Hungry Red Elephant

I found a tasty recipe for pumpkin bread. Yum.

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

I get a lot of compliments on my pies...so to start what I like to call my 'Pie Posts' I'm going to give you the recipe I use for crust. It's really simple, the trick is not over mixing it....I'm actually just now updating it because I read a pie tutorial on the Pioneer Woman website and well...it was way better.

For a nine inch, two crust pie:

2 ½ cups all purpose or pastry flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon sugar (for a fruit pie. Omit sugar for a savory pie.)
¾ cup cold butter, cut into chunks
¼ cup cold leaf lard, cut into chunks
¼ cup cold water

Mix the 2 cups of the flour, salt and sugar together lightly in a mixing bowl or in the bowl of a food processor.

Add the butter and lard chunks and cut into the flour using a pastry cutter or by pulsing the food processor. The mixture should look like large crumbs and begin to cling together in clumps. Add the remaining ½ cup of flour and mix lightly or pulse the processor two or three times. 

Do not over mix this flour. It should coat the clumps and be about pea sized...over mixed dough is gross and should be banished. 

Sprinkle the water over the dough and with hands or a fork fluff until the dough sticks together.

Divide in half and roll out. I roll it out on parchment paper so I don't have to worry about flipping, tearing  and all of that jazz.

Go crazy...do a lattice work top. leave it solid... Sometimes I cut out a bunch of holiday shapes with my Williams Sonoma cookie cutters and put them all over the top...it's all up to you. If you do a solid top make sure to cut slits in the top so heat can release. If you are just doing a bottom shell make sure to poke holes in the bottom so it doesn't go all wonky shaped on you.

Brush a quick egg wash (one egg beaten with one tablespoon of water) over the top and a little bit of sugar (I use cinnamon sugar because I think it's more tasty). Place it on a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven, 425 degrees, until the pie starts to brown, about 30 minutes. Cover the pie with foil to hinder more browning, turn the oven down to 375 and continue baking until the juices in the pie begin bubbling. Depending on the fruit used this could take twenty to forty minutes more. Be patient. As long as the pie crust is covered to prevent over-browning, the pie can continue to bake.

This post is long overdue, but life is settling down a bit so I'm going to try and post more recipes. Here is an easy one if you want some great, fresh tasting bean dip. 

Yeah, okay...So maybe it's been forever since my last post, well for your information during the in between I got engaged and bought a house, so my life has been a little preoccupied lately. However to thank you for your patience here is a recipe several have asked for. A little Greek woman straight out of Greece gave me this recipe...a genuine yaya she was. I warn you, this is extremely time consuming, but worth every minute if you want to wow your guests with your baking prowess. Do it.

Baklava

1 can (16 ounces) pumpkin
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt

Frosting: 

This syrup is amazing on pancakes or waffles...or anything else you can think of.


1 stick butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda

Combine butter sugar and buttermilk in medium saucepan, heat until just boiling, remove from heat and add vanilla and baking soda. Enjoy, as usual. 

1 stick butter
2 c flour
¼ c brown sugar
1tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
3 large eggs
2 c buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

Beat brown sugar, egg yolks and buttermilk. Sift together dry ingredients and mix well. Beat in dry ingredients, add 3 T melted butter and vanilla. Whip egg whites until fluffy and they form stiff peaks. Fold in the egg whites. Voila delicious batter! Add a couple of tsp of cinnamon or nutmeg for added flavor. Use the remaining butter to butter the waffles.

Want some delicious syrup, try my recipe for Magelby's Syrup

This frosting is really good on the Soft Sugar Cookie recipe I posted.

6 TBLS Butter (I use whole stick)
4 1/2-5 1/2 c powdered sugar
1/4 c half and half (I usually use a little more until consistency is right)
1 1/2-2 tsp vanilla

These cookies come out kind of like the soft fluffy lofthouse sugar cookies you can get at the grocery store...only better.

1 c shortening
1 1/2 c sugar
1tsp vanilla
3eggs
5 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c buttermilk
Cream shortening, sugar and vanilla. Add eggs. Alternating, add dry ingredients and buttermilk. Chill dough for at least 1hr. When you roll out the dough make sure not to reuse the scraps more than 2 or 3 times. That way the cookies will stay nice and cakey.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake for around 8 min

If you don't have a good recipe for frosting check out my Butter Frosting Recipe

1/2 cup Red Wine vinegar
1/2 cup Olive Oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
2-3 T Poppyseeds (depending on your preference)

In a pot combine brown sugar and red wine vinegar. Heat on medium until brown sugar is completely dissolved. Add olive oil and poppyseeds. Pour in a jar and keep in the fridge for dressing. You will have to warm it up each time you use it so be sure and store it in a microwave safe container. Jar's or water bottles work quite well. You can add more or less olive oil depending on how strong you like your dressing.

This is an easy crockpot recipe that requires little, preparation time, as in less than 5 minutes.

1 (3-4lb) rump roast
2 small cans diced green chiles
1 small can tomato sauce
salt and pepper

Place the roast in a crockpot with all sides nicely salt and peppered. Add green chiles & tomato sauce. Cook for at least 8 hrs. When it's done cooking take a fork and shred all of the beef and mix well with the juices, tomato sauce and chiles. Voila, super quick, super easy and delicious. I serve the meat with all the fixins, flour tortillas, grated cheese, diced tomatoes, avacados, sour cream etc etc. Sometimes I'll even add a can of rotel with the tomato sauce and chiles to give it an extra kick.

2-4 bone-in skin-on chicken breasts

Courtesy of my lovely sister and her husband who used to live in Italy. 

2-4 Mild Italian sausages: (use however many you want, really it just depends on how 'hearty' you want your sauce.
2 cloves of Garlic
1 Onion chopped (I usually chop them in wedges so if someone doesn't like them they can pick them out)
2 Large cans (14oz-ish) Tomato Sauce
1-2 cans of diced stewed tomatoes (I like to use Fresh bottled tomatoes from the garden or fresh chopped tomatoes but you can definitely just buy stewed or diced tomatoes in a can, or chop a tomato from the grocery store)
1-2 tsp salt
1-2 tsp sugar
1 c hot water
1/2 c olive oil
Fresh chopped Basil
1-2 carrots finely grated

Dice the onion and garlic and remove the sausage from the 'skin.' Add the diced onion, garlic and sausage to a large pot with olive oil in it. Sautee until the onions are mostly cooked and the sausage is fully cooked through also (sausage should resemble ground beef or taco meat, if you need to chop it up before adding it to the pot but generally you can just use a spoon to chop it into smaller portions while it cooks.)

Add your tomato sauce, diced or stewed tomatoes, salt, sugar and hot water. Stir well. At this point you should add the chopped basil and carrot. Just use however much you want, I generally use one of those small packages of fresh basil you can get at the grocery store, I think the brand is Living Herbs but really do whatever you want.

Let the sauce simmer for at least 3-4 hours. Every so often keep adding water to keep the sauce the consistency you want. If you feel like it's getting too thick, just add a little water. If you feel like it's too thin, simmer it without a lid to let some of the moisture cook off.

Once it's simmered for several hours you are good to go. You may want to add salt, pepper or sugar to taste. Also, this recipe is up for debate, if you really like rosemary then add some rosemary, maybe you would prefer oregano instead of basil, that's fine too. It's really up to you what you want. You can also make it with steak instead of sausage. It's a different flavor for sure, but it's still delicious. I will sometimes cube a roast or a ribeye instead of sausage. 

The other day I mentioned on my Google Buzz how much I disliked "Recipe Hoarding" and the hoarders that hoard them. Recipe Hoarding occurs when you taste something delicious, ask the cook what the recipe was and 1) They tell you it's a family secret or 2) They leave one ingredient out so yours never tastes quite as good. I don't understand why people find it necessary to guard things that should be shared. Isn't that the point of food? I grew up in a home where good food was religion. It was something to be shared and celebrated and a reason to get everyone together and have a good time.