Hi guys! Well, I’ve uploaded three new recipes for you to try. Vegetable cakes with orange marmalade, my zesty Lasagna with a Latin twist and a serious dessert; White chocolate cheesecake! All of them are unbelievable so I hope you get the chance to try them out; as a matter of fact, the White chocolate cheesecake would be a perfect addition to your holiday table this Sunday!! I’ll be celebrating Easter with my grandmother and she always prepares a sweet ham smothered with garlic, cinnamon, cloves and pineapples and I’ll bring my famous potato gratin and garlic broccoli spears! I can’t wait! I wish you great food and fun times with your family this holiday weekend and will meet you back next week with my holiday recipes for you to try!

Take care, evy

Hola my friends, I’ve just posted a new recipe for yellow rice. This recipe is a basic one that, if you open your mind, will take you to new creative heights in the world of rice. When my mother taught me to prepare it she said that it should serve as a template, that I should feel free to add whatever ingredients I wanted in place of the peas to make it special and my own. So, this recipe evolved into my yellow rice with shrimp and lima beans and my famous Arroz con pollo that I prepare with a hot Sofrito (not posted yet) and a very mild yellow rice with mixed vegetables. Today I give it to you with my mother’s blessings and her words of advice; the possibilities are endless so please give it a try, master it and let the creative juices flow. Oh, and don’t forget to share some of your creations with me here on Evy’s Kitchen.

Take care, Evy�

This is a picture of my chicken stock gently bubbling away on the stove, it takes approximately seven hours to get the perfect golden color that you see here in my picture. This stock, which I affectionately call liquid gold, is the cornerstone of many of my Thanksgiving recipes. It goes into my stuffing, gravy and green beans so you know it has to be perfect! Check out my recipe section at www.evyskitchen.com to print the instructions and give it a whirl for one of your Holiday recipes.

Hi! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I had a very nice one thank you very much. The food was great and it was awesome spending time with my family especially my big brother’s kids; he and his wife Kelly just had twins and I’m simply tickled to have met them! So, after eating so much poultry (because we ate leftovers for two days after) I had a food block! No kidding! I just had no idea what to cook after so many days of cooking (I began cooking on the Tuesday before Turkey day) we had a plethora of leftovers I mean we had, turkey pasta, turkey sandwiches, turkey and rice I was like whoa (in the style of Joey Lawrence the hottest Dancing With The Stars contestant aside from Mario but he is heavenly ordained so we can’t place him in the same category) I need some pork!

Yes, I love pork. Sorry for those of you out there who don’t care for swine but I love it! OK then so here is what I came up with; I loved this recipe from the August 2006 issue of Cooking Light Magazine page 123, Indian Spiced Chicken but I just couldn’t think of eating another morsel of poultry so I decided to make it with pork and see how it went. The recipe also called for tomato chutney but I didn’t have tomatos so I substituted them with peaches which I had frozen from the summer. I have to say that it was luscious! The pork married perfectly with the peaches and the sweet potato and corn just teamed up to make it a perfect pairing! You must try this recipe, go to my website; www.evyskitchen.com and click on the “recipes” link and look for it there. You will love it! Ok , then I’ll check back with you later, I’ve just purchased my Christmas tree and I’ll be decorating it in the next few days; I think I’ll bake some Christmas cookies! I love Christmas, smooches and blessings to you all.

Evy

OK, so I’m still on my pork kick! I pulled this bowtie pasta with pesto pork sauce and goat cheese together for dinner tonight out of absolute desperation as I had a Barnes’s & Noble date with my good friend Teresita to get to and as usual I was running late with only 30 minutes before I had to leave the house. I took a quick look at my basil plant and sure enough I had enough to make a decent pesto, no pine nuts, but I had walnuts so no problem! The pork was leftover from the stuffing I made for Thanksgiving, it’s Jimmy Dean’s Maple pork (if you have not indulged in pork stuffed into a plastic sleeve then you have no idea what you’re missing). For the recipe pay a visit to my website; www.evyskitchen.com and click on the “recipe” link. Hope you like.

Sad news; I’ll have to cut my post short as I picked up new ornaments for my tree tonight and I won’t rest until I finish my tree project. I’ll share some pictures tomorrow with some cookie musings as I’ve got to find the perfect biscuit for Teresita’s Cookie Exchange party next Sunday. I plan on testing the Barefoot Contessa’s Rugelach from her “Parties” book and I’ve got my eye on a tasty looking Mexican wedding cookie recipe that I found on the web. I love testing sweets!

Bueno then, besos from me to you! Evy

For years now my friends have been telling me how wonderful it is to have a real tree at Christmas time and although I’ve always meant to buy one, I never have quite gotten around to it. There’s just something comforting about the 8 foot faux tree I’ve had for 17 years. I bought it for my daughter Christina’s first Christmas and I took such great care of it that its lasted our family all of this time. Maybe it’s the memories associated with the tree that makes me hesitate at the thought of replacing it or maybe it’s the ease of having one at the ready rather than going through the trouble of choosing a new one each year. Regardless, this year, my old tree is blessing someone else’s house as I’ve finally made the jump to a new Christmas tradition; a real tree. And yes, I don’t think I’ll ever go faux again.

Christina and I have a tradition, every year we decorate the tree together, drink hot cocoa and share some sort of treat that I’ve baked for us; it’s a mother, daughter thing and this year was no exception. For our decorating date I made one of my favorite winter quick breads; banana, cranberry and walnut to be exact.

And, since I have to test cookies for Teresita’s cookie exchange party on the 17th, I baked a cookie that I’ve wanted to try my hand at for years, Linzer Cookies. Now, this isn’t the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe that I had originally intended on using, no, this is Martha Stewart’s recipe from her “Baking Handbook”. If you have the book you will find the recipe on page 117. I used Martha’s recipe because it uses traditional Linzer dough (a dough with ground nuts) and the Contessa’s recipe doesn’t. The Contessa uses shortbread dough in her cookies which I’m sure is very good; however, for my first time I wanted to make an original version which was absolutely the right call, the results were fantastic. The cookies were crisp and rich with a nutty, butter flavor. Just one thing, be prepared to deal with a very fussy dough. It is soft and sticky requiring 15 minute visits to the freezer to harden enough just to use the cookie cutter successfully. But please don’t let that stop you from baking them; as you can see, they are truly worth the effort.OK then, I plan on testing a few other types of cookies this week before I decide which to bake for Teresita’s party, come back and visit me here on Evy’s Kitchen to see what I come up with. The cookie and banana bread recipes are posted on my website for you, www.evyskitchen.com; please enjoy.

Take care, Evy

I know, my visions been tunneled lately in reference to the other white meat but I just can’t help it!  Chicken and Pork are about the only two protein choices the working class can readily afford these days and I for one am sick and tired of chicken.  (I think I mentioned this in a recent post…). 

Anyway, today I was on a mission to use up whatever vegetables I had left in my refrigerator.  You know those lonely leftover vegetables, the stragglers that kind of hang around after you’ve used most of the bunch?  Well, I had a very small fennel bulb left over from a previous recipe but not enough to make a whole new dish such as, the Contessa’s potato and sausage casserole I’ve had my eye on so, I decided to bake the fennel with my pork chops and use the remaining as a topping for the finished dish.

What you see here are ½ inch center cut pork chops drizzled with olive oil and covered with thinly sliced fennel and fresh sage.  A bit of salt and pepper and off to the oven for an hour and 15 minutes at 325°F.   The results were stupendous!

Tender, fragrant, freshly roasted pork.  Wow. 

I served these up with a side of steamed green beans tossed in extra virgin olive oil, freshly crushed garlic, salt & pepper.  Truly no need for a starch here; the combination was rustic yet fresh all at the same time.  I think you will enjoy it.
For the recipe please visit my site; www.evyskitchen.com and click on the recipe link. 

Hope you had an awesome day, muchos besos, Evy

Remind me never to bake cookies at my house again.  I’m sure these kids of mine have gained 10 lbs each munching away on the tiny delicacies I’ve been testing.  FYI, the Barefoot Contessa sure has her stuff together.  Never have I had as many successful recipe turnouts as I’ve had with her book; Barefoot Contessa Parties!  I’ve tried almost every sweet it has to offer and I’ve been pleased every single time!  I baked her Rugelach cookie over the weekend and another batch yesterday, yes, they are THAT good.  The preparation was pretty straightforward, exactly what you would expect as far as mixing, chilling and then rolling out the dough.  The filling was effortless to apply and wow is it fantastic; nuts, raisins and cinnamon sugar sprinkled over apricot preserves, OMG!  Take a look at them below and please consider baking them.  For those of you who have never baked cookies but want to, don’t be intimidated by their appearance, you truly can make these yourself just follow the directions, take them to your nearest holiday gathering, sit back and soak up the praise!  

Well, I’m off!  I’m testing gingerbread men cookies tomorrow from “The Good Cookie” written by; Tish Boyle and that will be the final one I test before deciding which one will make the cut for Teresita’s cookie exchange party on Sunday.  Until then, buen provecho mis amigos! Evy 

Christmas traditions; you can’t live with em, you can’t live without em! I have spent the past 13 days participating in, and cooking for, an endless stream of holiday events. I mean FOR REAL, I have baked, broiled, fried and served up a handsome array of holiday treats to the most appreciative people ever and I’m not ashamed to say I am dead tired. I wanted to write all about Teresita’s cookie exchange but immediately after, I was called upon to cook for my employer’s Southern Holiday Tasting. This, a new tradition we cooked up to feed an entire college campus as our holiday gift to them. It all started with the Book Store sending out a faculty wide invite to join them for a holiday meal and we were blessed with a divine array of ham, various pasta salads, dips, spreads, cocktail shrimp, mini meatballs and a fabulous chocolate fountain with endless variety’s of dipping choices. Wow. Then, the Finance division invites the entire campus to their Annual Sweet Fest where we were inundated with mountains of sweets; cakes, every brownie known to man, cheesecakes, lemon bars, OMG!! So, my supervisor decides we, the Division of Minority Affairs, would enthrall the campus with our cooking! A tasting, nothing big you know? HA! You tell me what happens when an entire group of Foodie’s decides to feed an army a Southern feast! We obviously went a bit, or MORE, overboard. The menu consisted of collard greens cooked with the plumpest ham hocks you’ve ever seen, baked macaroni and cheese, white rice and black eyed peas (my contribution), 2 roasted turkey’s and one fried, 2 sweet hams, yellow rice, real Southern dressing (stuffing for those of you who are not familiar with the term “dressing”), corn bread, pumpkin cake, blackberry doobie, red velvet cake, peach cobbler, apple pie and the ultimate, Southern red punch! The college has NEVER seen anything like it; as a matter of fact, neither have I. At last count we fed over 200 people and that’s only due to finals being over and most of the faculty/staff taking the remainder of the week off in preparation for Christmas, who knows what would have happened had we been fully staffed. I’ve got a few pictures of my division to share; shame on me for not having my digital camera with me on that day but someone had a disposable so I WILL be posting some pictures after the break so that you can see what I’m talking about. Otherwise, I’ve got some great pictures of my book club’s holiday party and some other equally great holiday events I’ve been to in the past 13 days. I hope that you enjoy them and the recipes I’ve collected from this incredible talented group of cooks, as usual you can find them on my website; http://www.evyskitchen.com/. I’ll be back after the 1st with more to share, until then, God bless and good luck in the coming year. Evy