Nothing funny about feldspar

Original recipe from here:

4 cups firmly-packed kale
1 Tbsp extra virgin Olive Oil
1 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 375°F. Wash, dry and stem the kale. Coat with oil. (A big baggie works well for this.) Roast for 5 minutes. Turn and roast 7-10 minutes more, until it becomes crispy. Remove from oven, sprinkle with salt & serve immediately. (2 servings)

I made this a couple of weeks ago, and Plagioclase has been asking for it ever since. (The only reason I’m posting it is because I don’t want to lose it, and I want to be sure I get the time/temp right.)

I don’t have sea salt — kosher seems to work ok. The kale seems limp when you turn it, but it does crisp right up. Very tasty. Sometime I’m going to try it with some other sturdy greens, like maybe beet or turnip.

Tonight’s update: the first time I made this with bagged/washed kale. Tonight I used farmer’s market kale. I had better luck with the bagged stuff — I don’t think I dried it well enough so some just ended up steamed and not crunchy. It still tasted ok, but it just didn’t have the crispiness that we loved the first time around.

This is a “I have it in the fridge, now what do I do with it, and I need a salad!” kind of recipe.

Kernels from one ear of corn
3 Tomatillos
One lime
1 Tablespoon Mint Chutney

Cut the corn from the cob, and roast in a dry pan until the kernels get a bit singed and are easy to break apart. Put into bowl.

Broil the tomatillos for as long as you can stand. The longer, more charred, the better. Chop up into corn-sized pieces and put into the bowl with corn in it.

Juice the lime in a separate bowl, and blend in the mint chutney. Pour over the corn + tomatillos and mix well.

Serve at whatever temperature it ends up being. Ours was warmer than room temperature, but not hot.

2 lbs ricotta cheese (whole milk)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
12 oz chocolate (I used about 8 ounces bittersweet and 4 oz unsweet), melted and cooled
1 cup toasted salted cashew pieces (Trader Joe’s)
1 prepared crust (I used a large graham cracker crust)
Some more nuts

Beat cheese, sugar and vanilla until light. Beat in chocolate. Stir in nuts. Dump into pie crust. Sprinkle with some more nuts. Put in the fridge to cool.

Serve with raspberry sauce (12-16 oz frozen raspberries, boiled with 1/4 cup water and a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Sieve, boil down to desired consistency.)

The original for this recipe is half the size — I doubled it because I had the ricotta and the larger crust. It also includes some heavy cream, which might have made the filling damper, or it may have been compensating for the low-fat ricotta. In any case, I didn’t use it because I didn’t have any, and I figured the whole milk stuff was enough to provide richness.

I also didn’t use semi-sweet chips because I seldom use them. They’re too sweet for me. If I had, I would have cut down the sugar.

This first try through, the filling seemed to be rather dry and stiff even before chilling (almost like sticky cookie dough). It broke the crust as I was trying to pat it into place. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the cream? Oh well.

In the end, it’s a very dense chocolate cheesecake, that is somehow missing something. It most definitely isn’t bad — just not as groaningly good as I hoped it would be. It could be that even a little bit of salt mixed it (the salted nuts just disappeared) would be enough.

All in all, it’s dead easy, and as long as you get decent chocolate, tastes pretty good too. Next time I might add some cream (or milk) to see if a little more liquid gives it less body. And I think I’ll make it a smaller version.

Putting this here where I might be able to find it again. Bought the “special” tin, and found that it didn’t include the microwave instructions — ’twas a frantic internet search…

Baked Corn Supreme

Take half a box (just under 4 oz) of John Cope’s Toasted Dried Sweet Corn and grind it in a food processor. Add 1¾ cups cold milk, 1½ Tablespoons sugar, 2 Tablespoons melted butter and 2 eggs and blend for 15 seconds or so.

Put into well-buttered casserole, cover and microwave for 6 minutes, stir, and microwave another 6 minutes. Put into oven (uncovered) to brown.

Makes about 4 servings.

Thank the internet for the basic recipe, which I modified to what I had on hand:

• 1 can cream style corn
• 1 can’s worth of frozen corn kernels
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 1 box Jiffy cornbread mix

Stir together everything except the Jiffy mix until it’s well mixed. Blend in the Jiffy mix, but don’t over beat. Pour into a (buttered) 9 × 13 baking dish and bake for 1 hour at 350°.

Next time, I’ll butter the pan — there was some stickage which was surprising given the stick of butter in the batter.

This turned out to be very tasty, and not too sweet (or “gooey” which for Plagioclase’s mother is a sin on par with un-well-done meat). It’s more of a “spoon bread,” definitely a side dish. The browned bits at the edges were mucho yummy. Of course, Plagioclase immediately started suggesting to put in chiles and cheese. I might try that the third time I make this recipe — it’s really on the “incredibly good as it is” segment of its arc.