It's World Baking Day

Okay, I admit this is a lame, fake "holiday," (hilariously) sponsored by a lame, fake dairy product (Country Crock, if you're curious). But I'll take any excuse to stock the house with sweets!

So very sweet

In this case, I was looking at the remnants of a 3-pound bag of gala apples. I fried up a few to go with some pork chops a week or so back, and I was getting desperate for ways to use up the rest. The problem is, they aren't very tasty on their own -- call it a cautionary tale about out-of-season impulse buys.

Lucky for me, I found a super-simple recipe for apple oatmeal crisp. Bonus: I had some oats in the cupboard that needed using up too.

The Ingredients

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 3 cups apples - peeled, cored and chopped
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 

Double bonus: no grocery run necessary

So I wasn't kidding about super-simple, especially when you account for one of my favorite kitchen tools:

Bloomin' apple

I ended up using four of these little guys, after cutting away the bruised and otherwise yucky bits. I didn't bother peeling them, and it didn't hurt the finished product at all. (I basically never peel apples. I kind of dig the added texture from the skins.)

So now, dump the first four ingredients into a bowl and stir.

Your dishwasher will thank you!

Half of that gooey goodness goes into the bottom of a buttered 8" pan. Then a layer of apples. I tried to put them in there all pretty and photogenic too. Hahahahahaha, yeah, that failed.

Next comes the white sugar. I only used about a quarter cup though. And even at that, it was starting to look like Al Pacino's desk at the end of Scarface. I did want to taste some apple, after all. Then cinnamon, then the other half of the batter.

Once again, I could almost eat this right now! Patience...

Into a 350 oven for 45 minutes, and here's what comes out.

Could it be? A baking success?

Well almost. There's one clear, egregious oversight visible here, and that's the shameful lack of vanilla ice cream. Guess I'll be running to the grocery store after all.

It'll be worth it.

The verdict: delicious, and I'm not missing the extra sugar even a little. The oats are admittedly kind of weird, a bit of chewy amongst the crispy. It's kind of like an extra gooey apple oatmeal cookie, if I tell the truth.

Gotta go now. That ice cream isn't going to buy itself.

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Chili for realz

I'm informally designating today as my one-year anniversary of hardcore cooking. Good friends and regular readers already know this story. So y'all can skip the next two paragraphs. Go on ahead, I'll never know.

Last August, I came home from a month of speech camp with massive anxiety. No job, no prospects, and badly banged-up self-esteem. I decided, if I wasn't going to be adding any income to the household, the least I could do was contribute work that would cut down our weekly expenses.

Hence, the cooking. For less than a hundred bucks a week we could both eat really, REALLY well. This year, as I'm about to re-enter the workforce, I'm feeling kind of angsty about where the time to cook will come from. Gotta work on my repertoire of things that re-heat well. Gotta do something, cuz the thought going back to takeout kinda disgusts me now.

Yep, I've turned into one of those a*hole food people.

One thing on the agenda is to make gallons -- literal gallons -- of chili. Right now, while tomatoes are cheap and taste perfect. Chili keeps well in the freezer for months, so the more I crank out, the more quick meals I'll have through the fall.

I know I've covered chili on this blog before, but I wanted to share the recipe with fresh tomatoes instead of canned. The process isn't substantially different. Just a little more prep but a lot more flavor. I don't know who invented chili, but bless their memory all the same.

Chili on the "For Real" (a.k.a. with fresh tomatoes)

What I used:

• 1/2 cup dry red kidney beans, rinsed and soaked overnight
• 8 or 9 medium tomatoes (I can't remember for sure -- say a pound pint* and a half)
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 large sweet yellow onion
• 1 medium green bell pepper
• 1 small red bell pepper
• 4 stalks celery
• 4 large garlic cloves
• Anaheim, serrano, and red and green jalapeno peppers
• 5-6 shakes mild green Tabasco sauce
• Cumin, parsley, cilantro, and cayenne
• Salt and pepper

Phew! Okay, so the first thing was to pre-cook the beans. Following the package directions, I let them go for a good hour before starting the chili prep proper. Next I put the ground beef on medium heat with some salt and pepper, and blanched my tomatoes.

In two batches, because I was using my big pot for the chili -- duh...

I was thinking the other day, I don't believe I've ever broken down my blanching philosophy. I bring the water to a good rolling boil, then carefully add the tomatoes (or peaches, or green beans, or whatever). Then I bring the water back up to boiling, and let it go for 3-5 minutes. For these tomatoes, I gave them the whole five. After that I fished them out with a slotted spoon and gently relocated them to a giant bowl of ice water.

While all that browning and boiling were going on, I was chopping up all the veggies except the hot peppers. Those go in later. Then I put the browned beef aside and drained most of the grease, using what was left to sweat down the veggies.

Oops. Over-drained the grease. No worries, just sprinkle in some olive oil.

You'll notice I used celery here, which falls outside my usual onion-bell pepper-garlic trinity. In this recipe it adds some much-needed moisture. Without the extra juice from canned tomatoes, that's a big bonus.

Once the onions started turning slightly transparent, I dumped in the beef and beans and reduced the heat to low.

The beans should be *almost* done at this point. Think al dente.

Next went in the tomatoes. Again, to conserve moisture, I peeled and shredded them right over the pot. That way all the drips ended up in the chili and not on the cutting board. I hope it goes without saying, I cut out and discarded the stems.

It was looking a little dry, so I added in a few ladles of the tomato-blanching water. Then I stuck a lid on all that and let it simmer while I diced up the spicy peppers.

L-R: 1/2 a serrano, 1 red jalapeno, 1 green jalapeno, and 1/4 Anaheim

I chucked those in the pot and added the Tabasco, cumin, parsley, and cilantro. Taste. Oddly not that spicy. So I added some cayenne. And a little more salt and black pepper.

Stick on the lid and it's ready to simmer.

Now my favorite part of chili making. Walk away. Go do other stuff. I mean, I do check on it from time to time, give it a stir and a taste, maybe adjust the seasoning. But the standing around, bent over a cutting board? That crap is over. I gave it an hour, maybe more. The biggest thing was making sure the beans were good and tender.

Actually, forget what I just said. THIS is my favorite part of chili making...

You know, the eating.

We had some for dinner, and lunch the next day. The rest I stored in a freezer bag. I'll be super grateful to thaw that out, some chilly night this fall. (See what I did there? That joke's for my Dad.)

Yeah, it took a while, but most of that time was spent sitting on my butt. And it's so worth it, to have real-life-from-scratch chili! I bet this would be awesome in a crock pot too. If I had a crock pot. Are you listening, Santa?

I close, dear readers, by begging for your favorite freezable recipes. I've got two weeks until school starts and I need to do some hoarding. Recommendations?

Updated Aug. 10: Pints? Pounds? Whatever! Read what you write, girl.

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Chops, beans & fries

We eat a fair amount of pork chops around here. They're affordable, easy to fix, and reasonably low in fat. I'm posting one of my favorite meals today, and hooray for that. This is supposed to be a food blog, after all.

Dinner: Pork chops with gravy, green beans, and grandpa's home fries

I start with the green beans. Admittedly, proper Southern green beans involve a whole day on the stove and a ham hock, but this is the abbreviated version.

Fresh veggies make me so happy.

In this photo, from left to right:

• 1 lb. green beans, washed and snapped
• 1/4 cup or so of sweet yellow onion, cut in strips
• 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
• 2 green onions with the bulbs removed

Across the top there you can see a couple of potatoes and a tomato. We'll come back to those.

Uh-oh, gotta back up!

I fried about a half a pound of bacon earlier today. That grease plays a vital role in this dinner. If you want to try it without frying up the bacon, just get into your drippings can. Wait. You don't have a drippings can? That rush of wind you just felt was the South's collective gasp.

Just kidding. You can use your favorite vegetable oil, shortening, or store-bought lard for all the fat that follows.

Okay, so I took about a tablespoon of bacon grease and put it into a medium saucepan. Turned the heat on medium and let it get good and hot. I also put medium heat under a shallow skillet with the rest of the grease, and started heating up the cast iron on medium-high heat. That's three burners going -- getting intense now!

Remember those potatoes? While the pans are heating up, start slicing them into thin rounds. A fancy mandoline makes it super-easy. But I'm a cheapskate so I use my trusty chef's knife.

See if the grease is hot enough with a shake of black pepper. If it sizzles, it's ready. Toss the onion and garlic into the saucepan to sweat. Once the onion starts getting caramelized, add the green beans.

Toss gently to coat the beans.

Add about a half a cup of water and a handful of chopped green onions. Cover, and reduce the heat to low. You can pretty much forget the beans after this, except for occasional stirring.

At this point, I add about a tablespoon of sesame oil to the cast iron. I just love the flavor sesame adds to the pork chops and the forthcoming gravy, but just about any oil will do the trick.

Now we return to the taters. Carefully add them to the skillet in a single layer and sprinkle with seasoned salt. Also, turn on the oven to its lowest setting, and get a casserole dish ready.

Give the skillet a gentle shake to coat the taters' tops.

Put any remaining slices in a bowl of water to keep them from getting black. While they're cooking, turn the slices after a few minutes so both sides get brown around the edges. If they start curling up like potato chips, reduce the heat a little.

As the potatoes start getting done, take them out of the skillet, put them in the casserole, and put the casserole in the oven. This way they'll stay crispy and hot until you're ready to serve.

Add more slices as space becomes available. A word of caution, though: if they've been soaking in water, be sure to blot them dry with a paper towel or lint-free cloth. Adding water to hot grease is an awesome way to start a kitchen fire. We prefer to avoid that...

So yeah, the main course, eh? After all this the pork chops are like falling off a log. Tilt the cast iron around a bit to spread the oil evenly. Lightly salt and pepper the raw chops, then gently place them in the skillet. Make sure they're not touching each other or the skillet's sides.

Pork chops turn kind of white as they get done. Look for that white color to get about halfway up the sides. At that point they should be nice and brown on the bottom, and ready to turn.

 

This picture was supposed to show you the nice brown color. Damn.

Give the chops a few minutes to get brown on the other side, then sprinkle the pan and the chops with, oh, maybe 2 tablespoons of flour. Sorry. I'm a dash-of-this pinch-of-that kind of cook. Then add about a quarter cup of water. Go easy on the water -- it's way better to add more if your gravy gets too thick. Trying to add more flour to a too-thin gravy? Lump city.

 

By this time, I have to focus on not drooling right in the pan.

Stir frequently to keep the gravy from sticking and/or forming lumps. I like to add a little soy sauce here, instead of extra salt. It creates a nice brown color and fabulous savory flavor.

Phew! By the time the gravy is good and thick, the chops will be cooked all the way through. Both potatoes should be fried, and the green beans tender-but-firm.

Oh yeah! I forgot that tomato! During some down time I diced about a quarter of it, strictly for this lovely salad:

 

You know, to counteract all that bacon grease...

And here's the finished meal. Know how I judged its success? Doug didn't speak a word during dinner. Which, we totally ate at the table! Uncharacteristically grown up for us.

 

Proper chefs would totally hate on my messy plating.

I hope you can see why I like this meal so much. If anybody out there tries it, I'd love to hear about your results!

No Promises

My efforts at blogging always start out with such good intentions... I think of stuff to say for a while. Then all at once I realize it's been 6 months since I posted, and anybody who might have been reading has no doubt (rightfully) given up.

This time, I'm on a big cooking kick. I've found so much joy in learning to fix simple dishes from fresh ingredients. I feel better, my husband feels better, we've both lost a little weight and just can't fathom going back to a diet of prepackaged processed crap. As a bonus, we're spending about half of what we used to on food.

It would be nice to centralize and share my growing collection of recipes. Also, I kind of hope I can be an inspiration. Cooking from scratch sounds hard. Dirty. Unpleasant.

Okay, so it can get a little dirty -- just this week I slung mashed potatoes all over the kitchen with a hand mixer. Dang. That never happens with dry taters from a box. Oo, but they're so much tastier! Totally worth it! 

Basic Mashed Taters

• Peel 4 large potatoes and cut them into chunks.
• Put the chunks in a big pot and cover them with water.
• Add salt, put a lid on the pot, and set over medium/high heat.
• Bring the water up to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until you can cut through the largest chunks with a spatula.
• Drain the water (save it if you're a gravy or chowder fan -- the starchy water makes a lovely thickener).
• Put the cooked chunks in a large mixing bowl, add a stick of butter and about a cup of milk.
• OPTIONAL: Add more salt, black pepper, garlic powder, shredded cheddar, sour cream, chopped green onions, parsley -- whatever turns your crank.
• Start the mixer on low speed and work your way up. If the taters look dry or aren't mixing easily, dump in more milk.

(This is where I went awry. I was in a hurry so I jumped right in on high speed. Presto. Potato volcano.)

• Keep at it with the mixer until the potatoes are your ideal consistency. I like them a little lumpy. Some folks prefer smooth.
• Serve with extra butter, sour cream, chopped green onions... You get the drift.

This recipe makes about 6-8 generous servings (depending, of course, on the size of your potatoes).

It ain't rocket science. And it doesn't have to be gourmet, either. What I've learned in the past few months is, if you use fresh ingredients, and stick to simple combinations, it's almost impossible to screw it up.

All it takes is courage!