When Chef Beau MacMillan was teaching at Les Gourmettes last week, Duncan Family Farms sent over a huge box of squash blossoms.

The lucky students received the added bonus of Barbara Fenzl’s delicious Squash Blossom Quesadillas at the start of the class.

Once again, I was on the happy receiving end of a basket full of goodies! I brought them home and made Ricotta Stuffed Squash Blossoms, intending to share the recipe here.

Then I discovered that I’ve already posted the recipe, nearly to the day, two years ago. CLICK HERE to see.

Of course, with that many squash blossoms, I also had to make Barb’s fabulous and super easy quesadillas!

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On the last day of Les Gourmettes classes last week, Barb sent me home with a big box of spinach and a package of feta. Both would have gone bad in her refrigerator – since she would be eating out all weekend.

The following pasta recipe is what I created with it.

Waste not, want not.

It’s magical to watch a huge pile of fresh spinach wilt down …

and down … to a little handful of cooked spinach …

… in only a couple minutes.

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Galette is a French term that refers to a variety of flat round cakes, usually made with a flaky pastry dough.

Galettes can be sweet or savory. Although it is most common for galettes to be filled with fruits or chocolate and served for dessert, savory galettes are a satisfying meal on their own.

When making this galette, it is important to have the filling ingredients chilled or at room temperature. A hot filling will melt the butter in the dough before it hits the oven, preventing the crust from becoming flaky and crispy.

One of the filling ingredients in this galette is an onion jam. I link you to that recipe in the list of ingredients.

I made a simpler version for this galette by eliminating the vinegar and raisins in that original onion jam recipe and instead adding a couple teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves. Either version will work wonderfully here.

Joanne Weir made a Mushroom and Blue Cheese Galette in cooking class at Les Gourmettes last week. It was fabulous! I was the lucky recipient of an extra round of dough for the crust. It is an outstanding dough. It is flaky and crispy and delicious. The recipe below is for Joanne’s dough and my filling.

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“Here’s a story of a lovely lady, who was …”

No, stop there! Not “bringing up three very lovely girls. All of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls.”

Let’s try again..

“Here’s a story of a lovely lady, who is all about getting what she wants. She uses trickery and scams plus plans and schemes, and drives her youngest child insane.”

That could be the theme song for my own sitcom or reality show. Honestly, I drive poor Connor crazy with all my ideas. He desperately tries to resist, but somehow he can’t escape when I pull him into these plans, completely against his will and better judgement.

I’m going to give you the recipe today first, and then if you feel like hearing the story behind it, feel free to read all about it, after the recipe.

This is a fun way to make grilled cheese.

Use whatever cheese or cheeses you like.

Top the cheese with your favorite additional fillings, or no fillings at all.

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Here is a quote from yesterday’s post:

“So back to the drawing board. I hope to have it down by tomorrow and post the recipe and my success.”

What I hoped to have down was the recipe for “The Rebel Within” from Craftsman & Wolves, a restaurant in San Francisco.  “The Rebel Within” is a buttery, cheesy, sausage flecked muffin with a soft-cooked egg in the center. The egg yolk in the muffin should be soft and runny with the oozing yolk dripping like liquid gold onto the plate.

The muffin is named after a Hank Williams III song. Williams is the grandson of the legendary Hank Williams and the son of Hank Williams, Jr.

So, the big question is… did I get it right? Was I successful? Was the liquid gold running onto my plate?  No. No. and No!

I really wanted to name this post “Muffin Extraordinaire” but it’s honestly only “Muffin Almost There.”

I developed the recipe by using the blueprint of the muffin that I found on the restaurant’s website. It’s a tongue-in-cheek blueprint with a hint of what ingredients to use, but it has no real portions. At least it gave me a starting point.

First, I tried soft poaching the eggs for 3 minutes in simmering water and then shocking the cooked eggs in ice water, as with THIS method. But once the muffins were baked, the yolks were firm, not even close to runny.

The second go-round, I tried only poaching three of the eggs for one minute and shocking them in the ice water. I cracked the remaining three eggs directly into the bottom layer of batter in the muffin tin.

I imagined that the 1-minute poached eggs would work and that the raw eggs would run all over the place and make a mess.

Once the muffins were baked, I anxiously cut into one of each type of muffin. The result? Exactly the same as the first time around. The yolks were cooked firm. The raw eggs did not run and make a mess, as I anticipated, they were firm right in the center of the muffin, just as the poached eggs were.

Even though the yolks didn’t turn out as I had hoped, I am going to share the recipe I developed while trying to get it right, because even without runny yolks, the muffin is AMAZING! Wonderfully scrumptious. Somehow the muffin is dense, yet still fluffy and fabulously flavorful.

Instead of naming my version “The Rebel Within” I shall name mine “The Easter Egg Within.”

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Saying, “Eat Your Kale”  is so 2012, but that doesn’t mean Kale is not still King in 2013.

Why?
Because…

• One cup of kale still has only 36 calories, 5 grams of fiber, and 0 grams of fat.
• Per calorie, kale has more iron than beef.
• Kale is high in Vitamin K. Eating a diet high in Vitamin K can help protect against various cancers.
• It is high in antioxidants, such as carotenoids and flavonoids, which also help protect against various cancers.
• Kale is a great anti-inflammatory food. One cup of kale is filled with 10% of the recommend daily allowance of omega-3 fatty acids, which help fight against arthritis, asthma, and autoimmune disorders.
• Eating more kale can help lower cholesterol levels.
• It is high in Vitamin A, which is great for your vision, your skin, as well as helping to prevent lung and oral cavity cancers.
• Kale is high in Vitamin C, high in calcium, and kale is still a great detox food.

To summarize – Eat Your Kale!

This quick and easy pasta recipe should help get it on your table on any busy weeknight, especially if you use the meat from a rotisserie chicken, as I did.

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My husband loves fires, really a little too much. For Dave, this blazing glory is a small fire. I think he has a problem!

and…

… Crock-Pots Rock!

That’s all I have to say as an intro for this super easy and super delicious recipe.

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After making a cheese sauce for the chowder recipe I posted yesterday, I was in the mood to make cheese sauce again the next day.

I had a huge hunk of fabulous Manchego cheese in the fridge so I created this saucy open-face sandwich, which would be equally delicious without the bread and served as a chicken main course dish.

Besides making the classic sauce for a humble mac & cheese, I seldom make cheese sauce. Maybe I should listen to Julia Child and do it more often.

“Sauces are the splendor and the glory of French cooking” ~ Julia Child 

How about a quick lesson in the classic French sauces?

Let’s begin with the queen of the mother sauces of French cuisine ~ Béchamel sauce – also known as white sauce is made with a white roux of butter and flour that is then cooked in milk. Béchamel is used as the base for other sauces, such as Mornay sauce, which is what I’ve been making, it is Béchamel with cheese.

In the late 19th century, famed French chef Auguste Escoffier created the list of the five mother sauces.  They are:

• Sauce Béchamel, milk-based sauce, thickened with a white roux.
• Sauce Espagnole, a fortified brown veal stock sauce.
• Sauce Velouté, white stock-based sauce, thickened with a roux or a liaison, a mixture of egg yolks and cream.
• Sauce Hollandaise, an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon or vinegar.
• Sauce Tomate, tomato-based

That is quite a bit more information than you need to make this simple sauce and dish, but it’s good basic stuff to know.

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On the second day after Christmas, we had no food left in the house.  OK, we had food, but nothing much to make for dinner. All I could scrounge up was the ham bone from HoneyBaked left from Christmas Eve. It had less than a cup of meat left on it.

What to do?

I dug around and found a package of diced pancetta with an expiration date of 12/29/12. Score!

I had a few potatoes, a bell pepper, a chunk of cheddar cheese, and some leftover mushrooms that would soon be going south. Hey, this might constitute a meal, after all!

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