You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘gastroporn’ category.
The mister and I have rather slovenly spent the entire day in our PJs making shit.
He made this:
Yummy coffee cake. I’ve not tried it yet (well, I had a wee bit of the stuff that stuck to the sides of the pan), but it looks and smells incredible.
I’ve been working on this:
That’s a big puddle ‘o quilt I’m working on for a wee button due to shuffle onto this spinning rock sometime next month. I kind of love quilting. My way of quilting anyway. The way a colour story comes together and can be screwed with is my kind of fun.
In between quilty things, I made challah, using this recipe.
A few words about the recipe:
- I often cook breads on the top rack of the oven with a pan of water on the lower rack. This caused the cook time to be much longer than what is cited in the recipe.
- The recipe makes 4 x 1 pound loaves. I did a plaited loaf + gynormous rolls. This also upped the cook time considerably.
- I used silicon muffin ‘tins’ for the rolls & a cooking stone for the loaf. If you do not have these things, go get some now. They will revolutionize the way you bake.
This stuff is easy peasy, lemon squeezy. No kneading required, just a little time to let it rise a couple of times. Soooo delicious. 2 of the humongous rolls from the batch disappeared within about 30 seconds. So good:
I also did a proper braid:
Well, maybe not proper. There are only 3 strands in the plait as opposed to the usual 6ish. Next time I’ll do a 6-strand plait.
So yeah, in the end: totally gratifying recipe.
I’m normally an anti-bouillon, build it from scratch, chicken soup girl. I really hate the either too salty or no flavour qualities bouillon brings to the table so hardly a carcass, asparagus end, mushroom stem or handful of wilted parsley crosses my path without being tossed in a bag and frozen for future use in homemade soup stock. One day I will get around to documenting my process for creating homemade soup stock but today is not that day. Last night, out of a lack of time & energy & the need to provide the eldest sprog with the nasty bottom sustenance in somewhat liquid form, I caved and made a not-from-scratch chicken soup. It gave me an opportunity to get rid of some rice leftovers and to test drive a product I’ve only recently discovered. It was the quickest, easiest chicken soup I’ve ever made & it was pretty damned good so I’ll share that recipe with you instead.
What you need:
1 tablespoon of olive oil
A good pinch of black pepper
1 large cooking onion
2 inch chunk of ginger, peeled
4 cloves of garlic
6 bay leaves
6 cloves*
A healthy pinch of ground nutmeg
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs**
2 (UK) quarts of water (10 cups)
2 cups of pre-cooked rice
1 and 1/2 tablespoons of Better Than Bouillon(tm)***
3 cups of vegetables of your choice (I used a frozen mix of carrots, broccoli & cauliflower)
6 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 tablespoon dried
I started with heating the olive oil in my large stock pot over medium-high heat and because I was concerned with getting the oniony/garlicky flavours into the soup quickly I puréed them together before adding them to the pot. I should have added the ginger to that mess as I neglected to tell my family that there were large chunks of it they may not want to consume and I think everyone but me got one. Good times. So, then I added the onions, garlic, ginger, cloves, nutmeg & bay leaves to the pot and cooked until everything was a lovely, translucent slop. I then added the thighs and cooked those until lightly browned. At this point they were easy to pull apart into bite-sized pieces in the pot with a couple of wooden spoons so I did that. Then in went the water, the bouillon-esque stuff and the rice. I brought all of that to a boil then added the frozen vegetables & thyme sprigs & let the lot of it simmer until the vegetables were tender.
*The French word for cloves is clous which translates back to english as nails. I don’t know why I like that so much but it always makes me think of making orange/clove pomanders as a kid at Christmas time.
**Why thighs? The slightly higher fat content lends itself to better flavour distribution as well as holding its own against other flavours & being easy to pull apart once cooked.
**This stuff is like magic. The instructions on the jar called for 1 and 1/2 tablespoon per quart of water used but I got away with 1 and 1/2 for the entire batch of soup. It wasn’t too salty (the stuff is worth about 39% of your daily sodium intake recommendations per 6 gram serving which, compared to others with 45% for 3.5 grams is pretty decent) and my chicken soup tasted chickeny and not bouillony.
I don’t know about any of you but I’m still sat here in my pyjamas, sipping a manhattan and brimming with smugness for having done almost nothing productive today. I did do laundry, but I was still on auto-pilot so it hasn’t registered in the productivity scale.
The weekend was highlighted by a crash visit from my Megan who was going stir-crazy in her rural digs and so hitch-hiked in for some mindless entertainment chez nous. After a brief lecture directed at my loin fruits about the perils of hitch-hiking we most definitely came through on the mindless entertainment part & much wine, food, guitar hero and general joyful conviviality was had by all (except the wine bit for the sprogs – I made them chai and shiley temples).
Today the son indulged us with his waffle-making skills & I created a lovely apple stew to go with them. Perfect for a lazy Sunday 14:00h brunch.
I can’t share the buttermilk waffle recipe as that’s the son’s secret, but here’s how to make the stew:
What you need:
7 apples
1/2 stick of butter
2 cardamom pods lightly crushed
4 cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/5 cups sweet vermouth
10 dashes of Angostura bitters
Peel and roughly chop the apples into bite-sized bits. In a medium sauce pan melt the butter then add the spices and the apples. Cook and stir until the apples become somewhat fork tender. Add the vermouth and cook and stir over low heat until it thickens. Try to time this with the finish time of the waffles. If you miss just add a little more vermouth to loosen it up again. Serve over hot waffles & vanilla ice cream and top the lot of it with loads of freshly ground pepper.
I hope you all had as lovely a weekend.
That’s last night’s pantry-busting-inspired experiment.
I took some pre-made naan from the freezer, sauced it up with a 1:1 mix of tikka sauce and sour cream (yoghurt could be substituted), added some roasted snow peas, spinach, peppers and broccoli, then some bits of cooked chicken – all topped off with grated marble cheese. Tossed them on the pizza stones in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes and out they came all gooey and golden and pizza-esque.
Next time I’ll use goat cheese but otherwise wouldn’t change a thing.
We have a lovely organic poultry vendor at our local farmer’s market from whom I (and the rest) get tremendously good deals on his capons (2 for $40 – can’t beat that) so I’ve usually got a couple in the freezer at any given time. I was feeling like we needed a toasty, warm, autumnal meal this weekend so here’s what I made:
I tend to prefer dryer bread for stuffing than the fresh sesame bread I ended up using just because it keeps it from getting soggy. To it I added 2 diced macintosh apples, which are about two weeks out of season here and are getting a little softer as a result. This makes them perfect for cooking in this manner and add a little moisture to the stuffing. I also tossed in some chopped proscuitto, ground sage (can’t WAIT until the stuff my Megan provided is ready for rubbing), ground nutmeg, oregano and lemon juice. Capons don’t need a lot of help in the flavour, fat or moisture department so I wanted a lot of that to come infused through the stuffing, rather than treating the meat itself but I did pour the better parts of the remnants of a bottle of white zinfandel from last night’s wine night (donated by a well-meaning guest rather tragically to a group of red snobs) into the pan to help it out a little. The results were great. The proscuitto gave it a low smokey flavour, the sage came through in a subtle tone, that apples lent their juices to getting everyone to make friends and the lemon juice and wine perked things up nicely. We ate our chicken and stuffing with mashed potatoes and yams, fresh green beans, & beats in horseradish butter. It was lovely.
Yesterday was our first snow up and over here in the borough. It snowed big white, wet snow fluff from about 10 in the morning until 6 at night. It snowed enough that it collected on the ground in spite of the plus zero temperatures but was mostly melted by morning. Living on the main drag I’ve seen cars coming through with a good 2-3 inch covering of the white stuff still on them today.
Although there are many things I love about winter I don’t feel prepared or equipped with the skills to deal with it and all that it implies just yet. I still have lavendar to harvest, a rosemary plant to pot up and winter coats to buy for the kids. I have zippers to replace and orders to fill and the early onset (17 days earlier than last year) makes me feel more frantically behind than I did the day before it snowed.
The dog hated it too. I’m sure if his first introduction to snow was a lighter, shiner, less wet and blustery one he would have been ok. I tried to take him to the park and let him off the leash so he could tear around the basketball pad as he loves to do but he just stood there and looked at me scornfully.
Yesterday was miserable so I treated myself to this:
A variation on this dish, sans polenta. The kids protest when I make them eat placenta polenta. The mushroom guy at the market had loads of oyster mushrooms last weekend and proclaimed his undying love for me when I bought two lots of them as well as my usual stock of creminis. I cheated and nuked the arborio rice rather than making it a true risotto in the name of timing and not burning the rice. I even let us eat in the living room, curled up under blankets, watching the first episode of True Blood (the kids fast forwarded through all the sex scenes I’d forgotten were in it) me with my glass of wine. It was lovely.
I hadn’t attempted to make spaghetti & meatball sauce using the patented family secret recipe in about 7 years. It was one of those things that I attempted and failed miserably at each time, possibly out of contempt for the stuff as I saw it growing up. A huge pot would be made at the weekends then part of it eaten as a meal and the rest put into the fridge to be used in various and sundry meals through the week. We literally ate the stuff in one way, shape or form 4 nights out of a week. Being the variety loving creature I am I just stopped eating it. Instead I would eat my pasta with olive oil and garlic and a little romano cheese with a couple meatballs on the side and all of the vegies I could fit on my plate after that. I boycotted the sauce. After moving out I learned to make a wicked napolitano sauce & kickass greek meatballs (not to be eaten together) while my sister mastered the family sauce & the meatballs to go with it. I never refused an offer to partake in her mastery when she lived 2 and a half blocks away from me. Now she lives an hour and a half away and I had a hankering so I gave it another shot…and it didn’t suck. It was actually quite good if a little less thick than I wanted it to be. That being said, I didn’t exactly follow the family recipe to a T, either. And I made bison meatballs. And served it with zucchini. But for all of my improvisations, it did not suck and I’m quite happy with that.
cushti 