Cooking from the Blogs-What I Made

Even though it was a busy week with Thanksgiving and all, I did manage to cook a few new recipes from the blogs.

Monday I ran across this Chicken Noodle Soup over at Delightfully Dowling.  When I read her post, I remembered that I had some chicken breast bones thawed in the refrigerator that I had almost forgotten about.  I decided to use them to make this soup for lunch.  I made a few changes, adding some chopped red pepper because I put them in almost everything.  I did not have any fresh dill on hand so I used dried, maybe about a teaspoon.  I use Sriracha hot sauce.  Since my hubby likes his soup a little thicker like chowder, I mixed an additional 1/4 cup flour with 1/2 c. water towards the end and cooked the soup until it thickened slightly.   I couldn't really taste the dill, but the combination of the Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and dill gave the soup a lovely flavor that was different from the typical chicken soup.  I will definitely be making this again.

Spiced Sirloin Tip Roast from At the Well.  The original posted recipe used brisket and was cooked in a slow cooker.  I can rarely buy brisket here and am not really a fan of beef roasts from a slow cooker so I used a sirloin tip roast and cooked it in the oven.  I used the exact ingredients called for in the brisket recipe and put it in a Dutch oven.  I did brown the roast in some olive oil before I put it in the oven.  I usually stud beef roasts with slivers of garlic but did not do that to this one.  Next time I make this recipe I will.  The first night I served the meat without the gravy as we had loaded mashed potatoes so I felt we didn't need the gravy.  When I served the roast a second time I made gravy from the cooking liquid.  There was about 3 cups of cooking liquid.  I removed the fat and thickened the liquid with 1/4 cup flour mixed with 1/2 c. water.  I also added 1 T. Worcestershire sauce and 1/2 t. garlic powder to the gravy to give it a little more oomph.  The photo above is from the second time the roast was served.  What is there about meat that makes it so unphotogenic?  This recipe is going into my regular rotation for beef roasts.

I tried two new recipes for our Thanksgiving dinner.  The first dish was for a new dressing.  I saw a post over at Fake Ginger for a Cornbread, Bacon, Leek and Pecan Dressing.  I decided that I wanted to make this one.  In all my years of cooking, I have never cooked with leeks.  Probably because of the expense.  I was able to find two leeks that had really long white parts so used them instead of the four she suggested.  I got busy and forgot to cover the dressing when I put it in the oven.  Because of that, my dressing came out dryer than hers did, I think.  Nevertheless, it was very good.  I did miss the celery that I usually put in dressing so I will add that the next time I make this.  I think that dried cranberries would be a nice addition to this.  I did not add them as I had two other dishes with cranberries in them already.

The second recipe that I added to our Thanksgiving dinner was Autumn Chopped Salad.  I found this at Espresso and Cream a new to me blog that I will be checking out further soon.  I did change the recipe quite a bit to work with what I had on hand.  I used mixed salad from a big instead of the romaine, used an apple as well as a pear, used toasted walnuts, left out the cheese and used honey mustard dressing that I let each person just add to their helping.  I was going to use candied pecans, but I burned them.  I liked the fruit/lettuce mix a lot and will be making some version of this combination again.