Monday

Cardamom Poached Apricots with marscapone and pistachio

Thanks to Holly for being my guinea pig and taste testing my recipe. I was looking for something to use my homemade marscapone with and these fit the bill. This is a nice little cheese course style dessert. They're a little sticky for finger food, but I think a fork with these would be a little silly too.

Ingredients:
1.25c water
3/4c superfine sugar
6 cardamom pods crushed
2 tsp lemon juice
8oz dried apricots
1/2c marscapone cheese1c finely chopped pistachios

Make a syrup on the stove top with the water, sugar, cardamom and lemon juice by bringing to a boil and then simmering for 1-2 minutes.
Add the apricots, return to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes.
Remove for heat and scoop out apricots with a slotted spoon to a cutting board or plate to cool.

Once cooled, cut a slit in the apricots and fill with a little marscapone. I used a little pastry tube which worked great.
Dip the cut end into the pistachios so they stick to the marscapone, but they'll stick to the apricot pretty well too.
Refrigerate if your marscapone needs to firm up, but serve at room temp.


Recipe from Small Bites by Jennifer Joyce, a great Christmas gift from Nancy and Diane who are very supportive of my foodie habit!

Pastry Crust in the cuisinart

This is the go to Callahan family pie crust. From the kitchen of Nancy Bishop, long time family friend and superior cook!

Ingredients:
1 1/3c flour
1 tsp salt
1 stick of butter, cut in pieces
1/4c very cold/ice water

Put the flour, salt and cold butter pieces in the cuisinart and pulse to form a coarse meal. While running, slowly pour in cold water in a steady stream until a ball of dough forms - it may not take a whole 1/4c.

Roll out and fill your pie!

Kale Chips

After some recipe trials, this is the best version. I can eat more kale in one sitting in chip form than should be possible.

Ingredients:
Kale leaves of your choice (tuscan and curly both work), washed and DRIED
olive oil, in a mister ideally
salt or other seasoning

Preheat oven to 350*.
Rip the kale from the vein and dry it well with a paper towel. Arrange leaves in a single layer on a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet. Mist (or drizzle) a bit of olive oil and bake for 15 minutes.
Your chips should be dry, flaky and a little brown on the edges. Sprinkle with salt (or truffle salt!) and eat.