Posie Gets Cozy

Tyler's Tomatillos, and a Time-Out

I TiVo a few cooking shows on my little upstairs television so I can watch one or two after I hop into bed, before Andy and Clover come up. I like this quiet time when I am cozy and my hands are still and I can watch Ina or Tyler or Alton make something. The three shows I like, Barefoot Contessa, Tyler's Ultimate, and occasionally Good Eats, have very different styles, their hosts very different energies. Ina is calming and competent; Tyler is full of whirling energy; Alton seems to make everything more complicated than it has to be (?), but I always learn something.

Lately, I have been choosing to watch the Tylers first. Such a nice guy — I saw his Chefography the other night. Good guy. Good food. Made his Chicken Enchiladas with Roasted Tomatillo Chile Salsa on Saturday night and they were fantastic. I highly recommend them, especially for a party or something ('cause the recipe makes a lot).

It was my first time cooking with tomatillos and I really like them. Sort of tart but sweet, and still mellow. You roast this stuff first, then bang it about in the food processor, then add part of it to the chicken sauce, part of it to the top of the enchiladas (below the cheese). Good stuff!

I'm going to sign off here for a bit and try to get myself a little more organized. I'm having a hard time staying on top of it all lately, and my in-box is a big disaster. I truly regret that I am unable to respond to a lot of the questions that seem to pile up in there, and here — please check my FAQ pages for some answers if you don't hear back. I'm working on Book Idea #2 and it is happily though completely occupying me. But I am going to try and get off my computer a bit to get outside and write some recipe cards in the sun. I feel like a mushroom that has been under a duvet cover of moss, and the sun is supposed to come out soon.

Of course, Emily's suggestion of uploading recipes to Tastebook.com and making your own cookbook is so tempting I can hardly stand it. It would require lots of time on the computer, but how awesome to wind up with a cool binder like that? They have great stock photos, and you can use your own, as well. I ordered the sample recipe cards and will let you know what the quality looks like when they come. This was not even on the list of things I need to do, but I can see that it could easily become one of those activities I could become quickly obsessed with as my in-box implodes, my pets go unwalked, my calls go unreturned, and my husband is forced to eat Combos and microwave popcorn for dinner.

My sister made us some recipe cards!

Isn't my sissy the most awesomest??? Look what she made for us:

Click here for the free downloadable pdf that you can print out on cardstock with your inkjet printer and cut out. Here's the strawberry one:

I love these. I had been on the verge of grumpily designing my own (because I have been wanting, pretty much every day for the past year, to completely redo my recipe box properly and I can never find recipe cards that please me) when Julie showed me her adorable and recently updated web site last week, and I saw these sweeties there. PERFECT. Done. Now for a nice pen, and a lazy afternoon. . . .

Thanks Jules!!! You rules.

Three miles down the trail, it went "POP! hisssssssssssssss . . . sss . . . s. . . ."

TIME TO GO ON A DIET

Peanut Butter Cookies Actually Worked

Our oven, though outfitted with a new element, is still sporadically quitting on us, so the repair man comes on Thursday. In between hissy fits, I managed to keep the temperature at 375 degrees for an afternoon so that I could bake some cookies. For some reason, I have been really wanting these classic peanut-butters with a little bit of strawberry jam. This is the same recipe my mom used — I wonder where it comes from, originally. I rolled mine in sugar, then did the criss-cross, then did what someone in the comments on that recipe suggested and made a little bowl with the back of a 1/4 teaspoon, then blooped the jelly in before baking. I think this is the first thing I've baked in months that actually worked out.

On Saturday afternoon, our friend Amy came over with Clover's boyfriend Bennie, who is a "Cavachon" — a cross between a King Charles Cavalier spaniel and a Bichon Frisee. He looks like a spring-loaded flokati rug. I have never seen a dog bounce like this one. Bennie and Clover have known each other since they were baby puppies and they play very well together. It is hilarious to watch them. They both charged upstairs and Bennie taught Clover to jump onto the bed in one second. This was something she didn't know she was "able" to do.

I made fried corn chowder and garlic bread for lunch. The fried corn chowder comes from Caprial and John's Kitchen. I watched them make this on TV a few months ago and have made it a couple of times since. I've made a lot of different corn chowders and I really like this one — you carmelize the corn before throwing it in the soup at the end. I used frozen white corn and it worked just fine, thought I will say that I prefer using chicken stock to the vegetable stock. Vegetable stock sometimes has a really strong flavor that I don't care for. The chicken stock seems mellower. But you could leave out the bacon and use vegetable stock for a vegetarian option that would still be really great, don't get me wrong. This soup is delicious.

This weather is seriously making me crazy. It's been freezing and raining all week and I am just so over it. It snowed on Saturday, hailed on Sunday. This is the longest winter ever. I want to be in California, near the ocean, laying out by the pool, drinking a Bellini RIGHT NOW!!!!!

Rice Pudding

Late yesterday I saw that Amy was talking about the very cool cookbook of family recipes she has and that was the perfect inspiration. I had, only hours earlier, been having lunch with my friend Shelly at IKEA, where I bought nothing but three bags of frozen Swedish meatballs, as it is my goal to never be without Swedish meatballs in the freezer. Andy's grandma Helen Thomas wrote out her recipe for rice pudding for me several years ago, but it was only a few months ago, when Andy's mom (Helen's daugher) was here in September, that she told me this rice pudding is not considered a dessert; it is what the Thomases eat with Swedish meatballs. It is amazing that way. Natch, after reading Amy's post and having three bags of meatballs suddenly at hand, I had to make some. This is Helen's recipe as written. I make it just this way, with jasmine rice.

Helen's Rice Pudding

Wash 1 c. rice (not Minute Rice) in ice cold water. Put in double boiler and add 2 c. hot water. Steam rice until dry. Put in large baking bowl. Add 2 more cups of milk and 1 can [sweetened] condensed milk, 3/4 c. sugar, and 4 beaten eggs. Add salt to taste. Sprinkle cinnamon on top and put pieces of butter. Bake in medium oven — 375 degrees about 1 hour, until pudding is firm.

Alas, as I was talking on the phone to my niece who was thanking me for the (awesome) horse stationery I sent her, the preheating electric oven went, "KaPOOOF!" and there was a big flash of light and something blew, I screamed in shock, narrowly avoiding bellowing expletive ["Holy . . . wow!"] into phone at nine-year-old niece.

Fifteen minutes later, my next-door-neighbors, who graciously allowed me to use their oven for my pud and meatballs, thought that the "element" was bad. PERHAPS this explains my crap kitchen karma lately. Or would I just like to think so. Anyway, we have no oven now and must stop and get new heating element on way to Powell's for more books because I want lasagna this weekend, with my reading. Lasagna with a side of reading. I'll read at the table.

Portlanders, do you know about the rice pudding store at Bridgeport Village? Not kidding. All rice pudding. AND GOOD. I meant to tell you about it before. It's called Pudding on the Rice.

I love lasagna.

Lasagna. Perfect wintry dinner. I love lasagnas. I make them frequently and I think I've finally figured out the way I like mine: 1) NO sauce on the bottom of the pan. No sauce. Layer noodles thickly right into the (lightly oiled) baking dish to create a sort of "crust." When you put the sauce down first, it all soaks into the noodles and I don't like that. I like me a nice rubbery, ripply layer. 2) Speaking of noodles, don't use the no-boil noodles. Although they seem easier for obvious reasons, I have found that they just never stop "cooking," and ultimately get very mushy, and I don't like that either. Ina's recipe for Turkey Sausage Lasagna has you soak regular noodles in hot water for a while, and that works pretty well, actually. They still soak up some of the liquid in the pan while cooking, enough to truly cook, but they don't stick to each other and get all crusty and weird in the strainer while you are fussing with the other stuff. I don't like to rinse the hot, cooked noodles in cold water because they're all slimy and slippery then. 3) I like thick layers of stuff in general, not lots of thin ones. I'd rather have one thick layer of ricotta, for instance, then split the cheese up and have it sort of all mush together when you cut it.

Eeeeeewwww and yum. I love ricotta cheese. I've noticed that people either love or are disgusted by ricotta. Andy Paulson = disgusted variety. Maybe not disgusted, but certainly not a slobbering cheerleader for it, as am I. R-I-C-O-T-T-A!  Yeah! In our family we pronounced it like "rig-awt." We Giada-ified it. When I was old enough to see the word spelled I had absolutely no idea that the word "ricotta" referred to "rig-awt." My mother used to buy it fresh from the deli counter at the grocery store, probably Jewel or Dominick's. I have never seen it sold like that here out west in a regular grocery store. Maybe they still sell it that way in Chicago, or places with a larger Italian population. She would put the cheese in cheesecloth in a strainer over a bowl for several hours until a lot of the water came out. Now I just dump mine straight out of the container. There is a HUGE difference, to me anyway, between part-skim and whole-milk ricotta. I can't even pretend to like the part-skim stuff. I would just as soon not have the lasagna. And cottage cheese in lasagna? I'll pretend you didn't just say that.

The most insanely rich but seriously delicious lasagna I know is the Spinach Lasagna Bechamel (scroll down that page to see it, and yes, I'd definitely use 2% milk instead of whole here) from the Sundays at Moosewood cookbook. My friend Dee McNamer, the beautiful and talented and ever-lovely Dee, served this at an English department party in Missoula once. Everyone who makes it and everyone who eats it is always slightly embarrassed to be that happy about something so bad for you. It seriously weighs about 26 pounds (not including the tare weight of your baking dish). Maybe make it if fourteen people are coming over. I've been known to make it for four. But they have to be close friends, so they'll feel comfortable wearing sweatpants to your dinner party (I encourage this when serving lasagna).

That's It: Part II

Well, okay. I feel so bad that I left you hanging. I don't know what was funnier, scrubbing cake off the baking sheet or reading the comments from everyone who thought these were Whoopie Pies (they did look like WPs, though those rings of what look like white filling are actually the little metal cake pans, or the parts of the pans that aren't covered with molten chocolate). I'm sad to say that looking at the finished cakes was just as funny, since they didn't really get any better looking, though I tried, oh I tried. I really did try. I laughed out loud, alone, so many times while doing this, so at least I amused myself.

So, I was just trying to bake little cakes like the ones I did for Valentine's Day last year and the dinner party ones with the pink flowers and the birthday one (now I'm just showing off, cause that one was beautiful, I'm sorry, but it was). So I mean, I had it. I did used to have it. I had to go back and look just to make sure. Was I [pause] too sexy for my shirt? I think so. Hubris. Got lazy. While you are all so nice to blame the oven temperature, the recipe, the humidity, the baking soda, or the [insert name of blameable cause other than myself here] for me, I'm chagrined to say this one was entirely Operator Error. I just filled the pans way too full; apparently, though I took the time to make cake batter entirely from scratch, I could not really be bothered to stop for 1/4 second and think about how much batter I should put in the pans.

Turns out, not too much. This batter, when finished, is totally liquid, the consistency of Swedish pancake batter. But it . . . rises. So the cakes totally blobbed out in the oven and gooed all over my nice beautiful baking sheet. I was standing and looking at them through the oven-door window with my mouth actually hanging open as they were bubbling over, oozing like lava. That was a sad moment. I decided to let it go, and hope the part in the pans still cooked. But thank goodness for the nice baking sheet, otherwise . . . well, at least I got that part right.

The finished stacks are these wobbly, pock-marked, frowsy little towers of sponge and cream. I think they are embarrassed for themselves, actually. They looked just like the ones I made in my Easy-Bake Oven when I was nine. But Andy was right: They are delicious. So it was all fine — just too much batter of a too-sticky cake in a 4" round tin. The recipe, Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake, is one I've used many times, and it is the best chocolate cake, if you like them dense and sticky, as I do. But it's so moist that it's not a great candidate for further lateral slicing, like I did with the Stacks of Hearts and Clouds (drier); this one's sticky even when it's coming out of the pan. It's insanely delicious, though, so don't let me stop you. Don't let my problems stop you. Just, put it in the right size pans. I see now that this — wrong pan-size — is a recurring theme in my baking badness. So, after I surgically removed these from their pans and cut off all their weird edges, I added a layer of raspberry jam. Frosted them with this (with a little jam added):

Cloudburst Frosting

4 T. flour
1 c. whole milk
1 c. butter
1 t. almond extract
2 c. sifted confectioners sugar

In small pan, whisk together flour and milk. Simmer until thick over low heat. Remove from heat and let cool completely but NOT in refrigerator. Cream together butter and almond; add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add flour mixture and beat until fluffy. The frosting will appear to separate, but just keep beating on high until it whips up into smooth, fluffy clouds.

Slapped a doily under them, sprinkled on some powdered sugar, and just dug in, quick. Not a problem. Nope [munch munch], no problems now. I wish you were here so you could have some and then maybe you'd forgive me for being such a doofus. Nevertheless, I'm sticking to smocking and savories for a while. Seriously. That's it.

That's it.

Mmmmm-mornin'

Monday ("Pastry-bag-day") already, huh? That weekend was sloooow, yet too fast. It was sloooow because it felt like the first one in I don't even know how long where Andy and I had nothing to do and nowhere to go. We puttered. He puttered, I sat. Mostly cross-stitching and smocking (show ya later). Tick tick tick the hours went by, quiet and slow. We watched Persuasion and Uncle Buck. He made rice pudding and Swedish meatballs. I made chicken and broccoli. Clover got long walks. We considered going various places and decided not to. Man, it was so great. All of us here needed that so much.

I'm blushing furiously over how many people downloaded the Pleasant Kitchen Dishtowel designs. Shelly told me she checked the stats last night and the pdf had been downloaded 1,717 times. DUDES! Seriously? I'm so pleased that you like them. I have really loved doing this project, and plan to finish all the bindings this week and help you with that, too. Really I'm just completely delighted that both the concept and the designs have found such kindred spirits. Some projects just need to be shared, so thank you for welcoming this one!

On Friday morning I attended a free "webinar" at Blurb. com. This was such a cool presentation, where you phone in to hear a lecture about making books with Blurb, and walks you through all the steps on screen. I first heard of Blurb last summer but I never really had time to do anything about it. I was a little intimidated by the software every time I started playing with it, too. But last month, when I wrote this post about the tomato soup and you shared your own family favorites, I had an idea to collect it all in a Blurb book. If I do decide to do it, I will send out a call to anyone who wants to participate, and have you resubmit your story, a recipe, and a photo of the food (or whoever made it for you). Then I'll take everything and format it into a Blurb book that would be available for everyone. I am excited about the idea, and just have to see when I will have time this spring to get going on it. I'll keep you posted on how it all shakes down, but just be thinking of one.

Fat-Tuesday Indulgence

Well, okay after reading the comments yesterday and seeing how many people have had trouble with the silicone bakers and soap, I'm not feeling so bad! The only other silicone baker I've used was the brownie pan I used for Brownie Disaster II — and I'm not saying the pan caused the disaster, just that I didn't get to taste the brownies to say if they tasted like soap because I'd already ruined them in so many ways, but they might've tasted like soap too, I don't know. Could be the type of soap we use. Someone suggested that the lemon juice could've reacted with the baking soda — that seems possible, too, if it happens when it's baking, because I tasted the batter before baking and it tasted delicious. My guess is that, since I washed the bakers in the dishwasher before using them, there was still soap left on them. So — if you are going to use these, it makes sense to wash them in very mild soap by hand, and rinse well. I didn't even think of that — but now that I do think of it, we always wash our Silpats by hand, as the directions indicate, and never have trouble with them. I forgot about those. I just thought that it says to wash by hand because they didn't want them getting whipped around in the dishwasher or something. But I think it's more because of the soap. Anyway, you get the picture. Silicone and soap = not so good.

These are Coq au Vin Rosettes, a variation on a recipe in an old magazine I have from 2002 called 100 Ideas: Comfort Cooking Recipes from Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications. It seems like just the right fattening thing for Fat Tuesday. . . .

Coq au Vin Rosettes

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs
3 c. sliced fresh mushrooms
1 medium diced onion
2 T. butter
1/2 c. white wine
1/2 t. pepper
1 t. salt
8 packaged dried lasagna noodles
1 c. chicken stock
4 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. sour cream
2 T. flour
1/2 c. milk
1 c. shredded Gruyere cheese

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cut chicken into 1" pieces. In a large skillet, cook mushrooms and onion in hot butter over medium-high heat for about 8 minutes until tender, stirring occasionally (you want to leave them alone a bit to get some caramelization going). Add chicken, pepper, and salt and cook until chicken is no longer pink. Add wine and simmer until alcohol evaporates and you are left with just a few tablespoons of liquid in pan. Remove from heat.

2. Meanwhile, cook lasagna noodles in boiling salted water until almost done; drain. Return to pan and toss with a tablespoon of olive oil to keep noodles from sticking. Halve each noodle lengthwise. Curl each noodle half into a 2 1/2" diameter ring and place, cut side down, in an ungreased 3-quart rectangular baking dish. With a slotted spoon, spoon chicken mixture into center of lasagna rings, reserving liquid in skillet. Add the chicken stock to the liquid and heat until simmering. Add the cream cheese to the liquid and heat until cream cheese is just melted. Remove from heat.

3. In a small bowl, stir together sour cream and flour. Stir in milk. Add sour cream mixture to liquid in skillet. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly. Spoon sauce over pasta rings, covering noodle edges so they don't dry out. Sprinkle with shredded Gruyere.

4. Bake, covered, for about 35 minutes or until heated through.

These are super yummy, especially with a nice salad or perhaps some roasted veggies on the side. Make them if you didn't get enough pancakes for breakfast (since it is Pancake Day — and thanks Christine for this awesome pancake-making video and a response to it). It seems wrong that I didn't make pancakes this morning but I'm crazy like that.

Thank you so much for all the info on smocking, and pleating, and pleating machines! Wow cool! I have to say that I actually prefer the more rustic-looking hand-pleated version, and I don't actually even mind pleating the foundation by hand because I like that kinda thing, but it is very good to know that I should continue to do that down the length of things, which makes sense. I never did get out to get a smocking book last week but I really do need to run some errands today, so I will. I can put off the errands no longer. For some reason all I want to do is stay home and pleat and stitch and cook and embroider dishtowels (ooooooh, can't wait to show you — I'm on "Sunday" now, so almost done). I am just so loving having a little time to do this stuff, especially after all the editorial stuff (words words words, red pens, pages, Aleve, memos, sticky notes, more words, more Aleve). I swear I've started a half a dozen just-me projects (the chair pads, the papercuts, the smocked bag, the dishtowels, a cross-stitch pattern I'm finally finishing the chart for, I don't even know what else) in the past two weeks. But it's been so great. I was waiting a long time to get to make some things for myself and it's like, once set loose, I just exploded all over the craft supplies. Sobbing. "I've missed you guys! I love you guys!!!" Start one thing, start another, start another. Gathering them all up in my arms and collapsing in a satisfied, yarny-flossy-ginghamy heap of sobbing joy. Aaahhhh. Good. Doesn't take much to make me happy, I tell ya. I know I have to get back to making things for my web shop, but for now this feels so good. I'm taking my own advice for once. I can dish it out, just can't take it.