Holt Cuisine

Some of you may remember the pumpkin project last fall. I ended up with a freezer full of pumpkin purée. Recently I finally got to use most of what I had left by making pumpkin brownies for a bake sale. They were really good and very easy to do. I have written about my opinion regarding box cake mixes . I really think they are one of the great Food Science masterpieces of our times. So in this case I started with a simple box brownie mix. The one I used was the plain one from ALDIs. It called for water, oil and eggs to be added.  Home puréed pumpkin is wetter than canned pumpkin, so I substituted one cup of my frozen pumpkin for both the oil and water. It was brownie mix, 1 cup frozen pumpkin puree, and two eggs.  I did a trial recipe to see if it was going to work using a 9x13 pan. They were too thin and the texture was a little stoggy. So I used a 9x9 pan and added a tsp of baking powder to the powdered mix.  I baked them according to the package times and to an intern...

In my search for the tender green bean, I decided to try the Instant Pot rather than the microwave for the initial cooking step.  I bought a large bag of “washed and trimmed” beans – 2 lbs – so that I could try the beans 3 ways. I went through the bag and checked them for stems (probably 10-15 beans still had stems), and rewashed them. Then I put them in the steamer basket of my Instant Pot and steamed them for 3 minutes.  Then I immediately put them in an ice bath to stop the cooking. They were very tender. In fact they bordered on mushy. I separated them into three bunches. I put some in the freezer, seasoned some for a sheet pan meal, and some others for Stir Fried Rice (see below).  But I felt like I needed more research, so back to the grocery store. This time I got regular and French beans.  I steamed the regular beans at 1 and 2 minutes in the instant pot. I steamed the French beans for 0 and 1 minute.  Then I roasted them all for 30 minutes at 325. ...

Ever since I tried to make green beans in a sheet pan meal, I have meant to get back to them. I still haven’t been very successful in getting them to cook on a sheet pan, but I keep tweaking the method, hopefully. I know that for many people, a chewy green bean is ok. I’m a little weird because I want them to be fully tender, but not mushy and still bright green. I know… You can’t always get what you want – but I can try.  I grew up on canned green beans. They were a bit mushy and usually a grey green color. I bought a can to feed to my grandson. They seemed the right consistency for someone who doesn’t have molars yet. He was un-interested and after tasting them I had to admit he had a point.  I remember my sister saying that you had to cook green beans for a long time to get the can flavor out of them. This makes sense. You have to get the can flavor out and put something else in. When I was a child it was usually bacon or salt pork. Once my mother started learning to cook w...

This week is New Year’s and that means Tamales. We plan to make Cream Cheese Chili Tamales and Turkey Tamales. Here is the recipe for those .  To go with the Tamales I usually serve salsa and cheese sauce.  I decided to make a fresh salsa this time rather than buying something from the store. I usually use a combination of these ingredients (how many I used this time): Tomatoes (4) Tomatillos (8 small) Poblano Peppers (2) Jalapeno Peppers (6) Garlic (20 cloves) Onion (2 med) Cilantro (1 bunch) Lime (4) Salt (2 tsp) In the past we have put these veggies in the smoker and it makes a great smoked salsa. I have also made the salsa with all these things, uncooked. The raw salsa is a little “liquidy”.  This time I decided to roast everything in the oven, except the cilantro and lime. I roasted them slowly (325°) for about an hour. Everything was nice and dry.  I took off any dried skins, but if they didn’t come off easily, I left them on.  All the veggies went into th...

I see that lots of people still have their Thanksgiving pumpkins sitting around, and some of them might still be good for roasting. Here are some of my conclusions:  1. A squished looking pumpkin is best. These seem to have smaller seed cavities and more flesh.  2. A round, jack-o-lantern friendly pumpkin is more likely to have thin, stringy flesh.  3. Even a thick skin pumpkin can be a little stringy, but the food processor will take care of that.  Here is another thing I found that was helpful. I bought these on Amazon. They are silicone and allow you to freeze things in one cup portions. I froze the last pumpkin puree like this and it really helped on freezer space. I’m looking forward to using them the next time I make broth. I think broth in 1 cup blocks will be very useful.  A friend asked me if I was missing the North Carolina Candy Roaster pumpkin. I will say that the Candy Roaster pretty much had it all – thick flesh, firm but not stringy, and swe...

For the past few weeks our church has been doing a pumpkin patch. There were all kinds of pumpkins and gourds. As the weeks went by if became plain that there were going to be a bunch of pumpkins leftover. Apparently, that is usually expected and of course that made me wonder if you could eat them.  Up until a few years ago, the only time I had ever tried to roast a pumpkin I used a standard carving pumpkin. It was stringy, pale and tasteless, so I went back to the can. While we lived in North Carolina we had access to the Candy Roaster. This vegetable changed the way I think of fresh pumpkin partially because it looks more like a squash than a pumpkin, but also because, roasted it was so much better than canned pumpkin! But would anything in the pumpkin patch be that good?  I read a couple of articles that indicated that the fancy heirloom type pumpkin were best for eating, so I decided to try a few to find out.  The picture above shows the pumpkins I brought home. We ch...

When I was young the only beet I’d ever eaten was from a can. I wasn’t a fan. My mom was a young wife in the early 1940’s and canned goods were the modern miracle. By the time my sisters and I were cooking in our own kitchens, canned goods were taking a second place to fresh veggies.  I don’t remember exactly when I was introduced to my first fresh beet, but it was a game changer. They taste nothing like a canned beet. The canned beet tastes like… well, can. The fresh beet has a sweet earthiness. They were a favorite around our house and still today if my adult kids request a specific meal from me, chances are it will include Harvard Beets .  A little over a week ago I got a share from a box of fresh veggies that my daughter picked up for us. As you can see in this picture, it was bountiful. We shared out the beets and I got 3 medium and 1 large beet.  Since I wasn’t planning to cook them right away I stored them in the veggie drawer in the refrigerator. You can store the...