Many of us love cookies, but when one needs to stay gluten-free, then eating cookies may become problematic, as you can see from this complete list of gluten free foods, in case you want to know what you can safely eat. Liz Lovely bakes gluten free cookies in the Mad River Valley in Vermont and many locals say that her gluten free Ginger Molasses cookies are excellent! So, if you happen to live in Vermont, you’re lucky to be able to enjoy great gluten free cookies without having to bake them yourself.
Cooking
Stuffed mushrooms are delicious. I know they are a bit painful to wash, but once you’ve managed to do that, the rest is poetry. The secret here is not to store them for too long in the fridge. Although they resist up to one week, cleaning is much easier in the first 1-2 days. If you are the kind of person who likes to have a pantry full of supplies, then you’d better freeze them. Mushrooms are suitable for freezing. Please don’t ask me how to do it, because I prefer to cook them fresh.
Preparing the filling is easy. For example, you can stuff the mushrooms with themselves. I mean, are you going to discard the stems or what? Stems are good. If you want, you can use them into some other meal or you can chop them, mix them with a little bit of egg, cheese, onions and garlic, and you’ve got a lot of healthy stuffed mushrooms recipes to try. If health is not your main concern, minced meat is another delicious option. You can use either pork, beef, turkey or chicken, or a mix of minced meat and bacon pieces. How often do you cook pulled pork recipes, have a great barbecue party, then try to do something with the leftovers for the following week? Stuffed mushrooms can help you clean up your fridge, because they make good friends with all other veggies. I admit I haven’t tried them with eggplants, but who knows, I might discover a new recipe to share with you one of these days.
What other mushroom stuffing secrets do you know? Would you care sharing them with us?
As I don’t have a good video camera, I can’t make movies to show you how to cook the recipes I’m publishing here. Nonetheless, I found another solution, which I hope will help you cook delicious meals: a video-recipes series of posts from famous and less famous cooks. For today, chef Keith Snow demonstrates his very popular & delicious pork chops recipe.
Marinated meat is much better than usual steaks. That’s because of the action active ingredients in a marinade have upon the meat tissues, breaking them up and dissolving connective tissue (which is responsible for the toughness of some meat cuts). The issue with marinades is that the process of marinating really calls for larger batches of marinade and pork chops, otherwise it’s wasteful of the marinade ingredients, especially of the more expensive herbs and spices.
Pork chops can be marinated in advance, then frozen separately for later cooking one at a time, but only in the following conditions:
- Freeze only fresh pork chops. If the meat was already frozen before you use it, do not freeze it one more because it’s detrimental to your health and may determine food poisoning.
- Use special freezer bags to store the marinated pork chops. You can add a bit of the marinade inside the bags, for preserving even more flavor.
- Make separate portions, small enough to be cooked at once and eaten within 1-2 days. Once frozen, cutting the meat or separating the chops will be almost impossible, so it’s wiser to think ahead when you make the packs for the freezer.
Can any of you offer us some more tricks for freezing marinated pork chops?
Pork chop recipes are among the special dishes I enjoy cooking quite frequently. Nonetheless, pork meals can become boring if there’s no alternation of flavors and “auxiliary” ingredients. A touch of creativity is always needed, be it in the kitchen or in other areas of life. Please notice I said “a touch”. If you get too creative, people around you might get scared. It’s up to each of us to decide how far we can push our creativity in order not to trouble the fragile balance of our little personal world.
What I’m suggesting today is an unusual main dish recipe. It’s unusual because it brings together pork chops with cranberries and with orange marmalade in the same dish, in a sweet and sour surprise for your gustatory system and eventually for your brain.
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup fresh cranberries, chopped (frozen ones are also fine, but the real taste and aroma are always in fresh foods)
- 2 tablespoons orange marmalade
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 pork chops (bone-in, about 1 inch thick)
- 2 tablespoons honey
- salt and pepper to taste
Cooking Instructions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Oil an average size baking dish (cover is not needed, so don’t worry if your dish doesn’t have a lid).
In a bowl, mix the cranberries with the orange marmalade and with the ground cloves. With a meat knife, carefully cut a pocket in each pork chop by cutting into it toward the bone; spoon the cranberry mixture into these pockets.
Place the pork chops in the baking dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour one tablespoon of honey over each chop, trying to cover as much as you can of its surface. Bake the food uncovered for about 50 minutes. The honey will create a sweet glaze over the chops, which will combine with the sourness of the cranberries into an exotic taste you’ll either love or hate (there’s no middle way here).