More Crock Pot Fun!

This isn't really a recipe-- just a tip. Today I made polenta in the crock pot and it was delicious! Before I had been stirring over the stove, but I tried this because Ben wanted to go run some errands. The polenta turned out so creamy and smoothe! I used a small crockpot that doesn't even have a low or high setting; it's just on or off-- and it still worked great. I use my kitchen scale to measure the polenta just because the recipe on the package is in grams. You can use the recipe on your polenta package; I didn't make any changes for the crockpot.

Crockpot Polenta

125 g. polenta
750 mL water
10 g. salt

Place in a small crockpot and turn it on. Ready in 4-5 hours, but you can keep it on until you get home!

Crock-pot "Pulled Pork"

Hi! Wow, I haven't had a chance to write anything for awhile. I have been cooking though! We had a great Thanksgiving. My friend and I prepared the dinner together at a home we rented in Austin. It was fun having all the kids and enjoying everyone under one roof! It's a challenge to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving in an unfamiliar kitchen, but it went fine. Once we all went camping for Thanksgiving, but believe me, that's another story! Still, after preparing Thanksgiving over three campfires, it takes a lot more than a different kitchen to throw us!

Anyway, the other day I was listening to "The Spendid Table" on NPR and there was a guy talking about how you can make decent pulled pork barbecue in a crock-pot. His recipe included liquid smoke, which he explained is actually an all natural product actually made from smoke and wood. However, it upsets some people's stomachs, so I thought I'd try to make it without.

While nothing like the slow smoked, delicious barbecue we get in Texas, this is a very easy, economical way to make pulled pork and it is quite tasty. The best thing is I bought a 4.5lb. pork shoulder for $7.30 at the local market. Even after discarding the bone and fat, there was still about 3lbs. of delicious, tender pork. If you do the math, that's about $2.40/lb-- about 1/3 the price of purchased pulled pork.



Crock Pot "Pulled Pork"


1 4.5-5lb. pork shoulder roast
1 large onion, sliced thickly
3 T. salt
1 T. garlic powder
2 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 T. paprika
1 or 2 bay leaves
Your favorite barbecue sauce

Lime wedges (optional)
Mix all the seasonings together except the bay leaves. Rub the pork roast all over with the mixture. Place the onions in the bottom of the crock pot. Place the roast on top and lay the bay leaves on the roast. Pour in about 1/4 c. water down the side of the crock pot. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Take the roast out and let it cool a bit. With two forks, pull the roast apart (this will be easy) and discard the fat and bone. You can shred the meat a lot or a little, whatever you prefer.

Pour the liquid from the crockpot into a big Pyrex measuring cup. Skim off any fat. Put the shredded meat into the empty crockpot and pour about 1 c. of the liquid over it. Stir gently. Pour in the barbecue sauce to taste (some people like a lot, some a little). You can serve more sauce on the side.

You can make sandwiches with this on hamburger buns or just serve the meat as is with a squirt of lime over it (optional-- but I think it's delicious!). You will have a lot of meat. This freezes just fine also.

P.S. I didn't take a photo, but pulled pork isn't that photogenic anyway. However, it is yummy!

Apple Cake--More Heritage Recipes

Another good thing about really old recipes is they give you a lot of ideas for making "something out of nothing". In other words, you can create something quite tasty with small quantities of basic ingredients. It was raining here yesterday (yay!), and I didn't want to get out to the grocery store. I had two large Granny Smith apples that needed attention, but that's not enough for a pie. So, I went to my collection of old cookbooks and found this apple cake recipe dated 1850. Maybe because baking ingredients were not as easy to come by more than a hundred years ago, but I've noticed that with these really old recipes, the amounts of butter and sugar are small. They yield a dish smaller than we're used to, but they say they serve usually 6-10. This is generally good for us now as well: less butter and sugar and smaller portions-- but still yummy! I love the way these recipes allow good, simple things to "speak for themselves". Two large apples were plenty for this 8x8 cake that will easily serve six "2009" portions, or nine "1850" portions. I think back then they would serve this with heavy cream poured over, but now it's great served warm with vanilla ice cream! My dad would have liked to pour condensed milk over this-- straight from the can-- yikes!

Ada's Apple Cake
1 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1.5 Tbl. butter
1 beaten egg
1/3 c. milk
2 large or 3 small apples
2 Tbl. sugar mixed with 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (to sprinkle over the top)
1 Tbl. butter
Preheat the oven to 400F. Spray an 8x8 baking dish with Pam (not authentic to 1850-- but easier!). Mix the first 4 ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the butter and work into the flour mix with a pastry blender or your fingertips until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the egg and milk and mix well with a fork. Spread in the baking dish.
Peel and core the apples. Cut into wedges about 1/4-inch thick. Place over the cake dough, pressing them in slightly. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over all and dot with the 1 Tbl. butter.
Bake for 30 min. or until the apples are tender and the top is golden and sugar-glazed.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. You can put slices in the microwave if you've made the dish ahead-- they are just as good!

Biscuit Journey

Homemade biscuits can be delicious! When they are good, they are the stuff that makes family memories, but guess what? When they are bad they make even more memories! As a child, my mom made biscuits with Bisquick like every other mom I knew. Sometimes she used the canned ones, but we liked the Bisquick ones enough.

When I had a home of my own, I decided one day to try making biscuits. How hard could it be? The recipes are all very simple and they use extremely basic ingredients. As a young married person, I also reasoned that the homemade biscuits could be made for a fraction of the cost of the canned ones. That was the beginning of the longest running joke in our family-- mom's biscuits. At first, Ben was the only one around to make fun of them, poking at them like they were boulders, using the butter knife in an exaggerated sawing motion like he was cutting firewood, pretending to break a tooth-- it was all tooooooo funny and so annoying! After our daughter was born, it didn't take long before she got in on the joke as well. She especially enjoyed seeing her Dad act as though he couldn't lift the biscuit off the plate, moaning and groaning to her complete delight! Everyone's a comedian.

However, I kept at it, much to my family's entertainment. Finally, I figured out that it wasn't the recipe so much, they varied very little-- it was the technique. You have to be careful to not mess around with the biscuit dough much, pat it to the correct thickness, and bake at the correct temperature. Once you have these things in place though, the biscuits are light, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Homemade biscuits have a terrific, clean flavor. And yes, they are very inexpensive to make. As with pancakes and waffles, you can make up a batch of biscuits before you can go to the store to buy the canned ones. They can really make an ordinary weekday type meal special. I served these with the homemade plum jam my daughter and I made in the first post. Now, my family still makes fun of my biscuits because the joke has taken on a life of it's own. However, they do seem to be able to lift these biscuits enough to make it to their mouths!

Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour

3 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1/3 c. cold butter

3/4 c. milk

Preheat the oven to 425F. Line a good quality baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.

Put the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir well to mix. Use a pastry blender to combine the butter into the flour. As you work the butter in, you will see smaller and smaller pieces of butter within the flour. Keep going until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. Add the milk and stir with a fork just until everything is moistened.

Put some flour on a tea towel or pastry cloth. Push the dough into a flattish ball, then pat gently into a disk about 1/2-inch thick. Cut out the biscuits with a biscuit cutter (metal is best). You can use a glass, but this doesn't cut cleanly and it kind of mashes the biscuit edges so they don't rise as well. Place the biscuits on the baking sheet at least 2 inches apart. You'll get about 9 biscuits from this recipe. Don't work the scraps too much, just press them together enough to reform them, then cut out some more biscuits.

If you want, brush each biscuit with melted butter. This makes them brown really nicely, but some people don't want the extra calories.

Bake the biscuits for about 15 minutes, but watch carefully the first time because ovens vary. Serve at once!

Spanish Stir Fry

I made this up for dinner tonight from the odds and ends I had in the fridge from the weekend. This one's more about cooking without a recipe than trying to ever duplicate it again. There are so many random ingredients it would be a real bother to try to gather these things up from the grocery store. The main idea is to learn what flavors are complimentary and invent! You know way more about flavor combinations than you think. All you have to do is think about what you like to eat based on other dishes you like. For example, in this dish, I had a couple chicken breasts, some chiles, a few olives and some cilantro. It wasn't hard to think Spanish from this collection of ingredients. Then I thought about the way I wanted to cook them. I wanted something healthy, quick, and fresh tasting-- a stir fry! But there's no law that a stir fry has to be Asian, hence the Spanish Stir Fry. From there I wanted to use some zucchini, red onion, tomato and summer squash that had looked good at the Farmer's Market. I always have garlic around-- and there it was, dinner! If this seems like too many ingredients, that's okay; your invention could have far fewer or more, depending on what you have that you want to use up or include. What you don't put in is important though. The difference between a wonderful, freshly prepared dish and "leftovers", is restraint. Don't just empty the refrigerator, heat it up and pronounce it "dinner"! The fun is in finding the friendly combinations! Anyway, here's my "recipe", use it as a guide to making your own luscious, healthy and economical meal.
P.S. I also had an avocado that needed to be used, so I made some guacamole. I served a dab of it on the stir fry. It looked pretty and added even more fresh taste to the dish.

Spanish Stir Fry
2 chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1 small zucchini, sliced
1 small yellow squash, sliced
1 small red onion, sliced
2 red or green chiles, sliced
about 1/4 c. chopped cilantro
1 small tomato cut into chunks
2 cloves garlic
2 Tbl. olives, cut up coarsely
1/2 lime
olive oil
salt, pepper
Heat about 2 Tbl. olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the chicken and saute for a few minutes. Add some salt and pepper. Add the squashes, tomato, garlic, chiles and sliced onions. Cook and stir over high heat until the veggies are looking crisp tender-ish. Add the olives and cilantro and continue to cook and stir until the flavors are blended and the chicken is done-- about another 3-4 minutes. Squeeze the lime over all and serve!

Today's Guacamole
1 small avocado mashed up
1 serrano chile, seeded and chopped
squirt of lime juice
salt
2 Tbl. chopped fresh cilantro
Mix altogether and serve with the above stir fry or chips.

Weekend Waffles

Hi! Well I haven't written for awhile. Ironically, I've been busy cooking for one gathering or another and haven't had time for the blog. Anyway, three day weekends are especially nice for leisurely breakfasts and waffles are always popular for that! If you haven't tried making waffles or pancakes from scratch, you should give it a try. While I do think the mixes on the market are generally very good, there are several reasons for making them yourself. Timewise, depending how far your grocery store is, you can prepare the batter for waffles or pancakes faster than it takes to drive to the store and buy a mix (I timed it once and was true at least for our store, which is about 3 miles away.). These recipes require very basic ingredients that you probably have already, so you can whip up a batch whenever the mood strikes you-- no preplanning! Besides that, they are less expensive than good quality mixes, they have no preservatives, and lastly, they taste terrific!
Here are two recipes I really like. Both recipes yield fluffy products, which we prefer at our house. If you like thinner pancakes, you can add a little more milk to the batter, but waffle batter needs to be fairly thick. This is a good waffle recipe because you don't have to beat the egg whites separately to yield a light waffle which a lot of recipes require.

Weekend Waffles

2 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbl. sugar
2 eggs
1.5 cups milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
4 Tbl. melted butter

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Beat the eggs, vanilla and milk together in another smaller bowl. Add them to the dry ingredients along with the melted butter and mix with a wire whisk just until everything is moistened. Don't overmix the batter or the waffles will be tough.
Bake waffles according to the directions for your waffle iron. You can keep them hot and fresh on a rack in a warm (180F) oven if you want to serve them all at once.
Of course, homemade waffles deserve real maple syrup and real butter!

Light and Fluffy Pancakes

2 cups flour
1 Tbl. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1.5 c. milk
1/4 c. melted butter

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat the eggs, milk and butter together lightly and pour into the dry ingredents. Mix with a wire whisk just until everything is moistened and the large lumps disappear. Make pancakes by pouring small amounts (1/4 cup or so) of batter on a hot griddle (350-375F) or in a large cast iron skillet that has been oiled or sprayed with PAM. Turn the pancakes over when you see the edges looking drier and holes forming in the pancake. Cook them another minute or two until the other side is browned nicely.

Both of these recipes can be "doctored up" by adding chopped pecans, blueberries, etc. People in this family are generally "purists", but I like them with all kinds of stuff in them-- banana, raisins, peanut butter........

Wonderful Gadget!

Hi Everyone! Although I've owned a melon baller for many years, I'd never used it for that purpose before. It is a great gadget for removing the center core of apples, pears, etc. and that's pretty much all I every did with it. Making a bunch of spherically shaped fruits didn't much appeal to me. However, the other day I wanted to make a pretty fruit salad and I got out a very old recipe that required the fruits to be spherical. I got out the melon baller and put it to work on some watermelon and canteloupe. Wow! It was great! Making the little balls is very quick and easy; faster than cutting up the fruit into not so pretty cubes. Plus, they look nice! Use a seedless watermelon to make things easy. I didn't need one half of the watermelon, so I've stored it in the fridge and just scoop out the melon as I've served it during the week, covered it back up with plastic wrap and stored it as it is-- no messy clean-up with the rinds, etc. every time you want to serve it! Anyway, the salad I made had the aforementioned melon balls, green grapes, and strawberries. The sauce that went with it was very tasty, easy and kind of old-fashioned because it uses mint jelly (remember that stuff?!). Here's the recipe for the sauce.
Easy Mint Sauce for a Large Fruit Salad
1 bunch mint
1/4 cup sugar
1- 10oz. jar mint jelly
1/4 c. water

Take the leaves off the mint stems and chop them finely. Place in bowl with the sugar. Allow to stand for 1 hour (if you don't have time to do that, it's okay, the sauce is still good.). Melt all the jelly in the microwave and pour it over the mint sugar mixture. Add the 1/4 c. water and stir well. Refrigerate until ready to use, at least 1 hour (that's necessary to get a nice natural minty taste.).
Right before serving, pour the sauce over the salad and mix well to coat all the fruit. Very refreshing!