Tasty Recipes from Recipe Wizards

Prep time: 25 minutes

Serves 4

This comes from Raley’s Web site, www.raleys.com.

INGREDIENTS

one 10-ounce bag oriental salad mix

1 1/2 cups chopped, fully cooked rotisserie chicken meat, chilled

1/2 cup diced mandarin oranges

1/4 cup sliced green onion

1/4 cup Chinese chicken salad dressing

4 burrito-size flour tortillas

INSTRUCTIONS

Toss together all ingredients except tortillas in a medium bowl. Place equal amounts in the center of each tortilla. Fold up the bottom and sides to enclose.

Note: For a lower-carb option, forgo the tortillas and serve this as a salad sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds.

Per serving: 400 cal.; 23 g pro.; 48 g carb.; 12 g fat (2.5 sat.); 45 mg chol.; 550 mg sod.; 3 g fiber; 8 g sugar; 27 percent calories from fat.

Prep time: 25 minutes

Serves 4

This comes from Raley’s Web site, www.raleys.com.

INGREDIENTS

one 10-ounce bag oriental salad mix

1 1/2 cups chopped, fully cooked rotisserie chicken meat, chilled

1/2 cup diced mandarin oranges

1/4 cup sliced green onion

1/4 cup Chinese chicken salad dressing

4 burrito-size flour tortillas

INSTRUCTIONS

Toss together all ingredients except tortillas in a medium bowl. Place equal amounts in the center of each tortilla. Fold up the bottom and sides to enclose.

Note: For a lower-carb option, forgo the tortillas and serve this as a salad sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds.

Per serving: 400 cal.; 23 g pro.; 48 g carb.; 12 g fat (2.5 sat.); 45 mg chol.; 550 mg sod.; 3 g fiber; 8 g sugar; 27 percent calories from fat.

I saw “Julie & Julia” the other night and, although I salivated at the close-ups of chocolate pie and baguette slices sizzling in butter, one lingering question spoiled the film for me:

How did that couple afford all those groceries?

She’s an unhappy secretary who set out to cook 524 Julia Child recipes in a year. He’s a magazine editor who delighted in consuming every butter-drenched bite. They live in a tiny apartment above a pizza parlor in New York City.

So, are live lobsters really in their budget? Do they clip coupons for foie gras?

I know, you’re supposed to suspend your disbelief. One thing I can relate to is Julie’s schedule. She’d get home from work after dark, then labor over fancy French food for hours. The couple would finally eat, at their coffee table in front of the television, around midnight.

This is not so different from my life, BK (before kids). Now, we have a dining table and a steady supply of frozen pizzas.

One snapshot from the movie that stuck with me was Julie frying slices of bread for bruschetta in butter. Seems I’m not the only one. This image – it lasts only about two seconds – has spurred chatter on food Web sites. Everyone wants the recipe.

I don’t know why you need a recipe to fry bread in butter. But the scene did inspire me to choose this week’s dish.

I picked a simple bruschetta, one with a few, choice ingredients. I used tomato and basil from our garden. I bought my baguette at the farmers market.

No, I didn’t fry it in butter, but the dish still was everything bruschetta should be – crispy bread, juicy tomatoes, hints of basil and garlic.

It didn’t take hours to prepare, and it didn’t call for any expensive, hard-to-find ingredients.

I like to think that Julie – and Julia – would approve.

BRUSCHETTA WITH TOMATOES AND BASIL

This recipe is from Good Housekeeping.

Ingredients:

1 loaf (8 ounces) Italian bread

1 large clove garlic, cut in half

11/4 pounds (8 medium) ripe plum tomatoes, seeded and cut into \-inch pieces

2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Meanwhile, slice bread diagonally into scant 1/2-inch-thick slices; reserve ends for making bread crumbs another day. Place bread slices on two cookie sheets.

Toast bread on two oven racks for 15 minutes or until crusty and dry, turning slices over once and rotating cookie sheets between upper and lower racks halfway through baking. Transfer bread to wire racks to cool slightly. When bread is cool enough to handle, rub one side of each toast slice with cut side of garlic. Discard garlic.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, gently toss tomatoes, basil, oil, salt and pepper until combined.

To serve, spoon 1heaping tablespoon tomato mixture on garlic-rubbed side of each toast slice.

Another tool in the parental kit: those small adult gadgets with touch-screen technology, so easy a child, even a toddler, can use them.

Parents are discovering that iPhone and iPod Touch applications, or apps, are a handy distraction and an engaging, even educational, way to keep young children busy. (Other handheld devices are getting in the game now, too.)

“It’s been a lifesaver a lot of times,” said Anna Friend of Westwood, Kan.

Life serves up some downtime for her younger son, 6-year-old Brady – waiting at big brother’s activities, at restaurants – and at such times he has enjoyed apps ranging from racing games to math practice. “It’s helped me keep my sanity and kept him busy,” she said.

And many apps are cheap (not counting the cost of the device). Here are five worth checking out for toddlers and preschoolers.

-”Wheels on the Bus,” 99 cents. Everyone raves about this one. When the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish in the song, your toddler can make the wipers swish, swish, swish on the screen.

-”Preschool Arcade,” 99 cents. Pinball for counting practice, a claw-crane for shape matching and a rocket ship for letter recognition.

-”Peekaboo Barn,” $1.99. Touch the barn door and learn animal sounds and names, in English and Spanish.

-”Toddler Teasers Quizzing,” $1.99. Correctly touch the letter B, say, or touch the yellow rainbow stripe and the crowd roars.

-”First Words: Animals,” $1.99. Spell the animal pictured on the screen with letter tiles. Skill level is adjustable.

We’re testing a batch of professed kitchen miracles and innovations that promise to make our cooking chores faster and easier.

Will they really?

Armed with a healthy dose of skepticism, Beacon Journal home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge, consumer affairs writer Betty Lin-Fisher and I got down to business to find out.

Here’s what we have to report:

GT Xpress 101

If Billy Mays is the king of the infomercial, then pitchwoman Cathy Mitchell has to be the queen.

What is it about her that makes you want to buy everything she’s selling? Her grandmotherly manner? That voice? Or the fact that she looks like she’s really enjoying all of those pocket meals she produces on her GT Xpress 101?

This compact electric “meal, snack and dessert maker” has two wells for preparing everything from omelets to salmon to individual cakes. Like a panini maker, it cooks from the top and bottom.

We approached this $29.99 cooker with varying attitudes. Betty was completely enamored with it and was convinced she would like it. I was a total skeptic, and Mary Beth had not even heard of it.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of our testing was that this cooker works well, and we all loved it. Shocked was probably the better reaction when we removed two stuffed chicken breasts from the cooker’s wells, sliced into them and found them to be perfectly cooked. (Yes, we tested with a meat thermometer, and they were over 165 degrees.)

The chicken, which was stuffed with ham and cheese, was moist on the inside and nicely browned on the outside. It performed equally well on minute steak roll-ups and when baking angel food cake with strawberries.

A word of caution: We mistakenly baked a batch of cakes without first spraying the machine with non-stick spray and had a real mess on our hands. So always make sure you are armed with a can of spray before using the machine, despite its non-stick surface.

We all liked the fact that the machine had permanent cord storage on its underside. It’s compact – about the size of a waffle iron – and could easily store in a drawer or standing up in the corner of a cupboard. Mary Beth liked the fact that it would use much less energy than the oven.

There were a few drawbacks. The specially designed spatula that comes with the GT Xpress is rather flimsy, and we wondered how well it would hold up over time.

I had problems with the recipes that came with it. Most don’t even call for a simple sprinkle of salt and pepper, and many call for the use of high-fat or high-sodium ingredients like stuffing mix or canned soup. However, if you are willing to improvise from the book, it wouldn’t be hard to make healthy meals in the GT Xpress. We also had concerns about how well the non-stick coating on the machine would hold up. But after several weeks of making breakfast and snacks for Betty’s children, the Xpress is going strong with no problems to date. You can’t make dinner for four with this cooker, but it would be good for singles, seniors, and even busy families who juggle different meal schedules.

Verdicts: Betty: Snap it up. Lisa: Snap it up. Mary Beth: Snap it up.

Titan Peeler

The advertising for this peeler claims it is “the world’s best.” Those are big words to live up to.

At $14.99 for a two-pack, the price wasn’t out of line. But after trying it on a variety of vegetables, none of us felt overly excited about it.

As a peeler, it works well. But it’s a peeler like any other. We didn’t find anything special about it, and it worked as well as the peelers we all had at home.

One of the peelers has a special blade for making julienne strips of vegetables and it worked well also, after a few attempts at learning how to use it. “It’s gadget-y, but it doesn’t seem worth learning how to use it,” was Betty’s reaction. Mary Beth and I just didn’t think it was all that special.

While Betty liked its ability to julienne, she questioned how often she would ever need the function. “I just don’t julienne all that often. I don’t think I’ve ever julienned in my life,” she said. Bottom line, if you need a peeler, this one works well, but it’s nothing extraordinary.

Verdicts: Betty: It depends. Lisa: It depends. Mary Beth: It depends.

Beater Blade

The Beater Blade isn’t an infomercial special, but rather one of a few new products that are out for use on traditional stand mixers. We were sent one as a sample, so we didn’t have to pay to test it out. It sells for $24.95 at major retailers or on the Internet.

The concept behind the Beater Blade is that it eliminates the need to constantly scrape the sides of the bowl when mixing, combining the features of a mixing blade and a spatula into one attachment. It is available in a variety of styles to fit most stand mixers in either the tilt-head or bowl-lift styles.

We all agreed that this blade works, continuously scraping the sides of the bowl and eliminating the need to constantly stop the mixer and scrape down the sides. Where we disagreed was on its usefulness.

As someone who uses my mixer a lot, I found it convenient and appreciated not having to turn the mixer off and on.

Betty questioned whether there is a real need for it. “I guess I don’t understand what the big deal was,” she said. Mary Beth didn’t think the price was worth it, because she doesn’t view scraping the bowl as that big of a task. “To me, that’s not a time-saver,” she said.

Verdicts: Betty: It depends. Lisa: Snap it up. Mary Beth: It depends.

One Touch Cordless Knife

We had high-hopes for this One-Touch product, because we liked the brand’s can opener and jar opener in past reviews. This cordless knife, however, fell short of our expectations.

Our problems began when loading in the six AA batteries needed to operate the knife. We were unable to get the battery cover to close tightly. It’s possible we had a defective model, but we ended up taping the knife handle with duct tape to keep the batteries from popping out before we were able to test it.

Once we got the knife working, we tested it on a variety of items, and it cut OK. I felt that it lacked the power of my electric knife, and the blades are considerably shorter, so I wondered how well it would slice a large ham or turkey. Betty questioned whether you would ever need the power of an electric knife where you won’t have access to electricity. And Mary Beth didn’t like the fact that it used so many batteries.

At $14.99, plus the cost of six batteries, we think your $20 is better spent on a real electric knife, even if you have to spend closer to $30 or $35. Over time, you’ll make up the savings in the cost of replacing batteries.

Verdicts: Betty: Skip it. Lisa: Skip it. Mary Beth: Skip it.

Miracle Blades III

“The last set of knives you will ever need,” is the claim of this knife set.

For $19.99, the 11 Piece Perfection Series contained 10 knives – a paring knife, two long serrated knives, four steak knives, a fillet knife with a flexible blade, a “Rock ‘n’ Chop” (similar to a traditional chef’s knife) and a “Chop ‘n’ Scoop” knife with a wide blade for lifting items like chopped vegetables. There is also a pair of kitchen shears, which product information on the Internet claimed would even cut through a can.

The blades were sharp – as all new knives typically are – and performed well.

They weren’t perfect. Despite our best efforts, none of us was able to cut through a can with the shears, and the Chop ‘n’ Scoop seems rather flimsy.

We don’t think this is the last knife set you will ever need. These blades can hardly compete with professional-quality knives. They don’t have a full tang; their stainless steel blades are fused into their plastic handles. But as inexpensive knife sets go, they aren’t bad. These knives average just $1.82 per blade. That’s cheap even for cheap knives. So if they only last a year or two, you are still likely to get your money’s worth of performance out of them.

If you don’t cook much and aren’t concerned about owning chef’s-quality knives, I say go ahead. But if you are looking for lasting quality, I doubt you will find it in this box.

Betty agreed that buying them or not depends on what you are looking for in a knife set. Mary Beth, who admittedly doesn’t cook a lot, said the knives would be fine for her purposes and felt that for the price, they were a bargain.

Verdicts: Betty: It depends. Lisa: It depends. Mary Beth: Snap it up.

Each season, the newest cookbook titles reveal the hottest trend in cooking, and this year it’s all about barbecuing. Here’s a look at what’s new this spring.

Who wouldn’t be impressed with a book that arrives in an oversize matchbox with matches on the cover? “Barbecue” by Thomas Feller (Hamlyn, $24.99) gives no indication as to who Feller is or where he comes from, other than a listing that says the book was first published in France in 2008 under the title “Barbecue” by Hachette Livre. The photographs are so tempting, it really doesn’t matter about Feller’s background. Eighty recipes range from marinated rib of beef to marshmallow and strawberry kebabs. There also are Mediterranean barbecues that feature souvlaki, squid and cherry tomato kebabs with pastis, with sides of Lebanese tabbouleh and bean tsatsiki with mint. For the vegetarian barbecue, Feller shows how to make potatoes baked in the embers with cottage cheese, and grilled eggplant with pesto.

-The most comprehensive grilling book to debut this spring is “Weber’s Way to Grill” by Jamie Purviance (Weber, $24.95). This step-by-step guide is not about absolute right or wrong when it comes to issues like gas versus charcoal, direct versus indirect heat or grilling with the lid on or off. It’s about paying attention to details as basic and significant as salt.

Purviance gives detailed instructions for checking doneness of meat, what to do when foods stick or flare-ups happen, and how to get great results with a smoker.

-Two Kansas City pitmasters have teamed to put all their expertise into “America’s Best BBQ 100 Recipes from America’s Best Smokehouses, Pits, Shacks, Rib Joints, Roadhouses, and Restaurants” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $19.99). Ardie Davis is founder of the American Royal International BBQ Sauce, Rub and Baste Contest. He’s also known as Remus Powers, Ph.B. Paul Kirk is the operator of Baron’s School of Pitmasters and has won 475 cooking and barbecue awards.

This book is about the people who make the barbecue. Food tastes better when you know the people and stories behind the recipe, the authors say.

-”Serious Barbecue” by Adam Perry Lang (Hyperion, $35) isn’t for the hurried cook who simply wants to make a meal. Lang owns Daisy May’s BBQ U.S.A. in New York City and is the meat maestro at Carnevino in Las Vegas, and his book reflects his obsession with great meat. Lang shows how to make crisp and unctuous pork belly as well as Asian pork meatball skewers.

-”Fred Thompson’s Grillin’ With Gas” (Taunton Press, $19.95) says it’s OK to use gas over “real” fire. Most people cannot taste the difference, says Thompson, best known for his book “Barbecue Nation.”

-The BBQ Queens Karen Adler and Judith Fertig have written nine cookbooks that focus on barbecue and grilling. Their newest is “300 Big & Bold Barbecue & Grilling Recipes” (Robert Rose, $24.95) and it’s filled with ideas for making sauces, salsas, vinaigrettes and marinades, along with grilled clams, scallops and sea bass.

-The staff at Cook’s Country magazine visited barbecue shacks all over the country searching for the best barbecued beef, steaks and chicken. Then they tested and perfected those recipes for the back-yard cook. The editors of “Best Grilling Recipes” (America’s Test Kitchen, $29.95) say that grilling and barbecuing might seem easy, but it goes a lot better when you know the basics.

-Kansas City pitmaster Ardie Davis also has two small books that give expert tips on smoking and grilling. “25 Essentials: Techniques for Smoking” and “25 Essentials: Techniques for Grilling” (The Harvard Common Press, $12.99 each) are handy little books that would make ideal gifts for Father’s Day. In the grilling book, Davis shows how to plank-grill, fire roast, and grill in the fireplace. The smoking book is about smoke-baking, high-heat and paper-bag smoking, and smoke roasting.

-”Great Year-Round Grilling in the Southeast” by Ellen Brown (Lyons Press, $19.95) takes a look at the grilling styles in the Southern and Gulf Coast states. Brown, founding food editor of USA Today, lives in Providence, R.I., and is the author of nine cookbooks, including $3 Meals. The recipes in her grilling book reflect the ethnic heritages that are blended with those of the original settlers in the Southeast. This book is for the cook who is looking for more upscale, rather than down-home, recipes.

Here are recipes from the latest round of barbecue cookbooks.

Paper-bag smoking is a favorite way to smoke pork butt. Place a partially smoked pork butt in a paper grocery bag and finish cooking by slow-smoking it. The paper absorbs some of the grease and keeps the meat from drying out. This is not a recipe for the gas grill.

BUTT IN A BAG

3 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

5-pound bone-in pork shoulder

2 cups wood chips, soaked in water and drained

Barbecue sauce of your choice, optional

Mix pepper and salt together, and rub it on all surfaces of pork. Set meat aside while you build the fire.

Fill charcoal chimney with briquets, set chimney on the bottom grill grate, and light, or prepare a fire in your smoker. Oil grill grate.

When coals are ready, dump them into the bottom of grill, and spread them evenly across half. Scatter wood chips on hot coals. Place butt on indirect-heat side of the grill across from the coals. Increase temperature to 350 degrees by opening bottom vents on grill. When smoke starts to rise, close grill lid. Place a candy thermometer in lid vent. Smoke 30 to 45 minutes to get the bark started.

Reduce temperature by closing the vents until you’re at 225 to 250 degrees. Smoke the pork 4 hours. Place the meat in a brown paper grocery bag large enough to hold it, fold ends over to close it, and return it to the same place in the smoker, opposite the fire. Add more briquets if necessary, and close lid. Continue smoking for 2 to 4 more hours or until tender. Check for tenderness by pulling a piece of meat off and tasting it. The mark of a shoulder done to perfection is when you can remove the blade bone by pulling it out with your hand.

When the shoulder is done, set it aside in a pan to rest for 30 minutes, then move it to cutting board. Serve it Southern-style pulled (stringy portions torn off by hand), Kansas City-style thick sliced, or chopped. Some barbecuers like to mix in a little tangy barbecue sauce as they’re chopping, especially if the pork is still a little fatty. Transfer to a platter and serve.

From “25 Essentials: Techniques for Smoking” by Ardie A. Davis

SALMON GRILLED ON ONE SIDE ONLY

4 tablespoons soy sauce

3/4 cup olive oil

6 slices salmon fillet with skin, about 5 ounces each

Freshly ground black pepper

Mix soy sauce and oil in a dish and marinate salmon in it for 1 hour, turning frequently.

Light barbecue, place grill grate to heat over flames, and when you have nice hot embers, lay salmon on grill, skin side down. Cook 10 to 12 minutes, seasoning with pepper, and serve immediately. Makes 6 servings.

From “Barbecue” by Thomas Feller

TUBE STEAKS WITH PICKLED ONIONS

1 small white or yellow onion

1 small red onion

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons celery seed

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

8 all-beef hot dogs, about 1/4 pound each

8 hot dog buns

Yellow mustard

Ketchup

Trim off ends of onions. Cut each onion in half lengthwise. With a very sharp knife, cut onions into paper-thin slices and place in a shallow, non-reactive dish, such as a glass pie plate. In a medium bowl, combine vinegars, sugar, salt, celery seed and red pepper flakes. Whisk thoroughly to dissolve sugar and salt. Pour vinegar mixture over onions and stir to coat them evenly. Set aside at room temperature for about 3 hours, stirring onions occasionally. Drain onions and set aside.

Using a sharp knife, cut a few shallow slashes in each hot dog. Prepare the grill for direct cooking over medium heat. Brush cooking grates clean. Grill hot dogs over direct medium heat, with the lid closed as much as possible, until lightly marked on the outside and hot all the way to the center, 5 to 7 minutes, turning occasionally.

Place hot dogs in buns. Squeeze your condiment of choice alongside each hot dog and top with pickled onions. Serve warm. Makes 8 servings.

From “Weber’s Way to Grill” by Jamie Purviance