Alizarine

Pretzel Dogs

2012-02-22T14:45:25-06:00

You know how much you love pretzels. You know how much you love hot dogs. Now consider the following idea:

Pretzels wrapped around hot dogs!

Look at them: pudgy, salty, golden brown grubs concealing a secret...

...the secret of hot dogs!

(Jeff was fond of the pretzel dog in the center, saying it looked like it was tipping its hat. "Top o' the morning to ye!" I enthused.)

Oh yeah, you'll get attached to these cuties during the baking process, even to the point where you assign some of them personality traits seconds before you dip them in ketchup and mustard and shove them into your face.

The recipe is from the always great Joy the Baker, who adapted it from Alton Brown, and I urge you to visit this link if you want to see Joy's excellent step-by-step photo instructions. I was on my own in the kitchen as I made them, and Jeff and Melissa (his daughter) were watching a 2-hour episode of Sherlock in the living room.

It's an awesome show.

During that time I was able to make the pretzel dough, let it rise for an hour while I made phone calls, cut the hot dogs in half, get a pan of water boiling, and divide the risen dough into 16 pieces. They finished their show just in time to help me with the fun stuff: wrapping, boiling, egg-washing, baking, and eating.

A note on the recipe: it is right on the money, but I halved the water and baking soda amounts.

A note on eating: they are delicious. You will groan.

(My notes are in italics.)

INGREDIENTS

1 ½ cups warm water (between 110 and 115 degrees F)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
2 ¼ teaspoons (1 package) active dry yeast
22 ounces all-purpose flour (about 4 1/2 cups) <--this amount was perfect, no more, no less
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
about 8 cups of water <--original recipe called for 14
generous 1/3 cup baking soda <--original recipe called for a whole cup, which seemed excessive
1 large egg, beaten, with a splash of water
salt and pepper for topping <--The only coarse salt we had in the house was some fleur de sel that I got for Christmas. Ain't we fancy?

DIRECTIONS

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine warm water and sugar. Sprinkle the yeast on top of the water and set aside for 5 minutes. The mixture will begin to foam and froth. If it doesn’t, throw the mixture away and start again with new yeast.

Once the yeast and water is frothy, add the flour, salt, and melted butter. Using the dough hook, mix on low speed until well combined. Increase the speed to medium and knead the dough until it is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, creating a ball of dough around the dough hook. Beat on medium speed for approximately 4 minutes.

Remove the dough from the bowl. The dough will be soft, pliable, and just a bit sticky. That’s perfect. Scrape any residue out of the bowl and coat the bowl with a bit of vegetable oil. Place the dough back in the bowl, sprinkle with flour, cover with plastic wrap, and store in a warm place to rise. Allow dough to rise, until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Place baking racks in the center and upper third of the oven. (Jeff vetoed the idea of baking two pans at the same time, and while I didn't think two pans would be a problem, I gave him a "fair enough" shrug because who really cares? We used the upper-third rack and baked the pretzel dogs in two separate batches.) Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, and lightly brush the paper with oil. It’s important to brush the parchment paper or the pretzels will stick!

Combine water and baking soda in a large pan (8 quart is fine) and bring to a boil.

While the water comes to a boil, turn the dough out onto a clean, slightly oiled work surface. Divide dough into 8 or 16 pieces, depending on how large you’d like your pretzel dogs. 8 pieces of dough for whole hot dogs. 16 pieces of dough if you’re going to slice the hot dogs in half. (We sliced them in half.)

Start with the fingers of both hands in the center of the dough, and roll, moving your hands outward as you roll. Roll the dough along the oiled surface until you have about a 24-inch or 12-inch piece of rope (depending on how large your piece of dough was… the more dough the longer the rope).

Wrap pretzel around a hot dog, making sure to seal the ends.

When water has come to a boil, gently lower a couple of pretzel dogs into the boiling water. Boil for 30 seconds. Remove carefully, using a flat, slotted spatula. Place on prepared baking sheet. Brush boiled pretzels with beaten egg, and add coarse sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper (we just wanted salt).

Bake until deeply golden brown, about 12 to 14 minutes. (15 minutes resulted in the pretzels in my top photo. The second photo was more like 13 minutes.) Transfer to a cooling rack for a few minutes before serving warm.

Soft pretzels are best enjoyed the day they are made.

If you’re not going to enjoy all your pretzel dogs, double wrap them in plastic wrap and store in the freezer. When ready to serve, transfer out of plastic and into a piece of foil. Wrap well and bake in a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes, or until heated through.

Taco and Shoe Field Trip!

2012-02-19T12:54:00-06:00

Last weekend Jeff and I took a mini-mini-trip to Arcola and Tuscola, two small towns about thirty minutes south of Champaign. Mysteriously, both of their names employ the exotic "cola" suffix. Last year we read a stellar restaurant review of Arcola's El Taco Tako, and it had haunted us ever since, because it implied that the little shack was The Second Coming of Tacos:

"...the best tacos you will ever eat...every bite is perfect...culinary gold...the best goddamned taco joint in Illinois..."

"If we're ever down there, we need to try those tacos," we promised each other, and on Valentine's Day weekend, we did it.

The place was a tiny ten-seater, and we were the first lunch customers. As instructed by the review, we ordered a couple of plates of tacos (chicken and pork) from the cheerful owner who spoke about as much English as we speak Spanish. He left to fix them while we took in the kitchy beauty of the place and tried to hear each other speak over the television that was blasting a Spanish-language sports program. Jeff's looking up at it.

The walls were painted a brilliant, some would say gutsy turquoise that I just loved and liberally festooned with all manner of Mexicana.

Jeff got a kick out of the curtains in the window behind me. They were decorated with an incongruous John Deere motif. It was a cold, windy day, and I kept my coat on until the tacos arrived.

The wee tacos were indeed very, very good, and just looking at them makes me want some more. But. The amount of time that had elapsed between reading that amazing review and actually eating the food was too long. The glory of these tacos had been built up too much!

(ff to 7:35 or so)

"They're great tacos," concluded Jeff, "but in the end they're just tacos."

You know? It was kind of a three-note meal: the spicy meat, the interesting par-fried shell-within-a-shell, and the (fantastic) grilled onions. Plus we each had five of them, and a certain amount of taco fatigue had set in.

So we left feeling slightly non-plussed and bloated, and the tacos came back to say hi to us via a series of burps that lasted well into the afternoon, during which time we hunted for shoes for me.

Jeff and I will be visiting Paris in early April (hooray!!), and I've been trying to figure out what shoes and clothes to wear. It is not easy! I wanted some shoes that I could walk for miles in--but I also wanted to wear dresses with them and not look like a complete dork wearing big chubby American sneakers. My feet are huge, flat, and ducklike (wide at the toes, narrow in the heel). I can't wear high heels and walk for more than a few blocks without bitching. I can't wear cute shoes, period. I can wear boots, but I'm not sure if they're appropriate to wear in the early spring. When is it officially springtime in Paris, anyway? Can you wear boots all year? Would they be too hot? What about sandals? Would they be too cold?

So with those problems and more swirling in my mind, I set off to find the perfect dressy-but-comfortable shoe appropriate for the not-exactly-spring week of April 6. Jeff was patient as I tried on and rejected pair after pair through seven stores, most of which were located in an outlet mall in Tuscola. I found only one pair that met my comfort criteria, although style had to take a backseat. Have any of you ever heard of S.A.S. shoes?

I've worn their style-free sandals for years, especially when I was a teacher, because the foot pad was so incredibly comfortable. I believe the pads are made from a combination of Milky Way caramel, saltwater taffy, circus peanuts, marshmallow fluff, and miniature helium balloons. S.A.S. stands for San Antonio Shoes (made in S.A. Texas), and they refuse to sell their products online, so nice people like Joel, the knowledgeable man who helped me find the right size, can keep their jobs. It's adorably 19th Century. The shoes are plain but extremely well-made. I've heard the description "fug" bandied about. Some would call them Old People Shoes.

Actually they're Rich Old People Shoes--most styles cost in the neighborhood of $100-$150, and that was way more than we had planned to spend. As I tried on other, cheaper (cuter) shoes, I was frustrated because nothing came close to the comfort of the S.A.S. shoes. We thought we could try to find them online somehow, like on Ebay, but I've tried that before and failed. After we gave up, I may have admitted to Jeff that I was "slightly disappointed."

We rolled out of Tuscola and were about to get on the interstate when Jeff said, "Damn it! It's Valentine's Day!" and did a quick U-turn. It was downright cinematic. He drove us back to the S.A.S. store and bought me the shoes.

He was richly rewarded once we got home.

I mean, they're not that bad, right? They're so austere that they're actually kind of cool, right?

PS Please do not leave frustrating comments telling me that you have found better, cuter, cheaper, more comfortable, perfect shoes. My feet are freaks and will vary with your mileage, I can almost guarantee you. I've been wearing these in all week and am beginning to bond with them. Thank you for respecting our privacy during this beautiful time in our lives.

The List

2012-02-10T14:03:28-06:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Jeff and I met and our Chicago trip a month later when Jeff said "not yet" to a taxi driver who asked if we were married. I didn't tell you about our jouney home on the train. That was when The List was born.

Amtrak trains run between Champaign and Chicago several times each day. During our three hour trip, Jeff and I were full of glee and goofiness. As I watched the snowy south side of Chicago whiz by, I decided that I would kiss Jeff whenever I saw an American flag. Because that's just fun. I eventually told him what I was up to and, to pass the time, we came up with other things we could spot and do. I had a pad of paper handy and wrote them down as we laughed our heads off, and eventually this list was typed out, laminated, and placed in the car's glove compartment for future reference. (Or do you prefer glove box? I was born into the glove compartment tradition. The more I think about it, the crazier "glove compartment" seems.)

This sixteen-item list included the following:

Spot a cement mixer = high five
Person wearing a do-rag = hug
Amish or Amish-like or Amish transportation = first opportunity up-against-wall kiss
Restaurant patron having a birthday = French kiss

Here are some other items on the list, but I'm not going to share the payoffs with you.

Spot a representation of a leprechaun
Restaurant sign with mascot promoting cannibalism
"Tiny Dancer" plays in a store
Water tower that resembles something else, e.g. a pineapple
4-legged animal with fewer than 4 legs
Larger-than-life Jesus
Someone pronounces Bono's name as "Bone-oh" or someone says the word "cockles"

...and so on. Later we added: spotter of semi/truck emblazoned with OVERSIZED LOAD gets to touch other person inappropriately upon spotting.

In the two and a half weeks between my birthday and Valentine's Day, I decided to collect as many of the items listed above as possible. Jeff had put together a little Indianapolis getaway that weekend, and I planned to roll the items out periodically. I was able to get my hands on a wee cement mixer, a little toy Amish guy, a leprechaun night light, a do-rag decorated with hamburgers and hot dogs, some cockle shells, a coaster with a three-legged dog on it, and a poster of a pineapple water tower. I put the Amish guy on the dashboard while Jeff gassed up the car before we took off. Jeff cracked up when he saw it and gave me an up-against-a-wall kiss.

Suffice it to say that this was the best Valentine's Day of my life, and we had a million laughs during the slow roll-out of Jeff's mini-gifts. On the drive back home, we even spotted an orange semi with JESUS written in towering block letters on each side. Larger-than-life Jesus!

Fun Valentine's Day idea: if you have not yet made a list with your loved one, I highly recommend it. After four years, our list is still alive and kicking!

Cheap Cioppino a.k.a. Cheappino!

2012-02-10T11:45:00-06:00

A couple of years ago I posted a recipe for cioppino, a tomato-based seafood stew that was easy to make but a little expensive. It is pronounced like this. My recipe called for a pound of shrimp and a pound of scallops, and if you buy those around here they'll cost about $15 plus they'll be frozen and sometimes even a tiny bit funky when defrosted. I'm lookin' at you, scallops. Unacceptable.

But we still want cioppino all the time (and so does Bun).

So Jeff came up with a compromise: ditch the shrimp and scallops entirely and load up on the much cheaper tinned mussels. He became obsessed with mussels after he took a business trip to Belgium a few years ago, by the way. That country ruined french fries (frites) for him, too. We try mussels at every restaurant we can, and they've even inspired a painting.

The tinned mussels that we buy are a far cry from that kind of thing, but the red oil they're packed in really makes this dish great, and we found we don't miss the shrimp and scallops. We bought the mussels at Meijer, a Midwestern superstore similar to Wal-mart. The package looks like this, and we bought two of them for around $1.80 each:

Jeff says, "These are by no means the best mussels you can eat. But for the price, they impart a lot of flavor and have a good mouth-feel." Here's what one looks like (sorry about the blur):

Yesterday afternoon Jeff and I threw the cheappino together, let it mellow out on the stove, and ate it that evening with a baguette (Artisan Take & Bake French baguette, which was terrific).

I suggest you pair the cheappino with some cheap pinot.

Or not! I don't know anything about wine.

REVISED! INGREDIENTS

2 T olive oil
2 C chopped onion <-- this was one huge Vidalia onion, but it's more like one or two regular ones
1/4 t crushed red pepper flakes
2 medium stalks celery, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 (28 oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 (8 oz.) bottle clam juice
1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste
1/2 C chicken broth
1 T red wine vinegar
2 1/2 t Italian seasoning
1 t Old Bay seasoning <-- optional, I just felt like tossing some in
1/4 t sugar
1 bay leaf
1 (10 oz or so) can baby clams, undrained
2 (small, sardine-like) tins of mussels in spicy red pepper oil
1/4 C chopped Italian parsley
salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in a large dutch oven or similar soup pot. Add the onion, red pepper flakes, celery, garlic, and a little salt and pepper. Saute until the vegetables are soft.

Add the diced tomatoes, clam juice, tomato paste, chicken broth, red wine vinegar, Italian seasoning, Old Bay seasoning, sugar, and bay leaf and heat through. You can let it simmer for a while if you've got other things going on. The sauce will thicken a bit.

Add the clams, mussels, and parsley. Let everything heat up and adjust salt and pepper, if necessary.

You can eat this immediately or you can let the flavors marry for as long as you like on the stove.

Even without the shrimp and scallops, your big-eyed cat will still totally want you to share this with her.

Sunflowers

2012-01-31T14:40:39-06:00

Here's a 10.5"x13.5" watercolor of sunflowers. It's really one sunflower and five petals of a second, but I feel like going with the plural for the title. Because of Vincent. The reference photo I used came from my former student (and current University of Wisconsin-Madison student) Mara. She took the photo a couple of summers ago and kindly gave me permission to paint it--I finally did that over the past few days.

I think sunflowers are kind of boring when they're in full bloom--too symmetrical and repetitive--but I loved the shape of this one that's just starting to open up. I made the leaves and stalk fuzzy with some white acrylic paint and a small messed-up brush. I normally don't like adding acrylic paint to a watercolor painting, but on this small scale that was the only thing that made sense to me. And I really wanted that sunflower to look fuzzy!

I wish I could add a button marked "animate" that you could push to watch the sunflower open up, time lapse photography-style. Instead, please watch this beautiful thing (with surprising but totally great Edward Scissorhands soundtrack!).

I wish I could remember Gustav Klimt's quote about sunflowers being the artists of the garden--I read it in college and I think of it whenever I see them. His idea was that sunflowers are the tallest flowers (and therefore different and therefore outsiders), and it seems like they are observing the smaller flowers when their heavy heads tilt down.

I may have added the different/outsider idea myself. I would also like to see a picture of a sunflower holding a sketchpad and drawing the other flowers. I'm sorry. The Edward Scissorhands music--which made me tear up, how about you?--is filling my head with twee and maudlin ideas.

gggggggggggggg <--Typed by young Hypatia, seen below (left).

Oatmeal Crispies

2012-01-25T20:44:14-06:00

Are you like me? Have oatmeal cookies been inexplicably difficult for you for as long as you can remember? Does your mom--whose cookies are the toast of two states (IL, MO) and locals think of her as The Cookie Lady--also have trouble with them?

Troubles like: they become giant pancake cookies. That is the main problem.

Finally, at age 42 and 364/365ths (tomorrow is my birthday), I have an oatmeal cookie recipe that I truly love. They don't spread out like sons of bitches! They are chewy but not too bendy. During that magical cooling-on-the-rack time, they're slightly crunchy on the outside in a way that is...endearing. Easy and fast, too! Freezer-ready!

Interestingly, they contain no cinnamon or other spices, and that simplicity makes them somehow better. Before I made them the first time, I thought about adding chocolate chips to the dough (which you could eat raw by the fistful with no problem whatsoever). But I didn't, and I'm glad because they are so perfect that...

...chocolate would not improve them.

BOOM.

!!! Chocolate would in fact diminish them !!!

The recipe is from The Pioneer Woman's blockbuster first cookbook, and on the page it looked...nothing. Almost comic.

It seemed to me that I was eating the oatmeal cookies of God.

(Bun drowsily watches me make these cookies while in her popular "roast" position.)

But before I get into the recipe, I wanted to address what is currently my top popular search--see box at right. How did I meet Jeff, you ask? Match.com, how do you like them apples? Oh, you naysayers were like:

"Eww, why would anybody ever do online dating there's just so many CREEPS out there and you can't be too careful and gawd what kind of loser do you have to be because I met my man the old fashioned way at some random bar why don't you do that oh right you don't drink and you probably have social anxiety disorder or whatever it is anyway oh well I guess you should give it a shot because tick tock tick tock am I right hahahaha!!"

You people! I shouldn't even let you in on this recipe!

Jeff was the last of seven men I online dated during 2007. We met a few days before Christmas, and after a torrid month of dating, he took me to Chicago to celebrate my birthday. Here's how foxy Jeff looked that weekend:

He treated me like a queen for a couple of days, and we were positively giddy with love for each other. On our way back to the train station, our cab driver asked us if we were in fact married. And that's when Fox Jeff unintentionally gave me the best birthday present of my life when he said, without hesitation:

"Not yet."

GUH.

I mean, what better thing to say to a lovestruck, 39 year-old spinstah?

"Not yet." MEANING THERE IS A YET. Jeff was a real man with actual yet ideas. Yet was a possibility. A probability! No messing around with this guy. DECISIVELY IN LOVE. That's what I had been waiting for, that's what I needed, and that's what he was!

So yeah, I met this loser on Match.com, yo.

Here's the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup shortening (Crisco) <-- I used butter flavor. Yeah, sorry, but it works, and guess what is in Oreo filling? Basically Crisco! Stop judging and just make these.
1 cup packed brown sugar <-- I haven't tried dark brown sugar yet, just light.
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking oda
3 cups old-fashioned (rolled) oats
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans <-- Optional but really good.

DIRECTIONS

In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening with both sugars until well combined.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs together. Add vanilla and stir to combine. Add to the shortening/sugar mixture and mix well.

In a separate bowl combine the flour, salt and baking soda. Mix carefully into the egg/shortening mixture until well combined. Now add the oats and pecans and mix to combine.

Divide the dough in half and place each half of the dough onto a sheet of waxed paper. Roll the dough into a log and then wrap it tightly in the waxed paper. You can either chill or freeze the dough until later or you can go ahead and slice the dough evenly into cookie rounds. Each roll makes 12.

When you are ready to bake them place them on a cookie sheet (I used parchment paper on the sheet, but you could also do Silpat or Pam, 6 cookies per sheet although you could probably do 8) and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown. Golden brown around the top edges of the cookies, that is. Maybe underbake them a little. Definitely check the cookies at 10 minutes if you're using room-temperature dough and 12 minutes if it's frozen.

Cool on a wire rack. Fantastic warm. Fantastic crumbled up on vanilla ice cream--either baked or raw.

Glass Gems 3

2012-01-23T11:52:16-06:00

More than any other painting I've made, this one looks like it would taste incredible if licked, like some kind of Willy Wonka fantasy candy. But I've got to think that saliva would do bad things to a watercolor.

These are, once again, glass gems, a.k.a. the stuff you can put in floral arrangements and aquariums. Under ho-hum circumstances, they look like this:

But stack them next to a window and get them under the right kind of lights and they become magically delicious. I've said this so many times: I love what light can do to glass.

I've been obsessed with this painting for two weeks. It's as big as I can go at 21"x29", so each gem is about the size of a dinner plate. I had fun with the crazy variety of colors in this one, from Opera to Permanent Green Light, which I almost never get to use. The white, eye-like ovals are my small table lamp. You can see my hands in the bottom gems and window reflections at 9 o'clock on a lot of them.

Obviously (or not?) I have to use photographs for this kind of painting. I can't imagine our cats seeing a pile of these things--which are hard to stack--poised on the edge of a table and not feel the need to knock them over. In case you missed this photo of Bun helping me paint, here's what my setup looks like:

I use my laptop to zoom in on micro-details while Bun glares at me. That's because Bun is old school, I'm afraid. While I am loyal to what I see in my photos, I tend to pump up colors and edit the image as I work. Each whole gem took a day to paint, and each had its own abstract weirdness with which to contend, so I was never bored.

The red gem seems to be the brains of this operation--part of it actually kind of looks like a brain--and it influences its neighboring gems. My favorite section of the painting is in this neighborhood:

Like Bun, Jeff sometimes checks in to see how I'm doing, and his top comment for this painting was, "Aliens." (Jeff is alien-school. He has an entire bookcase devoted to science fiction.) He likes the pink gem on the left which is probably the weirdest one.

Taste the rainbow!

I think Glass Gems 3 is a prime candidate for a giclee print, and I'm currently toying with the idea of offering it in two sizes, small and large. If I wanted to offer a near full-size print (around 21"x29"), the end cost to customers would be at least in the $100-$125 dollar range (***guessing***) if I wanted to make any kind of profit. Smaller prints would be in the $75 range. I really think this deserves to be big, though. Even unframed and just tipped against my studio wall, it has quite a presence. Please let me know if you'd be interested in jumbo gems (or small gems), and if enough people respond, I'll get going on that!

Chicken Pot Pie

2012-01-12T18:37:20-06:00

My friends, what is pie?

(Sidebar: one time I went to Germany to visit a friend, and while I was there I made a lemon meringue pie for a dinner party. One of the guests asked that same question: "What is pie?"

They don't know what pie is in Germany!

That will never cease to amaze me. I've mentioned it before.)

What is your mental image of a pie, those of you who know what one is? Close your eyes and imagine one. Dig, if you will, the picture.

Here's my idea of a pie: crust on top, some kind of filling, and crust on the bottom. Right? Right. Under no circumstances are the following two items pies:

On the left is a ramekin with filling and crust on top but not on the bottom. Probably delicious; not pie.

On the right is a baking dish with filling and let's say Grands!^® biscuits on top. Probably okay; not pie.

Call those two things something else, but stop calling them pies, please, especially if you plan to serve them to guests. Don't say, "Hey, come over! I'm making chicken pot pie!"...

...and present something that has no top and bottom crust. The second you mention C.P.P., people (well, me) will visualize a true pie and spend the day thinking about how great it's going to be, and when you deliver some casserole topped with a biscuit, a part of me will hate you, and I'm sorry. I just really love pie.

Tuesday Melissa came out for supper, and I made a true chicken pot pie. I cut vent holes in the shape of an M on the top crust because who doesn't like a pie marked with their initial? All human beings who know about pie like that, but so few people ever receive a pie made in their honor. Bake a pie with a top crust and mark it with somebody's initial. Make one for yourself! HONOR PIES. It'll knock their socks off.

(Photo not available, but trust me, it was cute.)

So this pie is comfort food of the highest order. It's from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and I've already made it twice since Christmas at Jeff's request. I love it too, and after Melissa returned to her apartment, she Facebooked the following: Now I just want endless amounts of chicken pot pie...*sigh*

The Pioneer Woman's recipe is for a top-crust-only-pie-that-is-not-a-pie, and she made it in a pie pan/casserole dish that's bigger than mine. The recipe made more filling than my pie could hold, something like two cups, but that was no big deal. I just kept it warm while the pie baked and spooned it alongside each piece (see extras in the top photo).

It's not the easiest thing in the world to make, but pie never is. You will not be a fan of the time-consuming fine chopping that's involved. Once you start making this pie, people will demand that you keep making it.

But come on. You've got to admit that my honor pie idea intrigues you.

(Unrelated: Bun is a stern taskmistress as she supervises the painting of Glass Gems 3.)

INGREDIENTS

Top and bottom pie crust <-- However you want to make it: if you go with my recipe here (scroll down), use the version with the 3 cups of flour that I've written in blue pen.
3 celery stalks
3 medium carrots, peeled
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 large onion
4 tbsp butter
2 cups chicken, cooked, diced or shredded <-- Lately I've been buying big packages of 8-9 bone-in chicken thighs, which taste chicken-ier than breasts and are cheaper. I remove the skin, top them with 1/4 cup olive oil, juice of one lemon, and salt/pepper, and roast I them in a glass baking dish at 400 for 45 minutes. We eat some and save the rest for stuff like this.
1/4 cup flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 chicken bouillon cube (optional) <--used it
1/4 cup white wine (optional) <-- used it
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp ground thyme <--used regular non-ground thyme
1 tsp kosher salt or more to taste
black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 400. I went with 425 as that's how I bake any pie that has my kind of crust.

Begin by finely dicing the fresh vegetables, celery, carrots and onions. Melt the butter in a large pot or dutch oven. Add the onion, carrots, celery and peas. Saute until the vegetables start to soften, a few minutes (mine always seem to take longer than that). Add the chicken and stir to combine. Sprinkle the flour evenly over the vegetables and chicken and stir to combine. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring gently.

Pour in the chicken broth, stirring constantly. Stir in the bouillon cube and wine, if using. The flour will combine with the chicken to create a delicious gravy. Pour in the cream and stir. Allow mixture to cook over low heat, thickening gradually, about 4 minutes. I went a few minutes longer to further thicken the sauce. Season with thyme, salt and pepper. Remove from the heat. Taste and adjust the seasonings as needed. Be sure it's adequately salted!

Make and roll out your top and bottom crusts (see link above). Lay the bottom pie crust in the pan and load it with the filling until it's level. Do not heap on much more than that. Roll the top crust out to 1" larger then the pan. Place the crust on top of the chicken mixture. Press the crust gently into the sides of the dish to seal. Work as quickly as you can here. The heat of the filling will make the top crust kind of hard to deal with as you seal it to the bottom crust.

Cut small slits (I.E. MAKE AN HONOR PIE WITH DECORATIVE INITIAL) in the top with a knife. You might want to work the slits into bigger gaps. I've found that skinny slits will try to seal themselves back together while the pie is baking.

Cover the outside edge of the pie with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking for about 12-15 more minutes, or until the pie has a little color on top. But not too much. We're looking for "healthy glow," not "tanorexic."

Let it cool for 10-15 minutes and serve with extra filling. Some filling will inevitably ooze out after you cut into the pie. I like to tip the pan at a slight angle to encourage the ooze to get back to where it once belonged as it cools with mild success.

Cover and refrigerate the leftover pie. Individual slices (with extra filling) will reheat nicely in the microwave.

PS It finally snowed! I made a celebratory crazy cake and, since I didn't have any powdered sugar, I made a quick mocha ganache topping:

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped or in chip form
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
5 ounces heavy cream
tiny sprinkle of fleur de sel (decoration)
handful of white chocolate chips (decoration)

Put chocolate and espresso powder in a smallish bowl. Heat cream in a small saucepan until simmering (small bubbles will appear along the edge of the pan). Do not boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate and wait for two minutes. Whisk the mixture until you have a thick, glossy ganache. I let mine cool and thicken for about ten minutes. Pour and smooth over your cake and decorate it (or not!).

Thanks to my sister in-law Shanna for my new cake stand. I love it so much!

Blackberry Scones

2012-01-08T11:22:12-06:00

The first week of 2012 was kind of lousy for Jeff and me, with new annoyances popping up almost daily. Such as minor water damage from a leaky washing machine, a dryer that wouldn't heat up, a pet portrait whose background stymied me for about a day, a Bun who we thought may have been constipated again but it was a false alarm, reliable 4:30 a.m. insomnia, a malted crisp tart that didn't firm up and was a nightmare to cut into at a dinner party (my fault; I skipped step #432 while making it). Also Glass Gems 2 wasn't selected for the Sky Gallery. I'm a little disappointed about that, but as always you can never feel too upset when your art gets rejected, and you can never feel too happy when it gets accepted. It's all so subjective, and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. ETC.

(Above: Bun and Jeff taking a disco nap.)

But yesterday something nice happened: Bun was reunited with her University of Illinois doctor Blake Marcum, who you may remember from such exciting posts as Bun Health Mega Crisis.

Last week Blake asked me to paint a portrait of a very Bunlike cat named Charli as a surprise for his wife Lindsey. Charli died of feline leukemia a couple of months ago, and Blake wanted something to memorialize their special girl. Blake saved Bun's life, so I was more than happy to oblige and gave him my S.F.R.D. (Standard Fecal Removal Discount). Blake and Lindsey stopped by our house on Saturday morning and I gave her the painting. She received it with a shocked, big smile and some tears--a heartwarming scene and gratifying for me to be sure, as I rarely get to witness my clients' reactions. Lindsey and Blake played with our cats and looked at my paintings for a while. Bun was standoffish but curious, keeping a close eye on our visitors, one of whom probably smelled like a place Bun would like to forget. They were charmed by her judgy little face nevertheless, and Bun eventually warmed up to them, going so far as to roll around on the floor and display her glorious belly for a few seconds, like so.

(See that unspotted, blondish area between Bun's back legs? That is Bun's celebrated "palomino patch.")

A couple of weeks ago, I painted another pet portrait for a very happy client in Virginia. Pets, pets, pets! This dog's name is Honey (and Honey is still alive). Here she is along with my portrait of Charli.

The photos I had to work with were a little blurry and a little flashbulb zombie-eyed, but I can work with that kind of source material if I have to and change backgrounds at the client's request, as I did with these.

Wow, this post is so not about scones yet.

This morning, as Jeff fine-tuned and moved our fixed washer and dryer back into place, I felt like making scones to celebrate the fact that we had survived the hassles of last week. The recipe is by Tyler Florence and originally used blueberries, which are a lot easier to work with than blackberries. The blackberries were mysteriously on sale last week ($1 per pint: bizarre!), so how could I refuse? Here's a reminder of what these scones look like:

They're kind of free-form and not the tight, dry triangles you might be used to. They're not going to win any scone beauty pageants. But taste-wise, they are so much better than those dry triangles. They melt in your mouth and the glaze provides a zippy citrus flavor burst that works well with blueberries (and now blackberries). You will probably hate making them thanks to a few messy steps detailed below, but you will love eating them. I've left my own copious notes in italics.

INGREDIENTS

for the scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut in chunks
1 cup fresh blueberries <--or blackberries if you're a glutton for punishment; some people claim to have used frozen fruit and had an easier time, but I can't vouch for them.
1 cup heavy cream

for the lemon glaze

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2-3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted <--probably more like 3 cups
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 lemon, zest finely grated

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Sift together the dry ingredients; the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Using 2 forks or a pastry blender, cut in the butter to coat the pieces with the flour. The mixture should look like coarse crumbs. I managed to do all of this in my food processor in about 15 seconds. I used to be old-school when it came to cutting butter into a pastry, but now I'm a firm believer in the ease of a food processor. Both will work, of course. Post-processing, transfer the mixture to a large bowl.

Make a well in the center and pour in the heavy cream. Fold everything together just to incorporate; do not overwork the dough. Fold the blueberries into the batter. Take care not to mash or bruise the blueberries because their strong color will bleed into the dough. You will hate doing this because the dough is tough and "shaggy," and the blue/blackberries will not want to become incorporated. Use your hands to distribute the berries as evenly as you can throughout the dough, trying not to squash them. You will squash some of them, though. It's unavoidable and it's ultimately okay.

Press the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 12 by 3 by 1 1/4 inches. Your rectangle will suck and look rough. Cut the rectangle in half then cut the pieces in half again, giving you 4 (3-inch) squares. Cut the squares in half on a diagonal to give you the classic triangle shape. Place the scones on an ungreased cookie sheet. IF YOU CAN! Things are going to fall apart during the transfer from floured surface to cookie sheet. The dough is going to seem like it's way too dry, especially if you're making these in a cold kitchen and the butter isn't even close to melting. Oh, and the blackberries will be like: We want no part of this. My advice is to work the messy mounds into semi-triangular shapes once you've got them on the cookie sheet. Put a little cream and/or water on your hands as you attempt to organize them. They do not have to be perfect. No one will care about shape perfection once they taste these, I assure you.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until beautiful and golden brown. Mine took 15 and were pale-golden. Let the scones cool a bit before you apply the glaze.

You can make the lemon glaze in a double boiler, or for a simpler alternative, you can zap it in the microwave. Mix the lemon juice with the confectioners' until dissolved in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water for the double-boiler method, or in a microwave-safe bowl. Whisk in the butter (cut into small chunks) and lemon zest. Either nuke the glaze for 30 seconds or continue whisking in the double boiler. Whisk the glaze to smooth out any lumps, then drizzle the glaze over the top of the scones. Let it set a minute before serving. A word about this glaze: it makes two tons of glaze. There is no way you will ever need this much glaze, not even if you flat-out dunk the scones into it each time you take a bite. However, the glaze is awesome and you could probably drizzle it over fruit or bland cookies/cakes later. If that idea does not appeal to you, feel free to cut the glaze recipe in half. Tyler's recipe also makes a very runny glaze, so you might want to increase the amount of powdered sugar to 3 cups if you plan to make the entire recipe. Play around with it until you have a consistency that works for you.

Again: yummy scone. Eyes on the prize.

Meatloaf

2011-12-31T16:37:57-06:00

Last night I made the best meatloaf I've ever had.

Perhaps bacon may have had something to do with that?

This is the second of two posts I'm making today about food ideas for the new year. The first, Sawdust Pie, made you feel better about eating pie because you're eating not as much pie as usual. This meatloaf will make you feel good about yourself because per serving you're getting maybe 1/6 of a pound of hamburger (and who asks for a 1/6 pounder? nobody), 1/12th of a cup of parmesan cheese, 1/3 of an egg, 1/2 of a slice of bread, maybe a tablespoon of milk, and not even one piece of bacon.

Look at you being all virtuous in the kitchen, yo!

This recipe is from The Pioneer Woman and it's straightforward, fast, and easy. I made the meatloaf last night, ate small portions of it with a similarly blown-away Jeff, and went to sleep dreaming about it. I woke up thinking about it. The texture, especially on the first day, is somehow silky and unlike ordinary hamburger. It becomes this whole other thing. The bacon of course is a major player, and that doctored-up ketchup is not to be missed. As a team they made the best meatloaf of my life, possibly yours.

Pioneer Woman says this makes 8 servings. I say it makes 12. It kicks major ass either way.

INGREDIENTS

for the meatloaf

1 cup milk
6 bread slices
2 lbs ground beef
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt, such as Lawry’s
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 to 1/2 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
4 eggs, beaten
8-12 thin bacon slices <--I think I used 9

for the tomato gravy

1 1/2 cup ketchup
6 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
Dash or two of hot sauce – more if you like heat <--I added a wee squirt of Sriracha

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Pour the milk over the bread and allow it to soak in for several minutes.

Place the ground beef, milk soaked bread, Parmesan cheese, salt, seasoned salt, black pepper and parsley in a large mixing bowl. Pour in the eggs.

With clean hands, mix the ingredients until combined well.

Form the mixture into a loaf shape and place on a broiler pan, which will allow the fat from the meat to drain. Line the bottom of the pan with foil to make clean up easier.

Lay bacon slices over the top, tucking them underneath the meatloaf.

Make the tomato gravy. Pour the ketchup into a small bowl, add brown sugar and dry mustard and splash of hot sauce.

Stir the mixture until well combined. Pour one third of the tomato gravy over the top of the meatloaf.
Bake for 45 minutes, then pour another one third of the remaining tomato gravy over the meatloaf. Bake for an additional 15 minutes. Serve with the remaining tomato gravy on the side as a dipping sauce.

Bonus unrelated recipe from Mr. White!!

PS Jeff just said that the meatloaf pictured at the top of this post looks like a trilobite and he's right.