Tag: flour

After seeing this completely and totally awesome page for minestrone linked off of wikipedia, I felt it was my patriotic duty to make minestrone. After all, I do live in Las Vegas, and anybody who lives here knows that italian restaurants outnumber any other kind of restaurant by a factor of approximately thirty-seven to three. I especially liked the basic assumption- that you can pretty much just buy seasonal vegetables, completely at random, throw them all together, and make some soup. I mean, you basically don't need to know how to do anything. How could this possibly go wrong?

So I went to Sunflower Market, since they sell local produce, and bought twelve of every vegetable they had. If you could screw up minestrone, I was going to figure out how. I came home, got a big stock pot out, and started my soffrito- a fancy word to say I rendered the fat out of some bacon and then threw in some onions, leeks, and shallots.

I also didn't have pig trotters or marrow bones or anything like that, so for thickening I waited until my 'soffrito' was pretty much sweated, then threw in some flour, like a roux. Then I spent TWO. HOURS. cutting up vegetables and throwing them in. I cubed the turnips. I chopped up the zucchini, summer squash, celery root, spinach leaves, potatoes, and carrots. It looked like I was carving up the grisly aftermath of a war against the vegetables, a war which I handily won. All of it drowning in six cans of chicken broth and a pitcher of water, with a sprig of rosemary (I fished that out after everything started smelling like rosemary), a bay leaf, and a parmesan crust. Then, because I was pretty much throwing in everything I had, I put in two cans of kidney beans and a cup of orzo. By this point I was in such a rut that I might have diced my children and thrown them in, had they wandered into the kitchen.

It cooked for HOURS. Three and a half hours. I felt like a witch, sitting there and stirring my massive cauldron of stuff. And then something magical happened. It started to smell like delicious.

So, basically, you'd have to try way harder than I did to screw up minestrone.

Of course, I decided to make Chicken Katsu, because it's delicious and wonderful. It all starts with chicken thighs, which I cut into manageable chunks and egg-battered with flour and panko. A few minutes in the deep fryer, and they came out delicious.

Actual people who have lived in Hawaii tell me it's not the chicken, but the sauce that makes things work. The recipe I was using has a pretty complicated sauce, and of course I added random amounts of everything instead of paying attention and got something a little too clovey.

Why did I use a recipe and not invent something myself? This time, it was because I have absolutely no clue about what the Hawaiians eat. But make the chicken part. It's fantastic. Next time, I'm eating it with barbecue sauce.

The Queen of Tarts is always acting all high and mighty, baking bread and cookies and I think probably even people every night. She'll casually pull out some flour and other stuff, get a bowl or something, and in twenty minutes she'll be yanking a tray of golden brown tastiness out of the oven. Her demeanor seems to say, what, bread? Oh look, here it is. Easiest thing in the world.

So, for Russian night, I decided to make a mushroom pastry. I'd show her. I'd whip up a huge plate of tasty mushroom foods and then I'd be the one who shrugs modestly. Oh yeah, those pastries? Totally easy.

I started the night before with:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 sticks of butter

The recipe I was following told me to cut the whole thing together with a wide knife. Not knowing what the heck it was talking about, I got a butter knife and cut the mixture together while watching Bob the Builder. By the end of it, my shoulders were totally and completely sore.

The next day, I sauteed:

• 1 lb minced mushrooms
• 1 minced large onion

I added some pepper and tarragon during the cooking process, then set it aside to cool down while I pulled out the dough.

Of course, the dough didn't look right. It kept falling apart. It was impossible to roll. So I got out the pastry knife (yeah, I didn't know we had one the night before) and cut in an additional half stick of softened butter. The dough formed a nifty ball immediately. Victory for me.

I started rolling the dough out, but it was pretty sticky, and it kept tearing in places. In fact, it took me an hour to roll out, but I learned one vital fact you'll need if you ever work with dough: flour is your friend. If your dough even begins to give you lip, cover it (and your rolling surface) with flour. You cannot have enough flour on hand. It's mathematically impossible.

Once I had the dough rolled out to about a quarter inch, I cut it into squares. I mixed a cup of grated parmesan into the mushroom mixture, put teaspoonfuls of it into the squares, and folded them diagonally. After all the little triangley things were made, they were brushed with egg yolk, sprinkled with caraway seeds, and put into a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes.

Were they good? Yeah. They were good. They were pretty darn good. But I couldn't shrug and be all modest, because my shoulders might have fallen off.

Supercook is a pretty darn awesome site, where you enter the ingredients you have and it gives you a list of recipes you can make with them. It assumes you have water, salt, pepper, and sugar (sugar is a pretty big one), so I've been trying to find the largest number of recipes for the smallest number of ingredients. So far, it's butter & onions (12 recipes)...

Update: make that butter and flour (79 recipes).

After a mixup where the beans I had originally planned for a Boston Baked Beans dish didn't manage to fully soak overnight, I had to run to the store and grab some ingredients to quickly whip up a backup dish, broccoli and ham gratin.

• About a pound of broccoli, stems included
• 8-10 slices deli ham
• Parmesan and cheddar cheese for topping
• Breadcrumbs
• 2 cups of milk
• 1 stick of butter
• 4 tbls flour
• Dried sage
• Black pepper
• Dry mustard

After cutting the broccoli down (including stems) to florets and small discs, I put them on to boil. After they'd softened slightly, I spread them across the bottom of the baking dish. Next, I mixed up a bechamel (melted the butter, mixed in the flour, then took off the heat and mixed in the milk). After putting the milk back on the heat and whisking heavily, I added a dash of sage and mustard, then ground in some pepper.

After tearing the ham into shreds and laying it across the top of the broccoli, I added the bechamel, covered the top with cheese and breadcrumbs, and put it into the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour.

Unfortunately, I let it cook a little longer, and I really shouldn't have; the broccoli dried up a bit. I'm looking forward to trying this one again sometime soon, however.

I was seriously in need of some sour cream yesterday, so I browsed the internet for a couple beef stroganoff recipes and generated something that turned out to be pretty darn fantastic.

After slicing a half-pound sirloin steak into small strips, I dredged them in flour, garlic salt, and pepper, then sauteed them in butter along with a quarter onion (diced). I added a couple dashes of Worcestershire and soy sauce (that combo is my secret weapon for meat dishes). After the onion was transparent, I added some sliced mushrooms, a shot of apple cognac (any brandy would be fine), and half a can of chicken broth. Once the whole mixture thickened, I added half a cup of sour cream, reduced the heat to medium, and let the sauce thicken.

Over buttered egg noodles, this one was pretty fantastic. There was just a hint of the apple flavor from the cognac. If I do this again, I will wait to add the steak until after the onions are done; it certainly wasn't overcooked, but I would have liked it to be a little less cooked anyways.

Dough Face By LittleRoq	Turtle Bread

This year for Christmas I ordered the Alpha-Bakery and Rainbow Bakery Children's Cookbooks from Gold Medal Flour for a lot of the kids. When they arrived I took a peek through them and found something very surprising, these aren't recipes just for kids. They are great, simple baking recipes for people of all ages.

We have made several recipes from the books already.

From Rainbow Bakery
Twisters Biscuit Sticks- a versatile and easy breadstick recipe
You Can Dough It! Baked Dough Creations- a salt dough recipe to make keepsake ornaments, decorations, or beads

From Alpha-Bakery
T is for Turtle Bread-This bread is really fun to make. I had never made a fun shaped bread before. It could also be shaped into an oval or round loaf or baked in a loaf pan.

If you are looking for a great gift for some kids in your life or you just want to get your hands on some simple, yet wonderful recipes then you may want to order the Gold Medal Flour Children's Cookbooks.

Please save your family from store bought refrigerated sugar cookie dough. These cookies turn hard as a rock within minutes of making them and they have no real flavor at all. Treat your family to some wonderful homemade sugar cookies and frosting. They will thank you for it.

The recipe I am going to share with you has been in my family for over 20 years. My aunt Kathy received the recipe from a co-worker. Kathy then gave the recipe to my mom. It has since become a tradition that each year at Easter and Christmas my mom makes 6 double batches of cookies. We spend many hours baking and frosting, but it is always a lot of fun and wouldn't be the same without them.

I had never made these cookies on my own, but this past week that all changed. LittleRoq had a Christmas party to go to and I volunteered to make the sugar cookies (so as to save the children from the horrible store bought ones!). LittleRoq joined in on the cutting out of the shapes. And then he frosted the cookies reserved for our house while I frosted the ones for the party. It was really neat to make a recipe with my son that I have been making at my mom's side for many years.

Over the years we have learned a few things about making sugar cookies.

• First: Make way more cookies than you think you will need because no one can get enough of these.
• Second: If you are going to ship them, use small shapes rather than large ones because the small ones are more likely to survive the trip intact.
• Third: Do not roll the dough into large balls and then refrigerate. This creates a lot of hard work for you later on. The best thing to do is separate the dough and flatten it into a few small slabs, wrap in plastic wrap and then refrigerate. This makes rolling the dough out much easier.
• Fourth: Use powdered sugar rather than flour to dust your rolling surface so as to not add too much flour taste to the cookies.

For many cookie pointers read the transcript of the Good Eats episode The Cookie Clause. Alton Brown has many great tips on cookie making in that episode. It is where I learned about the slabs of dough. Can you believe we never thought of that?

And FINALLY the recipe:

Kathleen's (Mary's) Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 c sifted powder sugar
1 c butter softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 c flour, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

Cream the sugar and butter. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and almond extract. Blend dry ingredients, stir into butter mixture. Refrigerate at least 3 hours.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out dough a little at a time (if it gets too warm it gets sticky) to about 1/4 inch thick. Use cookie cutters to cut out.
Bake on un-greased baking sheets for 8 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool on wire racks. Frost with butter cream frosting.

Butter Cream Frosting

1 lb Powder Sugar (4 cups)
1/4 c milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 c butter softened
Food coloring

In a bowl combine sugar, milk, vanilla and butter. If a little thick add milk a few drops at a time until thin enough to frost with. Divide into bowls and mix in the food coloring.

Frost the cookies. Allow frosting to harden on the cookies then store in air-tight containers. (Place a piece of bread in with the cookies to keep them soft. When the piece becomes hard and dried out replace it with a fresh piece.)