Sweet Corn Tomalito

This is a recipe I have been making for years now. It’s a copycat recipe from a Mexican restaurant chain called Chevy’s. We don’t live anywhere near a Chevy’s anymore, but there was one just down the road when we lived in St. Louis and it was our favorite Mexican place. They serve this on the side of all of their entrées. It’s kind of like a sweet corn bread, but the texture is different. It’s not bready at all. It’s just kind of sweet and corny and it complements spicy Mexican food very well. We loved it so much that I looked around online and found the recipe on one of those copycat recipe websites.

Sweet Corn Tomalito

Ingredients:

5 tbsp butter or margarine, softened

¼ cup Masa Harina

⅓ cup sugar

½ cup warm water

2 cups corn kernels, fresh or frozen, thawed, divided

½ cup cornmeal

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 tbsp plus 1 tsp milk

Directions:

In a medium mixing bowl, mix the butter, masa, and sugar using an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 1 minute.

In a blender or small food processor, blend half the corn kernels with the water until smooth. Combine this mixture with the butter mixture, stirring well. Add the remaining corn kernels, corn meal, baking powder, salt, and milk and mix well. Pour the corn mixture into 2 qt. baking dish. Tightly cover with plastic wrap.

Microwave on 30% power for 7 minutes, then at 100% power for 4 minutes. Tomalito should have a smooth, moist texture.

Makes 6 servings.

It used to be that I didn’t make this very often because it was a pain in the butt. The original recipe called for steaming it on the stovetop instead of microwaving. I could never get that to work very well and would always end up throwing it in the oven to finish, but that messed up the texture. Then I found it on Food.com (formerly Recipezaar) and there the microwaving technique was suggested. It comes out perfectly every time now! And it’s not so much of a hassle.

The first time I made this recipe, I had to go to a Mexican grocery store to find Masa Harina, but now it can easily be found in the regular grocery store.

I make this every time I make enchiladas because it compliments any kind of enchilada so well.  The slightly sweet corn-iness goes really well with the spicy/salty filling and topping on the enchiladas.

Olive Garden’s Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

This is a copycat recipe of Olive Garden’s newest soup, Chicken and Gnocchi. It’s my favorite one there and I wanted to try to recreate it for a Lenten soup dinner at church. I found it on Recipezaar and tried it last week. It is pretty good, but I made a few changes for next time. Here is my amended recipe.

Olive Garden’s Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

Ingredients:

¼ cup butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb. chicken breast, cubed

¼ cup flour

4 cups whole milk

½ cup carrots, shredded or matchstick

1 stalk celery, chopped

½ cup fresh spinach, chopped or torn

3 chicken bouillon cubes

16 – 17 oz. gnocchi

Directions:

Melt butter in soup pot over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté for 2 minutes. Add chicken and cook until no longer pink. Add flour and stir into chicken for 2 minutes. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly. Add veggies and bouillon cubes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat back to medium and cook until veggies have reached desired softness. Add gnocchi and cook an additional 3 minutes.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

The Recipezaar recipe for this soup called for more of the roux ingredients (the flour and the butter). It also called for part whole milk and part heavy cream. The reviewers said it came out really thick, so I used whole milk and half and half. They were right about it being too thick. It was super thick. I ended up adding 2 to 3 cups of chicken stock and it was still thicker than the Olive Garden version. So next time I make it, I will reduce the flour and butter (as above), so that not as much liquid is needed to thin it out. I also will make it using just whole milk instead of part half and half. Make sure you have some chicken stock on hand to thin it out if it becomes to thick.

Taste-wise, this is really good. It really does taste very close to the Olive Garden soup. It was a hit at the church dinner. I will definitely be making it again.

Southwest Sauce

This is basically a chipotle mayonnaise. It is a copycat version of Subway’s Southwest Sauce. It’s not exactly the same, but pretty tasty regardless.

Southwest Sauce

Ingredients:

1 cup mayo

½ tsp dijon mustard

1 squeeze lime juice

2 chipotles in adobo, chopped

1 small clove garlic, minced

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend well.

Makes about 1 cup.

This is a really yummy sauce. It is really good on turkey sandwiches. I recently made it to dip Oven-Fried Sweet Potatoes in. Mmm! It’s also good on chicken fingers.

Two chipotles make it pretty hot, in my opinion. I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to hot, so if you like things really spicy, you can try doing three chipotles instead of two. But you might want to do two first, taste it, then add more if you would like.

Despite the fact that I strongly dislike jalepenos, I absolutely love chipotles. Chipotles are smoked jalepenos, but I don’t think they taste anything like jalepenos. You buy them in the Mexican section of the grocery store. They come in little cans that say “Chipotles in Adobo.” Adobo is the super-flavorful sauce they come packed in.

Mushroom Ravioli with Smoked Gouda Sauce

This is a copy-cat recipe. It is supposed to be like Olive Garden’s Ravioli di Portobello, my favorite dish of theirs. I got it from one of those copycat recipe sites, Flora’s Hideout. But you can find the same recipe on a large number of websites. It gives you the recipe for making your own mushroom ravioli, but I am not that ambitious. I bought refrigerated ravioli and just made the sauce. Here’s the recipe for doing it that way.

Mushroom Ravioli with Smoked Gouda Sauce

Ingredients:

¼ cup butter

¼ cup flour

2 cups milk

8 oz. smoked gouda, shredded

3 sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped

18 oz. fresh mushroom ravioli

2 green onions, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

Directions:

Put a large pot of water on to boil for the ravioli. In a large saucepan, heat butter over medium-low heat until it melts. Whisk in flour and cook for about 3 minutes. Add milk slowly, whisking constantly. Cook another 2 minutes or until sauce is thickened.

Add gouda and sun-dried tomatoes to the sauce. Stir over medium-low heat until cheese is melted.

Meanwhile, boil ravioli according to package directions. Drain.

Pour gouda sauce over warm ravioli. Top with chopped green onion and tomato.

Makes 4 servings.

I didn’t call it Ravioli di Portobello, because it’s not exactly the same as the Olive Garden dish. But it is pretty close. I didn’t have jarred sun-dried tomatoes, so I used some dried ones that I had and rehydrated them. They worked okay, but I think it would be better with jarred ones. I’ll use those next time. I also forgot about the green onion and tomato for toppers (because the copycat recipe didn’t list them on the ingredient list). I did miss those and think it will taste more like the real thing to me if they are on there. The sauce was really thick; I ended up thinning it out a bit.

The refrigerated ravioli I got for this was AWESOME. As you probably know by now, I love filled pastas. I heard about a new Buitoni one a month or so ago. Wild Mushroom Agnolotti. I’ve been wanting to try it ever since. This was the perfect dish to try it in! I loved it. Even though the sauce wasn’t quite the same as Olive Garden’s, the ravioli was as good (if not a little better!). It would be delicious with any kind of sauce under the sun. I definitely have a new favorite kind of filled pasta.

I will certainly be making this dish again. I might tweak the sauce a little bit as I go.

I think my picture looks pretty close to the Olive Garden dish:

Like I said above, I didn’t have the green onion and tomato, so I sprinkled on some dried chives I had in my spice cabinet.

Cheddar Garlic Biscuits

These biscuits are very similar to Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I found the recipe online at one of those restaurant knock-off websites (can’t remember which one.) Super easy.

Cheddar Garlic Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups Bisquick

⅔ cups milk

½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

butter

garlic cloves, smashed

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Combine Bisquick, milk, and cheese. Drop onto baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until middles are set. Meanwhile, put smashed garlic cloves and butter in saucepan and melt over low heat. Brush melted garlic butter over top of warm biscuits when they come out the oven.

Makes about 10 biscuits, depending on how big you make them.

The original recipe said to bake at 450° for 10 minutes, but they kept getting too dark on top and not done in the middle, so I tried them at 400° for 15 minutes and it’s a lot better. I also found it works better to get the thicker shreds of cheddar instead of the finely shredded kind. That way you get more visible ribbons of cheese running through the biscuits. Don’t skimp on how many garlic cloves you put in the butter. That’s the only way of imparting garlic flavor since there isn’t any inside the biscuits themselves. Also, I wouldn’t use skim for the milk. Since they are biscuits, they have a tendency to be a tad dry, so I think the more fat you have in the milk, the less dry they will be. I make mine with 2% and that works.

I made these for an Advent dinner last week and they went over pretty well.