Cooking In General

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I love cabbage and tomato together in soup. Actually they taste really good cooked with brown rice. With a little meat and a green salad on the side it makes a very nice supper.

Home made invented soups are the best. Beans are usually a great addition as well. I'm sure that your soup was delish~!

 

Just a little something something for the hungry adventurers:

Turnips

Slice them thin, fry the slices in some oil in the frying pan, add some chili and some pepper powder or curry. Black pepper is great as well.

Get them crispy on the outside and chewy in the inside. Add some salt. You'll love it

Better than potato chips.

 

Probably a silly question, but what measurement is "c" in Rally's recipe?

 

Surely c stands for cup.

 

Ah. That makes a bit more sense. I'll go and look sheepish now.

 

Does anyone have any good casserole recipies? I bought a new casserole dish a few weeks ago and so far I've just made hamburger/bean/vegetable/cream corn/potato casserole. I need some new things to make in it.

 

@Dfly PM me an e-addy and I'll scan some good recipes including Bourgignon and Bouillabaise and others

 

No posts here for a while, but it's December and I'm about to start marathon bread-baking. It's my solution for what to give people for Christmas. By about December 23 I will have made about 60-70 loaves of cinnamon swirl bread. For those of you who live in the U.S., the best flour for yeasted breads, IMHO, is King Arthur. I discovered while I lived in Vermont years ago and it's now available nationally. I use a mix of half King Arthur all-purpose and half King Arthur bread flour.
Here's the recipe:

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

2 cups warm water (if it's feels good to you, the yeast will like it, too)
1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
1 Tablespoon sugar
Mix water, yeast, and sugar in large bowl and leave for 10 minutes. The yeast should start growing and look foamy - if not, start over.

6 cups (about 26 oz. weight) all-purpose flour, or mixed as described above
2 Tablespoons corn oil
1 Tablespoon salt

Once the water/yeast/sugar mix is all foamy, add about one cup flour and mix well. Next add the oil, then the salt, and mix well. From the remaining flour, sprinkle about 1/4 cup on your clean counter, then dump the rest into the bowl and mix until it holds together. Now dump the dough onto the flour pile on the counter and knead it (that means: smash it flat, fold it in thirds, give it a quarter turn, and smash it flat again). Do that for several minutes. The longer you knead it, the finer the grain of the bread will be, but you really only HAVE to do it until the dough is evenly textured.
Now cover with platic wrap (not air-tightly) or a damp towel and leave it at room temperature for about two hours.

Meanwhile mix:
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
which will make a little more than you need, but goes great on buttered toast later.

Once the dough has risen, divide it into two even pieces - I weigh it to make sure they are the same but you can eyeball it. Working with one at a time, pat the piece into a rectangle and then use a rolling pin to roll it out as long as you can get it to go. It will be elastic and want to retract on you - if it's too stubbron, let it sit on the counter a few minutes and it will relax. I aim for 24-30 inches long, with the width the same as the length of my bread pan, but if you can't get it to go that long, you just won't have as many swirls in the slices. Once it's rolled out, spread the cinnamon sugar evenly over the dough and roll it tightly from one end, tucking under and trying to seal it a bit as you go, to avoid air pockets. It won't be a perfectly round cylinder, but not to worry - it will round out as it rises. Neaten up the end and put it in a well-greased standard loaf pan. Repeat with the other piece, spray top of loaves with non-stick cooking spray, and cover with plast wrap. Let rise in pan about 1 hour, until top of loaf is above top of pan.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake on center rack for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake an additional 20 minutes. Loaf is done if it pulls slightly away from sides of pan and, when turned out into an oven-gloved hand, sound rather hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool on wire rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing - it's still cooking and setting as it cools.

I will do these assembly-line style, actually three at a time rather than two at a time, with three rising in the bowl, three rising in the pan, and three in the oven, for two or three days each week till Christmas. People love them and they can eat them and have no extra "stuff" to store or decide what to do with.

 

Won't they have gone stale by the time you give them to people?

Plus, how come you are baking for 70 people? I only have to get presents for about 6 people each Christmas.

 

Yes, Harbourboy, the loaves WOULD go stale - if I waited till Christmas to give them. But I don't; they get delivered the day after they get baked! So part of the fun is giving a gift early that gets enjoyed right then.

And the 70 people are basically all the people I work with, the people in the choir I sing with (that's about 30 right there), the people in the law office across the street who take care of UPS deliveries when I'm not here and let me use their fax machine, my doctors (several of those, alas), my pastor, family members (big family) - I'm not all that overcome with people, but I don't give any other gifts at Christmas, just the bread I bake. The number fluctuates because there are some people, on the edges, I find out I can't deliver to - they've gone out of town, for instance, before I get to them.

The bread does freeze well, though, and best way to defrost it is to take it out the night before and let it sit on the counter overnight, still tightly wrapped up.

[ December 06, 2006, 15:31: Message edited by: revmaf ]

 

Can someone tell me how you freeze bread dough? I have bought in from the grocery store already frozen but I'd like to make my own and freeze the dough until I'm ready to use it.

Do you have to let it rise for a while before you freeze it or do you freeze it as soon as you do the kneading?

 

Regarding freezing bread dough:
It works much better if you let it rise once before you freeze it. This gives the yeast an opportunity to grow and mulitply and start doing their generational thing.

When it's risen once (and by once, I mean whatever the recipe specifies for the first rise, usually 1 1/2 to 2 hours), punch it down (baker-speak for pressing it down to its original size to get rid of all the air pockets). You can then form it into a loaf shape, if that's what you're going to end up with, or into rolls, or whatever you intend. Then, if the dough is sticky, spray with non-stick cooking spray, wrap in plastic wrap, and then overwrap in a heavy freezer bag with most of the air squeezed out before you seal it. You can skip the non-stick spray if it's not sticky.

Now, to bake the bread, take it out and place it on or in the pan you're going to use and leave it at room temperature until it has risen - this may take two to four hours, depending on the size of the dough piece that is thawing out. Once it has risen to your expected size, bake normally. Or, if you are using a recipe that calls for three rising periods, let it rest at room temperature till it rises, punch it down, shape it, and bake.

Don't keep it too long in the freezer (my guess would be six months max) and be careful to wrap it in a way that is as close to airtight as you can make it. I have consumed some truly awful bread that was freezer-burned - ugh!

 

It's almost Hanukkah, so time for my annual attempt to make edible latkes. I think I have a better chance this year, since I actually know what temperature the oil has to be for frying them (as opposed to "hot"), and I'm going to go out and get an infrared thermometer to make sure my pan reaches and maintains that temperature.

 

Ooo, Rallymama, if the latkes come out good give us the recipe and the secret temperature. I had a Jewish neighbor growing up who made latkes - they were wonderful.

 

I love to cook, and consider myself to ... progress steadily and produce edible food and satisfied eaters. I insist on cooking regularly, at the time usually various soups of the hmm-let's-look-what's-left-in-the-fridge sort.

Made muffins today. I improvised and reversed a red wine cake recipe to a white wine cake recipe, exchanging red wine for white whine, dark chocolate for white chocolate etc. I was afraid of them being sticky inside so I sort of ... burnt them. Lack of practice?

Still this is funny, because from the outside they are reddish-brown and dark, and look in fact like red wine muffins - yet from the inside they are golden. And they taste great - and completely different. I consider them a success, except for the point that next time I won't burn them, I hope

You need:
1/8 l of white wine
a generous shot of rum
a large spoon of vanilla sugar
a large spoon of baking powder
approx 300g of honey
4 eggs
half a pound of butter
some 300g of regular flour
200g of ground almonds
200g of rasped white chocolate
complete skin and juice of an untreated lemon (or orange)

Mix, fill into muffin forms and put in the pre-warmed oven at about 200° C for about 45 min (baking time is re-adjusted ).

 

Well, yesterday I cut open my supposedly vacuum-sealed one-pound packet of Red Star yeast and was greeted by a wafting aroma of something rotten, not yeasty! Apparently it had not sealed properly and the yeast became infected with bacteria. I proofed a tablespoon of it (that means mixing it up in warm water with a bit of sugar to help it grow) and it smelled even worse, so I chucked out the whole package.

I have been baking bread for many years, usually using bulk yeast that I store in the freezer, and this has never happened to me before. I am very glad I discovered it now, before ruining several time-consuming batches of bread!

So, bread-bakers, this is another reason to proof your yeast first, instead of mixing it in with the other dry ingredients as so many recent recipes direct. The old reason (still a sound one) was to make sure the yeast was alive and the bread would rise. The new reason is to make sure the yeast isn't infected with something!

Yech!

 

Daaaaaamn, Rag, those sound awesome and I want to make them soon... except i donöt have honey or white chocolate... *contemplates experimenting*

here be soemthing nice and shiny for you: Brownies from heaven!


¾ c sugar

½ c butter

2 tbsp water

2 c chocolate chips

1 ½ tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 ¼ c flour

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt, set aside. Heat sugar, butter, and water until completely melted. Stir in 1 c chocolate chips and let them melt. Remove from heat and let cool. Stir in vanilla. Beat eggs into this mixture, then add dry ingredients, stirring until just combined. Add chocolate chips, and pour into a greased 9x9 square pan. Bake at 350F (180C) for 25-35 minutes.

 

Ara,
on second thought - add raisins.

 

I don't LIKE raisins

 

You poor thing.