Xan, Catherine, Ryan, Kris, Cammy: Apple-picking!

Folks, it's apple-picking season!

Last year, apple picking was a bust.  An early warm-spell/frost killed off all the apples in the midwest.  Instead, County Line orchard hung up miles of rain gutters and stocked them with pre-picked apples flown in from Washington.  They helpfully decided to inform us by advertising on their website not only that they were open for picking, but furthermore that it was in fact "raining apples."

Needless to say, we showed up at the orchard excited and left disappointed.

Despite their devious lies, we returned to the orchard last weekend, after verifying that it actually had apple-picking, of course.  

Gala, McIntosh, Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and Jonagold.  Here's the haul:

As you know, I like climbing trees.  It's kind of the main point of apple picking for me, actually.  But I haven't been able to find any orchards around Chicago with big trees.  All the places that offer apple picking were planted in the last 25 years and the trees just aren't that large.  I think it's actually becoming more usual to plant trees closer together and keep them smaller because it makes picking easier, but even the "old-style" trees they have just aren't big like the ones we grew up with in the DC area.  "Climbing" a tree at most consists of taking 1 to 3 steps up the tree.  What?  Moreover, they are mildly annoying steps, because small trees have lots of leafy shoots everywhere, because even the "interior" gets sunlight.  Nevertheless, I enjoy it because it is my natural habitat.  And I think the trees enjoy being inhabited by a native as well.

A farmer guy yelled at me for climbing a tree.  He said I would break the tree and then break myself.  It's not his fault; the tractor is his natural habitat, and he does not recognize his agile woodland kin.  I continued to climb trees away from the farmers, because it is socially optimal to break rules that are not designed for you, so long as you can avoid getting caught.

The farmer reminds me of a particular security guard at Pomona.  The golf cart was her natural habitat, and she had it out for the parkourists.  However, golf carts cannot do parkour, so she only ever caught up with us when we weren't doing parkour.  A catch-22, or perhaps a not-catch-4.  In exchange for her hypothetical lectures, let us say a prayer for our pathbound kin, it is not their fault.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, pie!  We converted our bounty into an apple pie and applesauce:

8 apples each

The crust was really good, which was Catherine's doing.  She has made Kenji's recipe a few times now and is getting it down pretty well.

Recipes for crust and filling:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/07/easy-pie-dough-recipe.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/perfect-apple-pie-recipe-double-crusted-thanksgiving-dessert.html 

Or for the science behind those recipes:
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/07/the-food-lab-the-science-of-pie-how-to-make-pie-crust-easy-recipe.htmlhttp://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/10/the-food-labs-apple-pie-part-2-how-to-make-perfect-apple-pie-filling.html

I know some of you like the vodka pie crust method.  That was also developed by Kenji (during his time at Cooks Illustrated).

If you are having problems with your apples turning too soft, this pie recipe with fix that.  Before filling the pie, you soak the apple slices in hot water for a few minutes.  This gives the pectin time to convert into a heat-stable form that won't break down at higher temperatures in the oven.

For the applesauce, I used this recipe:

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/applesauce/

I put in 2 cinnamon sticks instead of 1, because Catherine specifically likes cinnamon applesauce.  It was delicious, and so easy!  In fact it was so good that we just bought more apples at the grocery store and made another batch of applesauce.  I guess we did not pick enough!

Ryan, on the other hand, picked a lot of apples.  He walked away with a couple bags, and a pumpkin too!  Doesn't this baked apple look delicious?

Unfortunately that only gets rid of one apple...

And here is his pork tenderloin with cinnamon applesauce:

Apple sauce, that's more like it!

And here is our parallel dinner:

You might think that's a pork chop, given that it looks like one and is served with applesauce.  But actually it is lamb!  I do not regret this, although I do wish we had included peas, and put the applesauce in its own bowl.

Xan and Catherine: Beef Empanadas

We had extra pie crust and made beef empanadas!

They were delicious, especially because the pie crust recipe is amazing (link forthcoming, requires a food processor).

The recipe did not call for cheese inside, but Catherine wanted cheese, but then we forgot, so we just sprinkled cheese on a few and cooked it that way.

A good idea in theory, but a bad idea in practice.  The crust was much better on the cheeseless ones, and now we have cheese stuck to our baking sheet.

Xan: It's scallop time!

I came home rather tired from work but mom was thawing scallops on the counter so I could not resist cooking them:

Delicious despite lame cell phone camera.

Because I never cooked scallops before, that's why.  Of course I looked up doneness temperatures on the interwebs and used a meat thermometer, which is how come they came out perfect despite the fact that I never cooked scallops before and have no idea what I'm doing.  I love the 21st century!

This was really easy.  Also I managed to make this using only ingredients I could find in my parents' kitchen.  You should be very impressed, as I am a bad finder and I didn't get any help from mom.  The only thing she told me was that we didn't have any spinach, which wasn't even true.

I chopped up some bacon and rendered out the fat, which I then seared the scallops in.  I deglazed the pan with white wine vinegar and a bit of lemon juice.  Because that was the first vinegar I found, that's why.  Also it is the obvious choice according to xan's cooking heuristics.  I then added some garlic and crispy bacon bits and wilted the spinach and that was it really.

The spinach was really good, even though I don't usually enjoy cooked spinach from my parents' kitchen, but that is probably because they don't cook it properly, i.e. with bacon.

By the way, let me just say that cooking with bacon is not the same as cooking with an unhealthy amount of bacon.  A little bacon can go a long way!

Provocative Claim: It is self-defeating to force feed your children steamed vegetables when you could simultaneously increase their vegetable intake (and hence overall health!) while decreasing your eternal efforts to police their vegetable intake, simply by making vegetables a little less healthy and a lot more delicious by adding some bacon.  It is probably even better to just get some browning going, but surely we can at least say that bacon trumps steam.

(Discuss).

Xan: Easter! and a Tammy Egg Hunt!

We had a nice Easter feast with a few friends:

On the menu was:

• Ham
• Rack of lamb
• Yam
• Sacrificial Ram (return of the big corn sheep)
• 500 gram broccoli salad on the lam
• apricot jam bars (not pictured, sorry)
• bread-am

I don't know what bread-am is but everything else rhymes with ham so what can I do.

Beautiful spirals of meat!

I love Costco.  But as a consequence I am still working on pounds of ham leftovers.  Here are all the things I have put ham in: 

• sandwiches
• broccoli salad
• pasta
• soup
• beans
• ham

I swear it keeps getting better and better though.  I don't remember liking ham this much before.

Also, because I was deep frying sweet potato fries anyway, I went ahead and deep fried the rack of lamb before bringing it up to 128 F in the oven.  The oil wasn't deep enough to submerge everything, but I could still get better coverage than by searing without an inch of oil.  No, this does not make it greasy or unhealthy.  Meat doesn't really absorb oil.  It just gives it a delicious browned crust, evenly and quickly.  You mostly can't see it in the picture above, but look at the rib lying on its side at the back.  They all look like that underneath. And because the browning only takes a few minutes, they are nice and medium rare from edge to edge inside.  And because there was ham too, I didn't feel guilty not catering to the preferences of Catherine-types who like their meat cooked past medium rare.

Here is the bread-am, which I already posted in the pan pizza post:

What is it with circular arrangements today?

And here is broccoli salad, the sacrificial ram (a beheaded big corn sheep), and yam aka sweet potato fries:

Now, on to the Tammy Egg Hunt!

What is special about a Tammy Egg Hunt, you ask?  I will tell you.  Tammy did the hiding---which meant I never had to look up---but more importantly she also chose what to put inside the Easter eggs.  There are some problems with this.

The first problem is that, culturally speaking, Tammy is from Pluto, which is not even a planet.  The second problem is that she does not see this as a problem.  She persistently trusts her bizarre intuitions even though, time and again, they are scientifically proven to make no sense.

Of course, I know Tammy is a clueless Plutonian.  So I tried, I really tried, to preempt the inevitable Tammyisms by telling her what to buy for the Easter eggs.  Said I, "Get jelly beans, Cadbury mini-eggs, other candy."

At this point you will not be surprised to hear that this advice went completely unheeded.  Our Easter Egg Hunt got totally, woefully Plutoed into a Tammy Egg Hunt.  I mean, I expected something weird to happen. But even if she only saw my directive as a loose suggestion, she couldn't possibly have violated it more seriously than she did.

Without further ado, here's what we found in our eggs:

Popcorn, cough drops, and tea bags: everything you need for your very own Tammy Egg Hunt!

Gosh, I don't even have a picture of the popcorn because we already ate it.  There were like 10 pieces.

People were like, "Umm...I think some of these eggs are empty..."  But no.  Tea bags just don't make a sound when you shake them.  Also, popcorn is mostly air, which is why it's normally served in large buckets instead of tiny plastic eggs.

Worst. Easter Eggs. Ever. 

Incidentally, these were also the Funniest Easter Eggs Ever, just for the pure comedic value of finding such outlandishly out-of-place "goodies" inside, earnestly placed there by a well-meaning but utterly clueless alien.  Man, even normal aliens do better than this!  E.T. would have filled these eggs with Reese's Pieces!!!  But just think, somewhere out there in the vastness of outer space orbits a space rock that wishes it was a real planet like Earth.  And on this tiny, cold non-planet lives a race of tiny, cold Plutonians who desperately wish they could fit in with Earthlings. At least one Plutonian somehow made the physical journey here, but the culture gap is just too vast to bridge.  Pro-tip: Easter is a time for candy, not medicine. Earth is large and warm.  Thus Earthlings are tall and healthy and they do not have colds like the tiny people on cold Pluto.

The real tragedy of this affair was that Catherine had been forgoing chocolate for Lent, and Tammy completely failed to deliver. Luckily for Vongsafooders, a chocolate fix is never more than 90 seconds away!  I refer (of course) to brownie in a mug, which we had later that night after everyone left.

Xan: Pan Pizza Montage!

I made so many of these since my previous post, and though I didn't take pictures of most of them, we're gonna need a montage!  I tend to take pics when food is noticeably different from something I've cooked before, so these are more or less representative of the variations so far.  (Minus the one depicted in my previous post.  Actually, that is my favorite and the one I make most often).

Pepperoni.  Caramelized onions.  Olives.  Panko bread crumbs.

Thinly sliced potatoes, onions, bread crumbs.

Melted butter and cinnamon sugar.

This is just Catherine posing happily with her new pizza cutter from Disney World.  Sigh...

Olive oil, salt, and rosemary

Hawaiian with bread crumbs!

 And here is an overhead shot of the Hawaiian pizza:

An emblem of our relationship.

On the left, cheeseless Hawaiian with crushed pineapple and leftover ham from Easter.  On the right, Catherine's version of Hawaiian, namely regular pepperoni pizza. (with bread crumbs. are you noticing a trend yet?)

And here is a closeup of her slice since we don't have one of those yet:

This would also be an excellent opportunity to showcase our new cast iron skillet, which is visible in the Olive Oil, Salt, and Rosemary bread above.  We had a 10" cast iron skillet (which was used to make most of these) and Anne gave us a 12" as an engagement gift.  (Thank you!  We're putting it to good use!)

I wanted a 12" in part because the 10" pan pizzas are dissatisfyingly small for the two of us.  I didn't want to go above 12" though, as I have learned from experience that even 12" pans are much larger than 10" pans. Their area is proportional to the square of the diameter, of course, so the 12" pan is almost 50% larger than the 10".  But even knowing this, it still always surprises me on a gut level, just how quickly pans get big as the diameter increases. I mean, look!

On the right is the 12" pan, on the left the 10".  It comes pre-seasoned from Lodge, but it ain't the same, as you can see. So I seasoned it myself. (You can see it is black in the Olive Oil, Salt, and Rosemary Bread shot).  Anyway, the 12" pan is just right for our pizzas.  And for Easter I used it to brown a rack of lamb that wouldn't fit in the 10"!

But listen.  You can make these pizzas in whatever size pan you want.  The important thing is to make them, for they are easy and delicious.  Again, here is the basic recipe.  But to that, I would add that I no longer bother making pizza sauce, which makes it even easier.  (You could also buy pizza sauce...).  I just use crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce, throw some salt on, and sometimes make up the difference with other toppings.  If you go this route, the dough is easy, the sauce is easy, the toppings are easy.  That adds up to easy pizza!

Easter Baking

I have been quite remiss in posting about my culinary adventures, of which there have been many in the last few months.  But in honor of the holiday, I'm going to post about the three stages of my Easter baking!

Stage 1: Bunny, Chick and Lamb cakes.  I used a mold that I bought on Easter sale at Karstadt, and used a Germany recipe, which included grated marzipan!  This was new for me, and I must say even the baking marzipan here bears slight resemblance to what is found in the UK.

Stage 2: Two days later, I made cupcakes.  If you look in the first picture, you can see two different kinds of Easter flavored cupcake liners!  I made coconut cupcakes from a Barefoot Contessa recipe.  They were quite popular at work, but I wasn't so happy with them because there was also almond extract in, and it was a bit too strong for me, I suspect because the coconut here being dessicated and un-sweetened, the flavor doesn't offset the almond as much as it should.

Stage 3: I was invited by a couple of co-workers for Easter brunch today, and I volunteered to bring supplies for Easter cookie decorating.  This picture is just from the beginning; about half an hour later the table was completely full.  It was a hit!  And the guests were from all over the world, so some had never decorated cookies before.  And best of all, I finally got to use all of my Easter cookie cutters.  And the second picture is my cookies.

Xan: Love-hate relationships

What do smoked salmon and corn dogs have in common?

They are both foods that I LOVE, but only for the first few bites.

It is a peculiar sort of love-hate relationship.  I love smoked salmon, but I get sick of it so quickly, and I have no idea why.  I also love corn dogs, but I can only make it about halfway through a corn dog before I am just done with that taste.  I have the same problem with hot dogs to a lesser extent.  (Foot-longs are definitely too big).

I do not seek these foods out.  I eat them when they come to me in life, which is just infrequently enough for me to forget about my love-hate relationship with them.  When I saw smoked salmon at a breakfast buffet recently, I remembered how much I loved it, but I took too much because I didn't remember that I was about to hate it again.

There are probably other foods in this category that I just cannot remember right now.  Has anyone else had an experience like this?