Tag Archives: cooking

Cherry Chutney

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A twist on my Mango Chutney recipe.

I love chutney as a condiment with grilled pork and roast turkey (instead of cranberries). There’s always a batch of mango chutney in my fridge at home. Unfortunately, when I left with my RV for the summer, I forgot to bring some along. But since I’m currently surrounded by cherry trees with ripe fruit, I figured I’d try making cherry chutney for a change.

Cherry ChutneyI found a recipe for cherry chutney online and made a batch of it. It had some major differences from my mango chutney recipe — for example the inclusion of onion, spices, and mustard seed — and I had mixed feelings about the result.

Yesterday, I decided to try again by simply substituting cherries for mango in my mango chutney recipe. The result was quite tasty. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

Ingredients:

  • 1-1/2 pounds cherries, pitted and cut in half or quarters. I’d picked the cherries the night before, choosing small fruit from the tree since I knew my client wouldn’t pick and sell it. (Shame to see it go to waste.) The small fruit fit well in my cherry pitter and most cherries didn’t need to be quartered; halved was enough. If cherries aren’t in season, you could probably use frozen. Do not use cherry pie filling.
  • 1 cup golden raisins. You can use the regular kind if you can’t find golden.
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar. This is an excellent recipe for using up brown sugar that has solidified in an improperly closed bag. But fresh brown sugar won’t hurt it.
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup vinegar. I usually use white vinegar, but the only vinegar I had available was apple cider vinegar (from the other recipe). Didn’t hurt this recipe at all.
  • 1 jar (2-7/8 ounces) crystallized ginger, finely chopped. I don’t know what kind of jarred ginger my source recipe is talking about. This time, I found crystalized ginger in a 6-oz bag and used half of it.
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped. I cheated this time and used about a teaspoon of jarred chopped garlic.
  • 1 teaspoon salt. This time around, I skipped the salt.

Instructions:

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan and heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about an hour or until slightly thickened. Remove from heat, cool. Place in a sealed container — a canning jar works well for this; I avoid plastic for anything I want to keep long term — and store in refrigerator. It will stay fresh and edible for quite some time. Serve with pork or roast turkey (as discussed above) or Indian curry dishes.

Yield: Approximately 4-5 cups.

Warning: It does not smell good while cooking.

Easy Cherry Cobbler for One

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When you have a limitless supply of cherries, you get creative.

Fresh-picked CherriesA few days ago, I asked my client if I could go into his orchard and pick some cherries. I’d finished off the 15+ pounds of Rainiers I’d picked in Quincy two weeks before and was fresh out of fruit. Across the street from my RV were 86 acres of ripening cherries. My client gave me the green light and I’ve had fresh-picked cherries in my fridge ever since.

If you have some kind of comment about the affect of cherries on my digestive system, save them. I seem to be immune to the usual effects. Indeed, I easily put away a pound of cherries a day with no significant side effects.

But I am bored with simply popping fresh cherries from a plastic container. Back in June, I began experimenting with cobbler. The results were so-so. I wanted an easier recipe so I turned to Bisquick.

Bisquick, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a Betty Crocker/General Mills product known primarily as a pancake batter mix. But what a lot of folks don’t realize is that it’s a good quickbread batter mix that you can also use to make biscuits and “shortcake.” (Shortcake is in quotes because it doesn’t make real shortcake.)

The trick is to mix Bisquick with milk and a small amount of sugar to make a batter. Then bake it for a little sweet breadlike cake. Add fruit to the batter and you have an easy cobbler.

Here’s my current recipe. It makes just one (because I’m by myself here) but I don’t see why you couldn’t multiply the recipe to make more. You might try making individual ones in large muffin tins.

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup Bisquick
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 7 cherries, pitted and split in half

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Grease an ovensafe custard cup or other suitable baking vessel.
  3. In a small bowl, mix the first three ingredients until blended.
  4. Fold in the cherries.
  5. Place batter in custard cup.
  6. Bake 20 minutes or until batter is done.

This would probably be excellent with fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. I have neither so I do without. It isn’t bad.

If you give this a try — with or without your own modifications — please do use the comments for this post to let us know what you think.

Helicopter Sugar Cookies

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Bake your own fleet. They’re good to eat.

Helicopter CookiesToday, I made sugar cookies in the shape of helicopters for my cherry drying clients. It was a lot of work, but worth it. The cookies came out great and I think my clients will get a chuckle when they see them.

The recipe is my grandfather’s recipe for sugar cookies. He owned a bakery in New Jersey when I was growing up. My mother got the recipe from him and passed it on to me years ago. You can make the cookies in any shape you like.

Here’s the recipe. It may be doubled.

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 lb (1 stick) butter or margarine
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tbsp milk
  • 1-1/2 cups flour
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • white of 1 egg, beaten (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Cream butter and sugar in mixer.
  3. Add egg, vanilla, and milk. Beat well.
  4. Sift together dry ingredients and add gradually to butter mixture.
  5. Knead in extra flour if necessary to produce a firm batter.
  6. Roll out the DoughRoll batter out to 1/4 inch thickness on floured board.
  7. Cut with cookie cutters and place on cookie sheet.
  8. If desired, brush tops with egg white.
  9. Bake until golden brown (not more than 10 minutes).
  10. Cool on wire rack.

Yields 2 dozen cookies or fewer (depending on shape and size of cutter).

I added sprinkles before baking. My helicopter is red and I wanted to make the connection.

Cauliflower Mashed “Potatoes”

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A lower calorie, lower carb, healthy alternative.

Here’s a recipe for folks trying to cut calories or just eat healthier. It’s basically a mashed potato substitute — made with cauliflower.

Ingredients:

  • Cauliflower1 head of cauliflower. Make sure it’s not green. (Image from Wikipedia.)
  • 1/4 cup milk or cream. Obviously skim milk will make it lower fat and calories, but cream will make it more like real mashed potatoes. Use either or anything in between.
  • 3 tablespoons butter or butter substitute. Butter is better, but go with the substitute if you’re trying to keep calories or fat content down.
  • salt to taste

Instructions:

  1. Trim off cauliflower stem and greens and cut into flowerettes. (My spelling checker says I spelled that wrong, but how else would you spell it?)
  2. Place in a microwaveable bowl with a lid, add about 1/2 cup water, and cover.
  3. Microwave on high for about 10-12 minutes. (Times may vary.) You want it completely cooked through. (If you have a fear of microwaves, you can steam it on a stovetop.)
  4. Drain.
  5. Combine milk or cream and butter or substitute in a microwave safe cup or bowl.
  6. Microwave milk/cream/butter/substitute mixture on high for 30 seconds or until hot and butter is melting. (Fear of microwaves? Use a pan on the stove.)
  7. Using a potato masher or electric handheld pureeing tool (my tool of choice for this job), puree the cauliflower. (You might also be able to use a blender or food processor, but I think that’s taking things too far.)
  8. Add the milk/cream/butter/substitute mixture and stir well.
  9. Add salt to taste.
  10. Serve.

This should make 4 normal sized servings.

I made this the other night with some heavy cream left over from the holidays that has still (by some miracle) not gone bad. It tasted unbelievably good with the steak Mike grilled up for us.

Skeptical? Don’t knock it until you try it.

And yes, I do use my microwave extensively for cooking vegetables.

Chicken Curry

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Easy dinner.

Here’s what I had for dinner tonight:

Ingredients:

  • 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
  • 2-3 lbs. of chicken. I used chicken breast fillets tonight, but I usually use thighs. I trimmed off all the excess fat before cooking and cut into large cubes.
  • 1-1/2 large onions, cut up. I slice them, but you might prefer them chopped.
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup dairy sour cream
  • 2 tsp. curry powder
  • 1/8 tsp. ground ginger
  • 1/8 tsp. ground cumin

Instructions:

  1. Lightly brown chicken in oil. If necessary, drain off fat. (If you use lean chicken or trim it like I do, you shouldn’t have any fat to drain off. Just nice chicken juice.)
  2. Add onions and salt.
  3. Cover and cook until chicken is cooked through. This should take 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how small you cut up the chicken.
  4. Mix remaining ingredients in a bowl.
  5. If there’s a lot of liquid, drain off all but about 1/2 cup.
  6. Stir in sour cream mixture.
  7. Heat through.
  8. Serve with rice and mango chutney.

This should serve 4 or 2 with leftovers.