Red Wine Cookies

I saved this recipe earlier this year when it showed up on my Facebook feed expecting that at some point I would have an open, but unfinished bottle of red wine. Although an unfinished bottle of wine is a rare event at our house, it does occasionally happen. We actually ended up with two open bottles at the same time when we had one at each of our houses. Since the recipe indicates that you can use any type of red wine we figured mixing would be fine. Once we had both bottles in the same place I began the process of reducing the wine, following the instructions to use the same pan in which I first melted butter until foamy.

I also mixed the wet and dry ingredients separately (as indicated), and then together which really made for a lot of dishes. The beach house has a rather small dishwasher so we had to wash these in two rounds, as well as wash the cookie sheet by hand, a difficult task in the rather small sink that goes with the rest of the rather small house.

This recipe demonstrates the importance of having a well-stocked pantry. You don't want get caught with leftover red wine and find that can't make cookies out of it because you are lacking the rest of the ingredients.

The cookies were rich, chewy, and not too sweet.

Crab-stuffed flounder

Well, it's already been a week since National Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day. It was fortuitous that it fell on a day we were already planning on going to Kyler's Catch to fetch some seafood for dinner. We were aware that crab meat these days is crazy expensive and so we were in fact prepared to pay the $17 for 8 ounces. Nevertheless, this of course put a bit of pressure on the chef-of-the-day (Pam) to get preparing the meal right. 

I used this recipe from The Nibble with the following adjustments

• We used sole which is not exactly the same as flounder, but it was recommended by the folks at Kyler's, whose advice we heed.
• I did not use celery (we didn't have any).
  
• I used dry parsley.
• I absolutely did not use plain breadcrumbs. I only use panko.
• The filets weren't big enough to roll with the crabmeat inside, so I made fish sandwiches instead.

Ready for the oven

We very much enjoyed this meal. And it really wasn't difficult. Looking forward to enjoying this again when the price of crab is more reasonable. 

Valentine Skillet

 

Photo of "downtown" Valentine, Arizona because this
dish was more delicious than beautiful.

We do not go to Mexican restaurants on Cinco de Mayo and we do not go to any kind of restaurants on Valentine's Day. Neither is worth the trouble, especially as our home-cooking options have increased and improved over the years. We both remember our sad efforts to find a nice meal out one Valentine's evening in Tucson.

On this, the 110th anniversary of Arizona statehood (about which we wrote extensively for Celebrating the States in 2010), I prepared a dish with Arizona roots -- something from the Valentine State. As is often the case on this blog, I credit Pam for doing the hard part -- finding a great meal idea -- while I merely cook it.

The dish she suggested was Skillet Beef Tamales, which had been contributed to the Taste of Home recipe site by a reader from Arizona. I started to think about how I might spend part of Monday morning doing some prep work, because I do enjoy making tamales for special occasions (and nacatamales for really special occasions). As much as I was starting to look forward to this, I was just as happy to find that this dish is more skillet than tamale -- by which I mean it is a single-pan dish perfect for a weeknight celebration.

And that single dish was the heaviest of indispensable cast-iron skillets -- perfect for browing the local, grass-fed beef (using olive oil instead of the called-for cooking spray and adding a generous dash of black pepper). I then covered it to finish essentially steaming the combined ingredients. The result: instant comfort food. We will make it again, probably with more spices, but we both agreed it was quite tasty as-is. We enjoyed it just as much for lunch the following day.

And some geography ... 

Regular readers (and I think we do have some) will not be surprised to know that looking for a good image to put at the top of this article sent me on a bit of a digression through "Arizona Valentine" rabbit holes. As my beloved and I had learned long ago, Arizona is called the Valentine State because of its February 14, 1912 statehood. What I did not realize -- or had forgotten -- is that Valentine is a town, or perhaps more accurately was a town. The town is named for a Robert G. Valentine, who had served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The town that bears his name is on the site of a school that taught Indian and white children in separate (and probably not equal) buildings for which the Hualapai children had been made the bricks. 

I learned this from the Valentine page on TheRoute-66.com, which means we will have an opportunity to visit it when we take the Great Hayes-Boh Route 66 Mother Road Trip in a few years.

Dinner by the sea

Yummy Haddock

James was scheduled to row with his rowing club on Thursday night, so we drove down to the sea together with the intention of picking up some fresh fish at Kyler's Catch for Pam to prepare at our beach house while James got his exercise. Little did we know that the row had been canceled earlier in the day. While James was disappointed when he arrived at the marina, we did not despair. We still had fish to enjoy, plus which it was also National Cream Cheese Brownie Day!

We went to our classic 1980s era Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook for a fish recipe and selected Baked Fish with Mushrooms (because we had mushrooms). The recipe also called for bacon (which was also on hand). We decided to substitute the shallot we had for the green onions. 

The first step involved cooking the bacon - a rather straightforward instruction. Unfortunately, our electric stove has three different sized burners nested in concentric circles, with each having settings from Low to High which are all part of a single dial. The "low" setting on the smallest burner (which I did not intend to set) is next to the "high" setting for the middle burner (which I did intend to set). I put the bacon in the skillet, turned the dial, and waited wondering why the two slices wouldn't cook at all. I eventually discovered the problem and reset the dial, but what I didn't realize was that the middle sections (the only part getting any heat) of each slice had in fact started to cook, so that when the rest of the bacon was heated it heated unevenly. By the time the ends were cooked the middle sections were burned. They looked like long figure 8s. I threw out the burned parts and used only the ends.

After removing the bacon I sautéed the chopped shallot and the chopped mushrooms in the bacon fat and added 3 T. butter and some dried oregano. The fish (Haddock) was placed in a baking dish, topped with the mushrooms, shallot, butter and oregano and baked at 350 for 15 minutes. The bacon was crumbled and added to the top. We served with a spinach salad and paired with a buttery Chardonnay.

Cream Cheese Brownies: The secret is to 'spray with spray'

I don't always celebrate the food holidays I learn about on National Day Calendar. I imagine I would "fall away to a ton" (as my grandmother used to say) if I did, but I could not resist National Cream Cheese Brownie Day. I started with a recipe I found on spendwithpennies.com, but had to make a few substitutions, so my revised recipe follows:

For the Brownies:

12 T unsalted butter

1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 c. cocoa powder

1 1/4 c. sugar

2 eggs

a dash of vanilla extract

1/2 t. salt

1 c. flour

For the Cheesecake Swirl

1 8 oz. package cream cheese

1/4 c. sugar (I had used up all the granulated sugar we had in the brownie mix, so I had to crush up a bunch of sugar cubes)

1 egg

a dash of vanilla extract

The instructions specifically said to "spray a 7x11 pan with baking spray". I ended up using a 9x13 pan because I didn't have the size recommended. Fortunately I did have plenty of my eponymous baking spray.

I melted the chocolate chips and butter together in the microwave (stopping every 30 seconds to stir). Cocoa powder, sugar, eggs, salt, vanilla, and flour were added and mixed together to form a batter which was poured into the well-sprayed dish. I also saved out 1 dollop of the batter as indicated in the recipe.

The cheesecake topping was made by mixing the cream cheese with the sugar and mixing by hand. The recipe says to use an electric mixer, but we don't own one. Next I added the egg and the vanilla extract and stirred until well mixed. I poured the smooth cheesecake batter on top of the brownie batter already in the pan, then plopped the reserved brownie batter on top of that and used a knife to swirl everything together. This baked at 350 for 25 minutes. It cooled a bit before we sliced it, but it was still warm and creamy when we ate it. So good. Not too sweet with a wonderful mouth feel, warm and chocolatey.