Saturday and Sunday mornings have a certain routine Chez Besotted – wake up, snooze, wake up, snooze, wake up, make coffee, make bacon & eggs, eat. I would never want anything to disrupt the rhythm and tradition of the first 6 activities, but, every once in awhile, even my beloved bacon & eggs get a bit stale.

Mixing it up with pancakes or muffins can be fun, but my absolute favorite breakfast pastry is a hot, buttery scone. If your only exposure to scones is Starbucks ersatz leaden imposters, try a homemade (or real bakery) version, and you’ll see how far from reality the S-bux kind are.

I made my first scone recipe out of the original Barefoot Contessa cookbook, and instantly fell in love with this puff of delicious, buttery flaky goodness. Whether made with fruit, maple syrup and oatmeal, or cheese, scones make an unbelievably special treat, particularly on blustery winter weekend mornings.

The recipe below is a personal concoction of dried cherries, cream, and ginger. A little sweet a little spice, and a little silken creaminess make a tremendous scone. Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Cherry and Ginger Cream Scones, Yields 12

Prep Time: 45 Minutes

Baking Time: 25 Minutes

Total Prep Time: 70 Minutes

Ingredients:

4 Cups Flour

2 Tbls. Sugar

2 Tbls. Baking Powder

2 Tsp. Salt

1 ½ Cups Butter

5 Eggs

1 Cup Heavy Cream

¾ Cup Dried Sour Cherries

1 Tbls. Candied Ginger

2 Tbls. Fresh Ginger, chopped

2 Tbls. Ground Ginger

Splash Milk

Raw Sugar

Preparation:

Before you do anything, get your butter and eggs prepared by beating 4 of the eggs and chopping the butter into small cubes (about ½ inch square). Once they’re done, put the eggs and butter back into the fridge to keep them extra cold – for that matter, keep the cream in the refrigerator until you need it.

Once you’re ready to go, preheat the oven to 400° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Do all of the following actions very quickly, as you want the ingredients as cold as possible….

Add the butter pieces and mix on low speed until the butter is broken up into gravelly pieces (no bigger than a pea).

Add the eggs, fresh ginger, ground ginger, candied sugar, and heavy cream and mix until just blended. Stir in the sour cherries with a wooden spoon.

Dump the dough out onto a well-floured surface with well-floured hands – the dough is very sticky, so use as much flour as you need in small increments, but be careful not to make the dough too dry.

Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out to a thickness of ¾ of an inch. Using a 2.5-3.5 inch cutter round (depending on the width that you desire), cut out rounds of dough and arrange on the baking sheet.

Once the dough rounds are lined up on the baking sheet, mix the last egg with a splash of milk to create the egg wash. Brush the dough with the egg wash, sprinkle with the raw sugar, and put into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool, split, butter, serve, and enjoy!

This is my total cop-out post. For several weeks, I was busy baking up a storm and churning homemade ice cream, and then I stopped. Dead stop. I’ve eaten out the last several nights and been making my way through the mountains of baked goods already cluttering up my kitchen, and thus, have prepared little else for the last week or so.

And, when it came time for dinner last night, I realized that there was nothing suitable already made in my refrigerator. This does not happen. I usually have a buffet of left-overs ready for the nights that I don’t feel like cooking, or that are too muggy to contemplate turning on the oven, but not last night. And so my only solution, apart from becoming even better acquainted with the sushi delivery guy than I already am, was to recycle something from the fridge into a dinner-appropriate meal.

Scrounging around, I realized that I still had the spicy coconut broth from the Asian Veggie Raviolis left, but no remaining raviolis to go with it. I decided to use the broth as a braising liquid for some pan-seared chicken and serve with a nice big salad.

If you happen to have the spicy coconut broth lying around from the raviolis, this dish couldn’t be easier, and would be my poster-child for the easy weeknight meal. Even if you don’t, making the broth takes only about 10 minutes of not-very-hard work to get the dish started.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Pan Seared Chicken in Spicy Coconut Sauce, Serves 4

Prep Time: 15 Minutes

Roasting Time: 15 Minutes

Total Time: 30 Minutes

*Add 10 Minutes Prep and Total time if you haven’t already prepared the Spicy Coconut Broth

Ingredients:

1lb. Chicken Meat, cut into large chunks,

2 Tbls. Olive Oil

1 Tbls. Salt

1 Tsp. Pepper

2 Cloves Garlic, chopped

1 Cup Spicy Coconut Sauce; see Asian Veggie Raviolis Recipe

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 375°

If you haven’t made the Spicy Coconut Broth, start that now. It won’t add too much to the cooking time.

Season the chicken chunks with the salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan with a lid over medium-heat. Once hot, add the garlic and cook, stirring for 1-2 minutes.

Add the chicken and cook for 5 minutes. Try not to flip or stir the chicken for these 5 minutes, as leaving them alone with allow a nice tawny-colored crust to form on the skin.

Pour the Spicy Coconut Broth into the pan, cover with the lid, and cook on the stove top for another 5 minutes.

Transfer to the oven to allow the chicken to braise in the broth for 15 minutes.

You can see how nicely the broth has thickened into a sauce.

Remove from the oven, plate the chicken, and pour the broth, which will have thickened into a lovely sauce over the chicken. Serve and enjoy!

I was a little troubled the other day…. while I desperately did not want to turn my oven to 375° on a day so humid you could practically bottle the humidity, I really, REALLY wanted a ginger scone and did not want the store or cafe-bought variety, which tend to be nothing like a real scone.

Well, as fate would have it, my scones (yes, I did cave and turn the oven on) were also nothing like a real scone, but, in fact, turned out to be more like the perfect ginger cookie. Now, before you think that all of this balmy Boston weather has gone to my head and turned me into some sort of ego-maniac, dropping superlatives like “best” and “perfect” with nary a thought for accuracy, let me tell you that this cookie is worthy of any and all laudations that you care to throw at it.

But first, the story of how my scone became a cookie…. Many years ago, I worked at a cookbook company, and one of the perks was the opportunity to review and take home books that were in their final stages, but not quite ready for print. Perhaps the author’s acknowledgements were missing, pages weren’t numbered, or some of the recipes still needed a note here and there – the books were all but done, save a few details.

I took home A Sweet Quartet: Sugar, Almonds, Eggs & Butter, which is half narrative/half cookbook, and a very sweet read. Inside, I found what looked to be a lovely recipe for ginger scones; the measurements seemed a bit off, and the quantity of sugar was missing, but I figured I could make an educated guess, cross my fingers, and hope that all turned out well.

As I made the dough, something seemed off.  It was stickier and more difficult to work with than any scone dough I’ve ever made before, but, I added a bit more flour and popped them into the oven….

About half-way through baking, I turned the oven light on and saw that my “scones” were flat as pancakes. Harumph. So much for my lovely ginger scones, I guess my craving will have to be filled by lovely ginger pancakes.

I took them out of the oven, let them cool, and took a bite, and it was outrageously delicious. The ginger flavor was powerful yet smooth, and the texture was delightful – cakey on the inside and crispy, sugary on the outside. I couldn’t call them scones, but to do away with such a wonderful recipe seemed a waste of something truly special.

As the afternoon wore on, and my trips to grab ‘just one more nibble’ increased, I realized that my ginger scones were actually the perfect afternoon cookie, and thus was born Besotted’s Best Ginger Cookie.

Just a note, the ginger flavor comes from sugary ginger chips, real ginger, and ginger powder, and I would advise you not to skimp on any of them. It’s the combination of ginger flavors that adds depth and richness to the cookie. Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Best Ginger Cookies, Yields 12

Prep Time: 25 Minutes

Baking & Cooling Time: 30 Minutes

Total Prep Time: 55 Minutes

Ingredients:

2 Cups Flour

1 Cup Sugar

1 ½ Tsp. Baking Powder

½ Tsp. Baking Soda

¼ Tsp. Salt

2 Tsp. Ground Ginger (Ginger Powder)

2 Tbls. Candied Ginger

1 Tbls. Fresh Ginger, peeled and rough chopped

¼ Cup Butter, very cold and cut into 8 pieces

½ Cup Buttermilk

1 Tbls. Maple Syrup

Sugar in the Raw

Preparation:

Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 375°.

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and gingers 6-8 times, until blended. Add the butter through the feed tube and pulse 12-15 times, until blended. The dough should look somewhat crumbly and sandy.

Pour ¼ cup of the buttermilk through the feed tube and pulse quickly until blended. Add the remaining ¼ cup of the buttermilk and the maple syrup and pulse again until blended.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface, knead into a bowl, and flatten into a disc shape (note: the dough will be very sticky, so flour your hands well, and don’t have any reservations about adding more flour to the surface or dough to make it more manageable).

Using 1 ½ – 2 inch cookie rounds, cut cookies out of the dough and arrange on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the sugar in the raw on top of the cookies.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack or serve immediately…. Enjoy!

My dear friend, PK, has given Besotted much love, support, and advice from the very beginning, and I am finally taking his advice from way back when to include a salsa recipe….

As much as I love baking, its precision and the inability to taste-test the recipe as I go stifles my…. creative flair. I love recipes that have a very basic base to which I can add anything that happens to cross my mind. That, coupled with the fact that Boston will be hitting 90° today (!) made it imperative that I start my Summer Salsa Experiments a bit early.

Salsa is a great dish for experimentation and for the novice cook, as it is very nearly impossible to mess up. I was about to write that as long as you have a base of tomatoes and onions, adding the rest of the ingredients is just a matter of personal preference, but, in fact, this recipe contains no tomatoes, so even that element is subject to change.

My only suggested guidelines would be to find juicy fruits and vegetables whose flavors meld well together, add a few complementary spice/spicy elements, blitz together until you reach the desired consistency and serve.

Speaking of which, the serving and presentation of salsa can be a varied as the ingredients. It is generally thought of as an accompaniment to tortilla chips, and it does serve admirably in this capacity, but salsas can also serve a more sophisticated function, accompanying pork or chicken recipes as a stuffing or sauce, as a topping on toasted baguettes, etc. They are, in essence, wildly versatile.

The following is my adaptation of a Barefoot Contessa recipe. A few tweaks to the ingredient list and preparation yielded this sweet, spicy, and very flavorful salsa. It’s perfect on tortilla chips, and, to be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn’t try it on anything more sophisticated; it has a very casual, almost raucous flavor that would be too much for something attempting sophistication. It would be like wearing cut-offs and drinking Sam Summer at the Symphony – both are fine in their own right, but don’t really go together.

Mango Kiwi Salsa

Adapted from Barefoot Contessa Mango Salsa

Ingredients:

2 Tbls. Olive Oil

1 Red Onion, quartered

3 Cloves Garlic

1 Tbls. Ginger, peeled

1 Mango, peeled and cut into slices

1 Kiwi, peeled and cut into slices

Juice from 1 Orange

1 Jalapeno Chili, seeded & chopped

½ Tsp. Salt

½ Tsp. Pepper

Preparation:

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the ginger and garlic a couple of times, until it looks ‘rough chopped.’ Add the onion and pulse until the onion is well chopped.

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, ginger, and garlic. Cook for 10 minutes. Quite a bit of the liquid from the onion should be cooking off.

I use red onions for the pretty puce color

Meanwhile, in the same bowl of the food processor, blitz the mango and kiwi until chopped, but still chunky (about 6 pulses).

After the onion mixture has cooked for 10 minutes, add the juice from the orange and allow to cook for another 5 minutes.

Once the 5 minutes is up, turn the heat down to medium-low, add the chopped jalapeno, salt & pepper, and cook for another 3-5 minutes.

Remove the saute pan from the heat and allow to cool for 15 minutes before adding to the mango/kiwi mixture. Mix well and serve with tortilla chips.

Summer, here I come!

I have a confession to make…. I started Besotted with more than just the goal of jotting down my favorite recipes and rambling about my culinary experiences. I desperately want to get people back into the kitchen, and for them to do more than peel back the plastic on a microwaveable meal or ‘add water’ to make a meal magically puff up before their eyes.

It’s an absurd quest in our multi-tasking, over-taxed, over-stressed world, but I’m taking it on, and if there’s one recipe in my arsenal to battle the delivery-guy, grocery-store-prepared-foods, and the like, it’s this one, because it takes 15 minutes from grocery bag to table. Not only is it easy and quick, but the flavors – fresh chilis, ginger, garlic, and lemon – will instantly remind you why fresh always tastes best.

Toss in a few large shrimp and some olive oil-soaked toast, and you have a pretty spectacular meal that you can be eating before the pizza delivery guy has even put on his hat.

Start with big, fat shrimp (16-20 count). They're the focus of the meal and should be generously sized.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Shrimp, Chilis & Ginger, Serves 2

Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef

Ingredients:

3 Tbls. Olive Oil

2 Tsp Fresh Ginger, peeled and finely chopped

3 Cloves of Garlic, peeled and finely chopped

3 Fresh Chilis (Habanero, Jalapeno, etc. according to your taste), deseeded* and rough chopped

2/3lb. Large shrimp (16-20 count), tails and shells removed

Juice from 1 Lemon

½ Cup of Fresh Flat-leaf Parsley, rough chopped

3 Tbls. Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

6 Slices of French Baguette, toasted

Sea Salt and Fresh Pepper to taste

Preparation:

Plate your toasted French baguette, 3 slices per person and set aside.

Heat a saute pan over medium-medium-high heat until nicely hot. Add the olive oil, ginger, chilis, garlic, and shrimp. Cook, stirring constantly for 90 seconds; turn the shrimp onto the uncooked side and cook for another 90 seconds.

Turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and extra-virgin olive oil. Stir for 30 seconds and remove from the heat.

Pour the shrimp and sauce over the plated toasted baguettes. Season to taste and serve.

*Please take extra care with deseeding chilis. The last thing you want to do is get the seeds under your nails or near your nail bed, nor do you want to touch your face after handling the seeds. If you’re new to this, rubber gloves are your best defense. If you want to live dangerously, wield a paring knife (small and easy to manage), split the chili in half lengthwise, and flick the offending seeds into the sink or garbage, taking care not to touch them.