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.

Click here for the recipe for the Cherry Almond Crumble

 

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!

Click here for the recipe for the Crepes

 

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!



Click here for the recipe for our dry aged steaks

 



Click here for the recipe for our Dijon Peppercorn Sauce

 

 

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!

Click here for the recipe for the Mushroom Red Wine Sauce

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.  

Click here for the recipe for the Beer Battered Cremini Mushrooms

 

 

 

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.

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

 

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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…

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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…

 

 

 

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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…

 

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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!!

 

 

Beef Bourguignon

When I was a kid, this is something that my mom would make on special occasions.  Bourguignon de Boeuf, also known as Boeuf Bourguignon or Beef Bourguignon...which ever that you like to call it, it is one of my favorite dishes!  This is a big hardy meal and is a typical meal for central to southern parts of France for Sunday, holidays or special gatherings.  It does take some work, but it's well worth it.  As in most French cooking, the prep work is the time consuming part, the cooking tends to be rather simple.  Prepare all the ingredients before you start cooking, you should be able to go from step to step without having to do additional prep work along the way.  This should be done in a heavy Dutch oven, cast iron style pot...like Le Creuset oven.

 

For the recipe for the Bass Family Beef Bourguignon...

Tomato Salad

My mom used to make tomato salad as a side for dinner all the time.  I made this as the first dish I ever served Tiffany when we first started dating.  It is very simple, but very good.  Use the best fresh tomatoes you can find.  Heirlooms are great, but romas or just about any hot house medium size fleshy tomatoes will work.

 

For the recipe for the Bass Family Tomato Salad...

 

Dill Pickles

We found out we both had a love for Dill Pickles when we ate for the first time together at Carnegies Deli in Las Vegas, and they placed a giant bowl of dill pickles in front of us at our table. We ate through the whole bowl of pickles before we even placed our drink order. Ever since, we have been trying to make our own at home. We think we’ve come up with a pretty great recipe here. You can pickle any vegetables you like using this recipe, just replace the cucumbers…we are fond of pickling our own garlic, and jalapeno. We hope you enjoy, and try it out for yourself.

For the recipe for the Bass Family Dill Pickles...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

It is no secret that I LOVE CHOCOLATE!!!! So when I first made these babies, I just about passed out from how good they tasted. This is the simplest recipe and yet has been one of our “go to” desserts for many functions. We have made these for Christmas, for our son’s classroom parties, for church potlucks, birthday parties, and more…. Let’s just say there are NEVER any leftover to bring back home….

Ingredients:

 

1 pack of Tollhouse Peanut Butter/Chocolate Cookie Dough	Makes 24
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	24

Instructions: 

Step 1:  Preheat oven to 350 Degrees.

Step 2: Break off individual cookies, and place them inside of a silicone mini muffin baking dish. One that fits 24, or 2 that fit twelve.

Step 3: Bake for about 10 minutes. (You want them slightly undercooked)

Step 4: Immediately place Chocolate Peanut Butter cups into the baked cookie, and gently press it inside.

Step 5: Let sit for about 10 minutes then pop out of silicone dish.

Step 6: Enjoy J (Can be stored in the freezer for up to one month).

We're working here!!

So, to let everyone know, we are working on more videos!  Right now we have 6 more in work...still have to edit them and post them.  But in the meanwhile, here is another recipe...the Bass Family BBQ Sauce:


Well, then, what can I say, we love barbecue (BBQ, barbeque, bar-b-que)!  I travel a lot around the country and get to sample different food in different places and BBQ is definitely different from region to region.  I tend to like a combination of vinegar and tomato based sauces, so that’s what ours is.  We like to smoke ribs (which is another recipe for later) and like them dry or wet.  We also do pulled pork, check and beef (all for another time) and we use the same recipe for the sauce for all of it.  The only real variation is the heat and sweet that gets added (for the kids in mind).  There are a thousand different ways of doing these types of sauces, this is one that we’ve settled on that we like a lot!  There are a lot of ingredients, but that’s typical of BBQ sauces.  I hope you enjoy!

For the recipe for the Bass Family BBQ Sauce...

The "veggies"...

The wet ingredients....

 The dry ingredients...

After it's been cooked and reduced a bit...

 

Check out the recipe for more pictures and instructions...I hope you enjoy the sauce.

Valentine's Day Dinner Special

Even though we never go a day without saying the words "I Love You"; my hubby and I love having a special day to celebrate our love for each other. One way we show our love is through food. We've developed a passion for cooking together, and for those we love. This dinner is inspired by experiences we have shared together. For instance the salad and dessert are inspired by our trip to France, and the entrée is inspired by our trips to the islands.  
 
For the link to our video of our Valentine's Day Dinner:
 

 
 
 
For the recipe for theRaspberry Vinaigrette salad...
For the recipe for theCioppino...
For the recipe for theRaspberry Tart...

 

Yo Momma!!!

Yo Momma!©® is a twist on the Cayman Momma and the Bahama Momma.  It is a variation that I created to counteract the boredom on Cayman Brac (being a non-diver, there is nothing else to do then drink on the very small island).  Careful, this drink will sneak up on you and grab you by the poo poo, only two are recommended by the management  :-)

For the link to the video:

For the complete recipe...

French Onion Soup

A quick story. When I was growing up I used to HATE onions with a capital H! If I even saw onions in a dish I would not touch it, whether I could taste them or not. It wasn’t until I stepped out of my comfort zone at the ripe old age of nineteen at Mimi’s Café, in Anaheim California right next to Disneyland that I tried my very first bowl of French Onion Soup…. From the first bite I was HOOKED!! Let’s just say my hate for onions has since disappeared, and I have grown a LOVE for the vegetable. To this day French Onion Soup is, and always will be one of my favorite dishes. Our version of this soup is based off of Julia Childs famous French Onion Soup, with a Bass Family twist.

 

Here is the link to our video:

 

 

For the complete recipe...

Our first video and recipe!!!

Well, it's happened, our first video is posted (along with 3 others).  The first is for Beef Stock.

Stock is one of the staples you have to have to make soups and sauces.  A few years ago, we decided to try and make our own.  So here is the link to the YouTube video:

For the complete recipe...

Here comes the posts!

So, it's been a fun filled few weeks around the house...I've been home now for a while, which hasn't happened for a long time.  We've been cooking, filming and editing up a storm.  Trying to get the process down.

We're ready to post some of our first attempts.  We're also going to be re-posting recipes that were on one of my other sites as well...we will be filming those later.  Hope you enjoy.

Hello and welcome to our blog!

Hello everyone, this is Tiffany & Johnny Bass and hopefully this is the start of a long and fruitful blog.  One of our many passions has been and is cooking.  We love to cook...things that are time test recipes or ones that we make up on the spot.  We love to host family and holiday parties, which gives us the added challenge of cooking for a larger group.  Normally, it's dinner for four...Johnny & Tiffany and our two children, Sean & Cayman.  We tend to add a bit of a French twist to our recipes (partial due to the fact that Johnny is half French, but also because we love the food), cook classic French dishes or whatever strikes our fancy.  We also like heat (which is not very French, but who's counting), so some of the recipes will have the option to add or remove the spice if you'd like.  We will try to explain how we put our dishes together, so others can make the same without too much effort.  We will post about the basics, foundational items like stocks and spice blends; to a bit more advanced & interesting things like Boeuf Bourguignon or Choucroute au Johnny. We have a YouTube channel as well that will have videos of us cooking these dishes, along with the recipes posted here. 

As Julia would say, "Bon Appetit!" so lets let the good time roll!