Mary, Recipes

lemon pistachio cookies – christmas baking begins!

This is one of my “maybe” Christmas cookies – I haven’t quite decided if this is going on the final baking list. Every year I always make at least one lemon treat because in the winter our lemon tree seems to always be exploding with lemons – and this year is no different.  I decided to experiment ahead of time to see if this new recipe would be a winner for the cookie list this year – but I can’t decide! People seem to always really enjoy what I’ve made in year’s past, so it’s hard to decide what to mix it up with. Maybe you’ll have an opinion?

You don’t need too much for this batch – fresh lemons, pistachios, and the usual suspects: sugar, flour, eggs and butter.

Start by whipping that butter and sugar together in a frenzy. Frenzy, I tell you! Anything else and it won’t turn out as right.

Well… it probably will. But I just like to say the word “frenzy”.

After that, you must add eggs. And flour. And lemon juice. Continue with the frenzy.

Then, pull it off the mixer and fold in your pistachios. I suppose you can to this in the mixer, too, but I rather like doing it by hand.

Just a thing, I guess.

Then you take your lemon zest…

and mix it in with a half a cup of sugar. Mix and smoosh it together to make “lemon sugar”.

The lemon sugar is super sparkly and makes the cookies shiny and glittery!

You’ll take a ball of dough and roll it up and then roll it around in the sugar.

Then place it on your cookie sheet and slightly flatten out the cookies. You can use your fingers or a little spoon, like I did.

The cookies spread out a bit, so I did rows of 2 so they’d have a little extra room for expanding.

If you like a really nice lemony flavor, use extra lemon juice when making the dough. If you’d rather have a “hint” of lemony flavor without feeling like you’ve been punched in the face, use about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice instead. I kind of lean towards “punch me in the face” but not everyone is into that (ie: Jake).

I love how the sugar sticks to the cookies and create a glittery effect. It reminds me of ornaments and frosted things. The pistachios give a nice little crunch to this cookie as well. If you want a crispier cookie, cook these for a tad longer – otherwise, these have a soft inside with a light crisp edge. Get the recipe below!
Continue reading “lemon pistachio cookies – christmas baking begins!”

memere’s pork stuffing
Mary, Recipes

memere’s pork stuffing

This pork stuffing is probably not one you’ve seen before. It’s traditionally a “Canadian” thing and considering my dad’s side of the family comes from Canada, it’s not really that much of a surprise. My Memere (or grandmother) was a wonderful cook – she saved and wrote down a lot of her recipes and she even journaled just about every day of her life. My dad says that this is great Memere’s recipe – so it’s an old one!

My great Memere immigrated here from Canada and moved into a French Canadian neighborhood in Massachusetts – so she never learned how to speak English. My grandparents both spoke French and my dad knows enough to get by – but me? I took a semester of French in college and almost didn’t pass the class because I got the final exam date mixed up – luckily my teacher took pity on me and allowed me to take the test in her office and I managed to pass it – and then promptly forget everything I learned.

Luckily you don’t need to know French to make this recipe! This recipe is sort of similar to cretons, a cooked pork spread, but we add in mashed potatoes to it and then stuff it inside of a turkey.

First, start off by boiling a lot of potatoes. I used almost a whole 5 lb. bag of potatoes. Seriously.

Also: since that’s a lot of potatoes, I didn’t peel them. This elicited a response from my father, “You didn’t peel the potatoes?!” Sorry, no, I did not. I was being lazy.

Luckily my laziness won out because I remembered to use our potato ricer this year, which happily removed most of the peel for me.

Thank you, ricer, for helping me to be lazy.

Take your freshly riced (or mashed) potatoes and make really basic mashed potatoes with just milk. You want a creamy, but still held together, mashed potato. Reserved about 2-3 cups of mashed potatoes and then use the rest to seasoning to your liking. Since we usually only make this for Thanksgiving, we just kill two side dishes with one stone, hence the crazy amount of cooked potatoes.

Proceed by slicing 4 small onions (I like to use the sweet ones) and chop up about a head of garlic.

Mind you, I did use some of the garlic for other dishes… but a little extra garlic never hurt anyone, right? You can cut back on this a little if you’re afraid, but don’t be. It’s just garlic, my darling.

Fill a big old pan with all of your onions and cook those suckers down until they’re good and caramelized.

Like this! You’ll want to add in the garlic in about the last 1-2 minutes of cooking so you don’t burn the garlic over the long cooking time for the onions. Remove this from the pan and reserve.

Add your plain old ground pork (not a sausage variety of any kind – no Italian, hot, or breakfast sausage here – just ground pork!) to the pan and cook down until it renders its fat.

My dad uses a potato masher (ironic that I didn’t use it for potatoes this year? I think so) to get the pork finely cut up.

Then, when you see the fat start rendering… you just cook it some more. Don’t drain the fat! Continue to cook it until the fat is cooked back into the pork. You can remove a little bit of it if you really feel you must… but then you’ll be removing porky flavor! So please try to resist.

Crush up some saltines (or, in our case, Keebler Club crackers since no one remembered to buy saltines…) and then add this to your pork. The saltines will soak up some of that fat and add saltiness and flavor to the dish.

At this point we add the magic secret ingredient – Bell’s Seasoning. Bell’s Seasoning is a poultry seasoning from New England containing rosemary, oregano, sage, ginger, and marjoram. It’s a salt free, all natural blend – and something you can’t get here in Southern California. We usually have our relatives send us a bunch and stick the boxes in the freezer – but you can order it on Amazon, or just use your favorite poultry seasoning.

We use half of a 1 oz. box of Bell’s Seasoning for the stuffing.

After the spices are mixed in, add in the caramelized onion/garlic mixture.

And again… mix well.

Then add in your reserved plain mashed potatoes. I didn’t actually measure this out – but I believe this is about 1 1/2 – 2 cups of mashed potatoes put in. You don’t want to put in too much potato since it’ll take away from the flavor – so it’s always better to just add in a little bit, mix, and see how the proportions look.

Mix, toss, turn and get that potato in there!

And this is about what it looks like mixed in – you can clearly see the pork and the potato combines the pork together nicely. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Use this stuffing in place of a traditional stuffing mix. The pork stuffing adds a wonderful aroma and flavor to your bird.

Add the leftover stuffing to a cast iron pot and bake in the oven for 30 minutes along with any other side dishes. Once it gets crusty and golden, you’re good to go.

This stuffing is truly one of my absolute favorite things to eat and I look forward to it every year. Some years I also make cornbread stuffing on the side, but I can’t live without this dish on the Thanksgiving table.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so many years to finally document my Memere’s pork stuffing and hope that you can try it out this Christmas or just as a new side dish for your dinner table. Get the recipe below! Continue reading “memere’s pork stuffing”

San Diego County, Mary, Poway

company pub & kitchen / poway – san diego, ca

Company Pub & Kitchen is a gastropub in the heart of Poway, adding to their lineup of restaurants and “boozy” places in town. Laura and I came here one evening before we continued on with our marathon of “Downton Abbey”. I started watching Downton Abbey earlier this year and immediately knew Laura would also be into it – we’re both fans of English dramas and have major soft spots for Mr. Darcy (the BBC TV version, of course – hello, Colin Firth!).

We needed some full bellies before we could go and hunker down for a few hours and I had a group deal for this place.

Let’s recap: Things I’m a fan of: Colin Firth, Jane Austen novels, British dramas and group deals.

[the drink menu]

I really dug the paper their menus are printed on. It’s that teacher’s grade paper. Do teacher’s still use this? Surely they’ve upgraded to a computerized system by now…

[orange wheat and a snake bite (stella & strongbow cider)]

Laura got a Hanger 24 Orange Wheat beer while I opted to try a “Snake Bite” – which is a combination of Stella and Strongbow Cider. I almost got a “Shandy” which is a beer of your choice mixed with Sprite – but Laura gave me a “Maybe you shouldn’t try that…” look and I decided that the stella/cider combination did sound better… I actually ending up really like it. Maybe I should put cider in everything!

[quack mac & cheese – duck/bacon sausage with mac n cheese – $9]

We started by sharing two items – a salad and this Quack Mac and Cheese which had duck and bacon sausage with a Gouda, Cheddar and Parmesan cheese sauce with the noodles.

The sausage sounded so interesting – but, turns out neither of us like the sausage very much. The sausage was a bit on the spicier side and had a very intense smoky flavor. The texture was also really odd, probably from it mostly being made out of duck.

The mac and cheese was very creamy and tasted good – but it was rather on the oily side. It looked to me like the cheese sauce had separated and broke, like when you add the cheese while the sauce it still hot. I liked the flavor overall, but the texture of the sauce made it a little off.

[“abc” salad – avocado, beets & goat cheese with heirloom spinach, toasted pine nuts, white balsamic vinaigrette – $8.50]

Our waitress had the salad plates split for us so we both got a nice, even sized portion for sharing. Pretty simple salad and the beets were chopped small which I appreciated since they didn’t stand out as much (since I’m not a huge fan of beets). The avocado and goat cheese made for a nice creamy texture along with the crunch of the toasted pine nuts. The vinaigrette was light and not too heavy handed. Continue reading “company pub & kitchen / poway – san diego, ca”

Mary, Mission Gorge, San Diego County

tropical fruit paradise / mission gorge – san diego, ca

I buy lots of group deals from Groupon, LivingSocial, Amazon Local and places like that. Lately I’ve felt like a lot of the places I’ve been to have been just kind of “meh” and not really impressive with their food or service, so when I finally went in to use one of my coupons to a little place called Tropical Fruit Paradise, I really wasn’t expecting very much. I read a couple of Yelp reviews saying they had good torta sandwiches and that was enough to get me to shell out money to buy two coupons – and as it turns out, this was a really excellent idea.

Let’s say that my first visit was the “scouting trip”. I went here alone for lunch one Saturday afternoon while Jake had to work for a bit. My Amazon Local deal covered $10 – just enough to get me one torta sandwich and one strawberry agua fresca. I had to pay tax and for my bag of chips, all in all a steal.

[steak torta sandwich – includes mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, and sliced avocado with a side of salsa – $6.99]

I ordered just a plain old steak torta, just wanting to try something “basic” and simple here for my scouting mission. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The steak was well seasoned and marinated – cooked perfectly as well. It was juicy and cooked to medium and stacked high with lots of fresh veggies – red onion, tomatoes, green leaf lettuce and slices of perfectly ripe avocado.

The bread on the torta is also really nice – the bread is fluffy with a nice chew and is grilled on the inside. I could tell it was grilled on a stove to toast since the top of the was still fairly soft but had a really nice crunch from the grilling.

Since it’s a pretty large sandwich, I only ate half and brought the rest home to Jake. He ended up gobbling the sandwich in no time and thought – even cold – that it was one of the best torta sandwiches he’s ever had. I think I might have been onto something here.

[agua frescas – strawberry flavored – $2.49, large]

Ever since I got one of these at Frutilandia oh so many moons ago, I’ve loved them. I order them pretty much wherever we go – but I always get the same flavor! I can’t seem to branch out and try a new flavor, sticking with my standby strawberry favorite. The version here at Tropical Fruit Paradise seems a little creamier than other versions I’ve had a little less sweet – but still quite delicious in my book. I ordered one of these on both of my visits to Tropical Fruit Paradise. I can’t manage to tear myself away from them.

Must… have…strawberry water… arrrrgh!

[tostielote – tostitos, nacho cheese and corn – $3.99]

From here on out we’re using iPhone photos since I actually left my camera at home on our second visit. Lordy. Jake ordered this – it sounded totally weird to me, but since he was paying for it, I wasn’t going to complain.

I ate my words shortly after though since I did actually kind of like it. These are served right inside of a bag of salsa flavored Tostitos chips and topped off with nacho cheese, jalapenos and corn. Nacho cheese and corn?! Was this invented on purpose? I can’t see how that’s possible. I honestly believe someone had an open can of corn that got accidentally dumped in some nacho cheese and no one noticed until they started eating it and then decided it was good. I would never put “nacho cheese” and “corn” together otherwise. But for some reason it’s tasty? Even as I ate it I was in disbelief. Still kinda am.

[cubana torta – milaneza, chicken, ham, chorizo, egg, american egg, jack cheese + veggies – $7.69]

Jake and T shared this Cubana Torta – this thing is packed with goodies! Milaneza (which, in this case, it a thinly sliced breaded steak cutlet), chicken, ham, chorizo and an egg… with two kinds of cheese! This is definitely a rich sandwich with all of those layers packed into one sandwich – but you’re still able to wrap your whole mouth around the sucker since everything is thin enough to still make it a decent side.

I did have one little bit and the chorizo seemed to be the most dominant flavor since it had a little bit of a spicy kick to it. I thought the egg made it “too much” – but Jake totally loved this sandwich. We had this last weekend and just last night he told me he had been thinking about this sandwich for three days! I hope I don’t lose out to a sandwich! Continue reading “tropical fruit paradise / mission gorge – san diego, ca”

Mary, Recipes, Products

purple sweet potato pie

Purple sweet potatoes. I’ve never seen these in the store before or really even knew of their existence until I got a bag full of them from Frieda’s Produce. With Thanksgiving on my horizon, I figured I’d try a twist on the classic sweet potato pie – replacing the normally orange colored sweet potatoes for the vibrant purple variety instead. Take my hand and let’s go on a pie-making journey!

You can see a hint of their purple color in the skins alone, but the purple color becomes a bit more pronounced once you cut and peel the sweet potatoes. It seems to be almost jewel-toned in color. These were treated the same as any other potato – wash, peel, and cover with water and set to boil.

I felt like I was a witch with a cauldron full a of bubbling boiling potion after seeing my pot of water turn purple! The whole sweet potatoes simmer and boil away for about 45 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and you can easily stick a fork through them.

Drain the freakishly festive purple water to reveal your bright purple sweet potatoes. Mash them with a masher, fork, or other implement of your choice until the sweet potatoes are nice and smooth. You’ll still see a few strings sticking up, but it should smooth out further as you weave the mixture into a magical pie filling.

Add the beautiful things – like butter, sugar, milk, vanilla and spices – to your sweet potatoes in the mixer and churn away. Let it whirl and be amazed by the color yet again.

In a partially baked pie crust, pour in your Barney-like filling and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until the edges are a golden brown. There seems to be a lot of cooking time going around here for this one, but you’ll love the end result!

Eat a slice and hope that you don’t start singing Barney songs. Share with family and friends as they ooh and ahh over the color then pat yourself on the back for such a brilliant idea. Continue reading “purple sweet potato pie”

Mary, Recipes

winter spice cookies with pumpkin cream

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a food blogger potluck hosted by CC of Pink Candles at Ridgemont High. I wanted to make a little dessert to go along with some pesto pasta salad that I made and I decided I wanted to make sandwich cookies – with pumpkin filling!

Except… well. The cookies didn’t come out as planned.

And neither did the pumpkin filling.

But, not wanting to waste my efforts and deciding that the cookies still actually tasted okay, I just went with it. And called them cookies with pumpkin dip. I let people assemble the cookies themselves since my pumpkin filling was way too loose to stay together in the cookie (hence, I called it “dip” instead).

The cookies have similar spices to pumpkin pie – so you could easily use pumpkin pie spice instead or adjust to your liking. The recipe is from a cookbook I got in a reddit gift exchange called One Girl Cookies. It originally calls for twice as much ginger with just a little cinnamon, but I love cinnamon, so I switched up the flavors a little bit.

The first thing that went wrong is that I rolled out the dough too thick. I haven’t rolled out cookies in forever, and for some reason I couldn’t remember what an 1/8th of an inch looks like. The cookies ended up puffing up and getting way too thick for cookie sandwiches, and I ended up splitting them open with a knife to make them sandwich cookie worthy.

The second mistake? Too much pumpkin in my filling. I could have “fixed” it with more powdered sugar, but it already tasted super sweet to me so I didn’t want to go that route. I added about 4 or 5 spoonfuls of pumpkin which was too much, so I adjusted my recipe below to 3 tablespoons, which should be about enough (though test it after two if you want a more cookie sandwich filling rather than a dip).

All in all though, the cookies were still pretty tasty. The cookies have a gingerbread-like flavor and spice and are a bit crunchy on the outside and softer in the middle (especially if you make a boo-boo and don’t roll them out thin enough like I did!). Continue reading “winter spice cookies with pumpkin cream”

Mary, Recipes, Products

deep fried turkey and corn fritters for thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is coming up real fast – faster than I would like – and we’re getting heading into “you better decide what you’re doing now” territory for Thanksgivings planning. Until now our only turkey making options have been the bake-in-the-oven variety, but I recently got the opportunity to try out Masterbuilt’s Butterball Indoor Turkey Fryer to try frying a turkey for this Thanksgiving.

I did a test run of the turkey fryer this weekend to try it out before we cook a whole bird. I made fried turkey breast, undocumented french fries and corn fritters. Let’s go on a little adventure and see how this sucker works!

[Dad figuring out the plug with the turkey fryer set up on the stove]

This deep fryer is an electric turkey fryer and can be used indoors, creating a safer and easier option for turkey frying. No crazy outdoors setup with a propane tank with the risk of tipping it over and catching on fire!

[Masterbuilt Butterball Indoor Turkey Fryer]

This sucker is pretty big and can safely hold up to a 14lb. turkey. You use 2 gallons of oil for one turkey and it gets fully enclosed with a drop in basket and a lid to shut the fryer while the turkey is cooking. A thermostat on the front easily let you control the temperature and lets you know when the oil is ready. The timer counts down for you and beeps when ready. The instruction manual that comes with the fryer also has some handy preparation tips, suggestions and other recipes for this fryer (which can also be used as a steamer).

[Filling up the fryer with peanut oil]

Since I was only cooking a turkey breast for my first try, I didn’t need to fill it up to the max line. I went about halfway to max. I used peanut oil since it’s got a high smoking point and imparts a nice flavor to whatever you’re frying. The house totally smelled like peanuts while the oil was heating up!

It can take up to a half hour for a full 2 gallons to get up to temperature – since I used a little less, it took about 20 minutes to heat up the oil to 375 degrees.

[Turkey breast preparation for the fryer dry run]

When preparing your turkey, you must ensure that your turkey is completely defrosted. Ice and water will definitely not mix with your hot oil! I prepped my turkey breast by patting it completely dry and adding salt and pepper all over the outside.

When cooking your bird, you may want to brine it first before doing a deep-fry – and if this is the route you go, make extra sure your turkey is patted dry and free of any brining liquid.

You can also inject the turkey will extra seasonings but I was kind of a lazy pants and just did a plain old breast!

[This turkey breast is getting ready for a hot oil bath]

My 2 and 1/2 pound breast was placed into the fryer basket. There’s a little lip on the side where the basket is held up above the oil. It comes with a lifter to help you ease the basket in and out of the fryer. I recommend trying to lift the basket in and out before you even get to this step just to see how it works. I found that I had to move the basket forward for it to slide easily down and had to practice a few times catching the handle. Nothing too hard, but it’s good to practice before there’s hot oil bubbling angrily in your face.

[bubbles!]

I carefully lowered my turkey breast and watched the bubbling begin! Then I shut the lid and began the short wait until my turkey would be done.

[Turkey fryer’s control panel]

The green light comes on when the oil has reached the proper temperature and is ready to deep fry your treats to a golden brown.

The instruction manual recommended that for turkey breast only, the temperature be dropped to 325 while it’s cooking. This isn’t something you do with a full turkey though – just the breast! I set the timer and cooked the turkey breast for about 17 minutes (about 7 minutes a pound). A normal, full sized turkey will take about 4 minutes a pound to cook and the temperature stays at 375 degrees.

[Freshly fried turkey breast]

The turkey cooked up pretty quickly and when I lifted the basket up, this is what my eyes feasted on – golden, brown deliciousness!

I let the turkey breast rest for about 10 minutes while I also cooked up some french fries (mmm, french fries cooked in peanut oil!).

The first time I did this, I undercooked the turkey slightly (I cooked it for 14 minutes then added an extra 3 minutes of cooking time). I loved the golden, crispy outside skin on this sucker but I really wished I had brined, injected or seasoned the breast a bit more liberally. Salt and pepper alone didn’t quite do this thing justice and since I do prefer dark meat, it wasn’t my favorite turkey… but it was still pretty good. If they just sold dark turkey meat for frying this would have probably been more perfect, but I didn’t see any of that on the shelves. We’ll still be trying out frying a whole turkey for the big day and this dry run helped us to learn what else we needed to do for a flavorful turkey!

[John McLemore’s cookbook]

In addition to the turkey test, I also used the fryer to create a recipe from John McLemore and his cookbook, “Dadgum! That’s Good, Too!“. The cookbook is pretty much created to pair with the turkey fryer, providing a whole section of “fried foods”. A lot of the recipes have stories and photos of John and his family with them, sharing a story behind the recipes.

Flipping through the book for ideas, the corn fritters called to me and demand that I create them. They seemed like an easy side dish to create for a little BBQ we had over the weekend with Jake and his family.

[Corn fritter batter]

The corn fritter batter came together very easily. I kind of wished I had tried this with creamed corn … we’ll save that idea for next time!

[Floating corn batter]

Spoonfuls of corn fritter batter were dropped into the hot oil. At first I put them in the basket and lowered them, but it seemed more efficient to just drop them by the spoonful.

[Starting to get golden brown]

After a few minutes, the fritters need to be flipped over if they don’t flip on their own. I got Jake to do this part for me since I had to stand on my tiptoes just to peer down into this thing.

Curse my short height.

[Pulling the fritters out of the fryer]

It only takes about 6 minutes to get these lovelies to a golden brown. I fished them out with a slotted strainer while I finished up the batch.

[Corn fritters ready for hungry mouths]

A little extra dash of salt and these babies were ready to go! They had a nice, slight sweetness to them and puffed up really nicely.

I think a little extra seasonings would be a fun variation – maybe a little paprika, garlic salt, or cayenne for a spicy mix. Everyone really enjoyed the fritters as-is though, proving it to be a winner!

I also liked how easy and fast it was to fry them – though I don’t think I’d break out this big old fryer for only cooking fritters!

The turkey fryer has a drain valve to easily remove the used cooking oil once your done with all of your frying. Many of the elements of the fryer are also dishwasher safe (your manual will tell you which parts can go in the dishwasher) for easier cleanup.

The one downside I see to the fryer though is that this thing is HUGE. It’s not something we’ll keep on the counter and will probably need to store it in the garage once we’re done with it.

I did like that this unit can be used for more than just deep frying – there were recipes for a low country boil and steaming chicken and veggies – a nice option for large dinners and get togethers that don’t involve frying making it a multi-purpose product.

The Masterbuild Turkey Fryer is available at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Amazon and several other local retailers if you’re thinking of picking one up for your Thanksgiving dinner!

Recipe below for the Corn Fritters!
Continue reading “deep fried turkey and corn fritters for thanksgiving”

San Diego County, Mira Mesa, Mary

yogurt swirl | shaved snow / mira mesa – san diego, ca

I had never even heard of Shaved Snow before I saw it on Jinxi’s and Kirbie’s blog. I was immediately intrigued by it. The shaved snow looked like ribbons of deliciousness and I knew I just had to try it!

Kirbie went to Yogurt Swirl which is about 2 minutes from my house and I knew it was destiny to finally try this luscious stuff.

Jake and I had the kids last weekend and I decided we needed to try this stuff, stat. I peeked at the menu and the Carmel Milk sounded like the best option for us to share. At $6.99 it seems like a hefty price to pay.

But once you see them make it and you see the size of your plate, the $6.99 price tag doesn’t seem too bad after all.

They have a special machine with specials blocks of the flavored ice for making your snowy, layered creation. The ice gets shaved off into these ribbons as the ice block rotates around.

I choice mochi and almonds as our toppings with complimentary condensed milk syrup on top.

The mound of shaved snow seemed really large at first… but we easily polished this sucker off in record time. Continue reading “yogurt swirl | shaved snow / mira mesa – san diego, ca”

Recipes, Mary

gouda stuffed tortilla chip meatballs with cranberry orange ginger glaze | clash of the cooks challenge

I like trying new things and doing new things. This was definitely a new thing in which I’m battling it out with other bloggers in the Clash of the Cooks Challenge, sponsored by Whole Foods Market. You, too, can also participate at home by creating your own holiday inspired meal with the ingredients listed below! Check out the Facebook link for more information!

Monday evening I trotted over to the Whole Foods Market in La Jolla to pick up my basket of “mystery goods”. I had to use all of the items to create a holiday inspired dish!

My mystery basket included: Whale Tails Alaea Hawaiian Sea Salt Tortilla Chips, Chicken Stock, Cranberry Sauce and Smoked Gouda Cheese.

My mind started running immediately. Cranberry sauce? I hardly ever eat that. Paired with smoked cheese? Are you serious? And TORTILLA CHIPS? I started walking out to my car in a daze with a number of ideas running through my head.

And to keep on thinking through those ideas, I stopped for a pumpkin cupcake at Sprinkles. I mean, why not? It was right there!

I made my decision on what I was going to make and I needed a few more things – off I went to prepare for the evening’s feast!

Or in my case, the evening’s appetizer.

I decided to make gouda stuffed meatballs with tortilla chips and a cranberry orange ginger glaze. I know, that’s pretty much a mouthful of words right there… I suppose I could have just said something like “savory and sweet meatballs” but that didn’t seem very fun to me.

First things first… let’s make the glaze/sauce thing!

I say it’s a glaze because it’s really thick, but I didn’t want to coat the meatballs in the stuff… I just wanted a little on top. Because I’m not a sauce person. Glaze. Sauce. You know what I mean.

I started off by putting in some brown sugar and chicken stock in a pan and setting it to simmer. Then I added some of my cranberry sauce along with the zest and juice of one navel orange.

I didn’t get all of the steps here in my photo, but also in the mix was some rice wine vinegar, grated ginger and pinch of black pepper.

Once you’ve got all of the ingredients into the pot, you pretty much just need to let it sit back and simmer away until it thickens up.

After about 30 minutes of simmering, you’ll get a thickened glaze/sauce. The beauty of sauces is that if you forget what you’re doing and don’t watch the pot and it maybe goes a little too far… you can just add in a bit more chicken stock to thin it back out! Yes, this totally happened to me. Honesty is the best policy in all things.

Once you bring the sauce together, you’re good to go to start making the meatballs. First thing to do though is to turn on your oven to 350 degrees!

Then, chop up some onion and garlic and saute it in a pan. I cooked the onions until just slightly brown and threw in the garlic for about a minute. Then I took if off the heat to let it cool slightly while I prepared the rest of my mix-ins for my meatballs.

In a big bowl I added in my ground beef, some freshly chopped oregano from the garden, my onion/garlic mixture, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and a good pinch of kosher salt and ground pepper. Time to prep the Whale Tails!

The Whale Tails chips really are whale tail shaped! For some reason this surprised me. Probably because I wasn’t paying attention to the bag. All I thought was, “What am I gonna do with tortilla chips?” instead of really looking at the bag.

The tortilla chips got crushed up under the mighty weight of my rolling pin!

The crushed tortilla chip get dumped right in along with two eggs. Then, it’s time for mixing. I just use my hands – I’m not afraid of a little bit of cold meat. Just squish it all together until it’s well mixed.

Then, cut your gouda cheese into little cubes and start making the meatballs.

The meatballs are about palm sized – just place a chunk of cheese in the middle and wrap the meat around it and form a nice ball.

Continue until all the meatballs are done. Eat any leftover cheese (after you wash your hands, of course).

I put my meatballs on a pizza pan with holes in it, over another baking sheet. This way any fat and grease would drop to the bottom so the meatballs wouldn’t be sitting in its own grease.

Bake meatballs for about 30 minutes until a luscious golden brown.

The gouda cheese got kind of oozy and gooey there – but I think that just adds to the look! Who wouldn’t want to goggle up one of these babies?

These little meatballs are flavorful and delicious – with plenty of cheese to make for the perfect bite of tastiness.

That little square of cheese sure made a difference in flavor!

But pair it up with a good dallop of sauce and you’ve got yourselves a winner! The sweet from the sauce pairs nicely with the savory and cheesy meatball. Perfect thing to appease the relatives and visitors for this upcoming turkey day!

If you enjoyed my recipe and post, please like it on Facebook (using the Facebook like button below), post this on Twitter or share one of the photos on Pinterest. My entry is being judged on the following:

• Originality / Use of Ingredients
• Plating / Photography
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Every bit helps! If I win the weekly challenge, I will be headed to a live cook-off competition at the Encinitas Whole Foods Market to compete for:

• First place will receive is a Whole Foods Market Pantry Makeover, a Vitamix blender and dinner for 2 at Solace
(prize valued at $700)
• Second place will win dinner for six catered by Whole Foods Market (prize valued at $200)
• Third place will receive a holiday meal for six (valued at $130)

Thanks in advance for your support!

Remember, you can also compete as well – check out the details on how you can join in on the fun!

If you’d like to recreate my recipe at home, then check out the full recipe below! Continue reading “gouda stuffed tortilla chip meatballs with cranberry orange ginger glaze | clash of the cooks challenge”