2008 Christmas Cookies: Molasses Crinkles

Abe sez: they're extra yummy and really cute
Molasses Crinkles (makes 5 dozen)
from Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu
Wet Ingredients:
2 sticks butter
1/2 c blackstrap molasses
2 c sugar
2 eggs

Dry Ingredients:
1/2 t salt
2 t each: baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, ground ginger
1/2 t ground cloves (not in the original recipe)
4 c flour (I'm happy with the white whole wheat flour I've been using lately; I can't recall the brand name)
1/4 c sugar

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.
2. Melt the butter in a glass bowl, add wet ingredients and stir until combined
3. In a separate bowl sift together dry ingredients (except the additional sugar), then add to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.
4. Form 1-1/2 inch balls of dough, roll them in the sugar until coated, and place on baking sheet.
5. Bake 12-15 minutes until firm to the touch. Cool and enjoy!

2008 Christmas Cookies: Chocolate Snowflakes

I first collected this recipe from a cookie exchange at work, probably 16 years ago, but I also found it here (which saved me some typing). These taste like powdered bites of brownie. I like them because butter is not required - nothing against butter, but I don't always have some on hand when the baking mood strikes.

Chocolate Crinkles (make 4-5 dozen)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 (1 ounce) unsweetened chocolate squares, melted
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sifted powdered sugar

Combine sugar, oil, and melted chocolate in a large mixing bowl; beat at medium speed of an electric mixer until blended.

Add eggs one at a time and then and vanilla, mixing well after each addition.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Add about one-fourth of dry mixture at a time to chocolate mixture, mixing after each addition.

Cover and let chill at least 3 hours. (I baked a small batch one day after chilling and then returned then dough to the front porch and then forgot it was there for 3 days. They baked up fine even after this neglect.)

Shape dough into 1-inch balls, and roll in powdered sugar. Place cookies 2 inches apart on lightly greased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Oven Stew

When I started this blog with Lorraine, I didn't intend for it to become a recipe blog but, for me, that's what it has turned into. I think it's because 1) Writing about food is easy for me 2) It gives a way to keep track of recipes I really like 3) I love to cook and eat simple, tasty food and 4) I imagine that someone out there reading one of my recipe posts might be saying, "That sounds good, I think I'll try that." In other words, recipe posts provide that all important connection with an audience and please don't spoil it by telling me that you don't ever ever think that when you read my recipes.

What's better than homemade beef stew? Beef stew that is finished off by baking in the oven so your husband can put it in when he gets home and all you have to do when you get home is step in and enjoy the aroma. A treat for all the senses and not too hard on the pocketbook.
Oven Stew
1 T olive oil
1 plus lbs beef stew meat
1 - 2 onions, chopped
1 lb mushrooms, washed, and chopped
2 cups, sliced and chopped carrots - medium chunks
6 small red potatoes, cut into eighths or smaller - small to medium chunks
<1 box Progresso beef broth
<1 cup red wine - didn't measure
1 bay leaf
1 t or more rosemary

Brown the meat in the oil in a very large pan. I used my 'wok pan' which has the dreaded nonstick coating but is such a handy size and shape. The meat I had this time was a little fatty, so maybe the oil wouldn't have been necessary or maybe it would be better to buy leaner beef and cut my own cubes. In any case, I like smaller cubes than the butcher does, so I cut the meat before browning it. Special kitchen shears are not necessary; I just use regular Fiskars that I wash with the dishes (or I should say, that Dan washes).

Season the meat with salt and pepper. Add the onions to brown meat and cook them until they are soft and sweet. Add the mushrooms and cook down. Add all the rest of the ingredients and mix. Bring to a boil, remove from heat and put in a large casserole with a lid. Cover and refrigerate.

Instruct your husband to preheat the oven to 350 and bake the stew in the covered casserole for 2 1/2 hours, give or take. Don't expect thick gravy like you'd get if you just opened a can of Dinty Moore. You could try thickening it - maybe by flouring the meat before browning. But I wouldn't bother.

Roasted Vegetable Breakfast Strata

I've been practicing breakfast casseroles this week in preparation for the 'Welcome Breakfast' at Dokime on Tuesday. I'm planning to record the event as a 'Virtuous Meal', but in the meantime, here's a recipe I made up myself. I was very happy with the results and so was Abe - he ate 3 helpings. Note that the picture was taken with our new camera.

Roasted Vegetable Breakfast Strata
1 lb roasted vegetables (see below)
1 lb hot Italian turkey sausage
6 hefty slices of sourdough
1/4 c butter, softened
2 T olive oil (in addition to the oil used to roast the vegetables)
8 eggs
1 cup feta
2 cups milk

1 lb vegetables amounted to:
7 stubby ears of corn, husked and rinsed
1/4 medium zuke, cut into 3/4 inch chunks
1/2 eggplant, cut into 3/4 inch chunks
10 gloves garlic, peeled
1 mediuiml red onion, halved and thickly sliced
12 small plum tomatoes, sliced in half

Preheat the oven to 425 (conventional). Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper (spray the sheet with Pam first so the paper adheres). Put all the vegetables except the tomatoes on the sheet. Pour on 2 T olive oil. Sprinkle with sale and pepper. Move around with a wooden spoon to distribute the oil. Put in the oven for 45 minutes, stirring a couple times.

Move the vegetables aside to clear a place on the parchment for the tomatoes. Place them face down and return sheet to the oven for 15 more minutes.

Meanwhile, brown the sausage.

Take the veggies from the oven to cool. Reset the oven to 450/425 convect. Seperate the garlic from the rest of the vegetables and put a couple cloves in with the butter. Add the olive oil and mix into a paste. Spread on the bread slices and cut the bread into cubes.

Remove the corn kernels from the cobs and skin and chop the tomatoes. Add all the vegetables to the sausage and mix it all together.

Spray a 9x13 glass baking dish with Pam and lay down half the bread cubes. Top this with 2/3 of the sausage mixture. Top this with 1/2 cup feta. Repeat with the remaining bread cubes, sausage and feta. Press down on the the layers with your hand and even out the top.

Mix the egg and milk with a hand mixer in a large mixing bowl. Pour carefully over the layers. Put on the middle rack on the oven. Bake 45 minutes.

As the picture shows, the top of the strata turned pretty black. This was the eggplant skin. Didn't look good but tasted fine. I might consider covering the strata loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes or so, the next time I make this.

Cooking on autopilot: Chicken with Tomato Rosemary Shallot Pan Sauce

Supper tonight was very much inspired by Pam Anderson's first book, "How to Cook Without a Book". I recently rediscovered her while searching for good granola recipes. What I like about Pam are her very approachable cooking style & writing style; when I read her books, I find myself saying: I can do that! She doesn't call for outlandish ingredients or hair tearing techniques. Another thing to love about Pam is she's not shy about using fat - butter and olive oil.

I bought the chicken breasts I used in this recipe at our local grocery store, owned by the Nilssen family which also runs a meat market in Glenwood City. This means the meat department at the Super Valu is a cut above what you'd usually find at a store of its size and that sometimes they offer chicken that they package themselves rather than getting it from a big processor like Gold'n Plump.

That's how I ended up with two giant chicken breasts for supper tonight. I picked up the smallest package of the no name chicken and it still weighed in a two pounds. I had to double check the label to make sure it was really chicken and not turkey.

The rather more uniform and smaller mass marketed breasts might work even better in this recipe since you'd save then time I spent minutes trimming the tenderloins, etc, but they might not be as succulent.

I'd like to make more meals like this: simple and quick but tasty, but next time, I'll take it a little easier on the fat. Sure smelled and tasted good, though. The sauce ended up being too thin and juicy for a true pan sauce, so call it what you will; I call it delicious.

Chicken with Tomato Rosemary Shallot Pan Sauce:
2 well trimmed breasts
1 shallot
1 beef steak tomato
1/4 cup vermouth
1/2 t finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 T butter
1 T olive oil
scant 1/4 cup of flour

Rice:
1 cup Uncle Ben's Natural Brown Rice
1 T butter
2 cups water

Wax Beans:
1 lb wax beans
1/2 t salt
1 T butter
1/3 cup water

Start the rice: bring water, rice and salt to a boil, set burner to low, cover and cook for 25 minutes.
Trim the beans. Chop the tomato, slice the shallots, flatten the chicken with a potato masher. Salt and pepper the chicken then dredge in flour (put flour in a pie plate).
When the rice is about 12 minutes from being done, start heating the oil and butter for the chicken in non stick skillet on medium heat.
When the rice is about 8 minutes from being done, put the beans, butter, salt and water in a Dutch oven on high. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Uncover and cook until the water cooks off, stirring a couple times.
At the same time as you start the beans, turn the chicken pan up to medium high and place the breasts in the pan. Cook for 4 minutes on one side, flip and cook for another 4 minutes, then move to the serving plates. Turn the heat off the beans and the rice and cover.
Put the shallots and rosemary and vermouth in the pan, deglazing all the yummy brown bits. Reduce by half then add the tomatoes and cook for a minute or two.
Spoon the rice and beans onto the plates. Spoon the sauce onto the chicken and rice. Sit down, say grace and enjoy!

A quiet simple granola

I’ve recently wearied of my ‘Fiber One and blueberries’ morning routine: blueberries are hard to find and expensive and are not always flavorful; the cereal alone tastes like cardboard and is also pretty pricey. I needed a change.

So I began hunting for an appealing granola recipe. Appealing meaning: readily available ingredients and no need to purchase new equipment (like a food processor which I haven’t had for years or a blender which I haven’t had since I recklessly burned out the motor of my last one trying to make homemade peanut butter). The recipes here came pretty close and reintroduced me to Pam Anderson, a cook I admire, but they weren’t quite the ticket.

I found what I was looking for on Thursday, when Sallie at “A Quiet Simple Life” posted this great recipe. I’ve incorporated a few of Pam’s suggestions into my version below, but it’s pretty faithful to the original so I’ve dubbed it “A Quiet Simple Granola”, in honor of Sallie.

If you’re not familiar with Sallie’s work, sample this recent post (“Fragmented Lives”) and consider adding her blog to your list of frequently visited sites. I’ve been reading her for years, having first stumbled across her original blog called ‘Two Talent Living’, before I knew what a blog was. But I knew what good, thoughtful and thought provoking writing was and that’s what Sallie offers on a regular basis. That, and some dynamite recipes from time to time.
A Quiet Simple Granola
5 cups old-fashioned oats
1 & ½ cups sliced almonds (6 oz package)
½ cup packed light brown sugar
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ cup cooking oil
¼ cup honey
1 tsp vanilla
1 & ½ cups dried fruit (Craisins or raisins or a mix)
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Mix the oats, almonds, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon in a bowl. Warm the oil and honey in the microwave for one minute. Whisk or stir in vanilla. Carefully pour liquid over oat mixture. Stir gently with a wooden spoon; finish mixing by hand.
Spread granola in two large baking pans (I use two foil lasagna pans). Bake 15 minutes, stir and repeat two more times for a total or 45 minutes. Stir in dried fruit and bake 10 minutes more. Let cool completely, then seal granola in an airtight container.
Makes 9 cups (24 servings).

Sour Milk Chocolate Cake

Besides not making the cream cheese icing and forgetting to put in the last 1/8 cup of the warm water/baking soda mixture and using old milk without adding vinegar, I made this pretty much as directed here. Mixed it with my handy mixer. The cake rose beautifully and baked in about 48 minutes at 350, conventional. The crumb was very moist, but the cake sliced nicely.
Rather than icing it, we topped in a simple sauce made from local raspberries and sugar, natural vanilla ice cream and, to red line the decadence meter, chocolate sauce. It was so good. I sent some home with Marlys and took a couple pieces to Marge (topped with the raspberry sauce only).

Hot meal for a hot day: Chinese spare ribs and Kung Pao noodles

A quick and tasty meal that doesn't heat up the kitchen. Inspired by a recipe in Everyday Food, June 2008.

Shopping list
1 watermelon
1.5 lbs boneless country style pork ribs
1 pkg Simply Asia Kung Pao noodle bowl
1 9 oz pkg Green Giant Simply Steam sugar snap peas (frozen)
5 spice powder
cayenne
hoisin sauce

Put the watermelon in the freezer when you get home from the store.

Wash and trim the pork and pat dry. The rest of this meal goes really fast, so take the time here to do a good job trimming. I didn't and ended up with pretty greasy ribs. One good way to get rid of a lot of fat is rip or cut the meat apart at the fat seams and then trim the pieces with scissors.

Mix 1 T 5 spice powder and 1/8 t cayenne (more if you like it spicy). Add salt and pepper. Rub the ribs with the mix and place in a glass pie plate.

Put the pork (uncovered) in the microwave and cook for 20 minutes. Check for doneness - pork should be opaque throughout. When done, remove from oven, slather with hoisin sauce, tent with foil and let sit.

While the pork is cooking, put the peas in a large glass bowl. While the pork is resting, microwave the peas for 3 minutes. Add the noodles, the sauce and the freeze dried vegetables, 1 T water and stir. Microwave for 3 more minutes and stir. Sprinkle with the peanut topping.

Serve the pork and the noodle dish with tamari on the side. For dessert, serve sliced watermelon (it should have cooled off pretty well).

This meal's virtues are: it's speed, it's not too expensive, one can find all ingredients at Nilssen's (except tamari and 5 spice powder), it doesn't heat up the kitchen, it's easy to clean up after. Made enough for me and Dan and Dan's lunch (a little shy on the noodle dish).

Two Thumbs Up Potato Salad

This recipe gets Dan's seal of apporoval, and that means something coming from a chip off the old Spud.

Two Thumbs Up Potato Salad
8 medium Yukon Gold potatoes - scrubbed

3 HB eggs - see How to make Hard Boiled Eggs
3/4 cup mayo
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar (I use Bragg's - the best!)
1 small jar pimentoes
1/4 - 1/2 red onion finely chopped - see Red Onions That Don't Bite
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/2 t celery seed

Put the potatoes in a large pot, cover with cold water, cover the pot and place on the stove over medium - meduim high heat, bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer for 20 minutes or so. While the potatoes are cooking, chop the HB eggs and mix them along with the rest of the dressing ingredients until well combined.

When the potatoes can be pierced easily with a fork, remove from heat and rinse with cold water so they're cool enough to handle but still quite warm. Don't peel. Slice into bite size cubes, put in a large mixing bowl, pour the dressing over and mix well. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

Red Onions That Don't Bite

Peel and slice a red onion. Place in a storage dish (either a glass one or one you don't care if it absorbs the onion odor), cover the onion with water, put the cover on the dish and put the dish in the refrigerator. Use within a couple days. Before adding the onion to the dish, rinse it in cold water and dry off with paper towel. Delicious onion flavor without the bite.

How to make Hard Boiled Eggs

These eggs really aren't boiled. Or not for long.

Take 6 eggs and place in pot deep enough to cover them with an inch of water of cold water. Put the open pot on the stove and bring to a boil slowly - heat set at medium to medium high. When water is bubbling, but before it really starts to roll, turn the heat off, cover the pan and let the eggs sit for 14 minutes.

Prepare a sink or large container dish of cold water and ice cubes. Once the 14 minutes are up, place the eggs in the ice water and let sit until cooled off completely. Peel right away or refrigerate until needed. Should yield tender easy to peel eggs without the gray ring around the yolk.

Homemade Pizza 2: The dough

In the last episode of Homemade Pizza, you'll recall that I vowed to cut back on the volume of dough. So here's the recipe I'm going to try today:

Dough (adapted from the Olive Oil Dough recipe from this really good book)
2 1/4 cups lukewarm water (push the tap all the way back and a little to the left of center)
1 generous T yeast
1 generous T salt
2 t sugar
1/4 scant cup EVOO
5 1/2 cups flour (this time, I used closed to 4 cups of whole grain spelt; the rest all purpose)

Let the water, yeast, salt and sugar brew for about 5 minutes before putting in the oil and flour. Mix with a spoon and hands and put it to rest on the counter for 2 hours. Knead for about 3 minutes, adding barely enough flour to make it workable. Put it in the refrigerator until ready to form and rest again before prebaking and topping.

Grilled Cheese Casserole

I promise I will do posts on topics besides food, but this recipe is from a book I need to return to the library.

Adapted from Reeve Lindbergh's Forward From Here an excellent book that is not a cookbook but contains a recipe she calls Aunt Ellie's Cheese Puff. We've dubbed it:

Grilled Cheese Casserole
5 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk
8 slices sourdough - buttered and diced (these are hefty slices)
8 oz sharp cheddar - grated
salt, pepper and dry mustard

Preheat oven to 400/375 convect. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish. Place half the diced bread in the dish, cover with cheese, sprinkle with mustard, a liberal amount of pepper and a bit of salt. Repeat. Beat the eggs and add the milk to them. (I used my quart-sized Pyrex measuring cup for this which made the next step easy). Pour evenly over the baking dish. Put in oven and bake 45 minutes (conventional oven will take longer) or until nicely puffed and browned.

Homemade pizza, part 5: The assessment

The world wants to know: Was it good?

Yes, it was good and not that much work. Abe gave it a 6.5 on a scale of 10. I'm no longer speaking to him. Mose gave it an 8. There's a young man who knows pizza.

As for me, I'd give it an 8, too. It all comes down to the crust and while this crust was pretty good, there was too much of it and it got toooo crispy. Maybe a shorter prebake.

The sauce recipe is definitely a keeper and the toppings too. But those parts are easy. It's the darn crust that keeps me up at night.

What would make a perfect crust?
-chewy, with a moist interior. Like good ciabatta
-pretty thin
-made of 1/2 whole grain
-not at all doughy

Using pizza stones might fetch me the chewy but not crisp exterior and flavorful interior that I crave. I have one pizza stone, but seldom use it for pizza because I always make two and I can't stand the asymmetry of baking one on a metal pan and one on stone.

So I won't do that. But next time I will cut the volume of dough in each pan by 1/4, will reduce the prebake to 7 minutes, will brush the edges with olive oil after the prebake and will raise the proportion of all purpose flour. These small changes will bring me one step farther down the road to Pizza Heaven.

Homemade pizza, part 4

Once the oven was heated, I stretched the continuing-to-rise crusts into the corners and put them in the oven to prebake for 5 minutes; turned and shuffled and baked for another 5.

There was a bit too much sauce or too little pan, depending on your perspective. I topped Dan's & my pizza with 2 sweet Italian chicken sausages (sliced thin), a handful of spinach, 4 oz mushrooms. On Abe's half of the boys' pizza, I put one sliced sausage. Lots of cheese on top: 4 oz shredded mozz and 6 slices provolone on each pan.

These babies were pretty heavy when I put them in the oven. Baked for 12 minutes then turned and shuffled and baked for another 2.

Let them sit for 5 minutes (10 would be better but who wants to wait that long?) before slicing.

Homemade pizza, part 3

I'll credit the brief kneading with the way the dough turned out - elastic and dense. Last time, I wrestled for half an hour to get the dough stretched onto the pans. This time, it went quickly with enough coverage for turned up edging along all sides of the pan.

After I stretched the dough, I made the sauce. It's a combination/variation of two recipes from allrecipes.com
Pizza Sauce - for two pizzas (but looks like there will be some left over)
2 6oz cans tomato paste
2 8 oz cans tomato sauce
1 T sugar
3 T parmesan
1 t Italian seasoning

Mix altogether and let sit for 1/2 hour.

Which is what it's doing now.

Meanwhile, the oven is heating 450/425 convect.

I'm also conducting a taste test. I split the 2 cans of paste and sauce and all the other ingredients. One bowl contains Contadina and the other Hunts. The latter tastes and looks way better.

Homemade Pizza, part 2

Deviating again from the method outlined in the book, I took the dough out of the container at about 1:15 and kneaded it with floury hands on a floury surface, adding a bit more flour as I went. Didn't knead a ton - maybe 3 minutes. Just enough to get the dough smooth and to work the flour in. Then, back into the container with the dough, back on with the 'cover' and then...

Well, normally, I would put the dough in the fridge at this point, but since our nice new refrigerator decided to stop working on Thursday, I put it on the front porch instead. It's a cool day and with the wind chill, the temp may be around fridge level.

And there I'll let it sit all afternoon.

Homemade Pizza - part 1

We like to eat pizza once a week, usually on Friday or Saturday night. If it's a Saturday when I'm home without a pile of work (i.e., 3M work) to do, I like to make it from scratch.

From scratch pizza is so much better than anything you can buy, but like many better- than-store-bought-things, it takes time and is subject to variation. In other words, sometimes you can work really hard and end up with pizza that wasn't worth it. When this happens to me, I often think it's because I make it differently every time.

To address this vexing problem, I'm blogging the nitty gritty details of today's pizza attempt so I can refer back next time and be reminded what worked and what didn't.

Dough (adapted from the Olive Oil Dough recipe from this really good book)
2 3/4 cups lukewarm water (push the tap all the way back and a little to the left of center)
1 1/2 T yeast
1 1/2 T salt
1 T sugar
1/4 cup EVOO
6 1/2 cups flour (this time, I used closed to 4 cups of whole grain spelt; the rest all purpose)

So far, I've stuck pretty close to the recipe but varied the method, letting the water, yeast, salt and sugar brew for about 5 minutes before putting in the oil and flour.

Mixed it with a spoon and my hands and put it to rest around 10:45. Around 12:45 or thereabouts, I'll put it in the refrigerator to foment slowly until I'm ready to knead and form and rest again.

Light Caesar Salad

I haven't been a huge Caesar Salad fan - it can get a little greasy and sometimes serves as a way excuse to pass off sub-par Romaine as a 'healthy' choice. But I ran into a recipe for 'Lighter Caesar Salad' a week or so ago and was pleased with the results.
But do you think I could find the recipe when I wanted to make it again? No way. So I searched around on the web, found a recipe to start with but added a couple variations that I recalled from the other version. And it turned out all right.
Here's how I'll make it next time:
Croutons
1 loaf 3 Cheese Semolina bread
Dressing
1 T EVOO
1 T LF mayo
1 1/2 T fresh lemon juice
1/2 T anchovy paste
1/2 T Dijon mustard
1/4 t sugar
1/4 t salt
1/4 t black pepper
1/2 t minced bottled garlic
1/2 cup Parmesan
Salad
3 Romaine hearts
Slice and cube bread and bake in roasting pan (in two batches) @ 450/425 for 8 minutes.
While croutons are baking and cooling, whisk the dressing together and wash, spin and tear the Romaine. Toss the dressing with the salad. Add 1/3 of the croutons and toss again. Save remaining croutons for next time.