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We’ve been hit with snow storms (on two separate occasions) in the last two weeks. You could even call them the blizzard(s) of 2009 since many companies closed down shop and we were all confined to the house. A bad thing? I don't think so. It's usually dreadful for most but I had an opportunity to sleep in, and cook wonderful meals all day.
Before I started the actual cooking, I made chicken stock for the first time. Yes, first time for a self proclaimed foodie and aspiring chef.
Homemade Chicken Stock
Olive Oil
1 bay leaf
6 whole black peppercorns
1 whole onion, cut into large cubes
2 celery ribs, washed and cut into large cubes
2 carrots, peeled and cut into large cubes
2 garlic cloves, cut in half
Chicken Carcass from a whole chicken or various drumstick and thigh bones (save poultry bones and/or carcasses after meals to make stock; they can be frozen for up to 6 months)
Water
Add olive oil (enough so the vegetables don't stick) to a large pot on medium heat, add the chopped onions, garlic, bay leaf, and peppercorns. Saute for 2 minutes then add celery and carrots. Saute for few more minutes, or until the vegetables are brown around the edges. Add chicken carcass and stir to combine. Cook for 2-4 minutes. Add enough water to cover. Turn up the heat to high to bring the liquid to boil. When bubbling on top, turn down the heat to low and simmer for 1 – 1 ½ hours. Skim the fat from the top.
I omitted salt so I can add precise amount of it in a recipe.
When it cools, pour the liquid in another large pot using a strainer. This step is to separate the vegetables and spices from the liquid. Using a wooden spoon, press the vegetables to release any unstrained liquid.
Pour the liquid one more time through a fine sieve to remove any solids.
Pour the stock in freezer friendly containers and freeze for up to 5 months. The stock can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.
I used some that night for Mexican paella, refrigerated 2 cups for Hoppin’ John and froze rest of the stock. It was so easy to make that I have decided to make my own stock rather than buy pre-made. Try it, it’s rewarding and comforting.
I had a head of cauliflower in my fridge, calling my name, when I found this recipe for Cream of Cauliflower Soup on epicurious. I hate to say it but it's been difficult to write about this soup. We both had such high hopes for it beacuse we made it on a blistery cold winter night, with saffron and diced onions and cream. And it doesn't get much fancier than saffron in this house...
Cream of Cauliflower Soup with Saffron - copied from epicurious
2 cups water
2 cups low-salt chicken broth
1/8 teaspoon coarsely crumbled saffron threads
3 tablespoons butter
2 cups chopped onions
1 1/2 pounds cauliflower, cut into1/2- to 3/4-inch pieces
3/4 cup half and half
Thinly sliced fresh chives
Combine 2 cups water and 2 cups low-salt chicken broth in medium saucepan. Bring mixture just to simmer. Remove from heat. Add saffron threads. Cover and steep 20 minutes.
Melt 3 tablespoons butter in heavy medium pot over medium-low heat. Add chopped onions and sauté until very tender but not brown, about 10 minutes. Add cauliflower pieces; stir to coat. Add saffron broth. Bring to simmer over high heat. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until cauliflower pieces are tender, about 20 minutes.
Working in batches, puree cauliflower mixture in food processor until smooth. Transfer cauliflower puree to large saucepan. Stir in half and half and bring to simmer. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Bring to simmer before serving.) Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with sliced fresh chives and serve.
Like one of the reviewers said it was an okay soup that was bland and did not have hopes for seconds.
This one's going in the “tried it and didn’t care for it” file and leave it there. I believe it can be improved but with a bad taste in my mouth from the first round, I am going to leave the testing up to someone else.
The soup was so bad, even the picture looks awful; not really, it's just a terrible picture taken in the dark by the iPhone.
It was a double date night with dinner and a movie. We were debating between couple restaurants (new and old) in Mason before an 8pm show. As I was waiting for the husband to come home from work, I discovered G. Bailey’s opened in Encore’s old location and serves brick oven pizza. I’d been to Encore once for dinner long time ago and remembered leaving happy and buzzed; the chocolate martini was delightful. I also learned G Baileys is owned by the owners of the Golden Lamb and we’ve dined there for Valentine’s Day and loved it.
Every so often, I get a craving for pizza and this was the night. After arriving at 6:30, our party of four was seated 15 minutes later- not bad for a Friday night. (They only take reservations for party of 8 or more). There are plenty of booths and tables for seating. They have a large wine cooler housed close to the kitchen (the friend said this is from the Encore days). Overall the appearance is pleasant, with a dash of suburban restaurant attempting to be upscale.
For first course, I ordered “their version” of the chicken noodle soup and someone else got an insalata capresse. The soup was very salty. The server offered another bowl and informed me the second bowl would be from the same pot; I kindly refused. The insalata capresse, on the other hand, was magnificent; perfectly dressed and seasoned. 
(my sad attempt at taking a picture of the pizza, discreetly, with an iPhone)For dinner three of us ordered pizzas and one ordered halibut with vegetables. The pizzas arrived soon after the first course plates were cleared. The pizzas are small with 6- 8 slices. My grilled chicken pizza tasted all right, nothing extraordinary. The crust was thin (my preferred style) but it tasted doughy and lacked a bold oven grilled flavor. The toppings were bland, lacked salt and garlic, and unfortunately with a bad crust made for an okay pizza. I was disappointed in their attempt at brick oven style pizza. Maybe because growing up, we regularly ate at a local joint that cranked out more pizzas from their brick oven than you can shake a stick at. So even if I had higher expectations others in the party agreed the pizza lacked substance. The halibut, a main course, is served with a three tier salad and potatoes. The tiered serving style was fun and unique; it came with herbed cottage cheese, onions and a variety of peppers and the basics of a mixed green salad. The cottage cheese with fresh herbs was a hit; a simple and brilliant idea that I’ll use at home. The halibut guy didn’t complain or rave about the fish or the potatoes so I assume they were good but not memorable.
They have other dishes on the menu like roasted chicken, pork tenderloin, pasta and sandwiches that may be worth trying. This place is still new to the restaurant scene in Mason so hopefully they’ll fix the glitches soon.
The movie? Doubt. It’s definitely worthy of the award nominations. We saw the play at Cincinnati Playhouse and preferred that over the big screen. To no one’s surprise…
One of many new traditions for 2009 is to cook simple brunches, often. Keeping in tune with that, we invited couple friends over for brunch on New Year’s day weekend. At first I wasn’t sure about the menu and when I suggested biscuits and gravy, the friend said her husband loved biscuits and gravy. Since my husband loves them too, biscuits and gravy would be our first cooked meal with friends in 2009.
Maybe you can help me figure out my husband’s obsession with biscuits and gravy. It’s a southern dish that probably got its start in an older woman’s kitchen. On a lazy Sunday morning, this woman woke up to leftover biscuits from the previous night’s (fried chicken and biscuits) dinner and had preserved sausage links from the meat season. Hypothetical scenario that could be true, will you please just play along? So with a cup of milk, flour, salt and pepper she invented gravy for the biscuits, served them to the family and called it a day. I bet she had an easy morning that morning compared to all the other days she’d spent peeling and grating potatoes for the hash, or deep frying catfish or better yet frying balls of dough and sprinkling sugar on them.
Like that woman, I also had a lazy start to the morning. I first made the dough for biscuits, following Alton Brown’s recipe. I’d seen him make these with his grandma in one episode and knew I had to try them.
Alton Brown’s Biscuits (not pictured; those biscuits are from before Alton gave me a wonderful lesson on biscuit making. From a previous life, I guess you can say)
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons shortening – I used vegetable shortening
1 cup buttermilk, chilled
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs. (The faster the better, you don't want the fats to melt.) Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky.
Turn dough onto floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5 or 6 times. Press into a 1-inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough. (The recipe states the measurements make 12 biscuits and unfortunately mine only yielded 6. I made another batch of dough for more. Or my cutter may have been too big. (I used a water glass since I don’t have the 2 inch cutter. I’ve learned my lesson.) After baking the biscuits, I realized the water glass proportion made giant biscuits. Something was a mistake on my part). Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible and continue cutting. (Biscuits from the second pass will not be quite as light as those from the first, but hey, that's life.)
Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 15 to 20 minutes. (I baked mine for 30 because they were giant biscuits). Other than fixing my cutting measurements, I wouldn’t change a thing about the recipe. The gravy’s real simple too.
Sausage Gravy
Vegetable oil
4 tablespoons butter, divided (use for turkey sausage or lean pork sausage)
1 lb sausage- ground or links, remove casing if using links. (Ground turkey or pork is fine; until recently, I’ve bought ground turkey tubes (in the frozen foods isle) but since the start of the CSA, we’ve been on a pork kick. And by we I really just mean the husband.) Make sure the ingredients consist of water and meat, nothing else!
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups of milk, room temperature
Salt
Freshly ground pepper, lots of it
Add oil (one coat) and 2 tablespoons of butter (if using) to a large pan on medium heat. When the butter melts, drop in the ground sausage. Break up the meat into small pieces with a wooden spoon as soon as it hits the pan. I like small to medium sized chunks (pictured). Season with salt and pepper. As the meat cooks, the color changes from pink to gray. When the meat is about 60 percent cooked, add the flour, and combine so most of the meat is coated with flour. Cook for 3-5 minutes or until there is a nutty aroma from the pan. (When flour is raw it doesn’t smell like anything, and when it’s cooked, it releases nutty smells.) Stir in milk and bring to a boil, season with salt and pepper, then lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until thickened to desired consistency. Stir in the last 2 tablespoons of butter, taste, season with salt and pepper, if necessary and serve over baked biscuits.
Actually, my husband was born and brought up in India and didn’t know a thing about biscuits and gravy. His definition of biscuits is the American cookie and gravy is the sauce that comes with an Indian vegetable or meat dish that’s scooped up with naan or rice. Why a grown Indian man goes ga-ga for southern style biscuits and gravy- I don’t know, but I do know that when they are on our menu, he’s like a kid in the candy store. Regardless, I think these satisfied the cravings of both husbands, and wives.
I hope you enjoyed your New Year’s Eve festivities, whether it was at a bar, with friends or in front of the tele. We spent ours with friends and homemade food. The theme for this year was street food; we had Samosas, Falafels, and a pot of Paav bhaaji. Paav bhaji is a common street food in many Indian cities, especially Mumbai. The bread, Paav, is served alongside bhaji, a potato based curry that has a variety of ingredients including cauliflower, peas, carrots, onions, garlic, ginger, peppers and spices. This is truly a one pot wonder. Onions, garlic, and ginger are first sautéed in ghee or vegetable oil in a large flat pan, then potatoes are added with water, cauliflower is next, then carrots and peppers are stirred in with the spices. Everything simmers on medium-low for 45 minutes. The peas are added in the last 10 minutes of the cooking so they don’t become mushy. On the streets the bhaji is simmered all day and served with a pinch of chopped cilantro. Paav is a hot dog bun that’s buttered and roasted on the edges of the large pan with bhaji. This is a hot (temperature and sometimes spicy) dish, great for a cold day.
At our house the husband is a better cook for Indian food; Paav bhaji is definitely one of his specialties, so is chicken curry, goat curry, egg fry (another highly-favored street food) and dhan shaak (goat curry with yellow split chickpea lentils).
After Thanksgiving, Mom sent us away with two kinds of homemade Samosas, one filled with meat and the other with split chickpea lentils (traditional Gujarati kind), thank you! The Samosas and the husband’s Paav bhaji were highly rated; the Falafels, on the other hand, were not. The batter was well seasoned but they were under fried resulting in a semi-done inside. (For those questioning- I soaked and cooked the dried chickpeas in the slow cooker before making the batter- I try not to feed guests raw beans.)
Onto those New Year’s resolutions, I’ve got a few of my own. I admit I don’t take them seriously because I break mine in the first month. In fact, I’ve already broken one. I want to dress femininely, more often; more skirts, blouses, dresses and fewer shirts and slacks. Wrapping up the first week of 2009, I have yet to wear a skirt or a dress. See what I mean?
Another one is for writing. In conversations with friends, I realized I genuinely enjoy snail mail. I fancy the inspiration that goes behind picking cards or letters, sender's handwriting, the pen and stamps that are used for the receiver. This connects the sender and the receiver on a personal level, something emails can’t do. (I appreciate email and Internet as much as the next person so this is not a rejection to technology just an expression of my fondness for snail mail.) Someone pointed out, in this day and age of junk mail, catalogs and bill collections, who doesn’t like to receive a nice card from friends? For those of you that like sending snail mail, email (ha!) me, I like getting cards just as much. Some of you will see these in your mailboxes in 2009!
The writing resolution also includes blogging regularly and putting my thoughts down on paper or on in a document often. So far I am on track, wouldn’t you say?
And finally for 2009 I want to cook food simply. I want to create unpretentious dishes, using locally produced ingredients (when possible), that taste gratifying. In the few days I’ve cooked since we rang in 2009, I’ve made biscuits and gravy, creamy cauliflower soup and pork chops. Hopefully if I stick to my writing resolution, the recipes will be up soon.
Pour the liquid one more time through a fine sieve to remove any solids. 
