I Can Make You Hot! (38 page)

Cut the tops off the peppers and scoop out the seeds and pith. Mix and match whatever ingredients suit your fancy.

Some suggestions: chicken, mushrooms, and couscous; rice, vodka sauce, and Parmesan; chicken, feta, and a bit of oil; chicken, rice, and vodka sauce.

Let your taste buds run wild and make each one different if you like.

Stuff the peppers with the mixture(s) of your choice. Spray a pan with organic nonstick cooking spray, stand the stuffed peppers in the pan, and bake in a 350° F oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the peppers are soft and the filling is browned on top.

Eggplant Lasagna

I came up with this recipe one day when I was trying to think of a fun, healthy dish for my girls. I added the dehydrated eggplant because, as you know, I’m in
love
with my dehydrator, and I also love the added crunch.

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 pint cherry tomatoes

One 15.5-ounce jar Newman’s Own vodka sauce, or use the
homemade sauce

1 medium eggplant, sliced about ¼-inch thich

4 ounces shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

½ cup chopped dehydrated eggplant, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Spray a nonstick frying pan with nonstick cooking spray. Add the chopped garlic to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, for 3 to 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and brown over medium heat for a few minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Spoon
¹
/
₃
cup of the vodka sauce into an 8-inch-square baking pan. Add a layer of eggplant slices and cover with a layer of the tomato-garlic mixture and a layer of the shredded mozzarella cheese. Repeat to make 3 layers, finishing with a layer of vodka sauce.

Sprinkle with the Parmesan, cover with aluminum foil, and bake for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand at least 10 minutes before cutting and sprinkling with the dehydrated eggplant for added crunch.

Guacamole with Homemade Baked Chips

Growing up, I’d always believed that guacamole was fattening. It wasn’t until I discovered that even though its key ingredient, avocado, has fat, it’s good fat. I didn’t know there were good fats and bad fats, but there are. We all need some fat, not only for flavor but also because your body needs it to function, just like a Ferrari needs oil. My go-to good fats are olive oil; canola oil for cooking; grapeseed oil for salads; almond oil or truffle oil in moderation for flavor; and—of course—avocado.

I love this guacamole with my own homemade baked tortilla chips.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

3 ripe avocados (not soft and flabby but not six-pack hard, either)

2 garlic cloves

1 shallot

1 jalapeño pepper

½ small white onion, finely chopped

1 lime

Fine sea salt

Handful cilantro, finely chopped

½ ripe tomato, seeded and diced

Paprika, for garnish

Baked corn tortilla chips
^*

Scoop out the flesh of the avocado. Grate the garlic and shallot; you want the flavor of the juice. If you don’t like things too hot, seed the jalapeño pepper, then dice the pepper. (Be careful: don’t rub your eyes after handling the pepper until you’ve washed your hand thoroughly.)

Combine the avocado, grated garlic and shallot, the diced jalapeño, and the chopped onion in a bowl. Squeeze the lime over all and stir to combine. Season with sea salt to taste. Stir in the chopped cilantro, and scatter the tomato over all.

Garnish with the paprika and serve with tortilla chips.

make your own taquitos

Use your home-baked taco chips to make delicious bite-size snacks. Finely chop cooked chicken breast or shrimp, or use cooked ground beef, and combine it in a bowl with diced red onion, tomato, and avocado. Mix the ingredients well, season with salt and pepper to taste, and top each chip with a teaspoonful of the mixture for tasty taquitos pequeños.

Breads and Desserts

Mom’s Irish Soda Bread

Where’s the Zucchini? Bread

Kiki’s Cocoa Crunch

Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies

Mom’s Chocolate Cake—aka The Chocolate Devil

Graham Cracker Icebox Napoleons

Mom’s Irish Soda Bread

My mom, Lesley Killoren, is smart (she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Loyola University Chicago), was one of the first American Airlines stewardesses, and she is a great cook who has always been weight conscious. To tell the truth, she never really liked to cook, but I think that was really because she hated the cleanup. On Sunday mornings, however, she often made this Irish soda bread. I got to sleep in on Sundays because there were no swim meets, and the whole family would sit down together for breakfast. My dad, who is of German and Irish descent, loved the bread, and also loved using our breakfasts as vehicles for lecturing us about friends or school. We’d recap what we’d done on Saturday night. My sister usually had something fun to talk about while for me it was often recapping the plot of
The Love Boat
. But no matter what we were saying, somehow Mom always found a way to jump in and turn the subject to sex. It’s true! My mom often provided us with a short course in sex education.

I still love Irish soda bread even though I haven’t yet figured out how to use it as a platform for talking to my daughters about sex. One of the great things about it, aside from how delicious it tastes, is that a ½-inch-thick slice has only 170 calories!

MAKES ONE 9-BY-5-INCH LOAF;
ABOUT EIGHTEEN ½-INCH-THICK SLICES

1½ cups buttermilk

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 large egg, slightly beaten

1½ cups dark seedless raisins

3 cups all-purpose flour

²
/
₃
cups sugar

1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.

In medium bowl, combine the buttermilk, butter, egg, and raisins; set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients by tossing them together with 2 forks for about 1 minute.

Add the buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50 to 55 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave in the pan for 1 minute. Remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

The bread is best when freshly baked, so store it wrapped airtight and try to eat it within a day or two.

Where’s the Zucchini? Bread

When I was growing up I was a kind of Peter Rabbit. I spent a lot of time stealing vegetables and flowers from our neighbors’ garden in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. But even kids who say they “hate” vegetables will love this bread—and so will you.

MAKES TWO 8-INCH LOAVES;
ABOUT 16 SLICES PER LOAF

3 cups cornmeal

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 teaspoons baking powder

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 large egg whites

1 cup grapeseed oil

2¼ cups sugar

3 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 small zucchini, shredded

1 small zucchini, finely chopped

Preheat the oven to 325° F. Grease and flour two 8-by-4-inch loaf pans.

Sift the cornmeal, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon together into a bowl.

Beat the egg whites, oil, sugar, and vanilla together in a large bowl. Add the sifted ingredients to the egg white mixture, and beat well. Stir in the zucchini until well combined and pour the batter into the prepared pans.

Bake for 40 to 60 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pans on a wire rack for 20 minutes.

Kiki’s Cocoa Crunch

In my mom’s defense, she had three kids and it was easier to make the sandwiches for our school lunch the night before, freeze them, and let them thaw in the morning. Except that they never thawed. So I mixed cocoa powder and cereal together and took the mixture to school in plastic baggies for my lunch. Now, instead of a meal replacement, this is my go-to chocolate crunch munch.

MAKES 9 SERVINGS

2 ½ cups organic rolled oats

1 ½ cups unsweetened cereal (any grain or flake)

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ cup maple syrup

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Organic nonstick cooking spray

Preheat the oven to 250°F and move the rack to the bottom third of the oven.

In a large bowl, combine the rolled oats, cereal, brown sugar, and cocoa powder and mix well. Stir in the maple syrup and vanilla extract until everything is evenly coated.

Spray a large baking sheet with the cooking spray. Spread the mixture evenly over the baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for one hour.

Cool, break into pieces if necessary, store in baggies, and have it handy for a sweet snack.

Preserve in an airtight jar or container or in Ziploc bags for snacking.

Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies

This recipe was my first adventure into baking. I remember it as printed in a newspaper, and it is apparently one of Katharine Hepburn’s family recipes. I have always admired Ms. Hepburn for being a pioneer in acting and in fashion. She wore pants and even jeans in 1939. She was
so
cool, and her brownies are amazing!

MAKES 8 BROWNIES

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
^*

2 squares unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter and flour an 8-inch-square baking pan and set aside.

In a saucepan over low heat, melt together the butter and chocolate.

Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar, eggs, and vanilla and beat well to combine. Stir in the flour and salt.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake for about 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool in the pan and then cut into squares.

You can eat these right out of the pan if you want, but it’s much nicer to cut them into squares and pile them on a fancy plate. If you want to smarten up your act you can serve them on individual plates with a dollop of
crème fraîche
and a scattering of shaved chocolate.

Mom’s Chocolate Cake–aka The Chocolate Devil

My mom’s been making this cake since I was a kid. It’s always been the bane of her existence and now it’s become my nemesis, too. I think she got it from a magazine, but she made her own notes on the torn-out page and adjusted some of the ingredients. For some reason it’s devilishly hard to get it right, but when you do it’s worth all the fuss because it’s the most delicious cake on the planet. Try it on Sunday Funday and start to make some family memories of your own.

MAKES ABOUT 10 SERVINGS

3 squares unsweetened baker’s chocolate

2 cups sugar

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

2 large eggs

¾ cup sour cream