Being [Stuck] There
    Chili and grilled T-bone steaks.
    My dad was a good cook. He only had two notes, but he played them well. From-scratch chili and T-bone steak marinated all afternoon in Worcestershire sauce, black pepper and smashed garlic, “kissed,” as he described it, by the bars of a very hot grill.
    Although he allegedly made other dishes, everything tasted like chili or marinated T-bone steak. Dad had other food favorites, but if he really wanted something besides chili or steak he’d cajole someone else into fixing it.
    My repertoire is more varied than my dad’s but I slip into food ruts that can last awhile. Rice is one of these ruts. One evening, when the refrigerator was stuffed with left over rice dishes and Mom went directly to the freezer for a TV dinner, I ate and enjoyed cold cooked rice with herb dressing and chopped green onions.
    Mom likes rice, she says, “Just not as a steady diet.”
    Sometimes a food rut will be worn by experimenting with an idea for a month or so before springing it on a special gathering. Two summers ago I had a month-long horseradish seizure that got a little tiresome but yielded excellent results.
    I like fish. Some species I even love, like halibut steak marinated in lime juice and cracked pepper. Fish can easily overwhelm me, though. If it is at all fishy my taste buds ache even before I eat it.
    Salmon steaks are one of those always available but not always fresh fish products that I like very much, but only if they’re not fishy. Mom loves salmon and we have it whenever it’s on sale, so I regularly concoct marinades to attempt to counteract fishiness. One day I reasoned that a 24-hour refrigerator marinade of lemon juice (6 lemons), 3 heaping teaspoons of pure, prepared horseradish (not in a base sauce) and two teaspoons of dried tarragon would do the trick, whether the steaks were fishy or not. As it happened, salmon went on sale a month previous to a celebration dinner we were hosting. I decided to preview the marinade, and the dish, several times before the event. At one serving I even made the leftover marinade into a delicious sauce, using the cornstarch milk method.
    The typical hotness of pure, prepared horseradish mellows considerably by the time the fish is grilled and the gravy simmered, imparting a unique flavor to the fish, barely recognizable and very agreeable.
    I used horseradish in a variety of applications that month, including the previously published Meat and Potatoes Salad, substituting it for the curry, leaving out the cinnamon and pistachios and using beef instead of vegetable broth and olive instead of peanut oil. Very successful.
    You’ll notice my marinade was not oil-based. I rarely use oil based marinades, unless I have a particularly lean cut of meat. It hardly seems necessary, unless the meat is tough. I have found oil-based herb dressings successful with beef shanks. A friend of mine also marinated some venison steaks in Italian dressing and grilled them. Good food! These are exceptions, though, not the rule.
    Unfortunately, by the time the dinner event occurred, my mother and I mistrusted the excitement over what had become, to us, an ordinary entrée. One of our guests who had told me he would “eat anything” when I surveyed the invitees to make sure I served something everyone liked, confessed to me that he usually doesn’t like fish, but this fish was “extraordinarily good.”
    I didn’t believe him. That’s the down side of food ruts.
    Food ruts are inevitable if you savor food as well as eat it. Consider yourself lucky if your household contains a co-cook or two who will occasionally push you out of the kitchen in exasperation. I once got into a breakfast bread rut that my whole neighborhood collaborated in stopping...but that’s another column...

- posted by Gail Rae @ 12:18  0 comments   email...this post

 
Better-Than-Bisquit Scones [from my ISP deleted journal Playing with Food]
    Did I elaborate on that scone recipe, the one mentioned in “My Fan Club”? I should have. The Scone Episode is classic “Playing With Food.”
    When I lived in Seattle, I visited Larry’s Market at least once a week, on Sundays, and, if I was working in Bellevue, more often. I fell in love with many of their baked and deli goods. Larry’s Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins, for instance. Larry’s Curried Rice, which was wonderful with a little shredded chicken, warmed in the oven on a bleak February day. Larry’s Cranberry Scones.
    Larry’s Cranberry Scones are the only reason I like scones. I’d never tried scones before, being only a recent and reluctant bisquit fan. I couldn’t see any more sense to sweet bisquits than to bisquit-bisquits. I tried a (rather large) free sample, though, one morning, and went home with four scones for the next four mornings.
    These scones were so peculiarly good that I decided to crack the recipe code. The next Sunday morning I bought a pre-packaged “set” of scones that had been baked the previous day. It had a list of ingredients on it. I wasn’t expecting a recipe, but I was expecting to find out what the secret was to Larry’s scones.
    I found it, toward the end of the list. Grated orange peel. That’s right; and a listing of baking soda and baking powder that put it further down on the list than I would have thought wise (Ingredients on packaged products are typically listed in descending order of their percentage of the whole.).
    Since I’d never dealt with scone recipes at length, I scouted for a base recipe to work from that featured traditional ingredients and richness (cream instead of milk, for example; no substitution of fruit pulp for fat). I found a likely candidate in a Sunset Bread Book someone had given me for Christmas years ago. Then, I started to play. I added grated orange peel, of course, fresh off the rind, and dried cranberries. I cut back on the baking powder/soda but increased the amount of sugar. This is the scone recipe I came up with:

A Tribute to Larry’s Scones

Preheat Oven to 400°

Dry Ingredients: 1 3/4 cups white flour 1/4 cup whole wheat flour 2 tsp baking powder 1/3 cup sugar 1/4 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients: 4 Tbl margarine 2 eggs, beaten 1/3 cup whipping cream 3 Tbl grated orange peel 2 handfuls dried cranberies

Preparation:

• In a large mixing bowl blend flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Cut in the margarine with a pastry blender or two knives balanced between nervous fingers until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in eggs, orange peel and cream to make a stiff dough. Dump in the cranberries and mix them, by hand, into the dough.
• Knead the dough on a lightly floured board until it sticks together. Divide the dough in half. Roll each half into a circle 6” wide by 1” thick. Serrate each circle into quarters. Place serrated circles 1” apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Brush tops with egg white, if desired.
• Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Eat fresh. Bisquits don’t keep well.

    I nailed these delicious breakfast bisquits on the first try. I became famous for them in Seattle. My boss expected scones whenever I visited the home office. I even negotiated job terms with scones.
    Several friends of mine tried the recipe. Donna made them with non-fat milk and was pleased with the results. I experimented with adding more wheat flour and discovered that the scones became grainy if I raised the ratio of wheat to white over 25% per batch. I also tried inserting chopped Turkish apricots and finely ground pecans. Those went over well at Rittenhouse, Zeman and Associates.

    What else might you find in the list of ingredients for any particular item?

1. A-1 Steak Sauce includes puréed raisins. Imagine that!
2. I deduced the use of cinnamon and currants in curry from the list of ingredients taped to the bottom of Larry’s Curried Rice.
3. Any Ceasar dressing worth its salt includes anchovy paste. So does Worchestershire Sauce.

    The ideas you can get from the ingredients lists on processed foods for tweaking recipes are endless. Pay attention to what you like. Follow your likes around the side to the list of ingredients. Figure out what (besides the chemicals) it is that you’re tasting. Try it, the next time you prepare the food from scratch.

    What finally happened between Larry’s and me? I continued buying their Curried Rice, until they changed it (they added what was clearly canned chicken and some creamy, disgusting sauce base) and then discontinued it. Although I liked the emotional resonance of buying Cranberry Scones at Larry’s, I eventually supplied all my own scones. Larry’s increased the fat content to where the scones were downright greasy. I couldn’t handle that. Fortunately, due to a life time of playing with food, I don’t have to.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 11:14  0 comments   email...this post

 
Last Word on Potato Salad [from my ISP deleted journal Playing with Food]
    Remember the Berry Inspirational gathering? I didn’t want to do coleslaw or potato salad because I knew someone else would. Well, except for my concoction and a chicken/crouton casserole that I loved because it burned around the edges (yes, I’m one of those), the entire buffet was salads, primarily potato salads. The affair ushered me into a meditative moment on potato salad.
    Each of us has forthright opinions on potato salad. If we make it, we don’t make it like anyone else. We’re particular about “deli” potato salad, too. I’ll bet the number of delis per capita is a 1:1 relationship between delis and potato salad fanatics in any particular neighborhood.
    I’m not a fanatic, but, in my time, I’ve made lots of potato salad and conducted some unusual and sometimes spectacular experiments with the idea. I made a potato salad for a family dinner that starkly catered to my own tastes: tart, briny, bitter; it included radicchio, capers and salad olives, a variety of colorful, fresh chopped onions and peppers, grated parmesan cheese and was dressed with a kind of pesto called Gran’Mere’s Recipe, one of my all time favorite products on the market; I'm sure I'll mention it later. [UPDATE ON Gran’Mere’s Recipe 2020: This product apparently no longer exists. I was introduced to it in Seattle in the early 90's and continued buying it In Phoenix into the first decade of the 2000's, I believe. A good pesto hearty with added garlic, taragon vinegar and loads of basil will suffice beautifully. If you do this to an amount of your favorite pesto, be sure to give the flavors several hours to mingle before using it.] Everyone had “a little” salad, as in “Try a little, dear.” Enough to decide they didn’t want more, although I prefer to think that this instance was one of mind over flavor. It didn't appear like potato salad; it was more a colorful vegetable concoction with lots of potatoes in it (including some purple ones I couldn't resist) and a very strong, very Mediterranean aroma. I could have considered it a failure since I took most of it home. I ate it all week for dinner, though, with gratitude. Sometimes, your knockout recipe isn't going to appeal to anyone else, but don't despair. That leaves more for you.
    One of my socially successful potato salads was a Meat and Potato Salad I devised for a luncheon I held for all the local mothers in my family. It was as mouthwatering as it sounds.
    Making potato salad is one of my occasional obsessional behaviors. It’s usually triggered by eating someone else’s potato salad. At the potluck, I sampled seven potato salads that weren’t quite to my taste. Since then, I’ve had potato salad on the recipe part of my brain. This morning, I realized my compulsion was actually a directive from the Potato God to make my kind of traditional potato salad.

My Take on Traditional Potato Salad

Salad Ingredients:

2 very large baking potatoes, baked dry*, skins on 3 hard boiled eggs, chopped The top of 1 small head of celery w/leaves 3 slices sandwich-sliced bread and butter pickles

1/2 package shredded cabbage with carrots 24 pitted olives stuffed with pimentos 1/2 large, flat Bermuda onion, chopped small

Dressing Ingredients:

a little less than half a 16 oz. jar of mayonnaise A generous splash of olive brine Several shakes of dried herb Italian seasoning About 1/2 tsp onion powder About 1/3 cup of sour cream A few shakes hot pepper flakes

About 1/8 cup prepared spicy brown or stone ground mustard About 1 1/2 tsp celery salt About 1/8 tsp garlic powder Several grinds of black pepper corns Several shakes of caraway seeds

    The secret to this recipe is as much in the preparation as it is in the ingredients:

• The potatoes: I microwaved them for 15 minutes (three sets of 5 minutes each, breaking to turn the potatoes over) in a 650 watt turntable microwave. *Baking dry indicates that I did not oil the potato skins. When the potatoes were done and cool, I chunk-chopped them, skin intact.
• The celery: I sliced it thin, leaves and all, down the head to where the outside leaves stop. Usually, this is where the slender stalks end and the thick main stalks bulge out. On the head I bought, I used one third of its length.
• The pickles: I dried the olives and pickles by patting them with a cheesecloth pad then cutting them on the pad (slicing the former and dicing the latter), for two reasons:
1. I hate it when moisture collects at the bottom of a bowl of dressed salad;
2. drying pickled ingredients allows me control over the amount of brine flavor that leaches into the salad.

    I made the dressing using one of my favorite techniques: opening a partial 16 oz. jar of mayonnaise, dumping all the ingredients into the bottle, screwing the top back on and shaking it. The measurements are approximate because this is a measure-by-feel and use-up-what’s-left recipe. When I finished the dressing, the jar was three quarters full.
    Toss everything together with the salad dressing.
    Let it sit for a few hours so all the flavors infuse through all the ingredients. Mine is in the refrigerator right now, primping for dinner. When I finished assembling it, I tasted a well-dressed chunk of potato to test whether I’d successfully created the flavor I’d imagined. It’s wonderfully zesty; I might not eat anything else for dinner, tonight!

- posted by Gail Rae @ 09:18  0 comments   email...this post

 
As of May 1, 2010...
...Blogger will no longer allow FTP publishing. Updates to this blog, if they should occur, can be found at http://caringaboutfood.blogspot.com. This section of the journal will also remain at in it's domain directory, so accessing links should not present a problem.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 22:10  0 comments   email...this post

 
No More Cooking for Mom
    As you may already know, my mother died on December 8th, 2008 at approximately 0709. As you also know, I didn't do a lot with this section of The Mom & Me Journals dot Net, even though it was always my intention to do more. Thus, I'm not sure this is the right time for me to officially close out this section of the journals. I suspect, as time continues, I may have more to say about Mom, her food habits, and recipes I devised for her delight. We'll see. In the meantime, be assured, the main section of these journals continues; you can access it through the immediately previous link in this post.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 12:37  0 comments   email...this post

 
Hoisin Pot Roast
    Over the last few months, beginning sometime in December, I think, I've cooked more than a few pot roasts. Aside from the fact that I've been trying to keep my mother in beef in order to bolster her hemoglobin/hematocrit and keep her anemia at bay (which hasn't actually been successful), my mother is, at heart, a meat-and-potatoes (sans all other vegetables until about six or seven years ago) kind of girl. As well, I love a good pot roast especially when a variety of root vegetables (for us it's potatoes, carrots and onions; neither of us likes turnips or parsnips) and some peppers and celery stalks have been simmered with it over the last hour or so of cooking. And, the gravy! I'm not really a fan of gravy, but, when it comes to pot roast, bring that ladle a little closer, please!
    To keep my mother's senses alert, as well as my own, I've been experimenting with a variety of simmering liquids. So far I haven't ventured from starting with a basic beef broth out of a can; I've been adding a variety of other flavor enhancing ingredients, though. A couple of weeks ago, contemplating our second pot roast of the year, I was seized with the idea of leaning toward an Asian flavored roast. I decided to add Hoisin sauce (Dynasty's brand; although if you're curious about different varieties of Hoisin, give this page a try) and some other additions to the beef broth.
    Here's a list of what I added to the called for 1 cup of beef broth:

• About 4 oz. of the aforementioned Hoisin sauce. I can't be more specific, as I didn't measure, but when I checked the newly opened 7 oz bottle after dumping what appeared to be a "good" amount into a bowl, it looked like about 3 oz were left.
• About 3 oz Kikkoman "lite" soy sauce. Again, I'm guessing at the amount, since I added according to how thick I wanted the additional sauce to be. I know it was a bit less than the amount of Hoisin, but a bit more than 1/8 of a cup.
• Two heaping tablespoons of freshly grated, freeze dried ginger root.

    I also fooled around with the minced vegetable mixture called for in the Joy of Cooking, 1997 edition (pgs 667-668) recipe, which holds the basic instructions I follow when making pot roast. Instead of measuring the onions, I simply chopped 1 small-medium yellow onion, 4 large cloves of garlic, 1 whole green chili (also known as an "Anaheim pepper" and about a 1/2 cup of celery and threw them into my food processor for mincing.
    I was expecting the roast to be imbued with a smoky Asian flavor after simmering. What I got, though, was better than expected. The "Asian" influence metamorphosed into a rich, extremely beefy, flavorful roast. The gravy I made from the simmering liquid (after straining out the dregs of the minced vegetables) was almost too beautiful to eat: A deep sienna with a touch of Van Dyke brown...and savory, oh my! This is the kind of pot roast of which I've dreamed; it's the kind of pot roast that you think only food stylists can create with non-food items for commercials!
    The roast was huge, between four and five pounds. More than half ended up in the freezer. In order to preserve the flavor of the meat I spread the minced vegetable dregs over the roast before wrapping it for freezing. I also froze what was left of the gravy, about two cups, considering that my additions had increased the "called for" simmering liquid by 100%. A week later we had our first "left over pot roast" meal from what was in the freezer. It was even better than the first time and, by the way, the gravy froze and thawed like it knew what it was doing. So did the left over chunked vegetables I'd also frozen: Carrots, a medium Bermuda onion, two medium sized halved red potatoes and a green bell pepper sliced into 4 strips. I warmed everything in the oven instead of the microwave because I'd wrapped the left overs in aluminum foil for freezing but, also, in order to scent the house with the aroma of the warming dish.
    By the way, although the above mentioned recipe recommends turning the roast every half hour, the day I made this version was a partial wheelchair day for Mom, she was still battling her cold and I was running on empty. I managed to turn it after the first half hour. Soon after that initial turn, though, Mom decided to take her nap and I couldn't resist collapsing on the couch for a "short" nap. Two hours later...well, the roast was fine and so was I. Pot roast is very forgiving, it seems.
    For those of you who've never attempted pot roast but are interested, this particular roast took four hours of simmering to reach it's personal perfection. Because the roast hadn't been turned as per the recipe, the "top" of the roast developed a thin, deep brown crust. The meat, throughout, though, was fall-apart tender and retained an inviting prime-rib pink inside. I should also mention, the cook book recipe above recommends a very low, almost inactive simmering temperature. When I make pot roast I use what I imagine is a slightly higher temperature: "3" on a burner marked from "Low (1)" to "High (11)". This keeps the liquid visibly active but not jumping.
    Yes, I intend to continue experimenting with simmering liquids, but, I have to say, I think I've hit upon our "family recipe" with this one. It's definitely a keeper and repeater!

Labels: hoisin sauce, pot roast

- posted by Gail Rae @ 17:46  0 comments   email...this post

 
Christmas 2007 Recipes
    Since the Sauerbraten recipe resides in the 1997 edition of Joy of Cooking {page 668-669} I won't challenge the copyright and publish the recipe here. A few comments I want to make about my own preparation.

1. Our roast marinated a little over five days. I read somewhere that the longer the roast marinates, the deeper the flavor, which I'm sure is true. One recipe I chanced across on the web recommended a seven day soak; another a 14 day soak. I guess I was well within outer marinating limits.
2. I used a chuck roast measuring a little over four pounds. It took four hours on barely a simmer (which the recipe recommended) to braise the roast to the point of almost falling apart.
3. I did, indeed, add 1/2 cup of crushed gingersnaps (out of the box; a generic brand) to the gravy. I imagine some people would enjoy the flavor. My mother did. It was a little too sweet for my taste.
   • Regarding this step, I reduced the liquid left from roasting a bit too much, although no more than the recipe called for, down to "2 to 3 cups". At this stage, the sauce without the gingersnaps was what I consider a good consistency for a slightly thick meat sauce. Adding the gingersnaps thickened it almost immediately beyond the point of what I would consider likable gravy. Take into consideration that I'm not a gravy fan and rarely make or serve it. This gravy, though, was so thick it could have been served as a meat pudding side dish.
   • I did not add the suggested "1 tablespoon red currant jelly or brown sugar" to the gravy.
   • I did not sieve the gravy in order to smooth it, thus, it was hearty with bits of pan drippings, meat and the minced vegetables used to flavor the braising liquid.
4. Although the recipe recommends browning the roast "over medium-high heat", I found this a little too hot for the described subtle, 20 minute browning "on all sides". Almost immediately after placing the roast in to Dutch oven, I removed it, turned the burner down to medium (my burner setting goes from "Low {1}" to "High {11}" with "Medium" falling at the sixth setting), gave the pan about 10 minutes to cool, then browned the meat.
5. I used gin instead of crushed juniper berries. I bought the gin in one of those "single serving" bottles and added the entire bottle to the marinade. I think that comes to 1.5 oz, maybe a little more. I'm not sure this made much difference in the final flavor.
6. Some months ago I had a bad experience with using dry red table wine in a beef stew. Although I followed the recipe's recommendation for the amount of wine to add, the stew had such an overwhelming wine flavor that Mom and I found the it inedible. This time I used red cooking wine, which I assume is a somewhat lower grade than table wine. To my taste, it was perfect.
7. I followed a pot roast family tradition in that I added large chunks of traditional pot roast vegetables to the roast during the last hour and a half of cooking, as follows:
   • potatoes, quartered, an hour and a half before the end of the braising;
   • chunked carrots at an hour before the end; quartered Bermuda onions at 40 minutes before the end; a quarter of a head of cabbage, cut in half, 20 minutes before the end.
   None of the vegetables overcooked or fell apart at these time limits.

    I found the Rum Date Sauce recipe for the dessert on the web on the page linked to its name. I read through several recipes, including commentary on some of them, before I decided on this one. I chose this because of the use of cornstarch, and very little at that. I doubled the recipe and followed it exactly except:

1. I used chopped dates instead of raisins.
2. I used dark brown sugar instead of granulated sugar.
3. I used blackstrap rum, the darkest rum available.
4. We stored the left over sauce in the refrigerator, heated it in the microwave for a minute on high a couple of days later and used it again with great success.

*  *  *  *  *Family Date Bar Recipe
    This recipe is not a typical date bar recipe, although it's the first one to which I was exposed as a child, so it came as a shock to me, several years later, that most people think of date bars as a sort of date jam baked between layers of a sort of oat streusel. If you like dates, this is the date bar recipe you want to try. A woman for whom I used to babysit made these. This is her recipe. When I asked her for it, she wrote it from memory onto a blue index card. I've never seen its like, before or since, outside our household, so I'm betting that she originated the recipe. Sometime within the next few days I'll be making this with dried apricots and toasted, slice almonds; and serving it with an Brandy Apricot Sauce, based on the above Rum Raisin Sauce recipe, but substituting Apricot Brandy for the rum, Apricots for the raisins and using granulated sugar instead of dark brown sugar. I'll report back on the results.

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice
1/8 tsp salt

Other Dry Ingredients:
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 cups chopped dates
1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

Dry Ingredients Preparation:
    Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and spice.

Wet Ingredients:
3 eggs
½ cup butter or margarine
1 tsp vanilla

Wet Ingredients Preparation:
    Beat butter and sugar until fluffy and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat with each addition. Add vanilla and beat a little more.

Inclusion Preparation:
    Add the flour, baking powder, salt and spice mixture to the wet ingredients a little at a time, stirring with a rubber spatula. Stir only until moistened.
    Quickly fold in dates and nuts.
    Pour batter into a 9" x 13" baking pan lightly coated with non-stick cooking spray.
    Bake in preheated 325° oven for 25 minutes until golden brown.
*  *  *  *  *    

Labels: Apricot Bars, Brandy Apricot Sauce, Christmas Dinner, Date Bars, Rum Date Sauce, sauerbraten

- posted by Gail Rae @ 02:02  0 comments   email...this post

 
I want to be sure and get these Mother's Day recipes down...
...before I forget them. *  *  *  *  *Fresh Raspberry Cobbler Recipe Preheat oven to 375°. Fruit Prep: 36 oz (dry ounces) fresh raspberries ½ cup flour ½ rounded cup sugar (white sugar is best) grated zest from about ¾ of a lemon Toss raspberries, flour and sugar in bowl. Grate the lemon zest over the bowl. Retoss the mixture. Some of the raspberries will come apart and mix with the flour and sugar. Don't worry about this; it'll make a rich filling. Dump raspberry mixture into a 2 qt oval gratin dish. Bisquit Crust: 1 cup white flour ½ cup whole wheat flour 1½ tsp baking powder ½ tsp salt ½ heaping tsp Allspice 6 Tbl stick margarine or butter ¾ cup milk Whisk together all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Cut in magarine until mixture looks like meal with some coarse crumbs and some fine crumbs. Add milk and stir with a flat wooden spoon or rubber spatula just until mixed. Drop spoonfuls or spatulafuls of dough on top of the fruit mixture. Bake for 40 - 50 minutes, until crust is deep golden brown and raspberry mixture is bubbling. *  *  *  *  *Sauced, Baked Meat Recipe Preheat oven to 300° Sauce Ingredients: 1 7 oz jar Dynasty Hoisin Sauce ¼ cup light soy sauce (Kikkoman is a good brand for this recipe) 1 Tbl grated fresh ginger 3 cloves garlic, slice and smashed or 2 tsp garlic powder When I made this on Mother's Day, 2007, I had about three quarters of a jar of Hoisin Sauce in the refrigerator, so I made up the difference with a ginger/soy Asian vinaigrette. Whisk sauce ingredients together. Spray with cooking spray a 13 x 9 glass baking dish. Arrange 3.75 lbs. of beef loin tri-tip strips in the dish. Pour in the sauce. Turn and brush the meat so that each piece is well covered. Tightly cover the baking dish with aluminum foil. Bake for three hours. Turn the oven to 350°. Turn the meat in the baking dish. Return the meat to the oven uncovered and bake for an additional hour. Remove meat from oven. Allow to sit at least 15 minutes. Before serving, spoon or drain the fat off the meat. Transfer meat to serving platter (if you wish), set it on the table and dig in. *  *  *  *  *    

Labels: baked meat, cobbler, hoisin sauce, raspberries

- posted by Gail Rae @ 13:42  0 comments   email...this post

 
Some Damned Good Banana Bread
    What makes this banana bread so good is that it has a story behind it.
    This is the second time in a month I've purchased bananas with the intention of letting them ripen, then making banana bread. I forgot about the first batch, swinging in the fruit basket, and they ripened to the moldy liquefaction, which I noticed when observing some sort of sticky substances dropping onto other fruit in the baskets below. A few days later I came home with replacement bananas...
    ...about which I forgot until yesterday. They were blackened and had begun to host mold on the skin, but no liquid was evident in the bag. "Why not," I reasoned, "just peel the mold off with the skin? I'll bet the fruit inside is so ripe it's only fit for banana bread."
    That's when I noticed the winey smell. I think I mentioned that yesterday. Or, maybe that was mentioned to my mom, not you. Anyway, I do remember commenting on this to Mom and saying, "This bread should have a really robust flavor."
    My mother saw fit not to comment except with raised eyebrows. She likes banana bread, you see, but it had better be so rich with banana flavor that it could pass for the fruit. Her favorite way of eating bananas is out of the skin, slightly soft. She doesn't like banana flavoring in other foods, except in well appointed banana bread. I'm this way about bananas, too, only more so; I won't eat the banana raw unless it's just this side of green. So, it's not hard for me to find appropriate banana bread recipes.
    The last try was straight out of Joy of Cooking, and was good, but needed some work, primarily because of our high altitude. I made no adjustments and it showed. It's primary attraction is that all the liquid comes from bananas, except for the inclusions of eggs. Thus, it is loaded with bananas.
    I wondered, though, if, somewhere along the line, I'd bookmarked any promising banana bread recipes. Sure enough, there was the one I was destined to use, with enough alterations so that I can confidently publish it without citing the source...it would be too confusing if I did that, anyway, because my changes, while they seem to be minor, turn out to be important.
    This recipe also features all fluids from bananas and eggs. Here it is. I'll talk about it, later.*  *  *  *  *Damn Good Banana Bread Recipe

Dry Ingredients:
1⅓ cups unbleached, high altitude, all purpose flour
⅔ cup unbleached, high altitude, wheat flour
¾ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

Other Dry Ingredients:
¾ cup (or more, to taste, I think I used close to a cup) finely chopped walnuts.
scant ¾ cup brown sugar

Dry Ingredients Preparation:
    Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large bowl (which will be your final mixing bowl).

Wet Ingredients:
2 cups mashed overripe bananas
¾ cup butter
2 jumbo eggs

Wet Ingredients Preparation:
    In a separate bowl cream the butter (which should be room temperature or a bit warmer, but not liquid) and brown sugar with a mixer until it looks a little like whipped cream.
    Mix in eggs one at a time (I did not beat them, first) with mixer. Stir in mashed bananas until well blended. Yes, the mixture will look ooky...the butter and bananas will not combine smoothly. Don't worry about this. You don't want them too because part of the magic of this recipe is what happens to the bread as the small chunks of banana bake into it.

Inclusion Preparation:
    Stir banana mixture into flour mixture. Stir enough to moisten. Fold in walnuts. A note on the walnuts: My preference, often, this loaf included, is to chop the nuts so fine that they're like a coarse meal. This releases oils, thus the flavor. In banana bread, this makes a BIG difference.
    Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. This recipe well fills, not too little, not too much, a flared, 9¼" x 5¼" x 2¾" aluminum pan; a pan that is part of Mom's original collection of fruit cake baking pans and was originally purchased on Guam or previously. It and its kin remain my favorite loaf pans. For reasons discussed later in the recipe, it is smart to line the pan with overlapping aluminum foil, heavy gage, and grease (or, as I did, Pam) the interior of the lined pan.

    Bake in preheated 350° oven for 60 minutes or until the loaf has raised, is golden brown and a thin skewer inserted one inch from the center of the loaf comes out clean. In my oven, it took exactly 60 minutes. The crust was an attractive Burnished Old Gold brown. The loaf had been scenting the house delectably for the previous half hour.
    If you did not line your baking pan with aluminum foil, let the loaf cool for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan. Immediately wrap the loaf securely in aluminum foil and put it up to mellow for 18 - 24 hours. I usually also encase it in a large plastic bag and close the bag securely, just to "make sure". I recommend doing this with all quick bread loaves. It enhances the moisture, texture and flavor.
    You may need to increase amounts of leavening ingredients or decrease, slightly, liquids, for this to work perfectly at lower altitudes.
*  *  *  *  *    The use of brown instead of white sugar, by the way (I always use the darkest brown I can find), adds a hint of caramel, which enhances the banana flavor. It reminds of me eating fried bananas on Guam. These bananas were the local variety, closer to plantains, really, except the color of bananas. We had three prolific trees on the swampy side of our house. They were small, pungent in both aroma and flavor, very firm even when very ripe and could be stored (on the tree) almost forever. One of the local desserts, which Mom occasionally cooked for us, was peeling these ripe, firm bananas, splitting them lengthwise, rolling them in brown sugar and frying them briefly in a hot skillet full of sizzling butter.
    You'll also notice that this recipe doesn't include vanilla. It wouldn't hurt if you want to add a teaspoon, but I don't think it needs vanilla; the bananas, finely chopped walnuts and dark brown sugar give this load a superior flavor.
    Our loaf ripened overnight in its aluminum foil plaster. I tried a piece just a half hour ago. Oh, my, my! At room temperature, without any kind of smear, this bread is perfect. It is moist and firm, highly fragrant and flavored, its texture much enhanced by the addition of whole wheat flour. It has some heft. It is not melt-in-your-mouth cupcake sweet bread, although it's plenty sweet. You have to chew this stuff...and reap the benefits!
    So, needless to say, I'm pleased with this one and want to be able to refer back to it, so I'm cybermortalizing it here.
    If you like banana bread, you've gotta try this. I recommend, though, you let your intended bananas go at least until the skins are completely black...perhaps it is not necessary to wait for skin mold. If skin mold happens, though, never fear. That's where my bananas were at. I discarded none of them. Although I can't attest to the flavor of the winey smelling fruit, in the bread, the condition of the meat only deepened and ripened the banana flavor.
    No, Mom hasn't tried it yet. She's not up. I'll report back.
    I did, by the way, use real butter. When I type "butter", I mean "butter". Otherwise, I'll type something else.
    I think I'll slice myself another piece before I go over to the main journal and direct visitors here.
    Mmmm...even the bread smells like wine. I assure you, though, it does not taste like wine.

Labels: banana bread

- posted by Gail Rae @ 10:04  0 comments   email...this post