ree drummond

Cooking With Christie: Nostalgia

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This Weeks’ Recipe: One Pot Homemade O’s

Flipping through the pages of a new cookbook, I ran across this recipe — which inspired quite a debate in our household. My husband, whose folks weren’t into serving highly processed canned goods, never enjoyed the original tinned version of this dish as a kid. So, when I went to make this from-scratch version, he assumed it was a main dish. Citing the fact it’s a pasta with a red sauce and sprinkled with parmesan — like spaghetti.

(The Cookbook I found this recipe in and would recommend it to anyone looking for great and straightforward dinner recipes!)

And, technically, I supposed both the original and look-alike versions are pasta dishes.

However, as a kid who’s eaten more than their fair share of canned goods, I never once connected the components to a traditional pasta dish. Moreover, my family always ate the original tinned version as a starchy side dish — since it didn’t actually contain any visible vegetables.

This debate went round and round (as I was cooking the dish). Finally, we compromised and added a bit of chicken for protein.

Even with this non-called-for-ingredient addition (as well as the deletion of garlic and onion (due to allergies) and the addition of grated celery root), it turned out really well! And if you’re looking for a trip down memory lane with a far superior version, this homemade o’s recipe is for you!

Christie: Honesty, the only detective I can ever see entertaining the idea of making One Pot Homemade O’s is Tuppence, who perhaps would make them for her kids.

Cooking With Christie: Outtakes!

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Most of the ingredients for the Hot Chocolate Cookies. BTW: These cookies were a lot of fun to make!

Helpful Tip From Me to You: Don’t get caught up with playing a video game whilst baking them….as you only get about ten uninterrupted minutes (at a time) before you need to do one thing or another with them.

Cooking with Christie: A Cookie I’d Never Heard of Before (But You Probably Have!)

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This Week’s Recipe: Hot Chocolate Cookies

Inspiration: A friend of ours, my husband and I love playing board games with, invited us over to his house to celebrate his birthday. To fuel the mini-celebration, I asked what kind of cookie he’d like me to bake as a treat. After texting several suggestions, all of which would kill me due to the nuts they called for, he landed on Hot Chocolate Cookies.

This request immediately sent me to the internet because none of my many, many cookbooks contained a recipe for such a specimen. …and lo and behold, I found a recipe from a source I am quickly coming to trust — Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman.

Using a 72% dark chocolate and Swiss Miss cocoa mix and unsalted butter (on accident), I set to work…..and they turned out great! (Despite the fact I got melted chocolate everywhere due to an ill-placed kitchen rug I tripped on at a crucial moment. In any case….)

Even better? The Birthday Boy adored them!

Next time I make these, which I’ve got a feeling will be soon, I will try them with 100% dark chocolate. Whilst the 72% tamped down the sweet factor of the sugar, marshmallows, cocoa, and white chocolate chips — I think these might be even better with an extremely dark chocolate!

Christie: I believe Tuppence would enjoy making these for her kids as they are pretty simple to make but look unusual/exciting with the marshmallow on top!

(I also thought it worked well with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, since Hot Chocolate plays such an important part in the mystery!)

Cooking With Christie: Veggie Tot Pie

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Inspiration: Recently, I’ve been battling mental fog. This blank greyness not only makes it difficult to think my way out of a paper bag — it turns cooking/baking from a joy into a chore. (Which sucks, btw.) Which means my husband and I end up eating eggs & pancakes and toasty cheese sandwiches & soup. But as much as I love these comfort classics, there’s only so long you can eat them until you start longing for a veggie.

So, on a day when I found myself with two brain cells to rub together, I flipped open The Pioneer Woman’s Super Easy Cookbook, hoping to find something new and easy to make.

And Mrs. Drummond didn’t let me down.

Veggie Tot Pie is a super versatile veggie forward dish that’s easy and cheap to make!

My Recipe Changes: Just as Ree instructed, I switched up the veggies a bit to suit our tastes and what I had in my freezer. (Which explains why I used crowns instead of tater-tots.)

I also discovered that unless you’ve got an enormous cast-iron skillet, you only need one can of Campbell’s condensed soup called for in the recipe (it’s what makes the sauce that ties the dish together). I favor Campbell’s reduced sodium Cream of Mushroom soup. It helps control the amount of salt in the end dish, allowing me to add things like soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce for extra depth of flavor.

And because of stupid, stupid allergies, I can’t add the called for onions and garlic — so I leaned hard against my spice cabinet. In the above pic, I added teaspoons of turmeric, paprika, black pepper, mushroom powder, tomato paste, and chili crisp.

In recent iterations — I’ve added frozen cubed sweet potatoes and fresh peppers to my original corn, pea, and carrot veggie mixture. I also used Abbot’s Butcher plant-based chorizo to make the pie into a main dish rather than a side. Adding the faux meat meant leaning into the chorizo spices — so I added a teaspoon of coriander, sweet paprika, black pepper, oregano, and chipotle instead. And it turned out great!

Christie: This is a simple dish I can see Tuppence cooking on a weeknight when her (and Tommy’s) kids were growing up. The tots on top make it fun (and the entire dish goes well with a dash of ketchup), and the wealth of veggies hiding in the gravy makes it easy to get the kids to eat their vegetables!

Cooking With Christie! Bread Pudding

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Inspiration: In a fit of ‘waste not want not’ my husband and I decided to make bread pudding after a loaf of bread I’d baked turned out utterly wonky. And by wonky, I mean the seam split from the main body of the bread loaf, and one side was substantially larger than the other…However, when cut into small one-inch cubes, the bread’s lop-sidedness disappeared!

(Who would’ve thunk it….)

Ree Drummond on the Food Network site wrote the base recipe we used. Though, predictably, we made a couple of changes….

The problem with Bread Pudding, for me, is the texture — or the lack thereof — so my husband had the idea of putting a crumble on top made with cinnamon (1tsp.), butter (2Tsp.), flour (1/4c), and brown sugar (1/4c). And when all I wanted to do was eat the sweet, crunchy topping? Well, we sliced the remaining pan full into one-inch thick strips, turned them onto their sides, made more streusel topping, coated the lot, and baked it again until golden brown.

The concoction was terrific! Even better? With the topping, it actually had texture!

Christie: Honestly, I can see Miss Marple making this for the same reason, especially during WWII (or after, as the habits formed during this period still inform decisions today), as the dessert is a tasty and economical one!

Cooking With Christie!

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This Week’s Recipe: The English Breakfast Situation

Surprise, surprise, surprise! I got a new cookbook called The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Super Easy! and of course, I needed to share a few of my faves from inside with you guys! 

The first of which, renamed in our household to the English Incident (because I was trying to recall Mrs. Drummond’s title and nearly nailed it), this recipe is indeed super easy and very tasty! It’s also one you should only indulge in when you know lunchtime is going to be late or when you’re going on a hike and need a lot of fuel to sustain you — because while it’s super easy, it makes A LOT of food, even when pared down a bit.

(This is not a complaint, just an observation — FYI.)

Now, because I made this for dinner (the best time for breakfast dishes, IMHO), I tweaked the recipe just a bit: omitting the bacon entirely, used smoked apple & chicken sausages, and as my pantry was bereft of fresh parsley, I used a couple of handfuls of peas (we’d just picked from the garden) instead. 

I also used one less egg, one less sausage, and slightly increased the amount of mushrooms. (Because we love them so.)

And it turned out beautifully! A great one-pan wonder that takes less than twenty-five minutes to whip up.

(Hopefully, the Pioneer Woman won’t mind the rejiggering of her recipe!)

Christie: Honestly, I can see any of Agatha Christie’s detectives loving this breakfast as it’s just a slight twist on a Full English!