Recipe shenanigans

Holiday baking is underway, in preparation for gift-giving, parties, etc. Every year I debate whether I should just stick with what I know, or branch out and try something new. This year I went with a compromise: something new, but from a recipe source I trust implicitly: Bruce and Mark. I've had my eye on these jam roll cookies ever since they were posted this time last year, and yesterday I decided to try them out with homemade cranberry jam and pecans.

The verdict: they tasted great, but they didn't look anything like jam rolls - more like giant jam blobs. I don't know if I let the dough get too warm, or did something else wrong, but visually they were not at all what I was expecting. I will say again, though, that they tasted great.

I still had half the dough in the fridge, having run out of time to make the second roll. Today, on the hunt for something to make for our street's holiday party, I decided to turn the dough into thumbprint cookies, filled with cranberry jam (no nuts - better for the kid portion of the party) or Hershey kisses. These were much easier to assemble, and came out of the oven still looking like thumbprint cookies.

And while those were baking, I decided to mess with another recipe, too: I whipped up a batch of Emergency Scones, swapped in sour cream for some of the heavy cream, threw in big handfuls of chopped bacon and grated gouda, and baked up some savory mini scones. (Also good, although next time I'll add a big pinch of cayenne or mustard powder for a little extra punch.)

What to make next? I'm deliberating between sugar cookies and Russian tea cakes at the moment. Teacher presents up this week....  

Pasta bake

When you’re halfway through a bout of solo parenting (as I currently am), nothing breaks up the monotony like a mum-and-kid playdate. Bonus points if it’s another solo-parenting mum who is also craving social interaction, a change of scene, and some quality adult conversation.

Yesterday Miss B and I met up with our pals LB and Mr W for an afternoon outing to see Despicable Me 2 (even more minions!). When we made the plan, I’d invited them back here afterwards for some playtime and dinner afterwards. Knowing I’d want to be able to concentrate on the conversation, I opted to get most of the prep out of the way before we left for the movies, and made a pasta bake.

Creamy pasta bake

For this concoction, I used a combination of ingredients that I frequently make as a pasta dish, with some adaptations to make it work in baked form (mainly a roux sauce rather than a pan sauce).

Pasta

1 lb/450 g short pasta of your choice (I used gemelli)

1 Tbsp/.5 oz/15g butter

Mix-ins

4 slices bacon, chopped,

1 shallot, peeled and chopped

¼ cup/2 oz/60 ml white wine

1 bunch spinach, washed and roughly chopped

Sauce

2 Tbsp/1 oz/30 g butter

4 Tbsp/1 oz/30 g flour

¼ cup/2 oz/60 ml white wine

1 cup/8 oz/240 ml stock or similar (I was out, so used the pasta cooking water)

1 cup/8oz/240 ml pouring cream

2 oz/60 g cheddar cheese

pinch cayenne pepper

salt

Topping

2-3 handfuls of shredded parmigiano reggiano cheese

2-3 Tbsp of grated pecorino romano cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil, then add pasta and cook until just edible and still very al dente (8-10 minutes). Drain, reserving 1-2 cups of the pasta water. Return to the pasta pot (minimizing washing up!) and mix in 1 Tbsp of butter to keep from sticking. Set aside.

While the pasta cooks, you can get on with the mix-ins and sauce.

Mix-ins In a large skillet, cook the bacon over medium heat until it begins to brown and crisp, 5-7 minutes. Once you start to see signs of browning, add the shallot and continue to sauté, stirring frequently. When the bacon is looking crisp and the shallots have softened, add the wine and stir briskly to scrape up all the good stuff that will be stuck to the bottom of the skillet. Add the spinach and leave to wilt for another 5-7 minutes, stirring regularly.

Sauce Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, then add flour and stir together with a whisk to make a roux.* When the roux has cooked sufficiently, add wine and continue stirring. Add remaining ingredients in the order listed, stirring frequently to bring everything together. Bring just to boiling point and let simmer for a bit to thicken the sauce up. Make sure the cheese melts and finish off by salting to taste.

Assembly Lightly grease the inside of a casserole dish (I used an oval 2.8-liter which held this amount of food perfectly). Empty skillet of mix-ins into the waiting pasta and mix together, then pour over half the sauce and mix again. Pour the whole mixture into the prepared casserole dish and spread out to even depth. Pour in the rest of the sauce.

This is the point where I covered the dish with foil and put it in the refrigerator for 3 hours. When we got back from the cinema, I cooked it as follows.

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Remove casserole dish from fridge, but leave covered. When oven is preheated, put in casserole and leave to cook for 30-40 minutes, until beginning to brown and bubble on the edges. At this point, remove foil, add topping cheeses, and return to oven for 10-15 minutes.

Let stand for 10 minutes before serving if possible. Generously served 2 adults and 2 children, with probably another 4 servings left over.

* See here for an in-depth discussion of making roux-based sauces and gravies.

Improvisational baking

As soon as I saw the picture of slab scones on Dinner with Julie’s blog, I was overwhelmed by the desire to make them. Do you ever get this way? That you want to cook something so badly that the adrenaline surge gives you a head rush? Maybe it’s just me? Some kind of little-known baking addiction/withdrawal? I’m not sure why I had that response to this particular recipe, which is, after all, for scones – something I’ve made about a thousand times before.

Not like this, though. There is just something so appealing about the idea of making something this way, with a layer of delicious filling in the middle. Why is this more alluring than mixing the same stuff all through the dough? I don’t know; maybe it’s the concentrated taste, contrasting with the scone texture, as opposed to having it scattered all through in bits? I haven’t analyzed it sufficiently; I just knew that it was a brilliant idea and that I was going to take the first excuse I could to make some.

An afterschool play date provided me with opportunity; then I just had to figure out how to work around my lack of equipment. These days I normally make scone dough in the food processor, because it takes me about 30 seconds and I don’t have to hassle with massaging butter into flour. Under the current circumstances, that option was obviously out, so I went to my next-best option: freezing the butter and then shredding it on a box grater. That way it’s already so small when it goes into the flour that it requires minimal additional work.

The other equipment issue, particular to this recipe, was rolling out the scone dough. I don’t have a rolling pin either, and I’m resisting the urge to buy one, since I already own at least four for this very reason. So I improvised: I filled an empty 1-litre bottle with water and put it in the freezer. Once frozen, it made a perfectly good makeshift rolling pin (if you don’t mind a little bit of a – shall we say rustic? – texture).

Julie’s recipe makes enough scone dough for two pieces of dough; I omitted the sugar so that I could make one savory (filled with about ½ cup of grated cheddar cheese and a couple of rashers of bacon, sliced thin and cooked until crisp) as well as one sweet (filled with about 6 tablespoons of raspberry jam). I got at least 6 big, triangular scones out of each slab, and they were a smash hit at the playdate. As my friend PJ pointed out, they are perfect for transporting, because you don’t need to bring anything extra for accompaniment; all the good stuff is already inside. Still warm, with a cup of tea alongside, they were just thing for a chilly Canberra winter afternoon. And would probably still make a nice snack (or breakfast) even if you’re among those sweltering somewhere in the northern hemisphere.

Cheesy grits

In the RL weekly breakfast rotation, Monday belongs to Savory Cheddar Oatmeal. Until I ran out of oats a couple of weeks ago, that is. Since then, I’ve been trying to make some space in the pantry (via my insides) and simultaneously branch out in my exploration of some things that I have bought on a whim but have not since used to their full potential.

Those motivations were how, without really intending to, I made myself grits for breakfast last week. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of grits.

Grits, for those of you who don’t already know, is a breakfast porridge made from coarsely ground corn or hominy (which is corn that has been treated with alkali, via a process called nixtamalization, improving its nutritional value), cooked in boiling liquid, seasoned to taste, and served hot. Left to cool, it congeals and becomes firm enough to slice and fry. It is of Native American origin, and mainly available today in the regional cooking of the American South. It is similar in composition and texture to polenta.

Since my exposure to grits has been minimal (even though technically I’ve been living in the South for nearly two years), it wasn’t until I was well into consuming my breakfast that it dawned on me that it wasn’t original or even very unusual; merely another update of a dish so old that probably no one will ever know who first devised it.

Yankeefied cheesy grits
Most recipes for grits (and porridges generally) seem to call for cooking the grains in water, but I always use milk for at least half the liquid. It bumps up the nutritional value and the flavor.

1 part cornmeal*
3-4 parts milk or other liquid of your choice**
1-2 oz/30-60 g sharp cheddar cheese, thinly sliced or shredded
1-2 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
salt & freshly ground black pepper

Combine the cornmeal and liquid in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-low heat. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring often, until nearly all the liquid has been absorbed and the cornmeal is cooked to a consistency that you like. (You may need to add more liquid than the amount specified here if you like your grits mushier than I do.)

When you are satisfied with the grits’ consistency, add the remaining ingredients and stir to distribute throughout the mixture. Taste for seasoning.

Serve hot. (I often eat mine straight out of the pan. Saves on washing up.)

Serves 1. Can be multiplied. Leftovers are great sliced, fried up in bacon fat, and served as part of a subsequent breakfast.

* I used about half a cup of coarsely ground cornmeal to make this batch. It would have fed 2 people easily.
** For this batch, about 2 cups/500 ml of liquid.

Tiny omelettes

Like millions (billions?) of other people, many of whom you’ve probably encountered on the internet in the past few weeks, I annually buy into the whole ‘January-Fresh-Start’ mentality. On top of the general zeitgeist, my birthday is in January, so this month is the start of my personal New Year as well as the one indicated on the Gregorian calendar in widespread use worldwide.

I don’t make resolutions as such, but in the few weeks that elapse between January 1 and my birthday, I try to give some thought to the things I want to focus on in the coming year to make the most of my time. These usually boil down to living more mindfully in various ways: working on replacing sloppy or unhealthy practice with good practice, focusing on habits I want to develop, eliminating various kinds of physical (and mental) clutter, and so on. Some of this is directed toward food, generally with a view to making the most of what I’m eating while practicing moderation. I told SP last year that my personal food philosophy is “make every mouthful count”. One of the ways in which I do this is to eat a variety of different foods, since when I fall into eating ruts I am more likely to lapse into unrestrained and mindless snacking. So I’ve been working on coming up with different things to eat for breakfast, and ideally to develop a schedule where I eat a different thing for breakfast every day of the week, which to me is the ideal combination of repetition and variety.

Paradoxically, my latest addition was inspired by reading a blog post where its maker talked about eating it for breakfast every day for the last several months as part of a weight-loss program: an egg-and-cheese omelette that clocked in at a mere 220 calories. But what caught my attention about this was her note that it was a 2-egg omelette. Revelation! Omelettes don’t have to be made with 3 eggs, the way they are in restaurants. I could even make one with just 1 egg, add a little filling, have a bit of starch alongside, and still not break the caloric bank.

One-egg omelette
Eggs, in addition to being a pretty reasonably-priced source of protein (even if you buy the free-range, no-chemical, gold-plated kind), are filling, tasty, and versatile. Probably the reason why most cuisines offer some variation on the omelette.

1 tsp olive oil
1 egg
~2 teaspoons filling of your choice*
salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a small frying pan.** Meanwhile, break the egg into a small bowl and beat the yolk into the white until consistently mixed.

Pour egg into hot pan and allow mixture to cook for 30-45 seconds or until the edges are just starting to set. Sprinkle over fillings, then season with salt & pepper. Using your preferred spatula, gently flip one half of the omelet over the other half. Allow to cook for 1-2 minutes more, then slide out onto a plate.

Serves 1. Tastes great with a toasted whole wheat and olive oil biscuit alongside (if you've still got some calorie allowance left).

* I have been using chopped bacon and shreds of cheddar cheese.
** I have a 4-inch cast iron that’s perfect for a tiny omelet, but you can use whatever you have that's good for cooking eggs. The omelet won’t look as neat in a bigger pan, but will still be fine.

Savory bread

When I perused the breads that the Vintage Homes Society had for sale last year, all I saw were sweet breads—pumpkin and zucchini and so on. When I signed on to contribute, I asked if savory breads were welcome. This is what I had in mind.

Bacon blue cheese bread
Adapted slightly from David Lebovitz’ The Sweet Life in Paris
Savory quick breads are known as le cake in France and David Lebovitz mentions coming across them being served as a trendy hors d’oeuvre. I don’t know if this is still trendy in Paris, but anything with bacon and blue cheese is a perennial favorite with me. Apparently I’m not the only one; when the sale organizers saw this, they requested that we double our suggested contribution. And I've already had two requests for the recipe—hence its jumping the queue from yesterday.

8 strips/5 oz/150 g bacon
2 scallions
5 oz/140 g blue cheese
bacon fat for greasing the pan
1.5 cup/6 oz/210 g all-purpose/plain flour
2 tsp/10 g baking powder
.5 tsp/3 g cayenne pepper
.5 tsp/3 g kosher salt
4 large eggs
.25 cup/2 oz/60 ml olive oil
.5 cup/4 oz/120 g plain whole-milk yogurt
1.5 tsp/7 g Dijon mustard
2 oz/60 g grated parmesan

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Lay the bacon on baking sheets and place in the oven to cook until crisp, turning once, about 15 minutes. Allow to cool, then chop coarsely or crumble. Set aside.

While the bacon is cooking, chop the scallions finely and crumble the blue cheese. Set aside.

Use the rendered bacon fat to grease a 9-in/23-cm loaf pan.

In a large bowl, measure the flour, baking powder, cayenne, and kosher salt and mix thoroughly. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, crack the eggs, then add the oil, yogurt, and mustard. Mix with a whisk until smooth.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture, then use a rubber spatula to mix until nearly, but not quite, combined. Add the scallions, blue and parmesan cheeses, and bacon, and fold gently into the batter until evenly distributed throughout.

Scoop batter into prepared pan and smooth into corners. Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean (try to find a spot with no cheese bits in it!).

Spinach salad

Aka look: more eggs! Because apparently that’s what I like to eat when the weather shows signs of spring.

Although hard-boiled eggs are not essential to the composition of a spinach salad, they can give it enough nutritional heft to make it count as a meal. And anything I can eat that contains something as healthy as spinach and serves as a vehicle for eggs and bacon? Lead me to it.

Egg salad

I never ate egg salad when I was growing up. Not even once. No one ever offered me any, and I’m sure if they had, I would have declined with disgust.

Even after I emerged from my egg-hating phase, I had no interest, although by then plenty of opportunity. Aside from its starring role in grade-school lunches, egg salad is a perennially popular sandwich filling at the ubiquitous English sandwich shop (under the name egg mayonnaise) where, adoring mayonnaise as they do, a sandwich filling has never yet been found that they didn’t believe couldn’t be enhanced by the addition of copious amounts of butter or mayonnaise. Possibly both. (How about on hummus with roasted vegetables? I kid you not.)

Needless complication

The other night, someone I follow on Facebook posted a query: “Anyone have an easy carbonara recipe?”

I thought, “Huh? Easy carbonara recipes? Is there such a thing as a difficult recipe for spaghetti carbonara?....I’ll just post a link to my recipe….um….”

At which point I remembered that I’ve never posted about spaghetti carbonara. Possibly the dish I make most regularly. The one that DP requests for every last meal before he goes away, and every first meal when he gets back. The one he requests so often, in fact, that when I say, “What should I make for dinner for X?” I now immediately follow it with, “…and don’t say carbonara!” He would be completely on board with Calvin Trillin’s campaign to have it replace turkey as the national dish for Thanksgiving.

Building blocks

Canberra has gone from being freezing cold to summer-hot more or less overnight. So I'm thinking about salads again, particularly one that I came up with last year, after reading a post on 5 second rule about a BLT salad. I loved this idea, but decided to take it one step further—just as I always do in restaurants, when I'm offered the choice of a BLT or a club sandwich. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato are pretty fantastic all by themselves, of course, but add some good chicken or turkey and you've made RL's day.

Chicken club salad
Slapdash ranch dressing*
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Greek yogurt
1 small clove garlic
2 basil leaves
½ tsp dried oregano

Salad
1-2 pieces bacon
4-6 leaves of romaine
6-8 grape tomatoes
½ chicken breast, cooked and sliced**
salt & freshly ground black pepper
handful of croutons

Put all dressing ingredients in a mini-processor and blend. Thin with a little bit of milk or lemon juice if you think the consistency is too thick. Set aside. ***

Cook the bacon using your preferred method—frying pan, oven, microwave. Chop into thin slices and dump into a bowl big enough to mix the salad. Wash, dry, shred, and add the romaine. Wash, dry, quarter, and add the tomatoes. Add the chicken. Season with salt and pepper.

Add half the dressing and toss thoroughly. Taste and decide if you want more dressing or seasoning, and repeat as necessary. Top with croutons and serve immediately.

Serves 1, accompanied by a very large glass of ice water.

* So called because I didn't have any of the traditional herbs for ranch dressing on hand, so I just improvised. (You could also use bottled ranch dressing, naturally, but I didn't have any of that either.)
** Having leftover cooked chicken is my main impetus for making this salad. You don't want to be cooking chicken specially--then you'll just be getting all hot and bothered, instead of cooling off, as this salad intends.
*** This makes a pretty small amount of dressing, but you can easily double it. For me, a little thick, creamy dressing goes a long way.

Breakfast BBQ

It takes the Australian mind to bring together two great Australian traditions: the barbeque and the full cooked breakfast. Eggs, bacon, sausage, plus a vegetable medley: tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, and onions (the last two contributed to the mix by yours truly--not traditional). Sourdough toast on the side (the only thing not cooked on the grill).

Simple, yet brilliant. And delicious. I'll be copying it on my own grill at the first opportunity. I think you should too.

Pack rat

This recipe is the best reason I can think of for never getting rid of a cookbook ever.*

I bought How to be a Domestic Goddess more than seven years ago. At the time, I had a job that required me to travel an average of two weeks out of every four, and that was when my cookbook collection (not to say problem) really started. I had just moved back to the US, but was often either in the UK on these trips, or else passing through en route to somewhere else. I started picking up cookbooks here and there, reading them as though they were novels as a way to assuage my homesickness and mitigate night after night of eating alone in restaurants. This was one of the first ones I bought, and for me it exemplifies what Laurie Colwin said about cookbooks: that they are distillations of domestic life at a particular place and time. And very comforting at a time when domesticity of any kind was in short supply.

Even though I’ve pored over this cookbook numerous times over the years, I’m not sure I had ever cooked a single thing from it before this month. But I’ve been wanting to make this recipe ever since the first time I cracked the spine; in fact, as soon as I chose it for the Cookbook Challenge, I thought, “Now I’m finally going to make that bacon and egg pie.”

* In the mental health field, this is known as rationalization—finding post hoc reasons to justify otherwise inexplicable actions.


NL's Boxing Day Egg-and-Bacon Pie
So called because it is NL's preferred Boxing Day supper; obviously you don't have to wait until then to make it. I fiddled with the filling proportions, as the original recipe was practically all bacon and hardly any egg. It was delicious like this, but next time I make it, I might lower the bacon by another 100g and add yet another egg.

Pastry
I used this recipe for Anxiety-Free Piecrust; or substitute your own favorite

Filling
400g/1lb (streaky) bacon, cut into thin strips
1 medium onion, chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1 scallion, chopped
2 Tbsp chopped basil**
3 large eggs

Make the pastry ahead of time, so it’s had time to rest by the time you are ready to put the pie together.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Fry the bacon and onion together, seasoning liberally with pepper. Mix the remaining ingredients together thoroughly and set aside.

Roll out both halves of the pastry dough to fit your pie dish of choice; line the dish with one, and set the other aside. Dump the bacon and onions into the pie shell, then pour over the egg mixture. Cover with the pastry lid, trim both, and fold over and pinch the overhang to seal the pie. Cut steam vents in the top and bake for 30 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. NL recommends serving it cold or about room temperature, but we ate it hot and it was good that way too.

Serves 6.

** The original recipe called for parsley, but I’m not a big parsley fan and I never have any on hand. I do, however, have three basil plants on my balcony.