When Failure is Success in Disguise

Hello! How are you today? I hope it’s spring where ever you are – our local weather teased us with some warmth, then threw a curveball in the form of a little snow storm last week. At least it’s starting to melt, and we can see the grass again!

So, let’s get right to it! One of the things I love about trying new recipes is the fact that sometimes, nothing goes quite right; it’s those times where I get creative and come up with something even better than planned. This past weekend, I tried to make coney sauce for the 5,000 hot dogs I bought at Costco (yes, I went when I was hungry, and no, that’s not a good idea). I thought I would play around with the recipe a little by using half ground beef and half ground bison…no special reason, really, except that the two packages were on display next to each other at the store and it seemed like a good idea. Of course, when we got home I realized I didn’t have all the spices I needed, but figured it was no big deal since I have a pantry full of options.

Turns out it is a big deal! I used the chipotle chile powder instead of regular chili powder (apparently there’s a difference, according to Alton Brown), and fudged some other spices to make up for what I was missing, and it was SPICY! I like a little heat in my food, but only to a certain point; I like to enjoy a meal, not suffer through it. Anyway, I tried to adjust the heat level by taking out a lot of the … I don’t know … broth, I guess, and adding in more water to make up the difference, but it was still crazy hot. So what’s a girl to do? Well, my solution was to add another teaspoon of cinnamon and a few hearty pinches of – wait for iiiit – sugar (I like to use Sugar in the Raw…it reminds me of Europe). That definitely helped the heat factor, and so did the can of tomatoes Ben suggested I throw in to dilute the spice.

The end product was this big simmering pot of meat and juice and onions and canned tomatoes. Sure doesn’t sound like the coney sauce I know and love! However, it was still delicious, so we threw it on some dogs and went to town. It didn’t end up being the meal I expected, but it was still good (and taught me what to do next time!). So where’s the happy ending? Well it’s right here: it didn’t make a very good coney sauce, but it was an AMAZING chili. As it sat in the refrigerator overnight, everything came together and had a little flavor party that wrapped up just in time for dinner. We added some shredded cheddar, a little salsa and sour cream, and enjoyed it a heck of a lot more than we had when it adorned a hot dog. Yum.

But back to the night I was making what I thought was coney sauce…I was being adventurous, so I tried another new recipe (this came out of my cast iron cookbook) for dessert. It’s called Sauteed Bananas in Rum, and involved butter, rum, brown sugar, bananas and ice cream. It’s really easy to burn make – you basically make a rum-caramel sauce in the skillet, add the bananas and cook quickly, then serve it over ice cream. It didn’t take very long, and even though the house smelled like burnt sugar all night, Ben said he loved it. :) I keep him around for a reason.

That’s about it for now – I’ll keep trying to find new things to make (and the time to make them!), but might take a couple days’ break right about now. I was lopping off a hunk of bread dough with a serrated knife so we could have crusty bread with dinner tonight, and cut through the tip of a nail into the nail bed. This is after I nicked myself twice while chopping onions for that ridiculous chili…

Take care, and be safe (especially when using sharp kitchen utensils)!

Adventures in Boule

Hello! How are you today? It was an overcast, rainy day here, but let me tell you a little secret - I loved it! I love this time of year; the snow is starting to melt, the rain starts to fall, and it really starts to smell like spring. Love love love it. Don't you? I did have a nasty migraine today, but I'm lucky enough to have Ben for my wonderful husband. He takes care of me when the headaches hit, and has patience with me when they force me onto the couch, whimpering and whining. If that's not love, I don't know what is!

The reason I'm writing today is to brag a little bit; I like to do that once in a while when I'm really proud of something I've done, and this seems like the right venue. :) As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up seven books for a pretty decent price from Borders during their going-out-of-business sale. Three of those were cookbooks, and I couldn't be happier with my choices, considering I didn't so much as flip through them in-store. They sounded good from the titles, so I took a chance. If nothing else, I liked the covers enough to at least have them on display even if the recipes were terrible.

One of these books was about bread making; it's called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg MD and Zoe Francois (see their website here). I thought it would be great because not only do I want to learn to make great bread at home, but I also liked that it's local, with both authors living in the Minneapolis area. And so begins my first foray into bread making...

I started the process yesterday, as the book recommends (to give the dough time to chill thoroughly in the fridge, making it easier to handle), and it took maybe 10 minutes, start to finish. I added the four ingredients to my stand mixer, let it combine, and left it on the counter for a couple hours. The result was a very sticky mass of dough; it was enough to make about 4 loaves, depending on the size you choose.

When it had risen enough, I threw it in the fridge with some plastic wrap over the top. After I started to feel a little better after popping some of my migraine pills this afternoon, I decided it was a good time to make some dang bread (munchies and all that). It couldn't have been easier; I lopped a chunk off the big mass, sprinkled it with some flour, and pulled the sides down to make a ball. That only took about two minutes. After that, it was just a matter of letting it rest on a pizza peel with some corn meal (to prevent sticking) for about 40 minutes.

I preheated the oven, made some slashes through the top of the dough, and baked for a half hour. At the end of the 30 minutes, we had a wonderfully scented kitchen and this:

Right? Get. In. My. Belly. I made some honey butter while we waited for it to cool (with Ben hovering with the bread knife all the while), and then we went to town on the little loaf. I would have included pictures of the cut bread to show how beautiful and dense it was on the inside, but it just didn't last long enough. We gobbled it down in an hour (well, I like to think of bread as a nutritious dinner...). Luckily, the way this ... I don't know ... program works is that you make this big batch of really wet dough and leave it in the fridge. Over the course of two weeks you have this great dough at your disposal, and it gets more sourdough-y as the time wears on. So the way I see it, we'll get at least 3 more loaves out of that one batch, and Ben couldn't be happier. :) The best part? The money I spent on the yeast and the flour (it calls for all-purpose non-bleached) was less than I'd spend on one loaf of crusty bread at the store. Sold.

I can't wait to try some of the other recipes included in that book - and when I do I'll definitely share them with you.

Thank you for reading and take care!

The Case of the Moldy Bread

Hello! How are you today? The weather is beautiful in my neck of the woods, so I can’t complain!

I’ve been thinking lately about how much food we waste in our house…it’s a big victory if we actually finish something before it spoils, be it a gallon of milk or a jar of pickles. Sad, right? Since I keep saying that we need to keep better track of our spending, I’ve tried to figure out ways to make food last longer, but it’s a lot harder to do than I thought it would be! Geez, how did my mom do it??

One thing that will ALWAYS go bad around here is banana bread. I use my Gramma’s recipe, and my problem is that I love it so much that I could eat the whole thing right out of the oven (add a knife and some soft butter, and you have the heavenly trifecta), but I don’t want to finish the loaf when we get near the end. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but I can’t help it…I never want it to end, so it gets moldy. D’oh. I mean, look at this bread. Beautiful, right?

I recently made two loaves because I had some bananas going bad on the counter (hmm…anyone else see a pattern here?); one for instant gratification and one for the freezer. The instant gratification loaf was reduced to a butt after just a couple of days, and that’s how it remained until the first spots of mold showed up. Sigh. Then, with high hopes, I pulled out the freezer loaf. Don’t worry, it froze and thawed beautifully – it was like it was fresh out of the oven! Only cold…but you get the idea.

Now here’s the great part: we finished it! I owe it to Ben; he pulled a little prank (I like things just so and he likes to push my buttons) in his rush to leave for work one day, and that little move somehow led to us finishing our first loaf EVER. What did he do, you ask? Well, while we had started slicing off one end of the bread, that morning he decided to lop a big hunk off the other end (the bread was essentially butt-less), so we were left with the lovely moist center part. For some reason, we ended up gobbling up the remainder over the next couple days.

Well, no, I don’t know why that changed anything…I’m just saying it worked, and I’m excited about it. Sheesh! Who knew that his attempt to get under my skin would lead to a banana bread breakthrough? :)

Oh, I wanted you to know that I raided a Borders the other day to take advantage of their going out of business sale, and I picked up three cookbooks. I am VERY excited to try some of these new recipes...it looks like I'll finally be able to get some serious use out of my cast iron skillet! I can't wait to share tales of those adventures!

Take care!

A Basic

Hello! How are you today? I hope you’re warm and comfortable, where ever you are. I spent the weekend with my sister and her family, and her two little boys had just gotten sick with your standard cold. Of course, that didn’t stop me from playing and hugging and kissing cheeks, and now I’ve come down with the same bug. Worth it!

This cold is actually what inspired this entry; what’s better for a cold than home-made stock? When I came home sick from work yesterday, I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to eat, and I really didn’t feel like pounding juice and water; however, the thought of sipping some piping hot stock from a big mug sounded like heaven. Not to toot my own horn, but I was quite pleased with myself for having just that in the freezer. It just so happens that I spent a recent weekend making a nice big batch of beef broth, which I’ve never done before. Once again, it was a recipe I found online that sounded like it would work out well, and seemed simple enough. If nothing else, I figured everyone should know how to make stock – it’s easy, and it’s a basic added to so many dishes.

I will likely do some things differently next time (isn’t that always the case?), but I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I started out as the author suggested: I roasted the bones and chopped veggies in the oven to give the stock a deeper flavor. However, there was just too much stuff in the roasting pan for anything to really develop a nice color; next time I’m going to either use two pans or just brown in batches. Besides that snag, the process went really smoothly. While I was tending to the simmering stock (I added herbs and spices to what I had roasted, and covered with water), I kept myself entertained by listening to Nerdist podcasts (if you don’t know about this, you SHOULD – www.nerdist.com), nursing a glass of wine and playing with the dog.

After about 6 hours, I pulled all the big chunks out with tongs, and ran the rest through a fine mesh strainer lined with cheese cloth. The end result was this beautiful dark-golden broth, which I then stuck in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, I followed an online suggestion and filled jelly jars (you know, the little jars with 2-part tops for canning?) using a funnel for freezing. I wasn’t sure if that would work, but the package said they were freezer safe, so I figured, “Eh, why not?” It worked like a charm! I used 8-oz jars so that I would be able to easily grab, say, two cups without having to thaw a bunch and measure from there. I ended up having a ton of stock, so I filled 12 jars and a gallon-size zip top baggie (I nested it in my 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup to make it easier to fill and freeze).

This project worked out so well! I ended up using the eight cups from the baggie in beef stew just a few days later, and it was easily the best I’ve ever made. I used a couple jars in my failed Beer Cheese Soup adventure, and have a couple other recipes that could use some quality stock. Of course, if this cold runs much longer I may not have any left! It hit the spot yesterday, and I’m planning on having another cup this afternoon. I love it – the steam coming off of it helped my nose, the warmth soothed my chills, the smoothness felt wonderful on my throat, and the homey-ness made my tummy happy. Like I said, it’s basically a cup of heaven. It’s amazing that simple ingredients (beef bones, celery, carrots, onions and seasoning) could make something so delicious.