Recipes to try again later

I promised to share recipes that were successes and failures when I set up this blog. Spectacular failures often come with a good story, which is probably why I've been hanging onto this group of recipes without posting them. They were not highly impressive dishes (or haven't been tested yet) and they don't come with good stories. Despite that, I'm posting them here today because the blog entry is easier to find (and read) later than a little slip of paper with pencil marks on it. Hopefully in the future there will be revisions with photos and more exciting tales. Perhaps someone out there will try them out with the suggested "note to self" revisions and let me know how it goes.

Choco-cherry Smoothie

1 cup cherries from cherry bounce
1 1/2 cup seltzer water
2 cups homemade kefir
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp cocoa powder

Blend until smooth. 
NOTE TO SELF: try with 1/2 cup seltzer next time, possibly less kefir. Great chocolate and cherry flavor, but beverage ended up too thin to be a good smoothie. The tanginess was nice, but perhaps less kefir and/or a teaspoon more sugar would bring taste into better balance. Booziness of the alcohol-preserved cherries sneaks up on you, so warn people if you serve this to others. 

Lemon-Chicken Pasta

3/4 pound thin spaghetti, cooked in boiling salted water
2 cups shredded leftover roasted chicken with lemon-pepper-garlic seasoning
75 g bunch parsley, chopped
juice and zest of 2 Meyer lemons
5 Tbsp olive oil
grated Parmesan cheese to taste

Whisk together the lemon juice, zest and olive oil. Toss with chicken and pasta and parsley. Sprinkle each serving with grated Parmesan. 

NOTE TO SELF: I'm sure that this dish could be done with plain salt-and-pepper roasted chicken with just the addition of a minced clove of garlic and some pepper to the sauce. Next time, consider using at least 1 Tbsp less oil. This version was a little too oily. 

The Large-Crowd Meatball Experiment

5 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 large onion, minced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
4 oz fresh bread, processed into fine crumbs
3/4 cup vegetable stock or milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 oz (by weight) sour cream
1 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
2 Tbsp dried Greek oregano
2 Tbsp dried basil

Place ground beef in large mixing bowl. Saute minced onion and minced garlic in olive oil. Moisten breadcrumbs with vegetable stock/milk in a small bowl. Add sauteed onion/garlic and moist breadcrumbs to meat along with all other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake.
NOTE TO SELF: These would taste great with ground lamb or beef-lamb mix. Salt was not quite overpowering, but could easily be cut to 1 Tbsp plus 1/2 tsp. Dried basil and oregano amounts (especially oregano) should probably be cut in half. Devote another blog entry to this experiment and its theoretical variations with Korean, sweet-sour, American meatloaf and Middle Eastern flavor profiles. 

Bloody Mary Meatballs

3 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup minced onion
1/4 cup Bloody Mary Mix
1 Tbsp prepared horseradish

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil and mix thoroughly with meat and other ingredients. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake. Serve in a Bloody Mary sauce I haven't written a recipe for yet or make Bloody Marys and eat meatballs as snack with cocktail.
NOTE TO SELF: Mixed parts of three different recipes together to create this one, can't try it out until there is a sharing occasion to make this with a Bloody-Mary-inspired tomato sauce to serve them in.

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How much more awkward-sounding can the name of this salad be?

A mixed-bean salad with garbanzos, kidney beans and green beans and a pickled-tasting sauce is a common player on potluck tables in my area. It's an old standby, everyone sees the contents and knows what the salad is going to taste like. I felt like making one that had a bit more crunch, no obvious sweetness (my least favorite part of some versions of bean salad) and used the spicier pickle flavor of my own home-canned green bean pickles. 

The bean pickles are one of my favorite recipes from the Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving, one of my souvenirs from living in Canada. The original recipe is called Dilled Beans, but I use the variation called Hot 'n Spicy Beans, skipping the red pepper strips and the dill. The recipe also worked this year with purple beans, which make me sad by doing the same thing purple asparagus does: turn green when cooked.

When asked at the potluck supper what name this dish has, I responded, "Bean, uh ... bean and bean salad." There are three beans, but do you think my brain could add them up in the necessary moment to say something succinct like Triple-bean Salad? Uh ... nope. 

Bean, Bean and Bean Salad with Carrots
serves 6 to 8

1 15-oz can garbanzos (chickpeas)
1 15-oz can Great Northern beans
3 small garden carrots, julienned (about 1/2 cup julienne)
1/2 pint home-pickled spicy green beans with garlic 
1 clove pickled garlic from the jar of home-pickled beans
4 to 5 Tbsp pickle juice from the jar of home-pickled beans
4 Tbsp olive oil
2 pinches dried epazote
salt and pepper to taste

Place all beans and carrots together in a bowl. Whisk together pickle juice with minced pickled garlic, olive oil, epazote and some salt and pepper. Pour over beans and mix thoroughly. Add more salt and pepper if required. Allow salad to sit overnight in the dressing before serving.

Note: the epazote could be replaced by dried basil, savory or thyme for a different flavor.

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Henne en Bokenade

For the Thanksgiving feast this year, I used my friends as guinea pigs took the opportunity to get some immediate feedback on a stew recipe I was dying to try, but needed some help in eating the large quantity of food produced. I experimented with a recipe from the compilation by John L. Anderson called A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke, a collection of recipes from several manuscripts written in England in the 1400s, and carted the results along in a big pot to reheat at the home of the hosts.

This chicken dish (in addition to two other meats) was substituting for turkey, since our hosts, who grew up in Sri Lanka, have never acquired a taste for that bird. My dinner offering was definitely standing on the far side of tradition among the foods at our Thanksgiving table. It was more like a tagine or a curry rather than the typical glorious platter of roasted poultry.

As per normal with these 15th-Century recipes, very little guidance is given in quantities or cooking times. The method is laid out with regard to what order things should be done and what mode of cooking should be used, but nothing more detailed than "take these and put them together," "cut it in pieces," "temper with this/allay with this" or "sethe (simmer/boil) it." Sometimes the recipes are written a little out of sequence when the writer goes back to add something that should have been earlier in the list. In this case, I had my choice of two different ways to make the same dish called "Vele, Kede or Henne en Bokenade" or "Autre (another) Vele en Bokenade." They are wildly different from each other, one being made with fresh herbs like parsley and sage and thickened with egg yolk, the other being flavored with warm spices and onions and including some dried currants and other thickeners. But, they are both "en bokenade," meaning a sort of one-pot main dish or potage.

The original recipe is for "Autre Vele en Bokenade," using veal. Since the recipe beforehand offered "henne" or chicken as an option, I decided chicken would be an acceptable option for the second recipe as well.

The original text:
Autre Vele en Bokenade
Take Vele, and Make it clene, and hakke it to gobettys, an sethe it; and take fat brothe, an temper up thine Almaundys that thou hast y-grounde, and lye it with Flowre of Rys, and do there-to gode powder of Gyngere, & Galingale, Canel, Maces, Quybybis, and Oynonys y-mynsyd, &Roysonys of coraunce, & coloure yt wyth Safroun, and put there-to thin Vele, & serve forth. 

My quick-and-dirty version for modern cooks:
Take veal and clean it and cut it into small pieces and simmer it. Take that broth and thicken it with ground almonds and rice flour. Add powdered ginger, galingale, cinnamon, mace, cubebs. Add minced onions and dried currants. Color it with saffron, put the veal in the sauce and serve.

The recipe I devised:
Henne en Bokenade 
Cut up a whole chicken so you have wings, breasts, thighs, drumsticks and a back piece. Place the chicken pieces in a large pot with the wings and legs and back on the bottom and the breasts sitting on top. If you have a young chicken, use stock for simmering. If you have a stewing hen, simmer in water. Simmer the deboned chicken in 3 cups chicken stock (or 4 cups water and a much longer cooking time for stewing hen) with 1 tsp salt, 8 white peppercorns and a dash of powdered ginger. Remove the meat when it is cooked through and make a sauce with the broth. Skim fat from the broth if desired.

Mix 2 heaping Tbsp of rice flour with at least 1/4 cup water until it becomes a thick slurry that looks like cream. Use more water if needed. Whisk the rice flour slurry into the hot broth. Add 1 minced onion, 1 tsp ginger powder, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 3/4 tsp ground mace. Grind 10 cubebs and add them to the sauce. Bring the sauce to a simmer and cook until thickened, whisking occasionally. While the sauce is simmering, remove the meat from the bones and discard the skin. Pull the meat into smaller pieces that would fit on a spoon. When the sauce is close to the desired thickness, add 1 cup dried currants and a generous pinch of saffron. Add the cooked meat to the sauce and add a little salt if desired. The finished dish looks like chicken pieces and currants swimming in a fragrant yellowish-brown gravy.

Notes:
1. I did not have ground almonds or the time and desire to grind almonds on my own in a mortar and pestle on Thursday, so my sauce is thickened only with the rice flour this time.
2. I skipped the galingale because I had just run out, but I used more ginger than I otherwise might have.
3. This sauce thickens considerably as the dish cools. Serve immediately (just like the original recipe says) for the best presentation.
4. For those who are asking, "What's a cubeb?" A cubeb is a a dried berry from a plant related to black pepper. It is somewhat similar to pepper in flavor but also has a tangy, clove-like flavor. I got mine as a gift from a friend, but I know of a source in my area: Spicewell's Essentials. http://spicewells.us/Home.html
5. When I try this one again, I'd go for the ground almond and change up the spice mix to blend more successfully with the saffron; possibly, I would use less saffron than the approximately 1/4 tsp I had when I just dumped the rest of my saffron in the stew. Mine had a bit of an overpowering saffron flavor that blended well with the ginger, but left the other spices far less present.

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Successfully avoiding a trip to the grocery again

You know the scenario: You're pressed for time to get that dish done by dinnertime or in time to leave with it for someone else's house and you realize you don't have as much of one ingredient as you thought you had. The recipe won't turn out the way you have come to expect. You're not sure whether you can fudge it with using less, but you have to try anyway because you've already started mixing the other parts.

This recipe is about embracing the unexpected and foisting it off on your friends at a potluck, which I did. And about avoiding a trip to the grocery for which there is no time, which I also did and made it to that potluck on time. And it's about finding another tasty use for backyard rosemary and other gardeners' summer tomatoes that show up unannounced at our place or appear in our Henry's Farm CSA box.

Running-Out-of-Cornmeal Cornbread (with bell and whistles)
alterations to Cook's Illustrated "All Purpose Cornbread" recipe
at least 6 servings

5 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour
4 ounces whole-wheat flour
3 ounces cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp table salt
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 1/2 ounces fresh cooked corn kernels (or thawed frozen corn)
1 cup unsweetened kefir (or buttermilk)
2 large eggs
8 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
large pinch dried rosemary, crushed (this is the bell from my backyard plant)
one to two ripe garden tomatoes (this is a whistle)
a pinch of kosher salt or sea salt (this is a whistle)

Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray 8x8-inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Whisk flours, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt in a bowl until combined and set aside.

In food processor or blender, process sugar, corn, kefir and eggs until combined. 

Make a well in the center of dry ingredients and pour in wet mixture. Fold together for a few turns of the spatula/spoon. Add melted butter and rosemary and fold until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Pour batter into baking dish. Smooth the top. Slice the tomatoes thinly and lay the slices on top of the batter so they just touch each other. Sprinkle with kosher/sea salt.

Bake about 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted it the center comes out clean. Tomato slices will look as if they have sunken into the top. Take directly from oven to potluck and serve cornbread still warm out of the baking dish.

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Monster Beets!

Just had to post an amusing picture from last fall at work. Kelly and I are posing with some beets from Jane's Garden. I've been thinking a lot about those crazy super-sized beets because this year's beets have been just normal ones.
Thanks to Jackie Pope-Ganser for the photo.

When you get monster beets, it's time to use just one to make a big salad. Here's a recipe I use at home. I'm changing the title to commemorate the beets.

Monster Beet and Apple Salad

One monstrously-large beet, peeled and ends cut off
3 to 4 crunchy eating apples (examples: Fuji, Jonathan), peeled and cored
1 bulb fennel (optional), save the feathery fronds
balsamic vinegar
sugar
salt
fresh-ground black pepper
walnut oil (tastes the best, but olive oil will also serve)
walnut pieces (optional)

Grate the beet into a bowl, using the large holes on your grater. You may need to cut it into smaller pieces to hold onto it while you grate. Grate the apples into the bowl. If you are using the fennel, cut off the stalks, cut the bulb in quarters and cut out the cores. Then slice very thinly.
In another bowl, pour in a few tablespoons of vinegar and add pinches of sugar and salt until it has a taste you find pleasantly tart and lightly sweetened. Season with pepper and then whisk in oil in small batches until the dressing emulsifies. Mix the dressing with the beets and apples and walnut pieces (if using). Use the fennel fronds for a garnish or mix them in with the whole salad.

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