Waffles and Berries, Linguine with Two Sauces

Today was day 24 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made two dishes. I made some Waffles and Berries (Waffles with Two-Berry Syrup) this morning, and some Linguine with Two Sauces for dinner tonight. Here's our critique of these two dishes...

WAFFLES WITH TWO-BERRY SYRUP, tough waffles, good sauce...

The waffles themselves had really good flavor (made with white flour, whole wheat flour, flax seed, and wheat germ), but they were a bit tough. We like our waffles a little lighter and fluffier. But, the flavors were very good and we liked the taste, just not the texture.

Also, the batter was really wet. I ended up letting the batter sit for a few minutes to allow the liquid to absorb into the flours and it helped quite a bit.

The syrup, however, was really good, and really easy to make. I thought it was really watery so I let it cook down a little bit and ended up cooking it down a bit too much. I may use this syrup at our Bed and Breakfast to top my own pancakes, waffles, blintzes and crepes. it was good, and really easy.

I probably will not make this particular waffle recipe again, however, and definitely would not serve it at our B&B since the texture was tough. But I did like the flavors. If it could be variated somehow so it wasn't so tough, I'd love to make this dish again, but it needs to be lightened up a bit.

LINGUINE WITH TWO SAUCES, one of my favorites so far!

I REALLY liked this dish a lot! My hubby liked it ok, but he's not a big time creamy sauce guy, so wasn't as in love with it as I was, but he still liked it well enough to make again in the future sometime.

It was a little on the sweet side, however. I'm not sure what caused it to be sweet since there was no sugar in it. Maybe the tomatoes, maybe the 1/4 of white wine (which was supposed to be a dry white wine) was not as dry as it should have been, which may have been the case as I'm not a wine connoisseur. But, I loved it.

The combination of the creamy white sauce that the pasta was mixed in with, and the red sauce that the pasta was topped with, blended really well together. I knew it was going to be good when I smelled the sauces cooking before it was put together and baked in the oven. And then when I pulled the foil off the top after baking it the aromas were delightful. I could not wait to try it. And once I did, I was so very pleasantly surprised.

I will be making this dish again and again I think.

46 recipes down, 501 more to go (close to breaking the 500 mark!)

Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato Cream Sauce Recipe

As promised I would pick our favorite dish for each month and share that recipe. The Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato Cream Sauce recipe was Brian's favorite dish. Rachel liked the Baked Chicken with Lemon, Sean liked the Oven Fried Chicken Thighs with Mustard Buttermilk Sauce, and my favorite was the Blueberry Crisp a la Mode.

If you're enjoying these recipes, you can purchase the cookbook here.

And if you want to come and taste some of our cooking personally, we'd love to have you as our guest in our Colorado Springs Bed and Breakfast Inn, Rocky Mountain Lodge & Cabins where we'll serve you a gourmet 3-course breakfast each morning.

Enjoy our favorite recipe of the month from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT for January...

PAN SEARED SCALLOPS ON LINGUINE WITH TOMATO CREAM SAUCE

• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1/4 cup minced shallots
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
• 1 Tbsp. grated peeled fresh ginger
• 2 Tbsp. whipping cream
• 1 Tbsp. butter, cut into small pieces
• 2/3 cup chopped seeded plum tomatoes
• 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 cups hot cooked linguine
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• Chopped fresh cilantro, optional

1. Combine wine, shallots, lime juice, and ginger in a medium skillet; bring to a boil. Cook until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 5 minutes. Drain mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl, reserving liquid, discard solids.
2. Return wine mixture to skillet. Add cream, and cook over medium heat for 1 minute. Add butter, stirring until butter melts. Stir in chopped tomato, 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper. Add linguine, and toss well. Cover and keep warm.
3. Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Sprinkle scallops with 1/8 teaspoon salt. Arrange scallops in pan, cook 2 minutes on each side or until done. Add scallops to pasta mixture; toss gently to combine. Garnish with chopped cilantro, if desired.

Yield: 2 servings (about 3/4 cup pasta mixture and about 5 ounces scallops)

Calories 426 (29% from fat)
Fat 13.5 g (sat 7.3g, mono 3.5g, poly 1.2g)
Protein 34.8 g
Carb 40.6 g
Fiber 2.6 g
Chol 92 mg
Iron 2.8 mg
Sodium 794 mg

Calc 75 mg

Lemon Chicken, Layered Chocolate Pudding Dessert

Day 18 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made 2 dishes today... a Lemon Chicken, and a Layered Chocolate Pudding Dessert. Here's what we thought of them...

BAKED CHICKEN WITH LEMON, delicious all around (one of our favorites)...

Everyone loved this chicken. My hubby even said it's one of his top favorites so far, along with the Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato-Cream Sauce. The recipe has you soak the chicken in a brine for 8 hours or overnight, saying the uniform salting produces a very moist bird. And we all agree, the chicken was extremely moist. I thought the chicken was slightly salty, which would make sense from it soaking in the brine, but the lemon flavor really was an interesting twist I wouldn't have thought of doing. We all enjoyed it very much, and loved how moist and juicy it was. A definite keeper that we'll make again. And it's really quite easy to make.

OUTRAGEOUS WARM DOUBLE-CHOCOLATE PUDDING, good, rich, chocolate dessert...

For this recipe being "light", which it truly was, at only 257 calories and 7 grams of fat per serving, it was really a good chocolate dessert, that really did seem rich and decadent.

I've made a couple things out of this cookbook that call for fat free evaporated milk, and the other 2 dishes weren't that great, especially the Lasagna Chicken Florentine (our least favorite so far), but it works great with this recipe, especially since you're adding chocolate to it. How can you go wrong with chocolate, and dark chocolate at that? And you use an egg substitute, but we couldn't tell at all. It really was rich and decadent. Not as good as the real thing (not light), but for a substitute when you need to cut calories and fat, this is a definite winner!

This dish has 2 layers to it, so it takes time to make, about 2 hours from start to finish (nearly 1 1/2 hours is baking time). I took a picture after we'd had a few bites so you can see the layers. And the fat free whipped topping is definitely missing the richness of real freshly whipped cream, but it was ok.

This recipe is supposed to be served hot from the oven. We ate it after it has set about 20 minutes because it was done about the same time our dinner was done. It was good "warm", not sure it would have made much difference being "hot". I have taken the extras and put them in the fridge and I'll serve those cold, like a chocolate creme brulee. I think they'll be good. We'll find out when I serve them tomorrow. Will post a follow up to this blog after we've tried them cold.

All in all, a good chocolate dessert, definitely worthy of making again.

34 recipes down, 513 more to go.

Oven Fried Chicken

Well, I haven't posted for the past several days. It's been a whirlwind week around here. My 50th birthday was on Friday and my husband and kids planned a surprise party for me. Most of my family flew in from around the country and surprised me. And the birthday party extended to a birthday weekend celebration. I couldn't have asked for a better present, having nearly all of my direct family here.

My dear hubby decided to make one of my favorite breakfasts for me... Scrambled Eggs Benedict in Puffed Pastry Shells, along with Creamy Hash Browns, Canadian Bacon, and cantaloupe, for my birthday celebration. Here's a picture of his fantastic job. You will notice that my meal is plated beautifully on a plate he heated and garnished with a rosemary sprig. Everyone else had to help themselves from the buffet table and use paper plates. I was definitely spoiled in many ways :)

Then, while most of the family family were still here, my 9 months pregnant daughter went into labor and had her baby Monday morning. It was the icing on the cake of a fabulous weekend! Being a proud Grandma, I just can't resist showing our new granddaughter off to you.

Now, back to our cookbook blog from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT (nothing compared to this beautiful little angel here). My Mom is still here enjoying her Great Granddaughter, so she and I made dinner together tonight. We made Oven Fried Chicken Thighs with Mustard-Buttermilk Sauce. Here's what we all thought of it...

OVEN-FRIED CHICKEN THIGHS WITH MUSTARD-BUTTERMILK SAUCE, a keeper (one of our favorites)!

This was a really easy dish to make, and it was really good as well. The chicken was really moist on the inside, and had a slight crisp on the outside. There was no oil used to cook it, so I was surprised it could crisp up even a little bit. And the mustard buttermilk sauce was excellent. You dipped the chicken in some of the sauce and then into bread crumbs with Parmesan cheese (wasn't enough though, we had to just about double the bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese mixture), and then baked it. The remaining sauce was warmed right before serving and drizzled over the chicken. The flavors were great. My hubby thought the sauce was honey mustard dressing we'd made and put it on his salad, which was really a good idea, though it would probably have been better cold. But, the sauce can also be doubled as salad dressing we found out.

Overall, a good recipe that everyone enjoyed and would love to eat again.

30 recipes down, 517 more to go.

Blueberry Crisp Recipe, Berry Crisp Recipe

Today was day 12 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I just went with a dessert tonight.  The dish today was a blueberry crisp recipe, but I made a triple berry crisp recipe instead. Here's our thoughts on this recipe...

BLUEBERRY CRISP a la MODE... EXCELLENT (one of our favorites)!!!!!!

I think this is my favorite recipe that I've made so far. After doing a number of recipes in this cookbook exactly as directed, there's been a lot of them that I would have tweaked on or changed slightly, so I decided today I'm just going to take the recipes from the cookbook and tweak on them and change them up a little to suit our family and our likes or dislikes. So, with that in mind, I decided to not just do "blueberries, but make it a triple berry crisp. I used blueberries, blackberries and raspberries, and it was absolutely delicious! I'm sure it would have been just as good with just blueberries, but I happened to have the three berries on hand so used them, and I'm glad I did.

The other thing I tweaked on was that it was supposed to be baked in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish. I put it in three small pie dishes, which serve 2 each. I thought the portions were perfect. My hubby and I split one, and my daughter and son-in-law split one, and we have an extra one for tomorrow.

Also, the recipe calls for low fat frozen yogurt to put on top. I had vanilla ice cream on hand and just used that instead. I know it's not "light", but just wanted to use what I had. Not sure that it ended up being a "light" version of the crisp since I didn't use yogurt, but it sure was worth every calorie! I will definitely keep this recipe and make it again, and will probably make it for my Bed and Breakfast guests as their dessert course sometime.

23 recipes down, 524 more to go.

Gingersnap Scones, Scallops with Linguine, Gingerbread with Lemon Glaze

Day 3 of Cooking from "THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT" and I made Gingersnap Scones with Espresso Glaze for breakfast this morning, Pan-Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato-Cream Sauce for dinner, and Warm Gingerbread with Lemon Glaze.

GINGERSNAP SCONES WITH ESPRESSO GLAZE, good but needs a tiny bit of tweaking...
I changed the recipe just a little. The recipe called for the dough to be rolled out to a 10-inch circle and cut into 10 scones. I thought they would be a bit on the thin side if I did that, so I rolled the dough into an 8-inch circle and cut it into 8 scones. I liked the size of the scones. The texture of the scones was good, not as dry as scones normally are, and we liked that about these scones. The glaze was much too thick and not of a "drizzle" consistency, so I needed to add additional water to it to thin it enough to drizzle on the scones. We liked the flavor of the icing. The scones themselves were not sweet and the icing helped with that. I didn't really care for the walnut on top, so I only put the walnut (for garnish, really) on half the scones. We served these to our guests in our Bed and Breakfast Inn, Rocky Mountain Lodge & Cabins, this morning, and they were a hit. I'd make this recipe again, the same way I made them this time, but without the walnuts.

PAN-SEARED SCALLOPS ON LINGUINE WITH TOMATO-CREAM SAUCE, Brian said a 10 on a scale of 1-10 (obviously one of our favorites)...

Since Brian can never get enough pasta, and loves scallops, I thought I'd make this recipe for him. He loved it and said I could make this recipe as much as I wanted and he'd eat it over and over again. The only variation I made on this recipe was that I used whole wheat linguine instead of regular linguine. Part of the recipe was a little unclear; it called for 1 1/2 cups hot cooked linguine, but it did not tell you how many ounces of dry pasta to cook. I cooked about 6 1/2 ounces of dry pasta, which I think was more than 1 1/2 cups, but Brian says you can never have too much pasta. The recipe said to cook the scallops for 2 minutes on each side, but the scallops did not look done on the sides so I cooked them for 3 minutes on each side, and they were done perfectly. Chef Gordon Ramsey would not have reason to throw these scallops out for being raw or overcooked (in my humble opinion). The portions seemed to be large, but that could be because I had a little more pasta than the recipe called for, but there were a lot of scallops too. So far, this has been Brian's absolute favorite recipe.

WARM GINGERBREAD WITH LEMON GLAZE, good, but needed more glaze...
I have another gingerbread with lemon sauce recipe that I make every year for Christmas, it's Brian's favorite Christmas dessert. I didn't make it this year because I wanted to make plum pudding instead (which took a month to prep and make) for a novelty. We'll be going back to gingerbread next year. Anyway, this recipe was up against my gingerbread recipe, and although this recipe was good, we still prefer my standby recipe. We liked the bites with the lemon glaze through the cake, but thought the gingerbread itself lacked a little flavor and the bites that didn't have the glaze throughout it was a little dry. The flavor of the lemon glaze was delicious, however, there was a lot of fresh squeezed lemon juice in it. We like my other recipe where you serve warm lemon sauce over the cake. And the frozen reduced-fat whipped topping does not stand a chance against home made real whipped cream.

Man, you'd think I was a food critic the way I talk about these recipes, sheesh! We ARE enjoying eating them. I don't think Brian likes the clean up afterwards though ;)

8 recipes down, 539 more to go.

Until tomorrow...