Stuffed Baby Potatoes

Inspiration from Spanish tapas menus

750g waxy new potatoes - the smaller the better
2 tbsp My Secret Kitchen Oak Smoked Rapeseed Oil
1 tsp My Secret Kitchen Lemon & Chipotle Spiced Sea Salt
100g cream cheese
1 tsp My Secret Kitchen Secret Wild Garlic Spices
1/4 bottle My Secret Kitchen White Wine & Porcini Finishing Sauce
Chives to garnish
My Secret Kitchen Balsamic Reduction to serve

Preheat oven 190C. Par boil the potatoes and leave to cool. Using an apple corer, scoop out a small circle in the centre of each potato. Place the potatoes in a bowl and drizzle over the Smoked Rapeseed Oil and Spiced Sea Salt; mix together so that the potatoes are evenly coated. In another bowl, mix together the cream cheese with the Secret Wild Garlic Spices and put to one side. Place each potato in a baking tray with the scooped out hole uppermost. Fill the hole to 3/4 with the White Wine & Porcini Finshing Sauce and bake for 10 minutes or until warmed through but not too hot. Fill a piping bag fitted with a fluted or rounded nozzle with the cream cheese mixture. Pipe a swirl of cream cheese on the top of each potato and serve immediately with a drizzle of Balsamic Reduction.

Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

Twice baked sweet potatoes with porcini mushrooms, blue cheese and walnuts.

serves 6 as a side dish

3 large sweet potatoes
My Secret Kitchen Lemon & Chipotle Spiced Sea Salt, to taste
2 tbsp My Secret Kitchen White Wine & Porcini Finishing Sauce
150g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
25g butter
75g blue cheese, crumbled
25g walnuts, crushed
2 spring onions, chopped


Preheat oven 160C
Bake the sweet potatoes for 1 hour or until soft and cooked through, leave to cool. Cut in half and scoop out the flesh taking care not to damage the skin - it will need to be a shell for the filling.  Saute the mushrooms in the butter and reduce the liquid, put to one side. Mash the potato and season well with the Lemon & Chipotle Spiced Sea Salt before adding the White Wine & Porcini Finishing Sauce, sauteed mushrooms, blue cheese, walnuts and spring onions - reserve a little of the blue cheese and walnuts for the top if you wish.
The potatoes can now be frozen or chilled until ready to bake.  To re-heat, place in a oven at 190C and bake for 20 mins. Serve as a side dish or with salad with Balsamic Reduction.

Fig & Honey Dough-Knots

Makes 16 'knots'

For the pastry knots:
1 x 375g puff pastry sheet
4 tbsp My Secret Kitchen Fig Pudding Pickle
4 tsp My Secret Kitchen Secret Honeycomb Spices
1 egg, beaten

For the milk icing / glaze:
5 tbsp icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp milk


Preheat overn 190C, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Unroll the pastry sheet and evenly spread the Fig Pudding Pickle over the surface; then sprinkle the Secret Honeycomb Spices over the top. Starting with the long edge at the top, fold over 2cm to form a seal and then fold the opposite long edge up to overlap the folded edge slightly to form another seal. Cut the pastry into quarters and then each quarter can be cut into 4.  To form into knots, take each strip and lengthen it slightly by pulling and teasing the pastry gently - don't worry if some of the fig filling comes out of the sides, it will help to form the glaze over the top when they are folded. Tie the pastry strip into a simple knot as if you were tying a shoe lace - you can expect each one to look slightly different! Brush each knot with the beaten egg and place on the lined baking sheet.
Bake for 12 minutes or until golden and leave to cool slightly.  Make the milk glaze by beating together the icing sugar with the milk until smooth.  Brush each know with a little of the glaze and leave to set.

Smore's Honeycomb Brownies

Makes 16 squares

This ingenious and indulgent recipe uses just 1 sachet of brownie mix & the choc chunks are sprinkled on top

1 pkt My Secret Kitchen Ultimate Chocolate Brownie Mix
1 large egg, whisked
50g butter, melted
50ml milk
25g digestive biscuits, crushed
2 tsp My Secret Kitchen Secret Honeycomb Spices
100g marshamallow fluff
50g white mini marshmallows
1/2 sachet chocolate chunks - found inside the Ultimate Chocolate Brownie Mix

Preheat oven 150C and line a 20cm x 20cm tin with greaseproof paper.
First, mix together the crushed digestive biscuits with the Secret Honeycomb Spices and put to one side. Next prepare the Ultimate Chocolate Brownie by using just 1 of the brownie mix sachets and combining with the beaten egg, melted butter and milk.  Pour into the prepared tin, spread evenly and bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle over the digestive biscuit & honeycomb mixture before scattering over the marshmallows and half a sachet of the chocolate chunks found in the brownie packet. Put the brownies back into the oven for a further 5 minutes until the marshmallows are puffed and the chocolate chunks have started to melt.

5/7/13 ChefElla's Lemon Pasta With Asparagus & Prosciutto

CHEFELLA'S LEMON PASTA WITH ASPARAGUS & PROSCIUTTO.

There are so many good tasting foods. Chocolate, fresh bread, pizza, cookies, cake, and of course bacon. While all of these foods taste wonderful and while they are fun to eat, eating too much of them is not good for you. Adding just a little of these good tasting foods in with your healthy recipes can give your meals extra flavor. Because I like bacon I thought it would be fun to add some to my pasta, and since pasta is Italian I thought I would find some Italian bacon. While prosciutto is not exactly bacon it can add the same great flavor of bacon to sandwiches, pizza, salads, and pasta. Prosciutto is a dry cured ham that is usually thinly sliced and served uncooked.

For this recipe you will need to use the stove and a knife. If you are not allowed to use the stove or a knife by yourself you can have a grown up help.
1. Wash your hands.
2. For this recipe you will need measuring cups, a rubber spatula, a small bowl, a mixing bowl, a blender, strainer, slotted spoon, sauce pan and sauté pan.

Ingredients: (This recipe will make 8 servings.)
3 Cups Whole Grain or Whole Wheat Penne Pasta un-cooked.
1/2 lb. Prosciutto Ham, 1/4 inch thick sliced. This should be about two slices.
1 lb. Asparagus Spears
1/4 Cup Red Onion, Small Diced
2 ea Garlic Cloves, smashed, or 2 tsp chopped garlic
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1/4 Cup Lemon Juice
1/4 Cup Flat leaf parsley
Garnish Parmesan or Feta Cheese

3. Fill sauce pan 3/4 full with water and put on stove. Turn pan on high heat. When the water comes to a boil add pasta and cook for the manufacturers recommended amount of time. If the water begins to foam just add a little olive oil and the foam will go away. When the pasta is finished pour into a strainer over the sink. When the water is drained off put the pasta in your large mixing bowl.
-If you are saving the pasta for another time you can rinse the pasta with cold water and refrigerate or you can mix the pasta with a little oil and then refrigerate.
4. While the pasta is cooking slice your prosciutto into 1/4 inch wide strips.
5. Heat sauté pan on medium heat. Add prosciutto to the pan and cook slowly. The prosciutto will turn crispy like bacon.
6. Remove the prosciutto to a plate with a slotted spoon and leaving the remaining fat in the pan.
7. Return the pan to the heat and add the onions and garlic. Sauté for 2-3 minutes but do not brown.
8. Add lemon juice, olive oil and flat leaf parsley to your blender. Using your rubber spatula transfer onions and garlic to the blender. Scrape any left over oil into the blender also. Blend the mixture until it is smooth and there are no large pieces or chunks left.
9. Fill your sauce pan 1/2 way with water, put on the stove and turn the heat to high. Cut your asparagus spears the same length as your penne pasta.
10. Fill your small bowl with cold water and ice.
11. When the water boils add the asparagus pieces and cook for 2-3 minutes. Pour the asparagus in the pasta strainer over the sink. When drained put the asparagus in the ice bath. This will stop the cooking and turn the asparagus bright green. This cooking method is called blanching(the hot water) and shocking(putting the food in the ice water).
12. When the asparagus is cold drain in the strainer.
13. Mix sauce with the pasta and then add asparagus and prosciutto and mix. Serve in bowls and top with cheese.

Enjoy

- ChefElla

Sour Cream Fruit Dip

Usually we have fruit plain, but sometimes it's nice to make it a bit more special with a sweet dip!  My mom has been making this one for as long as I can remember.  It's super easy and definitely my favorite.  A bit tart, brown sugar sweet, and the cinnamon pleases my cinnamon loving soul.  Over the years I've had it with basically every kind of fruit you can imagine and it always tastes good! 

You can change the recipe around by altering the sour cream.  You could try light sour cream, greek yogurt, a mixture of whipped cream and sour cream, or a mixture of sour cream and cream cheese if you want it thicker.  Also, the amount of brown sugar you use is completely up to you.  I tend to go kind of heavy on the sugar but you don't have to!  I'll bet a few drops of vanilla extract would be really nice, too!  Point is, you can't go wrong with this dip recipe and feel free to make it your own.

Sorry about the lack of a picture!  I meant to take one but it was all gone by the time I got around to it!  Will try to remember next time.

Sour Cream Fruit Dip

1 C sour cream
1/2 C brown sugar (you may want to start with 1/4 C and add more if you think it needs it)
1/2 t cinnamon

Stir everything together in a bowl, cover, and refrigerate for an hour or so before using if possible so the brown sugar can dissolve.  Serve with any kind of fruit!

secret recipe club: maple glazed whole wheat spiced apple pizza

for this month's secret recipe club, i chose something totally out of season, sawsan's apple and cinnamon streusel pizza. sawson blogs over at chef in disguise and when i first saw that she lives in the middle east, i naively thought we couldn't have anything in common. i was so wrong! i have a pretty technical day job and spend a lot of my off hours cooking and being a mom. and so does sawsan. she is an orthodontist by day and self professed "food explorer" - a term which i love, by the way - by night and a mom of two.

this recipe was the perfect way to use up some apples i had hiding out in my refrigerator that had seen better days. spiced up with orange, lemon, cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg and blanketed with streusel, these are my kind of apples. it didn't hurt that i added another layer of sweetness with a maple glaze.

while this pizza was baking in the oven, i kept thinking of other combinations that would be equally as delicious - spiced apple drizzled or baked with caramel, spiced pear, fresh berries, peaches with vanilla. i cannot wait to try a few later this summer when fruit is in season!

this recipe would be great for a party - it's easy to make and can feed a lot of people. besides, who can resist warm, cinnamony apples?!


for more information on the secret recipe club, including the list of participating bloggers, featured recipes from members, and instructions on how to join, visit the secret recipe club website!
 
check out my previous secret recipe club posts: pig out cookies, pasta with blistered tomatoes & arugula and iced grapefruit cookies, mushroom barley soup, scalloped ham and potato bake & andes mint cake, chicken souvlaki with tzatziki, asian pork chops, lemon lime meltaways, blueberry peach crisp, minted lemon ice, white chocolate macadamia nut blondies, raspberry cream filled eclairs, jam swirled cheesecake, whole wheat grapefruit cake, chewy no bake granola bars & carrot cinnamon waffles, cannoli, gingerbread muffins, double chocolate peanut butter chip oatmeal cookies, butterscotch peach cake, whole wheat honey pancakes, minted pineapple lime agua fresca, breakfast tacos, simple almond sandwich cookies, & roasted banana rum cake.

maple glazed whole wheat spiced apple pizza
adapted from chef in disguise
45 minutes, serves 8+

sawsan's original recipe calls for the zest of a whole orange, so that's what i used. and honestly, it was a bit overpowering. i like the combo of apples + orange, so i think the zest is good, it could just be toned down a bit. if you don't care for the combo, skip the orange zest completely.

1/2 pound whole wheat pizza dough
1 tablespoon butter, melted

for the apples:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
4 large hard apples (gala and jonagold are good choices), peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
zest of half an orange (optional, see note above)
zest of half a lemon
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

for the streusel:
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup oats
1/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

for the glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
1-2 tablespoons water

1. if using a pizza stone, place it in your oven and preheat it to 450F. if you aren't using a pizza stone, preheat your oven to 450F. stretch your pizza dough into roughly a twelve inch circle and set aside.
2. saute the apples. melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat. once melted, add the brown sugar and cook until dissolved, about 1 minute. add the apples, turn down the heat to medium low and cook until the apples are tender and the sauce has been reduced to a glaze - it will become watery before it thickens - about 10 minutes. remove from heat and mix in the zest and spices.
3. make the streusel (if you're super organized, make the streusel while the apples are sauteing). mix the flour, oats, sugar, and salt in a bowl. add the butter and use your hands to rub it into the mixture until the mixture resembles coarse sand.
4. spoon the hot apple mixture over the pizza dough evenly. sprinkle the streusel evenly over the apple mixture on the pizza. brush the crust with melted butter. bake until the crust is golden, about 8 minutes. remove from the oven and cool completely. 
5. to make the glaze, mix the powdered sugar, maple syrup, and 1 tablespoon water until smooth. if the glaze is too thick, add water a little bit at a time, until it's the consistency you want. pour glaze over the cooled pizza. store leftover pizza in the refrigerator.