Monthly Archives: April 2009

Pork Souvlaki

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pork_souvlakiCurrently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

The weather up here in North Idaho has finally warmed up enough to get the grill out of storage, and to celebrate, we made these pork souvlaki skewers.

You start out by marinating cubes of pork in the classic greek flavors of onion, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and oregano for up to 24 hours. After a quick trip to the grill, the skewers were ready to go. This recipe was easy, fast and very, very good. The only thing problem I had was I overcooked the pork, so it was a bit dry. 

If you don’t fancy pork, I think this dish would be equally good with chicken. Leftovers (if you have any) are good served in a pita with some cucumber/yogurt sauce.

Orzo with Parmesan and Peas

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orzoCurrently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

I don’t have a very large repertoire of side dishes, and I haven’t cooked with orzo before, so I was excited to try this recipe.

If you aren’t familiar with orzo, it is a small, rice-shaped pasta that cooks up quickly and can be flavored in a hundred different ways. This dish was simple, very tasty. You boil the orzo until tender (about 9 minutes), drain it, then toss it with the parmesan, peas and a bit of butter.

Any vegetable could be used here, although you might need to precook it. I ended up adding a bit of the pasta water to keep the dish from getting too dry. This dish would go with just about anything and the leftovers are good reheated.

Barbecued Meat Loaves

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bbq_meatloafCurrently cooking out of The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

I have mixed feelings about this recipe. It was easy and fast, but I didn’t really like the taste of the meatloaves. The recipe calls for meatloaf mix, which is a mixture of equal parts ground beef, pork and veal. None of the grocery stores around here carried mealoaf mix, so I made my own using just beef and pork. The finished dish was very porky, but not in a good way.

Other than that (which, admittedly, is my own fault, not Rodgers’), I really liked the concept of this recipe. Instead of making one big meatloaf, you make four mini ones, shaped like doughnuts, which puts the cooking time at about 30 minutes. You use barbecue sauce in the mix as well as on top of the meatloaves. This gives the meatloaves a nice flavor and isn’t nearly as sweet as the standard ketchup.

Rhubarb, Orange and Apple Jam

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rhubarb_orange_apple_jam1From Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been hearing about French Pastry Chef Christine Ferber and her preserves made from local ingredients. They are supposed to be out-of-this-world good, with unique flavor combinations.

Mes Confitures was originally published in French and then translated into English. Some of the directions are a bit vague, and sometimes you just have to guess at what the author meant. This ought to be interesting.

My plan with Mes Confitures is to try a recipe here or there while I’m concentrating on other cookbooks. I just can’t get excited about making batch after batch of jam or jelly, no matter how unique the flavor combinations may be. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really like jams or jellies. I think it has something to do with losing the fresh fruit flavor. And I find many preserves to be far too sweet. Maybe this book will turn me around.

The first recipe I tried was a rhubarb, orange and apple jam. It starts off by poaching thin orange slices. Then you add rhubarb and apples. At first, I had a whole lot of fruit and not much liquid, but as the rhubarb broke down and the sugar melted, it started to look more like jam. Ferber’s instruction say to boil until the jam is set, which happens around 221 degrees (F). I boiled for almost an hour and didn’t get higher than about 210 degrees. I decided to go ahead and jar the jam, knowing that it would probably be pretty loose.

The finished product ain’t bad. You get a big hit of orange and apple flavor, but not much rhubarb. It is far too sweet for me on it’s own, but the sweetness is tempered by toast (or kamut biscuits in the above picture). I was really hoping that the rhubarb would give the jam a sour edge, but I guess 4 cups of sugar might make anything sweet. The texture, while loose, set up better than I thought it would. I didn’t bother to sterilize my jars but just kept them in the refrigerator.

Pork Chops in Creamy Mushroom Sauce

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chops_mushrooms2Currently Cooking out of The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

The next cookbook under the microscope is The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers. The book is aimed at people who don’t have a lot of time to cook, but want great tasting food. As he says in his introduction, “The Carefree Cook is about how to get fantastic flavors in your everyday cooking with a minimum of effort.”

chops_mushroomsRodgers’ book covers everything from soups and salads to side dishes and desserts. Most of the recipes have fewer than 5 steps and contain easy-to-find ingredients, a boon to busy cooks.

The first recipe that I tried (and one of the first I ever marked to try) was pork chops in a creamy mushroom sauce. Bryan loves mushrooms and we both love pork. There was no way this recipe was going to fail. The dish came together fast, just as Rodgers promised. First you brown the pork chops, then saute mushrooms and shallots (I used onions). You use sherry and chicken broth to deglaze the pan and then add the pork chops back in to finish cooking. At the end, sour cream and cornstarch are stirred into the mixture to thicken it.

The only tricky ingredient was a porcini powder that was listed as optional. Lucky for me, I came across this stuff during a stopover at Whole Foods in Portland, OR. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I’m assuming it’s dried porcini mushrooms that have been ground to a powder. It thickened the sauce and added a deep, earthy mushroom flavor.

I served the pork chops and sauce over white rice with a side of roasted broccoli. This stuff was good, as in lick-the-plate-clean good. The only bad thing about it? There’s only enough leftovers for one person . . .

Whoopie Pies

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whoopie_pies2

I have a thing for whoopie pies. To me, they are a perfect snack. Little chocolate cakes sandwiched together with filling. Unfortunately, they are usually disappointingly not chocolatey and the filling is super sweet. But I just keep trying new recipes, hoping to find the perfect one.

I snagged this recipe off the NY Times website. You can find the recipe here, although you may have to create a free user login to get to it. It is based off of a recipe from Zingerman’s Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, MI. Having once lived in Ann Arbor, I can attest to the goodness that is Zingerman’s. And these whoopie pies did not disappoint. I refuse to admit the exact number of pies that I ate, but I will say that Bryan was lucky to get any.

These whoopie pies were so good that I made another batch within two days. I exercised a bit more restraint (actually, the restraint came from the waistband of my jeans that were so tight that they simply stopped me from eating any more) and gave most of them away.

The cake part is moist and dense. Instead of using the marshmallow fluff filling that is part of the recipe, I made a cream cheese filling. The cakes were pretty sweet, so the tanginess of the filling was a nice contrast. I kept the pies in the refrigerator which made the cake part almost fudgy. I also made the pies quite a bit smaller than the recipe calls for. Instead of getting 6 pies, I used a tablespoon scoop and got 15 pies. They were the perfect size.

Kamut Pound Cake

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kamut_cake2Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

You might remember this cake from the chocolate spelt pound cake. Originally, I had wanted to do the kamut version, but couldn’t find any kamut flour. During a weekend trip to Portland, OR, though, I stumbled upon some in Whole Foods. When life hands you kamut flour, you have to take it, right? So that little bag came back home with me.

I had the batter whipped up in no time, and man, was it good. It had a toasty, nutty taste, kind of like cornmeal, but without the grittiness. Like the chocolate spelt version, this one was a bit dry, so I toasted a slice and ate it with some homemade rhubarb, apple and orange jam. I’m really intrigued by the kamut flour and plan to try it in some biscuits soon. But back to that jam I just mentioned. See, right next to the Whole Foods in Portland is Powell’s Bookstore, one of the largest bookstores in the country.

Can you see where this is going?

I might have spent some time in Powell’s browsing their huge selection of cookbooks. And some of those cookbooks might have jumped into my basket and come home with me. And one of them is all about jams and jellies. More on that later.

This is the last recipe out of Pure Dessert, and I’m sad to come to the end of it. Like Medrich’s other books, this book was full of hits and only a few misses. The caramels and the almond cake have earned a spot on my list of favorite recipes and with hotter weather coming (and no air conditioning), I’ll be making that grapefruit granita regularly.

My Chocolate Pudding

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puddingCurrently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

I grew up on burnt chocolate pudding that came out of a box. Back before there was instant chocolate pudding, there was the chocolate pudding that you actually had to cook on the stovetop. I remember my mom standing in front of the stove, stirring away, muttering. See, she had a habit of burning the pudding. It was a real godsend when the instant stuff came out that required no heat.

This recipe is mostly straightforward. You cook eggs, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and milk, add in some vanilla and chopped bittersweet chocolate and then whiz everything for a few seconds in a food processor. I thought that last step was a bit fiddley, and I’d probably leave it out next time.

The pudding was good and chocolatey, but I’d call this more of a soup then a pudding. Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely. It just didn’t set. At all. You pretty much could bypass the spoon and drink it. I’m guessing I didn’t leave it on the stovetop long enough. This pudding could easily be adapted to include all sorts of other flavors, such as mint, mocha or even orange. It’s a good basic recipe.

Raspberry-Chocolate Chunk Muffins

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muffinsmuffins2Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

I hadn’t planned on making these muffins, but every time I flipped through Pure Dessert, I kept stopping on this recipe. Muffins just didn’t seem exotic enough to try. But they have raspberries. And chocolate. Really, it was only a matter of time before I caved.

The batter came together really easily using just a wooden spoon (no mixer required). The recipes calls for all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour. I didn’t have any whole wheat flour, so I used all all-purpose flour. At the end, frozen raspberries and chocolate chips or chunks are stirred into the batter. Keeping the berries frozen means that they don’t turn the batter purple or get squished during mixing.

The muffins smelled divine as they were cooking. They rose well and had nicely rounded tops. The batter itself is pretty neutral and makes a good background for the raspberries and chocolate. Because I like to tinker, I want to try substituting some sour cream or buttermilk for part of the milk to give the muffins a bit more tang. This is a good basic fruit muffin recipe. I’d imagine that just about any fruit would work here, as long as it can stand up to the mixing.

Tropical Swirl Babka

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babkaCurrently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.

This is actually two recipes in one. First, you make a batch of Desire’s Brioche dough. But instead of making traditional brioche loaves, you roll the dough out and spread a filling of muscovado sugar and cinnamon on it, then roll the dough up and cut it like cinnamon rolls. Then you toss the sliced dough into the pan and bake it. What you end up with is sort of a cross between monkeybread and cinnamon-swirl bread.

The main feature of brioche is that is contains a lot of butter, and you have to slowly beat chilled butter into the dough. I haven’t made brioche before, but Medrich’s instructions were pretty clear. She warns that this dough is very wet, sticky and elastic. She wasn’t kidding.

My dough seemed too wet and almost mushy. Even though I beat it for the amount of time Medrich said to, it didn’t pull together like I expected. It felt and looked more like a cake batter than a bread dough. But I went ahead and beat in the butter and then let the dough rest, overnight, in the fridge.

The next morning, I rolled the chilled dough out. It was much easier to handle, cold, but it still seemed mushy. I was unable to find muscovado sugar, so I used dark brown sugar in the filling. Once assembled and in the pan, the dough didn’t rise very much, but it did get a good oven spring. I might have overcooked the babka, as it was a bit dry, and I felt like it needed more filling. Even after baking it, though, it still didn’t have the mouthfeel of a traditional bread. It was more like a cake.

This is probably the only recipe out of Pure Dessert that I felt really didn’t work, and that might have been more my fault then the recipe’s fault.