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USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

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Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

Just got back from our local country grocery store with four bone-in rib eyes that were on sale because today's the sell-before date. The price was discounted and each had an additional $2 coupon. All four for about 10 bucks! :)

Two on the grill tonight after a bath in my homemade Morton's marinade, then served up with sauteed mushrooms, homemade sweet potato fries and steamed broccoli and cheese.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

Cookie mania last few days. Lemon cookies, Chocolate treasures, Lace cookies today. Yesterday was Jumbles, lemon cookies. TOmorrow is sugar cookies and pepperkaka. my back is aching me.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

leswp1 said:
my back is aching me.
Click to expand...

Worst part of cooking is all the standing, chopping, stirring, and beating. The back pain sinks in eventually, especially when you're already tired.

Have you ever shared the pepparkaka recipe? I've been told to make a tray of cookies and a couple of appetizers for a finger-food Christmas Eve. Want to do something a little different.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Worst part of cooking is all the standing, chopping, stirring, and beating. The back pain sinks in eventually, especially when you're already tired.

Have you ever shared the pepparkaka recipe? I've been told to make a tray of cookies and a couple of appetizers for a finger-food Christmas Eve. Want to do something a little different.
Click to expand...
Pepperkaka
1 c butter
1 c sugar
½ c molasses
3 1/3 c flour
1 Tbsp each ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Oven 350. F Cream Butter, sugar and molasses together. Add spices, soda and salt. Add flour last. Chill until firm. Roll out very thin using rolling pin with sleeve and pastry cloth sprinkled with mixture of ½ sugar& ½ flour and then rubbed in. Cut using cookie cutters. Family tradition has these being heart shaped but I do all shapes. Move to cookie sheet using thin spatula.

Use egg wash (egg white with a bit of water in it beaten) over top and add small sliver of almond in middle or the tiny little cooking sprinkles in a little spot in the middle. When I am in a rush I don't do this part.

Bake 4-6 minutes. They are done when the cookie is no longer puffed up. Stores well, make a week before for better flavor.

These are supposed to be very, very thin, almost see through. You have to use a pastry cloth and roller sleeve primed with the flour sugar mixture. I have tried to do it without them and disaster ensued. Scrape the cloth off with the edge of a metal cookie cutter between rollings as it will leave behind the grease from the butter. A small amount, size of a golfball and a half will close to fill the pastry sheet I have. Roll from middle out, gentle pressure. if you go to fast it will split.

These are killer popular at my church. They had a fair and they charged 2$ for 6X 3 inch cookies. People bought them all. YIKES!
 
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Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

New variation I tried this yr.

Lemon cookies

1 stick butter
fine zest of 1 lemon,
2Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 egg
1 pouch of Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie mix (sorry all you purists)
1/3 c of flour

Melt butter, mix in everything in except dry ingredients until thoroughly blended. Add dry ingredients. Chill in a square container until firm.
WHen chilled pop out block of dough onto cutting board. Chop into little fingers a little less than 1/2 inch square on the ends or roll into long snake the thickness of a tootsie roll and chop lenghts about as long as tootsie roll. roll in confectionsers sugar. Bake somewhere around 8 minutes. These don't expand very far, separate by a bit more than an inch. Makes a ton of cookies- YUM!
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

jen said:
Here's the <a href="http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Peanut-Butter-Maple-Cookies">Peanut Butter Maple</a> cookie recipe.
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I used just plain peanut butter and no extra maple bits or anything, but made sure to use real maple syrup. They tasted great and went really well at my department's "Floor Feast" this week. I just didn't expect that the one batch would make five dozen. That's more than I'd get out of a normal recipe. Anyways, they were delicious. Thanks for sharing the recipe!

This weekend will be orange blossoms (think rum balls with orange juice instead of rum) and maybe snickerdoodles with red and green sprinkles instead of sugar. We'll see.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

If anyone is still looking for something sweet to make for Christmas, I strongly suggest <a href="http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/dark-chocolate-buttercrunch-recipe">KAF's Dark Chocolate Buttercrunch</a>. Get some high quality chocolate to make it special (I used Callebaut chips and Scharffenberger, because I only had 1 bag of Callebaut left). Pretty easy to make and very, very good. You don't even have to melt your chocolate (this is always a selling point for me).
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

I have to pump some insulin after reading all these cookie recipes :(
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

Made a bunch of cookies this weekend. The peanut butter maple, which were delicious; my chocolate chunk cookies, which are always a favorite; some old fashioned molasses chews; chocolate peppermint cookies, and Giada's lemon ricotta cookies. Those things were delicious. And quite lemony.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

You guys have some fantastic cookie ideas, man. :)

For Christmas Eve dinner, I think we're going to try ordering oysters for home delivery. I'm going to use Island Creek out of Massachusetts, they get great reviews. This is a cooking thread, and raw oysters aren't exactly "cooking" -- but it feels like a big leap, food-wise! I hope it goes well.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

I needed to use up bits and pieces of stuff, so I made oatmeal-maple-butterscotch-pecan cookies, and cherry-blueberry-white chip-mini dark chip cookies this weekend (cherry chips, not dried cherries - and blueberry jammy bits from KAF). The cherry-blueberry were really, really good. The others were good but the texture was a bit off (probably bad ratio of fillings to oats-flour).
 
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Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

Les - They sound great, but imply a lot of rolling and peeling action. Given I'm already making this for our Christmas Eve tapas bar, I went with something else I love, but haven't had in awhile and is a bit simpler - lemon squares. However, I saved your recipe for the future, so thanks.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

The oysters have arrived -- exciting! They're supposed to keep for at least a week, in the fridge, with a damp towel over them. I ordered three dozen, and I'll practice opening 6 tomorrow and 6 more on Sunday. Then I'll be ready (somewhat) for the post-Mass, Christmas Eve dinner were hosting for a few family members in town.

We're doing a cold "Champagne supper" thing: shrimp cocktail, oysters, sliced meats (roast beef and hot coppa), good cheeses and crackers, smoked fish, some chopped veggies, and one or two hot things, like spinach phyllo triangles. Theoretically we'll have everything done a full day beforehand, so when we get home after church all we have to do is pop the drinks and set out the plates. :)
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

In a cooking frenzy. So far today- made the gravy for Swedish meatballs, Kielbasa soup, a huge batch of French toast, Swedish coffee bread, started the chicken soup, made the swedish pankake batter. My back is aching me.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

ShirtlessBob said:
I picked up kohlrabi at the farmer's market today and I have no clue how to use it.
Click to expand...

For starters, it's a member of the Brassica oleracea species, along with cabbage, broccoli, kale, and Brussels sprouts. So taste and texture are probably similar, and should be treated as such. Bacon probably pairs well. ;) :D
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

Had a small Christmas gathering today. Made cheese tartlets, pickle roll dip, crab cakes, lobster mac & cheese, and key lime pie. We also had a pea salad thing that my friend made. A nice time was had by all.
 
Re: USCHO Cooks: Open Your Mystery Basket.

I have been making candy treats by melting milk chocolate, then stiring in cherrios, grapenuts and toasted peanuts (the grapenuts give it an awesome crunch), but eventually after a couple weeks the treats get a white kind of film on the outside. What trick is out there to prevent this?

Also, has anyone bought fresh ground beef, that when during the cooking process, ends up releasing a lot of water? Where would all the water come from? It's impossible to carmelize the beef without turning it into shoeleather even with taking papertowels and soaking this water up as it is released.

Making a 7# prime rib, hand breaded shrimp, home-made focaccia and french bread today for the parent's wedding anniversary. I'll also do some sort of boring yet healthy steamed veggie too. No sense in driving the calorie count any higher.
 
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