Trim and Fashionable

I am a serious appetizer lover, so I was very excited to learn that the Whip It Up theme this week was appetizers. I love hosting parties and having people bring their favorite appetizers. So fun! My friend Dana brought this to a party once and it was delicious. The recipe came off of the Bush’s chili beans can. She thought adding corn to the recipe sounded good, so that’s how I made it tonight.

Was the recipe easy to follow?

Extremely easy and straight-forward, as most back-of-the-can recipes are.

Did the dish taste good?

It was delicious.  I think it’s hard to mess up a dip, but this one really IS tasty.  It would be a good football party food!

Would you make it again?

Definitely.  It was so easy to throw together.  It literally takes less than 5 minutes.

BUSH’S® Best Chili Cheese Dip

Ingredients
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup chunky salsa
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese, divided
1 (16 ounce) can BUSH’S® BEST Chili Beans, undrained
1 (16 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained (optional)
3 tablespoons sliced green onions (optional)
3 tablespoons pitted sliced black olives (optional)
Tortilla chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine cream cheese and salsa and spread in bottom of 9-inch pie plate. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup cheese. Spread chili beans over shredded cheese. Top with remaining shredded cheese, sliced green onions and olives. Bake for 15 minutes until mixture is thoroughly heated and cheese is melted. Serve with tortilla chips.

J was at the dentist office earlier this week. He asked the dentist how his garden was doing (we’re friends with him), and he said it was great. J kiddingly added that he could send fresh produce our way any time he wanted, and he said, “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” And he came out sporting these pretties:

There’s nothing like a home-grown tomato. I thought it was perfect timing since this week’s Whip It Up theme was fresh produce!

It’s SO not like me to wait until Thursday to publish my post, but this has been a really crazy week and I literally haven’t had a spare second to fix something until tonight. I searched online really quickly before I left work for fresh tomato recipe ideas, and found this one for broiled tomatoes.

Was the recipe easy to follow?

The recipe was extremely simple and straight-forward.

Did the dish taste good?

No!  I was so sad.  Maybe it would have been better if the tomato had been hollowed out and stuffed?  The proportion of breading and tomato just wasn’t yummy.

Would you make it again?

Definitely not.  I’m not sure what happened.  It sounded so good on paper, but I just really did not like the result AT ALL.  You live and learn, I guess.

INGREDIENTS:
2 medium tomatoes
Dijon mustard
salt
fresh ground pepper
ground cayenne pepper, to taste
3 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup seasoned fine dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

PREPARATION:
Cut tomatoes in half; spread cut side with mustard and sprinkle with a little salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste. Combine melted butter, bread crumbs, and Parmesan cheese. Spoon crumb mixture over the top of each tomato half.

Place under the broiler and broil until crumbs are browned and tomatoes are tender. Broiled tomatoes serves 4.

It looks pretty good, right? Don’t be fooled. Or maybe you can figure out how to tweak it to make it taste good. Let me know if you do!

I bought a bag of Vidalia onions when I made my chicken and dressing last week, so when I saw that this week’s theme for Whip It Up was vegetarian recipes, I knew immediately I wanted to make onion rings. I’m not even an onion lover, but it’s hard to resist the sweetness of Vidalia onion rings. I looked at a few options online, and finally decided to use Simply Recipe’s onion ring recipe. I had leftover buttermilk in the refrigerator from the chicken and dressing as well, so this worked out perfectly.

I had a candy thermometer in the drawer, so I put it in the oil as instructed. For some reason it melted and stuck to the pan. What in the world? It had instructions on the thermometer for both frying and candy-making, so I’m not sure why it wouldn’t have been able to take the heat. I became a little stressed at that point, but I was able to scrape the plastic off of the pan before it was time to put the onion rings in. I didn’t know the exact temperature, but I used her tip of putting a little bit of moistened flour in the pan and knew the oil was hot enough because it sizzled but didn’t burn.

Was the recipe easy to follow?

Simply Recipes is one of my favorite recipe websites because the recipes are so easy to follow. I think Elise makes a conscious effort to write recipes that are very straight-forward, and I very much appreciate her for that.

Did the dish taste good?

I served them to J as part of dinner, and he said, “Wow, these are the best onion rings I’ve ever had.” He doesn’t make bold statements like that very often, so I was very happy and made a mental note that this recipe was a keeper. The breading was very light, so they didn’t feel as greasy and heavy as onion rings typically do.

Would you make it again?

Definitely. Perhaps I’ll even make them again this week since I still have some onions left!

INGREDIENTS

2 large yellow onions, peeled, sliced into 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch thick ringed slices, rings separated
2 cups buttermilk, or 1 cup plain yogurt mixed with 1 cup milk
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour and 1/4 cup cornmeal OR 1 cup prepared cornbread flour plus 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 or 3 cups of grapeseed oil, or other high smoke-point oil such as canola oil or peanut oil

Equipment needed: a 5-quart heavy-bottomed dutch oven, tongs, candy thermometer, paper towels, cookie sheets

METHOD

Combine the buttermilk (or yogurt and milk) with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon black pepper in a large bowl. Add the onions to the buttermilk mixture and coat thoroughly. Let sit at least 15 minutes.

In a separate bowl combine the flour and cornmeal, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Set aside.

Add the oil to a largish Dutch oven pan - about 5-quart or 6 quart size. Make sure that the pan is absolutely dry inside before you add the oil. Any water droplets in the pan will cause the oil to splatter violently as it heats up. The oil should create a layer anywhere from 3/4-inch to an inch thick. Use more oil if necessary. Heat the oil to 350°F. Use a candy thermometer to measure the heat of the oil. You may need to tilt the pan in order to cover the thermometer’s sensor completely and get an accurate reading. I have found some instant-read thermometers to be useless for this purpose as their sensors are 2 1/2 inches up from the bottom. A good old fashioned metal-encased thermometer works best.

Be very careful whenever handling hot oil. No running kids in the kitchen. No distractions. Do not answer the phone if it rings. Pay attention. Have the pan’s lid close by.

You can test if the oil is ready by moistening a little bit of the flour and dropping it in the pan. If it sizzles and fries, it’s ready. If it burns, take the pan off the heat and let the oil cool down a bit.

Working in batches, lift some onion rings out of the buttermilk and coat them in the flour mixture. Use tongs to place them one by one in the hot oil. Fry for a minute on each side, until golden brown. Do not crowd them. Place finished onion rings on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels to absorb the excess oil. Keep the complete onion rings warm in a 200°F oven while you fry the rest. Between batches, if you end up needing more oil, add some. Let the temp get back up to 350°F before starting the next batch.

Serve hot.

Note: It’s best not to pour the leftover oil down the drain. Better to pour into an extra empty jar, and discard with your trash.

The theme this week is Old Favorites. As soon as I saw the theme, I knew exactly what I wanted to try. The time before last when we visited Troy in Indianapolis, he made the following recipe for Chicken and Dressing. I think it’s the one his mom always uses, and it was so delicious. I know it’s not typically a summer dish, but I don’t mind eating a hot meal while I’m sitting in an air-conditioned house.

My Nanny was always responsible for dressing at Thanksgiving, and for some reason I never liked it. When Troy served it to us, I realized that what I liked so much about his was that the chicken was IN the dressing. It made such a difference to me for some reason.

The Whip It Up Questions:

Was the recipe easy to follow?

I thought it was very easy to follow. The recipe uses a bag of stuffing mix, so I guess that eliminated a lot of measuring, but it was simple to throw together. I made the cornbread and biscuits ahead of time, and I also had some extra roasted chicken in the freezer, so that helped a lot.

Did the dish taste good?

It was delicious! Very moist and flavorful.

Would you make it again?

Yes. I love making recipes that freeze well. This recipe made four 9×7 disposable casserole dishes. Four! I’ll have to see how the frozen ones taste before I make it again, but I imagine they’ll be fine.

Katy’s Cornbread Dressing

1 pan cornbread (see recipe below)
1 onion, chopped
4 ribs celery, diced
½ cup butter
4 eggs
1 16-oz package herbed stuffing mix
A couple of pieces of dried bread or three biscuits torn into pieces
2 tbs sage
¾ can cream of chicken soup
½ cup cream
About 6 cups chicken broth (or amount used to cook one chicken, covered by one inch of water), maybe a little more.

Make and crumble pan of cornbread.

Sauté celery and onion in melted butter over medium heat until tender.

Stir together eggs in a large bowl. Stir in cornbread, onion and celery mixture, stuffing mix, bread pieces, soup, cream, and broth until blended. Mixture should be kind of loose and soupy.

Pour dressing into a lightly greased 13 x 9-inch baking dish and a lightly greased 9-inch square baking dish. (You can freeze containers covered for up to 3 months if desired at this point. Thaw in refrigerator for 8 hours.)

Place dishes in oven preheated at 350 for about an hour or until each is lightly browned and firmed up.

Chicken and Dressing Variation: If you are cooking a chicken to make your broth, debone the cooked chicken and tear it into pieces. This recipe will use about half of the chicken. Place the chicken in a layer in the bottom of the pan and pour the dressing mixture into the baking dishes. Add little more time to bake, maybe 5-10 minutes.

Cornbread

1 cup cornmeal (I use white cornmeal)
4 tbs. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
3 tbs. oil, 1/4 cup oil

Heat oven to 425.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Mix wet ingredients together in a separate bowl. Combine the two.

Heat a 10-inch cast iron skillet over a medium flame. Add 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. When hot, sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of cornmeal into the oil. Coat the sides of the pan and let cornmeal brown until lightly browned, but not smoky.

Pour cornmeal mixture into skillet and put the pan in the hot oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes until brown around the edges. Turn immediately onto a plate (top side down) so that the bottom stays crusty.