Excellent save, Chocomouse. It would have been horrible to lose those ingredients.
On Thursday, I baked two large loaves of the Wheat, Rye, Seed Bread that I adapted from a Pillsbury cookbooklet. I decided to use dark rye for all the rye this time, delete the ¼ cup wheat germ, and substitute ½ cup Clear Flour for that much bread flour. (I need to use up my Clear flour.) It’s a windy day, which makes it hard to keep the house warm, so the two risings are done in the room with the wood stove. [We are not happy that the expensive Anderson double-hung windows allow air in along the sides.] The loaves look good, and I look forward to slicing one tomorrow.
Dinner on Thursday was “One-Pot Tarragon Chicken Mushrooms, & Rice,” a recipe that came from "The Splendid Table,” and which I’ve now made four times. I use half brown rice and half mixed wild rice (for a total of 2 cups) and adjust the broth accordingly. I was cooking six chicken thighs, so I reduced the rice to ¾ cup of each. I do not have shallots, so I used 1 Tbs. Penzey’s dried onion that I rehydrated. I decided that ¼ tsp. dried tarragon per piece of chicken is a good ratio. I was able to cook it in my Chantel casserole dish (from when Chantel was made in Germany about twenty years ago), which moves nicely to the table as the serving dish. I like making this recipe for us, but it would also work well for a dinner party. We had microwaved fresh broccoli as well.
That's interesting, BakerAunt - I haven't had a soft-boiled egg since I was a youngster (remember trying to get the egg out of the shell without getting bits of shell throughout the egg??) nor have I seen recipes that call for soft boiled eggs, although plenty of recipes that use fried eggs. Len, I don't like runny slimey!) whites either, only runny yolks. I wonder what is the "standard" for a safe-to-eat egg? I think it is not cooked long at all, but I cannot recall a recipe right this minute.
On Wednesday afternoon, I made the KAF recipe for Maple Granola with my usual changes of deleting the vanilla (why cover up the flavor of maple syrup?!), cutting the coconut flakes in half, using just ¼ tsp. salt, and adding ½ cup pumpkin seeds. For the fruit, I stir in 2 cups raisins. My husband eats the granola almost as fast as the cheese crackers. I like it as a topping on my Greek yogurt, and occasionally as a breakfast cereal.
This YouTube link making croissants uses an interesting technique, he uses waxed paper to help produce clean squares for the detrempe and buerrage. I may have to try that. It might not work as well for larger batches, though.
I did have one issue with his technique. He rolls the dough out to a generous 1/4 inch thickness at the end, I was taught to roll it out to more like 1/8 inch thick.
Shows like Chopped do their best to increase the drama and tension, like providing only one ice cream machine. Also, there are sometimes only small amounts of some items in the pantry, and there have been shows where an item was available for one round of the competition but not in a subsequent round. (I remember a dessert round where there were no eggs, for example.)
But people bump into each other all the time in real kitchens, too.
I remember a cooking show where they were making bread from scratch in two hours. Sorry, folks, but that's just too darned fast to develop much flavor.
I prefer to chill pastry cream before using it, because I think it handles better that way for piping, but my wife often uses it while its still a little warm. And if you're going to mix it with whipped cream (or low-cal Cool Whip), it really needs to be cool or you lose volume as you mix it.
Thanks Joan and BA for the buttermilk information. BA - it was 1%. Joan - when the recipe calls for decreasing baking powder and upping baking soda is it calling for double acting baking powder? I don't have any recipes that distinguish between double action baking powder and baking powder and even a lot of baking powders on the shelves here make it hard to distinguish.
I used my brown butter to make shortbread. I used my standard recipe - 8 oz. butter, 2 cups flour, half cup corn starch, and vanilla to taste (I use 1 tsp.) Could not get much simpler. The dough was more crumbly than normal but I pushed it together, rolled it out, and cut out cookies with a round biscuit cutter. Mt family went nuts over them. They definitely tasted better after cooling for some time. As I said, I think the butter could brown some more.
This is the thing that confuses me about all the cooking competitions - most of what I bake does not taste good or at least it's best for several hours to several days after baking. People make pastry cream all the time and while I've only made it a couple of times it needed to chill in the refrigerator for at least a few hours before it had a full flavor and it was even better the next day. So how do people create this great tasting stuff right off the stove or only having chilled briefly, even in a blast chiller?
I have that thread by Baker Irene, but Thanks. I can't find my other recipes right now (the Microsoft Word formatting got screwed up when I had to do a reset; I have all the info there but it's difficult to find and read). Irene uses white chocolate chips, melted, with flavoring added. The one I'm interested in calls for sugar, cinnamon, corn syrup, and a couple other things, and then it is baked.
Aaron--That does seem like a lot of buttermilk for the dry ingredients that you list. What was the fat content of the buttermilk? I buy buttermilk that is 1 1/2% fat (or sometimes 2%), but I've seen higher percentages, as well as some recipes that call for "full-fat" buttermilk, which ought to be an oxymoron.
To go with beef stew for Tuesday dinner, I baked cornbread in my scone pan again, using the cornmeal we bought at Spring Mill.
The PBS News Hour reported last night that Borden's has filed for bankruptcy. That's another major dairy organization.
Meanwhile, the Bon Appetit staff, in their January cooking month e-mail specials, are emphasizing little or no dairy as a way to "save the planet." While I don't mind having recipes that don't rely so heavily on cheese and butter, I'm not sure their alternative choices are superior, either nutritionally or in terms of saving the planet. (Almonds for example require a lot of water to grow, and almond milk wastes a good deal of the nut.) I wish that they would also look at the need for calcium in the diet, and if they want to do no dairy, make a concerted effort to insure that calcium needs are met with as little supplementation as necessary.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by
BakerAunt.
On Tuesday, it was time for the Leftovers Turned into Lunch Challenge. On New Year’s Day, I cooked a bag of black-eyed peas. Although my husband purports to like them, he loses interest after two meals, and there I am with a pot to eat by myself that has no additional seasonings or ingredients. Before we got married, I always cooked them with rice and ham. So, I decided to turn the pot of black-eyed peas and their liquid into lunches for the rest of the week. Since I’m planning to make a dinner tomorrow that uses rice, I tried 1 cup farro, cooked in 2 cups of the bean broth. While the farro cooked (30 min.), I diced some onion, sautéed it in some grapeseed oil, then added a package of cubed ham from the grocery. I added the leftover beans, and whatever liquid remained, along with some minced fresh parsley and some freshly ground black pepper. I mixed in the cooked farro. As I was sitting down to lunch, my husband, who had eaten his usual sandwich decided it smelled good, and that it might be something he could also eat, which a taste with a spoon confirmed. I was hoping for that outcome, which is why I restrained myself from adding a dash of red pepper. I expect that he will eat it at one meal, at least, with me.
Over on the BBGA forum, a member recently posted a recipe for apple bread using the lees left over from making/fermenting apple cider. (That's the thick residue at the bottom of the fermenting vessel. It has a lot of dead yeast cells, so you have to add some live yeast.)
I'm looking around for a source for some apple cider lees to try the recipe, the poster said it makes great toast.
On Sunday afternoon, I baked my adaptation of “Fresh Apple Cake,” from Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking with Whole Grains (Sarah E Myers and Mary Beth Lind), p. 213, using four of the Jonathan apples that we picked last November. It will be a delicious dessert for Twelfth Night--and beyond.
Chocomouse--We keep having weather reminiscent of late October or March, with very little snow.
For Sunday dinner—Twelfth Night—we had a rotisserie chicken, accompanied by a stir-fry that I made with farro cooked in turkey broth (from freezer), a roasted delicata squash, and some kale. I seasoned it with some dried thyme. We also had microwaved fresh broccoli.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: added information
