A chilly Sunday

 

Today is a chilly Sunday morning with definite hints of the approaching winter.  My silver maple tree, a very ancient and large tree, dropped tons of its leaves suddenly last night.  My backyard pathways and landscaping beds are covered with them.  The air is chilly and damp from overnight rain.  And the skies in the morning the last few days have a particularly wintry appearance that apparently I can see but not many others since no one else seems to get it when I try to describe that appearance.

This coming weekend, two cookies are on offer, one with lemon and a second with molasses and lemon.  For the following week, we have chili and ice cream.  Check them out and put in your orders.

The picture at the head of this post is shami kebabs.  These are made of minced beef, ground yellow split peas or chickpeas, and seasonings.  They are then dipped in whisked eggs and fried in a pan.  They are excellent and I have found they successfully go with many other foods such as rice, chutney, and fried bread or simply by themselves.  And I especially love them on a toasted hot dog bun with ketchup and cheese.

How do I know about these?  It wasn't from learning how to make them.  My life has been graced by the presence of a wonderful woman who has introduced me to this food and many others as well.  

Other foods I have been introduced to recently include chicken karahi, beef nihari, chutneys and daal (lentils) dishes, achar gosht, chicken biryani, chicken haleem, and sheer khurma which is a vermicelli-based dessert.  

I will write more of these in the future, and some of these will probably find their way to a place on the menu of Bruce Bakery and Bistro.

Have a great week!  Winter is coming and I am excited to think about more snowfalls soon.

A recipe for pecan ice box cookies

 

It is a cold Saturday night here in Kansas City with the temperature below freezing and a slight breeze that make the cold just a bit worse.  Perfect for sitting inside and drinking a warm mug of hot chocolate and enjoying a good cookie.

This weekend's food orders have been rescheduled for two weekends from now.  Nothing terrible prompted the reschedule. I simply had a very busy week that included a two-day trip out of the state.  For the upcoming a holiday weekend, I will not offer anything to order.  So grab a few cookies for the following weekend and that aforementioned mug of hot chocolate.

If you want to make a good cookie yourself, then keep reading.  Here's my recipe for pecan ice box cookies.

You will need the following ingredients:

1 cup of Crisco vegetable shortening (use Crisco sticks for the most accurate measurement)

225 grams of light brown sugar

225 grams of granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 cup of chopped roasted pecans (measure the cupful after roasting and then chopping; roast the pecans at 350 for 9 minutes before cooling and then chopping)

470 grams of all-purpose flour

Now prepare the cookie dough using the following steps: 

1.  Cream together the shortening and both sugars.

2.  Mix in the eggs and vanilla.

3.  Mix in the flour and baking soda on low speed.

4.  Mix in the chopped pecans.

5.  Form the dough into a slab approximately 10 inches long by 4 inches wide.  Wrap the slab in plastic wrap and freeze it overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 F before baking.

6.  Cut the frozen dough (do not thaw) in slices approximately 1/4 inch thick from the 4-inch-width side of the dough slab.

7.  Place the slices on a cookie sheet.  They will spread a little so give them some room.  I place 8 slices on a large cookie sheet, 3 vertically on the top, 3 vertically on the bottom, and 2 horizontally in the center.  

8.  Bake in the 350 oven for 12 minutes for regular (slightly pale) or 13 for crispy (darker).

9.  Let them cool to room temperature.

I usually store the cooled cookies in a plastic Zip-Lock bag.  They will last several days when stored that way.  

Give them a try and let me know how it goes.  And don't forget the milk or the hot chocolate!

Stay warm, everyone!

November foods

 

Good morning on this frigid November Sunday in Kansas City.  As the temps are beginning to stay lower for the upcoming winter, I am getting excited as I watch for our first snowfalls to cover the ground just as powdered sugar covers the bouchons in the picture above.

This coming week we have two cookies available for order.  One with lemon and one with molasses and spices.

Next following weekend, I will not be sending out any food.  But I'll be back with more in December.

That's it for today.  Just a short post as I have a very busy week ahead with piano students as I help them all prepare for holiday performances.

Have a great Sunday.  And I will talk to you all soon again.

Cheese and cakes and salads

 

Happy Sunday!  

This coming weekend we have gougères and autumn spice cake with cream cheese frosting ready for ordering.  For the following weekend, we have lemon sablés and molasses cookies with lemon.  

As I was thinking this week about the upcoming winter season and various things I want to cook for the autumn and winter menu offerings, I also thought back to the summer months and some of the salads I made.  It's amazing to think how simple a salad can be and yet how satisfying at the same time.  One of my favorite quick go-to salads this past summer was tri-color cabbage chopped up roughly, shredded carrots, a healthy sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese and a creamy honey mustard dressing.  Every time I fixed this salad and ate it, I found myself ready to make it again at the next meal.  Four simple ingredients, no fancy preparation, nothing extraordinary, just simple good food that was wholesome and delicious and required extremely little time to prepare.  When I eat things like this that are so full of flavor, I often notice that some other processed things are significantly lacking in flavor by comparison.  Sometimes even a piece of candy that usually tastes delicious seems to have only a sugar flavor as my sense of taste has been somewhat altered so that I am truly noticing how much or how little flavor is actually in some of the processed foods we eat.

This is not to say that I'm against processed foods in general.  It's just curious to note how often they don't really seem to have that much flavor when eaten side by side with something that is naturally flavorful and wholesome.  Perhaps at some point some of these processed foods were simply something delicious in someone's kitchen that then were altered as a result of their transition to mass-produced commercial food products.

Just an interesting food thought I happened to have tonight.  Nothing earth-shattering or profound.  But an interesting thought nonetheless.

Have a great week everyone.  Colder weather is undoubtedly the way and that means soon we can start thinking about hot chocolate on frigid mornings.

A little late

Good evening, everyone!  Well, perhaps I should say, "Good morning!"  I'm a little late in getting the weekend blog post up.  And it's about 145 AM here as I type this.  So ... Good morning, everyone!

This weekend we have slow-roasted tomatoes and corn bread both on offer for weekend orders.  Next weekend, we have gougères and autumn spice cake.  All these foods are such excellent fall season foods no matter whether it's warm or cold.

It's very early or very late now, depending on perspective.  That reminds me of a time not long ago when I was up very early making something on a Sunday morning.  I was very groggy, so groggy that when I went to grab the cinnamon, I grabbed cumin instead!  The bottles looked the same.  They are somewhat close in color.  But the real excuse is that I was very groggy, very sleepy still, but I, for some odd reason, couldn't wait to get up and experiment with something new I had in my mind to try.  It doesn't matter what it was, at least not for this story.  All that matters is that I came perilously close to measuring out 2 teaspoons of cumin instead of cinnamon.  Needless to say, that would have had a disastrous effect on what I was baking.  I caught myself at the last minute.  And my planned baking for the day was saved and was a success.

I wonder if one made a mistake like that, how often it would turn out to be a good mistake.  I know for certain that sometimes I have absent-mindedly made such errors that in fact resulted in interesting new food ideas.  I can't say that I've ever made a mistake that created an culinary-world-shattering event, but I've certainly had new ideas prompted by those mistakes and other "what-ifs".  

OK, that's about as much as I can do here as the clock is approaching 200 AM.  All I will say is that I hope if anyone has any interesting stories about fatigue-induced mistakes that they will share them.  Too afraid of embarrassing yourself?  Don't be!  We've all made big mistakes in the kitchen and they always make good stories.

Autumn foods

Autumn is in full swing.  Today in Kansas City the weather is mild, the winds are up, the leaves turning color, and the tall grasses are in seed waiting to feed the birds during the coming cold weather. 

This coming weekend we have savory egg salad ready to order and one of my favorite autumn foods,  allspice muffins with streusel toppings.  The following weekend's menu has slow-roasted tomatoes and corn bread.  These are also great autumn foods, in my opinion.

My kitchen had a lot of activity this past week.  Cookies, rice, beef kababs, and other foods as well were all part of kitchen production.  Lots of ingredients were measured, lots of butter was cut, many dishes were washed.

Speaking of butter, does anyone get supreme satisfaction when measuring ingredients such as butter?  Unsure of what I mean?  Ok, here's what I'm talking about.

I have sliced up so many blocks of butter over time for precision weighing that sometimes now when I cut off a chunk of butter and place it on my kitchen scale, the weight that I have eye-balled is just about what I need.  I need 140 grams, I cut the butter and it is very close to what I need, and sometimes exactly what I need.  I get supreme satisfaction from this tiny little event.  Somehow I find it immensely gratifying that I can portion almost exactly what I need after so many days and nights in the kitchen cutting and measuring and weighing all sorts of ingredients. 

Surely someone else must feel that same elation.  Ok, I said "supreme satisfaction" first, and now I've upgraded the emotion to "elation".  No matter what it's called, it's pretty cool that it happens.

Today, I'm making strawberry froth, eating lots of leftovers, and planning a menu for the coming weekend when family will be visiting for food and bonfire.  

I hope everyone has a great Sunday and enjoys the waxing autumn.

Good morning! and blueberries

Good morning!

This coming weekend we have two different cookies on the menu.  Chocolate chip pecan and ginger spice.  I just finished updating the menu for the following weekend.  You can order allspice muffins and savory egg salad. 

Today I'm making another attempt at my latest iteration of a high-protein, gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream (for oldest daughter).  I had a good batch last time, but it still was not quite right.  Today I'm going to do the same batch but this time I will alter the freezing process.  We'll see how it goes.

Someone asked me about using blueberries in batters.  So here are a few thoughts from my experience.  First of all, whether to use wild blueberries or non-wild (which we can call cultivated) is always an important decision.  Most people like cultivated in blueberry muffins and pancakes or for snacking by hand. These tend to have much more moisture and they are larger of course.  But sometimes in baking, I've found it makes much more sense to use wild.  They are smaller and have significantly less moisture.  You can only really buy them frozen in the grocery stores, it seems.  So when I use them, I always let them thaw and warm up to room temperature.  Then they are ready to use.  And because of their size I don't have as much of a problem with berries sinking to the bottom of a baked good during baking.  With using any blueberries comes the risk of juice making your batter blue once you start mixing.  I have found that if I take thawed wild berries and warm them up a bit in the microwave for maybe 30 seconds, I can rinse off the expressed juice in a colander, then let them dry on paper towels (top and bottom) and then finally pop them into the batter.  If I do all that, then I don't have to worry about blue batter.  

Could you pop them into the batter frozen?  You could but you won't have a batter that is baked all the way through.  They are basically little ice pellets you are mixing in, and they will keep your batter very cold for quite a while in the oven.  They shouldn't even be cold from the fridge. Let them come up to room temperature before mixing them in.

Now I have a craving for blueberry muffins.  And I have a large bag of frozen wild blueberries in my freezer, so maybe that will be my next activity today.

Have a great day everyone.  Colder temps are on the way, it seems, so get out those winter coats.

Weekend offerings and a new smoothie

Good morning on this chilly October morning.

A new smoothie has been added to the menu.  This is called a tropical sunrise smoothie.  Pineapple, banana, papaya, kiwi and mango are all included.  Other flavor highlights include coconut and orange.  This is one of my favorite beverages to make.  It is very healthy, very delicious and it can even be made vegan on request by replacing the small amount of dairy-based yogurt with a vegan yogurt, or simply omitting the yogurt altogether.

This coming weekend's menu include two different strawberry drinks.  And the following weekend's menu has just been updated with two cookies perfect for the fall season:  chocolate chip pecan and ginger spice.

I've had some requests for raspberry roulade, mint chocolate ice cream and smoky sloppy joe filling to make fresh appearances on the weekly menu, so I'll try to do that soon.

Today I'm thinking of making a chocolate cake, and perhaps a couple other things as well.  I have to head to the grocer today to pick up more of the European-style butter that I use, and I use a lot of it.  And at the same grocer where I usually pick it up is also something else I like to have on occasion:  corn flakes.  Ok, I know that doesn't sound like anything extraordinary.   But I happen to like breakfast cereals and milk for a light snack, and there is one particular brand of corn flakes that I especially like.  And for me the simplicity of corn flakes, cold milk and just little bit of sugar added is really amazing.  I find it to be refreshing and satisfying, a perfect snack sometimes.  Brilliantly-made complex foods are great, but sometimes something simple and easy is perfect for the moment at hand.

Enjoy the morning, everyone.  Eat something delicious.  

Technique matters

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today I'm making cookie doughs for orders tomorrow.  Two types of cookies, both of which need the dough to chill overnight before baking.  While making one of the batches today, I came up with an idea for today's post.

Technique matters.

I was making a batch of pecan ice box cookie dough.  In fact, I was planning on making more than one batch today plus dough for French butter cookies.  I set out all my ingredients.  I had everything ready.

I put the shortening (not butter for these cookies) and two types of sugar in the mixer and let it do it's work.  Then I got ready to add the eggs and vanilla.  But my mind was elsewhere and I wasn't focused on what I was doing.  I was finishing double checking the weight of the flour and baking soda, and then instead of grabbing the eggs and vanilla which were already whisked in a separate bowl, I tossed in the flour.  The mixer immediately started combining it with the sugar and shortening mixture.  And then I saw the eggs and realized that I had made a mistake.  I dumped in the eggs just to see whether this could be salvaged.  So instead of the eggs being mixed in the proper order, with the shortening and sugar mixture, they were going in after the dry ingredients.

The picture above shows on the left the cookie dough with the eggs going in at the wrong time, and the one on the right was done properly.  It can clearly be seen that the one on the left does not hold together the same as the one on the right.  And no amount of pressing and molding with the hands will change that.  The one on the left is lost, gone, finished, unusable unless one wants to experiment.  There is no way it will yield that same cookie that the one on the right will yield.  The ingredients are exactly the same, down to the gram.  But the order of mixing makes a huge difference.

Technique matters, whether it's the order of mixing for individual ingredients, how long something is mixed, how fast the mixer beater is moving, whether it's done by hand or machine, etc.  You can have great ingredients and a great recipe, but in the end the technique to bring it all together must be the right technique.

Here is the shaped block of dough from the good batch of dough using the proper mixing order.  This is now in my freezer where it will sit overnight until morning.  Then it will be sliced and baked and sent out with people who will enjoy it.

For all my recipes, I continually improve the techniques with little adjustments over time.  And I notate all of these in my recipe database.  I back up the file as well.  Twice!  I never want to lose track of those tweaks, those technical adjustments which are so vital to turning out something that is scrumptious.

Enjoy your weekend.  I'll post again probably on Sunday.

Strawberry froth

Good morning to all!

It's a cool clear morning here in Kansas City on this early October Sunday.  I can feel the change of seasons in the air, and it can certainly be seen with the shortening of the daylight.

A new item has been added to the menu.  This is a strawberry froth, similar to the orange vanilla froth posted yesterday.  This is very refreshing and very healthy as well.  I love drinks made of fruit.  They simply make the body feel good and the spirit feel light. 

Another new beverage will be posted sometime this week.

This coming weekend we have pecan cookies and French butter cookies on the menu.  And the following weekend you can order the new strawberry froth and also the new strawberry lemonade which was just added to the menu days ago.  I hope you will give them a try.

Yesterday I taste tested the new high-protein, gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream that I've been working on for oldest daughter.  It tastes pretty nice.  I've a got a few tweaks to make and I want to adjust the freezing process.  So I'm not quite satisfied with it yet.  And I'm not yet certain that it is the end product.  I'm still working on a couple different variations on this recipe to get a balance of flavor and texture that I'm happy with.  This is my first try at making a dairy-free ice cream, so there has been a lot of trial and error.  But I'm hopeful that soon I'll see a finished product with which I am happy.

Today I'm working on sandwich rolls and maybe a chocolate cake as well.  And I'm in the process of developing a new recipe for a strawberry cream cake at the request of youngest daughter.  

Enjoy these early days of fall.  The coolness in the air, the lengthening of the nights, and the flocks of Canadian geese flying overhead in vee formation all portend the coming winter.  I can hardly wait.