Now We're Cookin' - Wednesday 11/26/2008

I worked from home today to avoid the pre-holiday drive time traffic. I love getting up, making a pot of tea, and going to work on the other end of the house.

Clients were typically demanding as the people they work with put pressure upon them to tie things up before the long holiday. But I was mentally prepared for it, and I didn't have a commute behind me or ahead of me.

On my lunch break I made hot artichoke dip and tried a new recipe for cranberry sauce. It sounds unbelievable, but here it is:

Brandied Cranberry Sauce

16 oz. cranberries
2 cups sugar (I might do a half cup less next time, I adjusted for 12 oz. of berries)
1/3 cup brandy (I forgot to reduce the amount)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Rinse cranberries. Place them in a cooking vessel. Add the sugar. Cover, and put in the oven for an hour. (No additional liquid, just the water from rinsing.)

When you take the cranberries out of the oven, pour the brandy over the top. Stir or don't...I saw recipes that advised both methods. I poured them from Pyrex to this serving dish and then added the brandy, which mostly evaporated.

Quince-tessential Fall Fruit

Consider the humble quince. Not really edible in it's natural state. It won't actually harm you, it just doesn't taste nice.

On the way home from the doctor's office on Saturday (allergies became a sinus infection, hence the long absence from Any Given Sundry,) Kitty and I stopped at Sanchez Produce and I saw these. I'd read about them in How to Pick a Peach.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I can't stop talking about that book!



By Wednesday I was beginning to feel human again... You know, that sense of life being worth living you sometimes get when emerging from a bad cold or flu? That was me.

It was Kitty's last day in California, so I wanted to get around to cooking this up. I may have become a bit over-excited. Russ Parson's recipe for poaching quince was so simple that I thought he hadn't given me the proportions for simple syrup.

So I went online and the first one I found recommended 2 parts sugar to 1 part water. I was thinking I was going to try to poach the quince whole, so I used two cups of water and four of sugar.

Then Kitty pointed out that the instructions said to slice the quince. Well, shoot. Of course.

We dropped the slices in with the seeds still intact, just to see what would happen. The seeds contain a lot of natural pectin, which is what helps fruit jelly become jellified.

At some point I noticed--or Kitty read--that Parsons actually said 1 part sugar to 1 part water. Too late, buster. You have to get my attention and you have to hold it.




It took a lot longer than 45 minutes for the quince slices to turn rosy and look really cooked. But oh my, what a delicate and lovely flavor.


Serving recommendation is with a couple of vanilla cookies on the side.

I think there was so much sugar, though, that I more or less candied the quince rather than poaching it.

I'll try this again using the correct recipe with less sugar. Also will probably try this recipe found online, which looks spicy and wonderful. Ooh, or this one for membrillo.

Sauteed Green Tomatoes - Monday 8/25/2008

I wanted to try to do something with those green tomatoes from Sanchez Produce, but I didn't really want to do the fried thing.

I thought the sweetness of the onion and the mild butteryness of crook-neck squash would balance well with the somewhat tangy green tomato.

-Olive oil
-1 large onion (cook till translucent and a bit browned before adding other stuff)
-2 large crookneck squash
-4 small green tomatoes
-1 small red tomato
-fresh rosemary
-celery seed
-sage
-freshly ground pepper and salt

I cut the onion into about 1 inch square pieces. Wanted them to be more like a vegetable than a seasoning. I was only going to use rosemary and celery seed, but then as I stood over the pan and inhaled, I thought it was really asking for some sage.

The red tomato pretty much disintegrated, but helped carry the flavors.

After cooking the onions for about 10 minutes I added the other veggies for another 15 minutes or so, until they started looking cooked.

We liked this. I’m looking forward to having the leftovers with some grilled chicken strips for lunch tomorrow.

Meet the Doris Day - Tuesday 8/5/2008

It's quite possible that someone else has come up with this refreshing beverage and has named it something else. But since I've been on a celebrity-named beverage kick on an online community, when I was making this the name just popped into my mind.

This is a very loose recipe...

For one glass:

Cut sweet watermelon into 1/2 inch cubes (about 2/3 of a cup per glass)

Put into 6-8 ounce wineglass

Pour in enough chardonnay or Riesling to cover the watermelon

Crush some of the watermelon against the side of the glass with a fork, and add any watermelon juice that escaped onto your cutting board.

Wait about 10-15 minutes for the wine to infuse into the melon. Drink and fish out the watermelon (with a spoon or fork, please) in a way that works for you without dismaying your friends.

Best enjoyed sitting on a front porch. Back porch, patio, balcony or open window will also work.

FPA - Wednesday 3/5/2008

That's Future Peaches of America. (Snapped on our way out for an evening hike.)

I don't know about you, but those futuristic organizations were big where and when I grew up. Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America come to mind.

I just went to my high school's website, which has been newly revamped. Yay, it's about time!

I would just like to say that the newspaper went from the Courier to Cat Tracks when I was there, and I helped design the cat footprint logo that trailed across the original banner. I was editor in chief during the time when we switched from hand-mimeographing to being printed inside the (now, sadly defunct) Noble County American.

Boy, was Mr. Gagen, the editor of that paper a hero to me. He'd come down from working as a reporter in Chicago to run his own local paper, and I thought he did a great job of it.

I just went looking for a link to any archives. All I found were obituaries, including that of my father and my grandmother. I can't believe my dad was only 62. I mean, I can. But he's missed out on so much since 1990.

Okay. Anyway. It's spring and things are blooming. It's amazing where a photo of a blossom can take you.

Cool Thing: Yet another new recipe. This one for Chicken Breasts with Mushroom Cream Sauce from Eating Well rocks if you're able to get all the ingredients without too much trouble. I found fresh Shitake mushrooms for a reasonable price at the always amazing Trader Joe's.

Spinach Soup - Tuesday 3/4/2008

By the time I took this photo I was so hungry that I didn't check the clarity of the shot.

You get the idea, though. I tried a new recipe for Spinach Soup from Eating Well magazine. I didn't make the croûtons, but the soup is wonderful on its own. It's not too hard either to make or to find the ingredients for. It is good, however, if you have one of those immersible hand blenders, otherwise you have to transfer the soup to a regular blender.

Cool Thing: Hydra was right when he said this wonderful video of a kid's amazing basketball experience would appeal to the Indiana in me. I predict that you will like it. I further predict that if you grew up Hoosier it will actually bring tears to your eyes.

Cool Thing #2 : Bonus! When I sent the above video to The American, she responded with this little gem.

LOL! I have the greatest friends.

Pumpkin Cake! - Sunday 11/18/2007

I found this truly wonderful recipe for a pumpkin cake several years ago and finally got around to trying it today. You can go to the link if you like. This is just going to be notes about things you should know if you're going to try it.

Like... Note the photograph above. I had to laugh when I tried to follow the instructions to beat the cream cheese (for the frosting) at medium until creamy. Even though it was at room temperature, it all migrated instantly to the beaters!

This is where the recipe's 20-minute prep time first gets thrown off (unless, like me, you realize that neither you nor your husband actually put the eggs into the cart and you have to wait for reinforcements) as it takes 3-5 minutes to repeatedly scrape the cheese off the beaters as you try to get it creamy.

Tip #1, kind of: Next time I will try adding in just a few spoonsful of the pumpkin puree at the beginning. (Maybe I'll let you know. I'm making this again for Thanksgiving.)

It will also take you another few minutes if, like me, you have to pause to laugh helplessly, find your camera and stage several shots along the way.



Tip #2: Don't believe them when they say to mix the frosting in a "small bowl." What is Kraft's definition of a "small bowl" anyway!? I had a suspicion that my definition of a small bowl wouldn't hold the 8 oz. of cream cheese, 7 oz. of pumpkin puree, 8 oz. of confectioner's sugar and full tub of Cool Whip.

Right I was. This bowl is probably about 2 quarts and it's just about full!


Tip #3: KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR PARROT AT ALL TIMES!

Or he might just wander over--while you're waiting for the cakes to cool and trying to design your Christmas card online--and take a big bite out of one of them.

If this does happen, simply cut around the bite with a knife and fill in with frosting. Don't tell anyone about this. It will only make them uneasy about eating in your home.

Unless they have cats. People with cats have fewer food/animal issues because if they're honest with themselves, they know that their darlings dance all over everything in the kitchen anytime you leave the room.


Tip #4: Half of this cake is enough for most reasonable people to enjoy. I called Braveheart for advice on freezing cakes. (In her spare time, she is the Mistress of Cakes and the Doyenne of Pies.) I wrapped the other 8-inch round in plastic wrap and aluminum foil and slid it into the freezer for later. Froze the extra frosting separately, in a yogurt container.

If you followed the link, you'll see that this cake is configured differently because it's only two layers (really one layer split into two) and it has frosting on top, and there are no pecans.





Which leads us to

Tip #5: If it's your boss's birthday and she's allergic to nuts, don't even bother to toast the pecans and take them on the side. Let her feel that the cake is complete as it is.

Or, like me, tell her that you omitted the pecans because you didn't think she should have to provide the entertainment by puffing up and being Medivacked to the hospital.

"Happy Birthday! Buh-bye!"

A good, hypoallergenic time was had by all.