Carrot Ginger Orange Soup

This is pulled from my personal recipe box, posted at the request of @SusanEsparza.

Carrot Ginger Orange Soup
Ingredients

small amount of olive oil
2 shallots, minced (use 2 small mild onions if you can't find shallots)
1 Tablespoon freshly grated ginger
grated rind of one large orange
6 cups chicken stock
12 large carrots, peeled and chopped into uniform chunks
juice of one large orange
sour cream for garnish (optional)

In a soup pot, heat oil over high heat. When warm, sautee shallots till opaque -- 3 to 4 minutes. Add ginger and orange rind, stirring until fragrant -- shouldnt' take long, no more than one minue. Add stock and carrots. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to high simmer/low boil. Cook until carrots are extremely tender -- 30-45 minutes longer; you should be able to mush a carrot chunk against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Cool on the stove for half an hour. Stir in fresh orange juice. Puree in batches in a blender or food processor (remember: if its still hot, you'll be dealing with steam...open the little hatch in your blender top!). Store in fridge. Reheat on stove top before serving. Garnish with sour cream if you want. Haven't tried it, but I think a swirl of pesto through it would be delicious, too.

This is tasty all the time, but is particularly lovely on a rainy night, when you want to feel warm.

You can use vegetable stock if you are anti-fowl.

Raisin Gingerbread Muffins

I've been baking and cooking up a storm lately!

Last night, for example, I made Raisin Gingerbread Muffins, thinking that they were a little more neatly portable than the boy bait was.

Recipe with my modifications follows.

Raisin Gingerbread Muffins

Take your butter out of the fridge, and let it soften.

Preheat your oven to 375°F

If you forgot to soften your butter, pour yourself a lovely beverage and sip it while you wait for your butter to soften.

Cream together:
1/2 cup butter (which is softened, right?)
1/2 cup sugar

Beat in:
2 eggs, 1 at a time

Beat in:
1/2 cup sour cream

Beat in:
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, which has more nutrients in it than other molasses, so this gets the mystical allure of being a Healthy Muffin

In a separate bowl, mix together:
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 generous pinch salt

Add dry ingredient mixture to wet mixture, and stir to combine. Just to combine -- once everything's gotten damp, stop stirring.

Stir in:
1/2 cup golden raisins

Line your muffin tins with, well, muffin tin liners/cupcake wrappers; you're making 12 muffins, so line enough indentations. Distribute dough evenly between the cups. They'll be about 3/4 full, but don't worry too much about it, as long as they are evenly full. Grab a tin by the short sides, lift a few inches off your work space, and thunk it back down on your workspace to help settle the dough in nicely -- it's sticky, so if you try to even 'em out from above, be prepared to lose some dough.

Pop the tins in the oven. Check in on them in 18 minutes: if you can slide a toothpick or broomstraw into one and have it come out clean, you have muffins! Otherwise, rotate your trays in the oven, and give 'em another 3 minutes.

Remove from oven to wire rack. After 5 or 10 minutes, tip them out of the tin to finish cooling on the rack.

Once they're all-the-way cooled, you can pop 'em in a zip top bag -- a gallon size works nicely, if you eat two of the muffins first. (What? They smell good.) Close the zip top almost all the way; you don't want it completely air tight. Store on the counter or in your breadbox if you're going to eat them all in the next few days, otherwise fridge 'em or freeze 'em.

These taste VERY GOOD. They'd be even better with cream cheese frosting.

Sunday, Cooking

Today, I'm going a bit nuts in the kitchen.

Right now, I've got a ham in the oven, cooking low and slow a la Alton Brown's City Ham recipe. I've also got a pot of beans simmering so that I can make Tante Suzie's Pork & Beans. I've whipped up a batch of the master dough recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and have it rising. Later, there will also be asparagus.

I also have a big measuring cup filled with tomato juice, for the pork & beans. Trouble was, see, that I didn't have any tomato juice in the house, and I was ill-inclined to go out again (long churchy morning). Thank goodness for the internet! Did you know that you can make your own tomato juice substitute? One can of tomato paste to four cans of water. Doesn't matter what size can of paste you're using, just make sure you measure the water in that self same can. This'll also help you clean out every last bit of tomato goodness.

I've been making a concerted effort to eat more "real food" -- so, there's been a lot of baking. The Boy Bait was just the start. I've made two loaves of no knead bread this week, and as you might have gathered from the first paragraph, I've got more bread plans for this week.

And that's my Sunday. Light on cookbooks, big on love.

Blueberry & Blackberry Boy Bait: Cooking the Books

It's September 11, 2011, and I celebrated the second day of being in a Toxic-Free Zone (TFZ), media-wise. I invited a friend over for movies, made up a big super nacho, and, because nothing makes a TFZ quite like the scent of baked goods, I baked.

Specifically, I baked a Boy Bait...with variations from the original recipe (I know you're all terribly surprised).

Variations:

• I used blueberries and blackberries.
  
• I used a whole lot more blueberries than called for -- a whole big pint container, not just one cup.
  
• Yes, and then blackberries in addition to that...a 4 oz package.
  
• I didn't use nutmeg, because, well, I found out I didn't have any nutmeg in the house.
  
• I did have cinnamon, though.
  
• I ran out of sugar -- what sort of baker am I? -- so filled out the "sprinkle on top" sugar measure with cinnamon sugar.

I recommend upping the amount of fruit like I did. Otherwise, you're having much more cake than fruit. This gives you a good duality. And, yes, I said "cake" -- it's much more cakey than a clafoutis or any crumble, crumb, or whatnot.

The recipe came together just fine. A survey of other boy bait recipes online show that others are way more complicated, with whipping of egg whites and folding in of same, and cutting cold butter into flour... this is easier.

In the original post, I talked about how I liked how the ingredients list was ordered. Well...I take it back. The first measure of sugar, the butter, and the eggs should be together, at the top of the list, and then the dry, then the milk, then the toppings. So sayeth me.

I would serve this slightly warm with ice cream, or completely cooled with whipped cream or Cool Whip. I didn't, though, and it was just a touch on the too-dry side...and that was with the extra fruit!

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner: First Cookbook Drawing Winner

We've got a winner for the first cookbook drawing! And A Little Something goes to...

First, process:

There were 7 entries. I numbered them in the order they came in, and then used the Truly Random Number Generator to pick the winning number.

Entry #3 turns out to be ... Kelly, who is afraid of cheddar cheese chocolate fudge. Congratulations, Kelly!

Banana Mutt Cookies, and Just a Few More Hours to Enter the Drawing!

There are a few more hours left to enter the cookbook giveaway drawing -- I'm extending the deadline past midnight Eastern tonight all the way until 8:27 AM Eastern...the approximate time that Puck will wake me up tomorrow.

It's the time of year where I declare all my social media outposts as Toxic Free Zones, and I guarantee you'll find nothing morbid, morose, depressed, depressing, sad, or weary here. Happiness, lightness, silliness, frivolity are the rule. And what fits that bill more than Three Dog Bakery Cookbook: Over 50 Recipes for All-Natural Treats for Your Dog and baking for your own or your neighbor's pooch?

Banana Mutt Cookies

Makes about 20 mutt pleasers

Whew! Cat chasing can be exhausting work -- this is truly the paws that refreshes. Use fresh bananas and your dogs will love you a bunch!

1 1/2 cups ripe mashed bananas
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups oats
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
1/4 cup applesauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto an ungreased baking sheet, and press flat with a fork.

Bake for approximately 15 minutes, then cool on a rack before serving. Store in an airtight container.

"The paws that refreshes." Folks, I want to assure you: I did not write that myself. That pun comes to you straight from the cookbook.

The oats they're talking about here are the kind that come with a Quaker on the label. Rolled oats, either quick or old fashioned. I'm not saying your dog can't stomach steel cut, Irish oats ... I'm just saying that there might be some extra dog gas if you go that route, and most American households tend to stock the Quaker rolled variety, so use what you have.

Missed a few days of posts, as I was auditioning for a show. Long story short: I'm not doing a show this fall, so the blog will skip nicely over the unsightly lulls that tend to come with my being theatrical. So, yay! Regular cookbook posts!

Let me know what kind of cookbook you think I should cover next. Moreover, go enter the cookbook giveaway drawing before it's too late.

Coq Au Vin: My Deep Dark Secret

It's time to 'fess up. I love cookbooks, but I rarely ever prepare a recipe as written. It is much, much, much more common for me to consult a few books and then some website, and cobble together what I like from all of them to make something more me.

Tonight, for instance, I stopped at a couple stores on the way home, and bought fixings for coq au vin, or, really, A Slightly Less Pretentious Dish of Red Wine Braised Chicken. And here's how I did it:

Coq au Vin, or a Slightly Less Pretentious Dish of Red Wine Braised Chicken

Preheat your oven to 350°F

8 chicken thighs, with skin, bone in
1 cup flour
hearty pinch salt
hearty grinding pepper

Put flour, salt, and pepper in a brown paper bag. Close up, and shake to combine. Open bag, and put in two chicken thighs. Close the bag, and give a few hearty shakes. Open bag, and take out each thigh, placing them on a cooling rack for the time being. Repeat until all thighs are coated and placed on the rack. Throw out the bag.

Why the rack? Because we want the moisture from the chicken to start forming a shell with the flour, so we want as little contact with surfaces as possible.

2 containers of white mushrooms, sliced
big pat of butter
big pinch of salt

In a separate skillet or pot altogether, melt your big pat of butter over medium-high heat, and then dump in your mushrooms. Add salt. Stir occasionally as you do the rest of your work.

1/2 package bacon, cut into chunks

In a big flat-bottomed pot or a deep skillet, over medium-low heat, render out the bacon fat. If your pot is running hot and you're risking crisping/burning rather than rendering, add a shot glass full of water.

Cook until you've a good amount of fat rendered out, then use tongs and remove the bacon to a bowl for now. Leave the fat in the pan.

Lay 2-3 chicken thighs skin-side down in the bacon-y pot. Let sit for a few minutes, until the crust starts forming, and you see a bit of golden brown. Turn over, and let sit until the other side is crusty/golden. Remove to a heavy 9x13 pan. Repeat with the rest of the chicken thighs, in small batches. If you pot dries out, add a few glugs of olive oil between batches.

4 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced

Dump your non-fungus veg into the bacon-y/chicken-y pot, and stir frequently until the onions and garlic are softened. If you have the patience, keep going until the carrots are soft. If not....so be it.

By now, the mushrooms should have cooked down. They're now much more brown than they were, and almost all of the liquid they threw off has evaporated.

If it hasn't evaporated, turn up the heat, and keep the non-fungus veg going until the mushrooms are ready.

When the mushrooms are all ready, take 'em off the heat, and spread them over/between the chicken in the 9x13 pan. Scoop up non-fungus veg and spread over/between the chicken & mushrooms. Sprinkle/spread the bacon on top of the whole mess.

1 750-ml bottle of relatively inexpensive pinot noir, ideally from France or Oregon (it should be something that you would actually deign to drink; plonk has no place here, but "I could use it in Sangria" does)
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs rosemary AND 3 sprigs thyme OR a big ol' pinch of dried herbs de Provence

Check your bacon-y/chicken-y/non-fungus-veg-y pot: is there any fat left in the pan? If so, pour it off (not down the sink...into an empty can) or blot it up with paper towels. Dump in your wine, turn up the heat to high, and start whisking to get all the crusty bits up off the pan bottom. This? Is flavor. It's also "deglazing." It is the key to goodness. Honest. Add in the herbs, and whisk frequently as the whole things bubbles strongly. Keep it going for 3-5 minutes -- it'll reduce somewhat.

Take off the heat, and pour over the chicken/mushroom/veg/bacon concoction. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, and pop in the oven for an hour and a half.

1 package noodles -- egg noodles, spätzle, fettuccine, or whatever you have in the cupboard
large amounts of water
heaping pinch of salt
big knob of butter
store bunch of fresh parsley, leafy bits chopped up, stems discarded

Bring water to a boil in a big ol' pot. Toss in the salt, then the noodles. Stir, and cook for the length of time specified on the package. Drain. Put into a big ol' bowl, and toss with the knob of butter and 3/4 of the parsley.

Eat a bowl full of noodles, because by now you're really hungry, and the house smells amazing, and you're salivating, and you need sustenance.

When the chicken's been in the oven for an hour and a half, pull it out, open it up, and sprinkle the rest of the parsley over the whole thing.

Serve the chicken and veg along side the noodles, and spoon some of the delicious sauce over the whole thing. Make sure you're not eating the bay leaves or the sprigs of herbs. Throw those bad boys away.

Like all things stewed and braised, this'll just get better as it sits in the fridge. Make sure you have some leftovers for the next day or two, because you'll be the happiest person in the world.

And that, m'dears, is how I cook.

Cheese Please Hound Rounds: For, Lo, We Love All Things Cheese

It comes as no surprise to you all that we are a cheese-loving family. We're die-hard Tillamook Cheese boosters; heck, Puck was even Tillamook's fan of the month back in October of last year. We love us some cheese, we do.

If a dog in your life is also a fan of all things fromage-esque, why not try out this recipe from Three Dog Bakery Cookbook: Over 50 Recipes for All-Natural Treats for Your Dog and offer up a double indulgence -- two cheeses, no waiting.

Cheese Please Hound Rounds

Bakes up approximately 24 chewy, cheesey chompers

Your hound will definitely hang around when he smells these rounds!

2 cups white flour
1/2 cup shredded low-fat Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1 teaspoon chopped cilantro leaves
1 teaspoon parsley flakes
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup chopped peanuts
2/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix together flour, Cheddar and cottage cheese, cilantro leaves and parsley.

Add oil, peanuts and water and mix thoroughly.

Break off golf ball-size pieces and shape into balls.

Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Cool on a rack and serve. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

I give you full permission to use all parsley or all cilantro, as one teaspoon each is going to lead to a lot of waste unless you've got a lot of Mexican and Italian cookery planned for the week.

I also give you permission to use whole wheat flour instead of white flour. They'll be less bakery-pretty, but there'll be some increase in nutritive value, and if you've already got that flour in the house, might as well use it. Seriously, I am just tickled pink at the idea of baking for our dogs, but if it requires a special trip to the store for ingredients, I suspect we might be taking it a bit far. Kooky is all well and good, until it takes you over into nutjob territory.

One nit to pick: there is no such thing as low-fat Cheddar. There is low-fat cheddar, which is a Cheddar alternative. It shares many qualities with Cheddar, but it is not Cheddar, it is cheddar-esque. Picked nit, then, is this: Capitalize Cheddar, but only when you're actually talking about Cheddar. Low-fat options have their place, but their place is not in the List Of Things That Are Capitalized.

There's still time to enter the cookbook giveaway.

Three Dog Bakery Cookbook, by Dan Dye & Mark Beckloff: Party Hearty Mix-It-Up Mix

We're going through our bookshelves this weekend, doing a massive purge of books we've read and not loved. This is not a small task -- we are book fiends, and our shelves are overflowing. In pulling books yesterday, I found several cookbooks on non-cookbook shelves, including Three Dog Bakery Cookbook: Over 50 Recipes for All-Natural Treats for Your Dog-- I take it as a blogging sign. This week: dog treats! I'll even try to throw in a cooking-the-books post with feedback from Puck the Corgi.

Party Hearty Mix-It-Up Mix

Makes 42 hellraisin', raucous, rowdy snacks

The favorite for squirrel-chasin', stick-fetchin', hole-diggin' hounds--let the good times roll-over!

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
4 teaspoons skim milk
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix together oil, honey, vanilla, egg and milk in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, blend together flour, baking powder and ginger.

Combine dry ingredients with wet mixture and stir thoroughly.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface, roll out to 1/4-inch thick and cut into shapes.

Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

I do believe this is our first use-cookie-cutters recipe on Take One Cookbook...! You don't have to use cookie cutters, mind you. You could just cut the dough into long strips and then cross-cut into squares, rectangles, or diamonds. That method is quick, and you can make the treats as small as you want.

But, really, where's the fun in that? This is an opportunity. Yes, an opportunity to use cookie cutters! If you have bone shaped cutters, whip 'em out, but there's nothing saying you can't make your dog some turtle-shaped cookies, or stars, or hearts, or dinosaurs, or airplanes, angels or armadillos! Cut out as many as you can, then take the scraps, roll into a ball, and roll out again and keep going until you've used as much of the dough as possible. If it starts getting too sticky to work with, pop your dough in the fridge for 10 minutes or so, or add more flour to your board.

You can still do this even if you don't have a rolling pin: a clean wine bottle works great as an impromptu pin, and your dog won't even look at you funny.

Really. Dogs only look at you with love when you're baking for them.


Puck the Corgi guarding the polar bears' private meeting.
Yes, this week will have lots of pictures of my dog.

Oven-Fried Zucchini, and Cookbook Give-Away

I'm an apartment dweller, with no yard or patio or porch of my own, and no real strong motivation to schlep tools several blocks daily to manage a plot at the community garden. This is to say: I never have too many tomatoes. I never have to find someone to take some cucumbers off my hands. And I never, ever, ever have to figure out a way to use up an over-abundance of zucchini. If you are a gardener, though, you probably are coming into zucchini, and  A Little Something has a way for you to get through the bounty.

Oven-Fried Zucchini

The secret to the zucchini's crispiness is double dipping in egg whites -- finally, double dipping is acceptable! These are excellent with Horseradish Yogurt Sauce or prepared tomato sauce.

Makes 4 servings

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1/4 cup seasoned dry bread crumbs

2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch wedges

2 large egg whites

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Liberally spray a baking sheet with vegetable cooking spray.
2. Combine the bread crumbs and Parmesan in a large bowl. Set aside.
3. Dip the zucchini in the egg whites and then coat with the bread-crumb mixture. Repeat.
4. Place on the prepared baking sheet, and spray liberally with cooking spray. Bake until golden, about 30 minutes. Serve with Horseradish Yogurt Sauce.

Okay, you're not going to get through five grocery bags of zucchini this way. One cup of zucchini? Not  going to get you as far as hoped. So, I say, keep cranking these out. Crispy veg for dipping = a good movie day/night snack. Try it.

The sauce recipe is on the same page of  A Little Something but rather than type it all out in proper format, let's go easy: Take a container of plain yogurt, mix in 1 or 2 tablespoons prepared horseradish. Ta da. That's sauce. Or, you know, use lemon yogurt for a bit of extra tang -- this sauce is what I put on roast beef sandwiches.

I may have to make this later this weekend, as I've eggs and breadcrumbs in the house from the great meatball experiment.

Speaking of... time to put the balls in the sauce.

But before that... how's about a giveaway?

The First Ever Take One Cookbook... Cookbook Giveaway!


Yes, I'm giving away a cookbook! In fact, I'm giving away this week's cookbook: my well-worn copy of  A Little Something.

You can get up to four entries in the drawing. How? Leave a comment on this blog post with one of the following:

1. An appetizer you love to make.
2. A recipe from Take One Cookbook... that sounds really good to you.
3. A recipe from Take One Cookbook... that sounds appalling to you.
4. A link to your tweet or blog post wherein you tweet or blog about Take One Cookbook... in some way.

Each comment is one entry; don't put all four in one, or you'll confuse and confound me when it comes time to draw a winner.

Drawing will take place on Sunday, September 11, because we need a little happy on that day. Get your entries in by midnight Eastern on Saturday, September 10.

Cooking the Books: Dom's Mom's Meatballs

It's day two of a four day weekend for me, and I've a clean kitchen and a non-over-stuffed fridge. This means...

Time to cook.

I wanted to chop, and I wanted to mix, and I wanted an excuse to eat pasta. So, I hopped on over to the grocer's and bought all the fixings for Dom's Mom's Meatballs, the quintessential meatballs from Dom DeLuise (and his mother).

Of course, there are in-the-moment variations: I upped the amount of parsley, because I couldn't bear the thought of using just a bit of a bunch, knowing I'd not use the rest of it before it went bad. I bought pre-seasoned breadcrumbs, feeling in part like I was a poseur, but also admitting that, damn it, really good seasoned Italian breadcrumbs are, in fact, really good. I grated my cheese (parmesan -- Mr. DeLuise doesn't specify, but, c'mon, ya know his mom's using parmigiano) because the stuff in a shaker jar just isn't good enough for a loving batch of meatballs. I didn't measure the cheese -- it was closer to 4 oz by weight than by volume. I used 1.5 pounds of ground beef, and 1 pound ground pork, mostly because I couldn't buy a smaller portion of pork, and so I thought my option was "double the recipe" or "just switch proportions." There's only two of us -- well, three if you count Puck the Corgi -- and we've a small little freezer, so making 40 massive meatballs seemed foolish at best.

The meat mixture is resting right now. Didn't take any photos during the assembly & mixing process, because my hands were busy, and dirty. Perhaps I'll ask Nick the Chefly Husband to take some pictures as the shaping process happens. If so, I'll post 'em here. If not, well... They're meatballs. I assume they'll be brown and lovely, and eventually covered in red sauce and served with penne.

And a lovely glass of almost-undoubtably-red wine.

Island Delights: Four Recipes, No Rum

The whole concept of A Little Something is, really, party tidbits. Little bits of food to serve at parties. Little bits of food to soak up some wine or cocktails. Even the picture on the cover has a glass of wine.

So, you'll understand my dismay at the following group of recipes, all of which are clearly missing a vital ingredient:

Rum.

Rum.

Sure, sure, they'll say "add some light rum" but that's hardly how one writes a cocktail recipe. Tell me I'm wrong here.

Island Delights

Relax, sip, and enjoy. Add some light rum or a scoop of vanilla ice cream if you like. These drinks are excellent with nachos, flavored nuts, potato skins, guacamole, black bean dip, chips, and of course, your favorite something.

Makes 1 to 2 servings

Strawberry Banana Colada

1 banana
1/3 cup frozen strawberries
2 tablespoons canned cream of coconut
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup ice

Piña Colada

1/4 cup canned cream of coconut
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup ice

Island Paradise

1/2 cup frozen sweetened strawberries
2 tablespoons canned cream of coconut
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup ice

Strawberry Daiquiri

1/2 cup frozen sweetened strawberries
1/4 cup sweet-and-sour mix
1/2 cup ice

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Garnish with fresh fruit slices or wedges if desired.

A daiquiri is not a daiquiri if it doesn't include rum. Okay, purist might well say that a daiquiri isn't a daiquiri unless it's just rum, lime juice, and simple syrup. And coladas aren't coladas when they're just fruit.

Call 'em something else, please. "Island Paradise" is fine by me.

Or, call 'em Frozen Drinks. Some of my friends (Heather & Philip, of Picaroon Blog) used to host a Frozen Drinks Party every summer, where they supplied the booze and everyone brought frozen fruit, ice, and other add-ins. A good time, every year.

Okay, okay. I'll admit it. I don't tend to do frozen, blended cocktails. I like my margaritas on the rocks. I like my daiquiris in theory. But I'm being crotchety, and A Little Something has let me down on this group of recipes.

Henceforth, I'm going to pretend that these are Frozen Drinks, or Mocktails, or Fancy Drinks For Baby Showers And Children's Parties. I'm an information architect; labels are important. With the right label, I'll stop this recipe rant.