Zucchini Patties, or Something To Do With Little Squashlings

I'll admit it, I have to spell-check "zucchini" every time I write it. We could spell it zukini, as in, "Eat more zukini to fit in a bikini." No?
Well, bikini assonance aside, I do not mean to imply that the following recipe is in any way slimming, it's just a yummy way to use up the zucchini that your over-zealous gardener neighbor gives you every year.

Ingredients:
5 small/medium zucchini (or the one giant one that was growing sneakily at the back of the garden) grated (approximately 4 cups)
1/2 cup semolina flour, or whole wheat flour (fine corn flour if you need these gluten free)
3 eggs
2 green onions, finely diced
2 tablespoons finely chopped Italian parsley
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon dried dill
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3 ounces soft goat cheese (chevre), crumbled 
olive oil

a lemon, some Greek yogurt, and more Italian parsley to serve

Heat the olive oil in a NON-STICK pan over medium-high heat, using enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan well. (I had my stove on 9 then had to turn it down to 8 after the first batch.)  

After you've grated the zucchini into your mixing bowl, the best thing to do is grab handfuls of it at a time and squeeze the heck out of it over the sink to remove some of the moisture. Mix the grated zucchini in with all of the rest of the ingredients and then drop rounded spoonfuls of the batter into the pan carefully, smooshing them flat as you go, so they look like little pancakes. Fry them in batches, cooking for three minutes per side. Don't crowd the pan too much because you don't want them touching each other, it makes it hard to flip them over. This recipe should make at least 12-16 patties. If your batter starts to look a little runny between batches, you can add a tablespoon more of flour and mix really well before continuing.

They can go into a warm oven until serving, or you can just enjoy them at room temperature. Serve with fresh lemon squeezed over, good generous dollops of Greek yogurt or sour cream, and roughly chopped fresh parsley. 

Don't Embarrass Your Chili Pot by Chucking in Tomatoes

Cold. Rain, Wind. 

One hundred year old house with minimal insulation.

Arizona transplant must get warm.

Solution: chili con carne with homemade tortillas.

For flour tortillas:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (make sure your baking powder isn't ancient)
2 tablespoons lard (yes, lard)
1 tablespoon butter
3/4 cup water

Rub the lard and butter into the dry ingredients with your hands until it looks all crumbly. Add the water and  mix up until you have a ball of dough. Let this hang out for ten minutes while you heat up a very lightly oiled-rubbed smallish pan over medium heat (cast iron is good if you have it).

Tear off pieces of the dough, however big you want, and roll them out as thin as you can. Cook them by laying them one at a time in the hot pan for about thirty seconds to one minute on each side. You only want a few tiny flecks of golden brown on them, you don't want them to get crispy (or do you?).

 For the chili:

2 pounds of either ground beef or finely chopped beef
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 slice of bacon, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup of your favorite hot chili powder, I like Grandma's hot chili, but sadly it's been discontinued
4 dried Gaujillo chiles (in the Mexican spice section at the grocery store) ground fine (I use an old coffee grinder)
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon good cocoa powder
1 tablespoon honey, or agave syrup, or brown sugar
Enough water, stock or beer to cover the meat

In a medium sized pot, heat the olive oil and bacon to medium high, then add the meat along with all of the  spices and chopped veggies and brown it all well. Cover with liquid and bring up to a bubble. Simmer covered for at least an hour. If you have time, I really recommend adding a few cups more liquid and cooking for two or three hours, or throwing it in your crock pot on low all day.

Serve with a lot of grated sharp cheddar cheese or queso fresco, this helps "cool" the chili, it's pretty spicy. I recommend wrapping your tortillas in foil and warming them up before serving- or you can get all fancy-schmancy and toast them in a pan with butter.

I would serve a crisp cold lager with this, or a very cold bottle of Coca-Cola.

p.s. Tomatoes aren't terrible in chili or anything. The chili police aren't going to arrest you. If you wanted to take the leftovers and mix them with a can of diced tomatoes or tomato sauce and more beer and a pinch of cinnamon and serve it over rice, well then go right ahead and Godspeed.

Many Thanks To Cornwall for the Pasty

Whatever the true origin of the Pasty, they are nice looking and even nicer to eat. They were popular Cornish miner lunches back in the day, and are traditionally stuffed with meat cubes and rutabaga or turnip. They are also a fantastic make-ahead camping food. Wrap them in foil and heat them up near (but not too near) the coals and you will be a happy camper. My version is a bit different and is created like so:

Ingredients for the filling:

1 1/2 lbs beef chuck, cubed
1/3 cup flour
1 large potato, cubed
1 medium carrot or parsnip, diced
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil or clarified butter
2 teaspoons celery salt (or more to your taste)
2 tablespoons dried thyme
1 tablespoon black pepper (let's not be stingy)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Enough water or chicken stock to not-quite cover the ingredients, this will depend on the size of your pan.

Heat the oil in a pot over high heat, then add the cubed beef that you have dusted with the flour. Brown the meat for five minutes, then throw the rest of the ingredients right in the pot. Cook on low UNCOVERED for at least one hour, stirring gently on occasion. I want you to cook it until it is really thick and dry. You want the juices to look more like gravy than soup. You will get some stuck to the bottom of the pan, which is okay (just soak the pan before you try to scrub it). Let the filling cool down significantly before you stuff your pasties.

Ingredients for the pasty dough:

1 1/2 lbs. all purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
6 oz. cold lard
2 oz. cold butter
8 oz. cold water, or slightly more if your flour is dry

Sift the dry ingredients together with a sifter or just shake them through a strainer, then cut in the cold fats using a pastry cutter or a large fork. 

Add the cold water and mix with your hands. You want to dough to all stick together, if it doesn't, this is when you drizzle extra water if you think you need it, but the dough should be dry and stiff.

Now don't think of this as a pie crust, it's not. You don't want some crumbly thing that won't hold together. At this point, unlike pie crust, you are actually going to knead this hard dough for a minute until it feels smooth-ish instead of chunky and grainy.  Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 30-40 minutes. DON'T SKIP THE REFRIGERATION!

When the pastry is ready, divide it into 6 pieces. Roll each piece out to about a ten inch round circle with your rolling pin. You can lightly dust your board with flour, but this isn't a sticky dough, so you hardly need to. 

Place a nice generous semi-circle shaped blob of filling on one side of each circle, then fold the dough over to cover it. Press the edges together and either mash the edge with a fork to crimp it closed, OR crimp it like the edge of an apple pie (which is what I did), OR roll the edge over and squish the it down so it looks like a rope. Here's a great YouTube video that shows you how to do it: Pasty Crimping

Brush the tops of the pasties with an egg wash, and bake on a cookie sheet in a 325 degree oven for 45 minutes, but raise the heat to 350 at the end and cook ten minutes longer to get more color on the top if you like.

Pasties ready for the oven

   

February is Carb Month: Blackstrap Bread

There are times when I just have to have bread. Thick and chewy, toasted and buttery, a slice of this blackstrap molasses bread with anise will be yummy to my carb-craving tummy.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose white flour
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons anise seed, plus extra for sprinkling
2 teaspoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses,  I like Aunt Patty's
2 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil
2 cups warm water
1 packet, or two teaspoons instant yeast

Mix the water, yeast, molasses and oil or butter. Add the flour, anise, cocoa powder and salt and mix well. Knead for one minute, then place in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it rise at least a half hour, up to one hour. Knead the dough another minute or two, then form into a nice round loaf and sprinkle with more anise seed. Place on a baking pan and put in a warm place until it rises to double it's size. My house is always freezing, so I put it in my oven on the very lowest "warm" setting to rise. Bake at 375 for 50 minutes.  Let the bread cool completely before slicing.

Serve this toasted with butter and jam for breakfast with Earl Gray tea, or toasted with good egg salad and a cup of frothy Guinness stout for lunch.

Quick Egg Salad: 6 hard boiled eggs, chopped, 2 heaping tablespoons Best Foods or Hellman's mayonnaise, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, 1/4 teaspoon celery salt, 2 dashes Tabasco, 1 dash nutmeg, 1 tablespoon grated or finely chopped onion or 1/2 teaspoon onion powder, and a dash of paprika.

Braised Beef and Lettuce with Dill

Cooked lettuce. It's sweet and lovely. Please don't try to be a lettuce snob and substitute something darker like kale or dandelion greens in this dish. The whole point here is to have mild sweetness- this is a happy, smiley dish. It's a dish to make you feel cozy. You may watch re-runs of Happy Days or Mork and Mindy while you eat this, you may not discuss obscure 19th Century Russian literature or translate the works of Thucydides.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of lean ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup of cherry tomatoes slices in half
1 small head green lettuce, or half of a normal sized one, roughly chopped
1/2 sweet onion, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons of sherry
1/2 cup warm water
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon dried dill (very important)

Over med-high heat, cook your ground beef in the olive oil until it is well browned. Add the sliced onions and salt and pepper to taste, and cook for another 2-3 minutes, still on med-high. Add the tomatoes, sherry and water. Let this bubble up, then stir in the dill and lettuce and turn the heat down to a low setting (like a 3) and cook for another 7-10 minutes. 

I took the picture before adding cheese, but if you are a dairy fanatic like I am, you can sprinkle on top a mild soft cheese, a dab of Greek yogurt, or a knob of Irish butter. 

This recipe serves two, with each serving adding up to only 325 calories, assuming you use lean beef and limit yourself to 1 ounce of goat cheese to top each serving. I am not suggesting you count calories, but you have to admit, that's a nice lunch for that caloric price!  

Roasted Lavender Chicken and Yams

It's cloudy and chilly, and that means only one thing, I need to stuff myself with comfort food. Nothing is more comforting than roast chicken. Okay, maybe a grilled rib eye is...or bread pudding...or macaroni and cheese...never-mind. The POINT is that hot juicy chicken, and sweet melt-in-your-mouth yams are pretty damned comforting.

Le recipee eez as follows <---say that with le faux French accent, because it makes it fancier.

5 organic chicken drumsticks ( I say 5 because that's what comes in a vacuum sealed package from Costco, one or two more or less really doesn't matter)
4 large yams, or 5 medium sized ones (yams are orange inside, sweet potatoes look almost like regular potatoes inside, although they work fine too)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup fruity and/or sweet white wine like a moscato
1 heaping teaspoon dried lavender (I have purchased this at Target, believe it or not, and also Cost Plus)
1 teaspoon dried orange peel, or zest an orange (you can use the juice too, whatever)
1 heaping teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 heaping teaspoon lavender
1 heaping teaspoon marjoram 
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 heaping teaspoon rosemary

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash the yams and cut them in half lengthwise. In a roasting pan (if you don't have one, your big lasagna pan will work fine) arrange your drumsticks and your yams in a single layer, don't stack anything, you want everything snugly laying side by side. You also want the skin side of your yams facing down. Pour the wine over everything, then pour the olive oil over. Next sprinkle all of your seasonings as evenly as possible, concentrating the garlic and rosemary on your chicken. The amounts on the seasonings are just a guideline, feel free to sprinkle on the seasonings right out of the bottle, and just go for it until everything has a nice even dusting! 

Roast in the oven for 45 minutes at the 425 degree temperature, then add a 1/3 cup water and tilt the pan a bit so it runs around, then cook another 10 minutes on 300 degrees. 

During cooking, the sugars from the yams will ooze out and get really dark colored, don't worry about it, it's not hurting anything. (Although you might have to soak the pan a bit before you wash it.)

When you serve your dish, pour a little of the syrupy glaze from the bottom of the pan over the chicken. You might want to serve a glass of that white wine that you used to cook it with, I mean what the hell are you going to do with that bottle of wine? You don't want to be one of those people who keeps open bottles of wine in their refrigerator for a year. That's just embarrassing. And it's insulting to the winemakers of the world.

 P.S. Cost Plus World Market is a good place to get spices at a decent price, as is Trader Joe's and Target (it was weird buying spices at Target, but they have been pretty good so far for the price.)