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Like the mimosa or the bellini, I decided to stir up some trouble this morning with a Pink Muscato Magnolia! Never heard of it? Well, it’s because I just made this version up. A regular Magnolia (I Googled it) has watermelon pucker, Dr. Pepper, and grenadine in it, but mine is totally different. Magnolias are beautiful flowers, and some have pink petals, which I thought of when naming this drink. So here it is – watermelon juice and muscato wine, with some juicy bits of red plum thrown in for good measure. You can also stir in a little bit of club soda for that fizz, but I just work with what I have for now. Enjoy!
Pink Muscato Magnolia
serves 2
5 cups cubed watermelon, deseeded
1/2 cup muscato wine
1 small red plum, sliced
1. In a blender or food processor, puree the watermelon until smooth. Place a strainer or cheesecloth over a medium bowl, and pour the watermelon puree through, making a pulp-free juice. Discard the pulp.
2. Stir in the muscato wine. Pour the Magnolia into two chilled champagne flutes, and drop in some slices of red plum. Sip and savor!
Nutrition Facts (about 1 cup per serving): 107 calories, 0.3 grams fat, 18 grams carbs, 1.2 grams protein
Congratulations Kristen! You are the winner of the Cooking Light Magazine subscription giveaway! Woohooo!!!! (Confetti thrown in air…you’ll be contacted shortly to claim your prize). Your story reminds me of a time when I baked chocolate chip-coconut cookies for a coworker’s birthday, only to find out the birthday girl couldn’t have any because she had a coconut allergy! One of the lessons I’ve learned – now people think I’m overly paranoid to ask if they have food allergies prior to a potluck/dinner party/holiday goodie gift-making, but really, it’s because I’ve learned my lesson from prior experiences. Now, if I bring stuff to work, I always list what’s inside! 
Now, back to more food. This sweet corn, tomato, and basil salad is one of my favorite summer salads to make. I first whipped it up last summer, after I picked up some sweet ears of corn, vine-ripened tomatoes, and fresh basil straight from the farmer’s market one Saturday morning near Diamond Head crater. This was the end result, and I’m so happy to make it again now that it’s summertime. It’s such a versatile side dish - dress up a barbeque with some of this chilled salad or bring it to the beach with some sandwiches. Since it’s eaten cold, just throw it into your cooler!
The recipe from epicurious.com calls for more olive oil (like 5 tablespoons worth) and balsamic vinegar, but you only need a little bit. I don’t like my salads oily. I added more garlic, and I kid you not, when that garlic and olive oil saute with the corn, it’s all creamy, buttery-like, and caramelized all at once. Yummy goodness. Too much balsamic would overpower the vegetables, and since the sweet corn, tomatoes, and basil are so lovely and delicate, just a touch of balsamic will just heighten and enhance those flavors. I would say that this would serve four, but who am I kidding? Hubby and I got carried away one afternoon, and done ate the whole thing in one sitting!
Sweet Corn, Tomato, and Basil Salad
adapted from Epicurious.com, serves about 4 normal people, or two hungry ones
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 ears sweet white corn (makes 4 cups of corn kernels)
1/2 cup basil leaves, packed
6 cocktail tomatoes, halved and seeded (or use any flavorful tomato you have)
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp sea salt, or to taste
Freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
1. In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, heat the oil. When the oil is smokin’, add the garlic, and stir it around until bubbly, happy, and slightly browned. Add the corn, and saute some more, about 4-6 minutes until cooked. Remove the corn from the heat; add 1/2 the basil.
2. Put the corn mixture into a medium bowl. Add the tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, sea salt and black pepper to taste. Stir to combine, add the rest of the basil, and stir again until all ingredients are incorporated. Season again to taste, if needed. Let the salad cool for about 15 minutes at room temperature, then cover the bowl and place it in the fridge until cold, about 3-5 hours.
Nutrition Facts (per serving, about 1 cup): 175 calories, 5.3 grams fat (of those, 0.75 grams saturated fat, 1.25 grams polyunsaturated fat, 3 grams monounsaturated fat), 32 grams carbs, 5.4 grams protein, 4.6 grams fiber
I finally switched over to my own domain, http://nutritiontokitchen.com! To thank you for reading (I don’t know why you are, but thanks anyways!) and show you how appreciative I am of your support, I’m giving away a free 1-year magazine subscription to one of my favorite cooking magazines, Cooking Light. All you have to do is post a comment on a funny/embarrassing/eye-watering/memorable cooking debacle by 12am EST, June 20th. I’ll pick a winner at random and announce the lucky lad or laddie the next day! Yay!
Example disaster (involves me, of course): On a day of multi-tasking, I was in a hurry to bake two batches of red velvet cakes for a party, and in the midst of my mad dash to just throw that darned thing in the oven already, I poured my batter into my springform pans, picked them up, and flung red velvet cake batter ALL OVER MY STOVE, OVEN, FLOOR, REFRIGERATOR, ETC. The batter proceeded to swiftly seep into the cracks of my oven door and into the storage of baking pans that were in that pull-out thingy underneath the oven. Breaking in a cold sweat, I said a few words that I shoudn’t say here, scooped up handfuls of batter (yes, my hands were stained after that), dumped them in the sink, pitied myself for a few minutes after spending about 45 minutes cleaning the red out of my kitchen, and started over again (why, you ask? I really don’t know). And all of this stemmed from not locking the springform pans together correctly.
So anyways, back to your prize. This is fun – I never win anything, but at least one of you will! Just to highlight how great a lot Cooking Light’s recipes are, here’s a recipe I just made (and totally love) for you chocoholics out there – Chocolate Pudding, courtesy of Cooking Light mag.
Chocolate Pudding
6 servings (serving size: about 1/2 cup)
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups fat-free milk, divided
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 large egg yolks
- 2 teaspoons butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
Preparation
Place 2 cups milk in a medium, heavy saucepan; bring to a boil. Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a large bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Combine remaining 1/2 cup milk and egg yolks, stirring well with a whisk. Add egg yolk mixture to sugar mixture, stirring well. Gradually add half of hot milk to egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly with a whisk. Return milk mixture to pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 1 minute or until thick, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add butter, vanilla, and chocolate, stirring until melted.
Spoon pudding into a bowl. Place bowl in a large ice-filled bowl for 15 minutes or until pudding is cool, stirring occasionally. Cover surface of pudding with plastic wrap; chill.
Nutritional Information
- 246 calories; 9.6 grams fat (sat 5.6g,mono 3.5g,poly 0.5g); 6.4g protein; 35.8g carbs; 0 grams fiber; 74mg cholesterol; 0.8mg iron; 157 mg sodium; 150 mg calcium.
Recipe from Julianna Grimes Bottcher, Cooking Light, AUGUST 2006
Phở, or Vietnamese rice noodle soup, is a meal so quintessential to Vietnamese cooking that I was bound to post a recipe sometime or another. I don’t make it that often, but for you pho-natics out there, here you go!
The best phở really does come from home – both my mom and Phong’s can make some killer phở gà (chicken phở). And it’s easy too, as long as you learn some tricks of the trade that were passed down to me by my mom and Phong’s. The main thing is to make your broth as flavorful as possible. My mom taught me how to taste and appreciate the broth, and that if you had to add an overwhelming amount of condiments to it (ie, hoisin and sriracha), then you’re basically trying to cover up some inherent flaw in how it was made. Sometimes I’ll add a little bit of both when I go out to phở restaurants, but at home, my phở stays as is – maybe a sliced jalapeno on the side for some heat.
Here’s some Pho-1-1 pho you (I know, I really can’t help myself!):
1. Lesson from my MIL: instead of boiling the rice noodles while they’re dry, soak them in COLD water for about an hour. Then drain. Now they’re more pliable.
Now, in a small saucepan, boil some water. Take a small strainer and fill it with some noodles. Dip it in the saucepan, oh, for about 20 seconds, swishing the noodles back and forth with your chopsticks, until they become cooked…
Now they’re done! No boiling the heck out of them for long at all! And the best part is, the noodles come out perfectly al dente, not those soggy kinds that you’ll get if you left them raging mad in the pot too long.
2. Char the onion before putting it in the broth. But as you can see from the picture above, I don’t have a gas stovetop to do that over the stovetop, unfortunately, but I do have a grill plate that I placed onto my stovetop and was able to char my onion that way. Or, you can do as Jaden does for her pho ga at Steamy Kitchen, and broil it in the oven to get that depth of flavor.
3. If you want to buy one of those pho seasoning sachets at the Asian grocery store, go ahead. It’s filled with spices like ginger, star anise, and cinnamon. I just made what I had on hand – my mom and mom-in-law rarely use the sachets and just rely on a really flavorful broth with hints of charred onion, ginger, and star anise. So I do what they do!
4. What’s that daikon radish doing in the recipe?! Relax, just keep reading, and relax. This is optional, and a secret from my mama, but it does lend a clean, slightly sweet flavor to the broth. It becomes really tender, so if you want, you can slice it and put it in your bowl at the end too, for some more veggie intake. Or just leave it in the pot and let it work its magic.
5. For the thinly sliced onion garnish, soak the sliced onion in ice water for a few minutes, then pat dry. This is done if you don’t want an overly “raw,” or “stinky,” as my MIL calls it, taste.
6. I poach the chicken with the skin on, so that when it’s cooking and making the broth, the meat inside doesn’t dry out. That’s why I initially call for 16 cups of water, because I eventually skim off about 4 cups from excess fat in the broth and other scum.
7. I usually poach a whole chicken, but the grocery store only had ready-cut whole chicken. So I got that, and it actually worked better for me, because I could leave in the backbone and neckbone to extract more flavor while I was shredding the rest of the chicken.
8. If you’re confused about which types of fish sauce I recommend, go to Wandering Chopsticks’ blog and scroll down to the pic of different nuoc mam bottles – the one in the middle and right are what I use (Phu Quoc is good, but Three Crabs Brand is the only one I buy if I have a choice).
Chicken Phở for the Soul
serves anywhere from 4-6
16 cups water
2 tsp sea salt
1 whole chicken, cut into pieces (2 breasts, backbone, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks, 2 wings, and neck bone – discard the gizzards)
1 yellow onion, peeled, halved, and charred
1 small daikon radish (about a 6-inch long radish), peeled and left whole
1 stalk of ginger, about 4-5 inches long, peeled, and cut in half lengthwise
5-6 star anise pods
4 Tbsp good-quality fish sauce (I like the Vietnamese Three Crabs Brand or Phu Quoc)
1/2 tsp granulated sugar, or to taste
1 package (12 or 16 oz) pho noodles, soaked in COLD water for about an hour
For garnish:
A couple handfuls of bean sprouts
Thinly sliced yellow onion (let soak in ice- cold water for about 5 minutes, then pat dry)
Thinly sliced green onion
Cilantro
Thai basil
Freshly cracked black pepper
Optional: Hoisin sauce and sriracha hot sauce, thinly sliced jalapeno peppers
Preparation:
1. In a large stockpot over high heat, boil the water. Add the sea salt, and then the chicken pieces. Bring back to a boil, for about 5 minutes, then reduce the heat to medium-high. Skim the scum and fat off every 5 minutes or so, until the broth runs clear (I skimmed off about 4 cups of the stuff after an hour of cooking). After the first 15-20 minutes, take out the wings, thighs, drumsticks; take out the chicken breasts about 5-10 minutes after that when cooked through. Allow the pieces of chicken to cool for about 20 minutes before shredding.
2. Meanwhile, while you’re waiting for the chicken to cool, turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the onion halves, daikon, star anise, ginger, fish sauce, and sugar. Allow to gently simmer, with the backbone and neck bone still in the pot, for about 1 hour. Adjust seasonings to taste (add more fish sauce, salt, or sugar to balance out the flavors).
3. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, discard the skin and excess fat. Shred the chicken and place into a separate container (I put it in a tupperware because this pho lasts us a couple meals, and I can take out however much I need at a time).
4. Prepare the pho rice noodles according to secret #1 as indicated above.
5. Slice up all the green onions, roughly chop the cilantro, and thinly slice about 1/2 a yellow onion. Soak the thinly sliced onion in ice water for about 5 minutes, then pat dry and set aside.
5. To assemble your pho, place some noodles into your bowl. Top with a few pieces of heated chicken (you can nuke the chicken if it’s been in the fridge, covered, in the microwave for a minute or until hot). Ladle hot pho broth over the noodles and chicken, and top it off with bean sprouts, thinly sliced onion, green onions, and cilantro. Add Thai basil and jalapeno if desired (I didn’t have any today). Finish it off with freshly cracked black pepper. Serve with hoisin sauce and Sriracha on the side, if desired.
