Swedish Meatballs

We had a pot luck at work and someone requested Swedish meatballs. I agreed to make them, even though I had never made them before! So I had to do a little research.

Yes, I visited Ikea.

I saw an article that said that they had gotten chicken meatballs, but alas, when I got there, they had discontinued them sometime in the seven months since that article was written. Oh well. I bit the bullet and took a chance that my digestive system could take a few small bites (I have an intolerance to certain proteins found in pork, beef, and the dark meat of poultry, so I avoid those meats altogether - because it does not contribute to me living my best possible life, if you know what I mean).

I survived and was able to come up with a recipe that I think, although maybe not authentic Swedish meatballs, is pretty close and really tasty!

Swedish Meatballs

meatballs:

• 3 TBS butter or olive oil
• 1/2 sweet onion, minced
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt, or garlic salt or adobo
• 1/4 tsp tarragon *
• 1-2 cups bread/cracker crumbs
• 2 eggs
• 1 lb ground meat

gravy:

• 3TBS butter or olive oil
• 1 cup mushrooms, chopped into small pieces *
• 1/4-1/2 cup flour
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup sour cream *
• 1 TBS Worcestershire sauce *

*optional ingredients:

Preheat oven to 300F for non-browned meatballs or 350F for browned meatballs.

Heat the butter/oil for the meatballs in a large sauce pan. Add the onions, saute for 1 minute. Add the seasonings for the meatballs. Saute for 1 minute. Scrape out into a large mixing bowl. (Don't clean the pan, you'll use it for making the sauce later and the drippings add to the flavor.)

Mix in the bread/cracker crumbs, then the eggs. Add the meat and mix everything until uniform.

Oil a cookie sheet. Roll the meat mixture into 1" balls and place on cookie sheet about 1/2 apart. The mixture is much easier to form into balls if it is chilled first.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes.

Heat the sauce butter/oil in the same pan you sauted the onions. Add the mushrooms and saute for a few minutes. Add flour and mix until incorporated. Mix together broth, sour cream, and Worcestershire. Whisk into pan. Simmer on low until thickened to desired consistency. 

Serve meatballs and gravy over cooked egg noodles or mashed potatoes. 

Morel Cream Sauce

I had my best morel year ever. My son and I usually just saute the mushrooms and eat them as a treat, but I actually had enough to make some kind of a dish with the morels that I found. I wanted to keep it simple and mild, since this was the first time that I was actually cooking them into a dish and wanted to be sure they would hold their own.

So, although I was going to do a stroganoff or an Alfredo, I opted for a simple cream sauce. I basically went out to my garden and pulled what was available.

• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1-2 TBS garlic chives, chopped - whites and greens
• 1-2 TBS chives, chopped
• Small leek, chopped - whites and tender greens
• A few rosemary leaves, chopped (or a pinch of ground rosemary)
• 1/3 cup (or more) morel mushrooms, chopped
• 1-2 TBS flour
• 1/2-1 cup cream or half-n-half - enough to get consistency you want
• Sea salt
• Pepper

Saute the chives and leeks.	Add mushrooms and saute until the mushrooms are fully cooked.
Sprinkle in the flour and mix well.	Pour in cream/half-n-half a little at a time and mix well. You want to dissolve all the flour into the liquids.

Add the salt and pepper and cook until thickened.

I used this over egg noodles. It was delicious!!

The sauce was mild enough that the three mushrooms I used easily held their own. If you want to add a little more spice, like thyme or convert it to a stroganoff by adding sour cream, or an Alfredo by adding some Parmesan; I would add more morels. Heck, if I had had them, I would have added more anyway :)

Champagne Chicken

This is a great way to use up left over champagne from any celebration, mine was Valentine/anniversary weekend. I had this at a local Italian restaurant a couple of times and liked it enough to try to make it myself. I like mine better.

• 3 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 6-8 sprigs of fresh young rosemary
• 6-8 cloves garlic (sliced)
  
• 1/2 tsp dried sweet basil
• 2 TBS butter
• a little flour
• 8oz fresh mushrooms
• 2-3 TBS olive oil
• 2-3 TBS butter (optional)
• 1 - 2 cups champagne (I like Ballatore Gran Spumante)
  
• 1/8 cup half-n-half
• salt & pepper

Butterfly the chicken breast (slice the breast like a hot dog bun). Rub each chicken breast with a little sea salt. Stuff each breast with 2-3 sprigs of rosemary, a sprinkling of dried basil, a TBS or more of sliced garlic, and 1/2 TBS of sliced butter. Pepper each breast and refrigerate for at least an hour to allow all the spices to penetrate the meat. The longer you leave it, the more the meat will absorb the flavors. If you like, you can set the chicken in 1 cup champagne about 1/2 hour before cooking.

When ready to cook, heat a frying pan on medium heat. Add 2-3 TBS olive oil. Place the breast in the pan and dust with a little flour. Keep an eye on the heat; you don't want to burn the flour. Flip them carefully away from the cut side and dust the other side with flour. Once the one side is seared, flip again to sear the other side.

Push the chicken to the side of the pan and add the sliced mushrooms and the additional butter if desired. Once the mushrooms are seared, add the champagne - you can add the champagne that the chicken was sitting in as well.

Turn to low heat. Cover and let cook for about 5-10 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Take the chicken from the pan. Turn the heat back to medium. Add the half-n-half to the pan. If you would like a thicker sauce, mix a little flour to the half-n-half before adding to the pan.

Serve the chicken topped with the sauce.

This, as I said, was delicious. The sauce had a tangy, almost bubbly zip. I served this with a cabbage salad and fried mashed potato patties.

Turkey Madeira

We were having a slow day at work so the girls were leafing through our recipe magazines for dinner ideas. Blue saw this recipe in the slow-cooker magazine and rushed it back to my desk. And she was right to do so, because it certainly looked intriguing.

I had just purchased asparagus (what luck), but had to go to the store after work for the turkey breasts and mushrooms. It wasn't until I got home and was getting ready to make it that I realized that the reason that it is called "Turkey Madeira" is because it is made with Madeira wine. I had no idea what Madeira wine was, much less did I have it. A little research was called for.

Turns out that Madeira wine is from a place called Madeira, an island situated in the Atlantic Ocean north of the Canary Islands. During the shipping/exploration age it was THE place to stop before heading out for a long voyage to The Far East. They produced a fortified wine (wine mixed with a stronger alcohol, such as brandy, for longer and easier storage) which initially was considered average, but on a fluke, a ship returned to Madeira after crossing the ocean twice with a good amount of the wine still on board. The wine had drastically improved in flavor. They began experimenting with the aging of the wine, trying to replicate the heat, humidity, and motion of the travel on a ship. Before refrigeration, it was the most popular wine - because it does not have to be refrigerated after opening! It can last up to a year without refrigeration after opening. MY KIND OF WINE!!

So, turns out that I really did need to get this wine. I was very lucky that my liquor store had this wine in stock - and one actually from the island of Madeira!! SCORE!!

I rushed home with my treasure and prepared to make this dish. First I opened the bottle of Madeira and had a healthy sip. YUM! It's a tiny bit dry but sweet with layers of spiciness. It's like the Coke of wines. I reiterate: MY KIND OF WINE!

• 1/2 cup Madeira wine (1/4 more than the recipe asked for - it is good wine!)
• 1/2 cup chicken broth (I used 1 bouillon cube dissolved in 1/2 cup hot water)
• 1 cup sliced crimini mushrooms (the recipe called for porcini, but I couldn't find any and our local co-op has some very nice baby bellas)
• 1 medium chopped sweet onion (the recipe called for thinly sliced onion, which would have been terrific; but I had accidentally chopped my last onion before I noticed the words "thinly sliced")
• 2 lbs boneless, skinless turkey breast
• 3-4 TBS parsley
• 1/2 cup half-n-half
• 8 spears fresh asparagus
• corn starch or flour
  

Mix the wine, mushrooms, onion, and broth. Slice the turkey breast into 1" strips, placed them in the bottom of a crock pot, and pour the wine mix over the top. Set this on low and left it cook for about 5 hours.

Mix parsley and half-n-half (again, I used the singles since that is what I had) and mix it into the crock pot. Then chop asparagus and throw that into the crock pot. Let it cook an hour or so more.

If you want a thicker sauce, scoop out the turkey and asparagus into a serving bowl, pour the liquids into a sauce pan, added a little cornstarch mixed with water (or you could use flour) and heat it until it thickens.

I made my own noodles for this with flour, salt, water and oil. It was my first time making noodles and I'm not sure that I would make them again - but my family like them.


Here is a picture without and with the gravy.

Generally, I was expecting this dish to have more flavor. It was good, but not really a WOW. It is classic Midwest cooking. I would add more wine next time - maybe even marinade the turkey in it. But as it is a fairly good crock-pot recipe, it deserves a place in the rotation.

Spinach Pesto Quiche

There was a sale on eggs and I suddenly had the flavor of fluffy eggs, bacon and basil with a light, buttery pastry in my mouth.

QUICHE!!

I have only made quiche once; and although it wasn't terrible, it wasn't the best.
But this time, it was AWESOME!!!

The Pastry
Start with the pastry. It is very important that the butter be cold and that you do not over mix. The thing that makes the pastry flaky is the tiny bits of un-mixed butter melting and expanding, leaving air pockets.

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick COLD butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tbs ICE COLD water
  

Mix the salt and flour well. Cut the butter into the flour until just crumbly. Whisk the egg yolk and water and mix lightly into the flour mix. DO NOT OVER-MIX! Just mix it until everything is incorporated. Some recipes will have you roll it out at this point, but then you risk over-working the dough. I just pushed it into the bottom of the pan in which I was baking the quiche until it was evenly distributed across the bottom and sides.

Bake it slightly at 425F before putting in the filling.

The Filling

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups light cream (the only cream that I had was half-and-half singles - the kind that you use for coffee. 48 of them equals 2 cups :)
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup cheese (usually, you would use Swiss - for this I used my four Italian cheese mix)
• 2-3 tablespoons minced sweet onion
• 1-2 tablespoon minced garlic
  
• 1 cup chopped, raw spinach (I probably used more than this)
  
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (and I probably used more than this too)
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1/4-1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
  
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
  

Saute the onion, garlic and pine nuts. Whip the eggs and cream. Mix in all other ingredients, as well as the sauteed ingredients. Pour into the lightly browned pastry crust and bake in a 425F oven for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 350F and bake for another 30 - 45 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

This was even great as left overs!

Easy Veggie Lasagna

Lasagna was always one of the three dishes that my mother made that were not only edible, but were the best I ever tasted. I hardly ever make it because it seems so difficult. As I was thinking of possible zucchini recipes though, I thought that lasagna would be a perfect try.

• 10 lasagna noodles
• 12 oz cottage cheese
• 7 oz ricotta
• handful Parmesan cheese
• handfull Romano cheese
• 3-5 oz spinach, fresh or frozen
• 2 eggs
• 2-4 cloves garlic
• 6 tomatoes
• 3-4 TBS Italian seasoning
• 2 cup sliced mushrooms
• 8-10 oz shredded mozzarella
  
• 1 med zucchini
• Salt - garlic or sea salt
  

As I boiled 10 lasagna noodles in oiled and salted water, I mixed 12 ounces of cottage cheese, 7 ounces ricotta, a handful of Parmesan, and a handful of Romano in a large bowl. Add 3-5 ounces of spinach. I used frozen (squeeze it dry) but I think that I would use fresh next time since I wasn't impressed with the flavor of the frozen spinach. Mix in two eggs and set this aside. Preheat the oven at 350 degrees.

Heat a pan with some olive oil, one or two tablespoons. Chop up a couple cloves of garlic. Add to the hot pan- you do not want the pan so hot that the garlic turns brown, just enough to cook it. Dice six or so tomatoes. Add those to the pan. Add three or four tablespoons of Italian seasoning and a good sprinkling of garlic salt (or other salt. Sea salt? You know how much I like sea salt, mmmm...).

As the sauce cooks down, slice up a medium size zucchini into 1/8-1/4 inch slices. If you like mushrooms you can slice some (I used portabella since I had some leftover). Remove the noodles from the heat even if they are not cooked all the way (in fact you probably only want them cooked halfway). Rinse them under cold water and separate.

When the sauce is thick, spread some of it in an oiled cake or lasagna pan. Put in a layer of noodles, then a layer of cheese mix, then noodles, then a layer of the raw zucchini slices and the mushrooms (if you are using them) topped with tomato sauce, another layer of noodles, the rest of the cheese mix, a layer of noodles, and top with the remainder of the tomato sauce. Top the whole thing with grated mozarella.

Bake in the oven for about an hour. My husband is not a big vegetable fan, but he liked this. He even ate leftovers- that's rare. I made mine half with mushrooms and half without (my husband doesn't like mushrooms). My son ate until the mushroom side was completely gone.