I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Corned Beef & Cabbage. For one, there’s just no good shortcuts for it. Sure, you can make it all in the crock pot, but then you get mushy, fatty vegetables, which is just no fun. So this time my shortcut was simple: I made my husband start it for me, on his day off. This was my first attempt at a stovetop Corned Beef and Cabbage and it was phenomenal. What were my secrets?

1. Place a corned beef round roast (I prefer this to the flat) in a stock pot. I added the remains of one large carton of Kitchen Basics Beef Stock (my favorite—had some leftover from another meal) and enough water to cover the roast +2 inches, and two small peeled onions. I let this go about 3 hours, turning the roast every half hour or so.

2. About half an hour before the beef was done, I added the carrots to the stock.

3. And this is key: In a SEPARATE pan, I added 1 large sliced white onion, and 1/4 stick of butter. First I caramelized the onion a bit then added the cabbage. To steam the cabbage, I ladled in two large scoops of the beef broth and covered it all. The stock reduced to a lovely glaze, combining with the caramelized onions to make for a very sweet cabbage.

Everything was great, and I can’t wait to make this one again!

CONFESSION: I’ve always been kind of afraid of pad thai. It took me ages to even taste it, and even then the bottle of Pantainorasingh Pad Thai Sauce sat in my pantry taunting me for ages, along with the very intimidating rice noodles. Noodles you don’t boil? SCARY.

All of my panic was for naught, and tonight’s dinner, while it was made with not so traditional ingredients simply because I didn’t have the “right” veggies available, was absolutely restaurant quality.

Here’s what I used.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 package of Chantaboon Rice Noodles (1 bundle of noodles)
• 1 shallot
• 1 clove
• Handful of baby carrots, julienned
• 2 small chicken breasts
• 1 Tofu Cutlet (one of my favorite products on the planet), julienned
• 1 bottle Pantainorasingh Pad Thai Sauce
• 1/2 very small head of cabbage (1/4 normal head, shredded
• 1 sweet red pepper, sliced thin
• 1 egg

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What’s a Scotch Egg, you ask?

It’s a hardboiled egg.
Wrapped in breakfast sausage.
Coated with breadcrumbs.
And panfried.

Oh yeah.

Ever since the first time my husband and I tried Scotch Eggs at a restaurant across the street from the GenCon Gaming Convention in Indianapolis, he’s been wanting me to make them.

So here’s how you make these little bundles of cholesterol. You know you want to know.

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 Hard-boiled eggs, peeled
• 1 tube breakfast sausage, thawed but cold
• 1 egg, beaten, for dredging
• Breadcrumbs, in a shallow bowl for coating
• Hot oil

Take your peeled egg and a handful of sausage. Wrap the sausage around the egg until it’s coated. Eliminate all holes. Dredge your sausage-coated egg in the egg wash, then roll through the breadcrumbs. Fry in 1″ of hot oil until the sausage is cooked; this doesn’t take as long in the hot oil as you might think. Using tongs, remove the eggs from oil and place on a hefty layer of paper towels for draining.

Seriously, they’re as delicious as they are horrific. We figure once a year is about enough to eat these beauties, but boy are they fun!

Has it really been that long since I’ve posted? Wow. Lots of reasons why I’ve stayed out of the kitchen and away from the blog, but here’s hoping to get some of that inspiration back as Spring is in the air, right? A fully stocked pantry has me itching to create some exciting new dishes, so here’s hoping we’re back to stay!

Sometimes the most bizarre ideas come in the forms of dares of sorts. That’s where Donut Hole Pie came from. So when the brainchild of this bastard concoction had his 30th birthday this weekend, I had no choice but to make it.

And y’know what? It’s pretty damn delicious. Recipe to come

Coming soon, the secrets to the post-Thanksgiving dinner we shared with our other family — our dearest friends.

Remember when I said I couldn’t make an omelette to save my life? Well, I’ve finally had some real success!! This enormous egg white omelette was a part of a delicious brunch with some bread and McCutcheon’s Pear Butter that we picked up somewhere in Tennessee.

Stuffed with plenty of spinach, mushrooms, onions and red peppers, this impressive omelette also includes ham and cheddar cheese. It was brushed with the herb butter I made for Thanksgiving with some garlic and tarragon, which gave it an extra punch of deliciousness.

The omelette bar has officially been set high.

CONFESSION: I just can’t keep anything simple. Even something as basic as sloppy joes I have to play around with, find a way to make it more interesting, usually by adding more vegetables and some herbs to a prepared sauce.

That said, I also make the best sloppy joes on the planet. My secrets?

• Sauté an onion, a red pepper and a green pepper in some olive oil and set aside. Add it in when everything else is done cooking for the strongest vegetable flavor
• Penzey’s Northwoods Fire seasoning blend adds a great smokiness
• Gouda cheese. I buy mine at Aldi and keep it handy for shredding on random things, but for some reason Gouda+Sloppy Joe is like magic!
• I always serve it up with Milwaukee Midget Dill Pickles, hands down the best pickles in the galaxy. Seriously, there’s nothing better, and I’ve tried many to compare. Buy them online from the Willy Street Co-Op in Madison. and try them yourself!

Usually I can’t say enough good things about Patak’s Indian Sauce blends, but while their new Butter Chicken sauce provided an awesome base for what turned out to be Shrimp Vindaloo, it was surprisingly and disappointingly bland. By adding some Penzey’s Garam Masala and Vindaloo I turned this into a really fantastic Vindaloo sauce.

The recipe is extremely simple, starting with the Patak’s Butter Chicken sauce and adding Garam Masala and Vindaloo to taste. First I added cauliflower, which is a favorite of mine in curries of all sorts, a chopped onion, sweet white corn for a great sweetness and some frozen baby peas. Before it was done cooking I added about a  tablespoon of tomato paste to strengthen the tomato flavor and I served it over some steamed basmati rice. It was a great way to turn a sauce that I wasn’t terribly excited about into something really fantastic.

I also cannot say enough great things about my favorite new find, Trader Joe’s Garlic Naan. A couple minutes in the oven, brushed with a little margarine, and *POOF* restaurant-quality naan for dirt cheap. I’m super stoked about the Trader Joe’s that just opened near my house in Oak Park, and you can bet I’ll be getting even more adventurous with my cooking with some of their awesome prepared sauces. I can’t wait!!

Tonight’s dinner was extremely average tonight, so I almost didn’t post it. However, it also included a brilliant discovery: Penzey’s Country French Vinaigrette herb blend is one of the best pork chop seasonings I’ve found!! It’s supposed to be a salad dressing blend, but I sprinkled a generous amount of the blend over the pork chops before tossing them under the broiler to cook, and the flavor was just phenomenal.

I paired this with some Vigo White & Wild Rice, steamed asparagus and some leftover Bearnaise sauce (with fresh tarragon) from Thanksgiving.

Hardly as impressive as Meatcake, this strangely light recipe is sort of a miracle of science taught to me by my friend Samm. The concept is simple: Replace the eggs and oil in a standard box cake mix with a can of diet soda; ANY diet soda.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I believed her, but I decided tonight to give it a go. To make this lovely and fluffy cake, I combined:

• 1 can of Diet Sunkist
• 1 box white cake mix
• 2 egg whites (for fluffiness)

And that’s it. Seriously. I beat it ’til it wasn’t too lumpy, tossed it in the oven for 25 minutes at 350º and ended up with a light, fluffy and tasty cake. I frosted it with some lemon frosting in a tub that I got for 99¢ in the scratch & dent cart at my local grocer (they always seem to have some type of frosting). I can only DREEEEEAM of all the new combinations I shall make for my new favorite shortcut dessert. I imagine there are some pretty fantastic things that one can do with a can of Diet Dr. Pepper…

Yes-indeedy, this is absolutely what you think this is, and exactly what it shouldn’t be. It’s a MEATCAKE!!! Featuring three tiers of meatloaf with mashed potato icing and glazed with a delicious ketchup glaze, I was inspired by the awesome recipe by Black Widow Bakery.  It’s late, so I’ll be posting my own step-by-steps and recipe—which includes my personal meatloaf recipe requested by all those present at the birthday bash where this was served—in the next couple days, but I leave you now with a teaser.

Also, this is so NOT a shortcut recipe, to be sure. But I chose to invest hours and hours of prep, cooking and cleanup to celebrate the birthday of the man I love. Happy birthday to my husband Adrian… I hope you enjoyed your meatcake.