Category: minutiae

Argh. I hate it when the Television Without Pity forums are offline. Seriously, the cheesy bean soup that Sandra made yesterday had me completely nauseous. I need to discuss it!

I didn’t get around to making the soup yesterday. I’ll make it today. Probably. The Boston Baked Beans turned out well, but I’m not entirely convinced I couldn’t get the same thing doctoring up a can of B&M. I’ll still post the recipe, though.

Boston Baked Beans

Cook’s Illustrated

4 oz salt pork, trimmed of rind and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

2 oz bacon (about 2 slices), cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp mild molasses

1 1/2 Tbsp brown mustard

1 lb dried small white beans, rinsed and picked over

Salt

9 cups water

1 tsp cider vinegar

Ground black pepper

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position, and heat oven to 300. Add salt pork and bacon to an 8-quart Dutch oven. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned and most of the fat is rendered, about 7 minutes. Add onion and continue to cook until onion is softened, about 8 minutes. Add 1/2 cup molasses, mustard, beans, 1 1/4 teaspoons salt, and 9 cups of water. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Cover pot and place in oven. Cook for 2 hours, then stir, and cook for another 2 hours. Remove the lid and continue to bake until the liquid had thickened to syrupy consistency, about another 90 minutes. Remove from oven, and stir in the remaining tablespoon of molasses, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Cheese Bread with Bacon, Onion, and Gruyère

Cook’s Illustrated

3 oz Parmesan cheese, shredded

3 cups AP flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 – 1 tsp cayenne

2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

4 oz Gruyère cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 1/4 cup whole milk

1 large egg, beaten slightly

3/4 cup sour cream

5 oz bacon (about 5 slices), cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/2 onion, minced

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 350. Spray a 5×9-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. Make a 2-part sling out of parchment, and put it in the pan, using the spray to help it stick. Spray the parchment with nonstick cooking spray, and sprinkle 1/2 cup of Parmesan evenly in the bottom of the pan.

Fry the bacon in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned and crisp, about 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to a paper towl-lined plate. Pour off all but three tablspoons of the fat from the skillet. Add the onion to the skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 5 minutes, then set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Mix in the Gruyère cubes, bacon, and onion, coating the pieces completely with flour.

In a separate bowl, combine milk, egg, and sour cream. Pour the wet ingredients on top of the dry, and fold together with a rubber spatula to combine. The batter will be heavy and thick.

Scrape the batter into the loaf pan, smoothing the surface with the spatula. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of Parmesan evenly over the top.

Bake for approximately 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10-20 minutes, then de-pan and cool for another 30-45 minutes. Cut into slices and serve warm.

“Sarah, what the hell is going on with your blog?” Well, I find myself bereft of both time and enthusiasm lately. I get home from work and I just want to sit on my couch. It’s kind of sad. I miss sleeping in, going to several stores to gather ingredients, and cooking things that take ridiculous amounts of time.

I’m making one of those things today. It’s not done yet, so I can’t say whether it’s good or not, but recipes that start out with “Render the fat from four ounces of salt pork and two ounces of bacon” are A-OK to me. I’m in hour three of some Boston Baked Beans. And as soon as Ryan finishes making her soup, I’m going to make pasta e fagioli. Good times. I’m surpisingly not excited about it all. I think my spark is temporarily gone. Er, I hope only temporarily.

Apparently my last cheese bread had some raw bits in the middle. EW. That makes me very sad.

Soon, my top page isn’t going to have any recipes on it. I should recifty that situation.

I forgot something from last weekend. I made the cheese bread again! And wow, what a difference a parchment sling makes. Getting it out of the pan was so very easy, compared to the first time. I don’t know why Cook’s Illustrated didn’t recommend that procedure. I mean, they make everything else needlessly complicated, why not add a step that’s actually useful?

I ended up making the variation with bacon, onion, and gruyere. And it was quite tasty. They’re right, the flavor does improve as it sits, so be patient. I also used twice as much salt and cayenne. I bought some premium bacon- Nieman Ranch- and it, while very tasty, was not as salty as we have come to think of bacon. So that’s why I added more. And the cayenne? The CI folks sometimes can be wusses when it comes to heat.

I bought ingredients for Jonsauce. Woo. I’m so not keen on anything right now.

I didn’t eat dinner last night.

Amazing, I know. I got home from work, loaded up a hypodermic needle with Farscape, and plunged it in. Ah, sweet Farscape. I watched the Tivoquivalent of six hours- I got up through the first half of the Peacekeeper Wars; if we don’t have D&D tonight (Jer’s still not feeling great), I’ll watch the other half. I was thinking about trying to make myself an omelet (eggs are pretty much the only thing I have in my fridge), but the couch was too darn comfy.

I’ve got a bunch of episodes from the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to which I need to do the same thing. No distractions!

I need to go to the store. But it’s kind of nasty out.

I made some rather excellent chicken noodle soup on Wednesday. I should post the recipe. It was similar to the one I already posted, but there were a few differences. I am really looking forward to eatng it for lunch today. I made it ostensibly for Jeremy, who was sick this week, but you know, I’m really not that good a person. I just like making soup and getting “Oh, that’s so thoughtful!” comments from people.

You know what you don’t want to hear from a Target employee? That they’re having pest problems. I went a week ago to buy some face wash and TP, and I figured while I was there I might as well pick up some Jalapeno Cheddar Cheese Nips. The market section had vanished, so I hunted down a couple of employees to ask what was up. I got “problems with a vendor” twice before the guy told me there was a pest problem. EW. Yeah, I’m going to avoid buying anything edible at the Redwood City Target for a while. I suggest you do, too.

Okay, people? Learn to estimate times better. I am fine if you say, “I’ll be gone for an hour, can you hold down the fort?” However, if you say, “I’ll only be gone fifteen minutes,” and then come back forty-five minutes late, I’m likely to be a little irked (in my brain, not out loud). Overestimate, if anything.

Mynnyd lived! Joanna almost died again. So now Cameron’s campaign is over, and next week, we start Jer’s. Which means we need to stock up on wands of cure light wounds, because our cleric’s going to be absent.

I’m trying to cut down on my Diet Coke consumption- I don’t know if I’ve already talked about this. Working at a company with free DC is… well, you get tempted to go overboard. Which I did, the first week. Now, I’m trying to limit myself to one can during the work day. I drink a lot of water. Surprisingly, it also quenches your thirst.

You know you’ve been spending too much time at your brother’s house when you go to their local market and the cashier says, “Did you get your hair cut? It looks nice.” (She was right- I got it cut two weeks ago.)

Damn. I went down to Mountain View last night to deliver the soup, and then I decided to take the coupons Ryan had given me and go to Bookbuyers, a used book store. I got a couple of cookbooks, and then wandered around downtown. A couple of doors down is another bookstore called Books, Inc. I wandered in because they had a big display of Cook’s Illustrated books and magazines. Turned out they had just finished an appearance and signing by Christopher Kimball. Damn! I could have seen Annoying Bowtie Man in person! Oh, would I have loved to ask him his opinion of Sandra Lee and the trend of Krap Kooking these days.

Well, that… sort of worked.

I roasted a chicken last night (whole bird, variations on this recipe). I wanted to make it without going to the store, so that meant no little potatoes. What I ended up doing was this:

I didn’t have any sage, so I finely minced some rosemary. And I only had dried thyme. Whatever, the butter was still good. During the first fifteen minutes of roasting, I melted the leftover butter in a pan and added a cup of rice, which I cooked slowly until glossy, then removed from the heat. After the first fifteen minutes of roasting, I added half a cup of water and half a cup of white wine to the roasting pan so the drippings wouldn’t get burnt. During the next fifteen minutes, I defrosted a small container of French onion soup that my brother had made about a month ago (I was bringing it into work for lunch, but we kept having barbeques), and mixed that in with the rice. I also added what was left of the bottle of wine- probably an eighth of a cup. When I flipped the chicken over, I spread the rice mixture in the bottom of the roasting pan, lowered the heat as per the recipe, and cooked for another thirty-five minutes.

Okay. Chicken drippings make everything better. I wish I could just buy chicken drippings, because I only ate a leg last night. The rice was fantastic! However, I need to adjust some things, because it was stil vaguely crunchy in places. It was really, really good, if you could forgive that. And I could.

This’ll probably never work in exactly the same way again, though- how often am I going to have Jon’s French onion soup just sitting around in my freezer? I’m happy, though, that I was able to create something really, really good with what I already had.

I brought the rest of the rice and the other leg for lunch today. I’m really looking forward to it.

D&D tonight! I am predicting DEATH for Mynnyd!