Super Bowl Party!

We are only one week away from game time, and it can be pretty stressful to put together a great Super Bowl Party. I've gathered together a list of my favorite recipes to serve on the day of the big game. Hopefully these will give you some ideas on how to make your Super Bowl Party a great night, no matter who wins.

Finger Foods:

Grilled Ham and Pineapple Skewers
Deviled Eggs with Crab
Pigs in a Blanket
Barbecue Meatballs
Meatballs
Sausage Rolls
Tortilla Chips
Pot Stickers

Dips:

Cheesy Buffalo Chicken Dip
Guacamole
Roasted Tomato Salsa
Pico de Gallo
Black Bean Salsa

Sides:

Nachos
Root Beer Pulled Pork Sliders
Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork Sliders
Bacon Wrapped Cheddar Dogs
Corn Dogs
Caprese Salad

Cocktails:

Fruit Punch Beer
Scotch Sour
Maple Old Fashioned

Cheese Steak

So, today is the big game! The Eagles have their big chance to finally get to another Super Bowl, and maybe win this time! Now, I'm a Ravens fan, so it is not that important to me, but since I am living near Philly, I might as well root for the current home team. To that end, I'm offering my take on that most classic Philadelphia sandwich, the cheese steak.

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

2 tbsp oil
½ medium onion, sliced
½ lb white mushrooms, sliced
½ tsp salt
.6 lb top round steak, thinly sliced into ribbons
4 slices provolone cheese
2 sub rolls
Mayonnaise
Iceberg lettuce, shredded
Sweet peppers

Directions:

Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once the oil is shimmering, add the onions, mushrooms, and salt. Saute the onions and mushrooms, stirring frequently, until they are dark brown and shrunk to about half original size. Add the steak and cook until just cooked through before removing from the heat.

Divide the meat and veggie mixture in half and put two slices of provolone cheese on each. Let the residual heat in the pan and in the food melt the cheese.

Now comes the discussion of toppings. I like mayo, lettuce, and sweet peppers on my steak sandwich, so I take a lightly toasted sub roll and add a thin layer of mayo (toasting and using mayo help keep the roll from getting soggy), a handful of lettuce, and a few sweet peppers before placing the cheesy beef, mushroom, and onion mix on the roll. Feel free to add tomatoes, banana peppers, or whatever you like. I'm from Baltimore, I'm not here to judge your cheese steak game!

The Weather Outside is Frightful!

I'm sorry I've been on hiatus for so long; school was kicking my butt so I took off for finals and then the holidays crept up and work got really busy. School is about to kick up again, but I hope I will have some great news and more delicious recipes for you all soon. In the meantime, here is a collection of some of my favorite recipes to warm you up on a cold winter's night.

Hot Toddy:

My Hot Toddy recipe is the perfect drink for you and friends to chase away the chill this winter.

Mulled Cider:

My Citrus Mulled Cider, David's Mulled Cider, and my Cranberry Mulled Cider are a bit more kid friendly but just as good at keeping Jack Frost off your nose during this cold spell.

Kaiser Wiener

Well it's October so you know what that means, pumpkin spice everything! Well, yes, but it's also Oktoberfest! So, I'll be putting out a couple recipes celebrating classic German flavors that go perfectly with a cold pint. Let's start off with something I actually came up with last year, that I affectionately call my Kaiser Wiener.

My goal was to come up with a dish that contained as many prototypical German things as I could, and, outside of using a pretzel roll, I think I've done pretty well.

This recipe calls for a slightly obscure dried meat called speck. Speck is a smoked German version of prosciutto. Like prosciutto, it is great raw with cheese or wrapped around melon or asparagus, but when it's fried it cooks up like bacon. If you can't get your hands on speck you could use prosciutto, but I'd recommend very thinly sliced bacon.

The ingredients listed below are per serving so you can scale easily for any size gathering. Also, it is a one skillet method that minimizes clean-up.

Ingredients:

1 club roll
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 German style bratwurst
1 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
¼ c speck, cut into thin strips
1 tbsp German mustard
¼ c sauerkraut, well drained*

Directions:

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat for a few minutes until water sprinkled on the surface boils and skitters away. Butter the inside of a club roll and toast, butter side down, in the skillet until lightly brown and toasted. Lightly frying in butter helps create a moisture barrier that will help maintain the integrity of the roll when wet toppings (ie. sauerkraut) are introduced.

Set the toasted buns aside and then brown the bratwursts in the skillet until lightly browned on all sides and heated through. Evacuate from the pan.

Pour in the oil and then add the speck. Fry the speck for 3-5 minutes until lightly crisped and browned before removing from the pan and draining.

To assemble, spread mustard on the inside of the bun, layer on the sauerkraut, place on the bratwurst, and cover with the speck. Serve with a nice cold pint of amber and enjoy!

*When I say well drained, I mean I wrapped the sauerkraut in paper towels and squeezed it out. Anything less and you get a very soggy roll even after it has been lightly fried in butter.

Shrimp Bisque

Ok so I actually have a pretty lengthy history with this one. My parents used to do a thing called home exchanges, where a family from somewhere you want to go on vacation to comes and stays in your house and you go stay in there's. It is a good way to get cheap lodging on vacations. One time, when I was still in college, they did one over Mother's Day.

This Mother's Day coincided with my spring break, so I had to leave campus, but I couldn't go home cause there was someone else staying there. I ended up staying with my best friend and celebrating Mother's Day with his family. His mom picked 2 recipies for us to cook for her, a shrimp bisque and beef bourguignon (which my friend kept calling beef boing-boing).

Because Maryland is weird and all spirits stores are closed on Sundays, we ended up having to drive about 45 minutes to go buy the wine from the vineyard. I was helping mostly with the bisque and I liked it so much that I decided to make it my own and it's been one of my go to recipes ever since!

Ingredients:

1lb of shrimp
4 C seafood stock
3 tbsp olive oil
2 C chopped leeks
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 C heavy cream
½ C white wine*
⅓ C tomato paste
¼ tsp cayenne powder
2 sprigs of thyme leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Peel and devein 1 lb of shrimp and reserve the shells. In a 2 quart sauce pan, pour in the seafood stock and the reserved shrimp shells and bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and reserve your new shrimp stock, straining out the shrimp shells.

In a 4 quart stock pot add the olive oil over medium heat and once the oil is shimmering, add the leeks and garlic. Sweat the leeks and garlic for about 3 minutes until the leeks are translucent. Add the butter and melt it down before adding the shrimp and cooking the shrimp until it is pink and opaque. Next, add the flour and stirring until the flour has soaked up all the liquid and the bottom of the pan is dry.

Reduce the heat to low and slowly pour in the heavy cream, stirring constantly. Once the cream is worked in, add the white wine, tomato paste, and shrimp stock. Stir to thoroughly combine everything. Increase heat to bring to a simmer before adding the remaining spices and cook for 3 minutes.

Use an immersion blender to puree to desired consistency. You can do this in batches in a normal blender, but it is way easier to keep it all in the pot. Salt and pepper to taste and serve.

To make it a meal I serve it with my roasted garlic tomato spread on crostini and some seared trout seasoned with cayenne.

*I recommend a semi-sweet riesling or gewurztraminer. If you go with a dry white it can make it too spicy and overwhelm the shrimp taste and too sweet can really clash with seafood flavors. If you are near or in MD and can get a bottle of Boordy's riesling, that is my personal favorite.

Boerenkool met Wurst

Hopefully, some point soon it will actually be Fall weather here in Pennsylvania, which means it'll be time for hot food and steaming up kitchens. When that glorious day comes, I'll be making Boerenkool met Wurst, which is a great hot meal for a chilly night.

Boerenkool met Wurst, or kale with sausage, is a classic Dutch stamppot. A stamppot is a dish of potatoes mashed with another vegetable, and is a staple of traditional Dutch home cooking. I recommend serving with beef gravy, and if you'd like to make your own I've included a recipe for that too.

I don't remember exactly how I came across this dish, but my wife and I were looking at pictures of odd food and we ended up on one that looked like green mashed potatoes. I was really intrigued and figured I would give it a try. What came about has become one of my favorite one-pot meals that makes great leftovers.

Ingredients:

Stamppot:

3lbs of potatoes
1 qt chicken stock
1 lb kale, trimmed and cut into strips
1 smoked kielbasa
salt and pepper to taste

Beef gravy (optional):

1 qt beef stock
4 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
1 tsp dried sage
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Peel the potatoes and cut into small pieces. Place in a large stock pot and cover with the chicken stock. Top with the kale and the kielbasa. Cover with a lid and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat to maintain a boil. Boiled for 10-15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender enough to be pierced easily by a fork.

If you'll be making gravy, while the potatoes are cooking, combine the beef stock and cornstarch in a medium saucepan and whisk until smooth. Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the gravy thickens. Add the herbs and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside until ready to serve.

Remove the kielbasa and pour the excess water out of the pot, reserving at least 1 cup of cooking liquid. Use a potato masher to combine the kale with the potatoes, adding in some of the reserved cooking liquid as necessary to get a creamy texture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Slice the kielbasa into bite-size pieces. Serve a heaping scoop of kale and potatoes, topped with beef gravy, with a fan of sliced kielbasa.

Salted Caramel Sauce

We are almost to my second favorite season, fall, which means it is time for apples, apple cider, and by extension, caramel! Many people are a little intimidated by the thought of cooking sugar, but you shouldn't be. Real caramel is pretty easy to make and tastes way better than store bought.

There are two ways to make caramel: the slow way (wet method), which is a lot safer, and the quick way (dry method), which poses a few more challenges. I recommend trying the slow way until you know what you are looking before trying the quicker way. I'll go over both ways in this post.

Ingredients:

1 c sugar
½ water (wet method only)
1 c heavy cream
1 tsp salt

Directions:

Wet Method:

In a heavy-bottom saucepan with a lid, over low heat combine the sugar and water and stir until the sugar is totally dissolved. Put the lid on and bring to a boil. (Letting it boil with the lid on helps wash any stray sugar off the side of the pot that might lead to unwanted crystals that can make your caramel grainy.) Once the syrup has been boiling for a minute, remove the lid.

Now, leave it alone. At this point, before heat has changed the sugar into the delicious thing called caramel, if you agitate it too much, the sugar crystals can start to re-combine. This will create a chain reaction that would mean you have to start the whole thing over again. So be extra careful not to jostle the pot in any way.

Keep an eye on your boiling syrup, and when you see it start to turn amber, it is safe to give it a stir. At this point, the sugars are damaged to the point that they won't combine easily. Stir gently to even out any heat pockets.

Continue keeping sharp watch on the sugar syrup and watch the surface for any smoke. As soon as you see it smoking, remove it from the heat and pour in the heavy cream while stirring constantly. The cream is going to come to a rolling boil since the syrup is well over 300 degrees. Some of the sugar will harden instantly upon contact with the cool cream, but don't worry, if you keep stirring, all of that will work itself back in.

When the mixture is smooth and creamy, stir in the salt. You can store your caramel in the fridge for up to a month, but it tastes so good that I doubt it will last that long.

Dry Method:

Pour the sugar into a heavy-bottom saucepan over medium heat. Once the sugar starts to liquify and brown at the edges, you can use a spatula to gently pull the liquid bits toward the middle to even out the heat. If it burns, the caramel is ruined and you'll have to start over from scratch.

On the other hand, you have to be extremely careful to not over-stir, because if you do and it clumps up, you can ruin the whole batch. If it starts to form clumps, reduce the heat and keep stirring until it is all liquid, and when you're done you'll have to strain out the grainy bits.

If all goes well, keep stirring gently until you get a clear, deep amber before removing from the heat and stirring in the cream and salt and storing as described above.