recipe – Page 12 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Kitchen Sink Cooking

Cooking and baking can be “gotta follow the recipe to get it right” or “just throw it all together and hope for the best” in approach. Every culture and country has its national dish for leftovers all thrown together. When I was growing up, it was called “mish-mash” and usually had egg noodles, onions, sour cream, and whatever else was lying around. The Japanese have, I think (if I understood a friend correctly) “okazu,” which is mostly rice, with leftovers. Hash is another variant. Anyway, you get the idea: use it up if you got it!

For some things, you don’t really need a recipe, just ingredients. Granola is perfect for this. Tonight, I did need some cooking / baking skills for chicken pie. The mish-mash side was chicken and vegetables. Leftover roast chicken, potatoes, corn cut from the cob, red pepper, onion, celery, and carrots. Sauteed the chopped up stuff in a bit of oil and butter. Boiled up new potatoes (diced), about 3, and then saved some liquid. Into this, I threw some sour cream (natch!) and homemade chicken broth. After sauteeing the other stuff in the pan (which would then go into the oven), I sprinkled the mix with some flour, stirred it up a bit, and then poured the potato water / sour cream / chicken stock over it. Season with herbs and spices. I like rosemary, sage, thyme, garlic, pepper, and bay leaves. Sometimes a lot of celery seed is also good.

Next step: biscuit dough. 1 stick butter, about 3 c. flour, a T. of powder, and a bit of salt. Add pepper if you like, or sage or parsley. Use your hands and fingers to rub the flour and butter together until crumbly. Add about 1 1/4 c. milk or cream (I had neither, so mixed up the rest of the sour cream and some water), dump it in, stir it up briefly, knead out on a floured board, shape into a lump, and roll out, adding flour as needed. Roll from center out, making a circle about the diameter of the pan you will be putting into the oven. Fold into quarters, transfer to pan, unfold, slice into it for venting, pop into the oven. Oven is preheated to 400; bake about 1 hour. Prep time – about 1 hour, so about 2 hours total.

Virtuous little housewife, ain’t I?

Granola Girl!

As we all know, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Some will disagree, but I won’t. No breakfast, no fun, not nice.

I’ve been craving more “summery” kinds of food for mornings, and fruit with granola, or yogurt-fruit-granola are some of the best. Light, but sustaining, and not a lot of work, either. So, yesterday, after having it on the back of my mind for the past week, I finally rummaged through the pantry to see what I had. I had oatmeal, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, golden and black raisins, dried montmorency cherries, walnuts. I eyed the candied ginger and dried white peaches and hazelnuts, and decided that those should be saved for other things and times. I also looked at the spices, and decided on mace. I like its difference. Here is the recipe. Amounts can vary as desired. If you do a bigger recipe, increase cooking time.

Granola Girl Granola

Preheat oven to 400 F, and then drop to 300 when you bake it.

In large dutch oven, melt together 1/2 stick butter (about 4T), some maple syrup (real stuff, please), and a couple T of lightweight oil. Stir it up a bit to blend. Then add:

5 c. rolled oats

1/2 c. pinhead oats or ground flaxseed

1 c. chopped walnuts or pecans

handful pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries and raisins and cherries, as desired

ground mace – or other spices if you want (I like cinnamon, nutmeg, and Chinese 5-spice)

Coat all ingredients with oil-syrup-butter mixture. Then put into oven, dropping temperature to 300 F. Set timer for 15 minutes, and then stir thoroughly. Repeat 2 more times, for a total of 45 minutes or so. As it cools, it becomes crispier. Store in plastic container.

New Year’s Day: Beer and Scones

The first of the year – a day off! That is always something to enjoy. So, to celebrate, to feed the “Happy New Beer” beer makers, and to just try something that has been on the back of my mind for a bit, I decided to take the plunge and try my hand at making some scones. I’ve made plenty of scones – I’ve just been meaning to, but never have, created a recipe for ginger oatmeal scones.

Ginger Oatmeal Scones

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper.

1.5 sticks butter, at room temperature, cut into small pieces

1/3 c. sugar

2 c. flour

1 T. baking powder

pinch of salt

3/4 c. kefir, buttermilk, or thin yogurt

2 c. whole oats

1 c. chopped candied ginger

Mix together flour, powder, sugar, salt. Cut in butter with two knives, or with your fingers, until crumbly. Pour in kefir; stir with fork until just mixed. Dump in ginger and oatmeal. Blend together more. Shape into ball.

Turn out onto floured cutting board. Knead until smooth. Shape into ball, cut ball in half. Reshape each half into a ball, flatten ball with hand, twirl between palms to smooth edges and create a flat, circular disk. Cut into 6 scones. Repeat with second ball.

Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes, watching carefully to make sure they do not burn.

Yield: 12 scones.

Comments

Decent recipe – but needs some flavoring. I was hoping that the sourness of the kefir would be fine, but I don’t think so. Maybe plain buttermilk would be different. So, I think I would consider some lemon or orange zest, or perhaps even adding some juice. Hmmm.

Chopped Ginger