For the Love of Food

This is great for breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner. Heck, it’s even great for in between. Quiche is just yummy at any time of the day.

And, instead of using the traditional pie crust, I used the pat-in-the-pan pie crust I blogged about the other day (minus the fructose, cinnamon, and vanilla extract). Continue Reading »

While visiting my mom in the US, I had the opportunity to make some meals that I just hadn’t gotten around to making at home. One of the meals that has been on my list for a few months now has been a beef and Guinness pot pie – my husband’s request.

After some searching, I cam across a recipe that appealed to me from Closet Cooking. And, I combined it with my favorite pie dough recipe from Joy of Baking (minus the sugar).

This was actually a joint venture recipe: I made the pie dough, my mom made the beef stew, and my husband put it all together and baked it.

Now, I have never had a beef pot pie before, so I can’t compare with other recipes, but this with absolutely delicious, mouth-watering, plate-licking good. And, everyone who had some agreed – even my brother who is a very very very picky eater!

The recipe can be found here.

Now that Easter is just around the corner, I thought I’d share one of my favorite Easter brunch recipes with you. My mom has been making this quiche for quite a few years now. Originally, it’s a Pillsbury recipe.

It’s great served warm or at room temperature. I’ve even made it the day before and taken it out of the refrigerator a few hours before lunch to warm up. It’s a very flexible dish. Continue Reading »

This post under contsruction due to vandalism.

There’s not much better than some good old homemade macaroni. But, how can we make it better?? Top it with Italian Pizza toppings.

I mixed this recipe and this recipe and came out with this delicious recipe! Continue Reading »

This is another great Better Homes & Gardens recipe. I’d really LOVE to work in their test kitchen. I love everything they come up with.

They have this great spread of 10 different versions of macaroni & Cheese: herbed, Italian, harvest, smoky, new england, pizza, Denver, south of the border, Greek, and garden. I think they all look good, but I had to star somewhere, so we went with harvest. Continue Reading »

My mom has this great little Pillsbury cook book for casseroles. I meant to bring it back to Germany with me, but forgot it along with the pie tins that my mom was going to give me and a few other things. In this book my husband came across this recipe called Grilled Chicken and Tortellini with Roasted Red Pepper Cream. It looked interesting – I definitely never thought about adding pureed roasted bell peppers to alfredo sauce. And then I just thought to myself…where have you been my whole life! It was absolutely divine! I don’t think an alfredo sauce will ever be the same in my kitchen, and this new found wonder-ingredient will never been missing again! Continue Reading »

My mom makes great quiche. Now, I lived in France for a while, and while I was there I only ate it once and it was “so good” that I can’t even remember what it looked like, needless to say what it tasted like. And, if anyone can remember over decades how somethings tastes, i’s me.

So, I can’t say how this compares to the true thing, but it’s really delicious and easy to make. My mom uses a refrigerated pie crust that she buys ahead of time from the grocery store, but I make my own, and you can do whatever you want Continue Reading »

Ok, so I’m back. I’m still exhausted, but I can finally think again.

Right before I left Germany to fly to the US I made some vegetable pot pie. I basically needed a way to use up some extra pie crust that I had and didn’t want to freeze.

I was skeptical since meat always adds a good flavor to certain recipes, this being one of them. But, instead of using meat, I used some chicken bullion paste, which could be substituted for vegetarian chicken-flavored bullion to be made vegetarian. Continue Reading »

Ok, I’m pretty sure you agree with me that this looks super gross.

I’d never eaten/made anything like this before, and after I made it, I decided I wasn’t going to eat it b/c it just looked so gross. But, after fighting my way through this horribly written recipe (I’ll write it the way it should be written bellow), I figured I had to at least try it.

Wow – it was good.

And, as Tami from Running with Tweezers wrote: “Looks like crap, tastes like delicious!”. I have to agree with her (and her client) that there are just some foods that are hard to “make” beautiful – although I’m sure it’s possible to make everything beautiful with a little super glue and dried ice (don’t know what I’m talking about? …neither do I, I’m not a food stylist!).

Anyways, about this cookbook that I got as a birthday present: Dr. Oetker – Die Besten Landfrauen Rezepte von A-Z (Dr. Oetker – The Best Country-Women Recipes from A-Z). At first it looks like an amazing cookbook: a picture for every single recipe (for those of you who are visual cooks – there is really nothing else we need, except for maybe a recipe to go with the picture!). At first the recipes look nice and simple, but after reading through them and then making 2 recipes from here I realized that whoever wrote this book has never ever cooked anything before! Instructions are written backwards! Why do you tell me to preheat my oven as the very last step????? That is sooo illogical! Why don’t you tell me how to pre-prepare all the cut items so I can get it all done ahead of time??? It was a very frustrating experience! But, in the end, it was worth making because it was very delicious. So, the recipes are good, but poorly written. If you can bear with it – it’s a book worth getting.

Ingredients:
4 Chicken Breast (each about 150 grams)
Salt, Pepper to taste
20 grams Flour
2 Tablespoons of Vegetable Oil
2 Leeks, halved and cut into small strips
500 grams of White Peaches, sliced, pit removed
2 Tablespoons of granular Fructose (or sugar)

Sauce:
250 grams of Whipping Cream
125 grams of Sour Cream
2 Tablespoons of Curry Powder
20 grams of Flour
Peach juice (will be produced by your peaches – see instructions)
125 milliliters Vegetable broth

Directions:
Preheat oven to 200°C (392°F).

A few hours (or night) before, place your peach slices in a bowl with the fructose or sugar and mix well. This will make the peaches juice. Once you are ready to cook, remove the peaches from the juice and reserve it for the sauce.

Bring a pot of water to boil and add about 1 tablespoon of salt. Blanche the leeks in water for 2 minutes, then immediately remove from heat, drain, and rinse with cold water.

Rinse off chicken breasts in running water, and dry with a kitchen towel. Lay out on a plate and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and then roll in flour.

Heat oil in a skillet and brown chicken, but don’t cook through. Then, place the chicken breasts in a casserole dish. Distribute the peach slices and leek strips over the chicken.

Take about 100 milliliters of the peach juice (if you don’t have enough, use water for the rest) and mix with flour until there are no more lumps. Set aside. In a small pot, combine cream, sour cream, salt and pepper to taste, and curry and bring to a boil. Stir in the peach juice/flour mixture and then the vegetable brother and combine well. Bring the sauce to a boil again and then pour over the chicken in the casserole dish.

Bake for about 40 minutes.

Serve with rice.