Catching up with more cooking things

As you know I haven't been posting regularly but I didn't stop cooking -  but I am going to post some various pictures and events we had over the past few months..

October 2013 - Our old neighbors Jeff and Tammie left the neighborhood to move back to downtown Chicago and we went down to visit and participate in a Pizza tour of Chicago.  We walked all over downtown and sampled all of the well known pizza places and learned a little about the history of Deep Dish (Chicago Style) pizza...  Pizzeria Uno, Geno's, Giordano's  and a little place called Pizza Ora.   Really that was our favorite...  Lot of fun and good times

Here we are on the walking Pizza Tour

 

You all know what it is like to use up leftovers from Thanksgiving so I made a "Shepard's Pie" of sorts with the leftover turkey, gravy, corn, and mashed potatoes.  I used a small little cast iron single serve vessel, layered the leftovers and baked it in the oven until the potatoes were brown and crusty.  With a little cranberry sauce on the side it was like your Thanksgiving plate all in one dish... It was Tasty

Sheppard's Pie Steve Style

 



 For Christmas Sandy got me a Calzone maker  so I made some cooked some Italian Sausage, sautéed some mushrooms and green and red peppers and made a stuffed calzone...  Be creative - you can Stuff it with whatever you like but a little marinara for dipping and you have a quick and filling midweek dinner.  I used readymade pizza crust and it turned out pretty nice for the first time use...

Calzone

 

 Sandy and one of the neighbors got together an "ornament exchange" brunch  prior to Christmas for all of the Ladies in the neighborhood and I volunteered to cook... The menu consisted of Eggs Benedict, French Toast casserole, Mimosa's and Bloody Maries. I made a home made Hollandaise Sauce for the Eggs Benedict in a blender recipe and it was very good.  It stayed very stable as I took a page out of Alton Brown's book and charged a thermos with boiling water, drained it and then put in the sauce... It stayed very hot and I was able to add it right before serving...  here is the link to the recipe;
Blender Hollandaise

Roast Beef bites

We also had some non breakfast items - and deserts but if you remember my little roast beef appetizers on mini pancakes were a hit and provided some very needed savory "yang" to all the sweet "ying" of the pastries and other treats... 








One other thing I made was little caviar topped fingerling potatoes.  Very easy and very delicious.  Recipe goes like this:
Clean fingerling potatoes, and boil in HEAVILY salted water.  (I used about double the salt I normally boil potatoes in... when soft (about 15 -20 minutes remove from heat and drain)   Let cool so you can handle them.  (this can all be done the day before).  I sliced them into about 1inch lengths and used a corer to dig out a little indentation about a third of the depth of the potato.  I purchased some crème fraiche (I like it better that traditional sour crème in this recipe) and piped in a small amount of that into the indentation and then using chopsticks placed the caviar on top of the crème fresh.  It does have the WOW factor. :) 

Fingerling potatoes with crème fraiche and caviar