Braisin' Hussy

Saturday, October 30, 2004

I think maybe I'll make something with lentils today.

Well, the adrenaline did not wear off before my alarm went off. I was kind of not happy on Thursday. I'm thinking about baking the firemen cookies. And my neighbor who helped out (assuming I can remember which apartment he came out of). That night, however, after a fabulous meal at Jon and Ryan's, I came home and made cheese. Sort of a cottage cheese/ricotta hybrid. I've been interested in homemade cheese making since I bought an Indian cookbook- it calls for its use in a lot of dishes, both savory and sweet. However, the method they describe uses nonpasteurized milk, which I don't think I can get unless I know a cow. So, after some googling, I ended up here. This is a fun site. Making the beginner recipe wasreally interesting- the vinegar really works quickly separating the milk into curds! Assuming I can find rennet tablets and mesophilic starters somewhere, I'm going to continue on this cheese path. We'll see.

Pumpkinfest was last night. I really like the pumpkin I made. I used this design from Extreme Pumpkins, and then I painted black around it so it would be easily visible during the day, too. It's all part of my endeavors to be the worst Halloween person ever. I'm planning on baking cookies for this, too. Very disturbing for parents. Hee!

I've got a little list... bank, Sigona's, Jon's, laundry, cookies, video games, possibly lentils, and a costume party. I'm even more lazy than I was last year, when I threw on a bathrobe, grabbed a towel, and went as Arthur Dent. I've got a toque and an apron- I'll just go as a cook. The only question is whether the CCA apron or the Braisin' Hussy apron.

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Thursday, October 28, 2004

Oh, my God. I am the world's biggest moron. Seriously, you guys.

I woke up to the sounds of my fire alarm at 5am this morning. Panicked, I jumped out of bed to see what was going on. I saw blurry orange flames coming out of my wall heater. I ran outside and up to my landlord to ask him for help, but no one answered the door. I then ran back into my apartment to grab my glasses, my cell phone, and my bathrobe (it was quite cold, you see). I called 911 and got the fire department to come. After I hung up the phone, my brain started to clear a little bit from PANIC mode. I had an idea. A neighbor, alerted by my running around and PANIC came out of his apartment. I asked him if his heater had turned on yet this season. He said he turned it on once so far. I asked him if flames shot out of it. No. Okay, maybe I had a legitimate concern. Then, however, it dawned on me that I could just turn the damned thing off. So I did. And then the firemen came. A lot of them. There were two trucks. Even after I told them that this was all because I'm so incredibly dim, they, you know, had to do their job and check it out, so I had six firemen in my apartment, looking at my now turned off heater. I'm such a moron. Who needs to vacuum the dust from her heater.

I think this qualifies as a good story, Sarah. It's now 6am and I want to go back to bed. Let's see if the adrenaline has worn off yet.

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Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Well, that was random. I just got a call from Cost Plus, asking if I wanted to work there again this holiday season. I had to turn them down. They're good eggs, but working until midnight is really not my thing.

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Monday, October 25, 2004

I was not pleased with my Pasta e Fagioli. I think, if I make it again, I won't use a vegetarian recipe.

ETA: Actually, it's much better today than it was last night. I am now pleased.

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Sunday, October 24, 2004

Argh. I hate it when the Television Without Pity forums are offline. Seriously, the cheesy bean soup that Sandra made yesterday had me completely nauseous. I need to discuss it!

I didn't get around to making the soup yesterday. I'll make it today. Probably. The Boston Baked Beans turned out well, but I'm not entirely convinced I couldn't get the same thing doctoring up a can of B&M. I'll still post the recipe, though.

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Boston Baked Beans
Cook's Illustrated

4 oz salt pork, trimmed of rind and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 oz bacon (about 2 slices), cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp mild molasses
1 1/2 Tbsp brown mustard
1 lb dried small white beans, rinsed and picked over
Salt
9 cups water
1 tsp cider vinegar
Ground black pepper

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position, and heat oven to 300. Add salt pork and bacon to an 8-quart Dutch oven. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned and most of the fat is rendered, about 7 minutes. Add onion and continue to cook until onion is softened, about 8 minutes. Add 1/2 cup molasses, mustard, beans, 1 1/4 teaspoons salt, and 9 cups of water. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Cover pot and place in oven. Cook for 2 hours, then stir, and cook for another 2 hours. Remove the lid and continue to bake until the liquid had thickened to syrupy consistency, about another 90 minutes. Remove from oven, and stir in the remaining tablespoon of molasses, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

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Cheese Bread with Bacon, Onion, and Gruyère
Cook's Illustrated

3 oz Parmesan cheese, shredded
3 cups AP flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 - 1 tsp cayenne
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
4 oz Gruyère cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/4 cup whole milk
1 large egg, beaten slightly
3/4 cup sour cream
5 oz bacon (about 5 slices), cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 onion, minced

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 350. Spray a 5x9-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. Make a 2-part sling out of parchment, and put it in the pan, using the spray to help it stick. Spray the parchment with nonstick cooking spray, and sprinkle 1/2 cup of Parmesan evenly in the bottom of the pan.

Fry the bacon in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned and crisp, about 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to a paper towl-lined plate. Pour off all but three tablspoons of the fat from the skillet. Add the onion to the skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 5 minutes, then set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Mix in the Gruyère cubes, bacon, and onion, coating the pieces completely with flour.

In a separate bowl, combine milk, egg, and sour cream. Pour the wet ingredients on top of the dry, and fold together with a rubber spatula to combine. The batter will be heavy and thick.

Scrape the batter into the loaf pan, smoothing the surface with the spatula. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of Parmesan evenly over the top.

Bake for approximately 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10-20 minutes, then de-pan and cool for another 30-45 minutes. Cut into slices and serve warm.

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Saturday, October 23, 2004

"Sarah, what the hell is going on with your blog?" Well, I find myself bereft of both time and enthusiasm lately. I get home from work and I just want to sit on my couch. It's kind of sad. I miss sleeping in, going to several stores to gather ingredients, and cooking things that take ridiculous amounts of time.

I'm making one of those things today. It's not done yet, so I can't say whether it's good or not, but recipes that start out with "Render the fat from four ounces of salt pork and two ounces of bacon" are A-OK to me. I'm in hour three of some Boston Baked Beans. And as soon as Ryan finishes making her soup, I'm going to make pasta e fagioli. Good times. I'm surpisingly not excited about it all. I think my spark is temporarily gone. Er, I hope only temporarily.

Apparently my last cheese bread had some raw bits in the middle. EW. That makes me very sad.

Soon, my top page isn't going to have any recipes on it. I should recifty that situation.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

I forgot something from last weekend. I made the cheese bread again! And wow, what a difference a parchment sling makes. Getting it out of the pan was so very easy, compared to the first time. I don't know why Cook's Illustrated didn't recommend that procedure. I mean, they make everything else needlessly complicated, why not add a step that's actually useful?

I ended up making the variation with bacon, onion, and gruyere. And it was quite tasty. They're right, the flavor does improve as it sits, so be patient. I also used twice as much salt and cayenne. I bought some premium bacon- Nieman Ranch- and it, while very tasty, was not as salty as we have come to think of bacon. So that's why I added more. And the cayenne? The CI folks sometimes can be wusses when it comes to heat.

I bought ingredients for Jonsauce. Woo. I'm so not keen on anything right now.

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Tuesday, October 19, 2004

I didn't eat dinner last night.

Amazing, I know. I got home from work, loaded up a hypodermic needle with Farscape, and plunged it in. Ah, sweet Farscape. I watched the Tivoquivalent of six hours- I got up through the first half of the Peacekeeper Wars; if we don't have D&D tonight (Jer's still not feeling great), I'll watch the other half. I was thinking about trying to make myself an omelet (eggs are pretty much the only thing I have in my fridge), but the couch was too darn comfy.

I've got a bunch of episodes from the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to which I need to do the same thing. No distractions!

I need to go to the store. But it's kind of nasty out.

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Friday, October 15, 2004

I made some rather excellent chicken noodle soup on Wednesday. I should post the recipe. It was similar to the one I already posted, but there were a few differences. I am really looking forward to eatng it for lunch today. I made it ostensibly for Jeremy, who was sick this week, but you know, I'm really not that good a person. I just like making soup and getting "Oh, that's so thoughtful!" comments from people.

You know what you don't want to hear from a Target employee? That they're having pest problems. I went a week ago to buy some face wash and TP, and I figured while I was there I might as well pick up some Jalapeno Cheddar Cheese Nips. The market section had vanished, so I hunted down a couple of employees to ask what was up. I got "problems with a vendor" twice before the guy told me there was a pest problem. EW. Yeah, I'm going to avoid buying anything edible at the Redwood City Target for a while. I suggest you do, too.

Okay, people? Learn to estimate times better. I am fine if you say, "I'll be gone for an hour, can you hold down the fort?" However, if you say, "I'll only be gone fifteen minutes," and then come back forty-five minutes late, I'm likely to be a little irked (in my brain, not out loud). Overestimate, if anything.

Mynnyd lived! Joanna almost died again. So now Cameron's campaign is over, and next week, we start Jer's. Which means we need to stock up on wands of cure light wounds, because our cleric's going to be absent.

I'm trying to cut down on my Diet Coke consumption- I don't know if I've already talked about this. Working at a company with free DC is... well, you get tempted to go overboard. Which I did, the first week. Now, I'm trying to limit myself to one can during the work day. I drink a lot of water. Surprisingly, it also quenches your thirst.

You know you've been spending too much time at your brother's house when you go to their local market and the cashier says, "Did you get your hair cut? It looks nice." (She was right- I got it cut two weeks ago.)

Damn. I went down to Mountain View last night to deliver the soup, and then I decided to take the coupons Ryan had given me and go to Bookbuyers, a used book store. I got a couple of cookbooks, and then wandered around downtown. A couple of doors down is another bookstore called Books, Inc. I wandered in because they had a big display of Cook's Illustrated books and magazines. Turned out they had just finished an appearance and signing by Christopher Kimball. Damn! I could have seen Annoying Bowtie Man in person! Oh, would I have loved to ask him his opinion of Sandra Lee and the trend of Krap Kooking these days.

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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Well, that... sort of worked.

I roasted a chicken last night (whole bird, variations on this recipe). I wanted to make it without going to the store, so that meant no little potatoes. What I ended up doing was this:

I didn't have any sage, so I finely minced some rosemary. And I only had dried thyme. Whatever, the butter was still good. During the first fifteen minutes of roasting, I melted the leftover butter in a pan and added a cup of rice, which I cooked slowly until glossy, then removed from the heat. After the first fifteen minutes of roasting, I added half a cup of water and half a cup of white wine to the roasting pan so the drippings wouldn't get burnt. During the next fifteen minutes, I defrosted a small container of French onion soup that my brother had made about a month ago (I was bringing it into work for lunch, but we kept having barbeques), and mixed that in with the rice. I also added what was left of the bottle of wine- probably an eighth of a cup. When I flipped the chicken over, I spread the rice mixture in the bottom of the roasting pan, lowered the heat as per the recipe, and cooked for another thirty-five minutes.

Okay. Chicken drippings make everything better. I wish I could just buy chicken drippings, because I only ate a leg last night. The rice was fantastic! However, I need to adjust some things, because it was stil vaguely crunchy in places. It was really, really good, if you could forgive that. And I could.

This'll probably never work in exactly the same way again, though- how often am I going to have Jon's French onion soup just sitting around in my freezer? I'm happy, though, that I was able to create something really, really good with what I already had.

I brought the rest of the rice and the other leg for lunch today. I'm really looking forward to it.

D&D tonight! I am predicting DEATH for Mynnyd!

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Monday, October 11, 2004

This past weekend was quite fun and full. However, I didn't cook a single thing. Unless you count toasting a bagel.

After work on Friday, I went up to San Francisco to meet with some Television Without Pity people. (Stop freaking out, Mom, they were quite normal.) We went to the Pig and Whistle, a quite excellent little English pub. We sort of watched Bush and Kerry posture about, but the sound wasn't loud enough for us to hear. Mainly we talked about... well, television. And also that a majority of us worked in biotech- in fact, two of the people there worked at the same company, just on different floors. Small world and whatnot. Andyway, if I lived in the city, I think I'd want to frequent that bar. Pool table, dart board, fairly cheap beer, an excellent selection on tap, and some very excellent looking bangers and mash. Keckler was not on hand, sadly, but the five of us had a grand old time. I think. I hope. Well, I did, at any rate.

Also this weekend was a trek to the parents' house for closet-cleaning. Woo! That was... tiring. I had a LOT of old prom dresses. And a lot of random papers that I don't know why I was keeping. We made piles in the garage of stuff to throw out and stuff to give away. We probably could have gotten a decent yard sale together with some of that stuff, but it was just too much hassle.

I defrosted a chicken. I'll do something with that tonight. And Jon, if you didn't cook yours last night, you should cook it tonight. (We had a mixup where two chickens were defrosted- it was totally my fault.)

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Friday, October 08, 2004

Roast Chicken with Potatoes

1 4-lb. chicken, neck and innards removed
1 1/2-lb. small red or Yukon Gold potatoes
4 Tbsp butter, softened
1 Tbsp fresh sage, chopped
1 Tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 cloves garlic, unpeeled
Vegetable oil
Salt and pepper

In a large container or pot, combine 1 1/2 quarts or cold tap water and 1/2 cup kosher salt (1/4 cup table salt). Stir to dissolve. Submerge chicken in brine and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Remove chicken from brine and dry well with paper towels. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 450. Prepare the roasting rack by spraying it with nonstick cooking spray.

In a food processor, combine butter, herbs, and minced garlic, and pulse to combine into a paste. Loosen the skin over the breast and thigh on each side of the chicken. Spread three-quarters of the paste under the skin. Tie the drumsticks together with kitchen twine and tuck wings behind back. Oil the skin lightly and season with pepper. Set chicken breast-side down on prepared rack in roasting pan and roast for 15 minutes.

Quarter the potatoes and place in a bowl with the unpeeled garlic cloves. Toss with salt and pepper (to taste) along with the remaining tablespoon of paste. After the first fifteen minutes, scatter the potatoes and garlic cloves in the bottom of the roasting pan. Continue roasting for another 15 minutes.

Remove roasting pan from oven and decrease temperature to 375. Rotate chicken breast-side up on the rack, stir the potatoes and garlic, and return to the oven for approimately another 30 mintues, or until the breast meat is 160 and the thigh meat is 175 on an instant-read thermometer.

Let chicken rest for about ten minutes before carving. Transfer the potatoes and garlic to a serving bowl. Serve with bread, upon which the roasted garlic cloves can be spread.

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Thursday, October 07, 2004

Okay... I think I just saw a human heart. In a Pyrex dish. No, not one of Leigh's macabre cake creations. An actual human heart.

And that? Was a pretty good story, Sarah.

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Wednesday, October 06, 2004

I realize that I am not a good blogger. I have not been posting as regularly as I should. I am sorry. The problem with a new job is that you want to impress people, and you can't do that by goofing off at work. And I'm really quite tired. I haven't made anything since the weekend. I've got about a third of that post written. I'll finish it. Probably.

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Monday, October 04, 2004

I saw this recipe while flipping through Gourmet at my hairdresser's this weekend, and I really want to make it, but the reviews don't sound positive. Hm.... Of course, I have no occasions for which to bake a cake, so it's probably all for the best.

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Sunday, October 03, 2004

Okay, I'm over my annoyance.

Last night was Ryan's birthday party. Jon and I made lots of food. Jon made guacamole, crepes, ham and cheese sandwiches, and pesto. I made blackberry-rosemary syrup, basil-lime syrup, onion dip, salsa, chicken liver pate, mini twice-baked potatoes, and goat cheese stuffed basil leaves. Ryan, even though she was the birthday girl, made mojitos and raspberry coulis.

Yes, all right, the onion dip was a package of soup mix and sour cream. I'm evil! The potatoes were a variation on the original recipe, using pesto and monterey jack cheese instead of cheddar and green onions. Jon thought the pesto ones were better. I'm not convinced yet, although I do agree that the pesto was magnificent. I would link to his recipe, if only I could remember where his neglected blog lives.

We had a recently-pregnant lass at the party, which is why I made the syrups, so she could have fun drinks in a non-alcoholic way. The new one, the blackberry-rosemary syrup, I think needs more sugar. It was very... subtle. The rosemary was much stronger in flavor than the blackberry, which was kind of an afterthought. I might try it with raspberry next time. Wow, was it a pretty color, though. Veryvery pretty.

We did kind of run out of food, although we made a TON. And I was exhausted. Seriously, I fell asleep on the couch as people were heading home. I had to stay over at Jon and Ryan's that night because I wasn't sure whether I could make the ten minute drive to my house. It was kind of nonstop cooking from after work Friday until the party Saturday night.

And then, on Sunday, I made stock and cookies. Why not? I'd like to try making fish stock next. Or beef stock.

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Blackberry-Rosemary Syrup

2 cups blackberries (fresh or frozen)
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar (3/8 cup)
2/3 cup water
1 1/2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary

To serve: club soda or sparkling white wine

Combine blackberries, sugar, water, and rosemary in a small, heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil and then turn heat down. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until mixture has thickened and reduced by about half.

Pour into a fine sieve set over a bowl or whatever container of holding you're using. Let stand about five mintues- do not press on solids. Cover and store for up to a week.

To serve: Pour 1-2 Tbsp into the bottom of a glass, add ice, and fill with club soda. Or omit the ice, and fill with sparkling white wine. Stir and enjoy.

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