Manicotti and Mamma

When there's an 86 year old in the house, mealtimes tend to be pushed forward a bit.  It's not horrible on a day like this since we'll probably all be in bed early, anyway, if the lights go out, as expected.

This storm has been a pain already - and it really hasn't even hit us, yet.  We're still several hours away from that.

So...  we eat.  Eating does make the waiting so much easier.  In between bread baking and coconut bar baking, I made some sauce.  Just a basic onions, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, red wine, and ground beef.  Some Italian seasoning.  Nothing overly fancy.  I let it simmer for a couple of hours.  The manicotti came from the freezer - as did the hot Italian sausage that I simmered in the sauce.

It went into the still-working oven for 40 minutes.

Our house is actually pretty sound-proof and we haven't heard much of the storm all day - periods when it picked up, but nothing deafening.  We're definitely starting to hear it, now.

To paraphrase Bette Davis, we're in for a bumpy night.....

But bumpy, or not, we'll still eat well.


Soup and Sandy

Fresh-baked bread and a pot of soup simmering on the stove are two of the better ways to hunker down during a storm.  We've used up just about every cliché we can think of, and I swear I really need to get that damned "The wind began to switch - the house to pitch and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch..." out of my head.  That, Lena Horne singing Stormy Weather, and Jim Morrison singing Riders on the Storm.... The iPod of my mind is going into overdrive...

But while all that is going through my head, bread and soup are being prepared.  We're going to eat well, dammit!

It really is starting to get nasty outside.  It's following the timeline Victor found this morning pretty closely.  I just keep hoping the power stays on.

But, if it doesn't we shall survive.

The bread is James Beard's French Bread.  It is one of the most easy breads to bake.  The soup is soup.  Stuff in a pot.

James Beard French-Style Bread

Ingredients

  • 1 package active dry yeast
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 1 cup warm water (100° to 115°, approximately)
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour
  • 3 tablespoons yellow cornmeal

Directions

Combine the yeast with sugar and warm water in a large bowl and allow to proof. Mix the salt with the flour and add to the yeast mixture, a cup at a time, until you have a stiff dough. Remove to a lightly floured board and knead until no longer sticky, about 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary. Place in a buttered bowl and turn to coat the surface with butter. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1½ to 2 hours.

Punch down the dough. Turn out on a floured board and shape into a long, French bread-style loaf. Place on a baking sheet that has been sprinkled with the cornmeal but not buttered. Slash the tops of the loaf diagonally in two or three places. Place in a cold oven, set the temperature at 400° and bake 35 minutes or until well browned and hollow sounding when the top is rapped.

I'm making sauce next and we'll have manicotti and sausages in a meat sauce for dinner.  Victor's mom is staying with us so we need to have meals that are a bit more structured.

Mother Nature is having a ball.  We're eating well.  Not bad.


Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

There's just nothing worse than sitting around the house waiting for a hurricane to strike.  Whenever we find ourselves in a situation like that, one - or both - of us heads to the kitchen.  This time, it was Victor.

He thought it prudent to get a batch of cookies in the oven before we lose power - and the oven.  We're very actively involved in trying to get natural gas lines run into our neighborhood, but since that's not happening today, we're stuck with the electric ovens.  I could probably bake cookies on the gas grill - I know I can bake bread on it - but if I don't have to... I do like to take the path of least resistance whenever possible.

The pumpkin in these particular pumpkin cookies comes from instant pumpkin oatmeal.  I do have to admit I generally don't eat instant oatmeal because it's always sweetened and as much as I love my sweets, I take my oatmeal and coffee straight up the way Mother Nature intended.  But Victor likes it for the convenience in the winter and thought this one would mix well with regular oats to make a good cookie.

He was right, of course!

After having these, I imagine any of the numerous flavored instant oatmeals out there could work.  Give it a try!

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup rolled oats
  • 1 cup pumpkin oatmeal

Preheat oven to 375°. Beat butter until light. Add sugars and beat until well mixed. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and pinch salt. Stir in oats.
Use 1/4 cup scoop and scoop onto parchment-lined cookie sheets. Bake about 15 minutes.

Now...  if the Giants can do me a big favor and clinch the World Series tonight, I'll really be a happy camper!


The Ham Before The Storm

In case ya haven't heard, we have a bit of a storm heading our way.  In fact, not just heading our way, but heading our way!

Ooooops!

I'm channeling my inner-Fireman's Son and feel pretty confident - we have all the supplies and such we'll need in the event of loss of electricity, limbs crashing down, whatever.  Batteries, electronics charged, gas in vehicles, food, propane, water...  Even our alarm clocks have battery back-up.  We'll be fine.

But it is a bit strange to have a hurricane headed right towards your house.  Insurance is paid.

So...  with nothing to worry about, we had a simple dinner - ham steaks, mashed sweet potatoes, and peas.  Not The Last Supper - that's tomorrow night when things are supposed to get interesting.

I just don't want to lose electricity.  I know it's pretty inevitable with a storm of this magnitude, but geeze...  Last big storm we lost it for 5 days - and cold showers are just no fun at my age.

So if the weather gods are willing, we'll be here cooking our dinners and posting our pictures and talking about how nice it is to be indoors and dry.  And if the electricity does desert us, we have the electronics - as long as there is also cell service.  If there's no electricity and no cell service?  We have movies and books - and lots of batteries.


Beef Soup and Beer Bread

Last night was chicken soup and cornbread   Tonight is beef soup and beer bread.  With this %$@#& cold I have, the only thing that remotely sounds good is soup.  I can throw stuff in a pot and walk away.  Anything else is just too much of an effort.

It's not that I'm sick-sick, just snotty and tired.  And Victor has started with a scratchy throat, too.  This is just not the way to start the Storm of the Century.

The soup had a bit of everything in it:

  • beef
  • Mexican chorizo sausage
  • canned tomatoes
  • beef broth
  • fresh longhorn peppers
  • onions
  • garlic
  • great northern beans
  • pinto beans
  • black beans
  • pink beans
  • pimentos
  • canned green chilis
  • carrots
  • salt & pepper

The combination of ingredients added all the herbs and spices it needed.  I didn't add anything.  It was mildly spicy and really rich.  I let it boil for a while to reduce a bit.

The beer bread was my old standby.  And I used up my last bottle of beer!  Time to get more before the end of the world hits Sunday night.

This is truly one of the easiest breads to make - and it really does taste good.

Quick Beer Bread

  • 3 cups self-rising flour
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 12 oz beer
  • Melted butter

Mix and put into a 4″ x 8″ bread pan.  Top with melted butter.  Bake at 350° about 1 hour.

At least we're eating well... I have at least one more day of trying to get over this damned cold before returning to work...

Time for a cup of tea...

 


Chicken Soup & Cornbread

If there is any benefit to not feeling well, it's having Victor cook.  Chicken soup and a slightly-spicy cornbread were on the menu tonight - both with ingredients guaranteed to knock this cold out!  Chicken soup and capsaicin.  They both will cure what ails ya.

We had broth in the freezer and some bone-in chicken breasts, so it was a matter of chopping, dicing, and cooking while I was taking one of my numerous naps of the day.  But as good as the soup was - and it was really good - the cornbread stole the show.  It was stellar!  It was moist, it was light, it was flavorful.  Feed a cold and starve a fever?!?  I fed my cold!

There's more soup and more cornbread for lunch tomorrow.  I'm feeling better just thinking of it!

Chili Cheese Cornbread

  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
  • 2 longhorn peppers, minced

Preheat oven to 375°.  Butter an 8"x8" pan.

Melt butter and stir in sugar. Add eggs. Add buttermilk. Stir in cornmeal, flour, baking soda, and salt.  Mix in shredded cheese and peppers.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

And the soup?!?  Damn!  It was good!


Chicken and Drop-Biscuits

Cooking and taking pictures of dinner is fun, but it generally doesn't tell the whole story.

Food blogs are supposed to entice you to read and cook, just as our demo days years ago were designed to get the customer to buy and cook by making it all look incredibly easy to do. I always said it was hard work making it look effortless.  But like the Food Channel or any cooking show, what you see on the screen isn't necessarily what's going on behind the scene.

Take last nights dinner, for example.  Chicken with drop biscuits baked in the oven.  Totally fantastic and absolutely delicious.  And relatively easy to make, considering I had fresh broth and a chicken carcass to work with. The picture above shows what it looked like right before going on the table.  Light, fluffy, garlicky-cheesy biscuits atop steaming chicken stew.  Just what I needed since I was coming down with a sore throat and beginning to feel like hell.

The next picture shows the actual casserole.

Biscuits scooped atop hot stew and then baked in a hot oven for 20 minutes.  It just doesn't get any better.  But it doesn't show you what it looked like coming out of the oven.  Or the clouds of smoke in the kitchen that had me in a coughing fit that only exacerbated an already-sore throat.

Yes.  That is one dirty oven.   My oven messes are legendary, but this one was over the top even for me.

The oven was already dirty and I knew it needed cleaning so I eschewed a pan underneath.  I figured it would bubble over a bit.  It bubbled over more than a bit.  More than a lot of bits.

Victor patiently threw me out of the room.  Fortunately I was actually looking ill by that point and he took pity on me.

Victor has the oven cleaning down to a science, nowadays.  18 years of living with me and my kitchen messes has honed some serious survival instincts in him.  He opens windows, turns on fans, and hangs a sheet between the kitchen and dining room closing off that part of the house.  The billowing clouds of smoke are gone within the first hour, and even the neighbors now know not to call the fire department.

It's a win-win for all involved.  There were leftovers for today's lunch and Victor is making me chicken soup for dinner because I still feel like crap.

I'm probably going to be watching baseball from bed.  No fun.

Oh well...  at least the oven is cleaned.  As soon as I'm feeling better I'll have to get in there and do something about that.


Baseball Food

It's Giants baseball tonight.  Baseball.  This is it.  Game 7.  If they win tonight it's off to the World Series.

I'm in my Giants shirt, Giants socks.  If I had Giants underwear I'd be wearing it.

So dinner was hot dogs and chili fries with lots of cheese and onions.

Bags of peanuts in the shell.  If I can keep from throwing them on the floor I will be happy.  So will Victor.

GO GIANTS!


Roast Chicken with Tomatoes, Potatoes, and Cauliflower

Clean-out-the-refrigerator meals can be so much fun!

I knew I was roasting a chicken but wasn't quite sure what to serve on the side.  I had a couple of gold potatoes and a half-head of cauliflower that really needed using up.  A can of plum tomatoes tied them together.

The chicken was a basic salt, pepper, sage and into the oven.  When it came out, I set if off to the side and started the sauce:

  • 1 onion, minced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 3 gold potatoes. halved
  • 1/2 head cauliflower, in large florettes
  • 1 large can plum tomatoes in puree
  • French herbs
  • S&P

Chop onion and cook in the chicken fat until translucent.  Add garlic and quickly stir.  Add red wine and reduce by half.  Add chicken broth, potatoes, cauliflower, French herbs, and S&P to taste.  Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer until potatoes are done.

Serve over chicken.

It was fun, it was filling, and it helped clean out the 'fridge so I could do more shopping today!

 


2012 Fruitcake

It's never too early to bake a fruitcake.  The beauty of them is they get better as they age - and soak up the liquor that is poured onto them.

I must admit that I really do like fruitcake.  I even like the store-bought ones, although the odds of me ever eating one of them with their chemicals and artificial ingredients are between slim and none.  Low as they may be, I have my standards!

So...  I looked at my 2010 recipe and decided it would be easy to update for 2012.  And from the scents wafting through the house, it came out great!

I didn't use any candied fruit this year.  I thought about making some candied orange or lemon peel and then decided it really wasn't worth it.  I went for all dried fruit - soaked in amaretto!  As I said, it smells really good!

2012 Fruitcake

  • 8 cups assorted dried fruits (I used golden raisins, raisins, currants, apricots, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, dates, and figs.)
  • 3/4 cup amaretto
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup wholoe wheat flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 1/2 tsp cloves
  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 5 large eggs
  • 1 cup almond meal
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped assorted nuts (I used walnuts and pistachios)
  • 1/4 cup orange marmalade mixed with 1 tbsp amaretto)

In a large bowl combine all of the fruits with the amaretto and let macerate overnight.

Line the bottom of a well-buttered 9 1/2-inch springform pan with a round of parchment paper and butter the paper. Into a small bowl sift together the flour, the baking powder, and the spices.

Cream together the butter and the brown sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy and beat in 4 of the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

Drain the fruit mixture in a sieve set over the batter and beat the juices into the batter.

Stir the flour mixture into the batter, one fourth at a time, stir in the fruit mixture, the almond meal, and the nuts, stirring until the mixture is just combined, and turn the batter out into the prepared pan.

Put 2 loaf pans, each filled with hot water, in a preheated 300°F. oven and put the springform pan between them. Bake the cake for 1 hour, brush the top with the remaining egg, beaten lightly, and bake the cake for 1 hour more. While the cake is baking, in a saucepan melt the marmalade with the remaining 1 tablespoon amaretto over moderate heat, bring the mixture to a boil, and strain it through a fine sieve into a bowl, pressing hard on the solids.

Cool cake in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes.  Remove from pan. Brush the top of the cake with glaze.

The cake will keep, covered, for 6 months.

It will be going down to the basement where it will get a weekly dousing of amaretto until Christmas!

I'll be sure to let you know just how good it was!


Butternut Squash Soup

Another Saturday Treat awaiting me as I walked in the door, today!  Butternut Squash Soup!  A really really good butternut squash soup, I might add!

I was just going to make burgers, but Victor saw a half of squash left from yesterday and decided it needed to be used up.  So...  we ended up with burgers and soup!  A perfect combo meal!

The soup was really simple.  He sauteed one shallot and then added chicken broth and the cut up butternut squash.  He cooked it about 2o minutes and then hit it with the immersion blender until it was smooth.  He then added crème fraîche, salt, pepper, and a dash of freshly grated nutmeg.

Simple, fresh ingredients. It really was the perfect soup!

What a concept!


Butternut Squash and Spinach

Tonight's dinner is brought to you by spinach and butternut squash.  Two of our more-favorite foods.

They're not foods I normally pair together, but they seem to be this season's new couple.  I figured it was time to jump in and play.

My original thought was to just make a gratin of sorts, but my friend Marie suggested stuffing chicken breasts.  I decided to do both.  But with two different recipes.

Chicken Stuffed with Bacon, Butternut Squash, and Spinach

  • chicken breasts
  • bacon
  • garlic
  • butternut squash
  • spinach
  • chicken or beef broth
  • sage
  • S&P

Pound chicken breasts to an even thickness.  Place in small oven-proof dishes.

Dice bacon and cook in fry pan until crisp.  Drain off excess fat.  Add minced garlic and thinly-sliced and diced butternut squash and cook about 3 minutes.  Add about 1/4 cup broth - or wine or other liquid.  Add spinach.  Cook down.  Add sage and cook just a minute more - until squash is fairly well-cooked. Check for seasoning and add S&P, as desired.

Stuff into chicken breast and bake, uncovered, about 30 minutes at 375°.

I resisted adding cheese because I added it to the gratin and I didn't want the two dishes to be the same, but you can easily add any type of cheese you like - from a blue or gorgonzola to parmesan or a melty cheese like fontina.

The second dish was a layered butternut squash and spinach gratin.  I used a mandoline to slice the squash into thin pieces.  A sharp knife and a steady hand will do the same.

Spinach and Butternut Squash Gratin

  •  butternut squash
  • onion
  • garlic
  • spinach
  • heavy cream
  • pecorino romano cheese
  • S&P to taste

Mince onion and garlic.  Saute in skillet until translucent.  Add spinach and cook until wilted.  Add a bit of heavy cream, shredded cheese, and a bit of salt and pepper.  Set aside.

Lightly grease casserole dish.  Layer thinly-sliced butternut squash on bottom.  Add one-fourth of spinach.  Continue layering squash and spinach, ending with squash.  Add a bit of S&P.  Cover with foil and bake at 375° about 40 minutes.

Two ingredients. Two different dishes.  One very easy meal.