Category: Recipes

Recipes: Zucchini Quiche and Smoked Chicken

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Our family loves quiche so I decided to use two abundant vegetables from our garden (zucchini and onions) and make a meatless quiche. It was a hit! So I want to share it with you, too.

Zucchini Quiche
1 pie crust
1 medium to small zucchini, sliced in 1/8" slices
1 medium onion, sliced
2 Tbsp. butter
1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded cheese
4 eggs
2 Tbsp. mustard
3/4 tsp. salt
2 cups cream or milk or combination

Saute onion and zucchini slices in butter until they are as you like them. Put in the bottom of the pie crust. Layer cheese on top. Beat the eggs, mustard and salt with a hand blender or in your blender. Add the cream and/or milk and blend. Pour into pie crust. Bake for 15 minutes in a 425 degree oven. Turn oven to 325 degrees and bake 30 more minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Smoked Chicken
This year we bought an electric Brinkman smoker grill. We love it! I brine the meat in salt water overnight (usually 1/2 cup salt to 2 gallons water). The next morning I put the meat in the smoker with apple or cherry wood and then just let it smoke all day. It produces wonderful tasting meat with very little effort.

Two Ways to Roast Turkey

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Number One:
Sprinkle salt all over the turkey. Lay into roaster breast side down. Add 2 inches or more of water. Cover. Roast turkey at 400 degrees for one hour. Turn the heat to 250 degrees and bake till it falls off the bone. I do a large turkey all night. The turkey is so tender and full of flavor. The breast is wonderfully moist. You will need to carve the turkey and put the meat slices on a platter. It is not a picture perfect whole browned turkey, but the flavor is tops! It also produces lots of broth.

Number Two:
Baste turkey with 1/2 cup butter. Sprinkle with salt and herbs if desired. Bake at 325 degrees till tender. This is super delicious! The butter gives the turkey a wonderfully rich flavor.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner: Lamb Chops

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Our family loves lamb chops. My favorite method for preparing them is to bake them till they are fall-off-the-bone tender. I usually sprinkle both sides of the lamb chops with salt, garlic powder and thyme. I put them in a pan and add water about level with the top of the chops but not covering them. Then I bake them, covered, at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. A small amount would would probably take only an hour. I feed eight people here.

Another sauce we love on lamb chops is a fajita sauce recipe:

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup vinegar
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (or 2 cloves garlic, minced)
1/2 teaspoon onion powder (or 1 onion, sliced/chopped)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put lamb chops in baking pan. Stir together sauce ingredients. Pour over lamb chops. Cover and bake at 350 degrees 1 to 1 1/2 hours till tender. These would also be wonderful baked in a crockpot.

Custard Pie

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For our recipe this month, I’m going to give you a special family recipe that capitalizes on eggs. No, it’s not a favorite breakfast dish, but rather a favorite dessert of mine – custard pie. Whenever I make this custard pie, it reminds me of wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts with my kin. Especially on my father’s side of the family, custard pie was a must! I have always been very picky about custard pie. I never cared much for most recipes. However, this one I love! I hope you enjoy it, too.

Custard Pie
1 9-inch pie crust
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 1/2 cups milk
Note: I don’t use any white sugar. Instead, I just use approx. 3/4 cup brown sugar or sucanat for the total amount of sugar.

Beat the eggs and sugar until frothy. Add the milk. Pour into pie crust. Bake at 400 degrees 10 minutes. Turn down to 250 degrees. Bake 1 hour or until the center of the pie jiggles like jello instead of sloshing like liquid. You can cut the baking time in half by scalding the milk before adding it to the eggs and sugar. (Be sure you don’t overbake this pie. Custard becomes watery when it’s baked too long.)

Do you need a delicious, super easy pie crust? Try this push pastry. You mix it in your pie pan.

Pie Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted
3 tablespoons milk

Mix the flour and salt together in your pie pan. Mix the butter and milk together. Add to your flour mixture. Mix it with your hands until all the flour is moist. Form into a pie crust by forming it to the pan. Flute the edge if you desire.

Cathy’s Cooking Tips

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I often roast chickens by adding vegetables and plenty of water to make lots of broth. However, I found out that there’s another great way to roast whole chickens. Add no water, but instead brush plenty of butter all over the birds. Then salt them and roast them as usual. It will still make rich broth, but the skin is crispier. Yes, go ahead and eat that skin. You miss a lot of nutrition from the Omega 3’s of grassfed poultry if you don’t.

The next morning you can take the broth from your roasted chicken and poach some organic grassfed eggs in it. This is definitely a favorite way for our family to eat eggs.

Have you ever hardboiled eggs, but when you went to peel them, the shells came off in little pieces with bits of eggs adhering to them? This happens because your eggs are too fresh. For the shell to come off easily, the eggs should be at least two weeks old. That is unless you cook them a different way than usual. Instead of adding your cold eggs to the water at the beginning and boiling them, bring the water to a boil first and then add your eggs with a slotted spoon. Bring to a boil again. Then proceed as usual by cooking them on lowest heat for 8 to 10 minutes and then cooling them quickly in ice water. Very fresh eggs will come out much better by using this method.

Egg burritos are a great breakfast food. To fill your tortillas, scramble some eggs and add some leftovers such as diced potato, chicken or sausage, rice and beans or any number of vegetables. Top with sautéed onions and sour cream, salsa or mayonnaise. Try mixing a little mustard into your scrambled eggs before they’re cooked. It gives an extra, wonderful little zip.

Oriental Hot and Spicy Chicken

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Our family really enjoys a recipe called Oriental Hot and Spicy Chicken. You can brush this sauce on chicken pieces or on a whole bird.

2 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
4 Tbsp. vinegar
2 tsp. hot sauce
2 Tbsp. mustard

If you are baking chicken pieces, bake them uncovered for 1 1/2 hrs. at 350 degrees. If you are baking a whole chicken, cover your roaster and bake the chicken 2 to 3 hours at 350 degrees till the juices run clear and the leg joint is loose.

Chicken Salad

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This is a great way to use leftover chicken.

(All measurements are approximate.)

1 chicken, cooked and deboned and cut up
1/2 c.mayonnaise
1/2 c. sour cream
1 tablespoon dill weed
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons tamari sauce
1 tablespoon minced onion or 1 teaspoon onion powder
One stalk celery, cut up fine, optional
Unrefined sea salt, to taste

Mix all ingredients.

To be honest, I never measure the ingredients and I don’t follow a recipe. I just mix it together until it tastes like I want it. For variation, you can add some dried cranberries and/or chopped walnuts. Or add grape halves and some tarragon. Or put in a little curry powder and some frozen peas, thawed. For an oriental flare, add a little ginger and toasted sesame oil. In addition to the usual sandwich, you can serve the chicken salad in pita bread or rolled up in a tortilla. Or use it for the filling of your breakfast omelet. Or add some sliced hardboiled eggs, top it with buttered bread cubes and bake it in the oven. Have fun being creative! The best rule to remember is to start with a little of this and a little of that. You can always add more, but you can’t take it out.