Fruit Crisp

I may love chocolate, but I'm also a fiend for fruit. Make that baked fruit with a crispy topping and you just can't go wrong. This particular dish can be made with almost any type or combination of fruit. In this instance, I used plums because I got a little excited when I saw plums first get down to a dollar a pound for the season and bought more than I could eat before they started getting wrinkly. Plums made a fantastic crisp, but blueberries, peaches, ooooooo, blueberries and peaches! Raspberries, blackberries, apples, pears. You see where I'm going with this, don't you? The sky's the limit.

I used the standard large purple plums found in the grocery store, but I also really enjoy the smaller prune plums (Stanley is the most common variety). The amount of sugar you use to sweeten the fruit will vary with how tart your fruit is. You may want to taste as you go to be sure it is right. As I said, these plums were starting to get a little wrinkly and were quite sweet from sitting on the counter for a while, so I only used a little sugar.

Prepare the fruit as necessary to be able to cut it into half-inch pieces. Be sure to take out any offending seeds or pits. Some fruit you'll want to peel (like peaches or apples), but most won't need it. Plums do not need to be peeled. In fact, most of the flavor and color come from the peel, so make sure you leave it on there!

After the fruit is cut, mix it with a little sugar, lemon juice, and cornstarch. The lemon juice not only helps to keep the fruit's color at its best, but it also gives a subtle flavor boost. Divide the fruit mixture among your dish or dishes. I like to make mine in single serving ramekins, but you could do it all together in one dish, if you like.

Prepare the topping by mixing together the flour, sugar, butter, and cinnamon. Give each dish a nice little mound of it.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 45 minutes to an hour or until the top is nicely browned and bubbly fruit can be seen around the edges. Baking time will vary depending on the dish size you used. Be sure to let them cool for a bit before serving or someone is liable to burn their tongue right off! These little guys are wonderful served warm plain or with a little ice cream or served cold right out of the refrigerator... for breakfast!


Fruit Crisp
Yield: 8 standard ramekins or 1 9x9 casserole

3 cups of chopped fruit
1 TBS lemon juice
sugar to taste (1/4 cup to 1 cup, depending on the fruit)
1 TBS cornstarch

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut in pieces
dash cinnamon

Prepare the fruit by seeding, pitting, and/or peeling, as necessary. Add the lemon juice. Stir in 1/4 cup of sugar and then add the remaining sugar to taste. Be sure to do your tasting before adding the cornstarch, which tastes chalky before it is cooked. Once the sweetness is how you want it, add the cornstarch and stir until no white lumps remain. Evenly divide the fruit mixture into the ramekins or pour into the casserole dish.

In a small bowl or food processor, mix the topping ingredients together, cutting the butter in until it is in small pieces and evenly distributed in the flour and sugar. Mound the topping over the fruit evenly.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes to one hour, or until the top is nicely browned and the fruit is bubbly at the edges. Baking time will vary with the dish size you use. Let cool before serving. Is good served warm, at room temperature, or cold. Will keep, covered, in the refrigerator for 4-5 days.

Sauteed Spinach

You have to try this dish! Even if you are not a big fan of cooked spinach or greens, you must give this one a try. I made this dish up the other day on the fly when I suddenly needed a vegetable dish for a luncheon I was hosting. It turned out so well that I made it again that evening for dinner. Here's the most amazing thing. My husband? He said he liked the spinach dish even better than the pasta we were having, which was his favorite pasta carbonara.

There is so much flavor in this dish you will be amazed it is so full of vitamins and nutrients. I actually would recommend caramelizing the shallots (or onions) more than is shown in this picture. I was in a little bit of a hurry when I made the dish for this picture (although it still tasted great). The more caramelized the onions, the more flavor the end result will have.

While this dish takes around twenty minutes total because of the caramelization, it is very low maintenance. Start the onions and go work on other dinner preparations before taking one minute to finish the spinach dish at the last second.


Sauteed Spinach
Yield: 4-6 servings

2 TBS olive oil
1 TBS minced garlic
½ cup sliced shallots
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp cracked pepper
8-10 ounces fresh spinach
2 tsp lemon juice

Saute the garlic and shallots in the olive oil over medium high heat until they just start to brown. Add the salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and let the shallots caramelize over medium-low heat for 10-20 minutes, until they are nicely browned and sweet. Increase the heat to medium and add the spinach and lemon, tossing until the spinach is just wilted. Add more salt to taste, as needed.

Mini-Cheesecakes

I have a thing for mini-desserts. Not only do I like the fact that they are built in portion control... well, unless you eat multiple of them... but I just think they're so dang cute!!

Mini pies, mini cakes, mini loaves of bread; I've even done small cheesecake tarts before. But for my birthday this year, my in-laws gave me this sweet little mini-cheesecake pan from King Arthur Flour. Two perfect bites of sweet, cheesy goodness in every cake. I also like how quick they are to mix up and bake.

I use my Perfect Graham Cracker Crust recipe and then whip up a basic cheesecake filling, which has nice lemony overtone. The cutest thing, which I did not take advantage of in this instance, is that they end up with a slight dimple in the middle of the cake, perfect for filling with whatever fruit or chocolate topping you think your mini-cheesecakes deserve!

Mini-Cheesecakes
Yield: 12 mini-cheesecakes

1 recipe Perfect Graham Cracker Crust
1 package cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 TBS lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Prepare the graham cracker crust and tamp about a 1/4-inch layer of crust in the bottom of each pan. Bake at 400 degrees F about 8 minutes or until nicely golden. Let cool.

Adjust the oven temperature to 325 degrees F. Mix all ingredients together with an electric mixer. Pour batter evenly into the twelve molds. Bake at 325 degrees F for 20 minutes. After twenty minutes, turn off the oven and let the cakes sit in the oven ten minutes longer. Remove pan from oven and let cool completely. For easiest removal, chill cheesecakes in the refrigerator a few hours until they are firm and then remove the cakes onto a serving dish.

Perfect Graham Cracker Crust

I am pleased to announce that crumbly graham cracker crusts are no longer going to be a problem I have to deal with. I have always been frustrated by how the traditional graham cracker crust turned out for me.

It made perfect sense to me... I mean, really: crushed up graham crackers, sugar, and butter... there's no glue in there! What is supposed to hold it all together?

Fortunately, the cure is simple and wonderful. If you add one single egg yolk to the mixture, you end up with a perfect graham cracker crust that holds it's own once baked.

Perfect Graham Cracker Crust
Yield: enough for one pie/tart shell

1 pouch graham crackers (there are usually three pouches per box, 9 full sized crackers per pouch)
4 TBS melted and cooled butter
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup sugar
dash cinnamon

Grind the graham crackers into a fine meal. A food processor is easiest, but you can also use a rolling pin and a plastic bag. Then add the remaining ingredients into the mixture and be sure everything is well incorporated. Press into whichever mold or tart shell you choose and bake in a 400 degree F oven until the crust is gently golden, between 8 and 12 minutes depending on the size and thickness of your shell.

Grilled Turkey and Pesto Sandwich

We love sandwiches around here. My husband's been working such late hours that many days by the time he calls to let me know he's on his way, I just can't think about cooking a full-fledged meal.

Yes. Soup and sandwiches visit our house very often.

But, when I'm really looking for a satisfying meal, cold sandwiches just don't quite measure up to the task. Ergo, we eat a lot of soup and grilled sandwiches at our house.

The great thing is that you have almost as much flexibility with a grilled sandwich as a cold one. Granted, I'm not a big fan of lettuce and tomato condiments on a grilled sandwich, for instance, but you can add all kinds of other great things! Besides the regular grilled ham and cheese (yes, I live with a man and, apparently, men cannot abide by a meatless sandwich), the sky's the limit. Swap out your cheeses; go with a variety of meats. My favorites often include caramelized onions and/or mushrooms. Oh, yes, the options are many.

Funny, then, that this one has made so many regular appearances lately. It's much easier to make than a sandwich that requires cooking onions or mushrooms separately. I can slap these together in no time flat, and my husband says they're good! And they have turkey on them. GASP! What, no beef? I guess when you slather a sandwich with pesto, turkey is A-OK.

So, here's the deal: Butter the outsides of your bread and spread the inside of each slice with a little pesto. I have a bunch of homemade pesto in my freezer that I froze in ice cube trays. I use one ice cube worth of pesto per sandwich. I then place a slice of smoke provolone cheese on each slice of bread (read: two slices per sandwich). Fold some deli smoked turkey in the middle, put them together, and grill over medium heat until nice and golden and heated through. Yup. This one's a keeper.

Stew Dumplings

You ever noticed how sometimes folks start doing something because they think it's convenient and then they forget there ever was an original way to do it? I think stew dumplings fall in that category. When was the last time you had chicken and dumplings with dumplings made from scratch? It seems like everyone now just throws some refrigerator biscuit dough in their stew and calls it good.

There are only two problems with this practice that I can see. First: Biscuit dumplings have a weird texture that in no way resembles scratch dumplings. I find the refrigerator dough dumplings to be very chewy and dense. The real thing is just slightly chewy on the outside and somewhat fluffy on the inside. Second: It only takes me 2.4 minutes to mix up a batch of dumpling dough from scratch. Is that really more trouble than trying to open a roll of store bought biscuits?

Mix this dough together and drop by the tablespoon full on top of any stew you're cooking and see what a difference it makes! You may never look back!

Stew Dumplings
Yield: approximately 6-8 dumplings
Adapted from the New Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook

2/3 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk
2 TBS cooking oil
1/8 tsp salt
pinch of dried herbs (such as parsley, thyme, or oregano)

Stir together all ingredients. For the most tender dumplings, do not over mix the dough. Drop tablespoon sized blobs of dough onto any finished, bubbling stew (you will not want to have to mix anything else into the stew after you add the dumplings). Reduce heat to just maintain a simmer. Cover the pot and cook 10-12 minutes until dumplings are just cooked through.

Phyllo Dough Shortcut

Good news! Your life is about to get easier.

For a long time now, I've wondered, do I have to brush phyllo dough with butter to get the best results? I love baking with phyllo dough... those flaky layers get me every time, but I hate brushing each layer with butter. And, in this case, I really mean hate.

So, the other evening I conducted a test. I built two stacks of plain phyllo dough and baked them for comparison. On one I brushed butter like I usually do, on the other, I sprayed plain old cooking spray on each layer. First, I want to let you know that building the stack using the cooking spray was a breeze! It was wonderfully easy and I could control the amount of fat I used somewhat too. When you're trying to brush tissue paper thin sheets of dough with butter, there's no such thing as going easy on the stuff.

I purposefully made the stacks with no flavorings whatsoever. I wanted to be see if I could discern a difference in flavor between the two, because - as we all know - butter has a special flavor profile and if there was a difference, the hassle of brushing might be worth it.

And the good news is: knock yourself out with the cooking spray. Not only was the result just as flaky and puffed as the butter (in fact, maybe even more so), there was no significant flavor difference between the two. Make your life easy! Make phyllo with cooking spray!

NOTE: The cooking spray tower is on the right in the above picture, the butter on the left. When I bit into them, there was really no significant difference in flakiness. I think the difference you see in the picture is due to the edges of the layers sticking more with the butter when I trimmed around each stack before baking. Another kudos to the cooking spray, I suppose!

Spinach and Scallop Casserole

I have a confession to make. I've got some serious casserole woes.

Perhaps it's because about the closest thing to a casserole I had growing up was lasagna. Perhaps it's because when I first moved out on my own and really started cooking, I didn't have a working oven. Who knows why these things happen. But, just ask my husband... casseroles are a challenge for me.

My husband loves casseroles. So, occasionally, I try and go outside my comfort zone and make the guy a dish. Of course, it doesn't help that his favorite casserole, named - if you can believe - Dump Casserole - is a mixture of ingredients I just can't hardly bear to put into one dish.

Yet, I've got to try and help a guy out, and it's been a little bit of a rocky road. Some have turned out OK, some... haven't. But I keep trying. Fortunately, pasta casseroles are a little less daunting to me, I guess because I never really considered them casseroles. But, alas, this little dish I put together for my husband the other night turned out great. It's creamy and cheesy (which is never a bad thing, in my book). I love the combination of the shallot and spinach and how the hint of sherry brings out the best from the scallops.

Yup, this casserole, at least, was a smashing success.


Spinach and Scallop Casserole
Yield: 6-8 servings

3 cups elbow pasta (large elbows if you can find them)
1 tsp olive oil
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb bay scallops
3 TBS olive oil
3 TBS flour
2 cups warm milk (whole, preferably)
2 TBS cream sherry
1 cup shredded Gruyere cheese
1 cup thawed and pressed chopped frozen spinach
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Boil the pasta as instructed on the package until just al dente. Drain and hold until ready to use. If your pasta is ready way before your sauce is, add a little drizzle of oil to the pasta once it's drained to keep it from sticking together too much.

In a skillet, over medium to medium-high heat, saute the shallots and garlic in a teaspoon of olive oil. When the shallot is soft and starting to brown slightly, add the scallops and saute just until they are barely cooked. They cook very quickly, so give them your full attention while cooking them. Turn off the heat and let cool while preparing the sauce.

In a stock pot or Dutch oven, heat 3 TBS of olive oil and then stir in the flour. Cook for a minute or so and then add the warm milk slowly, stirring the whole time. Slow is the key if you do not want a lumpy sauce. Continue stirring over medium heat until the milk thickens and just starts to boil. Turn off the heat and add the sherry, cheeses (reserve a small bit of cheese to sprinkle on top of the casserole), and spinach. Stir to distribute the ingredients and then add the drained pasta and scallop mixture. Mix and then pour into a greased 9x13 (or similar) pan. Sprinkle the remaining bit of cheese on top.

Bake at 400 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until the top is nicely browned and bubbly. Let cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Greek Rice

Every now and again I try a recipe that I think looks intriguing but that ends up not being that great. I'd had my eye on a stuffed squid recipe for some time. It ended up looking pretty, just as nice as the picture in the recipe book:


However, there was something about the texture of the squid (fairly rubbery) that was an unappealing contrast to the texture of the rice filling. When cooking squid, the rule is typically cook it really fast or really long; anything in between is a recipe for dining on rubber bands. Unfortunately, to obtain a safe internal temperature on the eggs in the stuffing, I think it ended up crossing the "tender" boundary... if you can ever really call squid tender.

What was a pleasant surprise was how delicious the filling was. There was more filling than was needed to fill the squid I had, so I decided to saute it up with some added scrambled egg. What a delightful combination of flavors! The contrast of the sweet currents, the tangy lemon, and the nutty edge from the pine nuts was fabulous... and beautiful! While I can't recommend the squid application, I can whole-heartedly recommend this rice dish.

You need pre-cooked rice for this dish. Either use left over rice or cook some ahead of time. You need 1 1/2 cups of cooked rice. I advise toasting the pine nuts first. Nuts just have so much better flavor when they're toasted.


Greek Rice
Yield: 4 side servings

2 TBS olive oil
2 scallions, diced
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/4 cup currents
2 TBS minced fresh parsley
2 tsp lemon zest
3 eggs, divided

Mix the scallions, rice, pine nuts, currents, parsley, and zest with one of the eggs that has been slightly beaten in a bowl and set aside. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Scramble the two remaining eggs in the skillet. When the eggs are almost cooked through, add the remaining ingredients and saute, stirring regularly, until the rice is heated through.

Brownie Pudding

Who here likes ooey-gooey brownies? If you do, read the following post at your own peril. This recipe may be the simplest rich and decadent dessert around. You can make it less than six minutes. How's that for wonderful... or dangerous?

I'm almost embarrassed to post this recipe. It came about as a result of my uncontrolled and unabashed sweet-tooth. When my husband is out of town and I want to indulge - but only once - this is what I've come up with; making a whole batch of anything is just too dangerous. This gem works great because while it is absolutely sinful and will completely and utterly cure what ails you, there won't be any leftovers.

My husband had a brownie hankering the other night, but as we've really been trying to not be so co-dependent about our eating, I thought I would introduce him to this treat. He's sold! Cured his hankering without compelling us to consume an entire pan of brownies between the two of us.

Now, I'm not saying this treat is good for you or reduced calorie... it really, really, really isn't. But provided you only make one serving per person, you can only imbibe once.

Brownie Pudding
Yield: 1 generous serving (multiply as many times as necessary)

1/4 cup semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (I prefer the bittersweet, myself)
1 1/2 TBS butter
2 TBS sugar
1 whole egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
3 TBS all purpose flour

In a microwave proof glass bowl, heat the chocolate chips, butter, and sugar over medium-high heat in 30 second increments until the chips are almost melted. Stir until the chips are completely melted and the butter and sugar are incorporated. The texture will be somewhat grainy at this point from the sugar; have no fear.

Be sure the mixture is not too hot (if it is, let it cool down slightly) before adding the remaining ingredients as you do not want to scramble the eggs. Stir the egg, extract, and flour together with the melted chocolate until well mixed. Microwave on medium-high heat for one minute. Stir and then microwave on medium-high heat in 30 second increments, stirring between each, until you start to see the batter turn into a cake-like substance. At this point, go slow, heating just until most of the batter is no longer runny. If you over-do the cooking, it will not be as moist and gooey, so go easy.

Spoon into a serving bowl and top with whipped cream, if desired. I like how the whipped cream helps cut the chocolaty richness of the pudding and melts as it hits the heat. Yum! Yum! Yum!