19 posts tagged “cooking”
I have a confession to make. I was once a closet pastry-phobe.
Not afraid to eat it mind you... but to make it. For years, I avoided any recipe that called for a flaky crust. If I could rework it with a graham cracker crumb crust (for pies and tarts) or a fluffy buttermilk biscuit topping (for savory pies and such), then I did so. Later, I discovered that one could make acceptable pastry in the food processor, so I did so from time to time. I never fell in love with making it, though.
But recently I've gone back to more primitive methods and have been delighted. I use hard butter (partly frozen) grated on a hand-held grater for the fat; I stir the shreds of butter carefully into the flour with an old silver fork, and add ice water to bind... and slowly work the whole mess together, with the aforementioned fork. The result is glorious, and something that most home cooks have already discovered long before me.
I first used this buttery, flaky substance to make Vegetarian Sausage Rolls:
This is a Delia Smith recipe; the stuffing is a mixture of cheddar, breadcrumbs, onions, and seasonings. I took these to the all-parish annual meeting and they were completely snarfed up. Here's another view of them sitting cutely on the cooling rack:
I had to put one aside for my husband, or he'd never had gotten to try one. Then for the church's Easter Vigil Agape Feast, I made Eccles Cakes. These are a traditional small English pastry stuffed with dried fruit and spices. They are something like a flaky Fruit Newton with overtones of fruitcake. The pastry (sweetened a bit this time) is rolled, cut into small circles, and the filling is placed in the middle; the edges are brought together and sealed like a little drawstring bag (like making Ham Baos, if you don't mind a culture-clashing example) then they are flipped over and rolled gently with the rolling pin to flatten. Slits are cut into the top and they are baked until golden.
I filled mine with a mixture of dried cranberries, golden raisins, sugar, butter, spices, and a bit of candied peel.
Last weekend I used the basic pastry to make some little meat pies, or pasties. I filled them with a mixture of leftover shredded ham, sauteed onion, parsley, and Cheddar. They were yummy, but none survived to be photographed.
Soon I may be ready to make a Real Fruit Pie!!
For years, the chef/owner of our favorite Mexican restaurant (La Margarita Company) has offered informal group cooking classes several times a month. These are basically just demonstrations of the techniques, in a small-group setting, followed by the consumption of the food (yum). About a week and a half ago, I finally found time to attend one, and had a great time.
Pedro hosts these classes in the banquet room of the restaurant. His cooking setup is minimal, almost primitive: portable propane burners, old pots and pans, a blender, cutting board, and good knives. He says that he does this very much on purpose, so that the techniques will not be made intimidating by a fancy professional kitchen.
And here's a shot of his cutting board work area. Looks a lot like something we would all have at home. Not at all like a celebrity chef TV show.
As we students (five of us, all women) took our seats, the waitress brought us our choice of strawberry lemonade or Pedro's special margarita of the day. Since I was on foot, I opted for the 'rita. It turned out to be a Margarita Chilanga, made with premium tequila and fresh lime juice, served straight up with a roasted chile. Not something I ordinarily would have ordered, but the flavor was most intriguing.
Before cooking the main dish, Pedro prepared a salsa for us, using roasted tomatoes and roasted chilies. It was delicious but not very photogenic, so I didn't take a picture. Next, he picked up some ripe avocados and announced that he was going to make his mother's version of guacamole, that he grew up eating in Mexico City.
Now, I am most emphatically NOT a guacamole fan. Not usually, anyway. I've made it for other people, but have never wanted to eat it. There is something about the texture and color that I find deeply disturbing. But I still watched intently as Pedro mixed up his version, using the giant stone mortar known as a molcajete.
He scooped out the avocado flesh in large chunks, added chopped onion, diced tomato, fresh cilantro, and plenty of salt, and mashed it into a rough mixture. He then served it up to us... before I knew it, I had a little plate in front of me, heaped with the stuff. I knew I had to eat it, somehow...
...and you know what? It was really, really good. I ate it all, with the accompanying fresh tortilla chips, and wished for more. I think it was the chunky texture, with bits of firm-textured avocado, and the liberal amount of salt. Great, another high-fat food that I now like.
The final dish was called Pollo de la Plaze Morelia. According to Pedro, this is a chicken dish sold from the market stalls in the plaza in Morelia (well, duh). So it's street food, festival food, market day food. Mexico excels at this sort of thing, it seems.
The dish started with chicken thighs, already simmered until tender with garlic and onions; and potatoes and carrots simmered until tender. Pedro made a sauce in the blender, using roasted chiles that had been soaked in water, along with vinegar, garlic, onions, and some other seasonings. He poured this into a large pot (containing a rather alarming amount of sizzling-hot vegetable oil) and cooked the sauce. Then he put the chicken into the sauce to simmer further. He dunked corn tortillas into the hot sauce, alongside the chicken, and started assembling the dish.
The final dish consisted of the chicken (two thighs per person, no less) on the sauced tortillas, on a bed of romaine lettuce, with the tender simmered potatoes and carrots on the side. There were also little picked peppers and a generous helping of Mexican fresh cheese was scattered on top.
I ate about half and then took the rest home for my husband to have for lunch. We both pronounced it all very yummy. This coming Saturday is a class on traditional Mexican breakfast dishes, and I am planning on attending.
All right, peeps, who can tell me what this is?
And a closer view:
Correct answer wins a prize, to be determined. Those present at the Consumption of the Mystery Meat (and you know who you are) are disqualified from any serious participation, though you may offer Smart Remarks.
Perhaps these guys have encountered it in their travels...
When I start thinking of food as "cute", I am probably spending too much time on the 'net. But I can't help it... this is my pork loin roast from last Sunday, and I just love the little roasting rack I made for it out of apple wedges. As my husband pointed out, "Single-use disposable roasting rack".
I am behind on all sort of food- and cat-related subjects. More soon, I hope.
There are many recipes out there. Authentic recipes from Scotland call for a sheep's "pluck and paunch". The pluck includes various innards (heart, liver, lungs) and the paunch is the stomach. One cooks the innards, grinds them, adds onion, oatmeal, suet and seasonings, stuffs the whole mess into the paunch, and steams it for three hours. Several of the recipes I read called for hanging the sheep's windpipe over the side of the kettle during the cooking process.
I decided that less authenticity was called for here.
For one thing, you can't buy lungs here, whether from sheep, lambs, or cows, presumably because of lingering fears of TB. Not for consumption, anyway... honest, that was NOT an intentional pun. Also, I had no stomach for stuffing the mixture into a "paunch", even if I could find one. I just didn't have the heart to serve that to my guests; I knew I couldn't liver with myself if no one ate the results of my effort.
I promise, enough with the puns.
I did find a modern and tolerable recipe from an old Frugal Gourmet cookbook that involved nothing quite so medieval. I adapted it as needed to suit what I had, but used his general method. First, I opened the soggy thawed-out packages of lamb heart and liver... only to find that the liver is MUCH bigger than the heart. I don't know why this surprised me, but it did. I had more liver than I needed, so Lucy (always hanging around the kitchen, hoping for a handout) benefited.
Next, I diced up the hearts (trying NOT to identify parts that I recognized, but mostly failing), and put them in a small saucepan to simmer for about an hour.
They made the house smell lovely, like warm granola. Later on in the cooking process, when the house smelled of warm liver instead, I thought longingly of the oats.
The sliced lamb's livers waited in a larger saucepan, along with about a pound of diced beef stew meat. The beef would help add some body and balance out the liver. I was beginning to feel like Hannibal Lector.
After the heart had simmered for an hour, I added it and its cooking liquid to the liver and beef, then added more water to cover. I brought the whole thing to a boil and then simmered it for about 20 minutes. Now, the house was starting to smell very odd.
The cooled oatmeal went into my biggest mixing bowl, along with a finely chopped onion (I used the food processor, as for this I wanted onion mush), salt, pepper, rosemary, and two ounces of Scotch.
I had half-intended to buy really good, expensive Scotch, but panicked at the liquor store when the salesman told me that the premium brands were behind the counter (and Katr wasn't with me to egg me on). I settled for a blended variety that was called Robert Burns Scotch. It seemed to be fate.
The meat mixture, once it had the chance to cool a little (not much; I was starting to watch the clock by now) was chopped/ground/mashed up in the food processor, in batches. This was, quite frankly, revolting. It was a lot like having the stomach flu: messy, undignified, and best forgotten as soon as possible. So, no pictures of that part. My recipes all said "grind coarsely", but it was hard to get the heart and stew beef chopped up without pureeing the liver. Ewwww....
Eventually, everything was in the giant mixing bowl, and I mixed it thoroughly with my hands (therefore guaranteeing the undying love of my cats, who still think I smell like liver), and packed it into an Appropriate Vessel for steaming. You see, while haggis is ideally stuffed into a sheep's stomach, regular sausage casings are also used, and several recipes told me that in the absence of a stomach, the mixture could be steamed in a bowl or mold just like a sweet pudding. I decided to use my Bundt cake pan for this. I wonder if it will ever forgive me.
I used a portable roaster oven, with steamer rack, for the cooking itself. I like to set the roaster up in the laundry room in the basement, thereby freeing up kitchen space. And it always seems somewhat Dickensian to have a pudding steaming in the laundry room. So, a double layer of foil on top, then into the roaster, which was already full of simmering water. Then I could quit worrying about the haggis (mostly) and make the other dishes.
Katr showed up about 6:00, and we mixed drinks and finished getting the oatcakes ready. The party itself and other details to follow...
A week ago Friday, I came home from work and surveyed the items in the refrigerator for possibilities. I had a few ounces of leftover chicken, a couple of slices of ham, assorted odd and ends of cheese, some sausages in the freezer... you get the idea. It was time for another Main-Dish Pie.
This is largely based on a recipe in Nigella Lawson's "How To Be A Domestic Goddess" cookbook, where it appears as Pizza Rustica, an Italian meat-and-cheese pie. I used the same general construction (substituting the cream cheese pastry this time) but chucked whatever I had around into the filling. All the above-mentioned meats, a bunch of cheese, chopped sauteed onion, seasonings, and parsley were combined two beaten eggs and plopped into the crust. I used a springform pan to construct and bake the pie. It's a good idea to put a baking sheet underneath whilst baking a savory pie, as they tend to ooze a little bit of fat.
This one was baked for ten minutes at 400 degrees then another 45 minutes at 350 degrees. These pictures were taken several days later, before the last of the cold leftover pie was consumed.
Katr sent me this. Be sure to read the whole thing. I think that this culinary effort is the cousin to my Raised Game Pie.
A week since Christmas Dinner, and parts of it are, well, still with us. That's the way it goes. But playing around with leftovers is for me a big part of the pleasure of making a large dinner. I think that it's an art that we are losing, in this age of microwaves and tidy plastic freezer containers, and I hate to see that.
So, what has been the fate of the feast? The bisque was consumed as is, same with the trifle. The Christmas Pudding has moved in with the remains of the Christmas Cake on the covered cake plate and will keep for a while, so no worries there. The game pie keeps well in the fridge and we have been working on it, but it's rich; not the sort of thing you want every day, so I may freeze the remains soon.
The ham presents the most opportunities. We've eaten it sliced (warm or cold), in a tortilla with cream cheese (cold), in a tortilla with cheese and leftover mashed potatoes (warm), in a creamy pasta dish, and tonight we'll have some in Monte Cristo sandwiches. We also made yummy little hot ham wraps Friday night, little triangles of cream cheese pastry with a dab of Dijon mustard and a slice of ham, rolled up and baked. Who needs Hot Pockets?
I enjoyed working with the cream cheese pastry so much that I made up a batch today and used it as a base for a savory pie. I can't give you exact amounts on the filling, but I used a chopped sauteed onion (cooled), about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of leftover mashed potatoes, and about 6-8 ounces of sharp cheddar, in small chunks, plus salt and pepper. There was already parsley in the potatoes, otherwise that would have been a good addition. Many other leftovers could have worked.
For the cream cheese pastry, measure out 1 cup flour and a pinch of salt; whirl it in your food processor to combine. Add 6 tablespoons cold butter, in chunks, and 1/2 a package (or 4 oz) cold cream cheese, also in chunks. Pulse a few times, then process until it comes together. Wrap in plastic wrap, and chill. Then make your filling, with whatever savory leftovers you have on hand. If your mixture looks too dry, consider adding a beaten egg to bind the leftovers, especially if you are using meat.
Divide the dough into two balls, one a little bigger than the other. Roll the larger ball out to fit a standard 9 inch pie plate and tuck in inside. Add your filling. Roll out the remaining dough for a lid, plop it on top and use whatever method you like to seal the edges (I just fold them toward the pie). Cut slashes in the top for steam. Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown. Katr was talking to me when I put it in the oven and we forgot to set the alarm so I don't actually know how long I baked this one (we looked just in time; the Pie Gods were watching) but I would guess about 30 minutes. The bottom was a little soggy, so I let it cool a bit then later (with some tricky maneuvers) got it naked onto a cookie sheet and baked it for another 10 minutes.
Not quite as satisfying as a New Year's run, but my asthma has me flattened, and that pie was about all I accomplished today. Better luck next year, and in the meantime, there's pie!
The dinner has been cooked, served, and devoured, except for all the not-inconsiderable leftovers. The guests have departed. The dishes are mostly done. The cook is exhausted.
Final Menu:
English Raised Game Pie; Plum and Apple Chutney, and Oregon Red Currant Wine
Shrimp Bisque, and Oregon Hard Cider
Mustard/Sugar Glazed Ham, Buttermilk Parsley Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, and Beaujolais Nouveau
Traditional Steamed Plum Pudding, Cranberry-Apricot Trifle, Oregon Mead, and Coffee
I won't need to cook for days...
Mostly a holding pattern today, since I am on-call. No real cooking, just housecleaning and laundry and such. But as promised, here's a pic of the Christmas Cake, taken just prior to its premier at the Choir Party.
My Groups
-
Cuteologists Unanimous Updated: 3 hours ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
