Tomorrow, March 19th, is the Feast of St. Joseph, an important feast day in Italy or more specifically, Sicily. St. Joseph is particularly important to Sicilians, because he is credited with preventing a famine in Sicily during the Middle Ages through prayer. Each year, a large feast is prepared in his honor. Desserts typically include Zeppoli and Italian Fig Cookies.
Italian Fig Cookies, or Cuccidati, also tend to show up around Christmastime, so they are more of a “celebratory” cookie than linked to any specific holiday.
I wasn’t ready to conquer Zeppoli just yet, so I thought I’d try Italian Fig Cookies! This recipe is based off a recipe from Epicurious.
Note: I was sent a box of Krusteaz Buttermilk Protein Pancake & Flapjack Mix in order to write this post. Opinions are mine alone.
Happy National Pancake Day! Also known as Shrove Tuesday, coincides with Mardi Gras, the end of Carnevale, and the beginning of Lent. It’s a day to indulge, but you can indulge while still eating something nutritious!
To celebrate National Pancake Day, Krusteaz sent me a box of their new Buttermilk Protein Pancake & Flapjack Mix. This mix is packed with 15 grams of protein per serving! This pancake mix needs just water to become light and fluffy pancakes. For added protein, you can substitute in milk and add eggs to the mix as well!
I decided to up the nutrition of these pancakes with the addition of mashed sweet potato. Not only does it add a bit of sweetness to the pancakes, sweet potatoes are a great source of Vitamins A and C.
With all of the protein and vitamins in this recipe, a little bit of browned butter won’t hurt, right? 🙂 I topped these pancakes with a bit of browned butter chopped pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup to make these Sweet Potato Pancakes with Brown Butter Pecans.
I’ve mentioned before how awesome the Philadelphia food scene is, and it seems to only be getting better! One of the latest additions to the Philadelphia restaurant scene is Makhani, which just opened in Old City. Owned by restaurateur Shafi Gaffar, the restaurant includes a 34 seat dining room as well as a private space on the second floor for up to 50 for special events. The restaurant also provides delivery throughout Philadelphia.
Makhani, which means “with butter”, specializes in North Indian curries that usually have thick, moderately spiced and creamy gravies. The use of dried fruits and nuts , as well as the incorporation of dairy products like milk, cream, home-made cottage cheese, ghee (clarified butter) and yogurt, play an important role in the cooking of both savory and sweet dishes. Everything in the kitchen, from the breads, to the sauces, to the desserts, are made in-house and from scratch using high quality, fresh ingredients from Chef and his culinary team. Makhani will also offer authentic Indian dishes in a specially designed Tandoori clay oven brought over direct from India. On the menu, look for an extensive list of notable vegan options, as 50% of the menu is vegan.
Source: Society Hill Films
The made-to-order, farm-to-table menu from executive chef Sanjoy Banik is a relatively uncommon approach to Indian restaurants in the region. The flavors of Indian food can take up to ten hours to develop, so many restaurants pre-batch their preparations. The menu includes modern spins on traditional North Indian cuisine, and also features some unexpected ingredients, such as lobster, scallops, and lamb shanks.
Source: Society Hill Films
Gaffar is originally from Bangladesh, where is family owns a mango garden/farm and works as inspiration for many dishes on the menu, including Indian Mango Chicken (shown above)- a dish made of “spiced chicken breast cooked in our homemade mango sauce with fresh mangoes.” I decided to try to make my own version at home using my multi-pot to mimic the flavors of a dish that requires cooking for a long period of time to fully develop its flavors.
My version uses chicken thighs and differs in overall flavor to the version at Makhani, so I strongly suggest trying out their version as well!
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground sweet paprika
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
8 oz frozen mango chunks
1 (14 oz) can light coconut milk, thoroughly shaken
1 medium onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
0-2 dried red chili peppers, depending on your spice tolerance
I’m hoping you’ll allow me to post one more cookie recipe this season. These Chewy Gingerbread Cookies are too good to not post!
Every year, my mom and I bake multiple cookie recipes to give to friends and family. While there are some that we bake every year, (like these Hot Cocoa Cookies), we try to make a new cookie each time. After many years of trying to make gingerbread cookies and failing at the decorating part, we decided to try making gingerbread cookies instead.
This recipe makes a wonderfully soft and chewy cookie all with the yummy flavors of gingerbread.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
I love the combination of chocolate and pumpkin together. So when I was trying to think of an update to a traditional cookie, my mind went right to these flavors, which brings me to this recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Rugelach.
Rugelach are the perfect cookies for this combo. Traditional rugelach uses an apricot spread that is sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, walnuts, and raisins, and then rolled into a spiral. The pumpkin butter takes the place of the apricot spread, and mini chocolate chips are substituted in for the walnuts and raisins.
Note: I was sent samples of PBfit in order to write this post. All opinions are mine alone.
I try to do a few make ahead recipes when I have the time on my weekends to make weekdays a bit easier. I tend to focus on dinners for busy weeknights, but from time to time I’m able to whip up some make ahead breakfasts as well. My favorite make ahead breakfasts? Muffins, of course! So I decided to make Peanut Butter Banana Muffins!
Not only are muffins an easy way to make a huge batch of future breakfasts, but they also freeze well! We always have bananas around the house, so when we end up with some overripe bananas, I love to use them in muffins. This recipe adds in some PBfit powder for peanut butter-y goodness!
PBfit is peanut butter powder made by pressing roasted peanuts, grinding those peanuts and mixing in some coconut palm sugar, and a pinch of salt. The result is a delicious peanut butter powder that has 87% less fat and 1/3 the calories of traditional peanut butter. Because it’s in powder form, it works great in baked goods!
I really love sweet potatoes. I have a pretty bad sweet tooth, so sweet potatoes are right up my alley. Growing up, we used to always have them mashed with a ton of butter and topped with roasted marshmallows. Mmm.
This version for Pressure Cooker Mashed Sweet Potatoes is a bit more stripped down, no marshmallows here. The natural sweetness is allowed to shine through (although I do enhance it a bit with some maple syrup)!
Plus, because I cooked the sweet potatoes in my Pressure Cooker, this recipe is done in no time!
Ingredients:
4 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into similar sized pieces
1 cup water
1/4 cup unsalted butter (or coconut oil to make dairy free/vegan)
Note: I was sent a copy of AMERICAN COOKIE: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved for Generations for review. Opinions are mine alone.
Every cookie recipe has a back story, from the chocolate chip cookie to thumbprint cookies. What’s truly interesting about these back stories is how they align with the shaping of American baking through the generations. I love cookbooks that provide a back story to the recipes, like AMERICAN COOKIE: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved for Generations by Anne Bryn. Did you know that the first snickerdoodle cookie recipes were actually bars? Or that the first Girl Scout Cookies were baked at home to help raise money to send girls to camp?
Source: Penguin Random House
I assume I’m not alone in associating different recipes with different parts of my own life. I can’t look at a Peanut Butter Cookie without thinking of my family’s recipe, passed down from my great grandmother, or snack on a Neiman Marcus “$250” cookies without recalling many December weekends spent making them with my mom as a child.
I was first introduced to rugelach cookies — a cookie made by rolling a triangle of dough around a sweet filling — by my mother-in-law. She makes them every Christmas and has since my husband was little. So when I saw a recipe for Apricot and Raisin Rugelach in AMERICANCOOKIE, I knew I had to try them as a nod to my mother-in-law’s fantastic baking every December. This recipe differs from my mother-in-law’s version but the general idea is still there.
Rugelach cookies were first brought to America from Austrian-Hungarian immigrants, and has over time been adapted and modernized by Jewish-American bakers. Apparently, the original dough was quite time consuming to make. Somewhere along the line, cream cheese was added to rugelach dough, resulting in an easy to work with and flaky dough. Rugelach cookies have become a staple in many American households, and typically include raisins, nuts, spices and jam or preserves as a filling.
Ingredients:
Dough:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for rolling the dough
As someone who does her best to cook a bunch of meals over the weekends to eat during the week, my slow cooker is one of my most used appliances. I recently tried to move it into a closet to declutter my kitchen, but I keep asking my husband to help me retrieve it so often that he’s questioning its removal from our counter top.
One of my favorite takeout meals is Butter Chicken, so I wanted to learn how to make a version at home.
I based this recipe off a recipe from NY Times food, but adjusted it for the slow cooker, because we all know how much I love a slow cooker recipe. My version makes about 8 servings.
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups Greek yogurt
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 ½ tablespoons ground turmeric
2 tablespoons garam masala
2 tablespoons ground cumin
3 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick
4 whole tomatoes from a 14oz can of whole tomatoes (~1/2 of the can), chopped
It really takes me a while to adjust to colder weather. I feel like I’m always freezing! So a warm and hearty meal is a must this time of year, especially a soup or stew.
I came across a recipe for Sri Lankan Coconut and Turmeric Chicken Curry a while back, but was unable to find all of the ingredients to actually make it. (Curry leaves are difficult to come by near me!)
Recently, I just gave up and decided to make it with some substitutions.
This recipe from Delicious.com, even with my adjustments, is so fantastic that I can only imagine how good the original is!
Ingredients:
1 medium white onion, roughly chopped
~1 1/2 inch piece ginger
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small jalapeno, seeds and membranes removed
8 boneless skinless chicken thighs
4 tablespoons coconut oil, divided
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
3 cardamom pods, smashed
1 piece of cinnamon
2 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
1 (13.5 oz) can coconut milk, well shaken
1 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons cashews, finely chopped, plus extra to serve
I have such a sweet tooth. Seriously, if I could get away with eating ice cream and only ice cream for the rest of my life, I probably would. So, I am constantly looking for ways to satisfy my sweet tooth without, well, eating a pint of ice cream.
Cue this recipe for Overnight Chocolate Chia Pudding — its dairy-free, gluten free, and vegan. And, it tastes amazing!
The Coconut Almond Whipped Cream really puts it over the top. But the pudding is pret-ty darn awesome on its own!
Ingredients:
Chocolate Chia Pudding:
2 cups unsweetened almond milk
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (check the label to make sure they are vegan)
Note: I was sent a Cosori Premium 6qt multicooker in order to write this post. Opinions are mine alone.
I’m not going to lie, pressure cookers have always kind of intimidated me. I was under the impression that they were difficult to use, and easy to mess up.
Well, after trying out the Cosori Premium 6qt pressure cooker over the past couple of weeks, I’m here to tell you they are actually quite easy to use!
source: cosori.com
Pressure cookers are definitely having a moment right now, but they’ve actually been around since the 1600’s in some form or another. Pressure cookers use steam pressure to help cook food faster. When cooking tough meat, pressure cookers help tenderize the meat and cook it surprisingly quickly in the process.
source: cosori.com
The Cosori Premium 6qt pressure cooker is actually a multicooker – it’s a pressure cooker, hot pot, steamer, slow cooker, food warmer, sauté pan, yogurt maker, and rice cooker – all in one! The unit has 17 smart cooking programs, but you can also adjust the cooking time, temperature, and pressure cooking levels to customize your cooking.
source: cosori.com
I couldn’t wait to test the pressure cooker out! I immediately thought of barbacoa – super tender and shredded meat (typically lamb or beef) with seasonings, so it’s time to try making Pressure Cooker Barbacoa Beef Tacos!
We eat a lot of tacos in my house, so I knew this would be a perfect test of the pressure cooker’s ability. This recipe actually uses two of the features available -” sauté/brown” and “meat/stew” pressure cooking. The Cosori premium pressure cooker is quite large (6 quarts!), so I decided to make a huge batch for future dinners. (It’s always helpful to have a full freezer for busy fall weeknights.)
Note: If you’ve been considering purchasing the Cosori Premium 6qt pressure cooker, click on this link and use code UCS9PK3K to receive 10% off! (The code is only good through October 31, 2018, so be sure to purchase before then!)
Ingredients: (makes 12 servings)
6 garlic cloves
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
1 chipotle in adobo, plus 3 tablespoons chipotle in adobo sauce
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons ground oregano
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
zest and juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 cups beef broth, plus a tablespoon or two, divided
Because I usually have a recipe in mind when I go food shopping, it’s pretty rare that I come home with a rogue ingredient. But recently, while picking up ground beef and sausage for my Meatballs and Tomato Sauce at Primal Supply, I noticed that they had ground lamb, and felt compelled to buy it.
I didn’t exactly have a goal for the ground lamb, but decided to work with ingredients that I know work well with the flavors of lamb: cumin, saffron, mint, and cinnamon.
The result was Spiced Lamb with Saffron Couscous: saffron couscous, topped with flavorful ground lamb, pistachios, feta, dried apricots, and fresh mint!
Ingredients:
Couscous:
1 1/4 cups chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon saffron threads, crushed between your fingers
I’m not sure what took me so long, but I’ve just started using Hungry Harvest. Hungry Harvest rescues produce that would normally go to waste, packages them up in different box options, and delivers it to your doorstep. Each box is customizable, so if you don’t like something in it, you can opt for another product through their website before delivery. There are also add-ons, like eggs, crushed tomatoes, or other fruits/vegetables.
To be honest, I don’t really see an issue with any of the produce I received. Apparently, reasons include that the produce is too big, too small, has some discoloring, are oddly shaped, or there were just too many in the crop. For example, the carrots I used for this post were “randomly sized and have some curve to them.” They still taste the same to me!
Anyways, I am loving having veggies delivered to my house and am experimenting with some new sides to add to my rotation. These carrots are inspired by a dish at a local Italian restaurant in South Philly: Ristorante Pesto. After ordering, they bring out a nice bruschetta plate as well as these awesome balsamic marinated carrots that I couldn’t get enough of! They serve theirs cold as an appetizer, but the below recipe for Balsamic Honey Roasted Carrots can be served either hot or cold.
Note: This is not a sponsored post, but if you’d like to try Hungry Harvest, feel free to use my referral link to sign up. You’ll receive $5 off your first order. I will also receive a credit when you receive your first delivery.
