I am a Honey Bee

All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel

side dish

Mascarpone Mashed Potatoes with Crispy Shallots

Mascarpone Mashed Potatoes with Crispy Shallots- Enjoy rich creamy, cheesy mashed potatoes with crispy shallots. It’s a wonderful combination of flavors & textures. Those salty crunchy shallots on top are the perfect finishing touch.

Post Contains Affiliate Links. Read my full disclosure HERE

Did you see that Dictionary.com Twitter account tweeted that Gif is pronounced with a soft G?!?!?!

I am excited about this because I am in the ‘JIF’ camp. Not the hard G camp. Nope nope nope!!!! I basically feel vindicated in this tweet. I know that people will disagree with me, but when the creator of Gifs, says it’s with a soft G… then it’s with a soft G, damn it!!! 

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Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin

Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin

This week Amanda and I are taking a break from our Thirsty Thursday’s posts so we each can bring you some different posts. Amanda has a giveaway on her blog and I have a post for the brand new Pass the Cook Book Club. Awesome right? But don’t you worry as we have some fantastic posts planned for March. 🙂

Kita of Pass The Sushi has organized this great group where she picks a few recipes from a cookbook for everyone to make. It’s a fantastic way of dusting off and cracking open all of those cookbooks we all own. I am so bad about buying new books to fill them up with post-it’s and then not doing anything with them. So I was really excited when I heard about the PTCBC because it would encourage us to cook from what we own. Anyway, the first book is The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier by Ree Dummond. Perfect since, as usual, I had that filled with post-its bookmarking recipes I wanted to try. 

Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin_01 Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin_02

From three options we had, I decided on making the Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin. I remember my parents making it when I was young so I wanted to try it myself. I’m glad I tried it myself since it was super easy and made a great side for our dinner. It is a great side dish and I like that it has the possibility to take on a lot of different flavors so I can make a lot of varieties.

Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin_03 Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin_04

When Ree says it will be garlickly she is not joking! 3 cloves of garlic!!! I love garlic so it was perfect for me and went really well with the pork cutlets I made with it. The potatoes are soft and flavorful from the creamy sauce and the cheese on top was so good. This is going to be making a regular appearance on our dinner table.

 Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin_05 Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin_06

I only made a few changes to the dish’s ingredients and cooking process. First I didn’t serve the side with the green onions just because I forgot them in the store. duh! I swapped the black pepper for white pepper because I love white pepper with creamy sauces. I increased the amount of milk because when I put the sauce mixture in the dish it didn’t cover my potatoes. Also, since it is 8 servings I knew we would eat the leftovers over a few days so I didn’t want the dish to dry out either. Lastly, I popped it under the broiler for a minute so the cheese would get browned and crunchy- which I love, so if you don’t want it to browned then just bake it and don’t broil it.

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Be sure to check out what everyone else made!

If you love cooking then you should join Pass the Cook Book Club for some monthly cooking inspiration.

Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 2 tbs butter, softened
  • 4 large russets, scrubbed clean
  • 1/2 to 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoon flour
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • white pepper or freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar
  • 2 scallions, thinly sliced

Process

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare a 3 quart baking dish by buttering the bottom and sides. 
  2. Slice the potatoes into sticks, then into a small dice. Place the potatoes in the baking dish.
  3. In a bowl, combine the milk, cream, flour, garlic, salt, and pepper; whisk to combine. Pour over the potatoes.
  4. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and and bake for another 20-25 minutes. Just before serving, sprinkle with cheese and bake for another 3-5 minutes to make the cheese melted and bubbly.
  5. Serve hot and garnish with green onions, optional.

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Extra Cheesy Brussels Sprout Gratin

Dinner will never be the same when you make this Extra Cheesy Brussels Sprout Gratin. You’ll love all this cheesy goodness!

Post from 11/20/12, Pictures Updated 11/15/18

Post Contains Affiliate Links. Read my full disclosure HERE

I was recently going through old cooking magazines to organize them into a usefully system. Since a pile of cut up recipes from magazines tossed in a box isn’t much of a system…. no?

Well, my system is still getting tweaked but at least I can more easily find some fun things to try. In that process, I dug up recipes from December ’11 from Martha Stewart Living and one of the things that jumped out of me was the Smokey Brussels Sprout Gratin. Cheese! Brussels Sprouts! More Cheese! Winner!!!!

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Orange Cranberry Sauce

Post from 11/13/12, Pictures updated 11/8/16

When I was younger, I wasn’t a huge fan of the cranberry side at Thanksgiving.

My mom loved the classic canned jellied cranberry sauce. She loved the ridges on it and how it would pop out of the can. I love that this is a staple on our table for her. I just didn’t really love the texture of it. Plus, cranberries were so tart to me back then.

I think things all changed when I was working in the South End of Boston by a place called Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe.  You see, Charlie’s would sell oatmeal with a cranberry compote that I would get if I as a treat for suffering through retail on the weekends. I loved the warm oatmeal in the winter and the compote really added a lot of flavor to an otherwise pretty plan breakfast.

And then I met this amazing guy who just loved homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. So now when we’ve gone back to my mom’s to celebrate Thanksgiving there have been 2 kinds of cranberry sauce on the table. It’s great to have cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving but really I believe you can have it at any point in the fall. It works hot with oatmeal or cold with yogurt if you can’t get enough of it and want to enjoy it for breakfast as well.

No matter if you call this a sauce, chutney, salsa, compote, or a relish, you will call this a new family favorite. I love the orange and cranberry combination so much. It helps highlight the natural flavors of the cranberry while adding some sweetness at the same time. I often throw a vanilla bean that I’ve been using in my homemade vanilla extract to add a bit more flavor. I just give it an extra scrape and throw it into the pot. You can add a bit of vanilla extract instead or even substitute the sugar for vanilla sugar, or skip it all together. If you feel you might light a scrape of nutmeg or to throw a star anise in there then give it a try as this is all about finding the right flavors so this will be a family favorite.

Orange Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients

  • 2- 12oz bags of fresh cranberries
  • 2 cups of sugar
  • 1 cup of water
  • 1 cup of orange juice
  • zest from 1 orange
  • vanilla bean, optional

Process

  1. Rinse the cranberries and pick through to remove bruised berries and to remove any stray stems on the berries.
  2. Mix and combine all of the ingredients in a medium size pot and cook on medium low until you have a slow simmer. The berries will be popping during this process, stir often. Turn down to low to allow the sauce to continue cooking until the desired amount of berries have opened up.
  3. Can be served warm or cold. Store in an air tight container.

Sautéed Green Beans with Lemon and Almonds- SRC

When Price and I were first dating he was working at a place close to Chinatown and we would often meet for lunch in there. We would often go to Chau Chow City down the road from his office. I would always get their “String Bean Szechuan Style” dish. A spicy dish that is so large that it would make up 2 lunches for me. String beans are one of my favorite vegetables so an entire dish centered around them was an obvious winner. And that is why I loved this recipe for Secret Recipe Club this month.

This month I was given Yasmeen’s blog called Wandering Spice. What I loved most about her blos is that she paired a song with each recipe. I think that is adorable. Yasmeen makes such interesting recipes that it was so hard to pick from. It sounds corny but I could see myself making most of them in the summer. I just equate flavorful spicey food for the summer. Strange… I know! So I’m sure I’ll be whipping up something like her lentil + fresh basil orzotto or her Chicken + Phyllo “Ladies Fingers”. I have not really explored cooking with lentils before , although I keep buying bags of them to stack up in the cabinet, so her recipes will definitely help me learn.

 

 

Yasmeen posted a simple Sauteed String Beans with Lemon and Almonds recipe around Thanksgiving and I was hooked once I saw it. I know that string beans are often associated with Thanksgiving but I think that they should be made more often. As long as they are not viciously overcooked and mushy. Please don’t do that to this lovely bean. And with this recipe you won’t do that since it’s quick cooking and very flavorful.

Sauteed Green Beans with Lemon and Almonds

Serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups fresh green beans, approximately 1 1/3 pounds
  • 2 medium-sized garlic cloves, minced
  • 1/3 cup raw sliced almonds
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • pinch of red pepper flake, optional
  • Extra virgin olive oil, for dressing

Process:

Warm a large skillet over low heat. Gently toast the almond until they are aromatic and light brown, around 2-3 minutes. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Wash and trim the cut ends of the beans.
Turn the heat up for the beans. Once the skillet has gotten hot again,add the green beans and 1/4 cup water. Cover the skillet and let steam 2-3 minutes, until beans are just tender.

Add the minced garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper, red pepper flake, and rice vinegar to the beans. Sauté for a 1-2 minutes, until flavours combine and beans are tender (but still crisp). Once done toss in the toasted almonds and dress lightly with olive oil.

Serve immediately or at room temperature.

Secret Recipe Club

Check out my previous Secret Recipe Club Posts:

February: Fried Pickles

December: Shrimp Sriracha Stir Fry

November: Vegetable Enchiladas

October: Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars

Check out the rest of the reveal day posts!

http://www.inlinkz.com

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Thanks for visiting. Please leave me a comment to provide some feedback. I appreciate all the comments I receive. 

Roasted Broccoli- The perfect side

The thing I miss most about our old apartment is our little yard with grill. We had to ditch all the behind for this new place but the one thing we would not give up was grilled broccoli. Since we no longer have a grill we have been roasting it. Sometimes you just need to improvise and change things up to make one of your favorite foods stay with you.  And since we had a gas grill (don’t judge, I have no patience to heat coal up on a nightly basis) I can’t tell the difference. Bliss.

 

I swear that grilled/roasted broccoli is life changing. I had it at a BBQ for the first time and I swear the world stopped for a moment and everything went into slow-mo around me as I inhaled a plate of it. Screw the steak, give me grilled broccoli. Roasting it produces the same crunchy bits on the floral part of the broccoli. The stalk still has some bite to it as well that makes you shudder at the thought of steaming broccoli ever again (unless you downed it in cheese). I’ve had it with some Parmesan cheese sprinkled over it once I’ve taken it out of the oven but swear the best way is just to have it with some lemon juice on it. I love lemon juice on it so I use 1/2 a lemon but you can adjust to your own taste, as well as the amount of juice that comes out of the lemon.

 

Roasted Broccoli

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

  • 2 large crowns of broccoli
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper, optional
  • 1 lemon

Process

  1. Preheat the oven to 375. Place a rack just above the center of the oven.
  2. Trim 1/4″ off the bottom stalk of the broccoli. Cut the broccoli into tree like segments.
  3. Add the broccoli to a large bowl. Drizzle the olive oil over the broccoli pieces, mix to coat. Evenly sprinkle the salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper evenly over the broccoli, mix to coat.
  4. Evenly spread the broccoli on a baking sheet.
  5. Roast for 20 minutes, mixing at least once at the half way point.
  6. When you remove the broccoli from the oven, squeeze 1/4-1/2 the lemon over the broccoli immediately.

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Thanks for visiting. Please leave me a comment to provide some feedback. I appreciate all the comments I receive.