Some Like it Hotter

We’re lousy food-bloggers. Why? Because we don’t use the blog to store basic recipes, which means that when we crave something like a batch of Pinto beans … well, we’re left guessing how much hot pepper to put in, and can’t remember what we did in the last batch. Beginning to combat that evil, here is today’s Pinto recipe, which is still not fiery enough:

  • 4 cups dry Pintos, picked free of stones and broken beans, and washed free of dust
  • 10 cups (or so – 12 would be safer, if you’re leaving them cooking and going somewhere) of boiling water
  • 3 medium, white onions
  • 1 tsp chili flakes
  • 1 tsp cayenne powder
  • 1 tsp chipotle powder
  • 1 Tbsp sweet paprika
  1. Chop your onions,
  2. Add everything to your slow-cooker and let the smell drive you mad for at least 8 hours, topping up with hot water as needed to just cover the beans,
  3. Serve over a handful of tortilla chips and some cheese, topped with lowfat Greek yogurt (and an avocado, if you have a ripe one handy).

Next batch, we’ll know: that is simply nowhere near enough pepper! The sweet paprika is an awesome touch, but adds no heat. The chipotle adds a bit of smoke, which is also nice. But: next batch, probably 3 tsp of cayenne powder, and maybe an extra tsp of chili flakes. That should just get them to where they could be described as spicy, to us. (Note: Mr. B? Omit the cayenne powder and you’ll have something which might be described as, “hurts good,” in the world of the gringo.)

-D&T

First, Eat Six Oranges…

Lynedoch Crescent D 498

Ho, hum: winter.

We’ve had a ragged start to the week.

Back-to-back shows on Sunday reminded us of the many reasons why we were English majors and not musical theater majors (not the least of which it wasn’t offered at our school). We started the week tired, cranky, and sore — five hours on stage, holding a folder full of music in outstretched arms and standing still or sitting still for a long, twelve-hour period in cramped quarters will do that to you.

With the weekend partially lost, the usual housework catch-up from Sunday got pushed into Monday. T. is still trying to come to a natural sounding conclusion to her middle grade novel, instead of just quitting because she’s sick of writing it, but she had to intersperse work with doing the laundry and grousing that one other thing she wished the Pro-Snow Contingent had mentioned was the fact that with snow, a pair of jeans you just put on to cross the street to go to the store returns inevitably filthy on the hem, unless tucked into boots. City snow is filthy — and means more laundry, and much-needed time polishing shoes. (T. also groused quietly about wearing the same pair of black leather insulated boots every day and everywhere, but with these near-freezing temps, it’s just another winter reality.)

D. groused about having to meet with his supervisors, and having to hurry to a deadline for work, with his boss asking for meetings he didn’t have time to attend. Tuesday found us prepping for our last big show on the 20th, plus another event at Kelvingrove on the 19th, and we found ourselves tired and grumpy — and too busy.

Obviously, that meant it was time to start the Christmas baking. And maybe take advantage of the fact that the store is selling tons of salt for very cheap (the ice has persisted, and it’s forecast to give us another eight inches starting tomorrow – oh, joy!) and dye something a bright color. Quickly.

Creativity makes everything better.

T. decided that she was sick of racing around frantically every year in the pre-stollen prep stage, trying to find sulfur-free citrus peel, and that she should make her own. It’s funny – it’s such a simple thing — it’s orange peels, how hard could it be? – but most people only ever buy it. T. did a little research, and came up with a simple recipe. All you need is oranges, two cups of sugar, a cup of water, and some time.

  • First, eat six oranges. Or twelve clementines.
  • Okay, they don’t have to be oranges or clementines. And you don’t have to eat them right away. Just PEEL them, and set roughly four cups of peel aside. You don’t have to worry about the pithy side of the peel, either, although you should remove all the stringy bits. Just peel the fruit, and slice the skin into a size you’d like it to be. We had some dried peels sent from our favorite California citrus tree (thanks, Bean!) and some fresh ones, and simply broke them up and sliced them into a suitable size. In the future, T. thinks instead of slicing the sections crosswise, for short thin pieces, that she’ll slice lengthwise, to make as long of pieces as possible.
  • Next, chuck your peels in a heavy bottomed saucepan or whatever pot you’ve got, cover them with about three inches of nice, cold water, and bring them to a boil. Maintain that boil for forty-five minutes. The thicker the skin of your orange or grapefruit or lemon, the longer this will take. Clementines will become soft and pliable in much less time, of course, having thinner skin. If you’re using multiple citrus types, give the thicker ones a twenty minute head start. Don’t worry. This isn’t the tricky part. Just get them softened.
  • Now, drain the water, and refill the pot, and do it again, this time for twenty minutes. Incidentally, I saved the water from my peels. It smells wonderful, tastes sharply, bitterly orangey, and I’m thinking I might be able to use it as an ingredient in something…
  • As your peels boil for the second time, you can prep your simple syrup. In a heavy, non-reactive pot, put together your two cups of sugar and cup of water. I started out with boiling hot water so that the sugar would dissolve quickly. Set your syrup to simmering and when your twenty minutes are up, remove the peel from the water with a slotted spoon, and stir them into the simple syrup.
  • Candied Orange Peel 1
  • Simmer for an hour and a half to two hours — but stir frequently. That’s the only “tricky” part. Things do stick and scorch in a sugar syrup, and while a little burnt orange is actually quite tasty, these aren’t meant to caramelize, just simmer.
  • With a pair of tongs, allowing the excess syrup to drip back into the pot, remove your peel from the sugar, and lay them on a Silpat sheet, or a cookie sheet. (Many recipes call for tossing the peel in sugar at this stage; we did not — just seemed like waaaaay on the side of overkill.)The best idea is to lay them on a cooling rack, and let the excess moisture fall away. Especially if you plan to pack your peel away for later use, this is a good move. The peel will be ready to store in an airtight container in twenty-four to seventy-two hours. depending on how much moisture is in the air in your neck of the woods.
  • Candied Orange Peel 2

    Aaaaand, that’s it.

    Now we have sulfite-free peel for use in stollen, or to dip in chocolate and package up as gifts, or to ::cough:: scarf up by ourselves. Not that that would happen. Unlike with store-bought peel, this will be crisp and citrus-y, but not soft. (Don’t know why store-bought peel is soft. Does anyone?)

    We took the excess sugar syrup, which we caramelized, added a bit of vanilla extract, and bottled it. Can we say “pancake syrup?” Why, yes we can.

    Sometimes, when you’re exhausted and grouchy, it really does help to do one small, sweet thing right.

    Candied Orange Peel 3

“Meat” Pies

With the cold coming, we’re in the mood for heartier fare. So, today we made some “meat pies,” using hot water crust pastry. In searching for a recipe, we happened upon this crust, and … well, it’s absolutely awesome! I doesn’t involve the fiddling about with cold butter of the other kind of crust, and it was just … well, fabulously easy to work with.

We varied things a bit from the recipe (of course), but only because we had far more broth than we planned on, so didn’t end up using any milk in the crust at all.

“Meat” pies:
Meat Pies 1.4

  • 12 oz imitation chicken
  • 1 large carrot, diced
  • 1 large potato, diced
  • 8 green onions, diced
  • A dozen mushrooms, quartered
  • 8 oz mature cheddar cheese, grated
  • 8 oz goat cheese, with rind removed
  • 8 oz soya beans
  • vegetarian broth
  • water
  1. Simmer your ingredients (except for the cheeses!) until tender (approximately 1 hour).
  2. Assemble your hot water crust, using the simmering liquid.
  3. Add cheeses to your vegetables & chicken, stirring well
  4. Form your crusts
  5. Fill, and top with dough, crimping the edges tightly closed
  6. Poke a few holes in the top, so that any gasses may escape
  7. Bake for 40 minutes, if doing small pies; bake for 55 minutes, if doing large pies

These are so tasty, and so easy, with most of the work being the chopping of vegetables. D. shall eat well at work this week!

-D & T

Serendipity Fruit

Man, we love cranberries. The first year we moved here, D. went into a fish market to buy a bottle of mae ploy (why they carry mae ploy sauce, we don’t know, but we’re happy) and saw, serendipitously, that they had bags of Ocean Spray cranberries. He impulsively bought them out figuring we’d use them, and we did. He wandered over and asked them when they’d have them in this year… and they ordered a few bags just for him. He bought all of them.

We love our cranberries.

Cranberry Orange Bread 1

We’re not sure why they don’t grow them here — you’d think if you could grow blueberries, you could grow cranberries — but other than the brandy-laced sauce we found in Tesco the one time, it doesn’t seem like cranberries ever caught on here. Maybe it’s because the British lack a Thanksgiving holiday — Christmas simply isn’t enough time to relish the puckery sour-bitter berry that’s so, so tasty. And we do prefer ours kind of sour. Ocean Spray makes a canned cranberry sauce which most Americans cherish, but we’ve been making our very own tart relish with orange peels and spices for as long as we’ve been together.

But sauce isn’t all you can do with cranberries — T. has been known to eat cranberries …raw. And we also like them baked in bread. Sometimes we bake them into a yeast-raised bread, and we’ve found several quick bread recipes pairing cranberries with dates or figs — which seems weird, but we might try it. For today, though, we fell back on our old standard of pairing cranberry with orange, and this year tried out a new recipe for cranberry-orange loaf. At D’s work, the office manager asked him very seriously if he planned to take orders on them for Christmas this year. The answer is still no — but D’s willing to share the recipe!

Cranberry-Orange Loaf

Makes 2 large loaves or 6 mini loaves or 18 muffins

  • 4 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 1/2 cup orange juice
  • 4 tablespoons butter or margarine
  • 4 tablespoons grated orange zest
  • 2 eggs, beaten or 1/4 c. ground flax seed plus 2 Tbsp. water
  • 3 cups (One 12 ounce bag) fresh cranberries
  • Cranberry Orange Bread 3

  • 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans, optional. We opted not.

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Simply sift together the dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl, then stir in the wet ingredients (including the combined flax seed and water, which sat and hydrated for three minutes, if you’re using an egg substitute). When your rather golden-yellow bread batter has combined, stir in the cranberries last of all.

This is a very, very, very sweet bread, and if you use orange juice that is sweetened, you will be making a sweet thing cloying. We juiced six oranges for our cup and a half of juice — which you may not want to do, as it is somewhat tedious. If you use orange juice from concentrate, consider cutting it with lemon juice, or water.

We topped this bread with two tablespoons of raw sugar, to give it a crunchy top. This is a really moist bread, so be prepared for a long, slow baking time. Full-sized loaves need 50-55 minutes to bake, small loaves 30-35 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean when they are done.

We had a tiny slice of bread right out of the oven, of course, and D. wasn’t impressed. He fussed abut the crumb, decided there were too many cranberries per slice, and was generally grumpy. T. advised him to wait until it had cooled all the way, and settled… and boy, were we glad we did. The moisture balanced out, the crumb was light, and the flavor was delicious. At the office, the boss once again refrained from getting his scone. The office manager took four pieces, and a coworker moved the tray to her desk, so she could “watch” it. Much more of a cake than a bread, this is flat out delicious, habit-forming, and provokes kind of frighteningly possessive reactions in people.

Good thing we’ve got five more bags of cranberries…

Cranberry Orange Bread 2

Breakfast of Champions

Tofu Steak with Cheese and Avocado

People have asked and asked and asked us how we manage to be vegan in a place like the UK.

For one thing: we’re not vegan. T.’s mother is vegan, we’ve learned how to cook and bake without any animal products and we try to limit our animal-related food consumption, but we don’t claim veganism, not at all. We are vegetarians, however, and no matter how it freaks some of our omnivore friends (“You’re just so hard to feed!” our friend P moans) it’s not actually as bad as you might think.

Anyone, anywhere, as long as they have access to an Asian market like our fave See Woo, or Matthew’s, will be just fine, as Asian markets are the obvious go-to places to source tofu, interesting seitan, textured vegetable protein, vegetables, and noodles. We were pretty shocked a couple of weeks ago to see how well stocked the Largs Morrison’s was, too — for a small town, they were beyond awesome — so the regular shops are definitely in on the act.

“So, what do people eat there?” is the other perennial question. (T. usually gets this from school-aged children, and to avoid further devolving a nation into stereotype, she has stopped even jokingly mentioning haggis. The average Scottish person eats haggis as often as the average American wears a tuxedo, which is maybe once a year. ) Because of this, we thought we’d show you …breakfast. This is T’s plate, of course, liberally doused with Cholula sauce, but it’s just grilled tofu, half an avocado, and a bit of cheese. Protein, a little fat, and a lot of yummy. Followed by a handful of nuts and some fruit (Or D’s celery and peanut butter) around 3 p.m., this is enough to take us through most of a workday.

The how-to on this is simple: place a sliced, rinsed tofu steak in a lightly oiled stainless steel pan on medium, fry it until you see brown coming up the sides… then turn off the heat, put on the lid, go take your shower, come back.

It will have sweated itself free of the pan by your return, and you can sprinkle some spices (like our Spice of Greatness) on the uncooked side, then flip it and essentially repeat the process. We take a single cake of tofu (the big ones that come sealed in a carton with water) and split it and that works out as breakfast for two. T., who silently moaned her way through scrambled tofu as a child, actually prefers this to scrambled, and actually loves this dish, which continually surprises her.

Once the second side is fried, we sometimes lay cheese on. If you choose that option, just cover the pan for two minutes while the cheese melts and you’re prepping the avocados. It’ll all be melty and ready when you are.

Weekends are another matter altogether. We found out that The Drake across the way has pancakes – real ones – with fried bananas and maple syrup. Now, that is the breakfast of weekend champions!

Jam Tomorrow & Jam Yesterday

Jam Tarts 1

D. hardly can go in to work now without some kind of goody in hand. He’s run through his repertoire of cakes and pies and after fulfilling a scones-like-my-nan’s request, has received another query. “How about a strawberry tart?” someone suggested.

The problem with a strawberry tart is that in two weeks it’s November and we’re well away from the season where strawberries will come up from the earth. There are no berries in the store that anyone would want to eat, and cranberries are, sadly, a New World food. After considering frozen strawberries (ugh) and pondering some other kind of fruit (meh), we decided to try to make jam tarts.

Jam tarts are kind of a British thing anyway. Most of the time, they’re seen in miniature – as cookies that look like they’ve been thumbprinted with jam, or ramekin-sized goodies that are split in fourths. In order to truly make a jam tart, one needs a tart pan; not having one of those, we settled for eight ceramic ramekins and one spring-formed pan, and whipped up a thick, sweet crust.

Jam Tarts 3

  • 1 1/2 cups (210 grams) all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup (70 grams) stone-ground cornmeal or polenta
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 9 tablespoons (4 1/2 ounces or 130 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
  • 1/4 c. grated lemon rind
  • 2 large eggs, whole
  • 1 large egg, separated
  • 1/8 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 1/3 to 1 3/4 cups (450 grams) jam (see Note above; I used the smaller amount) or marmalade
  • 2 tablespoons (30 grams) coarse-crystal or granulated sugar

Mix your dry ingredients – the flour, cornmeal, lemon rind, baking powder and salt – together in a bowl. Using an electric mixer cream together your butter and 1/2 cup or sugar until smooth. Add the eggs and almond extract and beat until combined. Gradually sift in the flour and mix until the dough comes together like crumbs.

Take about half of the dough, wrap it securely in plastic, and refrigerate for minimum one hour, or you could go Smitten Kitchen’s route and freeze it for half an hour. Whatever works.

We’re not quite sure what happened with the crust. When Smitten Kitchen made this, it came through together easily enough. We, thinking we knew best, made a few changes: first, we added two eggs, instead of a single egg plus a yolk, as the recipe called for. We grated the cold butter as we usually do for crusts and pastries, though the recipe calls for room temperature butter. We ended up with a sandy, sticky dough, and T. was disappointed, because she’s been jonesing for farm-looking autumn stuff, and wanted to use her new rooster cookie cutter, or, barring that, her selection of leaves. Or, probably both, knowing her. The crust was just too …something for that. Heavy, sandy, sticky… you name it. We should have chilled it for more than fifteen minutes, but …um… we didn’t. We won’t say who’s fault that was. We went with Option B. and patted the crust down into our pan and figured we’d worry about tart top later.

Jam Tarts 6

The good thing about jam tarts is that it doesn’t really matter what kind of jam you use, but a word to those not wanting to flail about in a diabetic coma: use a tart jam or halve the amount of sugar in the crust! We had a jar of store-bought strawberry left over from the pirate cake a thousand years ago, unopened in a cabinet because we couldn’t bear to eat it ourselves. (One great thing work people are for: to eat food you wouldn’t otherwise know how to consume.) Our other choice was our lovely tart homemade blackberry jelly. We decided to use the less sweet jam in larger quantities, having some mercy on the health and well-being of D.’s coworkers. (As it turns out, he needn’t have bothered!).

After spreading the jam evenly on the bottom of each of the tart crusts, we rolled out a large piece of crust, and turned it over the pan. Some of it cracked a bit, but we knew it would melt together, and were not really concerned. We perhaps should have been! We had some small pieces left, and decorated the strawberry mini tarts with them, so eaters could tell the jams apart. We topped the crusts with the 2 tbsp. of sugar, and baked the tarts for twenty minutes in the oven.

They were gorgeous, and depanned pretty well. If you don’t plan to depan immediately, USE LINER PAPER ON YOUR PANS. Once the crust cools, it’s really not easy to get out, although it came out of the springform just fine (only the bottom stuck a little). We were surprised by how cookie-like and how unlike pastry the tart crust turned out to be. D. wasn’t fond of it at all, but T. tasted it, and said it reminded her of chewy sugar cookies. However, T. worried again that the strawberry tarts were simply too sweet, but they were among the first to go at D’s office, and the large bramble tart was consumed down to the last bite.

As you can see, the tarts are stacked in the carrier, and ready to ride in the cab. The large tart has been pre-sliced — and it sort of looks cracked, exactly like a cookie. It’s … maybe it’s the flour? We just expected the crust to be not quite so cookiesque. Weird.

Not bad for a first run, but we’ve got a bit of work to do on this one…

Run-up to World Bread Day: 10/16/10

Bagels with Alex 01

We don’t bake as much as we used to, finally having figured out that two people just cannot eat the amount of bread we produce and maintain figures that are anything other than spherical, but we still have a lot of fun baking for and with other people. Thus, we were glad to celebrate World Bread Day – also known as Welttag des Brotes, la Journée mondiale du pain, and el día mundial del pan, a day set aside by ye olde foodies around the globe to celebrate the staff of life. We participated in this day by hanging with our friend Axel, and teaching him to make bagels.

(Well, D. did the teaching. Axel did the work. T. sat on the couch and read a book until such time as her special skills of tasting were needed.)

Bagels with Alex 02

It was a perfect day for baking — the wind was just whipping along and while we enjoyed a brief walk through town, it was definitely a stay-inside kind of day. After much rummaging through various cupboards for bowls and pans, the World Bread Team decided on their bread and got started.

Newbie bread bakers are fun to watch, and Axel was more fun than most, as he sort of had a permanent expression of “Ugh!” on his face as the dough stuck to his hand… to the counter… and to the board on which he was kneading… He looked rather like a cat, disgusted with a puddle, and resisting the urge to shake his paws. Poor Axel. He persevered, though. We used a very high gluten (strong) flour, which allowed us to have a really tight, smooth dough, once it was all kneaded out, but it did start out a bit on the clingy side!

Bagels with Alex 03

Bagels aren’t that hard, of course – they’re just bread that’s boiled in a tablespoon of baking soda and water before they’re baked. We stuck with a simple recipe – plain bagels — but T. had her heart set on blueberry bagels. Except she forgot her blueberries. ::sigh:: Next time! There are tons of variations on bagels, but the variation D. reminisced about most fondly were the salt bagels we enjoyed in Santa Rosa. Much like fat, soft pretzels, these bagels were the perfect breakfast item – a slab of grilled tofu or a scrambled egg inside, and you had breakfast for on the go. Finding the right kind of salt is a bit tricky around here, but there’s plenty of other toppings, including poppy, sesame, or flax seeds and Parmesan. T. was even tempted to try baco-bits once, but was given a Look by a certain member of the baking team. ::repeat dramatic sigh::

Bagels with Alex 04
Bagels with Alex 05
Bagels with Alex 08

We probably didn’t let our bagels raise enough — the kitchen was a little cooler than we realized, and we weren’t really all that patient, to be honest, so our bagels more spread horizontally than got any kind of vertical lift on them, but for Axel’s first time, these really turned out well. They were crunchy on the outside and chewy when toasted, and just altogether yummy. We tried them first with plain margarine, and then loaded them up with Axel’s grandma’s strawberry preserves from Romania — again, yum.

In the spirit of World Bread Day being a global enterprise, we sampled our first taste of Brunost or mussmør – brown cheese from Norway. It’s right between the two plates, next to the jar of preserves in the picture… a creamy looking hunk of brown with a cheese slicer on top. While Brunost is a cheese, it’s …caramelized, and according to Wikipedia, is made by “boiling a mixture of milk, cream and whey carefully for several hours so that the water evaporates. The heat turns the milk sugar into caramel which gives the cheese its characteristic taste.” It’s sweet… and yet not really that sweet. Somehow, one expects it to be nutty, and instead it’s creamy. It’s definitely one of those “acquired” tastes! T. thinks it would pair well with hard pears or apples and D. felt it needed to be eaten with a particularly sharp, salty cheddar as well. Neither of us were sure it just goes with bread, and Axel didn’t eat any at all, but says his parents love it. We’ll have to experiment with it again and see what we think another day.

Bagels with Alex 10

World Bread Day 2010 (submission date October 16)

Um, Remember What We Said About the Food of Evil Cupcakes?

…About how the whole tiny-bites-of-frosting-in-annoying-paper thing is seriously out of control in the way a trend can only be when influenced by both our memories of classroom birthday parties, and the saccharine gushing of celebrity chefs? Part of the charm of the cupcake is the pastel link to childhood — but overexposure makes everything lose its charm. EVERYTHING. To wit: behold, The Electric Cupcake Maker.

You know that phrase “jump the shark?” It’s not just for TV shows anymore. The cupcake thing is OFFICIALLY out of control.

Six silicone cupcake “cases.” Little flashy lights. Ten minutes “and not an oven in sight.” Insane, isn’t it? You cannot find a decent bloomin’ waffle iron for love or money around here, but a cupcake iron? We’ve totally got your back on that one.

Foodies are just the weirdest people sometimes.

Image courtesy of Lakeland

Culinary, Quite Contrary

Not that T. would admit it or anything, but food blogger Gluten Free Girl is HER kind of girl. GFG’s …contrary. Not only for avoiding wheat products – she spends her days quietly avoiding the same social things T. avoids, which are generally the things most normal people enjoy.

In high school, for T. it was Mel Gibson movies. Now everyone else sees the wisdom in avoiding them (and him)? While T. – who actually saw him in person on a street in Vancouver when she was seventeen – was unwittingly an early adapter nonconformist. Culinarily, if that’s a word, it took us years and years to get one of those silicone baking mats, when everyone and their dog had one. For awhile the food blogger world was all agog over Jaimie Oliver, salted caramel everything, and cupcakes, bloody cupcakes. You’ll note that no more than a passing mention of that has made it to this blog. T. looks at trend-setting things, and says, “Yeah, they’re cute. Meh.” And D. has a fairly virulent distaste for all things Oliver and an eclectic desire for random recipes that are old, require strange Devices, or the use of a crank and lightning at midnight. We’re erratic and oblivious and that’s the usual state of things.

Kale Chips 1.2

So, when Gluten Free Girl talked about avoiding films like Forrest Gump (…Been there), Rain Man (…done that), and never watching The West Wing (…and have the T-shirt) and skipping culinary trends like roasted kale chips, T. gloried in the sensation of finding a woman after her own heart. And yet – last Wednesday T. got one of those best-friend emails that made confrontation unavoidable.

“Have you ever tried it?” was the innocent question.

Well, no. Heck, no! NEVER!

(But one does try so hard to look like a well-balanced, prudent person in public.) “Well, not yet – but how does Friday sound?” T. decided to reply.

As much as we love kale around these parts, it seemed stupid to not at least try it. And after some hemming and hawing and checking out Gluten Free Girl‘s take on the recipe as well as Smitten Kitchen’s T. decided on an approach.

Kale Chips 1.5

We would have preferred to use plain kale for this, but it’s not really deep into kale season here, for some reason, and the only way it’s available at Sainsbury’s, anyway, is pre-washed and pre-chopped in bag form. Not the way we want to deal with it, but since the recipe calls for tearing or chopping it into bite-sized pieces, it’s a way to begin. We used two bags of kale, which come in 200 gram bags… normally that’s a cup or seven and a half ounces, but with kale it was about five cups of springy kaleish goodness. (Most recipes call for about four cups, packed.)

We lined a bowl with paper towel and blotted the water from the kale, turning it and ruffling it with our hands. We went through and removed all of the stems (they don’t turn into chips – they’re wood, people). We then pulled out the paper and measured two tablespoons of olive oil into the bowl. T. massaged the oil into the greens.

At this point, some recipes advise the use of salt. We chose not to do this. 1.) Because we never salt food before it’s cooked, and 2.) Because salt removes water from vegetables, and if you salt before you roast, how do you know if you’ve used too much salt until it’s far too late? We also planned to use our Patented Popcorn Herb Blend on the kale, so chose to simply roast the veg. We turned the oven on to about 250°F/125°C and put the timer on for thirty-five minutes. And then we watched the oven like hawks. Depending on your greens, thirty-five minutes can be too long, and for the first time through this process, we wanted to be sure.

Kale Chips 1.6

We pulled the pans out frequently, and at one point dumped the greens out and ruffled our fingers through them and put them back onto the pan. At such a low temp, the roasting took place in roughly twenty-eight minutes, and we were happy with what they looked like. We dusted them with the PPH blend and a bit of salt, and sampled. Hmm. We shook a few of the smaller pieces through a cooling rack and set them aside to grind and use WITH the PPH Blend. We sampled some more. And some more …

You know, the world is not always kind to innovators. Who was the first person who said, “Hey, let’s take the wizened grain of this maize plant and put it over fire and watch it explode, ricochet all around, and then let’s eat the white stuff that appears next?” Or, imagine the first person to decide that cacti would be really awesome if they could just strip off the spines? Or, T’s favorite question of all time, who decided to eat the round whitish thing that came out of that bird’s backside? There are some really improbable foods in the world. Kale chips are one of them. You might consider trying them, though. Not that we’re going to talk about it all day or anything. We’re not on any food bandwagon, here. But they’re good, in a totally non-conformist way.

Just sayin’.

BUT BE WARNED. Remember how we said we’d taken two bags of kale to make this? We munched our way, reading and writing email and blah, blah, blah, with hand moving to mouth (and to towel to keep the keyboard reasonably clean) over and over again… and then remembered: That was five cups of kale in each bag. Kids: that’s a lot of fiber. DRINK a few QUARTS of water, and put the rest of the tasty crunchies away.

No, do it NOW. Or you will be very, very sorry…

-D & T

A Scone is Not A Biscuit, And Other Friday Observations

You know you’ve made it in the world of volunteer culinary when you start getting requests.

He says, “Wouldja make me some of those cheese scones? Like m’grandmother used to make?”

Cheese Scones 1

While it’s all very well to be asked to make something, no one in the world is ever going to measure up to a grandmother’s baking. Anyone’s grandmother’s baking. (Except maybe T’s; she begs her family to remember the red velvet cake. ::shudder::)

D. put off the scones with a box of Kahlúa brownies, which were an excuse for T. to decorate them with little gold balls and make the individual pieces look like dominoes (no pictures of those, sadly – they vanished), but after a cranky complaint from a dieting coworker, D. woke up Friday morning with the idea of a savory treat in his head – one the coworker didn’t like, and wouldn’t eat.

Cheese scones it was.

The recipe was somewhat of a surprise. D. did a bit of research, starting with the redoubtable Cynthia’s blog, Tastes Like Home, visiting the BBC Food page and passing by The Fresh Loaf for more inspiration. He did a lot of muttering. “What? Eggs?” he exclaimed. “Who puts eggs in biscuits?” We quickly learned that a scone is not a biscuit, no matter how similar they might appear to be. After a bit of poking around, we finally settled on a little input from each recipe blog, and roughed out a recipe that went something like this:

Sharp Cheese Scones

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  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tbsp of baking powder plus 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 stick butter
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 tbsp whole milk
  • 1 cup strong cheddar, grated plus 1/3 c. finely grated Parmesan
  • 1/3 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp mustard
  • 1 tbsp. dried chives, optional
  • Pinch of Cayenne pepper, optional
  1. Combine dry ingredients – flour, salt and pepper.
  2. With a fork, cut in the butter and when thoroughly combined, mix in the grated cheese.
  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg. Add in the milk; add mixture to the dry ingredients to create a soft, elastic dough.
  4. Roll out the mixture on a lightly floured surface. Cut into round shapes and place on a well greased tray.
  5. Bake in a pre-heated oven in the center rack at 350° for fifteen minutes, or until golden brown.

We differed briefly on the method of cutting the scones. T. is a drop-biscuit kind of gal, and D’s mother always cut them out, so he does, too. For the scones, T. wanted to have the wedge-shaped type, which are simply cut with a wet knife, and D. wasn’t having it. Compromise was reached by having a little of both.

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Though the dough was somewhat obstreperous – from the butter being dug out from the freezer and grated – the scones were almost as easy as biscuits, and smelled scrumptious when they were baking. They looked lovely, but after a taste test, T. was only “meh” about them. “They’re …buttery,” she said, and made a face. (T. does not like the buttery. Does not like the short. Does not like shortening bread, shortbread cookies, or pie crust. We know. We deal with her as we do all the insane: we speak gently to her and let her gnaw on celery like she wants.) D. was “meh” about them because he felt they should be spicier. We loaded the scones up to take them to our British Tasting Audience. Several Irishmen, a bunch of Scots men and women and a few gents from the Commonwealth countries of India and Africa were to be our victims subjects. What would they say?

Reactions were gratifying. Most of the British Tasting Audience (BTA) were excited to find the scones still warm. Several made gleeful remarks about their grandmothers, and moved to surround the plate where they lay. (Not the grandmothers. The scones. Stay with us, here.)

The original requester of the scones described them as “perfect,” which was a happy event – apparently D. is every bit as good a baker as his grandmother in at least one thing. And then, some of the BTA found the scones “spicy.” We can assure you that no more than a quarter teaspoon of Cayenne was added, so the word “spicy” in this context made T., who douses her food with Cholula at every opportunity, lie down on the floor and weep. However! The highest compliment was paid by D’s boss, who is a grinch-hearted grump before ten a.m. when the “trolley” comes by with sandwiches, bagels, and scones for elevenses. D. can rarely speak to his boss before that hour, and today — today his boss skipped the trolley and ate two scones. A happy, reasonable man prior to ten a.m.! (Well, a happy man, anyway. Let’s not push things.)

We’re still not sure if it was our recipe or the way we made the scones or what, but while this wasn’t a favorite for either one of us, they were passably good (and go well under beans, as if one was having beans on toast). D. is excited to have found a lemon rosemary scone recipe, while T. is pretty sure that scones are just made to be eaten with jam. Lots and lots of jam… and she saw a recipe that has the jam baked in on top. Experiments will follow!

The BTA is actually pleased to know that D. takes requests, and is plotting something else for him to make. Meanwhile, D. is not resting on his laurels, but is instead wondering how to make pierógi…

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