It's About Me

Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category

Valentines Day around here means one thing: It’s all about The Hunka. He gets his annual meal of Chicken in Port Wine Sauce and Asparagus-filled Crepes. Good stuff.

I goofed around most of the morning, and then decided I probably needed to get busy. That hair and face ain’t gonna do itself. Getting purdy is always a requirement for wooing your sweetheart, right? It took way more time than I normally take (which is about 15 minutes), but the results weren’t half bad. Too many wrinkles, and probably one too many rolls in the middle, but hey, I’m 43 and I deserve at least a little pudge. At least the hair looked good. No matter what, I can always depend on the hair.

I was so taking that picture in the mirror. In the bathroom. Then photoshopped the background so you wouldn’t know.

But forget about me. The star of this night is the meal. Totally. Don’t like asparagus? I dare you to eat these crepes and tell me you don’t like asparagus. My 11 year old who hates everything green devoured 4 of them.

The recipes – Where it all began

I found these little recipe books on a sale rack in some dollar store back in 1989 or so. They were a dollar so I picked up a couple. One of them was a book on French Cooking. It looked French. It has the image of the Eiffel Tower and had crepes on the cover.

And it was a dollar.

I’ve used it a few times in the last few years. It didn’t hold up well.

But it was a dollar.

And had this recipe.

Doesn’t this look fantastic?

Mine won’t look like this. All the port wine I’ve found is purple. Deep purple. And I don’t mean the rock group. But the taste? It’s divine. Or you could use sherry. Dry or Tawny. Or both port and sherry. Really, really divine!

The first cookbook I ever bought was in 1982. I was only 16, but was already nesting like a future newlywed. I might have had a boyfriend at the time that spurred that spark, but mostly I’ve wanted to be a wife since the dawn of time, and cooking is part and par for the course. It’s the southern raising I’m sure.

This Better Homes and Garden cookbook is nice for beginners. Lots of step by step basic recipes. Right after I bought this book, I nearly burned the house down. I was boiling eggs.

This is my go to book for crepes. I don’t think I’ve used any other recipe out of this book since I’ve been an adult but it’s my first cookbook, and I’m not getting rid of it. I’m sure there will be a great-granddaughter in my future that will think it’s old and ancient and cool.

Mmmm. Crepes. They’re like pancakes, only thinner. And you stuff them. And roll them.

Now I’m hungry. Really hungry.

To get this party started, gather up all your ingredients. Here are a few of my favorites. Or some I found on sale. In this house, it’s all about the sale.

These are the basics for both recipes. You’ll also need a few other things. Full recipe at the bottom of the page.

First heat some oil in a large fry pan. You can use oil or butter. I find butter burns too fast for high temp so I used vegetable oil. About 1/4 cup. Heat it to medium high. On an electric range, I used 8.

While the oil is heating put some flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika in a plastic bag.

Mix it up. We’re going to dredge the chicken in it. I used chicken thighs because they were on sale, and I had some in the freezer. You can use breasts or even a whole cut up chicken. I took the skin off. I’m not a skin fan unless it’s seriously fried. And then, I still pull it off. This meal is by far not healthy so if you like skin, leave it on.

Drop half the chicken in to your bag and shake it up. Shake it up like K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Shake, shake, shake! Shake, shake, shake! Shake your chicken….

I once had a pudgy teacher named Mrs. Saudi. Oh we had a song for her. Shake your body, like Mrs. Saudi.

My mother was so ashamed.

I thought of it myself.

I was the lead singer.

I’m still serving penance for that.

Drop the chicken into your hot oil, then coat the other half.

If your oil is the right temperature you should be getting a good sizzle right out of the bag. Keep it hot, adjust the heat as you need to so it doesn’t drop too much when you put the first half in the pan.

If you lose the sizzle, that flour is going to be mushy. You don’t want mushy.

Once you get all the pieces in the pan, put a lid on it. You’ll cook it the longest on this side with the lid on. It will cook the chicken through.

Let it cook a good long time. About 8 minutes up to 15. At 8 minutes, lift the lid and lift one piece. Is it stuck? If so, it’s not done. Put the lid back on and come back in about 5 more. If it looks golden brown and crispy, you’re ready to turn them all.

Now let them cook on this side until you get the same results. Do not put on the lid. If you put the lid on now that crispy crust will steam. Get soft. And if there’s something you don’t want on Valentines Day it’s soft chicken. Know what I’m saying?

While the chicken is cooking, put the asparagus in another fry pan. You can use fresh, but I love to use the canned variety because of the juice.

I laid out two cans, but actually got out a third can after I started putting the crepes together. We shared dinner with my step-dad. I wanted to have plenty for everyone and leftovers for the Hunka.

Turn the heat up to mid-range and let these simmer in their own juice while you’re prepping the rest of the meal.

If you have a good knife, get it. I have two. One is the world’s most expensive dented tip knife as seen in a previous post. The other one is this beauty my mother gave me the Christmas before she died. I love this knife. For obvious reasons.

Slice some mushrooms and one onion. I used two containers of mushrooms. One for the sauteed mushrooms and onion for the crepes and another container for the chicken.

Dice half the onion. Do you know the easy way to do that? Cut the onion in half, lop the top off, and peel the outer skin off. Cut the onion along the ribs, then turn the knife and cut the other way. Instant dice.

With the other half of the onion, do a simple slice. This gives two different textures to the onion. The dice will brown quicker, giving a caramelized flavor that’s oh so good with mushrooms.

Do you know what goes good with onion and mushrooms?

Yeah. Butter.

Is it wrong for me to want to stick my face in that and lap it up like the dog?

It’s butter. It’s good. Second only to bacon.

Mmm. Bacon. It’s meat candy. Sigh.

Toss the mushrooms and onion into the melting butter and let it saute. Stir it around once in awhile so it all gets toasty. When you first put the mushrooms in, they will soak up the butter. Put an additional 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil in there.

While the mushrooms and onions are caramelizing, and the asparagus is simmering it’s time to start in on the crepes and take a look at the chicken.

The simplest recipe on the planet, except for maybe pancakes. Crepes are pancake’s more sophisticated sister.

Start with two eggs.

One cup of milk. Yes, I know what the recipe says.

Let me introduce to you the worlds oldest one cup Pyrex measuring cup.

Not really. But the hard water build up will sure fool you won’t it? I hate hard water. Welcome to the ranch.

Add the oil.

Then whisk like crazy.

Get a cup of flour. Yes, I do know what the recipe says.

Add the flour, a pinch of salt and some sugar to the liquid.

And whisk until smooth.

Now, with the extra half cup of milk and the extra half cup of flour you didn’t use, you’ll either add one or the other to the batter to make it just right. Depending on the flour, your batter may be too thick. If it’s too thick, you’ll wind up with pancakes. If it’s too thin, they’ll crack and bust and you won’t get them out of the pan. Leave it out, unless or until you need it.

It’s a dance.

I bet when you started reading this you didn’t realize you were getting an encyclopedia. Oh how this girl can talk.

She can go on and on and on. Especially if I stop briefly to talk about myself in the third person.

Let’s move on.

You’ll need a small fry pan. We have several this size and my husband swears by the non-stick version. I’ve never had a problem with my stainless, so I picked it.

Heat it first. Dry.

While it’s heating up check the chicken and the asparagus. The asparagus is probably dry at this point, and getting toasty. If it looks like this, wonderful! Stir it up, and then put a little water in it. Or, if you’re a pig like us, go ahead and decide to put that third can in there. The toastiness will add so much flavor.

The chicken probably looks pretty good too.

Pull it out of the frying pan and pour off all the grease. You won’t need it. There will be browned bits in the bottom of the pan, and this is a great thing.

The heat should still be high at this point, and when we pour the liquid in, that hot pan wet liquid will release all those bits and help us make a gravy. Put in all the remaining mushrooms then pour in the wine. Mmmm. Thick sweet port.

Stir the pan well and get all the bits off the bottom. Then pour in the cream. I didn’t have cream. Not a drop. So I used sour cream and a little milk. Hey, you do what you got to do when you’re in the middle of your annual dinner.

Mix it all up.

And then put all that beautiful chicken back in the pan.

—–

I guess I’ll finish this one of these days if I can find all the pictures after the hard drive crash. :-\

I’ve been getting ready for our annual Valentines day dinner. This is one holiday that is dedicated to The Hunka. I usually get taken pretty good care of the rest of the year so I’ve always made it a point to do something big for Valentine’s just for my babe.

The meal for this annual event is a French one I found in this tiny little ‘French’ cookbook I bought back in 1992 for a dollar. In 1994 (both girls were living with us at the time) I had planned this awesome dinner for my honey and had asked the girls to get home late that night. They didn’t.

Worse yet The Hunka got home very late from work too. I was lucky to have been able to keep the food going as long as I did but in doing so I changed the recipe. Drastically. And it was good. Oh so good. Good enough we’ve had it every Valentine;s day since, and I have to try and remember all the chain of events of that night so I get it right.

The recipe starts off with chicken fried in a bit of oil, and then cooked in a port wine sauce. However, since The Hunka was so late, I had used all the port, and had to wind up using some sherry I had on hand. Anything to keep the sauce a sauce and not a crispy goo on the bottom of the pan. By the end of the night I had a bottle of port and a bottle of sherry in that pot.

Did I mention I drank some of that port? I drank some of the sherry too.

By the time my Hunka came home, I don’t remember the full details of the recipe. But I remember that the food was divine. I also made asparagus filled crepes with a sauteed onions and mushroom sauce to put on it. Divine. It’s the only word you need to describe it all.

The kids got home that night in time for dinner and my middle one – my darling child – she put ketchup on it. If I ever wanted to kill a kid that would be the time. For that, and the because her sister made sure they got home ‘early’. I could have killed them both.

Tomorrow, me and the Hunka will be eating Chicken in Port Wine Sauce with Asparagus filled Crepes. So will Devon. The kid won’t like it. He’ll make comments. He’ll make faces. He’ll probably drag out the ketchup.

Isn’t it romantic?

I like sales. I like sales on food. I really like sales on big hunks of meat. In particular I get giddy when I find beef of any kind on sale and I scored big time this week, twice.

Score one, rib eyes at Brookshires for $3.99 a pound. Not crappy, fatty, gristle laden steaks, but 3/4 inch thick juicy marbled goodness.

Yo baby come to momma. I aged these two ways, one I left them open in the fridge for a few days. Second, I coated them in kosher salt and garlic before I stuck them in the fridge. I’ll write about that part later, but do it. You’ll be glad you did.

Second score of the week was this bad boy.

Ten full pounds of all American beef. For $1.99 a pound!

Really! Aren’t you giddy now too?

Beef. Beef. Beef! Let’s cheer beef!

Okay.

I’ll stop.

But beef on sale makes me giddy.

I planned to get four roasts out of that hunk. I reached into the knife drawer and pulled out my most expensive non-appliance kitchen purchase ever. My first Wusthof knife. I spent $120 on this knife in a time when we really didn’t have the money. Good knives should always be sharp so I bought the most expensive knife sharpener to go along with it. If I’m going in the hole for a knife, I might as well go all the way, right?

Sheer beauty. And by beauty, I don’t mean the dent in the tip of it.

Dents?

In the tip of the world’s most expensive knife?

Yes, dents. Let me explain.

Once upon a time in a world far away, my darling hunka chunka wanted to show the nephew the difference between bagged coconut and fresh.

See where I’m going here?

He used a, a…(sniff, small cry) hammer, and my (sobbing gasp) World’s Most Expensive Knife to crack that sucker open.

And then…

THIS HAPPENED!

Doesn’t this break your heart? It sure did mine, and he hid it for as long as possible. I could have killed him, but since I love him, I just slapped him around a little bit.

And I might have spit in his food.

Kidding!

Or am I?

So with the world’s most expensive dented tip knife, I cut the right side off into two big chunks.

Then packaged them up into Foodsaver bags so they won’t get burned in the freezer. I love my Foodsaver.

I was going to freeze the whole thing, but since I’ve started doing the homesteading thing I thought I should can the other half. I’m learning to not put all my eggs in one basket, or in this case, all my meat in one freezer. If the freezer goes out I’d be hosed. Canning and freezing the same items ensures that we’ll have something to eat should something go wrong. Plus, canning meat is better than buying pre-made stuff at the store that has ingredients you can’t pronounce. Why buy Hormel Roast Beef when you can have your very own in a jar right in your cabinet!

Go beef!

To make sure this raw blob of bloody meat actually tastes like roast I needed to prepare it first. I plopped the two massive chunks in my favorite skillet.

I sprinkled both sides with salt, cracked pepper and garlic powder. With the heat on pretty high, the spices turn a golden brown and get crispy, sealing in flavor.

Looking through all the pictures I’ve taken, I failed to take a picture of the the crispy crust. Silly me. Sear both sides about 5 minutes or so each side. Trust me, you’ll thank me later, even if I didn’t show you a picture of it.

Set the meat aside and let it rest. Let’s use that beautiful crunchy goodness in the bottom of the pan to make some juice. Pour in some water, and break up those browned bits of spice and meat on the bottom of the pan.

Earlier when I pulled the meat out of the package there was a bit of fat on the bottom. Normally I leave that on and sear it like crazy when I make a pot roast, but I knew I was canning meat later so I cut it off and browned it.

Put it in the pan of watered bits.

Let it boil up with the gravy for awhile to get a lot of flavor infused in the juice.

Oh my. Half the floor is being swept by dog tails, while the other half is getting soaked by drool.

Dog slobber. It’s my favorite wrinkle cream.

Gauge and Cassie are lucky dogs.

Yes, they ate it all. I got roasty dog kisses for this little snack and undying devotion. At least until the hunka got home.

While the gravy and fat melded into gravy goodness I prepped the pressure cooker. No little water bath for these babies. Nope, gotta let them cook for awhile.

Put a couple inches of water in the pressure cooker. When I first got this cooker, I was under the impression that like a water bath, the water had to be over the top of the jars. The stuff I canned is good, but let me tell you, it took FOREVER. Have you ever tried to boil 24 quarts of water? That’s full of jars? And food?

Let my inexperience be your guide. Don’t. Don’t fill it. Don’t cover the jars. Just put some water in the cooker so you can create the boil, that creates the pressure, that cooks the food, to seal the jars.

Got it?

Good. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t pass along that little nugget of info.

Do you have hard water?

Do this too.

Pour about a quarter cup of vinegar in the water. It’ll keep the white film off your jars. We have seriously hard water. Pour the vinegar. You’ll thank me later.

Put your empty jars in the cooker, put a little of the water in them so they don’t float away and turn the heat up on high. While you’re waiting for the water to heat up, cut your meat into jar sized chunks.

Take the fat out of the gravy, let it cool, and give it to the dogs. If the puddle under my feet got any deeper I’d have to take swimming lessons. Or mop. And I don’t like doing either.

Take your jars out of the cooker, pouring the water back in the pot. Throw in the jar lids so they get hot while you’re filling the jars. Don’t boil those lids.

Pack the jars with your seared but yet still raw meat, and pour that gravy goodness into your jars. Fill the jars to within an inch of the top.

The jar on the left has too much liquid. The jar in the middle doesn’t have enough. The jar on the right is just…right.

If you don’t have enough gravy, use water. As the meat cooks, it’ll condense the juice into the best pot roast gravy you’ve ever had. Don’t worry about it. Use water if you need to. Just make sure you fill it to within an inch. Not too much. Not too little.

Put your lids on, put the bands on, and put your jars in the cooker. Seal the lid. In about 5 minutes, with the heat on high, your cooker will start building pressure. Put the regulator on when you get a constant steam hiss from the hole. Let the pressure build to 10 to 15 pounds. The 10 pound range is best.

Mine stayed at a steady 15 because my pot was on the back burner and every time I turned it down, and moved the pot back, the pot moved the knob back to high.

My pot is always on the back burner. In fact, most everything I really like to do, is on the back burner. But that’s how I roll.

In about an hour, you’ll have cooked pot roast.

These jars are straight out of the cooker. They’re bubbling and boiling and will for another 30 minutes. As they cool, they’ll seal so tight you’ll need a bottle opener to pry the lids off.

As they cool, let them sit. Don’t touch them. Don’t turn them, don’t shake them. Let them cool right where they are without being fooled with. They’re temperamental like that.

Once cooled completely, take the bands off and wash good. These jars will last in your pantry fo-evah. But why wait that long. Next week, when you’re running into the house from picking up the kids, milking the cow, training the dogs, building a web site, chopping wood, sewing a quilt and cleaning the baseboards you’ll be so happy that half your dinner is already done. Pop some bisquits in the oven, throw together a salad, and eat pot roast.

You’ll be glad you canned some meat.