Kristen – Page 26 – Food Follies

Chicken Stir Fry

We made a chicken stir fry the other night. Nothing really fancy, just chicken, onions, peppers, broccoli, carrots, and Nappa Cabbage. I marinated the chicken in a bottle of marinade I had gotten from the local Dollar store.

When it comes to stir fry, I like my vegetables to be fully cooked. I slice my carrots into thin strips and cut the broccoli down to crowns. I also peel the outside of the broccoli stems and include them as well. I start the broccoli, carrots, onions and peppers first, cooking them for about ten minutes before adding the meat. The cabbage gets added last, since that takes only a few minutes.

This procedure actually got me into trouble at the last place I worked. The management there insisted that the vegetables had to look bright and colorful, which essentially means raw. I also couldn’t add any soy sauce to the stir fry because it would darken the veggies as well. One of the cooks who had worked there for ten years had actually said to me: “If you make it look good, their imaginations will fill in the rest.”

Yeah well, I prefer the taste of my food to speak for itself.

Another Reason to Love Tillamook!

“Dairy farmers whose cows provide milk for the second largest producer of chunk cheese in the nation (Tillamook) voted Monday to ban a Monsanto Co. hormone on schedule, rejecting pressure from the chemical company…. Rick North, spokesman for Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, called the Tillamook ban a victory for consumers. ‘They’re not only doing the right thing, they’re doing the smart thing,’ North said of the co-op vote. ‘This should be great for their business.'” (full article)

This is terrific news, IMO. Tillamook already has some of the best cheese we’ve yet tasted on the west coast, and now it’s going to get even better! Mmmm… cheese….

Scallops Fettuccine Alfredo

For a slight change of pace tonight (we’re still hooked on homemade pasta) we decided to make Scallops Alfredo.

Alfredo sauce is one of the most simple sauces to make, but it requires good ingredients to work properly. Heavy cream, butter, fresh parmesan cheese and garlic are the basic ingredients, and if you substitute any of them for something cheaper, the sauce will suffer.

Tonight’s sauce seemed to come out too thin and salty at first. The Parmesan cheese I bought tasted very salty, but somehow between the addition of the scallops and the fettuccine, the sauce came out just right.

A Gift of Bread

Yesterday one of our bestest friends gifted us with a loaf of his homemade bread – we barely made it home with the thing intact – it was perfect! It had a thick, shiny, golden brown crust that gave your teeth a workout when chewing, a delicious flavor, the inside was thick and tasty, but tender as well. It even had the fancy schmancy diagonal slots across the top! I speak in past tense, although we do have a bit of it left, but it’s not going to last very much longer!

In Celebration of the Back of Cereal Boxes

When I was a kid, I’d sit at the breakfast table and read the cereal boxes over and over again. Often there was either something fun or interesting on the back, and sometimes some interesting recipes on the side. But over the last few years I’ve noticed that most cereal boxes use the space for either overt marketing or for supposed health messages, with no actual substance. I eat Cheerios because I like how they taste, okay? Not because they come with a whole bunch of propoganda about how this or that will help your heart. (Don’t even get me started again on those stupid commercials that show three year old children being overtly worried that their parents’ hearts are going to give out any minute!)

But, I digress. I give Albertsons store-brand cereal boxes the thumbs up. Their honey-nut o’s box had a ‘match a leaf shape to its tree’ learning game. And their corn flakes box had pictures and information about herbs and their uses – rosemary, bay, thyme, tarragon, chives, and basil. It’s interesting, fun, and the writing is creative. It doesn’t tell you that the product helps your cholesterol (reminds me of Smithers working at the race track in the Simpsons, “The audience is already here, do we really have to keep hustling them?”) or any other part of your body. It’s actually RELAXING to read these cereal boxes. So, I just want to say.. Nice job, Albertsons’ cereal box design people!

Olney Pancake Race

From their Official Website: “The Olney Pancake Race, dating back more than five hundred years, is held on Shrove Tuesday. The course is 415 yards long and is run from the Market Place to the Church at 11.55 a.m. Participants, housewives or young ladies of the town, must have lived in Olney for at least 3 months and be at least 18 years old. Competitors must wear the traditional costume of a housewife, including a skirt, apron and head covering. They must of course carry a frying pan containing a pancake. The winner, on crossing the line, must toss her pancake and she is then greeted by the verger with the traditional kiss of peace.” Enough said?

Meat Slabs

It was our own fault for forgetting to say that we wanted our half pound of deli turkey sliced really thin. But when we opened the bag later, although it was actually a half-pound, we counted SIX slices… er… slabs. First, I don’t know anyone who prefers thick slabs of deli meat, and I’m still not sure why that’s what seems to be standard unless you ask for it differently. Why wouldn’t extra-thin be standard? Is this a marketing thing or a true public preference thing? We got three sad sandwiches out of the slabs and vowed never again to forget our war cry of “Sliced as thin as possible!” Lesson learned, but bafflement retained.

Pierogies

I was inspired to make homemade pierogies yesterday and enlisted John as the filling-maker, while I played with the dough. We’d never made them before so we browsed through John’s “New York Cookbook” which had a couple of recipes. We took ideas from each of them, depending on what ingredients we had on hand.

For the filling, John boiled a few peeled and chunked potatoes (too many, as we ended up with a lot of extra filling – two would have probably been enough), mashed the potatoes, and then added finely chopped and then blanched onion and garlic, and some fresh ground black pepper and salt. The dough was pretty basic – a bunch of flour, some milk, a bit of oil, salt, and three eggs. It came out quite soft and elastic, like pizza dough. I actually had to add a bit more flour to stiffen it beyond the ‘really thick batter’ phase. I rolled out the dough to about 1/8″ thick and then made cutouts with a biscuit cutter. We then filled the cutouts of round dough with the filling and a bit of finely shredded extra sharp cheese, folded them over and pinched them shut, and then boiled them up. When they were done, we sprinkled more cheese on top. (We considered lightly frying them to crisp them up afterwards, but were too hungry for yet another step.)

If this is any kind of testimonial, they tasted almost EXACTLY like the Mrs. T’s Pierogies you can get in the freezer section at your local grocery store, only better, so we must have done something ‘right’ – LOL.

Pierogies

Dough:
3 eggs, beaten slightly
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups flour

Mix these dumpling ingredients together to make the dough. Then, knead the dough until you reach a pizza dough-like consistency, then form into a ball. Let sit for an hour, then refrigerate for about a half-hour, covered.

Filling:
Approximately two medium sized potatoes (or one rather large, or the equivalent)
1/4 finely chopped yellow onion
2 cloves minced garlic
black pepper and salt to taste
some finely shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese – approx. 1/4 cup

Peel, cube and boil the potatoes until soft. While the potatoes are cooking, chop the onion and blanch until clear. Then add the minced garlic and continue to blanch until blended. Set aside.

Mash the potatoes in the saucepan with a manual masher. Add onion and garlic to the potatoes and then mix until well blended. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Roll out the dumpling dough to about 1/8″ thickness. Cut into rounds (such as with a biscuit cutter) that are about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place about a half teaspoon (depending on the size of the cutout) of filling on the circle of dough. Sprinkle a bit of the shredded cheese on the filling. Fold the dough in half and pinch the edges shut firmly with your fingertips. Continue until all dough is gone.

Bring a good amount of water in a large saucepan to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add about 10-15 dumplings at a time (not too crowded) – they will sink at first and then float as they cook further. They will take about 8 minutes, or longer if you made the dough thicker than recommended. When done, pull them from the water with a slotted spoon. Continue with this process until all the dumplings are cooked, keeping the cooked ones warm in the meantime.

For serving, sprinkle more grated extra sharp cheese on top. Another option is to fry the cooked pierogies in a frying pan with a bit of oil/butter in the bottom, until somewhat brown and crispy.

Note: These are best when eaten promptly. The garlic flavors will fade overnight – I guess it’s a garlic and potato thing? Anyway, they’ll still taste good a day later, but not as garlicky.

Best… Lasagna… Ever…

John made the sauce, this time with fresh, mild, Italian sausage. I made the fresh lasagna noodles with my trusty pasta play-doh machine. Cows and companies made the ricotta and mozzarella cheeses. I think Pyrex made the glass pan… but I think I’m getting off track. It ended up being a seven layer lasagna that just seemed to melt in your mouth.

(We tried to take a photo of the layers, but that just wasn’t going to happen – too much cheese and sauce in the way for a good shot. ALAS!) There’s just something about fresh pasta that makes me want to NEVER go back to dried/boxed pasta. That’s probably not terribly practical, as one doesn’t always have the time, but it’s so worth it. It’s much more light and tender, I don’t feel overly stuffed, and best yet, I don’t feel like I have to take the entire night to digest it all.

Eventually, this food weblog will talk about something OTHER than fresh pasta, but it’s our latest ‘thing’ right now. You’ll see – you’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Review: Scrambl’z Restaurant

Today we tried Scrambl’z in Morgan Hill (California), an extremely cheery diner with smiley faces on the back of every server.

The food was excellent, and came in huge portions. I had a Chicken breast with bacon and BBQ sauce melt, which came on a big Kaiser roll. The plate came loaded with thin shoestring fries. The sandwich was called a “Green Slime” as an homage to 1950’s horror movies, but the only green on the plate was the half dill pickle.

Kristen had the French Dip, and our friend had the Fish & Chips (ok they’re fries, but I’m not British so I’ll forgive them). The service was excellent, our waiter was attentive but not intrusive, and very friendly. And the decor was… vibrant, as you can tell by the photo to the right. It was a mix of happy 50’s diner with happy… well, just happy. *grin*