I have now cooked 77 out of 251 recipes in the book which leaves me 174 to go. I know it sounds like a lot. In looking over the list, it breaks down to 5 poultry dishes, 14 meat dishes, 10 fish dishes, 5 soups, 29 salads (10 of which are dressings), 19 side dishes, 8 breads, 20 desserts, and 64 basic or lifesaver recipes. The basic or lifesaver recipes include a variety of sauces, jellies, chutneys, pickled items, mustards, and bases. Some are as straightforward as making chicken stock and others involve complicated concoctions. In trying to cover some ground, I decided to focus for a while on some of the lifesaver recipes. Not to mention the weather has been great and Matt just got a new smoker, so grilling outside lately is hard to beat. The condiments and desserts actually are the perfect pair for the grilled meat.
The first recipe I tried was herbed toasted walnuts. This was a really simple one and a great way to make use of the herbs coming back for the season. All you do is toast the walnuts in the oven and then toss them with melted butter that has steeped with minced herbs (I used oregano, rosemary, and parsley). Served warm, they were a great snack and are just as good reheated the next few days.
The second item was the cippolini onion chutney. The worst part about this recipe was peeling all of those tiny cipollini onions (30 in all).
Once they were peeled, I just browned both sides in a little oil and then made a glaze of honey and red wine vinegar. They finished product was canned with a red anaheim pepper and the reserved cooking liquid.
To serve, you dish out a few of the onions and top them with toasted almonds. We tried this as an accompaniment to steaks. It is really like a pickled onion more than a chutney but it is kind of a neat garnish since the pickled onion packs so much flavor. It also looked really pretty on the plate with the toasted almonds.
The third lifesaver recipe for the weekend was slow-cooker apple butter.
Did you know that apple butter doesn't have any butter in it? I always assumed apple butter was pureed apples and butter but I was wrong. This was actually a pretty easy dish. I just cut the apples into slices (core & all) and cooked in white wine and water until very soft.
After running through a food mill, I added sugar and a few spices and slow cooked the mixture for about 12 hours before canning. The apple butter is delicious on toast. It turned out the perfect consistency of not being runny but also not too thick. The cinammon really comes through on the finished spread and it's a great sweet treat that really isn't unhealthy or loaded with sugar.
Lastly, to dessert which was vanilla ice cream. I love ice cream. It's my absolute favorite dessert so I have been excited about the cold weather passing to try a few of these recipes. My mom gave me the ice cream attachment to my mixer for Christmas. This is a pretty cool gadget. It's a freezer bowl that has liquid in the base. You freeze the bowl for 15 hours and then pour your refrigerated batter into the bowl and a churn attachment mixes the ice cream in about 20 minutes. The batter was made by simmering milk and heavy cream with vanilla and sugar. The cream mixture is then combined with egg yolks to finish the batter. I didn't get my batter exactly right. I think the cream mixture turned a little too custardy thanks to me letting the "simmer" get away from me. Nonetheless, the flavor was perfect and creamy. There were just a few custard lumps in there but no problem...I get to try again 8 more times!
No comments:
Post a Comment