Quick Garlicky Shrimp and Spinach

 *Yes, ‘Garlicky’ is indeed a word, and that is indeed how you spell it! I looked it up. 

I needed something quick and light after all the feasting of Christmas week, and I had some really nice large shrimp in the freezer, so this is what I came up with. Just a quick garlic-powder-into-chicken-broth, wilted some spinach in the steam from that, and then sautéed the shrimp in some more of it.

It could go over rice very easily - you could even toss a little cornstarch in to thicken some of the broth, maybe - or over pasta. I wasn’t wanting something that heavy! I’m just eating the shrimp-and-spinach by itself this week, with some veggies on the side. 

I stirred quite a bit of garlic powder (social distancing is still in fashion, you know, so who cares about garlic breath, right?!) into about two cups of chicken broth in a four cup measure. Poured roughly half of that over some spinach, covered it tightly with plastic wrap (cut a small hole to vent!), and steamed it in the microwave for four minutes. 

I used quite a bit of spinach (a bag from Sam’s, so it was a bulk bag, 40 oz) since I’m not putting it over anything. You’d use less if you were topping rice or pasta with this, of course. Ditto the shrimp - I’m not totally sure how much I used, I think this is a three pound bag I have in the freezer, and I just grabbed a couple handfuls out to thaw.

You’re going to poach - cooking things in broth like this is ‘poaching’ rather than ‘sautéing,’ so you’re learning a new cooking technique, here! - your shrimp in the garlic chicken broth. Toss the rest of the broth and your shrimp in a skillet, turn on the heat to medium or so, and let them go until they’re pink. 

Pour everything in the skillet over the spinach, and voila! I’m calling it dinner.

I’m not even plating it, that’s how much of a holiday-recovery dinner this is. I’m putting it in a Tupperware so I can take it in the living room and eat it with my feet up on the ottoman! 

QUICK GARLICKY SHRIMP AND SPINACH

Ingredients

40oz fresh spinach

2C chicken broth

Garlic powder, to taste (I didn’t measure)

1lb large shrimp

Stir garlic powder broth in a four cup measure. Whisk well and set aside.

Put as much of your spinach as will fit in a large microwaveable bowl. Pour half the chicken broth over it, cover tightly (make sure it’s vented somehow!), and microwave for four minutes. Stir, add the rest of the spinach, and microwave another four minutes.

Poach your shrimp over medium high heat in the rest of the chicken broth. Once they turn pink, pour over your spinach and serve.

Optional: Serve over rice or pasta.

Rocky Road Gluten Free Fudge Cookies (Crispy)

 

These are a variation on my Gluten Free Fudge Cookes, but I think they turned out even better! Plus I found out that marshmallows puff up when you put them in the oven - can you see in the picture there? It was really neat, and they stayed puffed up, too, even as the cookies cooled.

Rocky road gluten free fudge cookies

INGREDIENTS

Cooking spray 

2 1/2 c. powdered sugar

3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

4 cold large egg whites

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1/2 c. chocolate chips

1/2 c. mini marshmallows

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper and very lightly grease with cooking spray. In a large bowl, combine powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. 
2. Stir in egg whites and vanilla, then add chocolate chips, marshmallows, and nuts. For shinier cookies, rest dough at room temperature for 20 minutes. Scoop teaspoon-size mounds (no bigger! these things spread out) onto prepared baking sheets and bake until set, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool for about 5 minutes on baking sheet then carefully transfer cookies to a cooling rack with a spatula to cool completely. 

Courtney’s Gluten Free Lemon Cake with Glaze

 Guest blogger recipe here!  This is a great light lemon cake that my sister bakes in a small loaf pan, rather loosely based on the lemon cake at Starbucks. It’s a favorite of my mother’s, so we wanted to share it with you here.

A note on the flours: I tend to use straight almond flour in baking, so you’ll see my recipes call for that. Courtney tends to use gluten free baking flour blends. This one is baked using the gluten free baking flour blend from Walmart, their gluten free all purpose flour blend.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:
3 eggs
1 C sugar
1 C sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
1/2 C vegetable oil
2 T lemon zest
2 T lemon extract
1 1/2 C gluten free baking flour blend
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

GLAZE INGREDIENTS

1 C powdered sugar

2-3 T lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x5 loaf pan with pan spray and lightly dust with flour. 

In a large bowl, beat the three eggs. Add sugar, sour cream/yogurt, and oil. Whisk until smooth. Add lemon zest and lemon extract, and stir well. 

In a smaller bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the larger bowl, until just combined. Lumps are okay!

Bake ~50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. You can cover with foil the last ten minutes to prevent browning, if you prefer. 

Cool in pan at least thirty minutes before glazing. You can turn it out to glaze it after that, if you prefer.

We don’t have real exact amounts on the glaze - just start with these, and play with the amounts of sugar and lemon juice until you get it to a desired consistency. Drizzle or spread over the cake. 

’Christmas’ Vegetable Soup

 You want to know how church musicians ever manage to have anybody - family, anybody - over during the holidays? Definitely nothing fancy! 

Large pots of soup are my general choice.

Large pots of relatively easy soup are even better.

I’ve done crock pots of my Stone Soup recipe a couple years; this year I ran into a slight difficulty with the recipe I originally wanted to make (how in the devil is everyone out of fresh spinach, for pete’s sake?!), so I’m literally just tossing one together today out of ingredients I’ve got in my kitchen/freezer/pantry. 

I’m using tomatoes - PRO TIP: Tomato soups and sauces are always better the day after! - so I’m putting it together in the stock pot on the stove today, eating a bit myself for supper tonight, and then the rest will go in the Crockpot on the ‘Warm’ setting while I’m in church tomorrow. It’s my Lessons and Carols service, so I have some extra family and friends coming to hear my choir and me. 

Starting with browsing some sausage. This is an Appleton Farms Aldi sausage that I like because it’s not too hot, works in many things, is marked ‘gluten free,’ and freezes well! (Aldi sells it refrigerated. I toss the rolls in the freezer to keep them handy.)

After the pork is browned, you’re going to want to set it aside on a couple paper towels to drain, and you’re going to need to pour the grease off somewhere, so you don’t pour it down your kitchen drain. Another PRO TIP? My favorite way to drain grease is simply cover a bowl with aluminum foil, set it in the sink, and pour your grease into it. You can then set the bowl aside while the grease hardens, ball the foil up and throw it away, grease and all, and never have to worry about cleaning grease off anything. Love. It. 

(Looks kind of disgusting, doesn’t it? Grease is kind of disgusting. This is why we drain it and don’t put it in the soup. Yep.)

All right, got that done.

Now I’m going to mash up my tomatoes, because what I have in my pantry is whole peeled San Mariano tomatoes. They’re my favorites. Just use your hands, toss the tomatoes and everything in your stock pot and just reach in and mash them up with your hands.

If you’re buying something and short on time? Diced tomatoes. The big cans! 

Potatoes? I had a five pound bag of russets. I’m dicing them and tossing them in.

Cans of potatoes work well in soup too! 

I’m going to toss in a frozen bag of peas and a frozen bag of corn too. 

Then, if you’re one of those who stocks broth in your pantry, fill it up with broth.

Me? I do bouillon. I have a small kitchen and a small pantry, and bouillon is easier to keep large quantities on hand! 

So I filled the stock pot up with water and Orrington Farms beef broth base (that’s my favorite marked-gluten-free brand), and set it on the stove to cook the potatoes. 

Voila! I’m leaving it there to simmer while I go finish practicing for tomorrow.

Musicians’ holiday entertaining: seriously, I suggest you try it. No joke!

Let me try to come up with some kind of ingredient list. 😊

‘CHRISTMAS’ VEGETABLE SOUP

Ingredients 

1lb hamburger or sausage

Α bag of potatoes, whatever you’ve got on hand

A large can or two of San Marzano tomatoes / diced tomatoes / whatever

A 12oz bag of frozen peas

A 12oz bag of frozen corn

Orrington Farms broth base / broth / bouillon (I didn’t measure this at all)

Brown your hamburger or sausage. Set it aside on paper towels to drain and cool a bit.

Dice your potatoes into bite-size pieces, or open the cans, if you have cans of potatoes. (If you’re using cans, don’t bother draining anything! Just toss it all in. Use less broth.)

Since I was using whole peeled tomatoes, I crushed up my tomatoes with my hands in my big stock pot. Then I added my raw diced potatoes, the drained sausage, and the peas and carrots. 

I added enough water to make it a good soup consistency - maybe 8 cups or so? Add broth base or bouillon to match your water; if you’re using boxed or canned broth, just add that to make a good soup consistency here.

Set it on the stove and bring it to a boil to cook the potatoes. After the potatoes are done, leave it on to simmer as long as you can! The longer it can simmer, the better it will taste. 

Lettuce Wraps (Kinda Sorta Loosely Based on PF Chang’s)

 ~~meaning, that is, that I started with a copycat recipe I found online - and then started adapting - and then decided I needed to cut the calories a little (we are just a few days past Thanksgiving) - and then decided that, okay, it wasn’t really much like the original recipe after all.

As usual.

So!

Here we go. This is to serve for dinner, for probably about four; if you want it for appetizers, the way they serve it at the restaurant, cut it in half.

LETTUCE WRAPS

Ingredients

2 lbs ground chicken

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 T minced garlic

12 oz package frozen spinach, thawed and drained

6 oz green onions, sliced

8 oz can water chestnuts, diced

Sauce

5 T gluten free soy sauce

3 T rice vinegar (unseasoned!)

2 T sesame oil

2 T peanut butter

1 T water

1 T honey

To Serve

Chopped peanuts

Lettuce leaves (I bought hearts of Romaine, but any sturdy lettuce leaves will work)

1. Get green onions sliced and water chestnuts diced. Thaw spinach and measure sauce ingredients into microwave safe bowl or large measuring cup. As with any stir fry, this goes together quick, so you want everything ready before you start.

2. Coat a wok with pan spray. Add ground chicken, garlic, ginger. Stir often to break up the meat. Cook until chicken is no longer pink. Add spinach and stir until heated and mixed through. 

3. Heat your sauce in the microwave 30 seconds and whisk until blended. Add to chicken mixture, along with green onions and water chestnuts. Cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes, until onions are softened and water chestnuts are heated through.

4. Serve with lettuce leaves, sprinkled with chopped peanuts. 

Gluten Free French Almond Cake

 We have the remains of a hurricane passing over us, and I have lost my co-supervisor at work: I am stress baking tonight! Giving it up for a French Almond Cake, mainly because I had all the ingredients on hand.

We are simplifying things a bit, because I do not have a springform pan, and I am NOT greasing the bottom of a pie pan just to layer it with parchment paper and more grease! So. 

You could probably give this a go with dairy-free, if you needed to, using melted coconut oil in place of the melted butter? If anybody gives that a try, message me and I’ll add in the edits! 

FRENCH ALMOND CAKE

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1/2C sugar (regular granulated sugar)

1/3C milk

2t baking powder

A grind or two of sea salt

1t vanilla extract

2t almond extract

1/2C (one stick) butter

3C almond flour

For the top: 

Sliced almonds

Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 325. Generously grease a 9-inch pie pan. 

In a large mixing bowl with a hand whisk (don’t use electric beaters), whisk eggs, sugar, milk, baking powder, salt, vanilla extract, and almond extract. 

In a small bowl melt the butter in the microwave on low power. Set aside. 

Measure three cups almond flour out. I measured them into another bowl, leveling off each cup as I measured it. Start adding the flour to the mixing bowl with the egg mixture, a handful at a time. After whisking a handful or two of flour in, add the melted butter. (You don’t want to add hot butter directly to the eggs, or it will cook them.) Continue adding flour until all is mixed together. 

Use a spatula to turn the cake batter out into the prepared pan. Press the almonds onto the top. They don’t burn while cooking, really! I doubted that myself. 

I baked the cake for 20 minutes before checking on it, then put it in for another 5. After 25 minutes, I covered it with foil to prevent the top from getting too brown (those almonds, you know, I was worried about the almonds). A knife inserted in the center came out clean for me after 30 minutes. 

Let the cake cool. Seriously, this is a cake you want to let all-the-way cool. Dust with powdered sugar once it’s all the way at room temperature. 

Make-Ahead Mac & Cheese

 

If you need a make-ahead macaroni - or if you’ve got the time for a make-ahead macaroni, even - this is the simplest homemade macaroni and and cheese ever, truly. You don’t even make a sauce! 

Gluten folks - the Barefoot Contessa takes the credit for yours. Overnight Mac &Cheese I adapted it for Tinkyada pasta and those of us who can’t do breadcrumbs! If you want to follow my easier instructions below? Cook your regular elbow noodles for four minutes exactly. Drain them right at four minutes, and go on with my instructions!

My gluten-free folks - make a note that this was made using Tinkyada elbow macaroni. Different GF pastas with different ‘al dente’ cooking times are probably going to require some adaptation, here. 

A full day before you are serving this, cook your Tinkyada elbows for seven minutes exactly. Drain them right at seven minutes!

Meanwhile, shred your cheeses if you need to. I bought mine shredded, a mixture of cheddars. 

Mix the 6 cups half and half with three cups of the cheese, and stir in the pasta. Stir well, and then cover by pressing plastic wrap down on top of the noodles. Does that make sense? You don’t want any air between the pasta and the plastic wrap. Press it right down on top, tightly. 

Then you just - put it in the fridge. That’s it. 

Cook the pasta; toss it with the half and half and part of the cheese; cover, and refrigerate overnight. Boom. Done!

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When you come back the next day to cook it, bring the bowl back to room temp. I just let mine sit out on the counter for about an hour; you could microwave it a few minutes, too. Whatever. Pull off the plastic wrap and stir it well. 

Preheat your oven to 400. Put it in a greased casserole dish; top with the remaining cheese. Bake 20-25 minutes, rotating halfway through if your oven needs it, or until the cheese are melted and bubbly.

It’s seriously so simple I can’t believe it. Love. It. 

MAKE-AHEAD MAC & CHEESE

Ingredients:

16oz Tinkyada elbows

6C fat free half and half

16oz cheeses, shredded (4 cups roughly)

A day before serving, cook the Tinkyada elbows for seven minutes exactly. Drain. 

Stir together drained elbows, half and half, and roughly three-quarters (three cups) of the cheese in a large mixing bowl. Cover by pressing plastic wrap down on the top.

Refrigerate overnight.

Bring pasta mixture back to room temperature (an hour on the counter or four minutes in the microwave, roughly). Preheat oven to 400. Cover casserole dish or 9x13 well with pan spray. Pour noodle mixture in; top with remaining cheese.

Back at 400 for 20-25 minutes, rotating once if needed, or until cheese are melted and bubbly,