Potato Tornado

It's been a wild couple of nights weatherwise at the Yankee Baker homestead--yesterday yours truly nearly got smooshed in her car by a tree limb and currently we're under a tornado warning--yes, I realise being on a computer in the midst of a ridiculous storm cell is typically ill-advised, but I have a Very Important Blog to update, so we'll just deal with the danger.  I had some pleasant adventures in the kitchen, including the culinary conclusion to the Great Zucchini Bread Caper--last four loaves are baked, cooled and ready to be ensconced in cling film, tin foil and boxes to be delivered with love to some of the Yankee Baker's nearest and dearest.

But enought about the dang zucchini bread!  I'm as tired of talking about it as you are of hearing about it.  In fact, let's leave baking behind entirely for a post!  Let's talk cooking!  Specifically, the delicious meal I had tonight when it was hot and hazy but the sky wasn't threatening to wash us off the map.  I acquired some farm fresh corn on the cob at the market this morning and decided it was an evening for Omaha Steak steaks and roasted potatoes to go along with my delectable veg.  Plan of action: roast potatoes, boil corn, grill steaks.

Confession: I hate charcoal grills.

I know to some of you this is sacrilege.  Oh but the flavour! you say.  So much better! you claim.  Here's the thing: I was raised on a gas grill.  I have grilled a few times on the Weber.  I taste no difference.  You know when I do taste a difference?  When I'm cooking over wood.  Give me a campfire or historic hearth and yes, there is a slight difference in taste--it's called woodsmoke.  But charcoal/lighter fluid v propane?  Nada.  Here's what I do notice about charcoal grills that's different from propane ones: they are pains in the asses.  Difficult to get started, impossible to turn off, just all around annoying.  Particularly tonight, when the damn thing exploded at me and roasted my knuckles.  On top of that, while I'm at the sink trying to stop the skin of my hands from cooking, I discover some of my hair had been singed in the inferno.  For crying out loud!  (By the way, this is a rant my coworker (aka Southern Blogger) would call a releasing of my inner Joe Pesci, or a revelation of my Jersey.  It happens.)  Gimme a good ol' propane grill that allows me to switch it on and off, adjust the heat level and doesn't try to char ME in addition to my food and I'm much happier.

Anywho, steaks marinaded in an herby garlicky concoction from a bottle, grilled up nicely and were delicious.  Corn boiled, was buttered, salted, peppered and also delicious.  Potatoes...well, they are the reason for today's post!  Here is my recipe for uber delicious, uber easy roasted potatoes that you could make any day.  These are different from the roast potatoes the Yankee Baker family has at Christmas, because those require the addition of a roast beef, Yorkshire puddings and, well, the Yankee Baker's family (specifically her dad because he makes said complicated roast potatoes).

1. Preheat oven to 325.  Make sure it's good and hot before you pop your taters in it.
2. The nice thing about this recipe is there's no measuring involved, so feel free to make a single serving up to a whole bag of spuds if you're feeding a small army.  However many potatoes you decide to do, make sure they're peeled.  Then cut them into small chunks--you don't want them teeny tiny, but if they're too big, they won't get crispy.  I usually get 8-12 pieces out of my spuds.
3. Toss your tater chunks into a baking dish large enough to hold them.   Quarter a few cloves of garlic; add them to the spuds.  Sprinkle on some parmesan cheese, dried rosemary, paprika, sea salt and coarse ground black pepper as your taste buds desire.
4. Douse the seasoned spuds with olive oil and toss it all together.
5. Roast your potatoes for 45 minutes.  Stir, then cook for an additional 10-20 minutes, or until potatoes are golden brown and crispy on the outside.
6. OM NOM NOM!

These potatoes go well with just about any meal, so give it a shot with your next dinner.  The leftovers perk up pretty decently in the toaster oven, so don't worry if you can't pack them all away on the first go around.  Bon appetit, friends of the interwebs!

When It's 90 Degrees Outside, the Only Logical Thing to Do Is Bake

As I sit down to write this, there are four loaves of zucchini bread cooling on my kitchen counter.  I had intended to make eight loaves, since I had eight ridiculous cups of zucchini, but yet again, my awesome preparedness skills struck and I ran low enough on canola oil that I had to stop at half.  And I'd already run errands for the day and wasn't going out for more.  Those of you who know me away from the interwebs should not be surprised by this.  I will have to hit the store tomorrow after work and complete the other four loaves then.  There is also a tray of shortcakes--well, minus one, which is safely ensconced in my belly--to be eaten with any of the myriad fruits in my fridge.  Except maybe the cantaloupe.  I feel like cantaloupe shortcake is not so much a delicious thing.

I'll start with the shortcake, since I can still taste its scrumptiousness in my mouth.  Here's my confession about shortcake: Bisquick.  It's my secret for waffles, too.  Yep, all you need is a big yellow box that's got half the work done for you.  All you need to do (for shortcake) is add some milk, melted butter and sugar, stir it, slap it in either a pie tin or drop it on a cookie sheet, bake it, and VOILA!  If you were to make it from scratch, there would be a lot more measuring and washing up.  So hallelujah for Bisquick!  Use it with pride and happy taste buds!

The zucchini bread, alas, requires these Many More Steps, as it does not make use of the magic Bisquick.  But I shall run down the steps so that one day when you are feeling adventurous you can make your own.  If I may start with a confession, though--and I may, since this is my blog and none of you can stop me, plus the name of the blog is "Confessions of a Yankee Baker," so it only seems appropriate--I have to tell you that I'm not especially keen on zucchini bread.  This may seem weird, since from the inception of this blog I have talked about very little else, but for some reason I just can't wrap my tongue around a slice of bread with squash in it.  I can tolerate all sort of fruit, nuts and even certain other gourds (namely pumpkin) in my baked goods, but zucchini just strikes me as weird in a bread or a muffin.  But since I'll have 8 loaves of it in my freezer soon enough, I might need to start liking it.  I'm told this recipe makes quite delicious zucchini bread, so who knows, maybe I'll actually enjoy it.

Hokay, so here it is.  The recipe for the oft-mentioned, oft-baked zucchini bread.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Squirt a little Pam into a couple loaf pans.
2. Add 3/4 cup nonfat vanilla yogurt into a large mixing bowl.  Dump in 2 cups sugar.  Stir this together with a whisk till it's smooth and creamy.
3. Add 3/4 veggie oil and blend it all together.
4. Add 2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla and 2 cups finely shredded zucchini (it helps if you do this ahead of time.  I got 4 cups out of one massive, monstrous zucchini.  A normal sized zucchini probably gets you about 1 cup.  You will have to test this and let me know).  Mix well.
5. Sift 3 cups all-purpose flour into a separate mixing bowl.  Add 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon and 3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg.  Toss that around so it's all mixed.
6. Add dry ingredients to the wet a little at a time until well blended.
7. Divide batter between two loaf pans.  Bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

C'est tout!  That is the zucchini bread recipe.  If your name is Stefanie, you now owe me a farm cheese recipe.  You promised.

Speaking of promises, I told you I would add pictures to the zucchini bread post.  I lied, obviously.  I still intend to make pictures happen, but it's been a busy week and I'm technologically stunted, so it might take a while for it to happen.  Until then, snack on some zucchini bread and stay out of the heat!

Bearer of Bad News

My friends, it is with a heavy heart I must announce the death of the Bacon Berry Pie.  Apparently tin foil is not enough to keep the mold and fruit flies at bay.  And here I was trying not to be a big fat piggie and eat the whole thing in a single sitting!  That'll teach me to be responsible with my pie!  Oh well, Farmers' Market tomorrow, more Not Cheap berries and perhaps more pie!

A Treatise on Eggs

I had intended tonight to make the Motherload of Zuchini Bread, but as I was shredding my 8 cups of zuke (out of only two squash, mind you), it dawned on me that I wanted to bake them in those little disposable aluminum pans which I haven't yet purchased.  I want to do this because I intend to mail a couple of these puppies and freeze the rest and figure the pans will help support the breads, particularly in the mail.  So no aluminum pans on hand, but I figured I could just line my regular pans in foil and just keep the loaves in the foil and do the same.  So the gameplan was still on!  Until I opened my yogurt and realised it smelled funny and had some dark brown ooze pooling on the top.  And since I'd rather not inadvertently kill anyone with my zucchini bread, I decided the baking would have to wait until after I purchased new yogurt (and aluminum pans).

While I was shredding the metric buttload of green gourd, Roommate came into the kitchen and inquired about the mess occupying the counter.  I informed him of the above facts, and the notion of yogurt in zucchini bread intrigued him.  Most zucchini breads, I said, require eggs, but since at the time of the baking of the first breads I had only hard boiled eggs in my fridge, I had to find an eggless alternative.

This got me thinking, in the roundabout way that I do, about eggs and the things I know about eggs that you might not know about eggs.  And so I decided that in lieu of the zucchini bread post (seeing as how there is no zucchini bread), I would post about eggs.  For you.  My loyal reader(s).

Hokay!  So.  Eggs.  You know them, you eat them, you love them.  Fried, scrambled, poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, as salad.  The incredible edible egg.  Most of us buy our eggs from the refrigerator section of the supermarket and then store them in our fridges at home.  DID YOU KNOW?  You don't really need to refrigerate eggs!  Well, not the farm fresh kind.  If you get yours from the grocery store, I strongly encourage you do so, and here's why.  Eggs are laid with a protective coating that protects against germs and other icky things from getting in through the microscopic pores in the shell (just like we have pores in our skin).  The trouble is, this coating is initially sticky--it dries quickly upon, er, exit--but while it's still sticky, it can pick up dirt and debris from the place the hen pops it out.  And if supermarkets were to sell these dirty looking eggs in the store, there would be much rioting and picketing in the streets by the masses.  Because obviously if something looks dirty, it is dirty.  Except in the case of eggs.  Protective coating, remember?  But because no one wants to buy and eat icky looking eggs, the commercial egg farms wash their eggs.  Power wash them, in fact.  The eggs are put in pyramid shaped baskets and power washed, which, yes, scrubs your eggs to a shiny white, but also strips the protective coating, leaving the pores exposed.  And the dirty water from the top of the baskets?  Guess where that goes.  Yep.  Into the shells of the eggs at the bottom of the basket.  So we take eggs that are ugly on the outside but safe and healthy on the inside and "wash" them to be pretty on the outside but introduce all kinds of ewie things to the inside (and arguably more important side of the egg).  One of these ewies includes salmonella.  Now not all of these eggs actually contain salmonella and if you keep these pretty on the outside eggs in the fridge and make sure you cook 'em real well, you have nothing to worry about.

If we were to NOT wash our eggs on the farm, or at least not POWER wash them but instead rinse them gently, leaving the protective coating intact, we could actually leave our eggs at room temperature for about 2-3 weeks.  For realsies.  After this 2-3 week time frame, the protective coating on the egg starts to deteriorate, and then you have the problem of open pores and gunk getting in.  BUT.  If we were to give the egg an artificial protective coating--done by coating the eggs in lard (see, bacon really does make the world go round) and packing them in something like sand, buckwheat or more lard (cos why not?)--we can keep our eggs for 3-4 months.  MONTHS!  And refrigerating non-washed eggs also extends their lives, not to months, but many weeks.  More than washed eggs, I can assure you.

Here's another cool thing about eggs: you can test their relative freshness before cracking them open and discovering they are, in fact, rotten and horribly sulfury smelling.  How, you ask?  Hold you horses, I'm about to tell you, I reply.  What you do is you get a vessel like a mixing bowl or pot.  Fill it with water.  Put your eggs in the water.  Observe whether your eggs float or sink.  This is where the magic happens.  Put your science hats on.....now.  When an egg goes bad, it creates methane gas (hence the stinky fart smell when you crack a bad one).  Like a balloon filled with helium, an egg filled with methane will float to the top of your water containing vessel.  A super fresh egg will sink like a stone and lay on its side.  Eggs that stand up or just barely come up off the bottom of the vessel are the ones you want to cook and eat ASAP.  They won't kill you, you just don't want them going more bad.

So there you have it.  Awesome things you probably didn't know about eggs.  Next post, I promise, will be the one about All the Zucchini Bread.  AND I will figure out a way to add pictures, to snazz things up a bit!  Until then, my friends!

Adventures of a Bacon Berry Pie

Up until just a couple days ago, the only pies I had ever made had been slapped together in conditions that would make a health inspector's head spin and were baked in a cast iron Dutch oven (I specify cast iron so you don't get confused and think I'm referring to the kind of Dutch oven involving a blanket, butt gas and an unsuspecting victim.  Incidentally, I had no idea this kind of Dutch oven existed, innocent that I am, until I started raving about my latest masterpiece to a boy who started giggling and eventually informed me of this alternative version) during my days interpreting in an 18th century farm kitchen.  I was taught to make a pie by the resident Pie Queen whose recipe for making a pie ran thus:

1. Put some flour in a bowl.  Add some lard and some cold water and mush it all together with your fingers till you've got a dough.
2. Roll out your dough and line a pie plate.
3. Dump in your filling.  Eat whatever filling is leftover as a snack.
4. Roll out whatever dough didn't fit into the pie plate and cut it into strips.  Weave the strips over the top of the pie to make a lattice.
5. Bake the pie in the cast iron Dutch oven.  Keep an eye on your coals so it doesn't either take forever to cook or burn.  Voila!  Pie.

You'll notice the complete lack of measuring and science to this recipe.  Pie Queen preferred fruit pies, but I liked to experiment with meat pies, using the same crust recipe (I have leftover dough from the Bacon Berry pie, so I might whip up a pork pie in my home cast iron Dutch oven and share that with you in a future post).

I decided to make a pie because I had an abundance of berries in my house, between the blackberries and raspberries I had purchased at Target and the strawberries and blackberries I spent a small fortune on at the Farmers' Market, and letting berries go bad because you forget to eat them is a cardinal sin.  So before I would have to go to culinary confessional, I thought, "Why not make a pie?"

I suppose I could have done it the Pie Queen way and just done it willy nilly, but since I was using berries that were Not Cheap, I thought it best to follow some sort of instructions to ensure a Better Baking Experience.  So I measured flour, added salt, which was a new thing for my pie crusts, and slapped in some bacon grease.  I finally got to use my pastry cutter for its intended purpose (my roommate insists on using it as a pizza cutter), which was pretty exciting.

The pie making experience was a rather tame one, until the pie was in the oven and I was sitting on the couch and realised the extent of the bacon smell wafting at me from the kitchen.  And then I considered the potential ramifications of using 2/3 cup of bacon drippings in one's pie crust.  Berry Bacon Pie.

Now don't get me wrong, bacon is manna from heaven and goes great with pretty much everything.  But the pungent vapours emitting from my kitchen would have given even the most serious of carnivores pause: does bacon REALLY go with a triple berry pie?  I know Granny Smith apples go brilliantly with pork chops, so perhaps this wouldn't be such a terrible thing after all...

And it turns out, dear readers, that despite the strong odor of fried pig, the pie crust made of bacon grease doesn't actually possess the strong taste of fried pig.  There is a bit of an aftertaste, but it doesn't affect or diminish the deliciousness of the berry pie.  And really, where is the problem if you can have your pie and taste bacon, too?  Yeah, I don't see one either.

Without further ado, my friends of the world wide web, here is the Yankee Baker's first posted recipe:  Berry (Bacon) Pie!

THE CRUST

1. Put a little more than 2 cups of all-purpose flour into a mixing bowl.  Stir in a little salt.  Add about 2/3 cup of shortening, if you want to be classy about it.  Cut the shortening in to the flour until it forms pea sized crumbles.  Add COLD water, a tablespoonful at a time, mixing it in until you have a ball of dough.
2. On a floured surface, roll half the dough out so it will line a 9" pie plate.
3. Roll out the remaining dough into a rectangle and cut it into 8-10 long strips.  Set these aside (or save this step for after the filling is in the pie).

THE FILLING

1. You want about five cups of your favourite berry(ies).  I like tart berries, and the only berries I don't particularly care for are blueberries, so I went with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.  You do what you want.
2. Add a heaping 1/2 of sugar (or more or less depending on how sweet your berries are and how sweet you wan them) and 1/3 cup flour (it seemed weird to me at first, but then it dawned on me: it thickens the juices!) and stir it all together.

THE MAGIC

1. Pour your berry filling into the crust in the pie pan.
2. Bring out those strips you cut.  Making a lattice top is not as difficult as some people might suggest; if you've ever made a situpon in Girl Scouts or woven a pot holder on one of those plastic looms with the neon coloured pantyhose loops, you can make a lattice pie top.  The trick to a lovely looking lattice is spacing.  Your strips should be about, oh I dunno, I'm crap at measurements, maybe 1/2" wide? and make sure the dough isn't rolled too thin before you cut them.  Then be sure you space neatly across the pie.  You don't want your strips too close together, nor do you want them leaving big gaps.  I like to do 5 strips on the warp and 4 on the weft.  (Weaving terms, don't let them scare you.  Just put 5 strips, evenly spaced, going one direction.  The other 4 will go perpendicular to these 4.  I will tell you how next.  Patience, grasshopper.)  Fold back the edges of the 1st, 3rd and 5th warp strips.  Lay the first weft strip down.  Fold the odd numbered warpers back down.  Now fold back the 2nd and 4th warpers.  Lay the second wefter.  Replace the even warpers.  You see it?  See the lattice?  Repeat these two steps till your lattice is complete.  Told you it wasn't that hard.
3. Brush a little milk over the top of the pie, maybe sprinkle it with a little sugar for some Edward Cullen worthy sparkle (let the record state that this is the extent of my knowledge about Twilight.  I happen to have a much better taste in reading material).  If your oven cooks hot, you may want to slap a little foil on the edges of your pie--I didn't, and it turned out a-okay.
4. Stick your creation into a preheated 375 degree oven and bake for about 50 minutes, or until the crust is browned and the berry goo is bubbly.  Remove, cool, cut, OM NOM NOM.

So there you have it, boys and girls.  Berry Pie.  Bacony tasting Berry Pie if you play your cards right.  And since I exhausted my supply of bacon fat on this one, I guess I'll be cooking up a lot of piggie to replenish.  This is me not complaining.

In Which I Start a Blog

Greetings, internet!  I have decided to start a blog.  I spend most of my day narrating my life in my head, so I figured why not put some of my musings on, er, screen, and share them with you!  Don't be scared, I promise I won't be (too) creepy.  My blog is called "Confessions of a Yankee Baker."  I thought of this title last night while I was baking a pie using bacon drippings for the crust in place of shortening, which I was too lazy to go out and purchase.  So there is my first confession.  I make pies with bacon grease.

My next confession is that no one outisde of the South uses the term "Yankee," save in reference to a certain baseball team from the Bronx.  Southerners use it as a derogatory term--with varying degrees of venom--for anyone outside of Dixie, but no one termed a Yankee will introduce themselves thus.  And it's not because of the negative connotation of the word; as someone born west of the Mississippi and raised north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I can assure it's because it just doesn't occur to us.  We don't really find the need to differentiate between Northern People and Southern People the way folks in the South do--unless it's those freaky bayou people you see on the Discovery Channel, but even Southerners consider them a separate breed.  Maybe it's because we won, but the bottom line is, "Yankees" don't think of themselves as such.  So why do I use it in my blog?  Well, for the last three years I've been living in Virginia, about an hour away from the Confederate capital of Richmond.  Now, I will confess that the area I live in reminds me quite a bit of the suburban New Jersey town in which I was raised--but less Jews (don't worry, Northern friends, we have a Manhattan Bagel) and the Chinese restaurants don't deliver (I have no redeeming good news for this.  It is what it is and it sucks)--but plently of people here insist that Virginia Really Is the South! and so who am I to doubt them?  They call me a Yankee (and I happen to support said baseball team), so why not?

Now, the last confession is that this blog may not be exclusively about baking.  Because I don't always bake, that's why.  And it's my blog, so deal with it.  It will involve a lot of food, however--baked, fried, toasted, microwaved, prepared by professionals, &c--because I like food.  Correction: I LOVE food.  It is delicious and keeps me alive, so thumbs up in my book.  I will share my adventures in the kitchen with you, but maybe also some crafty things and certainly some random ramblings.  Buckle up kids, we're going for a ride!

I think we'll leave it at that for tonight, just a basic introduction.  Tune in next time, in which I chronicle some of my latest baking escapades, including details of the bacon pie crust and the motherload of zucchini bread.

Cheers!
The Yankee Baker