recipe

Mmmm. Some days when you get home from school, nothing will do but a fresh-from-the-oven popover, a hot, crispy, buttery puff of ethereal deliciousness. Sadly, for us at CT, there had been more than a few at-home popover failures. (Or, as we like to call them, pop-unders.) Then we stumbled upon a killer recipe from our favorite Contessa, Ina Garten, and played around with it for a while to make it a little easier on the waistline and on the prep. Now squatty popovers are a thing of the past.

Check it out – with only five ingredients (six if you count the cooking spray) and a hot, hot oven, you can magic-up popovers in about the time it takes to watch Family Guy. The trick to sky-high success is to have all ingredients at room temperature and to keep close tabs on the time.

Sky High Popovers
(adapted from Barefoot Contessa Parties)

Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt or whatever you have
3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups whole milk, at room temperature

To Prepare

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

Spritz popover pans or muffin tins with cooking spray. (You can use softened butter to grease the tin if you don't have any spray.) You'll need enough pans to make 12 popovers.

Whisk together the flour, salt, eggs, milk and melted butter until smooth. The batter will be thin. Fill the popover pans about half full and bake for 26 minutes. Do not peek or they will flatten!

Eat immediately. (If you eat them with sweet butter and jam, we won't stop you.) Or try to wait and bring them to the table to share. We said try.

Want to buy the lovely Contessa's book? Click on the Contessa in the box.

Tags: popovers, quick, easy, snack, recipe

Hankering for some real blue cheese dressing? There's no need to buy that white goop in the bottle when you can put together your own in seconds flat. This version, a CT original, happens to be a slimmer, trimmer version of its fatty cousin. It tastes terrific with a bunch of green leafy stuff, like baby spinach or green leaf lettuce or arugula, and some chopped slices of something citrusy, like clemintines or tangerines or grapefruit.

One fun and very convenient ingredient in here is powdered buttermilk, which you can get in the baking aisle of most grocery stores. It saves you from buying a whole quart of the stuff if you're not going to use the whole thing, and it keeps in the fridge for ages. If you don't have buttermilk (either wet or powdered) no worries. You can still whip up this yummy dressing. It just won't have that extra tang.

Ingredients and Preparation

1 1/2 cups plain, lowfat yogurt
1 teaspoon buttermilk powder
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
1 1/2 ounces of crumbled blue cheese or gorgonzola cheese
the juice from half of a lemon (real juice, not the bottled stuff)
a dash of salt
a dash of black pepper

Serve over salad and mix. Makes enough for four side salads.

Tags: quick, easy, recipe

Still have lots of turkey left in the fridge and can't bear the thought of another ho-hum turkey-on-white-bread? The Hip Hostess is at your rescue with this fun, fast and flavorful twist on those old and tired versions of "Thanksgiving Turkey, Take Two (and Three and Four...)." And that Cranberry Apple Salsa!! We at CT are crazy for cranberries and think we just might serve this with pretty much any slab of protein that comes out of the oven! Read the whole recipe.

More

Tags: quick, easy, recipe, turkey

Hi Lisa. This a test to see if some content will appear in the stove on teh dev site. It does not seem to be working. TestRead the whole recipe.

Tags: recipe

Yearning for a full-bodied burger flavor but staring at a stack of turkey? Magic up that pile o' fowl into tasty turkey burgers with cheddar, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. You'll need a pound of turkey, an egg and a few southwestern flavors. Read the whole recipe.

Tags: recipe, quick, easy, turkey