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Tag Archives: Blood Orange
Some very close friends of ours, just brought a bundle of joy home. We decided to surprise them with a “baby dinner.” Now that most of us are well into our 40′s, the stork does not visit very often, so these surprise dinners are far and few in between. By now, you may be crinkling your nose, and wondering what a “baby dinner” is. A baby dinner, is a homemade meal, that the happy family can enjoy. Very little time in the kitchen, to prepare; more time to enjoy baby. Now, it is nice to bring baby something, but, the parents really enjoy this meal more then the little guy, will be enjoying, another blankie.
I normally make up a big batch of pesto and give two big containers to the parents. Enough, to use throughout the week, and another container for the freezer. I also include some great pasta, salad fixings (complete with homemade vinaigrette), fresh bread, a bottle of wine as well as bubbly water, and a home-baked treat. Since, I knew mama bear, liked our spicy tomato sauce, I made a bit batch of this. Enough for dinner that night, and an extra for the freezer. Instead of the usual chocolaty brownies, or grapefruit bars that I normally add to the baby dinners; I decided to try something new. We have a big bowl of blood oranges on the counter. We have been using them, mostly for cocktails, throughout the winter. I thought they work out nicely in place of lemon, in a bar recipe. I made a basic sweet dough, for the base of the bar. Then I made a dreamy, and creamy blood orange filling. It reminded me of a creamsicle. I thought about tossing in a shot of rye; but, they also have teenagers, so I kept the recipe “family friendly”. Next time. I don’t dust my citrus bars with powdered sugar, as I find they are sweet enough. These blood orange bars are perfect; slightly crunchy and melt in your mouth creamy.
 
Do you have a favorite citrus bar, that you like to make?
Recipe: Blood Orange Bars
*makes one dozen
Crust
What you need:
- 2 cups ap flour
- 16 oz butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup sugar
- salt, pinch
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste, I use paste
What you need to do:
Line a 8″ x 8″ baking pan with parchment paper; butter, the other sides of the baking pan. In a food processor, add the flour, sugar, and salt; give a whirl. Add the butter, and vanilla flavoring; process, until it comes together; about 5 minutes. Pat the dough onto the bottom, and up the sides about 1/4″. Put into the fridge for 30 minutes. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let cool.
Filling
- 1 cup fresh squeezed blood orange juice, I use the pulp as well
- zest from one blood orange
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup flour
- 5 eggs
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
Heat oven to 350. In a mixing bowl, with a paddle attachment, add the juice, zest, sugar, and flour; mix until creamy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix thoroughly, after each egg. Add the butter, mix for 1 minute. Pour into the baked crust. Bake for 45 – 55 minutes; depending on oven temperature. The middle will be slightly jiggly. Some ovens are hotter than others. Let cool. Slice into squares. Serve. Eat.
If you liked this post, check these out:
Blood Orange Bars
Blood Orange (Lemon Bars)
Blood Orange Bars
Our Second Year Blogiversary and we want to give back to you. Ready to start FLIPPING OUT over Chez US? We love our new Flip Ultra HD Video Camera and cannot wait until we have some time to show you what we have cooking. It is the best; it is easy to use and it is the lightest little video camera (and we know; video is our Real Bread & Butter), when you want to grab content quickly; whether it is while you are cooking in the kitchen, dining at a restaurant (you know who you are), playing with the kids or just want to record a message to say, “HEY, I/We LUV our new Flip, thanks Chez US”!
I cannot say “we” even though someone likes it when I say “we” all the time! I think personal holidays (i.e. birthdays, anniversaries, etc… ) are the best one! I love it even more when birthdays, anniversaries and blogiversaries keep on celebrating! We want to keep our 2nd Blogiversary going and to Thank You you for your continued readership we are giving one lucky reader their own Flip Ultra HD Video Camera. You can read all about it here – FLIP OUT!
Check out how we celebrated our Blogiversary – complete with the Perfect Blood Orange Margarita recipe!
What do you need to do?
- Just sign up for the new & improved Chez Us Daily Dish, which will be released sometime the week of June 1, 2009.
- Tell People about Chez US. The more people you tell the more chances you get. Referral Code ~ Your site name or name if you don’t have a site.
- Twitter, the more you Tweet, the more chances you get! Be sure to sign up for the Daily Dish, first and include a link to this post
- Already Signed up for our Daily Dish, leave a comment on this post! We will be double checking our handy dandy spreadsheet, if you aren’t signed up for the Daily Dish, then you won’t be included – sorry!
* family is excluded, sorry guys, you have to read about US!
What are you waiting for? Sign up now until midnight, May 31, 2009. Winner will be announced sometime on June 2, 2009.
READY to FLIP!
(click above)
The first sign of spring is baby asparagus lightly roasted, drizzled with blood orange vinaigrette and served along side roasted sea bass encrusted with butter and masala seasonings.
Okay! Okay! We know Chilean Sea Bass is one of the most politically incorrect fishes to bring into our home, let alone our mouths. We could not help ourselves, it is so delicious, so moist, so buttery and ever so flavorful! Sinful as it melts on your taste-buds, literally.
I coated the fillets with butter and a masala sea salt combination, wrapped them in parchment paper and roasted until flaky and delicious. During the last 10 minutes of roasting the fish, I added a bundle of asparagus that was lightly drizzled with olive oil. Before serving I tossed the lightly roasted asparagus with a blood orange vinaigrette and sprinkled with chardonnay sea salt.
What a luscious meal!
Recipe: Asparagus with Blood Orange Vinaigrette
1 lb baby asparagus, ends removed
1 small blood orange, zest and juiced
1 small shallot thinly sliced
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
Heat oven to 400. In a small jar or bowl combine all ingredients except asparagus and shake to combine. Set aside. Wash asparagus and loosely wrap in foil, drizzle with olive oil and wrap the foil to seal. Set on a cookie sheet and place in the oven. Roast for 10 – 15 minutes until lightly roasted, still slightly crunchy and dark green. Before serving toss with vinaigrette. Serve. Eat.
We love Fennel. We really started using it a lot a couple years ago. It is so versatile. You can eat it raw as a snack. Toss it into a salad. Roast it and add it to your mashed potatoes, make a lovely soup, bake it into a Galette, turn it into a creamy risotto inspired dish; the possibilities are endless. The taste is very unique. A bit of black licorice that is slightly green. Very refreshing.
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Most people either love or hate New Years. I always feel that it is one of those “over-rated” holidays with too many expectations and the end result is never what your fantasize it will be. Lenny still has hope, even though he can not remember one standing out over the others. This would be the first New Years Eve we have spent at our home as we are usually on the E. Coast. Therefore, we wanted to make it extra special with the hopes of it being one that stands out. In the early planning phase we talked to our friends Jeff and Andy to see what they were up too and before we knew it we were planning a sit down dinner for 12, one that would be similar to our ever so popular French Bistro dinner. But where would we go?
This time we would be going to Argentina! We started researching the food of Argentina almost immediately and the task at hand was looking for cookbooks, this proved to be very difficult. We finally decided on one to use, Argentina Cooks! As well, we were really surprised by the heavy influence of Europe, particularly Spanish and Italian in the cuisine. At one point I felt I was planning a meal in Italy. So we put out our feelers and contacted a few people, to get their advise on menu planning. Sylvia of La Vida en Buenos Aires was a huge help in giving us some direction with the menu planning.
Since our 20 sq. ft. kitchen would not handle a dinner for 12, Jeff and Andy were more than accommodating to host the evening at their home. As well Jeff would be my cooking companion as when we did the French dinner. Jeff’s brother John took charge of decorating for the evening and Andy set up the very adult bar. The table was decorated in shades of white and silver with lots of white light and candles. Each place setting had a coordinating menu printed out in hues of pale blue. We wanted the dinner to be cozy so he moved the living room furniture into the dining area and created a nice little lounge area which had views of the kitchen, and then he moved the table into the living room by the fireplace. The room was magical and intimate, exactly what we had in-visioned for New Years!
Unfortunately the guest list was the hardest part of the evening as we wanted to be with everyone but due to space and budget we had to have limit the guest list to 12. To be able to share our evening with everyone we love we did a live web cast – which was very fun as we had family and friends from far sign in. Sort of your virtual dinner party!
Now to the food! We decided to add our own style into the menu planning and to take the hearty country food of Argentina and add a California twist to it, as well we wanted to make it a bit more formal. It was very important that the food we used be organic, seasonal and as local as possible as we wanted to utilize the farmer’s market as much as possible. The menu we planned would be 7 courses and would be paired with wines to compliment.
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Susan at the Well Seasoned Cook is the hostess for this month’s Sugar High Friday. We participated in our first one last month and enjoyed it so much that we are doing it again. Now I should tell you about the new rule in our house – no sweets unless there is a good reason. This is definitely hard being part of the Daring Bakers and Tuesdays With Dorie, but I usually am able to come up with a good reason to make each of these challenges.
Diane & Todd of White On Rice Couple got tired of seeing me complain on Twitter, about how I could never find any passion fruit in the city so they surprised us with a box of the little gems. They were so sweet that we pretty much slurped all of them up except for the couple that we saved their pulp and froze – sounds like we saved something else & froze it! During this couple of weeks Diane slipped a birthday by us, she is so modest, so I knew that I had to send a “thank you” and happy belated birthday gift to her (them, she was suppose to share).
Diane and Todd are one of the go to sites for when we need a couple good cocktail ideas and since we know they love their cocktails, it only seemed appropriate to create a gift that was cocktail inspired. We wish we could have shared one of our favorites with them, but since we can not mail a cocktail and a fly down to make it, we recreated it as a cupcake.
Here you have it the Blood Orange Margarita Cupcake. I made a cupcake that was flavored with the zest and juice of one blood orange and topped it off with a ginger tequila buttercream frosting. Where does SHF come in, well, I dusted the tops of the cupcakes with silver sparkle sanding sugar. For this photo I used a gold edible dusting powder. The cupcakes were, well, pretty fantastic and definitely meant for adults only.
Recipe: Blood Orange Margarita Cupcake
    
we really are mad for macarons, at least the French variety. When we are in Paris, we usually eat them at least once a day. When we hit the Ferry Plaza it is a must to have them at Miette. As well, I like to make them every chance I get or at least whenever, I remember. When I saw that Minko from Couture Cupcakes was hosting an event dedicated just to Macarons, I knew we were going to be there!
Feeling very confident I ventured into two different varieties this time around: one using blanched ground almonds to create a very smooth and white palette, this is the one I normally always use. The other batch I would be using whole almonds ground with the skins on, to give them a speckled palette.
The flavors I chose for the “smooth palette” were Pandan with Kumquat buttercream (light green), Vanilla Bean specks with Hibicus buttercream (white with black specks) and Matcha with Verbana buttercream (dark green).
The flavors for the “speckled palette” were: Chocolate with Blood Orange buttercream and Traditional Macaroons with Burnt Caramel buttercream.
As always I gave MEM, our faithful macaron testers a couple dozen to taste for us – chocolate was voted as the best they have ever had, even better than the Ferry Plaza ones, which they love! The adults who tested for us said they liked the Pandan and the Traditional the best. Lenny & I loved all of them but felt the Matcha should be cut down, little too much Matcha Matcha!
WOW, times flies! We can not believe that it has been a year since we or I started this documented journal of what we eat nightly! We made a little video to show our thanks as well as to give you the recipe for these must make margaritas! See below! As a celebration of the birth of Chez US, we decided to re-create the original meal -of Vegetarian Enchiladas with a Tomatillo Chiptole Sauce. I freeze dry farmed tomatoes towards the end of the season – just whole – I throw them into a ziploc container and freeze them. Great to have on hand when you want really fresh tomato flavor in a sauce. This particular time, I cleaned out our supply and the sauce was incredibly flavorful – really fantastic! Slightly smoky and tasting like a garden full of fresh juicy tomatoes! I stuffed the tortillas with roasted eggplant, squash, mushrooms, cilantro (lots of it) fresh green garlic and onions and cheese. It was even better than than a year ago and the photos were really nice ….. then I hit delete and lost them all, except for the margarita kick off one! Lucky for all of us, Lenny is in charge of editing the video … so sit back and enjoy our first, “instructional video” on how to make these fantastic Blood Orange Margaritas!
Can’t see the video, click here!
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