Kitchen Fail.

Friends, sometimes it's important to point out the obvious.  Today it is this: The purpose of making chicken & vegetable broth is to have a bowl full of broth, not a colander full of soggy chicken & vegetables.

I bought my own organic chicken at the co-op.  I roasted it myself.  It was beautiful, and I was proud.  Then, before I was able to eat it, I came down with the stomach flu.  Bummer.

Two days of recovery later, I decided I would make this chicken into chicken soup.  I stuck it in a stock pot full of boiling water, added some vegetable scraps, and let it simmer for a while.  Then, when everything had properly steeped, I poured the contents into a strainer over the sink... WITHOUT CATCHING IT ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!

So now the plumbing in my apartment got some yummy seasoned chicken broth, and I'm left with this:

Good job, Katie.  And you call yourself... a cook? *sigh*  I think I'm going to put a stop to the rest of my kitchen projects for the evening and see if I have better luck tomorrow.  (These are the times I wish I had a dog to eat my mistakes...)

Creme Fraiche Quiche, and my new appliance.

I may never get married again.

Friends, I have news.  This Christmas, I welcomed a new arrival into my life: a Cherry Red, sexy, delicious, KitchenAid mixer.  It is the love of my life.  And to christen it in, I made Joy the Baker's Creme Fraiche Quiche.  Man alive, it was a good day.

Then, to top it all off, Joy mentioned my Christmas baking in her latest post.  (I know.  Some people get excited to meet someone like LaBron James.  I get all nerdy about virtual baking buddies.)

But back to this quiche.  I know puff pastry and creme fraiche are expensive, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  I need to know what that thing tastes like.  And it was worth it.  The egg part bakes up to be all fluffy and melt-in-your-mouth good, and the puff pastry crust is the perfect soft texture to compliment the delicate middle.  And, well, you add bacon and gruyere to anything and it's gonna be fabulous.

My brother refers to this as
"Wake and Bake".

I'm on a quiche quest now.  First I'm going to learn how to make puff pastry, then I'm going to experiment with plain yogurt instead of creme fraiche (cheaper), and then I'm going to start putting wild and crazy things in there.  Like whole cloves of garlic.  Or fresh thyme.

Brunch invitation coming soon.

Caramels

If you've read a few of my posts, you know that I'm easily distracted.  Case in point: these caramels.  My brother wanted me to make him some chocolate chip cookies, but on my way through the "C"s in my recipe index, I came across the instructions for caramels, which I have never made before.  "Oooo!  I'm gonna make caramels!" I said, and I pranced off into the kitchen to find the ingredients.   Not until several hours later, when my brother was hunched over with gut rot from too many caramels, was it mentioned, "Hey, weren't you going to make chocolate chip cookies?"  Oops.  Next time.

My dentist is gonna be pissed.

I only got one picture of this process, partly because I was busy with a candy thermometer, but also because you really don't want to know what goes into caramels.  (Hint: Everything bad for you is on the list.  Except bacon.  But I don't see why you couldn't throw a little of that in there, too.)  What you see in this picture is brown sugar and an ungodly amount of corn syrup.  What you don't see are the two sticks of butter and the can of sweetened condensed milk that I added later.  Lord help us all, they were delicious.

You can make them, too.  I promise all you need is an accurate thermometer and a decent attention span.

Quick Caramels

1 cup butter
2 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

Line an 8x8 or 9x9 inch baking pan with foil, extending foil over edges of the pan. Butter foil, and set aside.

In a heavy 3 qt saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add brown sugar, condensed milk, and corn syrup, mix well. Cook and stir over medium high heat to boiling. Carefully clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. Cook and stir mixture over medium heat to 248F or firm ball stage. (10 to 15 minutes)

Remove the saucepan from the heat; remove thermometer. Stir in vanilla. Immediately pour caramel mixture into the prepared pan. When firm, use the foil to lift it out of the pan. Use a buttered knife to cut into 1 inch squares. Wrap each caramel in waxed paper. Makes about 2 pounds.

Props to my former co-worker, Jane, for this recipe.

Wild Rice Stuffed Pumpkins

I'm handy with a whisk and a screwdriver.

 I am really excited about this recipe.  Not only because it's orange and involves tucking food inside more food, but because I made it up!  I know.  I'm awesome.  (And I was inspired by several awesome friends and cooks who have made other pumpkin-stuffed beauties.)

So here's what you'll need, and be prepared for a larger-than-usual grocery bill:

2 medium-sized pumpkins, about the size of a kindergartener's head
1 cup wild rice (or wild rice blend, like the one I used)
2 cups chicken stock
1 Tbsp butter + more for smearing and sauteing (total? about 4 Tbsp)
1 Tsp salt + more to taste

7 garlic cloves, hacked into big chunks (just do it)

1 medium onion, chopped

3 celery stalks, diced

20ish mushrooms, sliced

1/3 lb Gruyere cheese, grated

3/4 cup hazelnuts

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg (as fresh as you can get it)

Before they get their rice filling, those pumpkins need to bake for a while at 350.  I'd say an hour is a good amount of time.  But scrape out the guts first.  How?  After surveying a group of my most serious foodies on Facebook and using my imagination, I decided to carve it... well, like a pumpkin.  Saw around the top with a paring knife or serrated knife, then find some sort of thin metal object to catapult the lid across your kitchen.  I used a flathead screwdriver, but a crowbar would work, too.

Once the guts are out, smear the insides of the squash with butter, put the lids back on your squashes and place them in a 9x13" pan (I prefer Pyrex).  Open oven, insert pan.  Bake - like I said - for an hour.  While you wait...

Hazelnuts.  Pretty.

Throw the rice, butter, stock, and salt into a pot and cook yourself some grain.  I'm not gonna walk you through this process.  You're no dummy.

Next, saute up the following the garlic and onion, adding a swish of salt (because that's what fancy cooks do).  When the g & o are glossy and starting to get soft, add the celery and mushrooms.  When that's all about halfway cooked (not fresh, but not wilty), transfer the works to a bowl.  Stir in the nuts, Gruyere and nutmeg.  Taste it to see if it needs salt.  It probably does, so add some.

There.  Your stuffing is done.  Pull out the squash, stuff with stuffing, and stuff stuffed squashes back into the oven for another hour.  Remove from oven.  Stuff squash and stuffing into self.

Flourless Orange Cake

I learned something today.  Well, two things actually: 1. The Craftsman is open for brunch until 3pm, which is awesome; and 2. When using whole oranges in a recipe, you'll get the best flavor if you boil the oranges first.

Now, orange-boiling is a tedious task because it involves changing the water twice so that the bitterness of the orange doesn't get absorbed back into the fruit.  I know not everyone digs this sort of long process, but I'm telling you, it's worth it.  (Just like when Martha Stewart tells me to refrigerate cookie dough for two hours before baking.  There's a reason she has her own magazine.)

The other time-consuming part of this recipe is that it calls for "caster sugar".  This is not cane sugar and it is not powdered sugar - it's something in between.  And maybe you can get it at the grocery store and maybe you can't, but the roads were slippery today, so I just used my mortar and pestle.  I suppose you can use a food processor, too, but I'm all about manual labor today.  Anyway, the sugar ends up looking kindof like fine little snowflakes.  Pretty.

Aside from the aforementioned shenanigans, this recipe is rather simple - oranges, almond meal, baking powder, sugar and eggs.  Oh, yeah.  And you're probably wondering what almond meal is.  Well, pretty much it's finely ground blanched almonds.  Sounds fussy, but you can buy it in a bag at the co-op.  Just gonna warn you, though: it's hella expensive.

You can find the recipe for Flourless Orange Cake here.

As usual, there were a few instances where I didn't follow directions.  I boiled the oranges all proper-like, blah blah blah... but the order in which I combined the ingredients went kindof like this: throw everything except the almond meal in my (borrowed) KitchenAid mixer, whip it around for a while, stand in awe of the electronic device doing all the work, then add the flour.  Pour into pan.

The actual instructions were much more careful about number-of-seconds-between-adding-eggs and adding-the-orange-puree-in-three-shifts, but... I went to yoga in between a few of the preparation steps and thought I remembered how everything went in.  Oh, well.  It still turned out.

Another "learning experience" I had during this baking experiment was when I went to check the cake after 50 minutes of baking: It had apparently been done baking about 8 minutes earlier.  Lesson learned?  Check on your stuff ten minutes before the recipe says it's going to be done.  I'm sure this sort of thing was taught to me in 7th grade home ec. class, but that was a long time ago, and sometimes I forget things.

The ResultsThis cake is fantastic: juicy, moist, orange-y, sweet-but-not-too-sweet, and well-textured.  I'm going to make it for your birthday.

Granola

Free!

My cookie sheets are worthless.  They have been for a long time, but sometimes I'm slow to catch on.  The last five things I've made on them - mostly cookies and roasted vegetables - have all come out black on the bottom.  So I've decided to get rid of them.  Any takers?  They might be worth something on the scrap metal market.  But they're unsuitable for kitchen use.  And they're not even magnetic, so you can't even use them for magnetic poetry.  Harrumpf.

(FYI: I'm replacing them with baking stones.  If you haven't used them before, you should know that they're magic.  Everything I've baked in them looks like perfection.)

Last weekend I spent a few days at my parents' house in "the country".  I did a lot of baking, but nothing y'all haven't seen before, so I didn't create any new posts.  (The Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies were a big hit, by the way.)  One of my mom's friends is an excellent cook, and she had made some homemade granola, so when I went over to her place to deliver some baked goods, we made a little exchange.

Mmmm... Have you ever tasted granola that had the essence of "toastiness" rather than "sweetness"?  That's what this stuff tasted like.  It's just the way I like my breakfast - not too sugary, but with a lot of crunch.  With a little batting of the eyelashes, I was able to pry the super secret recipe from her.  (Actually, she just copied it out of this month's Bon Appetit magazine.)

Today was a perfect fall day for being a homemaker, so I made the granola.  If you want to stop by for breakfast tomorrow, this is what I'll be having.

Modifications
I used sunflower oil instead of canola oil because there's a family in Pierz, MN that produces it.  I also opted for apple juice-sweetened dried cranberries instead of dried blueberries, 'cause blueberries are hella expensive.  The tang is a little intense, but I still like it.  Maybe currants next time?

Ps. Have you seen my new apron.  It's sexy.  And so am I.

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

Photo Credit: Martha, not me.

I have found my new favorite cookie.  I'd take a picture of them, but every time I make them, I can't keep them around long enough to get a good shot.  Yes, they're that good.  Earlier this week, I made a batch that was supposed to make 24 cookies, but it only made 15. That meant I must have eaten 9 cookies-worth of dough before I put them in the oven.  Dang you, Martha Stewart.

So here's the recipe.  I cheated a little, because there's nothing more annoying to me than grating ginger, so I keep this stuff around for instances such as these.  You can get it at the co-op, and it pretty much lasts forever.

The other finicky thing about this recipe is that you have to refrigerate the dough for two hours, and then again for 20 minutes.  I'm not sure why (hey, I never claimed to be an expert), but I'm not gonna mess with perfection, so I just do what Martha tells me to do.  The nice thing about all these annoying and time-consuming activities (waiting for dough to rise, refrigerating cookies for hours before you cook them, waiting for milk to cool to room temperature, etc.) is that you can do other things while you're waiting.  Like laundry.  Or watching six episodes of How I Met Your Mother.  For instance.

Now that these cookies are gone, I have to find something else to bake.  Any suggestions?