Pictures

I have been told this thing needs pictures of our accomplishments. I did take some, just had to get them off my camera. Over one hundred pictures later here are some. Wow it worked. This first one is of my first loaf of sourdough bread. Nice golden brown color and smooth top. Not quite a perfect circle, but it was a free-form loaf and the imperfections are part of its handmade appeal.



And these are the baked apples. Don't they look good enough to eat. And I know I should not have used the flash, but my hand is not that steady, so it was either the washed out look or the blurry look. At least this way it is possible to see what they look like.

And here is Mom's sourdough bread. Looks like something out of a bakery. She is good at the bread thing. Her specially developed (normal) bread recipe is the best homemade bread around.
And finally, here is my cat stuck in a tree. Unfortunately the attacking magpies flew away before I got the picture taken. Poor citified fuzzball. Not a big fan of this country life. I did go rescue her after taking the picture so everyone can rest easy. And she won't hardly go outside anymore.

Pizza

Pizza, I forgot the pizza. It was Chicago style deep dish pizza. One of the two recipes so far that get a definite retry. The other is the beef stew. The only real problem with the pizza was that the sauce was too salty, but that was my fault, or Mom's. She told me to add salt and I added too much apparently. Next time it will get more toppings. We had one plain and one with kielbasa left over from the red beans. No wonder the food budget is over this month. All these exotic ingredients. And beef. We had to actually buy beef since all our cows are good for is hamburger. We get some nice lean hamburger though, don't have to drain it at all. This is what happens when the cow is 12 or more years old before she gets eaten. Always hamburger, except the killer cow. She got made into steaks. Killed her before she killed someone. Sweet revenge, or is that prevenge?

One problem we have noticed with all these recipes is the servings. For example the pizzas. It made two deep dish nine inch pizzas and the servings said 4 - 6. Four to six? Who is going to eat a third of one of those things in a sitting, much less a half? We had five adults and two kids eating them and still had a quarter left over. We must be light eaters or they don't plan on having anything for dinner besides a huge chunk of dough, cheese, and tomato sauce. We have to devote a week to leftovers. Or is this an excuse to not cook... Anyway we have only two recipes left in this issue. Roman mac and cheese (that is not what they call it, but that is what it is) and Thai Chicken. Bring on the sheep cheese, and oyster and fish sauce. Better start milking those sheep now.

Must go faster

As a quick catch-up. The minestrone was not that great. Rather bland, though some salt helped. Not sure if it was the recipe, cooking the beans in the pressure cooker to speed them up, or the lack of a Parmesan rind that was the problem. Hard to find a Parmesan rind around here. Not sure where one would be. Anyway that one won't happen again.

The stinky feet bread was good. It has more of a sourdough taste than the Italian start and a slight bitterness as well. It would have gone well with the minestrone soup if it had been done at 5:30 rather than 9:00. It kept well overnight and made good toast. This sourdough does seem to do better after storage than regular bread. I may have to try some rolls out of it. Those really show their age and are not near as good the following day.

The cream cheese filled coffee cake had a good taste, but the cake part seemed a little tough. This is another thing that could be altitude. Apparently you are supposed to adjust the leavening (baking soda vs. baking powder or the other way around) for higher altitudes and use buttermilk rather than normal milk, but improper pH can make things tough. More acid I think is what we needed, but I haven't got that part figured out yet. Maybe the acid makes it tough. The other problem was sinking. Both the topping and the filling sank, in some places so the topping was topping the filling not the cake. We can blame that on altitude too. Mom's usually breakfast cake recipe has a topping that partially sinks, which we really like because then there are seems and veins of brown sugary goodness deep in the cake. May have to try that one again. With a few changes.

Beans and more beans

This week saw the creation of Red Beans and Rice, Minestrone, and "Stinky Feet" bread.

To start with, I love beans. At least the dry kind. Green beans, of any color, can just go away as far as I am concerned. Or leave them on the vine long enough to get dry and worth eating. My Mexican roommate would apologize when we had frijoles for dinner and I could never convince her that no apology was necessary, just keep the beans coming. So, needless to say, I liked the red beans and rice. Couldn't find all the appropriate New Orleans special stuff, but it is surprising what the small town grocery store does carry. I am getting to know those aisles better and better. I can go right to the salt pork, anchovies, and oyster sauce. We learned an interesting fact with this recipe. At high altitudes the cooking time of beans is increased considerably. The instructions said to cook for an hour. After an hour and a half we had to eat and the beans were mostly done. It was maybe an hour later that the beans were truly done. Doing some research, thank you "Joy of Cooking", we found that above about 3500 feet the cooking time doubles. We are 1000 or so feet higher. This is why Mom has always used the pressure cooker to cook beans. This does raise an interesting question. Do we follow the instructions to add all the flavoring stuff at the beginning of the cooking time and cook that twice as long as called for, or cook the beans half-way then add the rest of the stuff so the beans are half cooked without the tastys, but the rest is not overcooked. All these lowlanders just do not consider us high up people. The red beans and rice is a keeper though. Pressure cooker will be pressed into service next time though. It can be done in under an hour.

Rhubarb cake

There are so few recipes for this vegauit I thought it would be good to put this here. One of my favorite ways to eat rhubarb. I prefer it when the rhubarb is a little older. Early spring it is pretty mild, later it will have more flavor. A nice combination of sweet and sour.

1/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter
1 t vanilla
1 egg
2 1/2 c. flour
1 t soda
1/2 t salt
1 c. buttermilk
2 c. chopped raw rhubarb

Mix all the ingredients except the rhubarb. Spoon 2/3 the batter into a greased 9 x 13 pan and spread. Sprinkle with the rhubarb. Spread (glob, dollop, place) the remaining batter on top of the rhubarb. Sprinkle with about 2 T cinnamon sugar. Bake at 350 for 40 -45 minutes.

oh yes Vegauit- something cooked like a fruit that is actually a vegetable. Rhubarb is the only one I know of. As opposed to fruitable: a fruit cooked like a vegetable- tomatoes, squash, peppers, and so on.

Sourdough

Now we have made sourdough bread, bread-sticks, and biscuits. A rather mild sourdough, not very sour, and slow growing. The bread I had to let rise four hours each time. Another thing to think about early in the day. Easier than the pulled pork though since it could be left alone for four hours, shaped, left alone, and cooked. None of this brine for a little while, cook for a little while, take the foil off, cook a little longer. The nice thing about bread is it takes so little hands on time. Half an hour spread out through the day. My uncle has also given us another start, affectionately known as 'Stinky Feet'. Mom says it smells like rotten milk, I think it has a rather fruity smell. Haven't made anything with that one yet. It seems to be more active so the rise time shouldn't be as long. I wonder how much anyone has analyzed the products of the yeast and bacteria in sourdough. Run it through a GC-MS or something, after mushing it up and all. What exactly is giving it all these flavors and what are those bacteria anyway? One paper said Lactobacillus, but I am sure there are many others. Do we really know what we are eating anyway?

As far as the Cooks Illustrated goes Mom made the 'fixed' baked apples and this was the greatest deviation from the recipe yet. Most we had before was substituting broth for wine in the stew. We didn't have apple cider, so used (pine)apple juice. Not another apple for the chopped to go in the middle so it was dried apricots. This was my least favorite recipe. Way too sweet, except for the tasteless apple. It probably has more to do with the apple used and the changes to the recipe than a bad recipe. Might have to try it again with better apples and the appropriate ingredients.

In the Beginning

We have decided to cook our way through Cook's Illustrated magazine to give us some fun and excitement and try new foods. Thanks to the gift giver for the subscription. Since we have done the first two "official" recipes it is about time to start writing, lest we get behind. "official" by the way means that they have been made since we decided to start. We have made a few other things. Desserts since they are the most important part. So now we have started working through from the January/ February issue. Won't post the recipes since they are copyrighted I am sure, but go to their web site and I am sure you can find them. (Now maybe we can get paid for advertising?)

So we made "Indoor Pulled Pork" first. Quite spicy, but tasty. If we had actually had the outdoor version at some point maybe we could remark on how close it was to the goal of replicating the real thing. The biggest drawback was the time. About 7 hours. Get started well before dinner for this one or expect a late meal. Another pointer is make sure you have covered all skin defects before rubbing the mustard rub. The vinegar and mustard seed will highlight any you may have missed.

Next was "The Best Beef Stew". Which was about the best I have tasted. No where near as good as Mom's mutton stew, but it was just made with the lesser meat so what could I expect. This one only took about three hours. The secret ingredient (all non family look away) was anchovies. Add a few to your meat stew and it brings out the meaty flavor. Might have to try it with the mutton. Mash them up well before adding so people don't get grossed out by the little fishies swimming. Even the fish non-likers who knew they were there (especially Dad, but also my brother and his wife) enjoyed the meal. I am sure the bribing with dessert of banana cream pie had nothing to do with it either.

The next experiment is actually not from the magazine, but from my uncle who found a place to get all sorts of exotic yeast/sourdough starts. This one is Italian from Idaho. At least that is what we were told. We shall see how it works.