Tag Archives: recipes

t2

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Do you ever “T2” during Thanksgiving weekend? I do.

T2 is basically a second Thanksgiving dinner. I do this when friends and family have been scattered to the four winds for the actual Thanksgiving holiday. If I have a free turkey to use, and I’m not cooking the actual holiday dinner, I like to do another dinner at some point in the weekend basically so I can have Thanksgiving leftovers.

I am pretty much a traditionalist when it comes to a Thanksgiving -type meal. I make my own cranberry sauce, it takes so little time. I also make my own herbed stuffing cubes. I know it sounds anal, but I don’t like all the sodium and additives in the seasoned stuffing mix that you can buy in the grocery store.

Basically you preheat the oven to 400°. You take a loaf of inexpensive potato bread, whole wheat bread, or plain old white bread and chop it up into about 1 inch cubes. It’s not an exact science you know what you like when you do it. I like potato bread for stuffing the best unless I make a baker’s sheet pan of cornbread for stuffing.

I put a piece of parchment paper on the bottom of a baker’s sheet pan. This pan is one of those ones that looks like basically a cookie sheet with a lip, and it is aluminum and heavy. I put the cubes on top of the parchment paper and give them a quick spritz with canola oil cooking spray. I do not soak them. Then I sprinkle whatever herbs and garlic powder I am going to use for my stuffing. Generally speaking I use savory herbs: rosemary, sage, thyme and so on. I might even throw a couple dashes of sweet paprika in.

Next turn off the oven. Yes, you heard me correctly, turn it off. Throw the cubed bread and with the herbs on top in the heated oven and literally ignore it for a few hours. Once everything has dried out and gone cold in a closed oven, I throw it into a Ziploc bag. I do this a day ahead of time.

T2 also gets a pie. This year it’s my pumpkin pie, with a praline surprise in the bottom. All it is is a piecrust unbaked in a deep dish pie dish. I like the vintage Pyrex ones that I can get at church sales, tag sales, thrift shops.

The pie filling is basically the recipe on the small can of Libby unsweetened pumpkin, but I add one more egg. They call for two I use three.

The “praline” aspect is simple: the day before I make my pie I take a couple tablespoons of butter and throw it in an 8 inch sauté pan. To that I throw a small handful of pecans and walnuts. They can be halves or they can be chopped. Your choice but I like the halves. To that I had a small handful of raisins. I used green raisins I got from the Indian grocery store this time. They’re great in curries and even better in pies. I add cinnamon, fresh ginger, cardamom, and a few tablespoons of turbinado sugar. I cook everything up until the point the sugar and butter caramelized together. Then I turn off the heat. Once everything has cooled off a bit, I spoon the stuff into a storage container and allow it to cool completely before putting the container lid on. Incidentally this is another thing I do the day before. The pie filling however, I do the morning I bake.

This morning, I whipped up the pie filling, did my piecrust and lined my pie plate with the crust. Before I poured the pie pumpkin mixture into the pie shell.

The bottom of the pie shell I then lined with my nutty praline mixture I made yesterday. I baked my pie at 425° the first 15 minutes, then reduced it to 350° for almost an hour today. When you add things like nuts or extra things to the pumpkin mixture, it takes more time. But you keep an ion it because you don’t want to burn your pie or overcook it.

The picture that opens this post, is my actual pie that I will be serving for dinner this evening.

The stuffing for the turkey will have baby Portabella mushrooms, onions, celery and other good things. Even a few crumpled strips of cooked bacon.

I will serve a hardy green salad that has a mixture of Romain, arugula, spinach, baby kale, and other greens. I will also do whipped sweet potatoes made with carrots and maple syrup. To the sweet potatoes I will add a dash of pepper flakes to give it a little heat. I will also serve on the side a small dish of the pickled beets I put up earlier this fall.

Early on the morning I am cooking the turkey, after my pie in the oven, I chop up the onion and celery and whatever needs to going to my stuffing cover the bowl with saran wrap and toss it in the refrigerator. It saves if you do a little prep time ahead of time.

When my guests arrive late this afternoon , I will serve them and assorted cheese platter of cheeses from Yellow Springs Farm. Because Catherine Renzi’s cheeses are goat milk-based, a lot of people will put out something like a fig preserve to have with the cheese. It’s that whole sweet and savory thing. I however, have decided to be different, and I will be serving my cheese with a tiny ramekin of apple butter on the side to use instead of sick preserves. It’s the apple butter I made a few weeks ago.

I set my table with real linens. All the linens I have, I have scored from church sales, flea markets, thrift shops, and eBay. You can get that Rich holiday feel without breaking the bank. And it is so worth it to use a good tablecloth. And quite frankly the vintage ones have more depth and substance to the fabric that a lot of the modern ones.

Except for the china plates my Great Aunt Josie left for me, everything that is on my table has been sourced from places like thrift shops, the Smithfield Barn, church sales, estate sales, and flea markets.

The actual turkey platter, is one of those metal ones created by several companies including Lenox that I scored for $30 last year at Frazer antiques.

All you have to do is look in magazines and online and on HGTV to get ideas on how to set a holiday table. Truly, it is not rocket science, and even with kids you can do this. And even with kids, you can set the table with nice glasses and plates. My mother did it with my sister and I, and I think she was spot on with giving kids a special feel for holiday meals and not sticking them with plastic utensils and plates and cups.

Okay, I have a bunch of things to do in the kitchen for T2 so you all enjoy your Sundays. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Remember, the Smithfield barn is open this afternoon for a few more hours if you were looking for some holiday bargains.

tales of pre-thanksgiving grocery shopping

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Beware! If you go to the grocery store after today, be prepared to take your life in your hands! Yes people, it has arrived: the Thanksgiving food shopping frenzy.

This afternoon I am giving thanks that I am pretty much finished.

I went to my regular market, the giant Giant on Boot Road in West Chester. The parking lot was not so delightful. There were a lot of people not looking driving every which way. But that’s normal for that lot.

At first when I got inside, the store was relatively sane and only moderately crowded. I had a random conversation in the frozen foods with a very cute older lady who had recently celebrated her 88th birthday. God bless her, I hope I look that fabulous when I’m that age. We were talking about how nobody really does homemade much of anything anymore when it comes to sauces. We were standing in front of some bad Progresso sauces that had been reduced and stuffed in a last chance bin. We had both the stopped to look to see what was in the reduced bin.

Then I wandered up and down the aisles, artfully dodging the carts of other people. There were a lot of cart gliders who would wander at an aimless snail’s pace. Then they would simply stop and block the entire aisle, completely oblivious to anyone else around them.

I almost had a few near ankle experiences – as in people on their cell phones going up and down the grocery store aisles who nearly ran me over. I am always amused when this happens, because inevitably they give you a dirty look like you have some nerve to actually be shopping while they are trying to have their crucially important personal cell phone conversations quite loudly in the grocery store. Some of these conversations people have on their cell phones in public are simply astounding. I use my phone in the grocery store only because I put a memo on my phone with my grocery list. I can talk to my friends and family when I get home.

I had one of those totally funny crack yourself up conversations with one of the butchers while I was choosing a turkey in the meat aisle. The butchers at the store are very nice.

Basically, I was looking for a smaller turkey, and this butcher kept trying to sell me the turkey that needed its own apartment on Thanksgiving. Which just struck me as very funny. Had a vision of myself needing a truss to get in and out of the oven.

When I got to the produce section, is when I found the store somewhat irritating. A lot of things were not as fresh as they could be. For example is it THAT hard to take the rotten apples out of the apple bins and they were misting all the vegetables so much that they were all kind of soggy. But I was able to pick through and get some of the things that I needed that I did not already have. You know like celery hearts and onions and yams.

I ended up with a red yams because they didn’t have any sweet potatoes that weren’t overpriced and individually wrapped in shrink wrap plastic to go into the microwave.

There was this older crabby skinny man doing produce I have never seen before in this grocery store. He was sort of like the Soup Nazi of the produce aisle. Some nice woman asked him for sweet onions. He mumbled “something something I don’t know. ”

So I piped up and said you have two choices: the soft ones that are available individually in the bin against the wall or the mesh bags of them stacked below.

Oh boy if looks could kill.

So I said to Mr. produce aisle/soup Nazi “go check those onions yourself. They are soft and should be thrown away.”

And that’s the truth. It is something that really bugs me about Giant. They do not throw away vegetables that aren’t supposed to be soft when they get soft. They do the same thing with Daikon radishes and fresh red beets.

Then this woman next to me also picking out red yams turns to me and says “I making these for the first time in years. Someone else always used to make the sweet potatoes or yams. How do you cook them?”

So I stood there for like 20 minutes and told this woman all the different ways that she could cook yams or sweet potatoes before mashing them and basically putting them in a casserole that would warm in the oven. It was a really pleasant conversation, and she was a super nice lady.

But unfortunately for us, we had the produce aisle guy and other people annoyed that we are actually standing there having a conversation. And no, we weren’t blocking the aisles.

I guess I just don’t understand why it is okay for people to have loud cell phone conversations in the middle of aisles of the grocery store, but it’s not okay for two women to stand in the produce department and discuss cooking techniques.

I know all of this is just because Thanksgiving is this week and everyone is in a frenzy. But what does it hurt any of us to try to be nicer or more pleasant to one another in public spaces like this? Especially when we are all preparing for the same holiday.

None of us are so busy that we shouldn’t be able to stop what we’re doing for a couple of minutes and exchange pleasantries. It doesn’t all have to be via Facebook, Twitter, text or cell phone conversation. I’m sorry but there’s something very true and real about being able to have a conversation. An actual conversation.

And since it is the season of giving, something occurred to me: many of us will not use our holiday free turkey coupons at our local grocery stores. So that being said, local food banks are in need. And if you can drop off anything in time for them to deliver to needy families for holidays, please consider it. And that includes the free holiday turkeys we get from the grocery stores as a shopping reward.

Check with your local churches as to where the food banks are located in case you don’t know.

As Thanksgiving draws near, I am grateful for the many blessings in my life. And I am thankful that I have such an amazing readership on this blog. And as I am not sure if I will blog again between now and Thanksgiving day, I wanted to take this time now to wish all of you a very happy Thanksgiving!

mmmm mexican food at home!

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My Chicken Enchiladas:

Two full boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into small chunks.

(Two full boneless breasts weigh about a pound – I buy the family packs at the grocery store and plunk them two at a time in quart freezer bags)

Goya Tomato Sofrito

El Pato Mexican hot style tomato sauce (7 3/4 oz can)

La Morena sliced red jalapeños in Morena sauce (7 oz can)

Can of refried beans- either red pinto or black beans

Soft fajita sized white flour tortillas

Crema Mexicano ( Mexican sour cream)

One bunch fresh cilantro

One lime

Goya adobo spice mix

New Mexico Style Chili Powder

Smoked Spanish paprika

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano

Shredded Quesos La Ricura

La Costena Taquiera Salsa Hot

La Costena Green Mexican Salsa Verde

One Vidalia or sweet onion cut into thin slices, then cut slices in half

Olive oil

Cut the raw chicken into small chunks. Place in a large sauté pan that has had some olive oil in the bottom warming. Just a few tablespoons of olive oil. Dust the chicken with Goya Adobo seasoning to taste, a few dashes of garlic powder, a few dashes of oregano, and about a teaspoon and a half of smoked paprika.

Add in your onion slices and about a third of a cup of Goya Tomato Softito. Add a couple of dashes of New Mexico style chili powder. (you can order that from Whole Spice in California on Amazon).

Cook the onion and chicken down on a medium to low heat until you can basically shred the chicken and the onion is starting to almost dissolve it’s so soft. Turn off the heat and to that at the zest of one lime and the juice of one lime and as much fresh chopped cilantro as you want. Adjust with salt and pepper if needed.

Set aside and let the flavors meld together for about 45 minutes on the stove with no heat under it.

Heat up your can of refried beans over low heat in a small sauce pan with a little of olive oil in the bottom to keep the beans from sticking. To the beans add a little dash of the Goya Adobo Seasoning (I buy the real Mexican refried beans from my local Latino market), and add about 1/3 of a can of the pickled red jalapeños mentioned in the ingredients minced up and the Morena sauce it came in. Stir it up well, add a little fresh cilantro, and once the beans are heated through turn the stove off under this pot as well.

Go do something else for 45 minutes total for both. Set the table, clean up your prep with the chicken, empty the dishwasher, whatever.

After you have let the sauté pan and the sauce pan and the various contents set, come back to your kitchen and preheat your oven to 345°.

Line a baking pan that you would use for a sheet cake or brownies with aluminum foil. The pan I use is actually a vintage aluminum rectangular pan came from the kitchen supply house.

Take out six flour tortillas and one at a time first on the bottom of the tortilla layer refried bean mixture, and then put the chicken and onion mixture on top of that. Add a little shredded queso and roll your tortilla into a tube.

Repeat this six times. I made six enchiladas from this recipe.

When you have the tortillas now enchiladas with all their stuffing rolled up like little tubes and lined up next to each other in the foil lined pan like neat little soldiers you’re almost ready to put in the oven.

Take your can of spicy Mexican tomato sauce and pour evenly over your enchiladas. Generously layer shredded Queso to taste over the sauce and enchiladas. Cover your pan tightly with aluminum foil and put in your preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Everything is already cooked, so it truly just needs to heat through and melt. But you must do this with a pan that is covered with aluminum foil or the enchiladas will dry out.

When you bring them out of the oven let them sit for a couple of minutes before you take the foil top off.

Serve the enchiladas with Mexican sour cream,chopped fresh cilantro, a salsa Verde, and a spicy red salsa. I suggest the brand I list above specifically in the ingredients.

There are no leftovers when I make this. Ever.

And FYI if you are in Chester County and reading this recipe, I use the little Mexican market at the bottom of where Route 352 meets Route 30 in Frazer. They have a small Taquiera attached called El Jalapeño .

This little market has several kinds of Latin American sour cream, Quesos and so on. They basically so all the supplies the grocery store should if you want to do a Latin inspired meal but don’t.

I was told I had to write down this recipe, so I have. It is something that started in my head as I scanned the shelves of this little market. I also do this with leftover pork roast instead of chicken.

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yes really…fruitcake

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Anyone who mocks fruitcake has only had the kind that comes out of the catalog and can be put in a time capsule and be consumed 50 years in the future. That is the kind of fruitcake that is just basically like a sweet, sticky block of concrete.

I make white fruitcake. I saw somewhere once and then couldn’t find it again, where it was referred to as “grooms cake”. It’s made with good brandy or whiskey and it actually tastes good.

If you’re going to make any fruitcake, pick a day where you’re not going anywhere. Why? Simple, baking fruitcake is a multi hour, multiple bowl, slightly kitchen destroying process. I remember my mother baking late into the evenings during the holiday season to get her fruitcakes made. She made dark fruitcake.

I like to make my fruitcake ahead of time because the last step before putting it away in the refrigerator for Christmas is wrapping the fruitcake first in cheesecloth soaked in brandy.

The basis for my fruitcake recipe can be found in a 1959 edition of the Better Homes & Gardens Holiday Cookbook. But I have adjusted the recipe over the years and tweaked it a little.

Before I get into it, I order my candied fruit this year from a company called nuts.com. Used to buy only from Edwards Freeman in Conshohocken, but the quality and prices even with shipping are better at nuts.com. You can buy the candied fruit mixture, or individual candied fruits in the supermarket, but they are much more expensive.

Okay ready or not here’s the recipe:

4 cups of mixed diced candied fruits and peels for fruitcake (whole red cherries, diced orange peel, diced citron, diced lemon peel, chopped pineapple)

1/2 cup of chopped dates
3/4 cup chopped dried figs
1 1/3 cup white raisins
2 cups flake coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup chopped pecans
****
2 cups sifted white all purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Small dash of green cardamom, mace, powdered ginger, cinnamon
****
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons brandy
1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
5 eggs

Whole red candied cherries and pecan halves for decorating before placing in oven.

In a bowl mix fruits and peels, dates, figs, raisins, and coconut. Add pecans and walnuts.

In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and almond flour.

Take exactly 1/2 cup of the dry flour mixture and sprinkle over the candied fruit and nuts mixture and stir well.

Get a third bowl, and cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, and then add the 2 tablespoons of brandy.

Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar mixture, and then mix in the pineapple juice. Blend on low until everything is blended well into a batter.

Combine the batter and the dried fruits and nuts dusted in the flour mixture together and stir gently until well blended. Personally, I do this in yet another large mixing bowl. Actually I do this in my largest mixing bowl.

I take two 8 1/2 inch x 4 1/2 inch x 2 1/2 inch loaf pans and grease them with unsalted butter. I then line pans on all sides with parchment paper, allowing 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch to stick up above the top of the pan.

I pour the fruit cake batter with all ingredients in it equally between the two pans.

On the top of the batter in each pan arrange to your specifications enough whole candied cherries and pecans to make an attractive pattern on top. I do mine in rows so they almost look like popcorn and cranberry garland for lack of a better description.

Turn the oven onto 275°F. This is not a recipe where you preheat the oven basically the entire time you’re mixing the batter. I only turn the oven on about five minutes before the fruitcakes go into it to bake.

Take a rectangular baking pan and fill it with 2 to 3 cups of hot water. Place that on the bottom shelf of the oven. This causes the cake to have better volume, better texture, and a shiny glaze.

Place your fruitcakes in the oven on the shelf above the pan with hot water. Please note you’re not placing the baking pans in the pan with hot water. That is a different process.

Bake fruitcakes in the 275° oven for 2 1/2 hours or until done. Please note dark fruitcake takes longer to bake, more like 3 to 3 1/2 hours

When the fruitcakes come out of the oven cool them for a while in their pans on racks on your countertop. Lift them gently out of the pans with the paper – the parchment paper makes handy handles.

Wrap the slightly warm fruitcakes in cheesecloth soaked in brandy. Then tightly wrap in plastic wrap. Don’t be afraid to use a couple layers. Finally wrap each fruitcake in heavy duty aluminum foil. You can put these in the refrigerator and forget about them until Christmas. I generally do my fruitcakes about now, and some years I open them up halfway through and add more brandy on top to soak in and re-wrap, other years I just leave it alone.

When you serve this, serve it on a pretty cake plate in slices.

Try white fruitcake, you won’t be disappointed.

My fruitcakes are in the oven, and now I’m going to check on them to see how they’re doing. I use my oven light, because if I open the oven I lose heat

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baking day: banana bread

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It really felt like fall this morning when I woke up, so I decided today would be a baking day.

I like making quick breads, and here’s a banana bread that’s easy to make and fun to share. It makes one loaf.

Banana Bread
1 tsp mace
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tablespoons buttermilk powder
2 eggs
3 mashed bananas
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c chopped pecans or hazelnuts
1 cup raisins
1/2 c unprocessed wheat bran (Millers Bran)
2 cups flour
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup sugar
Additional sugar for dusting

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Oven pre-heated to 350 degrees

Cream butter, sugar, molasses

Add spices

Add eggs and mashed bananas and vanilla

Add salt, buttermilk powder, baking soda

Add flour and bran

Add nuts and raisins

Pour this mixture into a loaf pan that you have greased. My loaf pan is 9 x 5″

After you have poured the batter into the pan and it’s even, dust the top with plain white table sugar or turbinado sugar. It gives this bread and a little sweet crust on top

20130923-132118.jpgBake at 350° for 55 to 60 minutes. When a wooden skewer comes out of the middle pretty much clean your bread is done

This recipe is one I have been making an tweaking for years. The proportions seem to work, although I will tell you this is the first time I’ve written this recipe down. Which is the case for a lot of my recipes- I did not write them down until people asked me to share some of them.

Enjoy!

farmers’ market couscous

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Market inspired summer salad- my own recipe (but I am digging the 3 cookbooks I picked up on the cookbook swap at East Goshen Farmers’ Market last week)
Anyway farmers market summer couscous salad:I cooked 1 cup of plain couscous according to directions with sea salt, garlic powder and olive oil to taste.

When cooled and fluffed I added two diced medium tomatoes from Thornbury Farm, I diced red/purple lollipop onion from Sunny Slope, minced herbs from plants I bought and planted in my garden from the East Goshen Farmers’ Market (mostly from Brogue Hydroponics) – 1/3 cup chopped mint, 1/3 cup chopped flat leaf parsley.  Then I added 1/3 cup chopped cilantro, zest of one lemon, juice of one lemon, a little more olive oil, wine vinegar to taste, adjusted salt and added fresh cracked pepper.

Toss in refrigerator covered and serve cold

YUM!

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risotto with caramelized onions, chicken, and mushrooms

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photo5I love risotto.  It takes a bit of time to do it right, but so worth it.  Here is a recipe I have been doing for years.  It has lived in my head because the impetus for it came from one I ate growing up that came out of our family kitchen and not a cookbook.  Intuitive memory cooking if you will. Hope you can follow.

Gently simmer 5 1/2 cups of chicken broth covered on low on the stove. ( I make my own stock incidentally. I find it easier)

Take a smallish sauté pan and cut up into thin rings one medium regular onion and one medium sweet onion and three cloves of garlic (minced).  Toss into a panphoto7 with 4 tablespoons of butter, a pinch or two of sea salt and swirl around and cook until nearly caramelized over medium-low heat.

Add 2 cups of sliced baby bella mushrooms – and yes cut your own, don’t buy pre-sliced. Add 2 medium ribs of celery minced. Add 2 medium grated carrots.  Allow it to cook down.  Remove pan from heat and just move to corner of stove.

I had leftovers from a chicken I roasted, so next I cut up the cooked chicken (skin-photo6free) into bite sized pieces.  I think about 2 cups, maybe a smidgen more.

O.k. now the fun part.  Pull out a large fry pan and put a few tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom.  Add the 1 1/2 cups of uncooked abrorio rice. Stir around on lowish heat until rice grains are translucent.  Add 1/2 cup of rosé wine (NOT white zinfindel – YUCK!), stir around until rice absorbs wine over medium-low heat.

photo2Now start ladling in your simmering chicken broth, one cup at a time.  Last night I only used 5 cups of broth, but sometimes I use 5 /12. The broth needs to be absorbed ONE cup at a time into the rice.  If you just dump all the broth in your risotto will be mushy, gluey and gross.photo4

When you hit the 3rd cup of broth almost ready for the 4th add in the sautéed onions and veggies.

photo1Half way through the 4th cup of broth being absorbed, toss in the chicken. Also toss in a few pinches of tarragon, basil, and oregano.

After you add the final broth and it is almost all absorbed, stir in 1/2 cup of grated parmesan or grated romano cheese. Stir in 1/3 cup rough chopped flat leaf Italian parsley five minutes before serving.

The whole add broth process takes about 30 to 40 minutes. I hope I have not left photo3anything out….again….have never written this down – always just done it.

Serve with additional grated cheese on the side and a nice green salad.

Enjoy!

slipping into uneven mediocrity

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1Redhound Grille used to be one of our favorite  places to have dinner. From when it first opened on Paoli Pike until a few months ago it was always fairly flawless.

Not anymore. It’s like a hound that has lost its scent.

Once again this evening the service was awesome and the food was off. Things too salty, not cooked right. Just off.  At least this time we did not smell shellfish gone bad coming out of the kitchen.2

So I’m thinking they need to decide what they want to be when they grow up. Do they want to just be a local taproom, or do they want to be a restaurant? Or a hybrid combination of both?

It’s a little hard to tell.

And while they aren’t the most expensive place on the planet, they aren’t the cheapest, either.   And it is getting annoying going in and ordering dinner and it is too salty and not quite right.3

They advertise they do catering, but with a kitchen as currently uneven as theirs is, file under save your money.

Tonight they were rocking another odd fossil crowd with a band called Zoot Suit.  It was the second time we had the misfortune to be there when they were playing. They are as inconsistent a cover band as the food currently coming out of Redhound’s kitchen.  Zoot Suit has a following, which has now surprised me twice. But if you don’t like the band, you can always go see one of the band founders impersonate Ben Franklin – a freakish sort of sacrilege. But hey, cover band and cover historical figure impersonator…I guess it all makes a weird sort of sense.

Anyway, I liked it better when there were fewer theme nights (bingo, quizzo, karaoke) and they were just the Redhound: good food, good drink.

I don’t know why or where Redhound fell off the awesome train, but I wish they would get it back.   They just keep missing the mark.  And they truly have terrific staff and a great atmosphere.   That is what has kept us going back to give the kitchen another try.  But we’re not going again for a while.  It’s like throwing good money after bad.

hello pumpkin…bread

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4Cold days are meant for baking, so today I whipped up a couple of loaves of my pumpkin bread – I had a container of Pacific Natural Foods Organic Pumpkin Puree left in the cupboard from Thanksgiving (it really IS the best pumpkin to cook with).

There is just something so homey about the smell of something wonderful baking in the oven, isn’t there? And by the way, one of my secret 3ingredients is Jayshree Spices’ Tea Masala spice blend.  It works well when making chai spiced tea, and you can bake with it too. I wanted something fun to accompany tonight’s dinner which is my hybrid cross between black bean and lentil soup and a spinach salad with a tangy apple cider-mustard vinaigrette salad dressing.  (And no, I have not written down my soup recipe it is a dash of this, a pinch of that, but I can tell you it is quasi pureed, made with tomatoes and my secret to its smokey fabulous flavor is good ham and minced orange peel.)

Anyway, I thought I thought I would share my recipe, which is a constant evolution. Pardon the haphazard way I list ingredients, but when something comes out of my head sometimes the whole codifying a recipe isn’t perfect…

Pumpkin Bread 1

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour two loaf pans and set aside.

1 15 or 16 oz container of pumpkin puree (I have seen both sizes – just pumpkin, no sugar or spice added)

3 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup milled bran (yes that again – love it in baked goods- makes chocolate chip cookies extra yummy too!)

1 cup Smart Balance oil

4 eggs

1 1/4 cups organic white sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2/3 cup of orange juice

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons buttermilk powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt (regular not sea salt)

3 tablespoons Jayshree Tea Masala Spice Blend

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon green cardamom

2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon mace

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon allspice5

shredded coconut, quick oats, and turbinado sugar for dusting tops of batter in pans before it goes in the oven.

1. Mix pumpkin, eggs, oil, vanilla, orange juice, sugars, spices

2. Mix in all dry ingredients except milled bran.  Mix well.

3. Add bran.  Stir again

4. Pour batter into prepared pans and dust top with plain quick cooking oats, turbinado sugar, shredded coconut.

Bake at 350 for at least 60 minutes (my oven went 70 minutes on this recipe today).  If a wood or stainless steel small skewer comes out of center clean, pumpkin bread is baked.

Cool in pans on baking rack about 20 minutes.  Carefully remove loaves from pan and cool completely.  This bread does need to sit at least an hour after coming out of over before slicing. (just my opinion)

Enjoy!

 

 

as american as apple pie

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So the other day when I posted a photo of a pie I baked on my Facebook page, I had NO idea I would get so many requests via e-mail for the recipe.   I baked an apple pie with raisins soaked in Calvados and a sweet cinnamon crust and an oatmeal crumble topping. Yes my own recipe and no, not written down – in my head – so here is I hope good enough to work with….

This recipe was inspired by a pie I had almost 20 years ago at the Brinley Victorian Inn in Newport, Rhode Island. The man who used to bake these crazy good double crust apple pies worked at the B&B (maybe he was a manager, I can’t remember).  And he soaked his raisins in booze (don’t remember what, whiskey I think).

I prefer a crumbly topping on my fruit pies, so anyway, here it is, hope it is proportionate enough that a bunch of home chefs don’t complain something was off  ( it is hard to write down something your hands can pretty much make for themselves on auto pilot)

Soak 3/4 cup of dark raisins in 1/4 cup of Calvados (French apple brandy – if you don’t have that a good bourbon will do as well.)

 Pie Crust

1 1/2 cups  flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

8 teaspoons sugar

8 tablespoons or 1 stick unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into little dots

4 tablespoons ice water

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger

Using pastry cutter, cut butter into flour, sugar, salt, spices.  Add ice water.  Form dough gently, do not overwork.  Wrap tightly in saran wrap and toss in refrigerator at least a couple of hours.

When sufficiently chilled roll out your dough and line a deep dish pie plate. My pie plate is like 9 inches in diameter (I *think* – it is vintage pyrex – so I do not recall exactly)

Gently rub bottom of crust in plate with soft butter.  (I saw it on a cooking show once)

Filling:

I use 8 to 10 apples of medium size. (I do not like red delicious apples so I will not use those) I peel them and slice them very thinly.  I toss into a mixing bowl with 1 cup of sugar (2/3 cup white 1/3 cup dark brown), 1/4 cup of flour, 3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground mace, and 1/2 teaspoon ground green cardamom.  I juice one medium to small lemon over mixture and toss. Fold in raisins that have soaked up their booze.

Topping:

3/4 cup oatmeal (Quaker quick oats, not the instant or steel cut or flavored)

1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

5 tablespoons of butter

1 teaspoon each of ginger and cinnamon

Blend all together with pastry cutter in small bowl and set aside.

Toss your apple mixture into your pie crust.

Evenly spread crumbly sugary topping over top of pie

Place in an oven preheated to 425 degrees and bake at 425 for 15 minutes and reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 40 to 45 more minutes depending upon your oven.

Hopefully my proportions are o.k.  This is as close as I can get – again – have been making this pie out of my head for years.