So, here we are again. Surplus ingredients that need using are staring at me, accusingly. I have my dairy products delivered by Smith Brothers and a pint of sour cream is one of the things they bring. Usually I have no problem going through it, but somehow I ended up with a stack of them in the fridge. While sour cream does have a long shelf life, it seemed to me that three pints was excessive. I used one last night for Sour Cream Chicken (recipe to follow) and whipped these up for today’s Brunch.
1/2 – 1 Cup Dried Sour Cherries (or other dried fruit – Apricots are nice)
4 Tablespoons Butter (cubed & chilled)
8 Ounces Sour Cream
1 Egg (seperated)
1 teaspoon Vanilla
grated fresh nutmeg (enough to cover the sour cream like a dusting of snow)
Preheat oven to 400°.
Place all dry ingredients in food processor and combine. Add cherries and process until there are no whole pieces remaining. Add butter and pulse until thoroughly incorporated.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk egg yolk, sour cream, vanilla and nutmeg until smooth.
Dump the contents of the food processor into the cream mixture and fold in with a spatula.
When there is no more liquid, dump on to kneading surface. It will be a crumbly mess. Be not afraid.
Press dough together with hands, turning, folding and kneading until it becomes solid.
Roll out about 1/2″ thick. Cut with your favorite biscuit cutter or slice like a pizza for wedges.
Place on lined baking sheet (parchment or silicone) and brush with beaten egg white (I like to add a splash of water to make it looser.)
Wait five minutes and brush again. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 20-25 minutes, turning once for even browning.
(When looking at my pictures, remember that I always make a double batch for Brunch. The recipe, as posted, will make enough to fill a 1/4 sheet pan, usually about 12. In wedges, you can cut 6 or 8.)
Crap. What the hell am I going to do with grapefruit & chard? I love getting produce delivered to the house from Terra Organics, but on occasion I find myself with an odd assortment of produce that needs eating. Many a dinner at my home begins with these circumstances. Many a morning finds me with a search engine box full of random ingredients. Mostly I am looking to see if these flavors have already been combined by someone who knows what they are doing. I am not looking for a recipe, so much as permission to shove some things together. And so begins tonight’s dinner.
Throw some parsley & chard in the bottom of the slow cooker. Pour in a cup or two of wine. Slice a head of garlic in half and toss it in with the citrus in wedges. (I used grapefruit, blood oranges and Meyer lemons.) Got some onions or leeks, throw them in, too. Make a pretty little bed for the pork roast. Since it is going to sit up above the liquid, it is going to roast and steam more than braise.
Season up that bad boy. Got a favorite house seasoning? Use it. I used our favorite (from Costco) and some Kosher salt. A little smoked paprika would have been a nice addition, or I could have gone a different direction and pulled out the Chinese five spice or herbs de Provence. Whatever floats your boat, baby! (Next time I am planning cumin & chili powder.) Put on the lid, set it on low and go to work or something. If you stay around the house you are going to be tormented by the tantalizing aroma. Consider yourselves warned.
Serving idea: with brown rice and lemon blueberry sauce.
This whole thing was so easy, I feel stupid calling it a recipe. The sauce is even easier. A cup of blueberries, a half cup of wine, a half cup of Meyer lemon marmalade (could certainly use orange here.) I have a little tiny Crock Pot that came free when I bought a full sized pot years ago. They are great for keeping dip hot at parties, and worked wonders here. It has no settings. Just On and Off. I plopped the ingredients in when I started the roast and cooked it the whole time with the lid ajar so that it would reduce some. A sauce pan on the stove would work as well.
See you next week for another episode of “What the hell is in the fridge and what the hell am I going to do with it?”
You can thank my sister for this recipe. She came across a company that sells frozen biscuits by mail order and was smitten with the idea of their Cinnamon Biscuits. I used their photo as inspiration. These are reminiscent of cinnamon rolls, but because they don’t include yeast, we don’t have to wait for them to rise, making them a quicker option.
Cover with the other sheet and roll lightly before repeating the sprinkles.
Fold it up like an envelope (both sides in, then top and bottom) and turn over so the seam side is down.
Roll it about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick and cut with your favorite biscuit cutter. (I used a 2″ round.)
Brush tops with a bit of beaten egg and cream and sprinkle with brown sugar.
Bake until golden brown & delicious (turning once during baking)!
WARNING: There is a lot of butter in these. While making them, I wondered if I had used too much, but no one who ate them thought there was too much. That being said, I think you could easily reduce the butter (either by omitting the grated butter in the layers or reducing the amount in the basic scone recipe by 1/3) and still have a delicious breakfast item.
Fresh grated nutmeg (about the same amount as the cinnamon)
Zest of 3 Meyer lemons
2-4 stale croissants
Preheat oven to 350°
Cut croissants into bite-sized cubes and place in baking dish.
Whisk remaining ingredients until thoroughly combined. Pour over croissants. Press croissants down into liquid and let sit at least ten minutes.
Place baking dish in to larger pan and place in oven. Pour hot water into larger pan up to an inch or so of the height of the baking dish.
Bake until custard is set (40 – 50 minutes) and remove baking dish, but leave pan of hot water in oven. Allow pudding to cool at least 20 minutes before serving. Remove water filled pan from oven when cool enough to handle safely.
Whisk eggs, cream and seasoning packet and set in fridge while you prep the pie shell according to directions (I like to blind bake it a bit.) When crust is cool, add bacon, chicken & cheese and toss lightly. Pour egg mixture over and stir or shake to settle if necessary. Bake for 30-50 minutes until top is golden brown and eggs are set.
Beef Tenderloin with Caramelized Onion Balsamic Cream Sauce
Spicy Shrimp
Potato “Risotto”
Steak were seasoned simply and prepared on the stove top in a cast iron grill pan and finished in a 400° oven.
Sauce:
Thinly slice 1 sweet onion and cook over low heat with 2 Tablespoons of butter. When onions are completely cooked and beginning to brown (which takes way longer than I think it should), add a pinch of kosher salt, a fair grind of black pepper, a splash of good Balsamic vinegar and a pint of heavy cream. Allow to simmer and reduce for a few minutes. Just before serving, add a handful of finely grated Parmesan cheese.
Kosher Salt, fresh black pepper and cayenne pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a sauce pan and cook onions until soft and translucent. Add potatoes and seasoning and stir to combine. Add chicken stock (1/2 a cup first and stir in.) You want it just moist enough to cook, but not too soupy. Cook 10 minutes. Add cream and simmer another 10-20 minutes (take taste tastes to check for texture. ) You can add a bit of stock if it is too dry.
Spicy Shrimp:
Soak cleaned shrimp in brine of 1/2 Cup salt and 1/2 Cup sugar to each quart of water for 30 minutes.
Drain and discard brine.
In the now empty brine bowl, mix 1/2 Cup olive oil, 1/4 Cup Balsamic vinegar and salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste (if you have any Tony Chachere Creole Seasoning on hand, just use it. )
Make these biscuits when you feel like beating someone or something. Take your aggression out on the the biscuits!
I will warn you ahead of time that these biscuits call for twice as much fat as my standard go-to recipe. I put off making them for that very reason! I know that you people think that I am the fat queen, but I have to say that sometimes even I am am startled by a recipe. These biscuits were a hit at Brunch, but I just can’t say that they were enough of an improvement to move them up into the top spot. The other blogs where I saw these mentioned referred to them as “perfect“ and “the best biscuits ever made or tasted“, and I just can’t agree. They are flaky and tasty, and if you rarely make biscuits, this might be your favorite. But, DAMN! That’s a lot of butter! Make a few different kinds and let me know what the friends and family say.
2 Cups AP flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon sugar
1 Teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 Tablespoons) butter, plus 4 Tablespoons, melted
1 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 450°
Mix together dry ingredients
Cut in butter (I prefer to dice the butter then pop it in the freezer for a few minutes, then whiz the frozen cubes into the dry ingredients in the food processor. )
Add buttermilk and combine with a large spoon until mostly cohesive.
Turn out on floured board (or silicone mat) and knead until all crumbs are into the solid mass. Then, roll out a half inch or so thick, and fold in thirds. Then beta the hell out of it with your rolling pin. Turn the dough 90° and repeat the process. Do this a half dozen times or more (we are building flaky layers here!)
When you are tired of beating your dough and you no longer harbor resentment for whom or whatever angered you in the first place, roll the dough about 1/3″ think and cut with your favorite biscuit cutter. Always press straight down, then twist slightly if you need to get the cutter loose. (Straight cuts allow better rising.)
Place them, just touching, on a parchment or silicone mat lined baking tray or baking stone and brush the tops with melted butter before placing in oven for about 15 minutes.
Brush them again when you remove them from the oven.
Cook Better, Eat Better, Taste Better, Live Better.
For the record, I have a perfectly adequate range. It is probably much like yours. This perfectly adequate GE Profile gas range is white, with four burners and a convection oven. It even has a warming drawer. But still I am discontent.
Issue One:
Anytime I break out a large pan on the stovetop, it gets crowded. (Can’t use my 15” cast iron skillet AND my pasta pot at the same time.) Right now I have a 12” skillet, a pasta pot and a chef’s pan on the stove and it is a balancing act.
Issue Two:
There is only one oven. Don’t get me wrong, I am pleased as punch to have a convection oven. Still, sometimes I want to cook more than one item at more than one temperature. I have worked around this by adding a counter top convection/toaster oven (which I love!)
Issue Three:
I have room in my kitchen for something bigger!
So you can see why I find myself researching ranges. It all started when I was at Sears and saw a Race Car Red range that got me all hot and bothered. The price startled me. I had only bought a range once before, and it was much more budget friendly. So, now that I had an idea that one could spend $5K on a range, I branched out my research with the usual suspects (Wolf, Viking, etc.) I started digging around to see what brand of range the Food Network chefs had on set. Then I found some home decorating/remodeling websites that mentioned European brands of which I had never heard.
I requested catalogs. (My husband called them Kitchen Porn.) What these ranges have in common is they are well made, expensive, and worked in a way that was familiar to me. And then there is Aga.
The Aga Cooker is like nothing I had ever seen. Big, heavy, enameled cast iron and always on. Yes. You heard me right.
This cooker stays hot all day, every day and is ready to cook when you are. When you aren’t cooking, it just sits there, insulated and holding in the heat, and creating a gathering place for the whole family.
Why are these people so cultish in their adoration?
The people who own and Aga are a little different. Not only is there a lifestyle magazine, Aga Living, but there are user groups and online forums. There is a consistent sentiment from them of “Once you live with one, you can’t imagine living without one.”
I have to admit that I had a tough time wrapping my head around the whole concept. Why is it on all the time? How hot is it in the kitchen when it is on? How much does it cost? How do you pronounce it?
Well, my little kumquats, the answers to all these questions are available at an Aga Demonstration. Because this is different from what most of us are used to, the authorized dealers have small demonstrations in the store. They keep a Cooker running in the store and a trained demonstrator comes in and cooks a variety of items for the 10-12 people in attendance.
I went to one last week at Sutter Home & Hearth in Woodinville, WA. The other attendees were a diverse group. There was a middle-aged couple who had purchased a Cooker at a different vendor and had challenges (that vendor is no longer an authorized retailer and the unit they purchased was a floor model, etc.) An older couple who lived in a remote location where power went out frequently was there to get an idea of how much power was required and if a generator would be able to keep up with the draw. The couple sitting next to me was the least vocal also seemed the most interested. I think they may have been seriously ready to buy. The oddest group was a family with children. The father was British and had grown up in a home with an Aga Cooker and I think he was there to convince his wife that she needed this item in their American home.
The demonstration did a great job of explaining how the Cooker works in a regular family. The woman teaching us was not a chef, just a mother & grandmother showing us basic, everyday foods. I got my questions answered, and the sales pitch was effective, because while I went in with only the idea that I wanted a new range, I left wanting an Aga Cooker.
Pros:
Ready when you are
Warming plate and warming oven
Blazing hot boiling plate
Great customer support before & after purchase
A warm & welcoming kitchen that is truly the heart of a home
Makes you want to cook
Cons:
Takes 12 weeks to arrive from the UK
Limited color choices (they think they have lots of color choices, but I kept finding Cookers online in more appealing colors that must have been discontinued.)
Some of your favorite cookware may not fit
Price (in my region, with installation & sales tax, I would be looking at about $25K. Don’t get me wrong. I still want it.)
I can’t believe I lived more than 40 years without tasting a Meyer lemon. I feel like the Children of Israel, wandering in the desert for 40 years. My first taste was life changing. (Much the same as my first taste of Balsamic vinegar. ) I have become the Meyer lemon evangelist. I can’t stop talking about them, cooking with them, and forcing other people to have a taste. (Best hot toddies, ever!)
There is a reason I haven’t tasted them before. I don’t live where they grow, and they don’t travel well. I had some last year because a friend got them in a care package from his friend in California. (Yes, I did live in California long ago, but it was Death Valley, people. Not a lot of citrus trees growing there.)
This year, I found the little balls of sunshine hiding in the vast stacks of fruit at my local Costco. They came in a pack of about a dozen. The first pack I made almost exclusively into cocktails. When I went back and there were more, I used those for cooking, replacing any other citrus I would normally use. And I made marmalade so that I would have something to remember. I am on my third package now.
We have been enjoying the marmalade at brunch for a couple weeks, and I thought maybe we should have Meyer lemon overload this week. So, on the the scones.
1 large egg, plus 1 yolk (reserve white for egg wash)
250 ml heavy cream (1 cup) minus 1 tablespoon for egg wash
zest of 2 Meyer lemons
Preheat oven to 400°
Whisk together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder & zest. Add butter and incorporate thoroughly (I like a food processor, but you can use a stand mixer or your fingers.)
In a separate container, mix egg, yolk & cream, then add to dry ingredients and stir just until combined.
Turn onto a lightly floured surface (I use a large silicone mat) and work as little as possible until the dough is a cohesive mass. Roll out to about an inch thick.
Cut to your preferred size and place (shoulder to shoulder, just touching) on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat.
Handle scraps as little as possible while re-rolling.
Mix the remaining egg white with a the reserved cream and brush the tops of the scones. Let sit a few minutes and brush again.
Bake for 15-18 minutes, rotating pan once if necessary for even browning.
I am going to try making these into chocolate scones for our Valentine’s Wine Tasting this week. I will let you know how it goes.
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