New Blog Site: CookLikeMad.com

WordPress.com, you’ve treated me well, but I’m ready to take off the training wheels. Please come to my new website (still a blog, of course), CookLikeMad.com, for all new posts, pictures, and recipes. Seafood Gumbo will be the next post, so check there later tonight for your new favorite recipe for this comforting Southern dish. [...]

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Scallops with Spicy Asian Barbecue Sauce

Spicy scallops garnished with fresh torn basil Scallops are one food most people love to eat in restaurant but rarely cook at home. Why? They are just as quick to cook as shrimp, easier to clean than shrimp, and when seared on high heat, make for a beautiful presentation. The reasons I compare scallops to [...]

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Soft Pumpkin Cookies (Pumpkin Cake Bites)

Some people like crunchy cookies, other likes soft, chewy cookies- I like both, but today I’m standing up for cakey cookies. Perhaps these would be better named as cake bites, since the dough is looser than normal cookie dough and the resulting texture is more like a cakey pumpkin blondie than a cookie, but the [...]

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Chicken Pot Pie with Easiest Pastry Crust

Just look at that photo above- do I even need to say anything to encourage you to make this pot pie? Feel free to bake this in individual ramekins so you can serve them in their baking dishes. With this rustic dish, that would be a beautiful presentation. Interestingly enough, this dough is very similar [...]

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Balsamic Braised Chicken with Broccolini and Potatoes

Ignore those button mushrooms next to the broccolini (or don’t)- I just sauteed them and put them on the plate to use up leftover mushrooms in the fridge. They married well with the other ingredients, though. I’m cooling off from my sugar rush and getting back to my culinary school basics. While I cooked some [...]

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Eggless Chinese Five Spice Cookies

pretty pecan pinwheels! As I continue with my baking kick, my mind turns to cost. What ingredients can I cut out and still have a great cookie? Butter? No way. Sugar? Not in a million. Flour? Fat chance. Eggs? Hmm….And that’s where we begin. In nearly every traditional cookie recipe, eggs lend texture, flavor, rise, [...]

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Easiest Cookies Part 2: Palmiers (Mini Elephant Ears)

Aw, they look like hearts… Good thing v-day’s coming up! Palmiers are the biggest trick in the book. They not only require two ingredients, frozen puff pastry and sugar, but maintain their addictive crunch for days after they’re baked. Using a silpat makes clean up especially easy, but the puff pastry has enough butter in [...]

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Easiest Cookies, Part 1: Chocolate-Dipped Pecan Meringues

Ok, so I guess I’m on a baking kick. Its just that D and I have a few friends coming over to watch football tonight and tomorrow night, and I couldn’t help but bake some goodies to munch on during the game. I made both palmiers (recipe in part deux) and chocolate-dipped pecan meringues (recipe [...]

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Pumpkin White Chocolate Cream Puff “Napoleon”

There are some no-brainer food combinations that come to mind when I think of things to make for dessert: chocolate and mint, chocolate and cherry, chocolate and coconut, chocolate and almond, chocolate and peanut butter, white chocolate and berries, hmm…chocolate, white, milk, or dark, seems to compliment an inexhaustible list of flavors, huh? However, chocolate [...]

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Jalapeno Cornbread Stuffing, Two Ways

A warm bowl of stuffing and baked eggs Every January, I find it tough to snap out of the holiday mindset, and this year is no different. In fact, I think I’m finding it particularly challenging to snap back into work mode, since keeping a food blog makes my mind dwell on food in a [...]

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