Project Cookie for Christmas 2011

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It is the day after Christmas and we've been happily "sampling" the seven different cookies we baked for the season. When we were baking them the days leading up to the 25th, we were scratching our heads at some moments. I mean, we've baked all of these cookies for Christmases past (with the exception of one), and we wanted to make sure they came out the same way they did previously.

So questions arose like "did we use shortening or butter?", "how long does this dough need to chill?", and "how many times the recipe did we use?"

To help ourselves when future cookie baking beckons, I am writing down here what we did this year with all the nitty-gritty details. Because all in all, I think each cookie turned out well and I would like to repeat our results.

1. Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe:  used the recipe on the back of the morsel package
How Many Times the Recipe:  used 1 recipe
Yield:  made little less than one tin
Shortening or Butter:  used room temp. butter
Was Dough Chilled:  no
How Were Cookies Formed:  dropped by spoonfuls
How They Turned Out:  cookies were somewhat thin (1/2" thick) and were soft and chewy
Side Notes:  none

2. Cherry Surprise Balls

Recipe:  old family recipe -- blogged about it here
How Many Times the Recipe:  2-1/2 times
Yield:   little less than one tin
Shortening or Butter:  used room temp. Crisco butter flavored baking sticks
Was Dough Chilled:  chilled in fridge for 1 hour
How Were Cookies Formed:  formed into balls by hand after dough was chilled
How They Turned Out:  came out perfectly round and with a shortbread-like texture. No flat bottom.
Side Notes:  best indicator when these light cookies are done is when their bottoms turn golden brown. Cookies will remain soft until completely cooled. Did raise oven temp. to 350F.

3. Snowball Cookies

Recipe:  old family recipe -- blogged about it here
How Many Times the Recipe:  1-1/2 times
Yield:  little less than one tin
Shortening or butter:  slightly soft butter
Was Dough Chilled:  no
How Were Cookies Formed:  formed into balls by hand; used flour to prevent stickage
How They Turned Out:  turned out round and with a shortbread-like texture. No flat bottom.
Side Notes:  cookies are done when edges are slightly brown. Kept dough in fridge when waiting for first batch.

4. Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Recipe:  Quaker Oats recipe
How Many Times the Recipe:  1 recipe
Yield:  one full tin
Shortening or butter: slightly soft butter
Was Dough Chilled:  no
How Were Cookies Formed:  dropped by spoonfuls.
How They Turned Out:  cookies did not spread much, remained tall. Crispy exterior and chewy interior.
Side Notes:

5. White Chocolate Cherry Chunkies

Recipe:  a Paula Deen recipe -- blogged about it here
How Many Times the Recipe:  1-1/2 times
Yield:  little over one tin
Shortening or butter:  room temp. butter
Was Dough Chilled:  no
How Were Cookies Formed:  used small ice cream scoop
How They Turned Out:  cookies spread moderately. Turned out chewy and slightly crunchy.
Side Notes:  used dried cherries instead of candied. Used 6 oz of dried for 1-1/2 times the recipe.

6. Peanut Butter Cookies

Recipe:  from a cookbook of mine, A Year of Cookies by Lorraine Bodger
How Many Times the Recipe:  2 times
Yield:  little over one tin
Shortening or butter:  room temp. butter
Was Dough Chilled:  no
How Were Cookies Formed:  used small ice cream scoop and pressed down each cookie with a fork
How They Turned Out:  cookies spread moderately. Turned out to be slightly crunchy.
Side Notes:

7. Drop Sugar Cookies

Recipe:  created by Tiffany from the Bake-off Flunkie blog.
How Many Times the Recipe: 1-1/2 times
Yield:  one full tin
Shortening or Butter:  cold butter cut into small pieces
Was Dough Chilled:  no, but dough was set aside at room temperature for 15 minutes before forming the cookies
How Were Cookies Formed:  used small ice cream scoop
How They Turned Out:  cookies spread moderately. Had a slight crisp exterior and a chewy interior.
Side Notes:

How to Make Chicken Vesuvio--Step by Step

This recipe has a lot of history and not only in the Italian culinary world, but in my family's as well. It has been a special meal choice for the folks here for decades! Our version includes multiple heads of garlic, lots of white wine, and a few secrets.

I've been cooking the family meals this past year and a couple weeks ago I attempted this dish for the first time. At the start, I didn't even have a vague idea on how to pull this thing together, so I spent my time bombarding my father with Vesuvio-ly questions, (which he took just fine. . . He likes to talk about food), all morning long. In the end it turned out to be very, very yummy!

The dumb thing I did, or should I say didn't do, was write down exactly what I did. I mean, here I was hunting down every possible nugget of information on this recipe and I didn't write down a thing. Yeah, stupid me. And I was feeling really stupid today when I wanted to give this Vesuvio a try again. Start from scratch once again!

Didn't remember much at the beginning but after talking about it with my father (again) it sort of came back to me. Anyhow, I managed to come close to what I did before and now I am writing it down here for reference. Not going to make the same mistake twice!

Chicken Vesuvio

Serves: 6-8*

Cooking time: 2 hours

Ingredients:

• 16 chicken drumsticks
• 20 medium to large red potatoes or Yukons**
• 6 tbsp. butter
• 1-1/2 tbsp. dried oregano
• 1 tbsp. garlic salt
• 20 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups white wine
• 2 chicken bouillon cubes
• Vegetable oil
  
• salt and pepper

Instructions:


1. Preheat oven to 400F. In two large casserole dishes or steamer trays, pour some vegetable oil to coat the bottoms. Add drumsticks to pans and season them with salt and pepper. Place pans in oven, uncovered. After 30 minutes turn oven temperature down to 375F.


2. In small saucepan, melt butter. Add oregano, garlic salt, and minced garlic to butter. Saute garlic on medium-high until fragrant: about 1 minute. Add 2 cups of wine to garlic mixture and bring to a boil. Once boil is reached, add bouillon cubes and stir until dissolved. Remove pan from heat.


3. Wash potatoes and slice them into halves or quarters, depending upon their size. The potato wedges in this dish is unusually large in size so keep them big!

4. Once chicken has been cooking for 1 hour it is time to add the potatoes. Nestle the wedges underneath the drumsticks to allow the potatoes to soak up the chicken juices. Next, pour the wine mixture over the chicken and potatoes, cover, and return pans to oven.


5. After 30 more minutes of cooking, stir the chicken and potatoes so that everything is immersed in the sauce. Add some water to bring sauce level half way up the pan contents.


6. Cook for another 20 minutes. Remove cover, raise oven to 400F and cook for another 10 minutes. The last 10 minutes at this high temperature helps with the browning of the meat and vegetables. And there you have it. . . Enjoy!





*roughly two drumsticks per person
**I used a type of white potato that has yellow skin. It is called Kennebec (which we grow at the farm), and it is a starchy potato that holds it shape well while still having a smooth, buttery texture.

How to Make Chicken Vesuvio Step by Step

(condensed written recipe is found above)

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Add some vegetable oil to two large casserole dishes or steamer trays. Place chicken drumsticks in pans and season with salt and pepper. Place pans in oven, uncovered. After 30 minutes turn oven temperature down to 375F.

 

2. Now to make the garlic wine sauce, which includes garlic salt, dried oregano, butter, white wine, minced garlic, and chicken bouillon cubes. 

 

3. In small saucepan, melt butter. Add oregano, garlic salt, and minced garlic to butter. Saute garlic on medium-high until fragrant: about 1 minute. Add 2 cups of wine to garlic mixture and bring to a boil. Once boil is reached, add bouillon cubes and stir until dissolved. Remove pan from heat.

 

4. Wash potatoes and slice them into halves or quarters, depending upon their size. The potato wedges in this dish is unusually large in size so keep them big!

5. Once chicken has been cooking for 1 hour it is time to add the potatoes. Nestle the wedges underneath the drumsticks to allow the potatoes to soak up the chicken juices. Next, pour the wine mixture over the chicken and potatoes, cover, and return pans to oven. 

     

     

      

6. After 30 more minutes of cooking, stir the chicken and potatoes so that everything is immersed in the sauce. Add some water to bring sauce level half way up the pan contents.


7. Cook for another 20 minutes. Remove cover, raise oven to 400F and cook for another 10 minutes. The last 10 minutes at this high temperature helps with the browning of the meat and vegetables. And there you have it. . . Enjoy!

How Tempting the Carrot Can Be

10/5/11:  Cream of Carrot Soup

There's been lots of tempting fruits and veggies on the farm the last month or so. Lots of great baking apples, sweet potatoes, sugar pie pumpkins, and winter squash. These are the type of veggies I like: ones that take a long time to bake but end up sweet and comforting. And they warm up the house to boot!

Another vegetable that has been on my mind is the carrot. We planted numerous rows of these this year (500 feet long rows, I should add), and we've been harvesting bushel after bushel ever since August. 

Up to a couple days ago, I only roasted carrots in the oven with a drizzle of olive oil and s&p. Carrots, plain and simple. But during the last part of September I was looking for a different recipe, and I found one via one of our good customers at the farm stand: Suzanne. 

She gave me a recipe card for a Cream of Carrot Soup. Ah, very intriguing, don't you think? (She gave my sister and I a couple more cards which we will be giving a try soon!)

  

Suzanne was telling me that she came across this recipe when she was visiting the Fernwood Nature Center in Niles, MI. There she tried this soup for the first time and thought it was really delicious.

Before I get to my carrot soup experience, let me write out the recipe for you as Suzanne wrote it:

Cream of Carrot Soup

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

• 1 ham bone
• 6 cups water
• 1-1/2 lb. carrots, peeled and diced
• 4 stalks celey, cubed
• 4 medium red potatoes, cubed
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cups half and half
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Place ham bone and water in large pot. Bring to a boil. Remove any scum, then add carrots, celery, potatoes, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 2 hours, or til vegetables are soft. Strain mixture and save water. Discard bay leaves. Puree vegetables using some reserved cooking water in blender, food processor, or using stick blender. Remove any ham from bone and puree if desired, (I would chop up and add unless you desire a very smooth soup). Add remainder of cooking water you saved, then re-heat to simmer. Add half-and-half and salt and pepper. Serve HOT!

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I planned on making this soup for two weeks but just couldn't find 2-1/2 hours of time to make it happen. But when last Wednesday rolled around and I needed to stay home to freeze some green beans, I thought I could work on the soup at the same time. 

I am very pleased to say that I followed the recipe precisely--I even had the ham bone, bay leaves, and half-and-half. Let me tell you, that doesn't happen too often for yours truly!

So the soup turned out to be wonderful; I could taste the carrot and it had a smooth texture because of the potatoes. And the ham bone gave it full-body, rich flavor similar to that of split pea soup. Since it was so good and simple to do, I think the humble carrot has found a new place to put up his feet. ;) 

Sweet Cakes for a Sweet Gal + Thoughts on the Sweet Chic Cookbook

What I think is harder than being a daily blogger is writing up a post after a long (and in my case, very long), duration of blog silence. And that is where I'm at today. It is harvesting time at the farm and there are lots of fruits and veggies to pick, but that little ol' thing called "Time" is hard to come by these days. 

Cooking for me over the past couple of months has been sort of on-the-fly, usually coming up with a meal plan the day before. Very much unlike my Winter and Spring meal calendars where I was all set a month in advance. But I'm making it work, anyway! 

What is the real disappointment I've found with all the craziness of the harvesting season is not finding time to bake. Baking takes a little extra time and so I haven't been breaking out the baking powder and measuring spoons much. 

Now enters Sunday. Sunday, August 14 to be exact. Ah, yes, that's when I found some time to bake using a new cookbook I just received a couple weeks ago. It is called Sweet Chic and this is what I made:

That is a chocolate cupcake. But wait.

Now it is a cupcake with chocolate frosting. Now that's better. :) And oh look, there's more:

The Sunday I made these was my sister Catherine's birthday and so I made 3 dozen worth and had milkshakes, too:

I was one proud baker after making these cupcakes. They were extremely moist (probably because the recipe uses solely vegetable oil instead of butter), and the frosting was chocolatel-y and not too sweet. Catherine loved them (yay!) and my Papa, a cake and frosting connoisseur, thought they were excellent. Sigh. What reviews! I'm blushing.

The Sweet Chic--Stylish Treats to Dress Up for Any Occasion cookbook, written by Rachel Schifter Thebault, has a very interesting approach to baking. The book is divided into three sections: cookies, cakes/icings, and confections, like truffles and bark. A good portion of the recipes provided are basic in nature, such as CCC (Chocolate Chip Cookies), chocolate brownies, sugar cookies, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, buttercream frosting, chocolate truffles, etc. Complete with clear photos for most of the recipes! I'm a sucker for the photography.

What the author did to give her own twist to the book was to supply you with ideas to create special variations of the basic recipes; allowing you to dress your desserts up or down. Dress up or down? Hmm, sounds like fashion, right? That is the exact metaphor the author is using for this book. Each subsection is given a fun fashion nickname like the Scoop Cookies are the Basic T. Fun! So now I can take the basic recipe, Devil's Food Cake, and make mini S'mores Cupcakes, Rocky Road Cupcakes, and even Individual Mud Pies.

When I first glanced through the book I thought, "Oh, another cookbook with lots of basic recipes. I probably could easily find all of these with a quick google search." But after getting comfortable in bed and reading it thoroughly, I knew I found something special. I have the habit of deciding to bake something out of the blue, so I don't give myself much preparation time. You can usually find me running around for a peanut butter cookie or a fudgy brownie recipe just minutes before I get into the kitchen. And once I find it (usually off the internet), I need to alter it a bit because of pan size, yield, and then I cross my fingers that I got the recipe from a good source.

Sweet Chic helps so much in this recipe-finding turmoil I usually find myself in. I just go to one of the book's basic recipes, find the variation I want, maybe change the yield, and then simply execute. The book has all the usual desserts I make on a weekly basis so it is all in one place.

So this is how it panned out last Sunday. First, I knew I wanted to make cupcakes. Looked in the cake section of the book. Found chocolate mini cupcakes. Hmm, no mini cupcake liners on hand. So just doubled the recipe. Simple. Next, frosting. Found chocolate frosting made with a melted chocolate base and sour cream. Sounded good so I chose that one. DONE!

If I had to do it my old way I would be going through my huge recipe binder for 10 minutes at the least. It is so helpful to have a cookbook at the ready!

Mary's Potato and Cheese Soup

4/27/11:  Potato and Cheese Soup

My recipe searching usually ventures down one of three roads: internet, magazine, or cookbook. AllRecipes.com, sure. TastyKitchen.com, been there. Cook's Country magazine, yep. And we mustn't forget our dear Betty Crocker cookbook.

So where did the Potato and Cheese Soup recipe come from? I am happy to report that it didn't come via the sources above. It came from Mary H. from California (the Quilting Bibliophagist), who is my sewing/quilting buddy. Whenever either of us have a sewing or quilting related question, we email each other for advice. One of my emails strayed off into the realm of cooking and I asked her if she had any good, easy, and quick recipes she could share. And that is how the Potato and Cheese Soup was found! Here it is:

Potato Cheese Soup

• 8 cups of peeled and sliced potatoes 
• 4 cups water
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 10 sprigs parsley
• 3 cups milk
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 2 to 4 tablespoons butter or margarine 
• 1/4 teaspoons pepper (or to taste)
• 2 pinches of garlic powder

Cook the potatoes in the water with the salt until tender. While the potatoes cook, saute the onions in the oil until soft. (I use a nonstick frying pan. If you're using a regular pan, you might have to use a little more oil.) When the potatoes are done, puree the potatoes, onion, and parsley in a blender. If you wish, you may leave some of the cooked potatoes un-pureed.

Be careful. Do not fill the blender more than half full at a time. You must also use a blender which has a glass container, not a plastic one, to puree the hot soup. If you run out of cooking water while pureeing your batches of soup, just add a little of the pre-measured milk. If you do not have a blender, you will need to chop the onions instead of just slicing them, and you will need to finely chop the parsley and either mash the potatoes or run them through a food mill. This all takes more time which is why I love using the blender.

Return the potato puree to the pot. Add milk, pepper, garlic powder, and butter. Stir. Add cheese. Heat and stir over a very low flame just until the cheese melts. Caution: High heat will cause the cheese to become a rubbery mass. Check the seasonings and adjust if necessary. (A thick pan is ideal for soups like this. I have a soup pot that is made of porcelain covered cast iron which I love. It's also great for rice or beans.)

If you need to prepare this soup very quickly, wash your parsley and slice your onions the night before and store them in the refrigerator in a tightly-covered container or zip lock bag. Peel and slice your potatoes and store them in the 'fridge covered with the water so they don't turn grey.

I like to serve this with cornbread or whole wheat Irish Soda Bread. Or just regular whole wheat bread. Adding a salad to the meal makes a little more well rounded nutritionally, though my husband was perfectly happy just with soup and bread. And potatoes are very nutritious anyway. Serves 5-7.

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I tried to stay true the recipe as well as I could. The only thing I changed was using dried parsley instead of fresh. So this is how the kitchen time unfolded:

I cleaned the potatoes:

Peeled them:

Measured the amount of potatoes by using my large, 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup. No home should be without it. :)

Placed the potatoes into our 6 quart pot. (Oh, by the way, I doubled the recipe. That's the reason for all the potatoes! I had freezing leftovers in mind.)

While the potatoes were coming to a boil, I sliced the onions thin:

Pureed everything together and then added the milk, cheese, and seasonings:

The end result was a creamy, flavorful bowl of soup that everyone loved--even the soup haters. Yay!

And because bread and soup is like Astaire and Rogers, I made some biscuits using my tried and true recipe.

Even though I made this soup way back in April, I wanted to say a thank you to Mary for sharing this recipe with me. I will be making more once our new red potatoes are ready to harvest, which is not too far from now come to think of it. There is only a few weeks between the time our potatoes from the previous year are spent and the time we harvest the new crop. But how long those weeks seem!


What about you? What is your favorite potato recipe of all time? How about soup? Send some recipes to me at herlittleway at gmail dot com.

The Colorful Side of Brown Food

3/30/11:  Quesadilla Casserole

I remember watching an Iron Chef America episode when there was a discussion of "brown food." Oh, there is nothing wrong with brown food in most cases--nicely browned pork cutlets or a dark, rich chocolate ganache is always a good thing, but not all dishes should showcase that shade. And that is exactly what happened during the episode's judging. A dish came out and it came with a very unappetizing shade of brown, a brown similar to a cardboard box.

So the three judges searched for their inner Andrew Zimmern stomachs and went in with their forks. Mind you, I do not recollect who was challenging who, what the secret ingredient was, or which tie Alton Brown was wearing, but what I do remember is the look on their faces. They loved it and the dish went over with flying colors.

A very similar scenario happened in my house. I made this Quesadilla Casserole, a recipe I found in the October 2009 issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray, and I substituted the black beans with refried beans because I was out of the former. Yeah, you can see where this is going. The casserole came out browner than brown.

But because of my Iron Chef capabilities (yeah, right), the dish turned out to have great flavor. I guess brown food isn't all that bad.

When I made it again and decided to make it just as flavorful but add a bit of color, I did this simply by making a couple cups of homemade enchilada sauce and using that as a layer. I also made sure I used a can of black beans; they add color and contrast to the casserole.

So here is the casserole all spruced up:

What about you? Have you been cooking any Mexican inspired dishes? Which is your family's favorite that you cook again and again?

Home Cooking

In all appearances, my dear old Sabbath Supper has been totally neglected since the last post was published, which was. . . Let's see. . . In APRIL! Gosh, how did that happen? Did I stop cooking or something?

Au contaire! There has certainly been lots of home cooking and baking around these parts but because I've been diligently working on my crafting blog (St. Gemma's Art and Needlework), all last month to try to achieve my May-Every-Day enterprise, Sabbath Supper fell to the wayside. It is a very sad thing, too, because talking recipes and ingredients is something I enjoy and I've already found that I'm forgetting some important tips from past recipes I did. I try to write down notes and such right in the cookbook or recipe print out, but sometimes I feel tuckered out once the dishes are clean and not one scribble of guidance is left.

So the May-Every-Day project has come and gone and now I will be able to concentrate some of my energies on posting to this blog.

Before I left Sabbath Supper alone and forgotten, I did put some future posts on file but didn't have the time to finish them. Now I will. Expect to see them today and tomorrow! Here are a couple sneak previews of what is to come:

Homemade Hamburger Buns

3/15/11: Homemade Hamburger Buns

You should never let the name "hamburger buns" lead you into thinking that these circular buns that are split in half are just used for hamburgers. No siree! My family does sometimes use them for the ordinary hamburger but we have found a million and one other uses for this bread vehicle. Sloppy Joes, BBQ pork, turkey, and beef, chicken patties, steak-ums, sizzlers, pulled pork, fish fillets, and more.

That is why after my success with my homemade hot dog buns, I decided it was high time to try the faithful old hamburger bun.

So after using the exact same recipe that I used for the hot dog buns, here is what I came up with:

They were as soft and wonderful as the hot dog version. Very happy about this! So now I've been cutting way back on our hot dog/hamburger bun buying and keeping our freezer full of home-bakery freshness: