Easy Holiday Cooking - Mexican Meatloaf (Tacos)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 2 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend (cheddar and Monterey Jack)
• 1 1/4 cup tomato salsa, divided
• 2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 pack of small flour tortillas (about 10)
• 1 can black beans

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.


2. In a large bowl, combine Panko, eggs, cheese, 1 cup of the salsa, mustard and meats.
3. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Shape meat mixture into a loaf on the baking sheet.
4. Spread remaining 1/4 cup of salsa on top.

5. Bake 50 minutes, take out the meatloaf and spread the can of beans around the meatloaf.
6. Return the meatloaf to the oven and bake another 10-15 minutes or until the internal temperature of the meatloaf (as measured with a thermometer) reaches 155 degrees. Let rest 10 minutes before serving.
7. Serve sliced with beans on warmed tortillas - TACO STYLE!!

I needed to find a quick, easy and delicious recipe for several holiday events this year and this basic Mexican Meatloaf recipe came through for me big time. I tweaked it a little bit to suit my taste, adding much more cheese than the original recipe required and including black beans. Also, I used honey Dijon for added flavor. If you can't find Panko bread crumbs in the japanese section of your grocery store, then buzz up some slices of bread in your food processor for light airy bread crumbs. Be careful moving the cooked loaf from the baking pan to the serving dish, get a buddy and 2+ spatulas to prevent cracking/breaking the loaf during the transfer. Then arrange the beans artfully around the loaf and find a green garnish. I used limes and encourage a sprig or two of cilantro. These will beautify your log-o'-meat and are appropriate complimentary taco ingredients.

Spiced Rum Cider

 

There are plenty of recipes out there for spiced cider, but this one has been the most successful. We served it at our "pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving" party and someone actually named it as what she was thankful for this year! Not to mention that we ran out of the spiced cider, which is probably the best endorsement you can get for a drink.

Our version is based on this Emeril Lagasse recipe. If you ask us (please, don't email us; it's a figure of speech), Lagasse uses way too much sugar. Cider is sweet enough, and you want to be able to taste the rum. Below is our edit of his recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 apple, studded with whole cloves (it should look like the Hellraiser of apples)

• 1 orange, thinly sliced
• 1 gallon apple cider (don't be fooled by recipes that call for less, you'll need this much)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons allspice
• Plenty of grated nutmeg
• Sailer Jerry spiced rum (We got this suggestion from Lukas, and it's the perfect rum for the recipe.)
• Cinnamon sticks for garnish

Directions
In a pot, combine the studded apple and other ingredients, except for the rum. Slowly bring to a simmer over low heat. Simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Ladle into mugs and garnish each with a cinnamon stick. Let the drinker choose their own amount of rum (it's the giving season, after all).

Workout Queen's Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Happy Thanksgiving!!! After running and running so many miles (back to Mexico) since my last post (lol) I'm back and ready to crack the whip on healthy dining. Just so that you all know these diets and foods work, I've lost 14lbs and it's still coming off...and with that I share with you a Thanksgiving Treat which may or may not be on the diet (but all within reason and portions, right??)...this is a spin off of regular cheesecake. DO try this at home!

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 2 Ready Made Crusts

For the Cream Cheese Filling

• 1.5 bars of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 cup of sugar

For the Peanut Butter mixture

• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
  
• 2/3 cup powdered sugar
  
• 1/4 cup brown sugar

I had to do a little substitution here because I didn't have powdered sugar. But for all you novices out there...just take the granulated sugar and put it in the blender. And there you've got powdered sugar. Also, regular sugar works instead of brown sugar. So, the recipe is rather easy.

Procedure:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Put all the ingredients of the Cream Cheese Filling into a blender (YES, a blender). Mix well. Set that aside.
3. Combine the two different sugars for the peanut butter mixture.
4. With a fork, measure out the peanut butter and put it into the sugar mixture. Begin to cover it with sugar and mush it around.
   
5. After a few minutes, you'll start to see that little balls are created from the mixture. That's what you want!
6. Grab your Ready Bake Crusts.
7. Take the Peanut Butter Mixture and pour all but about two teaspoons into the crusts. Set the extra aside for now.
8. Get your cream cheese filling and gently pour it into the crusts. You'll see the peanut butter mixture mixing with the cream cheese.
9. Put your crusts into the oven. Bake for 35 mins and cool for 3 hours.
   
10. Sprinkle the extra Peanut Butter mixture on top. It will melt right into the cake, but also be a little garnish.
    
11. Then SERVE!

The cooling time is what helps it congeal, so don't be too nervous about the consistency as it comes out of the oven - it's okay. Just let it do its cooling thing and it should definitely smell and taste awesome. Now just remember, we did put TONS of sugar in here, so portions are what REALLY matter to the Workout Queen. Taste it, enjoy it. Just don't gorge! Eat your heart out!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! :)

Pumpkin Pie Jello Shots

For a pot-luck party we decided to save time and combine the dessert and the cocktail together. Though most of us equate "Jell-O Shots" with "Fraternity Hazing" these are much more adult. Of course, no one ever said adults don't do shots...

Pumpkin Pie Jell-O Shots

from Tasting Table

1 or 2 Crumbled Graham crackers
1 envelope Knox gelatin
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of ground nutmeg
1/2 cup vodka
1/2 tablespoon cold heavy cream
Fresh whipped cream, for serving

1. Arrange the mini cupcake cups on a baking sheet. Place 1 cup cold water in the top of a double boiler and sprinkle the gelatin over the top. Let stand for three minutes.
2. Heat the gelatin mixture over a gentle simmer until the granules have dissolved. Add the pumpkin, sugar and spices and heat, stirring occasionally, until the pumpkin and sugar are completely melted. Remove from heat and cool for 30 minutes.

3. In a medium bowl, combine the vodka with 1/4 cup cold water and the heavy cream. Whisk in the pumpkin mixture and immediately divide it among the cupcake cups. Chill until firm, at least 4 hours. Sprinkle each with crumbled Graham crackers, top with whipped cream and serve.

Yum Frankenstein

Just because we focus on drinks and baked goods doesn’t mean we don’t love meat. In fact, you may even call us Shake and Bacon. Which is why we want to give shout outs to some recent meaty meanderings around the Internet.

The Turducken is the culinary Frankenstein monster served to the bourgeois on Thanksgiving. We all know the drill: stuff a chicken inside a duck and cram it into a turkey. Only wrapping this delicious three-way in bacon could make it more indulgent. Enter the Turbaconducken. Not only is this guy fully covered in bacon, but each individual bird is wrapped in the stuff before being combined with the others. The turkey doesn't even need to be seasoned - the bacon does all the work for you.

Scrumptious! Thanks, Bacon Today.

The True Love Roast takes the holiday meal even further than the Turbaconducken by stuffing the Turkey with no less than 11 birds (making a dozen in all). This monstrosity will feed 125 people and set you back $1350. We are humbled, impressed, and a little freaked out by this British farmer's poultry prowess.

The True Love Roast: Romantic, eh?

If you've begun your holiday shopping but are stumped about what to get for your favorite carnivore, consider bacon dental floss. It does actually clean your teeth, and leaves them with that just-brushed-with-pork feeling. Win win, right?


Seeing all of this together is a little overwhelming. Maybe we'll just stick with a good old fashioned bacon cocktail.

Vampire cookies and Zombie cocktails

Happy Halloween! With the recent popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight franchise and HBO’s True Blood, it’s pretty obvious that vampires are everywhere. Including our kitchen. And when we came across this recipe from the Baking Bites blog for Vampire Cookies, we decided it was time to pay culinary tribute to tribute to the most ubiquitous, and sexiest, of all of the undead.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ sticks of butter, softened
• ½ cup sugar
  
• 1 egg
  
• ½ tsp vanilla
  
• 1/8 tsp almond extract
  
• 1 ½ cups flour
  
• ¼ tsp salt
• approx. ½ cup red jelly (use any flavor but make sure it’s not chunky or seedy, kind of like what your mom used to put in your PB&Js)

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and extracts.
Add flour and salt to the bowl and mix them into the butter-sugar mixture at low speed until dough is just combined.

Important to note, lest you begin baking late into the evening: Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

For your own Vampire Weekend (yeah, we went there): While you’re waiting, make some cocktails and watch an ivy league kid channel John Cusack and Robert Smith:

Preheat oven to 325F. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is about 1/8-inch thick. Use a cookie cutter to cut out 2-inch rounds.
Place rounds on a baking sheet, put a teaspoon of jam on each of them and cover with another round of dough. Press edges down lightly, pinching the edges onto the cookie sheet. Use a toothpick and poke two small holes (like a vampire bite) in the top of each cookie.


They look like little ghosts!

Here's the thing: this dough is damn nigh impossible to roll out. No matter how cold it was or how much flour we used, it still became a sticky mess on the rolling pin and our hands. We finally abandoned the cookie cutter method and rolled the dough into balls, then smushed them ourselves into little jelly pockets.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are set.
Cool for about 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Dip a toothpick in some extra red jam and re-insert in the “bite” holes you made before baking to emphasize them, if not already red. Draw a blood trickle down from one of the bites with the jam, because that looks pretty badass.

The result was scary.

These expand a lot, some ending up completely flat, and they didn't end up looking how we hoped (see Baking Bites for a picture of our hopes). But if nothing else they are tasty, and the hot jam squirts into your mouth when you bite into the cookie, which is just the kind of vampire effect we were looking for.

Though they aren’t as sexy, zombies are also pretty popular:

The Zombie was created before WWII by Donn Beach, the man responsible for the popularization of tiki drinks in America. As the story goes, Beach served the first Zombie to a patron as a hangover cure. How did the drinker feel after? Like the living dead, of course. (For the longer version of the Don the Beachcomber story, plus other great details about rum in general, pick up Wayne Curtis’ And a Bottle of Rum.)

Like the Mai Tai and the rest of the tiki clan, the Zombie’s a massive combination of tropical fruit juices and liquor. And there are scores of recipes for it, all with their own tweaks. The basic gist of most of them is several types of rum, lime juice, pineapple or other tropical juice, often a shot of apricot brandy, then garnished with mint, powdered sugar and a float of 151-proof rum.

But for how much us New Yorkers like to boast about having everything at our fingertips, we weren’t able to find a few common ingredients. If you know where to find orgeat syrup or falernum in the city please tell us. Otherwise one of the upcoming posts will involve making our own falernum. We also opted out of the usual jigger of apricot brandy.

Despite skipping a few pieces, we still have a hell of a lot of ingredients:

There were so many recipes, all of them different from one another, that we improvised a bit. Here’s our first version:

• 1 1/2 oz Bacardi white rum
  
• 1 ½ oz Bacardi gold rum
  
• Dash Angostura bitters
  
• 1 oz Passion fruit nectar
  
• 1 oz Pineapple juice
  
• 1 oz Papaya juice
  
• ½ oz Pernod

Shake with ice and strain into a tall glass filled with ice. Top with a float of Bacardi 151, powdered sugar, mint sprig and fruit garnish (in our case papaya and pineapple).
For the number of bartender’s guides that call for it, we can’t understand why anyone would want this drink with Pernod. The liquorice aftertaste turns it from a tropical drink into something medicinal. In our second try, we skipped the Pernod and added a little maraschino liqueur and a smidge of superfine sugar.

Much better, but next time we'll probably add BRRAAAAAAINS...