Cooking

Here is my online archive of recipes, including Ida's recipes!

I won't say I'm a very good cook, but I'm enthusiastic. ;-)

For whatever reason, I rather enjoy making individual dishes. I think I have a fear of commitment when it comes to making enough courses to fill out an entire meal.

Pressure Cooker

X-mas '99: Shara and her ex- got me a pressure cooker. I've used it a couple times but haven't fallen in love with pressure cooking.

It's a little scary. When you cool it down, it makes all kinds of hissing noises that just don't sound natural for a cooking product. Sometimes it makes a popping noise like on Das Boot when they dove down to twice the rated depth of the sub. Is she gonna crush us all? Of course, it's not actually going to blow up, sending gravy-soaked shrapnel through my dinner guests, but they don't know that, do they?

It only speeds cooking that would normally take a very long time. If it would take 20 minutes on the stove, it'll take "4 minutes" in the pressure cooker, + 5 minutes to get up to pressure + 10 minutes to cool it and get the top off. Woo hoo! we saved 60 seconds!

Things come out gray. I made a stew and everything came out looking the same color. One could argue that's how its supposed to look. After cooking a stew for 8 hours in a normal pot it should look like that. Well, I dunno, maybe I'm just not a fan of that style of cooking.

It doesn't get the gassiness out of beans. When I got the cooker, I was excited to think I could go from dry beans to cooked beans in only 20 minutes. Well, it works, but there is a component in beans that gives you gas. The longer you cook it and/or change the water, the more this stuff is removed. I haven't had very good luck with the pressure cooker. Maybe I should cook them longer? Maybe I have a bummy-tummy? I don't get gas from most canned beans but... woo hoo!! Dem pressure-beans start a fire under my butt!

I really wanted to fall in love with it. Fagor's moniker is "The single most important piece of cookware you'll ever own." Now that is a pretty tall order for anything, but I was still pretty excited about getting it... I researched it for hours and hours. I'm unhappy that I didn't catch pressure-cooker fever. Well, a friend wrote to me recently, saying how a pressure-cooker makes an excellent risotto in no-time flat. I'm going to have to give that a try... I've made risotto the traditional way and it sucks to stand there for 45 minutes gradually adding broth and stirring. There is room yet in my heart for a pressure cooker!

Cook's Illustrated

My very favorite Christmas gift in '97 was a large anthology of Cook's Illustrated magazines. I'm all excited about trying out all those new recipes!

I got a C.I. in '97 from my friend and ex- Heidi and really really enjoyed the French Toast recipe and a bunch of other items in it.

Recipes I love (and where I learned them from) include:
 

• C.I. French Toast- Cook's Illustrated May-June '97. I've made this many times now. I'm becoming just a little famous for it.
• Salmon in basil cream sauce - Found the recipe off the internet. I first made at Heidi's house in Brighton. It was just so darn terrific! I don't have the recipe but it's just so darn simple.. salmon, cream, basil!
• Chicken in Chocolate Mole sauce - learned at CCAE course, Winter-Spring '96.. Just thinking about it makes me warm all over. I made it with my friend Darren Black in JP once. That was lots of fun!
• Lots of variations on waffles - I've always loved home made waffles! Mike Saletnick has a good recipe with stiffened egg whites but I was never too wild about them. 

Waffles

12-01 I bought myself a Villaware model 2001 Belgian 4 square waffle maker (pictured) from Williams Sonoma. I am quite happy with it. I've had issues with waffle makers in the past. I had a waffle maker made by West Bend, it made 4 waffles in a round pie shape. It was terrific except that the plastic pieces kept falling off it. Two of the three legs fell off (I'd prop it up on measuring cups and such. The handle fell off (I fashioned one from a coat-hanger) and the case became severely tarnished from cooking. I kept it around for so long because it made a great waffle; the iron got hot enough to make a crisp waffle and didn't have any cold spots.

In 2000, my cousin Tami got me a Sunbeam Easyclean waffle maker shaped the same as the West Bend. I tremendously appreciate the gift but it just wasn't hot enough and the cold spots around the outside of the iron made for uneven cooking.

So, I was dealing with this rickety old West Bend model until I broke down and got the Villaware. After comparison shopping on the internet for what seemed like forever (and not finding all that much info), I ended up getting the Villaware mostly because it was sold by Williams Sonoma... they wouldn't sell a bad one for so much money, would they?

Well, I wasn't disappointed. It gets hot enough (I usually set the temp control to almost the max setting). However, the corners sometimes are a little cold, leaving you with that (unfortunate) classic home-made perfect-in-the-middle-but-rare-and-not-totally-filled-out waffle. But it is definitely good enough.

Recent waffle recipes include:

• Tollhouse semi-sweet chocolate - ick! baking chocolate is too bitter for waffles! I'll try milk-chocolate next time.
• Pickled garlic - OK, you're not going to believe me but they were really good. The sweetness of the pickled garlic worked really well

Tip: I usually make a double or triple batch of waffles and then freeze them. Considering all the effort you have to go through at such an early hour to make waffles for breakfast, frozen waffles taste better than fresh. They certainly put me in a better mood!

How to freeze your fresh waffles: cook as normal and let them cool for a few minutes. Put them in the freezer on a cookie sheet for 30 minutes. Then put them in freezer bags. They keep for a few weeks. To reheat: put syrup on them and nuke for 45 seconds or so. That's how I like 'em.

Bread bread bread bread

In case you're interested, I own a Breadman Ultimate and just love it. The loaf pan is a very pleasing shape, the motor never has trouble with fruits or nuts. The drop-in tray is nice but a bit small, only allowing 1/2 cup of stuff. Sometimes it sits on the counter for a month before making bread. When I get into it, I make 2 loaves a week.

When on my own, I usually start with the "Standard Bread Recipe" that came with the maker and make modifications from it.

1.5lb loaf
1 cup + 3 tbsp. water
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp dry milk
3 1/4 cups bread flour
1 5/6 tsp dry yeast

I often substitute molasses for the sugar, and throw whatever nuts, candy, condiments, spices or what not I've got around. I recently threw in a can of chicken soup (reducing the salt and water appropriately) and the loaf came out... just fine! The lesson being, as long as you get the moisture and salt content right, it's hard to screw it up. Sometimes, you'll add something that makes the yeast unhappy. Apparently the vinegar in relish makes yeast grow just 1/2 as much. My relish-loaf came out pretty dense.

2-20-03 update: At the suggestion of my dad, I tried dropping a can of anchovies into a loaf. I think he was mostly kidding when he suggested it, but hey, that's what you get when you suggest Anchovy Loaf to me! It came out pretty good.. a little dense, a little dark. It has this specialty-loaf appeal. Like maybe I should slice it really thin, dry out the slices and serve it under crostini or fancy hors d'oeuvres. But I've got to say, it doesn't make a very good peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Ick!

Now, back to my original article....

I sometimes use Lora Brody's Bread Dough Enhancer. As advertised, it gives the bread a nice texture and rise.

Here is a terrific Buttermilk bread. So simple!   (For a machine, cut this recipe in half or one-third)

1 tablespoon dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
1 1/2 cups warm buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted, unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon salt
6 to 6 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
 

Tips:
-When using powdered buttermilk, just follow the directions on the box. No
need to mix the powder into the water before running the machine.
-I usually use 2 tablespoons molasses, 1 tablespoon sugar instead of honey for a great flavor. 3 tablespoons of molasses might add too much flavor and color.
-If you take it out of the breadmaker and form it by hand, you can make
a great glaze with 1/4 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons water. Spread on with a paper
towel, then sprinkle with fennel seeds, sesame, whatever.

Here's an excerpt from a letter I sent to my friend "Munky Babe" on 12/3/99:

I own a Breadman Ultimate. They sell for about $200.
the breadpan is loaf shaped with is really really nice. Most have a more
pillar shaped loaf pan which makes slightly weird but perfectly good bread.
I have seen other people's machines with their pillar-like loaves  and really
wanted this shape.

I rarely use the other features of the machine. IE making jelly & dough.
But a friend uses the dough setting all the time. She has the machine knead the
dough and then she shapes it into pretty shapes like braided hallah. 

I sometimes make 2lb loaves but usually make 1 1/2lb ones. 2 lbs is pretty big.

When making bread for a party or something, I can speed things up by making
a batch of dough (4 cups of flour, 2 loaves worth) in 1hr or so and finishing
it by hand and putting another batch in the machine. This way, I get 4 loaves
in about 4 hrs. But that's about as fast as you can churn out bread.

It's nice having a delay timer, setting it to start at 5am & waking up to hot
bread.


The Breadman Ultimate takes a large piece of counter space. The thing is pretty
heavy so you don't want to have to move it 2x a week to make bread. I was at
BJ's recently and saw a 2lb bread maker that did loaf style and it was actually
smaller than my unit. Since my unit is 3 years old, I'm not suprised they've 
got smaller ones out there.

You might get some help from a mailing list:

*Info* Archives: 
*Info* To subscribe send to: 
*Info*    subscribe

When shopping, I kept hearing "make sure you get one with a strong enough
motor." Well, I could never find any reviews that compared motor strength
head-to-head so that was never a useful comment...

PS, you probably already know this but I'm very happy with my machine.
As a matter of fact, while I was writing this, a loaf came out and I had some.
It's yummie! ...white bread + some sour cream + chocolate covered raisins +
a weird coconut milk cookie I bought that is ALL fat & sugar and gross as a
cookie but good as a cooking ingredient + a little tumeric for color... WEEE!
(and yes, it was good, my roomate tried it and smiled)


Hope I helped!
lee