Given" might be too strong of a word.  Really the basket (featuring my fiance, his family, a pair of doves, a cookie engagement ring, and myself) was given to my soon-to-be in-laws, and I begged, pleaded, and held my breath until they agreed that I could take it home and enjoy the image of myself as a "Southern Bride" all dressed in buttercream.

The cookies are gorgeous.  I can only hope that my husband-to-be and I are half as pulled together as the cookie versions of ourselves (and that my hair stays anywhere near that smooth in the humid Alabama air).  The problem is that they're almost too pretty to eat.  I walk by it every time I enter my apartment's kitchen and am instantly met with the most delicious sugar-and-lemon cookie smell just beckoning me to bite my fiance's head off.  Or at least nibble on his top hat.  Do I eat his parents first? That can't be good for future family relations.  How about his brothers?  The doves are safe enough, but they give the basket its ambiance, so if I ate them, I'm pretty sure it would turn into a sugar cookie consumption free-for-all that would leave me in a sugar comma humming "Here Comes the Bride" with buttercream permanently jammed under my fingernails.

The worst part is, I hear the cookies are delicious and that they taste even better than they smell.  I've been told to wrap them and freeze them, so we can enjoy them in the coming months while we plan the wedding, and then simply microwave them for just a few seconds to return them to their soft, mouth-watering state.

While I'm still pondering how best to enjoy the basket, I do know that it's the best bouquet of anything I've ever received.  This is one gift idea I'm definitely passing on to friends and family over the next few months. It's especially perfect for boyfriends who hate giving flowers "because they'll die in a week."  These cookies live forever! One word of advice: When you personalize your basket, get all the key characters in, but ask the kind people at Cookies In Bloom to please, please, please include one ugly cookie of an aunt you don't like or your favorite love-to-hate sports rival.  That way, you can dig in without reservations and savor this guaranteed-to-please gift.

When it comes to breakfast, although my family eats it, it's usually something quick as everyone is jetting off to school, work or a list of weekend errands. This past Sunday though, we happened to get one of those lazy ones where we were all home and the day was unplanned and ours. A perfect morning for pancakes.

When it comes to pancakes, our six-year-old, Nicholas, is quite the traditionalist. He either likes the Banana Pancakes I make, or the ones from McDonalds. Period. There’s no experimenting past that. With no pancake-ripe bananas in the house and no plan to go to the Golden Arches, I set about to expand his pancake boundaries a bit. A quick search on MyRecipes, and I had a few to choose from, though nothing too crazy, as I was looking for something close to a traditional pancake so he’d dig in.

Buttermilk Honey Pancakes it was; it met all the criteria, and even better, I had buttermilk in the back of the fridge, just waiting for a recipe. The trouble with buttermilk? Usually I buy it for a specific recipe that calls for a scant amount, and then I'm left with half a carton and no inspiration. It gets pushed back farther and farther into the fridge, and by the time I've found it, it's long past expired. This time, it was different (although now two recipes in, I still have a bit left to use up, so do share your favorite buttermilk recipe with me!).

Nicholas wandered into the kitchen to inspect what the pancakes looked like. "I hope I like them," he warned me. "Me too!"

As I was glancing at the recipe, I happened to notice that it said it made 13 pancakes. I looked back at the bowl with the batter. No way. I never measure pancake batter out when pouring pancakes, but just to test the 13-pancake-yield, this time I did, using the 1/4 measuring cup recommended. I ended up with 9 pancakes, so you may want to adjust accordingly.

I put a little bit of butter and syrup on Nicholas' stack and held my breath as he took the first bite. And then the second. And the third. The kid barely came up for air, and when he did, it was to ask for more. Houston, we have a winner.

Fifteen minutes in the kitchen, and a fresh stack of Buttermilk Honey Pancakes and a lazy morning can be yours. Take that, McDonalds!

One of my favorite things to eat for lunch in the summer is a tomato sandwich. It's just hard to beat slices of juicy, garden-fresh tomato between two slices of  bread that are lightly coated with mayonnaise.

This past weekend I made a new favorite that's just a slight variation of my beloved tomato sandwich. I guess I would call it a Tomato Crisp Sandwich.  I spread a small amount of light cream cheese on a thin Kavli Crispbread wafer. Then I topped the cream cheese with a couple of very thin slices of tomato. I used a serrated knife so that I could get real thin slices. The combination of tangy cream cheese with sweet tomato and the nutty crunch of the crispbread made me so happy.  Then I remembered that I had some fresh basil out back, so I chopped a little and sprinkled it on the tomato. Now we're talking Really Happy.

I liked this so much that I made it again the next day with goat cheese instead of cream cheese. The flavor was even better, but the goat cheese didn't spread as well over the wafer.  If I'd had a creamier kind of goat cheese such as Belle Chevre, it would have been fine. 

I'll be sad when the summer tomatoes are gone, but maybe I can think of some other tasty toppings for the crispbread wafers.   

Panera Bread recently paid us a visit for a seminar on bread and bread pairings, and like most seminars of this nature, there was delicious food to go along with it!  Tom Gumpel, Panera's VP of Bakery Development (pictured here), not only entertained us with bread-related stories from his youth, but also showed us how to make an amazing Asiago Cheese Strata from just 6 ingredients (not counting salt or pepper). 

The strata had to be one of the best things I've ever put in my mouth, and I immediately wanted to share it with our readers.  The recipe is below, and I hear that it may be featured in an upcoming video from our Studio, along with an interview with Tom about how to pair bread with various foods. 

I'm planning to make it for our houseguests this weekend (and may experiment with adding bacon and mushrooms), but the plain version is a scene-stealer on its own.  Try it for brunch, or as a dinner side.

Asiago Cheese Strata
developed by Tom Gumpel, VP of Bakery Development at Panera Bread
Serves: 6-8 people
Assembly time: 10-15 minutes
Bake time: 35-45 minutes

Ingredients
2 tablespoons sweetened/salted butter (soft)
1-1/2 cup milk
1 cup cream
3 whole eggs
pinch of salt
pinch of cracked black pepper
1 loaf (18 ounces) Asiago bread
1 cup Asiago cheese, shredded (or other cheese shredded)

Directions
Preparation: Preheat oven to 325◦F. Brush the sides and bottom of 8” baking dish or casserole dish with softened butter.
Custard: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the milk, cream, eggs, salt and pepper and set aside.

Assembly
Cut the Asiago bread across the loaf in thin, even slices, approximately 1/4-inch thick. Start assembly of the strata by placing bread slices on the bottom of the dish until bottom is completely covered. Sprinkle shredded Asiago cheese as necessary on the bread slices to cover completely. Cover with another layer of bread slices and sprinkle cheese on top, again covering bread slices completely.

Continue to build the strata for as many layers as dish allows, then pour custard mixture over top of strata.

Cover the strata and refrigerate for 15 minutes, allowing the bread slices to soak in custard mixture.

Baking
Place the strata pan on a cookie sheet to catch any dripping of the custard. Set the strata in the center of the preheated oven and allow to bake for approximately 35- 45 minutes. The custard should gain a rich dark color and rise slightly from the pan (it will settle after removal from the oven). Carefully remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 15 minutes before unmolding.

Service
Carefully invert the strata by placing a 10-inch plate over the top of the pan and slowly flip the plate and pan over together. Place on the counter and allow the strata to fall from the pan onto the plate. If the strata does not release from the pan, cut around the sides of the pan and try to invert again.

Serve hot or warm as an accompaniment with meat and vegetables to fill out the meal.

I've always loved yogurt. Add some granola, and you've got breakfast. Short on time? Spoon for a snack. Need to satisfy a late-night sweet tooth? Serve up vanilla. It's versatile, creamy, cool, and healthy.

And here comes the discovery. On a trip to the Walmart Neighborhood Store, I stumbed upon Fage, a Greek yogurt. I've heard about Greek yogurt for years but never tried it. (As a former Cooking Light employee, I even read articles on how easy it is to make. The yogurt is strained differently to remove the whey, giving it a thicker texture and adding protein.) I grabbed a tub.

The next morning, my view on yogurt changed for life. That sounds overtly sensational, but I'm not kidding. Greek yogurt is nothing like normal yogurt. It's rich, uber-filling, and the texture is similar to soft serve ice cream without the sweetness. Example: Ever heard calorie-cutting tips like substitute sour cream or whipping cream for plain yogurt and thought, "Sure, if you don't care about taste." You COULD with Greek yogurt; it's that rich and creamy.

IMHO, anyone who hasn't tried it should. I picked up the Oikos brand from Stonyfield and like it too. It comes in vanilla, honey, and blueberry flavors.

I found brands at Walmart and Publix, although regular stocking seems come and go. If anyone knows which stores are carrying which brands, please post. Walmart had the better pricing, which is considerably higher than normal yogurt, but well worth it. Instead of eating two servings, I eat one!

Make granola happy. Buy Greek yogurt ;)

Jennifer

The year was 1999 and The Husband and I were a semi-newly-minted couple and the proud owners of our very first grill. We had scarcely ventured out of our hamburger and hot dog rotation when a recipe caught my eye in an issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. Grilled Pitas with Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese. The fact that my mouth was watering at the mere mention of it was a good sign. A very good sign indeed.

Although I loved to cook back then as much as I do now, we hadn't yet gotten very adventurous on the grill, and this recipe seemed like a perfect, albeit easy, way to dive right in. I mean, really, who doesn't love caramelized onions? In addition to spreading our wings a bit on the grill, this was actually my first time trying goat cheese as well. If you've never had it, I think it's a bit of an acquired taste. Creamy with a slight tang, you either love it or you hate it. I happened to fall in love.

A simple recipe, the only time-consuming part is caramelizing the onions, but since it needs so little hands-on attention, I usually use that time to set off on another part of the menu while it's doing its thing. If you want to try something a little different, something that is eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head good, give this recipe a whirl. The sweet caramelized onions paired with the creaminess of the goat cheese atop a crispy pita ... well, you really can't go wrong, and the beauty is in its simplicity. The fact that we've been making these for nine years now really says it all, and it's a perfect, unique way to enjoy grilling season. Dig in.

See the Grilled Pitas with Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese recipe at GoodHouseKeeping.com.