St. Patrick's Day shepherd pie

If you can't tell from my complexion and my hair, I am Irish. Oh sure, there are a few other strange things thrown in there, like Czech and maybe some German but there are quite a few Irish good-for-nothings in my ancestoral line.

I love the story my grandma tells about my great-great grandmother who came over to the United States from Tipperary on a boat. Her name was Alice Ryan and it sounds like she was a feisty one. She divorced a husband in the late 1800's when it just wasn't really cool to do that and not only did she divorce him, she hit him on the head with a cast iron skillet. I don't know if he had brain damage afterward. She must have really been mad at that man, and I am sure all the women out there can sympathize at some point or another. I went through a stage when I was married to my ex-husband where I threw dishes at him on a regular basis. But then I went to dish-thowers anonymous and broke the family cycle and Kevin has only had one dish thrown at him in the six years we have been together. Yes, I had a little set-back that day. Because I love that story and because I identify with that crazy great-great-grandmother, I begged my grandma to let me have the trunk Crazy Alice brought over from Ireland. It now sits proudly in our downstairs bedroom and is so large I could easily stuff a body in there. When my mom and I moved it, we thought it was funny when the neighbors were outside to hit the trunk several times and tell the "person" in there to "shut-up!" The apple probably doesn't fall far from the tree when it comes to crazy.

Yeah, yeah, I am getting to the food part! I made an easy shepherd's pie and irish soda bread in honor of Crazy Alice and St. Patrick's day. Here is a really simple way to make shepherd's pie. Start with a layer of vegetables in a pie pan or casserole dish.Brown hamburgers and onions in a skillet and that is your next layer. Pour a couple of cups of brown gravy on top of your hamburger.The next layer is a couple of cups of garlic mashed potatos. The last layer is cheese.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Have a Guiness or six while you are waiting.

Kevin and Miss Chocoholic really liked this dish, although I saw Miss Chocoholic picking through her vegetables and sliding some of them in the garbage can. It was really good microwaved the next day, too.

I'll leave you tonight with an Irish blessing:

"May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping."

Happy St. Patrick's day!

Bellisio's In Duluth

A trip to Duluth, MN is never complete without stopping at Bellisio's. It is one of my favorite classic Italian restaurants. Last week I took Wednesday off so Nancy and I could take a little road trip to Duluth to see the show "Riverdance." Nancy has worked in the same office with Kevin for a long time and I call her the "dorm mom" of his office. She hadn't been to Duluth in years so I asked her if she wanted to stop at Bellisio's for lunch.

The atmosphere is Bellesio's is always warm and inviting and the staff are friendly and helpful. The menu will make you salivate and the wine menu can be intimidating. I have read novels that are smaller than that wine list. I love the racks and racks of wine bottles that line the walls in the restaurant.It's very Italian.

I talked Nancy into trying a glass of moscato which she loved. A lot of women I know love that wine because it is so light, sweet, sparkling and doesn't have a bit of dryness in it at all. Even Kevin's mom will drink it and she doesn't drink much wine. There are many different kinds of moscato and they all taste pretty similiar. So if you like a sweeter, lighter white wine, try it! If you can't remember the name of it, I told Nancy I remembered it this way when I was first introduced to it. Tomayto, tomahto, mosquito, moscahto. Hey, whatever works! I'll write another post on just moscato wines some other time because I could go on and on about moscato. It is one of my favorites.

Nancy and I started out with the seafood bisque. It was rich and creamy with chunks of crabmeat. The bread that came with it was rustic and buttery.

Here is Nancy laughing at me for whipping my digital camera out to take pictures of my plate.

We both decided to have the lobster broth-infused risotto with shrimp and aspargus. The dish was good, it was clean and simple and the shrimp were cooked to perfection.However, I have a little problem. I am always looking for a dish that as I told Nancy..."blows me away." It is probably like a high that a drug addict looks for, whenever I find a dish that is extraordinary, it is a high for me. When lunch is over thirty dollars I expect to find that high and sometimes I am disappointed. But don't let my little problem stop you from eating at Bellisio's. While the food wasn't something that made my knees quiver, it was still good and the tastes were very simple and not muddled. That is probably good for a lot of people, for me I am looking for the thing that makes me say, "Wow!"
Trust me, I will be back and next time I will have the fettuccini which is always a "wow" dish at Bellisio's. (And the show "Riverdance" was amazing!)

Lemon Curry Chicken

Chef and Company started a cooking club this year and I was very excited to be around people who are as passionate about food as I am. We had our second meeting last week and it was so fun. We cooked lemon curry chicken with mango basmati rice salad.

I learned a few things that night. First of all, curry is from India. It actually means "gravy" not the powder in the spice jar that you and I are thinking of and see on the grocery store shelf. When the British were over in India, they wanted to take back the tastes of India, so they put together the spices that reminded them of that country. Curry in a spice jar is actually a combination of a bunch of different spices. Someday, I will have to find a place that has actual "gravy" curry or try to make it myself.

Second, basmati rice is also from India. I had never heard of it before. The name means "fragrant" and I have to admit it does have a nice aroma. Basmati rice is the most expensive and sought-after rice in the world. I found a box of it in the rice section of Cub Foods. It came with a packet of seasoning that I didn't use.

I have never cooked with ginger before, so that was different. But different is good! I love to try and find a new taste that I like. I bought a ginger root and I learned that you can grate the ginger, peel and all, and if you want to keep the rest, put it in a baggie in the freezer and it will keep for a long time. The next time you need some, just take it out and start grating, you don't even need to thaw it. So I went home and recreated the recipe. Here are a lot of the ingredients. Yes, my kitchen was a mess.
I have the rice cooling on a cookie sheet.And here is the recipe. Enjoy!

Chicken part:

-3 chicken breasts (I marinaded mine)

-2 cups of plain yogurt

-2 tablespoons of curry powder

-grated zest and juice of a lemon

-1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

-salt and pepper

Stir together yogurt, curry powder, lemon zest and juice, sesame oil, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add chicken and toss gently to coat with the yogurt marinade. You can either roast the chicken in the oven or put it on the grill. I grilled mine but we roasted it at the cooking class.

Mango basmati rice salad

-1 cup basmati rice

-1 inch piece of grated ginger

-1/2 pound of green beans

-1 small red onion

-1/4 cup cashews

-1/4 cup fresh mint leaves

-1 fresh mango, peeled, pitted and chopped

-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

-juice of 1/2 lemon

-salt and pepper to taste

Put rice with ginger in 2 cups of water, 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Give rice a stir and turn hear to low, cover and cook for 12 minutes without lifting the lid. Spread cooked rice out on baking sheet and let cool to room temperature. Par cooked green beans and drop into ice water bath to keep the bright green color. Drain, cut beans in half. Chop the onion, cashews and mint leaves coarsely. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and toss gently. Taste for seasoning. Serve the chicken breast over the rice salad.

Shrimp Po' Boys with Angry Mayo

My mom came to see me this weekend and I wanted to make her a good supper so I decided to make shrimp po' boys with angry mayo. I like to say "angry mayo, I think it sounds funny. I happened to see this recipe on http://www.foodnetwork.com/ and make it once in awhile. About six years ago I went to New Orleans and I wish I would have known about these then; I would have made an effort to try an authentic shrimp po' boy. Instead my friend, Carrie and I came back with twenty punds of beads between the two of us. Crazy girls! We did go to Cafe du Monde for the bengiettes so we managed to sneak a little culture into our partying.

I started out by chopping up some basil and cilantro putting it in a skillet with half a cup of olive oil. Then I chopped up a serrano chili pepper and added that and some garlic and lemon zest to the skillet. Once the basil and cilantro started browning, I pulled the oil mixture off and put it in a bowl in the refrigerator to cool. I added a cup of mayo and and a tablespoon of lemon juice to the oil and mixed it together once the oil mixture was cool. The mayo wasn't too angry tonight. How can you be angry on a weekend anyway? Usually I make it hotter but my mom isn't too crazy about spicy stuff and neither is Miss Chocoholic. You could add two peppers if you wanted the mayo to be angrier. (Did I mention I like to say "angry mayo?")I thawed and peeled a pound of shrimp and rolled it in a cup of flour and cayenne pepper. I pan fried the shrimp in the skillet I used to make the angry mayo. Shrimp, like most seafood, cooks fast so don't overcook it or the shrimp will be rubbery. I split open the bread and piled on lettuce, cheese, angry mayo and shrimp.Here's to a fun, relaxing weekend!

Mango Salsa

Sometimes you can find the yummiest things in the most unexpected places. I sing with the Legacy Chorale in Brainerd and if you live in the Brainerd Lakes area and have never heard us, you have to go to our next concert because you are missing out if you enjoy chorale music. Here is the website for the choir. http://www.legacychorale.org/ And there I am in the front row, second from the right.

What does this have to do with mango salsa or yummy things you ask? Well, every time we have choir practice someone brings a treat and last time we had choir practice, one of the guys in the choir brought the most addicting mango salsa I have ever had. And here is the amazing part... it is healthy! Ron was so kind as to send his recipe to everyone in the choir and I made it the other day and it was just as good as I remembered. Thank you, Ron!!

Time to show off another cool Chef and Company tool! This one takes the core right out of a mango. I discovered mangos about 3 years ago and I absolutely love their flavor. I love that they can add a sweet component to a salad; they can either be sweet or savory. But they can be a pain to dice and peel. This tool at least takes away the pain of trying to core it.

Here is Ron's recipe for mango salsa. I double-dog dare you to let it marinade overnight. You won't be able to. You will test it again...and again...and again... Oh wait, I just have to check one more time to see if I have the right amount of lime juice! Yeah, right! But it is even better if you don't eat the whole bowl and you actually let some of it marinade overnight. Wanna hear something scary? After eating this periodically for about three days, I was down to crumbs in the bag of chips and not very much salsa. So I dumped the crumbs into the rest of the salsa and ate the whole mess with a spoon. Pretty sad, huh?

Mango Salsa

• 1 can of drained black beans
• 1 can of drained corn
• 1 diced mango
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/3 cup dice onion
• 1/3 diced red bell pepper
• 1 cup finely chopped cilantro
• 1 package "Good Seasons" dry Italian dressing mix

Mix the first 7 ingredients together in a large bowl. Then add the dry seasoning mix and stir well again. Cover and refrigerate for 6 hours before serving. Making this the night before is even better. The longer it marinates, the better it tastes! Serve with Tostitos "Hint of Lime" corn chips.

Brisket

I bought a smoker from Wal-Mart last year and I am so glad I did. I love to smoke ribs and brisket. I decided last weekend to smoke some brisket. Smoking is definitely a weekend activity because you need to be around the whole day. It also needs to be started fairly early because you need at least a good eight hours. You want to start out with some wood chips and soak them for a couple of hours in water. Then I put them at the bottom of my roasting pan. Next, I put the smaller pan on top of the wood chips and fill it with water and apple cider vinegar.The brisket had been rubbed the night before with a dry rub. I make the dry rub myself out of brown sugar, cayenne pepper, garlic and onion powder. I rub it on the brisket or ribs, put it in a plastic bag and refrigerate it overnight. The grate goes on top of the water and vinegar pan and meat goes on the grate. I put the brisket in fatty side up so that the fat soaks into the meat. If you put the fat side down, the fat will just drip into your pan and not do anyone any good. Embrace the fat! Fat is your friend! Fat is unfortunately what gives a lot of food its flavor.I brush the meat with barbaque sauce, turn the smoker on low and let it do it's thing. I have to periodically add water and vinegar. You can also add herbs to your water to infuse the meat with more flavor. I will occasionally use rosemary in the water.The smoke starts to come out of the top and every time you step outside, you are reminded by the smell that supper tonight will be wonderful!Don't let the weather keep you off your deck! Even though the thermometer said almost 20 below, the wind chill that day made it feel more like 40 below. You struggle on because you are a Minnesotan and no amount of cold is going to keep you from doing what you love! Here I am in the smoker's lounge.

Doesn't that look yummy? Happy smoking and I don't mean the cigarette kind!

Blueberry Wine

I started a batch of blueberry wine on New Years day and it has been bubbling along nicely. I like to have at least one batch of wine going all the time and I was trying to decide what kind of wine to start next. I remembered I had a container of Ely blueberries that we had picked this summer just sitting in the freezer. I pulled them out and the smell of them reminded me of a summer's day in Ely on the pontoon on the way over to Pajama Girl Island where we go to pick blueberries in the summer.Kevin's mom is a blueberry fanatic. She loves to pick blueberries about as much as I love to eat a gourmet dinner. Her friends from Florida were in Ely one year and they like to pick blueberries as much as she does. Between the three of them, they invented the blueberry s'more. They were pretty proud of themselves.Can you tell I am lusting after summer? These 20 below days are starting to get to me. So in honor of summer, I think I will go dip into my bottle of blueberry wine...

Super Bowl Sunday

We decided to invite Kevin's family over for Super Bowl Sunday this year. Kevin's sister and brother-in-law, Karla and Eric came over with their two kids along with Kevin's mom, Marian. Miss Chocoholic gets along well with her cousins so it is fun for all of the kids when they get together.

I love when there is a big table of munchies and you can graze all evening. Karla and Marian brought some great appetizers. Karla brought some fall-off-the-bone drummies that just melt in your mouth and Marian brought some taco dip and some shrimp cocktail dip. That dip is one of my favorite dips. You take a tray and put down a layer of cream cheese, a layer of cocktail sauce and a layer of baby shrimp on top. It is delicious!

I made some guacamole and some artichoke dip. Check out this cool tool I got at Chef and Company that slices your avacado for you.
Then I added a package of guacamole seasoning that you can get at Wal-Mart. Isn't that neat? It is so good and so easy!The artichoke dip that I make is also very easy and I always get a lot of comments and requests for the recipe when I take it to a potluck. You can make a low-fat version of it by just substituting the ingredients with fat-free or low-fat items.You need two little jars of marinaded artichokes, a nice healthy scoop of chopped garlic, (I like the pre-chopped stuff from Wal-Mart) a package of cream cheese, half a bag of grated cheese and about a cup of mayo. Mix it all together and microwave it for about ten minutes to get everything to melt. I will usually put this in a crock pot afterward if I am taking it to a potluck. I serve it with tortilla chips. It is a gross-looking dip but what it lacks in looks, it sure makes up for in flavor!Karla made a board for the game and I can't remember who won, I was so full of food and so sleepy by the time the game was over! The best part of Super Bowl Sunday, in my opinion, is the food!

Wine Night

At least once a week (and if it is a bad week, twice) Kevin and I have what we call wine night. Wine night consists of drinking a bottle of wine (and if it is a bad week, maybe two) after we are done with supper and Miss Chocoholic has gone to bed. There are only a couple of rules for wine night. The first rule is that we have to sit at the table, not on the couch. If there is a good hockey game on, Kevin can sit in the spot where he can see the TV but no couch sitting is allowed. Now that I think about it, that is the only rule for wine night.

Either person can call a wine night. Sometimes they just happen on their own. We talk about things happening in our week and about things that may be bothering us. Wine night usually ends with a Greg Brown CD and slow dancing in the kitchen. I know, kind of corny but it helps us stay connected.

The last wine night, I had a bottle of this wine that was made at a winery in Door County, Wisconsin. I have wanted to go to Door County every since I went to a fish boil in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Door County is famous for their fish boils and for their cherrys.

This wine was very fruity. I mixed some of it with some diet Sprite and it was refreshing, almost like a light cocktail. The flavor really expands in your mouth and the raspberry smell is strong and reminds me of summer. I would recommend this wine for a summer picnic the next time you are out in a boat on the lake. I will definitely be buying this again for our trips to Ely. Here is their website if you want to check it out. http://www.dcwine.com/

Sexy Vexy

Remember the vexlar Kevin bought in the last post? I'm surprised he isn't taking the thing to bed with him at night. I was joking with him this morning that he was having an affair with her and started calling her "Sexy Vexy." Regardless of an affair with the vexlar on not, he did pretty well in his fishing endeavors today and the hunter and gatherer brought home some nice crappies.Simple is always best with fresh fish and the fresher the fish, the less you have to do to it for it to taste amazing. The most popular way to cook fish around here seems to be coating it in Shorelunch and frying it. While I like fish this way, I like the healthier alternative better and I get a little lazy sometimes. Frying is a lot more work than popping something in the oven.All you need to do is to put your fillets in a dish and put some pats of margarine on top. Then I sprinkle lemon juice and lemon pepper seasoning on top and pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes. Fish cooks fast so watch that you don't overcook it. When the fish is opaque, it is done.Miss Chocoholic and Kevin had some for a snack. Miss Chocoholic was eating her portion while Kevin was filleting it's brother. You can't get any fresher than that. The fish is so sweet and doesn't have a speck of fishy taste at all. Delicious! Good job, Kevin and Sexy Vexy!

Ice Fishing Tournament

This post is about fish, but mostly about catching them. By this time you have probably figured out that we are a fishy family...we love to eat it and catch it. So when the oppportunity came along to fish in this year's Jaycee Ice Fishing Tournament, we said "sure!" Kevin's mom had gotten us tickets at the Relay for Life Cancer Walk this summer so we figured they had to be lucky tickets because the money had gone to charity. Kevin's mom even volunteered to watch Miss Chocoholic for us because it was going to be a long day and Miss Chocoholic is not much for wanting to spend the whole day on the ice.

We got up early and had a big breakfast of eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy. Kevin's friend, Jim, came over with his son and had breakfast with us. Then we bundled up and took the four-wheelers across the lake. We went early so that we could get a good spot. Kevin and Jim own a fishhouse together and it is on the same lake the tournament was on so we thought we could just hang out in the fishhouse after we got our spots.Company showed up at the fishouse soon after in the form of Kevin's friend, Jerry, who found the thermos of glugg right away.After we got out to the fishing tournament, the gun went off to signal the beginning. We were in sixty feet of water and I was struggling to get my line down the hole.Kevin came over to help me and as soon as he was done helping me, he went back to his own hole and his bobber was gone. He pulled up his line and had a .65 pound walleye! He raced it over to the weighing station hoping he would place somewhere. They give out prizes to the first 150 places in this tournament and the lowest prize is a $250 gift certificate. I had a nibble once and my bobber started going down but once I pulled up my line, there was nothing there. The rest of the three hours I visited with people and drank some glugg. Jerry drank most of it, though.Here is a picture of Kevin and Jim and below that is Jim's son and me.It is always amazing to see 15,000 people on a lake. We were more toward the edge of the crowd. After the tournament, we found out that Kevin's fish came in at the 81st place and he won a $250 gift certificate to Mill Fleet Farm! He was kind of bummed because if he would have been 80th, he would have won a four-wheeler. But he was excited that he had placed. He said he has been fishing this tournament many years and only caught a fish one other time and he never placed with that one. I talked him into buying himself a vexlar the next morning. How can a woman compete with a vexlar? I know it will probably replace me someday. It was a super fun day. The weather was great, it was up in the twenties and the sun came out in the afternoon. And the icing on the cake was that Kevin's fish placed! We invited everyone we knew out on the lake back to our house where we downed many Tombstone pizzas. I can't wait to do it again next year!