Night at the Improv, Part II

On the same afternoon I made the frankencookies, I decided to make stuffed peppers.  We had gone to an orchard that morning, and I bought three poblano peppers, and we had a little ground beef in the freezer.  The thing is, I had made stuffed peppers with Betty's recipe before, and I wasn't crazy about them.  So I made up everything on my own, thusly:

~ 1/2 # ground beef
1/4 # sweet Italian beef sausage
1 C uncooked rice
1 small tomato I found in the crisper
generous handful (about a cup, maybe a little more) grated cheddar
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 generously proportioned, full-bodied poblano peppers

Boil peppers 5 minutes to soften them a little.

Cook the rice.  I've found that despite the package directions, I get pretty good rice in about 25 minutes.  Halve the peppers lengthwise, keeping in mind they'll need to become bowls soon, so cut them to make deep pockets.  Discard stems and seeds, put the pepper halves in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, and cook five minutes to soften them a little.  While the rice simmers away at the back of the stove, cook the beef, sausage, and garlic.  By the way, is your stove in the corner, against a wall, like mine?  Does that force you to have pot and spatula handles in the middle of the range instead of off to the side, out of your way?  Did you fail to consider this, and leave a metal spatula handle sticking out of the meat pan where it could get heated by the pot boiling the peppers and burn the shit out of your hand when you grabbed it?  Put some ice on that.  When the meat's done, dice the tomato and toss that in there, too.  The rice should be done by now, if you planned well (and except for the spatula handle, I did), so you can add that and the cheese to the meat mixture and stir it all together over low heat.

Pretty much any meal can be improved with the inclusion of good sausage.

By this time, I had decided that I wanted to make popovers, too, but the popovers cook at two different temperatures (first high, then a little lower towards the end), and neither was where I planned to bake the peppers, so I compromised and set the oven at 375F.

Filled pepper halves, just before I baked them.  They didn't last long enough after baking to get their picture taken again.

Turn off all your burners and start spooning filling into pepper halves.  Set them in a glass baking dish.  I had a little filling left over, so if your amounts are all the same as mine, and your peppers are the same size, you might need four instead of three (eight halves instead of six).  I baked them about half an hour, maybe forty minutes, with the popovers.  Faked my way through the whole meal, and all of it was tasty.  I was really happy with how the peppers turned out, and felt even better about that because I really hadn't liked Betty's recipe the first time I made them.  However, I'd add some cumin and curry powder if I did it again (and I probably will).

Night at the Improv, Part I

As you may know by now (if you've been reading this blog for a while, and have paid any attention at all), I'm a big fan of faking it.  Sometimes that just means trying a new ingredient in a well-used recipe (adding cumin and curry powder to Betty's brown rice and lentils was brilliant.  Betty's diverse, but her recipes tend toward the bland and basic), but sometimes I make dinner winging it all the way.

Sometimes, I have no choice in the matter.

This story actually happened last year, but since I knew I'd be hiking by now, I figured it would be a good post to delay until I couldn't be relied upon to update regularly.  The next post is a continuation of the same afternoon in the kitchen.

First, the cookies.

I have this great book for chocolate chip cookies.  All the recipes were culled from a contest to find "the best" chocolate chip cookie recipe, possibly the most subjective idea since Miss Universe (click the link, or you can't really appreciate the joke).  I first liked it because I got it when I was still beginning to learn how to cook and bake, and there was a lot of good information in how the ingredients worked, and enough variety in the recipes to see those theories in action, assuming you eat an awful lot of cookies, which I arguably do.  Since I got the book, I haven't even hit the halfway point in trying all the recipes, but I have found a few very good ones, and this is one of them.  That should come as no surprise; it was a finalist.

Joyous Chocolate Chip Cookies (submitted by Robin Joy Minnick)
3 C flour
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1/2 C butter, softened
1/4 C shortening
1 C brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 C granulated sugar
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
1 T milk
3 T dark corn syrup
2 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 C pecans, broken

1. preheat oven to 350F
2. Cream butter, shortening, and sugars.  Add vanilla, eggs, milk, and corn syrup.  Gradually add flour, baking soda, and salt.  Add chocolate and nuts.
3. Drop by teaspoon-sized balls onto parchment-paper lined baking sheets (the original recipe says greased sheets, but greasing a baking sheet recently removed from a 350F oven will either be exceedingly painful, or a fire hazard.  Maybe both!  One sheet of parchment paper will last through an entire batch of cookies, and nobody get third-degree burns.).  Bake 7-10 minutes, until cookies are golden brown, and slightly darker along the edges.

I'd made it two or three times before, and didn't think much of launching into it that afternoon, but after I had reached the Point Of No Return on making a batch, I realized that I had a little less then half as much brown sugar as I needed.  And about a third of the corn syrup.

The dark glob is molasses.  Don't tell anybody.

Fine.  I'll fake it!  Instead of a cup of brown sugar and half a cup of granulated, I had almost half a cup of brown sugar, and just used enough granulated to make up the difference.  (Still 1.5 C total sugar)  When I realized I didn't have enough corn syrup, I used molasses for the rest.  I've made lots of cookies with molasses.  It's dark and sweet.  That's sort of like corn syrup.  Plus, it smells nice baking.  Besides, the recipe actually calls for dark corn syrup, and I'd always used the light corn syrup we had, so strictly speaking, I'd never made those cookies right, anyway.

The results were pretty great.  The Chief Taster, who was already a big fan of the original recipe, raved about this batch.  I might even make a note in the cookbook to try this variation again.

Snickerdoodles

My usual uniform is shorts and a T-shirt.  You can tell when I'm being dressy because my shirt has buttons, and if I'm really serious, it's tucked in, too.  For me, the first real sign of winter's arrival is the day when I realize that I have to start wearing pants again (jeans) and store the shorts for a few months.  That day was about two weeks ago.  Truly, a sad day for me and anyone who enjoys gazing upon my hairy kneecaps.

This Monday, driving back to our place after the fourth wedding we've attended this fall, I got another inarguable sign of winter: snickerdoodle craving.  Out of nowhere, I could taste them in my mouth, and feel the perfect snickerdoodle texture smashing between my teeth.  I warned the Chief Taster that we'd have a batch in the next few days.  She sighed her resignation, hoping that she would be able to bear the threat of more baked goods.

The last time I made snickerdoodles was over two years ago, when I still lived in Bend, and winter arrived much earlier than here in Virginia (I still have trouble with the knowledge that, for the first time in my life, I live south of the Mason-Dixon line).  When I pulled them out of my pack as Summit Cookies, my Scotsman friend laughed at the name.  He'd never heard of them before, and I thought that was odd, because I had grown up with them.  On the other hand, he'd never heard of zucchini bread either, and raved about it the first time he had mine.

I realized while making this batch that snickerdoodles are a primordial cookie; the most basic cookie form, before it gets tarted up with chocolate chips, nuts, bits of fruit, icing, bacon, or all of the above.  If you want to try your own batch, I suggest this recipe from Ms. Crocker.  I think my doughballs were a bit smaller than she suggested, and I used a very small bowl for the sugar mix, because it gets used up and spread out easily, and it's easier to get the doughballs coated when the sugar mix is piled up.  I also used a spoon to scoop some over the top of the dougballs.  I just said "doughballs" an awful lot, and the software tells me I spelled it wrong every time.

Just ribbin' ya

You know what's handy about slow-cooker recipes?  They take hours to cook, but there's a lot of wiggle room, so they're handy for when out-of-state visitors are coming, and you don't know exactly when they'll arrive.  When Dad and The Lady came to visit us this summer, I made these ribs for dinner the night they arrived, because it really didn't matter if they showed up right on time or an hour late--dinner would be waiting for them.  I also made some cornbread (in the picture) and a pineapple upside down cake (a post for another time), and managed to time them both to come out of the oven as our guests came up the stairs to our apartment, but that's just because I'm fantastic.

Caribbean Spiced Ribs
3 lb pork loin back ribs
2 T dried minced onion
1 t ground mustard
1 t crushed red pepper (you can use paprika here; I just used red pepper flakes)
1/2 t ground allspice
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t garlic powder (or a small clove, minced)
1 medium onion, sliced (I think I used about half an onion.  The onions we buy are always much larger than the recipes suggest.  One large onion, chopped, is NOT one cup.  More like three.)
1/2 C water
1 1/2 C barbecue sauce

This was only the second time I'd made this recipe.  The first time, we really liked it, but I kept thinking it was a stretch to call them Caribbean ribs.  On what grounds, Ms. Crocker?  Because there are pigs in the Caribbean?  Because there are onions?  Weak sauce.  I decided that they needed some pineapple, at the very least, which is why they happened on the same night as my favorite cake (it turned out better than ever before--I can't believe I forgot to get a picture).  I'll explain how below.  I also considered using rum instead of the water, but I didn't.  Mainly because we didn't have any.

1. Betty says to spray the inside of the crock pot with cooking spray.  I don't use it, so I didn't do that.  It didn't seem to matter.
2. Combine the dried onion and spices in a small bowl.  Rub the mix into both sides of the ribs.  Cut the ribs in 4" sections.  Layer ribs and sliced onion (and pineapple!) in the slow cooker.  Betty says to pour the water over the ribs, but I think that washes too much seasoning off them.  Pour it down the inside of the crock.
3. Cover and cook on Low 8-9 hours.  Remember the Crock Pot Rule: leave often so you can return to smell dinner cooking.  Good stuff, right??
4. Remove ribs from cooker to a large bowl.  Drain liquid from cooker and discard (or pour it over the kibble of a very lucky dog).  Coat ribs in barbecue sauce and return to cooker with any excess sauce.  Cover and cook on Low 1 hour.

Did I mention I found blue cornmeal at the store?  It makes blue cornbread!  How great is that?!  Food in weird colors is EXCELLENT!

What a crock-pot

When I was in grad school, Dad bought me a crock-pot.  I practically lived out of the thing for a solid year.  I could stuff it full of whatever (he also gave me a slow-cooker cookbook), have dinner when I got back from a very long day of classes, and live off the leftovers for the rest of the week (I usually had a sandwich for lunch).  That thing was the start of me really cooking on my own, but I didn't get to this recipe until I was in Oregon (maybe because it was from a completely different cookbook).  Too bad--it's a good one.

Spicy Chicken in Peanut Sauce
disclaimer: not that spicy, nor that peanut-y
1 T olive oil
8 large chicken thighs (about 3 lbs), skin removed.  Bones optional.
1 C chopped onion
2x 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes with green chilies, undrained
1x 14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes, undrained (I can't always find this.  Stewed tomatoes also work.  So will diced.  Odds are good that nobody eating it will know exactly what the texture should be, so they won't know if you fudged it a little, either)
2 T honey (like I'd stop at 2 T of honey!  HA!)
1 1/2 t cumin
1 t cinnamon
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter (I won't even buy creamy peanut butter.  I get the kind that says "extra crunchy," or if it's available, "big damn jar of peanuts with a little peanut butter to fill in the gaps.")
2 cups hot cooked couscous

• heat oil in a 12" skillet.  Cast iron if you have it, because if you had it, why wouldn't you use it?  Cook the chicken thighs in the oil, turning once, until brown.  About 4 minutes.  DO NOT move the chicken around while you wait for it to cook.  Let it sit there, soaking in heat and crisping a little, until you turn it.  Turning it and removing it from the skillet should be the only times you bother it at all.

You can't beat a hot set of thighs.

• Mix everything except the peanut butter, couscous, and chicken in a slow cooker.  The couscous shouldn't be a problem, because it takes five minutes to cook, and you won't need it until you're ready to eat, HOURS from now.  Add the chicken.  Stir it in a little to make sure the chicken thighs are submerged--or at least covered--in sauce.
• Cover and cook on Low 7-8 hours.  Leave the room often so you can come back in and smell dinner.  It's one of the best features of a crock-pot.

This is exactly 1/3 C of peanut butter.

• Stir in peanut butter until melted and blended.  Serve over couscous (did you remember to cook it?  No?  That's ok, it only takes five minutes!  It will take longer than that for the chicken to cool enough to not burn you when you try to eat!).  I like to top it with some salted, dry-roasted peanuts.  Let people add their own.  It makes them feel like they have some measure of control over dinner.  They do not; you rule this kitchen!!

By now, the bones just flop out of their meat blankets.  Just add couscous!  And peanuts.  And maybe a salad?  Or pitas?  Your call.

Tiny Tart

Ever make a pie and have a little dough left over?  You could use it to decorate the top crust with pretty or lewd shapes, or you can fake a little dessert.  That's what I did.

When I finished assembling my chicken pot pie, I rolled out the little bit of dough I had left and put it on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Then, guessing at all of the amounts, I topped it with a small handful of berries the Chief Taster had already washed, some granulated sugar, and a little cinnamon.  Maybe some nutmeg.  I don't know, it was back in July.

variation on the naked pie: tiny naked pie.

Fold up the edges around the filling and seal it as best you can.  It will probably leak.  That's ok; you have parchment paper.

Oh, yeah.  That leaked.

I already had the oven going for the chicken pot pie.  I just slipped this on to the other rack and kept an eye on it.  When things looked brown enough (see above, and below), I pulled it out.  Somehow, the Chief Taster managed to arrive within a bout 47 seconds of the tart's extraction.  She ate it before dinner.  I didn't get any.  I guess that means it was good?

aerial view.  Next time, I need enough dough to make two.  Or I just won't tell her about it.

Pi R Round

During my freshman year of college, when I was begrudgingly adjusting to the cafeteria food (I still blame that diet for preventing me from growing to a full six feet), I sent Mom a postcard.  It told her nothing at all of what I was doing, who my friends were, or when I would be home next.  Instead, I filled the message space with tiny print listing dozens of foods.  Every alternate item was a different kind of pie.  Granted, towards the end I started stretching that definition a little with things like Cheeseburger Pie or Spaghetti Pie, but they were all things Mom had made, and I missed every single one of them.  Oh, how I love pie.  To this day, my Dad calls me every year on March 14 to wish me a happy Pi Day.  He does not always call on my birthday.  I love that man.

In addition to noting my favorite mathematical holidays, Dad also makes a mean chicken pot pie.  This is not his recipe.  It's Betty's.

Chicken Pot Pie
10 oz box frozen peas and carrots (I couldn't find that.  Mine also had corn and lima beans.  Whatever.)
1/3 C butter
1/3 C all-purpose flour
1/3 C chopped onion
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper (or 1/2 t.  Suit yourself.  I did.)
1 3/4 C chicken broth
2/3 C milk
2 1/2 to 3 C cut-up cooked chicken
pastry for two-crust pie

First, a little confession/revelation.  I spent several weeks hanging out with Dad back in June/July of this year, and because hanging out with Dad means myriad projects, we made a few trips to the hardware store, and while Dad paid for stuff, I flipped through the Exhibitor's Handbook for our county fair.  They had a stack of them sitting on the counter.  In the category for Pies, there were two main subcategories: With and Without Lard.  This cracked me up.  Then, while making chicken pot pie for the very first time less than a month later, I discovered that I did not have enough shortening to make the two-crust pastry recipe.  Luckily, since we don't have a dog, we collect bacon grease in an old shortening container and store it in the fridge.  I subbed a little bacon grease for shortening, used the customary amount of vegetable oil, and went on my merry way.  The crust turned out pretty well, but I have no idea how much bacon grease was used.  Oops.

Filling for the pie.  Yours won't look like this until the end of step 2.

1.  Rinse frozen veggies in cold water to separate.  Drain.  Heat oven to 425F
2. Melt butter in 2 qt saucepan.  Stir in flour (roux!), onion, salt, and pepper.  Stir constantly.  Cook until bubbly.  Remove from heat.  Stir in broth and milk.  Return to heat, bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Boil and stir one minute (ish).  Add veggies and the bird bits.  Remove from heat.
3. Betty wants you to make this in a 9" square pan, but it's a PIE, for Pete's sake.  Pies are ROUND.  Roll out a little more than half your dough to fit your pie pan.  Line the pie pan with the dough.  Dump in the filling.
4. Roll out the rest of the dough.  Betty suggests cutting out pretty shapes, then topping the pie with the cut-out pieces.  My dough was a little too pliable for that.  I was happy that I got the whole thing together.  I'll work on presentation in the future.  Maybe.  As it was, my aim was a little off when I added the top crust, and I had to do a little patch job.  You can see it in the next picture.  It looks a little goofy, but it tasted fine, so I don't care.
5. Seal the edges.  Make it pretty, if that's your thing.  Bake 35 minutes or until golden brown.

You know what that is.

One more thing: somehow, I ended up with a small handful of leftover pastry.  Check back next week to see what happened to it.