Cow Camp Creamed Corn, or: Winter Doesn’t Have to be Boring

I have been in a little bit of the winter blahs lately.  At least food-wise.  Beef potatoes, potatoes, beef.  There are only so many ways you can eat them each week without wishing for something more. And for some reason cabbage is the only local green we can find right now (no one even has squashes!  Doesn’t anyone know you can winter over squashes?).  And I don’t really love cabbage.

So Greg reminded me to shop our freezer.  We canned tons of tomatoes, peaches, and froze beans, corn, rhubarb. . . .

So I did.  And here’s one of my favorite recipes for all that frozen corn.

Cow Camp Creamed Corn
2 c. corn
8 slices bacon
3/4 diced red onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 c. heavy cream (or whole milk — if milk, add 2 T of flour to the milk and whisk before putting milk into pan)
8 green onions (I haven’t done this because green onions aren’t in season, but I’m sure it would be tasty)
1 red or green pepper (I freeze these just by chopping them, popping them in a bag, and freezing them – no blanching necessary)
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the bacon over medium heat.  Remove the bacon and crumble.  Add the onions, garlic and pepper, and saute lightly.  Add the corn kernels and saute lightly.  Add the milk or cream and cook over medium heat until vegetables are cooked to teh desired consistency.  Season with salt and serve.

Beef Liver

Hello blogosphere!

I’m finally back.  And with exciting news.  We tried beef liver tonight.  Yes, we did.  Remember when we ordered that half a beef?  And they asked us if we wanted a liver?  And we said yes (out of curiosity) and then ended up with 4 livers because no one else wanted theirs?  Yes, that beef liver.

All the while we’ve been enjoying the fabulous ground beef, the amazing roasts, the delicious steaks (and man, we hardly ever had steaks growing up so I feel like a queen), I have been dreading the task of using up that liver.  It’s been a tiny little worm in the back of my brain.  And last week, we came across a recipe in the More with Less Cookbook called “My Children Love Liver.”  So I thought to myself, “Deep breath, Mackenzie.  That sounds tasty, doesn’t it?  Let’s finally try that liver.”

The whole time I was cutting the liver (“Man, this is a weird texture, is it supposed to be this bloody?  I guess so.  Weird. I need to remember to bleach my cutting board”), breading the liver (“Definitely going to throw this plastic bag away”), and frying the liver in bacon fat (“Hey!  This smells great!  It smells like bacon and onions!”), I composed a positive blog review in my head.  I really wanted to like liver.  I really wanted to be the exception to the rule.  I wrote the whole darn positive blog post in my head before I even put a piece of liver in my mouth.

I made it three pieces into the pile of liver and onions before admitting that a love affair with beef liver is just not in my future. I did, however, put a full 30% more beef liver in my mouth than Greg did.  His final thought after that final piece of beef liver and a terrible face-twist: “It tastes like a cow smells.”

Our verdict?  It might smell like bacon, but it tastes like liver.  So let’s make pasta for dinner instead.

People who might like “My Children Love Liver”:  People who like extremely soft meat.  People who like liver. People who like to taste the way a cow smells.

Pizza dough

You mean I haven’t already told you about our pizza dough? Really?  I thought I had.  Well, here you are then.  Greg is the one who handles bread in our family, and here are his never-fail, highly delicious, pretty darn quick pizza dough recipes (made with our own home-ground grain of course).

1.  When we don’t want to wait around for the pizza dough to rise once, we use Smitten Kitchen’s rosemary flatbread recipe.

2.  Our other pizza dough option is often the Focaccia bread recipe from Simply in Season cookbook:

Focaccia bread:

1 c. warm water
1 T. active dry years.
Combine in a bowl, stirring until yeast dissolves.

1 c. whole wheat bread flour
2 T. olive oil
1 T. sugar
1.5 t. salt
mix together the dry ingredients and add the yeast, stirring until smooth.

Gradually add in 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 c of flour until to make a stiff dough.  Knead 8-10 minutes until elastic.  Place in greased bowl, turn to grease both sides, cover with a damp cloth, and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, 45 minutes. Bake in oven (with ingredients for pizza on top) 12-20 minutes on 450 degrees.

Pizza

Hello.  Life has been busy between breaks and family Christmases and getting back into the swing of working.  So this is only a brief post, brought on by the delicious taste of pizza in my mouth. 

Are you ever bored of the classic pizza combos?  Even though pizza is pretty much the ultimate food, it needs its surprises and variations to keep your taste buds happy.  So here are a few of my favorite variations, including one we just discovered last night.  And these are all white pizza variations, which means you make your crust, brush it with a little olive oil, and then add your toppings, without any tomato sauce.

All variations cover a 9×13 cookie sheet of dough. All variations are baked until the pizza dough is browned and done (I have no idea how long that takes.  20 minutes, probably?  I just keep a watch on it).

1.  Pear and gorgonzola.  1-2 pears, 1/2-1 cup of crumbled gorgonzola.  You are not allowed to say you don’t like gorgonzola because you don’t like blue cheese dressing (it is like night and day) or even because you don’t like gorgonzola.  Cooked gorgonzola is twice as tasty.

2.  Rosemary pizza.  Italians ate this all the time as an after-school snack.  Make your dough, put rosemary and olive oil on it.  Done.   Sometimes I add 1/2 cup of parmesan because I am a certified cheese addict.

3.  Asiago and Apple pizza.  Asiago is at least 10 tens better when it’s baked (and it packs a punch, so this variation is not as expensive as you might think).  So you know this one is going to rock your world.  We used 1 granny smith apple sliced thinly and about 1/2 cup of crumbled asiago.  The tartness and the cheesiness all together was FABULOUS.  We tried it for the first time last night and it is going to be one of my favorites forever and ever.  And yes, it is still good leftover today for lunch.  It is ROCKING left over. 

4. Potato pizza.  It sounds weird, but don’t knock it.  Sprinkle rosemary over the pizza crust, slice 2 potatoes thinly, and spread them on top.  Doubles your starch intake (for twice the fillingness?).  It is our variation on the Italian pizzas with french fries on top.

5.  Mushroom and parmesan pizza.  Either canned or fresh mushrooms work perfectly well.  You’ll need 2 small cans, 1 8-oz can, or about a cup and a half of fresh sliced mushrooms.  We used about 1/2 cup of shredded parmesan.  I think we usually add rosemary to this, too.  And sometimes we add kalamata olives, which is AH-MAZING.

Now, I dare you. Try a white pizza.   And if you feel like being really Italian, hard boil an egg, shell it, and put it in the center of your pizza.

Eat local, eat more safely

Alright, so I’m a hippie.  But sometimes even hippies get tired of eating locally and seasonally.  Even though they went to all that trouble canning tomatoes until 2 am (or their fabulous husband did).  Sometimes I’m a little tempted to just buy a hamburger from McDonald’s or a bunch of bagged spinach from Giant. 

Then I read an article or news headline that reminds me buying groceries in a regular old grocery store can be scary.  Dangerous, even.  E. Coli, for instance, has been found in tomatoes, spinach, and beef in the last year.  And apparenly it is not the USDA’s purpose to look after the public health.  Or so I gather from this rather damning quote from the NY Times:

“Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s [USDA's] Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing [for e. coli in beef], but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.”

If you’re interested in reading the whole article (and believe me it is long and made me feel somewhat nauseated) you can find it here.

Fish

I love fish. How could you not love fish?  Delicious, quick to cook, best with something simple like lemon or tomato. . . good for you, all those great things like long-strong omega 3-fatty acids (I don’t know what it means either, but supposedly it’s healthy). . . . The problem is, pollution is making certain types of fish unsafe.  And quite a few types of cheap, easy-to-come by fish aren’t being sustainably managed.  I’ve always struggled to remember which fish are good for you and which fish are sustainable, so today my mission was to look up some resources to help myself.  And possibly you.

Super Good Fish (healthy and sustainable)

A Seafood Pocket Guide (this one now has a home in my day planner)

A Smart Sushi Pocket Guide (somebody really thought on this one.  I love sushi.  I want to feel as guilt-free as possible while I eat sushi.)

More lists of fish.  And links to fish recipes. (they mention NPR.  You know they’ve got to be right.)

And now, friends, you can enjoy your fish even more.  Because you’ve got a clear conscience about how much mercury you’re consuming as well as how sustainable your diet is.

Secret Ingredient & Samovar Tea

Thanks to Mom’s graduation and the Christmas season, I am home in AL.  And I also got to see my grandparents again!  As always, I learned something new.  Grandma revealed to me the truly stunning fact that our family does indeed have a Secret Ingredient — a blend of 13 herbs and spices that can kick it up a notch for just about everything (including Grandma’s turkey stuffing recipe).  We call it Spice of Life. Yes, you know what that means — Kwisatz Haderach joke!   Haha.

I also tasted a delicious Samovar Tea, a recipe my mom’s college roommate from her sophomore year.  She got the recipe that year and never made it until now.  It is delicious.  Perfect for your holiday revelries.

Samovar Tea
4 c. water
2 c. sugar
6 sticks cinnamon
1 T. whole cloves

Make a syrup of the sugar and spices listed above.  Boil for 5 minutes.

4 T. lemon juice
1 T. grated lemon rind
3/4 c. orange juice
3 T. grated orange
3 c. pineapple juice

Add the juices and rinds.  Allow to steep.

1 c. boiling water
5 black tea bags (Mom uses lipton or something not too nice or expensive)

Brew the tea in 1 c. boiling water.  Strain both juices and tea.  Combine and add 7 c. cold water.  Heat to serve.  Serves 25 (or 8 if they really like it and want seconds).

Grar.

No posts this week.  Too much to do at work and getting ready to leave for Christmas.  Check back later.

Homemade Mints

Here are the homemade mints to fill the toe of that stocking or that new candy dish you’re going to get for Christmas.  And honestly, they are quite easy to make.  Mine turned out sort of weird and lumpy looking, but I also didn’t bother forming them into tiny balls or neat little patties or anything either.  I just sort of glopped the filling into the chocolate.  Because that’s how we roll around here.  Like any working woman, I’m learning not to fixate on how things look as long as they are nutritious and delicious and done on time.

From Jam it, Pickle it, Cure it

2 c. confectioners’ sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I know people say olive oil has a taste, but we used olive oil and you’d never know it)
1 tablespoon peppermint oil or extract
1 tablespoon water
1 1/2 cups good-quality chocolate chips or chunks (we used milk, but one imagines dark chocolate would be possibly even more delicious.  You know.  If you’re the kind that freaks out over dark chocolate.)

Combine the sugar, salt, corn syrup, oil, and peppermint in a large bowl.  Beat at medium speed, adding the water a little at a time until the mixture becomes a malleable dough.  Pinch off 1-inch long pieces of the dough and roll into balls.  Place the balls on a rimmed baking sheet (covered in wax paper or saran wrap if you are dishwashing-averse) and freeze for 20 minutes.

Place the chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl and heat on high power for 1 minute.  Stir with a fork and microwave for 1 minute more.  Stir again and microwave for another 30 seconds-1 minute, until the chocolate is melted and shiny and runny.  (You can also just heat in glass or metal bowl over a pan with a few inches of simmering water in it — whatever floats your boat.  My microwave, for instance, flashes 6666 and beeps continuously if left on for too long.)

Remove a few mints from the freezer at a time.  Working quickly, roll them in the chocolate with an implement (the chocolate will be hot!  So your hands may not be the best implement).  Transfer it to a rack placed over a second rimmed (and again saranwrap or waxed paper covered if you hate cleaning dried chocolate) baking sheet and leave it to dry.  Keep rolling things and re-heating your chocolate as needed (1 minute increments for the microwave or as your best judgment tells you in the double boiler).

Thyme Roasted Apples and Onions

I saw this recipe and thought the idea sounded delicious — but it was way too fussy.  Switch the oven racks every 10 minutes.  Glaze with a teaspoon here and a teaspoon there.  So I shortened it up a bit and made it a lot easier.  And it still tasted delicious.  And it was doable by the likes of me for a holiday dinner (and all 3 dishes I made were done at the same time!  Go me!  I never manage that!).

4 cups apple cider
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt plus additional for sprinkling
6 7-to 8-ounce onions, halved through root end, each half cut into 6 wedges
6 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh thyme, divided (or 3 tsp. dried thyme)
6 Braeburn (or Fuji) apples (about 2 3/4 pounds total), peeled, halved, cored, each half cut into 4 wedges  (I used Granny Smith which where delicious and stood up well to the baking)

1.  Boil cider in large saucepan until reduced to 2/3 cup, about 28 minutes.
2.  Whisk in butter. Season glaze with 1 teaspoon coarse salt.
3.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Butter a large casserole dish. Toss onions and apples in large bowl with the thyme and 1/2 of the glaze. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Place the pan on the op rack of the oven and roast apples and onions for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.  After 20 minutes of roasting, add the rest of the glaze.
5.  Increase oven temperature to 475 degrees. Roast onions and apples until tender and slightly caramelized, watching closely to prevent burning, about 10 minutes longer.