Sour Cream Pancakes

Wow, I am in love with this sour cream pancakes recipe from The Pioneer Woman.  I stumbled upon it by accident while searching the internet for a way to use up extra sour cream at breakfast time... awesome find!

These pancakes are so incredibly tender.  Mostly made of sour cream and egg, with only a teeny bit of flour and leavener, the recipe seems a little bizarre, but it turns out these incredibly light, soft, tender pancakes that are still very rich tasting.  I loved them, and I'm not even really a big pancake person, to be honest. 

Give them a try!

Cheesecake Ice Cream

When preparing for our non-Super Bowl Super Bowl party, as a result of some faulty spur-of-the-moment grams-to-cups-to-ounces calculations, I over-purchased both sour cream and cream cheese... not wanting it to go bad, I decided to put it to good use in this very easy and very rich cheesecake ice cream, from my favorite ice cream cookbook, David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop."

I had leftover "fudge ripple" from my tin roof ice cream, so I layered that with the cheesecake ice cream, and, while I was at it, dumped in the closest thing I could find to graham crackers here: some crumbled "digestive" biscuit cookie things... I was hoping the cookies would simulate the graham cracker crust of a cheesecake. 

Came together pretty nicely!  The ice cream is great- super creamy and rich, just like cheesecake.  I bet you could throw all sorts of other things in there if you weren't feeling the chocolate... strawberry, blueberry.

P.S.: As a funny aside, I noticed that many products at the grocery stores here in Indonesia, whether made here or elsewhere (such as Australia or Thailand), are sold in bags... sour cream (see below), cooking oil, mayonnaise, among other things.  

P.P.S.: Turns out I didn't actually use cream cheese in this recipe, but rather the oft sought-after "cream chess."

Zucchini and Corn Fritters with Black Beans and Chipotle Cream

Zucchini and corn fritters: a good way to use up some summer veggies... fresh sweet corn cut off the cob and shredded zucchini. Topped off with a little bit of chipotle sour cream (or yogurt if you prefer)- chipotle in adobo sauce, green onion, lime- and some black beans.

Spicy, creamy, sweet, fresh. Mmmm.

Christy and Brendan made a similar recipe- rice and corn cakes - and said it was also delicious. I'll give it a try next time I have leftover rice!

Chicken Stroganoff

Tim is making his annual March pilgrimage to the a Pogues concert at 9:30 Club, so I decided to cook a mushroom dish while he's gone (he's not a mushroom lover). Beef Stroganoff is one of my all-time favorites, but I'm a little beefed out these days, so I made a chicken Stroganoff instead. Not quite as awesomely delicious as the beef version, but pretty tasty!

Sweet Potato, Apple, Cheddar and Caramelized Onion Gratin

This sweet potato, apple, cheddar and caramelized onion gratin has a lot of potential. The flavor was great: spicy, sweet, creamy. The texture was a little off, partially due to my inconsistent slicing, but partially due to either too much sauce or a too-runny sauce. I can't decide. But the flavor was delicious enough to try again! I'll report back with any changes I make...

Fire-Roasted Corn and Tomato Salsa

Tomato time continues!

Today's recipe was a fire-roasted corn and Roma tomato salsa, served on top of chicken quesadillas (chicken breast was rubbed with cumin, chili powder and garlic salt before cooking) with chipotle-lime sour cream. Yum.
This salsa is really nice- it's fresh, it has a kick, and the sweetness of the fresh corn compliments the acidity of the tomato and lime. Super easy, too, especially if you don't bother to peel the tomatoes (which I didn't because I was lazy).

Spicy Black Bean Balls

Spicy black bean balls... no relation to chocolate salty balls.

Based on this spicy black bean burger recipe from Real Men Eat Green (a cute website from an earnest Canadian trying to convince men that eating and living green is cool/good for you), I decided to make these into dippable balls (ha! I said 'dippable balls'!) rather than burgers since we didn't have any buns.

Served with a chipotle/lime/cilantro sour cream dipping sauce. Mmmm.

To Die For: Beef Stroganoff

Omg. This beef stroganoff recipe is to die for... buttery, mushroomy, meaty.

The recipe calls for 2.5 lbs of sirloin, which is pretty pricey, but totally worth it. Be sure not to overcook the beef!! The only change Chuck made to the recipe was to substitute sour cream for the creme fraiche or whipping cream the recipe called for.

Leftover Cranberry Sauce Coffee Cake

Even after turning some of my leftover Thanksgiving cranberry sauce into an appetizer, I had a ton left. This time I tried swirling some of into a basic sour cream coffee cake... and I still have like three cups left. Oy.

Came out pretty good, despite a tragic glazing incident:

Cajun Spiced Scallops with a Sour Cream/Brown Sugar/Lemon Sauce on Sauteed Kale

For Martha's birthday dinner, Mike was searing Cajun-seasoned scallops and making a sour cream, brown sugar, and lemon sauce for them while I was sauteeing some kale in olive oil, garlic and a splash of chicken stock. At some point along the way, as we jostled each other for elbow room at the cooktop, we decided that the scallops and sauce might be best served on top of the kale. It worked out perfectly!

Neither of us used recipes, so I can't link you, but the basic idea was thus: sprinkle scallops with Cajun seasoning and sear in a cast iron pan, saute the kale with minced garlic and olive oil, then splash the chicken broth in and cover it for a few minutes to soften the tough veggie. The sauce is a mystery to me... Mike? My only input was "Add more lemon juice."

Crispy Stuffed Potato Skins!

Crispy, cheesy, bacony... fantastic. I'm bringing these to a football party tonight.

This method from Simply Recipes is a little bit labor intensive, but not difficult. It involves 3 separate baking times: first to cook the whole potatos, then to crisp the scooped out skins, then to melt the cheese. Totally worth it, though.

I used chives instead of green onions, but otherwise followed the directions. Mmmm.

Beet and Potato Fritter/Latke

I had a bunch of leftover roasted beets from this salad, and also needed to use up some of the plethora of purple potatoes I've gotten from the CSA recently, so I thought this beet and potato latke/pancake/fritter thing would be a good idea.

It's hard to see from the photo, but I made one large frying pan size fritter, and cut it into fourths.

This was pretty good- it toned down the super sweetness of the beets and gave them a nice crispy outside. I added some herbs to the fritter: parsley and cilantro, based on the flavors from Eileen's famous beet dip. I served it with a lime cilantro sour cream to brighten it up, and sprinkled it all with toasted walnuts.

French Country Sorrel Soup

Randy and Chris from Star Hollow Farm gave us this sorrel souprecipe and all of the ingredients to make it in last week's CSA box. Pretty tasty! Lemony and light.

Here's the recipe:

Country Sorrel Soup

1 1/2 TBS butter

1 small onion, diced

1/2 lb potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 1/2 C tightly packed sorrel, stemmed

3 C stock or water (I used 2 cups chicken broth, 1 water)

1/4 C sour cream

lemon juice (I used the juice from 1/2 lemon)

salt & pepper

• In a heavy pot, melt butter and saute onion until soft, but not brown.
• add potatoes, sorrel and stock.
• bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 10-15 minutes until vegetables are soft.
• cool and puree until smooth
• add sour cream lemon juice and salt & pepper
• heat through, but do not boil

Peach Ice Cream

Peach recipe #1, for those peaches that barely made it out of the orchard and home from Bluemont without dissolving into supperipe mush: David Lebovitz's peach ice cream from "The Perfect Scoop."

This is my favorite kind of ice cream recipe, in that it doesn't involve tempering any egg yolks, which I think is a pain in the ass. Cook the peaches slightly, whiz with sour cream and heavy cream, freeze in ice cream maker... devour.

(Served here with blackberry galette)

Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

I got a pint of amazing (huge, firm, sweet) blueberries in my CSA share this week... I also bought another box to supplement it, so we are swimming in blueberries here at 1346.

I saw this Dorie Greenspan recipe for blueberry sour cream ice cream several times on Tastespotting and Foodgawker (2 food porn websites I look at daily), and couldn't resist trying it, figuring that so many people couldn't be wrong (although I guess that's a dangerous assumption). It's very simple as far as ice cream recipes go: requires no separating eggs, no tempering egg yolks, and it's an awesome color... plus it tastes great: sweet and tangy. Kinda like blueberry cheesecake in ice cream form. Even Chuck, an avowed blueberry disliker, ate her bowl up.

Next blueberry and sour cream experiment: blueberry pierogis. Coming soon.