My family isn’t at all French. We’re probably 75% Cornish and 25% Norwegian. The meal I most requested from my grandmother, a truly wonderful southern cook, was Chicken Fricassee though. Or that’s what she called the bone in chicken in gravy, cooked in a bag if memory served, over rice that she whipped up to my constant demands. I’ve chased whatever that was for my entire adult life, though I don’t frankly remember very much about it except how satisfied it made me feel. It was hearty, and savory, and like any good southern girl “smothered” is my favorite adjective. This is my version.
6 bone in, skin on chicken thighs patted dry w/ paper towel 2 tbs bacon fat 2 leeks, quartered/rinsed/sliced 16 oz button mushrooms, quartered 1 tbs dijon mustard 2 lemons, juiced 4 cups chicken stock salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cup heavy cream 2 tbs cornstarch in 2 tbs water slurry 1/3 cup chopped tarragon
Set a straight sided sauté pan on a medium heat. Liberally season the chicken thighs on all side. Add bacon fat to pan and allow to render. Then place the thighs, skin side down in the fat. Brown them on all sides until a deep mahogany color forms. Also great… encourage that brown-ness on the bottom of the pan. That’s the flavor.
Remove browned thighs to a plate and add the diced/cleaned leeks. Soften the leeks, then add the mushrooms until they’re also browned. Sometimes I need to lid the pan w/ the leeks and sometimes not. Just don’t let them burn. Drizzle in a little more bacon fat or butter if necessary to keep it all from sticking. Squeeze in the lemon juice to deglaze, then add the stock and mustard. Let that come to a boil and reduce slightly. Add S&P, and cream. Add the starch/water slurry and stir until uniformly thick.
Add the browned chicken back to the pan with the skin side up. The darkly colored tops should sit proud of the liquid. Put the lid on and cook on low, just barely a simmer, for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and cook another 5 or 10 minutes. Sprinkle with tarragon.
Once a week, we have bread and butter plus whatever little noshes I have around. The bread always starts with an adapted version of the King Arthur Flour Cookbook‘s Crusty Italian Loaf. I use half bread flour though, and bake my loaves (usually 2) in a dutch oven rather than braiding anything. Starting the preferment- the biga- overnight, makes the process a day and a half long project but it’s not very hands on. The flavor is great and it has a nice open crumb. Plus you can add whatever you like. A favorite is dried cranberries, walnuts, and white chocolate. Cheese and jalapeño hits the spot. Tonight was cheddar, bacon, and chives. Smeared with a little butter, it tastes like everything I want in a loaded baked potato.
A note on the cheese: You really do want to leave it in chunks. If it’s shredded or in small pieces it will disappear into the dough and just leave you with a sort of cheddar flavor and it will soften the bread a lot.
For the biga: 2 cups all purpose flour 1 cup plus 2 tbs cool water 1/8 tsp active dry yeast
For the dough: 2-2.5 cups bread flour 1/2 cup water 2 tsp yeast 1 heaping tsp salt (probably more 2 in my house bc I feel like bread needs salt) 6 oz aged white cheddar, large (3/4 inch) cubes 10 strips crispy bacon, chopped or crumbled 2-3 tbs chopped chives.
On the night before you wish to eat your bread, mix the bigga ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer. Just use your hands or a rubber spatula. It will be thick and pretty shaggy looking. Cover it with a shower cap or plastic wrap and then let it sit in your warmish kitchen over night. The longer it sits on the counter, the more flavorful the bread will be.
The next day: add the cool water, 2 cups flour, yeast, salt, cheddar, bacon, and chives to the bigga. Turn on the mixer and allow the ingredients to mix at a 1 or 2 speed until it just cleans the sides of the bowls. Add the rest of the flour in small amounts if it’s too sticky. I don’t really work the dough at all at this stage. It’s together in a ball, but it’s not stretchy.
Remove the dough ball from the bowl and let it rest on the counter while you wash, dry, and very lightly oil the bowl. I’ve never needed flour on the counter at this stage. Then put the dough ball back in and cover it again. Set a timer for about 40 minutes. By that time, the ball should have sort of loosened up and gotten a little bigger. Wet your hand, then slide it under the dough, scoop/stretch the dough from the bottom and sort of fold it over the top. Vaguely like this. Do that 4 or 5 times, working around the dough ball. Re cover, let it rise another 40 minutes, and then repeat. Leave the dough to rise for another 30 minutes. Were I making just a plain bread, I would reduce each of those 40 minutes to 30…. the add ins will weigh down the dough and it will take longer to rise. You’ll notice these loaves aren’t particularly tall… another consequence of the additions.
Next, shape your bread. May I suggest youtube for tips, bc there’s no way I can accurately describe it? There are 10,000 ways to shape but I generally cut the dough roughly in half and make two loaves. 1’s a boule and 1’s an oblong simply because those are the bannetons I have. Leave these two loaves to rise, covered, for about 75 minutes. I’ve also done just one large boule in the round banneton and increased the rising time to about 90 minutes. You would also need to bake it significantly longer.
While the loaves are rising, place your dutch oven with it’s lid in the oven and heat to 450.
When the loaves have risen, place one in the fridge to cook after the first. I make a parchment sling and turn my loaf out onto it from the banneton. Then slice a cross in the top. Remove the dutch oven from the oven. Working very quickly, place the loaf (seam side down) into the dutch oven. Replace the lid, and put the whole thing in the oven. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Remove the lid then bake until golden brown, about 15-20 minutes. Remove the bread and allow it to cool on a wire rack while you repeat with the refrigerated loaf. Allow loaves to cool totally before cutting. I find it much easier to turn the loaf on it’s side and cut, rather than attack from the top.
The end result is a loaf w/ a crunchy crust that tastes slightly of cheese, an open crumb w/ little pools of cheddar remaining, and a nice smokey bacon flavor. We ate it off a cutting board piled w/ fruit and deviled eggs.
Mea culpa: I forgot to take a pic of the whole thing, but it was very pretty. This is a cross section on my plate. It was very rich, so I should have cut much thinner slices. Notice that we did have our New Years black eyed peas.
Day 3 (or day 2 after duxelles has fully cooled): Assemble the roll.
1 roll cut pork loin, about 3 pounds
½ pound pork sausage
2 large tart apples, peeled, cored, and cubed then tossed w/ lemon
½ cup panko bread crumbs 1 tbs rendered bacon fat
Prosciutto- I used about 10 thin slices. Have extra for patching up
1 egg beaten, w/ tsp water
Brown the sausage and break up into small pieces. When it is almost cooked, toss in apples and cook to just soften. If there is a large amount of liquid, drain it off. Add panko and taste for seasoning. This will depend on the flavor from the sausage. The panko is just to soak up juice from the apple as it cooks. Set aside to fully cool.
While the stuffing cools, roll cut the pork loin if this wasn’t done by your meat market. Pound to about ½ inch thick, being careful not to leave any holes. Season w/ salt and pepper and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
When stuffing is completely cool, layer it on one side of the pork loin and press down gently. Then roll from the short end to make a relatively tight spiral. Truss tightly with kitchen twine. Brown in hot bacon fat on all sides. Then place the entire roast in the fridge for about an hour until cool. Remove twine.
Lay out overlapping plastic wrap large enough to accommodate the circumference of your roast. Create a thin, overlapping sheet of prosciutto. It should be large enough to completely cover the roast when rolled up. The prosciutto is used in part to stop juice from the roast from wetting the pastry so it should have no holes or gaps. Put a thin layer of duxelles on the prosciutto leaving a ¼ inch strip at the edges clear. Place the cooled roast (with twine removed) in the middle of the duxxelles covered prosciutto. Use the plastic wrap to bring the edges of the prosciutto up and fold in the ends until the roast is completed sealed in it. Look for gaps in the ham and if there are any, spackle them over with additional prosciutto. Try to keep the entire roll tight. Use the plastic wrap to make a tight, neat log and refrigerate this overnight. The roast should be completely cold before enrobing in pastry.
Day 4: Roll rough puff pastry into a ¼ inch thick rectangle big enough to roll around your roast. Remove roast from plastic wrap and then bring the pastry up around the roast as you did with the prosciutto. Seal all edges with fingertips and place the pastry covered log on a baking sheet lined w/ parchment paper. (Seam side down). Score or decorate w/ excess pastry as desired. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Remove the pastry covered roast from the fridge. Insert a digital probe thermometer into the very center of the roll. Place in a 400F oven, then immediately reduce the temperature to 375. Cook until the center of the roast reaches 145F. Remove from the baking sheet asap so that the pastry isn’t sitting in any cooking juices. Allow to rest for 10 minutes, then slice into thick cross sections to serve.
For those days when <waves hand> all of this is just too much to bear, but you’d still rather not ingest cream-o-chemical soup.
For the sauce:
1 tbs bacon fat
1 large sweet onion, diced
1 large green bell pepper, diced
4-6 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp celery seeds
2 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
2 cans low sodium chicken stock
1 15oz can stewed tomatoes w/ chiles
1/2 cup sour cream
salt and pepper to taste. (Maybe some ground cumin too. MOAR cumin!)
For the casserole:
1 sauce recipe as above
1 lb shredded chicken
1 lb sliced crimini mushrooms, sautéd in bacon fat
3.8 oz can of ripe olives, sliced
1 cup jack cheese, shredded
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
20 corn tortillas, sliced in half
I generally sauté the mushrooms in bacon fat in a straight sided skillet and set them aside. Then in that pan, add some more bacon fat (Sorry… we’re not here for health today we’re here for the calming of existential dread) and soften your onions and bell pepper in that. Add the crushed garlic and stir through till soft. Then add all of the seasonings except the salt and pepper. Fry them until the kitchen smells like you might survive after all. Add the butter to melt, then add the flour and mix until it all forms a paste. Let that brown a little. Add the chicken stock and (well strained) tomatoes. Simmer until it thickens then turn off the heat and add the sour cream. Taste for salt and pepper. Decide it’s not quite right and add some ground cumin. Then maybe a little more cumin. This is the sauce! You did this to avoid cream of chemical shit storm in a can and it’s worth it.
Dump a little sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish (Mine was glass and 13×9). Then cover the sauce w/ tortilla halves. Layer on more sauce, some chicken, olives, mushrooms. Then more tortillas, then sauce, then chicken/olives/mushrooms, finish this layer with the jack cheese. MORE tortillas but instead of sauce go straight to chicken/olives/mushrooms. Then the rest of the sauce spread evenly over the top. Try to have a little more than 1/3 of the sauce left for this step. Sharp cheddar cheese on the now very saucy top. Cover with foil.
I generally make casseroles either the day before or at lunch time and refrigerate, then bang them in a 400 F oven covered for 45 minutes and uncovered until bubbly. About 15 minutes. This is a good time to go take a statin and some blood pressure meds. Check that your jeans are sufficiently stretchy.
Let it stand on the counter for a while so that it sets and you avoid pizza mouth blisters. Eat it. Keep eating until you either burst or stop feeling all of the feelings you don’t want to be feeling.
I don’t normally talk in such definitive terms but: We’ve all been making Buckeye Balls incorrectly for the entirety of man kind. It’s true. The correct recipe follows.
1 (6.5oz) container of PB2 with chocolate
1/2 of the same container filled w/ powdered sugar
2 tbs virgin coconut oil
6 tbs dark spiced rum
3 tbs coconut coffee creamer
chocolate bark, melted
In the bowl of an electric mixer using the paddle attachment, lightly mix PB2 and powdered sugar. Mix in the coconut oil and blend for about a minute until it’s even distributed through the bowl. Add in the rum, 1 tbs at a time, until the batter has a sufficient rum taste but doesn’t knock you over. Then add the coconut creamer until the mixture just comes together. You might not use all of the creamer. It should look like this:
Roll the dough into balls worth one or two bites. Refrigerate them for half an hour. Melt chocolate bark by the directions provided (Or make your own using your favorite chocolate and a scoop or two of shortening. I was lazy today.) Cool until you can just touch the chocolate enough to work with. Swirl each dough ball into the chocolate bark, and then set on a lined cookie sheet.
Refrigerate until set, then serve. Then thank me. Often. I’m freezing them and sending them to Costa Rica, because I want to be that far away from their magnetic wonderfulness.
For whatever reason, last night I was struck with a poweful urge to make cinnamon rolls. I had no yeast, but managed to find some at the neighbor’s house. I had no cinnamon either so I used a random assortment of spices in our rental house. I also didn’t have any pecans, only an enormous Costco tub of mixed nuts, so I chopped some up and used them. The resulting batch is enormous so I split it into two pie pans and an additional small pan. 1 pan was for us this morning, the others are being ferried to other homes for cooking and eating.
I think I haven’t been struck by an urge to make cinnamon rolls since well before I met Andy, which is like 6.5 years back. So I guess these are 7 year sweet rolls.
Dough
2 cup coconut milk
1 cup maple syrup (grade B is what I have)
2/3 stick of butter
.25 cup half and half
2 pkg yeast
5 cups flour
1 tbs Salt
Place 1 tbs brown sugar in a well oiled 9 inch pie or cake plate.
Melt butter in the coconut milk, then add syrup and cream. Allow the mixture to cool until just warm enough that you can put a finger in and not get burned. Add yeast and let sit until the mixture bubbles.
In a large bowl, mix four cups of flour and about a tablespoon of salt. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour in the milk mixture. Mix with a spoon until combined adding another cup of flour as necessary to make a sticky dough. Let the dough rise until doubled in volume, about an hour.
Filling:
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbs cinnamon
1 cup mixed nuts, chopped
1 stick of butter
Mix all ingredients together with a fork.
Spread risen dough on a large, floured work surface. Roll the dough out into a rectangle to about 1/3 inch thick. Sprinkle the filling evenly over the dough, then roll the dough up like a jelly roll. Pinch the seam closed along the long side. Slice in 3/4 inch cross section and place cut side down in prepared pans so that there is some space between the rolls.
Allow to rise over night (8-10 hours) in the refrigerator. In the morning, bake at 350 until golden, about 25 minutes. Turn out onto a plate immediately
Okay. I admit once and for all that I don’t measure anything. Ever. So you’ll have to use your eyeballs when assembling these muffins because they were both the bomb and the diggity. If it looks too wet, add more dry. If it looks too dry, add more wet. We’re grown ups and can handle this, right?
3 horrendously over ripe bananas I’d forgotten on top of the fridge
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce I needed to be rid of
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted (Yes. You read that right.)
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 cup maple syrup (I really just glugged until Andy shouted “HOLY SHIT!”)
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups unbleached flour
1 cup pecans or walnut pieces
Beat the bananas and apple sauce until smooth. Slowly wiz in the melted butter. Add in the rest of the ingredients one at a time except the nuts. Fold those in at the very last minute.
Pour into lined muffin tins, almost filling each cup. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes until just done. Makes about 2 dozen muffins.
Feed them to a baby so hungry, she’s prepared to eat her own foot. Save some for yourself.
For most of this pregnancy I’ve been trying to keep my carb count and glycemic index low. I figure that with a few pounds left over from Moxie and a strong family history of diabetes, the last thing I need is to go sugar crazy. I am; however, plagued with an abundance of ripe bananas since the world’s cutest toddler will only eat them in exactly the right window of ripeness. I came up with this version of a low carb banana nut bread by starting off here. My version is basically doubled, but with more banana, more leavening, and less sweetener and oil. It wasn’t very flavorful until fully cooled and was very slightly grainy. Otherwise, I give it a thumbs up.
6 ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup agave nectar
3/4 cup olive oil
4 eggs
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tbs cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 cup chickpea flour
1 cup chopped pecans
Mash very ripe bananas in a bowl using a wooden spoon. Stir in all remaining ingredients. The batter will be pourable. Distributed it into 2 prepared loaf pans. Bake at 350F for approximately 35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
Roughly figured on fitday.com (assuming 24 servings) I get
Calories: 188
Total carbs: 16g
Total protein: 5g
Total fat: 12 g
In regular banana nut bread
Calories: 216
Total carbs: 30g
Total protein: 3g
Total fat: 10g
I’m always poking bananas in the freezer since I buy huge amounts of them for Moxie. Today I made a double batch of banana nut bread which Moxie is delighted with. A single batch would be:
1 cup mashed ripe (almost rotting) bananas
1/3 cup butter (for the double batch I used 1/3 cup butter and 1/4 cup olive oil)
3/4 cup maple syrup (have used honey or agave before)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbs rum
3 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp soda
2 tsp salt (probably more)
1 tbs cinnamon
2 (plus a bit) cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup chopped pecans
I really just started my mixer and added, straight down the line. Added the extra bit of flour at the end so it was a nice pourable batter after I added the rum (which I just glugged in as an after thought) I made 4 dozen mini muffins and 1 loaf with the double batch. Poured out the batter into prepared pans, then baked the loaf for 35 minutes at 350, and 30 minutes at 300. The mini muffins I did 15 minutes at 350.
Since the addition of Moxie to my life I tend to make every thing in double batches, then freeze half for later. When making deserts this gives me the chance to make multiple varieties of everything. Today i was making brownies for a family function, but wanted some on hand for friends later in the week. Since I’m in a bit of a camp kitchen situation at the moment, I ended up pouring this truly enormous batch of brownie batter into a large baking pan, a small casserole, and two sets of mini muffin tins. They are exceptinally chocolaty, though some mini dark chocolate chips stirred in couldn’t really hurt.
I’m attempting to keep the kidlet off of refined sugars and corn syrup for as long as possible. If you don’t have cane sugar, the regular old white stuff would do the trick.
Frickin' HUGE batch of brownies
6 oz semi sweet chocolate
4 oz bakers choclate
4 sticks butter
3 cups cane sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
8 large eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
2 tbs cinamon
2 tsp kosher salt
3 cups chopped walnuts
Grease 2 9X13 inch baking pans. (Or one 9X13 inch pan, 2 12- cup mini muffin tins, 1 8X8 inch pan) Preheat oven to 350. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. Pour in to large mixing bowl, being careful to scrape in all of the chocolate. Stir in sugars to incorporate. In a sperate bowl, lightly whip eggs. Mix eggs in to chocolate mixture a little at a time, mixing between additions. Combine dry ingredients, then add slowly to the wet ingredients until just combined. Stir in walnuts. Pour batter into prepared pans and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Do not over bake. If using mini muffin tins, remove from the oven after about 10 minutes.
Not The Knowing One 