Around the time it first started to (finally) get warm, I decided it was time to grill something from the cookbook, and I decided Memorial Day weekend would be the perfect opportunity. I narrowed down the choices to a salmon recipe and Jame's Coffee-Marinated Skirt Steak (p. 52) and went to the store, figuring I would pick up whichever was more reasonably priced.
The salmon was not on sale and I couldn't find any skirt steak at the first store I visited, so I went home, recouped, and went back out to another. There the salmon was even more expensive and still no skirt steak! Rather than pay the extra money for salmon, I decided to drive back to the first store, and, once there... found the skirt steak! I was so excited to have found that darn cut of meat that I immediately bought it even though it was the only steak not on sale for the holiday. Also, using what I learned previously about shallots (in that I now know what they are), I successfully purchased some without hassle. I'll call this a tie, Supermarkets!
This recipe results in an impressive dish, and doesn't require too much work. First you whisk together most of the ingredients, pour half over your skirt steak, and retain the other half for basting. Then you set the steak on the counter top (covered to protect it from your cat) for the next half hour while you either set to work making more food (as I did), or play with the kids (as my husband did). Afterwards, I handed the steak over to my husband to grill while I finished the rest of the dinner.
On a whim I had decided to make Howard's Apple-Strawberry-Peanut Salad (p. 12), initially thinking that by "salad" he meant a lettuce-based salad. I was wrong; this is a salad of apples, strawberries, celery and peanuts, all held together with a mayonnaise based dressing. In what appears to be a miracle, honey and mayonnaise is combined into a dressing that is translucent and not reminiscent of mayonnaise at all. I was delighted but still hesitated in pouring it all over the apples and strawberries. What if I was ruining all that fruit for my son and me (like me, he likes his fruit raw and unadorned)?
I needn't have worried. Not only did my son love it, so did my daughter, me, and my friend who came over for dinner! My husband didn't try it (sorry, Howard, he saw me take a jar of mayonnaise to it, which he does not like, plus fruit doesn't tempt him at all). I couldn't believe that my daughter ate as much of it as she did. Of course she also loved the steak, along with me, my friend, and my husband. My frugivore son ate the steak begrudgingly only so that he could get more Apple-Strawberry-Peanut Salad.
It was a very good dinner, and a great way to kick off the summer. Thanks for the recipes, James and Howard!
Saturday, June 21, 2014
A Banana Bread Farewell
Now that summer is truly upon us, I am having a lot of difficulty A) cooking things and B) taking the time to write about it. Having just finished a yoga session celebrating the first day of summer, at the beginning of which I felt stressed by my sudden thought that I haven't written about Toni's Banana Bread, I decided to use the zen feeling I created to have a few quiet moments of composition.
The reason for my worry over not having written this post is that I made Toni's Banana Bread (p. 79) for her on her last day of work... in April. I had made Chad's Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies after his departure, so I wanted to make Toni's recipe before she left us as well. By lucky coincidence, I had 6 overripe bananas in my possession, which was extremely rare at the time because my daughter had been in the throes of a banana addiction rivaled only by her current applesauce addiction. Even luckier was the fact that I had all of the other ingredients I needed in my house.
I rushed home and mixed up the batter as quickly as I could, put them in the oven, and ran downstairs to exercise for the 50-60 minutes of baking time. I assumed I would hear the oven timer, or, worst-case, I only elliptical for 55 minutes. Well, it turns out I was wrong about being able to hear the oven timer, and also failed to calculate the 5-10 minutes I spent getting ready before starting my workout! Fortunately the banana bread wasn't completely cooked when I realized my mistake, although I think it could have benefited from being covered in foil for those last 15 minutes because the top got a little browner than I normally like.
Nonetheless, the banana bread was a hit with the coworkers (who, admittedly, will eat anything that looks remotely like food). The banana bread was even a surprise to Toni, who forgot she had submitted it and wasn't entirely sure why she had put in that recipe! I thought it was good, but I'll have to go on record that my recipe for banana bread (or rather, Southern Living's recipe for Cream Cheese Banana Bread) is much better! Chock that up to my foolish pride. Still, I wouldn't snub this recipe in a lineup of sweet breads - it was pretty tasty and had a good strong banana taste, which I love.
Thanks for the recipe, Toni, and we wish you luck in your new position!
The reason for my worry over not having written this post is that I made Toni's Banana Bread (p. 79) for her on her last day of work... in April. I had made Chad's Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies after his departure, so I wanted to make Toni's recipe before she left us as well. By lucky coincidence, I had 6 overripe bananas in my possession, which was extremely rare at the time because my daughter had been in the throes of a banana addiction rivaled only by her current applesauce addiction. Even luckier was the fact that I had all of the other ingredients I needed in my house.
I rushed home and mixed up the batter as quickly as I could, put them in the oven, and ran downstairs to exercise for the 50-60 minutes of baking time. I assumed I would hear the oven timer, or, worst-case, I only elliptical for 55 minutes. Well, it turns out I was wrong about being able to hear the oven timer, and also failed to calculate the 5-10 minutes I spent getting ready before starting my workout! Fortunately the banana bread wasn't completely cooked when I realized my mistake, although I think it could have benefited from being covered in foil for those last 15 minutes because the top got a little browner than I normally like.
Nonetheless, the banana bread was a hit with the coworkers (who, admittedly, will eat anything that looks remotely like food). The banana bread was even a surprise to Toni, who forgot she had submitted it and wasn't entirely sure why she had put in that recipe! I thought it was good, but I'll have to go on record that my recipe for banana bread (or rather, Southern Living's recipe for Cream Cheese Banana Bread) is much better! Chock that up to my foolish pride. Still, I wouldn't snub this recipe in a lineup of sweet breads - it was pretty tasty and had a good strong banana taste, which I love.
Thanks for the recipe, Toni, and we wish you luck in your new position!
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Celebrating the Battle of Puebla with Tres Leches Cake!
Each year on May 5th, we have a Cinco de Mayo potluck lunch at work. This year I decided to make something from the cookbook that counted as "Mexican enough". I posed the question to one of our Power Team members and she decided I should make Janet's Tres Leches Cake (p. 116). It didn't quite occur to me until I was making the cake that it contains a fair amount of rum. I always assume that rum in any recipe mostly bakes or cooks
out... but something to know about this cake is that the rum is blended
into the sauce, which is added to the cake after baking and before
storing cold.
I guess you could say it is fairly alcoholic, as cakes go.
The cake itself went together quite easily, with its base of yellow cake mix with pudding. The smell of rum was quite heady as it was blended into condensed milk and evaporated milk, and then pored over the hot cake perforated with many fork holes. The topping is whipped cream, chopped macadamia nuts, and toasted coconut. I reserved the topping for just prior to the Cinco De Mayo festivities because I was concerned the whipped cream would get runny. Now, if you've ever had a Tres Leches Cake, you will know that that was ridiculous. The cake itself is so soggy one would never notice if the topping were a little runny.
The hardest part of this recipe, for me, was the toasted coconut. My friend Google let me know that I could toast the coconut on a cookie sheet in my oven, and warned me that I should check it often and make sure I didn't burn it. I promptly burned by first batch. For my second, I watched the oven like a hawk and it turned out ok (perhaps a little more done than I intended, but good enough).
Everyone loved the cake, except for my coworker who can't handle soggy bread. This was absolutely one of the worst things she has ever had the misfortune to witness. As I was leaving the party I thought I had better try a bite for blog purposes and was shocked by how rum-filled it was. I'm not saying my coworkers like to drink but...no wonder everyone loved it!
I guess you could say it is fairly alcoholic, as cakes go.
The cake itself went together quite easily, with its base of yellow cake mix with pudding. The smell of rum was quite heady as it was blended into condensed milk and evaporated milk, and then pored over the hot cake perforated with many fork holes. The topping is whipped cream, chopped macadamia nuts, and toasted coconut. I reserved the topping for just prior to the Cinco De Mayo festivities because I was concerned the whipped cream would get runny. Now, if you've ever had a Tres Leches Cake, you will know that that was ridiculous. The cake itself is so soggy one would never notice if the topping were a little runny.
The hardest part of this recipe, for me, was the toasted coconut. My friend Google let me know that I could toast the coconut on a cookie sheet in my oven, and warned me that I should check it often and make sure I didn't burn it. I promptly burned by first batch. For my second, I watched the oven like a hawk and it turned out ok (perhaps a little more done than I intended, but good enough).
Everyone loved the cake, except for my coworker who can't handle soggy bread. This was absolutely one of the worst things she has ever had the misfortune to witness. As I was leaving the party I thought I had better try a bite for blog purposes and was shocked by how rum-filled it was. I'm not saying my coworkers like to drink but...no wonder everyone loved it!
Salmon Terrine, or an Exercise in Errors
The weekend after Phil's birthday I thought it was about time to make another entree, after devoting so much time to cookies and dessert. Furthermore, since it had been a long time since I did a recipe from outside the United States, I chose to make Marie-Christine's Salmon Terrine (p. 69).
There are multiple Salmon Terrines (or, rather, there are other Terrine de Saumon, which I am guessing is the same thing, I suppose time will tell) from Lyon in the cookbook. I had no idea what a Salmon Terrine was or what it should look like, so I headed to Google Images and discovered Salmon Terrine is basically a loaf of salmon, which varies in fanciness depending on how many hours you put into the preparation or how much money you spend at the restaurant. This Salmon Terrine calls for canned salmon, which Google indicated is a common way to make a "quick" Salmon Terrine.
The first problem I encountered was that I incorrectly assumed that shallots are the same thing as green onions. Apparently I'm not the only one (based on further investigation and interviews) but the internet also assures me that the Salmon Terrine I made with green onions rather than shallots was almost certainly not even remotely close to the intended recipe.
Nonetheless, it was time to start cooking or we would not be eating! The first step was to remove the skin and bones from the canned salmon. Let's not mince words here - this process was revolting and tedious. Luckily, after the half hour of removing tiny bones and gross skin bits from my canned salmon, the remaining steps were quite easy. I poured the mixture into a baking dish and put it in the oven at what I thought was a surprising temperature - 200°. I checked the temperature twice just to be sure.
About a half hour later, I checked the Salmon Terrine. It was still quite liquidy in the center, so I left it in for another 5 minutes... 10 minutes... 15 minutes...
Until finally it hit me - the recipe calls for a temperature of 200°C and my American oven was set at 200°F! I increased the temperature to the required 390°F, and the terrine finished cooking in about ten minutes, whereupon I doused it with lemon juice per the recipe. I served the Salmon Terrine with slices of french bread (I cheated and bought it) and the most delicious brussels sprouts ever (found by googling "French recipe for Brussels Sprouts").
Here is a picture of the Salmon Terrine:
My son and husband were not too enthused by this dish, but then they aren't big seafood eaters and suddenly I was asking them to eat it in loaf form. I thought it was pretty good, but I can't help but wonder... would it have been great had I used shallots?
Happy Birthday, Phil!
It sure has been awhile since I posted! I have a litany of excuses, but I also have a lot of recipes to talk about, so let's get right to it!
My husband's birthday was almost two months ago now, so a great place to start is with his cake. As soon as I saw Jennifer's Oreo Cookie Cake (p. 106) when I first got the cookbook, I knew I would make it for my husband's birthday. I baked the cake portion (box mix, following the directions on the box) the night before so that it would be nice and cool and ready to ice after work the following day.
The icing is made of cream cheese, sugar, cool whip, and crushed oreos. You simply mix all of those together and put it in the middle of the two cakes you made from the box cake. Then you apply some dark chocolate fudge frosting to the top. I will admit I was a little disappointed (I like my baked goods complicated)... until I sliced it and realized that this clever oreo cake is designed to look like a GIANT Oreo cookie:
Here is a picture of the slice:
The cake was delicious, although I think I made a little too much of inside icing (the recipe called for a small container of cool whip and I'm wondering if there is a smaller size than what I used - or if I just wasn't supposed to use the entire amount of icing I prepared).
Thanks, Jennifer, for such a clever recipe!
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Semifinals Game #2: Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
My Thursday was terrible. I started the day exhausted. It then became apparent that I have disappointed everyone in the world by doing an altogether horrible job. I was in a terrible mood. I announced before I left that I would not make cookies as previously planned, because I hated everything in the world.
Because cookie days seem to make everyone happier, though, I decided to make up the cookies for the second Semifinal game between Kristy's Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 121) and Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 127). I am glad I did, too, since baking tends to put me in a better mood, and by the end of baking I felt quite a lot more content.
First I mixed together the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I almost didn't remember to double the recipe several times, but I managed to get all the ingredients in there in the correct quantities in the end. Again, when it came to mixing in the absurd number of chocolate chips, my arms got an excellent workout (a good thing, too, since I hadn't exercised since Monday night). I chilled the dough in a separate bowl, and cleaned up all my bowls and measuring implements so that I'd be ready to mix up the second batch.
Once I got rolling on baking the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, I started to put together the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. This time I had the correct size of instant pudding mix, so no math was necessary for this batch. Also, I had Diamond brand chopped walnuts, and I'll have to take back all of the disparaging things I said last time about the nut industry - they were chopped into small enough pieces that I could just add them into the mix. Again I got a good arm workout as I mixed all of the chocolate chips and walnuts into the dough. By this time my husband was fully asleep on the couch, and the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies were finished baking.
I rolled all of the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookie balls so that I could start washing the dished while they baked. The recipe, as stated, makes about 6 dozen cookies so I had a fair amount of time while they baked in order to set the kitchen back to rights. Still, I only finished by about the time I was three oven-fulls from being finished. I woke up my husband and asked him to bake the last trays while I got a shower (not cheating since I've made these before!).
Although we've seen these before, I think I did a better job baking the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies this time, so here is a picture (Award Winning Cookies are on the left, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies are on the right):
Everyone enjoyed tasting both of these cookies again. I truly didn't know which one would be the winner since both cookies had an ingredient which may dissuade some voters - Walnuts in the Award Winning cookies and Oatmeal in the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. When the votes were tallied, the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies were the victor - the final score was 13 to 3.
Next week we'll have our finals, with Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies competing against Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies. I know everyone is looking forward to seeing these two epic cookie recipes face off!
Because cookie days seem to make everyone happier, though, I decided to make up the cookies for the second Semifinal game between Kristy's Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 121) and Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 127). I am glad I did, too, since baking tends to put me in a better mood, and by the end of baking I felt quite a lot more content.
First I mixed together the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I almost didn't remember to double the recipe several times, but I managed to get all the ingredients in there in the correct quantities in the end. Again, when it came to mixing in the absurd number of chocolate chips, my arms got an excellent workout (a good thing, too, since I hadn't exercised since Monday night). I chilled the dough in a separate bowl, and cleaned up all my bowls and measuring implements so that I'd be ready to mix up the second batch.
Once I got rolling on baking the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, I started to put together the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. This time I had the correct size of instant pudding mix, so no math was necessary for this batch. Also, I had Diamond brand chopped walnuts, and I'll have to take back all of the disparaging things I said last time about the nut industry - they were chopped into small enough pieces that I could just add them into the mix. Again I got a good arm workout as I mixed all of the chocolate chips and walnuts into the dough. By this time my husband was fully asleep on the couch, and the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies were finished baking.
I rolled all of the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookie balls so that I could start washing the dished while they baked. The recipe, as stated, makes about 6 dozen cookies so I had a fair amount of time while they baked in order to set the kitchen back to rights. Still, I only finished by about the time I was three oven-fulls from being finished. I woke up my husband and asked him to bake the last trays while I got a shower (not cheating since I've made these before!).
Although we've seen these before, I think I did a better job baking the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies this time, so here is a picture (Award Winning Cookies are on the left, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies are on the right):
Everyone enjoyed tasting both of these cookies again. I truly didn't know which one would be the winner since both cookies had an ingredient which may dissuade some voters - Walnuts in the Award Winning cookies and Oatmeal in the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. When the votes were tallied, the Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies were the victor - the final score was 13 to 3.
Next week we'll have our finals, with Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies competing against Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies. I know everyone is looking forward to seeing these two epic cookie recipes face off!
Semifinals Game #1: Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies vs. Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies
Last Monday brought us to our first semifinal match up, between the Number 2 seed, Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies and the Number 3 seed, Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies. Sunday, after arriving home from the quilt retreat, I sprang into action... by taking a long bath. But then - then, I started baking cookies.
First I tackled Joni's Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 132), which mixed up and baked very similarly to the first time I made them. I felt less stressed this time, perhaps because I had done this all before, or perhaps just because of the aforementioned long bath. Both children helped unwrap Dove Chocolates for me, and restrained themselves reasonably well from eating them as they did so.
Before I knew it we were finished with those and it was on to baking Todd's Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies (p. 130). Readers may recall that I felt the first time I made these was sort of a disaster, and I was shocked when they still won despite being a bit burnt. On Sunday night, I had started to mix up the cookies when I realized I had no sea salt in my house (recall I made these at my sister's house previously). What I had thought was sea salt was actually Kosher Coarse Salt. Google searches revealed that you can substitute sea salt for kosher salt in "most" recipes, although it appears that no one on the internet wants to know or share whether the reverse is true. My husband volunteered to run out to the store for some while I got the kids to bed, which allowed me some time to allow the mixture to cool before adding the toffee bits. During the previous batch, I had rushed this step and suspected that the toffee bits were meant to stay intact and not melt. This time, the benefits of slowing down showed - most toffee bits stayed intact. Since I was at home, I also had the benefit of using parchment paper, which worked so much better than wax paper that I wanted to sing. These were not the burnt, steamy cookies of last time! These actually looked like they could be tasty!
Here is a picture of both cookies. Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie A and are on the right, Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies were labeled as Cookie B and are on the left:
Indeed, everyone seemed to love both cookies, and it seemed to be a difficult decision for most. Were the Turtle Fudges too sweet? Were the Salted Chocolate Cookies too odd? In the end, the Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies took the win, 12 to 7 over the Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies. Congratulations to Joni for moving on to the finals!
First I tackled Joni's Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 132), which mixed up and baked very similarly to the first time I made them. I felt less stressed this time, perhaps because I had done this all before, or perhaps just because of the aforementioned long bath. Both children helped unwrap Dove Chocolates for me, and restrained themselves reasonably well from eating them as they did so.
Before I knew it we were finished with those and it was on to baking Todd's Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies (p. 130). Readers may recall that I felt the first time I made these was sort of a disaster, and I was shocked when they still won despite being a bit burnt. On Sunday night, I had started to mix up the cookies when I realized I had no sea salt in my house (recall I made these at my sister's house previously). What I had thought was sea salt was actually Kosher Coarse Salt. Google searches revealed that you can substitute sea salt for kosher salt in "most" recipes, although it appears that no one on the internet wants to know or share whether the reverse is true. My husband volunteered to run out to the store for some while I got the kids to bed, which allowed me some time to allow the mixture to cool before adding the toffee bits. During the previous batch, I had rushed this step and suspected that the toffee bits were meant to stay intact and not melt. This time, the benefits of slowing down showed - most toffee bits stayed intact. Since I was at home, I also had the benefit of using parchment paper, which worked so much better than wax paper that I wanted to sing. These were not the burnt, steamy cookies of last time! These actually looked like they could be tasty!
Here is a picture of both cookies. Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie A and are on the right, Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies were labeled as Cookie B and are on the left:
Indeed, everyone seemed to love both cookies, and it seemed to be a difficult decision for most. Were the Turtle Fudges too sweet? Were the Salted Chocolate Cookies too odd? In the end, the Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies took the win, 12 to 7 over the Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies. Congratulations to Joni for moving on to the finals!
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Quarterfinals Game #4: Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Chocolate Chip Cookies
Since I was out of the office Thursday and Friday of last week to attend a quilt retreat in Lancaster, PA, I made cookies for our fourth quarterfinal game on Tuesday night. Finally we had reached our final untasted recipe, the number 1 seed, Kristy's Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 121).
Kristy's recipe includes optional chopped walnuts, which gave me pause. What are the tournament rules regarding optional ingredients? I had just had a conversation with some coworkers which revealed that nuts are apparently a polarizing ingredient to include in cookies! If I included the nuts, was I doing a disservice to Kristy? But I like nuts in my cookies. So, throwing caution to the wind, I included them.
At this juncture I'd like to have a quick sidebar about "chopped" nuts. I have noticed that the supermarket sells Diamond brand chopped nuts... they sell local farm brands of chopped nuts. And I have come to believe that "chopped" is the nut industry's term for "nuts that aren't whole". This includes mostly nuts that are 95% whole and are, in my opinion, in need of further processing to make them "chopped".
Regardless, instead of pulling out my food processor to chop the walnuts, I decided to "save time" by breaking them into small pieces with my hands. This time-saving method, of course, ended up taking gobs of time, and I finally got to baking these cookies after 9 pm. Another ingredient in Kristy's Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies was instant pudding mix (I suspect this is a "secret ingredient" of Kristy's). My husband had kindly bought two packages for me at the store... which were, alas, the wrong size. I determined through measurement that I needed to include exactly 1 and 1/3 boxes of pudding mix. I can say with almost absolute certainty that 1/3 box of the larger size of pudding mix is about 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon of pudding mix, and that is what I added to the mix.
Nonetheless, they baked well, and, made the ton of cookies Kristy indicates (6 dozen!). Then I moved on to baking Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies (number 8 seed), which previously beat out Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies in a preliminary matchup. Wanda's cookies baked exceedingly well, which may indicate that I really should have baked all of the recipes in a trial run prior to embarking on the tournament. Of course that would have cost a lot of money and time, and I would have had to consume all of them myself! This time the Chocolate Chip Cookies baked perfectly. One taster said they were the best cookies she had ever had and that she was going to "make love to them". Others were wowed by the softness and chocolate-chip-rich Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies. As my husband put it, "This is going to be the closest one yet".
When the final votes were tallied, Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies lost by only one vote to Kristy's Award Winning Chocolate Chip Cookies, with a score of 10 to 11. Now we have our final four:
(1) Award Winning Chocolate Chip Cookies
(4) Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
(2) Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies
(3) Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies
No, I don't have the numbers out of order - those are the seeds. Apparently my original seeding was impeccable: we have only seen one upset (Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies over Chocolate Chip Cookies in Preliminary Match 1, which, if you recall, I suggested would probably happen prior to the start of the tournament). Do I just know my cookies, or, as my husband accuses, am I secretly trying harder when I bake the cookie I expect to win? I suspect I am just a cookie genius!
Kristy's recipe includes optional chopped walnuts, which gave me pause. What are the tournament rules regarding optional ingredients? I had just had a conversation with some coworkers which revealed that nuts are apparently a polarizing ingredient to include in cookies! If I included the nuts, was I doing a disservice to Kristy? But I like nuts in my cookies. So, throwing caution to the wind, I included them.
At this juncture I'd like to have a quick sidebar about "chopped" nuts. I have noticed that the supermarket sells Diamond brand chopped nuts... they sell local farm brands of chopped nuts. And I have come to believe that "chopped" is the nut industry's term for "nuts that aren't whole". This includes mostly nuts that are 95% whole and are, in my opinion, in need of further processing to make them "chopped".
Regardless, instead of pulling out my food processor to chop the walnuts, I decided to "save time" by breaking them into small pieces with my hands. This time-saving method, of course, ended up taking gobs of time, and I finally got to baking these cookies after 9 pm. Another ingredient in Kristy's Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies was instant pudding mix (I suspect this is a "secret ingredient" of Kristy's). My husband had kindly bought two packages for me at the store... which were, alas, the wrong size. I determined through measurement that I needed to include exactly 1 and 1/3 boxes of pudding mix. I can say with almost absolute certainty that 1/3 box of the larger size of pudding mix is about 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon of pudding mix, and that is what I added to the mix.
Nonetheless, they baked well, and, made the ton of cookies Kristy indicates (6 dozen!). Then I moved on to baking Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies (number 8 seed), which previously beat out Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies in a preliminary matchup. Wanda's cookies baked exceedingly well, which may indicate that I really should have baked all of the recipes in a trial run prior to embarking on the tournament. Of course that would have cost a lot of money and time, and I would have had to consume all of them myself! This time the Chocolate Chip Cookies baked perfectly. One taster said they were the best cookies she had ever had and that she was going to "make love to them". Others were wowed by the softness and chocolate-chip-rich Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies. As my husband put it, "This is going to be the closest one yet".
When the final votes were tallied, Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies lost by only one vote to Kristy's Award Winning Chocolate Chip Cookies, with a score of 10 to 11. Now we have our final four:
(1) Award Winning Chocolate Chip Cookies
(4) Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
(2) Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies
(3) Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies
No, I don't have the numbers out of order - those are the seeds. Apparently my original seeding was impeccable: we have only seen one upset (Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies over Chocolate Chip Cookies in Preliminary Match 1, which, if you recall, I suggested would probably happen prior to the start of the tournament). Do I just know my cookies, or, as my husband accuses, am I secretly trying harder when I bake the cookie I expect to win? I suspect I am just a cookie genius!
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Quarterfinals Game #3: Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies vs. Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies
Last weekend we went to stay at my sister's house for the weekend to squelch the complaints from both my son and my sister that they hadn't seen each other in "forever". Since the third quarterfinal game in the March Cookie Madness bracket was planned for the following Monday, Sunday morning found me at my sister's house baking up a batch of the number 2 seed, Todd's Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies (p. 130).
First I had to find English Toffee Bits, which a quick Google search revealed can be purchased under the Heath brand in the baking section of stores. On Saturday, I stopped by the local Food Lion where I ran into my sister. The store had no English Toffee Bits, but I did pick up the required sea salt and helped my sister pick out some lunch for all of us (pizza). Blithely ignoring the fact that I still did not have all of the ingredients, I went about the business of having a good time and left it until Sunday morning to find the English Toffee Bits, despite the fact that we planned to leave right after lunch. Luckily they were easily located at the SuperFresh (recommended by my sister as a store that has "all that weird stuff") and I got started on the cookies around 10am. Excitingly enough, the recipe required a 45 minute chilling time. I mixed them up quickly, using the tried and true pot-inside-another-pot-with-water method of getting around not having the double boiler mentioned in the recipe. The toffee bits melted into the cookie mix, which indicated to me that I probably didn't allow the chocolate mixture to cool sufficiently. Nonetheless, I continued, dropping spoonfuls (or rather forming balls out of the play-doh-like dough) onto wax paper onto cookie sheets. Now, I have never used wax paper in the oven before, but Todd assured me it would be fine in lieu of parchment paper. The result was a surprising amount of steam which issued forth from my sister's oven! The cookies took awhile to reach the "cracked top" stage, whereupon I removed them from the oven and allowed them to cool (against my better judgment, but following Todd's instructions) on the sheets. The result was a slightly burned, hard-as-a-rock cookie. Oh, and they stuck to the wax paper and pans. I thought they were awful but my nephew loved them and ate quite a few before I shooed him away. I pried them up once cool and loaded them all in a plastic ziploc bag to take home, very unhappy with the results.
After arriving home, I whipped up my second-ever batch of the number 10 seed, Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133). The cookies came together similarly to the first time with two exceptions:
Here is a picture of the cookies (Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies are on the left and Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies are on the right):
The end result was 8 votes for Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies and 12 votes for Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies. I was rather distraught over messing up Pragati's cookies, but I suppose I equally messed up Todd's cookies, so I guess the playing field was even. I'll just have to try to do better with the Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies next time. Congratulations, Todd!
First I had to find English Toffee Bits, which a quick Google search revealed can be purchased under the Heath brand in the baking section of stores. On Saturday, I stopped by the local Food Lion where I ran into my sister. The store had no English Toffee Bits, but I did pick up the required sea salt and helped my sister pick out some lunch for all of us (pizza). Blithely ignoring the fact that I still did not have all of the ingredients, I went about the business of having a good time and left it until Sunday morning to find the English Toffee Bits, despite the fact that we planned to leave right after lunch. Luckily they were easily located at the SuperFresh (recommended by my sister as a store that has "all that weird stuff") and I got started on the cookies around 10am. Excitingly enough, the recipe required a 45 minute chilling time. I mixed them up quickly, using the tried and true pot-inside-another-pot-with-water method of getting around not having the double boiler mentioned in the recipe. The toffee bits melted into the cookie mix, which indicated to me that I probably didn't allow the chocolate mixture to cool sufficiently. Nonetheless, I continued, dropping spoonfuls (or rather forming balls out of the play-doh-like dough) onto wax paper onto cookie sheets. Now, I have never used wax paper in the oven before, but Todd assured me it would be fine in lieu of parchment paper. The result was a surprising amount of steam which issued forth from my sister's oven! The cookies took awhile to reach the "cracked top" stage, whereupon I removed them from the oven and allowed them to cool (against my better judgment, but following Todd's instructions) on the sheets. The result was a slightly burned, hard-as-a-rock cookie. Oh, and they stuck to the wax paper and pans. I thought they were awful but my nephew loved them and ate quite a few before I shooed him away. I pried them up once cool and loaded them all in a plastic ziploc bag to take home, very unhappy with the results.
After arriving home, I whipped up my second-ever batch of the number 10 seed, Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133). The cookies came together similarly to the first time with two exceptions:
- While measuring out the natural peanut butter, I noticed halfway through that I had not mixed the container well so there was more chunky material at the bottom of the jar versus what I had in my measuring cup, so I tried to add a lump of the chunky material into my cup at that juncture.
- I baked them a bit larger than the previous time in an attempt to make them a size similar to the Toffee Cookies.
Here is a picture of the cookies (Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies are on the left and Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies are on the right):
The end result was 8 votes for Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies and 12 votes for Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies. I was rather distraught over messing up Pragati's cookies, but I suppose I equally messed up Todd's cookies, so I guess the playing field was even. I'll just have to try to do better with the Salted Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies next time. Congratulations, Todd!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Quarterfinals Game #2: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies
Last Thursday night I came home from work on time so that my son could get his wish of eating cheese sticks from Pizza Hut and I could bake cookies for our second quarterfinal match-up. The cookies: The number 4 seed, Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 127) versus the number 5 seed, Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 129). Given the seeding, this match should be excellent!
Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies are a fairly standard shortening-based cookie, but I was a little nervous for Susie when I realized that she was only including one bag of chocolate chips to 4.5 cups flour. If this tournament has taught me anything, it is that my coworkers are voracious chocolatevores (which is what I assume is what you call someone whose diet mostly consists of chocolate). The cookies were easy to mix, but called for baking for 16-18 minutes, which seemed like a very long time given that the recipe yielded a ton of cookies. I had a test cookie at the 16 minute mark on the first pan. It was crispier than I like my cookies (not a hard mark to reach since I like them on the raw side), and tasted sort of bland to me. I want back to the recipe and mentally went over the ingredients I had added - everything was correct. My husband tasted one and basically called me a crazy person - the cookies were fine, just not the over-sweet kind. I continued with the recipe, working hard not to try to "fix" it, since that would be against the rules. I would have loved to stir in a bit more sugar, or roll the balls in it, or generally make it much more unhealthy. Also, I would have baked it for a shorter amount of time. But, I gritted my teeth and followed the recipe.
During the end of baking Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies (how does Susie know this Polly, I wonder?), I mixed up a double batch of Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Readers will note that we encountered a Navika cookie recipe earlier this year (Brownie Cookies), and that I found them a little crispier than I tend to like, but very chocolatey and delicious. This was a fairly standard oatmeal cookie recipe until it called for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips per 24 cookie batch. That's right, I added 4 cups of chocolate chips to about 4 cups of dry ingredients. To recap: Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies contain 1 bag (approximately 2 cups) chips to 4.5 cups of just flour, and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies contain 4 cups chips to about 4 cups of dry ingredients. Clearly Navika loves chocolate! There were times when I was rolling the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie dough balls for baking when I wondered how a cookie could possibly bake when it was mostly chocolate chips. Somehow, these things managed to form cookies, and they were delicious!
Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (on the left in the picture below) and Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (on the right - oddly, you can barely see the chips in this photo).
People generally liked Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies but they loved the chip-laden Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, which won this match with 14 votes. Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies received one vote, which I believe was mostly likely from Bob, who commented that it was a great cookie with a cup of coffee. I tried that with some of the overage, and I would say coffee showcases the cookie best. I took some overage to my sister's house this weekend and Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies were cleared out of the bag first (despite there being more of them) so perhaps they just had the wrong audience for this tournament. But, their loss is Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies' gain, since Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies will be moving on to the semi-finals!
Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies are a fairly standard shortening-based cookie, but I was a little nervous for Susie when I realized that she was only including one bag of chocolate chips to 4.5 cups flour. If this tournament has taught me anything, it is that my coworkers are voracious chocolatevores (which is what I assume is what you call someone whose diet mostly consists of chocolate). The cookies were easy to mix, but called for baking for 16-18 minutes, which seemed like a very long time given that the recipe yielded a ton of cookies. I had a test cookie at the 16 minute mark on the first pan. It was crispier than I like my cookies (not a hard mark to reach since I like them on the raw side), and tasted sort of bland to me. I want back to the recipe and mentally went over the ingredients I had added - everything was correct. My husband tasted one and basically called me a crazy person - the cookies were fine, just not the over-sweet kind. I continued with the recipe, working hard not to try to "fix" it, since that would be against the rules. I would have loved to stir in a bit more sugar, or roll the balls in it, or generally make it much more unhealthy. Also, I would have baked it for a shorter amount of time. But, I gritted my teeth and followed the recipe.
During the end of baking Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies (how does Susie know this Polly, I wonder?), I mixed up a double batch of Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Readers will note that we encountered a Navika cookie recipe earlier this year (Brownie Cookies), and that I found them a little crispier than I tend to like, but very chocolatey and delicious. This was a fairly standard oatmeal cookie recipe until it called for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips per 24 cookie batch. That's right, I added 4 cups of chocolate chips to about 4 cups of dry ingredients. To recap: Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies contain 1 bag (approximately 2 cups) chips to 4.5 cups of just flour, and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies contain 4 cups chips to about 4 cups of dry ingredients. Clearly Navika loves chocolate! There were times when I was rolling the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie dough balls for baking when I wondered how a cookie could possibly bake when it was mostly chocolate chips. Somehow, these things managed to form cookies, and they were delicious!
Susie's Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (on the left in the picture below) and Navika's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (on the right - oddly, you can barely see the chips in this photo).
People generally liked Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies but they loved the chip-laden Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, which won this match with 14 votes. Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies received one vote, which I believe was mostly likely from Bob, who commented that it was a great cookie with a cup of coffee. I tried that with some of the overage, and I would say coffee showcases the cookie best. I took some overage to my sister's house this weekend and Polly's Chocolate Chip Cookies were cleared out of the bag first (despite there being more of them) so perhaps they just had the wrong audience for this tournament. But, their loss is Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies' gain, since Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies will be moving on to the semi-finals!
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Quarterfinals Game #1: Cowboy Cookies vs. Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies
On Sunday I prepared the cookies for our first quarterfinal matchup, between the number 6 seed, Roxanne's Cowboy Cookies (p. 125) and the number 3 seed, Joni's Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 132).
I began with the Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies because the recipe did not mention how many cookies it would yield, and the ingredients are not exactly pantry staples of mine. If the yield was low I would be off to the grocery store for more supplies! The ingredients included unsweetened baking chocolate, condensed milk, Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip muffin mix, and Dove Milk Chocolate and Caramel Candies. The only two ingredients included in this recipe that I keep in my house are pecans and butter!
I started to mix up the cookies and quickly discovered that the mixture was rather dry, which is when I began to question whether "Betty Crocker Chocolate Chop Muffin Mix" meant just the mix, or the mix prepared as noted on the package. The only liquid in the recipe was melted butter and condensed milk? Really? Puzzled, I made a test cookie. It had some compression issues and was fairly friable, but it baked ok. My son and I cut it in half and tasted it (sans chocolate caramel topping). My son said it tasted really good and I decided it was far too sweet (it should be noted it was 8 o'clock in the morning), but I decided to proceed according to my original interpretation of the recipe. There followed a difficult couple of hours of compressing the dough into balls, baking them for 8 minutes, popping a Dove chocolate onto each one (sometimes strategically over an area that was falling apart), cooking for another 2 minutes, then swirling a knife in the chocolate to "ice" the cookie. Luckily, the recipe makes plenty of cookies for tournament taste-offs so there was no need for another go-round. Finally, they were all done, and it was on to scrubbing the caramel and chocolate drippings off the kitchen table so that we wouldn't find Oliver (our dog) on top of it when we returned from our outing to my parents-in-law's house to not return a crock pot (please refer to Sunday's post for further details).
After a restful lunch and a quick run in the surprisingly chilly/windy weather, I embarked on the Cowboy Cookies. Cowboy Cookies are made with peanut butter, oatmeal (I used rolled oats, because why would cowboys use instant?), chocolate chips, and a slew of typical pantry ingredients, which made me wonder about how well-supplied cowboys must have been out there on the range. Or, as my husband pointed out, are they just supposed to taste like cowboys? Regardless, the recipe mixed up quickly (even though it included a bit of sifting), and the dough formed nice, easy to roll, dough balls for baking. In fact, my son and I kept up with the baking easily, and managed to roll all of the cookies in advance of available oven space, which facilitated cleanup during the later baking stages. It should be noted that the recipe for Cowboy Cookies makes a very respectable amount of cookies with very little fuss. They are light, crispy, and flavorful.
Cowboy Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (and "contains peanuts" for allergy sufferers) and Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (and "contains pecans" for allergy sufferers -- kind of a bad day for anyone affected by both peanut and tree nut allergies). Here is a picture of both (Cookie A on left, Cookie B on right):
My husband tasted both cookies and said, in a very serious tone, that "This is going to be the closest one yet. These are both great cookies." My coworkers were, of course, delighted with the offerings. The supports of the Turtle Chocolate Chip Cookies were vociferous, claiming things like "it's like fudge and cookies had a baby" and "I mean, these are SO delicious". Perhaps one voter put it best with the written in "Yum!" next to the circled vote for them. The end results were 10 for Cookie A and 16 for Cookie B. I prefer Cowboy Cookies, but then, I was there for the construction of both.
I began with the Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies because the recipe did not mention how many cookies it would yield, and the ingredients are not exactly pantry staples of mine. If the yield was low I would be off to the grocery store for more supplies! The ingredients included unsweetened baking chocolate, condensed milk, Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip muffin mix, and Dove Milk Chocolate and Caramel Candies. The only two ingredients included in this recipe that I keep in my house are pecans and butter!
I started to mix up the cookies and quickly discovered that the mixture was rather dry, which is when I began to question whether "Betty Crocker Chocolate Chop Muffin Mix" meant just the mix, or the mix prepared as noted on the package. The only liquid in the recipe was melted butter and condensed milk? Really? Puzzled, I made a test cookie. It had some compression issues and was fairly friable, but it baked ok. My son and I cut it in half and tasted it (sans chocolate caramel topping). My son said it tasted really good and I decided it was far too sweet (it should be noted it was 8 o'clock in the morning), but I decided to proceed according to my original interpretation of the recipe. There followed a difficult couple of hours of compressing the dough into balls, baking them for 8 minutes, popping a Dove chocolate onto each one (sometimes strategically over an area that was falling apart), cooking for another 2 minutes, then swirling a knife in the chocolate to "ice" the cookie. Luckily, the recipe makes plenty of cookies for tournament taste-offs so there was no need for another go-round. Finally, they were all done, and it was on to scrubbing the caramel and chocolate drippings off the kitchen table so that we wouldn't find Oliver (our dog) on top of it when we returned from our outing to my parents-in-law's house to not return a crock pot (please refer to Sunday's post for further details).
After a restful lunch and a quick run in the surprisingly chilly/windy weather, I embarked on the Cowboy Cookies. Cowboy Cookies are made with peanut butter, oatmeal (I used rolled oats, because why would cowboys use instant?), chocolate chips, and a slew of typical pantry ingredients, which made me wonder about how well-supplied cowboys must have been out there on the range. Or, as my husband pointed out, are they just supposed to taste like cowboys? Regardless, the recipe mixed up quickly (even though it included a bit of sifting), and the dough formed nice, easy to roll, dough balls for baking. In fact, my son and I kept up with the baking easily, and managed to roll all of the cookies in advance of available oven space, which facilitated cleanup during the later baking stages. It should be noted that the recipe for Cowboy Cookies makes a very respectable amount of cookies with very little fuss. They are light, crispy, and flavorful.
Cowboy Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (and "contains peanuts" for allergy sufferers) and Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (and "contains pecans" for allergy sufferers -- kind of a bad day for anyone affected by both peanut and tree nut allergies). Here is a picture of both (Cookie A on left, Cookie B on right):
My husband tasted both cookies and said, in a very serious tone, that "This is going to be the closest one yet. These are both great cookies." My coworkers were, of course, delighted with the offerings. The supports of the Turtle Chocolate Chip Cookies were vociferous, claiming things like "it's like fudge and cookies had a baby" and "I mean, these are SO delicious". Perhaps one voter put it best with the written in "Yum!" next to the circled vote for them. The end results were 10 for Cookie A and 16 for Cookie B. I prefer Cowboy Cookies, but then, I was there for the construction of both.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
VERY Slowly Cooked Potatoes
Yesterday I put together Carol's Pizza Potatoes (p. 36) because I was due to give my borrowed crock pot back today. I had purchased all the required ingredients last weekend but could not figure out what this should be a side dish for, so I didn't get around to making it. I had to run to the store to get an onion (I used up the previously purchased one for Crockpot Lasagna), so, after our weekly visit to the library, we stopped by the store where I bought the onion along with ingredients for this week's March Cookie Madness batches.
All in all, I got home a little later than intended, and then, to my horror, discovered that the Pizza Potatoes are supposed to cook for 6-10 hours rather than the 4-6 hours I seemed to remember. Instead of eating lunch, I sliced up potatoes (I peeled the potatoes - the recipe didn't specify but it seemed "right") and onions and sauteed them until the onions were fairly translucent. Then I combined that mixture, pepperoni, cheese, salt, and pizza sauce in the crockpot.
Then I read the recipe and realized the pizza sauce was meant to be poured on top rather than mixed in, so I poured in a little more for good measure. I turned on the crock pot, had lunch, and then ran off to the going out of business sale of yet another quilt shop (can you believe that???). I got home several hours later and went to mix the potatoes. First I wondered why the potatoes didn't seem very cooked yet, then to my mild interest, I noticed the cheese didn't melt. What an odd recipe, I thought. I actually left the crock pot and wandered off for a bit, before coming back and realizing that I had never plugged in the crock pot.
No matter, the contents were still quite cold and I didn't have to give the crock pot back until Sunday morning. The obvious answer was to put the whole thing in the refrigerator and start it heating right before going to sleep -- we would have Pizza Potatoes for breakfast!
Upon waking this morning, my very first thought was of having not started the Pizza Potatoes yet again. I hustled out of bed, took them out of the refrigerator, and turned them on, hoping the crock pot wasn't needed until early afternoon. I turned off the crock pot early, about 12:15 pm, and we lunched on it (as a main dish after all). It was pretty good, even with its checkered past. Some of the potatoes had browned after their prolonged expose to oxygen, but I took out some of the better-looking potatoes for this photo:
Everyone seemed to enjoy it, although my son did hold up a pepperoni and ask:
"Is this a... a... what is this, mom?"
He seemed satisfied with the answer, though, and ate that and some of the potatoes before leaving a pile of onions and cheese for me to consume. I had thought the onions might be a bit weird, but they turned into more of a texture and vehicle for sauce and cheese, and, really, isn't that what we all want from all foods?
All in all, I got home a little later than intended, and then, to my horror, discovered that the Pizza Potatoes are supposed to cook for 6-10 hours rather than the 4-6 hours I seemed to remember. Instead of eating lunch, I sliced up potatoes (I peeled the potatoes - the recipe didn't specify but it seemed "right") and onions and sauteed them until the onions were fairly translucent. Then I combined that mixture, pepperoni, cheese, salt, and pizza sauce in the crockpot.
Then I read the recipe and realized the pizza sauce was meant to be poured on top rather than mixed in, so I poured in a little more for good measure. I turned on the crock pot, had lunch, and then ran off to the going out of business sale of yet another quilt shop (can you believe that???). I got home several hours later and went to mix the potatoes. First I wondered why the potatoes didn't seem very cooked yet, then to my mild interest, I noticed the cheese didn't melt. What an odd recipe, I thought. I actually left the crock pot and wandered off for a bit, before coming back and realizing that I had never plugged in the crock pot.
No matter, the contents were still quite cold and I didn't have to give the crock pot back until Sunday morning. The obvious answer was to put the whole thing in the refrigerator and start it heating right before going to sleep -- we would have Pizza Potatoes for breakfast!
Upon waking this morning, my very first thought was of having not started the Pizza Potatoes yet again. I hustled out of bed, took them out of the refrigerator, and turned them on, hoping the crock pot wasn't needed until early afternoon. I turned off the crock pot early, about 12:15 pm, and we lunched on it (as a main dish after all). It was pretty good, even with its checkered past. Some of the potatoes had browned after their prolonged expose to oxygen, but I took out some of the better-looking potatoes for this photo:
"Is this a... a... what is this, mom?"
He seemed satisfied with the answer, though, and ate that and some of the potatoes before leaving a pile of onions and cheese for me to consume. I had thought the onions might be a bit weird, but they turned into more of a texture and vehicle for sauce and cheese, and, really, isn't that what we all want from all foods?
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Preliminary Game #2: Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies
Thursday night I baked two more batches of cookies for the second preliminary game in our March Cookie Madness tournament: Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 124) and Chad's (well, Chad's wife's) Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies (p. 125).
First I made the Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies. The recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies, so I doubled the recipe. The ingredients include not only cranberries and oatmeal, but also mini chocolate chips and peanut butter. The recipe has a whole wheat flour base. All in all, it was very similar to Vegan Peanut Chip Cookies, aside from all those animal products. The batter mixed up well, and stuck together better than the Vegan cookies. Also, I didn't burn any of them. I do think there was a little consistency issue in terms of the cranberry to chocolate chip to cookie dough ratios, possibly because the dough was thick and difficult to mix and I was tired and a bit lazy.
Then, I moved on to Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies which included three sticks of butter. This recipe mixed up well and was reminiscent of the traditional Toll House Cookie recipe, so I knew these would be tasty. I used semi-sweet morsels since Wanda gives you the option of using whatever "chip" you like. The dough was so thick at the end that my KitchenAid Stand Mixer actually slowed down significantly and had trouble mixing. I have never seen that before! After trying to mix in the morsels with a spoon and then a spatula, I ended up diving in and mixing it with my hands. Then I started to bake... and bake... and bake. Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe makes a ton of cookies! I ended up with so many that I couldn't take them all to work because they wouldn't fit in the container I had.
This matchup seemed very similar to the first preliminary game and I wondered if it would have similar results. On the other hand, I consider cranberries to be a very polarizing ingredient to add to cookies, so perhaps the ballot would come down to how many voters like the taste of cranberries. On Friday, the cookies were met with great excitement by all. Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies had some very vocal support, although those I mentioned that to insisted they had heard equally ardent support for the Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies. Here is a picture of both cookies (Cookie A, Chocolate Chip Cookies, are on the left and Cookie B, Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies, are on the right):
The final results were: 14 for Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies and 10 for Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies. (I guess that's what you get for resigning, Chad!). Congratulations to Wanda for advancing to the next round!
First I made the Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies. The recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies, so I doubled the recipe. The ingredients include not only cranberries and oatmeal, but also mini chocolate chips and peanut butter. The recipe has a whole wheat flour base. All in all, it was very similar to Vegan Peanut Chip Cookies, aside from all those animal products. The batter mixed up well, and stuck together better than the Vegan cookies. Also, I didn't burn any of them. I do think there was a little consistency issue in terms of the cranberry to chocolate chip to cookie dough ratios, possibly because the dough was thick and difficult to mix and I was tired and a bit lazy.
Then, I moved on to Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies which included three sticks of butter. This recipe mixed up well and was reminiscent of the traditional Toll House Cookie recipe, so I knew these would be tasty. I used semi-sweet morsels since Wanda gives you the option of using whatever "chip" you like. The dough was so thick at the end that my KitchenAid Stand Mixer actually slowed down significantly and had trouble mixing. I have never seen that before! After trying to mix in the morsels with a spoon and then a spatula, I ended up diving in and mixing it with my hands. Then I started to bake... and bake... and bake. Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe makes a ton of cookies! I ended up with so many that I couldn't take them all to work because they wouldn't fit in the container I had.
This matchup seemed very similar to the first preliminary game and I wondered if it would have similar results. On the other hand, I consider cranberries to be a very polarizing ingredient to add to cookies, so perhaps the ballot would come down to how many voters like the taste of cranberries. On Friday, the cookies were met with great excitement by all. Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies had some very vocal support, although those I mentioned that to insisted they had heard equally ardent support for the Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies. Here is a picture of both cookies (Cookie A, Chocolate Chip Cookies, are on the left and Cookie B, Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies, are on the right):
The final results were: 14 for Wanda's Chocolate Chip Cookies and 10 for Cranberry Oat Chip Cookies. (I guess that's what you get for resigning, Chad!). Congratulations to Wanda for advancing to the next round!
Monday, March 10, 2014
Preliminary Game #1: Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sunday I spent most of the day baking for the first game of the Cookie Tournament, a preliminary match between Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 123, Number 7 seed) and Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133, Number 10 seed).
I started after breakfast with Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies, which came together in a fairly typical chocolate chip cookie manner, with shortening, sugar, milk, eggs, etc. The recipe called for butter flavor Crisco, which I bought in stick format (first time ever) and a small bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips. The recipe gives different baking times for chewy and crispy cookies, so I aimed for the chewy end of the spectrum because I personally prefer that. They were a little tricky to get off the pan, which lead to me burning the second pan I did in an attempt to bake them into a sturdier format. Also, I recommend flattening the dough balls ever so slightly - this helps them to flatten out a bit more evenly.
After I finished baking the slightly over 3 dozen cookies, I ran out to the store for ingredients for Crockpot Lasagna and an additional small bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips in case I had to make another batch to even out the amounts obtained from each cookie recipe. After running back home and putting together the Crockpot Lasagna, I started in on Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies.
This recipe was completely different than any other chocolate chip cookie recipe I've made, mostly because I've never made any vegan cookie before. I was pleasantly surprised that I could find all the required ingredients at my local Acme, although I was a bit nervous that the Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips the recipe suggested I use were labeled as "may contain small amounts of milk". This suggests the cross contamination possibilities at the Ghiradelli plant may be higher than we'd like to know about, or perhaps this is just a limit of quantitation issue in their cleaning procedures. Other ingredients included whole wheat flour, flax seed, applesauce, natural peanut butter, oats, and maple syrup. I felt very healthy while making these, despite the large quantity of batter I ate. I made a triple batch of these since the recipe only makes 2 dozen.
The batter was tricky to roll into balls for baking, but it went a little easier when the dough was refrigerated before rolling. Still, I could really only get one tray's worth rolled before the dough became too warm to work with again and I was forced to eat the dough that was sticking to my fingers (don't worry, I washed my hands after each of these instances, because I couldn't even lick my fingers clean, warm soap and water was required). The dough balls were rolled in granulated sugar and then baked. These cookies were very soft and pliable when removed from the oven, which Pragati warns you of in the recipe. This caused some of them became a bit misshapen when they were removed to cooling racks. I managed to burn two trays of these cookies by setting the oven 50 degrees hotter than prescribed, so I ended up with approximately equal numbers of cookies and decided not to make a second batch of Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies. All burnt cookies were added to the rejects container and left at my house to ensure the validity of the vote (note that we are still going to eat them!).
The cookies were taken to QS Pharma today labeled as "A" and "B" and people were encouraged to eat one of each and vote for their favorite. There was a lot of interest in the cookies, and it seemed that everyone had their favorite (Cookie A, Cookie B, or Both). Cookie A was Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (left) and Cookie B was Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (right):
Despite an impassioned group of fans of Cookie B (I'm looking at you, respondent who wrote in "Hands Down!" next to your circled "B"), Cookie A pulled off the upset! The final score was 12 for Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies and 9 for Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies. We'll see you in the quarterfinals, Pragati!
I started after breakfast with Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies, which came together in a fairly typical chocolate chip cookie manner, with shortening, sugar, milk, eggs, etc. The recipe called for butter flavor Crisco, which I bought in stick format (first time ever) and a small bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips. The recipe gives different baking times for chewy and crispy cookies, so I aimed for the chewy end of the spectrum because I personally prefer that. They were a little tricky to get off the pan, which lead to me burning the second pan I did in an attempt to bake them into a sturdier format. Also, I recommend flattening the dough balls ever so slightly - this helps them to flatten out a bit more evenly.
After I finished baking the slightly over 3 dozen cookies, I ran out to the store for ingredients for Crockpot Lasagna and an additional small bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Chips in case I had to make another batch to even out the amounts obtained from each cookie recipe. After running back home and putting together the Crockpot Lasagna, I started in on Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies.
This recipe was completely different than any other chocolate chip cookie recipe I've made, mostly because I've never made any vegan cookie before. I was pleasantly surprised that I could find all the required ingredients at my local Acme, although I was a bit nervous that the Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips the recipe suggested I use were labeled as "may contain small amounts of milk". This suggests the cross contamination possibilities at the Ghiradelli plant may be higher than we'd like to know about, or perhaps this is just a limit of quantitation issue in their cleaning procedures. Other ingredients included whole wheat flour, flax seed, applesauce, natural peanut butter, oats, and maple syrup. I felt very healthy while making these, despite the large quantity of batter I ate. I made a triple batch of these since the recipe only makes 2 dozen.
The batter was tricky to roll into balls for baking, but it went a little easier when the dough was refrigerated before rolling. Still, I could really only get one tray's worth rolled before the dough became too warm to work with again and I was forced to eat the dough that was sticking to my fingers (don't worry, I washed my hands after each of these instances, because I couldn't even lick my fingers clean, warm soap and water was required). The dough balls were rolled in granulated sugar and then baked. These cookies were very soft and pliable when removed from the oven, which Pragati warns you of in the recipe. This caused some of them became a bit misshapen when they were removed to cooling racks. I managed to burn two trays of these cookies by setting the oven 50 degrees hotter than prescribed, so I ended up with approximately equal numbers of cookies and decided not to make a second batch of Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies. All burnt cookies were added to the rejects container and left at my house to ensure the validity of the vote (note that we are still going to eat them!).
The cookies were taken to QS Pharma today labeled as "A" and "B" and people were encouraged to eat one of each and vote for their favorite. There was a lot of interest in the cookies, and it seemed that everyone had their favorite (Cookie A, Cookie B, or Both). Cookie A was Pragati's Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (left) and Cookie B was Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (right):
A Case of Spontaneous Crockpot Lasagna
On Sunday, somewhat on the spur of the moment, I decided to make Crockpot Lasagna (p. 54). I had just finished mixing up Heather's Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 123) for March Cookie Madness (more on that later), and started discussing the dinner options with my husband. We contemplated going out to eat, but then realized that Daylight Savings Time had begun, and I was therefore an hour behind on preparing chocolate chip cookies for the first match. So, I decided instead to make Stephanie's Crockpot Lasagna.
Of course, this necessitated a trip to the grocery store, but we did have our regular shopping on the docket, so it didn't seem to be a big loss in time. I took Cynthia to the grocery store while Phil and Grant went off to catch a hockey game at the University of Delaware. Cynthia really enjoyed the shopping trip, particularly trying to pick out everything we didn't need, and extras of the things we did! We rushed home, chopped up peppers and onions like a madwoman, browned them, and mixed the unlikely trio of cream cheese, cottage cheese, and sour cream together. These ingredients were layered into the crockpot, along with some pasta sauce and uncooked lasagna noodles, which brings me to the question: Why doesn't anyone make square crockpots? It's not as though this oval design I'm using is particularly space-saving. Does it have to do with the heat distribution?
Setting aside these deeper questions in the quest to understand life, I broke lasagna noodles into the approximate shapes and sizes to fill each layer of this oval lasagna and went on with the layering. With a little better planning, or maybe just less springing-forward, this would have been a very easy dish to put together. I plugged it in and went about making Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133) (again, more on that later). I had time to go for a nice walk with my son and dog (I counted this as exercise because I'm finding hours of cookie-making rather exhausting) before serving up the lasagna. Here is a photo:
Cynthia, as usual, ate it like Garfield eats a lasagna (two hands and as fast as possible). Grant complained, but ate most of it. Phil and I downed ours as quickly as Garfield - only with forks. I'd say it was an unmitigated success.
I decided not to post about the baking of the chocolate chip cookies until after the tasting/voting because I don't want to prejudice anyone prior to voting. I'd like to say that friends reading this blog would vote for the easier recipe, but I suspect the vote would swing the other way. Check in later for a write-up of these two fine cookie recipes, and the results of the first match!
Of course, this necessitated a trip to the grocery store, but we did have our regular shopping on the docket, so it didn't seem to be a big loss in time. I took Cynthia to the grocery store while Phil and Grant went off to catch a hockey game at the University of Delaware. Cynthia really enjoyed the shopping trip, particularly trying to pick out everything we didn't need, and extras of the things we did! We rushed home, chopped up peppers and onions like a madwoman, browned them, and mixed the unlikely trio of cream cheese, cottage cheese, and sour cream together. These ingredients were layered into the crockpot, along with some pasta sauce and uncooked lasagna noodles, which brings me to the question: Why doesn't anyone make square crockpots? It's not as though this oval design I'm using is particularly space-saving. Does it have to do with the heat distribution?
Setting aside these deeper questions in the quest to understand life, I broke lasagna noodles into the approximate shapes and sizes to fill each layer of this oval lasagna and went on with the layering. With a little better planning, or maybe just less springing-forward, this would have been a very easy dish to put together. I plugged it in and went about making Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133) (again, more on that later). I had time to go for a nice walk with my son and dog (I counted this as exercise because I'm finding hours of cookie-making rather exhausting) before serving up the lasagna. Here is a photo:
Cynthia, as usual, ate it like Garfield eats a lasagna (two hands and as fast as possible). Grant complained, but ate most of it. Phil and I downed ours as quickly as Garfield - only with forks. I'd say it was an unmitigated success.
I decided not to post about the baking of the chocolate chip cookies until after the tasting/voting because I don't want to prejudice anyone prior to voting. I'd like to say that friends reading this blog would vote for the easier recipe, but I suspect the vote would swing the other way. Check in later for a write-up of these two fine cookie recipes, and the results of the first match!
Saturday, March 8, 2014
When Life Gives You Eggs, Make Cheesy Egg Bake
As regular readers of this blog know, my parents-in-law are currently visiting sunny Hawaii. Prior to their departure, they donated several perishable items to our household, including eighteen eggs. I, of course, could only think of one thing as soon as I saw them - time to make some of these Wil Research Cooks recipes that require 18 eggs!
Monday brought ice, then snow, then sleet to our area. Luckily I was forward-thinking enough to plan out making Carol's Cheesy Egg Bake (p. 49), which is a breakfast food that cooks for 90 minutes. Ninety minutes. Normally everyone in my family wakes up at about the same time as me, and not one of them will wait 90 minutes for breakfast!
Therefore, when my husband's work and my kids' schools announced closures and delays on Sunday night for the following morning, I saw my opportunity. I woke up at the regular hour of 5:30am, leaving everyone else sleeping. My work was suspiciously not delayed or cancelled. Perplexed, I decided shoveling the driveway would probably take an hour anyway, so I started preparing the Egg Bake.
It was very simple to make - layer frozen hash browns in the bottom of the pan, top with sausage or ham (I used ham because I could buy it pre-cubed), then pour an egg/milk mixture over top and bake. I halved the recipe (not because I didn't have enough eggs, let me stress that I definitely did). To halve the recipe, I used some tips from the internet, which indicated this is best done in an 8x8 baking dish. Aside from having to break some hash browns in half, this went exceedingly well.
I put the dish into the oven and headed outside with my son to shovel the drive. It took us over an hour, at the end of which the snow/sleet had begun again and was blowing sideways into our faces. Also, I couldn't help but notice a layer of ice on the driveway everywhere I shoveled. Undeterred, I headed inside to find that the Cheesy Egg Bake was finished. I sprinkled it liberally with cheddar cheese and sat down with my portion just in time for my husband and daughter to wake up and get pieces for themselves. It was delicious, particularly after the strenuous exercise I had just participated in! Here is a picture:
Then I proceeded to head off to work, which both my husband and my son told me was a bad idea, that I'd never make it, etc, etc. I know you're all pulling for me to make it now... but... my car ended up sideways in my driveway within seconds, so I gave up and headed back inside to work from home. Luckily, I had a Cheesy Egg Bake to warm me up and soothe my ego.
For fans of sports cars stuck in large amounts of snow (well, I enjoy it), here is a picture of my son later in the day, sliding down the driveway on a shovel behind my sideways car:
March Cookie Madness begins Monday! Have you filled out your bracket?
Monday brought ice, then snow, then sleet to our area. Luckily I was forward-thinking enough to plan out making Carol's Cheesy Egg Bake (p. 49), which is a breakfast food that cooks for 90 minutes. Ninety minutes. Normally everyone in my family wakes up at about the same time as me, and not one of them will wait 90 minutes for breakfast!
Therefore, when my husband's work and my kids' schools announced closures and delays on Sunday night for the following morning, I saw my opportunity. I woke up at the regular hour of 5:30am, leaving everyone else sleeping. My work was suspiciously not delayed or cancelled. Perplexed, I decided shoveling the driveway would probably take an hour anyway, so I started preparing the Egg Bake.
It was very simple to make - layer frozen hash browns in the bottom of the pan, top with sausage or ham (I used ham because I could buy it pre-cubed), then pour an egg/milk mixture over top and bake. I halved the recipe (not because I didn't have enough eggs, let me stress that I definitely did). To halve the recipe, I used some tips from the internet, which indicated this is best done in an 8x8 baking dish. Aside from having to break some hash browns in half, this went exceedingly well.
I put the dish into the oven and headed outside with my son to shovel the drive. It took us over an hour, at the end of which the snow/sleet had begun again and was blowing sideways into our faces. Also, I couldn't help but notice a layer of ice on the driveway everywhere I shoveled. Undeterred, I headed inside to find that the Cheesy Egg Bake was finished. I sprinkled it liberally with cheddar cheese and sat down with my portion just in time for my husband and daughter to wake up and get pieces for themselves. It was delicious, particularly after the strenuous exercise I had just participated in! Here is a picture:
Then I proceeded to head off to work, which both my husband and my son told me was a bad idea, that I'd never make it, etc, etc. I know you're all pulling for me to make it now... but... my car ended up sideways in my driveway within seconds, so I gave up and headed back inside to work from home. Luckily, I had a Cheesy Egg Bake to warm me up and soothe my ego.
For fans of sports cars stuck in large amounts of snow (well, I enjoy it), here is a picture of my son later in the day, sliding down the driveway on a shovel behind my sideways car:
March Cookie Madness begins Monday! Have you filled out your bracket?
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
March Cookie Madness Bracket!
The March Cookie Madness bracket is now ready! The chocolate chip cookie recipes in the Wil Research Cooks cookbook have been seeded according to the highly scientific method of "What Sarah Thinks Sounds Good". Obviously, Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 121) is the number 1 seed, having (apparently) previously won awards. Vegan Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 133) is the number 10 seed because I'm not so sure about a cookie with no butter, but it could very well pull some upsets because the ingredients do sound rather yummy. Without further ado, here is the tournament bracket:
To enter, print out and fill in your picks and submit the completed form to me no later than Monday, 10MAR2014. The first tournament "games" begin the week of 10MAR2014. Cookies will be baked and provided to QS Pharma employees, who will be asked to choose which cookie they prefer. Winning cookie recipe is the recipe receiving the most votes. There will be prizes (not sure what they will be yet, but I can almost guarantee they will be lame and inexpensive) for the person who contributed the winning cookie recipe and for the person who amasses the most points for their submitted bracket.
The brackets will be scored as follows:
Preliminary round picks will score 2 points
Quarterfinal round picks will score 4 points
Semifinal round picks will score 6 points
Final round picks will score 10 points
Good luck to everyone!
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Grant's Suggestion
My parents-in-law left for vacation in Hawaii last Monday. I mention this not to make everyone in the mid-Atlantic region feel sad about the impending snow predicted for Monday, but because it means I have access to their crock pot for two weeks and can really start to pare down the number of pending crock pot recipes to try from the Wil Research Cooks cookbook.
This morning I was going through possible crock pot recipes today and my son randomly suggested a potato soup. Coincidentally, there is a crock pot potato soup recipe in the Book, so we made Cheryl's Slow Cooker Cheesy Potato Soup (p. 21). My daughter and I ran out to the store to buy all necessary ingredients, then rushed home to set it up before I had to leave for lunch with some current and former QS Pharma employees. The set up was easy. All I had to do was cut up a little bit of onion (didn't skip on that this time!) and celery, and then basically dump all the ingredients in the crockpot (crowned with a stick of butter), turn it to low, push it as far back on the counter as possible to discourage the dog, and I was done. I went off to my lunch, which was long and lovely and full of great company.
How lovely to come home and not have to worry about dinner! This crock pot thing is fabulous, I just wish there were more recipes for more like 12 hours of crock pot time, then we could make dinners this way during the workweek.
Here is a picture of the soup:
Not really an impressive photo but it was cheesy and delicious, and we all ate it, except Grant (who suggested it in the first place!). Grant ate the bread I served with it. Nonetheless, this is a super simple, delicious dish, perfect for a winter's day.
This morning I was going through possible crock pot recipes today and my son randomly suggested a potato soup. Coincidentally, there is a crock pot potato soup recipe in the Book, so we made Cheryl's Slow Cooker Cheesy Potato Soup (p. 21). My daughter and I ran out to the store to buy all necessary ingredients, then rushed home to set it up before I had to leave for lunch with some current and former QS Pharma employees. The set up was easy. All I had to do was cut up a little bit of onion (didn't skip on that this time!) and celery, and then basically dump all the ingredients in the crockpot (crowned with a stick of butter), turn it to low, push it as far back on the counter as possible to discourage the dog, and I was done. I went off to my lunch, which was long and lovely and full of great company.
How lovely to come home and not have to worry about dinner! This crock pot thing is fabulous, I just wish there were more recipes for more like 12 hours of crock pot time, then we could make dinners this way during the workweek.
Here is a picture of the soup:
Cooking Suggestions from Den Bosch
As usual, I'm behind on my posting, but I have a big weekend (of cooking) planned so I thought I had better catch up. Last Sunday I made my first non-US dish, Gina's Chicken a la Castaliana (p. 49). Gina hails from the Den Bosch site, so I can now tell you that 250 grams is roughly 8.8 ounces, and 2 deciliters of chicken stock is about 0.8 cups.
The recipe (perhaps due to translation, perhaps due to culture differences, I don't know) felt a bit like a series of suggestions to me. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed interpreting what I was supposed to do, just going with what felt "right" at the time. The recipe calls for "1 or 2 Chicken". Since my family consists of 2.5 people who actually eat meat, and my kitchen isn't even big enough to hula-hoop in, I chose the 1 Chicken.
Purists will say that I cheated with this recipe since it calls for cutting the chicken into parts and I bought an already cut-into-parts chicken (this exists, I had no idea!). In my defense, the cut up chicken was for some reason several dollars cheaper. The recipe specifically calls for using the legs, drumstick, and breasts. I included the thighs because, hey, I like thighs. And, they are technically legs, right? Plus, what am I going to do later with two thighs? I saved the bony back portion of the chicken, thinking I will someday soon follow Carl Weathers' advice and get a stew going.
Then I diced the ham and decided that "bake the ham into the butter" (note: butter was not on the ingredient list) meant I should cut up "enough" butter into pats, put ham on top of the pats in a glass baking dish, and stick it in the oven at 350°C. (When all else fails, set your oven at 350°C.) While the ham was baking, I cut up the onion. By the time the onion was sliced (I only used one - I always cut down the onion, not sure why Wil Research employees universally love onion so much), the ham was not exactly brown but I was beginning to get nervous about the time, so I popped the chicken into the pan and pondered what the recipe could mean by "roast these but leave the meat white". I decided this meant I should roast the meat until I was ready for the next step. I washed the mushrooms (more cheating, they were already cut into "slides") and parsley, and chopped up garlic, then decided the chicken was roasted "enough" and added all these ingredients to the pan along with chicken stock.
By this time the pan was quite full and it occurred to me that the recipe was probably intended for an actual roasting pan. I suppose this should have occurred to me sooner since the recipe called for 1 to 2 chicken, but I persevered and arranged everything very carefully in the pan and continued. Next, for the first time ever, I peeled tomatoes and removed their seeds. Thank goodness for the internet, where I found directions for the task of peeling tomatoes (I chose her least favorite method, I guess because I'm contrary) and removing the seeds. This took forever and left me with a pile of skins and seeds that seemed rather wasteful. Thirty minutes had passed so I added in the tomatoes. Upon opening the oven I saw that the parsley had burned, so I replaced that and covered the whole thing with foil to hold in the juices better. Then I spent time cleaning the kitchen and eating tomato peels/drinking seeds while I waited for quite a bit longer than the suggested 10 minutes for the chicken to cook completely. Perhaps that "roast but leave the chicken white" step really meant to cook the things a lot longer! Even so, overall I felt very zen while cooking this dish. It was a very enjoyable experience and made our house smell heavenly. Here is a picture of it when it came out of the oven (aren't my tomatoes peeled and seeded excellently?):
I served it with baked potatoes, as the recipe suggested. The chicken and vegetables were absolutely delicious. The mushrooms were so good, I found myself being grateful that no one in my house would eat them (more for me). As for the chicken -- well, at this point, if you're not sitting down, I think you should.
Are you sitting down?
My son Grant ate the chicken.
The recipe (perhaps due to translation, perhaps due to culture differences, I don't know) felt a bit like a series of suggestions to me. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed interpreting what I was supposed to do, just going with what felt "right" at the time. The recipe calls for "1 or 2 Chicken". Since my family consists of 2.5 people who actually eat meat, and my kitchen isn't even big enough to hula-hoop in, I chose the 1 Chicken.
Purists will say that I cheated with this recipe since it calls for cutting the chicken into parts and I bought an already cut-into-parts chicken (this exists, I had no idea!). In my defense, the cut up chicken was for some reason several dollars cheaper. The recipe specifically calls for using the legs, drumstick, and breasts. I included the thighs because, hey, I like thighs. And, they are technically legs, right? Plus, what am I going to do later with two thighs? I saved the bony back portion of the chicken, thinking I will someday soon follow Carl Weathers' advice and get a stew going.
Then I diced the ham and decided that "bake the ham into the butter" (note: butter was not on the ingredient list) meant I should cut up "enough" butter into pats, put ham on top of the pats in a glass baking dish, and stick it in the oven at 350°C. (When all else fails, set your oven at 350°C.) While the ham was baking, I cut up the onion. By the time the onion was sliced (I only used one - I always cut down the onion, not sure why Wil Research employees universally love onion so much), the ham was not exactly brown but I was beginning to get nervous about the time, so I popped the chicken into the pan and pondered what the recipe could mean by "roast these but leave the meat white". I decided this meant I should roast the meat until I was ready for the next step. I washed the mushrooms (more cheating, they were already cut into "slides") and parsley, and chopped up garlic, then decided the chicken was roasted "enough" and added all these ingredients to the pan along with chicken stock.
By this time the pan was quite full and it occurred to me that the recipe was probably intended for an actual roasting pan. I suppose this should have occurred to me sooner since the recipe called for 1 to 2 chicken, but I persevered and arranged everything very carefully in the pan and continued. Next, for the first time ever, I peeled tomatoes and removed their seeds. Thank goodness for the internet, where I found directions for the task of peeling tomatoes (I chose her least favorite method, I guess because I'm contrary) and removing the seeds. This took forever and left me with a pile of skins and seeds that seemed rather wasteful. Thirty minutes had passed so I added in the tomatoes. Upon opening the oven I saw that the parsley had burned, so I replaced that and covered the whole thing with foil to hold in the juices better. Then I spent time cleaning the kitchen and eating tomato peels/drinking seeds while I waited for quite a bit longer than the suggested 10 minutes for the chicken to cook completely. Perhaps that "roast but leave the chicken white" step really meant to cook the things a lot longer! Even so, overall I felt very zen while cooking this dish. It was a very enjoyable experience and made our house smell heavenly. Here is a picture of it when it came out of the oven (aren't my tomatoes peeled and seeded excellently?):
I served it with baked potatoes, as the recipe suggested. The chicken and vegetables were absolutely delicious. The mushrooms were so good, I found myself being grateful that no one in my house would eat them (more for me). As for the chicken -- well, at this point, if you're not sitting down, I think you should.
Are you sitting down?
My son Grant ate the chicken.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Love that Linguine
After a brief hiatus from the blog during which I did actually cook something, but so totally wrong I decided it doesn't count and shan't be remarked on in this forum, today I made Stephanie's Chicken Sausage and Linguine (p. 51). This dish was a delightful departure from our regular spaghetti and marinara dinner. As a plus, as a pasta dish with sauce added at the end of the preparation, it enabled me to re-purpose two extra servings of linguine into kid's dinners with regular pasta sauce.
The dish, amongst other delicious ingredients, included some red wine. The only regret I have in making this meal today is that I had to take my son to swim class afterwards, so I could not partake of the rest of the bottle of wine while cooking and eating. However, I am now settled down with a glass while I draft this post -- a lovely side effect of making this dinner.
The sausage/sauce had an upscale, adult taste, which I welcomed after face-planting (hands-and-knees-planting?) outside the Acme after buying ingredients, having engaged in a little horseplay with my son in the hopes of running off some of his energy. My knee is still throbbing, but the wine is helping! My husband had to go out to a second store to procure light cream because for some reason the Acme had zero cream on their shelves, light or otherwise. This is often the case and I suspect that when the Acme employees see my headed towards the dairy products they hide them all, for reasons known only to their own sick, twisted hearts.
The preparation was straightforward, although I still managed to use all four burners at once (one was the sauce for the kids' dinner, so I guess it doesn't count!). I think it would have been fabulous with garlic bread, but I was busy with my four burners so I didn't think of that until it was too late. Still, plain bread was fine for sopping the remaining sauce from our plates, and I think everyone was happy with the results of the meal.
The dish, amongst other delicious ingredients, included some red wine. The only regret I have in making this meal today is that I had to take my son to swim class afterwards, so I could not partake of the rest of the bottle of wine while cooking and eating. However, I am now settled down with a glass while I draft this post -- a lovely side effect of making this dinner.
The sausage/sauce had an upscale, adult taste, which I welcomed after face-planting (hands-and-knees-planting?) outside the Acme after buying ingredients, having engaged in a little horseplay with my son in the hopes of running off some of his energy. My knee is still throbbing, but the wine is helping! My husband had to go out to a second store to procure light cream because for some reason the Acme had zero cream on their shelves, light or otherwise. This is often the case and I suspect that when the Acme employees see my headed towards the dairy products they hide them all, for reasons known only to their own sick, twisted hearts.
The preparation was straightforward, although I still managed to use all four burners at once (one was the sauce for the kids' dinner, so I guess it doesn't count!). I think it would have been fabulous with garlic bread, but I was busy with my four burners so I didn't think of that until it was too late. Still, plain bread was fine for sopping the remaining sauce from our plates, and I think everyone was happy with the results of the meal.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Super Salsa (and Cookies!)
Last Sunday was the Super Bowl, so the logical thing to do was to prepare a dip or other party item from the Cookbook. But, not being a logical person is not one of my strong suits. Plus, everything I wanted to make used a crock pot, which is not part of my kitchen arsenal.
Instead, I decided to embrace the wide availability of delicious fresh salsas and make Stephanie's Salsa Chicken and Rice (pp. 69-70). This dish was super easy to put together, and I thought it was delightfully light and tasty. The dish is made by cooking up some diced chicken, then adding chicken broth and salsa, rice, and cheese. I had one deviation to the recipe, which was using regular rice rather than instant, because while I was at the store I thought I had instant rice at home. It turned out to be regular boil-in-bag rice, which I liberated from the bags and used anyway. The recipe worked anyway with the modification of letting the pot sit for 10 minutes rather than 5 minutes, and letting the mixture boil with the rice added for a few minutes instead of just turning off the heat and allowing it to sit. My son, of course, thought the meal was "disgusting" and wanted to know what that "red" was doing in there. I made some broccoli so that he'd have something to eat:
Luckily, I also chose to make Navika's Brownie Cookies (p. 122), which received rave reviews from my son. This is a recipe from our own Nutan's daughter, and they are everything you might want in a cookie - chocolate with chocolate chips. YUM. They turned out crispier than I imagined, but that just makes them excellent with coffee, or hot chocolate, or, as I discovered as the week wore on, dipped into chocolate ice cream.
The cookie recipe made just over 36 cookies, so I must have been making them a little smaller than Navika intended. I took a little less than half of them to work, where they disappeared into many a coworker's belly, as well as my own. Everyone seemed to enjoy them! Luckily we don't have many participants in the Wil Research weight loss challenge this year - particularly in light of my decision to bake all of the chocolate chip cookies in the Cookbook as part of a March Chipness Tournament.
You see, we had agreed that two or more similar (or identically named) recipes should be prepared at the same time, brought into work, and judged in a winner-takes-all (takes what, exactly?) battle for supremacy. But, there are far too many chocolate chip cookie recipes in this cookbook to fathom making them all on the same day, so I decided to set it up tournament style in March. The winner will receive some totally-unexpected token of my appreciation at the end of the competition. More on this later in the month, when all the competitors have been seeded and you can fill out your brackets in the hopes of receiving a much-more-expected-because-you-know-this-is-going-on token of my appreciation!
Here's a picture of the cookies to whet your appetites:
Instead, I decided to embrace the wide availability of delicious fresh salsas and make Stephanie's Salsa Chicken and Rice (pp. 69-70). This dish was super easy to put together, and I thought it was delightfully light and tasty. The dish is made by cooking up some diced chicken, then adding chicken broth and salsa, rice, and cheese. I had one deviation to the recipe, which was using regular rice rather than instant, because while I was at the store I thought I had instant rice at home. It turned out to be regular boil-in-bag rice, which I liberated from the bags and used anyway. The recipe worked anyway with the modification of letting the pot sit for 10 minutes rather than 5 minutes, and letting the mixture boil with the rice added for a few minutes instead of just turning off the heat and allowing it to sit. My son, of course, thought the meal was "disgusting" and wanted to know what that "red" was doing in there. I made some broccoli so that he'd have something to eat:
Luckily, I also chose to make Navika's Brownie Cookies (p. 122), which received rave reviews from my son. This is a recipe from our own Nutan's daughter, and they are everything you might want in a cookie - chocolate with chocolate chips. YUM. They turned out crispier than I imagined, but that just makes them excellent with coffee, or hot chocolate, or, as I discovered as the week wore on, dipped into chocolate ice cream.
The cookie recipe made just over 36 cookies, so I must have been making them a little smaller than Navika intended. I took a little less than half of them to work, where they disappeared into many a coworker's belly, as well as my own. Everyone seemed to enjoy them! Luckily we don't have many participants in the Wil Research weight loss challenge this year - particularly in light of my decision to bake all of the chocolate chip cookies in the Cookbook as part of a March Chipness Tournament.
You see, we had agreed that two or more similar (or identically named) recipes should be prepared at the same time, brought into work, and judged in a winner-takes-all (takes what, exactly?) battle for supremacy. But, there are far too many chocolate chip cookie recipes in this cookbook to fathom making them all on the same day, so I decided to set it up tournament style in March. The winner will receive some totally-unexpected token of my appreciation at the end of the competition. More on this later in the month, when all the competitors have been seeded and you can fill out your brackets in the hopes of receiving a much-more-expected-because-you-know-this-is-going-on token of my appreciation!
Here's a picture of the cookies to whet your appetites:
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Happy Belated Birthday Post
I have been negligent with my posts for two weeks now, to the extent that I had to spend some time today getting my blog's password reset since I managed to forget it in that time span. My only excuse is a flurry of birthday activities for my son (now 5!). We usually have both a family party and a friends party, which leads to so much partying in January we are grateful at last to settle into February with its almost complete lack of plans!
For my son's "family" party, I decided to make Sarah's Hamburger Sausage Dip (p. 3) and Wanda's Meatballs (p. 63). Unfortunately both recipes called for slow cookers, and I had only procured the use of one from my mother-in-law, so the meatballs got top honors and were done in the slow cooker and the dip was heated on the stovetop (actually a great deal faster than intended, since I lost track of time and started this late - still melted together fine, FYI).
There was a heavy contingent at the party that loved the hamburger sausage dip. I mean LOVED. I had put a small amount out near to the chips and at one point heard my sister tell her husband, "Don't worry, there's a whole pot in the kitchen", whereupon he ran off to the kitchen to get a plateful for himself. Later in the party he told me he was going to do his best to eat all the remaining dip. My friend Marlene was also a big fan. Despite their efforts, we had leftovers of the dip, which I enjoyed slathered on pretty much anything I could find.
Wanda's Meatballs recipe starts with 2lbs of meatballs, pre-made, much to the merriment of my husband ("leave it to the Wil Research Cookbook to have a meatball recipe that starts with frozen meatballs"). This recipe is all about the sauce, which is an interesting blend of pineapples, brown sugar, vinegar, and tomato soup. The sauce is surprisingly sweet, with an almost Asian flavor, and I found it surprisingly delightful and a nice departure from regular marinara sauce. My sister almost tried it, but then someone told her what was in it (pineapple). She loves to have them around to look at (her husband loves them) but never to eat them. Everyone else (none of them have a weird relationship with pineapples) seemed to like them a lot. Even my son ate some (and more and more as leftovers during the next week), so he must have thought they were pretty good!
After the party, my friend Marlene whisked me off to a quilt shop (yay!), and ended up staying for dinner. To accompany dinner, I decided to make Howard's Winter Fruit Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing. I've had my eye on this recipe for awhile because it is very similar to one I make regularly. The differences are:
As for item 1, I would prefer blue cheese but can certainly see where many, many people would opt for swiss, since blue cheese is a love it or hate it sort of food. For item 2, Granny Smiths are not my favorite, but they did taste delicious with the dressing. For item 3, I'm pretty proud of myself for making this dressing. It wasn't terribly difficult, as I had long suspected oil-based dressings might be. And, it was yummy. And, now I know that if I don't have salad dressing, but happen to have lemons, onion, and poppy seeds laying around I am in business.
For my son's "family" party, I decided to make Sarah's Hamburger Sausage Dip (p. 3) and Wanda's Meatballs (p. 63). Unfortunately both recipes called for slow cookers, and I had only procured the use of one from my mother-in-law, so the meatballs got top honors and were done in the slow cooker and the dip was heated on the stovetop (actually a great deal faster than intended, since I lost track of time and started this late - still melted together fine, FYI).
There was a heavy contingent at the party that loved the hamburger sausage dip. I mean LOVED. I had put a small amount out near to the chips and at one point heard my sister tell her husband, "Don't worry, there's a whole pot in the kitchen", whereupon he ran off to the kitchen to get a plateful for himself. Later in the party he told me he was going to do his best to eat all the remaining dip. My friend Marlene was also a big fan. Despite their efforts, we had leftovers of the dip, which I enjoyed slathered on pretty much anything I could find.
Wanda's Meatballs recipe starts with 2lbs of meatballs, pre-made, much to the merriment of my husband ("leave it to the Wil Research Cookbook to have a meatball recipe that starts with frozen meatballs"). This recipe is all about the sauce, which is an interesting blend of pineapples, brown sugar, vinegar, and tomato soup. The sauce is surprisingly sweet, with an almost Asian flavor, and I found it surprisingly delightful and a nice departure from regular marinara sauce. My sister almost tried it, but then someone told her what was in it (pineapple). She loves to have them around to look at (her husband loves them) but never to eat them. Everyone else (none of them have a weird relationship with pineapples) seemed to like them a lot. Even my son ate some (and more and more as leftovers during the next week), so he must have thought they were pretty good!
After the party, my friend Marlene whisked me off to a quilt shop (yay!), and ended up staying for dinner. To accompany dinner, I decided to make Howard's Winter Fruit Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing. I've had my eye on this recipe for awhile because it is very similar to one I make regularly. The differences are:
- Use of swiss cheese rather than blue cheese
- Specifically uses a Granny Smith apple rather than any apple you happen to have on hand
- I have never bothered to make the dressing for the other recipe but I suspect it is different
As for item 1, I would prefer blue cheese but can certainly see where many, many people would opt for swiss, since blue cheese is a love it or hate it sort of food. For item 2, Granny Smiths are not my favorite, but they did taste delicious with the dressing. For item 3, I'm pretty proud of myself for making this dressing. It wasn't terribly difficult, as I had long suspected oil-based dressings might be. And, it was yummy. And, now I know that if I don't have salad dressing, but happen to have lemons, onion, and poppy seeds laying around I am in business.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Messy Chefs Make Meatloaves (and Potatoes)
Tonight for dinner I made Barbara's Little Cheddar Meatloaves (p. 62) with a side of Greg's Don't Tell Your Cardiologist About These Baked Potatoes (p. 31). Since these recipes both required cooking for 45-50 minutes at temperatures 100°F different than one another, I broke out my Hamilton Beach Roaster Oven, for only the second time in 6 or so years. I had bought this oven because my sister has one and it is so useful on the big baking holidays, such as Thanksgiving. Only - I go to Thanksgiving at her house every year so rarely am I faced with a situation where I need two ovens. So glad that I had it today, though!
I mixed up the meatloaves and topping first and formed the meatloaf mixture, as directed, into eight of the cutest mini meatloaves you'd ever see. Of course I mixed the meatloaves with my hands, because that is, in my opinion, the only way to make a meatloaf, although I felt the mixture was loose enough that a more fastidious chef could mix with a spoon if desired.
Then I went for the potatoes. The directions said I should liberally smear them with butter, then wrap a strip of bacon completely around each one. I decided that for a recipe with such a title, I should use real butter. For anyone planning on making these potatoes, the easiest method for smearing on the butter is to cut thin slices, then squish and smear it on with your fingers. Messy, but effective! Then I found that each slice of bacon could be basically cut in two, with one half wrapping almost all the way around, then the other slice placed perpendicularly to cover the other half of the potato. Then I wrapped most individually in foil, leaving only a pair of two small ones in bulk wrapping (yes, those doublets looked distressingly like testicles). I popped these into the roaster oven, topped the meatloaves and put them into the real oven, and spent a delightful 45 minutes cleaning up the dishes, cutting up some cantaloupe (I didn't want my son to go to bed with no dinner and I sure didn't expect him to eat meatloaf and potatoes), and playing a rousing game of hide-and-go seek with the kids. These are my kind of recipes!
After 45 minutes, the meatloaves were bubbling in a puddle of their own fat, just as meatloaves should. The potatoes were hissing a little, and not quite as tender as I'd hoped, but it was time for dinner so it was time for them to be "done" regardless. The meatloaf was good, but my husband found the topping to be too sweet for him: "I like the taste of meatloaf, and I can't taste it." I have a much bigger sweet tooth and I liked it, and I'm not just saying that because of how adorable they were. Next time I will whip up about half the called-for quantity and paint it on in a thinner coat, rather than dolloping it on with a spoon.
My husband and I agreed that the potatoes were nothing to write home about, and much less to your cardiologist about, but I thought the bacon could crisp up more so I put the remaining potatoes back into the oven for the duration of dinner (and then at least 20 minutes of more hide-and-seek time). When I finally took them out, the bacon had indeed become crispier and the potatoes were very, very good. At long last, they were something you should hide from your doctors! And, anyone who knows me knows how much I love keeping them in the dark!
It was a delightful dinner, and I thank Greg and Barbara for their recipes!
I mixed up the meatloaves and topping first and formed the meatloaf mixture, as directed, into eight of the cutest mini meatloaves you'd ever see. Of course I mixed the meatloaves with my hands, because that is, in my opinion, the only way to make a meatloaf, although I felt the mixture was loose enough that a more fastidious chef could mix with a spoon if desired.
Then I went for the potatoes. The directions said I should liberally smear them with butter, then wrap a strip of bacon completely around each one. I decided that for a recipe with such a title, I should use real butter. For anyone planning on making these potatoes, the easiest method for smearing on the butter is to cut thin slices, then squish and smear it on with your fingers. Messy, but effective! Then I found that each slice of bacon could be basically cut in two, with one half wrapping almost all the way around, then the other slice placed perpendicularly to cover the other half of the potato. Then I wrapped most individually in foil, leaving only a pair of two small ones in bulk wrapping (yes, those doublets looked distressingly like testicles). I popped these into the roaster oven, topped the meatloaves and put them into the real oven, and spent a delightful 45 minutes cleaning up the dishes, cutting up some cantaloupe (I didn't want my son to go to bed with no dinner and I sure didn't expect him to eat meatloaf and potatoes), and playing a rousing game of hide-and-go seek with the kids. These are my kind of recipes!
After 45 minutes, the meatloaves were bubbling in a puddle of their own fat, just as meatloaves should. The potatoes were hissing a little, and not quite as tender as I'd hoped, but it was time for dinner so it was time for them to be "done" regardless. The meatloaf was good, but my husband found the topping to be too sweet for him: "I like the taste of meatloaf, and I can't taste it." I have a much bigger sweet tooth and I liked it, and I'm not just saying that because of how adorable they were. Next time I will whip up about half the called-for quantity and paint it on in a thinner coat, rather than dolloping it on with a spoon.
My husband and I agreed that the potatoes were nothing to write home about, and much less to your cardiologist about, but I thought the bacon could crisp up more so I put the remaining potatoes back into the oven for the duration of dinner (and then at least 20 minutes of more hide-and-seek time). When I finally took them out, the bacon had indeed become crispier and the potatoes were very, very good. At long last, they were something you should hide from your doctors! And, anyone who knows me knows how much I love keeping them in the dark!
It was a delightful dinner, and I thank Greg and Barbara for their recipes!
Saturday, January 11, 2014
This Soup Tastes Like Despair
Cooking is unlike quilting or knitting, at least for me, in that you can't approach it with sadness or negativity and expect to feel better after the experience. Tonight for dinner I made Deb's Cauliflower Cheese Soup (p. 13) which featured a white sauce that could make me take back every nice thing I've ever said about white sauces, and resulted in a broken cheese-and-cauliflower mush.
But before I started in on making dinner, I visited My Favorite Quilt Shop in Elkton, MD, which had announced it was going out of business on New Year's Day. While it is always pleasant to purchase fabric at 50% off, I consider this shop one of my favorite places. I have never taken a class anywhere else, never having liked any class or assortment of people quite so much as I did the classes and people at My Favorite Quilt Shop. This closing also comes on the heels of the announcement in November that my favorite far-away quilt shop, Generations in Pottstown, PA is also closing. Apparently I am not spending nearly enough money!
On New Year's Day, feeling rather pleased with ending 2013, which hadn't been treating me as kindly as I would have liked, I checked my email and had first the happiness of getting an email from a quilt shop, then the disappointment of reading this news. The first day of their closing sale was last Saturday, but I couldn't bring myself to go. Instead, I puttered about at home working on some already in-progress quilts, which of course made me feel better, because quilting is a much more healing type of hobby than cooking is (apparently).
Today I still didn't want to go but shored myself up with thoughts of buying some fabric at incredibly low prices to take to QS Pharma's Craft Club's MLK day pillowcase-making event next Friday. Upon arrival I discovered that there was a significant reduction of fabric, but I still managed to snag a few good fabrics for pillowcases, and a bit of Halloween fabric just for me. I talked with the owner for a bit, but left with a feeling of sadness that this would be the last time I ever shopped there.
And then I came home to the soup. First I broke up most of a head of cauliflower (until it became so much cauliflower I became leery of adding any more). I added onion and the leftover chicken broth from Cheeseburger Soup (exactly the right amount of both onion and broth!). Then I set into the white sauce, which proceeded to take forever to thicken even a little bit. And when I say forever, I mean a half hour. Eventually I decided a slight thickening would have to do and added the shredded cheese. Now, to be fair, I used reduced fat cheddar, which must have a higher melting point than regular cheddar, because it struggled to melt into the sauce. I added the other spices, then poured it into the cauliflower/onion mixture and lowered the temperature.
What I ended up with was a bowl of something that had very good spice and flavor... if you could get over the sight and texture of a broken cheese sauce. My sadness had somehow ended up cooked into the soup! I can't help being reminded of an episode of Better Off Ted in which the lab grows artificial meat:
Still, the spices included were excellent and I think they may be worth trying in a macaroni and cheese. If I ever make this one again, I will use my tried and true white sauce recipe and full fat cheese, as the good lord intended. And, I will prepare it only on the happiest of days.
But before I started in on making dinner, I visited My Favorite Quilt Shop in Elkton, MD, which had announced it was going out of business on New Year's Day. While it is always pleasant to purchase fabric at 50% off, I consider this shop one of my favorite places. I have never taken a class anywhere else, never having liked any class or assortment of people quite so much as I did the classes and people at My Favorite Quilt Shop. This closing also comes on the heels of the announcement in November that my favorite far-away quilt shop, Generations in Pottstown, PA is also closing. Apparently I am not spending nearly enough money!
On New Year's Day, feeling rather pleased with ending 2013, which hadn't been treating me as kindly as I would have liked, I checked my email and had first the happiness of getting an email from a quilt shop, then the disappointment of reading this news. The first day of their closing sale was last Saturday, but I couldn't bring myself to go. Instead, I puttered about at home working on some already in-progress quilts, which of course made me feel better, because quilting is a much more healing type of hobby than cooking is (apparently).
Today I still didn't want to go but shored myself up with thoughts of buying some fabric at incredibly low prices to take to QS Pharma's Craft Club's MLK day pillowcase-making event next Friday. Upon arrival I discovered that there was a significant reduction of fabric, but I still managed to snag a few good fabrics for pillowcases, and a bit of Halloween fabric just for me. I talked with the owner for a bit, but left with a feeling of sadness that this would be the last time I ever shopped there.
And then I came home to the soup. First I broke up most of a head of cauliflower (until it became so much cauliflower I became leery of adding any more). I added onion and the leftover chicken broth from Cheeseburger Soup (exactly the right amount of both onion and broth!). Then I set into the white sauce, which proceeded to take forever to thicken even a little bit. And when I say forever, I mean a half hour. Eventually I decided a slight thickening would have to do and added the shredded cheese. Now, to be fair, I used reduced fat cheddar, which must have a higher melting point than regular cheddar, because it struggled to melt into the sauce. I added the other spices, then poured it into the cauliflower/onion mixture and lowered the temperature.
What I ended up with was a bowl of something that had very good spice and flavor... if you could get over the sight and texture of a broken cheese sauce. My sadness had somehow ended up cooked into the soup! I can't help being reminded of an episode of Better Off Ted in which the lab grows artificial meat:
Still, the spices included were excellent and I think they may be worth trying in a macaroni and cheese. If I ever make this one again, I will use my tried and true white sauce recipe and full fat cheese, as the good lord intended. And, I will prepare it only on the happiest of days.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
The Belated Cheeseburger Soup Post
I have been remiss in writing about my other cooking endeavor this past Sunday, Angie's Cheeseburger Soup (p. 14). Since there was so much to discuss regarding the Breakfast Casserole (p. 46), I didn't have the wherewithal to continue that night.
When I decided to make Cheeseburger Soup, I was a little put off by the name of the dish. It brought to mind sort of a greasy soup (since we all know that the best burgers are intensely greasy - apologies to Grace since she hates soggy breads!). Also, the recipe requires you to make a cheese sauce using "processed cheese, cubed". While I'm not entirely certain this is what was meant, I chose to use Velveeta cheese. If that doesn't fit the definition of "processed", I'm not sure what does.
Yet again, another first for me - I have never before purchased Velveeta cheese. I found this product near actual cheese in the grocery store, but oddly not refrigerated. Incidentally, my brand-new ceramic knives proved useless against the Velveeta. Someday soon I hope to accept that they are not effective with somewhat supple cheese products (devotees will recall they were also ineffectual for the mozzarella cheese slicing for Chicken Parmesan, p. 50), but I managed to cube it in preparation for the sauce.
I browned ground beef and onions in a skillet while preparing the broth/water/celery/carrot/potato mixture in a stockpot. Once everything was cooking away, I prepared the white sauce. The recipe instructed to make a roux using significantly more butter and flour that I normally do, but I support the notion that increasing the amount of butter in a dish will only increase its appeal, so I forged ahead. I should point out at this juncture that one of my absolute favorite cooking activities is making white sauce. It's such a simple thing to make, but so useful, and so delicious when turned into a cheese sauce. I love stirring constantly, waiting for that wonderful moment, right after you've thought "I must have done something wrong because this is never going to thicken", when the sauce magically thickens! Then, stirring in the cheese, then a little more cheese, then, once there is clearly enough cheese in there, an extra handful for good measure. I enjoyed this sauce as well, although the satisfaction of adding the Velveeta was not as complete because it took longer to melt, and, of course, I was following a recipe and couldn't just add it willy-nilly.
The sauce was a light yellow, due to the natural color of Velveeta, not the rich orange of the sharp cheddar cheese sauce that I usually prepare. There wasn't anything I could do about that, so I went ahead and drained the grease from my ground meat and onions, and added the meat/onion mixture to the stockpot, then added the cheese sauce to the stockpot, making sure the temperature was low enough that it wouldn't boil (per recipe warning). To the dish's credit, it appeared more orange/cheesy than the cheese sauce itself had, which made the whole thing look similar to a more liquid cheeseburger Hamburger Helper, with potatoes in lieu of pasta.
It was delicious, and was excellent paired with the remaining slices of Jen's Whole Wheat Bread (p. 85). My husband didn't like the celery, which he said wasn't in keeping with the cheeseburger idea, but I enjoyed the little extra crunch it provided since the rest of the soup was much softer.
On Monday, we discovered there is a possibility of a Velveeta shortage this month since it is a popular ingredient in many Super Bowl dishes, so I'm glad I made this recipe early in the month, and that I have half a block leftover for another dish! Thanks, Angie!
When I decided to make Cheeseburger Soup, I was a little put off by the name of the dish. It brought to mind sort of a greasy soup (since we all know that the best burgers are intensely greasy - apologies to Grace since she hates soggy breads!). Also, the recipe requires you to make a cheese sauce using "processed cheese, cubed". While I'm not entirely certain this is what was meant, I chose to use Velveeta cheese. If that doesn't fit the definition of "processed", I'm not sure what does.
Yet again, another first for me - I have never before purchased Velveeta cheese. I found this product near actual cheese in the grocery store, but oddly not refrigerated. Incidentally, my brand-new ceramic knives proved useless against the Velveeta. Someday soon I hope to accept that they are not effective with somewhat supple cheese products (devotees will recall they were also ineffectual for the mozzarella cheese slicing for Chicken Parmesan, p. 50), but I managed to cube it in preparation for the sauce.
I browned ground beef and onions in a skillet while preparing the broth/water/celery/carrot/potato mixture in a stockpot. Once everything was cooking away, I prepared the white sauce. The recipe instructed to make a roux using significantly more butter and flour that I normally do, but I support the notion that increasing the amount of butter in a dish will only increase its appeal, so I forged ahead. I should point out at this juncture that one of my absolute favorite cooking activities is making white sauce. It's such a simple thing to make, but so useful, and so delicious when turned into a cheese sauce. I love stirring constantly, waiting for that wonderful moment, right after you've thought "I must have done something wrong because this is never going to thicken", when the sauce magically thickens! Then, stirring in the cheese, then a little more cheese, then, once there is clearly enough cheese in there, an extra handful for good measure. I enjoyed this sauce as well, although the satisfaction of adding the Velveeta was not as complete because it took longer to melt, and, of course, I was following a recipe and couldn't just add it willy-nilly.
The sauce was a light yellow, due to the natural color of Velveeta, not the rich orange of the sharp cheddar cheese sauce that I usually prepare. There wasn't anything I could do about that, so I went ahead and drained the grease from my ground meat and onions, and added the meat/onion mixture to the stockpot, then added the cheese sauce to the stockpot, making sure the temperature was low enough that it wouldn't boil (per recipe warning). To the dish's credit, it appeared more orange/cheesy than the cheese sauce itself had, which made the whole thing look similar to a more liquid cheeseburger Hamburger Helper, with potatoes in lieu of pasta.
It was delicious, and was excellent paired with the remaining slices of Jen's Whole Wheat Bread (p. 85). My husband didn't like the celery, which he said wasn't in keeping with the cheeseburger idea, but I enjoyed the little extra crunch it provided since the rest of the soup was much softer.
On Monday, we discovered there is a possibility of a Velveeta shortage this month since it is a popular ingredient in many Super Bowl dishes, so I'm glad I made this recipe early in the month, and that I have half a block leftover for another dish! Thanks, Angie!
Sunday, January 5, 2014
6 AM is Too Early for This
Today started unexpectedly early for me, when my daughter decided to wake up slightly before 6 am, which is unheard of for her. Perhaps the early hour is why Kory's Breakfast Casserole (p. 46) was such an adventure. In between getting a breakfast ready for my daughter and the TV sorted out for my son, I didn't get much chance to consume any coffee and I believe the casserole suffered. But then, this all really started to go wrong on Saturday while shopping for ingredients...
I am not a big breakfast person. That's not to say I don't like breakfast, I love it. What I don't do is cook it. Oh, I'll scramble some eggs, sometimes even getting fancy and making an "omelet" (scrambled eggs with something fun in it like feta cheese, spinach, tomatoes, etc, isn't that how omelets are made??). I am queen of the waffle iron and pancake griddle. I can pour a mean bowl of cereal and toast just about anything. That being said, I don't do breakfast meats. And, it never once occurred to me that hash browns could be a thing you make at home.
So, when I was shopping on Saturday I spent some time staring at the various sausage products and hash brown options. I also spent more than a little time looking for crescent rolls, then found them by the sausage I'd been staring at earlier. Sausage I figured out right away: tubes of 1 lb abounded, just like the recipe implied, and I couldn't think of a better way to describe it than "bulk". Then came the hash browns. The recipe calls for 1 (2 lb) package, but the small hash brown packages next to the sausages were all less than a pound. Now, I've done a fair amount of recipe-following in my life, and I'm a firm believer that, when a recipe says "1 pkg" and states an amount that should be in that package, usually there is such a package at the grocery store, I'm just not seeing it. Aha - I thought - it must be frozen hash browns! I went to the freezer section and discover that there was a 2 lb package of hash browns there, but to my horror it wasn't shredded, it was in chunks. Alongside it was a 1 lb 14 oz package of shredded hash browns. The kids and husband clearly wanted to go home and eat lunch, so I settled on that, thinking I'd just have 2 ounces less casserole to consume.
On this fateful morning, I examined the recipe's directions. the bulk sausage specifically said "cooked", so I dutifully cooked it. The recipe said nothing as to the condition the hash browns should be in when added to the casserole. Not "frozen hash browns", not "cooked hash browns" not "refrigerated hash browns", not "controlled room temperature hash browns", nothing. I examined a few other recipes...Breakfast Pizza (also p. 46) is similar but also does not specify a temperature. Cheesy Egg Bake (p. 49) is similar but uses frozen hash browns. It was early, and I was beginning to run short on time before my daughter demanded Second Breakfast, so I went with adding them frozen. At first I wasn't sure they would all fit in the pan with the other ingredients, which was my first hint that something was wrong. But, once you've put all that cooked sausage on top, the last thing you want to do is somehow extract the frozen hash browns and cook them, then put everything back, so I went boldly forward, finished the layering, and put it in the oven for 30 minutes (the low end of the required baking time). After 30 minutes, the eggs were still very loose and runny, so I put it in for an additional 5 (the high end of the required baking time).
Hmmm. Eggs still runny.
I put it in for 5 more minutes.
Then 5 more minutes.
After a few iterations of this, the sausage appeared a little worse for wear, so I decided that the eggs were probably heated to an acceptable temperature to ward off food-borne illness. People eat raw eggs all the time, right? Never mind the only time I ever had runny eggs for breakfast I wound up with food poisoning.
I took out a piece and sat down with it. The crescent roll crust was a bit browner than I am guessing it should be, but overall it wasn't badly burnt. I had it with ketchup because it contained a lot of things I would normally dip in a ketchup. It was reasonably tasty... but I couldn't help thinking, was it worth all this hassle? My son was appalled by it (it was covered with sausage and egg, not his cup of tea). My daughter had, while waiting, already had her two breakfasts, so she didn't want any either. My husband woke up and had some a bit later and said his crust was too soggy. I didn't have the heart to tell him that was probably just the runny eggs soaking in!
Overall, this isn't something I'd make again, but I'd be willing to bet my attitude is simply soured based on the issues I had in the actual making of the dish. Plus, as I alluded to earlier in this post, isn't this actually the sort of dish I like to eat only when others make it for me? Maybe someday someone will (if you're ever in the Elkton/Boothwyn corridor with a hot casserole dish of this, Kory, I'll give it another shot!).
Here is a picture of the casserole:
Update 08JAN2014: This casserole is much better as a leftover. Save yourself the headache of making it in the morning and make it the day before and reheat!
I am not a big breakfast person. That's not to say I don't like breakfast, I love it. What I don't do is cook it. Oh, I'll scramble some eggs, sometimes even getting fancy and making an "omelet" (scrambled eggs with something fun in it like feta cheese, spinach, tomatoes, etc, isn't that how omelets are made??). I am queen of the waffle iron and pancake griddle. I can pour a mean bowl of cereal and toast just about anything. That being said, I don't do breakfast meats. And, it never once occurred to me that hash browns could be a thing you make at home.
So, when I was shopping on Saturday I spent some time staring at the various sausage products and hash brown options. I also spent more than a little time looking for crescent rolls, then found them by the sausage I'd been staring at earlier. Sausage I figured out right away: tubes of 1 lb abounded, just like the recipe implied, and I couldn't think of a better way to describe it than "bulk". Then came the hash browns. The recipe calls for 1 (2 lb) package, but the small hash brown packages next to the sausages were all less than a pound. Now, I've done a fair amount of recipe-following in my life, and I'm a firm believer that, when a recipe says "1 pkg" and states an amount that should be in that package, usually there is such a package at the grocery store, I'm just not seeing it. Aha - I thought - it must be frozen hash browns! I went to the freezer section and discover that there was a 2 lb package of hash browns there, but to my horror it wasn't shredded, it was in chunks. Alongside it was a 1 lb 14 oz package of shredded hash browns. The kids and husband clearly wanted to go home and eat lunch, so I settled on that, thinking I'd just have 2 ounces less casserole to consume.
On this fateful morning, I examined the recipe's directions. the bulk sausage specifically said "cooked", so I dutifully cooked it. The recipe said nothing as to the condition the hash browns should be in when added to the casserole. Not "frozen hash browns", not "cooked hash browns" not "refrigerated hash browns", not "controlled room temperature hash browns", nothing. I examined a few other recipes...Breakfast Pizza (also p. 46) is similar but also does not specify a temperature. Cheesy Egg Bake (p. 49) is similar but uses frozen hash browns. It was early, and I was beginning to run short on time before my daughter demanded Second Breakfast, so I went with adding them frozen. At first I wasn't sure they would all fit in the pan with the other ingredients, which was my first hint that something was wrong. But, once you've put all that cooked sausage on top, the last thing you want to do is somehow extract the frozen hash browns and cook them, then put everything back, so I went boldly forward, finished the layering, and put it in the oven for 30 minutes (the low end of the required baking time). After 30 minutes, the eggs were still very loose and runny, so I put it in for an additional 5 (the high end of the required baking time).
Hmmm. Eggs still runny.
I put it in for 5 more minutes.
Then 5 more minutes.
After a few iterations of this, the sausage appeared a little worse for wear, so I decided that the eggs were probably heated to an acceptable temperature to ward off food-borne illness. People eat raw eggs all the time, right? Never mind the only time I ever had runny eggs for breakfast I wound up with food poisoning.
I took out a piece and sat down with it. The crescent roll crust was a bit browner than I am guessing it should be, but overall it wasn't badly burnt. I had it with ketchup because it contained a lot of things I would normally dip in a ketchup. It was reasonably tasty... but I couldn't help thinking, was it worth all this hassle? My son was appalled by it (it was covered with sausage and egg, not his cup of tea). My daughter had, while waiting, already had her two breakfasts, so she didn't want any either. My husband woke up and had some a bit later and said his crust was too soggy. I didn't have the heart to tell him that was probably just the runny eggs soaking in!
Overall, this isn't something I'd make again, but I'd be willing to bet my attitude is simply soured based on the issues I had in the actual making of the dish. Plus, as I alluded to earlier in this post, isn't this actually the sort of dish I like to eat only when others make it for me? Maybe someday someone will (if you're ever in the Elkton/Boothwyn corridor with a hot casserole dish of this, Kory, I'll give it another shot!).
Here is a picture of the casserole:
Update 08JAN2014: This casserole is much better as a leftover. Save yourself the headache of making it in the morning and make it the day before and reheat!
Saturday, January 4, 2014
First Blood
If you had asked me on January 1st how long it would be before I injured myself doing this project, I would like to think I would have projected at least a month. Now, those close to me know that I have a tendency to accidentally cut myself when in the kitchen essentially every other time I handle a sharp knife. So, it should have been no surprise that a mere fifteen minutes after admiring how wonderfully my brand-new ceramic knives sliced through raw chicken breasts that I would find myself staring at my finger wondering "where did that red stuff come from?" The good news it was only the tiniest nick and the better news is it didn't hurt at all. It is, however, a shame that I managed to do it while slicing mozzarella cheese, not while doing something impressive, say, like quartering a squirrel (p. 55).
A little blood loss was well worth it though, because Lucy's Chicken Parmesan (p. 50) was delicious beyond words. I chose to make this as my second recipe from the book because, quite simply, we love chicken parmesan. Well, at least me, my husband, and my daughter do. My son (who abhors meat except hamburgers and chicken nuggets) recoiled in horror at the sight. He ate most of the spaghetti that surrounded the chicken, but did manage to choke down one piece of chicken, which we required of him before he got his treat of blueberries.
The recipe calls for shredded mozzarella or slices of mozzarella, and I went with slices, recalling how much I enjoyed having slabs of melted cheese atop a lasagna we made over the holidays. The slices did not disappoint here, either, where they created heavenly thick layers of cheese atop our chicken. The recipe also called for garlic salt, which I truly believed I owned until I got started making the dish. Apparently not, but luckily the internet exists, and it taught me that garlic salt is basically a 3:1 mix of salt to garlic (use the USP definition of the ":"), and can be mixed from salt and garlic powder. According to the internet, this is a way frugal people avoid paying for both garlic powder and garlic salt, so that they can really stick it to that evil Goliath, the McCormick company.
In addition, the recipe called for chilling the breaded chicken for 20 minutes before pan-frying prior to baking. I suspected (and later confirmed via more internet searching) that the chilling helps the breading to not flake off while frying. It worked like a charm! In the past I have only ever made chicken parmesan by breading the chicken and putting it directly into the oven to bake, in a misguided attempt at making the dish healthier. Now, having had this delicious recipe in all its pan-fried goodness, I cannot fathom returning to those dark days of baked chicken parm.
Thank you, Lucy, for sharing this delicious recipe. It is definitely one I will make again and again and again.
Here is the chicken parm after it was removed from the oven:
And served atop spaghetti:
A little blood loss was well worth it though, because Lucy's Chicken Parmesan (p. 50) was delicious beyond words. I chose to make this as my second recipe from the book because, quite simply, we love chicken parmesan. Well, at least me, my husband, and my daughter do. My son (who abhors meat except hamburgers and chicken nuggets) recoiled in horror at the sight. He ate most of the spaghetti that surrounded the chicken, but did manage to choke down one piece of chicken, which we required of him before he got his treat of blueberries.
The recipe calls for shredded mozzarella or slices of mozzarella, and I went with slices, recalling how much I enjoyed having slabs of melted cheese atop a lasagna we made over the holidays. The slices did not disappoint here, either, where they created heavenly thick layers of cheese atop our chicken. The recipe also called for garlic salt, which I truly believed I owned until I got started making the dish. Apparently not, but luckily the internet exists, and it taught me that garlic salt is basically a 3:1 mix of salt to garlic (use the USP definition of the ":"), and can be mixed from salt and garlic powder. According to the internet, this is a way frugal people avoid paying for both garlic powder and garlic salt, so that they can really stick it to that evil Goliath, the McCormick company.
In addition, the recipe called for chilling the breaded chicken for 20 minutes before pan-frying prior to baking. I suspected (and later confirmed via more internet searching) that the chilling helps the breading to not flake off while frying. It worked like a charm! In the past I have only ever made chicken parmesan by breading the chicken and putting it directly into the oven to bake, in a misguided attempt at making the dish healthier. Now, having had this delicious recipe in all its pan-fried goodness, I cannot fathom returning to those dark days of baked chicken parm.
Thank you, Lucy, for sharing this delicious recipe. It is definitely one I will make again and again and again.
Here is the chicken parm after it was removed from the oven:
And served atop spaghetti:
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