Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for July, 2008
July 30, 2008 at 1:46 pm · Filed under dessert, food
I was up until 1:30am making this, because it takes an hour to bake, and I only have one loaf pan but it makes two, and then you have to let them cool a bit before glazing them. This on top of realizing I didn’t have enough butter (there is a LOT of butter in this recipe) and having to run out to get more. So a late start plus a slow process meant I didn’t get a lot of sleep. But people at work seemed to appreciate it. And even though Lisa of Pittsburgh Needs Eated, whence I got this recipe, opted not to make the glaze, I decided that I need to make everyone at work fat so that I will look thin in comparison. It’s all a calculated ruse, people. Besides, I’ve never glazed anything before, and I wanted to see if I could get the cool drips down the sides effect, which I did – go me.
I also managed to cut myself on an eggshell. An eggshell! I ask you.
Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze
from Pittsburgh Needs Eated
Ingredients
for the cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups butter, softened (or, in my case, left out on the counter while I ran to the store for more – it was hot enough in the apartment that it was all soft by the time I got back)
1 pound (get it, it’s a pound cake) brown sugar – about 2 3/4 cups
1/2 cup white sugar
5 eggs
for the glaze
1/2 cup butter… but you could probably use less, it tasted pretty buttery
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk
4 cups sifted icing sugar (I have nothing with which to sift, so I just did my best to break up any clumps)
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method
for the cake
Preheat the oven to 325 F.
Grease and flour your 2 loaf pans (you can also use a tube pan), or, if, like me, you have only one loaf pan, prepare to do math and halve the recipe so you can make it twice in a row. It is not recommended to make the full recipe and then let half of it sit around for an hour.
Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.
Stir the vanilla into the milk and put it aside; since I had to actually leave the house, I stuck it in the fridge, to no apparent ill effect. I would also like to point out that vanilla milk seems like a fantastic idea.
Using a stand mixer, cream the butter (or use a hand mixer on high speed, but I love my KitchenAid and want to use it every chance I get).
Add the brown sugar in 3 batches, then add the white sugar, beating well after each addition.
Add the eggs one by one (if you’re doing two half-batches for a loaf pan, this means that you get to have the thrill of halving an egg), beating well after each addition.
Add half the flour, beating only until the flour incorporates into the batter.
Add half the milk, again beating only until it incorporates.
Add the other half of the flour in the same way.
Same with the other half of the milk.
Quickly pour the batter into your prepared pan or pans.
Bake for an hour, then check the middle with a wooden toothpick or skewer. If the toothpick comes out clean, it’s done. Apparently loaf pans can take as few as 55 minutes, but this was definitely not my experience.
Cool the cake in the pan for a while (the recipe recommends 20 minutes, but who has that kind of time?), then dislodge it from the pan with a butter knife and let it cool the rest of the way, or until you just can’t take it any longer, on a plate.
for the glaze
Heat the butter and brown sugar in some kind of a pot or pan (you’re an adult, you can decide what size and shape cooking receptacle to use) over medium heat, stirring, until it is a smooth sauce – about 2 or 3 minutes.
Add the milk and let it come to a gentle boil.
Give it a good stir, then remove it from the heat.
Add the icing sugar and the vanilla.
Whisk well for a minute or two, or until it has thickened.
Use quickly, before it hardens; if it does harden, you can soften it by heating it, or by stirring in a bit more milk.
It’s a lot brighter in the work kitchen than in my kitchen, but I had to pretty much just take the picture and run – I didn’t want to look like a nerd in front of everybody!
July 29, 2008 at 3:39 pm · Filed under food, meals
This isn’t a recipe because there’s no such thing as a recipe for a quesadilla (seriously… put some cheese on half of a tortilla, add some other stuff if you want to, then fold it over and cook it on a pan or a grill, that doesn’t count as a recipe). But after making that colonial stew, I had a whole Roma tomato left over that Matt wasn’t going to eat, plus there was tons of shredded chicken in the leftovers of the actual stew, so I made a quesadilla with slices of the tomato, pieces of the shredded chicken (and if any of the veggies make it in, that’s not a crime), loads of extra-sharp cheddar cheese, of course, and I sprinkled cumin, chipotle powder, and cayenne all over everything. Then I popped it in the George Foreman for a few minutes, cut it up, and voila:
It was so good that I made sounds while eating it.
July 26, 2008 at 11:14 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
So I got this recipe from someone’s site and I can’t remember where, but they got it from the Williamsburg Cookbook, which I do not own and have never read. I was at Colonial Williamsburg once, when I was 11 or 12. I probably did not eat this stew there. But I made it anyway.
It involves okra, which I’d never made before, and which I was prepared not to like. I have a number of irrational food prejudices, and I’m trying to overcome them. I taught myself to like pickles. I don’t like lamb, for no real reason, and so I’ve decided that the next time someone offers me some, I’m going to eat it. Just to see. And that’s what I did with the okra, I made it just to see. Turns out I have nothing against it. It’s not my favourite food in the world or anything, but it’s fine.
The original recipe serves 8 – 10. That’s not very helpful. I quartered it; I feel like I should have left more water in, though, because when the chicken was initially cooking, the water didn’t always cover all the parts, and I was hoping that we didn’t get a lovely colonial intestinal parasite to go with our colonial recipe. That remains to be seen – 72 hours’ incubation period, after all, I took FoodSafe – but since it cooked so long and nothing was pink, I’m fairly confident that we’ll be fine. If you’re nervous, add more water. Ours cooked nearly all away, so you won’t wind up with a thin soup anyway. But this is the recipe as I cooked it, quartered.
Chowning’s Tavern Brunswick Stew
Ingredients
1.5 pounds chicken, on the bone – use whatever part you like best, but don’t get boneless
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 cup okra, chopped
1 cup chopped tomatoes (I used Roma tomatoes since they were the cheapest, and it was about 2 of them to a cup)
1/2 cup lima beans, dry
1 small potato, diced
1 8-oz can corn, because I don’t have time to cook a cob of corn and then cut the kernels off and not even know for sure how much I’m going to get. If you know already how much corn is on a given cob, you need about a cup – go nuts.
a little under 1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
Method
Cut your chicken, if necessary to fit it in the pot without being too sticky-uppy, and add enough water to just cover. The original recipe calls for 2 quarts if you want thin stew, and 3 quarts if you want thick stew – I quartered it and went with a couple of pints of water, and it still didn’t seem like enough. So just pour water in until you’re satisfied.
Simmer for about 2 1/4 hours, or until meat can be easily removed from the bones.
Take the meat out and put it on a plate.
Add all the vegetables and beans and continue simmering.
Meanwhile, shred the chicken with two forks.
Put the chicken back in.
Add the seasonings.
Continue to cook until the potatoes and beans are tender, and then you can leave it on low or turn it off and cover it (if you’re using a cast-iron pot like I was) until you’re ready to eat it. It’s one of those stews that benefits from long, slow cooking – you could probably make it in a crock-pot, actually.
It takes a long time what with all the simmering, but it’s pretty easy. You just chop everything up and throw it in and then ignore it, other than giving it the odd stir now and then.
July 20, 2008 at 11:53 pm · Filed under breads, food
Ok, that sounds extreme. But it’s my first experience making something yeasted – something that requires rising, and punching down, and rising some more… anyway, what with all the rising and whatnot, as well as ordinary prep stuff and cooking, it came out to just about 4 hours to make these. But it worked out! They’re tasty, and some of them were downright enormous. The photo really should have been of the pan, and of them all touching each other from expanding so much. But I didn’t really think of it at the time – we were in a rush to eat dinner and head out to one of the pre-tryout roller derby open skates. I’ll be trying out in November, so I need all the tips, pointers, and practice I can get – and skating alone in the parking lot out back is not the same as going around a track with lots of people.
Anyway, if you’ve got a day that you don’t need to go out much, that’s the day to make these. I found the original recipe on Sass and Veracity, and so much of what she says in the notes is so true, particularly about having to add so much flour to get it to pull away from the sides of the bowl. She says she used 14. I stopped counting and eventually resorted to just dumping some flour in, running the mixer for a bit, scraping down the sides of the bowl, and then dumping in some more. And then I got tired of trying, decided it was sticky enough and pulling away enough, and moved on to the next step. Also, hers are lovely and golden-brown and mine are not, because I didn’t have the extra couple of minutes to leave them in the oven due to aforementioned derby hurriedness. But maybe if I warm the leftover ones up in the toaster oven, they’ll brown a bit. We’ll see. I halved her recipe, sort of – it’s hard to halve an egg, for instance – so it’s close but not quite the same.
** Edited to add: heated up in the toaster oven they do brown up nicely, and Matt made a bacon sandwich with one sliced in half. Bacon and garlic are both good, and he asked the very good question of why they are not seen together more often.
4-Hour Garlic Knots
Ingredients
for the dough
1/2 cup whole milk
4 1/2 tbsp butter
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 tsp plus 1/4 cup sugar, divided
about 3/4 of an envelope of dry active yeast (ahh, just ballpark it) – my choice of super rising yeast may have had something to do with the super puffiness of my knots, but who cares
2 smallish eggs
around 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, but have plenty on hand for flouring surfaces, your hands, the super sticky dough, and for adding to the mixer in an effort to make the dough form a ball. You’ll need lots. If you only have the recipe-mandated 2 1/4 cups on hand, you do not have enough. Go to the store.
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp melted butter, which can be acheived by just doing this on a sufficiently hot day, and leaving the butter out, like I did.
for the filling
2 regular-sized cloves garlic, or 2 tiny ones from the middle of a bulb and one big one, or however much garlic you want, ultimately. It’s a recipe for garlic knots; I’m not going to judge you for putting in more.
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter, melted
3/4 tsp rosemary, chopped
a few cranks of salt
Method
In a small pan, warm milk and 4 1/2 tbsp butter over low heat until the butter melts, stirring every now and then so nothing burns.
Once the butter is melted, take it off the heat.
Combine the warm water, the 1/2 tsp sugar, and the yeast in a small bowl, and let it stand for 5 minutes until the yeast is beginning to puff out.
Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the rest of the sugar and the eggs at low speed until blended.
Add the warm milk mixture.
Throw in 1 1/4 cups of the flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until mixture is smooth.
Take out the whisk attachment and replace it with the dough hook.
Add the yeast mixture, the salt, and the remaining flour, 1/4 cup at a time. Be sure to keep scraping down the walls of the bowl every so often.
Beat on the second-lowest setting until the dough is starting to climb the hook, but falling back down, or until everything looks smooth and you’re tired of waiting. It doesn’t matter if the dough is wet or not a ball. Don’t worry about it.
Now comes the part that requires either true patience or a cavalier, devil-may-care attitude towards the adding of flour. The original recipe asks that you add flour, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together in a firm, but very sticky, ball that pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If you add the flour one tablespoon at a time, you will be doing this all day, because it’s going to take a lot of flour. By the end, I was going by quarter-cups, and I still had to just give up and say it was close enough, eventually. If you start feeling like you might die of old age while waiting for the ideal dough to form, just throw in a bunch of flour and take the best result you can get and run with it.
Pour the 1 tbsp of melted butter into a large bowl.
Turn out your dough onto a floured surface (the original recipe insists that it be lightly floured, and that your hands be only lightly floured, but if you follow this instruction, more dough will wind up on you than in the recipe. It is very sticky. Flour accordingly) and with floured hands, give it a few quick hand kneads to form it into a ball.
Put the ball into the bowl, turning it over to make sure it is coated with the butter, then cover the bowl tightly (using plastic wrap if the bowl has no lid).
Leave it in a warm, draft-free place to rise for the next 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size, if you’re any judge of that (I am not).
Do something else for an hour and a half.
Punch down the dough.
Fold it over.
Fold it over again.
Turn it over a bit more to ensure full butter coverage.
Cover it back up again and leave it in the same place to rise and double in size, another hour.
Do something else for 45 minutes.
About 10 minutes before the hour is up, melt 1 tbsp butter in a pan with the 1 tbsp olive oil. Over medium heat, add the garlic and stir about 2 minutes, or long enough for the garlic to become fragrant without turning brown.
Add the rosemary and salt and give it all a good stir.
Scrape out all of this mixture, being careful not to leave any chunks of delicious flavour behind, and set it aside.
Now it’s time to shape the knots: turn out the dough onto a floured surface and divide it into 8 parts.
Take one of the parts and roll it between your hands until it makes a rope about 11 inches long.
Flatten this rope out a bit.
Scoop some of the garlic-rosemary oil mixture into the centre of this rectangle, all down its length. Use your discretion as to how much.
Pinch the two long edgees of the rectangle together, sealing the garlic mixture into the middle of a tube, essentially. Close off the ends as well.
Twist this rope, then form it into some kind of knot or knot-like shape.
Place each finished knot onto a lined baking sheet – you can use wax paper, or you could use a silpat if you’re princess fancyboots.
Once they’re all done, cover the entire sheet with plastic wrap and let it rise for about 45 minutes.
While this is going on, preheat the oven to 350.
Bake the knots in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until golden.
Remove from the oven and brush any remaining garlic mixture over the tops of the knots.
They’re delicious hot out of the oven, by the way, and even just the straight bun is tasty – but garlic and rosemary improve everything, of course.
July 20, 2008 at 1:10 am · Filed under food, meals, pasta, soup/stew
This is the recipe I thought I’d already posted, the one for which I had originally bought the campanelle. It was originally a florentine, but I’m pretty sure that implies that spinach is involved, and neither of us really care for spinach, so we gave that the boot. Which makes this… what? A pretty good soup, but maybe not one with a specific name.
Italian Beef Soup
Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped finely
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 lb stewing beef, cubed
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
5 cloves garlic, minced
5 cups beef broth (about 2 cans… that might be a bit less than 5 cups, but it worked out for us)
1 14-oz can “Italian” diced tomatoes (the kind with basil and garlic)
1/2 lb campanelle (or other small-ish pasta, but come on – campanelle are cool, and they don’t cost any more than, say, penne. Live on the edge.)
1/2 cup heavy cream
parmesan and basil, for garnishing
Method
Pour olive oil into your big soup pot over medium heat.
Saute onions and carrots for 5 – 7 minutes or until slightly softened.
Add the beef and the salt and pepper, and cook through.
Throw in the garlic and let it cook for 1 minute.
Stir in the broth and the tomatoes.
Turn the heat up to medium-high until the soup just begins to boil.
Dump in the pasta, turn it back down to medium, and cook until the pasta is al dente, which ought to be about 10 – 12 minutes.
Simmer for another 20 minutes or so, unless you get impatient (this is the step at which the spinach would have been added, so the long wait could have to do with an ingredient that is no longer relevant).
Serve, drizzling a swirl of cream into each bowl and topping with basil and parmesan.
I didn’t have a picture of it with the full effect of the creaminess, sorry.
July 17, 2008 at 3:17 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Here’s the thing with this recipe: it’s so bare-bones, I don’t know if it even qualifies as mi goreng anymore. I mean, yes, it is noodles, and they are fried, so I guess calling it fried noodles isn’t wrong, but I don’t know. I seem to recall there being more in it, usually.
I got inspired by this post on Rasa Malaysia, which is a site I enjoy reading, because – and yes, I know the two are different – I used to live in Indonesia when I was little, and I’ve been back several times, and my dad goes there constantly for work. So some of the language has stuck with me, and a lot of the dishes are very similar, and the whole Southeast Asian flavour is nice and reminiscent for me. Actually it seems like there are tons of Indonesian or Malaysian food blogs out there right now. Which is cool.
Her post was largely about choosing the best variety of noodle for your purposes, which I followed as faithfully as possible – I didn’t have time to go to the big Chinese supermarket, Super 88, so I hit up the little Asian grocery store near our apartment: Village Food Land! Their selection was, obviously, a bit limited compared to the Super 88, considering that the entire store is about the size of the Super 88′s tea aisle. I did find some rice noodles that, while not very stick-like in appearance (they looked like linguine, folded over to make a round-cornered rectangular packet), referred to themselves as “rice stick” in the instructions (as in “put the rice stick in boiling water”). They were Vietnamese, though, because that was the only kind I could find, so who knows what that’s done to my authenticity.
I was also going to get bean sprouts at Village Food Land!, but they didn’t have any, so I just skipped it. I would have added in all kinds of veggies (broccoli and mushrooms spring instantly to mind, although again, I don’t know how authentic they are, but they’re yummy in a stir-fry) but Matt wouldn’t have really been interested in eating them. Maybe I should have thrown in shreds of egg, like nasi goreng. I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my dad.
So anyway, this is LIKE her recipe, but different, because I used what I had on hand and didn’t buy much new food, and the new-food-buying that I did do – or tried to do – was hampered by availability and the tastes of the target audience.
Mi Goreng
Ingredients
8 oz (1/2 a package) “rice stick”-type rice noodles
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 green onions, cut into… well, I wasn’t going around with a ruler or anything, but let’s say about 1.5″ lengths, then cut in half
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into small pieces
1/2 tsp corn starch
4 tbsp vegetable oil (this was maybe more than I needed. Next time, I’ll try with just 3.)
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp teriyaki sauce (hey, it was there!)
4 tbsp water
1 tbsp sugar
3 cranks of pepper
Method
Cook the rice sticks according to package directions or until soft. My package said 6 to 8 minutes in boiling water, the original recipe said 30 minutes in warm water… whatever. Cook them, then set them aside to drain.
Coat the chicken pieces with corn starch – apparently this helps tenderize it, and who am I to argue? The chicken WAS tender, but I had chalked that up to the quick cooking of the hot wok.
Heat your wok and coat it with oil.
Mix together the sauces, water, sugar, and pepper and set it aside – you’ll need it ready since everything cooks so fast.
Throw the chopped garlic into the wok and stir-fry until light brown.
Add the chicken and stir-fry until “half done” – don’t know what metric to use for this, but not very long, anyway. A couple of minutes, maybe.
Add your drained noodles and the sauce, stirring constantly.
Keep stir-frying for another 2 or 3 minutes.
Throw in the green onions and stir-fry for another minute or so.
Serve it up all hot and delicious.
High speed action shot of stir-frying in action! No, actually I just don’t have a very steady hand and there’s not lots of light in the kitchen.
It worked out all right, except I got a few splatters of hot oil, and then when I was putting the wok away the next day (it lives up on top of our cupboards, since we have a severe lack of storage space), it fell down and dented the lid, the counter, and my toe. Mean!
July 16, 2008 at 12:32 pm · Filed under dessert, food
Matt got a new job recently, and I kept telling him I’d bake him a pie, but we went out to dinner to celebrate instead, and came home so full that pie was completely out of the question. But I had nothing to do this Sunday, so I decided now was the time for pie action. We went to the store to buy pie fixins, which, obviously, include ice cream. Vanilla. But while we were in the ice cream aisle, Matt pointed out another flavour that he wanted: Root Beer Float. Now, root beer doesn’t really go with peach pie, so I was reluctant to get it, but Matt made a very good point that this is the most genius ice cream flavour ever. Think about it. It’s not just root beer, it’s root beer float. What’s the difference between root beer and a root beer float? Ice cream. So this is ice-cream-flavoured ice cream. Amazing.
Anyway, we got both kinds.
Peach Pie
filling from twoyolks.org, crust from a recipe that I’ve had long enough to have forgotten where I got it, but how different is one pie crust recipe from another, really
Ingredients
for the crust
1 stick cold butter… that’s right
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup ice water, divided
** note: this makes ONE crust. This pie requires two, but instead of doubling the recipe, making lots of dough, and then dividing it, I made ONE crust twice. This is partly because that way I know that the two crusts are the same size (no room for “user error” when dividing it), but also because my countertop is barely big enough to roll out one at a time! If you prefer to double it from the beginning, I’m not going to stop you.
for the filling
5 or 6 freestone peaches, peeled, pitted, and sliced (the original recipe specified that they be 1/2″ thick; mine were thinner and the world did not end.)
1/4 cup corn starch
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter, softened
Method
for the crust
Cube the butter and put it in the freezer while assembling the other ingredients.
Put flour, butter, salt, and 2 tbsp ice water in a food processor and give it a few pulses until the mixture resembles coarse meal. You can also do this by hand with a pastry cutter – I’ve done it both ways and the crust is equally flaky, but your arm doesn’t get as tired on the food processor.
Now start adding more ice water, about 1 tsp at a time, until the mixture comes together to form some approximation of a ball.
Place this ball on a lightly floured piece of wax paper and flatten slightly to form a disk.
Wrap the disk up in the wax paper and put it in the fridge for 45 minutes.
After 45 minutes, take it out and roll it out to the desired size and press it into the pan (or drape it over the top or whatever you’re doing with it).
for the filling
Preheat the oven to 450.
Mix the peaches, corn starch, and about 1/2 cup of the sugar in a bowl. This is where things get weird with the original recipe. It said to mix in 1/4 cup sugar, that’s 1/4 cup out of 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp, and to sprinkle the rest over the crust. More sugar on the crust than in the pie? So either they meant 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp, with the 2 tbsp being for the crust, or they meant put 3/4 cup sugar in the filling, but either way, I’ve changed it a little so that it makes more sense to me.
Dump the peach mixture into the crust that has already been pressed into the pan and spread it out.
Lay the second crust overtop of the pie, pressing the edges together and making a little roll (or whatever decorative thing you like to do here).
Cut vents in the top crust.
Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the crust.
Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 and continue baking for another 50 minutes.
Serve warm (careful, it’s really hot) or cooled. Recognize that the filling will be all gooey when it’s hot, but more solid once it’s cooled, if that’s something you care about.
July 15, 2008 at 4:49 pm · Filed under food, meals, soup/stew
It’s in quotes for a reason. First off, while it is supposed to mimic the flavour of a baked potato, the potatoes involved are not baked. Second, this is a lot thicker than a soup. More like a stew. Or just a gooey heap of potatoey deliciousness. Tough to classify, easy to love.
“Baked Potato” “Soup”
Ingredients
3 large russet potatoes
3 slices bacon
1 1/2 tbsp butter
1/2 onion, chopped (the original recipe called for a whole small onion, but I had a half an onion hanging around the fridge, so…)
2 cloves garlic, minced (or however many you like. I may have used 3.)
1/4 cup flour
2 cups chicken broth or stock (this = 1 can, if you are too lazy, like me, to make stock… one day I will, but Friday was not that day)
12 oz fat-free (you know, to make this dish healthy, hahaha) evaporated milk
1 tbsp seasoning salt (I may have added more… but whatever, it’s been hot, we’ve been sweating, we need to replace that salt, right?)
1/2 cup cooked ham, which is optional but I did it
4 green onions, chopped
Method
Cook the potatoes until done. I don’t care how. The original recipe did it in the microwave, but I don’t know how to do that, so I just did it in a pot of boiling water. Besides, they said it took about 14 minutes in the microwave, and I can’t believe that would be faster than on the stove. Anyway. Just cook them through. Whenever they’re done, just set them aside.
Towards the end of potato time, start cooking the bacon in a large soup pot (I got to use my Le Creuset for the first time, and it was fantastic, thanks for asking). When the bacon is crispy, take it out and put it on a paper-towel covered plate to drain.
Add the butter and onion into the bacon grease. You might be thinking, as I did, that you really don’t need to add much butter to the already bacony pot, but good luck making a roux later, instead of just a wad of buttery flour. Not that it really mattered, though. Do what you think is best with regard to the butter.
Cook the onion until transparent, about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and cook until just fragrant.
Add the flour and stir for 1 minute. Do not allow the roux – or wad of dough – to brown. Much.
Slowly add the broth and the evaporated milk while stirring.
Scoop out the innards of one of the potatoes and mash it a bit. Here is where you will discover whether you’ve cooked it all the way through – I hadn’t, and mashing it turned into more of “chopping it up into wee pieces and bashing them a bit.” Which is fine. They’ll get mushier in the cooking process. So add this to the soup.
Add the seasoning salt. Meditate on the deliciousness of seasoning salt for a moment, then add a little more.
Dice the remaining two potatoes, skin and all, and the leftover skin from the first potato. Add them into the soup.
Break the bacon up into pieces and add it and the ham into the soup as well.
Heat it all through.
Serve with the green onions on top. The original recipe also mentioned that you could top it with croutons, but that was too much for me. But feel free to go for it if you want.
Matt has been working his way through the leftovers and informed me last night that I could make it again if I wanted to. This is high praise! Success!
July 11, 2008 at 1:46 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
This is another older one that I made a while back and just saved up the photos and recipe for once the site was up and running. I am cooking tonight – baked potato soup! with bacon! – but I’m antsy to post something. Particularly because, now that the stats are up, I’m completely addicted to them, but no one will come to the site if there’s never anything new, right? And knowing how slow I can be to post new stuff, it’s probably best if I don’t assume that a new recipe will equal a new post straight away.
Lemon-Caper Pasta
Ingredients
10 oz pasta – the original recipe called for garganelli, but I had some campanelle left over from a soup that I’d made… thought I’d already posted it, but no – so what’s a little out-of-orderness among friends, right?
zest and juice of one medium-sized lemon
3 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup parmesan, plus some more to top the finished product
2 tbsp capers, drained
salt and pepper
Method
Cook the pasta according to package directions, or how you like it.
Whisk the lemon juice and olive oil together in a bowl:
Add parmesan, lemon zest, capers, salt, and pepper.
Drain the pasta, reserving a couple of tablespoons of the pasta water. Return the pasta to the warm pot.
Toss in the water and the lemon oil mixture.
Serve with more parmesan on top, and maybe some more pepper, like we did, or mint, like the original recipe called for (it didn’t appeal to me… not a big mint fan).
This was my first lemony pasta outing, and Matt’s first experience with capers. He didn’t hate it, which was a better reaction than I had hoped for. However, after my second lemon pasta, he decided that, ultimately, he didn’t care for the flavour in his pasta, so you won’t be seeing any more of those from me. I liked it, though. I thought it was very bright-tasting, if that makes any sense.
July 9, 2008 at 11:36 am · Filed under meta
The stats are working now, yay!
I just submitted a picture to Tastespotting for the first time (the bacon potato salad)… yay? Or boo, for ego? I feel like people HAVE to submit themselves now, since the big thing happened. But I liked the idea that people would be submitted if someone else thought they were any good; a sort of validation. But now everyone’s all paranoid about attribution and copyright and nobody wants to submit anyone else’s work anymore, lest the object of their adulation gets all uppity about it. Well, let me put anybody’s mind at ease: I am hereby permitting anybody to submit any of my pictures to any of the food aggregator sites. Obviously, give credit, but go ahead and submit them in the first place if they’re any good. I would feel honoured.
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