Stuffed Shells, the Drag Queen of Coffeepot Mac and Cheese

My niece Cait loves to visit St. Croix and loves to cook with me. Our sharing the kitchen has been written about before when she did a guest post on making Enchiladas and when we had our Christmas Flat Bread Pizza Contest for the most artistic Pizza Pie. This trip we decided to do Stuffed Shells as a big step up from traditional Mac and Cheese that I made with my grandchildren and Great Nephew. Of course the step up is in sophisticated flavors and not complexity, but just like Mach and Cheese it is a very hardy addition to any meal and in our case it was dinner with nothing else except the salad.

Since Cait had just been to see Priscilla on stage in New York and loved it and I have a copy of the movie and love it, the name just naturally evolved. The most popular definition for “Drag Queen” at Urban Dictionary is “a man who dresses as a flamboyant woman in order to entertain others.” As Mac and Cheese goes, this hearty rendition is flamboyant and entertaining so I guess it qualifies.

Stuffed Shells Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups shells

1 tsp salt

water

8 oz Ricotta

4 oz mozzarella

2 oz Parmesan

Tomato Sauce

Directions:

1. Place two cup of shells in the coffeepot with a teaspoon of salt. Add ten cups to the water reserve and let perk on the shells. Cook for 15 minutes on the warming plate. Do not over cook,
2. Mix all the other ingredients in the bowl. The amount of tomatoe sause is flexible and to taste but ½ cup is a good place to start.
   

   All ingredients mixed until uniform

3. Drain the pasta after it’s cooked and rinse with cold water.
4. Add pasta to cheese mixture and mix until uniform.
5. Return Mixture to pot and cook 2-3 hours more.

This was so delicious, that when I made it yesterday, I ate the whole pot which is really not the purpose of portion controlled coffeepot cooking. It just gets difficult scaling down below these levels so I made the same amount, I made the first time with Cait. At least when Cait was here, we shared the pot, made a salad and both had enough to eat.

Pulled Chicken Sandwich

While I don’t as a habit buy red meat, it is not really a major health issue with me and I will eat it if served, especially if well cooked. When I visit my Daughter and son-in-law, I tend to eat more meat in a week than I would at home in a month. My daughter Dagny is an excellent cook and she uses her crockpot to cut down on evening cooking time. When I visited, she had me make a pulled pork which was melt in your moth delicious and nothing could be easier. Essentially you slow cook the pork and onions then poor off the juices, shred the meat and add back a red sauce mixture of your choice.

Of course I liked the meal and decided to try the same concept with pulled chicken. Since I didn’t really remember what she had me do for the red sauce, I decided to use my home made BBQ sauce that I had used on the Sloppy Joe.

Ingredients:

1 T olive oil

1 medium onion rough cut

4 cloves garlic minced

1 piece of chicken breast

1 oz. Rum, white wine or  water

½ cup Homemade BBQ sauce

Roll to serve it on

Directions:

1. Add oil, onions and garlic to the pot.
   

   Glazed onions and garlic

2. Add Chicken breast and rum (Some liquid is necessary to promote heat distribution.)
   

   Add Chicken Breast and Rum

3. Cook until tender about 4 to 8 hours. (Whatever is best for your schedule.)
   

   Cook until chicken can be shredded

4. Remove chicken and shred with forks.
   

   Shredded Chicken

5. Poor liquid off onions and garlic. Discard or save for soup base.
6. Return chicken to pot, add BBQ sauce and stir until uniform.
   

   Mix Onions, Garlic, Chicken and BBQ Sauce.

7. Place on hot plate and reheat.

I normally don’t eat bread, but for this meal, I purchased some delicious onion rolls and made this a treat as I ate two sandwiches.

Simply Delicious!!

Beautiful Stuffed Red Peppers!

While getting my computer organized which is just another way of wasting time, I actually found a copy of the Stuffed Red Pepper served with mashed potatoes and sauce. It really was a beautiful meal fit for a king or at least this old man. There is no need to post a recipe as the following post is for Stuffed Green Peppers.

Meanwhile, I don’t know if Ill get back to writing more about food but I certainly enjoy the visitors to coffeepotcooking.wordpress.com. There were about 13,000 visitors last year and it seems that the most popular reason why visitors come is to learn about coffeepot cooking in general but there are many who come to find recipes for Puerto Rican food which I learned to cook from my friend Chino. Of course the disasters are all mine as Chino is no longer alive to give constructive criticism. (It might be better if you used cilantro instead of parsley.)

Chino was a very positive human being and the most negative thing he ever told me was “It”s alright.” Of course, I figured out that that was a very negative assessment and I should try again. However, when he said something was good or great he meant it and we used to trade foods we cooked on almost a daily basis.

Of course some of the recipes I intend to post in the future have Puerto Rican influences inspired by Chino and some have Italian Influences inspired by Dolores. Others come from my daughter who is an excellent cook with Caribbean roots. Oh and I would be rude to ignore Monica who has taught me to love Indian food which has a tremendous influence on all Caribbean foods.

Well, I will try to remain committed, at least until I publish the best of what I have been eating so that I don’t have to keep wasting time rooting through piles of paper recipes. I am not quite so manic about what I eat as I have learned to control my input to reasonable amounts and yes I achieved one goal last December of losing 100 pounds from my peak weight (265). I am now contented holding 172 plus or minus 4 pounds. As to exercise I like walking and do about 25 miles in a normal week and last Saturday walked a 26.4 mile Marathon in 10 hours and 15 minutes.

Stuffed peppers and coleslaw.

When it comes to food, I simply can’t resist a bargain especially when I think about low bulk prices paid to farmers and the much higher price in the store. I am really not sure how much a farmer gets paid for red bell peppers but in our local stores they are generally around $5.00 per pound. So when I saw big beautiful Red Bell Peppers on sale for $1.69, I compulsively brought 2 having no idea what I was going to do with them.

My mother would have had no problem. She used to make fantastic stuffed bell peppers using raw rice. Whenever I tried to duplicate her recipe, I failed so I asked to watch her do it and finally understood. Her secret was essentially moisture control which is far easier when you are cooking for six instead of one or two and have the time to do it in an oven in a big roasting pan. I adapted her recipe and they came out perfect as I alson solved the problem of how to make great stuffed peppers in the coffeepot or crockpot. The secrete of my success is to start with cooked rice.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures. I have cooked this a few times since and because I was too lazy to post the recipe on line, I had to search for the recipe each time among the stacks of paper on my desk. While I have not been searching for new recipes as much as I should, I returned to coffeepotcooking to post this recipe and found my friend Monica from London has started publishing new recipes which I now want to try. It must be karma.

Also I have another new fish recipes that I want to post so I no longer have to search through scraps of paper plus the new ones from Monica that I will try, so will probably post them also. It really is easier at my age to search on line then to remember them or even hunt for scraps of paper. Besides in a sick sort of way, I get to haunt my children, niece, and grandchildren as the keep searching my site for recipes after I am long gone which I figure is about 30 years from now.

Mom’s Stuffed Peppers Coffeepot Style

Ingredients:

Stuffing Ingredients:

1/3 to ½ pound ground beef

1 small onion diced

½ cup cooked rice (either white or brown)

4 oz. Tomato sauce (canned or Italian)

½ -1 tsp garlic salt

¼ tsp pepper

Additional Ingredients:

2 medium bell peppers (red or Green Look Best when cooked)

4-8 oz. Tomato sauce

Directions:

1.Combine all the stuffing ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix until uniform.

Mixed ingredients

2.Cut tops off of peppers and stuff with mixture.

SWtuff the Peppers

3.Place in coffeepot

Stuffed Peppers in the Pot

4.Add additional sauce until just completely covered.

Cover with sauce

5.Cook covered with foil 4-8 hours until top is cooked.

Cook covered with Foil

6.Serve with rice or coleslaw.

Served with rice

This is one of those nostalgia meals that my Mom did quite well. In those days hamburger was actually cheap and peppers were free in summer. A can of Goya Tomato Sauce is still only 35 cents so I call that a real bargain for a good product.

End note: if you are really foolish enough to want to start wit uncooked rice, I would use 1/4 cup brown rice and 1/2 cup of water plus 1 T of water and cook 8-12 hours or essentially all day  I simply dont believe white rice will work unless it’s microwave rice or minute rice both of which are expensive.

Seasoned French Fried Yams

As I write this post, I am weighing 170 pounds which is down about 95 pounds from my peak including a loss of 75 pounds over the past two years as documented in this blog. Regular readers recognize it has not been an easy period in my life cycle as I have had to deal with the death of my wife, my mother, mother-in-law and some very dear friends but that is part of the life cycle. I have also had to address health issues of a very minor stroke, disc replacement surgery and and a bad back. This is also part of the life cycle.

On the other side, I now have the resting heartbeat of an athletic 18 year old (below 50); I have the energy to walk 35 miles per week and still work in my yard every day; I have reduced my blood pressure medicine four fold; I still skip with my granddaughters; and I even jog on occasion, especially when I am showing off for other senior citizens or running with my granddaughters.

As far as cooking and food goes, I use my coffeepot for convenience in the same way a family of four would depend on their Crockpot. I sometimes use the stove and charcoal grill, but have learned to cook portion controlled meals for one with no leftovers. I now have more energy to be physical and less time for the computer. Therefor, I am more focused on the exercise and physical side of a healthy life than I am on controlling my meals and writing about it. Also, since this is a blog about coffeepot cooking, I don’t usually post recipes cooked on the stove.

The problem with not formally documenting my recipes is that when I want to repeat a meal or my daughter asks me about what I did a few months later, I have to start all over with hours hunting for the recipe. I really have never been organized with my recipes except at coffeepot cooking.

French fried yams is really not an old recipe or one pulled from on-line. It is a variant of the Yams that Cait and I cooked at Christmas a year ago. I loved the flavor but I also liked fried food which I only eat at home where I know what oil was used and how old it is. Last night was fried fish, and I just didn’t feel like traditional French fried white potatoes. I pulled the spice blend from the previous Yam recipe which was a hit and decided to try the seasoning with fried Yams. They were great and I will definitely do them again over Christmas so that is a good reason to write down the recipe.

Seasoned French Fried Yams

Spice Blend

½ tsp ginger

½ tsp powered garlic

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp turmeric

1 yam sliced into 1/8 to ¼ inch slices

Blend spices in zip lock bag and shake until blended. Add sliced yam and shake until evenly coated. Heat oil on medium flame until it reaches 360 Fahrenheit. Cook for five minutes or until floating. Drain and dry with paper towels.

Enjoy!!! These were quite good and different for a change of pace.

End note: I use a tall asparagus cooker that came with a removable basket as my deep fat fryer for one. This tall but narrow pot takes about 1 ½ quarts or liters to fill it half way which allows more than enough room when the moist potatoes bubble up when first added to the pot.

Bangers and Beans

When I was in London, my son insisted I try the fairly traditional “Bangers and Beans” for breakfast. I thought both were incredibly bland but in defense of English Food, he said that the bangers (sausage) ranged from something near a hot dog to incredibly spicy wild boar sausages. They even have veggie bangers. The beans have just as broad a range and I suggested the basic breakfast beans we ate were close to Campbell’s pink beans right from the can.

Given the broad range of ingredients, I figured I could use just about any sausage and any beans and still be entitled to the cool name. Of course with an American accent, I served my Banger with ketchup, mustard and onions on a whole wheat roll.

Bangers and Beans

Ingredients:

Sausage ( I used Turkey Kielbasa)

Beans (Bush’s original baked beans)
1 tsp mustard added to beans

1 T ketchup or barbecue sauce added to beans.

1 small diced onion

Directions:

1. Add beans, mustard, ketchup and ½ diced onion to the coffeepot. Mix until uniform.
2. Add Turkey Kielbasa to the pot – or any other sausage you want to try.
3. Cook for 2 – 4 hours. It will be done in 2 hours and still not yet over cooked in 4 hours.
4. Typically American – Place sausage in roll and garnish with the rest of the onions, ketchup, mustard or relish.

This recipe begs for personal experimentation. What type of sausage? Bratwurst, Regular Kielbasa, or the humble hot dog. What type of Mustard? Spicy Brown, French’s or Dijon. What type of Beans? Pink, Baked or Red.

So simple to make but so many different ways to do it. When you first start cooking, experiment and have fun just like I do with my granddaughter. I have made other variations of this meal with my granddaughters but sometimes, I just like to act like a kid and do this on my own.

I was more than a little flattered to get an unsolicited mention in http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/ The detailed post is here. If you read it carefully, I’m still not sure I was featured because I am clever enough to cook in my coffeepot and make good food or because I cook with my beautiful granddaughters and include them in fun projects.

Oh well, either way, I am still flattered.

Now I’m just dying to get an Easy Bake Oven and expanding my culinary horizons with portion controlled meals. Maybe even Beef Wellington for one.

Pasta and Turkey Meatballs

Tonight was a typical night of coffeepot cooking . I was just a little too lazy to do anything else so I got some cheap sauce and the thing that most of these sauces lack are the spices because they are the most expensive ingredient.

No problem!

I went outside and picked a fresh bay leaf, fresh basil and fresh oregano. I put them in the pot and poured sauce on top. I microwaved 3 turkey meatballs (3 minutes) and added them to the pot and went and took a shower. The amount I cooked was too small for a crockpot and I still didn’t have to watch the stove.

I did have to boil a pot of water to make the pasta, because the only pasta that works well in the coffeepot is angle hair and I didn’t have any. For those of you trying to do this in a coffeepot who still want advice, here is the original post.

I plan on being creative mañana but we will see whether that means tomorrow or just some day in the future.

Microgreen Soup

When I Googled “microgreen soup” and “cooked microgreens”, I found nothing in the first category and only limited information in the second. I was searching because I stumbled across the microgreen concept and found that I could grow a crop of microgreens hydroponically without mess or much effort all year long. I could keep several tray going and have fresh greens daily.

The problem was, microgreens wouldn’t bring much added value to my life unless I could discover unique uses. I tried broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and arugula and the only salad green that was a keeper in my mind was arugula because it substituted for something I was already eating a lot of. The others were OK, but since I buy reasonably priced and hydroponically grown cucumbers, watercress, Chinese spinach, and arugula, the other microgreens don’t add much to the salad except as a garnish. Also, since I live alone, a lot of what I grew was going bad.

I love soups of all kinds and I have fond memories of the children’s story Stone Soup and have made it with magic stones with my daughter and granddaughters. I let them choose the smoothest magic stone they can find which is then washed prior to cooking.

This recipe is as close as possible to making a fantastic soup out of next to nothing and I used wilted root cellar crops that would eventually go bad. This is actually two recipes as the blended soup is excellent for lunch or a side dish. I just added the potatoes and carrots as I wanted a heartier soup for my dinner.

Excellent Vegan Microgreen Soup

Ingredients

1 T. olive oil

1 medium onion chopped

2 garlic cloves diced

2 celery stalks diced

1 oz. Rum

3 cups water

6-8 oz. microgreens (mixed broccoli and cauliflower)

1 T. Dried parsley

½ tsp. Thyme

1 tsp. salt

1 large potato cubed

2 carrots coined.

Directions

This recipe can be scaled up and made in either a Crockpot or coffeepot. Since I am cooking for one, I used my coffeepot.

1. Add oil to pot and put on hot plate of coffeemaker.
2. Chop onions, dice celery and garlic add to the pot
3. Add rum
4. Add three cups of water to the coffeemaker and let it drip into the pot. This will heat up everything quicker.
5. When onions are soft (about 1 hour), add the microgreens and cook for 1 hour more.
6. Add spices and salt to the pot. Mix thoroughly.
7. Place in blender and blend until the consistency of pea soup.

Taste this soup right now! It is fantastic!.

8. Coin carrots and add to pot.
9. Dice potatoes into ½ inch cubes and add to pot.
10. Cook for 4 more hours and serve.

This should have been enough for two meals but I enjoyed it so much, I only had a cup left over which wasn’t enough for a full meal. I really love this soup. It has only natural ingredients with no artificial thickeners, or bullion of unknown origin.