Domestifluff : Food, Craft, Etc. » Side Dishes

Warm Green Bean and Potato Salad

Kristen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:40:34 +0000

Alright, so I know that I should ban bacon from my diet. It has sugar and all those nasty nitrates, but I just can’t (or won’t) give it up because it’s just too tasty. If I knew that eating bacon would bring dire consequences, then maybe I’d consider giving it up, but for now I stick to using it sparingly in dishes where I feel the flavor is truly enhanced by its presence. And sometimes I just munch a whole piece or three.

I love simple, flavorful side dishes, and this warm green bean and potato salad is tasty and pretty quick to make. A bit of bacon adds flavor, but I think the salad would still be quite good without the bacon. The only issue that I have with the original recipe is that it contains no mention of draining the bacon fat from the pan before adding the other ingredients, but I had to soak up most of the fat because, otherwise, I felt that the entire dish would be swimming in it. I like bacon fat, but even I have my limits.

Warm Green Bean and Potato Salad
adapted from Everyday Food, November 2009

Ingredients

1 lb. red new potatoes
1/2 lb. green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch lengths
4 slices bacon, cut crosswise into 1 inch pieces
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
kosher salt and ground pepper
1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

Instructions

1. In a large saucepan, cover potatoes with at least 2 inches of salted water. Bring to a simmer and cook about 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes are just fork tender. Drain.

2. In a large nonstock skillet, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add the potatoes and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook, mashing potatoes slightly with a spoon or potato masher, until golden brown in spots, about 5-7 minutes. Transfer to a serving dish and keep warm.

3. Add bacon pieces to the skillet and cook until browned, about 5 minutes. Remove the bacon using a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Drain all but about 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat from the skillet, and add the green beans. Cook until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat. Return the potatoes and bacon to the skillet, add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and toss gently to combine. Return to serving dish and serve warm.

My Favorite Gluten Free Biscuits

Kristen — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:42:57 +0000

Now that you’ve made your own sweet, sweet jam, wouldn’t you love to slather it on a warm and fluffy biscuit with some butter? These biscuits have been a long time in the making and, when I say a long time, I mean over a year and a half of experimenting with the recipe, using every type of gluten free ingredient imaginable, and having several results that weren’t exactly edible. I’ve learned a lot about making gluten free biscuits along the way.

Here are just a few of my lessons learned: too much guar gum makes for nasty, chalk-tasting biscuits; glutinous rice flour tends to make the biscuit bottoms chewy; using glutinous rice flour and no xanthan gum leaves the biscuits dry and crumbly, but you’ll still have chewy bottoms; whipping an egg white and folding it into the biscuit dough doesn’t seem to add much in the way of fluffy (i.e., don’t waste your time); using shortening tends to make the biscuits very dense and heavy; and attempting to replace the buttermilk with coconut milk and a little lemon juice changes the texture in an ugly way and makes the biscuits taste not quite horrible but not very biscuit-y, either.

I also discovered that making the perfect biscuit, or at least my opinion thereof, doesn’t require a blend of half a dozen different types of gluten free flours and who knows what else. Thank goodness for that, right? When I simplified the ingredients, I got the results that I wanted. I realize that this isn’t always the case with gluten free recipes, but I knew it was a good omen when I picked up a cooled biscuit and it felt much lighter than it looked. Believe me, this was a rarity during my year and a half in search of my favorite gluten free biscuit.

Gluten Free Buttermilk Biscuits
inspired by Alton Brown’s Southern Biscuits (my pre-gluten free favorite)
makes 10-12 biscuits

Ingredients

1 cup cornstarch
1 cup brown rice flour
1 tsp. xanthan gum
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. kosher salt
4 Tbsp. butter, unsalted, chilled, cut into small cubes
1 cup buttermilk
2 egg whites
cooking spray

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper or by lining them with foil and a light coating of cooking spray.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, add cornstarch, brown rice flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Combine with a fork until ingredients are evenly distributed throughout the mix. Add the chilled butter cubes and work the butter into the dry ingredients using your fingers or a pastry cutter until the mixture has a sandy, crumbly texture.

3. In a small measuring cup, measure the buttermilk and add the egg whites. Pour the wet ingredients into the mixture of dry ingredients and butter and work with a fork until just combined. This is a wet, slightly sticky dough, and you can easily make these into drop biscuits if you’d like at this point, but I personally prefer to use cutters to make the biscuits. If you’re using the “cutter” method, then spray your hands with cooking spray and turn the dough onto a floured or non-stick surface (I just use another sheet of parchment paper), forming it into a 3/4 inch thick disc. Spray your dough cutter (I use a 2 1/4 inch round) with cooking spray and cut as many biscuits as you can from the dough, reforming and cutting until the dough is gone.

4. Move the biscuits to the baking sheets and place in the oven. Immediately lower the temperature to 400 degrees F and bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the bottoms are golden brown. Serve warm. The biscuits also store well in the freezer.

Rosemary Thyme Oven Fries

Kristen — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:27:07 +0000

I love potatoes. Mashed, fried, baked, sweet, or however you want to prepare them. Put a potato in front of me, and I’ll find something to do with it.

Couple my love for potatoes with my seeming inability to plan anything besides the main entrée at dinnertime — more times a week than I’d like to admit, you can find me frantically trying to think of a side dish that I can make because I spent too much time focusing on the main dish and completely forgot about the sides — and you have the makings of a tasty potato side dish.

Should I admit that we’ve had these oven fries at least twice during the past week? Actually, it’s not even because of my poor meal planning skills. I’ve just been looking for any excuse to make them. I’m very glad that B likes potatoes almost as much as I do.

Rosemary Thyme Oven Fries

Notes: If you aren’t planning on grinding the spices into smaller bits like I do, then you may want to double the salt, rosemary, and thyme to get the same strength of flavor.

Ingredients

3 large Russet potatoes, cut lengthwise
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. dried rosemary
1 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
2 Tbsp. olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with foil for easy cleanup, and spray with non-stick cooking spray.

2. In a coffee/spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind the salt, rosemary, thyme, and garlic powder. See the note above if you aren’t planning on grinding your spices.

3. Cut the potatoes and place in a large mixing bowl or straight onto the baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over the potatoes, and sprinkle the spice mixture over them. Toss everything together until potatoes are evenly coated with the oil and spices. Organize potatoes in a single layer on the baking sheet.

4. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the potatoes are golden and slightly crispy. Serve immediately.