Pam's first fried rice

Serendipity is sometimes what brings us to try something new. This week it was a recipe on my Facebook feed from New York Times cooking that featured fried rice with bacon. I heavily modified this to something I could make without doing any additional shopping. We had leftover cooked rice and some uncooked bacon. The recipe also calls for cabbage and scallions, which I did not have so I did not use. 

I began by cutting the bacon into small pieces and cooking in olive oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. When the bacon was cooked I removed it and then put in 4 minced garlic cloves which I sauteéd for about a minute and then added them to the bowl with the bacon bits. 

Next I added some olive oil to the pan and then spread the rice in a layer on the bottom of the pan. I added Worcestershire Sauce, salt, and some ground ginger. I let it cook until it became crispy, then stirred it a bit and let it cook just a bit more after re-spreading it then folded in the bacon and garlic along with some sliced carrots and frozen peas. 

As the rice was finishing I quickly cooked four over-easy eggs. The rice was divided onto two plates and two eggs were placed on top of each.

We were pleased with the meal. Easy, nutritious, delicious.

Yellow Squash Fritters

At the last Farmer's Market of the season James and I bought some yellow squash. Usually I make a yellow squash casserole with them, but I hadn't tried any new recipes in a long time so I went to the trusty New York Times Cooking Page and adapted the recipe for Summer Squash Fritters with Garlic Dipping Sauce. I actually followed the recipe pretty closely; I just didn't make the dipping sauce, and didn't use zucchini - only the yellow squash I bought. The recipe calls for beer in the batter, which really did enhance the taste. We topped them with sour cream in lieu of the dipping sauce. We liked these and will make them again.

Depression Era Spice Cake (fail!)

Although tomatoes are among my favorite foods now, I famously did not like them as a child. Nor did I like tomato soup, so I was surprised once when my mother suggested that we make a spice cake that had condensed tomato soup as one of the ingredients. I remember that the cake turned out moist and tasty which is why I attempted it again for this year's Thanksgiving dessert contribution. Used the recipe I found on this page - the one labeled Tomato Soup Cake (One Bowl Method). It really seemed simple enough, and I do believe I followed the recipe as written, but I ended up with two very thin layers, so thin that when placed one on top of the other and frosted they were barely the same height as one typical layer. I've decided to blame it on old baking powder. I did indeed serve the cake along with the other desserts that folks made. Mine was not a favorite. I ended up throwing most of it away. 

Peaches in Red Wine

Yesterday was National Red Wine day, of course as avid Malbec fans virtually every day in Red Wine Day at our house, nevertheless, we decided to celebrate by stepping up our game with a red wine cocktail. I had saved the Peaches in Red Wine recipe from my Facebook feed earlier in the week. It was fortuitous that we had two chilled peaches already in our refrigerator. 

The recipe calls for two cups of red wine for serving 4-6 people. We both had a good laugh about that. Two cups serves two people at our house! I measured the wine into a mixing bowl and added 1/4 cup of sugar, a pinch of black pepper, a shake of nutmeg, and two shakes of ground ginger. I stirred everything together and chilled for an hour. Meanwhile I peeled the peaches and cut into wedges. After the wine chilled I put the cold peach wedges into wine glasses and then poured the wine over them. 

A cool treat for a beautiful day - enjoyed on our front porch.

Not Mrs. Fran's London Broil

 I'll get to the steak shortly -- this is an easy recipe with a very nice result. The title above is the one given by author Kwame Onwauchi. We had flagged the article when we read his Notes from a Young Black Chef. Since that was almost a year ago, I had to skim over the pages just before the article to be reminded of the reason for this unusual title.

It brings to mind Not Your Mother's Green Beans from the mini Moosewood, which is a Hayes-Boh favorite whose title announces a departure from the overcooked blandness typically associated with a particular dish. Onwauchi is indeed offering a recipe that contrasts with the leathery steak served by his family friend Mrs. Fran, but he does so as a reminder to himself that as important as it may be to cook well (and he is OBSESSED with this throughout his life), gratitude for those who cook with great heart is even more important, even if their skills are limited. Read his "Dominoes" for the complete, humbling story.

Herewith, the flavorful approach from the Creole side of his culinary biography. It preparation should start 24 hours before the meal. If the steak is frozen, it should be thawed prior to the first step below.

Whisk together (and do not fret overmuch about exact measures):

• 3T olive oil
• 3T balsamic vinegar
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 jalepeño, quartered (or several, chopped coarsely)
• juice of 1 lime
• 1/4 cup cilantro stems (with leaves)
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t ground black pepper

Put this in a ziplock bag with a 2-pound top round steak and put it in the fridge overnight. I had an excellent 1.5-pound free-range steak from Crescent Ridge, one of our local favorite sources. I often find some other way to marinate when a bag is called for, but I followed the directions this time and was pleased. It was easy to turn the bag over a couple times during the (almost) 24-hour process.

Onwauchi does not say exactly when to make the salsa -- he vaguely uses the word "meanwhile" -- but to me it made a lot of sense to make it right after the marinade, so that it could meld overnight and also chill. The salsa is most unusual, but also very simple. Mix the following in a bowl, and 90 percent of this meal is done:

• One pound of cherries, pitted and coarsely chopped; I was lucky to find fresh cherries at the beginning of their season; frozen would have been my other option. This is a bit time-consuming.
• 1/4 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 T cilantro leaves, chopped (I used more)
• 1/4 jalapeño (I used a whole one)
• juice of 1 lime (yes, that's 2 limes total)
• salt (just a bit)

One the marinade has soaked and the salsa melded, the steak should be removed from the marinade and placed on a platter for 30-60 minutes, to reach room temperature. Onwauchi suggests patting it dry, but that seems silly. I just left if on a platter and picked it up with tongs (click-click!) when I was ready to cook. Rather than searing it on a hot skillet (he suggests 7 minutes per side, with a 130F internal temperature), I put it on our Big Green Egg, in which I had been baking potatoes at about 450F for over an hour. (We are all-out potato bakers!) 

My special blogger power is knowing when the final dish is not going
to be photogenic and also when the ingredients will be. These nice
colors all melded together in a tasty but not pretty way.

I did this for 7minutes per side, taking no temperatures. In retrospect, 6 minutes would have been even better, but these results were very good -- medium at the ends and medium-rare in the middle. I tented foil over the steak for 10 minutes and sliced it very thin (on bias, as he writes). I returned this to a clean platter and served with the salsa.

We shared this with friends we knew would appreciate the vibrant flavors and the local sourcing (we buy our best chickens from these same friends). The sweet/spicy, cool/warm contrasts of this meal were amazing. We will definitely repeat -- and we might be doing so with this salsa on their chicken. 

Bonus: this recipe involves a fair bit of chopping on the day before, but almost no work at all on the day it is served. That makes it a very nice thing to serve when friends are coming over.

Chicken with Walnuts

A quick recipe from a classic cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book) this used several leftover ingredients that I had in my refrigerator including two half bell peppers (one green, and one orange) and 3 scallions. 

I started by slicing two chicken breasts into about 20 pieces and then slicing the peppers, and scallions. Everything was set aside while I made the sauce which consisted of what was left in my bottle of soy sauce (the recipe says 3 T), 2 t cornstarch, a bit of port wine (in lieu of cooking sherry), a sugar cube, a bit of ground ginger, salt, and crushed red pepper. 

Using my indispensable cast-iron skillet I first sautéed the chopped vegetables for two minutes on high heat with orange-infused olive oil (I chose this flavor cooking oil because the recipe lists kumquats as an option for serving). The veggies were removed and then a cup of chopped walnuts were given a turn in the skillet for one minute. They were removed and then the chicken strips were cooked in the skillet. Once they were cooked through (it only took a few minutes) the sauce was added and then the vegetables and walnuts were put back in. Everything was covered and cooked together for another minute. 

We had some leftover lemon rice with almonds which we heated in the microwave oven and served with the chicken. 

An easy, delicious, and nutritious weeknight meal.

Blackberry Budín

August 1 is Lammas, so we got out The Wicca Cookbook, and easily determined that we should make Blackberry Pudding. (We call it Budín, as it is called in Spanish, and also makes for a nice alliteration here.)

We have an abundance of blackberry brambles in our yard which did not produce at all last year. I expect they simply needed to be fallow, and chose their own time. This year we are once again enjoying their bounty.

Ingredients listed are as follows:

1 1/4 c. almond milk
1/2 c. ground almonds
1 1/4 c. water
1 pint fresh blackberries
1/3 red wine
2 T. rice flour
1/3 t. sugar 
1/2 t. salt
1/8 t. ground ginger
1/8 t. ground cinnamon
1 T. butter
2 T. red wine vinegar
1/4 c. currants or raisins.

I adjusted the recipe a bit. It called for almond milk, but I just used regular old milk. It also suggests using red wine vinegar, but since I had blackberry-ginger vinegar on hand it seemed like an appropriate substitution. I also used regular flour in place of rice flour. I misread teaspoon as tablespoon for the sugar, and even so it wasn't very sweet. I'd add even a bit more next time. I did not measure either of the spices. I simply dumped in as much as I thought would be good. Again, next time I will use even more. I added more raisins than called for as well, for sweetness.

I started by soaking the blackberries in the red wine, meanwhile since I had whole almonds I used the blender to grind them. I then added the blackberries, other liquids, flour, sugar, salt, and spices. Once it was all liquid I poured it into a saucepan and stirred until it came to a boil. I let it boil to thicken for a few minutes, then removed from heat and stirred in the butter and vinegar. I chilled the pudding in the refrigerator for about two hours, and we had it for dessert, topped with some vanilla yogurt. 

It is a bit grainy, and the blackberry seeds got stuck in my teeth, so those who are bothered by these textures may wish to forgo this recipe.

Creative Kimchi

A Nueva Receta Special Mention

We include this recipe for Kimchi fried rice not because we have made it -- and in fact we are not likely to make it ourselves -- but because Noah Conk deserves special recognition for the unique format of his comfort-food recipe.

We learned about his creative project from a brief story on NPR's All Things Considered, in which he explained its importance as part of his personal path as an adopted immigrant. The result is a labor of love -- 3 hours of instructions in the form of song titles in a playlist. 

The NPR story explains how this works; Spotify tells you how to make his ...

The Kimchi Fried Rice Playlist/Recipe

 

French 75

Regular readers might know that we met in French class, so it was great that Pam a creative way for us to celebrate when National Cognac Day and National Bubbly Day fell on the same day. It was a day off four us, as well, making it all the easier to celebrate the occasion responsibly.

As with many National Day celebrations, there is often a good chance of us finding requisite items in our larder, but we were out of both cognac and sparkling wine this Saturday. What do do?

We wandered the aisles of a local liquor store where we find an ever-changing selection of our favorite wines -- Malbecs of Mendoza. It has quite a selection of spirits as well, but we passed many kinds of "brandy" before finding just a couple of cognacs. And even though Courvoisier VSOP is not as expensive as some items in the store, we did have to ask a manager to unlock the glass case it was in.

Image: Kazzit

Next, we drove to our favorite vineyard, which we needed to visit anyway because our latest wine club selection was available. While there, we picked up a chilled bottle of Brut -- not French grapes, but French-inspired processing.

We returned to our weekend Whaling House ready to prepare a mid-day cocktail that librarian had found just in time to save the day! French 75 is a very simple, elegant cocktail that is well regarded from New York to Paris but is named for a restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Verdict: this was quite simple, delicious, and a good thing to enjoy after we were done with our automobile for the day!

Lagniappe

Whenever I think of cognac, I think of two stories from the past. One is that in my previous job (in which adult beverages could be purchased with a work-related meal), one of our VPs always ordered a glass of Courvoisier. It was from him that I got the idea it was fancy.

The other is that on the former Brazilian airline Varig, cognac was always offered as part of the ordinary beverage service, for no extra charge. I only ever saw one passenger abuse this -- he went from drunk to drunker in a short flight. For the rest of us, it was just a nice extra touch. It may or may not be a coincidence that this airline eventually went bankrupt. 

Cenas Sin Recetas

For a special dinner to mark our anniversary, we looked in Laura Arnold's Best Simple Suppers for Two, because there are two of us. There we found a recipe for Caprese Salad with Basil Pesto. We knew we would need to modify the recipe because it called for prepared pesto. We also thought it would be nice to use the pesto we prepared for the salad to make a pasta pesto. 

In the end, the recipe for one dish had become merely a menu suggestion and shopping list for two dishes we already knew how to make. So we set off on a small shopping trip. We rarely go to the grocery together, but we decided to make an occasion of it and we visited Fieldstone Market in Marion with a short list. Because we already had pine nuts on hand, we just needed fresh mozzarella, basil, tomatoes (we remembered this place always has great ones), parmesan cheese, and fettuccine. 

We returned to the small galley at Whaling House, where we each put together two nice, simple dishes. On a platter, we had mozz, tomatoes, a drizzle of basil-infused olive oil, and a sprinkling of dry basil. Pam blended some of that oil, fresh basil leaves, chopped garlic scapes and pine nuts until they made a paste. I combined them in a bowl with fettuccine, a small scoop of the water from cooking the fettuccine, some freshly shredded parm,  and lemon zest. These combined well with a a baguette from Fieldstone and a Gewürztraminer from Westport Rivers. As we dined, Pam remembered to light the candle we first lit together 35 years ago at a church in Baltimore, and that we light on May 9 of each year. (And that I failed to include in this photo.)

Flashback for the next day: While we were in Fieldstone, Pam noticed a small, whole chicken and some fingerling potatoes. We bought both, with vague plans to prepare them in our upright chicken roaster -- a great little pan that we first wrote about in the 2011 Just Peachy post on this blog. (It has been featured many times since then, especially since we get roasters from our friends at Maribett Farm. 

In the middle of Tuesday afternoon, I rinsed the chicken and removed the package of giblets from the middle. I glanced around the kitchen and decided to fill the central well of the pan with some margarita mix and tequila, which would moisten the inside as the bird roasted. I then applied some lime-infused olive oil, dry thyme and oregano, and a bit of salt. I placed the small potatoes around the base of the pan and roasted at 450 for 15 minutes before turning down to 300 for an hour. At the end of that time, my eyes and our Thermapen agreed that it needed just a bit more cooking, so I increased the heat to 425 for another 10 minutes. The result was a perfectly cooked, very tender and savory chicken. 

Simple chicken, without a recipe. The candle is not the one mentioned above;
it is an "everyday" candle on a sun-moon-star candlestick that was the gift
of a generous colleague. 

It paired well with Malbec, as most things do. A prefect start to our 36th year! 

A Birthday Celebration that created quite a lot of Dishes

A mid-week birthday during final exams means a low-key celebration for James as he enters his sixtieth year. James made his own birthday dinner of an old favorite: Puerto Rican Chicken Fajitas from the Well-Filled Tortilla cookbook. My role was to bake the birthday cake. When I asked James over the weekend what kind of cake he would like he said something with lemon and raspberries. The New York Times Cooking page had just what the (Ph.D.) doctor ordered! Lemon Sheet Cake with Raspberry Whipped Cream.

This recipe is a 12-step program, beginning with preparing the pan. The instructions call for use of a non-stick spray, but I used Crisco shortening. I did follow the instructions to coat the pan, then cover in parchment, and then coat the parchment, which seemed like overkill, but I must say that I have never had such an easy time removing a cake from a pan when it was time to serve. The recipe also calls for vegetable oil. I used lemon-infused olive oil, which really was the right thing to do.

The recipe also calls for an electric mixer in steps 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11. Still don't have one, so a spoon, a whisk, and some strong arms were put to good use.

Lemons needed to be zested and juiced, and raspberries needed to macerate (a word I did not know before) and then strained. Cream needed to be whipped and flour sifted. We used every mixing bowl in our cabinet, one of which had to be rinsed out so it could be used again. We also used more of our utensils than we usually would with one recipe.

The result was a delicious yellow cake with a thick pink topping. This isn't very sweet, so the flavors of lemon and raspberry come through more than we expected, although neither is overwhelming. 

Photos show our sink after we'd already put round one of dishes into the dishwasher, and our "Julia Child" pegboard with lots of space as as all the utensils were being washed. Unfortunately the photograph of the cake turned out blurry, so I won't be posting it here.

So many dishes!

This is after I'd already washed the flour sifter and put it back in its place. We really did use a lot of utensils.

Algorithm Chicken

 

Photo: AllRecipes user Rebecca Lepore

Although one purpose of this blog is to push us to leaf through the pages of the several dozen cookbooks we own, frequent readers will notice that we are just as likely to seek our inspirations online. 

It seems that it is not only our human readers who have noticed our patterns -- the algorithms were quick to provide assistance yesterday. I went to All Recipes at midday on a Friday. The timing suggests a user seeking an easy meal; the fact that it was me suggests that I'm looking for yet another way to prepare an item that is a staple of our weekly dairy delivery. The fact that it was either one of us suggests that a listicle is in order. This led the ghosts in the machine quite inevitably to put these words front-and-center on the AllRecipes screen: 

12 Top Chicken Breast Dinners That Use 5 Ingredients or Less

I scrolled through the list until I found two that seemed likely candidates: recipes we would both like and without breading because I've been kind of overdoing that option lately. I sent both links to Pamela and her exact words were "Both look yummy!"

I chose Balsamic Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts, a recipe whose title is almost the entire recipe. I followed the recipe almost exactly as written, reducing the balsamic for about 15 minutes instead of 10. I did assemble the dish pretty much as directed, though it was not very pretty (hence the stolen photo above) and I did not believe the toothpicks would make it any more so.

Because I was using our oven as an air fryer at 400F for some potatoes to go with this, I decided not to bake the chicken in the oven, but rather to use an indispensable cast-iron skillet with a lid as a Dutch oven. Starting out a bit hot and then keeping the heat minimal worked well for this; it was cooked properly in 35 minutes.

I regretted not noticing the recipe's suggested inclusion of sautéed mushrooms -- it was written as an afterthought, and not included on the ingredients list.

We both agreed that this was as delicious as it was easy. I liked it as much as Pamela did, even though she is by far the bigger feta fan. We will definitely be making it again, perhaps with a flavored balsamic.

Lagniappe

I am certain that the runner up will be featured here very soon.

National Grilled Cheese Day

 For this year's celebration (we seem to manage this one fairly often), we found a recipe whose name practically is the recipe: Blackberry Bacon Grilled Cheese. Anybody who knows how to make a grilled-cheese sandwich need only add these details:

• blackberry refers to blackberry jam
• bacon refers to crispy bacon, cooked before assembling sandwich
• cheese refers to Swiss cheese (I used a nice, soft, lacy Swiss)
• sliced, fresh jalepeños are the only component (aside from cooking butter) not implied in the title
• grilled refers to sourdough bread (which was hard to find in these days of supply-chain challenges)

We had only Canadian bacon on hand, so I substituted that. It was leaner and less crispy than South-of-the-49th Bacon. This somewhat lighter alternative made for a nicely balanced sandwich.

Photo: Lemon Tree Dwelling

The recipe is accompanied by photos that are far superior to any I could have taken of these somewhat messy sandwiches. The recipe itself helps me to understand why so many people whine about overlong, meandering food-blog posts. 

Nothing in the author's discussion of this recipe related at all to the recipe, unless the reader is aware of the coincidence between National Grilled Cheese Day and National Only-Child Day. 

Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken: Têm

 This was the title of a recipe Pam read to me as we made the Friday mid-day transition from "we have plenty of food so we don't need to shop for dinner" to the making of an actual plan.

My response was, "I like every word of that title!"

She then read the ingredient list, answering herself with "Têm!" after every word. This is a bit of family lore, dating back to my dissertation travel in Rondônia in 1996. A neighbor who enjoyed sharing a lot of foods with me invited me to cook a big meal in his kitchen. I would need ingredients that I had not yet seen in the area. As I asked him about each thing I would need to make a chicken and pasta dinner, he would nod solemnly and pronounce "Têm!" -- "They have it!" This sounds so much better in Portuguese, so it is how we share the good news that what we need is on hand. (That meal, by the way, became a minor legend. During a return visit in 2000, people would stop me in the street to ask me if I could cook for them again.)

But I digress. We had everything mentioned in the title of Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken, plus the additional ingredients: lemon, pepper, and above all: bacon.

This is another recipe that it is taking me longer to describe than it might take a reader to prepare. I began by putting the rice on to cook as a side dish, and then following the recipe almost to the letter. I used a splash of lemon with the ground pepper, since our jar of lemon-pepper was in the other kitchen. And I used some nice fresh mozzarella, which I shredded/crumbled. The only thing I will do differently next time is to put the bacon on earlier in the process; the thick slices we use could not really crisp in 10 minutes. 

Lagniappe

When I don't think a dish will make for a good photo, sometimes I take a photo of the ingredients, or of the dish in progress. Other times I will poach a photo from the recipe website. In this case, just trust me: this is more delicious and easy than it is photogenic. It just looks like melted cheese at the end. The website has 70 photos. I scrolled through half of them before I concluded that there are a lot of ways to make this look ugly. 

Cilantro Lime Rice and Beans

There's not a whole lot more to add to this post, once one reads the title. The recipe showed up on my  Facebook feed, posted by a friend. I remembered it on Friday when we were looking for an easy meal for dinner. Serendipitously, we had part of a lime, as well as some cilantro left over from a meal we prepared earlier in the week. Since the only other ingredients listed (besides rice and beans, of course) were water, salt, and olive oil we were good to go. I used the basil flavored olive oil we found at Fieldstone Farm Market (a great grocery store we recently discovered in Marion, MA). 

The recipe can be found here. I used my indispensable cast-iron skillet for this one-pot meal.

Pi Day Pie

Mmm...Good pie!

We were quite pleased with ourselves last Sunday for remembering that Pi Day (3.14) was coming up, and so we got out our Teeny's Tour of Pie cookbook, from which we selected the decadent Bourbon Bacon Pecan Pie. James was in charge of making the crust, cooking the bacon, and whipping the cream for the topping; Pam was in charge of making the filling and baking.

Ingredients for this one include:

6 T butter at room temperature

1 c. packed light brown sugar

2 eggs (the recipe says 3, but I discovered that when a recipe calls for three I can use two to good effect)

1/2 t. salt

1 t. vanilla extract

3/4 c. dark corn syrup

2 T. bourbon

3 cooked slices of bacon (the recipe says four, but we only had three so that's how many we used)

8 oz. chopped pecans

Whole wheat crust (recipe follows)

James steps in here to describe his pre-dinner efforts...

Before starting the crust, I cooked three thick slices of bacon, cutting them into small pieces as they cooked. I let them cook over low heat until crisp and then let them drain on paper towels.

This was a simple, basic crust. I did kitchen math on Teeny's Whole Wheat Crust recipe, because it is for a double crust and we would have no need of a top crust or second pie very soon. (Maybe next year we'll do a quiche and a pie on the same day.

The inclusion of a bit of whole wheat allowed us to pretend this dessert was a bit less decadent than it actually was. After cleaning and thoroughly drying the counter top on our Gilligan (kitchen island), I sprinkled a bit of white flour on it. Then I combined 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour, 1 tsp salt,  and 1 Tbsp sugar. I then cut in 3/8 cup (3/4 of a stick) unsalted. butter and 1/8 cup (2 Tbsp) shortening.

I sometimes use two knives for this, but I have had success lately with a pastry cutter, pausing periodically to clear the gaps between its blades. Once I had that elusive crumbly texture, I kneaded in cold water and cold vodka, just a bit of each at a time, totalling only 2T of vodka and 4T of water. I rolled the dough into a ball, and then flattened it to a thick disk.

I then used a stone rolling pin to roll the disk out until it was a bit wider than the pie pan. I pressed it into the pan and put it in the fridge while I made dinner. After we ate, it had been chilling for well over an hour, making it ready for Pam' part.

Back to Pamela ...

The butter and brown sugar were mixed together and then the eggs were added (one at a time - stirring after each one) then the salt, vanilla, corn syrup and bourbon. Most of the chopped pecans went in, along with the bacon, but enough pecans were saved to put a layer into the bottom of the pie crust. Once these were placed, the rest of the filling was poured into the crust, and the pie was baked at 350 for 50 minutes. It then set and cooled for another 50 minutes. 

The bacon and the more-than-usual amount of pecans cut down on the sweetness of what can be an overly sweet pie.

James again ... for the first time ever, I used a small mixing bowl and small whisk to make the whipped cream. As we say, rather than a mixer with a mixing attachment, we use a whisk with a rower attachment. Coastal rowing has given me some forearms! I combined about 1/3 cup whipping cream, 1 Tbsp confectioner's sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and whipped until peaky. We put this on each slice, and I also splashed some bourbon on top of mine.

We had this for dessert following a simple dinner of fried rice. We did not want to overdo things!

 

Invalid Cooking

Look at the title of this post again; there are two ways to pronounce it. We mean both: cooking that is not valid (in-VAL-id) and cooking for those who are incapacitated (the archaic IN-vul-id). From our point of view, both apply to a food item we learned about this weekend: beef tea.

Let that steep in: beef tea. 

It is, unfortunately, just what it sounds like and it is a real thing, though not at Casa Hayes-Boh.

Palm Leaf badge from
How Girls Can Help
Their Country

We heard about it on The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel (s4e8) on the same weekend that I was preparing a lecture on unorthodox teas and on the same weekend that Pam read about beef tea in a fascinating article about retired Girl Scout badges.

A badge from the early twentieth century was for invalid cooking -- that is, the preparation of foods that would be easy to eat or restorative of health, for those unable to eat regular foods.

I am reminded of a hospital stay when I was ten years old, in which I rejected a nice plate of spaghetti and had nothing but creamed soups and Jello for the rest of a week. I am glad beef tea was out of favor by then!

People in the tea industry use "orthodox tea" to distinguish the products of Camelia sinensis from the tinctures of other plants, such as yerba maté and herbal teas. All of the candidates I knew about before this weekend are extracted from plants. I am very pleased to have learned of this seriously unorthodox exception.

When thinking about the term beef tea, both of us immediately thought it was just a funny way of saying broth, but this is not the case. As detailed in the Beef Tea recipe on epicurious, beef it cooked and then seeped and filtered. The beef itself is discarded just as tea leaves would be, and the bones are not present at all. As its presence on epicurious suggests, this is having a bit of a comeback. 

Perhaps it is not surprising that there are some particularly British ways of doing this, including a paste or fluid called Bovril and beef heart tea. 

Red Wine Cookies

I saved this recipe earlier this year when it showed up on my Facebook feed expecting that at some point I would have an open, but unfinished bottle of red wine. Although an unfinished bottle of wine is a rare event at our house, it does occasionally happen. We actually ended up with two open bottles at the same time when we had one at each of our houses. Since the recipe indicates that you can use any type of red wine we figured mixing would be fine. Once we had both bottles in the same place I began the process of reducing the wine, following the instructions to use the same pan in which I first melted butter until foamy.

I also mixed the wet and dry ingredients separately (as indicated), and then together which really made for a lot of dishes. The beach house has a rather small dishwasher so we had to wash these in two rounds, as well as wash the cookie sheet by hand, a difficult task in the rather small sink that goes with the rest of the rather small house.

This recipe demonstrates the importance of having a well-stocked pantry. You don't want get caught with leftover red wine and find that can't make cookies out of it because you are lacking the rest of the ingredients.

The cookies were rich, chewy, and not too sweet.

Crab-stuffed flounder

Well, it's already been a week since National Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day. It was fortuitous that it fell on a day we were already planning on going to Kyler's Catch to fetch some seafood for dinner. We were aware that crab meat these days is crazy expensive and so we were in fact prepared to pay the $17 for 8 ounces. Nevertheless, this of course put a bit of pressure on the chef-of-the-day (Pam) to get preparing the meal right. 

I used this recipe from The Nibble with the following adjustments

• We used sole which is not exactly the same as flounder, but it was recommended by the folks at Kyler's, whose advice we heed.
• I did not use celery (we didn't have any).
  
• I used dry parsley.
• I absolutely did not use plain breadcrumbs. I only use panko.
• The filets weren't big enough to roll with the crabmeat inside, so I made fish sandwiches instead.

Ready for the oven

We very much enjoyed this meal. And it really wasn't difficult. Looking forward to enjoying this again when the price of crab is more reasonable. 

Valentine Skillet

 

Photo of "downtown" Valentine, Arizona because this
dish was more delicious than beautiful.

We do not go to Mexican restaurants on Cinco de Mayo and we do not go to any kind of restaurants on Valentine's Day. Neither is worth the trouble, especially as our home-cooking options have increased and improved over the years. We both remember our sad efforts to find a nice meal out one Valentine's evening in Tucson.

On this, the 110th anniversary of Arizona statehood (about which we wrote extensively for Celebrating the States in 2010), I prepared a dish with Arizona roots -- something from the Valentine State. As is often the case on this blog, I credit Pam for doing the hard part -- finding a great meal idea -- while I merely cook it.

The dish she suggested was Skillet Beef Tamales, which had been contributed to the Taste of Home recipe site by a reader from Arizona. I started to think about how I might spend part of Monday morning doing some prep work, because I do enjoy making tamales for special occasions (and nacatamales for really special occasions). As much as I was starting to look forward to this, I was just as happy to find that this dish is more skillet than tamale -- by which I mean it is a single-pan dish perfect for a weeknight celebration.

And that single dish was the heaviest of indispensable cast-iron skillets -- perfect for browing the local, grass-fed beef (using olive oil instead of the called-for cooking spray and adding a generous dash of black pepper). I then covered it to finish essentially steaming the combined ingredients. The result: instant comfort food. We will make it again, probably with more spices, but we both agreed it was quite tasty as-is. We enjoyed it just as much for lunch the following day.

And some geography ... 

Regular readers (and I think we do have some) will not be surprised to know that looking for a good image to put at the top of this article sent me on a bit of a digression through "Arizona Valentine" rabbit holes. As my beloved and I had learned long ago, Arizona is called the Valentine State because of its February 14, 1912 statehood. What I did not realize -- or had forgotten -- is that Valentine is a town, or perhaps more accurately was a town. The town is named for a Robert G. Valentine, who had served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The town that bears his name is on the site of a school that taught Indian and white children in separate (and probably not equal) buildings for which the Hualapai children had been made the bricks. 

I learned this from the Valentine page on TheRoute-66.com, which means we will have an opportunity to visit it when we take the Great Hayes-Boh Route 66 Mother Road Trip in a few years.

Dinner by the sea

Yummy Haddock

James was scheduled to row with his rowing club on Thursday night, so we drove down to the sea together with the intention of picking up some fresh fish at Kyler's Catch for Pam to prepare at our beach house while James got his exercise. Little did we know that the row had been canceled earlier in the day. While James was disappointed when he arrived at the marina, we did not despair. We still had fish to enjoy, plus which it was also National Cream Cheese Brownie Day!

We went to our classic 1980s era Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook for a fish recipe and selected Baked Fish with Mushrooms (because we had mushrooms). The recipe also called for bacon (which was also on hand). We decided to substitute the shallot we had for the green onions. 

The first step involved cooking the bacon - a rather straightforward instruction. Unfortunately, our electric stove has three different sized burners nested in concentric circles, with each having settings from Low to High which are all part of a single dial. The "low" setting on the smallest burner (which I did not intend to set) is next to the "high" setting for the middle burner (which I did intend to set). I put the bacon in the skillet, turned the dial, and waited wondering why the two slices wouldn't cook at all. I eventually discovered the problem and reset the dial, but what I didn't realize was that the middle sections (the only part getting any heat) of each slice had in fact started to cook, so that when the rest of the bacon was heated it heated unevenly. By the time the ends were cooked the middle sections were burned. They looked like long figure 8s. I threw out the burned parts and used only the ends.

After removing the bacon I sautéed the chopped shallot and the chopped mushrooms in the bacon fat and added 3 T. butter and some dried oregano. The fish (Haddock) was placed in a baking dish, topped with the mushrooms, shallot, butter and oregano and baked at 350 for 15 minutes. The bacon was crumbled and added to the top. We served with a spinach salad and paired with a buttery Chardonnay.

Cream Cheese Brownies: The secret is to 'spray with spray'

I don't always celebrate the food holidays I learn about on National Day Calendar. I imagine I would "fall away to a ton" (as my grandmother used to say) if I did, but I could not resist National Cream Cheese Brownie Day. I started with a recipe I found on spendwithpennies.com, but had to make a few substitutions, so my revised recipe follows:

For the Brownies:

12 T unsalted butter

1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 c. cocoa powder

1 1/4 c. sugar

2 eggs

a dash of vanilla extract

1/2 t. salt

1 c. flour

For the Cheesecake Swirl

1 8 oz. package cream cheese

1/4 c. sugar (I had used up all the granulated sugar we had in the brownie mix, so I had to crush up a bunch of sugar cubes)

1 egg

a dash of vanilla extract

The instructions specifically said to "spray a 7x11 pan with baking spray". I ended up using a 9x13 pan because I didn't have the size recommended. Fortunately I did have plenty of my eponymous baking spray.

I melted the chocolate chips and butter together in the microwave (stopping every 30 seconds to stir). Cocoa powder, sugar, eggs, salt, vanilla, and flour were added and mixed together to form a batter which was poured into the well-sprayed dish. I also saved out 1 dollop of the batter as indicated in the recipe.

The cheesecake topping was made by mixing the cream cheese with the sugar and mixing by hand. The recipe says to use an electric mixer, but we don't own one. Next I added the egg and the vanilla extract and stirred until well mixed. I poured the smooth cheesecake batter on top of the brownie batter already in the pan, then plopped the reserved brownie batter on top of that and used a knife to swirl everything together. This baked at 350 for 25 minutes. It cooled a bit before we sliced it, but it was still warm and creamy when we ate it. So good. Not too sweet with a wonderful mouth feel, warm and chocolatey.

Food and Fellowship

Fellow Unitarian Universalists (along with many other church goers) are familiar with the coffee hour fellowship that follows Sunday services. This informal gathering is probably more important to some than is the formal service. Zoom church makes this difficult, and even our masked in-person meetings are happening without the "after" part, as we forgo eating and drinking together in the name of public health. Our first Sunday service of the new year (a "Zoom only" affair) sought to rectify this missing piece with "Breakfast Church". Since this had to be strictly BYOB we found a fun recipe to try with thanks to the New York Times Cooking Page. Although we had previously made Dutch Baby with Bacon and Runny Camembert, the simple Dutch Baby was, well, simpler. With just a few basic ingredients, a blender and a hot oven we had a tasty breakfast treat in about a half an hour - and it looked really cool, too. We sprinkled the puffy pancake with some powdered sugar, and added a few teaspoons of apricot jelly. We shared stories and enjoyed our respective meals via our online gathering. Breakfast at Casa Hayesboh is, of course, always paired with fresh roasted, fairly traded, organic coffee. For Breakfast Church we also imbibed some mimosas.

Dutch Baby hot out of the oven!

New Year's Eve dinner - Fettuccini with Chicken and Mushrooms

Welp, 2021 closed much the same way that 2020 did, so as we entered our third year of pandemic James and I spent a quiet evening at home. We managed to stay up until about 10:30 before we decided we'd had all the Netflix excitement two baby boomers could take. We did however, have a lovely meal before we settled in to the boob tube.

We selected Fettuccini with Chicken and Mushrooms from one of the oldest cookbooks on our shelf - 365 Ways to Cook Pasta. The recipe was selected because we had chicken and mushrooms in our larder. It calls for a mix of white button, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms. I only used the first two of these. We had purchased some white mushrooms for another recipe, and the shiitake came from a log James insisted we take with us from a shiitake mushroom farm we visited on Martha's Vineyard - our last trip before the country shut down in March 2020. The log was supposed to have been soaked that spring in order to cause the mushrooms to come out, but that was never done, so were were pleasantly surprised to find a 'shroom growing out of the log earlier in the week. I plucked it to use in our last meal of 2021.

The accidental shiitake mushroom

The recipe itself was of a rather straightforward chicken/pasta/creamy-tomato-sauce variety. Peas were also added to make it a complete meal in itself.