Snow Day Menu

There’s something about a foot of snow on the ground that makes a girl’s appetite grow exponentially. If I’m going to be cooped up inside, it had best be with some fantastic meals.

When I decided to host a last-minute game day on Saturday afternoon (and by games I mean Catchphrase, not basketball), a big pot of chili seemed like the natural choice for a winter meal for a crowd. And being a chili fanatic, I’m always eager to try out a new recipe.

For this particular chili, some toothsome beans were the star of the show. I recently placed an order from the much-lauded bean-sellers, Rancho Gordo. They’re a California-based company that specializes in tasty, fresh heirloom beans. I decided to put the yellow-eye beans to good use in an adapted version of Bon Appetit’s Turkey Chili with White Beans. I love the addition of cinnamon and cocoa powder, but decided to up the spiciness quotient and added some hominy into the mix.

Snow Day Turkey Chili

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 medium-sized onion, diced
• 1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 pound ground turkey (not lean turkey breast)
• 2 tablespoons chile powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 2-3 cups chicken stock
• 1 can whole tomatoes
• 2 cups dried yellow-eye beans
• 1/2 cup dried hominy

Soak beans and hominy overnight. Drain and rinse. Bring to a boil then let simmer for 30 minutes.

Saute onions and garlic in oil in a large Dutch oven until softened. Add oregano and cumin and mix well. Add ground turkey and cook through. Add chile powder, bay leaf, cinnamon, cocoa powder, salt and red pepper flakes. Add tomatoes and their juices, breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon. Mix in stock and bring to a boil. Let simmer for 30 minutes

Add beans and continue to cook chili for 15 minutes. Remove bay leaf and serve with sour cream and cilantro.

Since girl can’t live on chili alone, some cookies were in order to keep things sweet. This version is crumbly and super satisfying.

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Adapted from MarthaStewart.com

• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 2 cups milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets in parchment paper, trimming excess.

In a small bowl, mix oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In a larger bowl, mix butter, peanut butter and sugars using an electric mixer until combined and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and continue to mix.

Stir oat mixture into butter and sugar mixture. Add nuts and chocolate chips.

Scoop balls of dough onto lined baking sheets, placing them two inches apart. Bake for 15 minutes until lightly browned, rotating sheets halfway through cooking. Let cool on baking rack.

Stir Crazy

Miss Menu has been on a bit of a stir-fry kick lately, and for good reason. The stir-fry is a quick and healthy week-night meal that incorporates veggies, protein and carbs in one big, flavorful pot. Better yet, a stir-fry comes together quickly and reheats pretty well the next day. It’s the easiest way I can think of to throw together a hot and home-cooked meal in a hurry.

With that in mind, I like to keep my pantry, freezer and fridge stocked with as many stir-fry-friendly ingredients as possible.

• The best stir-frys have a truly great cooking liquid. Most of the liquid is reduced while heating, but the more flavorful your broth, the better your stir-fry. I keep Canned Light Coconut Milk & Chicken Stock on hand to make it happen.
• To make the meal a bit more filling while keeping it healthy, I turn to some lean protein. You can almost always find Ground Chicken or Turkey in my freezer.
• Miso Paste turns a stir-fry into something a bit more special to Miss Menu’s taste buds. And now that it’s readily available in most grocery stores, it’s easy to add this fermented soybean paste to your stir-frys for a rich, earthy and slightly salty flavor. I blend a tablespoon or so of paste into the cooking liquid to spread the flavor throughout the stir-fry.
• Frozen veggies are a great and easy add-in, and Frozen Edamame is a particular favorite for its vibrant color and punch of protein.
• A stir-fry can stand well on its own, but if you’re looking to add some heft to the meal, look no further than Sweet Potatoes, Pearl Barley and Brown Rice. All keep well and are complex carbohydrates with loads of fiber. The sweet potato is a particular success: you can cook your stir-fry while blasting the potato in the microwave for 10 minutes, and the potato absorbs any cooking liquid very nicely.
• For a flavor boost, a post-cooking sprinkle of Sesame Oil or Soy Sauce can’t be beat. Crushed Red Pepper and Ginger are other reliable standbys, but when I’m feeling a bit more adventurous I’ll spin my spice rack to Fennel or Coriander.
• To keep things bright, there’s nothing like Fresh Veggies added into the mix. Sugar snap peas, red peppers, zucchini and carrots are some reliable mix-ins.

Once your pantry is stocked, it’s time to get cooking!

Quick Tips for Super-Simple Stir-Frys

• To Wok or Not to Wok: The wok is designed with a stir-fry in mind. The shape allows you to heat just a small amount of oil in the base of the pan, instead of using enough oil to cover a wide skillet. You also have several heating zones: the flat base is super-hot while the sloped sides provide a more gentle heat. For Miss Menu, using a wok is a matter of space. My cupboards and pot rack are stuffed to the brim, without an inch to spare. Once I free up a bit of room, though, I plan to invest in a Joyce Chen flat-bottomed steel wok.
• I typically heat a bit of olive oil in the bottom of my pan because it’s what I’m most likely to have on hand. But peanut and vegetable oil are good inexpensive substitutes, and are desireable for their clean flavors. Pricy safflower oil is another, heart-healthy option.
• Once the oil is heated over a medium-high burner, finely chopped garlic and diced onions receive the first turn in the pan.
• Add vegetables in order of their firmness. Carrots should receive more cooking time than red peppers, and peppers should receive more cooking time than spinach.
• When possible, chop vegetables to similar sizes to ensure even cooking time.
• After the vegetables have sautéed, add some cooking liquid and let simmer for a while to allow the meat and veggies to soak up some brothy goodness.

Meaty Meals: Osso Buco in the Winter

There are some dishes that practically scream “winter.” There’s nothing like a heavy stew or a satisfying and rich cassoulet to keep you warm on a chilly night. 

For Miss Menu, there are some restaurants that fall into that same winter category. They feature hearty food, a comfortable setting and are downright cozy. That’s why this past weekend, Miss Menu found herself on a winter date with her good pal Cookbook Queen at Bizou, one of our favorite Charlottesville restaurants. 

Bizou is one of those rare restaurants that provides just the right mix of comfortable and creative. Their menu always features some staple dishes that have earned a well deserved spot on the menu: meatloaf with spicy chipotle catchup, roast chicken, and toasted banana bread a la mode. This past Saturday also featured a seasonal short rib with a decadent, creamy polenta. 

Braised Beef Short Ribs with Polenta

But the Saturday special was what stood out to me as the ideal marriage of comfort and creative: an Asian-style pork osso buco. 

To understand this dish, first we’ve got to take a look at osso buco. When most people hear the term, they think of the Italian veal dish. In this traditional version, a veal shank receives a long, slow braise with stock, tomatoes, garlic, onions and plenty of other flavorful add-ins. 

But the term osso buco isn’t synonymous with this conventional veal version (known commonly as osso bucco milanese). The phrase osso buco translates to pierced bone – the bone of the shank, or front leg of a cut of meat, contains flavorful marrow that is a big component of the dish. The shank’s connective tissue requires that long braise for the most tender results. 

In this pork version of osso buco, the braise infused the pork shank with bright, Asian flavors. The chef at Bizou added a rich broth, a roasted sweet potato, a sprinkling of edamame baby bok choy and–my favorite part–a cilantro wonton. 

Asian Pork Osso Buco

The next step in my osso buco exploration is, of course, an at-home test. But first I have some decisions to make. Traditional Italian flavors, or something a bit more exotic? How do we feel about a Mexican style osso buco? And should pork or veal be my shank of choice? This is the kind of conundrum Miss Menu enjoys!

Holiday Feasting

Almost two weeks after the Menu family Christmas day festivities, Miss Menu is still dreamy-eyed with thoughts of the day’s meals: a breakfast to remember with a perfect mixture of sweet and savory; a traditional beef-and-potatoes dinner with some tasty twists; and a highly indulgent dessert.  

We don’t like to budge much from our traditional Christmas morning breakfast, and for good reason. Our coffee cake recipe (see below) is super simple but insanely satisfying. It also freezes well. (The Menu Family likes to take a frozen cake on beach vacations, too). Add scrambled eggs, thick-cut bacon and plenty of mimosas and you have yourself a Christmas brunch to remember.  

The next Christmas day menu that brings joy to the taste buds is Christmas dinner. Last year’s crown roast of pork was hard to top in terms of a wow factor, but this year we decided to try something new with the New York strip roast. This tender cut is usually served up as individual steaks, but a whole roast is perfect for a crowd. We pre-ordered our meat from local-favorite Belmont Butchery, then followed the basic guidelines in this Epicurious.com recipe. Basically, you pan sear the whole roast in a skillet on the stove top, fat-side town, to create a nice brown crust before putting the whole skillet in a 375-degree oven and cooking to 130.  

The beef receives a quick stove-top sear before roasting.

 

A stove full of Christmas day goodness.

 

 Our side dishes included a sausage-and-oyster stuffing, smashed potatoes with plenty of alouette cheese and string beans with crispy onions.  

All that is well and good, but for this sweet tooth, a Christmas meal just isn’t complete without a decadent dessert course. We found ours by recreating a version of the famous lemon butter cake from Chez Foushee Restaurant in downtown Richmond. It’s something of a dessert institution in my hometown: a buttery crust meets a dense, intense, lemony filling. The result is slightly similar to a cheesecake, but somehow tastes even more sinful. After you test the experiment below, I highly recommend a trip to Chez Foushee to taste the original.   

Lemon butter cake.

 

Menu Family Coffee Cake 

 

Batter:  

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 pint sour cream

Cinnamon Mixture  

• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons chopped walnuts
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon

Using an electric mixer, beat butter until it becomes creamy. Gradually add sugar and vanilla.  Add salt and eggs and continue to beat.  Combine baking soda with flour and add alternately with sour cream.  Pour half the batter into greased and floured 13 x 9” baking pan.  Sprinkle half the sugar/cinnamon/walnut mixture over.  Top with remaining batter and sprinkle remaining cinnamon mixture over all.  Swirl with knife.  Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. If freezing, let cool completely before wrapping in plastic wrap and aluminum foil. 

Lemon Butter Cake
Adapted from a 2006 Richmond Magazine recipe and discovered thanks to a co-worker who enjoys lemon butter cake just as much as Miss Menu!  

Crust  

• 1/2 stick butter, melted
• 1/2 package boxed yellow cake mix (2 cups)
• 1/2 a whisked egg (2 tablespoons)

Filling  

• 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 8-ounce package cream cheese (light is OK)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• Zest from two large lemons
• 1 stick butter, softened

For crust, stir together melted butter, cake mix and egg until mixture comes together. Grease the sides of a 9-inch springform pan, inverting the bottom of the pan so the cake can slide off easily once cooked. Press the dough into the bottom of the pan and  half-way up the sides.  

For filling, cream together the cream cheese and butter using an electric mixer. Mix in condensed milk until fully incorporated. Add powdered sugar and incorporate. Add eggs, one at a time, then add lemon juice and zest and mix. Pour mixture into the prepared crust and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Top will puff up and brown a bit. Chill overnight – top will fall a bit. Serve dusted with powdered sugar, with raspberries or lemon slices to garnish.

Rich & Italian: Just How I Like My Christmas Meals

Menu-wise, this Christmas season was one for the books. In between sessions of opening presents and playing with the niece and nephew, we simmered, stirred, broiled and baked. The Menu Family cooked up a series of feasts that, in Miss Menu’s humble opinion, was the biggest collective success in family holiday history. 

For Christmas Eve, we decided to take a break from the traditional ham and macaroni & cheese; instead, we opted for a festive Italian menu. A heaping antipasti platter–lovely salami, loads of veggies, trays of cheese and bowls of briny olives–started us off on the right note. Father Menu stirred up a batch of Bardstown Slings (bourbon, Triple Sec, cranberry juice and lime) to wash it all down. 

Antipasti on Christmas Eve

Pouring some Bardstown Slings

For our main course, we decided to go with a one-”pot” dish – something that could be prepared ahead and popped in the oven as soon as we’d returned from church on Christmas Eve. My jaw quite literally dropped when I read about this Sausage and Broccoli Rabe Torta in the highly craveable Gourmet Today cookbook. I’ve waxed poetic about Gourmet cookbooks before – and will likely continue to do so ad nauseum, for one good reason. Time and time again, their recipes surprise, delight and satisfy. For this torta, you take a pancake-like batter, sizzle up a batch of crepes and layer them with sweet and spicy Italian sausage, loads of garlic-sauteed broccoli rabe and a gooey and rich bechamel sauce (butter, flour, milk and cheese). The layers bake up in a springform pan so you’re left with a layered tower of Italian goodness.  

We doubled the recipe to serve our group of 7 (plus one hungry 20-month old) and were left with plenty of leftovers. Next time around, I might use a smidge more milk in the bechamel – this sauce was super rich – and reduce the quantity of cheese to lighten the load a bit. We used a mixture of broccoli rabe and broccolini for the filling – both are similar to broccoli but with smaller florets, more leafy greens and nuttier, more bitter flavors. You could get really creative with this recipe and substitute grilled eggplant or roasted peppers, instead. We rounded out our meal with a leafy green salad and a crusty baguette. 

Layering the torta

The finished product

Dessert was something special for the true chocolate lover. This recipe for Memphis Mud Pie from Down Home with the Neelys over on Foodnetwork.com is super fudgy. We created our own chocolate cookie crumb crust (like the one in this cheesecake recipe) in lieu of the store-bought version recommended, and were tremendously happy with the chocolatey results. 

Christmas Eve is the perfect time for indulgence, and this menu fit the bill. Next up from Miss Menu? Stay tuned for tales of a New York strip roast, oyster sausage stuffing and a decadent lemon butter cake on Christmas day, plus a recipe to make your Christmas morning breakfast exemplary.

Spreading the Christmas Spirit, Miss Menu Style

Haul out the holly and deck the halls: Christmas is here and Miss Menu is ready to celebrate. From the carol-singing to the festive menu making, the holiday season is one of my favorite times of year. And gift-giving is one of the best parts of Christmas – when you can find that perfect gift. Here’s a quick peak at Miss Menu’s fave food-related gifts to give.

The Very-Best-Food-Magazine-EVER might have closed up shop this year, but you can hold on to their recipes by purchasing a copy of Gourmet Today for your favorite home chef. You’ll find over 1,000 tested recipes with a focus on the modern, using ingredients that are available in today’s markets and techniques that are popular in today’s culinary landscape. This is a true treasure trove.

Miss Menu’s favorite gifts to give are those little extravagances that the gift receiver wouldn’t necessarily by for herself. An insanely fantastic pairing knife might fall under this category.

In the stocking stuffer realm, your favorite baker can never have enough silicone baking tools: a nonstick silpat and a pastry brush always come in handy.

Around this time of year, you can always find great deals on pots and pans, so it’s the prefect opportunity to buy a pair of Calphalon nonstick pans – I use mine habitually.

Any entertainer would love to add more serving pieces to her arsenal, and Etsy.com has some great vintage picks. Miss Menu is digging this folk art ceramic plate and this fantastic, avocado green warming dish from the 1970s.

And, of course, you can never go wrong by giving out gifts from your home kitchen. My personal fave to make and give is some festively wrapped biscotti. The double-baked Italian cookies are easy to make, impressive to give and keep well. I can’t wait to try this savory version from Washingtonpost.com.

Merry Christmas from Miss Menu!

A Few Good Appetizers

Miss Menu was recently tasked with a fun challenge: create a yummy snack that would pair well with an existing menu of delectable cocktail party treats. The occasion was a “stock the bar” party for a high school friend. The existing menu was a spread of party-friendly heavy appetizers:

• Crab Hush Puppies
• Inside Out BLT’s
• Pecan Crusted Pork Tenderloin on Crostini
• Pulled Pork Barbeque on Miniature Cornbread Pancakes
• Smoked Salmon Mouse on Cucumber Rounds

Since the menu already offered plenty of meat and fish options, I wanted to do something heavy on the veggies. My first inclination was a cold-weather-friendly, smooth root vegetable soup, like this parsnip and apple version over at Epicurious.com. But little cups and soup spoons are not well suited for a cocktail party. The same reasoning kept a festive winter salad featuring fresh herbs, grapefruit and fennel out of the running. I love the possibilities of this fantastic flavor combination, but the rest of the menu was fuss-free, and balancing a little salad plate whilst mingling would just prove a hassle.

So I was looking for something compact – hand-held, perhaps, or bite-size.  Some gooey fried risotto balls–or arancini–would fit that bill, but fried food is so much better served piping hot, and I hardly wanted to stand by a pot full of boiling oil all night long to serve up steaming risotto balls.

The same problem applies to another appetizer that I’ve been dying to try out – spanikopita. The store-bought versions are so often weak when it comes to packing a flavor punch, so I think a homemade version would be super satisfying. Alas, folding the phyllo pastries seemed tedious, and the reheating factor unattractive.

Which brings us to our full list of requirements: veggie-centric, fuss-free and no on-the-spot cooking required.

It was with those requirements in mind that I watched last Wednesday’s episode of Top Chef, in which the judges lauded Kevin for his simplistic vegetarian dish. I love the idea of highlighting fantastic flavors in simple, reliable and delicious dishes. So, I decided to create a snack plate with my very favorite – and supremely simple – appetizers.

I love a good party dip; spinach and artichoke is a personal, tried-and-true fave, but to keep things even more simple this time around, I chose a cook-free Green Goddess dip. I’m a big fan of the clean and bright flavors of the fresh herbs mixed with tart sour cream and mayo. For some crunch, I turned to the Mexican spiced nuts recipe from The New Best Recipe Cookbook, by America’s Test Kitchen. I’ve made these nuts more times than I can count, and their use of sugar, cayenne, cumin, cinnamon and garlic powder has to be one of my very favorite flavor profiles. To round out the snack tray, I threw some homemade crackers into the mix. These buttery versions, adapted from an Ina Garten recipe that uses thyme instead of paprika, are more like savory cookies than crackers, actually. Anyone who’s indulged in cheese straws from Ukrops will be familiar with these delectable bites.

Green Goddess Dip
Adapted from Epicurious.com recipe.

• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 large handful parsley
• 1 large handful tarragon
• A few sprigs of dill
• 1 shallot
• 1 garlic clove
• Salt
• Pepper

 Chop garlic, shallot and herbs in food processor. Add sour cream, mayonnaise and olive oil and process until well combined. Season with plenty of salt and pepper. Serve with sugar snap peas, baby carrots, slice peppers and your other favorite crudites.

Parmesan Paprika Shortbread Crackers
Adapted from Barefoot Contessa recipe.

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 3 ounces parmesan, finely grated (preferably using a Microplane so cheese is super-fine and fluffy)
• 1 1/3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Using a mixer, blend butter until creamy and a bit fluffy. Mix in grated cheese, flour, paprika and salt and pepper. Roll dough into a log (about 1 to 1 1/4 inch in diameter) and place in the freezer for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice log into 1/4 inch crackers and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, until slightly crispy.

The Best Spiced Nuts EVER
Adapted from The New Best Recipe Cookbook.

• 2-3 cups mixed nuts (I use walnuts and pecans, or whatever’s on sale)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 tablespoons water

Toast the nuts for 3-4 minutes (I like to use the toaster setting on my toaster oven). In a medium-sized bowl, mix the white sugar, salt, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne and garlic powder. In a saucepan, heat the brown sugar, water and butter over medium-high heat, stirring. When the mixture starts to boil, add the toasted nuts and stir. Once the liquid has evaporated, remove from heat and pour nuts in bowl with the spice mixture. Toss to coat. Spread nuts on parchment paper to dry and cool.

Prost!

I love fall because it typically marks a period of kitchen reinvigoration for Miss Menu. When the temperatures turn cooler, my little oven is a great source of apartment-wide heat! Plus, cooler weather tends to turn up my appetite a notch or two. One of my favorite fall food indulgences is hearty, meat-heavy, flavor-rich German food.

I started my autumnal culinary ode to Germany in September with a mini-Octoberfest with work friends. Bratwurst, cabbage, potato salad and German chocolate cake were the highlights of this festive lunch.

Next up came another bratwurst event, but with a twist. A good friend gifted Mother Menu with a quartet of French mustards straight from Paris, so we figured that a meal of bratwurst was the perfect occasion for some mustard taste testing. And these weren’t just any mustards. Made by the French king of moutardes, Maille, these tasty condiments feature fantastic flavor profiles: pepper, mint, carrot, even rhubarb.

The next step in my personal, two-month-long Octoberfest came at Cafe Rustica, a little restaurant near downtown Richmond that specializes in the hearty fare so appropriate to fall. Cafe Rustica introduced me to my first sauerbraten. This German beef pot roast is marinated and slow-cooked to juicy perfection. But my favorite part of the sauerbraten is the traditional side dish. Spaetzle are tiny little dumplings that, at Cafe Rustica, were pan-fried after being boiled.

I think the next step is to bring my love for all foods German into my own kitchen – and what could be more authentic than making your own bratwurst? This recipe over at epicurious.com uses pork spare ribs, pork fat and the help of a food processor to grind up meat for the sausage. For serving alongside the ‘wurst, a beer and horseradish mustard sounds like the perfect accompaniment. I’ve never made my own mustard, so this recipe sounds like the perfect excuse.

Entertaining with my Favorite Flavors

Mexican food has always been a particular passion of Miss Menu’s. I swoon for tamales, lust over chile rellenos and constantly crave gorditas. In Miss Menu’s humble opinion, her hometown of Richmond is short on truly fantastic Mexican restaurants, so I turn to my kitchen when I’m looking for my favorite flavors.

For a recent gathering of friends, Mexican Fiesta was the theme of the day. Menu requirements were the following:

1. A good portion of the meal needed to be prepared in advance.
2. I was expecting one veggie guest and three omnivorous guests (plus the obviously-omnivorous Miss Menu herself), so I needed a healthy helping of meat-free options.
3. I wanted simple food with big flavors.

As Miss Menu is a self-confessed soup-addict, I decided that a couple of soup options were the way to go for the centerpiece of this meal. I pulled an old standby, Ina Garten’s Mexican Chicken Soup, from my recipe archives for the meat-eaters. But for a veggie-friendly option, I was excited to try the Chilled Avocado and Corn Soup from Gourmet.com. This super-smooth soup relies on a corn stock and puréed avocados for tons of flavor, with a touch of sour cream and cilantro oil for added flavor. It’s a beautiful dish that packs a punch.

To round out the menu, I decided that a Nachos Bar was the way to go. I like that the guests can customize their nachos for their own unique dietary requirements. I served a big bowl of yellow corn tortilla chips, heated in a 350-degree oven with plenty of shredded cheddar, alongside a host of pre-made toppings: a can of Hormel Chili No Beams (a lifelong junk food addiction); refried beans; Mexican-flavored black beans; chives; sour cream; and some (homemade) salsa.

Avocado & Corn Soup – I followed this recipe over at Gourmet.com pretty closely. The flavors are super strong, and I can’t help but think this would be even better in the summer when you can use fresh instead of frozen corn for the stock. The corn stock is definitely something I’ll recreate for future veggie soups.

Mexican Chicken Soup - This Barefoot Contessa recipe is a longtime favorite. I love how the corn tortillas thicken the soup. I always add a can of black beans, corn or, in this case, hominy to give the soup some extra oomph. I also like to cut back on the stock a bit, so the end result is pretty close to a stew.

“Dulce de Leche” Bars - I’ve always been intrigued by this dessert recipe, which features a shortbread crust with a chocolate and dulce de leche topping. Dulce de leche is a rich, milk-based sauce that I can NEVER find in the grocery store. So I improvise. I use the shortbread crust recommended in this recipe at Epicurious.com, but for the topping, I just melt together a can of sweetened condensed milk, a cup of whole milk and five ounces of bittersweet chocolate. This time, I also worked in a couple of pinches of cayenne and cinnamon to ensure some Mexican-inspired notes, and sprinkled the top with chopped pecans before chilling in the fridge.

Olé!

Breaking the Breakfast Rut

Miss Menu is the kind of girl who simply must eat breakfast first thing in the morning, every morning. In fact, you might even say that, on a work day, an almost comically large bowl of cereal is the only thing that really gets this girl out of bed.

It’s that big bowl of cereal that’s put me in something of a breakfast-menu-rut as of late. For years now–practically my whole life–I’ve been stuck in what I call the cereal cycle. When I was younger, it was Rice Chex that filled my cereal addiction. After four or five years, I switched over to Banana Nut Crunch, before Multigrain Cheerios gained my allegiance. Today, and for the past several years, it’s been Honey Bunches of Oats (with Peaches) that beckons me from bed every morning. I pour myself a big bowl, douse liberally with skim milk, and tucker in alonside my (growing) pile of cookbooks for some inspirational morning reading.

While this is a perfect lovely way to start my day, I’m wondering if now isn’t the time to break out of the cereal cycle. And so this week, I’ve started experimenting with a new-to-me breakfast food: steel-cut oats.

Some might argue that oats aren’t too much of a departure from cereal. Afterall, it’s just subbing one bowl of grains for another. But it’s what you can do with the oatmeal that makes a difference.

Yesterday’s incarnation featured the oatmeal, reheated, mixed with a swirl of agave nectar and layered with  Greek yogurt, fresh raspberries, walnuts and dried cranberries. This morning, I got creative by forming the oatmeal into patties and cooking them on the stove top in a bit of oil, then serving them with a spread of pumpkin butter (my favorite fall addiction from Trader Joe’s), plus more of that same yogurt, walnuts and cranberries. Tomorrow I’m going to add mango to the mix, and the next day will highlight dried banana chips and pomegranate seeds.

The sheer variety of “mixables” for the oatmeal is super-attractive to a girl who’s been a monogamistic-cerealist since infancy. But aside from the fantastic and fun flavor profiles, the most important thing about a weekday breakfast for me is that the assembly must be super quick – three minutes, max, for this hungry girl. By fixing a big pot of oatmeal on a Sunday and refrigerating it, I’m good to go by just popping a portion in the microwave for two minutes. A few seconds of chopping and stirring and I have myself a rut-free breakfast.

Steel cut is an important distinction when you’re talking types of oatmeal. Steel cut oats are basically oat kernels that are cut into several pieces. They take quite a bit longer to cook than quick cooking rolled oats, which are flattened. Most would say that steel-cut oats have a much more toothsome quality, and are well worth the longer wait (about 30 minutes of cooking time).

The idea behind this rut-breaking is not necessarily to eat less food, or even to consume fewer calories, but to make the calories that I do eat count a bit more. So breakfast features loads of fiber, maybe a bit of potassium, and a few vitamins and antioxidants thrown in for good measure. I’m about as far from a health food nut as a girl can get, but I’m resolved to add more nutritious food to my diet (without taking away any of my favorite indulgences). Breakfast seems like the perfect place to start this new, tasty resolution.

Miss Menu wants to know: Do you have any unique oatmeal menu possibilities to share?