Test Kitchen #7: Corned Beef & The Cupcake

Last Tuesday had the distinction of not only being test kitchen day, but Matt’s birthday as well. (Under marital contract, I am not at liberty to release his age, nor should I really have admitted that he even has a birthday. The theory is that he just came into being at some point, much like the Big Bang Theory. But I digress.)

Even though Matt has never been fond of celebrating his birthday, he does have a great love for baked goods, especially cupcakes as long as they’re covering with tons of frosting. I found a cake form at Williams Sonoma in the shape of a giant cupcake and planned the surprise treat as his gift.

I arrived early at Dad’s to start the cake first so that it would be baking while we were making the corned beef hash. No baking secrets here. I went with Duncan Hines Super Moist boxed mixes, chocolate for the top layer and golden yellow for the bottom. It had tons of whipped cream vanilla frosting, some in between the layers with slices of fresh strawberries and a bunch swirled on top. It finished off with rainbow sprinkles and a whole strawberry on top.

After that project was under control we set upon the corned beef hash. Once again, the improvisation method produced the best results. Dad and I were reminded of the Beef Vegetable Turnovers and how great they came out with very little planning. As Dad would say, “We do pretty well when we just wing it.”

Here’s the basic recipe that we downloaded from the web. The major things we added were the green pepper and we swapped in chicken broth when the original recipe called for heavy cream (Yuck!) Dad also had a bunch of cheeses leftover from a three cheese macaroni they had made recently and we sprinkled a small amount of Gruyere on the top before baking.

It was so good; we ate it for lunch with a couple fried eggs. We personally delivered a serving to Mom, who was already having a hectic day in the nurse’s office and was forced to skip lunch. This one is a keeper and the next time there’s an occasion to have a big family brunch, this will definitely be on the menu.


Corned Beef Hash

Ingredients: (About 4-6 Servings)

2-3 cups of corned beef, chopped or diced
2-3 medium boiled potatoes, diced
½ cup chopped onion
¼ cup of chopped green pepper
3 tablespoon of butter
2 tablespoons of dried parsley flakes
¼ - ½ cup of chicken broth
Salt & pepper to taste
A dash of paprika
¼ cup of shredded Gruyere cheese (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 450°

2. Skin potatoes and boil until tender. Remove from water, allow to cool, and cut into small cubes. (If you make the corned beef dinner for St. Patrick’s Day, just make a few extra potatoes and store for later.)

3. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter into a skillet over low to medium heat, sauteing onions and green peppers till soft.

4. Add potatoes, meat and seasonings. Cook until combined and add ¼ to ½ cup of chicken broth, just enough to moisten the mixture.

5. Melt the rest of the butter into a pie plate and pack the corned beef hash into the plate. Sprinkle with shredded cheese.

6. Bake for 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

7. Cut into equal pie-shaped slices.
Consider serving with your favorite type of eggs.

Dad Flips The Eggs

P.S. The Giant Cupcake was a big hit for Matt’s birthday and he enjoyed it for dessert that night and for breakfast the next morning.

St. Paddy's Day

As St. Patrick's Day was on a Tuesday this year, Dad and I were going to test out Corned Beef Hash. The day evolved into a family affair and Matt and his Mom, Carol, joined us for corned beef, boiled potatoes, carrots and cabbage. There was also plenty of Jewish Rye, mustard and horseradish for sandwiches with my mother's chocolate cake, and apple cake rounding out the evening.

Once Dad saw how much food we were making, it seemed that making hash would be overkill. So with plenty of corned beef, saved and stored, the hash is on deck for tomorrow's test kitchen. Stay tuned.

A special thanks to my mom, who kept us laughing all night. If tritaphan is the chemical ingredient in turkey that makes you sleepy, there must be some magical ingredient in corned beef that makes you giddy. Actually, that kind of explains the entire holiday: corned beef + beer = happy people. I haven't seen my mom laugh that hard or that much in a long time.

Test Kitchen #6: Mexican Pizza Pie

Good news and bad news: Good news is that last week I booked a 2 week on-site graphics assignment that will ensure the continued flow of groceries into this house as well as a much needed increase in our savings account. The bad news was that it was the first week I had to bail on Dad for our Tuesday test kitchen. Though disappointed, he pressed on without me to create AND photograph a new concoction.

After last week's vindaloo incident, we spent the remainder of the afternoon brainstorming about a new recipe. It was Dad's turn and he had this idea for a layered Mexican dish that you could make in a pie plate. You barely need a recipe for this and as with most Mexican dishes, as long as there's plenty of cheese, you can't go wrong. He served it with a side salad topped with salsa and said it must have been good because Mom asked for seconds. He saved me a piece that I picked up the next morning on my way into the office. It received many Ooos and Ahhs as I was standing in line for the microwave at lunch time.

The best part about this recipe was trying to figure out what to call it. In the office, many people asked if it was a Mexican pizza or lasagna. But the best name suggestion came from our brainstorm the previous week. At first we thought of baking the entire thing in a spring form pan, so you could make multiple layers of tortilla and ingredients, but later landed on the pie plate to keep it simple. After chatting up the concept for a while, Dad and I sat in silence contemplating the whole picture, when he asked,

"Sounds good, but what should we call it?"
I thought for a moment and blurted out, "The Mexican Beef Cake?"

We both burst out laughing to the point of tears. That didn't sound as wrong in my head as when I heard it come out of my mouth.
Enjoy!

(These steps are meant to be loose so you can make your own variations.)

A Mexican Pizza Pie

Needs:
• Ground Beef
• Taco Seasoning Packet
• Chopped green pepper
• Chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• Tomato sauce
• Two burrito size tortillas
• Shredded Mexican Cheese
• Sour Cream (garnish)
• Chopped Scallions (garnish)
• Salsa (garnish)

Steps: Preheat oven to 350º
1. Prepare taco meat per instructions on seasoning packet.
2. Add peppers and onions and cook until soft.
3. Add tomato paste and a little water and stir until saucy. Set aside.
4. Lightly grease a deep dish pie plate.
5. Place tortillas on a microwave safe dish, cover with a damp paper towel and microwave for 30 seconds.
6. Place one tortilla in the bottom of the pie dish. Press the tortilla up the sides so it meets the edge of the plate. Fill with meat mixture.
7. Cover meat with second tortilla and top with tomato sauce and shredded cheese.
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until edges of tortilla are golden and cheese is melty.
9. Slice in pie shaped sections and serve with desired garnishes.

Variations:
Get more adventurous by adding more layers. Dad suggests dividing the meat in half, so you create one layer of meat at the bottom, a layer of re-fried beans in the middle, and another layer of meat on top before you close it up with the final tortilla.

To lighten the load on the calories and fat, try with ground turkey, reduced fat cheese and fat-free sour cream.

What's Masala You?

So what's the cure for utter disappointment when you've had a recipe go terribly wrong? An evening out with friends at a restaurant that knows how to do it right. After Tuesday's Chicken Vindaloo debacle, I found it very ironic when my girlfriends, Sarah and Kelly, suggested Indian food for our planned Thursday night out.

We arrived at Coromandel in Orange, with appetizing and aromatic smells welcoming us into the dining room. On Kelly's suggestion, I ordered the Chicken Tikka Masala. Now this is how the sauce in the recipe was supposed to look and taste. Cooked in a creamed tomato curry sauce, with chicken so tender and flavors I could barely describe. Along with the warm and toasty naan bread, the service was pleasant and the evening was very enjoyable. I can't wait to try something new from their menu and bring Matt along. He always enjoys trying something new.

Sarah & Kelly
Thanks for the evening out, ladies!

In order to prove to Dad that Indian food is worth further investigation, I saved the leftovers and brought them over to him on Friday for lunch. At first he was taken aback by the sauce's bright orange color, but I think he warmed up to the dish after a few tastes. After all, it had to be better than the onion and tomato puree that we had produced earlier in the week. Hopefully I'll be able to persuade him to accompany me to a lunch there sometime so we can try some thing a little more adventurous.

Test Kitchen #5: Chicken Vindaloo

They say in the aerospace business that if a plane crashes and everyone walks away unharmed, then it's actually a successful landing. If any of you have seen Apollo 13 lately (as we have many times because it seems to be constantly on and Matt can't get enough of it) then you know that they categorized that historic mission as a successful failure. This, of course, is referring to the fact that, although the astronauts never made it to the moon, everyone made it home alive and intact.

Similar thoughts could describe this week's test kitchen. While our attempts to launch a new recipe like Chicken Vindaloo were valiant, the result didn't even land among the stars let alone hit the moon. The good news is that no one was injured in this experiment, suffered from stomach cramps or had to call up Ralph on the big white phone. (That one's for you Dad. I don't remember the last time you laughed that hard.)

I won't even bother to list the recipe here. If you're a fan of Indian Cuisine, feel free to try it yourself with the recipe I got from epicurious.com. I've had vindaloo in Indian restaurants before and enjoyed it, so I really wanted to try to make it myself. This was nothing like what I've had before. Don't get me wrong; the recipe itself is not terrible. It's a good base start that needs some serious tweaking. My advice would be to read to all the review comments and incorporate some of those suggestions.

Some of Our Ideas:

Add more spices. This smelled really spicy when it was cooking, but tasted rather bland when it was done. Many of the reviewers had the same thought.

The recipe says blending the first 11 ingredients will create "a paste". On what planet will all the moisture from 3 cups of onions and 1 1/2 cups of tomatoes create a paste? Try sauteing the onions til brown first, then add the tomatoes and the other seasonings. Then you can remove everything and try blending it in the processor. I still have my doubts on the consistency of the substance that it will produce but it's worth a try.

Either cook the potatoes ahead of time so they are mostly done before adding them to the "sauce" or be prepared for a much longer over all cooking time. The recipe says to simmer the potatoes and chicken in the sauce for 15 minutes or until tender. OR until 45 minutes goes by because that's how long it took our potatoes to get soft.

If none of this works, hit google and choose one of these Indian Restaurants and I'm sure you'll find a winner.

Best overall review: "It tastes like seasoned baby food."

Until next week, we'll just lovingly dub this one a learning experience.

If you have a great Chicken Vindaloo recipe, please post or send me an email.

Test Kitchen #3: Savory Muffins

Recently, I purchased an entire bag of fresh shredded Parmesan only to get it home and realize that the recipe I had bought it for only required it as a garnish. When Dad called Monday morning to discuss Tuesday's recipe, I said, "Do you have any ideas how I can get rid of all this extra Parmesan?" He immediately answered,
"How about muffins?"

This week's test recipe challenged the traditional notion of the breakfast muffin. Dad had found a recipe in USA Weekend magazine that asked the question, "Why do muffins have to be sweet?" USA's Pam Anderson, the author of The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight & Eating Great, provides a master recipe for baking muffins from scratch and then adds your choice of three other combinations of ingredients to create a savory twist. Some of the options include adding goat cheese and olives to the mix or feta and sun-dried tomatoes for a Mediterranean flavor. We chose the Italian flavor; prosciutto, Parmesan and basil.


This recipe is my favorite so far in the photo op category. One of the best things about baking muffins or cookies is that you have plenty of options in order to find the prettiest ones for the shot. We decided to double the recipe and yielded 18 muffins. Doubling should have produced 24, but in the second batch, Dad decided he wanted HUGE muffins, so we filled the muffin pan cups all the way up to the top. The larger muffins came out beautifully, but if you decide to make them this way, keep them in the oven for 30 minutes instead of 25 like the recipe indicates.


The Verdict
These muffins were really tasty but also extremely filling. Ms Anderson's column, Cook Smart, promotes healthier cooking and while the master recipe contains yogurt instead of oil, it also contains eggs and a considerable amount of butter. The recipe thankfully includes the nutrition information for those of you that want to keep track of your fat and calories. If you're a weight watcher, one muffin works out to be about 6 POINTS.

Since I was kind of eating bits of muffin while I was shooting them, I didn't realize that I had inadvertently eaten about 2 1/2 muffins. They had come out of the oven around 1PM and by 5, I was still quite full and worried how I was going to eat dinner with my friend Beth later that night. Even Dad thought he would wait a while and probably just go with soup for dinner.

The master recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard. If you don't normally have Dijon in your house, why waste the expense on buying a whole jar just for one recipe. I mixed a couple of tablespoons of Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard with a couple of tablespoons of mayo and that worked just as well. We saved the left over mustard and spread some on the muffins when they were done. An excellent complement to the prosciutto flavor and a little different than using butter. Dad also suggested trying the recipe with diced ham instead. Partly to cut the cost and partly to cut the salt. Prosciutto can be very expensive; over $18/lb at our local grocery store.

I think this would make a great addition to any brunch buffet. You just might want to warn your guests how filling they are. Or take Pam Anderson's suggestion from the recipe. Pour the batter into mini-muffin cups and serve as small hors d'oeuvre sized treats.

They also make great breakfast sandwiches. Since I had dinner plans last night, I left the remaining muffins for Matt. He sliced up two small ones and topped each one with a fried egg. I got a happy text message during dinner that read " Thanx! They rocked!".

I highly recommend trying these muffins. Your guests will praise you for their beauty and original flavor. For the complete recipe, see USA Weekend online. Or email me and I'll be happy to send you a PDF.

A Valentine's Day Getaway

In what is becoming an annual tradition, Kathy and I spent the Valentine's Day weekend in Greenwich at the Hyatt Regency. Our first visit to the Hyatt came in 2007 after our trip to California for a wedding was canceled due to a severe snow storm. We had made it all the way to the Bronx when we finally got confirmation that our flight was canceled. Not wanting to lose the weekend getaway we had planned, we searched for a place to stay and found the Hyatt. We became hooked.

The Hyatt offers many great things for a short getaway. It is within an hour of our home, has an indoor pool and a great restaurant but most importantly it has a huge four-story atrium with paths winding among the trees found within. Winfield's, the hotel's restaurant, and a bar both located in the atrium, offer plenty of opportunities to spend time in this relaxing setting. This year our trip started by arriving late in the afternoon on Valentine's Day. After checking in, we proceeded to the heated indoor pool for a relaxing swim. There's something right about swimming while it is 40 degrees outside.

That night we headed to Winfield's for a romantic dinner for two in the atrium. Having enjoyed excellent meals there on past visits, we had high expectations and Winfield's did not disappoint. For the Valentine's Day holiday, the restaurant had a special dinner menu for the night. Kathy and I decided to start out with the seafood martini for two. This was a unique idea: shrimp, crab and lobster arranged in a martini glass with cocktail sauce on the side. The seafood was fresh, well prepared, and the cocktail sauce had just the right zing to it. A good way to begin the meal.

For the main course, Kathy had the Chilean Sea Bass on a bed of mac and cheese orzo. Sea Bass has become one of Kathy's favorites, and this one was on the mark. The mac and cheese orzo was an interesting side, having just the right amount of cheese while, at the same time, not being too overwhelming. I decided to try something different and ordered the lamb chops with mashed potatoes. This was the first time I ordered lamb and I really enjoyed it. The meat was tender and full of flavor. I am looking forward to trying it again.

To top the evening off, we had dessert (what's Valentine's Day without some sweets?). Kathy had an excellent slice of Junior's cheesecake with strawberry compote and I had a chocolate heart filled with a mix of berries. We had a great time with excellent food and good conversation in this beautiful setting.

We awoke Sunday morning and went swimming again (I can't pass up a pool these days). We had selected a hotel package which included the Sunday brunch at Winfield's. All I can say is Wow! The spread was impressive: several stations, a good range of cold and warm buffet foods, and a enormous dessert table.

We started the brunch off with some mimosas. After surveying the room, we both settled on some eggs and sausage as a first course. Some of the other food highlights were the sushi bar, the roast beef carving station and the omelet station. But the star of the show for me was the pancake station with it's three foot round griddle! I have to admit I made two visits to this station, well rewarded each time with some excellent fluffy pancakes with syrup and whipped cream. Needless to say we ended brunch feeling quite stuffed and looking for a nap. Thank goodness our package included a late checkout.

In the end, I can't say enough about Winfield's. Whether for dinner, breakfast or brunch, we have never had a bad meal there in the 3 visits we've made to the Hyatt. This, plus the wonderful environment have us looking forward to the next visit.