Anne Burrell’s Olive Oil Cake with Blueberries and Mascarpone
Gina Neely’s Flourless Chocolate Cake
I actually said Gina Neely in the same breath as the fabulously gifted Anne Burrell. Both made pretty rockin’ cakes this weekend on the Food Network’s Saturday lineup.
Anne Burrell’s was from her Spaghetti Carbonara show.
Anne learned how to make this cake while in cooking school in Italy. She begins by adding sugar to egg yolks. How much sugar? How many egg yolks…she doesn’t say. Anne beats her whites separately. How many? She won’t say. Oy, let me look! It’s ¾ cup of sugar and 5 yolks and SEVEN whites. That might have been worth mentioning.
She adds salt in her whites. NO! I know Ina does that and lots of other folks too. But, on this, I will have to go with Rose Levy Beranbaum, who after all, wrote The Bible on these matters. No salt with egg whites. It only dries them out.
Anne is going too fast. She zests a Meyer lemon over her egg yolk and sugar bowl. She describes it well as a lemon with the aroma of a tangerine. It’s actually a cross between a lemon and an orange. It looks like she has about a dozen egg yolks in there, but it’s only 7.
Anne beats the whites on the second speed of her KitchenAid and the yolks to ribbon-stage by hand. This is where a second mixer bowl could come in handy. She checks her whites by removing the beater and bowl from the stand. She dips the whisk straight into the whites to get some on the end of the whisk and then holds it over the bowl sideways. If the peaks keep their shape and don’t flop over, they are firm enough.
She thoroughly whisks in ¾ cup high quality olive oil and Vin Santo (or you can substitute sweet sherry) to the yolks. Anne stirs in one cup of flour and tells us we can make this in a regular cake pan, if we don’t have a spring-form one. She doesn’t tell us to be sure to line the cake pan with waxed paper or parchment, but be sure you do.
Anne folds her egg whites into the batter in 3 parts. I guess that’s her substitution for beating in a quarter of the whites at the beginning to lighten the mixture. I still would do that.
Anne is great at showing us the straight-in-and-over folding technique with the spatula and then showing us how to “draw lines” in the batter to “bust through” the egg whites. This is important.
You don’t want huge globs of egg white left in the batter. After folding for a bit, you hold the spatula straight down (as if you were inserting a skewer) and move it back and forth through the masses of whites almost in a scissoring motion. That breaks them down without deflating them.
Anne greases the pan with olive oil, which makes sense, since she’s using it in the cake. She lines the springform pan with parchment paper. How is THAT going to work? Unless she turns it over to remove the paper, you risk papery slices. So then why not just use a regular cake pan?
The batter goes into the pan and the cake gets baked at 350°F for 45 minutes…That was fast. She takes out the cake. It’s beautiful. Anne tests it with a skewer. It comes out clean, so it’s done.
For a topping, Anne rinses and goes through blueberries. They go in a pan with a cinnamon stick, sugar, ¼ cup water and the sieved juice of half a Meyer lemon. As she discards the lemon half in her garbage bowl (which bears no resemblance to this one), Anne smiles and says – to the lemon - “Thanks for coming.” She really is adorable.
The blueberries get cooked for 20 minutes. Oh, I don’t watch her enough to know that she says “Thanks for coming” to every ingredient that she’s finished wish. I love chef-to-food communication.
Anne unmolds the cake and reminds us that there’s paper on the bottom. (I still don’t get why. Just grease and flour it and it should be fine. BUT I ALWAYS line cake pans.)
The slice goes on a plate and she tops it with some berry compote. Luscious. She spoons a little mascarpone over in a quenelle shape. She practically inhales the cake. It’s pretty great and so is she.
But may I ask you a question? Would an olive oil cake ever - in a hundred years - be as good as one made with butter? This cake looks so darn good, but I’ll be honest, I kinda want to use butter. That would be sacrilegious, though, wouldn’t it?
I must have been born with butter running through my veins, so I just can’t help thinking that I would taste this cake and think, okay, but I’d prefer butter.
But what if I kept to the spirit of the cake and used OIL, (I LOVE my carrot and apple cakes with oil), just not olive oil?
Remember, that my olive oil comes straight from Spain and, while I do use it liberally, I never use it without thought.
How about safflower oil? I’m sure that’s against the entire spirit of the recipe and I’d be excommunicated from the church of Italian Food Aficionados. Is it possible that we sometimes just have to admit, “You know what? I’m just not sure I’d love that”? But I do love everything about the recipe…except the olive oil.
Strangely enough, I had no such dilemma with this Flourless Chocolate Cake from Gina Neely. Imagine her in the same post as Anne!!! But I think this recipe could become a standard in your kitchen…and mine.
Pat chops 8 oz. semisweet chocolate while Gina melts two stick of butter on the stove. He stirs the chopped chocolate into the butter.
Do you ever really bother with chopping the chocolate? I almost never do...I find it good fun to jab a fork right into the chocolate bar in the pan. Then I stir it around the bottom, mixing it with the melting butter as I go. Yup, THAT is truly what I do for fun.
Gina beats 1 of cup sugar and 6 eggs in a mixer until light and fluffy. Pat reminds us to continually stir the chocolate.
I’m also reminded of Ina’s trick. She holds back a bit of chopped chocolate and stirs it into the melted mixture off the heat to ensure that she doesn’t overheat it.
Gina whisks in ½ cup of cocoa, vanilla and 1/3 cup of brandy to the egg mixture. Pat’s deep blue polo shirt matches the deep blue mixing bowls that Gina was using earlier.
Gina lines her springform pan with parchment paper. Too? What’s going on here? Am I completely out of it?
THEN Gina sprays the pan with Pam. Never! Not with this cake. Butter and flour the pan properly. Pat pours the melted butter and chocolate into the batter and Gina mixes it together. Pat pours it into the lazily prepared pan. It bakes at 350°F for 50 minutes.
Gina tells us to have the bowl and beaters cold as she beats 1 cup of cream. See, Gina? You don’t need Cool Whip! She beats in ¼ cup of powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon of brandy. Gina cuts a piece, then tops it with the whipped cream and then some raspberries.
This is a really nice serviceable recipe and it would freeze beautifully too. You could also top it differently. How about chocolate whipped cream spread over the top and chocolate shavings to finish it off? Or a raspberry sauce with Grand Marnier garnished with rosettes of Grand Marnier-spiked whipped cream and fresh raspberries? Or top it with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. Ooh la la! OR just a bit of powdered sugar. You could also cut it into rounds and make little individual cakes. Those trimmings would have to be disposed of somehow…I guess.
Anyway, Gina did good and I HAD to acknowledge it.
Showing posts with label Cool Whip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cool Whip. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sandy, Bad Food And The Ruin Of The World
Sem-EYE-Homemade with Sandra Lee
Italian Slow Cooking
Bow Ties with Artichoke Pesto
Chicken with Vegetable Ragout and Polenta
Venetian Coffee
Wild Mushroom Dip
My intention was to finally sit down and watch The Cooking Loft and report on how the chef of Butter is doing as host of her own show. But as I prepared to turn on the tape, there was Aunt Sandy in an overly elaborate black tunic with scads of white lace running down the front. She had a wide black-ribbon headband and her hair was in a beehive ponytail reminiscent of Wasilla chic.
Plus, the window valence was a strange black brocade piece of material draped diagonally across the window. There were black items stuck haphazardly all over the kitchen. Maybe this was a funeral lunch for a lace maker…I HAD to stay tuned.
Each dish that was promo-ed was an unattractive brown or beige. I guess she’ll make up for that with lots of tchatzkies on the table. Even the beginning of the show riles me, though, where she actually admits her food is 70% processed chemicalized crap mixed with 30% real food.
The first recipe is a mushroom dip, which honestly looks like grey waste matter in a flat bowl. She soaks dried mushrooms in warmed white wine. I don’t think that’s an awful idea, but it is a waste of wine - although she probably buys it by the keg - because not all the liquid is used. She mixes her soaked mushrooms with some of the liquid in the food processor. The enormous handkerchief type sleeves of her tunic threaten at any moment to become saturated with winey mushroom juice, but she plows on unperturbed.
OMG, the other ingredients for the dip include a can of mushroom soup. Just imagine using condensed soup as the base for a dip. Think about dipping a carrot stick into a can of soup. There really should be a law, although she is quite proficient at getting that gunk out of the can.
That goes into her nonstick pan, which I hate. I sure hope she has no birds around. She called that a sauté pan. No, Sandy, that’s a saucepan. A sauté pan is wide with straight sides.
Oh joy, she’s adding tarragon. That’s okay, I would rather have eaten compost than this anyway. Next a small tub of cream cheese goes in with ½ cup of sour cream and a cup of mozzarella (preshredded, bien sur) goes in. She adds salt…bad move. She pours in the mushrooms and stirs well. It all goes into that flat bowl.
She moves very rapidly to artichoke pesto. I think it’s so we don’t notice how bad the mushroom dip looks. She opens 2 jars of artichokes and drains them in the sink. They go into the food processor. She adds 1 teaspoon of FAKE lemon juice with ready grated parmesan cheese and ¼ cup of pre-chopped walnuts. Sandy purées the mixture and adds 3 tablespoons of olive oil. It comes out the exact same brown grey color as the mushrooms. It looks like chopped liver.
She’s back from a break. Oh, I just noticed the BLACK KitchenAid in the corner. Sandy strains cooked bow tie pasta and tosses it with the artichoke pesto. She adds some more of her packaged grated parm. She doesn’t even try to stop it from looking like gritty grey cement on the pasta. No green, nothing from the plant world to lift the color.
Sandy moves on to a chicken dish. Finally…this dish will have some color from the tomatoes. She goes to her fridge (at least it’s not her pantry of hell) and gets pre-made polenta in a tube. I actually did try that once. It’s awful. It’s artificial tasting (a prerequisite to be included in the Sem-EYE-Homemade pantry). It keeps its shape so well, you KNOW there’s something fake in there, encouraging the molecules to hold up to heat and heavy handling.
Now Sandy has a “medley” of frozen vegetables sitting on her counter, which she has thawed. I’m not an expert in frozen vegetables, I only use frozen peas and corn, but even I know that you’re not supposed to thaw them before cooking. She (expertly) opens the bags of vegetables and places them in what looks to be an old fashioned steel washtub. Oh sorry, it’s a black rectangled (with oval edges) deep baking dish. She opens the chicken breasts (on her wooden board) and seasons them with Italian seasoning and a bunch of other stuff. She flops them into the baking dish and seasons the other side.
For the sauce, she pours tomato sauce into a bowl and mixes it with a few tablespoons of tomato paste, a teaspoon of crushed store bought garlic and ¼ cup of sherry. She pours two-thirds of it over the chicken. She cuts her rubberized polenta into ½ inch slices. They look like rubber hockey pucks. She places them on top and around the chicken and then the rest of the sauce goes on. It goes in the slow cooker. Oh, THAT’S why she thawed the vegetables… It will cook for 4 to 5 hours.
I have to admit that I don’t get how a slow cooker really helps anyone. You can’t put the dish together before you leave for work in the morning and leave it in there for 8 hours. Even if there were a timer that you could set for 4 hours after you walked out the door, you couldn’t leave the chicken sitting in there, not cooking, for that long. And if you started it when you got home, most likely it would be too late to serve whatever it was for dinner, so I don’t get the point.
Sandy’s oven mitts match her black theme. She takes the chicken out of the slow cooker thingie and serves herself a plate. The polenta did indeed keep it shape. As soon as she plates it, she leaves it on the side and doesn't taste it. She’s right. The chicken has probably acquired the same texture as the polenta.
Dessert is packaged pie crust assembled with grape jelly and ricotta. She opens the pie crust pastry package with BLACK handled scissors. She unrolls her dough and pats it to even it out. She spreads ½ jar of grape jelly all over, leaving an inch plain rim around the edges.
Sandy dollops plain ricotta (no sugar, no lemon rind, no orange zest, nada) all over the top. She folds over the edges all around towards the middle to form an outside crust. That looks like something a 7 year old would make. She actually uses a real egg to brush all over the pastry. (She should have added a spoonful of water to make the egg wash less gloppy.) She presses halved red grapes INTO THE CRUST. (I didn’t see that coming.) She bakes it at 375°F for 20 minutes.
She takes her crostada out of the oven. It looks flat and fake. She covers it with powdered sugar. Oh, that will help.
Oh goodie, COCKTAIL TIME! Actually, it’s liquored-up coffee time. Sandy is making Venetian Coffee. I can’t stand her saying LICK-KOR for liqueur. It’s Lick-Cue-or. Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but certainly not LICK-KOR.
She pours amaretto into the bottom of two glass mugs. THAT IS A LOT OF AMARETTO. This isn’t going to be liqueured coffee, it’s going to be a mug of liqueurs with a drop of coffee. She adds a shot of Sambucca. I’m not kidding - more than half the glass is filled with liquor.
A member of the Semi-Homemade Club sent her the idea of how to flavor her coffee inexpensively. Instead of buying already flavored coffee, Sandy says you can buy cheap nasty coffee and flavor it with (undoubtedly artificial) different extracts. That’s not a bad idea, but, of course, use good coffee and good extracts. BTW, you can also throw tons of cinnamon into your grounds before brewing, and it will give your coffee a nice flavor, if you like that sort of thing…I don’t.
Oh no…”And now for the whipped topping.” Do we have to go through this again? Sandy, did you ever hear of cream? Real cream…from a cow, not a food factory of chemicals and additives? She puts a huge spoonful on top of her “nice little cozy cocktail”.
We’re forced to look at her tablescape. It looks like a cheap replica of what Elvira would dine with every night. There are hideous plastic looking highball glasses, that inexplicably have a chunky wine glass embedded inside and the wine goes all the way down to the stem and base. Very unbalanced and heavy looking. They look like this. The tablecloth is that black patterned material. There are silhouette place cards and cameo buttons turned into pins. Scary and bad…
Do people actually watch Sandra Lee seriously? I know, I know she has a very affecting personal story. She has an admirable work ethic and she probably keeps quite a few people employed, but couldn’t she do all that cooking real food?
It would be nowhere near as fun, of course, but she wouldn’t be encouraging the poisoning of America and helping huge multinationals that make this sludge in their quest for world domination. Make no mistake, her food is evil and made even more so by the presenting of it in this superficial, over-laced, cheap, not cheerful, setting.
Italian Slow Cooking
Bow Ties with Artichoke Pesto
Chicken with Vegetable Ragout and Polenta
Venetian Coffee
Wild Mushroom Dip
My intention was to finally sit down and watch The Cooking Loft and report on how the chef of Butter is doing as host of her own show. But as I prepared to turn on the tape, there was Aunt Sandy in an overly elaborate black tunic with scads of white lace running down the front. She had a wide black-ribbon headband and her hair was in a beehive ponytail reminiscent of Wasilla chic.
Plus, the window valence was a strange black brocade piece of material draped diagonally across the window. There were black items stuck haphazardly all over the kitchen. Maybe this was a funeral lunch for a lace maker…I HAD to stay tuned.
Each dish that was promo-ed was an unattractive brown or beige. I guess she’ll make up for that with lots of tchatzkies on the table. Even the beginning of the show riles me, though, where she actually admits her food is 70% processed chemicalized crap mixed with 30% real food.
The first recipe is a mushroom dip, which honestly looks like grey waste matter in a flat bowl. She soaks dried mushrooms in warmed white wine. I don’t think that’s an awful idea, but it is a waste of wine - although she probably buys it by the keg - because not all the liquid is used. She mixes her soaked mushrooms with some of the liquid in the food processor. The enormous handkerchief type sleeves of her tunic threaten at any moment to become saturated with winey mushroom juice, but she plows on unperturbed.
OMG, the other ingredients for the dip include a can of mushroom soup. Just imagine using condensed soup as the base for a dip. Think about dipping a carrot stick into a can of soup. There really should be a law, although she is quite proficient at getting that gunk out of the can.
That goes into her nonstick pan, which I hate. I sure hope she has no birds around. She called that a sauté pan. No, Sandy, that’s a saucepan. A sauté pan is wide with straight sides.
Oh joy, she’s adding tarragon. That’s okay, I would rather have eaten compost than this anyway. Next a small tub of cream cheese goes in with ½ cup of sour cream and a cup of mozzarella (preshredded, bien sur) goes in. She adds salt…bad move. She pours in the mushrooms and stirs well. It all goes into that flat bowl.
She moves very rapidly to artichoke pesto. I think it’s so we don’t notice how bad the mushroom dip looks. She opens 2 jars of artichokes and drains them in the sink. They go into the food processor. She adds 1 teaspoon of FAKE lemon juice with ready grated parmesan cheese and ¼ cup of pre-chopped walnuts. Sandy purées the mixture and adds 3 tablespoons of olive oil. It comes out the exact same brown grey color as the mushrooms. It looks like chopped liver.
She’s back from a break. Oh, I just noticed the BLACK KitchenAid in the corner. Sandy strains cooked bow tie pasta and tosses it with the artichoke pesto. She adds some more of her packaged grated parm. She doesn’t even try to stop it from looking like gritty grey cement on the pasta. No green, nothing from the plant world to lift the color.
Sandy moves on to a chicken dish. Finally…this dish will have some color from the tomatoes. She goes to her fridge (at least it’s not her pantry of hell) and gets pre-made polenta in a tube. I actually did try that once. It’s awful. It’s artificial tasting (a prerequisite to be included in the Sem-EYE-Homemade pantry). It keeps its shape so well, you KNOW there’s something fake in there, encouraging the molecules to hold up to heat and heavy handling.
Now Sandy has a “medley” of frozen vegetables sitting on her counter, which she has thawed. I’m not an expert in frozen vegetables, I only use frozen peas and corn, but even I know that you’re not supposed to thaw them before cooking. She (expertly) opens the bags of vegetables and places them in what looks to be an old fashioned steel washtub. Oh sorry, it’s a black rectangled (with oval edges) deep baking dish. She opens the chicken breasts (on her wooden board) and seasons them with Italian seasoning and a bunch of other stuff. She flops them into the baking dish and seasons the other side.
For the sauce, she pours tomato sauce into a bowl and mixes it with a few tablespoons of tomato paste, a teaspoon of crushed store bought garlic and ¼ cup of sherry. She pours two-thirds of it over the chicken. She cuts her rubberized polenta into ½ inch slices. They look like rubber hockey pucks. She places them on top and around the chicken and then the rest of the sauce goes on. It goes in the slow cooker. Oh, THAT’S why she thawed the vegetables… It will cook for 4 to 5 hours.
I have to admit that I don’t get how a slow cooker really helps anyone. You can’t put the dish together before you leave for work in the morning and leave it in there for 8 hours. Even if there were a timer that you could set for 4 hours after you walked out the door, you couldn’t leave the chicken sitting in there, not cooking, for that long. And if you started it when you got home, most likely it would be too late to serve whatever it was for dinner, so I don’t get the point.
Sandy’s oven mitts match her black theme. She takes the chicken out of the slow cooker thingie and serves herself a plate. The polenta did indeed keep it shape. As soon as she plates it, she leaves it on the side and doesn't taste it. She’s right. The chicken has probably acquired the same texture as the polenta.
Dessert is packaged pie crust assembled with grape jelly and ricotta. She opens the pie crust pastry package with BLACK handled scissors. She unrolls her dough and pats it to even it out. She spreads ½ jar of grape jelly all over, leaving an inch plain rim around the edges.
Sandy dollops plain ricotta (no sugar, no lemon rind, no orange zest, nada) all over the top. She folds over the edges all around towards the middle to form an outside crust. That looks like something a 7 year old would make. She actually uses a real egg to brush all over the pastry. (She should have added a spoonful of water to make the egg wash less gloppy.) She presses halved red grapes INTO THE CRUST. (I didn’t see that coming.) She bakes it at 375°F for 20 minutes.
She takes her crostada out of the oven. It looks flat and fake. She covers it with powdered sugar. Oh, that will help.
Oh goodie, COCKTAIL TIME! Actually, it’s liquored-up coffee time. Sandy is making Venetian Coffee. I can’t stand her saying LICK-KOR for liqueur. It’s Lick-Cue-or. Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but certainly not LICK-KOR.
She pours amaretto into the bottom of two glass mugs. THAT IS A LOT OF AMARETTO. This isn’t going to be liqueured coffee, it’s going to be a mug of liqueurs with a drop of coffee. She adds a shot of Sambucca. I’m not kidding - more than half the glass is filled with liquor.
A member of the Semi-Homemade Club sent her the idea of how to flavor her coffee inexpensively. Instead of buying already flavored coffee, Sandy says you can buy cheap nasty coffee and flavor it with (undoubtedly artificial) different extracts. That’s not a bad idea, but, of course, use good coffee and good extracts. BTW, you can also throw tons of cinnamon into your grounds before brewing, and it will give your coffee a nice flavor, if you like that sort of thing…I don’t.
Oh no…”And now for the whipped topping.” Do we have to go through this again? Sandy, did you ever hear of cream? Real cream…from a cow, not a food factory of chemicals and additives? She puts a huge spoonful on top of her “nice little cozy cocktail”.
We’re forced to look at her tablescape. It looks like a cheap replica of what Elvira would dine with every night. There are hideous plastic looking highball glasses, that inexplicably have a chunky wine glass embedded inside and the wine goes all the way down to the stem and base. Very unbalanced and heavy looking. They look like this. The tablecloth is that black patterned material. There are silhouette place cards and cameo buttons turned into pins. Scary and bad…
Do people actually watch Sandra Lee seriously? I know, I know she has a very affecting personal story. She has an admirable work ethic and she probably keeps quite a few people employed, but couldn’t she do all that cooking real food?
It would be nowhere near as fun, of course, but she wouldn’t be encouraging the poisoning of America and helping huge multinationals that make this sludge in their quest for world domination. Make no mistake, her food is evil and made even more so by the presenting of it in this superficial, over-laced, cheap, not cheerful, setting.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The Only Thing Good
About Cool Whip Is...This Video
DARN! The greatest video in the world may be been "deactivated". Or maybe not...
Here's a hint of what the world is missing: You can't have pie without Cool HUIP.
A year ago today…Blueberry Sauce Throwdown
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Call The Cardiologist, The Neelys Are Cooking
Down Home with the Neelys with Pat and Gina Neely
Expandable Pants (Pat's Three Brothers Drop By For Dinner)
Grilled New York Strip Steak with Beer and Molasses Steak Sauce
Mama's Lasagna
Frozen Lemonade Pie
Green Beans with Ham Hock and New Potatoes
How about, instead of being worried about the over-exuberant loveydoviness exhibited by the Neelys, we worry about what's going on in their arteries? It is true that the more we pretend to want to cook and eat low calorie healthier food, the larger we are getting as a nation. So why not just throw caution to the wind and eat with absolutely NO CONCERN whatsoever to nutrition, like the Neely’s?
And why am I pointing this out with them and not my precious Ina, for example? I suppose because, with Ina's recipes, I automatically leave out or cut down the salt. I halve the cream. I substitute olive oil for a lot of the butter and, most importantly, I cut the portion size.
With the Neelys, there really is no recipe left after you've removed the sugar and the fat AND the artificial ingredients, so it would be a challenge to adapt them. A robust, full flavored i.e. fat-laden, absolutely yummy, dish every once in awhile is fine. But it has to be worth it! See if you think these are.
They start with Mama’s Lasagna. Pat chops an onion and garlic and sautés them in a stock pot with olive oil. Gina gets the filling ready. She mixes 2 cups of cottage cheese (or use ricotta, she says) with 2 eggs and a teaspoon of seasoning salt, which is their special mix of paprika, garlic powder and onion powder (both of which I use ONLY in Cajun blackened recipes). Oh, there’s regular salt and pepper too. Gina grates ½ cup of Parmesan cheese on a nifty grater that catches the cheese as it’s grated.
Pat browns 1 pound of ground beef in a stock pot. Curious choice of pot, by the way. That’s why I love a huge sauté pan for stews, chili, sauces and even soup. It guarantees you can BROWN meat properly, without it steaming. The high sides of a stock pot almost ensure that steam will gather up the sides of the pot and wash down on the meat. Brown in a sauté pan or skillet and then, if you have to, transfer the ingredients to a larger pot.
Gina, AKA the spice fairy, adds pepper and spices to the beef. They sure do have fun together. If these are the antics in the kitchen, I don’t even want to think about what’s going on upstairs. Pat chops the parsley. HE’S the parsley fairy. He adds tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste to the meat.
Gina starts the crust for the lemonade pie. She mixes 7 tablespoon of melted butter with ¼ cup sugar and 2 cups graham cracker crumbs (from a box… because she’s a working mother.) That goes into a pie plate. She takes the back of a measuring cup and presses the crumbs in the pie dish (just like Ina). She bakes it at 350°F for 7 minutes.
Gina tells us that Mother Neely bakes all the sweets for the restaurant, but Gina says SHE (Gina) is the sweetest. Uh-oh, are you supposed to say that about your M-I-L? Gina takes out the crust and lets it cool. I hope Mother Neely cools down as easily.
Pat sprays the lasagna pan. Gina puts the sauce in the bottom and Pat lays over unbaked noodles. (My spell check changed that sentence to Pat LIES over unbaked noodles…I’m sure Gina would like that!) They add half the fillings plus half an 8 ounce bag of cheddar cheese and half an 8 ounce bag of mozzarella. Pat adds more sauce and adds another layer of noodles and the rest of the filling goes over with the remainder of cheese. He puts it in a 375°F oven for 30 to 35 minutes WITHOUT covering it, a method I always employ.
The next recipe of green beans and ham hocks makes Gina remember her own small apartment with her grandma. (Great great grandma? I’m a little confused.) She and Pat deal with the ends of the green beans. He breaks them off, she cuts them. They go into a pot with the ham hocks that have been cooking for awhile and HALF A CUP OF SUGAR! They simmer for 20 minutes. I’m guessing the green beans will be done by then…no longer green, but done. “Look how they tender they look.” That’s one way of describing them.
They add potatoes and salt and pepper. (Pat’s the spice fairy now.) They cook for 20 more minutes covered. FYI – that would be a total of FORTY minutes for the green beans. Note that the potatoes are cooking for half the time of the beans.
They’re making a New York strip steak for the brothers. For a good steak, they tell us you should always make your own steak sauce. (I’m not sure they should bother, since Pat likes his steak well done and Gina likes her medium.)
Pat chops and Gina sautés 1 chopped onion with garlic. They mix together 2 cups of ketchup, beer, sugar (of course), lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, cayenne, paprika and apple cider. I wonder if they meant apple cider vinegar…I guess not. Gina sprays a measuring cup with Pam before measuring molasses. Smart. She adds that too. The sauce gets stirred into the onion. Pat fairies it up…you know, adds the seasonings. They cook it for 30 minutes over medium low heat and reduce it to 2 cups.
Pat rubs the steaks down with vegetable oil, then salts them. Gina dances over to spice up the steaks. He puts them on a medium grill. Luckily, the recipe tells us to cook NY Strip steak for 3 minutes per side for medium rare and not the well done that Pat prefers.
Gina starts on Mama Neelys Lemonade Pie. I like the sound of that. It sounds really refreshing. I hope the boxed graham cracker crumbs don’t portend something fake and artificial. She stirs in 6 oz defrosted lemonade (that’s ok, I make a wicked Brandy Sour with frozen lemonade) and 14 oz sweetened condensed milk. I’m still with her. A lot of Southern desserts depend on that.
Uh-oh, she takes a 12 ounce container of Cool Whip and stirs that in. I was kinda afraid the dessert would degenerate into that. Oh wait, but it’s ok (NOT!) because “to make it taste more homemade”, Gina’s adding freshly grated lemon zest. She says “we’re going to put this in my FRESH graham cracker pie shell…Nothing store bought here.” Uh, Gina you just made a pie that featured Cool Whip. She piles the whole thing into the prepared crust. It goes into the freezer for 2 hours.
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to tell you what’s wrong with Cool Whip…not that I ever let that stop me before.
I’m not saying that there’s not a deep, dark side to all of us that could eat a tub of Cool Whip in one sitting and be perfectly satisfied.
BUT, NUMBER ONE, I would never admit to it and NUMBER TWO when you have a cooking show on THE FOOD NETWORK, you shouldn’t be using Cool Whip. Gina, I promise you, your great grandmother didn’t use Cool Whip. I’d like to know what she used back in the day.
The beans are done…well, actually the beans were done many, MANY minutes ago. They look like limp grey versions of their former selves.
The brothers arrive. There are lots of them. 4 in total, counting Pat. Apparently, dinner isn’t being served in the dining room. The food is all on the counter and they dig in. While they’re still actively engaged in their steak dinners, Gina brings out the pie. She puts candied lemon peel (that looks about 3 years old) on top. After a lot of joking from his brothers, Gina says Pat’s not a Mama’s boy. One of the brothers says “Oh, yes he is. He’s just got 2 mamas!”.
What are we going to do with the Neelys? I like them, but I wouldn’t use their recipes. I don’t want to be harsh, because I like the fact that they cook together (which is SO foreign to me). I like their kitchen, I like their family values, but adding ½ cup of sugar to green beans and then cooking them for three quarters of an hour? There’s no way I would do that. You?
Expandable Pants (Pat's Three Brothers Drop By For Dinner)
Grilled New York Strip Steak with Beer and Molasses Steak Sauce
Mama's Lasagna
Frozen Lemonade Pie
Green Beans with Ham Hock and New Potatoes
How about, instead of being worried about the over-exuberant loveydoviness exhibited by the Neelys, we worry about what's going on in their arteries? It is true that the more we pretend to want to cook and eat low calorie healthier food, the larger we are getting as a nation. So why not just throw caution to the wind and eat with absolutely NO CONCERN whatsoever to nutrition, like the Neely’s?
And why am I pointing this out with them and not my precious Ina, for example? I suppose because, with Ina's recipes, I automatically leave out or cut down the salt. I halve the cream. I substitute olive oil for a lot of the butter and, most importantly, I cut the portion size.
With the Neelys, there really is no recipe left after you've removed the sugar and the fat AND the artificial ingredients, so it would be a challenge to adapt them. A robust, full flavored i.e. fat-laden, absolutely yummy, dish every once in awhile is fine. But it has to be worth it! See if you think these are.
They start with Mama’s Lasagna. Pat chops an onion and garlic and sautés them in a stock pot with olive oil. Gina gets the filling ready. She mixes 2 cups of cottage cheese (or use ricotta, she says) with 2 eggs and a teaspoon of seasoning salt, which is their special mix of paprika, garlic powder and onion powder (both of which I use ONLY in Cajun blackened recipes). Oh, there’s regular salt and pepper too. Gina grates ½ cup of Parmesan cheese on a nifty grater that catches the cheese as it’s grated.
Pat browns 1 pound of ground beef in a stock pot. Curious choice of pot, by the way. That’s why I love a huge sauté pan for stews, chili, sauces and even soup. It guarantees you can BROWN meat properly, without it steaming. The high sides of a stock pot almost ensure that steam will gather up the sides of the pot and wash down on the meat. Brown in a sauté pan or skillet and then, if you have to, transfer the ingredients to a larger pot.
Gina, AKA the spice fairy, adds pepper and spices to the beef. They sure do have fun together. If these are the antics in the kitchen, I don’t even want to think about what’s going on upstairs. Pat chops the parsley. HE’S the parsley fairy. He adds tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste to the meat.
Gina starts the crust for the lemonade pie. She mixes 7 tablespoon of melted butter with ¼ cup sugar and 2 cups graham cracker crumbs (from a box… because she’s a working mother.) That goes into a pie plate. She takes the back of a measuring cup and presses the crumbs in the pie dish (just like Ina). She bakes it at 350°F for 7 minutes.
Gina tells us that Mother Neely bakes all the sweets for the restaurant, but Gina says SHE (Gina) is the sweetest. Uh-oh, are you supposed to say that about your M-I-L? Gina takes out the crust and lets it cool. I hope Mother Neely cools down as easily.
Pat sprays the lasagna pan. Gina puts the sauce in the bottom and Pat lays over unbaked noodles. (My spell check changed that sentence to Pat LIES over unbaked noodles…I’m sure Gina would like that!) They add half the fillings plus half an 8 ounce bag of cheddar cheese and half an 8 ounce bag of mozzarella. Pat adds more sauce and adds another layer of noodles and the rest of the filling goes over with the remainder of cheese. He puts it in a 375°F oven for 30 to 35 minutes WITHOUT covering it, a method I always employ.
The next recipe of green beans and ham hocks makes Gina remember her own small apartment with her grandma. (Great great grandma? I’m a little confused.) She and Pat deal with the ends of the green beans. He breaks them off, she cuts them. They go into a pot with the ham hocks that have been cooking for awhile and HALF A CUP OF SUGAR! They simmer for 20 minutes. I’m guessing the green beans will be done by then…no longer green, but done. “Look how they tender they look.” That’s one way of describing them.
They add potatoes and salt and pepper. (Pat’s the spice fairy now.) They cook for 20 more minutes covered. FYI – that would be a total of FORTY minutes for the green beans. Note that the potatoes are cooking for half the time of the beans.
They’re making a New York strip steak for the brothers. For a good steak, they tell us you should always make your own steak sauce. (I’m not sure they should bother, since Pat likes his steak well done and Gina likes her medium.)
Pat chops and Gina sautés 1 chopped onion with garlic. They mix together 2 cups of ketchup, beer, sugar (of course), lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, cayenne, paprika and apple cider. I wonder if they meant apple cider vinegar…I guess not. Gina sprays a measuring cup with Pam before measuring molasses. Smart. She adds that too. The sauce gets stirred into the onion. Pat fairies it up…you know, adds the seasonings. They cook it for 30 minutes over medium low heat and reduce it to 2 cups.
Pat rubs the steaks down with vegetable oil, then salts them. Gina dances over to spice up the steaks. He puts them on a medium grill. Luckily, the recipe tells us to cook NY Strip steak for 3 minutes per side for medium rare and not the well done that Pat prefers.
Gina starts on Mama Neelys Lemonade Pie. I like the sound of that. It sounds really refreshing. I hope the boxed graham cracker crumbs don’t portend something fake and artificial. She stirs in 6 oz defrosted lemonade (that’s ok, I make a wicked Brandy Sour with frozen lemonade) and 14 oz sweetened condensed milk. I’m still with her. A lot of Southern desserts depend on that.
Uh-oh, she takes a 12 ounce container of Cool Whip and stirs that in. I was kinda afraid the dessert would degenerate into that. Oh wait, but it’s ok (NOT!) because “to make it taste more homemade”, Gina’s adding freshly grated lemon zest. She says “we’re going to put this in my FRESH graham cracker pie shell…Nothing store bought here.” Uh, Gina you just made a pie that featured Cool Whip. She piles the whole thing into the prepared crust. It goes into the freezer for 2 hours.
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to tell you what’s wrong with Cool Whip…not that I ever let that stop me before.
I’m not saying that there’s not a deep, dark side to all of us that could eat a tub of Cool Whip in one sitting and be perfectly satisfied.
BUT, NUMBER ONE, I would never admit to it and NUMBER TWO when you have a cooking show on THE FOOD NETWORK, you shouldn’t be using Cool Whip. Gina, I promise you, your great grandmother didn’t use Cool Whip. I’d like to know what she used back in the day.
The beans are done…well, actually the beans were done many, MANY minutes ago. They look like limp grey versions of their former selves.
The brothers arrive. There are lots of them. 4 in total, counting Pat. Apparently, dinner isn’t being served in the dining room. The food is all on the counter and they dig in. While they’re still actively engaged in their steak dinners, Gina brings out the pie. She puts candied lemon peel (that looks about 3 years old) on top. After a lot of joking from his brothers, Gina says Pat’s not a Mama’s boy. One of the brothers says “Oh, yes he is. He’s just got 2 mamas!”.
What are we going to do with the Neelys? I like them, but I wouldn’t use their recipes. I don’t want to be harsh, because I like the fact that they cook together (which is SO foreign to me). I like their kitchen, I like their family values, but adding ½ cup of sugar to green beans and then cooking them for three quarters of an hour? There’s no way I would do that. You?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)