As we hibernated indoors yesterday, away from the stifling humidity, most of our energies wound up in the kitchen. I had been wanting to make Peter Reinhart’s recipe for Casatiello, and Italian Brioche, studded with bits of spicy salami and gouda cheese. What I love about his book is the complete thoroughness of instruction; he describes the process of how the dough will evolve, and what to expect. This dough has a high butter content, and after the butter has been added, the dough is very sticky, and altogether messy, resembling cookie dough. His instructions tell you to work the dough for 12 minutes, for in that amount of time the butter will distribute evenly and your sticky mass of dough evolves into a beautifully smooth, tacky ball that cleanly rotates around the mixer bowl. It was definitely one of those angels-singing marvel moments as I watched it happen. I baked it in a square springform pan to make one loaf; you can bake it in bags and in smaller sizes more typical of Brioche, too. It’s delicious, and made me wonder about other cheeses and even adding snippets of fresh herbs, such as the French tarragon that is always looking for something to creep into…..

In-between my dough mixing and shaping, James took over the kitchen and used the mixer’s food grinder attachment to make an amazing tomato sauce. The food grinder is great, because you get all of the pulp and meat and juices of the tomato, while efficiently discarding the seeds and skin. We have almost all heirloom tomato plants, and the flavors of these tomatoes are out of this world. Describing a slice of Carbon uses similar language as describing wine… smokey, bold, strong finish. So when you mix all these robust, intense flavors together, and cook them down all afternoon, you have a sauce that literally sings to you. He also incorporated caramelized onions and banana peppers, plus some sauteed chicken tenders. As James put it: summer in a bowl. It was excellent.

So where’s dessert? Well, this is a good example of how mistakes happen – even to those of us who’ve been cooking and baking for over 30 years. We had leftover egg yolks, because earlier this week, James had made zucchini bread, and one of the most awesome ingredients he uses is candied nuts. He’d done both pecans and walnuts, and the candying process uses a bunch of egg whites. So, what to make with egg yolks? Well, certainly a custard comes to mind – and with the heat, why not ice cream? Sounded good to me. Some things you take for granted, some things you don’t think about, and sometimes, even when you’re standing right there at the stove, stirring your mixture of cream and sugar and eggs and bits of natural vanilla bean, you take your eyes off what you’re doing to talk to your spouse, and the next thing you know, you have bits of cooked egg separating rapidly from your liquid. Gah. I tried plunging it into a water bath, stirring madly, but there are chemical processes that just don’t reverse themselves. I pitched a fit, pissed-off with myself for forgetting how quickly chemistry can happen, and then had to decide what to do.

I decided to give it a try, anyway, because the flavor was amazing, and not eggy, but the big question was texture. I chilled the custard, then put it in my Krups machine that I’ve had for 20 years. And waited.
It never froze. I think it was the fact my custard was too warm, still. So what to do? This is when experience is a good thing, because it makes you more resourceful. Rather than focusing on the failure of ice cream, I focused on what was wrong with my dish, and what could I turn it into? I had it: Milkshakes. I strained the custard through a sieve, removing the bits of hardened egg proteins. Then I added frozen strawberries to the blender until it was completely full. I figured that if any of the egg had made it through the sieve, the texture would be masked by the presence of strawberries (and keep in mind, the mixture never scorched, and was utterly, vanilla-ey delicious, despite the overcooking.)

The result was stupendous. My husband declared it to be one of the top 5 milkshakes of his life.

What was leftover was poured into a dixie cup, popped in the freezer with a fork in it to make a makeshift ice cream bar. The texture on that might be a bit grainy, but at least we know it’ll taste good!

Now it’s Sunday, and I think I’d like to go out for brunch.

I love broccoli. A few years ago, the Wo planted broccoli Rabe and we snarfed it up. This year, he planted a Rapini variety called “Rapa Senza Testa”. Wellza, Weza Liked itz a Lotza!

It helps to like greens, and broccoli and spinach, if you’re going to cook with Rabe or Rapini.

Here are the cleaned leaves from the plant:

I picked a variety of leaves – some bigger and older, some were newer and greener. With the older leaves, I tore the leafy part into goodly-sized chunks, and avoided the stem, especially at the base. (That part can get tough.) I left more of the stem on with the younger shoots. Two plants yielded about 5 cups or so of the green stuff – and while that sounds like a lot, you will quickly see how it disappears when cooked!

I started with a big ol’ Vidalia onion, and sauteed it in olive oil until it was semi-soft. Then I added some minced garlic. (So as to not burn the garlic, since it takes a lot less time to cook.)

Once everything’s soft and cooked, here comes the mound of Rapini:

Which quickly becomes this:

Meanwhile, a quick trip to Fritz’s yielded the protein in the dish (Sweet Italian Sausage Links):

Now, you can use a spicy sausage, and it doesn’t have to be in link form – you can cook it up with the onions, just drain off the fat. I’ve made similar dishes with spicy meat and it’s equally delicious. These links are pre-cooked, so I didn’t have to worry about cooking time. Just sliced them up into delicious rounds, and added them to the mixture.

I added freshly-ground pepper, and about a cup of water with a couple chicken bouillon cubes half-dissolved, and let it simmer. This is a brothy pasta topping, and since the bouillon already had plenty of salt, I didn’t add anything else. Since you’ve got a stronger component with the greens, balanced with the sweeter meat (or robustly complemented, if using a spicy version), you really don’t need a lot of herbs or other seasonings – of course if you want to throw in some basil, or something else, experiment away!

Spoon it over a nice curved-shape pasta – these were called “gnocchi” even though they were actually just a little fancier shell-shape. Trumpets, corkscrews, rigatoni – you want shape and the ability to grab a little extra juice. My photo got a little blurry, but you get the idea. Top it with some fancy Parmesan, or powdery, depending on what you did or did not remember to get at CostCo, pour yourself a nice cheerful white wine to keep it light, and savor the flavors!

In other gifts from the garden, here’s a shot of the stir fry I made the next night, with four days’ worth of snow pea harvesting:

I am pretty much done with those little pulverized packets of instant oatmeal. (Maybe in a pinch or crisis…) But people eat it because it’s quick, convenient, foolproof and it comes in a bunch of flavors.  And there’s lots of health benefits touted about oatmeal, so we all know it’s good for you, good for your heart and treating cholesterol, and yet if you’re like me, you think of home-cooked oatmeal as a gloppy sticky mass, made only slightly more palatable by a splash of milk and some brown sugar.

Then, on one of my social networks, I kept seeing chatter about “Baked Oatmeal”.  Reviewing several recipes, I decided to give it a whirl – following the recipe but throwing in some extras. This is the recipe I used (discussion on modifications shortly).  I skipped the raisins, threw in some pecans and dried cranberries, put it all in the oven, and waited. Lordy, friends, it only took one batch to make me an instant convert. This is definitely different from dry dusty packets, and it’s a step up from stovetop oatmeal.

Things to consider, starting with the oats. This recipe calls for the quick-cook oats, which will work, and will give you a very smooth-textured end result. That’s alright, but for my taste, I don’t want smooth, it reminds me too much of my lesser-ideal oatmeal dishes.  So I crank up the texture (and fiber)  and what I usually create a mixture of various oats: a cup or so of quick oats, a cup or so of Irish oatmeal/regular oats, and a cup or so of steel-cut oats or my favorite, Bob’s Red Mill 5-Grain Rolled Cereal, which is a wonderful blend including oats, flaxseed, barley and rye.  (I looove all the Bob’s Red Mill line – all the specialty flours and grains you need!) Today’s batch was quick oats, regular oats, steel-cut oats and a handful of flaxseed. I then added about a half-cup of chopped dried apricots, a quarter cup of apricot preserves, and 3/4 of a cup of walnuts that I’d rough-chopped and toasted on the stove with a little butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. De-lish.  Other adjustments: substitute applesauce for most or all of the oil, and I have used milk powder and water instead of regular milk. (Confession: I’ve also used half-and-half and butter.) I’ve used Splenda in place of the sugar, but I’ve also used brown sugar in varying amounts every time. The nice thing about this sort of recipe is that it’s very accommodating and forgiving. I always use the eggs and the baking powder, but I’ve sometimes added more oats and had a drier mixture going in to the oven – other times it’s been pretty wet and has come out moist. Either way it’s really delicious hot with some milk poured on top, and it reheats beautifully. It’s a great weekend dish, but you can also make it the night before, leave it in the fridge and bake it in the morning. It’s filling, it keeps you full all morning, and it has lots of good fiber. It’s also a nice recipe for those of you who tend to follow every recipe to the letter, and you want to break free and experiment a bit – just keep your wet ratios in line with your dry, and try a variety of dried fruits, nuts and seeds. It’s like fun birdseed for people!

You know when you’re alone, and you make a face or react to something, and you don’t censor your muscles or reaction or words, because nobody can see you?

The other night, I was making chili for dinner. It’s been freaking cold, and it sounded like a great, quick meal. James was in the living room, on the couch, and just barely in my line of sight when I was standing at the stove. The television was on, and we’d finished our conversation. I pulled the chili seasoning packets out of the pantry – there was a small amount of “HOT” powder left, and a plenty of “Medium-Hot” in another package. (By-the-by, we get a lot of spices and seasonings from Penzeys over in old Overland Park – it’s a cook’s mecca!) I put the remainder of the Hot powder in the pot, and then started to shake out some more of the Med-Hot.

That’s when it happened. The bobble. The lurch. The shifting weight, while negligible, threw me, and suddenly I found myself dumping in a quite goodly amount of the chili powder. I felt my face contort into a “WHOA WHOOPS OH FUCK” and simultaneously,  my brain was thinking, “JWo isn’t seeing this, just don’t say anything, carry on, get control of the bag.”

Then I hear, from the living room, “That’s not a good face!”

Whups. Busted. Not that it wouldn’t have become apparent once the meal was served! It was some damned spicy chili, but I will say, those Penzeys people make a helluva spice – the depth and robustness of the peppers gives it a huge full flavor, they don’t rely on just straight hot peppers to flame it up. So it could have been a lot worse. But we had bellies o’ fire and relied on the oyster crackers a little more than usual!

Despite the less-than-bumper crop of tomatoes this year, and despite the fact it wasn’t blazing hot, we sure got a lot of jalapenos harvested. James made pepper jelly, and then we didn’t pick for a while – so the next harvest was filled with large, thick-walled jalapenos, and I decided to make them into jalapeno poppers, one of my favorite appetizers ever.

Man, that was an undertaking. Probably because I made over 100 of them, and I spread the steps out over a few days.

First, I thought I didn’t need gloves, because I was only coring them out. WRONG-O. I cored them and then stuffed them with cream cheese, and then put them back in the fridge. The next day, I followed a recipe that had me dunk them in milk, then in flour, then back in milk, then in bread crumbs, and I was supposed to do each type of dredging a couple of times. Perhaps if one were making, say, 12, that wouldn’t seem like a giant pain in the ass. I did get them all coated, and then I layered them on a cookie sheet, with wax paper dividers, and froze them. Eventually they got bagged in food saver bags of 12, and I must say, they’re really good. Worth all the effort. Here’s a pic of them all ready to be bagged up:

The other appetizer you can make (courtesy of my pal Bekah) is cut a slit & remove the seeds, or cut them in half (still remove the seeds), stuff with cream cheese, and wrap with bacon. I used about a third of a bacon slice per jalapeno, and the second time I made them, I didn’t even mess with toothpicks. Place them on a cookie sheet (I put down tin foil, since I prefer lazy-easy clean-up), bake in a 375′ oven until the bacon is crisp, and yuuuummmmeh time awaits. I mean, bacon and cream cheese make everything better in general, why not combine them? And you’re still getting some vegetable… lol.

Last, but not least, a really awesome addition to a crudite platter is to halve jalapenos, and stuff them with crunchy peanut butter (or you could use cream cheese) – a fantastic upgrade to celery. And there’s always the fun Russian Roulette of if you’re going to get that jalapeno that’s blazing hot! But the peanut butter helps minimize the burn fairly quickly, and most everyone I know loves ‘em. So, if you’re still harvesting peppers, these are some good ways to use them now, and save some for later, when it’s actually cold outside and you want a little summer heat flavor.

I clipped an article out of the Star a week or so ago, for a Gooey Butter Cake recipe that uses pumpkin, ala Paula Deen. Seriously, anything Paula Deen does has to be good because it’s gonna involve a half-ton of sugar, at least a stick of butter, and usually the advice to top it all off with a big ol’ spoonful of whipped cream. So no big challenge there, all the ingredients are very normal, ordinary things.

Being unemployed means I get to go to the grocery store when all the old people are shopping. It’s rather nice. I went to Price Chopper on Monday, and in the baking aisle, where all the canned pumpkin should be? Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Like there’d been a giant recall or a giant rush on the canned pumpkin. OK, I still had some time before I needed to make this. So today, after hanging & commiserating with Pensive Girl, I went to Aldi’s. (Aldi’s! Yes! My first time ever! Being frugal can really be an adventure. More on that later. I will say I researched it online so I wouldn’t look too new or stupid.) No pumpkin. They did have cranberry sauce, though. Ok. So, no biggie, Aldi’s doesn’t have everything, I’ll just swing into the ghetto Price Chopper on my way home.  (Sing it in your Cartman voice, “In the gheetttooooo”…) SAME THING. Completely empty shelf. What?! The?! Fuck!? Is everyone in the mood for pie, suddenly?

I decide, ok, Ward Parkway Target. I know, it’s not a full-service grocery store, but they’ve expanded…. maybe they’ll have it. Nope. They did have some evaporated milk with a photo of a SLICE of pumpkin pie on it, which fooled me for two seconds, and then I was angry at the can label for having suckered me in. Turns out the gorgeous Rashan, who tried to help me, and also had a canned pumpkin need (he was making cheesecake), had fallen for the same duplicitous photo on the milk can. And he also determined that no, there was no pumpkin to be had. They’ll have it later, as a seasonal item.

So I don’t know what the dealy-bob is with the run on canned pumpkin in the regular grocery store – I can’t imagine that many people raced to the store after seeing that recipe – but I may have to try Hy-Vee or -eek- WalMart if we’re going to have this cake before November. Because I am not going to buy a pumpkin and cook it, just to be able to make a recipe that involves using a box cake mix. If you see canned pumpkin out there, lemme know!

Yes, it’s possible. And, actually, delicious!

We’re in high harvesting mode with the garden, and while we can always freeze or can the tomatoes, coming up with a new way to eat zucchini or yellow squash can get a bit challenging. A few weeks ago, I remembered one of my favorite breakfast joints in Minneapolis, and how they specialized in egg scrambles loaded with non-traditional breakfast things – namely, vegetables. So I gave it a whirl, and darned if it isn’t just as tasty as I remembered it to be – and now I’ve created my own version, with summer squash!

I’ll admit up front, measurements and precision aren’t my thing when making dishes like this, especially because I think you can be flexible and include what you want. This isn’t a chemistry-based dish, where you need the right amount of leavening agent or a proper ratio with your flour. Experiment yourself! And you can get your veggies in before noon….

Very Veggie Scramble

1 onion, diced

1T vegetable oil

About 3 cups sliced vegetables (I used one small yellow squash and one small zucchini, a few jalapenos and a bag of frozen broccoli. Fresh broccoli is even better. Cauliflower would be delicious, too. Mushrooms. Peppers. You get my drift!)

1 fresh tomato, diced

4-5 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup cheese

salt, pepper to taste

Saute the onion until it’s softened, then add your veggies to the skillet. You want to cook the veggies to a stir-fry consistency, so there’s still some structure and bite in them, not mushy. Right as the veggies are nearing that stage, pour your beaten eggs over the whole thing, and gently stir and turn in the pan, cooking the eggs. Once the eggs are done, I added the tomato and then the cheese. I basically wanted the tomato to get to the same temperature as the dish, but without any further cooking, since it was the softest veggie in the mix. Season to taste – and devour! It reheats well in the microwave, so save your leftovers. You could extend this even further (and add a starch) if you folded in prepared hash browns right before the cheese-melting stage.

If your tomato crop is running over, hubs has a great bruschetta recipe on his tomato blog.  It’s a wonderfully tasty summer appetizer – we made this into dinner one night, it was so good. We used fresh mozzarella, which is definitely more traditional, but if you like goat cheese, I can’t recommend going that route enough. The tangy goat cheese definitely takes it to a whole new level!

Did you know you can’t buy the green sauce in a 12 oz bottle, like the one  you might use at Chipotle? This made me irritated. I do not like things that I love available only to the food service industry.  So, like much of my life, I found what we call a “work-around”:

Mmmm. That’s a whole gallon of green Tabasco.  Screw you, tiny-5-ounce-bottle-available-at-Price-Chopper.

Also, for those who like to do cost analysis? It would require purchasing 25 5-oz bottles to come close in volume…. let me illustrate, starting with a gallon=128 ozs,  god why do we not use the metric system?

$3.99 (small bottle cost on website) divided by 5 = Cost per ounce = $0.798

128 times $0.798 = $102.14

My cost to ship a gallon was just under $50.

You can get yours straight from the source, too.  It’s all I can do not to drink it by the shot.

A couple weeks ago, I found myself at a Starbucks, around 8 o’clock in the evening, and as much as I love my lattes, that’s just too late for me to consume caffeine. (Yes, I know, I can get decaf, but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I wanted to try something new.)

So I ordered the Berry Chai Infusion.

Oh. Mah. God. Tart but sweet, spicy and smooth. Love at first sip.

I decided I had to figure out a way to recreate this at home. My first attempt was so-so, but my second attempt is pretty darned good. And a lot fewer calories, to boot! I’m slurping one right now, and it’s de-lish.

You can make your own, too! I’m not much on exacting specifics, but here’s what I did:

8-10 cups hot water

3 Tazo Black Chai tea bags

3 Celestial Seasonings Wild Berry Zinger tea bags

8 single-serve packets of Splenda

Pomegranate-Black Currant Juice (We had some Old Orchard juice I’d scored on clearance at Target, seemingly because they’re not making it anymore. Their Healthy Balance line looks like they’ve got some great blends that would work just as well. You want something with a tart base, and a blended juice tempers one flavor from dominating. And, bonus, 1/3 the calories! I’ll probably try the Pom-Blueberry-Acai next.)

Place the tea bags in a teapot, cover with hot water. Add the Splenda packets (or wait & do this after you taste-test), and allow to steep. When the tea is sufficiently strong, pour about 1/3-cup to 1/2-cup of juice into your mug, fill to the top with tea, and then microwave 30-60 seconds so the whole drink is piping hot.

Bravo Tazo, baby! You just hacked in. Let me know how yours goes! I think you could try all kinds of variations, with the constant being the black chai, and a tart juice.

….Same As The Old Year….to paraphrase The Who, singing about something we ALL wish for ourselves, not to be fooled (again).

I rang in the new year by calming down three extremely pissed-off, barking black labs, who were certain we were under siege from The Enemy, as fireworks and god-knows-what-else exploded near and far from our house. I also was tending to the largest batch of crack Chex Mix I’ve ever made. Actually, the only batch I’ve ever made, but since the Wo was eating it for breakfast this morning when I stumbled out, and immediately asked me what in the hell I put in it to make it so full of WIN, I can only say, hey, I rocked in the New Year’s Chex Mix, baby. (The “secret”? Uh, half-again as much Worcestershire sauce as the traditional recipe calls for. We love us the nummeh brown winegar sauce.)

I followed up that winning first act with a breakfast of homemade Prune Cake from the Pioneer Woman, and do not let the name fool you. You will get on your knees and pray you’ll get another piece after you try the first one.  I served it with a tall glass o’ milk, and a shot of Reddi-whip on the side. Startin’ the New Year off RIGHT!

Then I threw together a batch of slow-cooker black-eyed peas, and that recipe lied to me about using dried beans. I thought I was in good shape, but 13 hours later, those suckers still have some crunch to ‘em, so that’s going to be dinner tomorrow. Fortunately, we weren’t particularly hungry, because we got together with the Wo’s immediate family & ate at Ted’s Montana Grill. Deeeelish.  My brother-in-law got the Kitchen Sink Bison Burger, and good lord, that was the craziest damn sammich I’ve ever seen. It had ..well, yeah, everything on it, including a slice of ham and a fried egg! He loved it.

Before the Wo crashed last night, we spent some time playing our newest Wii game, Lego Indiana Jones and the something or other. Oh mah god, it’s pretty damned fun for a two-person game. We have to work co-operatively, though initial observations showed we were utterly incapable of it, as he would whip me into pieces, and I, once rebuilt, would attack him with my shovel. I noticed, playing the role of sidekick, that I got stuck with a lot more grunt work. Mostly because I had the shovel. Which is quite effective on enormous spiders, too. Anyway, we laughed our heads off, which was the goal.

End the year laughing, begin the next one with Chex Mix and Prune Cake.

We rock.

Happy New Year. Actually, I’m pretty sure this one will be a lot better than the last one.