Local exploring

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since my last post in early September:

Trying out the VRE station that's five minutes from our house for a day of commuting to meetings in DC - infinitely preferable to navigating traffic!

The VRE doesn't run on weekends, so the station does double duty as the home of our local farmers' market - great local produce and flowers.

Unpacking and renovating continue - at a slower pace now that we're nearing completion on both. Here's a shot of my very old slow cooker (a wedding present) cooking its first-ever batch of Disruptive Bolognese using a mix of farmers' market ground beef and turkey (a resounding hit!). In the background is the recently installed backsplash, the last major piece of work in the (now-complete) kitchen.

Thoroughly enjoying my first proper North American autumn in a very long time with some festive front-door decoration...

...as well as the view from our new window seat - Miss B and I agree this lamppost is like a bit of Narnia on our doorstep...

...and having this view a few steps from our front door is pretty nice too!

When we can tear ourselves away from nesting, we're enjoying having DC close by for fun as well as work - it's kind of amazing to see these iconic buildings pop up in the distance as you wander the city.

And, last but not least - a new recipe to share as I re-deploy a time-honored strategy suggested many years ago by my English friend E: "make friends with cake". In this instance a batch of cinnamon sugar scones, which I brought to share at a coffee morning recruiting parent volunteers at Miss B's new school. I met a few people, and signed myself up for a few things - another rootlet put forward into our new community.

T-5 prep

NaBloPoMo, Day 22.

So, how are you spending the weekend? Given my post yesterday, I'm betting you can guess how I'm spending a good chunk of mine:

(Note divided prep list - because of course I forgot to look at the whole calendar, and invited people for Sunday lunch tomorrow! A glutton for punishment, that's me.)

Cutting up bread to dry out for stuffing...was absolutely thrilled to find some really good local bread on sale at half-price, which means I don't have to bake my own stuffing bread.

One appetizer taken care of - a big batch of sweet and spicy roasted nuts cooling after coming out of the slow cooker.

Slow cooker doing double duty - now working on a large batch of caramelized onions, which will get used in stuffing, gravy, and possibly another appetizer.

Enough pie crust for at least four pies ready and waiting (and probably more, since there's at least one single-crust pie on the list).

No close-up of the stock, but you can see the pot on the stove; I roasted up a bunch of chicken wings, then threw them in with to simmer with some chopped carrots, celery, and onion. This will be used mainly for gravy and stuffing. (I would've liked to have made turkey stock, but turkey parts are hard to come by around here and us expat beggars can't be choosers.)

All of which contributed to a kitchen that looked like a complete disaster area by 5pm. (We got takeout for dinner, so it's clean again...for now.)

Luckily, this is actually one of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon. Hope you're getting to do the same today.


 

Emergency scones

As soon as I saw Celia's post about International Scone Week, I thought of these, and then yearned for them all week until I had time to make (and photograph) a batch. I finally found some today, and remembered just how small a window is really needed: I had piping-hot scones coming out of the oven about 20 minutes after I walked into the kitchen to start cooking. Hence the name as, if you've got the ingredients on hand (which you are likely to, once you've made them), you've got the wherewithal to produce a homemade treat with no warning for unexpected guests, last-minute morning- or afternoon-tea requests, or late-night cravings. After you've done this a few times, the reason for my private nickname for them ("Dangerous Scones") becomes self-explanatory.

Emergency scones
I topped half of the scones with sucre chouquettes (aka sugar pearls, or small chunks of sugar) that I brought back from France as one of my souvenirs. You could substitute any chunky sugar you have around, such as demerara or turbinado, or leave off altogether. You can also leave out the sugar from the scone dough if you want to pair these with savory ingredients or accompaniments.

1 1/3 cups/5.5 oz/160 g all-purpose/plain flour (I subbed 25% whole-wheat flour)
1 Tbsp/.5 oz/15 g sugar (optional, see note above)
1.5 tsp/7 g baking powder
1/4 tsp/1 g salt
1 cup/8 oz/240 ml heavy/whipping/pouring cream
coarse sugar for sprinkling (optional, see note above)

Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, then pour in the cream and mix just until the dough comes together.

Drop by large spoonfuls (I used my 1-Tbsp cookie scoop) on to prepared baking tray, leaving at least 1 in/2cm between scoops. Sprinkle with sugar if desired.

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until light golden. Serve warm.

Makes 20 small scones. (I baked 10, and flash-froze the other 10 unbaked for a future scone emergency.)

75 words*

Back in the old days of the internet (you know, 2007), I used to post on LiveJournal occasionally – mostly to keep up with goings-on of two of my sisters who were active there. Not long after, my whole family signed on to Facebook, and as a result I have barely logged on to LJ since. However, I still fondly remember one of the things we used to do regularly, which was to sum up our weekends' activities in 50 words or less (or 75 words or less if a lot had happened). So much so that I’m going to revive it here (note that this explanation doesn’t get included in the word count!).

My weekend, in 75 words or less**
Solo parenting. Friday movie night: tomato-rice soup in front of Frozen on DVD. Saturday: farmer’s market; lazy afternoon; popcorn; skype calls with Virtual Book Club (four work friends in four countries) and DP; raspberry puff pie in front of My Big Fat Greek Wedding on TV. Sunday: rainbow pancakes; Miss B’s afternoon out with family friends; dinner at ours: marinated goat cheese, minestrone, stuffed focaccia, triple chocolate brownies (more on these last 2 later!).

* Two posts in two days! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

** I had to go for 75 words in the end, despite starting this post thinking nothing much had happened!

Wednesday digest

Sydney, May 2013 - nearly-winter here not quite the same as nearly-winter in Canberra!

 

Here I am again, getting caught up with the latest happenings around casa RL.

Work/school Pleased to report that DP worked from home one day last week! I can’t remember the last time that happened. He did school drop-off and pick-up, and we went out to lunch alone together for possibly the first time since before we left Missouri last May. Miss B is immersed in Term 2, and the other day ran in the school-wide cross-country event. Each senior student (years 3-6) in her school is assigned to one of four houses, which compete against each other in various events, so on cross-country day they divvied up the entire school into houses, who sat on the junior oval, cheering on their housemates and generally making a ruckus when it wasn’t their turn to run an event. With the rest of the kids born in 2004, Miss B ran two circuits of the grounds, for a distance totaling 2 km. Given that a) Miss B is the smallest kid in Year 3 and b) kids who were born in 2005 who tower over her only had to run one circuit, I was thoroughly impressed with her perseverance and spirit in finishing the course. As for me, I am already up to my ears in preparations for my .org’s next major meeting, which happens in mid-September. Even though I know rationally that this is four months away, it feels as though it’s just around the corner because there’s so much stuff we’ve got to put in place now, before people start booking their travel arrangements.

Recreation This kind of overlaps with work, but I was thrilled to discover another member of my .org who is based in Canberra. (This brings the total, as far as I know, to three of us.) She brought her two little ones over for tea (adults), slab scones (everyone), and a play (children) the other day. Between bouts of wrangling three children among two adults, we managed to have some grownup conversation about work stuff that we’re both interested in and might collaborate on – very nerdy and enjoyable. Makes me realize how much I miss having people around who understand what the heck I’m talking about most of the time. In other news, we took the new car out for its first road trip and went to Sydney for the weekend. DP not only voluntarily went shopping on George Street (Sydney’s main shopping district) on Saturday afternoon, it was his idea. (This is ‘what have you done with my real husband?’ territory.) He took Miss B to a hobby shop so that could look at trains and planes and so on, and I got to browse in Dymock’s by myself. For a whole hour. It was blissful.

Food Nothing revolutionary to report on the cooking front; I’ve been trying out some other people’s recipes, and revisiting some of my own favorites:

• gnocchi with bacon, spinach, and cream (roughly based on this recipe)
• roasted pork belly (I sat this on top of a bed of chopped carrot, celery, fennel, and red onion, and roasted some potatoes for Italian potatoes with oil alongside)
• a variation on the chicken soup with orzo recipe from the Dinner a Love Story cookbook (you can see a picture of it here)
• and more soup – a fridge-clearing vegetable soup using my soup spec
• and a batch of sweet and spicy nuts, just to have something around to nibble on

Weather All the soup is because it’s suddenly cold for real in Canberra – as in, time-to-break-out-the-winter-coats cold. And getting dark at 5pm. Still weird to have that happening in May.

How about you?

Puff pastry

Is there anything that you can't improve by wrapping it in puff pastry?

We're coming to the end of the Australian school year, and that means that in the canteen we're cutting down on ordering fresh food, and trying to use up what's already there - EDF on a large scale. Puff pastry does an excellent job of packaging up odds and ends of food, and makes them look great - and easy to eat out of hand - in the process. We've been serving up lots of "puff" specials for morning tea, and after watching hordes of schoolkids scarf them up, I've been inspired to come home and scavenge in my own fridge.

Some things I've wrapped in puff pastry lately:

- leftover sausage (either alone, or with spicy mustard and cheddar cheese - see above)
- leftover chocolate ganache
- blackberry-apple butter
- leftover meat and veg
- leftover apple pie filling (or any pie filling, or jam, or...)

I'll stop there, but I think you get the picture. Please feel free to share your puff-pastry excesses with the rest of us.

Raspberry muffins

Have I spent enough time yet waxing rhapsodic about Ratio? About how it’s fundamentally changed the way I approach cooking and baking? About how it’s like having the Rosetta Stone for deciphering, and then adapting, existing recipes, to say nothing of creating new ones? About how I love it so much I gave it its own blog tag?

No? You want to hear more? Oh, go ahead, twist my arm. Allow me, if you will, to explain the construction of a Ratio recipe.

Ratio raspberry muffins

Lately these are my go-to choice for playdate baking; they mix up and bake quickly, I pretty much always have the ingredients on hand, and small children devour them. (One recent small visitor ate four.)

Here is the basic ratio for a muffin batter:

2 parts flour : 2 parts liquid : 1 part egg : 1 part butter

Michael Ruhlman suggests that a recipe based on 8 oz/240 g flour should yield about a dozen muffins. So, working on this premise, I constructed the following recipe.

Dry ingredients

6 oz/180 g plain flour

2 oz/60 g whole wheat flour

2 tsp/10 g baking powder (working on another rule of thumb, gleaned elsewhere: 1 tsp/5 g per cup/4 oz/120 g)

1 tsp/5 g salt

4 Tbsp/60 g sugar (I used my citrus sugar here, for a little extra je ne sais quoi)

Wet ingredients

6 oz/180 g milk

2 oz/60 g Greek yogurt (for a slightly denser and more complex muffin)

1 tsp/5 g vanilla

2 eggs (= 4 oz/120 g)

4 oz/120 g (1 stick) butter, melted

Embellishments

1 cup raspberries (I used frozen, and tossed them with more citrus sugar before adding)

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Grease (or line) a 12-cup muffin pan and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a medium-sized jug, whisk together all the wet ingredients except the butter; add the butter slowly and carefully last, so as not to scramble the egg. Dump wet into dry and whisk until just combined. Fold in raspberries gently until evenly distributed.

Scoop batter (it will be thick) into muffin cups with ice-cream scoop or large spoon. Bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating pan halfway through.

Makes 12 muffins.