Chai Spiced Banana Oat Pancakes (Gluten Free!)

OMG.  I think I found something good here.

I've been working on homemade gift ideas for Christmas, and I was hoping to make things that didn't require refrigeration and could sit for a few days, since coordinating among different houses and different days can be a problem with that stuff.  I've also been looking for gluten free food ideas, and I didn't want to do all chocolate or other candy.  There are a lot of variables here lol.  I figured some sort of baking mix might be a good idea.

My sister has Celiac disease, which means she can't process gluten.  This takes wheat, barley, and rye off the table.  Some celiacs can't process oats, but more often the problem is that oats are contaminated by other grains.  But, you can buy gluten free certified oats (I buy Bob's Red Mill).  This is really a big deal, because I find that oats are the best gluten free baking medium.  Have you ever looked at gluten free recipes?  They have like 5 different kinds of flour in them, because no one flour is able to mimic the taste and texture of wheat flour.  Rice flour alone gets too gummy.  Others get too crumbly.  You have to add things to take the place of the gluten like xanthan gum.  Gluten free baking is hard.  It requires a very delicate balance of flours for each item (taking into account the shape of the item even).  And baking times are really delicate too, because GF baked goods go from raw to dried out dust in a matter of seconds sometimes.  Plus, you have to invest in multiple kinds of flour, some of which are not cheap or are only sold in stores that are not cheap: sorghum, rice, arrowroot, buckwheat, corn, millet, tapioca, soybean, almond, etc.  And in the end, your baked goods often STILL end up with a grainy, crumbly texture.

But oats.  Oats are awesome for GF baking.  First, they have a bit of chew to them and they set up well, meaning things don't fall apart as easily.  Also, oats already have a pleasingly rough texture, so any textural issues with other GF baked goods are not a problem with oat-based recipes, because they're meant to be...textury lol.  That's why, I find, oat-based gluten free baked goods are often VERY close, if not indistinguishable, from their non-gluten-free counterparts (even when you have to use other flours in conjunction).  GF oatmeal cookies are amazeballs.  Sometimes I make this recipe (without the raisins) and then sandwich them with some sort of flavored buttercream in the middle.  It's awesome.

Also...bananas.  Bananas are really great for baking, because they keep things moist and can take the place of a lot of added fat.  (Applesauce is also great for that purpose.)  Plus, bananas are the shit.

Anyways, I got this idea in my head that I wanted to make a gluten free pancake mix to give as gifts.  Since pancakes are basically baked goods that are done on the stove, a lot of the same rules apply.  There are lot of GF pancake recipes out there, but most of them either looked really boring, or they required all kinds of hippie ingredients I don't keep around or don't intend to.  (A lot of gluten free recipes out there are ALSO vegan, for example, because gluten free diets are also sort of a health conscious fad now.  This is good, because it means that more and more gluten free options are becoming available in grocery stores, but I'm still gonna use butter and eggs, damn it.)  Also, I wanted to get as much of the recipe as possible into the mix so that it required as few add-in ingredients as possible for the person receiving the gift.  So no agave syrup or soy products or lemon juice or various extracts.

By cobbling together ideas from a bunch of different recipes, I think I found the right mix.  I got it down to only 3 added ingredients, all of which I know my sister has around at all times: butter, eggs, and bananas.  So I can package all of the dry ingredients as a mix and just include instructions on adding the other items.

I tested these out today, and they were really, really good.  Plus, they don't have to be just for your gluten free friends.  They're just oat pancakes.  You can use regular (non-GF-certified) oats if you don't have to worry about gluten.  (Regular oats are a bit cheaper, and you probably already have them around.)

A note about oat flour: You can buy already-prepared oat flour (like Bob's Red Mill brand, available at Whole Foods for sure, but regular grocery stores like Jewel often carry it).  But, I actually prefer the texture of taking whole rolled oats and pulsing them in the food processor myself.

A note about the spices: As written, the spices are subtle but definitely present.  Feel free to increase any or all of them if you want the spice to be more pronounced.

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup oat flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
2 tbsp butter, melted (or margerine, or even coconut oil if you're a hippie like that)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 bananas, well mashed
(Plus more butter or oil for cooking the pancakes.)
Whatever syrup or topping you desire.

Makes 6-8 medium-sized pancakes.

1) Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl.  At this point you can package this as a dry mix or continue with the wet ingredients.

2) Combine the melted butter, eggs, and bananas.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients.  Fold it all together until just combined.  Let the mixture sit for 10 minutes to let the oats absorb some of the moisture.

3) Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat.  Butter or oil the pan and drop a few tablespoons of batter at a time, shaping into a circle or whatever shape you want.  (Note, if you want to, you can thin the batter with a bit of water.  I tried it both ways, and both are fine, so whatever you're more comfortable with.)  Cook the first side for about 3 minutes, or until bubbles start forming on the surface.  Flip and cook another two minutes.  (As you can see from the photo, I may have overcooked these a tad, but they still tasted awesome.)

4) Serve with butter and maple syrup, any other flavored syrup, fruit compote, etc.  I think these would be great with a ginger syrup (1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, approx. 2 tbsp water) or like a peach chutney or something.

Hooray!

Media pairing:

Mac Lethal rapping about pancakes (among other things) while making pancakes.

Corn Chowder with Chipotle Shrimp and Bacon

I'm on a mission to use up all the stuff in my freezer and pantry.  This is made rather difficult by my neurotic tendency to replace things as soon as I use them, especially staples.  I'm trying to resist that tendency.  My stock of canned beans and tomatoes is dwindling, and it makes me nervous lol.  BUT WHAT IF I HAVE TO MAKE EMERGENCY CHILI AND THE STORES ARE CLOSED!?  Anyways, I cleaned out/reorganized my freezer yesterday and found that I had 3 separate bags of corn in there.  Half a bag of grocery store corn, a bag of shucked farmers' market corn from last year, AND a bag of shucked farmers' market corn from this year.  Too much corn.  Plus I wanted the space, because I wanted to make a bunch of meals and freeze them.  (Exams are coming up next month, and I'm getting into super-prep stockpile mode.)  Also, I get into these moments when I realize I literally have weeks worth of food in the house, so I try to get creative on how to fit it all together into semi-coherent meals.  It's like a puzzle.  For neurotics and overplanners.  Hooray!

So anyway, I had this corn.  And I had some bacon (made corn and bacon hash last week...omg.  http://smittenkitchen.com/2012/07/17/bacon-corn-hash/).  And also some celery from my epic roasted chicken --> chicken stock --> chicken soup extravaganza last week. And oh look, a carton of fat free half-and-half that needs to be used this week.  Hey, scallions!  Half a yellow onion leftover!  OMG do you know what this means?  Corn chowder.  I was taking a walk and doing errands this morning and walked by Whole Foods.  Know what would be good on this corn chowder?  Those fancy chipotle shrimp from the seafood bar.  Huzzah!  This is clearly the stars alligning in favor of corn chowder.

I realize I'm a weirdo for making all kinds of soups during this sweltering hellbox of a Chicago summer, but no one said I had to make sense all the time.

I basically adapted a recipe from Cooking Light (http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/bacon-corn-chowder-shrimp-50400000114422/).  (BTW, I ordered this year's Cooking Light cookbook, and I totally feel awesome about that decision.)  The original recipe actually wasn't so light, so I changed a few things, but it's still awesome.  Do this now.

INGREDIENTS:
4 slices bacon, chopped into lardons
1 cup onion, chopped
1/3 cup celery, chopped (I just used one large rib, so just use however much works)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 tsp fresh thyme, minced (I used 1 tsp and it was pretty faint, so you could add more if you like thyme)
4 cups corn kernels (thawed if frozen)
2 cups chicken broth (I use fat free, reduced sodium...all the homemade stuff was already frozen...oops lol)
1/3 cup half-and-half (I used fat free, and it worked great.)
Salt and pepper to taste
Cooked shrimp (However many you want - I think 3 per bowl is plenty.  Like I said, I just bought the pre-cooked chipotle shrimp from Whole Foods.)
Chopped scallions, for garnish.


Get all this fun stuff chopped, along with the bacon:

Brown the bacon in a Dutch oven or stock pot over medium or medium-high heat.  (I have kind of a gimpy electric stove, so I usually have to kick it up a bit to medium-high, but you know your stove).  Remove bacon bits with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

I love this part...add the onions, celery, garlic, and thyme to the bacon fat.  Cook 3 minutes until softened, stirring frequently.

Add the corn and cook 4 minutes, stirring periodically.  (Note, I decided to leave some of the liquid from the corn, since I figured there was delicious corn flavor in there.  The tradeoff is that your corn won't get any color on it, so if you want some char, you can squeeze all the liquid out.  I'm not sure how worth it that is though, since there's a lot of corn and it would take forever to brown, especially because it lowers the temp in the pot initially.)

Add the broth, bring to a boil, and then reduce and simmer about 5 minutes.  (Note: You'll probably want to eyeball the broth.  Start with 1 1/2 cups and see if you need more, because too much liquid makes the puree and reblend step sort of hard, and you want the soup to be chowdery, not watery.)

Put about half, maybe 2/3 of the corn mixture into a blender or food processor and pulse until blended but still a bit textury (it's a word).

Put the blended mixture back into the pot and stir to combine with the non-blended mixture.

Remove the pot from the heat and add the half-and-half, stirring to combine.

Chowder!  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I actually didn't add any extra salt because the flavor of the corn was so awesome and the bacon and shrimp had salt, but do what your heart desires.  Ladle chowder into bowls.  Now top with shrimp and garnish with the bacon and scallions all purty-like.

(Note: The Cooking Light recipe calls for using raw shrimp and cooking them in the soup for a couple minutes, and it also uses more bacon and incorporates some into the soup itself.  You could totally do those things.  But I like my way better, so there.)

This makes 4 first-course servings, but if you're looking for this to be dinner, it more realistically makes 3 servings.  Double the recipe if you're serving more people or want leftovers.  (And why wouldn't you want leftovers!?)

And today's media pairing:

You knew it was coming.  Yes, it's the Ipecac/Who wants chowdah? segment from family guy.  Actually, you probably shouldn't watch this anytime near dinnertime or anywhere near chowder lol.

Sopa de Albóndigas...with a little Swedish thrown in

So I've had this bag of IKEA meatballs sitting in the bottom of my freezer for...I don't know how long, but I'm pretty certain it's more than a year and a half.  Yikes.  I totally would have gobbled those suckers up by now, but I started this whole Weight Watchers thing about a year ago, and my eating habits have changed a lot.  The meatballs themselves aren't that bad, but the sauce you put on them, the carbs you put them over, etc....I just didn't fit it into my plan, and then I forgot I had them.  So anyways, meatballs in serious need of being used.  I also had some zucchini that was probably on its last day or two of acceptable usage.  Combine that with the fact that I've been a little nostalgic for the food I used to get in Los Angeles, and now I'm starting to get ideas.  Sopa de albóndigas, aka Mexican meatball soup!

You could obviously make your own meatballs for this, and here's an interesting recipe for the whole shebang: http://www.food.com/recipe/best-albondigas-soup-107281

But, I had these things around, and they saved me a lot of time and ingredients.  The fact that they're already cooked helps not only with time, but also with avoiding meatball disintegration.  So I approve of this shortcut...just don't call me Sandra Lee, because I'll cut you.

I know, I know, it's totally not kosher to use Swedish meatballs in a Mexican soup.  (Oh no, look what I did there, throwing a third cuisine into the mix!)

Ingredients:

1  1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup chopped yellow or white onion (about half large one)
2 ribs celery, chopped (works out to around 3/4 cup)
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped (works out to about a generous cup)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin (I'm a cumin fiend, so I use a lot, but you could reduce it to 1/2 tsp)
1 tsp dried oregano (If you've got fresh, go ahead and use that, but you'll need slightly more)
1/2 tsp chili powder
64 oz chicken broth (That's 2 of the cartons.  I use fat free, reduced sodium.)
1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes (I like to use no salt added)
32 small meatballs (approximate - use as many as you want)
1 large zucchini (zucchino?), quartered and diced (works out to around 1 1/2 cups)
Juice of 1/2 a lime (or more if you want...I just had half a lime leftover from something else)
Hot sauce to taste (probably around 20 dashes, depending on what sauce you use)

Heat a large Dutch oven or medium stock pot over medium high.  Add olive oil and allow to coat the pan.  Add onions, celery, and carrots.  Cook while stirring for 30 seconds, then add garlic.  Sweat veggies down for a few minutes (6-8 minutes?), then add cumin, oregano, and chili powder.  Stir and cook for 30 seconds or so.

Add chicken broth and tomatoes (with their juice) and bring mixture to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or so.

Increase heat to about medium and add meatballs to soup.  Let heat through for about 5 minutes. (Note: I increased the heat at this stage because the meatballs were frozen and would lower the temp of the soup really quickly.  You'll reduce the heat again after the 5 minutes.)

Reduce heat and add zucchini.  Cook for 3-4 minutes.  (Note: You really don't want to overcook the zucchini, and it will continue to cook as the soup sits, with reheating, etc., so don't overdo it on the time here.)

Remove the soup from the heat and add the lime juice and hot sauce.  I used Louisiana hot sauce, because that's what I had.  It's not as spicy as some other hot sauces, so I used about 25 dashes to make it on the lower end of medium spicy.  You'll just have to add however much you want of whatever hot sauce you have.  I trust you.

And here's the finished product:

Om nom nommmmm....

This recipe will make about 8 first-course servings, with 4 meatballs each.

And, for your viewing pleasure, today's media pairing is a live-action 60-second remake of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:

Stew of Thrones. Er, well, little tiny carrot ottomans and barley floorpillows and celery chaises, maybe.

NO, I didn't read the books. Nor do I bloody intend to! Man! I just finished one popular fiction series and already the peer pressure from the nerd squerd to start another? I can't. Not when HBO makes the adaptation so you know it's randy and sumptuous. Winter is coming. Yeah, and so is everybody else, in ever other scene, practically.


Yep, I just started Game of Thrones. And to commemorate the occasion, I had a friend over for two back-to-back episodes of lusty, crusty, surely syphillitic scandalousness, and a suitable meal drawn from the stories of George R. R. Martin.


A few other versions of these meals are floating around online already. These interpretations are very much my own, however, and so medievally easy to make!


For the main course, stew! The books speak often of venison, stewed with barley, beer and carrots. Sounds easy enough. Only, I really don't care for venison, and we have lamb nowadays in this realm, in abundance. So, that.


Chop into small pieces:
2 ribs celery
2 large carrots
1 red onion


Add these, a box of sliced mushrooms, and about a cup of pearled barley to a pot, with two cups water. And then... BEER! About 2 cups. For now. More as you go along.

Two pours for you, one for me. Two for you, one for me. Two for me, one for me,


Separately, brown half a pound of ground lamb, separating it into fine mince. You can do this first in the same pot to which you then add the veggies. I did mine separately so we could have some vegetarian stew alongside the lamb, for Handsome Consort.

When the lamb is browned, deglaze the pan with... guess what, BEER! Turn down to a low simmer and cover to soften.


When the stew carrots and barley are soft, add half a cup of meal. If you have barley grits on hand, fabulous, Altonate Brown. I didn't, so I just used cornmeal.  Now is a good time to salt and peper the stew too. Plenty of black pepper and a scant teaspoon of salt. Be sure the stew is kept at a bubble so the cornmeal gelatinizes, or whatever, fully. Gets gluey-good. If too thick, beer.


Once the cornmeal has thickened the stew to a less-than-porridgey consistency, add a big dollop of bacon fat and the lamb. Simmer and add beer or water until ready to serve. Garnish with minced herbs. Marjoram, Thyme and Parsley are ideal.

This turned out exactly as I wanted. Incredibly savory and filling. It was definitely bordering on a savory porridge, but without a starch to accompany it, that was just fine. By the next morning, it was breakfast congee for sure!

To accompany the stew, a salad as light and refreshing as the stew was hearty, likewise inspired by the food of Westeros: Salads of sweetgrass and spinach and plums, sprinkled with crushed nuts. 


Wellllllll.... there are actually hardly any edible grasses, you know. Corn, bamboo shoots... lemongrass if you don't actually eat it... so I decided none of those sounded very tasty with plums, nuts and spinach. I improvised.

This is a toss of finely julienned spinach and sorrel, tossed with lemon juice and olive oil.
Add to your "grass" some thinly sliced plums. After that, with the sorrel, plums and lemon, it was quite tart. So I added a generous helping of currants and some honey to the dressing. Perfect! Sweet, tart and fresh. Top with a load of chopped pecans. Now we feast!


Obviously, the accompanying media was Game of Thrones. Here's a favorite still which should chill you to the bone and make the stew all the more needed to warm you, sirrah:

*dribble dribble* mmmmm stew's good.

Heisenburgers

DSC00751, a photo by roken is dodelik on Flickr.

Okay, so they're basically bacon avocado cheeseburgers with bleu cheese and caramelized onions. I mixed the bleu cheese with a little mayo to make it spreading consistency.

And really, the bleu cheese is the only thematic part.

But they're still pretty amazing. I might make them again for the season finale, if a better Breaking Bad-themed food doesn't emerge before then.

In the meantime, I have to prevent myself from buying an ice cream maker so that I don't try to make that Ron Swanson ice cream that was going around the internet a few weeks ago.

Seriously, is fan-fooding a thing? If not, can we make it one? Someone should ask Henry.

What would you serve?

Despite the dreadful pun that is this blog's title (for those not in the know, the main professional organization in our discipline is the Society for Cinema and Media Studies), we actually do very little combining of food and media studies around here.

So I want to pose a question that sort of combines those two things.

Breaking Bad returns next Sunday, July 17th. I am thinking of being dorky and making a themed dinner, or at least planning one and then not carrying the idea through. The question, then, is what should I make?

Some thoughts:

1. Alburquerque local cuisine? Googling "cuisine of New Mexico" gives me the idea that I would need four truckloads of green chiles. I don't like green chiles or anything spicy, really (except wasabi, and sometimes Panang curry).

2. Fried chicken, to commemorate Los Pollos Hermanos. However, the last time we had fried chicken, the boyfriend unit woke up at 3:00 a.m. with the worst migraine I've ever vicariously experienced. I think we both would prefer to avoid that happening again.

3. Nothing Skyler cooks looks very good, ever.

4. I don't want to have a dinner of peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

5. I could probably make blue hard candy, but that isn't exactly dinner.

6. Hamburgers with ricin? Probably not a good idea, since I intend to live.


My desire to do something so incredibly dorky is not without precedent. I did a themed menu for the Parks and Recreation finale--but that show is oddly obsessed with food. I could probably do two weeks' worth of Parks and Rec menus. Hell, all you'd have to do is serve bacon on everything. (For the record, I made waffles. And bacon.)

Please adopt Axl Affect before reading

When you were young
And your life
Was an open book,
You used to say,
"Live and let live."
But if it's getting tough to stay a vegetarian,
There's something you can try:
FAKE CHICKEN POT PIE!!!

HOW YOU DO

Go right ahead and drop a stick of butter into your large cast iron pan or other sautee pan. And bust out with the mirepoix:

3 Carrots in bite-size pieces, washed but unpeeled
5 or so ribs of Celery with their greens, chopped.
Pearl Onions to taste -- you can peel them yourself or use frozen. The frozen ones will be softer and sweeter.

Add two tablespoons of Poultry Seasoning (Schilling or whatever, but not stale, ok?), a teaspoon of Nutritional Yeast if you've got it, half a teaspoon Turmeric, one and a half teaspoons of salt, lots of finely ground black pepper and a teaspoon or so of Vegetable Boullion.

Sautee this mixture until the veggies begin to soften, so that the seasonings meld together and blossom in the butter and add your fake meat. I suggest one of three options:

- Quorn nuggets are bestest, but somewhat hard to find. But check that calorie to protein ratio. It's awesome. It totally justifies eating a ton of butterfat in pie crust, butter and cream forms.
- Trader Joe's Chickenless Strips, torn into smaller pieces
- Homemade gluten Mock Chicken

Then add a cup of water and turn the heat up so that the broth/gravy marinates into the "meat" and boils down again drier. This is an Indian "technique" called Bhuna. I wish I were lying. Everything simple and intuitive has a name. That thing you do when you hold your nose shut and blow to pop your ears? The Valsalva Maneuver. You can put that on a business card: "Expert in maneuvers Valasalvic and Heimlichean." Anyway, talking of bhuna reminds me that this recipe become my equally sinful SAMOSA PIE if you leave out the chicken, add cauliflower, potato, and lots of garam masala, aniseed and curry.

Next, add a cup and a half of cream! Like a boss! Or half and half, like an underboss. Stir the cream in. Slowly sift in, with a sifter like a good girl, a tablespoon and a half of corn starch and mix it carefully so it doesn't form clumps. Now is the time to drop in 2 cups Frozen Peas! When the gravy comes to a bubbling boil, the starch will thicken. Now you can turn the heat off and fill your pie shell!

I don't tell you how to make your pie crust. I don't know your life. Figure out some way to get two crusts. Lie, cheat, I don't care. I'm not even gonna tell you which one goes on top. That's homework. Alls I knows is: I don't make pie crust because I'm too fancy so I ride down to Trader Joe's in my gold limousine and have my man go in and get their frozen ones because they're vegetarian (other brands not so much FYI). Meanwhile, back at the manse...

Into the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes!

Out of the oven and into your body for ever and ever. Go in peace.

Media Pairing: Live and Let Die!!

Strawberry Shortcake (like Granny used to make it)

Strange kitchen.


Having blogged several of my mom's mother's baked goods, I will now impart the sole dish that I learned from my dad's mother. Technically, I learned it from my mother, who learned it from Dad's mother. And technically, I don't have her exact shortcake biscuit recipe. Mom might still have it somewhere, but it never got passed on to me. (Aunt Nancy? Help?) Granny generally disliked cooking but, having married into a family with notoriously sweet teeth, became fairly proficient at dessert out of necessity. This version of strawberry shortcake is from Dad's side of the family. My mother's family makes strawberry shortcake with those horrible yellow spongy cakes from the grocery store, to which I say, ew. A homemade biscuity thing is much, much better.

So I found myself at my dad's new house for spring break, along with some rapidly wilting strawberries that had been deemed not quite awesome enough to eat as-is.



I always have to bake something for my father, so why not strawberry shortcake?

Step zero: Preheat oven to 425. Place the beaters of your electric mixer into a very clean metal bowl, then put the bowl in the freezer.

Step one: Wash, hull, and slice about 1 quart strawberries. Taste a couple of representitive slices for sweetness. Sprinkle sugar over berries - anywhere from 1/8 to 1/3 cup, depending on how many berries you have and how sweet you want them to be. Stir a bit. Leave on the countertop while you do everything else.



Personal tip: Do not refrigerate the berries before you slice them. They don't spoil any less quickly in the fridge, really. More importantly, trying to hull and slice cold berries is really unpleasant. Obviously, if you have syrupy leftovers, they need to go in the fridge.

In the absence of Granny's authentic biscuit recipe, I use this one from About.com, which I typically modify slightly. I do not turn the dough out and knead it properly. For two to three kneads, why bother? I just sort of mash it around in the bowl a little. I also make these as drop biscuits rather than rolled biscuits. This is mainly because I hate cleaning up after kneading and rolling sticky biscuit dough. It works fine. Nor do I brush the tops with milk or sprinkle them with sugar. Not necessary. Incidentally, you also don't need to use a buttered foil-lined baking sheet. I use an ungreased sheet. There's enough butter. It's fine.

Cooking in someone else's kitchen is always a challenge. In Grandma's kitchen, the challenge is that I don't know where anything is (and, since the kitchen was remodeled recently, neither does Grandma half the time). In Dad's kitchen, the challenge is that neither he nor his wife bake. So it's not that I can't find things, it's that they don't exist. There is a food processor, but it's a mini prep. I asked for a pastry cutter and was told "There's a pizza cutter..." So I used two steak knives to cut in the butter.



You may also have noticed that this is a Pyrex casserole dish, not a mixing bowl. There are no proper large mixing bowls here. It's about improvising.

What you can't tell from that picture is that the flour is a little far gone. Still edible, but not so fresh. "How old is it?" I asked, because flour has, you know, a good long shelf life. I was informed that the flour was originally from St. Louis, which means a) it is at least two years old and b) they moved half a Tupperware tub of flour from St. Louis to Virginia. I...would have thrown it out in St. Louis and bought a new tub once I got to Virginia. But to each their own.



I did encounter some objects from my childhood. This tiny mixing bowl and this 1/2 cup! I learned to measure with this very 1/2 cup (and its brothers, which have probably all melted in dishwashers now). It must be at least 25 years old. Good cup.

Gone, sadly, is the other set of mixing bowls in which I learned to mix. It was a set of three Pyrex-ish bowls. The baby bowl was yellow and the daddy bowl was red. I don't know what happened to them--maybe Mom has them? The mommy bowl was white with a pattern of abstract geometric roosters across the top rim. That bowl got broken during a particularly experimental moment in which I attempted to make homemade peanut butter cups while on Rollerblades. Yes, I was old enough to know that cooking and Rollerblades don't mix. And yes, I was allowed to Rollerblade in the house.

But I digress.



This is how I form my biscuits. I like to get eight out of the recipe, but you could make them smaller or larger.




This is me doing obnoxious hipster photography.




This is what you should do while the biscuits are baking: create homemade whipped cream. You did buy heavy whipping cream, right? Whipped cream from a can is wrong. It's just wrong, folks. Maybe it's acceptable for Jell-O, but that's about it. The real stuff is so much better. (Don't even get me started on Cool Whip.) Pour about 8 oz. into your nice cold bowl, add a tablespoon or two of granulated sugar and a teaspoon or two of vanilla, and whip it.




This is what the biscuits look like. Let 'em cool for just a few minutes. You want to eat them warm, though.

*Yes, I did deliberately line up my biscuits with the teapot. I have to have some continuity in my food photography.

After tasting these particular biscuits, which had a slight plastic Tupperware container aftertaste, it was decided to throw out the St. Louis flour and purchase Virginia flour.




And this is what the whole thing looks like assembled. The cereal bowl and literal sundae spoon are also childhood relics. We used to have a whole set of sundae spoons. Each one was a different color. This is the last one left, though. Sigh.

Thus ends the tour of a few transplanted childhood kitchen objects.

Media pairing:



You thought I was going to post Strawberry Shortcake, didn't you? Didn't you?! WELL, I SHOWED YOU! Rainbow Brite was, and remains, superior.

I had sushi for dinner tonight and ordered a rainbow roll, too. So there.

Sugar Cookies a la Grandma

Another goodie from the treasure trove that is my grandma's recipe box. This is from the back of a product box (Crisco and Arm & Hammer are my educated guesses) from, I believe, the late 1940s. The last step before baking involves putting sugar on the top, so the traditional thing to do in my family is to make these for Christmas with red and/or green sugar, but obviously they can be made with white sugar for color-neutral occasions. Like last night's occasion, which was me wanting cookies.

Sugar Cookies
Sift together 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (presifted), 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Set aside.

Cream 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter and 1/2 cup shortening, then add 1 cup granulated sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla and cream again. Add 1 egg and cream until fluffy.



Do not announce "I'm making this recipe because it's the only one that only needs one egg," in case this happens to your only egg before the preceding sentence has even finished leaving your mouth.

Wait for boyfriend unit to go to grocery store for more eggs.

Stir in dry ingredients until mixture is smooth. This will be difficult. Then blend in 2 tablespoons milk.

Drop by teaspoons onto an ungreased cookie sheet...




Then flatten the tops with the bottom of a water glass dipped in sugar.



I would recommend--if you didn't already figure this out for yourself--removing any stray sugar from the cookie sheet before baking. The dough is pretty adhesive, so I usually just tip the sheet over the sugar bowl and brush it back in with the end of a paper towel or something.

Bake in a 400-degree oven until the edges are very lightly browned. The recipe says this will take 10-12 minutes, but I was taking cookies out after 8.5 and my oven is not particularly fast. The cookies are no good if you let them get too brown, so keep a close eye on them. Makes between 3-5 dozen, depending on how big your teaspoonfuls are.



While I'm typically a purist with these cookies, last night I went experimental. Here they are with cinnamon sugar on the top.




They were good that way.

And here they are with homemade butterscotch sauce drizzled on the top.



The homemade butterscotch sauce is pretty freaking amazing. There's a lot of it left over, in a bowl in my fridge, and I am exercising a lot of self-control right now. It's really hard not to just grab a spoon and eat the damn stuff on its own. I didn't have kosher salt, so I used sea salt, which created a delightfully salty/sweet combination if you're one of those salted caramel folks. I think I might be.


FYI, today I made an awesome breakfast of poached eggs over cornbread with a sun-dried tomato spread. Then I made a batch of super-healthy vegan chili, which even has organic green chard in it (on sale at Whole Foods), and will hopefully combat the effects of the butterscotch-drizzled sugar cookies...

Media Pairing: This came up when I searched YouTube for "butterscotch," and combines my loves of butterscotch, late-night television, and ponies. Well, sort of.

I found a cookbook.

It's a cookbook I purchased myself, in 2003, in Greece. It's called The Traditional Greek Cookery Book. Did I buy it for someone as a gift, and forget to give it to them, and by "them" I probably mean Leslie? We'll never know, because I've completely forgotten. The book was still in its shrink wrap. I unwrapped it. I'm stuck in Grandma's house with what appears (mercifully) to be a 24-hour bug, the Television of Endless Bowl Games, and the World's Loudest Little Brother (tm). What else was I going to do, read one of those quals books I dragged across the country with me?

Sweet zombie Jesus, this is an awesome cookbook. No, I haven't made any recipes from it yet, but there are many reasons that I already believe in its awesomeness.

1. It has no credited author, but was either written by a Greek who speaks British English in a charming second language sort of way, or was written in Greek and translated oddly.

2. The measurements are given mainly in kilos and soupspoons.

3. The recipes all have calorie counts, because "there are few things worse than cookery books which do not help one stick to one's daily programme of nutrition." One recipe calls for 2.5 cups of oil. It is not anomalous.

4. There are some accompanying illustrations, without indication as to which dish is being illustrated. This is particularly problematic in all the dishes incorporating offal and mince. It's less problematic for recipes such as Roast Suckling Pig. I can tell that that's what that is. I can't tell why it's posed on a bed of twigs and a tree stump, or why someone has made it a Dr. Seussean hat of a carved tomato stuffed with kale and perched atop a carved grapefruit rind. But then again, I've never been very good at presentation.

5. Many recipes call for the use of an oven. Nary a one specifies what temperature said oven should be. Similarly, many simply call for one or two kilos of lamb or beef, without specifying which cut is preferable. It's like when I make an apple pie--I don't need a recipe to do pie crust or filling, really; I just need a vague reminder of how much flour goes in the dough. One fish recipe begins: "Fry the fish in the usual manner." Oh. Okay then. I'll just consult the Greek grandma I don't have.

6. It does go into great detail on how to prepare your lamb for roasting on a spit. Also on how to remove a lobster brain and then incorporate the brain into a sauce.


I showed my grandfather a picture of the most colorfully illustrated recipe, Octopus with Macaroni. If you saw that episode of Top Chef All-Stars a couple of weeks ago, where they ate at top NYC restaurants and the chefs were served a crown roast of octopus, it looked like that combined with macaroni and cheese. Before I could even offer to prepare Octopus with Macaroni for Grandpa, he said, "I will decline your invitation." Should I instead offer to cook one of the many dishes calling for lamb intestines?

One thing I remember about Greek cuisine, from my brief time there, was being absolutely bombarded by kumquats. Fresh kumquats, pickled kumquats, candied kumquats, kumquat jelly, kumquat liquor. There is no mention of kumquat in this book. I call foul.

Media pairings: Well, you know. I offer a selection. (The first film relates more to the cookbook topic. The second film is better.)