It’s Berry Season

The best thing about planting a garden is all the fruits and vegetables. The worst thing is all the fruits and vegetables. Especially if you’re not really a Susie Homemaker that loves to can and freeze. Guilty. Pretty soon the horrible zucchini and tomato pandemic will begin, but right now I’m just trying to deal with some berry vines that I suspect are on steroids.

First it was the Loganberries. These little suckers are so fragile they pretty much turn to mush if you look at them cross eyed. I don’t really want to make berry jam, so my favorite use thus far has been to make a berry crumble. Pretty tasty topped with vanilla ice cream, or we actually prefer vanilla yogurt.

Following the loganberries were the early boysenberries. At least I can freeze them because they’re sturdy little berries. Being lazy as usual, I just baked some into a boysenberry galette . (It’s made just like the nectarine galette, just pile the crust full of berries instead.) I use store bought pie crust. You can judge me, but I don’t care. I’ll be sitting on my lazy butt, eating this with a smile on my face.

No telling what else I’ll have to make before I defeat these berries. And then the later ripening berries will kick in. The horror!

Einkorn Bread Revisited

I’ve been making Einkorn sourdough bread for quite a while now, but I decided there must be an easier way to make it than mixing, folding, letting it rise, folding, shaping, letting it rise again….. And guess what, there is!

Now I take Betty out of the fridge the day before and let her warm up. Betty’s my starter, named after a very old friend whose nickname was Bubbles. So named because she was a tiny little thing with ENORMOUS boobs. So when my starter started bubbling, I thought of Bubbles, who’s real name was Betty…..but I digress.

Anyway, I let Betty warm up for a while, feed her, and let her rest on her laurels all day.

The next morning I mix up my dough, no kneading required. I let it rise all day in a covered casserole dish until it’s doubled in size, then I transfer it to a second dish the same size that’s been heated in the oven. That’s it. No kneading, no second rise, and I can’t tell the difference in the taste or texture. Oh sure, you can shape a loaf, put slashes in the top, dust it with flour, make it look like it came from a bakery, and it will be pretty but won’t taste any better. So why work harder just to make it pretty. I’m not going to.

It does take a LONG time to rise, so you’ll have to start first thing in the morning to have bread by dinner time, but you don’t have to make much effort. I’ve amended my einkorn bread recipe if you want to check out the way a really lazy person makes it.

 

St. Patty’s Day

The family loves the traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner, so it’s mandatory on St. Patrick’s Day. Only problem is, I’m less of a fan of the traditional boiled dinner approach. Frankly, the potatoes, carrots and cabbage boiled in the cooking water are just OK, not really especially tasty. The corned beef takes a long time to boil. Then you have the hassle of taking it out of the pot, keeping it warm, cooking the potatoes and carrots, taking them out, cooking the cabbage…. It just doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried cooking the corned beef in a crock pot, but then you still have different cooking times on the veggies. So this year I tried something different and it worked so well, I’m sticking with it. Dinner cooks in two hours, with not much prep or fussing, so I got to enjoy the day too.

The corned beef cooks in an Instant Pot or pressure cooker in two hours. Meanwhile the beer braised cabbage bakes in the oven, also for two hours. An hour in, you can start cooking the mashed potatoes on your cooktop. I boil some Yukon gold potatoes, peels on, cut in large chunks, until tender. Drain, add a cube of softened butter, a little garlic power, salt to taste, and enough milk to get them to the consistency you want. Mash with a potato masher, don’t whip them with an electric mixer.

Carrots also cook in one hour, so you can start them with the potatoes. I cut them in thick matchsticks, coat with a little avocado oil, and sprinkle with a little seasoned salt. If you have a second oven, bake them at 450 degrees, stirring after 30 minutes. When they start to char, I add a couple tablespoons of butter and a light sprinkle of brown sugar, then back in the oven to caramelize. If you don’t have a second oven, you can cook them with the cabbage, but add about 15 minutes to the cooking time.

Fake Cheese

I started experimenting making non-dairy cheese because I have a couple vegan friends, and a son who’s lactose intolerant. My first effort was amazingly tasty! It was a mock brie that was super creamy and tasted pretty much like cheese. I don’t think anyone would know that it’s fake cheese. I’ll be making it from now on just because I like it, and it’s something everyone can eat. I’ll post the recipe for Non-Dairy Brie, and if my next experiment making fake feta goes well, I’ll post that too. Fingers crossed! (I’ll have to add a photo later since we gobbled it up before it crossed my mind to take a picture.)

Christmas is Coming!

The only problem with the holidays is it’s just impossible to eat all the stuff you want to make. I’ve made the Christmas jam. Still have to make some rum cakes to give to friends. Make some hard cider for the first time and it turned out really good. Last night I made a tiny half batch of eggnog so it would be a “one and done” event. So many things to eat, so little room!

I had to go digging for the eggnog recipe, so I’m going to post it here. I’m happy to share anything good, but mostly I just want to make it easier to find the next time I want to make it.

Now to make some homemade egg noodles, baklava, zeppole, cheesecake, toffee………..

Zlfred’s

We’ve been missing one of our favorite restaurants, Zlfred’s, so we’ve been working to recreate their most popular dish, the beef kebob sandwich. That was pretty much the only thing people ordered there.

First, the name. The story goes that when the restaurant first opened, they couldn’t afford to buy a sign. The previous business was called Alfred’s, so they just had the letter “A” replaced with a “Z” to save money, and Zlfred’s was born. The place was pretty much a dive, but every so often we’d go in for our beef kebob sandwich fix.

I tried many times to duplicate the taste and failed, but our son Jace has nailed it. I’ve found a good recipe to make the pita rolls. So I’ll post both the beef kebob and pita bread recipes, add some pilaf, and Zlfred’s lives on!

Thanksgiving in July

Mr. Man wanted a turkey dinner. Well, if you’re going to have turkey, you need dressing (stuffing), and not that stuff from a box. And you’ll need gravy. And since you have gravy, you have to have mashed potatoes. Then of course you need a vegetable, maybe two. And some rolls. And a nice dessert just to put a cap on the whole shebang. And now that you have all that food, you need some people to help you eat it so you won’t be eating leftovers all week. And before you know it, it’s Thanksgiving in July. All that because Mr. Man wanted to cook a turkey breast. But nobody complained. I think everything I cooked I’ve already posted recipes for, but I’m going to add the old green bean casserole, which everyone demands, and for which I should mention a couple of little tips to make it as good as it can be.

Italian Night

Since Covid we haven’t been eating out in…OMG…has it been a year?!!! No wonder we’re all sick of cooking. I’d slap a baby for even a McDonald’s burger if I didn’t have to cook it.

Anyway, since we’re restaurant deprived, I try and fix something good when the kids come over for Sunday dinner. Last night it was Italian. We had lasagna (which I also haven’t made in over a year), garlic bread knots (from my OMG pretzel recipe), The Big Salad (in case the lasagna was crap), and green beans.

I was just winging the lasagna, but the family pronounced it my best yet. Course, it may have been the quarantine talking. At this point, we’re glad to eat almost anything we don’t have to cook. So although the family liked it, maybe you should be suspicious…Enjoy!

October

It’s that time of year. This weekend we made caramel apples. OK, I got stuff ready, Angela did the work. But I made dinner while she was cooking caramel, so I should get some props for that.

At first blush, this seemed like a fool’s errand. Angela doesn’t really like caramel much. Merl & Jace love caramel, but think putting it on an apple totally ruins perfectly good caramel. Me, I’m Italian. I love everything. But surprise, surprise, everyone loved the apples. We tried sweet and tart and decided Granny Smith apples were the best.

The caramel recipe is one handed down by my Aunt Violet, who was hands down the best cook I’ve ever known. It makes great candy for Christmas gift giving too, so we’ll probably be making some caramel again in December. Check out the recipe variations.

Asian Night

We haven’t eaten out in six months due to Covid isolation. We’ve all been craving the food at Kenji’s, a little Mom and Pop place that makes the best food, especially their tempura vegetables. So last night, I took a shot at a mock Kenji’s dinner and scored a hit.

I made my lettuce wrap chicken, omitting the water chestnuts, adding toasted cashews, and serving over steamed rice. We also had Maangchi’s easy bulgogi. You should check our her Youtube videos, website and cookbooks. She a hoot! www.maangchi.com

But the highlight of the night was the tempura vegetables. OMG! I only made our favorites, sweet potatoes and broccoli, but that was enough to send us into food comas. The dipping sauce was also judged by my very critical family and pronounced amazing. Far cry from the Asian dish I made last week that was almost inedible. Hey, win some, lose some.