Favorites: Patty’s Zucchini Bread

Posted on September 2, 2013 by admin

It’s late summer, that time when gardeners discover huge zucchinis and plot how to get rid of them. No, I am not a gardener, I was on the receiving end in this monster zucchini transaction. We were headed off for a camping trip and needed a breakfast bread, and I had a hankering for zucchini bread. So both my problem and my gardener friend’s problem was solved.

My only zucchini bread recipe was in my dessert document as “Sherry Zucchini Cake”. It was cooked in a bundt pan and had an optional thin vanilla frosting. I always thought of this zucchini cake as zucchini bread, since I used to cook it in mini-loaf pans to give away at Christmas time, back in the 1990s. Just to check, I went online and found that most zucchini bread recipes are just like my zucchini cake recipe, but none of them had sherry or lemon in them. They are missing out on all that flavor!

This week, I wanted a more nutritious loaf, so I substituted whole wheat for some of the white flour. I thought brown sugar would make it even better, so I tried that too. I worked out the baking times for loaf pans instead of a bundt pan. So, I think I can call this successful recipe “Patty’s Zucchini Bread”.

Patty’s Zucchini Bread
makes 2 8×4-inch loaves

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup oil
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla (use a good vanilla)
2 tablespoons sherry (dry or sweet)
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 1/2 cups chopped nuts
1 cup raisins

Grease and flour 2 8×4-inch loaf pans and preheat the oven to 325˚.

Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Beat together oil and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and sherry. Stir in flour mixture. Add zucchini and lemon peel, stir to blend. Fold in nuts and raisins.

Turn into the two prepared loaf pans. Bake at 325° 55-60 minutes, or until it tests done with a toothpick. Let stand in pans 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.

250 Cookbooks: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Posted on September 1, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #44: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2007.

Finally, one of my contemporary cookbooks! 2007! I bought this book to learn more about a new way of making yeast breads, called the “no-knead” technique.

No-knead yeast breads are prepared by mixing flour, yeast, and water into a wet dough and letting the mixture stand at least overnight. The dough is then shaped gently into a free-standing loaf and baked on a stone or in a crockery pot in a very hot oven. The result is an artisan-type bread, like you would buy from a good bakery in your town. The crumb is uneven and creamy, the crust is thick and chewy and dark brown. It’s amazing. I experimented with bread baking for forty years but never produced an artisan loaf until I tried this new method.

The method is not only new to me, it’s new to the world of baking, according to this 2006 article in the NY Times: The Secret of Great Bread, let time do the work. I read that article, and Jim Lahey’s recipe that goes along with it, sometime in 2007, but did not try the technique until I saw a recipe in a King Arthur Flour catalog for “The Almost No-Knead Baguette“. I studied that recipe, and re-read the NY Times articles, and then tried the baguette. It turned out great.

I bought the cookbook Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day from King Arthur Flour after my success with the baguette. I tried several recipes from this book, mostly with success. Then I saw a class on no-knead breads offered by the Culinary School of the Rockies – I signed up for it. It was a great class. Today, in 2013, I am totally hooked on this technique. So much so that I wrote about it on my other blog: A Lovely Loaf (2011).

Traditional bread making employs the process of kneading to “develop the gluten”. This means, the gluten molecules move into a side-by-side alignment and then bind to each other to produce the elastic network that gives yeast breads their lift and their texture. No-knead bread making uses time and a wet dough to the same end. Since the no-knead dough is wet, the gluten molecules can move about on their own, but it takes some time (at least a few hours).

Now, I never hand-knead breads anyway, I always use my bread machine for that. So why would I want to try the no-knead method? First, it sounded like a good experiment. Second, once I did it, I found the result quite different from kneaded bread. Usually there are (desired) uneven pockets of air in baked no-knead bread, and the crust is always thick and chewy. No-knead breads just look cool. I still make both kinds of yeast breads; one method is not better than the other – each has its place in my repertoire.

No-knead bread advantages:

if you are used to kneading your bread without a machine, these breads use less of your hands-on time
they bake up like artisan loaves
great for pizza dough and focaccia
can store the dough in the refrigerator for two weeks

Kneaded bread advantages:

you can use a high proportion of whole grain flour in your breads
the crust is soft and easy to cut through to make sandwich slices
the texture is smooth and uniform (sometimes nicer for sandwiches)
you don’t have to start your bread the day (or week) before

The recipes I gleaned from the cooking class call for mixing the ingredients for a loaf of bread the day before baking. In the Artisan Bread book, you can bake the bread the same day, or you can let it sit in the refrigerator for up to a couple weeks. This is an advantage, especially if you have a full schedule of work and family and play. Time in the refrigerator also helps develop the bread’s flavor. The disadvantage is that the dough takes up a chunk of refrigerator space.

I made the “Deli-style Rye Bread” from the Artisan Bread cookbook. Since this is a recently-published book, I’m not going to scan in the recipe (copyright issues). Briefly, this cookbook has a plain design, with some black and white photos in the “how-to” section and a few glossy photos in the center. It is clearly written and friendly. I highly recommend it for the adventurous bread maker.

(In addition, there are recipes for items that go with or use bread: Tuscan White Bean Dip, Bruschetta, Spicy Pork Buns, marmalade, kebabs, and more.)

My version of the recipe below is a little different from the book’s, and the directions are written to explain how I make this bread in my own kitchen.

No-knead Rye Bread
makes 4 1-pound loaves

Mixing and Resting

3 cups water
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons caraway seed (I like lots of caraway; use less if you don’t)
1 cup rye flour
5 1/2 cups bread flour (you can use all-purpose flour)

Mix all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. You can used a stand mixer, or you can do it by hand. Mix only until all the flour is incorporated. It’s really, really sticky. It took some work to get all the dough off these beaters:

Let the dough stand at room temperature a couple hours (covered lightly).

Note: I left the dough in my mixer’s metal cooking bowl and it (1) rose up over the top and (2) stuck to the bowl, making it hard to clean. I suggest moving the mixed dough to a glass, plastic, or enamel bowl that is lightly oiled and large enough to allow the dough to rise to double its bulk.

After two hours, use the dough immediately or better yet, put it in your refrigerator. (The refrigerating step makes the dough easier to handle when you go to bake it, and it adds some flavor as the yeast works with the flour and sours it a bit.) If you decide to refrigerate the dough, transfer it to a plastic container large enough to allow for the dough to grow in volume by at least 50%. Lightly cover the dough in the container.

Here is my dough (in the bright light of the morning), after a couple days in the refrigerator:

Baking

You will need:

a pizza peel
a large baking stone
cornmeal
flour
a cornstarch/water glaze (microwave 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch in 1/2 cup water for 60 seconds)
a baking pan with about a half-inch of water in it

Sprinkle some cornmeal on a pizza peel. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and dust with a little flour (just enough to make it less likely to stick to your hands). Grab about a quarter of the dough: if you weigh it, it should be about one pound. This is a messy process:

This is sticky dough! I had to keep washing my hands to take these photos.

(Put the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator. It keeps two weeks.)

Here’s what the dough looked like before forming the loaf:

Cloak the dough. This means that you take it in two hands, and stretch the outside of the ball of dough down to the bottom, rotating as you work around the dough. (I’ve used this method a lot of times to form rolls; it’s hard to explain. What you want is a smooth surface on top, with the ends are tucked down on the bottom side of the formed ball of dough. It takes about 30 seconds.)

Place the dough on the corn meal sprinkled pizza peel. I had a lot of flies in my kitchen, so I put some plastic wrap on top (with a tiny amount of cornmeal sprinkled on the loaf to prevent it from sticking).

Here is my formed loaf, before rising:

Let stand 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hour (I let mine rise 1 1/4 hours). Dough that has not been refrigerated will take the lesser amount of time. You won’t see the dough rise a whole lot, especially if it has been refrigerated. (In fact, mine flattened out.) Here is my “risen” dough:

At least twenty minutes before you bake the bread, put a baking stone in the oven and preheat to 450˚. Put in on the top oven rack.

Just before you put the dough in the oven, put the pan with water in it on the rack under the heated baking stone. (This helps develop a good crust.)

Brush the dough with the cornstarch/water glaze and slash the top with deep cuts using a serrated knife. I sprinkled it with more caraway seeds. Slide the loaf off the pizza peel onto the heated stone in the oven.

Bake 30 minutes. Voila! You are done.This bread makes great corned beef sandwiches. I used my own dill pickles – yummy. I sliced the bread after only an hour’s cooling, and found it easiest to slice the chewy crust with an electric knife. Since there is rye flour in the dough (whole grain flours break up air bubbles), the texture is more uniform than on my no-knead white-flour only loaves.

I had fun with this bread project. It was a hot day, so I wanted to bake it in the morning and have it ready for lunch. While it rose on my counter and the oven heated, I was off on a bike ride, getting exercise as advised by Jane Brody in her NY Times column (Jane Brody’s nutrition book was my preceding cooking blog entry). Bread baking doesn’t have to mean that you spend your whole day in the kitchen.

250 Cookbooks: Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book

Posted on August 22, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #43: Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book. Jane Brody, W. W. Norton & Company, NY, NY, 1981.

This isn’t really a “cookbook”, but I entered it into my database, and it does have a few recipes, so I’m calling it part of the “250”. You can see both wear and food spots on this cookbook. It’s a great reference for an important component of cooking: Nutrition. My goal for years has been to pack as much nutrition as I can stand into the calories I consume. This book helps me with that goal. I used to refer to it all the time, although I’ve sort of forgotten about it lately.

Granted, this cookbook was published in 1981, and now it’s 2013. But I believe that this is still a good and complete reference for basic nutrition facts. If you want to know about vitamins, protein requirements, food additives, salt, or the different types of fats, Jane Brody’s book will answer your questions – and countless more. If you want to build a healthy basic diet for yourself, the facts are in this book. A large part of the book is devoted to finding a balanced, low-calorie diet for your family. However, some of the newer topics, like celiac disease, are not covered.

Jane Brody became the author of the NY Times Personal Health column in 1976. Her undergraduate degree is in biochemistry (a chemist like me!), and she backs up her articles with professional journal references. As a science writer, she interprets food and health science for the layperson. When I picked up my copy of Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book to begin this blog entry, I had no idea whether or not she was still alive, much less writing. Happily, I found that she still writes the NY Times Personal Health column, and better yet, all the articles are online. In fact, as of today, 3686 of those articles are readily available! Once again, I am very happy that I am doing this blog. I have re-connected to one of my nutrition gurus. Plus she is an exercise nut and now includes many articles applicable to aging (she is about 10 years older than I am).

Here’s the link to Jane Brody’s articles:

Jane Brody’s articles in the NY Times, searchable

As an aside, I’d like to mention another resource for nutrition fact and theories, a course from the Great Courses called Nutrition Made Clear. I listened to this 36-lecture course while commuting to work a few years ago, and still refer to the pdf course document for specifics on current recommendations for vitamins and minerals.

I decided to try “Potato Kugel” from the “Is it Healthy to be a Vegetarian” section of this book. I have a longing for kugels in general. Way back in college, a friend brought a traditional Jewish kugel to a party. It had noodles and was sweet: I had never had anything like it before and loved it. To this day, I have never made a sweet kugel for myself, but just the mention of “kugel” gets pings of longing zooming around my brain.

This kugel is based on grated potatoes, carrots, and eggs and is baked like a casserole in the oven. Kind of sounds like an easy way to make a potato-pancake-like meal. I am always looking for potato side dishes, as my dining partner (unlike Jane’s husband) does not appreciate grain side dishes (bulghur, quinoa, farrow, etc.). I’ll cut the recipe in half but otherwise I’ll make it as written. Potato Kugel
serves 3-4 as a side dish

3 medium potatoes
1 large carrot
1/2 onion
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup bread crumbs (preferably whole wheat)
3/8 cup dry milk powder
1/2 cup grated cheese for the top (optional)

Grate the potatoes, carrots, and onion into a large bowl. Drain off the accumulated liquid. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Spread in a non-stick sprayed (or oiled) pan*. Bake at 350˚ for 45 minutes, or until the edges are brown and the egg set. You can put the optional grated cheese on top during the last 5 minutes of baking.

*I used a small LeCreuset pan, about 4 1/2 x 7-inches, it holds 2 1/2 cups.

Comments

I used a food processor for the garlic, potatoes, carrots, and onion. First, I started the chopper blade running, and dropped in the clove of garlic. Then I changed to the larger-sized grater and ran through the potatoes, carrots, and onion.

There was very little liquid to pour off. I briefly put the grated mass in a colander and pressed on it, but I don’t think this step is necessary.

It just fit into my LeCreuset pan. To me, it looked like it would serve two people, not 3-4. Here it is before baking:

But after 40 minutes in the oven, it had puffed up nicely:

I put some cheese on top and put it back in the oven for 5 minutes, but it looks prettier in the above photo.

This is a dense potato dish, it is much more filling that I thought it would be. I dished up one-third of it to each plate, and it was a lot to eat (as a side dish). It had a good texture and a strong onion taste, both of which I liked. In fact, I could eat this a lot. My dining partner said it was fine – but wasn’t interested in having it a lot. He likes my scalloped potatoes better.

So this dish gets a half-thumbs up.

250 Cookbooks: Cookies, Bars, Brownies

Posted on August 16, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #42: Cookies, Bars, Brownies (Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks). The Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, MN, 1994.

I know why I stopped baking cookies: They just taste too good! I made the Hearty Apple Cookies from this cookbook and ate one and wanted MORE! Now, why can’t plain brown rice do that for me? Or carrots? Or tofu? Life’s not fair.

I have already discussed Pillsbury cookbooks/booklets in this blog, a few of the Bake-off Cookbooks and one of my favorites, Simply From Scratch. I have over 20 Pillsbury booklets. This particular one I am not going to keep. I had marked only one recipe in it, and this week as I paged through the booklet, only one other recipe stood out as one that I wanted to try: “Hearty Apple Cookies”. I like these because they include ingredients that have some nutritive value: whole wheat flour, raisins, nuts, apples, and oatmeal.

I want to make some changes in this recipe. First, about the “whole wheat flour” called for in the recipe. I keep three types of whole wheat flour in my pantry:

whole wheat flour (traditional, sold my many manufacturers)
white whole wheat flour (King Arthur Flour; sometimes in supermarkets)
whole wheat pastry flour (in supermarkets, sometimes in the bulk section)

I decided to use whole wheat pastry flour in these cookies. Next, I have some great golden raisins or sultans that I bought for the Butterscotch Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and I want to use these instead of dark raisins. Instead of apple juice, I’ll use boiled cider (from King Arthur Flour). This packs a lot more apple punch than mere apple juice. It’s great stuff:

For the oatmeal, I’ll use rolled oats from Bob’s Red Mill. These are particularly good oats, big and fluffy:

I assembled my ingredients:

And prepared the cookies as per the above scanned-in recipe. I thought that they flattened out too much as they baked. They definitely looked a lot flatter and more spread out than the photo that is next to the scanned recipe. The reason for this is either (1) type of flour (2) amount of flour or (3) choice of butter over margarine. I tried adding some all-purpose flour to the remaining batter, and it worked. That batch baked up like the cookies in the photo. But both flat and tall cookies taste equally good!

In the recipe below, I include the additional flour so that the cookies look a little better when cooked. I photographed both kinds to let you know what I’m talking about.

Hearty Apple Cookies
makes 4 dozen cookies

1 1/3 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup finely chopped, peeled apple
1/4 cup apple juice or boiled cider
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins (regular or golden)
1 cup chopped nuts
Topping: 1/2 cup rolled oats, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 cup butter, melted

Beat the brown sugar with the butter until light and fluffy; add egg and blend well. Beat in apple and apple juice.

Combine flours, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt, then add to the batter and mix until the flour is incorporated. Stir in raisins and nuts.

Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Drop cookie dough by heaping teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets (or greased cookie sheets). Top each with some of the topping and press gently into the cookie.

Bake at 375˚ for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. Cool a minute on the pan before removing to wire racks.

The original recipe made excess topping so I cut down the amounts in my version of the recipe (above). These cookies are moist and get softer on storage. Next time I bake these I will decrease the brown sugar to 1 cup as suggested in the cookbook for bakers at high altitude (over 3500 feet).

It was a little hard to get the topping to stick to the dough.

Here are the cookies from the first batch, before I added more flour to the recipe. They are pretty spread out and kind of floppy when you pick them up.

Here’s a comparison of cookies from the first batch and cookies baked after I added more flour to the batter. The more-flour cookies baked up taller and smaller and they held their shape when you picked them up. They also stored better: I was able to stack them up in a bowl and they didn’t stick together. Both batches tasted the same. Very apple-y and sweet and chewy and yummy!

250 Cookbooks: Complete Guide to Home Canning, Preserving and Freezing

Posted on August 8, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #41: Complete Guide to Home Canning, Preserving and Freezing. United States Department of Agriculture, Dover Publications, Inc., NY, 1973.

Publisher’s note: “This book is made up of seven pamphlets originally published as a consumer service of the USDA. The valuable practical information which they contain is gathered together here for the first time in book form to provide a permanent work of reference which can be distributed among the general public.”

This is indeed a great permanent reference, even though it was published in 1973. (It only cost $2.50!) Safe canning facts do not change with the years. I’ve used this book a lot, you can see the food marks on the cover. The book kind of plops open at “Making Pickles and Relishes at Home”, and that’s what I am going to do – make dill pickles!

I used to put up tomatoes, hot salsa, jam, and pickles each year. I’d go to local vegetable stands and buy vegetables and fruits by the bushel. Why? So that I’d know the ingredients in my food, and I enjoyed doing it. Believe it or not, in the late 1970s it was hard to find good hot salsa. I used to send jars of canned goods off to family members at Christmas.

But it’s been awhile. Nowadays I only put up jam, and usually I only make small batches. (I recently had lots of fun making apple butter for this blog, though.) I got excited when I pulled this book from the shelf. It’s August, and Colorado’s farmers’ markets have so much fresh produce to offer. I now have an excuse to go to the Boulder Farmers’ Market – an adventure! You never know what you are going to find, and just watching the people is entertaining.

I need to back step just a bit before I get started on my adventure and the recipe for dill pickles. I want to overview the contents of this book.

The Complete Guide to Canning, Preserving, and Freezing has seven sections:

Home canning of fruits and vegetables (I used this section for tomatoes)
Home canning of meat and poultry (never used)
Making pickles and relishes at home (used a lot)
How to make jellies, jams, and preserves at home (a good reference)
Home freezing of fruits and vegetables (rarely used)
Home freezing of poultry (never used for reference)
Freezing meat and fish in the home (never used for reference)

The freezing sections are the least useful to me. I mean, if I want to freeze a chicken, I buy it from a store and toss the package in the freezer. There are some strange instructions in the poultry freezing section. For instance, they describe how to make chicken sandwiches and freeze them in heavy waxed paper. I’d never do that.

I’ll stick to the good parts of this book. Such as, the recipe for dill pickles. I scanned in the recipe (below), but the section also includes several pages of straightforward information on handling the jars and the cucumbers, a table for adjustment to high altitude, and how to store the pickles. I add necessary details in my own version of the recipe.

The original recipe calls for some sugar; I left it out on purpose. I like sour dills.

Dill Pickles
this recipe is for a small batch of about 3 three pounds of small cucumbers; yields 3 1-quart jars

3 pounds cucumbers, 3-5 inches in length
5% brine (3/4 cup salt per gallon of water; I made one gallon)
2 cups white vinegar
1/4 cup salt
3 cups water
2 tablespoons whole mixed pickling spice
whole mustard seed: 2 teaspoons per quart jar
dill: 3 heads fresh dill per jar, or 1 tablespoon dill seed per jar

Wash the cucumbers thoroughly, scrubbing with a vegetable brush. Put them in a plastic bucket (or a glass container) with enough brine to cover and let them stand overnight. I covered the bucket lightly with a towel.

Get your jars ready. Bring a very large pot of water to a boil: it needs to be taller than your quart-sized canning jars. Wash a few quart canning jars (I needed 3 but washed 5), then put them in the boiling water for 5-10 minutes to sterilize them. Carefully remove the jars from the boiling water and drain them. I was lucky to find my old jar grabber in the basement, it’s in one of the photos below. Keep the water boiling because you need it again.

While the jars sterilize, tie up the pickling spices in a little square of cheesecloth. Combine the vinegar, salt, and water in a pot and drop in the tied-up pickling spices. Bring to a good rolling boil. I let it boil awhile to encourage the spices to release some color and flavor into the mix.

Drain the brine off the cucumbers. Put some dill in each of your sterilized jars, then pack in several cucumbers, add more dill and some mustard seed, then pack until full with cucumbers.

Take the pickling spices out of the boiling vinegar-salt-water mixture, then pour it into the jars to cover the cucumbers.

Close the jars. I use two-piece metal jar caps. One piece is a flat metal lid with rubber-sealer around the bottom rim. The other piece is a metal screw band. Place the flat piece on the jar, then screw the metal band down tight by hand to hold the sealing compound against the glass. This lid has enough “give” to let air escape during processing. They do not need to be tightened further after processing.

Immerse the filled and covered jars of cucumbers in the very large pot of boiling water. My pot was very full, so I had to remove some water as I added the last two jars.

Bring the water back to boiling as quickly as possible. Start to count the processing time when the water returns to boiling, and continue to boil gently and steadily for 20 minutes (sea level) or 25 minutes (5000 ft).

Remove the jars and set them upright to cool.

Here’s my cucumbers in the brine for their overnight soak:

Drained cucumbers and the rest of the ingredients:Boiling the pickling mixture:

Pickles-to-be packed in the jars with the dill and mustard seed:

In the photo below, I have poured in the pickling mixture and firmly capped the jars.Below, they are in the pot of boiling water:

Here, after the hot-bath treatment, you can see that the cucumbers look like pickles now, less bright green and more yellow-olive-green.I can’t wait to try these. But I have too! They need time for the seasonings to soak into the cucumbers and make them true pickles. I processed these on a Sunday and next Thursday I’ll put a jar in the refrigerator and on Friday I’ll try them.

It’s Friday, and here are the pickles. Yes, these are great! I’ll make them again.

250 Cookbooks: George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine Cookbook

Posted on August 1, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #40: George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine Cookbook. George Foreman and Connie Merydith, Pascoe Publishing, Rocklin, CA, 2000. (Salton, Inc.)

This is another cookbook I thought I’d toss. But it has some good ideas in it. There are about 175 recipes, mostly for seasoning different meats for the grill. A few of those are enticing enough to try. Plus it’s a low-fat way to cook, and nutrients are listed with each recipe. So I’ll keep this cookbook.

My first big question was: “Did I throw away the George Foreman grill?” I haven’t used it in years, and had put it aside to give away. I clomped down the stairs to the basement to search. And, there it was, under a shelf. Yay. And I even found the drip trays that came with it. So I’m good to go for trying a recipe from this book.

Why was I ready to get rid of this appliance? Because it is a pain in the neck to clean. The grill surfaces are not detachable, so I have to prop the whole grill up in the sink and rinse with soapy water. It is non-stick, and that helps, but still, it’s awkward to clean. The book says this about cleaning: “Your plastic grilling spatula and a wet sponge will safely remove any food particles.” I wish it were that easy. Also, I use my outdoor gas grill a lot for grilling, even in the winter. Clean-up is so much easier.

Why will I keep this appliance? Well, I have the room for it in the basement. And I’d like to try it for panini-type sandwiches. And the recipe I tried (below) took just a couple minutes to cook – such a quick and easy dinner. I’m ready to play with this grill a little, maybe I’ll come up with an easier way to clean it. And I’ll try a few more recipes from the cookbook, even if I end up using my gas grill to cook them.

I searched today (in 2013) and found that George Foreman grills are still publicized and sold. One model of the new ones has removable grill plates that can be put in the dishwasher. See? I wasn’t the only one who complained about clean-up issues.

For this blog, I decide to make “Poor Boy Steak Sandwiches”. The recipe calls for chuck steak, and I’d just seen it on sale in an ad from a local store. I like the green chiles and tomatoes added to the meat in the second half of the cooking; this will make the sandwich filling tasty and moist.

I was able to find some good, whole wheat deli rolls in the Whole Foods bakery section. These made the sandwiches great. You can see them in the photo below. They are probably “club” rolls; they are about 3 inches wide are thick enough to hold up to a big juicy filling.

I cooked one 14-ounce steak for the two of us. There was some left over, and on a hungrier day, my dining partner might have gone back for seconds. But on this night, the doggies loved their dinner a little more than usual.

Poor Boy Steak Sandwiches
serves 2-3; this recipe is intended for a George Foreman type grill

1 large chuck steak, maybe 14 ounces
salt and pepper
1 4-ounce can diced green chiles
1 small tomato, diced
mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup
2-3 large sandwich buns, toasted
slices of red onion

Preheat a Foreman grill for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, slice the steak in thin strips across the grain and remove any fat.

Place the steak strips in the grill and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put a drip tray at the bottom of the grill to catch the drippings. Grill for 2-3 minutes. Dump the green chiles and tomatoes on top of the meat and grill another 2 minutes.

Toast the buns and spread them with mustard and mayonnaise to your own tastes. Pile the meat mixture into the bun and top with sliced onions. Serve with ketchup.

Here is the cooked meat mixture:

And here is a filled sandwich, served with some cooked baby potatoes:

They were good. These would be even better with a New York or ribeye steak, but then the sandwich would no longer be “poor” as those are usually expensive cuts of meat. Sliced thinly, the chuck steak worked fine. It has lots of flavor and maybe fewer calories, and is definitely cheaper.

This is an amazingly fast dinner or lunch to put together. If you slice the steak while the grill heats, the sandwiches will be on the table in less than 10 minutes.

250 Cookbooks: 365 Great Cookies You Can Bake

Posted on July 25, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #39: 365 Great Cookies You Can Bake. Lois Hill, Weathervane Books, NY, 1990.

I must have bought this cookbook on a whim, because the last thing I need is more cookie recipes! It is, though, a good selection of cookies, and it would be fun to make a different kind of cookie every day for a year.

I don’t think this cookbook is in print any more. My edition is 1990, and by searching online, I find there was also a 1997 version. Both are available “new” from Amazon resellers.

“Nothing tastes quite as good as a homemade cookie fresh from the oven.” Thus begins the introduction, and I totally agree. This cookbook has recipes for “bars, brownies, drop cookies, macaroons, meringues, hand-rolled cookies, cookie cutter and pressed cookies, special one-of-a-kind cookies, and sugar-free cookies.” It really is a good selection, a one-stop book to search when I am looking for a particular type of cookie to bake. The layout and recipes are pleasing and straightforward.

I decided to try “Butterscotch Oatmeal Raisin Cookies”. The oatmeal, nuts, and raisins will lend a hint of fiber and nutrition to this treat.

I chose these for the oatmeal-raisins-nuts, and it wasn’t until I was mixing them up that I realized there is no added sugar in this recipe. I had to double-check to make sure. You add a beaten egg to the dry ingredients, a very unusual cookie-practice. Also, you don’t use a mixer. Hmm, are these really going to work?

I went ahead and followed the directions. My butter-butterscotch chip mixture separated into two layers, no matter how much I stirred it. After mixing it with the egg-dry ingredients and the nuts and raisins, the batter looked like this:

It’s wet and gooey. I went ahead and used the teaspoon to form cookies:

And baked them 10 minutes:

They were just nicely browned along the edges. I let them cool a couple minutes before removing from the pan, as suggested. And wow! These are great cookies! Warm from the oven, they are chewy and not too sweet. Perfect. Almost like a really good and fresh energy bar.

Butterscotch Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
-be sure to get golden raisins because they really make these cookies pretty
-made exactly 36 cookies

1 cup quick oatmeal
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt (leave out if you use salted butter)
7 1/2 ounces butterscotch chips (they are now sold in 12 ounce packages, sorry, you will have some left over)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 egg, beaten
1 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Combine the oatmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Combine the butterscotch chips and the butter in a pan and melt on the stove top, stirring constantly. Don’t worry if it separates into two layers, but be sure to heat long enough so the melted chips are smooth. Stir in the almond extract.

Stir the beaten egg into the dry ingredients, then add the melted butter-butterscotch mixture, the raisins, and the walnuts. Mix together well.

Drop by a teaspoon onto baking sheets. I used a parchment-lined half sheet pan; the other option is a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 350˚, until the cookies are brown around the edges. Cool on the pan for 2-3 minutes before transferring the cookies to a wire rack. (At first, they are too soft to transfer without breaking the cookies.)

Above are the ingredients. I was going to add the leftover butterscotch chips to the batter just before cooking, but decided not to.

Here are the cookies! They were wonderful.

250 Cookbooks: Mexican Cook Book

Posted on July 17, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #38: Mexican Cook Book. By the Editors of Sunset Books and Sunset Magazine, Lane Books, Menlo Park, California, 1972.

This was one of my mother’s cookbooks. The first thing I notice when I pull this book from the shelf is a pile of loose recipe clippings tucked in the front cover:

All of the clippings are for Mexican-style dishes, and all are dated in the early 1970s. Mother’s writing is on some of them. Apparently she used this book as her “Mexican cooking file”. I sigh. Burdens of memory. I should toss the lot but I know I’ll go through them one by one, thinking of her planning dinners.

At first glance I thought I’d just recycle this cookbook. It isn’t old enough or personally marked up enough to warrant historical value. But actually, I find that it is a good reference for basic, from-scratch Mexican cooking. This cookbook is more usable than my other 250 Cookbooks entry, Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking, at least in my opinion.

This Sunset Mexican Cookbook book gives straightforward directions for preparing all types of Mexican food. In the tortilla chapter, for instance, advice on buying prepared tortillas is given along with recipes for homemade tortillas. Recipes are given for basic sauces and fillings, tortilla dishes, enchiladas, tamales, appetizers, soups, salads, vegetables, rice, and desserts. The recipes don’t call for odd ingredients. My only complaint is that many of the recipes call for frying foods in oil, thus adding calories.

Like Elena’s, this cookbook discusses the history of Mexican-style cooking. I learned that the Aztecs were highly advanced in horticulture and grew tomatoes, avocados, sweet and white potatoes, peanuts, squash, pineapple, papayas, vanilla, and varieties of beans not known in Europe. And chocolate too. The Spaniard ships that returned to Europe were laden with seeds and cuttings, which flourished in various climates. And the Spaniards introduced many new foods to Mexico, such as beef and chickens, wheat, rice, nuts and spices, peaches and apricots.

Interesting excerpt from this book:

Now, what to cook? OMG, here is a recipe for Red Chile Sauce! To be used on enchiladas! Why does this interest me? For years, I’ve bought canned enchilada sauce. The price keeps going up, so that a small can now costs over 2 dollars. What the heck? Couldn’t I make my own? But I’ve tried, starting with tomato sauce and adding spices. Never could get that same “enchilada sauce” taste. My tries just tasted like tomato sauce, reminiscent of spaghetti sauce. So I had spaghetti-sauced rolled tortillas. Not very good.

So I started buying different brands of enchilada sauce and carefully noting the ingredients on each type. Most of them contain “dried red chiles” as the main ingredient (after water, that is). A couple of years ago I pulled a few enchilada sauce recipes from the Web and planned to try them. But I never did. So now is the time!

The Red Chile Sauce in this cookbook starts with dried red chiles. First they are soaked, then blended and cooked with a few spices and a small amount of tomato paste. I had nabbed an online recipe that is similar, so I sort of combined the two into a plan of attack.

I’ll use the sauce to make Folded Pork Enchiladas. Now, I have a method for making enchiladas that I like, and I’ll share that too. But I’ll do the Folded Pork Enchiladas like the recipe in this book, just to compare and contrast methods.

The Red Chile Sauce isn’t going to be a recipe for someone who doesn’t like fooling around in the kitchen. This is a recipe for a chemist at heart. For me, this is going to be fun. And messy. And potentially a failure.

The pork filling is cooked pork (I have some pulled pork in the freezer), cooked onions, green chiles, and olives, mixed with a little red chile sauce. Note that the tortillas are fried and then dipped in hot sauce. I usually don’t fry tortillas for enchiladas, but will for this recipe.

Now, here is the Red Chile Sauce recipe:

So what this involves is taking a whole bag of dried chiles, blending and cooking them until they make a sauce. I’ve always wondered why they sold bags of dried chiles in the Mexican foods aisles!

I don’t advise toasting the chiles, as I did and my sauce was slightly bitter. It wasn’t very hard to remove the stems and seeds, and there really wasn’t enough pith to worry about. I just chopped off the stems and shook out the seeds.I consulted another recipe, and decided to cook the chiles first, then process them in the food processor. It also suggested adding flour. I decided to use beef broth in the cooking liquid, as well as a few tomatoes and more spices.

Here is what the cooked mass of chiles looked like:

I put the cooked chiles in the food processor in batches. Then, I pushed the processed mass through a colander.

I put the processed-strained chiles back into a pot on the stove, tasted it, and added more spices and ingredients to get the taste more like the canned store-bought enchilada sauce that I like.

And here it is!

Now to assemble the enchiladas. Here is the pork filling:

The filled enchiladas:

The above covered with cheese:

Cooked enchiladas:

These were very good. I probably won’t make them this way again, though, mainly because of the frying step (calories). I usually steam the tortillas until pliable, fill with meat/cheese/olives/cooked onions, place not-touching in a glass baking dish, cover withe sauce, and then cover lightly with foil and bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes.

I will make the red chile sauce again, though. Plus I have lots frozen to use in the coming weeks. This was a successful project!

Red Chile Sauce (note: updated recipe, 2019)
use for enchiladas

12 ounces dried mild red chile pods (I found a 14 ounce bag and used most of it)
1 tablespoon cumin seed
3 tomatoes, cored and peeled (or use canned)
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 teaspoons Mexican oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups stock, beef or chicken
6 cups water

Cut the stems off the dried chiles and remove the seeds. In a large pot, toast the cumin seed until you smell the aroma, then add the chiles and the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil and then simmer 30-60 minutes. Let cool a little.

Place the chiles and the liquid in your food processor in batches – it probably won’t all fit in at once. Process until very smooth, a couple minutes at least.

Press the processed chile mixture through a colander. This removes any big pieces of chile skins.

Put the sauce in a pan. Taste and adjust seasonings. I added:

5 ounces tomato juice
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried cumin
1-2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar

Simmer about 15 minutes to blend the flavors.

To make enchiladas, I used a couple cups of the above sauce and added just about a half cup of canned tomato sauce. The flavor was a tiny bit bitter (I think because I toasted the peppers) and I thought the tomato sauce mellowed it to perfection.

250 Cookbooks: Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys and Chowchows

Posted on July 12, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #37: Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys and Chowchows. Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, Hearst Books, 1993.

This is a great cookbook, one of my newish favorites. I was surprised that the publication date was 1993, since this is a very contemporary book. I bought it sometime in the 2000s for myself, probably at Peppercorn. It’s still for sale, new, on Amazon. Because of copyright issues, I’m just going to take a photo to show you the lovely layout of the book instead of scanning in a recipe.

All the recipes in this book are “little dishes of intense flavor”. I’ve used the salsa section more than any other section of this book. The authors define salsa as a Mexican/Latin American version of a little dish. Salsas are made from different combinations of a variety of ingredients, such as cilantro, oregano, cumin, chile powder, corn, tomatoes, jicamas, pineapples, mangoes, black beans, tomatillos, limes, and hot chile peppers. “The most important thing to remember about salsas is that, like the Latin dance that shares their name, the best ones are wild, loose, and loud.” “Just mix ’em up and enjoy the taste. In this case, everyone can dance.”

This book taught me to add fruit to a salsa. Or corn and avocado and black beans. I used to use only peppers, onions, and tomatoes. The authors remind me to toast cumin seeds before use to brighten their flavor. These tricks have given a new world of flavor to my salsas!

Chutneys are a bit harder to define. They originated in India and can be raw or cooked, chunky or grated, and can contain a variety of fruits, vegetables, and spices. Traditionally, they go with spicy foods (like curries). The chutney recipes in this book usually include a sweetener like molasses or sugar, a fruit and/or vegetable, ginger, garlic, and spices such as star anise, mace, coriander, or curry. I like that they cover spices, such as star anise, with a two-page layout of a description, tips, and photos. I’ve made a couple of the chutneys, but since my dining partner does not like curry, I don’t make them very often.

Blatjangs, atjars, and sambals are chutney-type dishes from Africa, East Indies, and Southeast Asia. Chowchows are pickled relishes – mixtures of vinegar, spices, and vegetables. The book includes recipes for chowchows of the American South, a light version of kimchi (Korean), and spicy pickled grapes. I probably won’t try too many of these, but the pictures are pretty and the ingredients always fresh and full of flavor.

The title of the book is misleading, because more than salsas, sambals, chutneys, and chowchows are covered in this book. There are also sections on relishes, catsups and other condiments. The final section is “pantry”, in which some of the more unusual ingredients are discussed (along with great photos).

Creativity is the theme of this book. In this spirit, I created a salsa based loosely on “Papaya Salsa”. I used cantaloupe and mango instead of papaya, green and red bell pepper instead of just red, and added enough red onion so that it “looked right”.

Fruit Salsa

about a cup of chopped fruit – I used half cantaloupe and half mango, but use papaya, peaches, pineapple or any fruit you have around
about a quarter of a red bell pepper, sliced into short, thin slices
about a quarter of a green bell pepper, sliced into short, thin slices
about half of a medium-sized red onion, sliced into long, thin slices
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced (more or less to taste)
1/4 cup pineapple juice (or orange or any other type of sweet juice)
1/4 cup of fresh lime juice (more or less to taste)
1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, very finely chopped (you can include the seeds)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together well. Taste and adjust seasonings and/or amounts of onion and jalapenos. It keeps 3-4 days in the refrigerator.

Salsas are great in the summer. On a hot night, they perk up a taco, wrap, sandwich or grilled meat or fish. I used this Fruit Salsa on pulled pork, folded inside some thick pita breads from the Mediterranean Market in Boulder. Yum!

This photo is an example of the layout of this book.

250 Cookbooks: Light Cooking

Posted on July 7, 2013 by admin

Cookbook #36: Light Cooking – Low Fat, Low Calorie, Low Cholesterol. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL, 1994.

Well, dang. This is a big book that takes up a bit of space on my shelf. I picked it up thinking I could get rid of it, but I paged through it and wrote down about ten recipes that I wanted to try. So, I’ll have to keep it. Oh well.

This is a “brand name” cookbook. Right on the cover is Crisco, Dannon, Jell-o, Perdue, Egg Beaters, Borden, Dole, and Hershey’s, all with the ® next to them. I bought it from a check-out display at Safeway for I think $20. The introduction is only two pages, just a short guide to healthy eating. The recipes have no personal notes from an author. I’ve always felt that the main purpose of this cookbook is to advertise their products, since recipe ingredients often include brand names. But in its 515 pages of recipes there are some very good ideas for cutting calories and fat and controlling portion size.

Most of the recipes in this book are plain, simple, and easy to prepare. Each recipe has calorie, fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Other than the brand name issue, the recipes rarely call for odd ingredients. It’s a very “American” cookbook.

The recipes that I marked now to try include muffins, fruit crisps, beef, pork tenderloin, and chicken recipes. Common menu items that I cook a lot, with just enough twists to make me keep this book. I found a lot of pages marked with slips of paper from the last time I used it, probably over a decade ago. I still like those recipes.

Guess I have re-discovered a useful cookbook!

For this blog, I decided to try Banana Yogurt Muffins. Seems I always have an old banana laying around, and great non-fat Greek yogurt. They call for Special K® cereal, one I used to eat often but it somehow fell off my radar. Time to buy a box and try it again, both in the muffins and as a breakfast cereal.

I plan to make these pretty much like the recipe. I don’t have vanilla yogurt, so I’ll use plain yogurt and add some vanilla. And cinnamon, I think these need a little spice in them.

Banana Yogurt Muffins

1 1/2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg white
3/4 cup milk
1 banana (or more: I used 1 1/2 bananas)
1/3 cup plain yogurt (or use flavored and skip the vanilla)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups Kellogg’s Special K® cereal, crushed to 2 cups (I used a rolling pin)

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Using a mixer, blend the egg white, banana, yogurt, vanilla, and oil. Mix until there are no longer big chunks of banana in the batter. Add the cereal and let stand about a minute until the cereal softens.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients just until combined. Fill 12 muffin cups, either paper-lined or use a non-stick pan.

Bake at 400˚ for 25 minutes.

These turned out pretty good, for a low-calorie muffin. I’d make them again – it’s a good way to use up aging bananas and have a tasty, healthy weekday breakfast treat.