Pictured left, two Navel oranges in the back, a blood orange front left, and a Valencia at far right.

When you live in an agricultural area, you tend to take fruits and vegetables for granted. We certainly do. And oranges might be the pivot for that since where I live, in Orange County, California (oranges, Orange County?) we used to be THE center of orange growing. For a long, long time. But now more of them are grown in Riverside County, the next county over (east) from Orange County. There’s still lots of rural land in Riverside County. Not so much here in Orange County.

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As part of the lore of baking, I had always heard or read that once you combine the baking leavening agent (baking powder or baking soda) with any wet ingredients, you’ve got to bake it right away. Because the leavening will do its thing and die otherwise. Well, there’s something wrong with that reasoning, because this recipe, for a make-ahead coffee cake – WITH both baking powder and baking soda contained in it, can sit overnight in the refrigerator and in the morning it bakes and rises just fine. How come? I don’t know. Maybe somebody with more of a cooking chemistry background can answer the question!

Over the years that my DH has been in his men’s Bible study group, whenever it’s his turn to host, I scramble to find something that will work. Usually I have to bake something the day before and Dave reheats it in the oven for a short time in the morning, or I’ve gotten up at some really unreasonable hour in order to prepare and bake something so it’s ready to serve by 6:45 am. But neither option has been ideal. So when I saw this recipe online recently I knew I’d make this the next time Dave hosts the group.

This makes two 9-inch (round or 8-inch square ones) pans of coffeecake. You can halve it, as I did, but the other option is to freeze one of them in batter form (up to a month) and just add 10 minutes to the baking time when you bake it from a frozen state. I mean, is that easy, or what?

Leave it to the folks at Cook’s Illustrated (aka America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Country) to develop a make-ahead bakery item that works. I subscribe to an email from Cook’s Illustrated (although I don’t pay for an online subscription, just the magazine) and it was sent out with one of them, and the recipe was available then. Not now. I printed it out back then, but did find it online at another site also. But, back to how the make-ahead part works. I pulled out my favorite reference book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. It says that using cream of tartar releases 2/3 of its leavening power within 2 minutes of mixing. But if the acid (whatever it is in the batter that provides acid – like buttermilk, yogurt, brown sugar, molasses, fruit juices, vinegar and even chocolate) is not very soluble (so that would likely be yogurt, brown sugar, molasses – not the more liquid of the acids), then it can be held for awhile and only when it’s baked does the leavening begin to work.  Baking powder, on the other hand, is called “double-acting” because it does have some part of it that activates when you mix the batter together, but the other part doesn’t release until it’s in the oven. The book also says that in the restaurant business there is a type of baking powder that contains slow-release acids just so the leavening action doesn’t dissipate while the batter sits, before it’s baked. I’ll have to look at Surfas, the mostly pro cookware and foodstuffs store in Los Angeles, to see if they carry such a thing. Probably in 10 pound boxes. Uhm, no thank you.

So, back to this coffee cake. It was simple enough to prepare, really. I made half a recipe because my freezer is full to the brim. I found the batter to be stiffer than expected, so had a hard time spreading it. In the picture at left – the dough layer in the left-hand photo – you can see where I had to use my fingers to kind of spread it out. On the right side shows the nut streusel on the top. I ended up using my finger to kind of chop off  little globs of batter all over. Then I dampened my fingers with water and spread it out (the water helps the batter from sticking to your fingers). Then you spread the non-nut streusel in the middle. Then the other half of the batter goes on top. I did the same thing with dampened fingers to spread it out. Then the nut enhanced streusel goes on the top and it’s refrigerated. My DH got up at 5:30 so he could bake this. He just had to take the foil cover off the top of the cake pan and pop it in the oven for 45 minutes. It does need to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. One interesting note about the streusel – the recipe has you make the sugar-flour-cinnamon combo and divide it in half. Half of it gets nuts, which goes on the top only. The info says that in their testing of this recipe they found that the steam the nuts produced in the oven made the batter/dough around them soggy. Interesting, I thought.

And the taste – really good! There are crusty parts on it (from the streusel), which made for good taste contrast. Next time I think I’ll add some cocoa powder in with the streusel – just because I like it. The cinnamon was subtle and I think it could be pumped up a bit. The cake rose perfectly in the oven – amazing! It didn’t look like it was in any way stunted because of overnight refrigeration. Yes, I’d make this again if only because of the ease of it!
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A year ago: Leek & Turnip Puree
Two years ago: Shiitake-Crusted Chicken

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In December my former investment club members met at my home for a potluck dinner. We’ve known for years that we have some great cooks in the group, and the food is always wonderful when we have such get-togethers. The club disbanded a few months ago, but we’ll still gather now and then for conversation and most years we have a December potluck dinner.

Anyway, one of the gals, Linda C., brought this salad to the potluck. It was SO good. It’s a curry flavored rice (cold) salad, and I just needed to have some cold chicken to chop up to make this. It also has bottled artichoke hearts in it (maybe not something you’d always have in your pantry) and a box of chicken flavored rice mix. The one I used was a 6-ounce package from “Farmhouse.” But any such rice mix would likely do. The other thing you might not stock in your pantry is pimiento-stuffed olives. As it happened, I didn’t have any of those, so the salad may have lacked something. I had red bell pepper instead of green, too. And since I only had 2 green onions, I added some finely minced red onion. So, you see, this salad can be adaptable to what you have on hand. But to be true to the recipe, you need two of the small jars of marinated artichoke hearts. And just a handful of the stuffed olives. And the green pepper too. I garnished the salad with some minced Italian parsley from our garden.

Just so you know, there’s only a teaspoon of curry powder in the salad, so it’s not overwhelming in the slightest. It could be omitted if you aren’t a curry fan, but I liked the light hint. Linda said this is an old standby, one she used to fix for her family when her children were young. Thanks for the recipe, Linda!
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A year ago: Butternut Squash Soup (crockpot)
Two years ago: Coconut Banana Bread (a Cooking Light recipe – very good)

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Maybe you don’t need another breakfast idea. Maybe you always – every day – make time for a balanced breakfast, so if so, you don’t need to read this post. Most mornings we eat the same breakfast. But on an occasional morning Dave is out and I don’t usually feel like “cooking,” so if I have the ingredients, here’s what I make: Read the rest of this entry »

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I was looking up a recipe on my own blog the other day. Since my computer is right here in the kitchen, it’s easier for me to pull up my blog and find the recipe than it is to find it in the recipe program I use. And I was astounded to find that THIS recipe had never been posted to my blog. My goodness. Can hardly believe it. I’ve done a bunch of salad dressings, but this is one of my favorites.

It does have a bunch of ingredients in this. But as I’ve mentioned before about a couple of my garlic-enhanced salad dressings, the first thing I do is combine the fresh garlic (I always use the fresh stuff from a bulb) and salt in the blender. I whiz it up for about 30 seconds and just let it sit. Then, I leisurely find all the other ingredients needed for the dressing. Once they’re at hand, then I begin adding them to the blender jar. In this case, all the other ingredients (olive oil, canola oil, blue cheese, Parmigiano cheese, salt, pepper, celery seeds, dry mustard, are piled into the jar. Then you whiz it up until it’s thoroughly combined.

Oh, I forgot about the lime juice – from fresh limes, please. I happened to make a double batch, because when I make it, I might as well make a bunch. It keeps for weeks in the refrigerator.

There is no cream in the dressing. I call it “creamy” because once you whiz up the blue cheese, it makes it creamy colored. This is really a vinaigrette type – that’s why I included the photo of the dressing in the blender before I homogenized it. It uses just 2 ounces of blue cheese – so this isn’t like a creamy blue cheese dressing. The blue provides a nice undertone; it’s not the star of the show.

In the photo at right I made it and didn’t whiz up the blue cheese as much as usual, so it has small chunks of blue. I like it that way sometimes, although the recipe indicates to blend it thoroughly. Your choice.

Sometimes after it’s been in the refrigerator for awhile the dressing does separate. But I just shake it well and it’s fine. Because it contains some olive oil, when it’s refrigerated it solidifies, so just take it out of the refrigerator about 10 minutes before you need it and shake it. It should be of a thick pouring consistency.

I’ve been making this dressing for so long I don’t know it’s origin. It really isn’t “mine.” There are no notes on the page in my ancient recipe binder. It’s a family favorite, though, and worth making.
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A year ago: Apple Pear Upside Down Cake
Two years ago: Scott’s Broccoli Salad

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Even though I’m a huge fan of Mexican food, I rarely make it at home because we have a plethora of good restaurants (from fast-food type to mid scale) to go to. But I had a bunch of leftover chicken begging to be made into something. This Sunset Magazine recipe (from May of 2008) was just the ticket. Enchiladas are usually corn tortillas rolled around a filling. Served individually. But this one is a stacked type – with each of these stacks serving 2 people. What you see in the photo above is a stack of 5 corn tortillas (supposed to be 6 but my package of tortillas only contained 11 tortillas – go figure) with the chicken filling and grated Jack cheese in between each layer. Then the top is finely sliced cabbage and cilantro in a light fresh lime juice dressing. Very tasty.

The prep for this dish took longer than I’d anticipated. The recipe said an hour, and yes, that’s true. Maybe even longer. You wouldn’t think so, but it did take awhile. The chicken chile sauce mixture took time – cooking onion, chopping up the chicken, gathering up all the other ingredients needed (raisins, pine nuts, spices, chipotle, tomato paste, brown sugar and white wine vinegar). Then grating the cheese, slicing the cabbage (I didn’t have any radishes called for in the recipe). But once you start assembling the stacked enchilada, it came together in a hurry. While the enchilada baked in the oven I made the cabbage slaw.

We liked it. I won’t say this was a stand-out recipe, but it was good. If you don’t have great Mexican restaurants in your neighborhood this might be very satisfying. The tortillas are dipped in canned Las Palmas chile sauce, and when they bake they don’t get firm or chewy – they stay soft. Actually I didn’t like the tortilla brand – you can see the tortillas were starting to fall apart in the photo. They were too flimsy, I guess. But it didn’t matter at all because the taste was fine. The Sunset recipe indicated a serving was 1/4 of the above stack. Uhm. No. We ate half (so 3 tortillas per person). Next time – I’ll add about 1 1/2 cups of frozen corn to the chicken mixture. I think it would add a nice texture change and a bit more substance.
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A year ago: A list of travel websites
Two years ago: Chocolate Scones (oh yes, these are delish)

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It was some months ago that this cake was served at one of my book group meetings. A friend, Ann H. brought the cake to our get-together. Just about everybody went nuts over it, and Ann kindly forwarded the recipe to many of us in the group who wanted it. It’s not a difficult cake to make – actually I’d say this is a VERY EASY cake to bake, even with the nice glaze on it. It’s moist. It’s not as dense as a pound cake, but it’s somewhat reminiscent of one. I served it, actually, with a drizzle of heavy cream on top (probably not more than about 2 teaspoons per serving).

The cake is a fairly standard recipe – eggs, flour, fat (in this case shortening – I used non-hydrogenated – but you could certainly substitute unsalted butter). The cake has almond extract in it, added in at the end. You could probably use a hand mixer, but I used my stand mixer. Once baked, you prepare a melted sugar-butter-water glaze with just a tad of almond extract in it. The glaze is spooned or drizzled all over the cooling cake. I poked holes in the cake so it would get down inside, but mostly the glaze stays on the outside and just absorbs into it slightly. The cake is tender (although not really soft), and very tasty. We all enjoyed it very much. And thanks to Ann H. for the recipe – she said it was given to her by a friend. I hunted on the internet and found no other cake even similar.
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A year ago: Avocado Cheese Roll
Two years ago: Mashed Potatoes with Mascarpone Cheese

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Do you ever have a magazine that gets misplaced? I certainly do. And for whatever reason I had a stack of three Cook’s Illustrated from 2007 in one of our upstairs guestrooms. They went from one place to another before I finally said to myself that I needed to get those three magazines back downstairs nearer the kitchen where they belonged. In doing so I glanced through them, leafing past numerous recipes that I had no recollection reading. And up popped this recipe for chicken and sausage done in an Italian style. With peppers and onions. Sounded perfect for dinner the other night.

First off, I DID read the article from beginning to end, to make sure I understood the instructions (of course, I’m the first one to not do this step under most circumstances). I read about how the recipe developer, Sandra Wu, worked from an old recipe for this chicken dish (in Italian it’s called scarpariello, which means “shoemaker style”). It’s not known whether the shoemaker means it’s a poor-man’s dish, or if it refers to the chicken bones sticking out of your mouth as you eat it, which reminds you of a shoemaker holding nails between his teeth. You choose! In either case, this is an American Italian invention, popularized by some of the early Italian settlers who opened Italian restaurants in New York City.

There is a bit of food prep here, but it’s not overwhelming. While you brown the sausage, you can cut up the chicken. While the chicken browns you can slice up the onion and pepper. And while the onions and pepper brown you can mince up the garlic. While that browns you can bring together the rest of it (some white wine vinegar, some chicken broth, and sugar). The recipe developer was stumped with how to get the chicken skin to stay nice and brown, so she finally resorted to browning the chicken, then once everything is assembled, the pan full of peppers, onion and sausage, with the chicken on top is baked in the oven. While THAT is baking you’ll have time to make a pan of creamy polenta, which makes a perfect bed for the onions and peppers. Once the dish is removed from the oven you do need to thicken the sauce with a bit of cornstarch, then it’s served over polenta (or you can make some orzo or mashed potatoes instead).

One thing this recipe calls for that I didn’t have (and had to buy) was (bottled) hot cherry peppers. They’re essential in this dish, although because I ended up using hot Italian sausage (instead of the sweet called for in the recipe) I used fewer of the cherry peppers. They’re hot little puppies, so be careful. I also didn’t have bone-in chicken breasts, so bought those especially to make this. The breasts were huge. I mean gi-normous, so I cut each breast into thirds (recommended in the recipe). That step also helps the chicken to cook more uniformly.

In the photo above you can see the bed of creamy polenta on the left side. And the result? Really delicious. The sauce makes it, to me. I might want to make more of it next time – there really isn’t all that much for all the quantity of chicken and peppers and onions. Just enough to drizzle over the top. The sauce has a piquant taste – meaning it’s a bit of sweet and sour (from the sugar and wine vinegar combo). And the thicker chicken pieces took a lot longer to cook through than expected. So if you have a meat thermometer, cook the thickest piece to 160 degrees F. We also liked the addition of the sausage – it gave the dish a stronger character, I think, than if it was just chicken alone. We enjoyed it with the polenta (I made creamy polenta – half water and half milk – with some butter and a bit of cream cheese and cheddar cheese added). But we liked this very much, and yes, I’ll make it again. Even for guests, although the recipe indicated it was more of a weeknight kind of dish. I didn’t think so. Quite worthy of guests, I thought.
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A year ago: Crockpot Chicken Paprikash
Two years ago: Hot & Spicy Tofu Herb Dip (you’d never know it’s made with tofu)

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Our rains have subsided, mostly. It rained again last night, and my DH was out in it trying to keep any one place from flooding.

In the picture at left is a view of our front entrance. The rear part you see is the parking area behind our house. (We can park about 8-10 cars back there if they’re arranged like sardines.) You come down those steps to get to our front door, where I’m standing under an awning so I don’t get soaking wet. And there’s my favorite Meyer lemon tree on the left.

It’s actually a bit hard to see, but these photos were taken during a very heavy rain a few days ago, and you can see the water gushing down the steps. It’s a rapidly flowing stream of water just rolling constantly off the steps. Because the drain way up in the back of the photo couldn’t take the volume of water pouring into it, all the excess water comes flooding down the steps. The pump is working away on the left (where the hose is connected just to the left of the lowest lemon) trying to take overload water off about 60 feet to our downward hill. Fortunately, the rain slowed down before it began to fill up like a lake again.

On the right  you can see one of the drains from our gutters which is just gushing out at a VERY fast pace. There is a drain just below the spout, but it also is overloaded, so the area by our front door was beginning to fill up. Fortunately, as I mentioned, the rain slowed down and we didn’t have an overflow anywhere. The water is about 1-1 1/2 inches deep there.

And finally at left, there’s a photo just outside our front door. With the sandbags standing sentry. I know these photos don’t begin to show the severity since my camera captured a quick moment in time. A moment when you can’t even see the millions of raindrops!

We still haven’t determined exactly what we’re going to do – to fix these drain issues. Yet. We’re working on it. We are having two very large trees (one behind the Meyer lemon) removed. It’s a ficus tree, and should never have been planted in an area with area drains or sewers. Ficus have invasive roots. We’d hoped to not have to remove them, as they’re really beautiful, mature trees. But we finally decided they have to go.

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Funny thing, I don’t think I’d ever eaten Italian Wedding Soup before. I’d heard of it. But never ordered it in a restaurant or made it myself. No time like the present. Nor did I truly understand the meaning of the title – it has nothing to do with weddings. Like a dish that’s served at an Italian wedding. No, that’s a misnomer. In this case it means you “marry” two ingredients – in this case the marriage of vegetables and meat. A food marriage.

The recipe comes from Ina Garten’s newest cookbook, Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics. The recipe is on the Food Network website, with about over a hundred comments from people who’ve made it and gave it the maximum ratings possible. In case you’re interested, you can read all about Italian Wedding Soup over at Wikipedia. And at about.com too. Some history about the dish in both places. So the story goes, the soup is an Italian-American invention, really, although some places in and around Rome now make it. The soup can contain other meat products like pancetta, prosciutto, even salami. In this case, though, (and it’s more American this way) it’s made with chicken. It’s called Minestra Maritata (meaning married soup).

So, what’s the soup all about? The garlicky chicken meatballs are extra flavorful – we both loved the flavor of them since they’re heightened with ample garlic, parsley, and cheese. I purchased some ground chicken and some turkey Italian sausage, which was just extra delicious. You make small rounds (meatballs), place them on parchment on a rimmed baking sheet (makes about 32-40 meatballs), and bake them for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, you make a fairly simple vegetable soup with onion, carrots and celery, in a chicken broth. Traditionally the soup has a bit of pasta in it (I  used orzo) and at the very last minute you add in some fresh baby spinach. And you can add the meatballs to heat them up again if you made them ahead. I served 4 small meatballs in each bowl of soup. Very satisfying, filling, and really good. Now, the soup part is sort of bland, really. The recipe calls for fresh dill. I didn’t have any, so used dried. Others who made it commented that the fresh dill made a big difference, so I’ll try that next time. Likely the soup flavor would be enhanced if made a day ahead. Just don’t overcook the vegetables, as you want them to still have some texture. And don’t overcook the pasta – you’ll want to serve it just when the pasta has reach that perfect peak of done-ness, with just a bit of bite. What this is, is an EASY soup. Start to finish in less than an hour, and it was certainly a full meal. Do note the low calories and fat too. A nice bonus.
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A year ago: Crockpot Chile Verde

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