Gingerbread

Ahh, the holidays. A time to fellowship with family you don't see very often, eat way too much food and fall into a turkey coma watching football. And when the tryptophan wears off, it's time to go back for seconds - this time to the dessert table. At my family's holiday celebrations, sometimes it seems like there are more desserts than anything else - chocolate cake, fruit pies, chess pies, cookies and brownies. Oink. But this gingerbread recipe would really set the tone for the holidays. Now this is not a cookie, but it's actual gingerbread. Moist, rich, dense and downright delicious.

Gingerbread

1 C granulated sugar
½ C applesauce
¼ C butter
¼ C molasses
2 C all-purpose flour
4 t ground ginger
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t baking soda
¼ t salt
1 C fat-free buttermilk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
Whipped cream, optional

Beat the first four ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer until blended.

Stir together flour and next four ingredients in a medium bowl. Combine buttermilk and eggs in a separate bowl. Add both mixtures alternately to butter mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed until blended after each addition. Pour batter into a lightly greased 10-inch cast-iron skillet.

Bake at 325 for 35-40 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

First things first - I will definitely cook this again and I will proudly put my name all over it. It's so good, and even better after a few days because the top of the gingerbread gets kind of sticky. It comes together very easily, so no problems there. When I cooked it, I did not use a cast iron skillet and here's why: we have two cast iron skillets, one for cornbread that belonged to the Husband's great-grandmother and one miscellaneous one that is possibly as old as the former, but it is most certainly not for sweets. I used it before for fried chicken. If I were to put gingerbread in either of those skillets I would never hear the end of it. So I used a 9x9 silicone baking pan lined with parchment paper, which worked wonderfully. The gingerbread lifted right out once it was done with no cleanup necessary.




One error I made was simply a result of how eager I was to try the gingerbread - I cut it too soon before it cooled down enough. That resulted in some crumbly pieces, but they didn't go to waste (translation: I ate them). This recipe filled up the entire 9x9 pan so there was a lot to go around. I took about 10 pieces to work and my hungry co-workers did their part to make sure the Husband and I weren't tasked with eating the entire batch, though we certainly could have. And if you add whipped cream, whoa nelly. You're in for a real treat.




This was a delicious recipe that will certainly become a favorite for us.

Pecan Crusted Tilapia

Tilapia is the kind of fish that takes other flavors very easily. It's so mild that if you cook it with anything else, the texture is really the only thing that remains to remind you're eating fish - the fish taste simply vanishes. We've done a really nice meal before with tilapia - cajun seasoning on the fish with red and green peppers and tomatoes - and I decided to give this recipe a try recently. I bought this bag of frozen tilapia fillets from Target (their Market Pantry brand) and when we had one before, the Husband said it tasted a little too fishy for tilapia. So I made this recipe when he worked late that night and figured I could make it again for him if it worked out. I will say that it didn't work out, but it wasn't just one thing - it was a combination of problems.

Pecan Crusted Tilapia

Serves: 4
Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 8 minutes

½ C pecan halves
4 (6 oz) fresh tilapia fillets
1 t salt
½ t garlic powder
¼ t pepper
3 T butter

1. Process pecans in a food processor until finely chopped. Sprinkle fish with salt, garlic powder, and pepper. Dredge fish in finely chopped pecans.

2. Melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat; add fish, and cook 3-4 minutes on each side or until well browned and fish flakes with a fork.

I defrosted the tilapia overnight and it was ready to go. That's where a crucial step was left out of the recipe directions - pat the fish dry first. I really think this omission was the beginning of the end. I ground the pecans in my little food processor and spread them on a paper plate, seasoned the fish as directed, and then plopped the fish down on the plate to 'dredge' it in the chopped pecans. What started happening immediately is that the chopped pecans, finely chopped mind you, started to clump together and didn't want to adhere evenly to the fish. Then when I tried to spread them around to cover more of the fillet, they clumped more and started sticking to my fingers like dough. Ugh. I think patting the fish dry would have helped, but part of me thought the pecans might have been too fatty to use for this recipe. On the other hand, the Husband and I had a wonderful pecan-crusted trout at a fantastic tapas bar in Asheville, NC, a few years back and it was fantastic. So I know it can be done, but it just didn't want to work out for me.





I managed to get one piece semi-dredged in the chopped pecans, but by that point I had used up almost all of them up. I didn't want to chop more and waste them, so I applied the rest of the nuts to the other fish fillet as best I could, and put them in the pan. Here's where my next crucial error took place - I used too much butter in the pan. If the fish and nuts weren't soggy to begin with, they certainly were now. I also heated the pan too soon, so I had to remove the pan from the eye about 20 seconds before the fish were completely dredged and ready, as the butter had already started to smoke a little bit. I added more to compensate, but it was too much all together. At this point I was faced with one tilapia fillet with too many nuts in an uneven covering, one fillet with not nearly enough nuts, and too much butter in the pan. I was a hot mess.




After I felt the fish had cooked enough, which was a good bit longer than the 3-4 minutes suggested in the recipe, I removed them to a plate for inspection. The nuts hadn't really browned and they still weren't adhering very well. The one sad fillet with minimal nuts had pretty much lost the few survivors in the pan with the overabundance of butter, so he was naked. I covered him up with the other fillet. The taste was really underwhelming. Sure enough, the tilapia taste was pretty much nil, save for the nuts and salt, pepper and garlic powder, of which I could have added much more. The nuts were soggy and didn't have any crunch to them and the tilapia really did taste kind of fishy. I ate most of the two fillets I cooked to avoid throwing away my entire dinner, but I couldn't choke it all down. Even if I were to fix a few of my errors, I don't think I would cook this again.

Yucatan-Style Chicken, Lime and Orzo Soup

I did a little bit of research before writing this blog entry to find out more about this soup. I found it on the Epicurious site and it looked pretty popular. But now that I go back and see some of the reviews, I'm stumped. Lots of people said it was bland, some said it was the best thing they've ever had, and only a few mentioned the presence of lime in this dish. I don't know what lime has to do with the Yucatan area of Mexico, but they certainly must like it. However, the Husband and I didn't.

Yucatan-Style Chicken, Lime and Orzo Soup

3/4 cup orzo (rice-shaped pasta)
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium white onion, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 jalapeño chiles, thinly sliced
3/4 pound skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into matchstick-size strips
5 cups low-salt chicken broth
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 large tomato, seeded, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Fresh cilantro sprigs


Cook orzo in pot of boiling salted water until just tender. Drain well.

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and chiles. Sauté until onion begins to brown, about 4 minutes. Add chicken; sauté 1 minute. Add broth, lime juice, and tomato. Simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 3 minutes. Mix in orzo, then chopped cilantro. Season soup with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into 4 bowls. Garnish with cilantro sprigs. Makes 4 servings.

Again, I halved this recipe because it's just the two of us and, well, this soup looked a little suspicious. It's better to make a small portion of something that's inedible rather than a large portion. But let me say that this soup wasn't inedible, and it didn't even, as the Husband and I joked, "put the 'Yuc' in Yucatan." It was okay, but we were correct that it wasn't all that filling, and the lime was just so strong. I didn't even put the full halved amount into the soup because I was a little wary of that much sour in the broth. It was okay.




I did a few things differently. Instead of orzo, I used whole wheat brown rice from Whole Foods. We bought it dried in bulk and it's so good. Very nutty and a lot like the sticky rice you would find at a good Asian restaurant. That helped add some bulk to the soup. I used one chicken breast and did the thin slices. I only used one jalapeno, but I think two may have helped to overpower the lime juice somewhat. We didn't use nearly as much onion as it calls for. What is it with recipes calling for an entire onion? Ridiculous. Then I dropped a handful of cilantro into the soup which was a good kick.

This soup really had potential but the lime just turned us off. The rest of it wasn't good enough to where we would likely try it again with less lime; I think this is just a dud.