Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I promised this recipe to my awesome massage therapist (if you’re local to the Indy area and need a good massage therapist, let me know—this lady must’ve been on the honor role at massage therapy school), and it only seemed fair to share it with the rest of the Reading Public. As usual, my quantities are kind of sketchy, and I bought my ingredients at Trader Joe’s, so you may have to get creative about substituting…but I have faith in you.

1 package frozen potstickers, any kind, no need to thaw
3-4 C chicken, or vegetable broth
1 package shredded cabbage
1 package broccoli slaw mix (or shredded carrots)
8-12 ounces of the protein of your choice (chicken, shrimp, tofu, etc.)
Rice noodles or bean thread noodles
Thai fish sauce
Crushed garlic
Ginger powder
Toasted sesame oil

Pour the chicken broth into a large pot and bring it to a low boil. Drop in your potstickers (carefully, with minimal splashing), and let the heat come back up, stirring occasionally. Stir in as much fish sauce, garlic and ginger as you like; it’s very much a matter of personal taste. When the broth is seasoned to your exacting specifications, add in a couple of handfuls each of the shredded cabbage and slaw mix/carrots. Stir for a bit. If your protein is already cooked, add it and the noodles together. If not, let the protein cook about halfway, then add noodles. Stir in the toasted sesame oil right before you remove the soup from the pot.

Personally, I have never made it with beef and beef broth, but I can’t think of a reason it wouldn’t work. Also, feel free to play around with the vegetables. I’ve used a combination of green onions, broccoli, frozen chopped spinach, edamame, shredded carrots, and asparagus with excellent results. On various occasions, I’ve also added shallots or mushrooms, depending on mood and what was to hand at the time. Last night, I added some powdered saffron at the same time as the garlic to excellent effect.

My friend D., who makes this for Thanksgiving every year, tells me that when corn is out of season “like, er, now”, a one-pound bag of frozen corn is an acceptable substitute. Personally, I seem to recall that Trader Joe’s sells a roasted corn that would probably be very acceptable indeed.

6 fresh ears of corn
1/3 c. water
1/4 c. chopped onion
1/2 tsp. salt
4 c. milk
2 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper
3 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 beaten egg

With sharp knife, make cuts through center of kernels. Cut corn off cob; scrape cob. In saucepan combine corn, water, onion, and the 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in 3 1/2 cups of the milk, butter, the 1 teaspoon salt and white pepper. Blend together remaining 1/2 cup milk and flour; stir into corn mixture in saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes more. Garnish with snipped chives and paprika if desired. Makes 6 servings.

As a side note, when I make corn soup, I like to dress it up by stirring in sauteed red peppers, pancetta, and “crab” surimi, which makes it utterly unsuitable for my vegetarian and kosher friends, but sometimes that’s how the  gluten-free cookie crumbles.

One of my coworkers brought this into work last Wednesday and almost everyone asked for the recipe (one joked “Don’t bother with recipe, just keep bringing me some”). I haven’t made it yet myself, bu tI can verify that it tastes wonderful.

• 1 stick butter
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 Tbsp. milk
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. white vinegar
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 c. flour
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 c. peeled, chopped apples (I use apple pie filling when time is short – about 1 cup)
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon

TOPPING:

• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. flour
• 2 tbsp. butter

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease pans with cooking spray. Combine butter and sugar. Dissolve baking soda in 1 tablespoon of milk and 1 tsp. white vinegar. Add eggs. Stir together and then add in remaining ingredients in order given.

Pour batter (it will be thick) into a buttered 9 x 5-inch bread loaf pan. Combine ingredients for topping, mixing until crumbly. Sprinkle topping over batter.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or decrease time and bake mini loaves about 27 minutes (until tooth-pick comes out clean).

• 2 leeks, sliced thin
• 1/2 to 3/4 package sliced mushrooms
• about 3/4 to 1 lb. c chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces (uncooked)
• Olive oil or butter (for cooking)
• Parsley, tarragon, and savory to taste
• Approx 2 T cubed pancetta (optional)
• White wine (I use vermouth)
• flour for thickening sauce
• 3/4 to 1 C chicken broth
• 3/4 to 1 C milk, or half & half, if you’re feeling extravagant
• 1 sheet puff pastry

Melt butter in pan, or add olive oil. Saute the leeks and mushrooms on medium heat until they’ve stopped giving off water. Add the chicken. When the chicken is almost done, add the pancetta and herbs. When everything is cooked through and lightly browned, deglaze the pan with the wine. Let the alcohol cook off, and start gradually adding the broth to the pan to create the sauce. Turn down the heat a little and add the milk slowly to avoid curdling. Sprinkle flour over the pan and stir in to blend and thicken the sauce. Dump the lot of it into a casserole dish. Cover with a sheet of puff pastry and bake according to recipe (or, let’s be honest, package) directions.

Last night, a friend of mine who has an apple tree in her front yard gave me a several-pound bag of apples. These are not your picture perfect, tasteless, scarlet spheroids. No, these are apples with attitude. They’ve got swoops and valleys. They’re multicolored. And they’re very popular with the bugs and birds, apparently.

The skins were a total loss, so I was immediately drawn to the idea of applesauce or apple butter. You can make applesauce in the microwave, which seemed a little too fast, as I have a lot of laundry to do this afternoon. I started off looking at the recipe in my 1993 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, but I am temperamentally incapable of regarding it as anything more than a general guideline. Especially as it specified 6 cups of apples and honestly, I guessed at how much I had. It seemed on the heavy side of six-ish, but honestly? I was too lazy to measure.

So then…

Sort out your laundry according to your personal preference. Put the first load in the washer, and go core, peel, and quarter your apples. You can put them in lemon water to keep them from turning brown, but the apple butter is going to turn out brown anyway, so there’s no need to feel compelled. Because I was using natural apples, I only was able to use about 75% of what I’d been given, after cutting out various bad spots.

Wash your hands, and move the first load of laundry to the dryer. Start your second load of laundry.

Back in the kitchen, get out a good-sized pot (8-10 quart Dutch oven, sayeth BH&G. Pasta pot, quoth I.). For each pound of apple quarters, add 1 cup of unsweetened (I’m looking at you, high-fructose corn syrup) apple juice. BH&G says you can use apple cider instead, which actually would have been my preference had the supermarket had any, which it didn’t. Bring the lot to a boil, cover the pot, and turn down the heat. Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Check the laundry, discover that the towels are still damp, and add time to the dryer.

Take the simmered apples off the heat. BH&G instructs us to press the simmered apples through a food mill or sieve. Too messy. Perfect opportunity to use the stick blender, which did indeed work like a charm and clean up quickly & easily, and did not require an extra bowl or anything.

Stir in 1/2 cup sugar per pound of apples that you started with.

Next, one adds the spices. Personally, I have found BH&G to be quite timid and stingy when it comes to herbs and spices. For six pounds of apples, the book recommends 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon each of cloves and allspice. Granted, you’re going to reduce the apple butter considerably, but still. Besides, I tend to keep most of my spices whole, and grind as needed, so the odds of me getting an exact half-teaspoon of anything are vanishingly small.

I put about a tablespoon and a half each of whole cloves and allspice berries into the spare coffee grinder, and ground them down to a fairly fine powder. I added 1 1/2 teaspoons of the mix to the apple butter, with an extremely generous tablespoon of cinnamon. The apple puree will turn the brown color (see above) of really good milk chocolate as you stir in the spices.

I had a lot of ground spice left over, so I added an equal amount of cinnamon and stuck it in an empty spice jar for later use.

Bring the spiced apple puree back to a boil. Turn it down and let it simmer with the lid off for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put the second load of laundry in the dryer, and enjoy the fact that your house smells like apple pie.

After 30 minutes of reducing, I tasted the apple puree. I decided that it needed something more, so I grated in half of a whole nutmeg, and added about 1/2 teaspoon each of ground mace and vanilla powder. After tasting, I seriously considered the prospect of pouring the thin sauce over some really good vanilla ice cream, before I realized that I don’t have any.

And that’s where things stand now. The apple puree is a about the consistency of thick pancake batter, and BH&G tells me to expect it to thicken up sufficiently after another 90 minutes or so of simmering. I’m not set up for home canning, so I intend to freeze most of what doesn’t get given away. My friend with the tree will get some, of course, and I shall also foist some off on my parents.

Pardon me, while I go check on the laundry.

ETA: My apple butter cooked down to a nice, thick consistency in about 90 minutes rather than the 2 hours predicted by BH&G. Fill your kitchen sink partway with ice water (very easy, if you have a lot of ice water left in your beer cooler from the previous night’s party) and let it chill down. Stir it around frequently so that it cools faster. Ladle into containers to freeze, if it lasts that long. BH&G predicts enough to fill 8 half-pint jars if you start with six pounds of apples.