Caribbean Lime Chicken, v. 1.0: A Work in Progress

I've been experimenting with a new recipe.  I was more or less going for a Caribbean version of Chicken Piccata:  Sauteed chicken breasts with Caribbean spices and a lime sauce.  I'm not all the way there yet, but I think the idea still has some promise.   Meanwhile, while I consider what to do differently, I'll share my first attempt.

I developed a pretty basic recipe to start with, one in which chicken cutlets were seasoned, dredged in flour and sauteed, after which a pan sauce was made to serve atop the chicken.  Wanting a Caribbean feel to the dish, I decided to season the chicken with two key Caribbean spices - allspice and cayenne pepper - as well as the usual salt and pepper.   Green onions and hot peppers are another common component of Caribbean recipes, but I didn't want the dish to be horribly hot, so I used a jalapeno in place of the more typically Caribbean habanero or Scotch bonnet peppers.  Finally, I used slices of fresh lime, lime juice, chicken broth and butter to try to make a sauce similar to that for Chicken Piccata, but using lime in place of lemon.  I also decided to toss in some Malibu coconut rum, to add a bit more Caribbean flavor.

My starter recipe in hand, I gave it a shot.  I served the chicken with some egg noodles and asparagus.  The result was... well, it wasn't completely horrible, but it wasn't very good, either.  

The first mistake was the allspice.  It works great in spice rubs for grilling, but here it tasted bitter and sort of muddy.   Perhaps that is a function of sauteing it, but whatever the reason, it was definitely not good.  The lime sauce also wasn't very good.  As opposed to the bold lemony flavor one gets with Chicken Piccata, the lime flavor was pretty subdued.  An acid tartness was about all that remained of the lime flavor, in fact.  The rum and coconut flavors were indiscernible. 

So, it's back to the drawing board for this recipe.  I plan to give the basic idea another try some time, but I'll probably have to rework it a fair bit.   I'll definitely dump the allspice.  It simply did not work in this recipe, at all.  I'm not sure where I want to get the heat from, but I'm leaning in flavor of the non-Caribbean, but also relatively unobtrusive, idea of using some red pepper flakes in place of the chilis.   I'll almost certainly boost the amount of rum (probably to 1/4 cup) and reduce the amount of chicken broth (to perhaps 1/2 cup), and I think I'll drop the faux-Piccata aspects and ditch the lime slices in favor of lime zest.  I am also considering stirring in the lime juice at the end, when the sauce has been removed from the heat.

I'll report back after my next try.  Meanwhile, perhaps a reader will want to try some of my ideas for changes - or some of his or her own - and see if they can make this dish work. 


Caribbean Lime Chicken

yield = 3 servings

3              boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, pounded
                into 1/4-inch thick cutlets
                freshly-ground black pepper, table salt, allspice and
                cayenne pepper (to taste)
1/4           cup all-purpose flour
3              tablespoons vegetable oil
1              jalapeno, seeded and minced
4              green onions, white and green parts separated, both
                thinly sliced
1              teaspoon minced garlic
1              cup low-sodium chicken broth
2              tablespoons coconut-flavored rum
1              lime, sliced into 1/4-inch thick half-moons,
                ends and seeds discarded
1/4           cup fresh-squeezed lime juice
1/2           teaspoon granulated sugar
3              tablespoons unsalted butter

Dry the chicken cutlets with paper towels, then sprinkle on both sides with salt and pepper to taste, and lightly with allspice and cayenne.  Add the flour to a large, shallow dish or pie plate.  Dredge each cutlet in the flour on both sides, shaking off excess flour, then set aside.

Add oil to a large skillet over medium heat.  When shimmering, add the chicken cutlets and cook until browned (about 4 minutes), then flip and cook another 3 minutes or until browned.  Transfer cutlets to a warmed platter and cover with foil.  Pour off most of the fat from the pan, then return to heat.

Add the jalapeno and the white part of the green onions and stir-fry two minutes, then add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds.  Add the chicken broth and use it to deglaze the skillet, then add rum and lime slices and cook until the liquid is reduced and slightly thickened.

Stir in the lime juice, sugar and any accumulated chicken juices.  Reduce heat to low and whisk in the butter.  Spoon the sauce over the chicken cutlets, garnish with the green parts of the green onions.  Serve.

Not Much Cebration on Pi Day

The Coconut Cream Pie I made for Pi Day turned out great... so great that Juli and I have finished off half of it ourselves over the course of a couple days.  I made an additional pie, intending mostly to share it with my coworkers.   Unfortunately, that pie didn't turn out right due to a major error on my part.  Too bad, because it looked great.

The pie in question was a Lemon Custard Pie.  To make the filling, I followed a Cook's Illustrated recipe, save that I added just a bit of nutmeg to the filling and sprinkled a tiny bit atop the pie before putting in the oven to bake.  The filling was really, really good.... the creamy, lemon-flavored custard was just plain perfect, in fact.   The crust, sadly, not so much.

Instead of using the crust suggested with the recipe (which is a fairly old one, from 1999), I used Cook's Illustrated's famous Foolproof Pie Dough recipe (also known as the Vodka Pie Crust).  I followed that recipe to the letter... or tried to, anyhow.  It cooked up wonderfully, but as Juli and I sampled a piece, I discovered that I'd made a significant error.   The pie crust was incredibly salty, such that although it looked wonderful, it was quite inedible.  

I have a pretty good idea what went wrong.  The recipe calls for both 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar, and I strongly suspect that I grabbed the salt container a second time and added a tablespoon of salt instead of the sugar.   One benefit of having pre-cooked the crust before adding the custard is that the saltiness was thoroughly cooked into the crust and didn't spread into the custard, so at least we can still enjoy the custard (we scooped it out and tossed the too-salty-to-eat pie crust).

So, I unfortunately don't have too much to take to work for Pi Day.   Still, I found another great pie recipe, and I got a good reminder to be a little more careful when grabbing ingredients.  I think I'll make the Lemon Custard Pie again - this time with the right amount of salt in the crust - later this week or next weekend.   It'll be too late for Pi Day, but any day is a good day for pie.

Cooking Tip:
If you need to do blind baking but don't have pie weights, dried beans are an effective substitute.  I used a pound of great northern beans.  Simply line the uncooked pie crust with foil or parchment paper, then fill it in with beans.

Possibly the Ugliest Cake. Ever.

It's been a long time since I've made a cake from scratch.  I had fond memories of Mom making a red Waldorf Astoria cake (aka Red Velvet Cake) for Valentine's Day when I was very small.  She used heart-shaped pans.  It was my favorite cake!


I know I made the recipe a time or two as a teenager/young adult, because there's red food coloring spilled all over my recipe.  So I was pretty confident that this cake would be fabulous.  Ha!  Fate had other plans.

First of all, I'd seen a recipe variation called Pink Velvet Cake.  I was intrigued, even though the recipes were quite different from mine.  So instead of buying red food coloring, I bought fuschia coloring.  Now, I know that fuschia is not pink.  But the color dot on top of the wee little bottle was a beautiful hot pink.  I imagined eating hot pink cake, and how Valentine-ey pretty that would be. 

My first surprise was that the fuschia food coloring made the cake batter look like muddy mulberries.  Not the bright, happy color I was going after.  Well.  The frosting would cover that up, though, right?

Nowhere close to hot pink.

I made the cooked part of the frosting, and even though the amount produced wasn't generous, I figured the second half that is added after the cooked part cools would make up for that in volume.  Again, not so much. 

This recipe has you slice each round layer in half horizontally.  I'd never done that before, but decided on a whim that having a four layer cake would be much prettier than just two fat layers slapped together.  Even if it was mulberry-colored!  It was a little nerve-wracking, but I managed to slice the 2 rounds without crumbling the now thin layers.  I wasn't sure how the layers should go together, though, and I found out the hard way that it's impossible to frost the cut side without getting crumbs in the frosting and using more frosting than I should have done, especially since I KNEW that I didn't have a lot to begin with.

So, I finished frosting up the mulberry wonder- almost.  I completely ran out of frosting before the top was covered (the photo I took conceals this somewhat, although just looking at this makes me giggle- SO ugly!).

Is this not the cobbiest frosting job you've ever seen?

But the real stinger was that once I sat down to eat a slice, I found that it was so sweet that I didn't like it. This is the red velvet cake I remembered as a kid, but as an adult I just can't handle the sugar level!  So, I'm only calling this recipe an "Oops" because of the weird color. I might make this again in cupcake or sheetcake form, just because it's hard to do portion control on a 4 layer cake- you have to cut the slice big enough that it will hold together long enough for you to shift it to a serving plate. 

Anyway, if you just can't get enough of the sweet stuff, here's the recipe.  I did change one thing.  The original recipe called for a whole bottle of red food coloring, which is just overkill.  I had gel coloring, and I used a generous tablespoon.  But if you want to use liquid food color, I think 1 ounce would be a great plenty. 

Mulberry deliciousness, unless you're prone to sugar comas.

Red Velvet Waldorf Astoria Cake

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup Crisco
2 eggs
1 ounce red food coloring (original recipe calls for 2 ounces)
2 heaping tablespoons cocoa
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda
1 tablespoon white vinegar
2 1/2 cups flour

1.  Cream sugar, eggs and Crisco.  Add all other ingredients except flour and mix well. Mix in flour little by little until all is absorbed into the batter.

2.  Bake in two layer cake pans at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.  When completely cool, split each layer horizontally to make four layers.

Red Velvet Waldorf Astoria Cake Frosting (doubled recipe)

6 tablespoons flour
2 cups whole milk
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups butter

1.  Cook flour and milk in a double boiler until thick, stirring constantly.  Let cool completely.

2.  Cream sugar, butter, and vanilla until very fluffy. Blend in the cooled cooked mixture, then add a little more milk if necessary until the frosting is the thickness of whipped cream.  Frost between cake layers and on top (no frosting for the sides of the cake). 

Remember, arrange the layers so that you aren't frosting the cut side! You'll have a much easier time.

Note:  This frosting must be refrigerated, or the butter will separate out.  So plan on having enough space in your refrigerator to store the frosted cake.

Mediterranean Meatballs with Tomatoes and Feta: A Work in Progress

Sometimes when I make up new recipes, they work out great the first time out, but that isn't always the case.  Occasionally they turn out so bad I give up on the recipe and move on to something else, but most of the time I think about what did and didn't work, rewrite the recipe and give the dish another try.   This post is about one such recipe.

I wanted to make a recipe featuring meatballs flavored with Mediterranean spices and served up with cooked tomatoes and a bit of feta.   Here's the recipe I started out with:

2         tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided, + 2 teaspoons
1         medium yellow onion, finely chopped
2         teaspoons minced garlic, divided
3         slices stale white bread, torn into 1-inch pieces
3         tablespoons milk
1 1/4   pounds ground lamb
1/4      cup chopped fresh parsley, plus additional for garnish
1         teaspoon dried oregano + 1/2 teaspoon
1         teaspoon ground cumin
1/2      teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2      teaspoon table salt
1/4      teaspoon ground cinnamon
2         pints graped tomatoes, halved
2         tablespoons fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/4      cup plain yogurt
2         ounces feta cheese, crumbled
           warmed pita bread (for serving)

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Cook 1/2 cup of the onion until soft and lightly-browned, then add 1 teaspoon garlic and cook for about 30 seconds.  Remove from heat and transfer onion and garlic to a large bowl to cool.

Place the pieces of stale bread in a bowl.   Pour the milk atop the bread pieces, then use your hands to mash the bread and milk into a thick paste.  Add the bread paste to the bowl with the cooked onions and garlic and add the ground lamb, parsley, 1 teaspoon oregano, pepper, salt and cinnamon.  Wet hands and shape the lamb mixture into oblong, slightly flattened meatballs.

Heat another tablespoon of olive oil in the skillet.   Cook the meatballs until they are well-browned (8-10 minutes).  Transfer to a serving platter and cover with foil to keep warm.

Drain and wipe out the skillet and heat the final two teaspoons of olive oil.  Add the remainder of the onion and cook until it starts to brown.  Add the final teaspoon garlic and final 1/2 teaspoon oregano and cook 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes.  Cook, stirring often, for 5-7 minutes or until the tomato mixture thickens.  Transfer the tomatoes to the serving platter with the meatballs.

Add chopped mint to the skillet, cook 10 seconds, then remove from heat.  Stir the yogurt into the skillet, then pour the contents of the skillet over the meatballs.  Sprinkle with feta and parsley and serve with pita bread.

That sounded like a good starting place, but the results weren't everything I'd hoped.   The lamb was quite fatty, the meatballs didn't hold together very well, and cooking the meatballs left me with a lot of blackened bits, much of it burnt onto the skillet.   Just draining and wiping it out wasn't going to work, so I set that skillet aside and used a second one to cook the rest of the onions and garlic and the tomatoes.   Pretty quickly, I found yet another problem.  The amount of tomato was too much, and the halved tomatoes gave up so much juice that it would have taken a long time for enough liquid to cook off for the tomatoes to thicken significantly.  I decided to transfer the tomato pieces to the serving dish with the meatballs, but I didn't want to lose all the tomato flavor still in the skillet, so I stirred the mint and yogurt into the juice still in the skillet.  That was a mistake, as the sauce ended up being soupy and not very attractive. 

The final result was pretty disappointing, especially given the cost of the ingredients (lamb isn't cheap, and good feta is also a bit pricey).  Presentation-wise, it was a complete disaster, with the falling-apart meatballs rendered soggy by the mushy tomatoes and soupy sauce.   It looked quite unappetizing. 

But despite not looking very good and having a really disappointing texture, everything tasted pretty good.   There is clearly something here to work with, but I could tell right away it would need a lot of work, and some parts clearly needed to be rethought completely.

First off, I needed to do something different about the meatballs.  They hadn't held together very well.  One possibility was to use some other ingredient to try to bind them together, but an obvious candidate - eggs - was out, because adding an egg would weaken the lamb flavor so much it would be lost beneath strong seasonings, juicy cooked tomatoes and tart feta.  Considering the results of the trial run, I recognized one definite problem and another possibility.   First off, the ground lamb was too fatty.   I could offset that by mixing the lamb with some lean ground beef, though.  Second, I wondered if perhaps three slices hadn't been too much bread.   Next time I'd use less.  Plus, Juli had noticed some bread lumps in the meatballs.  I suspected these were pieces of the bread crust, so I decided to remove the crusts next time.  With less bread, I could also reduce the amount of milk.  Those two changes might result in sturdier meatballs without having to add an egg.

It also occurred to me that one way to keep the meatballs from falling apart might be to bake them, rather than frying them.  Without the risk of fallen-off bits of meatball burning, I could get by with one skillet.

Next I considered the obvious problem of the tomatoes.   I'd used way more tomato than I needed for this recipe, since I wanted the tomato to accent the dish, not drown it.   Next time I'd use only 1 pint of the small tomatoes.  The other problem was the sogginess.   Cooking these juicy little tomatoes down would take a long time, and adding cornstarch or some other thickener would blunt the flavor of the tomatoes.   Next time around, I decided, I'd cook the tomatoes whole, and only until some of them started to burst. 

Without all the tomato juice in the skillet, I figured the yogurt-mint sauce would probably be okay as is.   So, with the changes noted above, the beta version of my recipe ended up like this:

1         tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil + 2 teaspoons
1         medium yellow onion, finely chopped
2         teaspoons minced garlic, divided
2         slices stale white bread, crusts removed, torn into 1-inch pieces
5         teaspoons milk
3/4      pounds ground lamb
1/2      pound 90% lean ground beef
1/4      cup chopped fresh parsley, plus additional for garnish
1         teaspoon dried oregano + 1/2 teaspoon
1         teaspoon ground cumin
1/2      teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2      teaspoon table salt
1/4      teaspoon ground cinnamon
1         pint graped tomatoes
2         tablespoons fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/4      cup plain yogurt
2         ounces feta cheese, crumbled
           warmed pita bread (for serving)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.   Place a wire rack on a foil-lined, rimmed baking sheet and spray the wire rack with nonstick cooking spray.

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Cook 1/2 cup of the onion until soft and lightly-browned, then add 1 teaspoon garlic and cook for about 30 seconds.  Remove from heat and transfer onion and garlic to a large bowl to cool.

Place the pieces of stale bread in a bowl.   Pour the milk atop the bread pieces, then use your hands to mash the bread and milk into a thick paste.  Add the bread paste to the bowl with the cooked onions and garlic and add the ground lamb, parsley, 1 teaspoon oregano, pepper, salt and cinnamon.  Wet hands and shape the lamb mixture into meatballs.  Arrange the meatballs on the prepared wire rack and place in the oven.  Bake until browned, then remove from the oven and transfer the meatballs to a serving platter.

Meanwhile, add the remaining two teaspoons of olive oil to skillet and heat over medium heat.  Add the remainder of the onion and cook until it starts to brown.  Add the final teaspoon garlic and final 1/2 teaspoon oregano and cook 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until a few of the tomatoes have started to burst.   Transfer the tomatoes to the serving platter. 
When the meatballs and tomatoes are both cooked, heat the skillet over medium heat.  Add the chopped mint, cook 10 seconds, then remove from heat.  Stir the yogurt into the skillet, then pour the contents of the skillet over the meatballs and cooked tomatoes.  Sprinkle with feta and parsley and serve with pita bread.

So, that's the version I'll be working with next time I try out this recipe.

< to be continued >

Cookie Mistake Leads to Interesting Discovery

On Thursday night, I made up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.   I used the recipe for Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies from the May 2009 Cook's Illustrated.  I've used this particular recipe before, and the result has been reliably excellent cookies.  This time, though, something went a bit awry, but instead of ruining the cookies, they were quite tasty, and I also learned something interesting, and potentially useful.

The cookie recipe calls for toasted, chopped walnuts as an optional ingredient, and I generally go with that option, but I got busy trying to do a few too many things at once, and rather than dry-roast the nuts in a skillet on the stove top, which I usually do, I decided to toss them onto a baking pan and put them in the oven for a bit to roast.  Well, that "bit" turned out to be more than a bit too long, and so that first batch of nuts burnt.  No great tragedy; Juli chopped up another bunch of walnuts, and this time I cooked them on the stove top, and as usual, they roasted up just fine.

However, normally I roast the nuts while doing prep for the recipe, before I actually start mixing anything.  This time around, due to having ruined the first batch, and to my having started mixing ingredients while the nuts were in the oven, the second batch of nuts ended up being roasted only a bit before I needed to toss them into the cookie dough.  So they hadn't had enough time to cool when I added them to the dough.

The recipe calls for the chocolate chips and the nuts to be added at the same time, but because the nuts were still somewhat warm, the chocolate chips melted somewhat as they and the nuts were mixed in.   I noticed this pretty quickly, but not quite quickly enough to do anything about it; by that time, the chips and nuts were partially incorporated into the dough, and streaks of semi-melted chips were shedding streaks of melted chocolate into the dough.   By the time the chips and nuts were incorporated into the dough, the melted chocolate was likewise incorporated into the dough, making it somewhat darker than usual and giving it a somewhat moister-than-usual texture.

Not surprisingly, the dough being different resulted in the cookies also being different than those I've previously made using the recipe.  Aside from being darker in color, they were a lot crisper and somewhat crackly along the edges.  They also tasted somewhat different... but in a way that was pretty good in its own way.

This is what the cookies made with this recipe typically look like.



In contrast, these are what my most recent batch looks like.


One of the more unusual features of the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe is that it calls for most of the butter to be browned, and this gives the cookies something of a caramel-toffee sort of flavor.   I had thought the unintended incorporation of the melted chocolate into the dough would result in the whole cookie tasting more chocolaty, but that wasn't really the case at all.  Instead, the melted chocolate intensified the caramel-toffee flavor, giving the cookies a very rich toffee flavor.  I'm no food scientist, but I'm guessing having the melted chocolate in the dough, as opposed to just having distinct chunks of chocolate, boosted the sugar content of the dough enough to result in it becoming more caramelized, which would also account for the difference in texture. 

So, while I didn't get quite the cookies I intended, what I got was still pretty good, and I also learned something which might possibly be useful in some other recipe down the road.

Biscuits and Gravy v1.0

Juli and I both love biscuits and gravy when the dish is done right.  Unfortunately, as often as not it seems to be done badly.   There used to be a diner where we live that served up great breakfasts:  tasty pancakes, huge, hearty waffles, crispy chicken-fried steak with gravy, apple wood-smoked bacon and especially wonderful biscuits and gravy.   The proprietor of that diner eventually sold it, and while a couple other owners made a good try of things, one thing they never got even close to right was the biscuits and gravy.  In fact, since it was sold several years ago, I don't think I've once had biscuits and gravy that I'd consider really good.  Most examples since then have been just okay, plus a few really bad ones.

At first glance, biscuits and gravy would look like a simple thing to make:  some fresh biscuits topped with a white gravy full of sausage chunks.   Given how often it isn't very good, I suspected there was more to it than that, so as I started thinking of making it, I looked at various recipes I could find in various cookbooks and magazines, online and so forth.  I immediately discovered there were a lot of recipes out there, and that except for a few basics - milk-based sausage gravy seasoned with salt and pepper and served atop biscuits - there wasn't really any agreement between them.  Many used other seasonings; sage was common, but other choices included crushed red pepper flakes (or hot sauce), thyme, sage (a common choice), paprika, garlic, fennel, parsley, onions and even (in several cases) things like chicken bouillon and nutmeg. 

Even those recipes that stuck to the bare basics differed markedly in important sorts of details, such as the amount of milk to use, or whether to use something other than or in addition to milk.  Skim milk.  Whole milk.  Buttermilk.  Half-and-half.  I didn't see any recipes for soy-milk sausage gravy, but I would be surprised if there isn't one out there somewhere.

I settled on a biscuit recipe easily enough, but even my more dependable resources, such as Cook's Illustrated, weren't really providing any clear guidance for the gravy.  None of the individual recipes really struck me as the right way to go.  So, as usual when I run into that situation, I decided to look for general trends and neat ideas among the various recipes I had found, then used those for guidance in making my own recipe.

I knew I wanted something more than just a milk gravy with salt and pepper.   From what I could recall of the versions I'd loved best, all included some heat, and most had garlic and a sprinkling of herbs.  I decided that I would grate up some onion, cook that in with the sausage, toss in a bit of garlic, use some buttermilk (along with skim) for the gravy, and then add some herbs and seasonings. 

The biscuit recipe I used was one for Flaky Buttermilk Biscuits, taken from one of the 2006 issues of
Cook's Illustrated and reprinted in The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2007.  The biscuits in the picture looked darn good, and while I thought I'd be lucky to do that well on my first try at making biscuits from anything other than a mix, the mechanics of the recipe looked intriguing.  Essentially, one mixes up a dough with flakes of shortening and butter still spread through the dough, then rolls it out, folds the rolled out dough, then rolls it out again, essentially layering the dough.  The distinct layers of dough, with the bits of butter and shortening spread between them, should result in a light, flaky biscuit.

I was astounded at how good my biscuits looked.  Flaky, golden-brown... it looked like I'd hit the jackpot.  And, in fact they were pretty good... but not quite as good as they looked.   The texture was just a bit off.  I can't blame that on the recipe, though, because after the fact, I realized that instead of using buttermilk, I'd grabbed and used whole milk.  My only defense was that I was tired, as I got up at 6 am to make these, and hadn't gotten to bed until around midnight the night before.  I'll be more careful next time, though... and I will definitely be making those biscuits again.

The gravy... well, the comedy of errors continued.   When we'd bought sausage, the only type the store had in the brand we wanted was a medium-spicy one, so Juli grabbed that.  Unfortunately, I didn't notice and she failed to mention it to me.   Assuming it was just plain pork sausage with mild seasoning (and, as with the milk, not bothering to take a good look at the packaging), I spiced things accordingly, and as a result, the gravy ended up being a lot hotter than I'd intended, and more than either of us really wanted for a breakfast dish. 

Beyond that, some of the seasoning choices were, in retrospect, a bit much.  I'd been skeptical about how well parsley would work in sausage gravy, but I'd seen one recipe online that added fresh-chopped parsley at the end, and several people had raved about this, so I decided to go with it.  This was not a hit with Juli, and while I didn't dislike it as much as she did, I also didn't think it really belonged.  Also, The finished product was a bit heavy on the sausage and light on the gravy.  I used one cup of buttermilk and one of skim, but next time I make gravy I'll go with 3 cups of milk along with a pound of sausage. 

I didn't think the finished gravy was bad - it was better than quite a few versions I'd had over the years - but it wasn't really more than "okay," and since I always shoot for better than "okay," and Juli didn't even give it an "okay," I'd have to call this version a failure.   That's okay, though, as I learned some things for next time I try, which I expect will be sometime over the next couple weekends.  Next time I make the gravy, I'm going to use more milk, and start with a more basic set of seasonings and build up from there.  And no parsley.  And I'll definitely pay more attention to the type of sausage we get!

Homemade Frozen Pizza: An Experiment

Recently, when I cooked up an excellent Thin Crust Pizza (http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/10/thin-crust-pizza-done-right-this-time.html), I had an idle thought:  "Wouldn't it be great if there was a frozen pizza this good?"  The next thought followed right behind:  "Maybe there can be."

As it happens, I had made up two batches of pizza dough when I decided to make that pizza.  I had done this because I wasn't sure I'd done it right the first time around, and rather than risk another bad pizza after my previous, rather dreadful try at a thin crust pizza, I thought it best to just start over and make another batch of dough.   The second batch turned out excellent, though, and when I checked the first batch I'd made, it was indistinguishable from the second, successful one, so I must have done it right the first time after all. 

I made up another quick batch of sauce, rolled out the dough, placed it in a pair of disposable aluminum pizza pans and topped it with sauce and cheese. I didn't have any freezer bags large enough to hold a pizza pan, so wrapped the experimental pizzas in a few layers of plastic wrap to try to prevent freezer burn and set them flat in the bottom of our deep freeze. 

Here we see the subject of the experiment, wrapped and ready for the freezer.

A few days later, I decided to it was time to see if the experiment was a success.  I took one of the pizzas out of the freezer and let it thaw in the fridge.  Not what one normally does with frozen pizza, of course, but then this wasn't one purchased from the freezer section of a supermarket, so I decided I'd try to cook it in as similar a condition as possible to when I cooked the unfrozen version.   So, I tossed the pizza stone in the oven, heated the oven to 500 degrees for an hour to make sure the stone was hot, then tossed the thawed pizza onto the stone.

It looked good at first.  The cheese melted nice, the crust was turning a nice shade of golden-brown, everything smelled good.  I was thinking I might have succeeded in my goal.  

I realized that probably was not the case when I went to take it out of the oven and found the apparently-finished pizza to not be crisp and firm, but rather flabby and limp.   There was no sign of crispness.  I hoped perhaps it might firm up a bit as it cooled, but as I sliced it, I found that was definitely not the case. 

It didn't look so great, either.  The crust on the edge of the pizza had sort of a mottled, oily-rubbery look to it.   Flavorwise, it wasn't dreadful, but it wasn't great, either, and texture-wise, it was just not good.  Juli took one bite and gave up on hers.  I'm somewhat more stubborn, so I ate a bit more, but quickly also gave up on it.  Within a few minutes,I wasn't feeling so great, as that rubbery pizza felt like heavy in my belly.  Juli definitely had taken the smarter option.


I still had another whole pizza, though, and I wondered if perhaps the problem was that I'd thawed the first one before cooking it, thus giving the dough time to absorb a lot of moisture (and perhaps olive oil) from the sauce, rather than tossing it into the oven frozen, as one usually does with frozen pizza.  So, I heated the stone back up, took the other one out of the deepfreeze, unwrapped it and tossed in.  Same result.   Same flabby, rubbery crust, same oily look.  This time I didn't even bother taking a bite.

Notice the blotchy appearance of the crust

The freezing process clearly was not kind to the pizza, and it was particularly unkind to the dough.  I don't have any background in food science, so I don't know why this didn't turn out.  Maybe I'll write a question to the America's Test Kitchen folks, or post something on their bulletin board.   For now, though, I'll just call this experiment a failure and go on to other things.

So, the people who make Tombstone Pizza definitely don't have to worry abut any competition from me in the near future.  My attempt at making a homemade frozen pizza was a failure.  That's okay, though.  If I hadn't done the experiment, I would have just tossed out the dough anyhow, so all I wasted was a bit of time and a bit of cheese and sauce.  And now I'm curious exactly why the experiment failed.   I plan to eventually do a bit of research, and once I figure out what didn't work, maybe I'll try again sometime.  Or, if any of our readers can clue me in on what the problem is, and what might work better, that would be most appreciated.

To be continued...?

Batting .500

On Monday night, I decided to make two recipes I'd never tried before.  One, which sounded great and was quite straight-forward, came from an earlier edition of the Good Housekeeping Step by Step Cookbook, pictured below.  The other came from America's Test Kitchen Special Collector's Edition Best-Ever Recipes, which I've mentioned several times previously (and which you may well be tired of hearing about... but trust me, it really is that good). 



The easier recipe was Pork Chops with Apples and Cream - a very basic recipe, but with some nice extra features.  This is the dish I had in mind when purchasing the apple brandy a few days earlier.  The other was Potatoes Anna, a recipe that is pretty straight-forward in concept, but which I've read is notoriously tricky in the details.  This dish, which involves carefully layering thin potato slices in a hot skillet and letting them fry for a time before finishing them in the oven, has a high rate of failure on the last step, which is turning over the skillet to release the dish, such that what was the bottom of the arrangement of potato slices becomes the top of the dish when served.  When properly done, the presentation is quite nice, but oftentimes the potatoes stick in the pan, resulting in what might range from merely a somewhat-less-than-perfect presentation to a loose mess of fried potatoes.

The chops and apples cooked up wonderfully.  The nice, thick chops were moist and flavorful, the cream sauce was savory and the apples... well, they were the highlight of the dish.  They were tender and juicy, and had soaked up a lot of the brandy flavor.  The Potatoes Anna... well, not quite so successful.

The recipe called for the potatoes to be arranged in the skillet with the heat set at medium-low and allowed to fry for a total of 30 minutes from the time one starts to arrange the potatoes, then put in a very hot oven for another 25 minutes or so.  Our stove has settings ranging from 1 (Low) to 9 (High).  I figured 2 1/2 was a good, safe medium-low setting.  Turns out I was wrong. 

I figured I might have a problem when I could smell the potatoes starting to burn about 20 minutes into the frying.  I considered turning down the heat a bit at that point, but thought perhaps what I was smelling was just the potatoes getting a bit crispy on the bottom.  So I decided to let things play out.  I let the potatoes fry the suggested amount of time, then covered the skillet with foil, transferred it to the oven, already at 450 degrees, then cooked it as directed, first covered and then uncovered at the end. 

This was is the result.  The bottom layer was indeed burnt.  Well, actually, "burnt" isn't an adequate description.  Say, "charred to a completely dried crisp" and you're in the ballpark.  Or go with "turned to charcoal" and you're spot-on.  Really a shame, too, because it came out of the pan without a hitch, perfectly formed, no sticking at all.  My very first pass at this somewhat-difficult dish, and it would have been perfect, if not for the inedibly-burnt part.  Pretty big "if" though.

A tad overdone

I'm not sure if maybe our oven's settings are just a bit on the over-warm side, or perhaps this occurred because I prepared the dish in my new Lodge Logic skillet, which conducts heat really, really well.  Either way, though, I figured I'd learned something - one can, after all, learn as much or more from failures as from successes - and next time I make this, I'll start with the heat set at 2. 

I was worried this bit of learning might have come at the price of a ruined dinner, but thankfully that was not the case.  The story has a happy ending.

As it turns out, while the very top layer of the Potatoes Anna was completely inedible, it wasn't hard to remove the worst-burnt stuff (most of the top layer, as shown above), and the rest of the dish was really, really good... tender and creamy and wonderfully yummy.  And, as I wrote above, the Pork Chops with Apples and Cream turned out great.  Served up with some asparagus Juli steamed, it was still a really tasty dinner with good leftovers. 

I will be giving Potatoes Anna another try, though... and probably soon.

Spaghetti squash....or is it?!?

So today's lunch menu included spaghetti squash.  I've never cooked spaghetti squash before, and I was skeptical of the directions that The New American Plate cookbook gave me.  For one thing, they didn't give any indication of how the cooking time applied to the size of the squash, and Jeffrey and I had bought a really heavy, large one home from the farmer's market in Fort Dodge, Iowa.  We also visited the wonderful Community Apple Orchard while we were there, but that's a post for another day.

Anyway, I wasn't sure that our heavy squash would be at all done in the 15-18 minute time frame NAP allotted, but actually, that seemed not too far off. 

The really hard part was piercing the squash before putting it in the microwave, to give it some steam vents so it wouldn't explode. Spaghetti squash are winter squash, and have a very hard exterior.  Even with super-sharp knives, I was afraid I was going to bend the blade getting it in and out.  After I had it cooking in the microwave, I decided to check out some online advice.  Hmmm....this squash doesn't look like any that are pictured online.  The online ones are yellow, and ours is green-striped.  I wondered if we hadn't picked up a different squash variety, although the vendor did specifically say that this was a spaghetti squash.

As it turns out, I'm not really sure it was spaghetti squash at all!  It did shred up a little bit, but it didn't make long spaghetti strands.  It still tasted great, and we had a really nice lunch with Caesar salad, garlic bread, and the Probably-Not-Spaghetti squash with a wonderful meat spaghetti sauce.  I was way too generous on our plate portions, so we have 3 future lunches now packed up in the refrigerator.