Breakthrough Bakery

I have had a baking issue forever. I have never been able to make pastry. No biscuits, no pie crust. Certainly not croissant or napoleon or any thing like a french pastry. I have always said that if I pop biscuits out of a tube they will be door stops. It was not an actual joke. I’ve had the pastry finger of death my entire life. Well, knock on my big wooden cutting board, because I might just have it licked.

It all came about because of Southern style chicken n’ dumplings. I was determined to learn this. At work I was asked to make it and I really, totally, bitched it up. I keep telling myself that it could happen easily as I’d never eaten this dish as well as never made it before. However I spent Friday night in a black depression because it was a kitchen disaster. Over salted like mad. Too many dumplings, not enough sauce. Apparently other than that it was pretty much what it was supposed to be. Hah.

The dumplings are essentially a pastry noodle. Flour, fat and seasoning, then liquid. Then rolled out very thin and cut. They become a noodle when they are boiled not baked. The recipe I was using called for the fat to be blended to the flour by hand. This was to be my revelation. Everyone (read Uncle Bunny, Bakeshopboy and Dramamama) kept saying that if I only would get the feel for the dough I would get it. But my mom always had me using a pastry blender which was so ineffective and tedious that I think I was always giving up before the right consistency was reached. Thus no flaky or light to be had in the kingdom. Well, doing it by hand is THE way to feel the dough! (I believe) I totally get it now.

I made another batch of chicken n’ dumplings at home this weekend. Pronounced everything they are supposed to be only better by Dali Madison. Then when my horrible plague woke me up at 4:30am this morning, craving biscuit and honey, I just got up and whipped up a batch of biscuit scones. They weren’t perfect but they were right there in the upper half of the spectrum of reasonable goodness.
I may never before have felt my Scotch side as much I did pulling a tray of beautiful, egg wash browned scones out of the oven before dawn broke.
There is another piece of this I learned the hard way though. Which is that when the liquid goes in the mixing by hand goes out. What a waste of good scone-ness.

So far

Since Saturday night:

• 250 or so meatballs
• Sauce for aforementioned
• 2 lemon breads
• 56 shrimp for cocktail
• Cocktail sauce (organic)
• Pan of gingerbread
• Pan of tollhouse bars
• Pan of butterscotch brownies
• Pate (I am so dumb, it was only today that I really got that pate is basically frenchified and fancied up liver and onions)
• Cilantro chutney
Still to come
• Crunions!
• More butterscotch brownies
• Shortbread
• More gingerbread

Cider-phobic

About ten years ago I bought me some nice fall cider. I drank it and almost died. I came this close to going to ER. Anyone who knows me, knows my feelings about ER, so that is a really good indicator of how sick I was. I have to be pretty much dying or being threatened with death to get me anywhere near ER. It was in those halcyon days before mandatory pasteurization of juices but even now I won’t drink any cold cider, only hot and mulled.

It’s been interesting. Last night did not turn out as planned. Can’t tell if it was stress, a sudden onslaught of being completely convinced of how huge an asshole I am, or evil, bad, boughten, Kroger punkin’ pie, but I came even closer to the portals of that devil’s lair in the basement of the hospital (both the ER and the morgue) than the cider event.

I’m pretty sure I brought up a couple toenails. I scared the crap out of Oliver by eventually asking him to not leave the room again as I did not want to be found dead, aspirated and asphyxiated on my own vomit. I mean, that club has some great members, but I’m just not a joiner.

So as to not shoot the horse or anything, I’m climbing back on this very moment. I felt so very bad that he had to throw out, close to his whole pie, I am baking Oliver two of ‘em as we speak.

And I’m gonna eat some too dammit. I really, really, really, don’t want to become punkin’ pie-o-phobic.

Experimental Cake

The philosophy club (Socrates Cafe) is having a fundraising bake sale today so I have been baking.

Several pans of fudge brownies later.... As well as my famous pistachio streusel sour cream coffee cake. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, it broke. I could only salvage 6 cosmetically perfect slices. The household is happy though, we get to eat funky lookin’ but great tasting cake.

Now I just pulled a vanilla spice cake out of the oven. Basic white cake with ginger, cinnamon, allspice, fresh nutmeg, lots of clove, and orange peel. I have no idea how it will taste. I guess I’ll find out in about an hour.

So feel free to just meander by the student center bldg at WCC and meet the philosophy dept. It's tiny but really good. And I just know it's on your way to somewhere.

Update

OK pictures eventually, but we took home a cat. His name was Hudson but due to an unfortunate kid in school by that moniker he is now Artemus Four Jetson de Sprague.
He’s a gray, ergo Artemus. In my family all grey cats have had the Artemus designation, but he’ll be Jetson and or Sunny for common use. He’s six months old, had been at the shelter two weeks and he wants to be muffler when he grows up, so he’s practicing those skills now.
The two of them have not formally met yet. Thrills and hilarity to follow.

I am crazy busy roasting fowl and making pies, crunions, white girl casserole, my signature orange cranberry paste? sauce? (not sure which), mounds of stuffing with morels, chanterelles and portobellos, taters and a vat of gravy. I probably won’t do pix of that since I’ve done feast spreads a zillion times already. But I gotta get back....

Beating up the dough

K demos strudlin'

It's that time of year again. And as promised...

More butter please

Eh Voila

Restaurant-o-rama

Lord I have been on a crazy, eat out, don’t have to cook, bliss fest.
Saturday - I did Knight’s with Charley Daytona who was in town for the day. Frankly I was a little disappointed. The bread and the clam chowder were excellent but the ribs were sub par and the corn on the cob was cold. And they had 86’d the buffalo shrimp.

Sunday lunch - was the regular Chenai Vilas Indian food buffet with Dramamama. It was good but again slightly disappointing. I guess the Sunday buffet has some odd dishes in it. The Manchurian Gobi was just awesome as usual though.

Sunday night we did the birthday dinner thing at The Real Seafood. Scotto, MsInLaw, Oliver and I went. It was really very good. I had lobster fettucine because I hardly ever get lobster since becoming Buddhist. The creme brulee was to die for but could have used a thicker crust. The bread delicious, the slaw was great. Our waiter - very cool.

Monday I stayed home and had leftovers and such.

Tuesday I went with the entire fam damily to The Blue Nile. Delicious, overindulgent and a great source of good poop.

Oh and I made myself a good little cake which we’re still chipping away at. French vanilla, heart shaped, layer cake with almond butter cream frosting and fresh strawberries. Yum.

Now, as so often, the birthday signifies the end of summer and the beginning of school. It’s so odd that we’re back to that place where I lived my childhood always knowing that as soon the fun peaked it was grind time. Into the Freylach I go....

Untitled

As I live in America, and therefore it was a national holiday (which we don't have enough of, look at those countries with all those Bank Holidays), I, of course, rather than take my day to myself, invited people over for food.
A lot of my life is centered around food, in my house I'm the only one who cooks. It also happens that I'm a fairly superlative cook. I'm not just saying that to brag, its pretty widely believed to be true. Sometimes, you just have a talent and thats that.
There's not really any arrogance necessary because you didn't actually have much to do with it other than develop it or deny it.
I tend to think of barbecuing as a really good way to prove your skills. Cooking over an unregulated heat source you have to adjust your timing, attentiveness and be really flexible. You must also have good prep work and theories. One of my theories is marinade the shit out of things. I like to push the envelope on marination. Because I love Jerry and Sylvia Anderson I think of it as Super-marionation. I try to keep the meat in sauce as long as I can before the guests, were they to ask how long it sat in there, would refuse the food from knowing.
My current favourites are my recipes for teriyaki flank steak, and my version of Tandoori chicken. The Tandoori is really an imitation which involves lots of onions, yoghurt (I make my own), Garam Masala, Hing, Sea-salt, and paprika for colour. I would use cochineal but its a little harder to find. Uncle Bunny suggested a little saffron, he may just have something there.
I also specialise in what I call poverty cooking, which is to take any ingredients at hand and make them into something good. So I cleaned out the fridge for side dishes.
I was only going to have one or two people over, but there was a lot of food and I just knew the usual supects would be sitting at home without having things to do and that can be annoying and/or depressing when you think everyone else is doing something fun. So I invited a crew.
The food was awesome, and not just mine. Uncle Bunny brought a fabulous Bread Salad Fatoush and an amazing fruit shortcake for which he made ginger scones as the shortcake. Uncle Bunny has the magic pastry touch that I don't have. My huge failing as a cook is that I cannot make pie crust, biscuits and scones. I'm contemplating taking a class in pastry offered by one of my favourite customers at the market where I work part-time. I must ferret out the secret of the flaky.
There was an impressive thunderstorm and a nice time was had by all. Since in the last few years I've pretty much abandoned the backyard for the porch, we were able to kick back and enjoy the weather without getting scorched or soaked.
I imagine to myself that the people that go by in their cars, watching me wield my BBQ mop with such adroitness, are really wishing they could come too.
They're too shy or conditioned to ask I suppose, I'd think it potentially could be an interesting way to meet some new folk.
Maybe they have a great BBQ chef in their own life already. I hope so.