St. Benoit’s blessing
after the garlic pressing.
Tastebuds caressing.
Tag: recipe
Rumballology – the Paul W. Grignon Rum balls
Warning:
At one point this recipe looks too liquid-y to work but bear with it: the results should, I hope, please you.
This is a family Christmas favorite and was discovered by Paul W. Grignon, my father, who accidentally put too much rum in his time-honored rum ball recipe, very much to the delight of his children.
- 454g (16 ounces or 2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips
- 2/3 cup butter
- 1 egg
- 1 1/4 cup icing (powdered) sugar
- 1/2 cup rum (light or dark: a strong flavour doesn’t hurt; aged Mount Gay or El Dorado are my preferred brands)
- For garnish any or none of the following: melted chocolate chips, chocolate sprinkles, coconut flakes or icing sugar mixed with cinnamon
1 – Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave on low power (or a double boiler if you like more dishes). Be very careful if you use a microwave. The chocolate chips tend not to look melted and the tendency is to overheat them. Two or three sets of 3-minutes on power level 3, with a stir between, works for me.
2 – Mix the butter into the melted chocolate chips.
3 – Blend in egg and sugar while continually mixing. Sometimes I coddle the egg a bit before if the intended victims are a bit squeamish but it’s not necessary.
4 – The mixture should be cool enough now to carefully stir in the rum: here’s where the recipe gets liquid-y. Pour into a container with an air-tight lid and as little head space as possible and put in fridge. Here be the magic part. After several hours (I usually do it overnight) you should have a mixture that’s solid enough to work with.
5 – Scoop out with a spoon and form into balls or whatever shape you like. Then garnish if you like.
Tips
My preferred garnish is to use melted unsweetened chocolate. The crisp and bitter outside and sweet rum-ganache inside is delightful and the rum balls don’t ‘melt’ so easily at room temperature. If no coating is chosen then it’s smart to sit the container of rum balls on ice or freezer packs to keep them from melting (or Wicked-Witch-of-the-Westing).
A small but rather embarrassing fire caused by overheating chocolate chips might have resulted in me hurriedly carrying my smoking microwave to my apartment balcony while I ‘entertained’ guests some years ago in Nova Scotia. If you believe the rumour.
Comment below if you find some alternative way to make these: I’d appreciate the ideas.
Anticuchos coochie coo
Love Anticuchos
and you will too muchachos:
a heart ‘neath your clothes.
Anticuchos Perúanos
Anticuchos are a popular dish in Perú for festivals or fund-raisers, traditionally made with beef heart, but you can make them with other cuts of beef, chicken breast or a firm fish if you’re entirely heartless. This will serve a good size party.
Ingredients:
Two beef hearts
2 Jalapeno peppers minced
red chili powder
2/3 cup of authentic Portuguese Red Wine Vinegar
10 cloves of ground garlic
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp. cumin
2 tbsp. oregano
olive oil
Mode de préparation:
-cut in strips or chunks, marinated and broiled in oven in the marinade
Billy and Bessy Cheesecake on a Toasted Almond Crust
What can I follow up New York with? Cheesecake of course. This is a recipe of my own concoction which has gone over well with friends and coworkers. It’s interesting on the palate with the tartness of the goat cheese.
Ingredients
- 2c almonds, ground and toasted
- 4tbsp. butter (melted)
- 3env. unflavoured gelatin
- 1/2c water
- 500g Billy goat’s milk cheese (softened) [that’s a goat that’s a tom boy]
- 500g Bessy cow’s cream cheese (softened)
- 1 & 1/2c sugar
- several squirts almond extract (real)
- 1c heavy cream (18% or greater)
- dulce de leche (heated, the amount depends on how sweet you are)
Modus Operandi
- in medium glass bowl combine almonds and butter, press mixture into pan or cupcake cups
- place water in small sauce pan sprinkle gelatine over and let stand 5 minutes, then stir over low heat until completely dissolved
- in mixer beat the cheeses until smooth, add in sugar until well combined, gradually pour in gelatin, cream and almond extract until you have a smooth liquid
- pour mixture into pan or cups and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, you can freeze it too if you wish but remember to thaw half an hour before serving
- heat the dulce de leche until it pours easily and drizzle on top
Yield
- Serves 20 polite people or about a dozen people like me
- Gluten free
- Goes well with fresh fruit if you prefer that to the dulce de leche
Monica Mary Margaret Philomena Blackmore Kennedy dip
One of my favourite layer dip recipes from an old friend is Gluten Free:
Blend and spread this on the bottom of the pan:
1 pkg cream cheese
1/2c mayonnaise
1 chopped cucumber
Set these in layers:
12 strips of bacon, cut up and fried
1 large red onion, diced
several sweet peppers, diced
1 jar hot salsa
500g sour cream
Garnish the top:
sliced black olives
grated cheddar cheese
sliced or diced jalapeno peppers
And you can easily make it Vegetarian by foregoing the bacon.
Best Black Bean Soup
I visited Puerto Rico years ago on a business trip and asked a waiter at the hotel restaurant to give me some suggestions for some local specialties from the menu. He recommended plantain fries and black bean soup both of which I ordered. I enjoyed these so much I ordered them again the next day.
On my return back to Canada I tried to duplicate what I had discovered for my family. The plantain was difficult as we don’t want to get a deep fat fryer for health reasons but the black bean soup was amazingly easy. My favourite recipe book The New James Beard did have black bean soup but the ingredients would be hard to come by. No, I found the best recipe at the Kraft website here.
My kids, normally not big soup fans, love it so it must be good!
Highly recommended.
Awesome Potato recipe
This recipe for Hasselback-Potatoes looks absolutely awesome: I can’t wait to try it.
An Excellent Rum Cake
This exquisite cake recipe can be found at this site. It is so good that I didn’t want to take a chance that the cooks.com site will lose this recipe. Here it is:
Aunt Greta’s Rum Cake
1 c. chopped nuts
18 1/2 oz. yellow cake mix
1 sm. pkg. instant vanilla pudding
4 eggs
1/2 c. cold water
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. rum
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 10 inch tube or 12 cup bundt pan. Spread nuts in bottom of pan. Combine remaining ingredients and pour in pan. Bake 1 hour. Cool. Remove from pan and with toothpick prick holes in top of cake.
Glaze:
1 stick butter
1/4 c. water
1 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. rum
Melt butter in saucepan. Add water and sugar. Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in Rum.
Pour glaze over top and sides of cake. Let it absorb into cake.
Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing
This is my favourite recipe for blue cheese dressing. Delicious with a crisp salad. Make it at least an hour before the meal and let it sit in the fridge with a tight fitting lid before serving.
Stuff you need:
– 1/2Tsp/2.5mL dry mustard
– 1/2Tsp/2.5mL fresh ground pepper
– 1/2Tsp/2.5mL salt
– 2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (don’t recommend any more; if you don’t like it that strong you might want to reduce here)
– 3 spurts of Worcestershire Sauce
– 1/4Cup/50mL yoghurt (you can vary the ratio of this to the mayo according to how rich you wish it)
– 1/4Cup/50mL mayonnaise
– at least 50g (I prefer more) of your favourite firm blue cheese, crumbled or cut into 1 cm cubes
The method:
This is best done completely by hand using a spoon or fork, in my opinion, as a machine or another tool homogenizes it too much to be interesting to the palate.
Put dry ingredients into clear bowl and mix.
Follow this by mixing in the garlic and Worcestershire Sauce.
Add the yoghurt and mayonnaise and mix until no dry ingredients remain on the sides or bottom.
Add the blue cheese and mix briefly.
Taste and make changes as you see fit.
Yield:
3/4 cup but I often double or triple it depending on the number of people eating. It does keep for at least a couple days in the fridge (don’t know about beyond that as it never seems to make it that far).
Hummus
This is my wife’s time-honoured recipe for Hummus dip. Delicious served with pita bread (fresh or toasted) or with vegetables.
Stuff you need:
– food processor or similar device (or a blender)
– 1 can (19oz/540mL) of chickpeas, drained
– 4Tbsp/50mL fresh lemon juice
– 6 cloves of garlic, peeled
– 1/4Cup/50mL sesame tahini (usually in the foreign food section of your supermarket)
– 2Tbsp/25mL olive or canola oil
– 2Tbsp/25mL water
– 1Tbsp/15mL cumin
– 1Tsp/5mL salt
The method:
Chop the garlic fine in the processor.
Add chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, oil, water, cumin and salt and process until smooth.
Taste and make changes as you see fit.
Yield:
a little less than 2 cups.
Golbing 