I've written about Irish soda bread before, but now I've gotten the recipe perfected.
Ingredients:
Start oven preheating to 425°F. Mix vinegar and milk in glass, and leave it to sour for at least 5 minutes. Place some parchment paper onto a cookie sheet. In a large bowl sieve and combine all the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Pour in soured milk and mix together. Briefly knead dough into a ball and place on parchment paper on cookie sheet. Cut cross into top of bread, cover with large metal bowl, and put in oven. After 30 minutes, remove metal bowl. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes longer, until done.
Bread is done when browned and top is firm. You can double-check doneness by thumping on the bottom of the loaf, it should sound hollow. Place bread on rack to cool.
Dough should be sticky. You can use buttermilk, I use milk soured with vinegar because I always have milk around, and never have buttermilk around.
This is a really fast and easy bread.
I leave it on the cutting board, with the cut side down, that helps it last a little longer without much fuss.
Don't knead it very much. It rises from the reaction between the lactic acid in the milk and the baking soda. If you knead it too much, you'll lose a lot of the gas.
Because it's chemically leavened, you can use all sorts of flours. So far, my two favorite variations are 100% white all-purpose flour, and 50% all-purpose, 25% whole wheat, and 25% amaranth.
Ingredients:
Meat Mix:
Condiments:
Mix up the meat mix and get a steamer started. Form into small patties in the steamer and cover. Steam for a total of 8-10 minutes, flipping and pressing down with the spatula once. A minute or two before they're done, top the patties with one cheese slice each.
Cut hot dog buns into thirds. Each third is one hamburger bun, put hamburger in bun and add desired condiments.
I got a yield of 32 patties out of about 1-1/3 pounds of ground beef. The beef was "lean", no more than 20% fat. I'll generally get leaner ground beef than that, but this was on sale for 99 cents a pound.
I'd normally put cumin, mustard seed, and soy sauce into the meat mix, but I'm out of all three. Time to restock.
Next time I'll add more condiments. I'd like to try cherry tomato slices, and maybe shallot slices. I also thought it might be fun to top them with fried quail's egg.
I plan to work on baking my own tiny buns, but for now, the hot dog buns work really well.
I've been wanting to make tiny hamburgers for a long time, and never got around to it. Now that I finally have, they turned out great! Even cjo (not normally a hamburger fan) liked them. And they're fun!
Ingredients:
First, start frying the peanuts in the peanut oil in a non-stick skillet for maybe a minute, and then add the sugar. Keep stirring and frying between medium and medium high, until the sugar turns into slightly golden crystals about 1/8" diameter. During that process, you can see the sugar liquefying on the bottom of the pan, and then crystallizing as it's lifted back towards the top of the mix. Once it's to that stage, turn the heat to low and stir in the chocolate chips and peanut butter. Once it's all melted and mixed together, drop chunks of it onto wax paper on a cookie sheet, and then put the cookie sheet in the freezer for about an hour until it's fully cooled and hardened.
This is a quick and easy chocolate candy. It's crunchy from both the peanuts and the sugar crystals.
Because of the peanut butter, it doesn't get really firm unless you put it in the fridge or freezer. I cool it in the freezer just so that it'll be ready quicker, and then I put it into a container in the fridge, separating layers with wax paper.
I usually measure the chocolate, peanuts, and sugar, and do the peanut butter and peanut oil by eye.
You can drop them onto the wax paper in whatever shapes you like, I tend to prefer thin bars about 3 inches long.
Ingredients:
This started as a mistake, but it turned into quite a treat.
First, I started frying the peanuts in little bit of peanut oil in a small cast-iron skillet. Then I added it a bunch of sugar, mixing it the whole time. Then I added in the cocoa powder and kept cooking and stirring.
When I thought the sugar had caramelized enough, I stirred in some sherry and let it reduce a bit. Then I poured in the heavy cream, cooked it until it thickened a bit, and then poured it over vanilla ice cream.
I had a particular idea in mind, and it didn't go as planned, so I kept working on it and adding stuff to try to salvage it, and eventually it turned into an ice cream sauce. And a great ice cream sauce it made, too! There are crunchy chunks of crystallized sugar, and the chocolate sauce itself is fairly crystallized, as well. And the peanuts, freshly roasted in the pan and coated with sugar and chocolate, are delicious.
The leftover sauce, still full of peanuts, I put in the fridge, where I ended up nibbling at it by itself for the next week or so. Quite a treat!
Ingredients:
Spice Mix:
Just another stir fry I did tonight.
First, of course, I prepped all the ingredients. Then, I started by caramelizing the onion in peanut oil, in the cast iron skillet. I also continued adding peanut oil as necessary during cooking, and stirred frequently and vigorously during the whole process.
Added in the garlic, fried for a short bit then added the peanuts, ginger, and celery. Fried for a couple of minutes, then added the broccoli stalk and green bell pepper. Fried for another minute or two then added the spice mix, then dumped the sugar in an open part of the pan and let it start caramelizing, then mixed it in. Added the beef, fried it until it browned, then added the sherry. Let it reduce a bit, then added the tamari sauce and the broccoli floweretts. Added some flour to thicken it, cooked it until it thickened slightly, and then removed it from the heat and served
Ate it over brown rice. Not as good as some of my dishes, but better than the food we've been eating out lately. I haven't been cooking because of getting sick and then being tired.
My opinion of cauliflower was forever altered when I read a comment describing its taste as "slightly nutty." Before then, I had never noticed the nuttiness. Most of my experiences with cauliflower involved cheese, which overpowered its subtle flavor. After that comment, I tried cheese-free cauliflower. To my amazement, I discovered that I preferred it that way. Here I always thought that cheese improved everything, but so far, cauliflower appears to be an exception.
This hearty soup is my all-time favorite to make. The recipe was inspired by the Colophon Cafe's African Peanut Soup. I loved the original but wanted a vegetarian version to share with non-meat-eating friends.
If you don't have a blender, just leave the peanuts intact.
Ingredients:
4 cans tomatoes 2 cloves garlic 2 dried red peppers 1 inch ginger 1 vegetarian boullion cube (optional) 2 small cauliflowers 1 small onion 1 1/2 cup peanuts, roasted, with no extra flavorings 1/4 cup butter (for roux) 1/4 cup flour (for roux) 4 cups water butter or olive oil (for frying the onions, optional) black pepper (to taste)
Directions: Coarsely chop the peanuts in the blender. Use the lowest setting and just pulse it a few times. Many will remain intact, some will be cut into small chunks, and a few will be ground fine enough to slightly thicken the soup. If you don't have a blender or food processor, just leave them intact.
Peel and thinly slice the ginger. Chop the garlic and peppers.
I like a mix of crushed tomatoes and chunkier ones. My method is to puree two cans of diced tomatoes in the blender, and leave the other two as is. Alternately, use two cans of crushed tomatoes and two of diced. (We only bother stocking one kind of tomatoes, and I already have the blender out for the peanuts, or I'd mix tomato types myself.) Or, just use crushed tomatoes for the entire amount... Really, it's just a matter of how chunky you like the tomatoes, so do as you will.
Dice the onion. Fry in olive oil with the ginger, and garlic until soft and slightly carmelized. This will give a sweeter taste. However, if you're lazy you can skip this step. I usually skip it; the onions will soften and cook if you heat the soup long enough, and the spices are enough to tame the sharpness you get from not having carmelized them.
Chop the cauliflower into bite-sized pieces and set it aside.
Add everything except the cauliflower to the pot, and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat, and cook for at least 20 minutes.
Add the cauliflower, and simmer for an additional 15 minutes.
Prepare and add the roux. (Here's another step you can skip if you are lazy. This soup is actually quite thick just from the volume of cauliflower.)
Enjoy!
Ingredients:
Spice Mix:
This is an experiment I threw together the other day, so some of the amounts are guesses.
First, of course, I prepped all the ingredients. Then, I started by caramelizing two onions in a fair amount of peanut oil, adding a head of garlic towards the end. At the same time, I put the water, potatoes, and carrots in a stock pot and started it heating. Once I brought that pot to a boil, I kept it simmering for the rest of the dish.
Once the onions were ready, I put most of them aside (to use in other dishes) and left about 1/2 cup's worth in the skillet. Then I added the rather aged eggplant, and cooked it until soft, and added it to the stockpot, along with the spice mix, ginger, and tomato sauce.
Then I added the lamb and red bell pepper to the skillet, fried it until the lamb was done, added the sherry and soy sauce, reduced it, then added it all to the stockpot.
Simmered the stockpot for awhile (10–20 minutes) and then added the mint and started thickening it with the oat flour. When I was happy with its consistency, I stirred in the garam masala and removed from heat.
I had a few purposes besides just dinner when I made this. One was that I wanted to use up a bunch of vegetables that were getting old. Also, lamb was on sale and I almost never cook lamb for cjo, and cjo is rather fond of lamb, so I thought I'd give it a go. And then there were a few techniques that I wanted to experiment with.
So, given all that, I was quite happy when it turned out delicious! It was a bit on the hot side, but not so hot cjo couldn't eat it, so it was a resounding success.
Ate it with bread, though it would also go great over rice.
Ingredients:
Mix ingredients together, and whip with a hand-mixer. This will last a couple of days in the fridge. The stiffer you whip it, and the heavier cream you use, the longer it holds. Of course, once it collapses, you can still use it, it just doesn't have the nice texture. It still goes great in coffee.
I feel the need to proselytize two things:
The first is that whipped cream has sugar and vanilla in it! I don't know about the rest of the country, but in Seattle there is this tendency for restaurants and cafes to use the "gourmet" version of something, such as whipping cream from scratch rather than using a premixed aerosol can. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact, it can be quite a good thing. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to actually make the from-scratch version, so, for example, they just whip cream without adding anything at all. Yuck.
The second is the difference between actual whipped cream, and nitrogen-flushed whipping cream. When you whip cream, you actually change the structure of the whipped cream, causing these long strands to form that give it its body. Nitrogen just fluffs it up by injecting an inert gas. Nitrogen-flushed can actually look really pretty, but for flavor and mouthfeel, whipping is the only way to go.
That being said, it doesn't bother me that restaurants and cafes use the nitrogen-flush method, it's a tradeoff of time and labor costs versus quality. Using that method is the right decision for most restaurants. But the point of making food at home is that you can make better food than you can get out, much cheaper. And quite often, spend less time doing it.
I have often purchased the Costco package of hamburger meat, only to then have to figure out what to do with it. I've tried a number of things in the past. Sometimes I've divided it up into packages and frozen them, raw. Sometimes I've made meatballs of the whole thing, cooked them, and frozen them. I've occasionally even tried to use the whole thing up, which is a bit on the difficult side.
One of the problems is that I really like hamburgers, whereas Carol doesn't care for them very much. Another problem is that while I like meatballs, I find them a bit of a pain to make in quantity.
I finally hit on the solution, which has been working quite well for us.
I buy the package on Friday, and take out enough to make hamburgers for myself all weekend. At some point during the weekend, I use some more to make a dish of sloppy joes, which we both like. The rest I fry up with onions, garlic, and some spices, which I then freeze in about 3/4 pound packages.
Then we have spiced, cooked hamburger meat, that we can throw into a pasta dish to add a quick bit of flavor and protein, whenever we want a fast, easy dish.
Then, and this is the hard part for me, I wait until we've used up all the frozen hamburger before I purchase another package so I can have another weekend full of fresh hamburgers.
I usually just fry up some onions and garlic, and then throw the hamburger in with whatever spices I want. I'll often toss some wine in once the meat has browned, and maybe some soy sauce.
I also drain a bunch of the fat off, so it's a not too-unhealthy addition to any other dish.
Keeping things like this around the house help me keep cooking when I'm tired in the evening, instead of just giving in and ordering out.
Flour can be somewhat problematic to measure. Oh, it's easy if you have a good kitchen scale – I don't, yet – but if you measure with scoops there can be a huge variation in quantity.
If you just take a cup measure and take a firm scoop out of the bag of flour, you'll get somewhere around 5 ounces of flour, but it's quite inconsistent.
My technique is, I fluff the flour with a fork before each scoop, scoop, then level the top with one swipe of a butterknife. This gives about 4 ounces per scoop, and is somewhat consistent, though still not as good as weighing.
A scale! A scale! My kingdom for a scale!