Praline Monkey Bread

(Have you ever seen a more tasty looking pile of goo in your life?)

1 pkg. frozen rolls (I use Rich's or Bridgeford)
1 box of butterscotch pudding - not instant
1/2 c. pecans
1/2 c. unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 tsp. cinnamon

Sprinkle a few pecan pieces in the bottom of a greased or Pam-sprayed Bundt pan. Place frozen rolls in a circle around the pan. Sprinkle with the dry pudding mix. Melt butter in a pan. Add the remaining ingredients to the butter and pour this mixture over the rolls. Cover with a cloth and let stand overnight on a counter. Next morning, bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes, then invert onto a serving dish.

It Aint Easy Being Responsible to a Vast Internet Audience

 Everyone has their own Christmas eve routines and the Stoops family is no exception to this statement. Years ago, much of the night was taken up with stuffing stockings and putting all manner of Santa surprises together - bikes, strollers, scooters....you name it and we've probably spent a least one Christmas cursing over some incomprehensible instructions, in the hope of delighting a child's heart.

In our household, Christmas eve has also included putting together a pecan praline monkey bread so that it can sit on the counter all night before being baked for breakfast the next morning. In the 16 years since this tradition began there has only been one monkeybreadless Christmas morning. And here's what happened that year. I lovingly prepared the fixings, put the bundt pan on the counter, covered it with a dishcloth and went off to bed with visions of gooey sticky buns in my head. When it was time to come downstairs and heat up the oven, I glanced over to my covered culinary creation and noticed it didn't look quite as expectantly puffed up as usual. Upon careful inspection, it became obvious something had gone very wrong with the rolls used for this recipe because they were in the same compact, completely unrisen state as the night before. Hoping for a special oven miracle from God, I baked them anyway only to be greeted with now hot compact and completely unrisen rolls. So, no monkey bread for breakfast that morning. 

It's a great recipe to use when you have company. In fact, the first time I ever ate the rolls, I WAS the visitor. The summer before Brian turned two we were visiting with my friend Iris Bachmann, during the time she lived outside of Akron, Ohio. Iris is a woman who knows how to feed a crowd - often using recipes handed down from her mom, the school cafeteria lady. Iris' recipes are the kind that always turn out well. (Except if you use rolls that refuse to rise.)

All that said...I had my second ever cooking of the praline monkey bread disaster this morning. Imagine the horror when I began taking the rolls out of the pan only to realize they weren't going to fall out in their usually perfectly formed manner. Here I am, camera in hand, waiting to enthrall my subscribers with visual proof of my amazing culinary skill and I'm faced with what looks like a pile of goo. Oh well, at least they rose properly. 

(This is the night before so it's OK for the rolls to look un-risen)

(Ready to cook)

Recipe for Chicken Kiev

2/3 cup sweet butter
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
2 T. parmesan cheese
1 t. basil leaves
1 t. oregano leaves
1/2 t. garlic salt
1/4 t. salt
4 chicken breasts, boneless and skinned
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter. Combine bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, basil, oregano, garlic salt, and salt,. Dip chicken breasts in melted butter, then coat with crumb mixture; reserve remaining butter. Place in an ungreased pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes; or until chicken is fork tender. Meanwhile, add juice, green onions, and parsley to reserved melted butter (about 1/2 cup). When chicken is golden brown, pour butter sauce over chicken. Continue baking for 3 to 5 minutes or until sauce is heated through.

(This recipe went from Becky's collection, to mine, to the Penasquitos Christian Preschool's cookbook. I told you I've been making this Chcken Kiev for a long time!)

Chicken Kiev

I've been making this recipe for years - though I've never considered it to be a true chicken kiev, based on other versions I've seen. I mention this because I don't any of my vast number of subscribers to go about making this recipe and then feel cheated when it doesn't turn out as they imagined.

The recipe originated with my cousin Becky. She comes from a long line of very fine Southern cooks. In addition to that cooking gene, Becky also picked up a lot of expertise in Italian cooking when she married into a large Italian family. The marriage didn't last but her association with "The Firm" most certainly did - along with insider information on lots of very fine cooking secrets and recipes.

I first had this chicken kiev years and years ago. Becky was, in her usual completely nonplussed manner, serving a huge crowd of Becketts. If it were me having to come up with such a huge meal, I'd have been a nervous wreck but, for Becky, entertaining in big numbers was no big deal. I can still see 3 jelly roll pans completely filled with chicken breasts - and I can still remember how good they tasted.
Her recipe conjures up happy memories of West Virginia and lots of beloved family members gathered round a table laden with good foods.

Now if I could just learn to duplicate her fantastic cheese secrets!

Recipe for Potatoes Gratin

Awesomely Simple Potato Gratin
Adapted from The Art of Simple Food via Smitten Kitchen

As I mentioned above, potato gratins are infinitely adaptable, so have fun with this recipe. We sautéed half a pound of thinly-sliced shiitakes with one small minced shallot until they were softened and spread the mixture between potato layers. And then we fought over the corner pieces, but that part is optional, and maybe even avoidable if your household is full of grownups.

3 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces, plus an additional pat for buttering gratin dish
4 large yellow potatoes* (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup milk, half-and-half or cream (if using something richer than milk, you can skip the butter)
2 ounces cheese, grated or crumbled (Parmesan or Gruyere are the classics, but that doesn’t mean that goat cheese, blue cheese or any of your favorites won’t work as well) [optional]  (I USED GRUYERE)

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9- by 12-inch gratin dish with the pat of butter. Slice the potatoes as thinly as you can (a mandoline works great for this) and arrange them in a layer, overlapping the edges slightly like shingles. Sprinkle the potatoes with salt and freshly ground pepper and don’t be stingy — this is where the bulk of your flavor comes from and a third of the cheese before before repeating this process with your remaining potato slices. (If you are using a sauteed vegetable filling, this is where you’d want to add half of it.) Depending on how thinly sliced your potatoes are, you should end up with approximately three layers, with a third of the cheese between each layer. Reserve the last third of your cheese for later.

Carefully pour the milk over the potatoes. It should come up to the bottom of the top layer of potatoes; add more if this was not enough. Dot the top of the gratin with the three tablespoons of butter and bake it for about an hour. Halfway through the baking time, take the gratin dish out of the oven and gental press the potatoes flat with a spatula to keep the top moist. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the gratin for the last 15 minutes of baking. The gratin is done when the potatoes are soft and the top is golden brown.

Tim came home and wanted to know what I was making for dinner. The news that potatoes gratin was part of the menu brought a hearty endorsement from him, much to my surprise. "That's the one with the thin sliced potatoes, right?" he asked, before giving his approval.

It's definitely unusual to have one of my male children say they like something I cook so I was somewhat surprised - and a bit nervous  because, unbeknownst to the family, I changed up my potatoes gratin recipe, using one from Smitten Kitchen. In my usual pessimistic way, I had visions of Tim having a fit when he first tasted the difference in this dish, as compared to the one I've been making.

Well, to heck with Tim! For all my trepidation prior to serving and eating Deb's recipe, I LOVED the potatoes. Loved in that way where I could've easily taken a spoon and eaten up every bit of what was left in the pan. Heaven in a casserole pan.

Not only was the dish yummy, it also gave me a strange sense of accomplishment in the preparation of all the ingredients. While Deb bills it as her "Simple Potatoes Gratin" there was one highly tricky step. I had to, gasp, season the potato layers with an UNSPECIFIED amount of salt and pepper. WHAT???? Me, the Follow the Recipe Queen being put in the position of rakishly throwing in seasoning, with no care whatsoever for exact measurements???? Deb said to be liberal with the salt and pepper so I was - and the results were really, really, really good.

Flat Apple Pie

I've been wanting to try this recipe for some time - probably spurred on by the memory of apple scent wafting through the house. And then there's my OTHER reason - an excuse to use one of my favorite kitchen gadgets of all times, the apple corer/peeler.

Talk about kitchen therapy! Is there anything more peacefully industrious than turning a little crankshift loaded with an apple about to be stripped of it's skin? I absolutely adore watching the uniformly thin and ever growing ribbon of apple peel gracefully pirouette to the counter below. And how magical is it that such a funky looking little gadget can produce those peelings with such ease? Wonder upon wonders, even as I'm marveling at what comes off the apple, that same little machine is secretly hulling out the insides of the speared fruit such that when I pull the shaft away out pops a perfectly shaped core. Let's face it - there's not much you can do in a kitchen that could possibly provide more mystery and marvel than the lowly apple corer/peeler.

As suggested in the recipe, I made the crusts and froze them ahead of time. According to the Pioneer Cookwoman (or whatever she calls herself) this would produce the flakiest crust ever. I'm not talking ever for me (cause that would be easy to accomplish) but EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. (Until you roll out the next batch of flakiest EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE dough.)

I fear I'm a dough dummy. Crust cretin. Mine never taste exactly as marvelous as described in whatever cook book I'm working with. And, the flakiness quotient is also a bit suspect. This one was definitely flaky -but was it tooooo flaky? Did flakiness detract from the ability to stay together when cutting? So many quandaries when working with dough.

Putting this pie together was very simple and the results were tasty. Would I serve this to the Obamas, if they happened to drop by sometime soon. No. But, for a fall afternoon treat, the pie turned out pretty darned good.