Blue Cheese Wedge Salad

There are people in this world who like blue cheese dressing and those that don’t. Then there are people like me: people that LOVE blue cheese dressing. Besides salads, I dip chicken wings and veggies in it, and have also been known to dab my pizza in blue cheese dressing as I take a bite. I know…I should probably seek counseling. While any blue cheese dressing will make me happy, I find that homemade dressings really do the trick. I’ve tried several recipes over the years - ones made with expensive imported cheeses from specialty stores and others made with the blue cheese crumbles found in every grocery store. To be honest, I find the dressings made with your run-of-the-mill blue cheese crumbles to taste the best, actually.

My favorite recipe of all was created by Ellie Krieger from the Food Network. This dressing is amazing and it’s sure to please any crowd – even you blue cheese lovers out there! It uses ingredients that are probably already in your kitchen and Ellie promises that it has fewer calories and fat than other blue cheese dressings. Something tells me that by eating half of the recipe below (it makes ¾ cups and 2 Tbsp is a serving!) completely destroys this theory, but somehow I feel better knowing I’m eating a dressing that’s a little better for me.

Aside from the dressing, this salad also has unique garlic breadcrumbs and spiced pecans. My family came to visit a couple months ago and I wanted to come up with a twist to the usual blue cheese wedge salad – these breadcrumbs and pecans are just that. They are the perfect complement to the dressing and are incredibly easy to make. While the dressing is Ellie’s, the breadcrumbs and pecans are my own.

For all you blue cheese lovers out there – Enjoy!

Time from prep to Eating: 20 minutes

 
Homemade Bread Crumbs
 

What You Need:
Cookie sheet

The Stuff:
Cubed day-old bread (estimate about 2 slices of bread per person)
About 1 Tbsp olive oil

Salt

Pepper
Italian seasoning
Garlic powder

Here’s What You Do:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and place your bread cubes in one even layer on the cookie sheet. Drizzle the olive oil and sprinkle the bread with salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder until desired flavoring (if you’re unsure about how much to sprinkle, use a 2-fingered pinch for each spice and sprinkle evenly over the bread). Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, flipping the cubes over after 7 minutes to brown both sides.

As your bread is baking, start on the spiced pecans.

Spiced Pecans

What You Need:

Small skillet

The Stuff:

1 small package (2.25 oz) of chopped pecans

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1/4 tsp chili powder

1/8 tsp cumin

1/8 tsp garlic powder

1/8 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

Here’s What You Do:
In the skillet melt the butter over medium heat then stir in the brown sugar until melted and slightly bubbly. Turn the heat to low then add the spices (chili powder to pepper), mixing until well combined with the butter and sugar. Add the pecans and cook for 5 minutes over low heat, stirring every minute or so to ensure the nuts don’t stick to the pan. Store in a cool bowl until you’re ready to top your salad.

Ellie’s Blue Cheese Dressing

2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/4 cup low fat buttermilk
1/4 cup plain fat-free yogurt
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Fold a full sheet of paper towel into quarters and put it into a small bowl. Spoon the yogurt onto the paper towel and place in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to drain and thicken. In a medium bowl, whisk the buttermilk and thickened yogurt into the mayonnaise until smooth. Add the vinegar and sugar and continue to whisk until all the ingredients are well combined. Stir in the blue cheese and season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

The Salad

The Stuff:
1 tomato, sliced
3 green onions, chopped (or you can use a couple rounds of red onion too)
1 head of iceberg lettuce, cut into quarters
Spiced pecans
Breadcrumbs
Blue Cheese Dressing

Here’s What You Do:
Place a quarter of the iceberg in a bowl and drizzle the dressing. Top with the tomato, green onion, pecans, breadcrumbs and a few blue cheese crumbles.

Enjoy!

Extra Cheesy Mac and Cheese

It seems like everyone has a macaroni and cheese family recipe. While my family has unique recipes for a ton of different dishes, macaroni and cheese was left to Kraft (I love Kraft M&C so it's not a bad thing!). So in an effort to start my own tradition I came up with this version. To start, I thought of what makes me happiest when I eat macaroni and cheese – the cheese of course!  And this recipe sure does deliver when it comes to cheesy goodness - it's so yummy!  A little advice though, make sure the cheese is melted with the milk mixture before you put it in the oven.


Time from prep to Eating: 1 hour

What You Need:
Stock pot
Colander
9”x13” glass baking dish

The Stuff:
1 lb short noodle (i.e. bowtie, penne, etc.)
3 Tbsp butter
2.5 cups milk
¼ cup parmesan cheese
1 egg
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
¼ tsp garlic powder
1 package or 8 oz. of Sargento reduced fat shredded Italian four cheese mix
1 lb shredded medium cheddar cheese
Bread crumbs
Italian seasoning

Here’s What You Do:
In your stock pot boil the noodles just shy of al dente (usually 7 minutes will do). In a separate bowl whisk the milk, salt, pepper, garlic powder, parmesan cheese and egg until well combined. Slowly add the milk mixture to the drained noodles, adding ½ of the cheese and all the butter until melted. Add the second half of the cheese, thoroughly mix until melted. Place the noodle mixture into the greased baking dish and lightly sprinkle the bread crumbs and Italian seasoning over the top. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes and serve.

Carrie’s Homemade Tomato Sauce

Happy Sunday my fellow home chefs!! I hope you’ve been cooking up a storm since last I posted.

To give you a little background on how I came up with this dish, I’ll take you back three months in the Sperz household. This is the first year my husband and I planted a garden in our backyard and I was so excited thinking of all the vegetables and herbs I would be able to cook with! Tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, lettuce, peppers, basil, cilantro, chives, parsley, mint…we were definitely ambitious with our little plot of land.

As any first-time gardener would do we thought we would kill at least ½ of the plants we purchased. So naturally we ended up planting way more than what we should have. For example, since I love tomatoes I thought we should get all kinds of varieties in the hopes that a few would actually survive.  Not only did we plant red ones, but we also included yellow, green and heirlooms as well – 7 plants in all. It sounded like a viable plan at the time…

Lucky for our investment, all of the plants survived. Well, except for the eggplant and cilantro, and three months later the seven tomato plants are producing WAY more tomatoes than any human being should ever eat in a growing season. So in an effort to pawn a few off we shared with friends, neighbors and coworkers and still had more than enough for our own use (mind you, Erik doesn’t eat tomatoes). I had to come up with a creative idea to use a lot of tomatoes - a fine chef challenge - and this tomato sauce does just that. It uses 15 medium to large tomatoes!!! Problem solved.

Now, I made a cook’s big no-no by serving this to guests the first time I made it. Shame on me! Luckily, it went over fantastically. Everyone loved it and could hardly believe I didn’t follow a recipe. Erik even went back for seconds and piled on the red sauce…WHAT?????? Success! I hope you love this as much as we did.

Time from prep to Eating: 2 hours 15 minutes

What You Need:
Cookie sheet
Large sauté pan

The Stuff:
13 to 15 medium to large tomatoes, halved
1 small onion, diced
1 large shallot, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup chicken broth, low sodium (or you can use red wine if you prefer)
1 handful of spinach leaves
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Italian seasoning

Here’s What You Do:
Slice 13 to 15 medium to large tomatoes in half and place cut side up on a cookie sheet. Drizzle the olive oil, onion, shallot, garlic, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning on top. Roast in the oven for 2 hours at 325 degrees.

Allow the tomatoes to cool then remove the peels. In a sauté pan heat the tomato mixture over medium-high heat, using a wooden spoon to break them apart into smaller pieces. Add ½ cup chicken broth (or the red wine), spinach, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes.

The sauce pictured above was made from red, yellow, green and heirloom tomatoes.  Your sauce may be more "red" than mine if you use all red tomatoes.

Serve this sauce with any pasta.

White Pizza

For the same meal mentioned above, I must have needed a carb-fix. I felt I needed some pizza to wash down the pasta. Weird I know. But interestingly enough, the cheesy texture of this pizza complimented the pasta and red sauce perfectly. Of course, in your home you can (and probably should) make these dishes separately and feel just as carb-complete.

Time from prep to Eating: 30 minutes

What You Need:
2 small skillets

The Stuff:
1 pizza crust (i.e. Boboli)
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
½ cup of your favorite alfredo sauce
½ cup part-skim ricotta cheese
8 oz mozzarella cheese
½ white onion, sliced into thin rings
Salt and pepper to taste
4 basil leaves
Finishing oil

Here’s What You Do:
Preheat the oven to 425, or as specified on the pizza crust directions.

In the small skillet, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil and the onion over medium heat for about 15 minutes until caramelized. You may need to add a pinch of white sugar to help it along – though this isn’t absolutely necessary. Once caramelized place the onions on a separate plate and lower the heat to low. Add the rest of the olive oil and the garlic slowly cooking for about 2 minutes.

On the pizza crust evenly spread the olive oil and garlic, followed by the alfredo sauce. Spoon the ricotta cheese in various areas around the pizza (don’t worry, the cheese will melt and spread out all by itself), then top with the mozzarella cheese. Evenly spread the onions over the top the cheese and sprinkle salt and pepper to taste.

Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, or as directed in the pizza crust directions. Sprinkle with basil and some finishing oil before serving.

The Ultimate Baked Potato

Time from Prep to Eating: 15 minutes


This is probably one of my most favorite dishes that I make. Though I don’t think I’ve met a baked potato I didn’t like…the best part about it is that it’s super simple to make.

The inspiration for this recipe comes from a restaurant dish that I stumbled upon years ago. I went to college at Oregon State University where about 40 minutes away was a restaurant that had the best, most delicious, creative, and even addictive stuffed baked potato on their menu. This wasn’t just any stuffed baked potato. It was sliced in half and topped with loads of cheese, creamy alfredo sauce, a breast of chicken, and broccoli flowerettes. I loved this potato dish so much that I would find any excuse to drive the 40 minutes to get there. Mmmmm…the memories…

Much to my disappointment, BJs Restaurant and Brewery hasn’t found its way to Virginia yet (they’re in Ohio though!), so I came up with this knock-off version several years ago to satisfy my cravings. I promise you’re going to love this recipe. And if you get the chance to visit a BJs Restaurant and Brewery, their Grilled Chicken Potato will change your life. Just be sure to finish the meal with a chocolate chunk Pizookie Trio…I have yet to master a decent knock-off of this dessert...

What You Need:
A sauté pan

The Stuff:
2 russet potatoes
2 chicken breasts, cubed into bite size pieces
1 small head of broccoli, cut into flowerettes
1 cup of your favorite alfredo sauce
¼ cup of cheddar cheese, or even parmesan cheese (freshly grated only)
Salt, pepper, garlic powder for seasoning
Chives to top

Here’s What You Do:
There are two ways to bake a potato – one takes 5 minutes, the other an hour. For this recipe, I stick to the microwave method. Wash the potato, poke the potato with the tip of a knife in several location and place in the microwave for about 5 minutes, turning once at 2.5 minutes.

In the pan, cook the cubed chicken over medium-high heat until cooked through, about 7-10 minutes depending on the size of the cubes. During the last two minutes, add the broccoli flowerettes and cook until slightly softened. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste as it’s sautéing.

After the potatoes are cooked, place the alfredo in a microwave safe bowl and heat on high for about 1 minute – stirring at 20 to 30 second intervals.

For the assembly: Slice the potato in half and top with the cheese followed by the chicken, broccoli and then alfredo sauce. Sprinkle chives for color and a faint oniony flavor.