Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole

I believe in the power of the casserole. I actually began to construct an overly elaborate and delicious metaphor relating a casserole to life, but you aren't reading a food blog to hear me go on and on about that. But I will say that I'm on a one man crusade to revive the dying art of the casserole. It is for this reason that I've made a yearly tradition of throwing a dinner potluck called Night of 1000 Casseroles.

Some have called this a hipster party. I can kind of see where they get that from, since we are a large group of college-age people throwing a dinner party around something traditionally uncool and... well, weird. But I will be the first to say that our love for casserole is genuine, so the notes of ridicule and irony traditionally associated with hipster activities aren't even a blip on the radar.

And as I'm on this quest to bring life back into a dying casserole art, I'm not about to introduce something with canned soup mixes or prepackaged fried onion pieces. For this event, I saw a lot of nontraditional casseroles being made, so I decided to put my spin on a more homestyle sort of casserole. So was born the Cheesy Broccoli and Rice Casserole.

Ingredients:

• About 3 cups of cooked basmati rice
• 1/2 cup sliced (or diced) regular white mushrooms
• 1/2 cup diced onion (yellow, white, or any sweet variety)
  
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock (I cook for a lot of vegetarians. Use chicken stock if you want)
• 1 and 1/2 cups of heavy cream
• 12 ounces of broccoli, cut to bite sized pieces
  
• 4 tablespoons of butter
• About 2 cups of a shredded cheddar/jack blend (or just cheeses with a similar bite to them)
• About 1 and 1/2 cups of panko bread crumbs (or regular ones, of those are all you have)
  
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 2 cloves of minced garlic (more if you like garlic, of course)
• 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  
• Salt and pepper

Procedure:

0.5. Cook your rice now. Please. You don't want to be waiting on it while everything else is cooking. Depending on your rice, if you begin this step just before finishing step #1, your rice should be ready just about when you need it.

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Coat a 1 and 1/2 quart (or similarly sized dish, go bigger if you have to) casserole/glass baking dish in a layer of the butter you have measured out. Melt the remaining butter in a medium sized pot.

2. When the butter is melted, put the onions in along with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Sauté the onions until they become translucent (i.e., not opaque and pure white, but not fully brown yet... kinda see-through).

3. When the onions are transparent, add the mushrooms, garlic (if you add them any earlier, they might get overcooked), cayenne pepper, and nutmeg. Stir regularly until the mushrooms give up most of their moisture and turn a medium-dark brown.

4. Add in the flour and coat the veggies. Stir this pasty mess for about 2 minutes to get rid of the taste of raw flour. By the way, you're making a roux right now, it's what will thicken the sauce.

5. After 2 minutes, add the vegetable stock and then the cream to the pot. Stir until the sauce is well mixed and there are no chunks of floury roux floating around (there will with chunks of onion and mushroom left, of course). Bring this up to a simmer. You've just made soup much better than you could get out of a can.

6. When the sauce is simmering, add 1 and 1/2 cups of the cheese. Do this a handful or two at a time to allow the cheese to mix in evenly. Add in the broccoli, cooked rice, and 1 cup of the panko and mix well.

7. Take the mixture and put it in the buttered casserole dish, spreading the top to make an even surface. Sprinkle the remaining cheese evenly on the top, followed by sprinkling the remaining panko in a similar fashion.

8. Place the dish in the oven, uncovered, for about 20 minutes or until the top cheese is melted and the panko is a golden brown. Serve hot.

You'll be surprised with how simple this is to pull off compared to how many remarks of "Mmmmmm!" and "Thish ish sho gooad! [chewing noises]" you'll get. Feel free to make little alterations wherever you see fit. While there is some science to casseroles, much of it is an art that you use your instincts for when you feel confident enough about your culinary abilities. Stay tuned for some more of the top casseroles from Night of 1000 Casseroles.

Crockless French Onion Soup

It's been a while since I posted a recipe (mainly because I've been experimenting with things that are really hard to write about and recreate, curry among them). Anyway, because I love the film club I'm a president of so much, I decided that for our pot luck screening of La Reine Margot that I would make them french onion soup. This always sound more pretentious than I intend it to be, but I really haven't been able to eat french onion soup since I had soupe à l'oignon in Paris that I place on my list of the top five things I've ever eaten. So I realized that I was going to be disappointed no matter how good my soup ended up, but got over that fact pretty quickly.

Ingredients:

• 5 onions (Vidalia, mayan sweets, or just regular yellow or white onions)
• 3 tablespoons of butter (but more doesn't hurt...)
• Salt and pepper
  
• At least 2 cups of white wine
• 3 cups beef broth (can be made from bouillon)
• 2 cups chicken broth (can also be made from bouillon)
• A "bouquet garnis" of 1 tablespoon of herbes de provence and 1 bay leaf (see note)
• A baguette
  
• 1 cup of gruyere cheese (shredded)

Note: To make this "bouquet," I improvised... well, a lot. I put the herbs in a coffee filter and tied it off with kitchen string. The point is that you don't want little leafy bits floating around in your soup when it's done, so you use this little packet to get the flavors into the soup without having to skim the herbs off the top. I also toyed with the idea of putting them in my tea ball, so you might want to try one of those and just let the bay leaf go free in the soup (that's easy enough to pick out of anything).

Procedure:

1. Cut the tops and bottoms off the onions. With the bottom of the onion on the cutting board and the top facing up, make thin crescents out of the onion by cutting it as you would a pizza. But instead of making only a few "slices of pizza," make as many as you can manage (I averaged about 26 to 34 "slices" depending on how big the onion was. If you still have trouble visualizing what you're cutting, think of a bloomin' onion, but with smaller petals and cut all the way through.

2. Melt the butter in a large pot. When completely melted, add one layer of onion and lightly salt and pepper it. Add another layer of onion and salt and pepper it the same way, continuing until you run out of onion. Let sweat, covered, on medium low heat for 20 minutes without stirring them.

3. Remove lid and stir. Increase heat to medium and stir the onions occasionally until the onions are dark brown (not burnt, mind you, just really caramelized). This will take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or beyond, depending on your stove, the onions, and the alignment of the planets, so just tend to them every couple of minutes.

3.5. While the onions are cooking, slice your bread into inch thick pieces. Lay those pieces out on a baking sheet and sprinkle with a layer of the gruyere cheese. Set them aside for now.

4. Once satisfied with the color of the onions, add enough white wine to the pot to cover the onions completely. Turn the heat on high and stir constantly until the wine turns syrupy in consistency (3 to 5 minutes, give or take, depending on how much wine you used).

Side note: The alcohol will cook out of this, that's pretty much what you're trying to do with the heat up so high. But as I learned, the alcohol cooking off goes somewhere, making billowing clouds of steam. Inhaling said steam is like breathing in vaporized alcohol. Just letting you benefit from my white wine facial experience a couple days ago.

5. When the wine has cooked down, lower the heat back down to a medium and add the beef and chicken broths, along with the bouquet garni. Once that's brought up to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer. Let simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

6. Turn your oven's broiler on, and put the sheet with the cheese covered bread underneath the broiler. The bread should only be under there long enough to toast the cheese, so keep an eye on them and remove them before they get burnt, of course.

Serving:

You can probably tell by now, but this recipe has been adapted to suit the general population that doesn't have a set of matching mini crocks for traditional french onion soup. Instead, just take out the bouquet garnis and ladle out individual portions of soup into bowls, then sprinkle with as much of the leftover gruyere cheese as you want. Then plop a piece of the toasted bread (cheese side up) in the bowl and serve.

This version has at least a dozen servings, and can be increased very easily just by adding more onion or more broth. Every component can be stored separately and recombined when ready for any leftovers you might have.

Tips:

• Thinner pieces of onion are easier to get on a spoon.
• I've had good experiences with the "Better Than Bouillon" brand bouillon paste, but those little cubes work well too. For premade broth, I like cartons better than cans.
• Don't stand right over the pan when you add the wine. Really. It will be hard to see during that step anyway, so be prepared.
• Don't forget to take out the bouquet garnis.
• Deeper bowls work better than shallower bowls when serving.
• Your entire living space will smell delicious for a good 24 to 48 hours. Sorry, unintentional side effect.

My film club pot luck contribution was a big success, and resulted in leftovers for quite a while. That was pretty convenient when watching Julie & Julia the day after, craving both french food and blogging about it. So now I've satisfied both parts of that need.

Potage de Légumes on a crisp autumn evening

It's me again. Grad school has started in full swing and I hardly have time to cook anything without judicious use of my crockpot. I have no end of wonderful slow cooker recipes, but all the same I have come to look forward to nights I don't have class or work as nights I can kick back and get some real cooking done. (I know, I know.)

Last night was one of those nights. I had a little time on my hands, and I made a recipe I've been looking forward to making with great anticipation. This recipe has been crying out to me to try it for years. Almost a decade.

Many years ago, my brother was assigned a project that was ubiquitous to middle school French classes in our county: to cook, from scratch, a French meal for Mother's day. This was his first foray into cooking anything more complicated than toast, and it was quite the evening. I believe he still has the burn marks on his hands. One of the recipes he made I would barely touch-- it looked like applesauce and tasted of nothing much. It was a potage, a traditional, warming French vegetable stew. I did not, at the time, see the point of all those vegetables without any meat for them, and I was wary of the chunky purée my brother had made out of it. I barely ate any of my brother's meal at all-- I proclaimed the steak grey and chewy, the snowy merengue dessert flavorless. My brother can't cook, I told myself haughtily. Our sibling rivalry was still in full swing.

A year later, my mother served up another vegetable stew for dinner. This was rich and nutty and complex. I think I actually closed my eyes in delight when I had my first spoonful.
"What kind of stew is this?" I asked her.
"It's potage de légumes. What your brother made last year."

I could hardly believe her. That soup I still remembered with loathing. This soup was excellent, and the texture was creamy-- perhaps because she knew how to work the blender a little better than my brother had at 13.

The memories of this second rendering of the potage stayed with me. Every so often I would come across the recipe in my mother's personal collection, written out in her neat, even handwriting on a 3 x 5 index card. To make it would be to connect with my roots-- je suis québécoise, and proud-- to connect, too, with the most refined of cooking traditions. I would be just a little closer to mastering the art of French cooking.

But over the years, life got in the way. We always have onions, carrots, and potatoes on hand, but none of the other vegetables the recipe calls for, not without a special trip to the store. Somehow, whenever I thought of making the recipe, there wasn't time to go and buy them. Our lack of turnips kept me stalling.

It happened again when I began living on my own. I go produce-shopping once a week at Haymarket, and so every trip I have to decide what kind and how many fruits and vegetables I can reasonably use within the next week. This tends to leave ingredients more "exotic" to my pantry out cold. Maybe I'll have time to use those turnips next week, I would think to myself.

But at last, I forced myself to acquire the leeks, the parsnips, the turnips-- then go back out and buy onions and potatoes, because I'd used up the last batch. And, when the time was right and my ingredients were assembled, at long last I made my Potage de Légumes. It's a simple yet flavorful recipe, and easy to make so long as you're not afraid of cleaning out your blender afterwards.

The potage was everything I remembered and more. A perfect, traditional French dish, wonderful for autumn evenings. I love everything about this dish. Even the color is such a lovely orange. It is treat for the eye as well as the tastebuds. And the empty tummy.





Potage de Légumes Worth Waiting For

2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 large leek, white part only, sliced
4 cups chicken stock
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
1 medium turnip, peeled and diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 medium parsnip, diced
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp herbes de provence
Salt to taste

Melt butter in large saucepan. Add onion and leek and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until soft and translucent.

Add potato, turnip, carrots, parsnip, broth, thyme, herbes de provence, and salt. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Transfer soup to a blender and purée in batches until smooth. (The best way to do this, if you are unexperienced with puréeing, is to ladle soup out of the pot and into the blender, getting an even ratio of vegetables to broth, and once blended, pour into serving bowls and move on to the next batch. It's not as scary as it sounds-- I puréed mine in two batches.)
If soup is too thick, add a little broth.

Makes six side servings.

Caribbean Stew with Coconut Milk, Kale, and Sweet Potato

Lately I've been getting into cooking dishes with a Caribbean flair. Boston is home to some excellent Caribbean restaurants, and the ingredients are both easy to find and inexpensive to purchase. I'd been thinking of trying to make something along the lines of callaloo, but I wasn't sure-- I'd looked into several recipes but couldn't find one that felt just right. Ingredients varied widely. Some called for ham or bacon, some called for crab, some called for beef, others called for all three. Some called for sweet potato, some called for squash or pumpkin, others seemed to be just callaloo leaves and broth and spices. Which to choose? Which was the most authentic?

Then I read a friendly little article on Jamaican cooking that assured me it was all right to make substitutions and to use the ingredients that suited me. To make callaloo, in Jamaica or in Trinidad or anywhere it is made, said the article, was to learn how to cook. Experiment, it urged me. Find what works.

Now, that's my kind of recipe.

And here is my very own version. I'm sure it would be excellent with real callaloo, but I already had so much kale that I decided to substitute. (And FYI, kale is considered to be pretty close to the real thing, if you can't get callaloo leaves in your area. Many recipes also suggest spinach.)

Callaloo, Boston-style

3 cups chopped kale, spinach, or collard greens, or callaloo leaves if you have them
1/2 onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups sweet potato, diced
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons coriander
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
4 cups vegetable broth
1 can lump crab meat (6 oz)
1 can black-eyed peas
1 can light coconut milk (12 oz, approx.)

Sauté onion and garlic in a little bit of oil in a large pot, about 5 minutes. Add in spices, cook 1 minute longer.

Pour in the broth and sweet potato; bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes. Add in the greens of your choice; simmer 5 minutes. Stir in coconut milk, crab, and black-eyed peas; simmer 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve. Makes 5-6 hearty servings.




This stew is rich and flavorful. It may be the best soup I've made to date-- and I make a lot of soup. I was dubious about using canned crab meat but it tasted fine; I'm not sure the recipe would be the same without it. The ingredients here really come together into something special. (Not to be too modest or anything.)

Potential Teriyaki

I like recipes that are flexible. Having to follow a recipe exactly without making any changes at all feels confining to me- that's why I don't bake much. Bread dough and I do not get along.

This recipe is heaven if you like improvisation. Just start with these components, and take it in any direction you want. I call it teriyaki, but the ingredients you choose and the ratio of sweet to sour could really make it into anything, like a barbeque sauce.

Sweet
jam, juice, sugar, fresh fruit, honey, ketchup, molasses...

Sour
vinegar, lemon, lime, wine...

Salty
soy sauce, salt, boullion, salted cooking wine, worchestershire sauce...

Aromatic
dried spices, fresh herbs, garlic, zests and peels, sesame seeds, hot sauce, browned onions...

I usually start with equal parts sweet, sour, and soy sauce, then adjust. If you don't have soy, you can use salt instead. One combination I like is pineapple juice concentrate, lime juice, and soy sauce. For aromatics, I add garlic, lime zest, and a huge amount of ginger.

The only rule is that you have to taste it over and over before you get it right.

A Warning

If you find Nutella in the fridge, and want to soften it, do not put in in the microwave. Although the jar contains no metal, this may make your microwave emit blue flash, a deep booming sound, and a horrific smell.

Theoretically.

Pantry Soup

I realize that this is not quite in keeping with the “traditional” format of Weekly Delicious, but I feel like it needs to be written down somewhere. We writers of the Weekly Delicious have made quite a lot of soup in our time together, and not just because we enjoy soup (though that’s a fine reason by itself). No, to us, soup becomes that great communal dish that everyone can take part in. Translate that as: It’s quick, easy, cheap, and relatively fast to prepare. I can call up people on campus when I start getting hungry, ask what they have, compare it to what I have, and quickly think of how that can work as a soup. Really, it’s the epitome of poor college student dining, with everyone providing what they can in one big meal. For the sake of using a name everyone can agree on, I’ll call this kind of soup a Pantry Soup.

First off, what is a soup? Put something in broth, and I’ll tend to call it a soup. I count chili, stew, and ramen as soups. Usually for a soup, you have to have some sort of liquid base, usually a broth or cream base, though there are others out there. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of these communal soups you’ll be making with be broth based, so you have a few options here. You can go with bouillon cubes, a bouillon paste such as Better That Bouillon (which… really is), canned or carton stock or broth, or you can make your own broth. I’ll let one of the other contributors post how to make broth/stock, since it really is worth it when you make that from scratch. In any case, the first three options are really easy to keep on hand in your pantry all the time for just such an occasion as emergency soup making.

The majority of soups I make have vegetables in them, because that’s just how I make soup. Carrots, celery, and onion are very traditional additions to soup, along with potato, corn, mushrooms, green beans, and peas. In fact, if you have a veggie, odds are it would go good in soup. It’s a really good way of using up whatever is stuck in your fridge or freezer that you don’t know what to do with. Don’t be afraid to experiment with things that you may not be accustomed to. One of my favorite soup creations this year used fennel bulb (licorice-y taste, consistency similar to an onion) and cost barely anything to make a unique soup that had one of those flavors that made people wonder what it was (or would have, if I didn’t call it Beef and Fennel Soup when giving it to people).

Usually you start the veggies first in the pot so that they’re cooked properly, with longer cooking veggies starting first so that they can cook longer. Soup logic, you see. I’m not going to tell you how to cook them, since it varies depending on the soup you’re making, but in general if you’re making a communal soup, you’ll want your veggies cooked before you put your broth in.

The quality of your vegetables will affect your soup, but don’t worry too much about only getting the freshest of ingredients. If you go to a farmer’s market or the produce section all the time, yeah, you’re probably going to see an incredibly tasty soup as a result from great produce. But frozen veggies are really convenient, easy, and affordable without sacrificing too much in the way of taste and consistency, so they’re always a solid option. I tend not to go with canned vegetables as much, though they are a viable option. Sometimes, as is the case with most of the chili we make, canned goods make up the majority of your spontaneous soup. Canned corn, green chilies, and tomatoes (probably the one thing that I will go for canned 90% of the time, just because it’s exactly what I need and so easy) all play a role.

Speaking of canned goods, it’s a rare thing anymore for me to make a Pantry Soup without beans in it. Black beans, red beans, red beans, white beans, navy beans (every color, really), great northern beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, and my personal favorite: the chickpea (garbanzo bean). It’s less than a dollar for a can, and you can just fill your pantry with them. They act as great filler in lots of soups, and do a good job of being a healthy way of varying the consistency of your soup. Plus, it you’re too… well, cheap to buy meat, it’s a great way to get protein in your meal.

I mentioned meat, and now I guess I have to follow through on it. Generally for my Pantry Soups, I don’t have meat in them. Why? I don’t keep meat around without a purpose. On the rare occasion I actually cook a dish that needs meat at school, I’ll buy it that day with the intent to use it within a few hours. That said, go ahead and use whatever kinds of meat you want to cook. Seriously, if it can fit on a spoon, it’ll go in a soup. However, there are ways you can get around having to keep fresh meat around. Leftovers are a great source of proteins, making any leftover chicken or steak like gold in your soup. You can also buy precooked frozen meat pieces (look near where frozen chicken nuggets would be) to keep in your freezer. One of my favorite quick fixes is using frozen meatballs. Just use them whole or cut them in half and warm them up in the hot broth of your soup, and you’ve got meat that also flavors the soup with whatever spices are already in the meatballs.

Oh yeah, and spices. There is no right or wrong spice for every occasion, with the possible exceptions of salt and pepper. However, there are herbs and spices that go with a lot of soups. I have huge bags of herbes de provence, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, and bay leaves that I use all the time in soups. The bay leaf in particular will add an earthiness to your soups that will again make people wonder just what that flavor is. Just make sure to take it out before you serve your soup.

Last, but not least by a long shot, I bring up pasta. When you’ve got a wonderful soup that isn’t really enough food for all the people that just showed up at your apartment, you can add pasta to the equation to make that soup go a long way. When you think pasta, think of what fits well on a spoon. I tend to have an abundance of elbow macaroni and shells thanks to Costco, but any small pasta is great. You can even get nostalgic and add alphabet shapes, or stars, or whatever else you have on hand. To prepare it for your soup, just put it into the boiling broth almost at the end, and then follow the cooking time of you pasta. When time runs out (or slightly before), remove from the heat and you’ve got a meal.

Really, your Pantry Soup is only limited by your imagination. And what you have in your pantry, I suppose. Though that just means you should keep your pantry stocked, doesn’t it? Because when dinner for seven or more can cost less than $10, there’s no excuse to not have a few staple ingredients on hand.

Lazy Grad Student Mock Risotto

I've been itching to make a risotto for a while now. Why? Because I've never made one. I've never even tasted one. But it sounded so rich and creamy, and I love pasta, and, well, I like a challenge. Making soufflés-- another dish supposed to be the test of one's culinary skills-- turned out to be relatively easy for me. I wanted to take on the risotto, too.

But, having recently struck out on my own, about to start grad school, and being, erm, between jobs, I can't afford most of the key ingredients-- the multiple cups of white wine, the special Arborio rice-- and for that matter, I'm a whole-grains girl. I avoid white rice if I possibly can, especially in my own cooking. I investigated some brown rice risottos, but realized I would need the patience for the extra cooking time a brown rice risotto would require; it takes twice as long as white rice. I do enjoy cooking, but not enough to spend an hour or more stirring a pot constantly.

And that's when I found this recipe off the Paupered Chef blog for "risotto-style pasta". This, I felt, just might work. Whole wheat pasta only takes a few minutes longer to cook than white. The recipe already called for chicken stock rather than white wine (an excellent substitute in most recipes). It wouldn't exactly be a risotto but it would have that same creamy texture. And it would cook in a much more reasonable amount of time.

The original recipe, evidently designed for the food-lover with a steady job, called for "artisanal strozzapreti pasta". Even if I could afford to go out of my way to buy a special pasta for this dish, I wouldn't know strozzapreti pasta from...from...from another fancy kind of not-so-paupered-chef's pasta. The pictures of the cooking process showed flat, long, wide strands of pasta, so I decided the linguine I had in the pantry was a close enough match. Just before cooking, I decided to break up my linguine to ensure that it cooked evenly and to make it a bit more like risotto in appearance and texture.

Since this is the grad student version of the recipe, amounts have been reduced to two servings: one for dinner and one for lunch the next day. Feel free to substitute ingredients based on the contents of your pantry: this is the grad student version, after all. I was lucky enough to make a trip to Haymarket before preparing this recipe, but we can't all buy fresh produce in bulk for ridiculously low prices.

Lazy Grad Student Mock Risotto

1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 small onion or 1 small shallot, minced
3-4 baby yukon potatoes, peeled and diced small
1 1/4 cups chicken stock, or more if necessary
4 oz linguine, broken up into small pieces
black pepper, to taste
1/2 small tomato, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 branches fresh basil (I couldn't justify buying fresh basil for this one recipe, so I used dried Italian seasoning; however, if you have access to fresh basil I strongly recommend it)
1-2 scallions, trimmed, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces (optional)
4-5 stalks asparagus, ends removed, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Note: Even mock risotto needs your constant attention, so be sure to prepare all ingredients fully before proceeding to the directions below. Trust me.

Warm stock in saucepan. Meanwhile, heat olive oil and butter in a wide, deep skillet.

When the butter begins to foam, add the potatoes and onions. Sauté until golden.

Add the pasta and toss until it is evenly coated with oil. Add in a little stock, the tomatoes, and the garlic.

Cook and stir constantly over low heat as for a risotto, adding more stock as it evaporates from the skillet, continuing until pasta is fully and evenly cooked. Add scallions after first round of stock; add asparagus near the end-- it only needs a few minutes to cook.

When pasta is al dente, remove from heat and stir in Parmesan cheese and herbs. Top with pepper as desired.

Enjoy your plate of creamy delicious heaven-on-a-plate. It may not have the prestige of being a true risotto, but your tastebuds will not know the difference. And the potatoes-- which I've never seen in a risotto recipe-- add a nice thick richness to the texture.

Apple-Cinnamon-Oatmeal Bread, or, Banana Bread without the Bananas

Okay, so I'm pretty fond of making quick breads. Extremely fond. I can make real bread, too, but I don't always have the patience or time for it.

I'd been hankering for some time to try making the Chai-Spiced Apple Oatmeal Bread over at Cheap Healthy Good. However, my recent move to Boston means I'm on a tighter budget and no longer have access to my parents' accumulated baking supplies. I gave it a lot of thought, but I just couldn't justify shelling out 10 bucks for a little jar of cardamom that I only wanted for the one recipe. Nor did I feel like buying honey, as I hardly use that outside of baking recipes that specifically call for it either. I decided to start looking elsewhere for my quick-bread fix, for now-- I'm a fan of adapting recipes to ingredients I have on hand, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't attempt to make chai-spiced bread without chai spices.

This weekend I just happened to spot a quick-breads cookbook for fifty cents at a thrift store. Just what I needed-- there had to be something in there I could make.

Flipping through it, though, I realized that although the book contained lots of lovely recipes that I will be trying for many years to come, they didn't quite have the recipe I was craving right now. I wanted apples. I wanted oatmeal. Maybe a little spice. But I wanted a savory, hearty, grainy kind of bread, one I could have alongside a thick stew-- not a sweet dessert bread like the recipes for cinnamon-raisin bread or blueberry bread. Pumpkin bread or gingerbread seemed a better choice for autumn. Other intriguing recipes contained lots of ingredients I didn't have on hand, and half the point was to make something without going on an epic and expensive shopping expedition. What was I to do?

That's when I flipped back to the recipe for Old-Fashioned Banana Bread. This one I had mentally ruled out right away. I have an intense aversion to bananas; always have, always will. For whatever reason, bananas are a food I just cannot eat in any capacity.

But being an experienced baker, for an amateur, I know that any fruit puree can work as a substitute for oil or shortening in a recipe: in banana bread, mashed bananas are used, but that doesn't mean you couldn't substitute applesauce if you wanted to. Banana bread without the bananas? Oh, this was sounding good.

Using the banana bread recipe as a reference for amounts and baking time, I cobbled this together with my own inventive flair.

Apple-Cinnamon-Oatmeal Bread

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oat bran
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk or buttermilk substitute (1/2 teaspoon lemon juice plus enough milk to fill to 1/2 cup mark; let stand)
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup rolled or quick oats (not instant)
1 1/2 cup applesauce, unsweetened


Preheat oven to 375 F.

In a small bowl, combine flour, oat bran, baking powder, white sugar, and salt.

In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy; stir in buttermilk, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well.

Stir in oats until combined, then add the brown sugar. Make sure there are no lumps! Add in flour mixture slowly. Finally, beat in the applesauce.

Pour batter into greased and floured 9.5" loaf pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes until edges begin to come away from pan and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Bread will be very hot and steamy; allow to cool or it may fall apart upon cutting. Close your eyes and enjoy.

Grilled Peaches

This is the easiest recipe yet on The Weekly Delicious, but the results are just as wonderful as the others.

Perfectly ripe peaches are my favorite food. The texture, and flavor, the beautiful perfume... mmm. Because I love good peaches so much, bad peaches are a huge disappointment. They piss me off irrationally. Instead of warm and juicy and sweet, they are dry and grainy and sour and sad. Bad peaches go straight from unripe to rotten. What a waste of peach potential! However, there is a way to make lying no-good excuses for peaches into something wonderful.

After you are done cooking something delicious on the grill, cut your inferior peaches in half, and cover the cut sides with sugar. Put these skin-side down on the grill. If the grill is still quite hot, put them around the edges, away from the direct heat. You want to cook the peaches through without scorching the skin too badly. Do not flip them. They will bubble so happily, eager to finally live up to their potential. The sugar will melt and macerate the fruit as it cooks, making it even juicier. If you put them on just before you start eating your main course, they'll be ready in time for dessert.

Theoretically, you could eat this with ice cream, but that requires waiting a few seconds more before eating the peaches. Obviously, I have never tried it.

Smoked pork, buccaneer style

This may be one of the few times you'll ever see just meat here on Weekly Delicious. This is what happens when you're a college student with a limited budget and even more limited means of production. A bit of background:

For my Pirates of the World final project, we could do whatever we wanted so long as we could relate it back to pirates. So I decided to apply what I learned about the history of pirates by producing my take on the smoked meat (boucan) that gave the buccaneers their name (boucanier). The nature of this is really kind of haphazard and inexact in many aspects, since... well, pirates were like that. Feel free to scale up or scale down as you like.

Ingredients:
- About 5 lbs of pork loin
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of whole allspice
- About 5 - 6 tablespoons of kosher salt (you can use regular salt if you want)

Materials:
- About 6 handfuls of hickory wood chips (or whatever smoking chips you have)
- A grill
- Aluminum foil
- Mortar and pestle
- Meat or probe thermometer

Preparation:
Put your wood chips to soak in water for about an hour. I just used my ever so fancy multipurpose bucket. While the chips are soaking, crush the allspice in the mortar and pestle until it's about look of coarse pepper. Now, why did I make you grind your own allspice when you can just buy preground at the store? 1. It's a different, better flavor and 2. Pirates didn't have preground allspice, silly.

Mix your freshly ground allspice and salt together (you can even give it another smashing with the mortar and pestle, if you want the salt crystals to help you grind up the allspice a bit more) and apply liberally to the pork. Not enough? Just make more, because you want all of the meat completely covered. Made too much? You're not trying hard enough at covering the meat. Let the meat sit in the fridge like that until your wood chips are ready.

Hands on works well.

After an hour, take your wood chips out of the water and put them in the middle of a two large sheets of foil (lay two sheets on top of each other to double them up), leaving plenty of room around the edges. Fold those edges up and towards the middle, while making sure to not seal it up completely. Basically, you're folding this packet up like how an envelope is folded, but instead of closing, you want to leave some space for the smoke to get out of the top. A very flat volcano, if you will.

Light your grill and have it going about as low as you can manage it (I tried for a temperature of about 210° to 220° F). If you're using gas, only light one side of the grill. If you're using charcoal, only put the charcoal on one side. Put your wood chip packet (smoke hole side up) on the flame/coals, under the grill grate.

Cooking:
Take your pork out of the fridge and place your thermometer in the thickest cut you have. Put your meat on the side of the grill that doesn't have the smoke packet under it. You aren't cooking with the direct heat of the coals, you're cooking with the smoke and the ambient heat of the grill.

My smoke packet is in the back, so my meat is in the front.

Close the lid. You're aiming for the pork to be about 170° F. You could probably go a little less if you're impatient or brave, but I'm a bit wary of any meat that's not guaranteed cooked into that safety zone that kills off anything nasty. About half way through the cooking process (170 - your starting temperature, then divide that by 2. That's your halfway cooking temperature point), flip the meat.

Look. Smoke. That's supposed to be there.

I started off a bit colder than I was supposed to (plus it was autumn, so it was colder outside), so I took 4 hours to cook this all the way through. What I ended up doing was checking and recording the temperature of the grill every half hour so I knew how long I had to wait and if I had to make any adjustments. It may seem like forever, and you'll be tortured by the amazing smell, but it's all worth it. When you reach 170° F, remove from the grill and place on a clean platter and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes to keep the juices from running out when you cut the meat.

It's absolutely amazing hot off the smoker, but surprisingly also really good cold from the fridge too (especially if you precut it into snacking sized medallions). It's good reheated, it's good a week or two later too (That's why the pirates smoked the meat, the smoking process, salt, and allspice act as preservatives). It's just good.

Award-Winning Berry Custard Pie

I have just remembered that I am a contributor on this blog and could, perhaps, contribute something. So here's the recipe I made (and adapted) for Night of 1000 Pies:

Yes, this really is an award-winning pie, though I didn't win the award. This recipe won the Washington Post Magazine's annual pie contest in the category of custard pies. The berries really snazz it up. It's also a great recipe because of its adaptability: you can put in whatever berries you like, and because they're going to be encased in a custard, fresh berries are not essential; frozen will work just as well. Enjoy this pie in the dead of winter if you like.

I made this as a strawberry pie, but like I said, any berries will do, in any combination. Go wild.

The original recipe called for simply a 9" pie crust. Possibly a store-bought one. But as I had long ago discovered the perfect pie crust recipe, I just used that, with one special modification of my own: to enhance the sweetness of the pie and the strawberry flavor, I substituted strawberry cream cheese for half of the butter. This can get a little bit tricky because the cream cheese will be softer than the COLD butter you need to use to make a good pie crust, but in the end, it all worked out beautifully. Just be patient, and keep all the ingredients as cold as you can.

Pie Crust recipe, with modifications:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled and diced (if using salted butter, omit the 1/4 tsp salt)
  
• 1/4 cup cream cheese, chilled
  
• 1/4 cup ice water

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Rub in butter and cream cheese until mixture resembles coarse crumbs (I recommend using your hands. It's the only way.) Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. (Make sure the water stays COLD.) Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
2. Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate, adding more flour or ice water as needed. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

The pie recipe:

• 12 oz. fresh or frozen berries (I used Nature's Promise organic frozen strawberries. Defrost berries overnight if using frozen.)
  
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup whole milk (or, if you're me and don't want to buy whole milk because you'll never drink the rest of it, substitute. I had a can of evaporated fat-free milk sitting in the pantry, so I used that. I wouldn't recommend using plain skim milk, though; I think it would compromise the creamy taste needed here)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon flour

Position oven rack in middle of oven; preheat to 375 degrees.
Make sure berries are defrosted fully if using frozen. Retain any juices from the berries.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a medium bowl. Stir in the sugar and flour; combine until smooth.
Arrange the berries in an even layer in the unbaked pie shell. (I cut the strawberries into halves here, also.) Pour in any reserved juices.
Pour the egg-milk mixture over the berries. (Warning: You may have more mixture than will fit into your pie crust. This recipe's ingredient amounts may need some adjustments.)
Bake for about 45 to 50 minutes or until the center of the pie has set.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before serving.


Enjoy! I know I did.

Beef Pastie with Caramelized Onions

Night of 1000 Pies was about a month ago, but we're just now catching up with recipes. Oops? Here's one of mine, the Beef Pastie with Caramelized Onions.

This was originally based on a recipe by the same name in Bon Appetit Magazine. However, in keeping with the theme of Weekly Delicious, there have been some changes. Until my big fancy grocery store moves into town, cheeses are subject to changing. And it's already been established that we've come across the perfect crust recipe, so there were some changes in that way, too. Math was done. It was scary. But you need not be afraid, the work is done for you.

INGREDIENTS:
CRUST:
- 3 cups and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 and 1/4 cups butter, chilled and diced
- 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons ice water (approximate)
- 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

FILLING:
- 4 teaspoons olive oil
- 2 large onions, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 10 oz skirt steak, cut crosswise on diagonal into 1/4-inch-wide strips [fajita cut steak cut into 1/4 inch strips also works great]
- 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
- 6 oz coarsely crumbled Stilton blue cheese (1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups) [I used a mix of sharp white cheddar and regular blue cheese]
- 1 large egg white, beaten to blend


PREPARATION:

CRUST (do at least 45 minutes ahead of time):

1. Mix the flour, salt, allspice, rosemary, and thyme together.

2. Incorporate the cold butter into the dry ingredients a handful at a time. A food processor can be used to make the work easy, a pastry cutter is the second best thing, though if you have cold hands that don't mind tedious work, you can just use your hands.
- You want as much flour touching the butter as possible, so you want the butter end up pieces as small as you can manage (If you were to take some of the mix and rub it between your fingers, large chunks of butter shouldn't smear between your fingers)
- Keep any butter you won't be getting to immediately in the fridge or freezer to keep it cold.
- Keep adding butter until you've added all it.
- The finished mix should look mealy, sort of like damp and clumpy breadcrumbs.

3. Add the ice water a tiny bit at a time (a few tablespoons, at most), and completely mix before adding more water
- Only add enough water so that it comes together in ball.

4. Divide the ball into four pieces, and shape those pieces roughly in the shape of a disk. Wrap these disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 45 minutes
- Do not just place dough unwrapped in the fridge, it will dry out and become impossible to work with.


FILLING:

1. In a large pan, heat oil over medium heat. When hot, add the onions.

2. Sauté the onions until deep brown, for at least 30 minutes. Yes, it takes that long.

3. Add the wine and thyme and continue to sauté until most of the excess liquid evaporates (about 15 minutes, your time may vary)

4. Allow to cool in a separate container, and try not to pass out from how amazing this smells.

5. In the same pan you cooked your onions in, cook your beef until it's cooked all the way through. Remove and allow to cool.


PUTTING IT TOGETHER:

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.

2. Between two sheets of parchment paper (or with a well floured rolling pin), roll out each disk of dough until it is 9 inches in diameter
- Make sure there are no tears in the dough and that the final shape is a circle. The point of these crusts is to hold in your filling, remember?

3. Place all crusts on a piece of parchment paper
- One big baking sheet? Put them all on there, so long as they aren't on top of each other.
- No parchment paper? Just make sure you can move these without them falling apart in the process. Somehow. Be skilled, I know you have it in you.

4. Put 1/4 of the onion filling on half of each round, leaving about an inch along the side. It should be a delicious half moon of onions. On top of the onions, place 1/4 of the beef on each round, making the same shape. And on top of the beef, place 1/4 of the cheese on each.

5. Brush the border (about an inch) of the crust around the filling with the egg white.

6. Fold over the crust to cover the filling, sealing it into a pouch.

7. Brush the top of each pastie with egg white and make 3 small cuts in the top to vent steam
- No one likes an exploded pastie. At least no one will admit to liking it.

8. Still on parchment paper, move to baking sheets.
- Big sheet? Put them all on, so long as there's an inch or two between them.
- No parchment paper? Move them carefully to baking sheets that have been liberally greased.

9. Bake until golden brown (about 30 minutes), and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

10. Cut and serve!


VARIATIONS:

1. Feel free to do this without the herbs and spices in the crust.
2. Try it with some of the same cheese sprinkles on the outside
3. You can do like I did the first time and make two pastie volcanoes instead of four pouches. Just use one round like a bottom crust, and divide the filling in two between the bottom crusts. Lay the top crust on and seal as you would the regular pasties (you will have to stretch the top crust a little).

Lonley Island Chocolate Banana Pie

A bit of a warning before we begin. The Lonely Island Pie is intended to be almost tangy in its bitterness. If you would like to alter the recipe to sweeten it, I would suggest adding either sugar or condensed milk to your melted chocolate before adding that to the bananas. You can also try lightening the chocolate with 2% milk. If you would like to keep the recipe as-is, I would suggest enjoying a slice along with a glass of Merlot, or any similar red wine which goes well alongside bitter, dark chocolate.

Now that we have that out of the way...

Recipe for Lonely Island Pie

--Ingredients

- 1 unbaked pie crust

- 4 ripe bananas

- 4 units of unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz each)

- 2 separate tablespoons of sugar

- 1 dollop of dark corn syrup

- about 30 Nilla Wafers or so

- 2 tablespoons of almond extract

--Directions

- Peel all four bananas and mash them together well in a large mixing bowl. Melt the chocolate in a double-boiler saucepan and mix in the corn syrup. Immediately upon removing the chocolate from heat, pour it into the bananas and mix thoroughly. Add almond extract to mixture and stir.

- In another mixing bowl, crush the Nilla Wafers to large crumbs and then mix in the first tablespoon of sugar.

- Line the inside of the pie crust with the second tablespoon of sugar and then pour the chocolate-banana mixture into the crust, using a spatula to make the surface even. Top the pie with the crushed cookies. Bake the pie in the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool on rack.

Remember what I said about the wine. Enjoy.

Let's Bake A Pie

One of the most talked about events on the Weekly Delicious calendar, Night of 1,000 Pies, will be upon us in only a few days! For my part, I had, until last night, never before made a from-scratch pie in my life. After the tuna hot dish that I made for last semester's, Night of 1,000 Casseroles, I didn't want to be one of the people who will show up to next Tuesday's event offering only money for supplies rather than a finished product. As a disclaimer, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE. We welcome them with open arms full of pie. I saw this however as a chance to learn a new skill and so decided last night to start looking up online pie recipes and make my first attempt so that I wouldn't end up with only hours to go next week and no idea what I'm doing!

For novices such as myself, I've decided to post here the easy pie-crust recipe which was sent to me by my wonderful friend Michelle. Hopefully this will sway even one person who had not intended to bring something of their own to our little get-together to give it their best shot.

Simple and Deliciously Flaky Pie Crust Recipe

--Ingredients
- 1&1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 cup of butter (half a stick)
- 1/4 cup of chilled water

--Directions
- In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbles. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Chill the ball in plastic wrap in the refrigerator while you prepare the innards of your pie.

- Using a rolling pin, or kneading if one is not available, roll dough out to fit over a 9'' pie plate. Place crust in pie plate and press evenly into the bottom and sides of the plate. Cut off overhanging edges.

...and it's that easy! Now that you have the crust of your pie ready, you can use it for nearly any type of filling that you desire. I myself made a tasty and simple egg custard pie (recipe can be found here: Grandma's Egg Custard Pie).

...but what you make is up to you! For some suggestions, here is a recipe for blackberry pie and one for apple pie which also tells you how to give your pie a really neat lattice top.

Before I finish, here is a list of tips I gathered during my crust-forming experience.

• When they tell you to "cut in the butter," they really mean it. Try freezing the stick of butter and then using the finest side of your cheese grater to create a "butter powder" which will be much easier to fold into your flour.
• I found that after adding in all of the water called for in the recipe, my mixture was still to dry to stick together and form a ball. What I did was to measure out another 4th of a cup (the smallest measurement that my cup would count) of water and then add half of that, discarding the other half. I then kneaded the mixture into the ball I wanted, making sure to fold the inside of the ball out many times, soaking up all of the extra water.
• Not wanting to have my dough tear as I was pressing it into the plate, I accidentally made the crust a bit too thick and thus the sides slightly lower than I wanted. The pie still came out fine, but just a heads up that if you want a thinner crust, you will have to make sure that you work it into the pan thoroughly.
• When you are rolling the ball of dough into a flat "circle, " you want to make sure that EVERYTHING has some flour on it so that your dough will stick to nothing but itself. You want flour on your hands, your rolling pin and the surface you are rolling it on. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Hope that helps. If I think of anything that I missed, I'll edit it in later. Happy baking!

Suzie's Chocolate Cake

This recipe was devised by my mother, and it was many, many years before she agreed to let me share it. This cake has the most unique chocolate flavor- not just unique for a cake, but different from any confection I have ever tasted.

The cocoa for both the cake and the frosting is bloomed in hot butter, which really helps develop the flavor. The addition of sour cream adds a slightly acidic note. My favorite part might be how my mother cautions against using too much sugar- this keeps the cake dark and intense.

Oh, and when she says heaping tablespoons, she means HEAPING. I've seen her make this cake before, and I'm just proud of her for not breaking down and throwing in the cocoa by handfuls.

In her own words:

Suzie’s Chocolate Cake

350 degree oven / greased and floured 9" X 13" baking pan / 20 – 25 minutes or until done

2 sticks butter
1 cup water
4 HEAPING T. Cocoa (The Cocoa chosen will effect the flavor, of course. Try different kinds to see which you like best.)
2 cups sifted flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla

Combine 1st 3 ingredients in saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat.
Add flour, sugar and salt.
Beat until well blended.
Add sour cream, soda, egg and vanilla.
Mix well.
Pour into greased and floured 9" X 13" baking pan.
Bang pan on counter to make bubbles in batter rise to the surface and pop for a better texture.

Frosting

Boil together:
1 stick butter
1/2 cup sour cream
4 HEAPING T. cocoa
Stir it to keep it from scorching, but if you cook it a little while until it looks really ugly, the cocoa tastes better.

Pour into mixing bowl and add powdered sugar, mixing well. Only add enough sugar to make it sweet enough to please you. I never use a whole box of sugar. I find that the cocoa flavor is enhanced by holding back a little on the amount of sweetness added.
Add 1 tsp. vanilla, and blend well.

Pour frosting on cake while cake is warm, and then spread it out. I have tried to remove this cake from the pan to treat it like a regular cake, but the icing is hard to handle. I find leaving it in the pan it was baked in makes everything work better.

I also like to toast nuts, pecans, almonds or hazelnuts to sprinkle on top as people desire. I find they add a lovely flavor.