The Guardian Service Ware Blog

Guardian Service Water Bath Cooking: Eggs Baked in Ramekins

2012-01-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

The Guardian Service Roaster platter and lid doubling as a stove-top water bath.

In her PBS series, "The French Chef," Julia Child devoted an entire episode to "Elegance with Eggs," bringing the egg beyond breakfast. She starts with simple baked eggs in ramekins in a bain marie or oven water bath.

We've adapted her method for the Guardian Service Ware oval roaster platter and cover, creating a stove-top water bath that yields eggs which are tender and infused with flavor.

As Child points out in the accompanying Mastering the Art of French Cooking, "eggs offer a variety of presentations and you can draw on practically your whole cooking experience for its saucing and garnishing." In other words: check the refrigerator for leftovers! For eggs baked in ramekins, Child recommends "minced mushrooms, asparagus, spinach, artichoke hearts, diced lobster, shrimp, crab, truffles and/or a slice of foie gras."

As it happens, a foodie Santa brought us not only a free-range goose to cook Guardian Service style for the holidays, but a bit of foie gras. I placed a slice of day-old polenta and a thin slice of foie gras in each ramekin, then topped with eggs and cream.

Eggs Baked in Ramekins
Les Oeufs en Cocotte
(Adapted for Guardian Service Ware from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Individual servings of 1 or 2 eggs baked in porcelain, pyrex or earthenware ramekins. (Any variety of small baking dish will work, here we've used two FireKing lusterware handled ramekins).

For each serving:

1/2 Tbsp butter
1 ramekin 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter and about 1 1/2 inches high
2 Tbsp heavy cream
1 or 2 eggs

Variations:
Herbs, sauces, cheese, leftovers.

Some day-old polenta and a little foie gras dress up simple baked eggs.

Butter the ramekins, saving a dot for later. Add 1 tablespoon of cream and set the ramekin in the simmering water over moderate heat. When the cream is hot, break into it one or two eggs. Pour the remaining spoonful of cream over the egg and top with a dot of butter.
Cover with roaster lid and bake in simmering water bath for 7-10 minutes, less if cooking one egg per cup. The eggs are done when they are just set but still tremble slightly in the ramekins. They will set a little more when the ramekins are removed, so they should not be overcooked.
Season with salt and pepper, and serve.
The ramekins may remain in the pan of hot water, uncovered, for 10-15 minutes before serving. To prevent overcooking, remove from heat when slightly underdone.

NOTE: Alkaline substances can cause aluminum to darken, so boiling water may cause the aluminum to stain, depending on your water's pH. While the staining is harmless, you can prevent it by adding a tablespoon of vinegar or a few drops of lemon juice to the water bath.

Candied Orange Slices

2011-12-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

Citrus in California is like zucchini in the midwest: abundant. In North Dakota, where I was raised, folks will warn you to lock your car in late summer for fear of finding bags of squash when you return. We're lucky to have a neighbor who leaves bags of oranges on the handle of our back door from time to time, and at this time of year, if we're not snacking on them or juicing them, we make a few pomanders to place around the apartment and some candied peel or orange slices.

I like to make batches of these candied orange slices and keep them handy for everything from cookie platters to garnishing salads, desserts or meat dishes. Candied slices won't keep as long as dried peel, but the method preserves more of the orange (and doesn't require as much drying time).

This simple recipe can be multiplied as you wish and can be used with grapefruit or lemon (adjust sugar to taste). I candied four oranges using the large Guardian Service fryer and reduced the remaining syrup for drizzling on pancakes or yogurt or mixing into cocktails or marinades, etc.

Candied Orange Slices

1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup granulated organic sugar
1 organic navel orange, halved and sliced crosswise in 1/4 inch thick slices (about 10 per orange)

In a Guardian Service fryer, combine the water and sugar and bring to a boil. Add the orange slices and cook over medium heat, turning occasionally, until the liquid is reduced to a thin syrup and the orange slices are translucent, about 20 minutes.
Reduce heat to medium low and simmer until the syrup thickens and the slices are tender but still intact, turning occasionally, about 10 minutes.
Transfer the orange slices to a rack to cool.
Further reduce syrup to desired consistency and reserve for another use.
The candied slices can be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks.

Reducing the remaining syrup.

Marmalade syrup, cooling on the window ledge

Roast Turkey and Gravy

2011-11-17T11:30:00.001-08:00

With Thanksgiving week upon us, I thought I'd again post the Guardian Service stove-top method for roast turkey and my own family's gravy recipe, adapted for Guardian Service Ware. A Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours—in Good Health, Pleasure and Profit!

Guardian Roast Turkey

1) Prepare the turkey (bring to room temperature, remove the neck and giblets from the cavity and rinse thoroughly, pat dry and salt the bird, inside and out). Lather with butter, stuff and truss. In a medium pan (we used the 2 qt dome cooker), roast the neck and giblets over a layer of celery and garlic for an hour, then add water and continue to simmer on low until you're ready to add it to the stuffing and/or gravy (see below).

2) Over a medium burner, heat 2 Tbsp. fat and 2 Tbsp. butter in roaster and coat pan well. Place turkey in roaster and sear, browning all surfaces of the bird, 90 seconds per plane so that the skin caramelizes. (This keeps the juices inside the turkey as it cooks). Be bold! We used two large spatulas, rolled the bird in the pan, and grabbed it with a clean towel. Properly trussed the bird can take some handling. Remove turkey from pan; pouring off and reserving excess fat. Place turkey on its breast on roaster rack and lower into roaster. (Optional: we added two whole jalapeños to the roaster to scent the bird and compliment the Californio theme of our stuffing—see below). Cover with lid and cook over both burners at low heat for 15-20 min/lb.

3) Halfway through the roasting period, flip the bird—that is, turn it to distribute the juices. Remove the roaster lid and invert it as a resting tray, then remove the rack from the roaster and place turkey in the lid. Turn the turkey on its back, reposition on the rack and return it to the roaster to continue cooking.

4) The turkey is done when its juices run clear, the wings give and the thigh meat reaches 165℉. Now comes the fun part, finishing by browning the turkey using the deflected heat of the Guardian Service stove-top browning technique. Set roaster to one side of stove, remove lid and position it so it channels the heat over the turkey. Now you are a knight using his shield to roast his catch over an open fire! Turn it any way you please, letting each side of the turkey get a good toasting. Meanwhile baste well to give a healthy brown glaze.

The Lee-Peterson-Robinson Gravy

My mother's family's method for making gravy is a long-held tradition passed down through my great grandmother Ruth Lee Peterson, as Yankee a Puritan as they came. The method is simple, but requires patience and diligence, for which you'll be rewarded with unparalleled flavor.

2) When the fat separates from the browned turkey drippings, pour off all but a Tbsp or two of the excess fat and return the roaster to a low heat. NOTE: Because the Guardian Service pan heats evenly, it's harder to get drippings to really hold to the bottom of the pan*. (We used a free-range bird which has very little fat—just enough for the following step, the roux—but if you're cooking a Butterball, you may need a gravy separator for this step).

3) Whisk 2-3 Tbsp. of flour into the giblet stock and add gradually to the roaster, de–glazing the pan and blending continuously until smooth and thick. Salt and pepper to taste and serve. (Note: You can also use leftover water from boiling potatoes (or pasta) to de-glaze the pan, in which case there's no need for the extra flour—but if you're using the "waterless method" to cook your potatoes, you may not have any starchy water handy!).

Optional: for a heartier gravy, use a blender to incorporate the roasted neck and giblet meat (first removing meat from the neck bones) into some of the giblet stock and add to gravy as well.

*Don't fear a clean-up nightmare—the even heating of the Guardian Service cookware means an easier clean up than cheaper enamel pans which are more likely to scorch.

Roast Pork and Vegetables with Buttermilk Mustard Sauce

2011-10-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

I found an early edition of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" for two bucks at a local a thrift store this week and was happy to add it to our cooking library at last. Juila Child has always been an inspiration, though few food bloggers could claim to know her work as intimately as Julie Powell. Still, I'm happy to rediscover Child and her fellow authors' philosophy on roasts (particularly pork) is in perfect harmony with the Guardian Service Way:

"... we think pork is more tender and juicy if it is browned in hot fat, then roasted like veal in a covered casserole. This slow, steamy cooking tenderizes the meat and renders out the fat very effectively."

This casserole or "waterless" approach appears in our posts on roast poultry and lamb and is simply this: brown the roast on all sides in hot fat, then cook on a vegetable rack.

Rôti de Porc Grand'Mère

(Casserole-Roasted Pork with Potatoes and Onions)

Adapted for Guardian Service Ware from Volume One of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Juila Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck

Serves 4-6

2-3 lb boneless pork loin, marinated with Marinade Sèche, see below

4 Tbsp rendered pork fat, lard or cooking oil

2 sweet potatoes

3 potatoes

2 medium onions

2 carrots

2 garlic cloves, whole

a medium bouquet garni: parsley and thyme sprigs and bay leaf

2 Tbsp butter

2-3 apples, cored, peeled and sliced

1/3 cup cider vinegar

Marinade Sèche

(Salt Marinade with Herbs and Spices)

"Fine for all types of fresh pork. This is our favorite, as it tenderizes the pork and accentuates its natural flavor"

Per pound of pork:

1 tsp salt

1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper

1/4 tsp ground thyme or sage

1/8 tsp ground bay leaf

Pinch of allspice

Optional: 1/2 clove mashed garlic

Mix all ingredients together and rub them into the surface of the pork. Place in a covered bowl. Turn the meat 2 to 3 times if the marinade is a short one; several times a day if it is of long duration.

If moist from the salt rub marinade, pat meat dry with clean dishcloth or paper towels.
Heat 4 Tbsp fat or oil in the Guardian Service Roaster over medium heat, coating bottom of pan well. Add the roast, searing each side for 90 seconds. Remove roast to the serving platter.
Add vegetables and garlic to the roaster, cover and shake to coat vegetables with remaining oil.
Remove vegetables from roaster, add butter and return to medium heat. Layer sliced apples across the bottom, coating in butter. Return roast on top of apples and surround with vegetables. Top with herb bouquet and sprinkle with cider vinegar.
Cover and cook over medium low heat for 1 hour or more, depending on desired temperature of the finished roast. Allow to rest for 15 minutes, carve and transfer to the Guardian Service Roaster platter. Garnish with roasted vegetables and cover until ready to serve.

A pork loin on a roasting rack of apple rings in the Guardian Service Roaster

After the pork has been cooked and placed on a platter, kept it warm for 10 to 15 minutes while preparing the sauce:

Sauce au Babeurre-Moutarde avec Poivre Vert

(Buttermilk Mustard Sauce with Green Peppercorns)

an adaptation of "Sauce Moutarde à la Normande"

1/3 cup cider vinegar

2-3 dozen green peppercorns

1 cup buttermilk

2-3 tsp dry mustard

1-2 Tbsp softened butter

Strain the meat and vegetable juices into a bowl. Degrease, if necessary.
Reduce vinegar and green peppercorns until about 2-3 Tbsps of liquid.
Pour in meat and vegetable juices and boil down rapidly until about 1 cup.
Reduce heat, add buttermilk and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring in salt to taste.
Whisk in dry mustard and simmer 2 to 3 minutes more. Sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon lightly. Correct seasoning.
Off heat and just before serving, swirl in the butter by bits, then pour the sauce into warmed Guardian Service gravy boat.

Cranberry Walnut Oat Scones

2011-10-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

I recently sent some friends a Guardian Service 15" Service Tray as a wedding gift, knowing that they'd come to value it, as I do, for the wonderfully crispy crust it produces on homemade pizza. But because the tray, purchased online, arrived from a third-party seller and I couldn't be there to explain, they put it into use just as its makers intended: as a beautiful serving tray. Indeed, all Guardian Service ware was intended to go directly from "stove to table," with its part Arts and Crafts/part Space Age–Streamline esthetic.

But the tray was never marketed as I've come to use it most, as a baking sheet. Part of the cookware's pitch was its "top-stove" technology—baking on a burner, from quick breads in the Duplex Utility pan to layer cake in the Kettle/Canner—yet the service tray is perfect for traditional oven baking: the thin, rough-textured aluminum resists sticking and distributes heat evenly, creating crisp crusts for pizza or the perfect finish on an eggy holiday gougères.

So in honor of my friends' wedding, here's another recipe well suited to the 15" tray: scones.

I prefer the heartier, Scottish–style scones and the tray is just the right size to bake up a half-dozen large triangle scones. Variations are endless, from savory herb and cheese combinations to the fruit and nut sort featured here.

Cranberry Walnut Oat Scones

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup rolled oats

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 Tbsp. sugar

Gently pat dough into round.

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1/4 cup dried cranberries

2 tsp. orange zest

1/4 cup butter

2 eggs

1/4 cup half and half

Preheat oven to 450ºF.
Mix dry ingredients and cold cut butter into flour mixture until the size of small peas using a pastry blender or two knives.
Beat eggs in separate bowl, reserving 2 Tbsp. to brush tops of scones before baking.
Add half-and-half to remaining eggs.
Make a well in dry ingredients, add wet ingredients and as Irma Rombauer cautions us, "Combine with a few swift strokes. Handle the dough as little as possible."
Turn dough out onto the tray, pat into a large round (approximately 2 inches thick), then slice into six equal wedges with a silicone knife or other scratch-proof tool.
Brush triangles with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for 20 minutes or until browned.

Separate with a scratch-proof tool such as this silicone knife.

Brush tops of scones with reserved egg.

Jalapeño Cornbread

2011-10-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

This traditional cornbread recipe was adapted from "Guardian Service Tested Recipes" to suit the Californio theme of our Gold Rush Stuffing in last year's Thanksgiving post on roast turkey. It cooks to golden-brown perfection in the 10" Guardian Service Breakfast Fryer.

Jalapeño Cornbread

1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 jalapeño peppers, seeded, finely chopped
1 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 T. sugar
2 cups cornmeal
2 eggs
2 cups milk or buttermilk
4 T. melted butter, plus more for sautéing onion and peppers

Melt butter in 10" Guardian Service breakfast fryer and reserve 4 T for batter. In remaining butter, sauté onion and peppers until tender.
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add cornmeal.
Beat egg, add milk.
Mix quickly with dry ingredients and pour batter over the onion and pepper mixture.
Pour melted butter over top and cut through batter with a spatula.
Bake in oven at 400℉ (or in a layer pan on high in Guardian Service Kettle Canner) for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean.

Guardian Service Demonstration Dinner

2011-09-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

In its day, Guardian Service ware was sold door-to-door, often at neighborhood parties where a salesman would prepare a demonstration dinner. Similar to the later Tupperware parties, the sales strategy relied on showing the product to the customer first-hand. The salesmen prepared and presented meals to highlight their pitch: the economic and nutritional advantages of waterless cooking the "Guardian Service Way." The hostess would receive a caddy of highball glasses with matching coasters or candlesticks or salt and pepper set, or other such gift. These dinners were often publicized with listings in the social register, such as the one pictured below.

A typical Guardian Service Demonstration Dinner notice
from the Granite Falls Press, WA (June 19, 1947)

Last week we recreated the Guardian Service Demonstration Dinner (while trying to keep our "Knights of Nutrition" proselytizing on medium low). We packed up the Guardian Service Roaster, Duplex Pan and Economy Trio Cookers, and the Beverage Urn and Coffee Maker and prepared a dinner for eight at our friend Nancy's home in Venice. Among those in attendance were our friend Dirk (who we discovered had sold waterless cookware in his college years) and Sam Watters (author of the LA Times' Lost LA feature on our Guardian Service cookware collection).

We wanted to cook an elegant dinner that would showcase the key advantages of Guardian Service Ware (the economy and nutrition of stove-top, waterless cooking) with fresh, local, seasonal fare, so we left planning the menu until we shopped our ingredients, starting with the cut of meat.

The family farm on which I was raised in North Dakota maintains a small herd of free-range beef cattle which are integral to its organic, bio-dynamic, self-sustaining ecosystem. Here in Los Angeles, we're fortunate to receive most of the red meat we consume from my family's farm, so we never really consider buying beef raised in a feed-lot Cowschwitz. Regular outbreaks of food-born illness have heightened public awareness of the health and environmental risks involved in raising and eating hormonally and genetically modified animals. Whenever possible, we look for a butcher who sources meat from ranches employing ethical, humane practices.

We've been reading and hearing about Lindy & Grundy for over a year and thought what better way to showcase the Guardian Service Roaster than with something special from this excellent charcuterie?

Proprietress Amelia Posada greeted us at the door with a friendly hello—fresh as milk, raven hair tied up in a red kerchief with Bow lips stained to match, a Rosie the Riveter of the Rib Roast. I told her what I had in mind and how many we were serving and she presented a butterflied leg of lamb, artfully trimmed and aged to perfection (and as with all their meats, local, pastured and organic). We'll be back to try the half beef/half bacon ground mix Amelia recommends for a blue cheese-topped burger…

As we shopped for produce at the Farmers Market at Fairfax and 3rd, I surfed some recipe sites for inspiration. All the local organic vegetables and spices we needed were available for the seasonal Persian lamb dish below. We altered a few ingredients from the original recipe, roasting the garlic and jalapeño in advance to mellow and sweeten their effects on the meat.

We prepared one pot each of carrot coins, red and white new potatoes and red and white cabbage in the Guardian Service Economy Trio Cookers (or "triangle pans" as they're often called). And for dessert: a lemon pound cake cooked stove-top in the Duplex Utility Pan, topped with fresh strawberries muddled with brown sugar and plain yogurt and served with Guardian Service Coffee.

Roast Garlic Stuffed Leg of Lamb

inspired by Fakdeh Mehshi Khodra

2 cups chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 cup chopped fresh mint leaves

25 cloves garlic, peeled, roasted and mashed

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp finely chopped jalapeño pepper

2-3 carrots, sliced in half lengthwise

1 large onion, quartered

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp fresh ginger, minced

2 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

4 1/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb, butterflied, trimmed of excess fat, rinsed, and patted dry

1 pound onions, halved

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup red wine*

1 Tbsp cornstarch or flour

*Verjus, a sour grape juice, is traditional for a Muslim recipe. Vinegar and wine are a fine substitute.

Lightly coat 2 dozen peeled garlic cloves in a small or medium sized pot. Cover and place over medium high heat for 5 minutes, until lid is warm to touch, reduce heat to low and roast for 30 minutes, shaking pot occasionally to keep cloves from sticking.
Add minced jalapeños and continue to roast additional 5-10 minutes. Remove pot from heat and allow to cool.
Using a food processor or blender, blend the roast garlic and jalapeño together with chopped mint and parsley and set aside.
Rub the dry spices and ginger into the prepared cut of meat, massaging well.
Spoon a ribbon of the garlic paste into the center of the cut and roll into a roast, securing with kitchen twine.
Heat 1-2 Tbsp of olive oil in the Guardian Service Roaster over medium heat and coat bottom of pan well. Add the roast, searing each side for 90 seconds. Remove roast, add the halved carrots and quartered onion to the bottom of the roaster to form a cooking rack to support the roast. Return roast to pan, add any remaining garlic paste to the top, and sprinkle generously with cider and wine.
Cover and cook over medium low heat for 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on desired temperature of the finished roast. Allow to rest for 15 minutes, carve and transfer to the Guardian Service Roaster platter. Garnish with roasted carrot and onion and cover until ready to serve.
Reduce the remaining roast and vegetable drippings over medium low heat, adding a tablespoon of cornstarch or flour mixed an equal amount of water or wine to the gravy to thicken, if desired. Serve with roast and vegetables.

Rubbing spices into the lamb

Adding the roast garlic-jalapeño-mint-parsley paste

Rolling and trussing the roast with kitchen twine

Searing all sides of the roast seals in the moisture

The prepared leg of lamb resting on a vegetable rack, ready cover and roast

For advice on preparing the carrots, potatoes and cabbage, visit our previous blog post on cooking vegetables the "Guardian Service Way."

Guardian Service Lemon Pound Cake

Adapted for the Guardian Service Duplex Utility Pan. Serve warm or cold. Make ahead, freezes well.

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter

1/2 cup sugar, more if desired

4 eggs, beaten

2 lemons, juice and zest

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Blend butter until creamy, add sugar, then eggs and lemon juice and zest.
Sift together remaining dry ingredients and fold together with remaining wet ingredients.
Spoon into heated, buttered Duplex Utility pan, close and cook for 13-15 minutes on medium low heat. Flip pan and cook additional 13-15 minutes.
Remove from heat and allow to rest unopened an additional 10-15 minutes.
Open pan and gently run a knife along the edge of the cake to loosen, remove to baking rack and cool. Slice and serve with fresh strawberries and yogurt.

Tasty cake, stove-top

Don't miss our other blog posts with recipe ideas for the Guardian Service Duplex Utility Pan and instructions for making Guardian Service Coffee.

Two Seasonal Sauces

2011-09-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a pair of sauces—cooked up Guardian Service style—that celebrate two end-of-summer flavors: peppers and figs; perfect with any grilled meal or outdoor lunch. Serve them fresh or water bath can them to savor later.

The "waterless cooking" method is especially suited to sauces like these because it intensifies and marries the flavors. These can be made ahead in any medium-sized Guardian Service unit (a "triangle"pot, fryer, dome cooker, etc). Each sauce requires adding ingredients at earlier or later stages, so that all reach the desired texture and don't over or under-cook.

Sweet Hot Pepper Relish

Serve with hot dogs, hamburgers, sloppy joes...

Makes 3-4 cups

4 sweet peppers

2 hot peppers

2 carrots

1 medium sweet onion

2 Tbsp. sugar

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

juice of 1/2 lemon

pinch celery seed

salt, pepper to taste

Prepare hot peppers: wash, seed and remove stems from peppers (you may want to use latex gloves for this). Coat with olive oil, add to GS unit and roast on medium for 20-30 minutes, shaking unit occasionally to keep peppers from sticking. Set lid slightly ajar for last 10 minutes to allow moisture to escape. Remove peppers and allow to cool.
Dice carrots into bite-size pieces and add to Guardian service unit. Begin roasting carrots over medium heat.
Meanwhile, prepare sweet peppers: wash, seed and remove stems. Dice sweet and hot peppers and sweet onion together. Add to the roasting carrots, reduce heat and allow all vegetables to cook together for 10-15 minutes, just long enough for the carrots, onions and sweet peppers to retain a slight crunch.
Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients and stir until well-coated; allow to cool. Chill and serve.

Fig and Lavender Chutney

A simple but elegant chutney to serve with pork, chicken, salmon or mahi-mahi, polenta...

Makes 3-4 cups

7-8 large, ripe sweet figs (Turkey, Violette de Bordeaux, Black Mission)

1 medium sweet onion

1 Tbsp butter or oil

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

2 tsp. garlic powder

1 Tbsp agave nectar and/or honey

4 lavender flowers

1 jigger bourbon

pinch fresh ground clove

salt and pepper to taste

Chop onion and sauté in butter (or oil) in Guardian Service unit until translucent.
Add balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, agave and/or honey and continue to cook.
Chop figs and lavender flowers and add to onion.
Add remaining seasoning (clove, salt, pepper and bourbon) and cook for twenty minutes or until the figs cook down into a sauce.
Serve warm or cold.

Retro Rennovation

2011-08-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

The NY Times recently did a feature ("Restoring the Retro House") on Pam Kueber and her excellent "Retro Renovation" blog, which features a "daily dose of midcentury remodeling resources, home design inspiration, thrifty finds and a generous community of people passionate about their vintage and postwar homes—'modern' and 'modest' alike." We've added her site to our Blog Roll—check it out.

Strawberry Shortcake

2011-08-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Most often this hinged pan is used to prepare omelets (and it will, indeed reward you with lofty, golden omelets once you understand its eccentricities). But the marketing team of the Century Metalcraft Corporation dubbed it The Guardian Service Duplex Utility Pan for a reason. True to its "Kitchen of Tomorrow" name, the pan works as mini-Dutch oven to cook up a meal for two quickly and fuel-efficiently. We like putting the pan through its paces (and have adapted it for various uses) but these quick biscuits prove one of the best: the entire dessert takes less than 30 minutes to prepare, from assembling ingredients to presentation.

I've adapted the Shortcake recipe from the Guardian Service Tested Recipes cookbook to yield enough dough for two large biscuits. While I replaced the shortening in the recipe with butter and reduced the sugar slightly, the biscuits turned out light and fluffy (make sure not to over-handle the dough—rolling and shaping with your hands is sufficient).

Freshly whipped heavy cream is traditional (perhaps with a drop of brandy and scant sugar) but here I've substituted a yogurt sauce (scented with agave nectar, nutmeg and vanilla and added a drizzle of pomegranate molasses to the berries in place of a sugar glaze.

Guardian Service Strawberry Shortcake

The classic summertime dessert adapted for the Guardian Service Duplex Utility Pan

1 cup flour

2 Tbsp baking powder

2 Tbsp sugar

pinch salt

2 Tbsp cold butter, diced (plus more for pan)

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

1 dozen fresh organic strawberries, sliced

2 Tbsp pomegranate molasses (optional)

Low-Fat Yogurt Sauce

1 cup low-fat yogurt

2 Tbsp. agave nectar

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

pinch fresh–ground nutmeg

Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, salt)
Cut cold butter into flour. Beat egg, add to milk and mix into flour with pastry blender.
Turn out onto floured board, roll and shape into biscuits by hand, using a light, deft touch.
Heat Duplex Utility pan, add butter and drop biscuits into pan.
Close lid, cook for 8-10 minutes until bottoms are browned.
Open pan, heat opposite side, add pat of butter and coat pan. Close lid, flip pan and brown biscuits on other side.
Remove biscuits from pan, halve and fill with strawberries, top with yogurt sauce.

The complete Guardian Service dessert: Strawberry Shortcake and Coffee

Four Pancake Variations for the Guardian Service Fryer

2011-06-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

We’ve cooked up plenty of Guardian Service “Greaseless” Griddle Cakes for friends and family, but lately we’ve been serving these easy–breezy dishes with intimidating Teutonic names: Pannekoeken, Apfelpfannküchen, Salzburger Nockerln and Kaiserschmarrn.

Don’t let their names and many aliases confuse you: “Dutch Pancake,” “Dutch Baby,” “German Apple Pancake,” “David Eyre’s Pancake”… They're one–pan pancakes, quick and folky yet elegant dishes, all similar in preparation, infinitely versatile and equally suitable for breakfast or dessert. You might even adapt them as a savory for a brunch or luncheon.

We’ve adapted these recipes, traditionally cooked in an iron skillet, for the 10” Guardian Service fryer, which serves 3-4, though you could half again the recipe and prepare it in the 12” fryer for 6-8.

Each recipe starts with a pan of bubbling butter in which the batter is briefly fried before finishing in a high oven to bake into a golden puff, or in the case of the Kaiserschmarrn, scrambled into golden dumplings.

Begin with a basic Pannekoek (or “David Eyre’s Pancake,” as Craig Claiborne dubbed it in an enduringly popular 1966 article for the NY Times). Add apples, and a bit more flour and milk, and you have a traditional Apfelpfannküchen or a German Apple Pancake. Without the apples but with beaten egg whites folded in it becomes Kaiserschmarrn (roughly translated “Emporer’s Hash”). Minus the flour, you have the sweet Austrian soufflé “Salzburger Nockerln,” or Salzburg dumplings.

Pannekoek

or "David Eyre's Pancake"

Simple yet showy, the original one-pan pancake. Get everyone to the table before you remove this from the oven!

(Note that if you replace the nutmeg with a pinch of salt or some herbs and cooked this batter in a cold buttered skillet for twice as long, it would become a Yorkshire Pudding (or poured in muffin tins or ramekins: popovers). Our Guardian Service Gougères, has more flour and cheese and comes closer still to an eggy bread).

3 large eggs

¾ cup flour

¾ cup milk

fresh grated nutmeg

4 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

Juice of half a lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. In a mixing bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add the flour, milk and nutmeg and lightly beat until blended but still slightly lumpy.

2. Melt the butter in the 10” Guardian Service fryer over medium heat. When very hot but not brown, pour in the batter.

3. Transfer pan to oven and bake until the pancake puffs and turns golden brown at the edges, about 15–20 minutes.

4. Working quickly, remove the pan from the oven and, using a fine-meshed sieve, sprinkle with the sugar. Sprinkle with lemon juice and serve immediately with warm preserves. Serves 2 to 4.

Apfelpfannküchen

or German Apple Pancake

Like the Pannekoek above, but with apples

2 large eggs

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

1/4 tsp. salt

Pinch of ground cinnamon or nutmeg

4 Tbsp. melted butter

2-3 small apples

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

Juice of half a lemon or orange

1. Preheat the oven to 500°F. In a mixing bowl, lightly beat the eggs and milk. Add the flour and salt and lightly beat until just blended. Let rest for 10-15 minutes.

2. While batter is resting, melt the butter in the Guardian Service fryer over medium-high heat. When very hot but not brown, add the apples. Cover and reduce heat, simmering until the apples begin to sweat.

3. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over apples and pour the batter over all. Place uncovered fryer in oven, reduce heat to 425℉ and bake until the pancake billows at the edges and turns golden brown, about 15 minutes.

4. Working quickly, remove the pan from the oven, carefully invert pan onto serving plate, and sprinkle pancake with lemon or orange juice and sifted confectioners' sugar. Serve immediately. Serves 2 to 4.

Salzburg Knockerln

Essentially a sweet soufflé, fried then baked

Andrew notes: “One of my fondest memories is of wolfing down mouthsful of crusty, oozy, sweet Norckerln on a romantic date in Salzburg, many years ago, with the beautiful and brilliant young Joanna Schneiderman, as she then was. We took the funicular up the cliff at twilight to sup at the Café Winkler and washed the fabulous dessert down with kaffee mit schlag. Joanna went on to marry my best friend, Ken Albala, who incidentally is the world’s leading authority on pancakes. Worlds of love and memory collide in the crack of a few eggs.”

5 eggs, separated

1 Tbsp. Flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

lemon zest

pinch salt

1 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 275°F. Separate the eggs and lightly beat the yolks with the flour and lemon zest.

2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding a pinch of salt and the sugar.

3. Fold egg yolk mixture into beaten whites.

4. Heat butter in 10" Guardian Service fryer until bubbling and spoon the batter into fryer. (Traditionally this is done in three distinct mounds to represent the three mountains of Salzburg—mine sometimes resemble the lava flows of Haleakala, but they still cook to perfection in the GS fryer).

Kaiserschmarrn

Fluffy, pan–fried scrambled dumplings

¼ cup raisins

1 Tbsp rum (or bourbon, etc)

3 Tbsp. butter

4 eggs, separated

3 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 cup flour

1 ½ cups milk

2 Tbsp powdered sugar

pinch salt

Raspberry Sauce

1. In 10” Guardian Service fryer, simmer raisins with 2 Tbsp of water and/or rum, bourbon, etc.

2. Separate eggs. Beat yolks with sugar and vanilla until golden, gradually add milk and flour, alternating until mixed into a smooth batter.

3. Beat egg whites until stiff, adding a pinch of salt. Meanwhile, add butter to fryer, lightly sauté raisins.

4. Fold egg whites into batter and pour over butter and raisins.

5. When the edges of the batter begin to brown, gently cut through the batter with a spatula and fold over in the pan, scrambling the batter while browning the resulting dumplings on all sides.

6. Serve immediately with powdered sugar, drizzled with warm raspberry sauce.

Spicy Burmese Fish in a Pot

2011-05-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

Of several cookbooks I acquired during recent travel, I've enjoyed reading one in particular, a gift from playwright and director Seth Rozin: "The Universal Kitchen" (Penguin, 1996), written by his mother, the late Elizabeth Rozin, who authored several cookbooks on ethnic cuisines (and imparted her love of language and spicy food to her children).

In her "250-Recipe Tour of World Cooking,” Rozin gallops the globe, comparing the foods and cooking techniques of various cultures, while musing about how cooking makes us uniquely, yet universally, human:

"What we see, through this wide–angle lens, is a pervasive commonality in kitchen practice, across cultures and throughout time... We all make tasty and nourishing broths from the bones of animals; we all simmer meats and vegetables in pots of seasoned liquids; we all devise piquant condiments and savory sauces to give zest and excitement to our food... The kitchen may truly be one of the few places where we can celebrate commonality as well as diversity, for we all trace the roots of what we eat back to the ancestral melting pot and to those among us who first put fire and salt to meat."

When a mutual friend of Seth's, Bobbi, came to sup the other night, we thought it a perfect occasion to try out one of his mom's one-pot meals. In her chapter “Potluck,” Rozin writes:

“Think of the meals-in-a-pot that are emblematic of so many cuisines: the French pot-au-feu, the Louisiana gumbo, the Hungarian goulash, Irish stew, and New England boiled dinner... However they may differ in terms of ingredients and seasonings, these simmered liquid-based meals seem to offer the same advantages to everyone—an economy of time, labor, and utensils a variety of wholesome, nourishing foods cooked into flavorful ragouts that provide sustenance in an easy, homespun, nurturant form. Like the soups from which they probably derive, they shine as the beacon of home cooking and the domestic hearth, with heavy pots and blackened kettles bubbling their aromatic contents at the back of the stove or suspended over the hearth fire.”

Rozin's Burmese recipe, below, is perfectly suited to the Guardian Service method of simmering over a low heat. The meal is quick and easy (prep and cooking in under an hour), yet rich and deeply satisfying as well as nutritionally sound.

We made a few alterations, using Mahi–Mahi in place of bluefin, spring garlic, one habañero pepper, and oyster sauce (though minced anchovies could substitute for the fish sauce as well). We also added chopped sweet bell peppers and bok choi during the last minutes of cooking.

Spicy Burmese Fish in a Pot

adapted from Elizbeth Rozin's The Universal Kitchen (Penguin, 1996)

"Burmese curries—foods slowly cooked in highly seasoned liquids—are generally characterized by two distinct flavoring traditions, the soy, fish sauce, and lemongrass of Southeast Asia, and the dry curry spices and aromatics of Indian cuisine. This delicious and unusual fish curry is more the Southeast Asian type and should be done with a firm, meaty, and full-flavored fish. I find that bluefin works very well, but you can substitute other varieties if you wish. Burmese sauces are almost never thickened with cornstarch or flour and are best served over plain boiled or steamed rice."

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 ½ Tbsp. ginger root, finely minced

4 large garlic cloves, minced

2-3 fresh hot chiles, seeded and minced, or ½ – 1 tsp. crushed dried hot peppers

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

2 cups coarsely chopped fresh very ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 tsp. lemongrass powder, or 2 tsp. finely chopped fresh lemongrass

2 Tbsp. fish sauce

1 ½ – 2 lbs. thick bluefish fillet, cut in large chunks (or mahi-mahi, etc.)

1-2 large bell peppers, cut into large chunks (optional)

4 leaves bok choy (Chinese cabbage), cut into large chunks (optional)

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Small handful chopped fresh coriander leaf (cilantro)

Hot cooked rice (read our post on preparing Guardian Service rice)

In the Guardian Service Tureen (or the 4 qt. "Straight-Sided" Dome Cooker), sauté the onion, gingerroot, garlic and chiles in the oil over moderate heat, stirring, until the onions are soft and the mixture becomes aromatic.
Add the tomatoes, the lemongrass, and the fish sauce and mix well. Simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes.
Place the fish chunks on the tomato mixture, cover, and cook over low heat for about 30 minutes, until the fish is very tender.
During the last 5 minutes of cooking, add the bok choy and bell peppers and continue to simmer on low.
Sprinkle the lemon juice and the chopped cilantro over the fish; serve the curry with individual bowls of hot cooked rice.

Guardian Service Frittata

2011-04-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I returned to Reading Terminal Market to see what quality, sustainably-farmed foods I could find at the Fair Food Farmstand. Even off-season, the Farmstand carries a treasure trove of locally-farmed vegetables, raw milks, yogurts and cheeses and a variety of eggs from cage-free, organically-fed fowl ranging from chickens, ducks and geese to emu (which lay Fabergé-sized eggs with dark emerald-teal shells—marvels of Mother Nature's flamboyance). The Farmstand had all the seasonal ingredients I needed to make an excellent frittata.

Though I'd never cooked or eaten duck eggs, I'm a quick convert: larger and more flavorful than hens' eggs, duck eggs are also more richly nutritious (higher in protein, minerals, vitamins and complex amino acids). They're also beautiful—firm shells, large saffron-colored yolks and thick whites which set up firmly in dishes like this dense frittata.

Often a frittata is flipped to brown both sides or placed under the broiler to finish, but the Guardian Service fryer cooked this dish perfectly in 20 minutes on top of the stove, with a slightly browned bottom and a soufflé-like texture. Allow the dish to cool for 15 minutes before serving and it will lift easily out of the pan.

Guardian Service Frittata

with Duck Eggs, Sweet Potato, Mushroom, Shallot, Bacon and Cheese

Ingredients

6 duck eggs, lightly beaten (Pecan Meadows Farms, Newburg, PA)

2 medium Covington Sweet Potatoes, thinly sliced (Mast Farm, Morgantown, PA)

3 Yellow Dutch shallots, sliced (Tuscarora Organic Growers, Hustontown, PA)

8 oz. Crimini mushrooms, sliced (Mother Earth Mushrooms, Kennett Square, PA)

4-6 strips bacon, fried and crumbled into bits (Niman Ranch)

1/4 lb. "Maidenhead" cheese (or other semi-soft cheese), diced (Cherry Grove Farm, Lawrenceville, NJ)

1 Tbsp. butter, olive oil or bacon fat (optional)

1/4 tsp. salt and pepper, freshly ground

Directions

In the large Guardian Service Fryer, fry the bacon over medium low heat until just crisp enough crumble into bits and remove to dish to cool.
In the rendered bacon fat, sauté sweet potato slices 4-5 minutes per side until wilted, covering the pan between, then remove to dish.
Add an additional Tbsp. of fat or oil to the pan and sauté the shallots until translucent. Add mushrooms and continue to sauté, covered, for another 5 minutes.
Return the sweet potato slices to the pan, distributing evenly with the sautéed mushroom and shallot mixture.
Beat eggs with salt and pepper and pour over the potato, onion, mushroom mix. Sprinkle the diced cheese and bacon bits over the top.
Cover fryer and cook over medium low heat for 20 minutes or until the cheese melts and the eggs have set at the center.

Optional: finish under a broiler for a few minutes until browned or use a metal lid to employ the "stove top" browning method.

Allow the frittata to cool for at least 15 minutes or up to several hours. Invert or slide frittata onto a serving plate and cut into wedges or serve directly from the Guardian Service pan.

Chicken Napolitana

2011-03-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

One of the great joys and challenges of being an actor is travel. While I love to experience the local food and culture of each new locale, I miss home and, in particular, home-cooked meals. So imagine my delight to not only stay in a household in the heart of one of the best “foodie” areas of Philadelphia, the famed Italian Market, but with a host who owns one essential piece of cookware that made me feel right at home: a large Guardian Service Chicken Fryer.

After feasting on some must-have local cuisine (pork scrapple from Reading Terminal Market, cheese steaks at the 70-year-old Jim’s Steaks on South Street, and the fresh and indescribably scrumptious cannolis from the century-old Isgro Pasticceria) I wandered into Molly’s Books & Records yesterday (right around the corner from my temporary home) and found a 1^st edition of Craig Claiborne’s 1963 “An Herb and Spice Cook Book," and therein a simple Italian recipe that not only draws upon the choicest ingredients within two blocks, but is ideally suited for the Guardian Service fryer.

I jotted down a list of ingredients and made the rounds right after work today:

An organic, free-range chicken — Esposito’s Meats (1001 S 9th St).
Oregano and Bay Leaves — The Spice Corner (904 South 9th Street).
Tricolore Fusillone, canned Italian plum tomatoes — Claudio’s (926 South 9th Street).
Mozzarella — Di Bruno Bros. (930 S. 9th Street).
Assorted produce from the fruit and vegetable stands along 9^th Street.

Chicken Napolitana

(adapted from Craig Claiborne’s “An Herb and Spice Cook Book,” Harper & Row, 1963)

1 3-4 lb.	Broiling Chicken, cut into serving pieces
3 Tbsp.	Olive Oil
2 cloves	Garlic, finely chopped
1	Onion, finely chopped
1 tsp.	Freshly ground sea salt
1 tsp.	Fresly ground black pepper
6-8	Mushrooms, sliced and cooked in 1 Tbsp. butter until wilted
2 tsp.	Oregano
2	Bay leaves
28 oz.	canned Italian plum tomatoes
6-8	thin slices Mozzarella cheese
¼ cup	Pinot Grigio (or cooking wine)
	chopped Parsley (optional)

Prepare Chicken: wash, cut into serving pieces, pat dry with paper towel and rub with salt and pepper.
Heat olive oil in Guardian Service fryer over medium heat and brown chicken pieces on all sides. Add the garlic and onion, cover and cook briefly.
Add sautéed mushrooms, oregano, bay leaves, tomatoes and wine. Cover and simmer until chicken is tender, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
15 minutes before chicken is done, preheat the oven to 400°F.
When chicken is tender, uncover fryer and arrange the slices of mozzarella on top of the chicken. Place in the oven only long enough for the cheese to melt. Serve immediately, sprinkled with chopped parsley. Optional: serve on a bed of pasta (Fusilli, Fusillone, Penne, etc).

Long Pepper Pork Chops with Madeira

2011-02-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

We've blogged about quick-grilling chops on the Guardian Service Griddle/Broiler, but for thicker cuts (like these lovely pork chops) we tried a slower approach in the large Guardian Service Chicken Fryer, with its "self-sealing, self-basting cover."

The Tested Recipes cookbook provides several solid mid-century chop recipes ("Baked Pork Chops with Pineapple," "Swiss Steak") but the basic concept—sear, then roast—creates juicy, flavor-infused chops.

Using a vegetable (in this recipe, onions) to support the meat as a "roasting rack" is a key technique with waterless cooking and further flavors the meat while allowing the vapors of Madeira to envelop the chops as they simmer.

Andrew's brother recently brought us an ancient spice that's quickly become an obsession: long pepper. Its spike-shaped fruit is slightly hotter than its cousin black pepper and has a pungent aroma and tang that compliments pork perfectly. If you don't have a foodie-in-law with underground connections, long pepper can be found at Indian groceries and specialty spice suppliers online.

Long Pepper Pork Chops with Madeira

4 thick-cut pork chops

1 tsp sea salt

3 spikes long pepper, ground in mortar and pestle

3 Tbsp. safflower oil (for neutral taste and high heat)

2 Tbsp. Madeira wine (or sherry, fruit juice, etc)

Simple Garlic Prune Gravy (see below)

Prep the chops (rinse, pat dry and trim of excess fat). Optional: render fat for use in gravy.
Rub chops well with oil, salt and pepper.
Place the fryer over medium heat until it reaches the water test "ball stage."
Sear the chops on all sides until browned, 90 seconds per side.
Remove chops from pan. Place four slices of onion in the pan, spacing equally to support each chop. Place chops on onions.
Sprinkle Madeira over the chops, cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 20-25 mins.

Served with a sauce and vegetables (we served Guardian Service potatoes and golden beets cooked in the Economy Trio Cookers and a Garlic Prune Sauce) this makes an elegant meal for four for $20-25 (depending on the cut of meat) in under 2 hours.

Simple Garlic Prune Gravy

4 pitted prunes
2 Tbsp rendered pork fat and/or cooking oil
2 cloves garlic
juice of 1 orange
1 cup wine (red or white)
1/2 tsp. each cinnamon, allspice, dry mustard (like Colman's), dried parsley
corn starch or barley malt (optional, for thickening)
salt and pepper to taste

In a small cooker (like the Guardian Service Tom Thumb), sauté garlic for two minutes in rendered pork fat and/or cooking oil, then add prunes, parsley and orange juice and cook for 10-12 min until reduced to a sauce. Add spices and corn starch or barley malt for thickening and keep warm in the Guardian Service Gravy Boat to serve with baked pork chops.

Sustainable Food in 2011

2011-01-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

This weekend's NY Times launched 2011 with a series on sustainable living which included two great pieces on America's evolving diet.

The first is a jeremiad by Mark Bitmann about cooking simply at home (and a satisfying response to a September article which suggested preparing vegetables was too arduous and specialized for junk-food-addicted Americans). While he doesn't talk about waterless cooking techniques, Bitmann does sing the praises of increased nutrition and economy that attend home cooking:

"By becoming a cook, you can leave processed foods behind, creating more healthful, less expensive and better-tasting food that requires less energy, water and land per calorie and reduces our carbon footprint. Not a bad result for us — or the planet."

James Gorman's piece describes a new foodie movement, invasivores: radical eaters inventing palatable ways to cook invasive species. If anyone catches some wild carp, we'd love to grill it up on the Guardian Service Griddle...

A Happy New Year to our readers and wishes for Good Health, Pleasure and Profit for all in 2011!

PS Guardian Service Santa was able to hunt down a Guardian Service Pressure–Oven with which we'll experiment in the coming months. I'm poring over the original pressure cooker guide, but it's uncharted territory... let's hope we're not scraping pot roast shrapnel off the ceiling. Wish us luck!

Guardian Service Gougères

2010-12-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

With musicians, clergy and actors in my family, Christmas Day was, and remains, a gig for someone. Accordingly, our family celebrations take place in the early afternoon with a spread of finger foods to keep everyone content until all the pros come home. One of Andrew's family traditions which has become a welcome part of the smorgasboard is gougères, a delectable Gruyère cheese puff.

Andrew's mom dollops the cheesy dough into a wreath shape for Christmas. Here, we've adapted her recipe for the Guardian Service 15" round tray, which provides a wide circumference and gives the choux pastry a crisp finish. We've added parsley and roasted red pepper give it a festive "holly and ivy" touch.

Guardian Service Gougères

1 cup water

dash tabasco

1/4 lb (1 stick) butter

1 cup flour, unsifted

6 large eggs

4 cups Gruyère cheese, shredded

optional: dried parsley and roasted red pepper, minced

Preheat oven to 450℉. Butter generously the surface of the 15" round tray.
Add tabasco to water and bring to simmer. Melt butter in simmering water, bring to boil, then add flour all at once, beating vigorously until the mixture is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the pan to form a ball. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
Beat in two eggs, then the remaining, one at a time, until completely absorbed and smooth. When enough egg has been incorporated, the dough will be shiny and pliant enough to fall from the spoon.
Fold in the cheese, blending completely (optional: blend in parsley).
Spoon into a wreath shape on the tray and decorate with roasted pepper. The pastry puffs as it bakes, so butter the surface well and leave plenty of space for it to expand on the tray.
Bake at 450℉ for 8 minutes. This quick initial blast of heat makes the dough steam and rise, after which the temperature can be reduced (do not open the oven door during this time).
Reduce heat to 350℉ and bake an additional 35 minutes until golden and firm to touch with no moisture present. It may be necessary to prop the oven door open for ten minutes or longer at the end of the cooking time to allow the pastry to further crisp (though be sure there isn't a direct draft, or it can collapse).
Remove the gougères from oven, loosen the edges with a spatula, slice and serve (with cream cheese, if you really want to gild the lily). May be made ahead and frozen. Reheat in a low oven until barely warm.

Butternut Squash Bisque

2010-12-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

Denver's Brown Palace Butternut Squash Bisque, garnished with salad burnet.

As a friend who stopped by to taste this soup remarked, "Oh, that's not good... that's ffffffive–star brilliant." Indeed it is: at the turn of the century, this bisque was served at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, the first atrium–style hotel ever built and host to the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, Theodore Roosevelt and Queen Marie of Romania among others.

The recipe comes to us through Andrew's mother, Kathi, whose mother and grandmother were among the "Beautiful People of Denver." Andrew, an expert soup chef, has adapted this family favorite to take advantage of our Guardian Service cookware. Rather than boil the vegetables, we stove–top roast the squash and potatoes first, then mash. The perfect caramelization of the vegetables adds fantastic depth to an already rich soup. Plus, the waterless technique preserves nutritive value and flavor, helping to make up for this soup's truly staggering Gilded Age dairy fat content. Serve it in small portions... but they'll all want seconds. Andrew reminds us: like all soups, this improves over days and freezes beautifully. Plus, it is excellent served chilled.

Butternut Squash Bisque

from Denver's Brown Palace

(adapted for Guardian Service Ware by Andrew Martin)

1 1/2 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded.

1 lg sweet potato peeled

1 qt milk

Pinch each nutmeg and cinnamon

2 T. honey

1 tsp. pure maple syrup

2 T. mascarpone cheese

2 T. creme fraiche

1/2 c heavy cream

1/2 dry sherry

salt and pepper to taste

1) Roast the squash and sweet potatoes the Guardian Way, whole or in chunks, in a large cooker (pictured: the Guardian Service Chicken Roaster) until soft enough to mash with a potato masher. Low heat, about thirty minutes and a bit.

2) Let cool a bit, then mash the sweet potato/squash until smooth.

3) In bowl, add milk to the mash, and mix in remaining ingredients, blending until smooth. To give it a nice texture we used an egg-beater, but a blender or food-processor may suit you.

4) Pour into Guardian Service Tureen. Stirring constantly, bring soup back to a gentle simmer and cook 5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. If too thick, add more milk and adjust seasoning. Makes 2.5 quarts.

Roast Turkey, The Guardian Service Way

2010-11-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

We began our culinary adventure with a trip to LA's Farmers Market at Fairfax and Third, a food-lovers' destination since 1934. (Side note: that's me crooning pop songs of the era at the Market's 75th Anniversary with vintage swing and big band Dean Mora and his Orchestra).

We were shopping a bit ahead of the Turkey Day rush, but the good folk at Puritan Poultry supplied us with a free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free turkey which was locally-raised—so local, in fact, that the Sun Valley ranch from which it originated was closer to our apartment than the Farmers Market itself...

Weighing the bird at Puritan Poultry at LA's Farmers Market

As this was our first Guardian Service turkey, we opted to cook it stove-top, a hallmark of Guardian Service cookware, and found that the stove-top method yields a rich and succulent turkey. While it is not "steaming" a turkey (as Joy of Cooking's Rombauer disparages it) this method employs lower temperatures, using the meat's own juices and is very similar to braising, a type of pan roasting. The bird can be browned at the finish using the "stove-top browning" technique to reflect burner heat back onto the food's surface. The result is a delectably juicy bird that excels in flavor, tenderness and ease of slicing. It may not have the uniformly mahogany appearance and crispy shell of the Norman Rockwell ideal, but you won't suffer the dry and flavorless meat that often results from open-roasting in an oven, nor need to brine it for hours to ward against an arid turkey.

The large Guardian Service roaster is an impressive and beautiful design. The oval pan has claw like handles which allow for a firm grip, and jutting from either side of the deeply-pitched dome lid are wing-like handles, reminiscent of Mercury's helmet. But while the roaster may be the Big Bad Boy of this cookware line, it's still modest by today's out-sized expectations—its internal dimensions are 11" wide, 16.5" long, and about 9" high, if you're cooking with the rack. Our turkey was an ideal size for the roaster—just over 13 lbs—but I don't think the roaster could handle a turkey exceeding 15 lbs.

Roasting a turkey "The Guardian Way" employs a similar technique to the one we presented when roasting a chicken. It's just a bigger roaster and a bigger bird, so you may want a friend or two handy for some of the hefting and turning.

Guardian Roast Turkey

The Lee-Peterson-Robinson Gravy

1) Over medium heat, reduce the roaster pan drippings until they caramelize and stick. NOTE: It can take 30-40 minutes for the sugar in the drippings to properly caramelize and the fat to separate and run clear. During this window it is crucial that you ignore your nagging doubt and the hand-wringing of loved-ones who think you're burning the gravy and wondering why dinner is getting cold and why you're ruining this festive occasion... Patience—and DON'T SCRAPE the bottom of the pan.

2) When the fat separates from the browned turkey drippings, pour off all but a Tbsp or two of the excess fat and return the roaster to a low heat. NOTE: Because the Guardian Service pan heats evenly, it's harder to get drippings to really hold to the bottom of the pan*. (We used a free-range bird which has very little fat—just enough for the following step, the roux—but if you're cooking a Butterball, you may need a gravy separator for this step).

3) Whisk 2-3 Tbsp. of flour into the giblet stock and add gradually to the roaster, de–glazing the pan and blending continuously until smooth and thick. Salt and pepper to taste and serve. (Note: You can also use leftover water from boiling potatoes (or pasta) to de-glaze the pan, in which case there's no need for the extra flour—but if you're using the "waterless method" to cook your potatoes, you may not have any starchy water handy!).

Optional: for a heartier gravy, use a blender to incorporate the roasted neck and giblet meat (first removing meat from the neck bones) into some of the giblet stock and add to gravy as well.

*Don't fear a clean-up nightmare—the even heating of the Guardian Service cookware means an easier clean up than cheaper enamel pans which are more likely to scorch.

And now, as a bonus, this year's creation: a '49er, Californio–style stuffing!

Gold Rush Stuffing

Inspired by Hangtown Fry, an oyster-bacon omelet first concocted at the Cary House Hotel in Placerville, CA (then called "Hangtown" for its numerous hangings). A prospector who'd just struck it rich requested the most expensive dish the hotel chef could prepare. Eggs, bacon and oysters were precious ingredients, due to their delicacy, perishability and the distance from which they were brought in the 1850s... an early example of conspicuous consumption via "Food Miles."

3 cups jalapeño cornbread, cubed

1 cup bacon, cooked and crumbled

6 fresh whole fried oysters (dipped in beaten egg and cornmeal, fried in bacon fat)

3 celery ribs, chopped

2 leeks, chopped

2 tomatillos, chopped

4 leaves fresh sage, minced

1 sprig fresh thyme

1/2 cup giblet stock

1 egg, beaten

freshly ground salt and pepper

1) In the large GS fry pan, cook up 6-8 slices of bacon, crumble and reserve.

2) In bacon drippings, sauté the leek, celery and tomatillos. Remove and reserve.

3) Dip each oyster in beaten egg, dust with cornmeal and fry in bacon fat, adding butter as necessary.

4) Mix all ingredients. Stuff turkey and top each end with half an apple before trussing. Cook excess in separate unit for about 30 minutes at 325℉.

- Damon Kirsche/Andrew Martin

For side dishes, we served up Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Garlic (a perennial favorite from the NY Times) and another family favorite which we'll write about in our next post: the renowned Butternut Squash Bisque once served at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel.

Until then, thanks for reading and from our home to yours: Happy Thanksgiving!

Guardian Service Basics: Beans

2010-11-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

For regular readers of the Guardian Service Ware Blog, an apology for my sabbatical. I've been working a new job (yay!) which requires some driving (boo!) and I've had a little less time to both cook and write about it. I've also witnessed my eating habits change as a result. Late and large meals are ever the pitfall of my profession: you don't want to eat a lot before a show and after the curtain comes down (and a commute) you're both wired and tired and ravenous for a hot meal at 12:30 in the morning... and the fast food option rears its ugly head.

To combat the temptation, I've been trying to cook foods that will feed us over several days and improve as leftovers, like beans.

Beans. If the word conjures cans of syrupy mush or inedible pellets, we invite you to rediscover this nourishing, flavorful, economical and varied food, perfectly suited to Guardian Service Cookware.

Back in December, 2008 we had the good fortune to attend a talk at the LA Public Library hosted by the Culinary Historians of Southern California and featuring Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California and Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo Beans in Napa, CA. Both spoke about this humblest of staples in almost lyrical ways. We've incorporated more beans in our diet ever since.

In his recent book, "Beans: A History," Albala explores the "social, ethnic and nationalistic associations" of beans as well as the "philosophical and religious reasons why people have eschewed or embraced the lowly bean." His blog chronicles his latest food adventures—check it out.

Sando raises heirloom varieties of beans he has sought out in local communities throughout Mexico and Central America and their flavors and textures are as varied and nuanced as is their array of patterns and colors. He explained part of the mystery of rock hard beans, even those which have soaked overnight: your average supermarket navy beans may well have sat in a warehouse for a very long time before they reach your pot.

Cooking Beans with Guardian Service

The cooking time of dried legumes varies depending not only on their age, as mentioned above, but upon where they were grown and the kind of water in which they're cooked, which can make cooking them frustrating. Buying fresher beans from a consistent source can take away some of the guess work, but ultimately you'll need to patient and watchful. Fortunately, the consistent heat produced by the Guardian Service Cookware not only reduces the overall cooking time, but helps cook the beans uniformly.

1) In a large bowl*, soak overnight dried navy, lima, kidney or other dry beans in 3 times as much water as beans, removing any beans that float to the surface. Some cooks recommend changing the bean water at least once during the soaking—it removes some of the oligosaccharides which cause flatulence. I side with Irma Rombauer and Adelle Davis who both recommend cooking dry beans in the water in which they were soaked: vitamins and minerals are also passing into the soaking water and are lost with each water change.

*Don't soak beans in the Guardian Service Ware pan. While cooking with aluminum is safe, soaking for long periods can draw more metal into the food and possibly temporarily discolor your pan.

2) Transfer beans and water to Guardian Service Ware pan (the Casserole/Tureen unit works well or one of the dome cookers; if possible, select a unit with a glass lid, as it's easier to see that the beans remain on a steady simmmer). Slowly bring beans to a boil in the water in which they were soaked and maintain at a simmer over a low heat for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Optional: Add a bay leaf or two.

3) When the beans become tender and are nearly done, add salt, pepper, fats or additional seasonings. (Don't add these before the beans are cooked or the ingredients will lose their potency and may lengthen the beans' cooking time). Remove a few with a spoon and blow on them. If the skins peel away, the beans are cooked.

We cooked some Rancho Gordo Vaquero Beans mixed with some navy beans, then tossed them with olive oil, fresh herbs, minced shallots and sea salt. There are endless variations, though beans always pair well with tomatoes, onions, meat, cheese... "Dried peas and beans, being rather on the dull side," Rombauer writes in The Joy of Cooking, "respond readily—like a good many dull people—to the right contacts."

Thanks again for checking back, loyal readers. To make up for our absence, for our next blog we're planning something special: the week before Thanksgiving, we'll dig out the large size Guardian Service Roaster and roast up our first Guardian Service turkey!

Kettle/Canner Baking: Fig, Almond and Lavender Tart

2010-09-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

The two pounds of fresh, organic, locally-grown figs seemed like a good idea when we bought them. We'd bake some yummy turnovers or maybe a little jam, we thought. But when the temperature skyrocketed over the weekend (peaking at yesterday's 113-degree thermometer–buster), we thought again, as firing up our drafty old oven now seemed like a very bad idea. I pulled out the Guardian Service Kettle/Canner and did some stovetop baking instead.

I adapted the recipe below from one by Barbara Wilde, whose l'Atelier Vert (Green Studio) is devoted to traditional French home and garden style. It makes a delectable treat—chewy, crispy, flaky and juicy—and the nut filling gives it higher ratios of protein and fiber and lower sugar and fat than your average dessert. If you serve it with yogurt, it's almost healthy.

Tarte aux Figues Provençal

Fig, Almond and Lavender tart

2 c. almonds, blanched (or blanched hazelnuts or walnuts)

1/2 c. sugar

1 tsp. dried lavender, leaves and flowers

1 egg

1 tsp. Madeira (or pure vanilla or almond extract)

1 generous pound perfectly ripe black figs, cut lengthwise in quarters

2-3 Tbsp. sugar and dried lavender, for dusting

2 Tbsp. lavender honey (or mild floral honey), optional

1) Prepare a standard pâte brisée (pie dough) for a 9-10 inch crust. Shape it into a flattened round, wrap in wax paper and refrigerate at least 2 hours. Roll out and line a tart pan, prick all over, and place in freezer for at least half an hour.

2) Preheat Kettle over high heat for 10 minutes. Remove the crust from freezer, line with foil, and fill with dried beans or baking weights. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the edges turn pale gold. Remove from oven, remove weights and foil, and reserve.

3) In a food processor, grind the almonds with the 1/2 cup of sugar. Add the lavender, egg, and Madeira, pulsing until it forms a paste. Delicately spread the mixture over the prebaked pastry shell.

4) Preheat Kettle over high heat. Arrange the fig slices in concentric, slightly overlapping circles. Sprinkle with 2 to 3 Tbsp. lavender sugar. Place tart on top baking rack and carefully lower into Kettle. Cover and bake over high heat for 30 minutes or until the figs darken and ooze a bit of juice. Remove tart and rack from the canner and let stand 10 minutes before serving. Optional: drizzle evenly with the warmed lavender honey and serve à la mode.

NY Times: America Hates Vegetables

2010-09-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

Photo: Chris Martin

This weekend a NY Times article titled "Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries" was picked up as Huffington Post's lead story and subsequently around the blogosphere. Frankly, I pity the lot of them—the author and her interviewees. Kim Severson goes to great lengths to support a view that preparing vegetables is hard work, time-consuming and expensive. She writes:

People know that vegetables can improve health. But they’re a lot of work. In refrigerators all over the country, produce often dies a slow, limp death because life becomes too busy.

Now, I'll grant you, at the end of a long day, washing and chopping a head of broccoli can seem like a lot of work, might even seem time-consuming, but... really? She goes on:

In the wrong hands, vegetables can taste terrible. And compared with a lot of food at the supermarket, they’re a relatively expensive way to fill a belly.

If you boil a vegetable until it's dead, it will taste terrible. But to argue that "they're a relatively expensive way to fill a belly" is infuriating. Expensive relative to what? A triple-bypass? She goes on:

...a busy Manhattan resident who works for a pharmaceuticals company, would eat more vegetables if they weren’t, in her words, “a pain.”

“An apple you can just grab,” she said. “But what am I going to do, put a piece of kale in my purse?”

For weeks last March, the NY Times' most popularly emailed article was two simple recipes for that super health food, kale. Or, try an even simpler solution for a single serving on-the-go: Rip a few leaves of kale into bite-size pieces, muddle them with some salad dressing and chill them overnight. The acids in the dressing will "cook" the greens enough to make them a tender snack for lunch the next day. Stick that in your purse.

And the Times' last word? That summary statement is given to an analyst for a global marketing firm:

“Eating vegetables is a lot less fun than eating flavor-blasted Doritos,” said Marcia Mogelonsly, a senior analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm. “You will always have to fight that.”

I admit that we have serious problems in our nation's "food deserts," where fresh produce is not readily available. And cooking for one person isn't easy, especially if you spend most of your day away from home. And, whether for one or a household, cooking requires planning and work.

This article promotes the idea that fresh-cooked vegetables have to defend themselves and compete in a marketplace with junk food and panders to an America resigned to the Snack Food industry, deaf to social food movements and hopelessly addicted to greasy boxes of salty transgenic Frankenfoods.

We propose that perfectly cooked vegetables, crisp, juicy, abounding in flavor and nutrition and minimally processed (as is the Guardian Service Way) are incomparable to fast "food" and we invite writers and readers of the NY Times to take 15 minutes and try for themselves.

Guardian Service Recipe: Knickerbocker Nut Bread, a September Song

2010-09-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

In previous posts, we've put the Duplex Utility Pan to its most traditional use, frying omelets. But as the product leaflet notes, this pan was intended to handle everything from "quickie meals" and "dolling up left-overs" to baking meatloaf, loaf cake or quick bread. After a failed brownie mix experiment in our last post, I returned to the original recipe leaflet.

I assume "Knickerbocker Nut Bread" was named by the Century Metalcraft marketing department to give the recipe book neo-colonial charm—to the best of my knowledge there's no traditional bread by this name. Though Knickerbocker is a Dutch surname dating to the colonization of Manhattan, Washington Irving's satirical A History of New York (1809) was written under the pseudonym "Diedrich Knickerbocker" and became so enduringly popular that the name has graced everything from knee-pants to Hollywood apartments to the NY Knicks since that time. Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson based their 1938 musical satire "Knickerbocker Holiday" on Irving's short stories (minus Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the two for which he's perhaps best known) and gave us the classic "September Song").

On a personal note: I'm eternally indebted to Sleepy Hollow—it's Andrew's birthplace.

Knickerbocker Nut Bread

(from the Century Metalcraft/Guardian Service "Duplex Utility Pan" product leaflet)

3 cups flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract*

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 cups milk

1 cup chopped nuts

Sift dry ingredients. Add egg, milk and nuts. Bake in buttered Duplex Pan, allowing 13 minutes to each side.

*Note, erratum: The original recipe lists sugar twice on separate lines: "1 teas. sugar" and "1/2 cup sugar". I've substituted vanilla (optional), though I suspect the authors may have intended 1 tsp. of soda... it doesn't need it. The 4 tsp. of baking powder provide all the leavening required for this quick bread to fill the pan once completed.

Additional Notes: Begin with ingredients at room temperature. Heat 1 Tbsp. butter in one side of the Duplex Pan (in open position) until butter turns light brown.

Spoon bread batter into buttered side until almost full. Close unit, reduce heat to "low," and bake for 13 minutes.

Open the pan, butter and heat the opposite side, then close and reverse unit, baking the unfinished side for an additional 12-13 minutes (watch it—even on low heat it can burn quickly).

Unmold loaf to wire rack and allow to cool for ten minutes before slicing.

This recipe spares the fat and sugar, yet baked in the aluminum pan produces a dense, almost coffee or pound cake like consistency: a knockout served fresh for breakfast with butter and jam or cream cheese and jelly and rich enough to serve with ice cream for desert. It slices and toasts up beautifully. Wrap it in foil and it will keep well in the fridge (I'm sure for over a week... ours hasn't lasted that long). Vary with cinnamon and raisin or lemon zest and poppy seed.

Guardian Service Backyard: Buffalo Ribs, Corn on the Cob and Brownies

2010-08-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

As the dog days of August continue, we fixed another meal over coals last night, juggling items on the portable grill in a similar method to the "tandoori" dinner in our last post. Here's another attempt at cooking a complete meal out–of–doors with our Guardian Service cookware.

Last night's menu featured:

- Grilled Barbecued buffalo ribs and peaches

- Corn on the cob (steamed with Anaheim pepper and Brussels sprouts)

- Fruit and nut brownies (almost, see below)

...all prepared over 12-15 briquettes on a portable grill, using the Guardian Service Tureen and Duplex Utility Pans.

Timing and preparation are crucial: Start with the corn (and/or other vegetables) in the Guardian Service Tureen, set to one side of the grill. Once the pot is warm to the touch, stack the marinated ribs (and peaches) on the remaining grill space. When the corn is tender (roughly 30 minutes) remove the Tureen and set nearby to keep warm. Glaze the ribs with remaining barbecue sauce and finish cooking. Remove ribs and cook the brownies in the Duplex Utility pan for half an hour, flipping the pan after 15 minutes.

Corn on the Cob: Smoky, slow cooked peppers are traditional to Southwestern cooking; to get the same flavor with our Guardian Service Tureen, we added Anaheim pepper to our corn on the cob before cooking over the coals. Lined with corn husks and layered with Brussels sprouts (employing the "basket" technique, which I blogged about in our last post), the Guardian Service "waterless cooking" technique marries and infuses flavors with spectacular results: garden–fresh corn tinged with sweet, spicy pepper and caramelized sprouts.

Ribs: We marinated the buffalo ribs (grass-fed and organic from Handy Market in Burbank) in garlic, bacon drippings, salt, pepper and 1/4 cup homemade barbecue sauce, grilled them, then re-glazed them with plenty of sauce, finishing on the grill for another 20 minutes. Alongside the ribs, we grilled barely-ripe, locally-grown peaches, halved and marinated in the same barbecue sauce, as a compliment to the ribs. NOTE: You'll want a damp rag handy as the Tureen is bound to get messy during this process, and clean up is a snap, when it's warm.

Brownies on the Barbie?: Not really. Since the coals were still hot, we whipped up some Trader Joe's packaged brownie mix and threw it on the grill in a buttered Duplex Utility Pan. This turned out not to be the best method for brownies, which need moisture to escape to form a chewy crust—the opposite of what the Guardian Service pans are built to do. Warm from the coals and topped with ice cream, the gooey chocolate lava flow was yummy, just not an ideal brownie.

For our next post, I'll try using the Duplex Utility Pan to make a classic "Knickerbocker Nut Bread" from the recipe in the original accompanying leaflet—will the result be a doorstop or delectable?

Guardian Service Backyard Tandoori

2010-08-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

We were spared the scorching temperatures that socked most of the nation last month, but yesterday's warmer weather drove us out of doors rather than face heating up the kitchen for dinner. Our improvised meal was not only memorably delicious, but a solid adaptive use of Guardian Service cookware—a Pan-Asian Fusion meal undreamed of by the cookware's designers, yet one that honors their tenets of nutrition and economy in our common pursuit of "Good Health, Pleasure and Profit."

This method is inspired by tandoori* cooking, though instead of a clay oven, we use a portable 14 1/2" charcoal grill and our Guardian Service Casserole unit. When the coals are hot, the Casserole unit builds up a head of steam, gently cooking the vegetables at the grill's center, while the meat is grilled on the perimeter. The seared meat is then added to the mix. As the fire cools, it finishes the meal at the perfect low temperature required for "waterless cooking" with Guardian Service Ware.

Guardian Service Backyard Tandoori

(Five basic steps. Try any combination of vegetables and/or meats.)

Marinate the meat or fowl.
Layer the vegetables in the Casserole unit according to cooking time required—fibrous vegetables (carrots, celery, turnips, parsnips) in a "basket" layer (the bottom and sides), starchier vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes) to the center and the juicier, more delicate vegetables, which require little to no cooking, on top (tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, peppers).
Place the covered unit over a small amount of charcoal (12-15 briquettes) in the center of the grill.
Grill the meat: place the pieces of marinated meat around the outside edge of the grill, searing the outside edges until brown. (We use the Guardian Service Economy Trio trivet to prevent grill marks from burning into the Casserole, but it's not a necessity).
As the meat browns, place each seared piece into the Casserole along with any remaining marinade and cover. Finishing cooking for 30 minutes.

Note the color retention in the vegetables (and thus nutritional retention) from start to finish. The low, constant, contained heat of the waterless cooking method creates an incredibly nutritious meal and works wonders with inexpensive cuts of meat and any variety of vegetables and sauces.

Andrew improvised a Chicken Masala Tandoori last night employing the above method (carrots, sweet potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, cauliflower, jalapeño peppers, scallions, basil and chicken thighs marinated in Masala Sauce with sesame oil, juice of half a lemon, juice of half an orange, salt and pepper). Served withbread and chutney. Bon Appétit!

Chef Andrew. Not only does he cook an outstanding meal, but he suffers this dopey apron. And he's kinda cute too... I guess he can stick around.

*A true tandoor is made of clay and is used throughout India, the Middle East and Central Asia and employs high temperature cooking in a cylindrical clay oven or a grill. Andrew combined the grilled, smoked effects of tandoori cooking, with the slow, low heat requirements of Guardian Service Ware.

* * * * * * *

Stretch the fuel economy even further? As dinner was served, we placed a carafe of water over the remaining coals, enough fuel to bring it to a boil and brew a pot of Guardian Service Coffee (with dessert accents of fennel and cinnamon added to the grounds).