Creamy Three-Cheese Celery Bake with Oven-Fried Crispy Onions

For a copy of the recipe for Creamy Three-Cheese Celery Bake with Oven-Fried Crispy Onions, click HERE. 

Although we were quite fortunate and had no significant damage in my area from Hurricane Sandy, having no power for a few days did keep me from posting – the first week I’ve missed since starting this site over two years ago!- and limited the ingredients I had available. It’s a great pleasure to be back.

This week’s recipe for Creamy Three-Cheese Celery Bake with Oven-Fried Crispy Onions is not only a great side dish for your Thanksgiving holiday dinner, but for year-round dinner use as well. It’s my version of a tasty celery bake dish my mother-in-law used to make.

Some readers may remember that there was a celery-based soup posted here two weeks ago, and could be wondering the reason for what must seem to be my recent obsession with cooking celery dishes. Celery is a great, versatile ingredient, of course, and I like it very much for that reason alone. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I must also confess to another reason. Back in the spring, I planted celery in my garden for the first time. Not knowing any better, I thought that one celery seedling would grow one head of celery such as we buy at the supermarket. I planted three, unaware that each seedling would grow not one, but three or four celery heads. At harvesting time that’s a lot of celery, folks, and leads naturally to a desire to cook dishes that use it in significant quantities.

One more note regarding this recipe. For the mushrooms I would, of course, normally use fresh. Similarly, for the roasted red pepper I’d normally start with a fresh red bell pepper and roast it myself. This recipe having been cooked during the power-outage of Hurricane Sandy, the ingredients available to me were somewhat limited, and I had to use canned mushrooms and jarred roasted red pepper instead. The recipe below describes the use of both fresh and canned mushrooms. Making a roasted red pepper using the stove-top or oven is described in several recipes previously posted here, including one of my favorites, “Mini-Taco Hors D’oeuvres with Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Salsa.”

 

This recipe makes an 11” x 7” x 1-1/2” baking dish of celery bake, enough for 6 – 8 side dish size servings, or 3 – 4 servings of the celery bake plated by itself as a light lunch or dinner.

To start, let’s make the crispy onions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Julienne 1 medium onion.

In a plastic bag, combine 1 egg substitute and 1 Tbsp skim milk. Place the onion slices in the bag and shake to coat.

In another plastic bag, combine the 1-1/2 cups plain bread crumbs, 1 tsp dried oregano, and 1 tsp salt. Transfer the coated onion slices to the bag of seasoned bread crumbs and toss to lightly coat.

Spread the onion pieces out evenly on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicon sheet, and spray lightly with cooking spray.

Bake for 15 minutes. Toss the onions, lightly spray with cooking spray again, and bake for about another 15 minutes until golden. (Watch the onions near the end to make sure they don’t burn!)

When done, set the onions aside to cool. They'll get crispier as they cool.

Now let’s do the celery bake.

Begin lowering the oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Prepare 1/2 cup of chopped green pepper, 1/2 chopped roasted red pepper, and 2 to 2-1/2 cups of mixed grated cheese consisting of equal parts cheddar, parmesan, and asiago.

In a skillet, melt ¼ cup of butter substitute over medium heat, add 4 cups of thin-sliced celery (and 8 ounces of sliced mushrooms if fresh are being used), cover and cook until tender, about five minutes.

Uncover the skillet, move the celery to one side, and put 3 Tbsp flour and 1 tsp of salt in. Add 1-1/2 cups skim milk to the flour mixture. Cook until the mixture is thickened and bubbling, stirring constantly.

Stir in celery into the milk mixture, and add the green pepper and roasted red pepper. (If using canned mushrooms instead of canned, add 4 ounces of them here.)

When the ingredients in the skillet have combined, turn off the heat and add 2 to 2-1/2 cups of mixed grated cheddar, parmesan, and asiago cheeses (equal parts of each), stirring until melted.

Transfer the mixture to an 11” x 7” x 1.5” baking dish.

Bake until cooked through, about 20 minutes.

When the celery mixture has finished baking, top with the crispy onions. Serve warm.

For a copy of the recipe for Creamy Three-Cheese Celery Bake with Oven-Fried Crispy Onions, click HERE.

Hope you enjoy making this side dish even if you don’t ever find yourself dealing with more celery than any reasonable person should ever have to. And please come by again next week for another kitchen-tested, home-cook friendly recipe. Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Electric Cranberry Sauce with Apples and Apricots

Aside from being easy to serve, canned, jellied cranberry sauce has this redeeming quality: eating it is such good-tasting fun that you forget it doesn’t have any other redeeming qualities. I confess, with just the right amount of righteous guilt, to being a big fan of the stuff.

Still, with Christmas dinner barreling toward us at high speed and us staring at it like a reindeer in the headlights, it seems as good a time as any for "electric cranberry sauce with apples and apricots." It's a delicious, easy, and just a bit grown-up cranberry sauce I think you’ll like.

In a cup or small bowl, soak ½ cup of chopped dried apricots in 1/3 cup of brandy while you prepare the other ingredients. (It's this touch of brandy that gives this sauce both its deep taste and the word "electric" in its name.)

Combine 2 cups of cranberries, 1 large chopped apple, the juice and zest of one orange, 1/2 cup of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, and ½ teaspoon of nutmeg in a saucepan. Heat it to boiling, then reduce it to a simmer until the cranberries are tender and start to burst, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Combine 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of water, and mix into the cranberry mixture, cooking until thickened. Add the apricots, including the brandy, and heat until cooked through and the smell of alcohol subsides, about 3 minutes. If necessary, add additional sugar to taste. (I've found adding another 3 tablespoons works for me, but you may like more or less.)

If you’d like a cookbook style, notebook-ready copy of this recipe, just let me know in a comment or e-mail and it will be on its way, guaranteed to arrive in time for Christmas.

See you next week! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Herbed Honey Cornbread with Cranberries

In some ways, fall and winter can be a tough time in the kitchen. Oranges are bad, peaches are non-existent, and anyone trying to sell those horrid cold-weather tomatoes should be stoned with them. Apples are plentiful in fall and winter but, let’s face it, folks, they’re plentiful in spring and summer too.  On the very bright side, fall and winter bring us two of the world’s most perfect foods: mallomars, and cranberries. And since mallomars aren't a very good recipe ingredient, we’re left to ponder, play with, and otherwise thoroughly enjoy the cranberry. I’ve found them to be a wonderful addition to a number of recipes, such as the one I'm happy to share today: Herbed Honey Cornbread with Cranberries.

In working with cranberries, I’m going to beg you to forget those dried, sweetened cranberries in favor of the fresh kind. While the dried ones have some good uses, including as an interesting alternative to raisins, they’re usually sweetened – which takes away the tasty tart quality that's a big part of the reason we use cranberries in the first place – and lose almost all of the nutrition that the fresh ones are famous for. If you like statistics, here's an interesting comparison of fresh vs. dried. To keep it fair, both columns are based on products sold by Ocean Spray. (The nutrition figures for dried are adjusted for the same serving size as the fresh.)

                                   Fresh               Dried

Serving Size                 55 g                 55 g

Calories                       30                    180

Total fat                       0                      0.7 g

Sodium                         0                      1.3 mg

Total carbohydrates     6 g                   49 g

Dietary Fiber                2 g                   4.8 g

Sugar                            2 g                   38 g

Protein                         0 g                   0.1 g

Vitamin C                    20%                 0 %

Iron                              2%                  0 %

Except for the higher level of fiber (which is to be expected since 55 g of dried cranberries has less water than 55 g of fresh), those fresh ones sure do seem to be a lot better for a body. I freeze six bags of the fresh ones at the start of the fall, and replace each bag as I use it up so that I’ll start the cranberry-less spring with six full bags.

Ok, enough with the statistics already. Back to the joys of a fresh, warm, well-made cornbread, one of life’s great pleasures. It’s a perfect accompaniment to turkey or any other poultry, Sunday morning breakfast, and any other time you just feel like enjoying a taste and texture that’s more comforting than anything this easy to make should ever be.  The honey, cranberries and sage combine to give the cornbread a real boost I think you’ll enjoy.

While preheating your oven to 400 degrees, combine your dry ingredients in a large bowl: 1 cup of yellow corn meal; 1 cup AP flour, sifted; 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, and 1 teaspoon of dried sage.

In a separate bowl, combine your wet ingredients: 1/2 cup honey (heat the bottle in the microwave for a few seconds and it will pour more easily); ¼ cup canola oil (or other flavor-neutral oil); ¾ cup skim milk; and 2 egg-substitute eggs.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well until a batter forms, then add ½ cup of cranberries dusted with flour or, if you prefer, confectioner’s sugar. Pour the batter into a greased and floured 8” x 8” x 2” baking pan and bake until the top is golden and a toothpick or skewer inserted halfway between the middle and the edge comes out clean (about 30 minutes).

Fresh, hot cornbread doesn’t get much easier than that!

If you’d like a cookbook-style version of this recipe, ready for insertion into your recipe notebook, just let me know in a comment or e-mail and I’ll get it right to you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And till next week, stay well, keep it about the food and always remember – especially this Thursday – to kiss the cook. ;-)

Shrimp Stuffing

Why Shrimp Stuffing?

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we’re reminded that stuffing is one of those rare foods that just about everyone likes in some form or other. And while that’s a good thing, there’s still a problem.

As much as we’ve all come to love stuffing as a side dish, we’ve traditionally limited its use to turkey, chicken, and other poultry dishes. If we’re feeling adventurous, we might serve it with pork. And all the while, the large, wonderful world of fish dishes is left asking why they’ve been forgotten in all of this, and wondering if they, too, will ever get to be included with this great, classic side dish.

They need wonder no more. Step aside, Chicken and Turkey. Take a rest, Pork. A new guest is about to be introduced at the Stuffing-as-a-Side-Dish Ball, and her name is Fish.

And why not? Just as we serve potatoes or rice with both fish and poultry, all a fish-friendly stuffing would require is a combination of flavors specifically designed to complement fish.  Here’s one I feel confident you’ll enjoy.

A couple of side notes:

• This recipe attempts to strike a middle-ground in the age-old argument over whether stuffing should be dry or moist. You can vary the moisture either way by adjusting the amount of fish stock. 
• In the photo above the stuffing is shown served as a side dish with Pollock poached in fish stock and green beans cooked in, well, I don’t know what they’re cooked in. My wife made them, along with the Pollock. My contributions to the plate pictured were the stuffing, the fish stock, and folding the paper napkin.

To make about 8 servings of stuffing:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Melt 6 tablespoons of butter substitute in a skillet over medium heat. Add 1 cup of chopped onions, 1 cup of chopped celery, and a spice mix consisting of 1 teaspoon of chopped oregano, 1 teaspoon of ground celery seed, 1 teaspoon of chopped thyme, ¼  teaspoon of  dried sage, 1 teaspoon of chopped marjoram, and 1 teaspoon of lemon zest . Add salt and pepper to taste, and cook for 5 minutes.

Add 1-1/2 cups of fish stock, ¼ cup dry white wine, and the juice of one lemon, and bring to a simmer.

In a large bowl, combine 1 egg-substitute egg and 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley. Add 14 slices of stale potato bread (about 8 cups) torn into bite size pieces, ¾ cup of chopped raw shrimp, and the vegetable-stock mixture. Toss to combine.

Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish and dot with more butter substitute. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake until lightly browned, about 30 minutes more.

So the next time you serve fish, surprise everyone by having this special stuffing on the side. You’ll be glad you did, and so will your family or guests.

If you want to make shrimp stuffing and would like a cookbook-style, notebook-ready copy of this or any other Kissing The Cook recipe, just let me know in a comment or an e-mail and it will be sent post haste!

See you next week! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)