Recipes

November 29, 2011January 22, 2017

Cheddar and Sage Biscuits

A couple of weeks ago, Jonah and I got that nasty cold that’s been floating around. We were both out of commission for a few days, which really sucked. When I started finally feeling a little bit better, I really wanted to make some bread. See, a couple weeks before we got sick I bought some active dry yeast because I really want to start making bread. I’m terrified of it, for some reason, and also I don’t want to go through the learning process. I just want to start making beautiful crusty sourdoughs to begin with. But I think I should learn about the process and the ingredients and all that too, rather than perhaps biting off more than I can chew.

Anyway, back to the story. So I wanted to make bread but I really wasn’t feeling up to it: I was still a little light-headed, not to mention drugged up. But I wanted something bread-like. I recalled a recipe I had seen on marthastewart.com. If you have never been to her website, you really ought to. More recipes, craft, and homemaking ideas than you will ever have time to look at. So I went to my pinterest where I had saved the recipe (more on pinterest later), and got started: Cheddar and Sage Biscuits.

Sounds good, no?

Cheddar & Sage Biscuits

I don’t think it would hurt to add a little more cheese and a little more sage to the recipe. These ingredients were really subtle, and I think I was hoping they’d be a little more obvious in taste. The recipe also says to use a food processor, but mine was not nearly big enough for all this stuff. It nearly overflowed by the time I got to the butter. What I would recommend is putting either half or 3/4 of the flour in to begin with, then everything except the buttermilk, then transferring either to an electric mixer (kitchenaid) or hand mixing and adding in the remaining flour and buttermilk. But I dont’ know, try whatever you want. Just don’t blame me when you can’t fit it all in your food processor.

Ingredients

4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for working
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 cups grated sharp white cheddar, or whatever cheddar you have around (also, a little parmesan would probably taste delicious too…)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a food processor, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add cheese and sage, pulse to combine. Add butter and pulse until mixture is the texture of coarse meal. Add buttermilk and pulse until combined. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it comes together. Don’t overknead it! With a floured rolling pin, roll dough to a 3/4-inch thickness. With a floured 2 3/4-inch round biscuit cutter (or, you know, a cup), cut out biscuits (reroll and cut scraps).

Place biscuits on a baking sheet, 1 1/2 inches apart (I did only 6 per batch to ensure they had enough room), and bake until puffed and golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

They’re also really good if you cut them in half and put them in the toaster for breakfast the next morning. I took little tupperwares of these biscuits to some friends who are still in school at Lewis & Clark. They work their butts off, and so sometimes I really like to bring them a little surprise treat. I think they appreciate it.

November 28, 2011January 22, 2017

A new cookbook and some jams

For my birthday, I received the most beautiful cookbook: Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller. If you don’t know who Thomas Keller is, well then it’s time to get educated. He is the chef at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, perhaps one of the most famous restaurants in the world: it has won many (that’s right, many) James Beard Awards. He has another restaurant, Per Se, in New York, and both of these restaurants have been awarded 3 Michelin Stars. He is the ONLY AMERICAN CHEF to have had two restaurants both get 3 stars.

But this cookbook is from another restaurant he recently opened. He intended to open a burger joint in an old diner, but when he purchased the space his team was too busy. He decided instead to open a temporary homestyle cooking restaurant called Ad Hoc: no menu, 4 courses, 4 days a week, simple food. Well of course, being Thomas Keller and all, it worked incredibly well and is no longer temporary.

So I bring the cookbook home and I’m looking through it and there’s a section called “Lifesavers.” This section is full of what he calls staples, though not like flour and eggs. There are tapenades, jams, pickled things, candied nuts, anything you might need to make an ordinary dish or meal into an extraordinary one.

I decide, with Thanksgiving coming up and my mom having asked for some appetizer help, that I’d whip up a couple of jams. The two that seemed most appealing to me were the Fig and Balsamic Jam and the Red Onion-Cranberry Marmalade. Now, keep in mind while reading this that I have never made a jam before in my life and I have never canned (in fact, I was quite scared of it before). These recipes don’t require actual “canning” or one of those crazy sets with tongs and crazy jar contraptions. Thank goodness.

Fig and Balsamic Jam

Note: So you see this recipe and maybe you say, “Excuse me, what is a sachet? I thought this blog was about stuff everyone can do!” And to you I say, “It is, my friend! I will tell you what a sachet is!” Mr. Keller is all about sachets. In this case, you’ll want about a 5 or 6 inch square of cheesecloth. Place the peppercorns towards the bottom of the square, roll the cheesecloth over them once, fold in the ends, and keep rolling. Now tie it at both ends with cooking twine. See how you have a nice little package of peppercorns? Now you won’t have to try to fish them out of the jam later. Keller also uses this technique with lots of herbs like bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns, etc. (you know that feeling when the recipe says “remove the bay leaf” and you cannot find it for the life of you? no more!).

Another note from Mr. Keller: “Note on Plate Testing: To check that compotes, jams, and jellies are at the right consistency, put a tablespoon of what you’re cooking on a plate and chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. If it is too thin, return to the heat, cook a few more minutes, and retest.”

Ingredients

2 lbs figs, preferably Black Mission or Kadota, stems removed and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon black peppercorns, tied into a sachet
Fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Put everything but the lemon juice into a pan and attach a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, do not worry! You can still just follow the instructions and eyeball things, which is what I ended up doing anyway. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook, stirring to break up the larger pieces of fig. Cook until the jam reaches 215-220 degrees. My candy thermometer did not want to get up that high. I cooked this stuff for hours and it would still only get to 205 or so. Keller has a nice little tip in his book that says:

So I did my own version of the plate test which was to turn off the heat, let the whole pot cool on the stove while I did something else (hulu, anyone?) and then came back and checked it. It needed a bit more cooking, so I brought it to a simmer again for another little while. Now remove the sachet and stir in the lemon juice to taste. Spoon the jam into a canning jar or two, cover, and let cool to room temperature. Then refrigerate up to 1 month.

Red Onion-Cranberry Marmalade

Ingredients

1/4 cup canola oil
3 cups diced red onions
1 cup chopped dried cranberries
3 cups apple juice
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbl apple pectin (This is Keller’s fancy pectin he gets from lord-knows-where. I just used plain pectin, found at my local New Seasons near the canning jars.)
1 Tbl plus 1 tsp orange zest

Ingredients

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over low heat. Add the red onions and cook very slowly for about 20 minutes, until the onions have softened but not colored. Add the cranberries and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the apple juice and cider vinegar. In a separate bowl, combine the sugars and pectin, mixing well so that the pectin will dissolve smoothly, and add this mixture to the pot along with the orange zest. Attach a candy thermometer to the pan, bring to a simmer, and cook until it registers 215-220 degrees. I did the same thing as last time where, because my thermometer didn’t want to get that high, I just let the whole pot cool and then cooked it more if it needed it.

Transfer the marmalade to a canning jar, cover, and let cool, then refrigerate for up to 3 months.

Not so hard, right? These made wonderful Thanksgiving appetizers when paired with some good crackers and cheese (we used mostly Rain Coast crackers, goat cheese, and brie). I bet they’d work great for Christmas appetizers too…

November 28, 2011January 22, 2017

30-Minute Chili

I made this for dinner yesterday, and it was the perfect chili for this time of year: hearty, filling, warm, and really easy to make! Lots of canned foods, so very cheap as well. This version makes the perfect amount for 2 people with some leftovers. Double or triple it and you’ll have soup for the whole week!

Also fun fact….it has beer in it!

Its adapted from the recipe for 30-minute chili on marthastewart.com.

30 Minute Chili

Makes 4 servings | 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 Tbl vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
salt and pepper
3 oz tomato paste
2 Tbl chili powder (or more if you want more heat)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 oz canned green chiles in sauce, diced
1 1/2 lb. ground beef
2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes
1 can (14.5 oz) kidney beans
6 oz lager beer (I used PBR!)
cheddar cheese, grated

Instructions

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook until softened, about 3-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the tomato paste, chili powder, ground cinnamon, and chiles and cook 2-3 minutes. Add the ground beef and cook another 5 minutes, breaking up the ground beef and making sure that it gets browned all over.

Add the cans of diced tomatoes with their juice, the beer, and the can of kidney beans (without their juice). Bring to a boil and then simmer for 5-10 minutes, until kidney beans are nice and tender.

Serve into bowls and sprinkle with grated cheese. I recommend eating this with corn chips!

November 28, 2011January 22, 2017

Green Mint Crinkles from Honest Pretzels

As soon as we got back from Thanksgiving in Seattle, I was ready to make Christmas cookies. It was all I could think about. I knew the family upstairs had a cookbook that I loved as a kid, and that there was a recipe in that cookbook that I couldn’t wait to make for Jonah.

This is a children’s cookbook, so the greatest thing about it is that after the lists of ingredients and equipment you’ll need, there’s also a list called “Ask an adult for help with” and then the next page shows you, in illustrations, how to make the recipe. I turned right to the Green Mint Crinkles (page 126) and got started.

Green Mint Crinkles

Ingredients

1 stick of butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons peppermint extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 (2.25 oz.) jar of green cake decoration crystals

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with butter or oil. In a large mixing bowl, mix together melted butter, sugar, peppermint extract, and vanilla extract. In a small separate bowl, beat the egg, then add to the sugar mixture along with the milk.

Then add the flour, baking powder, salt, and green crystals. You’ll want to mix this by hand if you’re using a mixer, being sure to mix the green crystals in well. It’s always awkward when there’s a little patch of green at the bottom of the bowl, am I right?

Now make balls of dough roughly the size of a ping pong ball (I did mine a little smaller just so I could have more cookies) and place the balls on the prepared baking sheet. They can be close together because they barely spread, but they shouldn’t touch. Put them in the oven and bake for 12 minutes.

Let them cool a bit before removing them from the tray as they can be pretty fragile when you remove them. My favorite part of eating these cookies is to eat them when they’re still pretty warm and, when your mouth is full of cookie, to inhale. You get this minty steam and it tastes so good and feels like mint oil but in your MOUTH. Ok, I’ll stop. Enjoy with a glass of milk!

November 28, 2011January 22, 2017

Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta

Welcome to the first post on Serious Crust!

Tonight, I got home from work and after about an hour of lazing around the apartment, Jonah and I realized it was probably time to figure out what we were going to make for dinner. We had done a lot of cooking yesterday evening (recipes coming soon), and so were a little burnt out; We needed something easy and delicious.

Enter Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta: I handled the shrimp while Jonah did the polenta. I would say it took us between 20-30 minutes, and it tasted so good.

Lemon Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta

Serves 2, with leftovers | 20-30 minutes

Ingredients

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

1 Tbl butter
3/4 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails intact
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
a pinch of chili powder (we had some leftover from last night’s meal, but you can also use cayenne or paprika)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 Tbl chopped parsley

Creamy Polenta

1 tube polenta (you know, those weird looking things at the grocery store)
a little bit of: milk, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper

Instructions

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

Season shrimp with a little salt and pepper. Melt butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Add shrimp, garlic, and chili powder. Cook until shrimp are pink on both sides, about 4 minutes. Don’t overcook them! They can get dry really quickly, so keep an eye on them. When they’re cooked right they’re really juicy and tender instead of chewy. When the shrimp are cooked, put them on a plate to the side. Turn heat down to low, add lemon juice, parsley, and a tablespoon of water and stir. Add shrimp back into the pan to coat it in the sauce.

Creamy Polenta

Put polenta in a pot, cook on medium heat. Add other ingredients until you like the consistency and flavor. Easy, no?

Serve together!