Simple cheesy biscuits #WhenWeBake

I love biscuits. Since they don't need to rise, you can have them mixed and in the oven before your coffee is done brewing, which makes them perfect for breakfast or brunch. Dinner, too.

If you keep self-rising flour on-hand, they're even easier. You can buy it or make your own mix to have when you need it.

These biscuits are flavored with shredded cheese. I used a store-bought Mexican mix with both yellow and white cheese, but use what you like. Yellow cheese will show up a little better, but even a white cheese will show on top as it browns in the oven.

I've tried a few recipes using Country Crock Spread lately, but this time I used the sticks. I think I like them better for baking, but I'm still in the experimental stages.

Simple Cheesy Biscuits

2 cups (9 ounces) self-rising flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 stick (8 tablespoons) Country Crock stick
3/4 cup shredded cheese (I used a Mexican blend), divided
1 cup buttermilk

Heat the oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the flour and sugar in a medium bowl. Add the Country Crock and cut with a pastry cutter or two knives until you have bits as small as cornmeal and no larger than lentils.

Add 1/2 cup of the cheese and stir to distribute it.

Add the buttermilk and fold it in until there are few dry spots left. It's perfectly fine if there are some powdery places, as long as there aren't giant desserts of dry flour.

Turn the mixture out onto your work surface, and, using a bench scraper and your hands, first pat it down, then fold it over itself. Pat down and fold. After the third or fourth pat-and-fold, you should have a dough that's holding together.

Portion the dough into 8 pieces - you can use a disher to make a more round blob - and place them onto your baking sheet leaving space between them - they will spread a bit. Use your palm to flatten them a bit.

Sprinkle the tops of the biscuits with the remaining cheese.

Place the pan in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted on top and beginning to brown and the biscuits are just starting to brown, about 20 minutes. Remove the biscuits from the pan and place on a rack. Serve warm.

Polenta with Shishito Peppers and Cheddar

I might have mentioned - like a billion times now - that I really like polenta. And grits.

So this time around, I decided to throw some peppers into polenta. I had just gotten a rather large bag of shishito peppers from Frieda's Specialty Produce, and I had a tube of their polenta as well.

It seemed like fate.

Their polenta is shelf-stable at room temperature, which is great if you want to stock up. It's meant for slicing and frying, but I like soft polenta a lot, so that's usually the direction I go with it.

This recipe is super-easy, and the results are really tasty, The flavor actually reminded me just a little bit of tamales, but not so much that you couldn't serve this with any other cuisine. Or, for me, just a bowl of polenta for breakfast.

Polenta with Shishito Peppers and Cheddar

12 shishito peppers
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1-pound tube prepared polenta
1 cup water
1/2 cup half-and-half
4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
Salt and pepper, to taste

Remove the stems and seeds from the shishito peppers and dice. Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the peppers until they're fragrant and a little bit softer. Set aside.

Remove the polenta from the tube and cut or break it into pieces. Add to a saucepan along with the water. Heat on medium, stirring, then whisking, the polenta until all the pieces are broken up and the polenta is smooth.

Add the half-and-half, cheese, and peppers. Continue cooking and stirring until the cheese is melted in. If the polenta is too soft for your taste, continue cooking until it thickens to your liking. If it's too thick for your taste, add more water or half-and-half.

Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, to taste.

Serve hot.

I receive food items regularly from Frieda's Specialty Produce at no cost to me. You can find their products at your local grocery store.

Cheddar-chunk and chive sandwich loaf

At this point, I've thrown a lot of things into loaves of bread, but there's always more experimenting that can be done. Some new twist. A different combination of ingredients.

This time, my unusual ingredient is mayonnaise. It might sound odd, but it really isn't. Mayonnaise is mostly egg yolks and oil, and both are common ingredients in bread. And not only bread. I've used mayonnaise in cake recipes, as well. It adds moistness and a little bit of tanginess.

And it makes perfect sense in sandwich bread, since mayonnaise is such common ingredient in sandwich assembly.

When you're adding cheese to bread, you have two options. You can shred it so that it's well-distributed into the bread. Depending on the cheese, shredded cheese can almost disappear into the loaf.

Or, you can leave the cheese in larger pieces so it forms melted pockets in the loaf. This time around, I opted for larger pieces.

You can use either white or yellow cheddar for this recipe, but yellow cheddar will be more visible in the loaf.

Cheddar-Chunk and Chive Sandwich Loaf
This makes a great sandwich loaf, and it's nice all by itself. Or along with breakfast. If you toast it, be careful because the cheese will melt and make a mess of your toaster. On the other hand, of you toast it in a skillet, that cheese will get nice and brown and crisp.

1 cup water
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
3 cup (13 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup regular mayonnaise
4 ounces cheddar cheese, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 tablespoon dry chives

Combine the water, yeast, sugar, flour, salt, and mayonnaise in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix slowly until the ingredients are combined, then raise the speed to medium and continue kneading until the dough is elastic.

You can also knead by hand, if you like.

Add the cheese and chives and continue mixing until both are well-distributed throughout the dough. If the cheese seems to be breaking up as you mix, you can do this by hand.

Cover the bowl and set aside until the dough has doubled in size, about 1 hour, 15 minutes.

When the dough has risen, flour your work surface lightly and spray a 9x5 loaf pan with oil or baking spray.

Turn out the dough and form it into a log about 8 inches long. Try to keep most of the chunks of cheese from poking through the dough. Place the log, seam-side down, in the prepared loaf pan. Cover the loaf pan with plastic wrap and set aside to rise until the dough rises slightly about the rim of the pan, about 40 minutes.

While the dough is rising, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the plastic wrap and bake the loaf until it's nicely browned, about 40 minutes.

Remove the bread from the pan and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

This makes a great sandwich loaf, and it's nice all by itself. Or along with breakfast. If you toast it, be careful because the cheese will melt and make a mess of your toaster.

On the other hand, of you toast it in a skillet, that cheese will get nice and brown and crisp.

This post is sponsored by Red Star Yeast, which is pretty easy for me since it's the yeast I use pretty much all the time. And I'm totally serious about that. I buy it in 1- or 2-pound bags, because that's how much of it I use.

Not only do I love their yeast products, but they've got tons of useful information for consumers. Need an example? Here's a post about how to check to see if your yeast is still viable. And if you want to ogle pretty food photos, be sure to check out their Pinterest boards. LOTS of awesome stuff!

You can find Red Star Yeast on:
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Cheddar and Ham Biscuits

This post brought to you by Sargento. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Cookistry.

I absolutely LOVE making biscuits. They're like instant bread. And these are super-easy - you don't even need a biscuit cutter! With the holidays coming up, these are perfect for breakfast when you have guests - they'll be amazed that you made your own biscuits.

These would also be great for mini sandwiches or just a little snack.

This post is sponsored by Sargento, and they asked me to create a recipe using one of their shredded cheeses. I chose the fine-cut sharp cheddar from their Off the Block line of cheese, first because of the color. I had been brainstorming ideas, and I decided that a bright, cheery orange cheese would look really good in a recipe.

Once I decided for sure that I was making biscuits, I knew I wanted small bits of cheese rather than larger chunks, so I was pretty happy to find the fine-cut shreds. And of course, cheddar has a lot of flavor. I love all kinds of cheese, but even when I've stocked up on all kinds of fancy stuff, there's usually some kind of cheddar on hand.

Cheddar and Ham Biscuits

2 1/4 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 ounces (1/2 cups) Sargento fine-cut cheddar cheese
3 slices thin-sliced deli ham, diced (1-2 ounces depending on the slices)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Heat the oven to 450 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the self-rising flour in a bowl and add the salt, sugar, cheese, and ham. Give it a stir to disperse the cheese and ham throughout the flour.

Grate the butter directly into the flour mixture using a coarse grater. The easiest thing to do is to freeze a whole stick of butter, then unwrap and re-wrap the stick so that only 2 tablespoons are left wrapped. That way, you know when to stop grating and you've got a little bit to hang onto as you grate. Just make sure you don't grate the wrapping into the biscuits.

As you grate, stop now and then and mix the butter in so it distributes through the flour before it has a chance to clump together.

Add the buttermilk and stir until the flour is all moistened. If you have dry spots, add more buttermilk, as needed. If it seems wet and a little sloppy, don't worry about it.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough.Flour the top of the dough as well, just to keep it from being too sticky. Use your hands to pat the dough to form an evenly-thick square about 12 inches square. Fold the dough in thirds, like a letter, then fold in thirds in the other direction to form a fat square.

TIP: You don't need to measure 12 inches exactly. You know how big an 8 1/2 x 11 standard sheet of paper is. Try to make the sides of your dough about the same size as the length of that paper. It will be close enough.

If the dough is still sticky, flour your work surface and the top of the dough again. Pat the dough down to form a 12-inch square again. It doesn't need to be exact. Fold as before.

This time, pat the dough to form a 9-inch square. Again, you don't need to measure precisely - it should be about the width of that imaginary piece of paper. If you want taller biscuits, feel free to stop patting and make a smaller square of thicker dough.

Using the sharpest, longest knife you have (or you can use a rolling pizza cutter if you have one) cut about 1/2 inch off the outer edges of the square. Having a cut edge will help them rise properly. When you cut, don't saw like you're slicing - you want to cut straight down. If the knife is curved, you can rock it so you cut all the way through. Just don't saw.

Now, cut the dough in thirds in one direction, then in thirds in the other direction, like you're cutting a tic-tac-toe pattern that creates 9 square biscuits. Or, if you want smaller biscuits, cut in a 4x4 pattern to make 16 small biscuits.

Arrange the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet. If you leave them very close together - barely touching - they will have soft sides and tend to rise just a little higher. If you spread them a little further apart on the pan, the sides will be more brown and crisp.

Gather up the scraps from the edges you cut off and form them into biscuits of whatever shape you like. Bake until the biscuits are nicely browned, about 15 minutes.

Optional: Before baking, you can brush the tops of the biscuits with butter or milk, or sprinkle a little extra cheese on top. Or, if you don't want to bother with melting butter to brush onto the cold biscuits, bake the biscuits for about 10 minutes, then rub the tops with the remaining nub of butter, then continue baking.

Do you think YOU could create a recipe using a shredded Sargento cheese? They're holding a contest on Facebook where the winner will receive $2,000 toward kitchen supplies and ingredients for the perfect holiday meal, plus a year’s supply of Sargento Shredded Cheese. Just submit an original recipe and photo of a dish featuring a Sargento Shredded Natural Cheese variety, plus an explanation of why using real, fresh-tasting ingredients like Sargento Shredded Natural Cheese matters to you.

Look for Sargento on Facebook to submit your recipe.

Want more cheese? You can also find Sargento on Pinterest.

Cheddar Potato Leek Soup

This soup really doesn't need a story. It's potato-leek soup with a good helping of cheddar cheese. It's rib-sticking good.

Warning: I tend to like hearty soups. The joke used to be that if a spoon didn't stand straight up in the bowl on its own, then I needed to add noodles.

This soup isn't thick enough to hold a spoon up, but it's definitely not a broth. If you prefer a thinner soup, feel free to add more stock, milk, or water, to thin it to your desired consistency. Then taste for seasoning, because when you water it down, you might find that you need a bit more flavoring.

When you refrigerate the leftovers, they'll thicken considerably, but it will loosen as it warms up.

If you've never worked with leeks before, be warned. They can have grit and dirt between the layers, and much further down that you'd expect. You can cut them in half lengthwise and rinse between the layers, or you can slice them then wash the slices as you would spinach or lettuce, to remove the dirt.

Cheddar Potato Leek Soup

2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
3 leeks, white and tender green, well cleaned and sliced
2 quarts chicken stock
2 tablespoons bacon fat (optional)
2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
8 ounces mild cheddar cheese, shredded or cut into small pieces

Put the potatoes, leeks, chicken stock, and bacon fat (if using) into a heavy-bottomed large saucepan. If the liquid doesn't cover the potatoes, add water, just to cover the potatoes.

If you're using a low-sodium chicken broth, add 1 teaspoon of salt now. Otherwise, wait to season until later. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Cook, covered, until the potatoes are falling-apart tender.

Add the milk and use a stick blender to puree the mixture. Add the pepper.

Add the cheese, a small hand full at a time, stirring to melt it into the soup. Add more cheese as the previous addition is just about melted.

When all the cheese is added, decide if you like the thickness, and add more liquid, if desired. You can add milk, stock or water.

Taste for seasoning and add more salt or pepper, if desired.

Serve hot.

Cheese and Chive Loaf

What's your signature dish?

Mine is probably bread, although I'd have a hard time deciding what kind of bread I like the best.

Bread. Buns. Yeast-risen baked goods. I love them all, and they're usually what people ask me to bring, if an extra dish is needed for a dinner.

You'd think that we eat nothing but toast, breadcrumb sandwiches, breaded bread cutlets, and bread pudding.

Okay, I'll admit it. I do bake a lot of bread. But I make other things, too.

This time, though, I've got another bread recipe for you.

Cheese and Chive Loaf

1 cup water
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/2 cups (11 1/4 ounces) bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup instant potato flakes
1/2 cup* grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup* grated parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon dry chives
2 tablespoons olive oil
Egg wash: 1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water
Sesame seeds, as needed

In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine all of the ingredients except the egg wash and sesame seeds. Knead until the dough is smooth (relatively - it will have lumps from the cheese and chives, but the dough itself should be smooth) and elastic.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

When the dough has risen, flour your work surface lightly and turn out the dough. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x5 loaf pan with baking spray.

Form the dough into a a log about 8 inches long and place it in the pan, seam-side down. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise until the dough rises slightly above the rim of the pan, about 40 minutes.

When the dough has risen, remove the plastic wrap and brush the top of the loaf with the eggwash, sprinkle with sesame seeds, then slash as desired.

Bake at 350 degrees until the loaf is nicely browned, about 45 minutes. (timer)

Remove the loaf from the oven, and remove it from the pan. Let the loaf cool completely on a rack before slicing or storing.

*It's impossible to accurately measure grated cheese by volume, since it starts out fluffy, then it can be compressed. In recipes where it really matters, I measure by weight, then grate. In this case, I grated, then piled into a prep bowl to get a ballpark amount. That's good enough. If you like cheese, go ahead and add a little more. I won't tell.

Cheddar and Chive Muffins

Breakfast muffins don’t have to be sweet, and these cheddar and chive muffins prove it. Imagine these with bacon and eggs. Perfect, right?

Cheddar and Chive Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

2 1/2 cups (11 1/4 ounces) self rising flour
2 ounces coarsely shredded cheddar cheese
1 tablespoons dried chives
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg

In a medium bowl combine the flour, cheese, chives, and sugar.

In a separate bowl, combine the milk, vegetable oil, and egg. Whisk to break up the egg.

Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir until combine an there are no more dry spots. Cover the bowl and refrigerate until the next day.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and spray the cups of a standard-size 12-cup muffin pan with baking spray.

Remove the batter from the refrigerator. Using a disher or spoon, divide the batter into the 12 muffin cups.

Bake at 325 degrees until the muffins are lightly browned on top, and they bounce back when lightly touched on top – about 25 minutes.

Remove the muffins from the oven and let them rest a minute or two before flipping them out of the pan. If necessary, you can run a thin knife around the sides of the muffins to help loosen them from the pan.

Place the muffins on a rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: You can make these without refrigerating first, but refrigerating the batter improves the texture. Give it a try. I think you'll like it.

Sweet and Salty Popcorn Balls (and why I'm not crafty)

A ridiculous amount of this disappeared. Magically.

So, when my friend Carla from Good Cook said she wanted some posts about popcorn balls, I said, sure, I can do that.

I even had a recipe for caramel-like toffee thing that I knew I could use for the "glue." I'd made the caramel before but never wrote about it. I was waiting for something to use it with/for/in.

So, popcorn balls. Sure. Easy.

Ha.

Right.

I received two popcorn ballers (plastic molds for making the popcorn balls), one round and one oval/football shaped. The molds are a pretty good idea because your other option, I guess, is to form the balls with your hands. Sounds mildly painful considering you're dealing with melted sugar.

My first idea was to make a cheese-and-caramel sort of popcorn ball. There's a booth at the local farmers market that sells a mix of cheese popcorn and caramel popcorn and it's ridiculously good. I wanted to recreate that in a popcorn ball.

So far, so good.

I popped two batches of popcorn (about 5 quarts of popped  popcorn) and set out on my journey towards humiliation. You see, the bloggers in the Facebook group that Carla runs had starting making and posting their popcorn ball masterpieces. Some of them posted disclaimers that said, "hey, don't judge me ... my five-year-old made this."

And then they posted photos of Frankenstein-like monsters, and trains, and adorable gingerbread houses, and even turkeys and owls.

I considered renting some children, because my first attempt at making a "cute" popcorn ball was not quite a success. I used the oval/football shaped mold and decided to make it look like a fish. When I looked at the photos I realized it looked more like a dog with mutantly misplaced ears and a mohawk.

Mutant popcorn poodle

So I tried again, this time making it look more like a dog. A mutant popcorn poodle.

To glue the parts on, I used peanut butter. It made sense, since there was peanut butter in the caramel, but these weren't popcorn balls you could walk around with - the attached parts came of easily. Which was good for easy munching.

For something more secure, I'd suggest royal icing as a glue, or even melted chocolate. You could also use melted caramel, but I used all mine on the popcorn.

I used dried apricots for the ears and a dried cherry for the nose. The eyes were store-bought sugar decorations.

Better. Maybe. Sort of. But not great.

So, I decided to dispense with the cute popcorn ball and go back to my original plan - to make tasty cheese and caramel popcorn balls. Just balls. Round planetary objects. Yeah, that's what they were. Planets.

So much better.

Sweet-and-Salty Popcorn Balls
with peanut-butter caramel and cheese

It's round. Stare at it. It's like a planet, right? Right???

5-6 quarts popped popcorn
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 stick (8 tablespoons, 1/4 pound) butter
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
Cheese, as needed (something that melts well - colby is a good choice)

Have the popcorn popped and standing by in a bowl large enough to allow you to mix the popcorn without it spilling over the sides and onto the floor. Alternatively, have a dog standing nearby to catch fallen popcorn.

Just kidding. Maybe.

Put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed pan and heat on medium until the sugar melts and turns brown. Not black-brown-burned. You want a dark golden or rich brown. Add the butter. Gently. Things will bubble. Stir. The sugar will likely clump up and/or harden, but it will melt again. When the butter has melted and the mixture stirs easily, add the peanut butter and stir it in.

This is a thick caramel/toffee/candy, not a thin drizzly coating.

Add spoon fulls of the caramel to the popcorn and stir it around so that it coat the popcorn rather than the popcorn adhering to balls of the caramel. You'll see what I mean.

You can keep the caramel over LOW heat while you stir in spoon fulls, but watch it so it doesn't burn. Add as much of the caramel as you like. If you have some left over, pour it onto a silpat and let it cool there.

This stuff is really good ... the peanut butter makes it taste like peanut brittle. Even though it's only 1/2 cup, you can taste it.

For cheeseless caramel popcorn balls:

While the caramel is still warm and sticky on the popcorn, shovel the popcorn mixture into the popcorn ball mold, overfilling it, and mash the top on, compressing the popcorn a bit so it takes on the shape of the mold. Check it and shove extra popcorn in if you have gaps and holes in the ball. Mash the top on again.

Remove the popcorn ball from the mold and continue making more. Work quickly, before the caramel cools.

Left over caramel-coated popcorn is great for snacking. Quite a bit of it disappeared before I even started on the cheesy version.

For cheese caramel popcorn balls:

As some point, that caramel is going to harden to the point where it will no longer be sticky, but we can still make CHEESY caramel popcorn balls. Gather up what looks like about twice as much of the prepared caramel popcorn that would fit into the mold and put it onto a microwaveable plate or bowl. Grate a generous amount of cheese on top and mix it in. Grate a little more. This is our new "glue" so you need enough to keep the popcorn sticking together.

Use a cheese that melts easily like colby or a mild cheddar or gruyere. You can add something like parmesan for extra flavor, but don't count on that for the stickiness.

Microwave the cheese-covered popcorn until the cheese melts. The caramel will also soften a bit.

Shovel the popcorn into the mold as before and mash the top on. Add more popcorn, if needed to fill holes and gaps in the ball. Remove from the mold.

It's best to melt the cheese onto the popcorn one batch at a time, since the cheese cools pretty quickly.

Continue making as many popcorn balls as you like.

Just the cheese:

If you don't like sweets, the caramel isn't necessary. You could make popcorn balls with just the cheese. Just melt the cheese on the popped corn, and shove them in the molds.

For an added punch of savory flavor, you could add herbs and spices to the popcorn, or add more cheese flavor with powdered cheddar cheese.

As part of the Good Cook Kitchen Experts program, Good Cook sends me cooking gadgets for my use.

Vegetable Frittata and Cast Iron Steak and Potatoes

I love my cast iron cookware. Yes, it's heavy, but it's also durable. It's cookware you can pass down to your children. Or defend yourself against marauding slabs of bacon.
Once cast iron is properly seasoned, it's pretty much nonstick. And the more often you use it, the more nonstick it will become. Nothing sticks to my cast iron frying pans any more.

With cast iron, you can get a really good sear on your food, or you can pour cold batter in a screaming hot pan (like for cornbread). It holds the heat, so you can keep food warm. You can heat it while it's dry (unlike nonstick cookware) and you can use it on the stove, in the oven, or on your grill.

A frittata is about as versatile as a cast iron pan. You can serve it hot, warm, or chilled. It's great for breakfast, lunch, or even a side dish. You can add a wide variety of ingredients. You can plan it carefully or use up leftovers. Meat or meat-free. Serve it out of the pan, or flip it out to serve.

This time, I used a variety of vegetables. Okay, I'll admit that some of them were leftovers. My combination included carrots, red bell pepper, potato, onion, zucchini, and yellow squash. All of that added a variety of colors and textures.

Vegetable Frittata

2 cups vegetables, cooked through, drained of any excess liquid
1 tablespoon butter
5 large eggs
2 tablespoons heavy cream
Pinch of salt
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preaheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice any vegetables that weren't cut before cooking into 1/4-inch slices and bite-size pieces.

Melt the butter in a 10-inch cast iron frying pan. Add the vegetables and cook until warmed.

Beat the eggs with the cream and salt. Add to the frying pan, quickly mix into the vegetables, and even out the vegetables in the pan.

Cook without stirring until the eggs are cooked around the edges but still jiggly in the center.

Transfer the pan to the oven and cook until the eggs are no longer jiggly and firm, about 10 minutes.

Sprinkle the cheese on top and continue cooking until the cheese is melted.

Serve warm from the pan.

Cast Iron Steak and Potatoes

Steak on the grill is great in the summer, but when the weather isn't cooperating, you can get a great sear on the meat in a cast iron frying pan. Potatoes also get a nice crust. This time I used mini-potatoes that were pre-cooked until done, then crisped and warmed in the pan.

1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 strip steak
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 pound mini potatoes, cooked until tender
10 cherry tomatoes
Flake salt, as needed
Fresh herbs (rosemary, basil, oregano, or chives)
Olive oil, for finishing

Heat the cooking oil (use a high-heat oil) in the pan on medium-high heat until it's just barely smoking. Add the steak and sear on one side, then flip and sear on the second side.

Turn the heat to medium and continue cooking, turning as needed, until the steak is cooked to your desired temperature.

Move the steak to a plate to rest.

Slice the potatoes in half and add them to the pan. Cook, stirring as needed, until the potatoes are browned in spots and heated through.

Meanwhile, slice the tomatoes in half.

To serve, slide the steak and arrange on a plate. Arrange the potatoes and tomatoes around and on top of the steak. Sprinkle with the salt and herbs. Drizzle the potatoes and tomatoes with a bit of oil.

Serve warm.

Got Leftovers? Make Tacos!

Any leftovers are perfect for steak tacos. Just cut the remaining steak into bite-size pieces and toss everything into that handy cast iron pan to heat briefly, then serve in tortillas. Top with salsa and any other garnishes you like.

Herbivoracious-Inspired Grilled Cheese

So, everyone seems to be talking about Herbivoracious by Michael Natkin, right? Okay, maybe it's just the people I hang out with, but I've heard a lot of buzz about the book. Must-have and all that stuff.

Well, okay, I like vegetables.

So here's me paging through the book, looking at all the beautiful recipes, and I get stuck on grilled cheese of all things. And it's not so much the recipe as it is a new technique that's got me all boggled.

We all know that the best part of a grilled cheese sandwich is the warm, melty cheese, right?

Hah! That's what you might say if you've eaten a grilled cheese sandwich but you've never cooked one. Because cooks know that the best part is the crusty browned bits of cheese that ooze out of the sandwich and get all crisp in the pan.

Those browned bits NEVER make it to the serving plate because the cooks snag 'em and eat 'em. Because they're sort of odd almost-burned pieces, and who wants that, anyway, right? Yeah, right. Cooks steal 'em because they're the best part.

So Michael Natkin decided to expand upon that browned-bit idea in a very ingenious way. His recipe calls for specific cheeses, which I'm sure are marvelous. But I didn't have them on hand, and I absolutely had to try this. With the cheese I happened to have.

And YOU can try it with any grilled-cheese worthy cheese you happen to have on hand. I like colby cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches, but I've been known to stray. Use anything you like. Add stuff to the interior, like I did with my scrambled ham and egg grilled cheese, if you like. Or make it plain.

But you have to try this. It's brilliant.

Herbivoracious-Inspired Grilled cheese

Butter, for cooking - about a tablespoon
Two slices bread
Pile of grated good-melting cheese (enough to generously cover one slice of bread, plus a little more

Melt the butter in a nonstick pan on medium heat and place the slices of bread in the pan. Pile the cheese one one slice, reserving a small handful. Let's say 1/4 cup(ish). Flip the uncheesed slice of bread onto the cheesed side and press down.

Cook on medium heat, flipping the sandwich as needed, until the bread is toasted and the cheese is melted.

 Now comes the genius part. Pile the reserved cheese next to the sandwich in a shape similar to that of your sandwich. Let it melt. When the edges begin to brown just a tiny bit, flip the sandwich over onto the cheese. The cheese will adhere to the sandwich. Oh yeah, now we're talking.

Continue cooking until the cheese is nicely browned and crisp.

Serve hot.

Devour.

Repeat as necessary.

Whole Foods Friday: Whisky Cheddar Quesadillas

While the bread recipe posted earlier today used Kerrygold Irish Whisky Aged Cheddar in a more subtle manner, these quesadillas are all about the cheese. The other components are there simply to enhance the cheese.

Amounts per quesadilla are completely up to you - I like nearly equal amounts of tomato and avocado, and enough cheese so it oozes out of the quesadilla just a little bit while cooking. The crispy bits of cheese that stick to the pan don't necessarily make it to the serving plate.

The trick to these quesadillas is to do most of the cooking with the cheese-side down, then flip to let the cheese melt into the toppings a bit. That way, the tomatoes and avocado don't actually cook, but they warm up just a little bit.

There's no salsa here, and no hot peppers - that's on purpose, to let the flavor of the cheese shine through. If you want salsa, serve it separately.

Whisky Cheddar Quesadillas

Flour tortillas
Kerrygold Irish Whisky Aged Cheddar Cheese
Cherry or other small tomatoes, halved or quartered
Avocado, diced
Freshly ground black pepper

Set out as many tortillas as you need. With larger tortillas, I suggest doing folded quesadillas, because the large ones are harder to flip. With smaller tortillas, you can use two tortillas per quesadilla, like a sandwich.

Slice or shred the cheese onto the tortillas - as much as you like. If you're going to fold, just cover half of the tortilla. Otherwise spread the cheese over the whole tortilla.

Arrange tomatoes and avocado on top of the cheese. Finish with several generous grinds of black pepper.

Fold the empty side of the large tortilla over the fillings. For small tortillas, top with a second tortilla.

Heat a cast iron pan, griddle, or frying pan on medium heat. Place as many of the assembled tortillas onto the cooking surface as will fit, with a little space between them so you can flip them easily.

Cook until the cheese begins melting, then flip the quesadillas over and cook briefly on the other side. Remove the tortillas from the pan, place them on a cutting board, and cut into wedges.

Serve hot.

Whole Foods Friday: Sprouted Wheat and Whisky Cheddar Bread

I've made a LOT of cheese breads. Mostly with visible bits and chunks of cheese.

This time I wanted the flavor to be more subtle - I wanted this to be the sort of bread where you know there's something different, but you can't quite pinpoint what's going on.

I thought the Irish Whisky Aged Cheddar was an idea candidate. The cheese has its own subtle flavors. And since this recipe doesn't use a lot of the cheese, if you buy a wedge, you'll have plenty left for snacking or other recipes. And that's a very, very good thing.

While the cheese flavor isn't prominent, it's there, particularly when this bread is warm or toasted. Grilled cheese, anyone?

I made this in a bread machine, but you can certainly opt to make it by hand or with a stand mixer.

Sprouted Wheat and Whisky Cheddar Bread

1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 cup (4 1/2 ounces) sprouted wheat flour
1/4 cup grated Kerrygold Irish Whisky Aged Cheddar
1 1/2 cups (6 3/4 ounces) bread flour
2 tablespoons cane sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon butter

Add all ingredients into your bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. I added the cheese between the two types of flour because I thought it had a better chance of mixing evenly rather than clumping together, but I don't know if that was necessary.

Set the machine for a medium loaf, regular crust. Push buttons as required.

Remove the loaf from the machine as soon as it's done and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese

A guest post from the lovely Madelyn from Karma Free Cooking.

This recipe has been getting a lot of buzz around the folks at the SE Water Cooler on FaceBook. And I thought it might be of interest to your Cookistry readers too. This is the first recipe I did for my first official vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner since I started my blog, KarmaFree Cooking. And since then, it is still one of most popular recipes/posts there.  

This Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese packs a lot of nutritional punch and color from the butternut squash in the cheese sauce. You can substitute the squash for regular pumpkin. It works just the same.

Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese

Roasted butternut squash or pumpkin – about 1 pound
1 pound whole-wheat elbow macaroni or other tubular pasta
2 cups reduced-fat milk
4 ounces extra-sharp Cheddar, grated (about 1 1/3 cups)
4 ounces of Shredded mix of melting cheeses – Mozzarella, Asiago, Fontina, etc.
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese (also cream cheese will do in a pinch)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan

First step is to roast the butternut squash…
1. Peel, remove the seeds and cut the butternut squash or pumpkin into 2” pieces.
2. Roast the butternut squash or pumpkin on a baking sheet by adding a drizzle of olive oil, salt, pepper and a few sprigs of thyme. Massage the squash pieces so they’re seasoned all over. Roast in a 400F oven for about 45-60 minutes. Basically, until the squash is fork tender.
3. After it’s done, allow it to cool down a bit and puree in a food processor.

Now for the Mac and Cheese part…
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Bring a large pot to a boil for the pasta.
3. Meanwhile, start building the cheese sauce in a pot that’s big enough to accommodate the sauce and the pasta when it’s cooked. Over medium heat, bring together the milk, all the cheeses, the mustard, and pureed butternut squash. Season with salt and pepper. Your goal is to make a homogeneous cheese sauce where everything is blended and combined.  As soon as that’s achieved. Turn off the heat and set aside.
4. When the water boils, salt the water generously and add the pasta. Cook until the pasta is tender but still firm.
5. Drain the cooked pasta and transfer to the pot with the cheese sauce. Mix well together.
6. Transfer to a buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and some of the leftover cheese blend all over the top.
7. Bake for 20 minutes and then broil for 3 additional minutes so the top is crisp and nicely browned. Everything is already cooked, so you’re just heating everything together and browning the cheese on top.

This recipe is delicious. The Dijon mustard gives it a different and grown-up taste. I hope you like it too. Tell me all about it if you try it.