Food Archives - Page 13 of 19 - A Golden Afternoon: Simplified Home Living

Roasted Brie with Figs and Honey

We were blessed with many figs this year. I LOVE the texture of fresh figs. The very thing that I love most, the seeds, is often what people don’t like about them. I had already made drunken fig jam last year and some regular fig jam as well, so I wanted to make something where you could have the texture and fresh flavor, but add some richness too. Enter: melting cheese.

I was thrilled to find these ceramic dishes at Anthro this last spring. They are perfect for displaying picked fruit from the yard.

All you need is some brie, figs, and honey. I used a goat brie from Trader Joe’s because that’s what I had, but any will do. I used some honey that we got from the Napa Valley where we visited a few months ago. I’ve bought it a few times before and it’s some of the best. Check out “Branches” honey from Katz and Company. Then, just roast at 400 until it melts into awesomeness. Drizzle with honey and sit down for a few minutes to enjoy. San Diego had a few random drops of rain today, so it was nice to enjoy this while watching “Fantasia” (the 1940’s version) with my family.

Roast Chicken stuffed with summer, freshness on the side

One of my very favorite things to cook is roast chicken. It’s one of the few things I enjoy making over and over again, the same. For this version, I wanted to mix the flava’ up a little.

My oregano is so overgrown so I decided to use that along with some lemon thyme for the butter rub.

First preheat the oven to 425. You can chop up whatever herbs you happen to have and add them to 1 stick of softened butter. Mix.

Inside the chicken cavity, put the aromatics shown above. The goal here is just pump some flavor into the meat as the ingredients are steamed inside.

Salt and pepper the chicken and rub the outside with butter. I REALLY don’t like to look at pictures of raw meat but wanted to show how the bacon gets laid out on top next. I’m so thankful our local Trader Joes store started carrying the uncured bacon only. So nice.

Cook the chicken until the temperature reaches 165. When you get to about 140 degrees, take the bacon off and let the chicken brown. Normally, “they” say to tuck those wings underneath, but I was being lazy. Oh well. It tasted the same.

Summer Roast Chicken

1 whole free-range organic chicken

1 orange, halved

1 red onion, halved

1 head of garlic

6 sprigs of herbs, whole

1 stick of butter

3 T. fresh herbs, chopped (I used thyme and oregano)

1 lb./ package bacon

… … … … … …

Some lovely and EASY side dishes I’ve been serving lately are:

Sautéed English green peas with bacon. Trader Joes carries these peas seasonally, but you have to ask for fresh ones from the back if you want them to last more than 5 minutes. They get slimy super-fast.

Polenta with thyme.

Roasted asparagus with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I eat these like french fries.

Grill some market-fresh summer veggies.

Creamed corn. One of my favorites.

Gnocchi sautéed with garlic and rosemary.

Charred Tomato and Apricot Salsa

Last year, the canned item I got the greatest response to (besides pickles, of course) was salsa. It seems that salsa speaks to everyone. The cool thing about salsa is you can basically make it however you want. I have a “gringo” tongue so it’s pretty abnormal that I would even stick a jalapeno in it at all…hehe. What? You think I make tomato soup, not salsa, eh? To each his own, I guess.

So, turn some music on before you start this recipe and enjoy…

Start with whatever you feel like throwing in. My sister and I chose local heirloom tomatoes, red peppers from my garden, jalapeno, red onions, garlic, and local apricots.

I roasted the peppers and tomatoes together. In another pan, I roasted the onions and garlic. The tomato group I drizzled with olive oil and broiled for about 10 minutes or until the are charred :). The onion group I drizzled as well, added salt and pepper, and roasted for 45 minutes. I had a lot of onions so you might only need to roast a small batch for 20 minutes. The apricots I did the same as the tomatoes. Again, if you are making a small batch, you could probably fit it all on the same roasting pan.

After the charring and roasting, we blended both until evenly chopped to our desired consistency. For me, I wanted something that wasn’t pureed but not too thick. You know, the kind of salsa where you scoop it and it stays on, chunks aren’t falling off. but it’s not dripping.

My sister in her awesome apron she made from a not quite as awesome men’s shirt.

Chop up the cilantro and toss it in. Salt and pepper the salsa while you’re at it.

That looks much better now. Cook the salsa until it is simmering, then cook for 10 minutes longer.

Fill the jars with a 1/2 inch head-space and process them for 10 minutes.

You have to work quickly and only fill as many jars as you will be putting in the pot. The average stockpot will fit 6 half-pint and 4 pint size jars.

We were super happy with the results and immediately broke out the chips!

Christmas presents?

Charred Tomato and Apricot Salsa

6 heirloom tomatoes

1 red pepper

1 jalapeno

4 apricots

1 red onion

1 head of garlic (yes, I really love garlic)

1 T cilantro

olive oil, for roasting

salt and pepper, to taste

Share with friends and if there could be a pool or beach that would be perfect.

Junkfood Remade: Cheese-its

I’m so excited about this particular recipe because ANYONE can make this. There are so few ingredients and so few skills involved that my kids basically made it all. This means you can too. I’ve been asked a lot lately for “easier meals” or “fast recipes” which is kind of discouraging to me because I feel like I have posted recipes that are both of those things. But, in an attempt to meet half-way with people who want to start cooking, having never cooked much in the past, I offer you this recipe with love.

So, I had seen recipes before but saw a great look one on Pinterest here. This recipe had the perfect cheese-it (or cheez-it) flavor if not better, some of my taste testers said.

Cheese-its

(adapted from “Ready Made” and a few other sources)

8 ounces extra-sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely shredded

½ stick or 4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature

1 teaspoons kosher salt

1 cup flour

2 Tablespoons water, iced

This recipe has so few ingredients I put them in bowls so my kids could mix them lickety-splickety.

Kids are great at measuring. Practice makes them understand fractions visibly instead of just in theory. Makes sense, right?

Yet another awesome kid skill…grating. When they are little, I think they believe it’s a magic trick and constantly check underneath to see if the trick is working.

Measure the cheese to get 8 oz, if it wasn’t already measured as an 8 oz. block.

Pre-measuring the ingredients helps to maintain the kids attention during cooking.

Cream the cheese, butter, and salt until combined. Add the flour until it looks like the above. Then, slowly add the water until the dough forms a ball. It may take 15 seconds or so for the dough to make the ball after you add the water so be careful not to add much more (I added a T. more).

Pat the dough in a disk and put in the fridge for an hour. Then, roll out the dough until it’s 1/8 of an inch.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

Cut them in 1″ squares. You can see by the lines that i let my kids help cut them out. They LOVED the pastry wheel.

I put the better looking ones on this tray and saved the weird ones for the next tray. Poke a hole in them with a chopstick and bake for

12 minutes.

Immediately test your product to make sure they are safe to feed other people, but be sure to actually share them.

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Cocktail: Elderflower + Limoncello

We are gearing up for school around here. I have been slowly cleaning out every area of my house to get a fresh start. I don’t want anything hanging over my head when I start teaching my baby-girl mid-August. I know I will have less time for projects and for doing my crazy organizing of thing constantly, but I’m excited! I am learning from myself in the past and getting a jump on it now. I know we will have a blast and now that I’m mostly done with my lessons plans, I’m not quite sure why kids go to school for 8 hours. This was one of those things that bothered me during the school year when I sent my baby girl to school for the whole day and only saw her for a few hours. Even in those few hours, she was exhausted. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Charlotte Mason’s methods over the last few years and am really pumped to open up the eyes of my wee ones to the wonders of God in every day life…math and writing included! I’m even more pumped that they aren’t confined to a desk and they can learn the way they were meant to…through experience. Plus, they can learn the ay that is best for just them and not the way an entire class full of kids does. Hooray!

Today, I went on a date with my sweet girl to get her school supplies! I love walking into Target and seeing the organized rows of supplies. Huge breath in…and…enjoy (think Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail” about her “bouquet of sharpened pencils”). I just love Target in the Fall…er…summer (thank you year-round schools!). It made me think of how much I loved getting my annual see-through binder to then later stuff with pictures/stuff and my row of Ticonderoga pencils. My mom was reminding me of my Hello Kitty trashcan I used to have on my desk in elementary school. Awesome. I saw a little red metal one and I REALLY wanted it. Would that be weird?

Either way, I made a summer drink to keep your summer going…ready for school?