Apricot Shrimp Skewers

The other night, I had dinner over at my boyfriend, Dalton's parents house. His father, Bruce has become an amazing cook and was the genius who found this glorious recipe in Sunset Magazine. I must admit that Bruce was the one who showed me Sunset Magazine about a year ago and now I am officially obsessed. I know I have posted an overwhelming number of apricot recipes, and I am sorry for the individuals who aren't fans of the fruit, but wow they are my new favorite ingredient.

After being served this, I instantly had them copy me the recipe. I loved it so much I would have made it the day after for my family but I thought that would be a little excessive. So instead, I waited one day haha. Not very long, but I really wanted it again! Everyone in my family loved it as well. Definitely going to save this one!

Here the sesame oil, garlic, ginger, apricot jam, orange juice, lemon juice and soy sauce combine over the stove to create a lovely glaze.

Individually wrap the prosciutto around the shrimp after they have been deveined and thread onto the skewers, alternating apricot halves.

Remove the skewers after cooking on the grill for 8 minutes.

 

After letting the sauce sit for 15 minutes, the mixture thickens to create a lovely glaze that you can drizzle on top. 

Finally, top with chopped green onion for additional flavor and striking presentation.

This is a perfect seafood summer dish for a small or large group. What's great about this is everyone will think you slaved away in the kitchen in order to produce such delicious flavors, when in actuality the whole process is quite simple! I will be making this for a long time to come. Thanks Bruce!

 

Serves 4

Time 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 tsp. Asian (toasted) sesame oil

1 tsp. each minced garlic AND fresh ginger

1/4 cup of apricot jam

1/3 cup fresh orange juice

2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

2 tbsp. reduced-sodium soy sauce

16 paper thin slices prosciutto from the deli, cut in half lengthwise

24 large (26 to 30 lbs.) peeled and deveined shrimp

6 apricots, quartered

1/3 cup sliced green onions

Directions:

Soak 12 wooden skewers in warm water. Prepare grill for high heat. Heat oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook the garlic and ginger until fragrant (about 2 minutes). Add jam, juices, and soy sauce and cook until simmering. Measure out 1/2 cup glaze; set rest aside in order to thicken.

Wrap prosciutto pieces around already deveined shrimp and thread onto a skewer. Alternate threading shrimp, then apricot. (I fit about 3 shrimp and 2 apricot halves on each skewer).

Cook shrimp skewers, turning as needed and brushing with reserved 1/2 cup glaze, until shrimp is opaque, 8 minutes. Sprinkle with onions and serve with extra glaze.

Strawberry Galette

Everywhere I look I see strawberries. Like I've mentioned before, I spend my days usually reading up on the latest recipes and following my beloved food bloggers. It seems like everyone, and I mean everyone, has been consuming the delicious summer fruit. I even read one article which supplied 100 strawberry recipes. And yes, this strawberry galette made it on the list.

Making pie crust is a difficult task. Just now am I starting to understand the many tricks that are involved in creating the perfect, buttery, soft, flaky pie crust. For this recipe I really wanted a buttery one so I read up and chose one that called for 2 sticks of butter. I just LOVE the stuff! At first I was a little skeptical but holy crap, it turned out good. Like exceptionally good. I even blew myself away with this one.

Once I was finished, I immediately laminated the strawberry galette recipe and will definitely be referring back to it for next summer. What's great about this pie dough is if you make double or even triple the amount, you will have a wonderful dough that can be made into traditional pies, a galette, or even made into sweet fries. I just read on Oven Love about how you can thinly slice pie dough to coat in sugar and cinammon before baking. Then you have sweet fries which you can dip in homemade whipped cream. Why haven't I made these yet? Good thing I have some left over dough waiting at home in the freezer!   

Before preparing the galette, let the sliced strawberries sit in cornstarch and sugar for a little while. This will help sweeten and thicken their juices.

I usually don't have photos of myself in the kitchen doing my thing, but here you go! Here I am trying to perfectly assemble each piece of fruit. The dough is very delicate so you have to leave plenty of room around for the dough to wrap around it. When you are ready, drizzle some of the remaining fruit juice over the strawberries.

 

Strawberry Galette:

  inspired by The Comfort of Cooking

Ingredients:

15-20 strawberries, stems removed and slices

3 tbs. white sugar

 2 tsp. corn starch

1 egg, beaten

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Clean the strawberries, remove stems and slice. Don't slice too thin because you want the strawberries to keep their shape. Place the sliced strawberries in a bowl and toss in cornstarch and sugar. Gently stir until the berries are covered completely.

Roll out the pie crust. Layer the berries, overlapping each other inside the pie crust starting one inch from the edge. Fold the edge of the dough over the strawberries to assemble the rustic pie. Brush the dough with the beaten egg to prevent the dough from unraveling. Sprinkle all over with 1 tbs. of sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes and remove from the oven. Let it cool for 5-10 minutes before slicing. Serve with homemade whipped cream.

*For the homemade whipped cream, whip 1 cup of heavy cream until peaks form. Gradually add 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Spread on top of the galette once out of the oven. A really nice compliment to the warm rustic pie.

*If you are going to make your own crust, refer to Martha Stewart's Pate Brisee. That is what I used and it was lovely!

Apricot Glazed Pork Chops

I've been eating so many apricots lately. I added them in my white chocolate oatmeal cookies recently and then decided to substitute them in place of peaches for this pork chop recipe I found in Cooking Light. Don't get me wrong, I love peaches, but I thought why not try out something else? The cookies turned out wonderful, so I was sure these would be great too!

This recipe is super easy and fast! Just what I like for quick weeknight meals. Slice the apricots and prepare the fresh thyme.

Coat the apricots in sugar to help beak down and further sweeten.

The original recipe called for shallots, but I decided to swap those for red onions. The sweet flavor of this onion went exceptionally well with the apricots. These might have even been my favorite part of the dish!

Cook the pork chops for around 4-6 minutes on each side. You want the sides to turn a golden color for crispy texture with a lot of flavor. Then remove the meat from the pan and set aside in order to begin cooking the apricots, onion and thyme (use the same pan).

 

 Cook down for a short amount of time, then add the white wine plus chicken broth to deglaze (shown below).

Once reduced and thickened, add the pork chops back to reheat and absorb the flavor. Then it's ready to serve! 

Inspired by Cooking Light: Skillet Pork Chop Saute with Peaches

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons olive oil

4 (4-ounce) center-cut boneless pork loin chops, trimmed

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 red onion, cut

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme

5-6 apricots, sliced

1/2 cup of dry white wine

1/2 cup fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth

2 teaspoons honey

2 teaspoons butter

Directions:

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Sprinkle chops evenly with salt and pepper. Add chops to pan; cook for 4-5 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chops from pan, and keep warm. Add red onion, thyme and apricots to pan; cook for 2 minutes to soften. Stir in wine, scraping the pan to loosen browned bits and deglaze. Bring to a boil. Cook until reduced to 1/3 cup (about 2 minutes).Stir in broth and honey; bring to a boil. Cook until reduced to 1/3 cup (about 2 minutes). Remove from heat; stir in butter. Spoon sauce over chops.

Cranberry & Pistachio Biscotti

 

Despite what your mother told you, cookies are perfect for breakfast. Some of us wake up without feeling hunger (definitely not me), but I know you're out there. For those of you who don't and are told to eat breakfast because it starts your day off right, then this is your go-to. Yes biscotti is a cookie, but its less sweet and goes perfectly with a glass of milk, or a cup of hot tea in the morning or at night. 

The word biscotti, means twice baked in Italian. In this recipe you bake the cookie once, remove from the oven and slice diagonally, placing back in the oven to cook for the remaining time, allowing the biscotti to reach a crunchy and soft consistency. If you never have tried homemade biscotti, it is an experience, quite different from buying them at Starbucks or the market. These are anything but hard on your teeth, and the flavor increases every day.

 

You can make all types of biscotti, but I chose to use cranberry and pistachio. It was so wonderful. Seeing as how two of my friends, Diane Kay (Stepmom) and Susan Monus, the woman I work for in Malibu had their birthdays recently, I decided to make biscotti because their shelf life is much longer than any other baked good. You can freeze them so they will last even longer too! How great is that? Always having a small snack to go along with your tea! 

My kitchen looked like a complete mess afterward because I doubled the recipe thinking there wouldn't be enough, but oh crap, I now am left with 3 huge ziplock baggies filled with biscotti just sitting here waiting to be eaten. If you ever are having a party, this is a great way to make a lot in one session.

 In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar. Then combine the dry ingredients before adding the pistachios and cranberries.

 

What I did notice is the pistachio are much stronger in flavor than the cranberries, so if you are in it for the cranberries mostly, I would highly recommend adding more. For me, the proportions were perfect, but I probably would add a little more pistachio and cranberry so that there is more in every bite.

 

Just a note, the dough is extremely sticky, so don't be shy when flouring your surface. Mix one egg in a bowl to coat the dough when formed into a log. (shown below).

 Before going into the oven (above) and first time removed from the oven shown below.

 At this point, your kitchen will smell like you are in Tartine Bakery, which is located in the Mission District in San Francisco. That's a good thing if you've never been there and don't know what I am talking about. I had one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten recently. My mom and I shared a vegetable croque monsieur and a lovely quiche. Go there if you are in San Fran. You can smell it from a few blocks away and everyone leaves happy with a smile on their face. I'm killing myself for not taking any pictures...oh well.

 After removing, cut the biscotti diagonally. Do not cut immediately after taking out of the oven, wait around 15-20 minutes so that it won't crumble and fall apart. Don't wait too long or else it will harden and it won't slice easily, leaving you with a messy kitchen and not so pretty biscotti.

 On a wire rack, place the biscotti on the side they were cut to prep for their second baking round. You can see the lovely pistachio and cranberries throughout. At this point, the outsides are hardening, but the inside is soft. If you like doughy centers, you technically don't have to bake again, although it wouldn't reaaallly be biscotti. Who care though right?!

And there it is, after baked a second time, the outsides are even more golden and the inside is crispier than before, yet softer than market bought biscotti. Like other recipes, I'm sure everyone is sad when the last bite is taken and you are longing for more. Nope, not in this case. Like I said, 3 bags of biscotti left (I doubled the recipe for birthday presents). I will have these in the freezer for quite some time. Who wants to come over for a tea party?

Cranberry-Pistachio Biscotti
originally from Marth Stewart

Ingredients:
 1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup boiling water
3 cups all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar, plus more for sprinkling
3 large eggs, plus 1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (2 1/2 ounces)salted pistachios, coarsely chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 357 degrees. Line large baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside. Place cranberries in a small bowl; add boiling water. Let stand until plump, about 15 minutes. Drain, and set aside. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl; set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add 3 eggs, one at a time, beating to incorporate after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture, and mic on low speed until combined. Mix in cranberries and pistachios.

3. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface; divide in half. Shape each piece into a 16 by 2 inch log, and transfer to prepared baking sheet, about 3 inches apart. With the palm of your hand, flatten logs slightly. Brush beaten egg over surface of the dough logs, and sprinkle generously with sugar.

4. Bake, rotating sheet halfway through, until logs are slightly firm to touch, about 25 minutes. Transfer logs on parchment paper to a wire rack to cool slightly, about 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees.

5. Place logs on cutting board. Using a serrated knife, cut logs crosswise on the diagonal into 1/2 inch-thick slices. Place a wire rach on a large rimmed baking sheet. Arrange slices, cut sides down, on rack. Bake until firm to touch, about 20 to 30 minutes. Remove pan from oven; let biscotti cool completely on rack. Biscotti can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week. Freeze if you want to keep them longer.

Roasted Chicken and Broccolini Lemon Pasta

 

Oh yessssss. Fresh. Healthy. Light. Flavorful. Crunchy. Salty. Lemony. I could go on and on and on. My mom made this for me after falling in love at a dinner party. I think I have eaten it about three times now, so I figured why not learn how to recreate it myself? 

When you're in a rush to get dinner on the table, this recipe can go from difficult to easy in just a couple steps. Tonight, since there weren't any rotisserie chickens available at the market, I had to roast my own chicken at home. Here I will show how you can make this in a jiffy without all the labor!

 Here is the beautiful chicken I roasted at home, but for the speedy cook, buy a rotisserie chicken at your local market so you can start this immediately when you get home.

 I higgghly recommend toasting the pine nuts before starting the recipes steps because the flavor drastically changes, adding such wonderful flavor. 

Before, I have always eaten this with plain fettuccine noodles. I just so happened to stumble upon the lemon & pepper pappardelle pasta when buying ingredients at Trader Joe's and decided to test it out. Why not use lemon pasta when the main flavor already was fresh lemon juice? It worked out very well. I can't tell you which one was better, just slightly different.

 Chop the end stalks of the broccolini to make them bite size and squeeze 1/4 cup of lemon juice (2-3 lemons).

 

Boil the broccolini in salted water for 2 minutes until crisp-tender. You don't want to cook completely because they will cook after you remove, AND when you place back into the final pot to mix with the other ingredients before plating.

I can't even express how deep my love for this dish is. Maybe it's just because I'm obsessed with citrus and cheese, but I truly believe you will love every bit of it. Especially the leftovers. The day after is probably my favorittte. All the lemony goodness soaks up into the brocollini and the flavor is unreal!

Ingredients:

Salt

1 pound Broccolini, trimmed and stalks cut

1 (9 ounce) package of pappardelle or fettuccine pasta

1 (14 ounce) can of reduced-sodium chicken broth

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 3 lemons)

4 cups of shredded chicken (1 roasted chicken will yield 3-4 cups of shredded meat)

3/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese

1/2 cup toasted pine nuts

2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 tablespoon lemon zest

freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the broccolini and cook until crisp-tender, 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the broccolini to a large bowl. Add the fettuccine to the same pot of water and cook, stirring to prevent sticking. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.

Meanwhile, in a large, heavy skillet, bring the chicken broth and the lemon juice to a boil over medium- high heat. Boil for 5 minutes, or until the broth has reduced by half. Add the chicken and simmer just until heated through, about 2 minutes. Add the cooked pasta, broccolini, pine nuts, olive oil and lemon zest. Toss to coat, adding 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese to melt. Then add reserved cooking liquid from the pasta if dry to help moisten. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve the pasta, sprinkling the remaining parmesan and parsley on top. YUM.

Baked Salmon in Foil Packets

While taking my end of the year exams, I found myself craving seafood regularly. So, I decided to make this recipe I found on the Food Network by Giada De Laurentiis, who by the way is my secret guilty pleasure. While on summer vacation, all I do now is watch either the Food Network or the Cooking channel, but whenever Giada is on, she is my go-to. Most likely because I miss Rome more and more every day.

Well, this recipe was a pleasant surprise. I must say I was pretty nervous trying to attempt these individual salmon packets but it was well worth it. So delicious and moist. The flavors of the shallots, lemon juice, dried oregano and thyme were such a nice compliment to the fish...I wouldn't change a thing! (Although, maybe just swapping the dried oregano for fresh instead).

Roasted asparagus with cracked pepper and salt. I think I might eat this with every meal, no joke. Thought you might like to stare at the pretty vegetable so I added a picture even though they aren't part of the salmon recipe. Not a bad complimentary side though ;)

Stir the tomatoes, shallots, 2 tablespoons of oil, lemon juice, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper in a medium bowl to blend. Look how pretty! The recipe called for dried oregano but I used fresh instead.

This picture reminded me of the book I used to read as a child, The Rainbow Fish. Look at the pretty, reflective scales!

Place the individual salmon fillet, oiled side down, on top of a piece of foil. Wrap the ends around the fish to create a boat-like structure that will hold in the tomato mixture.

Ladle the tomato mixture into the tinfoil boat, covering the salmon fillet.

My favorite wine. If you missed my previous post, buy this and try it out! It was just written up in Food & Wine Magazine as one of the top 5 best white wines for the price. Told ya!

After the salmon is done cooking, remove from the oven and unravel the sealed tinfoil packets. Beautiful, moist and flavorful fish awaits your consumption!

 

I served the fish with asparagus and some lemon, basil angel hair pasta. The juices from the tomatoes and shallots work wonderfully with everything on the plate. Top of with some freshly shaved parmigiana cheese.

Ingredients:

4 (5 ounces each) salmon fillets

2 teaspoons olive oil plus 2 tablespoons

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 cherry tomatoes, chopped

2 chopped shallots

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, (if you like lemon buy more to use when serving)

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Handful of fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Sprinkle salmon with 2 teaspoons olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir the tomatoes, shallots, lemon juice, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper in a medium bowl.

Place each salmon fillet in individual tinfoil packets. Twist the ends of the foil to create a boat-like structure around the salmon to hold in the tomato mixture. Spoon the tomato, shallot and lemon juice mixture over the salmon, evenly distributing among each fish packet. Then, fold the sides over to seal each packet closed. Place the fish packets on a heavy large baking sheet. Bake the salmon until cooked through, about 25 minutes. Using a large metal spatula, transfer the foil packets to their plates and serve or remove the fish from the foil and place directly on plate, spooning the leftover tomato mixture on top. Enjoy!

Apricot & White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

 

Summer is here! Well for me at least. What better way to celebrate than to munch on some apricot & white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? 

 I've been looking through my recipes and photos of what I have made over the past few weeks and today I realized, where are all the sweets?! This is absurd and entirely unlike me. All throughout high school, I would only want to bake. My mom was becoming frustrated with what little knowledge I had of cooking and thought of baking as an easy method because all you had to do was follow the recipe exactly. I now understand what she meant, but who doesn't wan to eat sugar now and again? Or maybe all the time?

Anyway, during high school, my mom taught me how to bake pies. Banana cream pie, lemon meringue, wild berry, chocolate pudding, anything I could think of I made. Banana cream and lemon meringue were instantly my favorite and the ones I chose to submit in the local Malibu Pie Contest. For two years I won 1st and 2nd prize in the adult category. I was no amateur at baking because it's all I did with my free time. So now, here I am, the so called "baker" with very little to show on my blog. How come I don't even have a pie up to share with you all? Maybe that will come next!  

 

 Seeing as how my sweet tooth is extra strong today, I decided to bake up some fresh summer cookies! What I had in my kitchen were some apricots (I used Turkish), white chocolate chips and some rolled oats. You could substitute anything in place of these, like dark chocolate chips and cherries or white chocolate chips with cranberries. I have to say though, I've never had apricot cookies so I chose to experiment and wowwwww were they fantastic! I mean just pure bliss!

What's nice about this recipe is that if you aren't an oatmeal cookie fan, then you're in luck because the recipe doesn't call for many oats. Just enough is used to make them ooey gooey and chewy ;) I don't usually like to use a lot of white chocolate chips because they have a tendency to over-sweeten recipes, so I reduced the amount and added a little more dried apricot from the original recipe that sparked my interest. Below are the measurements I used.

 Mix the dry ingredients, including white sugar, tightly packed brown sugar and a full stick of butter.

 After adding the egg and vanilla extract, combine completely and gradually mix the dry ingredients in with the wet. (look below for dry ingredients.)

 Cut the apricots into 4 pieces and add them to the mixture. (Do not cut into 6 or 8 pieces because the apricots are mild enough that you won't taste them). Then toss in the white chocolate chips and mix till evenly distributed throughout the batter.

 1 1/2 tbs. cookie dough balls on a baking sheet, cooking in a 350 degree oven. After 8-10 minutes, the cookies will be golden brown and ready to remove from the oven. Place individual cookies on a cooling rack so that they don't overcook.

These cookies are nice and soft on the inside, while chewy and crispy on the outer edges. Such a delicious recipe and perfect for the summer. I'm sure if you wanted to substitute fresh apricots, that would be lovely as well! I will definitely make these again soon. Also, later in the night if you want a snack, warm them up just a little and don't forget to dip them in milk!

Apricot & White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies:

adapted from Closet Cooking

 Ingredients:

1/2 cup of butter (room temperature)

1/2 brown sugar (tightly packed)

1/2 white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 cup of rolled oats

3/4 cup of dried apricots (each cut into 4 pieces/chopped)

1/2 white chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl. Add the egg and vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda and salt. Mix the dry ingredients in with the wet.

Mix the rolled oats, apricots and white chocolate into the cookie batter.

Place 1 tbs or slightly larger balls onto a cookie sheet.

Place in the preheated oven and let bake for 8-10 minutes. Remove when golden brown.