Cass Cooks, Too!

posted by Cass on Jun 28

You know, if the kitchen is the heart of the home, the table must be a ventricle. It’s amazing what can happen to a family as they share talk and dinner, yk? Now with summer here, a lot of people are moving meals outside. I’ve always liked the look of glass top dining tables for outside use, though with small kids, I am afraid of them for inside. The one I showed you to the left is called the Coaster. I really think it would look great with some wrought iron chairs in a similar pattern, don’t you? Maybe with some cushions with a bit of red in them.

Now, with the size of my family, this Triple Acanthus is more suited to my needs. It seats 6 easily and I am thinking 8 would not be too crowded, since we can do 8 pretty easily at the one I have now. Unfortunately for me, my dining room is nowhere near large or formal enough to support those hand cast table supports. But they sure are purdy!

These days, I’m more shopping for chairs. I got four of those and two benches last fall, and the children have already managed to damage two of the chairs! How aggravating is that?

posted by Cass on Jun 24

Today, I am drooling over Dessert FourPlay Sweet Quartets from a Four-Star Pastry Chef by Johnny Iuzzini and Roy Finamore. Just the cover, with it’s lucious delicacies and that handsome face could do a girl in, before she ever opened the book. Just sayin’ Dare to open it, though, and the problem just gets worse!!

So here’s the premise: instead of one large dessert, Johnny gives you recipes for four complementary desserts which are meant to be served together in smaller portions. Now, I am going to tell you straight, the play on words in this book’s title is well earned. For a foodie, looking at the array of possibilities here is gastro-orgasmic. Let me give you an example–he has a section on strawberry and rhubarb and it includes strawberry-rhubarb consomme, fromage blanc panna cotta, pink peppercorn meringues with white chocolate ice cream and rhubarb sorbet, and rhubarb flan tarts.

And, uh, did you know you can make dessert from tomatoes? Yeah, you can, combined with figs and and cherries!

The book is broken down into five chapters: one for each season and then chocolate. Each chapter contains three fourplays. In the back is an extensive section of recipes for sorbets and cakes and cookies and such, which can be served with the recipes in the fourplays, or stand alone, or be used as he suggests for garnishes and extras and such.

The thing that makes this book so very dangerous, though, is the pictures. I mean, if were just a pictureless book of recipes, I’d be safe, but the pictures, they are all so luscious looking and the presentations are so lovely that I have invited a friend over to cook with me. That could be interesting indeed!

posted by Cass on Jun 22

Ok, so we made a couple of changes in the kitchen. The three teens are each taking 2 nights a week, and that leaves me with one, which was tonight and I made this:

I served it with rice, coucous, tomatoes/okra/corn and baby lima beans. It was so good to get back in the kitchen again, and also so very good to eat! I do love my own fried chicken.

Now, I don’t have a real recipe for friend chicken. I basically dip it in seasoned flour and throw it in hot grease. I vary the seasoning each time, depending on what I am in the mood for. Tonight, it was seasoned salt, garlic and a bit of thyme because I saw just a bit in the bottom of the jar and thought I might as well use it up. There ya go.

I do have three tips regarding fried chicken, though, that I can share. First and foremost, buy chicken with the skin on it. There is nothing healthy about fried chicken, and if you are gonna eat it, you might as well enjoy it. I prefer to fry thighs because they cook fairly quickly and very evenly, but I will also do breasts and drumsticks.

Second, hot grease. I use an electric skillet and I turn it to 350 and that’s where I keep it. I turn mine about 4 times, so each side cooks twice, and that gives a nice crispy skin. See above and live a little.

Third, and this is something Grandmother taught me just a few years before she died, long after she’d stopped cooking: the chicken is done when, after you turn it, the grease does not sizzle up. This is something you hear rather than see, but if the sound gets louder when you flip the meat, then you need to cook it longer. I haven’t pulled half cooked chicken out of the pan since she told me that.

posted by Cass on Jun 19

You know, I really need to confess something here. And it’s kind of an embarrassing something really. I am so out of the kitchen habit that I feel mildly ashamed to even be writing a cooking blog. Or attempting to revive one anyway.

1. My entire kitchen is in disarray, it needs a total reorganization. Which I am in the middle of.

2. The darn thing is never totally clean. I am chronically behind on dishes and desperately need to get back in the habit of doing ALL of them EVERY night. Period.

3. I need to work on planning meals again. Because of added demands on my time, I have turned most of the actual cooking here over to the teens, but I also stopped the planning, and that is becoming a major FAIL.

4. So, I am going to use the impetus of this blog to help get me back on track. I can’t take pictures in a dirty kitchen and I can’t share techniques and recipes with you if I don’t cook and I can’t cook if I don’t plan.

So, here’s the weekly agenda: one post with a menu plan, one post of a recipe or technique and one post of something else more or less kitchen related. And there ya go.

posted by Cass on Jun 18

So, I think I may have shared here, but maybe not, that I am not doing a whole lot of cooking these days. I mean, it’s not like I need a GPS to navigate my kitchen, but with me working now, and three other people in the house who are capable of putting a meal on the table, I have slacked off a bit. OTOH, I am still on the lookout for new recipes, because I like to learn new techniques, and also, they think Hamburger Helper is an adequate meal, which it is occasionally, but not every day. I’m thinking this book will be a big help in that regard.

First, the recipes are fairly simple. Second, they are mostly quick to prep and cook. Third, they rely on ingredients that are actually available here in BittyBurg. Robin Rescues Dinner is a clear winner in these three areas. We’ll probably be cooking our way through it, at least partially. There are lots of full color pictures, and each week of recipes begins with an optional prep session that you can do to help save even more time during the week. There are also hints on cooking a bit extra of this or that ingredient to use in other recipes for other weeks, and tips on how to use leftovers in the same way.

I just have one complaint about this book and it is relatively minor and petty. The cover says that there are over 350 recipes in the book. Being a great mathematician, when I picked it up, I expected to find seven dinners times 52 weeks. No, not so much. What we do get is three great looking main dishes, and some sides to go with them. It’s all good, just not what I expected. OTOH, I wouldn’t be as likely to actually cook my way through the book if it told me what to cook every. single. night.

All that said, you could easily use this book, and the week or so of menus in every month of Rachel Raye’s magazine to cook for a full year and never have to come up with a single idea of you own. Or eat Hamburger Helper more than once a month That’s a winner, ladies!

Cross-posted at www.cassknits.com

posted by Cass on Jun 17

Recently, I had an opportunity to throw a small party. I had a couple of birthdays I wanted to celebrate along with a wee divorce and a little un-family thing and I wanted a special dessert to go along with the meal. I called my aunt to get her recipe for a cake that everyone raves about, because I knew it would be just the ticket. Here’s how you make it:

1 Pillsbury yellow cake mix
2 pints fresh strawberries
16 oz strawberry glaze
8 oz softened cream cheese
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
12 ounces thawed whipped topping

Make your cake. You can cook it in four layers, which is what I did, or you can cook it in 2 layers and cut them, but you need to end up with 4 slabs of cake. It takes about 15 minutes for the layers to cook, if you do foour. That information is not on the box, so I am just letting you know. Cool the cake completely. Completely, do you hear?

Cut the strawberries and mix with the glaze, reserving 4 pretty ones to slice for the top of the cake. Also set aside 3 tablespoons of the strawberry/glaze mixture.

Beat the softened cream cheese well with the granulated sugar. Test it, and don’t stop beating until the sugar crystals are completely dissolved in the cream cheese, otherwise, it will be gritty, and that’s just nasty feeling in your mouth. Add in the powdered sugar and the whipped topping and beat it all until mixed very well.

Now then, put down a layer of cake, frost it with 1/4 of the frosting and top with 1/3 of the strawberry/glaze mixture. Do this 2 more times and then top with the last cake. Frost with remaining frosting, and top with the reserved strawberry/glaze mix in the center. Slice the four reserved berries and place in a circle around that little bit of glaze stuff.

This cake is so good, and it is even better the next day, so make it ahead if you can. Now, I am going to give you the piece of advice my aunt didn’t give me. If your frosting is too stiff to spread easily, go ahead and thin it with just a wee bit of milk. You will know when you get ready to frost the second layer if you need to do this, because if the frosting is too stiff, the layers will move, and you will end up with a very good tasting cake that looks a little funny. And people might laugh until they take a bit and then they will try to make up for it with their mouth full and that is just gross. Wanna know how I know all this?

I’m sure you could also use little wooden dowels to keep the cake straight, but really, thinning the icing a bit seems a lot easier and more efficient.