Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Cherry Almond Crumble


Cherry Almond Crumble

This is an amazing recipe that we discovered while watching an episode of The Pioneer Woman on Food Network. This has become one of our absolute Favorite desserts. It is so simple, but taste like you spent all day preparing it. The combination of the Cherry, and Almond together with the golden buttery crisp topping is just mouthwatering, and out of this world.



 



Crepes


Crepes

Crepes are a classic French breakfast, but can be used as a container for savory as well as sweet.  My mom used to make these for my brother and me when we were kids, they are very easy and can be quick to fix.   We can use the same crepe batter to make breakfast, lunch or dessert crepes.  Hope you try these out, they’re not as difficult as they may seem.  Enjoy!


 



Dry Aged Steaks with Dijon Peppercorn Sauce


Dry Aged Steaks with Dijon Peppercorn Sauce
Steaks are one of our staples around the Bass household.  We typically have them once a week (or so).  We like different cuts; flank, strip, tenderloin, rib eye and so on.  Our favorite are the rib eyes, with its marbling and trim of rib meat.  We love to cook at home, but we also love to eat out.  On occasion we’ll go to a nice steak house. Seems like all the good steak houses dry age their steaks…it’s amazing the flavors you got from dry aging, makes the flavors much more pronounced!  So, we always thought that the only way to get that was to go to a steak house…oh no mon frere!  Happens that Alton Brown had an episode on steaks on one of his series, Good Eats! And he should how one can age steaks at home.  Of course we had to try it and it works great.  The aging works well with strip steak (NY Strip), best with rib eye…don’t age tenderloin (filet mignon…it will make it tough)! So the following video is demonstrating how to age, then how we like to cook & server our steaks.

Nothing like Steak au Poivre (pepper)! This is a staple in most steak houses, listed in French or as a peppercorn sauce.  Ours is a creamy, Dijon version of the sauce.  This is made with the drippings from cooking steaks first, so this has to go hand in hand with steaks, though I suppose you could make it without the steak, it just wouldn’t be as rich of flavors.  This is a great topping for steaks, or over some sides served with steaks.    So, we also will show you how to make our peppercorn sauce in the following video.  Enjoy!



 





 

 

Mushroom Red Wine Sauce


Mushroom Red Wine Sauce
It’s no secret, we love mushrooms and we love wine, so this is the perfect combination…mushroom red wine sauce.  This is not your typical mushroom sauce with a couple mushrooms in the sauce or using a can of cream of mushroom as a starter, this is a mushroom side dish that we just call a sauce!  This is a nod to our French history and it goes GREAT with steaks or roast beef.  Fresh is best, so try to use fresh mushrooms, though you can complement them with dried that you’ve reconstituted…don’t throw away the liquid you get from the dried mushrooms; that will add nicely into the sauce.  That’s in addition to the fresh, not in place of!  Do not use canned!!!  So is it a “Red Wine Mushroom Sauce” or a “Mushroom Red Wine Sauce”?  Yes it is!   Enjoy!




Beer Battered Cremini Mushrooms


Beer Battered Cremini Mushrooms
This is an adaptation of a Giada De Laurentiis recipe.  It’s great for game day or as an appetizer for a family dinner.  The batter is very lite, almost tempura qualities.  We hope that you enjoy.  


 
 
 

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Saint Patrick’s Day Special Menu


Saint Patrick’s Day Special Menu

Welcome to the Bass Family Kitchen St Patrick’s Day menu!  We love the idea of themed menus, it lets us get a bit creative.  We started this year with the Valentine’s Day menu, now the St Patrick’s Day and there are more being planned as I type this.  This one is a little different than the first one we did, there are four parts to the YouTube videos.  That way if there’s something that you’d like to see, you don’t have to go through the entire video to find it…plus as a single video it would have been too long!  The menu contains Green Beer, Irish Soda Bread, Shepherd’s Pie and Mint Chocolate Pot-o-Gold Cupcakes with a Bailey’s Buttercream Icing.



*****************************************************************************************************
With part one, we introduce our menu to you and have a little Irish celebration at the end, green beer!

 
*****************************************************************************************************
In creating our little menu for St Patrick’s, we starting looking for a few ideas.  Since we were making a stew like dish, we thought that a bread would go nicely with it.  The Irish soda bread is a very easy bread to make…no yeast, no kneading (well, not much kneading) or rising needed. It’s a very rustic style bread, but it does need to be eaten soon after you make it, it will turn into a hard, inedible mass after a day or so that you could use as a door stop or boat anchor.  It is best fresh out of the oven.  We hope that you enjoy.

Click here for the recipe for the Irish Soda Bread…


*****************************************************************************************************
This Shepherd’s Pie is loosely based on Alton Brown recipe, but like all others we’ve made, we adapted it to our tastes and made it our own.  This is not a traditional Shepherd’s Pie, but I think it does have more flavor than others we eaten.  We like to add heat wherever possible, but that is optional.  We hope that you enjoy.

 
Click here for the recipe for the Shepherd’s Pie…
 

 
 
*****************************************************************************************************
We love all Holidays! They give us the chance to put our creative caps on, and whip out some fun “themed” foods. These cupcakes are so adorable and delicious. You or your kids will love breaking open the middle and finding the fun surprise inside. This recipe can be made with the Bailey’s for a fun cupcake for adults, or without the Bailey’s to keep it “kid friendly.”

 
Click here for the recipe for the Mint Chocolate Pot-o-Gold Cupcakes with a Bailey’s Buttercream Icing…
 

*****************************************************************************************************
We hope you all like our videos and recipes, please don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with our post.  Enjoy!!