Rhubarb Tart

Sense of Home Kitchen

It's rhubarb season!  We love rhubarb, the contrast of the tart flavor with the sweet sugar, it wakes up the taste buds. I have preserved rhubarb by washing, cutting, and freezing it, but I find that it makes the rhubarb tough and that it is then only suited for adding to dessert bread or scones.  It is best used in other desserts when fresh, so I have several recipes I hope to make over the next couple of months.  I do, however, like rhubarb sauce and juice preserved for winter, so I will start canning some of that soon.  The rhubarb is about a month early here due to the early spring so it should produce plenty for baking and canning this year.

Blueberry-Coconut Baked Steel Cut Oats

Sense of Home Kitchen

I love reading Melissa Clark's (yes, the same author from the wonderful cookbook In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite) articles over at The New York Times: Dining & Wine page.  She always seems to have a fresh and yet practical view of food.  Back in 2008 she wrote this piece on cupcakes disguised as muffins in which she quotes a pastry chef as saying "muffins are just an excuse to eat cake for breakfast".  Perhaps a bit less sweet and a few nuts and dried fruit thrown in for good measure, but I think this is basically true, and these baked oats, although you control the amount of sugar, are not far from being cake either.  With the amount of cream in this bowl of deliciousness designed to break our nightly fast, you couldn't exactly call this health food, but, oh my, is this good.

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas

Sense of Home Kitchen

This is a very simple dinner that is perfect when you have left over chicken.  It is also perfect for taking to gatherings where all the guests supply a dish, everyone seems to love these creamy chicken enchiladas.

The homemade tortillas really make a difference in this dish.  Purchased tortillas are thin and soak up some of the sauce becoming soggy as you heat the entire dish and often fall apart as you serve them, homemade tortillas are a little thicker and stand up to the chicken mixture inside and sauce poured over the top.  Give the homemade tortillas a try, you will find they do not take that long to make and the flavor is worth the extra time.

Cacao Sesame Bars

Sense of Home Kitchen

This website has changed the way I cook.  Cooking used to be faster, now I stop several times to take photos and carefully jot down ingredients and their amounts, cooking times and temperatures.  However, this website has also forced me to stretch and learn, try recipes I would never have tried before, adapt them, and think outside my personal "cooking box".  Since I was in my mid-teens, 30 some odd years ago, I have experimented with recipes, but never have I tried such variety and created my own recipes like I am today, I owe that to this website.  I am grateful for what I have learned and the confidence I have gained.  The more I cook, the more methods I try, the more "risks" in recipes I am willing to take.  It is rare that a recipe adaptation completely fails.

I have been creating more recipes that are completely my own, or adapting a recipe to the point that they have become a new dish and could be called my own, though I still give credit for the source of my inspiration, it is only fair.  I love having all these recipes at my fingertips.  In the past I would make a recipe, adapt it, and then never be able to recreate it because I failed to write down the details of my adaptation.  For the most part that was all right because I usually don't want to make the same thing over and over, in general I like to move on to something new. For those times that I get a craving for the same dish, when I want to look back at what I have been cooking, or when I am asked to share a recipe with a friend, I am grateful for this site.

Stuffed Onions

Sense of Home Kitchen

Ok, I am officially weak.  Despite my, "I will not spend any money unnecessarily!" determination, I just subscribed to Bon Appétit magazine, again.  I had subscribed to the magazine for years, we are talking decades, I have a collection that goes back to the late 70s, but I let my subscription lapse in 2010, bought the January and March 2011 issues at a newstand, and now, in a moment of weakness, missed it so much that I resubscribed.  For the two year plan!  I know I will have it coming for the next two years and that makes me smile.  I can't help but wonder, though, what was in all those other Bon Appétit magazines between January 2010 and March 2012, I guess I will never know.

Homemade Breadcrumbs

Sense of Home Kitchen

So I was sitting on my couch flipping through a few of my cookbooks, looking for inspiration, when I came across a recipe that caught my attention.  I quickly started making a list of fresh vegetables and herbs I would need to pick up at the store, but when I added breadcrumbs to the list I realized just how silly it is to purchase breadcrumbs when there is dried out bread sitting right in my kitchen.  Making your own breadcrumbs is very easy and only takes a few minutes.  If you have bread that is starting to dry, a food processor and an oven you are in business, you can even make do without the food processor.

Roasted Asparagus Soup with Blue Cheese Custards

Sense of Home Kitchen

Asparagus, now there is a sure sign of spring.  Around here wild asparagus has been starting to poke it's head out of the ground, but is is early and the weather turned a little cooler this week so although asparagus usually only takes a few days to pop up all the way, progress has been slow.  It will be a another week or so before I can go foraging.  In the meantime I have picked up some at the market, though it is not nearly as flavorful.  I love to eat asparagus raw, it almost tastes like fresh peas to me, but you only get that really fresh taste from just picked asparagus.  The asparagus I bought made an excellent soup though.  I know, I know, I make too many soups.  I can't help it, I think soup is comfort food.

Shrimp Salad

Sense of Home Kitchen

This recipe is an adaptation of a shrimp salad found in Patricia Wells' cookbook, Salad As A Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season.  There are so many terrific recipes in this cookbook, I am anxious for the garden to start producing so I can try more; I adapted this one for our taste and ingredients on hand.  This salad is what happens when shrimp cocktail meets salsa and the result is better than any shrimp cocktail I have ever eaten. The crunch of fresh peppers and cucumbers really add to this recipe, and the spicy tomato juice seals the deal.

The tomato juice I used is some that I had made last fall, I only a few jars of juice so I froze, rather than canned the jars.  I almost forgot about this jar until I came across this recipe, the juice was just as fresh tasting as when I made it months ago.

Baked Egg Custard with Cheddar and Chives

Sense of Home Kitchen

This baked egg custard is light and creamy and the perfect answer to what to make for brunch when company is coming.  It is sophisticated and yet super simple, takes very little time, and makes your house smell wonderful.  It can be partially prepared ahead so that very little time is required in the kitchen in the morning.

My chives are up and producing, the weather is nearly a month ahead of itself, so we are enjoying some fresh herbs. I had a dozen eggs from a friend's chickens that I wanted to use before they got too old so I went searching for a new egg recipe.  I have always found that the need to use ingredients we have on hand has been the best source of inspiration for recipes.  I was raised on a farm in the country and my first home of my own was in the country as well, we did not run to the store whenever an ingredient was needed, we substituted and made use of what we had.  Now that I live in town, only 2 miles from the grocery store, I could run out for those missing ingredients, but I still make use of what I have on hand or come up with a new plan for dinner.  This practice saves time and money, plus I try new recipes and dishes as a result.

Making the custard in the blender is very important.  The eggs need to have air incorporated to fluff the way you want them to in the oven.

Baked Egg Custard with Cheddar and Chives
~Sense of Home Kitchen, adapted from Gourmet, December 2008~

This dish can be prepared ahead of time and baked right before eating.  The egg mixture can be blended the night before, refrigerated, and poured back into the blender in the morning for another good mix to put air back in (very important) and poured into the baking dish and baked.  This makes a perfect breakfast or brunch for company.  Serve with a side of sausage, croissants, and fresh fruit or salad.

Serves 6 - 8

2 cups grated white medium Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup chopped chives
10 large eggs
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cottage cheese, drained
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. with rack in the middle.  Butter a 2-quart shallow baking dish (2 inches deep).

Place the cottage cheese in a fine strainer and set aside to drain excess liquid.

Sprinkle grated Cheddar and chopped chives evenly in the baking dish.

Blend the eggs, half and half, milk, strained cottage cheese, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in a blender until smooth.

Pour egg mixture over Cheddar and chives in the baking dish and bake until puffed, set, and golden, 35 to 45 minutes.  Serve warm or at room temperature.


Sense of Home Kitchen / Recipes / Eggs / Breakfast

Chai-Spiced Cookies

Sense of Home Kitchen

We got an invitation to a gathering a couple weeks ago and after much thought I decided I would make these wonderfully spiced cookies to bring, along with my Cucumber, Tomato and Feta Salad.  I had the cookies baked and the ingredients purchased for the salad when my husband said to me, "that invitation is for next Saturday evening, not this Saturday".  Oh well, points for being ahead a week rather than behind, right?  I could have saved these in the freezer for next week, but then we started eating them and sharing them with friends, so now I will be coming up with something else to bring.

These cookies were created from the memory of how good my Lemon Butter Cookies were and the terrific spice in the Chai-Spiced Cheesecake recipe I tried.  I am in love with cardamon, I love its taste, smell, and even its green color; cardamon is the spice I think of when I think of chai.  I think it is funny that in India the chai tea spice is made up of whatever spices they have leftover, and for me it is spices that I specifically buy to make chai flavored recipes.  I added cinnamon to these cookies (it was not in the cheesecake recipe), but I did not want that spice to take over so I kept it to just a teaspoon.

Chai-Spiced Cookies
~Sense of Home Kitchen~

Makes 5 dozen

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamon
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the vanilla and eggs.  In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cardamon, cinnamon, allspice, and black pepper.  Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until combined.  Drop by teaspoons on a cookie sheet and bake for approximately 10 minutes until cookies are lightly browned.  Cool on rack and store in an air-tight container.


Sense of Home Kitchen / Recipes / Cookies