Behind the Curtain

Raspberry Fritters

The granny excursion to the u-pick farm left me with loads of fresh fruit. In looking for ways to use the fruit I decided to experiment with a recipe from my 1942 American Woman's Cook Book. I had a lot of raspberries and have never fried before, but decided to take a whirl at it and make Raspberry Fritters. I'm glad I did. The process was a little kooky, but after a few sacrificial fritters I got the whole frying until it is a fluffy cloud of pastry goodness perfected. Here is a scan of the recipe (click fro larger):

Here is what I discovered is the best way to mix this thing, and its not according to the instructions! Add the water last. Gently mix the dry ingredients, do not completely mix them, you want them to be still crumbly. The beaten egg whites are going to add a lot of moisture to the mix and it will help everything to come together. If you find, after you add the whites, that it could still be a little thinner, then add the water. I made the mistake of mixing my dry ingredients. and water into such a great little dough ball that it just would not accept my whites. I had to add more flour and sugar to get it going again. Even with this little hiccup, the fritters tasted excellent. They definitely need confectioner's sugar dusted on top, but if you don't have any, you can always whip up some sugar glaze to make pseudo donuts or even just sprinkle regular sugar.

Since I never fried before and don't own a fryer I followed the frying instructions in the book. I ended up using a small sauce pan with high walls to fry. This gave me a small fry space, but made it tall enough that I reduced the oil splatter. One key note in the frying instructions below, Mrs. Berolzheimer points out to only put a small amount of food to fry at a time. If you put to many, the oil cool, the food takes longer to cook, the food absorbs too much fat and you end up with a greasy, soggy fritter. The directions for frying are below, click for readable/printable images:

  

  

I'm amazed at how comprehensive this cook book is. If a new 1940s bride got this as a wedding present, this would be the last cookbook she would need. I'm going to try to do some more recipes from it this summer, I'll make sure to report back on my experiments. Oh, and a little note on sugar dusting, I use a little broken tea ball filled with confectioner's sugar to dust my baked goods. Best way to do it.

Fruit Picking & Cherry Liquor

Last Sunday the grandmas went fruit picking in Homer Glen, IL, just an hour outside of Chicago. We've already made a little post about our adventure, should you be interested. It was one of the most expensive grandma clubs, but we had so much fun that we agree it was worth every penny. We also froze a lot of what we picked, so we now have fruit for a good while. All of us made plenty with the fresh fruits we picked - one of the many things I made is a recipe that has been on my to-do list for years: cherry liquor.

The only cherries they had ready to pick were sour cherries. At first, all the grannies were wondering how sour were the sour cherries and what we could use them in. All of those questions stopped once we sampled a cherry from the tree. It was so yummy on its own, we fell in love with them. When I got back from picking a few of hours later I was so happy to find that most cherry liquor recipes called for sour cherries. With that, my adventure in cherry splatter began.

A couple of years ago I got a cherry stoner/pitter and was excited to actually put it to use. But, holy crap, pitting cherries is a messy messy job. I ended up putting on a apron and tying a dish towel around my neck in order to catch most of the splatters from the pump striking through the cherry to pop out the pit. It was a fun mess though.

The original recipe I have had my eyes on for years used both the cherries and their leaves...I didn't pick leaves, so I was very sad at this discovery. (It required about 60 leaves, too many to just say, eh, screw it). So after some searching and recipe comparing, I decided to use this recipe for tart-cherry liquor. The cherries need to settle for a few weeks, then after the sugar is added, it needs to settle for a few months. So, this seems it will be a winter liquor, which is fine by me. With how short cherry season is though, I strongly suggest to go forth to the farmer's markets or u-pick farms and gather enough to eat and make liquor with. You can find a u-pick farm near you at this site, which separates the listing by state. I would definitely call the farm before you go to see if they are open this season and what is available to pick.

With all that, I hope everyone has a lovely 4th of July and gets to eat some awesome pastries this weekend!

Pastries & Press

I've been going through a bit of a crafting slump, but have found a lot of motivation in the kitchen. I've been baking, cooking or something-ing in the kitchen everyday. I've hit a few bad recipes, but have also enjoyed plenty of awesome ones too. The photo above is a homemade toaster pastry/tart that Donovan and I made on Saturday. The recipe is from Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It, a book that has the seal of a approval from all three grannies. The recipe says it would make 10-12 tarts, but we were only able to roll out 8 from each batch. Good thing we made a double batch so we could split a good amount.* I filled mine with raspberry jam while Donovan filled hers with lemon curd she made herself (from the Alton Brown recipe). Even with the low quantity yielded from the recipe we have dubbed the pastries excellent and will surely be doing them again.

I've been so busy in the kitchen that I totally forgot to mention that Donovan and I were interviewed for Pinball Publishing's CoinOp. Donovan and I love Pinball. We've been printing our stuff with them for years; they are always our go-to press. We actually just got our new business cards printed from them and absolutely love them. Double-sided, full bleed cards with trasnparency - so well done! Enough press geekery from me, I'll be posting some recipes that I've made and approved later this week. Have a lovely Monday.

* While eating a toaster pastry for breakfast this morning I realized that the reason we got only 8 from the batch is because we made them largr than suggested. This makes for a filling tart, which is awesome, but unfortunately they are too long for my toaster. Oh, why did my toast-r-oven have fry out last year?

Budgeting, Leftover Food

I've been thinking about budgets and planned spending lately. I don't have a credit card, so all of my purchases have to stick within my monthly budget or must be saved for before hand. This type of spending is not easy, but I prefer it. Its allowed me to experiment with planning meals and I found out so many tricks and recipes because of sticking to a budget. For example, I can buy a 5lb whole chicken at my green grocer for $6. I put that sucker in the crock pot before I go to work and there is dinner for tonight and leftovers for nearly the rest of the week. (My household is only two people, so it will be less for a larger household. If you have a bigger family, you can always get a fatter chicken to assure you have leftovers.)

I used to be "eh" about leftovers; never being able to bring myself to actually eat them. I figured out the trick, at least for me, is to refashion the leftovers into new dishes. Let's take the 5 lb chicken. After you eat a bit from it the first night - you can shred some of the left over chicken to make chicken tacos, or make a chicken pot pie, the left over opportunities are endless, not to mention what you can make for lunches to take to work. And for those who think cooking is hard or are scared of dealing with something like a whole chicken, read this post for a bit of a kick in the pants.

Here are two recipes I made just this week with our crock pot chicken left overs:
Chicken and Dumpling Soup
From Cooks' Country, with slight modifications
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup water
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
salt and pepper
2 tbls unsalted butter
1/2 - 1 onion, chopped fine (I tend to go easy with onion)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced thin
8 cups low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock
Shredded leftover chicken, about 3 cups

1) Whisk flour, water, eggs 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper in bowl. Set aside. Melt butter in large pot or stock pot over medium-high heat. Cook onions, carrots and celery until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in broth and bring to a boil. Reduce hear to medium-low and simmer, covered, until veggies are tender, 10-15 minutes.

2) Remove lid of pot. Stir in chicken and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Return to a simmer. Working quickly, use a 1/2 tsp measuring spoon to drop pieces of dough into soup (this was definitely a two-spoon job, one to scoop, one to push). Simmer, covered, until dumplings are set, 1-2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, serve.

With the leftovers I had after that I made these mini-pizzas. I don't have any exact measurements for this one as quantity would depend on how much chicken you have left over and how many people you are feeding.

BBQ Chicken Pizza
From Cooks' Country, with modifications

Left over chicken, shredded
bbq sauce, enough to cover chicken
finely chopped fresh cilantro, to taste
red onion, sliced thin, to taste
olive oil
salt and pepper
pita bread, each round is one pizza, use as many as you need*
Shredded cheese, your choice, enough to cover each pita
lime juice, optional

1) Preheat oven to 450 degrees and adjust rack to upper-middle position. Combine chicken and bbq (enough to coat chicken), and  some cilantro in bowl and toss. Reserve a little bit of cilantro for final topping. Heat onion over oil in small pan until translucent. Turn off heat and toss heated onion with salt and pepper to taste.

2) Lightly brush oil on baking sheet where pita bread will be. Brush pita bread with oil. Scatter chicken mixture over pita and top with onion mixture. Sprinkle with cheese and bake for 5 -10 minutes, until cheese is melted. (Watch the pizzas carefully. If you see the pitas getting dark brown or burning, remove from oven and complete melting the cheese by microwave.) Remove from oven and sprinkle reserved cilantro and lime juice, if using, on top of pizzas. Cut into quarters with sharp knife and serve.

* You can use ready-made pizza dough, store bought or home-made, instead of pita bread. If you are using dough, cook the dough in the oven first for 6 minutes until brown and bubbling. Then add toppings and cook as instructed.

I hope you find these recipes helpful. Now go tackle that full bird!

Liquor Infusing, the Food

A few weekends ago the grandma club got together for a liquor tasting. This meeting was a little different because we made all our liquors on our own time and got together to taste the product together. When you have a butt-load of liquor, you know you need some good food to go with it. And boy did we. You can read all about our liquor adventure here, complete with links to Noel's and Donovan's recipes for the food they brought. As for me, I brought a fruit tart and a yummy plate of glazed sausage bits. Both of these recipes are from Jacques Pépin's book Fast Food My Way (of PBS fame). I made two batches of the sausage plate; one with Polish sausage and the other using chicken apple sausage. Both were good, but I think the chicken one was better. You can also make this plate for dinner. Just serve it over some rice or couscous. Here is the recipe:

Glazed Sausage Bits
1/2 cup orange juice (or pomegranate juice)
1 tblsp ketchup
1 tblsp honey or maple syrup (optional)
dash of tabasco or siracha sauce
6 oz kielbasa, smoked sausage or chicken/apple sausage

Combine juice, ketchup and honey/syrup in a medium skillet. Bring to a boil and boil mixture for 2 to 3 minutes, until it gets syrupy. Remove skin from kielbasa (I didn't do this) and cut into 1/2" thick slices. Add sausage slices to sauce. Cook over high heat, turning the slices occasionally, until mixture reduces almost completely and coats the sausage slices (2 to 3 minutes). Serve as is with toothpicks or on top of Ritz crackers.

Infusing Liquor & Domino Winners

This month's grandma club is a little different than usual. We are flavoring liquor on our own time and getting together tomorrow for a tasting as our "meeting." No, we aren't making the actual liquor in our bathtubs or anything, just buying 151 proof vodka and infusing it. I am making two different flavors: Strawberry/blackberry and minneola tangerine (a cross between a clementine and a grapefruit). I only needed the rind from the tangerines, so I made juice from the rest of the fruit. It is really tasty. Tangy and sweet; a good change from orange juice in the mornings. Of course, we will be posting pictures and recipes next week after we tasted our products. I'm quite excited to see how all our liquors turned out.

As for those two Domino: The Book of Decorating winners...
Gigi R. & Laura Marie
Congrats! Email me your shipping addresses and I'll send the book your way.
(16sparrows at gmail dot com)

I used Random.org to choose the winners; it is a fun app. I need to come up with more reasons to use the integer generator.

Have an awesome weekend everyone!

P.S. - Bakerette has a lovely recipe for minneola cake!

Magic Cream Pie

50s Gal and I have been vintage recipe swapping via letters; the first recipe she sent me was this very tasty Magic Cream Pie. Here is the recipe:

1 1/3 cups condensed milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 bananas cut into pieces
1 baked 9" pie shell
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tbs. confectioners sugar

Blend milk and lemon juice. Stir until mixture thickens. Fold in bananas. Pour into baked pie shell. Cover with sweetened whipped cream, chill.

- - -

The recipe calls for you to make your own whipped cream with the sugar and heavy whipping cream. Here are some tips for making and flavoring whip cream. I used sweetened condensed milk and a pre-made graham cracker pie crust for this recipe and it turned out awesome. I found that it took a few hours to set and that it tasted (and was set way better) the next day. If you decide to make it the day before, don't put the cut-up decorative banana slices on the top until you are ready to serve. This is more an aesthetic thing as they turn brown, but are still tasty nonetheless. Next time around I may try to make a chocolate whip cream for the topper. Yum.

Don't mess with the Grannies

I pretty much love this outtake photo Noel took of us during our grandma club.

The ladies and I got together for another grandma club this weekend; we made cocoa mix and marshmallows. See our adventure here and view more pictures here.

I've been getting a lot of comments and emails from people saying how much they like my grandpa's bread recipe. I am so happy to hear that! One reader, Don, altered the recipe a bit to make pizza dough and was nice enough to share what he did. Here is what he wrote:

"I let the starter go for 24 hours, increased the yeast and olive oil in the dough by just a bit, and flattened it out into 2 large pizza pans. Made the best pizza crust I've ever had, and I've made my own pizza crust for years! After the dough has risen in the pans, I sprayed with olive oil and baked @ 450 for 15 min. Put the pizza stuff on, then baked for another 15-20 min. Oh yeah - the pre-baked pizza freezes extremely well."

I have yet to try this out, but it sounds awesome. Also, you may have noticed I have a tiny place holder for an ad on my sidebar. This is something I am going to experiment with. I thought about it because Soule Mama has some lovely shops on her blog, shops that I would of never ever heard about if it weren't for her sidebar ads. I love exposing you all to shops that I love and thought that doing a tiny ad on the sidebar is a great way to do that. I'm still looking for the perfect one that fits with the scope of this blog, but I'd love to hear you comments about this experiment. Also, if there are any indie shops you think I should know about, do tell! I just got my tax refund and want to support some indie businesses.

Speaking of Soule Mama, did you know she is coming out with a new book? I enjoyed her first one, even though I don't have any kids, and am I'm looking forward to her second publication.

Food is so damn good

Donovan and I made some more strawberry marmalade last week. It is so damn delicious, especially with the brioche I made a little while ago. For those who are not into bread baking or jam making, here are some recipes that are making me drool...

Vegan Bittersweet Ganache Glazed Bourbon Cupcakes from everybody likes sandwiches
Rosemary-Parmesan Popcorn with Black Pepper from the kitchen sink
Chocolate Hazelnut Shortbread from angry chicken
Habanero Gold Jelly from the arugula files (Noel got her sister into grandma club projects!)
Hot Spinach & Artichoke Dip from Closet Cooking
Sweet Onion and Roquefort Tart from Living Tastefully
Constructing the perfect grilled cheese sandwich, from the arugula files
Steak Sandwiches from Smitten Kitchen
Chocolate Bunt Cake from the kitchen sink

And lastly...Instructions on making your own Vanilla Extract! I had no idea this was even possible. (from bethany actually)

Pain Brioche

Last weekend I finally fulfilled my dream of baking brioche! (I know it has an accent on the "e," but I can't get that to work in Typepad.) I figured I've baked enough bread at this point that I could tackle this daunting recipe. Besides the fact that the crust got a wee bit more browned that I would of preferred, it came out really tasty. I would only suggest this recipe for those who have a stand mixer because the second "kneading" took about 20 minutes with my mixer. I don't even want to think about how long it would of taken if I was kneading by hand!

This bread was a bit of a pain to make, so I will probably only make it once a month as a little special treat. Though, we used it for French toast this weekend, and my goodness it was yummy! Rather than typing out the recipe I've scanned it in, because its freakin' long. For those who want to try it out, here is the recipe for Pain Brioche. Click on the "all sizes" link to view the print version.