Tag: food and cooking

Here, Have Some Pie

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

Pumpkin, this time.  All of ours is gone; and so is the cherry pie.  Some of the apple still remains, but not for long.

The weather here is unseasonably cold; the outside thermometer is reading 3 degrees Fahrenheit.  Normally we don’t get weather like that until mid-December or later.  Local opinion is that we’re going to have a cold winter; the question remaining is whether or not it’s going to be a snowy one.   Snowy is good, because snowmobiling and cross-country skiing are a big part of the local economy, such as it is, and a winter with substandard amounts of snow is the equivalent of  major crop failure.

But pie makes all things good.

Pumpkin Pie

  • 1 unbaked pastry shell
  • 1 can pie-pumpkin†
  • 3 eggs, slightly beaten
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp ginger
  • 1 and 1/2 cups canned evaporated milk (One 12-oz can.  Not sweetened condensed milk; not evaporated skimmed milk.)

Place the pie shell in your pie plate.

Mix the spices well with the brown sugar.  This breaks up the lumps in the brown sugar and keeps the spices from clumping together when you add the liquid.

Combine the eggs with the sugar and spices; beat well.

Add the canned pumpkin.

Add the milk and beat well.

Pour into the pastry shell.  (Actually, the way we do it around here is to add the filling to the shell a ladle-full at a time.  Better control that way, especially if it turns out you’ve got more filling than shell.  We use our largest pie plate for this recipe.)

Cook at 350 Fahrenheit for 45-55 minutes.  (Test it after 45, and give it another 10 minutes if it isn’t done yet.)

When a knife inserted into the filling comes out clean, the pie is done.

Enjoy.

†The kind that says “Ingredients: pumpkin.” Anything else is pumpkin filling, and an abomination before the Lord.

Family Feasts and Rituals

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving dinner already — tonight is pie production, because Thanksgiving dinner is nothing if not a pie delivery system.  This year we’re only doing three pies (cherry, apple, and pumpkin) because there are only going to be four of us at the table.  Come Christmas, when all three of the unmarried offspring will be temporarily in residence, we will be doing at least four pies (the current loadout, plus blueberry, and quite possibly some kind of chocolate cream pie as an extra.)

One of the things that a lot of science fiction and secondary-world fantasy often lacks, in my opinion, is this kind of tradition-laden family gathering.  Partly it’s because the protagonists of science-fictional and fantastic stories are so often loners, either by circumstance or by choice — they’re orphans, or they’re wanderers of one sort or another, or they’re estranged from whatever relatives they’ve got.  (Which is a pity, I think; nothing complicates life, or a plot, like family.)  But partly, I suspect, it’s because making up plausible and consistent holidays and family rituals that are convincingly alien but nevertheless feel like the real thing . . . is hard work.

(This is also where I like to give a nod to one of my favorite fictional Thanksgivings, the season four episode “Pangs” of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It has everything, from the manic freakouts over getting the traditional recipes exactly right, to a look at some of the more problematic historical and cultural issues surrounding the holiday, culminating in a shared meal where everybody — even the captive vampire tied to a chair — is entitled to a seat at the table.)

A Culinary Follow-Up

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 1 Comment

Or, cooking outside the present era, this time with a recipe from the 1400s:

Armored Turnips

  • 1 pound turnips, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 1/4 pound (or thereabouts) provolone cheese, thin sliced
  • butter

Parboil the turnips. Drain.

Generously butter a baking dish.

Layer the turnips and the cheese in the baking dish, finishing up with a layer of cheese.

Cook at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until the cheese is bubbly, and serve it forth.

This is the simplest version of this dish, the way that I learned to cook it decades ago in the Society for Creative Anachronism.  There are versions of it with sweet spices, and with savory ones, easily found on the internet (just Google “armored turnips”, and Bob’s your uncle), but this is the one that I know.  The original version I learned was meant to serve about thirty people, and used five pounds of turnips and one of cheese; it scales upward to a hundred or so if you’ve got the kitchen and the cooking crew for it, and that many mouths to feed.

An Offering of Pie

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

Last week was hectic and full of distractions, and this week is shaping up to be more of the same.  As an apology for erratic posting in days past and possible erratic posting in days to come, I bring a recipe for cherry pie.

(This also celebrates the reappearance of proper canned cherries in the local supermarket.  For most of last year they were hard to find up here; I eventually Googled “cherry shortage” and after some poking around learned that the late snowstorms back in 2012 had killed off a lot of that season’s cherry crop.)

Cherry Pie

  • 2 cans of tart cherries (we’re talking actual canned cherries here, and not “cherry pie filling”, which is a horrible sickly-sweet sticky glop and an abomination before the Lord.)
  • 6 T sugar
  • 2 T cornstarch
  • 1/8 t salt
  • 1 T butter, cut up into little pieces
  • a scattering of fine tapioca
  • unbaked pie crust

Put the unbaked pie crust into a pie pan.  Sprinkle the bottom of the pan with fine tapioca; this will help keep the crust from getting soggy.

Drain cherries; reserve juice.  Place cherries in unbaked pie shell.

Mix sugar and cornstarch and salt.  Put on top of cherries. Pour in cherry juice.

Dot with butter.

Put on top crust.  Or streusel.

Bake in 475 oven for 12 minutes; reduce heat to 425 and bake for 45 minutes longer.

Streusel

1/4 cup butter
2 T sugar
1 T cinnamon
1 cup flour

Cream butter; add sugar and cinnamon mixture alternately with flour.  Blend until crumbly. Sprinkle over top of pie.

Zucchini, Redux

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s the zucchini bread recipe:

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

  •         3 cups flour
  •         1 teaspoon cinnamon
  •         1 teaspoon salt
  •         1 teaspoon baking soda
  •         1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  •         3 eggs
  •         1 cup brown sugar
  •         1 cup white sugar
  •         1 cup vegetable oil
  •         1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  •         1/2 cup sour cream
  •         2 cups zucchini
    (This is one of those recipes that having a food processor with a shredding blade makes oh so much easier; otherwise, you and your grater are going to become very good friends.)
  •         1 cup raisins

Directions

  •     Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
  •     Grease and flour 2 bread loaf pans.  (Or take the easy way out and spray them with Baker’s Joy cooking spray.  It’s what we do around here.)
  •     Sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.
  •     In a separate bowl combine the eggs, brown sugar, white sugar, and oil.
  •     Add the dry ingredients slowly to the egg mixture.  It’s going to be fairly stiff by the time you’re done.
  •     When everything is thoroughly mixed, add the sour cream and the vanilla.
  •     Finally, mix in the shredded zucchini and the raisins.
  •     Pour the batter into the two loaf pans.  (They say, “pour” all the time in these recipes, but using a ladle and transferring the batter a ladle-full at a time makes the process easier to control, and helps you keep the amount of batter evenly distributed between the two pans.)
  •     Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.
  •     Test with a toothpick or a skewer; if it comes out clean, the loaves are done.
  •     Let them cool on a wire rack in their pans for a few minutes, then turn them out onto the rack to finish cooling.
  •     Have a slice, warm, with butter, if you want to. (Just to check for quality control, you understand.)

So there you are — zucchini bread.  If you’re looking for story ideas, or for recipes for Zucchini Lasagna or Zucchini Pickles, you’re on your own.

More Simple Cookery for the Deadlined and Overworked

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

The only difficult part of this recipe isn’t actually difficult at all, just a bit fiddly — if cutting up a whole head of cabbage into thin strips and turning three or four carrots into matchsticks takes more time or attention than you have at the moment, save it for another day.

Pork and Cabbage Stir-Fry

1 head of cabbage, cut into strips
3 T peanut oil, give or take
2 or 3 carrots, cut into matchsticks
1-2 pounds pork tenderloin, cut in thin slices
2 tablespoons minced ginger
1 cup chicken broth, divided (3/4 and 1/4)
1/4 cup soy sauce
shot of sriracha

Directions:

In a large wok (or a deep skillet, or a dutch oven; but a wok works best), stir-fry the cabbage and carrots in hot oil for about 6 minutes, until the carrots are crisp-tender. Remove and keep warm.

Stir-fry the pork in the remaining oil for 2 minutes — add a bit more oil if you need to. Add the ginger and stir-fry for 2 more minutes or until the pork is lightly browned. (“Lightly browned” pork is actually a kind of pale grey.  What they actually mean is, “no pink showing.”  Thin slices of tenderloin reach this stage quickly.)

Stir in the 3/4 cup of chicken broth and the soy sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat; cover and simmer for 3 minutes or until the meat juices run clear.  Combine the cornstarch and the remaining broth until smooth. Gradually stir into the wok.

Return the cabbage and carrots to the wok.  Add a squirt of sriracha.  (If you don’t have a source of sriracha where you are, I have a suspicion that a healthy shot of Tabasco, while non-canonical, would have a similar effect.)  Bring everything to a boil; cook and stir for 2-3 more minutes or until the sauce is thickened.

Serve over rice.

A Recipe in Lieu of Witty Advice

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

(Because some days I’m fresh out of wit, and because this recipe is by way of being a traditional welcome-home meal for the daughter whom we picked up at the bus stop yesterday evening after her summer in New York.)

Green Chile Pork Stew

2 to 2 1/2 pounds pork stew meat, or lean pork cut in 1″ cubes
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground sage
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons vinegar
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
2 or 3 medium potatoes, cubed
2 or 3 green chiles (such as Anaheim, or whatever you like), diced,
or 1 can (4oz)
2 cups tomatillo salsa (salsa verde) (about 1 jar)
1 can (15 oz) chicken broth
1 teaspoon brown sugar

(Salsa verde comes in varying degrees of hotness, depending upon the other ingredients in it besides tomatillos.   If the locally available brand is milder than you prefer, you can compensate by adding chopped jalapeños.)

Put flour, cumin, pepper, salt, and sage in a plastic ziploc bag; add pork cubes and shake to coat thoroughly.

Brown the cubes of pork in hot oil in batches; remove when browned and put in your crockpot.

With the heat still on, add the vinegar to the skillet to deglaze the pan, making sure to scrape up all the brown bits.  (The vinegar will reduce).

Ad the chopped onions, the chiles, the potatoes, the salsa, the chicken broth, the brown sugar, and the scraped bits from the skillet to the pork already in the crockpot.  Stir and cook, covered, on low for 8 to 12 hours, or on high for 4 to 6 hours.

This goes well with cornbread.  And if there’s any left over — which is by no means a sure thing — it reheats well in the microwave the next day.

Now That It’s Cooled Down Enough to Cook

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ Leave a comment

Here’s another dead-simple recipe for the deadline-beset or otherwise brain-dead writer:

Beef Ribs Cooked In Vermouth And Herbes De Provence

3 lbs. boneless beef ribs
Kosher salt and black pepper
1 carrot, sliced
1 rib celery, diced
1 tsp tomato paste or ketchup
2 tsp herbes de Provence†, crushed
1/2 cup vermouth
1/2 cup double-strength beef stock
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. vinegar

Put the sliced veggies into the crock pot.

Put meat into crock pot.  Sprinkle herbs, salt, pepper over meat.

Mix the stock, vermouth, honey, vinegar, and tomato paste.

Pour liquid mix over meat and seasonings.

Cook on low 8-10 hours.

If you want, mix a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch into some cool water and stir it into the crock pot 30 minutes or so before dinner.  (Turn the crock pot on high for that bit.)

Serve over egg noodles.

†Usually (as it is in the blend sold at our local IGA) a mix of savory, basil, fennel, thyme, and lavender. Sometimes there are other herbs, such as rosemary; sometimes there isn’t any lavender. I buy it pre-mixed, but there are numerous recipes on-line for the googling.

More Thought for (Fictional) Food

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 3 Comments

Even in the midst of fantastic (or historical, or science-fictional) adventures, your characters are going to have to stop sometimes for a bite to eat.

The late Diana Wynne Jones, in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland, speaks eloquently of the Stew that appears to be the only menu item available in so many of the realm’s inns and taverns.  There’s a certain logic to the idea — if you’re going to be serving hot food at all hours of the day in pre-industrial conditions, a pot of something that can be kept at a low simmer over a slow fire makes a certain amount of sense.  So does going in the opposite direction, with things that can be deep-fried or stir-fried in a hurry when they’re ordered, but it’s not often that you get a party of hungry treasure-seekers settling down at the local tavern for a plate of assorted fried stuff.

(Not chicken, though.  Time was, when any chicken that made it to the dining table was likely to be a stewing hen, retired from the egg-producing game because of age and likely to be tough as an old boot unless given the slow-simmer Stew treatment.  Fried chicken was a luxury, since it required the sacrifice of a young hen still in her egg-producing years.  It’s only in the decades since the middle of the twentieth century that chicken has become cheap and mass-produced.)

But if your characters are going to sit down to a good bowl of Stew, take at least a minute or two to consider exactly what makes that particular stew different from another stew in another place and season.

If it’s a meat stew, what kind of meat is it?  Beef, from a superannuated dairy cow?  Beef, from cattle raised for meat?  Was it purchased from a butcher shop — are they in a town that has a butcher shop, then? — or was the animal raised by the innkeeper and then slaughtered?  Or are your characters travelling through wool-producing country, where the common meat is likely to be mutton or lamb?  Or are they on the edge of the wilderness, where wild game is the commonest meat?

Are your characters traveling through a dairying region, where butter is the common cooking fat?  Or are they in olive oil country?  Or do the local cooks use chicken fat, or lard?

And what time of year is it?  Is it winter?  Before canning (a 19th-century innovation) and before reliable refrigeration (the 20th century), there were no out-of-season vegetables to put into those stews.  Wintertime meals would feature the kind of root vegetables that could be kept in cool dark places until spring — turnips, hard squashes, yellow onions, potatoes — or vegetables that could be dried or salted or pickled (sauerkraut, kim chee, parched corn, dried beans.)  Fresh greens wouldn’t show up again until the coming of spring.

Research — here I am, beating that drum again! — can help you keep your travelers’ tavern meals from becoming bland and generic.

The Return of Mindless Cookery for Distracted Writers

~ drdoyleeditorial ~ 1 Comment

Another dead-simple recipe for nights when your brain isn’t up to anything more elaborate.  This one has the advantage of being mostly made from pantry ingredients — you’ll need fresh milk, but chicken breasts are a freezer staple around our house, at least.

Chicken Breasts on Rice

Ingredients

  •         1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
  •         1 package dry onion soup mix
  •         1 can milk
  •         1 cup long grain rice
  •         4 chicken breast halves

Directions

  •     Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
  •     Mix together the soup and the milk.
  •     Stir together 1/2 of the soup/milk mix, the rice, and 1/2 of the package of onion soup mix.
  •     Pour soup/rice mixture into a 13×9 inch baking dish.
  •     Lay the chicken breasts on top.
  •     Pour the rest of the soup/milk mixture over the chicken and rice, and sprinkle the remaining 1/2 package of dry onion soup mix over the whole thing.
  •     Cover with aluminum foil (or a lid, if the baking dish has one) and bake at 350F for 1 hour.
  •     Uncover and bake an additional 15-30 minutes.

There you go.  Five ingredients, and nothing to worry about once you’ve got it going except remembering to take off the aluminum foil at the one-hour mark.