325* for 20-25 minutes. Do it for less than you think, or they’ll get too hard and not chewy
After a very successful day at work in which everything went exactly as planned and I was more productive than a chainsaw in a bamboo field (you could argue that that’s destructive, but cut me some slack), and a good day of racquetball where my cheapo racquet was like a sword that struck down those who wished to oppose it, I felt like making a good dinner.
A perfectly cooked New York steak started the meal, accompanied by blanched asparagus and fettucine in marinara sauce. The kid in me demanded chocolate milk, and I was happy to oblige. Leftovers tomorrow are going to be awesome.
Last night I made a decent dinner. Decent may be an understatement, but I’ll let you decide. Wild sockeye salmon in garlic butter, sauteed mushrooms (also in garlic butter), asparagus, a baked red potato, diced tomatoes in a spicy vinaigrette, and accompanied by sourdough french bread and chai tea. It was actually to my benefit this time to have a small kitchen because I was cooking so fast that having pieces further apart would have given me more trouble. I even had my timing correct so that all of the dishes were ready at roughly the same time, and believe me, knowing when to start the water boiling so that it’ll be boiling 3 minutes before the salmon is done is as much an art as it is a science. The neat thing was that I was able to do all the prep work as I was cooking, so from start to finish was just about 15 minutes.
Sometimes quick dinners turn out very well. The other night I combined the two ingredients in my fridge that were not condiments. My cod and celery combination actually turned out to be a spectacular dish. Sometimes I make a horrible mistake; do not ruin salmon with barbeque sauce. But those are opportunities to learn.
If there’s one thing I learned from Iron Chef, it’s that ingredients are the building blocks with which gustatory art is created, and creativity and willingness to match ingredients, coupled with a foundation of knowledge about the indredient and what it can and cannot do, are an extremely important set of skills in cooking. I didn’t learn to cook from Iron Chef. Who uses white truffles or foie gras regularly anyway? No, their knowledge of exotic ingredients is useless to me. What I learned is how to use timing, how to use smells, how to think about the ingredients, and how to come up with creative solutions for new dishes.
Melt and mix the pb and butterscotch chips on medium low heat. Remove from heat. Add a bunch of the noodles. adjust recipe to taste. Drop spoonfulls of haystacks onto a cookie sheet and cool. Try to make them bite size, which can be fairly difficult.
350* 20 minutes
Blend crust ingredients thoroughly. Press evenly in 8x8x2 square pan and bake for 20 minutes. Beat rest of ingredients together. Pour over crust and bake 20-25 minutes more. Do not overbake. The filling puffs during baking but flattens when cooled. When cooled, dust with confectioner’s sugar.
375* 8-10 minutes
Mix gradually mix the two together and drop rounded spoonfulls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
In a large saucepan, over low heat, melt butter and marshmallows, stirring until melted. Remove from heat. Stir in rice crispy cereal. Using a buttered spatula, press mixture into a buttered 13×9 pan. cool.
Diana Dunnington 11/2005
Preheat oven and bake at 300 F, 60 Minutes Place pie on center rack in oven
Combine:
Beat:
Stir: all above together. (set aside ½ cup of mixture as reserve)
Add: 1 ½ C pecans and stir (I use pecan pieces and don’t chop them up.)
Pour filling into a 9” raw single pie shell (You can purchase the shell in the frozen section of most grocery stores, or use a cook book for instructions)
Bake 60 min. Watch to make sure the top does not get to brown. I like to dress the top with a few ½ pecans to make it look extra special.
Cool, then refrigerate. Be sure to refrigerate left overs.
**I reserve a 1/2C of the egg mixture before adding the nuts and filling the pie shell. If I find I have room for any of the reserve mixture I add it before cooking. If there isn’t room, I dump it.
350* in a 13x9x2 pan for 45-50 minutes
350* until toothpick is clean (about 30-40 minutes)
This makes a good banana bread. You can add walnuts if you have them. If the mix is too thin in the pan it’ll cook faster and get harder, so be careful.
