GreenSunflower Cooks

Fresh Strawberry and Honey Sundae

It is getting to be the time for strawberries again.  I was at the natural foods store on Friday and I saw these organic strawberries.  I couldn't resist.  Tonight after I cooked dinner, I noticed them in the fridge and saw they were going to shrivel into a moldy oblivion if I didn't intervene.   This is what evolved.

Fresh Strawberry and Honey Sundaes

1pint fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
3 TB honey
High quality vanilla ice cream

In bowl which easily fits strawberries, place strawberries and honey.  Stir aggressively, macerating strawberries as you go.  Let sit at room temperature for 30minutes.  You can place them in the fridge until ready to serve at this point.

Once strawberries have released their juices, scoop out vanilla ice cream and top with strawberries and honey.

Summer is coming... yum!

Carrot Raisin Muffins

I was out to lunch with some friends the other day, and the restaurant had some great looking carrot raisin muffins.  So I decided to attempt some.  I based my recipe on my favorite muffin recipe from Karina.

Carrot Raisin Muffins

1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups organic brown cane sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
3/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups Pamela's Ultimate Baking Mix
1 1/12 cups grated carrots
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup pecan pieces

Heat oven to 375. Grease 12 muffin cups.
In large bowl, whisk together eggs and oil until blended.  Add sugar, vanilla, spices, and yogurt, whisk to combine.  Add baking mix, whisk to combine.  Add carrots, raisins, and pecans, stir with wooden spoon, or silicon spoonula until blended. 

Scoop into muffin pan, filling to the tippy top and maybe piled a little.  Bake for 20 min, until when touched it doesn't jiggle, or a tester inserted comes out clean.

Yum.

Iced Coffee With Vanilla Bean

Looking for something simple on a Saturday morning?  Something you can pep yourself up on all day long?  This is for you.  I love iced coffee, and I love not having to leave my house on a sleepy weekend morning

Jenn Siva's Iced Coffee With Vanilla Bean

1 pot freshly brewed dark roast coffee
1 can organic sweetened condensed milk
1 vanilla bean split lengthwise, seeds left intact.

While coffee is still fairly hot, pour into a glass, fairly temperature proof pitcher.  Add the entire can of sweetened condensed milk and the vanilla bean.  Stir until completely combined.  The vanilla seeds will start to come out, but this WONDERFUL.  Refrigerate for an hour or so, or do it the night before, just in case you drank to much and need sugar and coffee quick!!!!

Pour over a cup of ice, add a straw and drink lushly.

Chicken Biriyani

Babe, my husband is from Sri Lanka.  He can cook a mean biriyani, but is often lazy to cook for me, so I made my own recipe from watching him.  This is delicious. I often take it to potlucks, where people ooooohhhh and ahhhhhhh about my delicious ethnic food.

Do you have an Indian grocery anywhere near you, if so this simple dish is within your grasp.  I made it in 20 minutes.

Chicken Biriyani From The American Wife of a Sri Lankan

2 cups cooked chopped chicken (if marinated, even better)
1/3 seasoning packet of Shan Malay Chicken Biriyani Seasoning Mix
1 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup ghee or butter
1/4 cup olive oil
1 small red onion, sliced large
1 large green chili (a jalapeno would work) sliced lengthwise and cut into large chunks
15-20 fresh or dried curry leaves
3 tsp chopped garlic
3 tsp minced fresh ginger
3 whole cloves
5 whole peppercorns
3 green cardamom, smashed between your fingers to release oils
1 cinnamon stick broken into pieced by your fingers
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup golden raisins
2 cups dry jasmine rice cooked 1:1 to make approximately 4 cups cooked rice.
1 tbsp honey

Cook your rice, however you cook rice, just make sure water and rice is in a 1:1 proportion. 

In bowl combine seasoning mix, yogurt and chicken, stir to combine and set aside.

In large heavy bottomed pan, he oil and ghee/butter up on medium high heat.  Add onion, chili, and curry leaves and about 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt. Saute until fragrant.  Add garlic and ginger, saute until you can smell them.  Add the cloves, peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon, saute until fragrant.  Add cashews and golden raisins, saute 2-3 minutes.  Add chicken mixture to the pan.  Saute until chicken looks softened (about 5 minutes).  At this point taste the chicken.  It will be salty, if it isn't add a little salt.  If the seasoning tastes just right, add a little more of the seasoning packet, until it verges on too much seasoning (This mixture is going to have to season 4 cups of rice too). If you add more season,ing saute another 5 minutes.   Now add rice one spoonful at a time, mixing after each addition, until all the rice is combined. Add honey and stir to combine.  Optional: Top with a bit more ghee/butter and mix in.

Serve with yogurt and mango chutney.  Delicious!!!

Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnut

I made these little babies to take to work today, mostly because I found hazelnut extract at Whole Foods.  For those that do not want to go gluten free, you could take any basic chocolate chip recipe and as the chips, hazelnuts, and extracts. 

The bittersweet chocolate is almost overpowering but in food fauxgasm sort of way.  If you like dark chocolate, you like cookies, and you like subtle flavors to complement stronger ones, these are the cookie for you.

GS's Bittersweet Chocolate Chip and Hazelnut Cookies

3/4 cup butter, softened
3 cups turbinado or raw cane sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp hazelnut extract (if you cant find hazelnut, use 3/4 tsp pure almond extract)
4 1/2 cups Pamela's Ultimate Baking Mix
1 package bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

With mixer cream sugar and butter together until fluffy and thoroughly mixed.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing.  Then let the mixture sit for 3-4 min and mix again (to let the sugar dissolve a little bit).  At the extracts, mix.  Add the baking mix and mix until combined.  Take mixer blade out and stir in chocolate chips.

Scoop large teaspoonfuls of cookie dough onto cookie sheet.  Flatten tops of cookies either with back of spoon or clean fingertips.  Sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts.

Bake for 12-14 min until browned.  Let sit on cookie sheet for at least 5 min, then move to a rack. 

Enjoy!

Back In Action

If you read my regular blog you will know I am been SICK.  I am finally getting my energy back after a long six weeks of feeling so crappy I couldn't stand longer than five minutes.

Citymama, put up her plans for meals this week and I decided I would go ahead and post mine too.  There might even be some recipes later this week, with pictures.  Babe and I got a macro lens for our SLR, so the pics should be gorgeous. 

• Monday: Yogurt, Rosemary, and Lemon Marinated Lamb Loin Chops, Yukon Gold Smashers
• Tuesday: Turkey Tacos with all the fixin's
• Wednesday: Date night
• Thursday: Dill Pesto Grilled Salmon, roasted asparagus, or some kind of in season veggie
• Friday: Goin' out
• Saturday: Veggie Soup
• Sunday: Day of rest:)

OK, y'all, I gotta get to the grocery store!!!

Saffron Scented Sweet Potatoes

Whether we like it or not, the holidays are upon us.  Halloween will hit on the 31st, Thanksgiving November 22nd, and then we are onto the Christmas rush.  I have already started testing Thanksgiving, or holiday dinner recipes.  Since I am gluten free, Thanksgiving is a little more challenging.  This is an easy one.  I plan on working out some dressing pretty soon.

These are sweet, savory, and tangy, fairly lowfat, and very flavorful, much better than the canned yams my mom used to put out on the Thanksgiving table.

Saffron Scented Sweet Potatoes

3lbs sweet potatoes, peeled, and chopped in to 1.5 inch squarishness
6 cups gluten free chicken broth
4 tbs butter
1/3 cup Greek style yogurt
2 tbs raw cane sugar
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp pepper
4 saffron fronds

Boil the potatoes in the chicken broth until fork tender and drain.  Place in bowl of mixer, add butter and mix with paddle attachment until smooth.  Add yogurt, sugar, spice, pepper, and saffron and mix.  Allow to sit for 2-3 minutes for sugar to dissolve and mix again.  Serve!!!  Would be especially good with something spicy, like a Cinnamon-pepper crusted steak.

Grilled Swordfish with Sundried Tomato, Pear, and Onion Jam

Grilled Swordfish with Sundried Tomato, Pear, and Onion Jam
Originally uploaded by greensunflowerRN.

I love when fall and summer intersect in September.  It is a perfect time of year.  Your last chance to get something on the barbeque, and a first chance to include winter produce in your food.  I am just going to give the recipe for the jam here.  You can basically put this on any firm fish, no matter how you cooked it.  Grilled, in my book, is always best. This could also make a good bruschetta topping for something different.

Sundried Tomato, Pear, and Onion Jam

1 small jar sundried tomatoes in oil, sans oil
1 ripe pear, peeled, cored, and chopped
1 small red onion sliced thinly
1 tsp raw cane sugar
1 TB olive oil
1 cup red wine (use a good one)
1 cup GF chicken broth

In medium sauce pan, heat oil over medium heat, add onion and saute for five minutes until soft.  Add raw cane sugar and saute, until the onions are very caramelized but certainly not anywhere near burned.  Add pear and sundried tomatoes, stir to combine.  Add chix broth and wine.  Bring to a simmer and reduce until the mixture is a jam like consistency.  Cool until lukewarm.  Spread over what ever you like to your heart's content.

Pure Fried Dough Bliss

Gluten Free Donuts
Originally uploaded by greensunflowerRN.

I was recalling to someone the other day, the days in my former life, where I took a medication that made me a ravenously hungry glutton.  I used to eat Krispy Kreme donuts as if my doctor told me they would prevent cancer.  Since giving up gluten I haven't had a donut. And prior to that, I hadn't had a donut in quite a while. 

I found this recipe the other day.  I was intrigued... could it be good? Would it satisfy me?

The verdict and international law of food holds true... anything fried is wonderful!!  I used Bob's Red Mill Wheat Free Biscuit Mix, and found that the thinner the better.

I liked it so much that my shirt looked like this afterward.

I really liked those donuts
Originally uploaded by greensunflowerRN.

They weren't a Krispy Kreme, but they were enough to make this gluten free princess happy.

Cheese Platter

Cheese Plate
Originally uploaded by greensunflowerRN.

Sometimes it is hard to know how to put together a cheese plate.  Which cheeses do you use?  How do you serve so it looks pretty?  What kind of drink do you serve it with.

Here I have combined a Port Salut!, Saint Andre Triple Cream Brie, and a pepper jack, just so everyone will be pleased. 

The Saint Andre is aged and has a fairly strong flavor, the Port Salute! has a creamy slightly salty mild flavor, and the pepper jack is both spicy and sweet.  They all worked together well.  I bought a tricolor pack of grapes and places them in between the wedges.  In the center I quarter from fresh, black mission figs, for a little sweetness after eating a strongly flavored cheese.

I think a cheese platter can be served with just about any beverage.  I had a glass of Kunde Reserve Zinfandel with it.  I also served it with gluten free crackers, but sliced crusty baggette would be wonderful.