Chicken Mole

Why in the world would I want to make a recipe from a book that was the most poorly written tome I have ever had the misfortune to read? I was asking myself this question as I was chopping onions and peppers, trying not to burn myself with the jalapeño. I decided that it was because the recipe itself was taken from a website not authored by the woman who “wrote” the book I found it in.

Shopping for this recipe was fun. Since it wasn’t specified in the recipe, I went with diced tomatoes rather than whole ones because everything else is diced. There were no chipotle chilis (a dried pepper) in my market nor was there anything labeled “green chili pepper” so I bought a jalapeño pepper. I knew that it was green, it was a pepper and it packed enough heat that one was plenty. I should have inventoried my spice cabinet. Turns out I had almost no chili powder so I substituted Mexican style chili powder.

This recipe smelled terrific while it was simmering. I love dishes, by the way, that don’t need a lot of fussing over while they are cooking. It also thickened up surprisingly quickly after the addition of the cocoa and sugar.

The first night, all I tasted was heat. All spice, no depth. I thought by the second night when the flavors had had a chance to meld and mellow it would be better. Instead, it was just muddy. One substitution I shouldn’t have made was boneless breasts for the boneless thighs. Normally, I am not a fan of dark meat but in this case the more flavorful dark meat would have combined better with the spicy sauce.

This was my first taste of a mole sauce. I wasn’t impressed but it may be due more to this recipe in particular. I am reserving judgment on mole sauces for now. But I won’t be making this recipe again.

Verdict: Not bad, but I won’t be making this again.


Chicken Mole(source: www.sweatnspice.com)

1 (14 ounce) can tomatoes
8 skinned & boned chickn thighs
1 chipotle chile, or to taste
2 teaspoons cumin
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped fine
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 green chili pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped fine
½ cup water
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon sugar

Place all ingredients except cocoa and sugar in a large pot. Cover and simmer until chicken si very tender (about an hour). Remove chicken from pot. Add cocoa and sugar. Simmer sauce until thick. Return chicken to sauce and heat 5 to 10 minutes to blend flavors. Serve over rice.

Recycle: tomtato can, spice bottles

Compost: garlic skins, onion skins, pepper seeds and membranes

Blondies

Chocoholic that I am, I have a strange paritality for Blondies. I’ve only tasted commercially prepared ones. My search for a decent recipe so that I can whip up my own whenever the mood strikes, has so far proved fruitless.

This past weekend during my search for a new cake/cookie/brownie recipe to try, I ran across a cookbook that I wasn’t aware that I owned, Our Best Recipes by Better Homes and Gardens. Published in 2003, it features recipes from their past as well as contemporary offerings. One of those recipes is for Blondies.

It was love at first sight. I had all of the ingredients on hand except the chocolate chips. And it can be made in one bowl with only a wooden spoon for mixing. I melted, stirred, spread and sprinkled, then popped it in the oven with much anticipation. One direction I didn’t follow which I should have was to cut them while warm. I waited until the following day when they were rock hard from spending the night in the fridge. Cue the pizza cutter.

My anticipation was for naught. When I finally tasted them the following day when any home-baked good is at its most flavorful, these were strangely tasteless. My search for a Blondie recipe continues.

Verdict: What were they thinking???

Blondies(source: Our Best Recipes by Better Homes and Gardens)

2 cups packed brown sugar
⅔ cup butter
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate pieces (6 oz.)
1 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 13x9x2-inch baking pan; set aside. In a medium saucepan, combine brown sugar and butter; heat and stir over medium heat until butter melts and mixture is smooth. Cool slightly. Using a wooden spoon, stir in eggs, one at a time; stir in vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder, and baking soda.

Spread batter in prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with chocolate pieces and nuts. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean (avoid chocolate pieces). Cool slightly on a wire rack. Cut into bars while warm.

Makes 36 bars.

Recycle: vanilla bottle

Compost: eggshells

Lemon-Ginger Chicken

I was trying to come up with a main dish for our “Pairings” dinner when one day “Lemon-Ginger Chicken” popped into my head. I have no idea where that came from. I don’t believe I’ve ever made, or even eaten, it before. But it sounded good. Maybe because it was winter and spicier foods were more appealing just then.

As with the Ginger Carrot soup, I had a little trouble finding a recipe in which lemon and ginger were the only main flavor components, but finally found one on the Betty Crocker website. In honor of the occasion, I decided to buy real gingerroot instead of just using the powdered stuff. I’d never used it before, and was pleasantly surprised at the lemony fragrance that arose as I was grating it. Ah, now I see why this is paired with lemon….this pair has a lot in common! Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if this stuff tastes lemony too….YYAAAHHH!!! I’d momentarily forgotten about things like ginger beer…Okay, so this couple has some differences too…

Both the chicken and the sauce proved to be very quick and easy to put together. Especially when you don’t bother to flatten the chicken breasts first. In this case, however, you do need to be sure you cook the chicken long enough that it’s cooked through. Following the suggestions of some of the reviewers at the original website, I doubled the sauce recipe.

The chicken itself proved disappointing. I couldn’t taste the lemon or ginger at all, and I did taste an off-flavor that I thought might have come from the oil. The sauce was good, though.

A day or two later, when I had the leftovers for lunch, the off-flavor was gone, but I still couldn’t taste the lemon or ginger on the chicken itself. Maybe I should have applied the breading more heavily; there was a fair amount of it left over. The sauce had so much cornstarch in it that it had thickened to about the consistency of aspic, even after reheating, and the lemon flavor in it now seemed too strong. Also, there was really more of it than was necessary.

Although I think the lemon-ginger combination has serious potential for a good long-term relationship, this particular dish doesn’t show them off to best advantage.

Verdict: What were they thinking?

Lemon-Ginger Chicken
(source: bettycrocker.com)

Chicken
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1 1/4 lb)
1/2 cup Original Bisquick® mix
1/4 cup Progresso® plain bread crumbs
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon grated gingerroot
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Lemon Ginger Sauce
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon grated gingerroot
1 drop yellow food color
Lemon slices, if desired

Between pieces of plastic wrap or waxed paper, place each chicken breast smooth side down; gently pound with flat side of meat mallet or rolling pin until about 1/4 inch thick.

In shallow bowl, mix Bisquick mix, bread crumbs, lemon peel and gingerroot. Pour 1/2 cup water into another shallow bowl. Dip chicken into water, then coat with Bisquick mixture.

In 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Cook chicken in oil 8 to 10 minutes, turning once, until juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut (170°F).

Meanwhile, in 1-quart saucepan, mix lemon juice, 1/4 cup water, the sugar, cornstarch, gingerroot and food color. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened and bubbly. Pour sauce over chicken. Garnish with lemon slices.

High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): Cook chicken in oil 11 to 13 minutes or until meat thermometer inserted in center of chicken reads 170°F.

Recycle: oil bottle

Compost: rest of lemon

Rice Pilaf with Thyme

I have a tendency to get into ruts. Whenever I need a starch, I automatically make rice. Just plain old white rice. It’s quick and easy. Much quicker and easier than the mashed potatoes I was raised on. And mashed potatoes are so not good for you. I’ve been experimenting with other ways to make potatoes such as roasting them, but cleaning them and cutting them, and herbing them and finally roasting them takes so much time and effort. It’s much easier to throw 1 ½ cups of rice into 2 cups of water, simmer for 20 minutes, then turn off the heat and let it steam for another ten minutes. As they said in the commercial, “perfect rice every time”.

I need to get out of my rice rut. Since I was making chicken, I decided to go with rice pilaf. My first instinct was to revisit the Wild Basmati Pilaf recipe, making the changes I had planned on. After reviewing the recipe, I decided that it had too many ingredients and too many steps. I had been suffering with “flu-like symptoms” all week and wanted something easy to prepare. Like plain old white rice.

Next I hit the internet. Who knew there were so many variations of rice pilaf? It seems it can be made with every conceivable ingredient and seasoning. I didn’t even know where to start. Fortunately, Martha came to my rescue. She offers a very simple recipe using fresh thyme which I was also using in the chicken recipe.

I think I will have to take A’s advice and buy a timer that can time more than one thing at a time. I had difficulty (because I was so ill) timing both the chicken and the rice. Luckily, the rice was forgiving and I was able to “guesstimate” the cooking time and have it come out right. Better than right. This is an easy and delicious recipe that I’ll be making again and again.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!

Rice Pilaf with Thyme(source: Martha Stewart.com)

1 tablespoon butter
1 small onion, chopped
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 ½ cups canned reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 cup long-grain white rice
2 sprigs fresh thyme, or ½ teaspoon dried

In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium. Add onion; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is golden, 8 to 9 minutes. Add broth, and bring to a boil. Stir in rice and thyme.

Reduce to a simmer; cover, and cook until rice is just tender, 15 to 17 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes; fluff with a fork.

Serves 4

Recycle: chicken broth can

Compost: onion skins

Roasted Chicken with Garlic-Sherry Sauce

I try to make it a habit to cook a new main dish recipe and new dessert recipe every week. Since I cook mainly on weekends, that means that my weekend meals are usually not very good. This weekend was a one of those rare weekends when the dinner I cooked turned out to be delicious. I daringly tried both a new main dish recipe and a new side dish recipe (Rice Pilaf with Thyme, both of which were definitely standouts.

This was my first attempt at brining. I ran into two minor snags. Cooling the brine to room temperature took far longer than I anticipated. And I didn’t have any plastic bags larger than one gallon. I resorted to my fallback bags which in this case were scented. My concern was that the scent would permeate the chicken. It didn’t, instead permeating my refrigerator reminding me that I needed to change the box of baking soda.

Normally when making any chicken dish, I use boneless breasts no matter which cut of chicken the recipe calls for. I don’t much care for wings, legs or thighs. In this case, I opted to go with the bone-in breast halves as specified. Big mistake. They were very thick. They cooked, but were rubbery. I prefer my chicken to be cooked to a firmer texture. The advantage to using boneless breasts in a recipe like this is that if they are too thick, they can be pounded thinner to ensure that they cook properly.

I had been sick all week and so rested while the chicken was baking and the rice was boiling. Another big mistake. When the chicken came out of the oven, I realized that I hadn’t sliced the eight cloves of garlic. Which became six large cloves because I had neither the time, the energy nor the patience to slice two more. I was also perplexed by the instruction to “cube” the butter. I’ve melted butter, softened butter, even sliced it into pats, but am clueless as to how one “cubes” butter. I settle for cutting it into large slices which melted quite nicely into the sauce.

Other than the rubbery texture of the chicken, this dish was perfection. The sauce had body without being too heavy. The garlic was there but not obnoxiously so. The sherry added an “exotic” note to the sauce. And the fresh thyme was lighter and yet more flavorful than the dried thyme that I am accustomed to using in recipes.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!


Roasted Chicken with Garlic-Sherry Sauce(source: Taste of Home)

2 quarts water
½ cup salt
4 bone-in chicken breast halves (12 ounces each)
¾ teaspoon pepper, divided
2 teaspoons canola oil
8 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
½ cup sherry or additional reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 fresh thyme sprigs
¼ cup butter, cubed
1 teaspoon lemon juice

For brine, in a large saucepan, bring water and salt to a boil. Cook and stir until salt is dissolved. Remove from the heat; cool to room temperature.

Place a large heavy-duty resealable plastic bag inside a second large resealable plastic bag; add chicken. Carefully pour cooled brine into bag. Squeeze out as much air as possible; seal bags and turn to coat. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours, turning several times.

Drain and discard brine. Rinse chicken with cold water; pat dry. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon pepper. In a large ovenproof skillet, brown chicken in oil over medium heat.

Bake, uncovered, at 400°F for 20-25 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads 170°F. Remove chicken and keep warm. Drain drippings, reserving 1 tablespoon.

In the drippings, sauté garlic for 1 minute. Ad the broth, sherry or additional broth and thyme. Bring to a boil; cook until liquid is reduced to 1 cup. Discard thyme. Stir in the butter, lemon juice and remaining pepper. Serve with chicken.

Yield: 4 servings

Recycle: canola oil bottle, chicken broth can, sherry bottle, lemon juice bottle

Compost: garlic skins

Outrageous Carrot Cake

Who can resist a recipe that is billed as “outrageous”? I certainly can’t. I’ve been making the same carrot cake recipe for years. It’s from the Soft As Silk cake flour box. It tastes alright, but I would prefer something denser and moister. It was also my first taste of cream cheese frosting. Who knew it was that good?

At first glance, the two recipes are identical. A closer look revealed some differences. The outrageous recipe uses canola oil. The SAS recipe uses mayo. The outrageous recipe uses only cinnamon. The SAS recipe uses cinnamon plus allspice or ginger. The outrageous recipe includes carrots, pineapple, walnuts and coconut. The SAS recipe has no coconut. Although it wasn’t what I was looking for, I was intrigued enough to give it a whirl.

Looking over the baking directions, I was struck by the fact that you must bake the layers on different racks and then turn and reverse them. I understand that this is necessary to ensure that they bake evenly, but I was taught that you should open the oven door as little as possible to keep the temperature even. Uneven temperatures will prevent your cakes from baking properly.

I elected to bake all three layers on the same rack. When I checked them after the recommended 25 minutes, I discovered that the edges were rapidly overbaking and pulled away from the sides of the pans. 15 minutes of cooling in the pans later, I discovered that the layers were very greasy when I removed them from the pans. I’m not sure if it was because I elected to grease the pans instead of spraying them with nonstick cooking spray (banned in my kitchen) or because the recipe uses canola oil instead of my usual mayo.

The taste was too cinnamon-y and I intensely disliked the texture of the coconut in the cake. Add that to the greasiness of the cake and I see no reason to call this recipe “outrageous”. The frosting was really good, though.

Verdict: What were they thinking???

Outrageous Carrot Cake(source: Cooking Club of America)

Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 eggs
2 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ cups canola oil
2 ½ cups finely grated carrots (about 6 carrots)
2 (8-oz.) cans crushed pineapple in juice, well-drained
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1 cup finely chopped walnuts

Frosting
12 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 cups powdered sugar
1 ½ cups finely chopped walnuts, if desired

Evenly space 2 baking racks in oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Spray bottom and sides of 3 (9x2-inch) round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray. Line bottoms with parchment paper; spray parchment with nonstick cooking spray.

Sift flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon into medium bowl.

In large bowl, beat eggs and sugar at medium speed 1 to 3 minutes or until thickened and slightly lighter in color. Beat in oil at low speed. Stir in flour mixture until blended. Stir in carrots, pineapple, coconut and 1 cup walnuts until blended. Divide batter evenly among pans. Bake 25 minutes; turn and reverse cake pans. Bake an additional 10 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and cake pulls slightly away from sides of pan. Cool in pans on wire rack 15 minutes. Invert onto wire rack; remove parchment. Cool completely.

To make frosting, beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl at medium speed 3 minutes or until blended and smooth. Beat in vanilla. Add powdered sugar; beat at low speed 1 minute or until blended and smooth.

Place 1 cake layer on serving platter or cardboard round; spread with 1 cup frosting. Repeat. Top with remaining cake layer; spread top and sides with thin layer of frosting. Coat sides with another smooth layer of frosting; spread remaining frosting on top. Press 1 ½ cups walnus onto sides of cake. Refrigerate leftovers.

Cake can be made up to 2 days ahead and refrigerated, or 3 weeks ahead and frozen. To freeze, place cake in freezer until frosting is firm; wrap in plastic wrap, then heavy-duty foil. To defrost, place in refrigerator overnight; remove wrapping. Serve at room temperature.

20 servings

Recycle: canola oil bottle, pineapple cans, vanilla extract bottle

Compost: egg shells, carrot peels

Italian Sausage Meatball Rigatoni with Vodka-Tomato Sauce

When this recipe was delivered to my inbox, I bookmarked it immediately. I happen to have a bottle of vodka left over from my cocktail experiments. I was also intrigued by meatballs that are baked in the oven rather than fried on top of the stove.

White bread is not something that I normally have on hand so I used plain old bread crumbs from a can which I did soak in the milk for 5 minutes. Grating onions was an adventure. I haven’t cried that much since our first cat died. In the future, I may take a cue from a French movie I once saw where one of the characters was slicing onions while wearing a snorkel and mask. I wonder if you can rent snorkels like you can rent scuba gear? Unlike most of my experiences, this recipe did, in fact, yield 24 meatballs but they seemed awfully large to be fully cooked after 15 minutes in the oven.

Making the sauce was simple although I question whether the 15 minute reduction indeed reduced the vodka or merely boiled away the alcohol. The crushed red pepper and black pepper gave it a nice kick. And I really liked it over the rigatoni rather than the more usual spaghetti. The meatballs were a disappointment. They were nowhere near cooked through after 15 minutes. My guess is that they needed at least twice that much time.

Verdict: Not bad, but I don’t think I’ll be making this again


Italian Sausage Meatball Rigatoni with Vodka-Tomato Sauce(source: Cooking Club of America)

½ cup fresh white bread crumbs
½ cup milk
¾ lb. bulk mild Italian sausage
¾ lb. ground beef (85% lean)
1 medium onion, coarsely grated
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon salt, divided
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper, divided
12 oz. rigatoni
¼ cup butter
2 large garlic cloves, minced
⅔ cup vodka or chicken broth
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
¾ cup whipping cream
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Heat oven to 425°F. Combine bread crumbs and milk in large bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Mix in sausage, ground beef, onion, ½ cup of the cheese, parsley, ½ teaspoon of the salt and ¼ teaspoon of the crushed red pepper until well-blended. Shape into 24 (1 3/4-inch) balls. Place on rimmed baking sheet. Bake 10 to 15 minutes or until cooked through and no longer pink in center. Cover loosely with foil.

Cook rigatoni in large pot of boiling salted water according to package directions; drain.

Meanwhile, melt butter in medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook garlic 30 seconds or until fragrant. Stir in vodka; reduce until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, cream, remaining ½ teaspoon salt, remaining ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper and black pepper; bring to a boil. Simmer 5 minutes. Spoon sauce over rigatoni; sprinkle with remaining ½ cup cheese. Top with meatballs.

Recycle: milk bottle, vodka bottle, tomato can

Compost: onion skin, parsley stems, garlic skins

Carrot with Ginger Soup

I still have some carrots from this year’s (or, more accurately, last year’s) garden, and I thought a good use for them would be to make a carrot soup for the Valentine’s dinner. Since the theme this year was “pairings”, we came up with ginger-carrot soup. But at first I had trouble finding a recipe. There are quite a few out there, but they all seemed to have one of two problems. Either they included so many other ingredients that they were actually “ginger-carrot-and-fifteen-other-things soup” and thus didn’t really fit the theme, or they had just a few ingredients but the reviews indicated that they were “bland”, “boring”, etc. Finally I found a recipe that contained few other flavor components, and that got good reviews.

As a bonus, this recipe contains detailed instructions about pureeing the soup. Follow these and you should avoid the type of disaster OldRoses suffered last Thanksgiving.

The ingredients were pretty much as in the recipe, except that I used light cream instead of whipping cream; in a recipe like this, I doubt many people would notice the difference. I also sprang for real ginger, since I also needed it for the chicken dish (more on that here).

The recipe calls for 2 pounds of carrots. I wasn’t sure I had enough of my home-grown ones, so I bought a one-pound bag and used a pound of my own. Now, I should explain that the ones I grew are a purple variety. So when the carrots were simmered, the purple color leached out into the broth. When it was all pureed (without accident, I might add - I used a blender rather than a food processor), the whole thing took on a mauve color, which was perfect for Valentine’s Day. Oh, and the garnish in the picture is a particularly pretty carrot slice that I reserved for this purpose.

When I first tasted this soup, I was disappointed. The chicken broth flavor came out more strongly than I had expected, and I didn’t detect the ginger at all. But, by a day or two later, things had improved. The chicken broth flavor had receded and a lemony flavor from the ginger was present now. If you didn’t know there was ginger in it, you might think it was lemon instead, yet there’s the hint of a bite to it. I’m wondering whether the ginger level should be upped just a bit…

Verdict: Not bad...I might make this one again.

Ginger Carrot Soup
(source: foodnetwork.com)

2 tablespoons sweet cream butter
2 onions, peeled and chopped
6 cups chicken broth
2 pounds carrots, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 cup whipping cream
Salt and white pepper
Sour cream
Parsley sprigs, for garnish

In a 6-quart pan, over medium high heat, add butter and onions and cook, stirring often, until onions are limp. Add broth, carrots, and ginger. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until carrots are tender when pierced.

Remove from heat and transfer to a blender. Don't fill the blender more than half way, do it in batches if you have to. Cover the blender and then hold a kitchen towel over the top of the blender*. Be careful when blending hot liquids as the mixture can spurt out of the blender. Pulse the blender to start it and then puree until smooth. Return to the pan and add cream, stir over high heat until hot. For a smoother flavor bring soup to a boil, add salt and pepper, to taste.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with dollop sour cream and parsley sprigs.

*When blending hot liquids: Remove liquid from the heat and allow to cool for at least 5 minutes. Transfer liquid to a blender or food processor and fill it no more than halfway. If using a blender, release one corner of the lid. This prevents the vacuum effect that creates heat explosions. Place a towel over the top of the machine, pulse a few times then process on high speed until smooth.

Recycle: broth can, sour cream tub

Compost: veggie peelings/trimmings

Tuscan Rabbit Ragù

No, I haven’t lost my mind and eaten the Easter Bunny. I’m still caught up in recipes from the New York Times. They had an article on slaughtering and cooking rabbit. I kind of enjoyed the image of urban hipsters attending a workshop to learn how to kill and butcher animals. One attendee even brought her own knives.

Naturally, the article was followed by recipes, of which this one sounded really good. Except for the rabbit, of course. I decided to try it using chicken instead.

I was intrigued by the use of red onion, which tends to be sweeter than yellow onions, and by the lack of garlic. Seems like most everything I cook has garlic in it. I was disappointed when I couldn’t find pancetta or prosciutto at my local grocery store and had to settle for bacon. Ditto the Parmesan cheese rind. I’m still scratching my head over the “nonreactive” pot. I’ve never seen a pot that reacts. Reacts to what? How? Must be an urban hipster thing.

Olive oil that “shimmers”. Interesting concept. I didn’t see any “shimmering”, but it did get hot. Cooking veggies in oil for 25 minutes is okay. Not so much the bacon. Bacon cooked in oil gets soft and greasy. I think I would have preferred cooking the bacon first until crispy, removing it and then adding the olive oil and veggies, adding the bacon back in with the rabbit/chicken.

After simmering for two hours, I was pretty hungry. So hungry, in fact, that I forgot to add the thyme and rosemary at the end. Served over my usual rice (what I had in the house), it was pretty good. Then I remembered the thyme and rosemary and added it for the following night when it was even better. I’ll definitely be making this again. With chicken.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!


Tuscan Rabbit Ragù(source: NYT.com)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
¼ pound pancetta, bacon or prosciutto, diced
One 3- to 4-pound rabbit, cut into 6 or 8 pieces
1 cup white wine
A Parmesan cheese rind, optional
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 bay leaves
2 to 3 cups chicken stock or water
Salt
Black pepper
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary.

Place a large, heavy-bottomed, nonreactive pot over medium-low heat. Add olive oil and when it shimmers, add onion, carrot, celery and pancetta. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are soft and caramelized (about 25 minutes).

Raise heat to medium-high. Add rabbit. Brown lightly on all sides. Add wine and stir, scraping bottom of pan. Add cheese rind if using, tomato paste, bay leaves and stock or water. Stir well, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, stir, and reduce heat to low.
Simmer, lid slightly ajar, until meat is tender and nearly falling off the bone, about 2 hours.

Remove rabbit from sauce. When cool enough to handle, shred rabbit. Return meat to pot. Add thyme and rosemary, and season with salt and pepper. Reheat gently before serving. Ragù may be spooned over warm polenta or tossed with pasta, butter, more fresh herbs and grated Parmesan or pecorino Toscano.

Yield: About 4 cups, or 4 to 6 servings.

Recycle: olive oil bottle, wine bottle, tomato paste can

Compost: onion skins, carrot peels, celery leaves, bay leaves

Peanut Butter Cookies

I have totally outdone myself. Always on the lookout for interesting recipes and taking great pride in finding them in the most unlikely places, I found a delicious recipe for peanut butter cookies on a blog written by a poet on Writing.com. Got that? Blog? Poet? Writing site? Nothing to do with cooking except that poets cook too and apparently blog about it.

I used to make peanut butter cookies. This recipe intrigued me because it is made with creamy peanut butter whereas I had always used chunky peanut butter because that is what I had in the house. And it uses shortening instead of the butter I was accustomed to using. The big question was whether or not these cookies would be as rich and peanut-y as the cookies I used to make.

I’m not sure if it is appropriate to discuss why I stopped eating peanut butter and making peanut butter cookies. Being an omnivore and an omnivorous reader, I came across an article many years ago that talked about the amount of rodent droppings and insect pieces that were allowed in the manufacture of peanut butter. After reading that, I was rendered incapable of consuming peanut butter.

I decided that I would attempt to put aside my aversion to peanut butter and try out this recipe. The recipe is originally from the Crisco site. Although it calls specifically for Jiff, the blogger assures us that we can use any brand that we want. She uses a store brand. I bought Jiff because it was on sale. She does insist that only Crisco brand shortening and Gold Medal Flour be used but that’s not a problem for me. I use both. I will share her directions exactly as she wrote them because they are, like her, delightful.

I did make one critical error. I had a bag of Heath Milk Chocolate Toffee Bits in my freezer that were just crying out to be used. I was wavering between the peanut butter cookies and whatever cookie recipe was on the Heath bits envelope when I discovered that the recipe was in fact, a peanut butter cookie recipe that was nearly identical to this recipe. Problem solved! Or so I thought. Turns out that the Heath Milk Chocolate Toffee Bits added nothing to the cookies.

My initial question was answered in the affirmative. Not only were these cookies as rich and peanut-y as the recipe I used to make, but because they are made with creamy peanut butter, they taste a lot like Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. But without the chocolate. So you know what I’m going to do next time I make them, right? Add milk chocolate chips to them, of course.

Verdict: Needs a do-over


Peanut Butter Cookies(source: Crisco.com)

¾ cup creamy peanut butter
½ cup shortening
1 ¼ cups firmly packed light brown sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 egg
1 ¾ cups flour
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda

Heat oven to 375°F.

Combine peanut butter, shortening, light brown sugar, milk and vanilla in mixer bowl. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until blended. Add egg. Beat just until blended.

Combine flour, salt, and baking soda. Add to creamed mixture at low speed. Mix just until blended.

Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased Air-Bake cookie sheet. Flatten slightly in crisscross pattern with tines of fork.

Bake one baking sheet at a time at 375°F. Set timer for 7-8 minutes. Bake until set and just beginning to brown. Underdone is better than overdone – experiment on the timing to get them the way you like them.

Prepare second cookie sheet to have ready to put in oven when you take the first one out.

Cool first batch two minutes on baking sheet.

While cookies are cooling, put second batch in oven. Set timer.

Place sheets of foil on counter top or table. Remove cookies with pancake turner to foil to cool completely. Keep a paper towel handy to clean off pancake turner when it gets cookie “residue” on it. You need a good clean turner to move the cookies without messing them up.

Rinse off cookie sheet in cool water and dry before putting next batch of cookie dough on it. (This is her tip, not Crisco’s instruction. She says that it gives each batch of cookies the same starting point – clean, cool cookie sheet.)

Prepare cookie sheet to have it ready to put in oven when you take out the second batch.

Eat some of the first cookies. You have to test them to know if they are done to perfection or if you need to adjust the time.

Repeat steps the above steps until all cookies are baked.

Recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies of which you will have eaten at least one per baking cycle, so you will be a few short up final count. Cookies go wonderfully with a freshly brewed cup of Folgers French Roast Coffee – no additives like sweetener or creamer, natural or artificial – drink it stout and black.

To make Heath Bits Peanut Butter Cookies, reduce flour to 1 ½ cups and add 1 cup toffee bits. Use remaining 1/3 cup toffee bits (from 8-oz pkg) for topping, sprinkling on each cookie before putting in oven.

Recycle: peanut butter jar, milk jug, vanilla bottle

Compost: egg shell

Baked Frittata with Green Peppers and Yogurt

I saw this recipe while I was perusing the New York Times. Yes, I know, NYT recipes never work out for me but this one was irresistible. It was described as “…an Iranian-style omelet.” I saw “Iranian” and had to try it. I’ve never eaten Iranian food. I also had no idea what a frittata was.

I took one look at the price of saffron in my local grocery store and decided that it wasn’t really necessary. Probably only used for coloration. Although I would have preferred chives (and I think they would have added more flavor),I bought scallions because there were no chives available. I bought two medium green peppers, as directed, and ended up with so much diced green pepper that I found myself wondering why the option of using large ones was even offered.

Heating a casserole dish before using it was definitely novel. I don’t know what I did differently, but this recipe came out perfectly. I was disappointed with the taste, or rather the lack of taste. The yogurt gave it an interesting texture and a slightly different flavor. But on the whole, this dish is rather bland. Very disappointing.

Verdict: Not bad, but I won’t be making this again.



Baked Frittata with Green Peppers and Yogurt(source: NYT.com)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 medium to large green bell peppers, seeded and diced
2 garlic cloves, pureed in a mortar with a pinch of salt
Salt to taste
6 large or extra-large eggs
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
⅛ teaspoon powdered saffron, or a pinch of saffron threads dissolved or soaked in 1 tablespoon hot water
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
¾ cup drained yogurt
½ cup chopped fresh chives or finely chopped scallion

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet and add the peppers. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about eight minutes. Add the garlic and salt to taste, and cook, stirring until the garlic is fragrant, 30 seconds to a minute. Remove from the heat.

Place the remaining tablespoon of oil in a 2-quart casserole or a 9-inch cast iron skillet, brush the sides of the pan with the oil and place it in the oven. Meanwhile, beat the eggs in a large bowl and season with salt. Add the pepper, saffron water, flour and yogurt, and whisk together. Stir in the cooked peppers and the chives or scallions.

Remove the hot baking dish from the oven, brush the sides with the hot oil and pour in the egg mixture, scraping every last bit into the an with a spatula. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until puffed and lightly colored on the top. Remove from the heat, and allow to sellte for 10 miutes before serving. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Serves six to eight.

You can make this dish several hours before serving.

Recycle: olive oil bottle, yogurt container

Compost: pepper seeds and membranes, garlic skins, egg shells

One Egg Cake

While searching for something new and different to bake, I started pulling all of my cookbooks off the shelf, including The 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, the first edition of Fannie Farmer’s classic cookbook. I’ve often skimmed through it because the recipes are fascinating as well as a fascinating look at life over a century ago. I’ve never made any of the recipes, but they are fun to look at. Take for instance the recipe for Mock Turtle Soup. There are no turtles in it. Instead, the first ingredient is “1 calf’s head”, not something one usually sees in the market today.

One recipe did catch my eye. It was entitled "One Egg Cake". Could this possibly be the long lost birthday cake recipe that I have spent decades looking for? It is significantly different from the Betty Crocker Dinette Cake recipe that I have been baking. Betty uses shortening, Fannie uses butter. Betty uses vanilla, Fannie doesn’t. I’ve never made a cake without vanilla, have you? Just for fun, I decided to try the recipe.

If you think baking is an art today, back in Fannie’s day it was practically alchemy. Just getting the temperature correct in the oven was a challenge. There were no gas or electric stoves then. Stoves used coal. Oven thermometers were unreliable in those days. Fannie’s advice on achieving and maintaining the correct oven temperature for baking? "…experience alone has proved the most reliable teacher." My oven is a modern gas one so I turned to Betty for the correct 350°F temperature.

I would be curious to see a selection of pans from Fannie’s era. Nowhere does she discuss cake pans or their sizes. For the One Egg Cake recipe, she specifies a shallow pan. The amounts of the ingredients were similar to the Dinette Cake recipe, so I used my usual square 8x8x2 pan.

There are no instructions in the recipe for beating the batter. That is covered in the introduction to the chapter on cakes along with buttering and filling the pan, and removing the cake from the pan. I followed Betty’s instructions for the Dinette Cake recipe. I have no desire to beat cake batter by hand. I use a Kitchenaid stand mixer.

The batter came together beautifully and the cake baked perfectly. Unfortunately, this was not the long lost recipe. But it was a delicious butter cake and a fun trip through culinary history.

Verdict: Not bad, but I won’t be making this again.


One Egg Cake(source: The 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book)

¼ cup of butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup of milk
1 ½ cups flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder.

Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and egg well beaten. Mix and sift flour and baking powder, add alternately with milk to first mixture. Bake thirty minutes in a shallow pan. Spread with Chocolate Frosting.

Recycle: milk jug

Compost: egg shell

Beet Bread

When planning our menu for Valentine’s Day, A suggested we have bread. I had been thinking about various bread and roll recipes, even surfing the net looking for ideas, but I couldn’t come up with any recipes that reflected our theme of Harmonious Pairings. Banana nut bread? Too mundane nor would it really go well with the lemon and ginger in the rest of our dishes. Poppy seed rolls? I hate those little seeds getting stuck between my teeth. Potato bread or rolls? We were serving potatoes so it would be a duplication.

A threw out the idea of making bread or rolls and tinting the dough red. Whenever an idea gets tossed into my brain, I’m never quite sure what will come out. In this case, I managed to surprise myself. My brain started screaming “beet bread”. I had never heard of beet bread. But it made sense because beets are red (appropriate for Valentine’s Day) and they are a late season veggie that would normally be eaten in the winter. I started surfing to see if beet bread existed and how to make it.

I found several recipes and realized that my brain, in its efforts to come up with something original, had apparently forgotten the terrible experience of the butternut squash. Beets, like winter squash, are dense and hard. By the time I was finished peeling and cutting theminto chunks or grating them, I would be in too much pain to cut up the potatoes for the rosemary potatoes and the pearl onions for the peas and pearl onions. I tossed the beet bread idea back into my brain and told it to come up with something else.

My brain couldn’t let go of the idea of beet bread. Its next suggestion was beet bread using canned beets instead of fresh beets. I went back to the internet and found several recipes for beet bread using canned beets. I chose the simplest of them. I dislike recipes that have too many ingredients and/or too many steps.

Once I started making the recipe, I realized that it lacked some information. When I was purchasing the beets, I automatically reached for the sliced beets instead of the whole beets. But because they are pureed in a blender (I used my food processor without incident) it really doesn’t matter whether you buy whole or sliced.

The recipe also does not specify what size loaf pan should be used. I panicked briefly when I realized that for some strange reason I have an 8” loaf pan and a 10” loaf pan but no standard 9” loaf pan. In the end it didn’t matter because there was so much dough, the 10” pan was appropriate.

The bread portion of the recipe came together easily and baked up perfectly. The glaze was not as easy. I simmered and simmered but it just wouldn’t thicken. Nor did it really add anything the bread once it was poured over it. Without the glaze, the bread was delicious. It reminded me of pumpkin bread, probably because of the pumpkin pie spice. And it didn’t taste anything like beets. I have to confess that I don’t like beets but I do seem to like beet bread.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!




Beet Bread(source: Recipezaar.com) 

1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
¼ cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 (16 ounce) can canned beets, drained (reserve liquid)
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated orange rind
½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
¼ cup orange juice, not concentrated

Beat sugar, eggs and oil until light and fluffy. Puree beets in blender until smooth. Beat into egg mixture.

Blend flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, ginger and salt. Fold flour mixture and orange rind into batter, mixing well.

Turn batter into a grease and floured loaf pan.

Bake at 350°F for 1 hour.

Glaze: Combine brown sugar, orange juice, and reserved beet juice in saucepan; simmer over low heat until thickened. Pour over while bread is warm. Serve with cream cheese.

Recycle: vegetable oil bottle, orange juice bottle

Compost: leftover orange rind

Chicken Fajitas

I often liken myself to a bear. In the winter, I gain weight and hibernate. I am much less active because I don’t like the cold so winter sports like skiing or ice skating hold no allure for me. Instead, I prefer spending time in my kitchen cooking up a storm. Less active + more cooking equals more weight.

When I was younger, my winter layer of fat was cute but it rapidly disappeared in the spring as I spent more time outdoors and less time cooking. Nowadays, it is much harder to lose that extra fat. Last year, I carried it until August. This year I’m trying to be smarter about what I eat during my winter “hibernation”. Fewer hearty stick to your rib meals and more lighter meals.

Chicken fajitas is a dish that I normally make in the summer. It is very light and quick to prepare. The short cooking time is key in the summer due to the lack of air conditioning in my house. Also key is slicing the chicken, pepper and onion into very thin strips so that they can be comfortably rolled in a tortilla.

The origins of this recipe have been lost in the mists of time. But it has stayed in my cookbook because it has withstood the test of time. Simple and delicious.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!


Chicken Fajitas(source: unknown)

1 ½ lb. chicken breast strips, sliced thinly
1 jar salsa
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 onion, cut into thin strips
12 soft tacos

Brown chicken over medium-high heat until no longer pink. Stir in salsa, lime juice and Worcestershire sauce.

Add pepper and onion; cook and stir 3 to 4 minutes until vegetables are tender-crisp.

Spoon fajita filling onto tortillas. Top with additional salsa if desired. Roll up to serve.

Makes 12 fajitas

Recycle: salsa jar, Worcestershire sauce bottle

Compost: pepper veins and seeds, onion skins

Brickle Bundt Cake

I try to bake every weekend, but A’s Orange-scented Bittersweet Chocolate Cake was a hard act to follow. Time to try something completely different. I dived into my collection of toffee bits collection and came up with a Brickle Bundt Cake. I liked that it used sour cream. My experience has been that cakes made with sour cream are very moist. There is nothing worse than a dry cake.

I didn’t use the walnuts as called for in the recipe because I am not fond of nuts in my cakes. But I have to admit that the nuts would have definitely added flavor and texture to the toffee bits.

The batter came out very thick and stiff. I was unable to spoon the batter into the pan in thirds. The best that I could do was to put half in the pan, sprinkle the toffee mixture over it and then add the other half. I sprinkled the remaining toffee mixture over the top and hoped for the best, i.e. that it wouldn’t burn in the oven. Not to worry, the cake batter baked over it.

Another challenge was getting the cake out of the pan. No matter how well you grease and flour a pan, melting sugar is going to fuse to it. The toffee mixture that I so carefully sprinkled in the batter, oozed out of it and stuck like glue, making it next to impossible to get the cake out of the pan in one piece.

The glaze had a weird taste to it. I’m chalking it up to the powdered sugar that I used. It’s leftover from the Christmas cookies and may have picked up some odors in the interim.

When all was said and done, this cake was very bland. Walnuts in the toffee mixture would have given it a little flavor but not enough to make a real difference. This was a huge disappointment.

Verdict: Too bland – I won’t be making this again

Brickle Bundt Cake(source: Hersheys.com )

1 1/3 cups (8-oz. pkg.) toffee bits, divided
1 ¼ cups sugar, divided
¼ cup chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 container (8 oz.) dairy sour cream
¼ cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
Powdered Sugar Glaze (recipe follows)

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour 12-cup fluted tube pan or 10-inch tube pan. Set aside ¼ cup toffee bits for topping. Combine remaining toffee bits, ¼ cup sugar, walnuts and cinnamon; set aside.

Beat remaining 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Stir together four, baking powder, baking soda and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, alternately with sour cream, beating until blended. Beat 3 minutes. Spoon one-third of the batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with half of toffee mixture. Spoon half of remaining batter into pan. Top with remaining toffee mixture. Spoon remaining batter into pan. Pour melted butter over batter.

Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely.
Prepare glaze; drizzle over cake. Sprinkle remaining ¼ cup toffee bits over top.

12 to 14 servings.

Powdered Sugar Glaze: Combine 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon milk and ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract. Add additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time, until of drizzling consistency.

About ½ cup glaze

Recycle: vanilla extract bottle, sour cream container, milk bottle

Compost: egg shells

Peas and Pearl Onions

Since the theme of our Valentine’s Day dinner was “Harmonious Pairings”, peas and pearl onions immediately came to mind. It’s a classic pairing and one that I have never made before. Naturally, I turned to Marth Stewart who featured a recipe made with red pearl onions. Perfect for Valentine’s Day! I love Martha’s recipes. They almost always work, as well as tasting delicious. But I’m discovering that there is a glaring weakness in most of them: directions.

Martha assumes a certain amount of knowledge on her readers’ part, knowledge that I don’t have. I have never taken a cooking class other than two brief semesters in junior high school*.  That’s why I have always loved Betty Crocker. Her cookbooks include tutorials with photos.**  Martha does have video tutorials on her website but they are usually illustrating advanced techniques.

I am in need of more basic stuff. Like a paragraph on peas. She calls for frozen petite green peas. There were none in my grocer's frozen food case. There were peas and baby peas. Recalling my high school French, "petite" means small and baby peas are smaller than fully grown peas, so I went with the baby peas.

Or how about telling me that I should have cut off the tops of the onions before cooking them. Because once they were cooked, I discovered that it was next to impossible to cut the tops off of them. They mooshed, they split apart, they went flying across the counter, they did everything except exhibit a nice clean cut like in the photo on Martha’s website.

I made one glaring error that I can’t blame on Martha. I was supposed to have ½ cup of small fresh mint leaves which sounded delicious. But I was very busy that week and didn’t have time to get to the store where I buy fresh mint. I figured I could substitute. Very. Bad. Idea. My idea was to add a touch of mint flavor using extract. I didn’t have any mint or spearmint extract, only the peppermint extract left over from the Peppermint Bark. I think I overdid it because the dish tasted like candy canes rather than a refreshing vegetable dish. A was polite enough not to complain.

*Middle school hadn’t been invented yet. When I was young, schools were divided into elementary (k-6), junior high (grades 7 & 8) and high school (grades 9 – 12).

**The internet hadn’t been invented yet. There were no videos. Only reels of hilarious home movies, a few of which I fervently pray will never turn up on Youtube. At least not until after I am dead and buried.

Verdict: Needs a do-over with real mint




Peas and Pearl Onions(source: Marthastewart.com) 

10 ounces red pearl onions
Coarse salt
½ ounce (1 tablespoon) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons water
2 packages (10 ounces each) frozen petite green peas
½ cup small fresh mint leaves

Cut an X in stem end of each onion. Cook in salted boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain, and peel.

Heat butter and water in a pan over medium-high heat. Add onions, and cook for 4 minutes. Stir in peas and ¾ teaspoon salt, and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in mint. Serve immediately.

Serves 8 to 10.

Compost: onion skins, mint stems

Spicy Orange Chicken

Would you believe that it is a few days since Valentine’s Day and already I’m chocolated out? I am in dire need of relief from sweets. A blast of citrus seemed the answer. I’m not normally a big fan of citrus. I have never eaten an entire orange. A few sections full of strings and seeds was enough to turn me off. I drink orange juice, though. Ditto lemons. I don’t care for lemon on my seafood but I love lemonade in the summer.

This recipe made me pause. At first glance, I couldn’t reconcile chicken and orange flavors. But when I took a closer look, I realized that the orange was just a component of the Asian seasonings. I needed an antidote for sweets that was also low fat and low calorie. Spicy Orange Chicken filled the bill nicely.

I love that all of the ingredients are fresh. The recipe calls for two oranges rather than orange extract or orange juice. The spinach is loaded with nutrients like iron and calcium. I have to admit that I skipped the spinach and served this on rice. I’ll also confess to using dried ginger rather than fresh. I didn’t have any fresh ginger on hand.

Lucky for me, oranges were on sale and I bought an entire bag of them. I don’t know if the ones I bought were particularly small or the arthritis in my hands robbed me of the strength to properly squeeze them, but I used two oranges, rather than the one called for in the recipe, to come up with ⅓ cup of juice.

Despite the fact that the directions seem long and complicated, this was a fast and easy dish to prepare. The tangy citrus flavor was exactly what I needed to counterbalance all of the chocolate I have been consuming. I liked this so much, in fact, that I want to try the sauce in a stir fry. I bet it would be excellent.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!

Spicy Orange Chicken(source: BHG.com)

2 oranges
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 10-ounce packages baby spinach
1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
½ teaspoon cornstarch
⅛ to ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast strips
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced

Remove peel and white membrane from 1 of the oranges. Section orange; set aside. Squeeze enough juice from the remaining orange to measure ⅓ cup; set aside. In a 4-quart Dutch oven, heat 1 teaspoon of the oil over medium heat. Add spinach; cover and cook for 4 to 5 minutes or just until slightly wilted, stirring occasionally. Drain and transfer to 4 serving dishes or a serving platter. Cover and keep warm.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the ⅓ cup orange juice, the soy sauce, honey, ginger, cornstarch, and crushed red pepper. Set aside.

Sprinkle chicken with salt and black pepper. Wipe out Dutch oven with a paper towel. In Dutch oven, heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic; cook and stir for 30 seconds. Add chicken; cook and stir for 2 to 3 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink. Stir orange juice mixture; add to chicken in Dutch oven. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 1 minute more.

To serve, arrange orange sections on top of spinach. Spoon chicken mixture over oranges and spinach. Makes 4 servings.

Recycle: cooking oil bottle, soy sauce bottle

Compost: orange peels, garlic skins

Roasted New Potatoes

While researching recipes for our Harmonious Pairings dinner, A came across a blog, Simply Recipes with fantastic food photos. She sent the link to me because food photography is not one of my fortes.

While I was admiring the photography, I also checked out the recipes. This one caught my eye. Potatoes roasted with a little olive oil and some herbs sounded better and healthier than French fries. And because it can be made with either red or yellow potatoes, it was perfect for our Valentine’s Day dinner.

I used red potatoes, of course, and substituted dried rosemary for the fresh which is quite pricey. I haven’t succeeded in keeping a rosemary plant alive year round yet.

This recipe was simple to make and tasted delicious. And it was perfect for our dinner because rosemary and potatoes are a harmonious pairing.

Verdict: Yum!! This one’s a keeper!!


Roasted New Potatoes(source: Simply Recipes)

1 ½ lb of new potatoes (red or yellow skinned), cleaned, cut in half or quarters
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 teaspoons fresh rosemary
¼ teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450°F. Place potatoes in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle on salt and pepper. Add olive oil, rosemary, and garlic. Toss until potatoes are well coated.

Spread potatoes out on a single layer of a baking pan. Roast for 40 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through and browned. Serve immediately.

Serves 4-6

Recycle: olive oil bottle

Compost: garlic skins

Valentine’s Day at The Wooden Spoon

Carrot with Ginger Soup

Lemon-Ginger Chicken

Roasted New Potatoes with Rosemary

Peas and Pearl Onions

Beet Bread

Orange-scented Bittersweet Chocolate Cake

We thought that our Honey themed Valentine’s dinner was going to be a hard act to follow but thanks to a colleague of A, BioBabe, who suggested a theme of “Harmonious Pairings” honoring traditional Valentine’s Day couples, we had a wide range of recipes to choose from. For each dish, we looked for a recipe with a “pair” of ingredients. We also made sure to have some holiday red with red potatoes, red pearl onions, beet bread an, thanks to A’s ingenious use of purple carrots, even the soup was a dark pink.

I think it’s safe to say that this year’s dinner easily surpasses our first menu. Thanks BioBabe!

Buche de Noel 2

When OldRoses suggested we each do a Buche de Noel for the holiday party, I admit I had mixed feelings. I liked the idea of trying to make one, but I know they’re fairly time-consuming to make, and the party was in early December, which is the busiest time of year for me.

Oldroses told me around Thanksgiving that she had selected a coffee-flavored recipe, and suggested I do a plain one. A few days later, I went online to do some recipe research. Google “Buche de Noel” and you’ll get a ton of hits. I came across a recipe for an orange-flavored one. I liked that idea, knowing that orange and chocolate can be a great combination. Eventually I found a recipe I liked and printed it out.

After rereading the recipe for the cake, I turned my attention to the recipe underneath it, for the frosting. It was for a buttercream frosting, the type of buttercream that involves beating egg whites, then adding in a warm sugar syrup and other ingredients. The thing is, the egg whites don’t ever get cooked (unless the sugar syrup is hot enough?). This made me kinda nervous. This Buche was going to be sitting out for a couple of hours at least, and I didn’t want to risk poisoning my fellow gardeners. They might not give me my plot back next year. Besides, this particular recipe called for 7 egg whites and over 3 cups (1 ½ lbs!) of butter. AAAIIIIEEEE! So I went back online and did some more research. But every recipe I looked at used either a buttercream similar to this one, or a whipped cream-based frosting, which to me just didn’t sound right, flavor-wise. Finally I gave up and went to bed in despair.

Sometimes a good night’s sleep helps. The next morning I woke up and thought, hey, what about that chocolate cake frosting? The ganache with a pound of chocolate in it? Yeahhhh…..That recipe does include cream, but at least you heat the cream at the beginning of the process.

Since this is, after all, a French dish, I also consulted my two Julia Child cookbooks. “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” doesn’t include a Buche recipe, but “The French Chef Cookbook”, which is based on her first TV series, does. She also uses a buttercream frosting, but for the cake she suggests two or three possibilities, including an orange-almond sponge cake. This sounded even better to me than the orange cake I’d previously found. Also, she gives very detailed instructions.

Many recipes tell you to roll the cake up and let it cool, then unroll and frost it. Julia, however, recommends frosting the cake at once, because if you’ve overbaked it, you might not be able to unroll it again. This sounded prudent to me. Thus, operations were spread over three evenings.

Day 1: make the frosting, so that the cake could be frosted as soon as it was done. The frosting is actually pretty quick and easy to make. I probably could have made it while the cake was cooling. (This would also have avoided the problem I ran into the next day; see below.) Oh, and I didn’t use fancy high-priced chocolate. I just used ordinary chocolate chips. One pound is 2 2/3 cups. And you don’t really need a whisk; a spoon works just fine. When the frosting was finished, I set it, saucepan and all, in the refrigerator overnight.

Day 2: make and frost the cake.

Julia gives detailed directions for buttering and flouring the pan. I used parchment paper instead of waxed, and cooking spray instead of melted butter. Worked just fine.

The pan, by the way, is supposed to be a jelly roll pan, which is 11 x 17 x 1”. Fortunately, I do own such a pan. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit inside my oven. My range is so small that when the pan is in the oven, the door is open a couple inches. But the alternative would have been to cart everything over to a friend’s house, and with a fragile cake like this, that didn’t seem like such a good idea. So I made the cake at home, and compensated by rotating the pan halfway through the baking time.

The cake itself went together just fine. I’ve baked sponge cakes before so I wasn’t too worried about that part. Julia uses a large whip to mix the yolks etc.; a mixer also works. I should comment on the almonds, though. I used finely ground ones that a friend sent me from Germany, where they’re a pretty standard grocery item. They’re more finely ground than a nut topping, but not as fine as a flour. It might be possible to duplicate this using a food processor. Julia suggests a blender or meat grinder; I don’t think food processors existed yet when that book was written.

The trouble began once the cake was in the oven. Julia says to be careful not to overbake it, otherwise it’ll crack when you try to roll it. I left it in the oven a minute or two over the 10 suggested, and it did spring back when I touched it, and it was starting to brown around the edges, but it was so soft I’m wondering whether it was a little underdone. I’ve had my doubts lately about my oven’s thermostat, plus the door was a bit open.

Next, Julia says to sprinkle a thin layer of powdered sugar over the top of the cake. She does say that the powdered sugar should be in a sieve, but that part is in the list of ingredients, which in my cookbook is on the page before that part of the cooking instructions. (I’ve rewritten her recipe below to rearrange the several instructions that were in the list of ingredients.) As a result, I didn’t sift the powdered sugar first, and there were hard lumps of sugar that stuck to the surface of the cake. I was able to pick some of them off, but some of them got embedded in the cake, and would have made holes if I’d pulled them out, so I left them. Also, this made the surface of the cake sticky. I’m wondering whether flour would have been better than sugar. I have read somewhere the suggestion to use powdered sugar rather than flour when rolling out cookies because the sugar won’t make them tough like too much flour will; maybe that’s why Julia suggests sugar.

While the cake was cooling, I pulled the saucepan of frosting out of the refrigerator. It was stiff. About the consistency of fudge, in fact. Way too stiff to apply. It was in a metal saucepan, so I couldn’t microwave it. So, I just set the whole pan in the still-warm oven for about 15 minutes, stirring it frequently, until it got soft enough to spread over the top of the cake without tearing it up. Oh, by the way, the frosting recipe as written does make enough to fill and frost the cake. I was concerned about that, so I kept the filling layer rather thin. I should have used about 2/3 of the frosting as filling and saved only about 1/3 to frost the outside.

Rolling up the cake turned out to be not a problem. The cake did crack a bit toward the end, but the frosting covers that. After carefully moving the log to a serving platter covered with wedges of waxed paper, I applied the remaining frosting over the top and sides of the log, then pulled a fork over the frosting, using short strokes. Then I pulled out the wedges of waxed paper. This is a trick Julia mentions elsewhere, and that I’d learned years ago to keep your serving plate clean. Then I put the whole thing in the refrigerator and made myself a cup of tea.

Day 3: decorations. Often you see these decorated with marzipan or meringue mushrooms that look like the ordinary white culinary mushrooms. But those mushrooms don’t grow on trees. Unless it’s a fallen log, maybe, and would you burn a log that was that rotted? No, the mushrooms I’ve seen on trees are shelf fungi. (Also lichens, but I couldn’t think of a way to make those…) It so happens there’s a tree stump just down the street from where I live that has a nice growth of these, so I was able to get a good look at some.

I decided to try making an ivy vine curling up the log. The mention somewhere of marzipan mushrooms gave me the idea of making it out of marzipan. So I bought a can, and colored part of it green by kneading in a couple drops of green food coloring. Rolling a thin rope for the vine was easy; shaping the leaves was harder. I ended up printing out images of ivy leaves, then cutting them out and using them to cut leaves from a thin layer of the green marzipan. (I believe it’s possible to purchase little ivy-leaf-shaped cutters if you really want to get into this.) I then added a few shelf fungi - simple half-circles of plain marzipan.

And the result? The flavors of the chocolate frosting and the orange cake went very well together. The orange was strong enough to balance all that chocolate. But there was a bit of a problem with texture. The frosting, as I noted, is very dense and heavy, especially when cold, but the cake is light and fragile. So when you cut into it, the cake gets smooshed. Maybe that’s why all those other recipes use a whipped cream filling. Duh! So I would recommend finding something lighter for the filling. For frosting the outside, you could use what I used, or something lighter, but you can get away with a strong chocolate flavor. Or give up on the chocolate altogether and let the orange be the predominant flavor.

Verdict: Has potential, but needs a little tweaking.

Bûche de Noël

Orange-Almond Sponge Sheet

(source: The French Chef Cookbook)

3 tbsp butter

¾ cup ground (see below) blanched almonds

3 eggs

rind of 1 orange

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup strained orange juice

¼ tsp almond extract

¾ cup sifted plain bleached cake flour

Scant ¼ tsp cream of tartar

Pinch of salt

1 tbsp granulated sugar

Powdered sugar

Melt the butter and let cool to tepid. Reserve 1½ tbsp for the cake. Paint the inside of a jelly roll pan (11” x 17” x 1”) with some of the rest of the melted butter. Line with a 12 x 21-inch piece of waxed paper, letting ends extend beyond edges of pan. Butter the paper, roll flour over it, covering entire inside surface, and knock out excess flour.

Grind the almonds in a blender, or put them through a meat grinder with part of the 2/3 cup sugar.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Separate the eggs; place the yolks in a large mixing bowl, and the whites in a clean, dry smaller bowl. Be sure that there is no speck of yolk in with the whites. Grate the orange rind into the bowl with the yolks. Using a large wire whip, gradually beat in the 2/3 cup sugar. Beat vigorously for a minute or two until the mixture is thick and pale yellow. Beat in the orange juice, then the ground almonds, almond extract, and flour.

Beat the egg whites for a moment at moderate speed; when they begin to foam, add the cream of tartar and salt. Beat at top speed until egg whites form soft peaks, sprinkle in the 1 tbsp sugar and beat a few seconds more until egg whites form stiff peaks when lifted with a spoon or spatula.

Scoop the egg whites over the yolk mixture. Rapidly and delicately fold together, using a rubber spatula; when almost blended, rapidly fold in the melted butter ½ tbsp at a time. Immediately turn the batter into your prepared pan, smoothing over the entire surface. Bang pan briefly on table, to even the mixture, and set in middle level of preheated oven.

Bake for about 10 minutes. Cake is done when barely starting to color, when top is lightly springy or spongy if pressed with fingers, and when the faintest line of separation shows between cake and sides of pan. Do not overcook, or cake will break when rolled; it must be soft and spongy.

Remove from oven and sprinkle top of cake with a 1/16 inch layer of powdered sugar in a sieve. Cover with a sheet of waxed paper. Rinse a towel in cold water, wring it out, and lay over the waxed paper. Turn cake upside down and let cool for 20 minutes.

To unmold, loosen paper lining at one end of pan. Holding paper flat on table, gradually lift off pan, starting at the loose-paper end. Carefully dislodge paper from long sides of cake, then peel it off the top. Trim brown edges all around cake; they will crack when rolled. The cake is now ready for filling, which should be done immediately.

It is usually safest to fill and roll the cake promptly. But if you have not overbaked it, you can risk storing it as follows: sprinkle with powdered sugar, cover with waxed paper, roll up in the damp towel, and refrigerate in a plastic bag. The risk is that the cake may dry out, lose its sponginess, and then be unrollable.

Chocolate Ganache Frosting

(source: www.epicurious.com, from their Double Chocolate Layer Cake recipe)

1 pound fine-quality semisweet chocolate such as Callebaut

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Finely chop chocolate. In a 1 1/2- to 2-quart saucepan bring cream, sugar, and corn syrup to a boil over moderately low heat, whisking until sugar is dissolved. Remove pan from heat and add chocolate, whisking until chocolate is melted. Cut butter into pieces and add to frosting, whisking until smooth.

Transfer frosting to a bowl and cool, stirring occasionally, until spreadable (depending on chocolate used, it may be necessary to chill frosting to spreadable consistency).


Recycle: almond extract bottle, corn syrup bottle


Compost: eggshells