Saturday, December 18, 2010

Linden: Apple crumble

Two weeks ago, I was invited to a Thai food party, and told I could bring dessert. Since I wasn't about to take the time to make a Thai dessert, I went with apple crumble, after some annoying negotiations. I actually made this with the help of my Canadian friend Alia, who has featured on this blog before, in photo form. She helped with the peeling and apple preparation, and got my floor sticky by dropping tons of peels. In a good way! We just picked up the peels. And she did the worst part, which was carrying a baking dish through the middle of town (while I was at a carol service).

So we had a delicious and complete crumble. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken at that time, so you get the strangely angled sad leftovers sent off to Kathleen.


Now if you leave out the apple peeling, or enjoy peeling apples, or can do it while watching tv, which is my usual strategy (but you must be careful not to watch something to engrossing or you will end up peeling more than the apples, and no one likes that); other than the apple peeling, crumble pretty much tops the effort-to-impressiveness dessert scale. Here's what you do:

2 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups (packed) golden brown sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

4 pounds large Granny Smith apples, peeled, halved, cored, each half cut into 6 slices
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

So, first you peel your apples, throw them in a bowl, and toss them with the lemon juice and cinnamon. Put them into your baking dish. Combine your oats, brown sugar and flour, and cut your cold butter into small pieces. (I suggest taking a knife, running it under hot water, and cutting. When the butter starts sticking to the knife, run it under hot water again.) Use your hands to mix the butter into the dry ingredients. (I feel that in this situation, temperature is much less important than in pie crust, so hands it is.)

Put it in the oven at 375ish for something like an hour, and give it a couple minutes to cool.

Now crumble is an infinitely experimentable dessert. This recipe results in quite a lot of crumble (like, the stuff you put on top), but crumble stores pretty well, so you can just save it for your next crumble. Some people like raisins, I used slightly less butter than directed, etc etc.

Linden: Emptying the Pantry, Part One

I have been shamefully remiss in posting up my food adventures here, but so has everyone else. Last night, though, I was on my own for the first time in ages, and I made myself a little feast. I have a bit of a problem in that when I went shopping two weeks ago, I didn't realize I would be spending four days in London and Brighton, and thus bought more food than I can really eat in this time period. So I am eating cooked meals for every meal from now until I leave, in the hopes that all my onions and potatoes and sweet potatoes and garlic and vegetables can get consumed.

Last night, I was working on potatoes and the green beans that froze in my fridge. (Our fridge is currently having some temperature confusion, but we are working through it.)


I did potato wedges, with just a bit of salt and pepper (and some olive oil), put in the oven at around 400F for around 30 minutes, flipped halfway through. (Just in case anyone in the family doesn't yet know how to make potato wedges.) Because of the sad shape of the green beans, I popped them in some boiling water, and then put a little balsamic vinegar and pepper on them. And then I pan-cooked some paprika-coated chicken with lots of garlic, put it all on a plate, and watched tv while I ate it. Delicious!

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Xan: Marshrooms and more

And now back to our regular programming.  The kitchen was out of order again after Thanksgiving, but we're back in action.  On the menu today: Thanksgiving leftovers!  Specifically, we still had some uneaten turkey bits.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  And before you go there, the answer is no, we have not had turkey sitting in our fridge for the last several weeks. That would be ridiculous! Who do you think I am, my father?  No, unlike him, my fridge does not contain a bajillion acres of deep shelf space for "dry aging" leftovers, as he would say.  My fridge is a normal size, which means we can't afford to leave anything in there for weeks.  The space is too precious.  Therefore I kept my turkey bits under my desk.

*

I am talking, of course, about the marshmallows that propped up the tails of the turkey cupcakes from Thanskgiving.  That's right: turkey butts.  There were a lot of leftovers, even despite the fact that Catherine recently discovered their hiding place.

To use them up, I went ahead and Invented these marshrooms:



I don't know if Liz would be excited, or disappointed that they aren't really mushrooms.


Bottoms up!  Ready to grab.

Indeed, this may well be my most complex and groundbreaking invention to date.  Or not.  It probably depends on your ability to detect sarcasm in the written word.  There comes a time when we all must look ourselves in the mirror and ask: Am I, in fact, Tammy Zooo?  And if you are the type of person who answers no solely due to your own inadequate spelling ability, then I will remind you that no matter how many layers you may claim to have, I am very, very good at chopping onions.  Seriously, I have a lot of practice.  Do you know how many onions come through our doors every week? (Answer: MANY, though technically the kitchen has just one door).  There is literally nothing that makes Catherine happier than a well-chopped onion.  (Incidentally, it used to be that nothing brought more tears to my eyes.  But then she bought me onion goggles.)

In any case, whoever may stare back at you when you look into the mirror, one thing is for certain.  You, yes you, are currently reading this blog.  That makes you special, and at Vongsafood, specialness does not go unnoticed, or unrewarded.  And so, just as a special treat, I have decided to let you in on how I came up with this special treat.  Attention!  Below you may find some real insights into my creative cooking process.

Xan's Marshrooms:


Ingredients:

  • 15 leftover turkey butts
  • 4 squares of leftover unsweetened baking chocolate you bought one time by accident
  • several handfuls of powdered sugar
  • Leftover coconut sugar coating from Sweet Potato Balls recipe (see below)

Instructions:

  • Put the butts on a plate in the freezer.  Completely forget about them until at least an hour later.
  • Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in the microwave, heating repeatedly for 15 second intervals.  When the chocolate is bubbling and lumpy from overcooking, you are done.  Grab a few handfuls of powdered sugar directly from the bag*. Mix the sugar into the chocolate to cancel out the unreasonable bitterness of completely unsweetened chocolate (this will not actually work for any feasible amount of sugar, but imagine how bad it would be if you didn't do anything).
  • Remember that you left something in the freezer, like, over an hour ago.  Congratulations people, your butts are now rock hard and you didn't even have to go to the all night gym. Unfortunately, as is often the case, quick-gotten gains turn into even quicker-gotten losses.  In just 20 minutes, the butts will be mostly restored to their former softness. 
  • Dip the cold butts into the melted chocolate and then dredge in the coconut mixture.  Put back on the plate and serve to your delighted guests**.


*Portioning by hand is a bad idea for some ingredients, but you should really give it a try with powdered sugar.  You absolutely will not make a mess all over your counter and any surface within a 10 foot radius.  Trust me, it works!
**The only person who will actually like these is Tammy, for reasons that are surely obvious to you by now, provided your name isn't actually Tammy.  This was empirically verified tonight when she gave them two thumbs up.  Needless to say, this rating was at least twice as high as any of our other raters.


Now, I know you're eager to make yourselves some marshrooms.  But as is evident from the recipe, you will first have to make these sweet potato balls which, incidentally, also require leftover turkey:


Crispy coconut sweet potato shell on the outside, gooey marshmallow center.


Disclaimer:  Turkey butts have been known to expand to astounding diameters when subjected to high heat.  The sweet potato shells that housed them were at least three sizes too small.  Here's a more representative picture:




To be honest, I wasn't particularly impressed with the tastiness of these guys.  Too much nutmeg, for sure.  I don't know if I would make them again, but I think we can all agree that the concept, at least, is fantastic.

In any case, it's good to be back in action!

Monday, December 6, 2010

Linden's potatoes au gratin

Last night, instead of doing my statistics assignment, I made dinner. It looked like this.





It tasted okay, although if anyone has any tips on the chicken, they would be welcome!

The potatoes are potatoes au gratin, which loosely translated means potatoes that smell like cheese, and are made, unsurprisingly given the name, with potatoes and cheese, and a bit of milk thrown in for good measure. The chicken was salted, peppered, thymed, and floured, then cooked in a bit of oil, which spattered everywhere and I had to protect myself with a frying pan. It reminded me of that time Papa fought a bear with a tin bowl. The veggies were all I had, and were cooked a la Vongsathorn, which translates as to the wagons!.

I had the leftovers today for lunch.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Linden's Late Carrot Cake

My cooking habits have devolved in the last two weeks, in that I couldn't make the effort or take the time to cook fancy dinners or fancy cupcakes full of food coloring. I also haven't taken the time to post here, because I am Disciplined and don't procrastinate papers by doing things on the Intramanets. So belatedly, last weekend I made carrot cake (mostly because I needed to use up some carrots). Because of my sadly low-tech kitchen, this involved shredding carrots and nutmeg by hand (which resulted in a wonderful-smelling kitchen and orange tilted hands), and whipping icing by hand (so even though I have been remiss in doing all of my wrist exercises, they are still getting a bit of a workout).


(My strategy is to take advantage of the fact that I live sandwiched between a graveyard and the Magdalen deer park, and include them in my pictures of cakes cooling on windowsills. That in the background would be the long wall that goes around the deer park. Also in the deer park at the moment are huge balls of mistletoe in trees, which is awesome.)

So the main problem with carrot cake is that the icing recipes expect you to want to eat about half the icing sans cake, or put an inch of icing on the whole thing. I compromised by putting half an inch on, licking my fingers, and then putting the remaining the icing in the fridge and planning on doing another carrot cake this weekend. However! The good thing about it is that you get to feel slightly virtuous, because it is full of goodness, like carrots and walnuts.