Pintos, Chicken, Laziness

Hello, hello! I'm actually posting again! Will this become a regular thing? Hope so!
So, school's been crazy busy (of course), but I've been feeding myself plenty well (yaye!), so I have a few things to post about.



So, Wynona had her first batch of cornbread in the apartment, and it was probably the best batch I've made so far. I don't know what I did differently, but the batter came together much better that it usually does...it was actually a batter instead of meal in liquid. Perhaps it's because I used whole milk? In any case, I devoured it almost instantly. It was rather nice with sour cherry preserves.

So, being a college student, I'm rather lazy. Enter the lazy supper! It takes about half an hour to make, depending on how fast you prep spinach, and really requires very little work apart from that.



Lazy supper consists of spinach, scrambled eggs, bacon, and corn pone. (This corn pone recipe is from Crescent Dragonwagon's Cornbread Gospels.) The first thing you do is start the corn pone. Set the oven to preheat to 375F while you throw 2 cups of corn meal, 1 tsp salt, and 1 tbsp drippings (or butter)into a bowl and pour 2 cups boiling water over them. Give the mix a few good stirs and let it sit 5 to 10 minutes. While it sits, prep your spinach, and scramble your eggs. Check your corn mash. If it's cool enough to handle, form pones about 1/3 inch thick, put them on an oiled baking sheet, and throw them in the oven. Otherwise, fry up your bacon first, making sure it renders up a good amount of grease (oooo, yummy yummy bacon grease!). At this point, the pones should definitely go in the oven, for about 15 minutes. While they bake, saute your spinach until it's just cooked, and plate it with the bacon. Make sure you get all the pot-liquor, too--the pones will soak it up and be super delicious! Now come the eggs. Replenish the pan's fat if you need to. Your eggs should be perfectly cooked as soon as the pones are ready. Plop a couple pones on your plate, add the eggs, pour yourself a nice, cold glass of milk, and dig in!

I haven't been entirely lazy, though. Weekends are my big cooking days, and I've done two big projects that I'm rather proud of. The first is a roast chicken. This method is actually one that Matchstick and I developed last year, and it's totally one of my favourites.

• Remove the giblets and rinse the chicken inside and out. Pat dry with paper towels. Remove that silly, useless pop-up timer!
  
• Place the chicken in a roasting pan, and tuck its wings back. I'm not sure how to explain how to do this, but you kind of twist the tips of the wings around to the wrong side, behind the shoulder blades...if you have questions, better consult Julia Child.
• Slice an orange, squeeze half of it all over the chicken. Stuff both halves into the cavity.
• Peel and halve an onion, and stuff that into the cavity too.
• Sprinkle the chicken with ground cloves, salt, and a little pepper.
• Roast at 350F until the temperature is 180F on the meat thermometer, or until the drumsticks are loose and wiggly when you jiggle them.
• Let the chicken rest 10 minutes before carving.

This recipe always comes out moist, even without basting, and I really love the spicy note the cloves add.

One of the benefits of roasting a whole chicken, instead of just thighs (or whatever), is that you can make your own chicken stock! And, since it's getting to be that time of year, when everyone suddenly catches dorm (or homeroom) plague, there's nothing better to have on hand than a nice batch of Yiddish penicillin. Home made chicken stock is so fantastic, and almost guaranteed to cure whatever ails you! So, once you've carved your chicken thoroughly, don't throw away that carcass! Put it in a pot with the wings, and maybe even the leg bones, throw in the giblets, three ribs of celery, one or two scrubbed and broken carrots, some peppercorns, and a dash of salt. Add enough cold water to cover everything and fill the pot. Bring the pot nearly to a boil, skim any scum that formed, and set it to simmer, covered, for...well, for as long as you feel like. Longer is usually better. You want to extract all the chickeny goodness you can. You should skim the pot occasionally. After, o, six hours, taste the stock. You may want to simmer it down a bit if it seems weak, but when you deem it finished, strain your stock into a separate container. You'll probably have enough to freeze a good portion and still have enough for soup. If you're going to make chicken soup straight away, you can pick the meat from the carcass and add it to the soup, along with slices of the carrot you used for the stock.

My second project is the beginnings of a recipe for pinto beans. Inspired by my success with blackbean soup, I decided to be daring, and came up with something rather nice, but definitely in need of some tweaking:

• 1 lb dried pinto beans, soaked
• 3 ribs celery, chopped
• 1 "cheek" cabbage, shredded
  
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed
  
• 4 strips bacon, chopped into medium chunks
  
• 1/2 tsp cumin seed
• 2 costeño chilis
• 1 ancho chili
• 3 chilis de arbol
• 3/4 tsp cumin
• 3/4 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  
• 1.5 cups chicken stock
• Salt to taste

1. Set the costeños and ancho to soak in a bowl of hot tapwater
2. Fry the bacon in the bottom of a large pot, stirring it to make sure it renders all its fat
3. When the bacon is crispy, remove it from the pot, and toss in the cumin seed and garlic. Saute a few minutes
4. Add the onion, and cook until they begin to turn yellow
5. Add the celery and cabbage, cooking until the cabbage is well wilted
6. Remove the costeños and ancho from the water, and squeeze them out. Discard the water and chop the peppers. Add them to the pot
7. Wash your hands really well. The capsacin from the peppers will cling to your hands, and if it gets in your eye by accident, bad things would ensue
8. Add the beans, bacon, and chilis de arbol
9. Add the chicken stock, and enough water to cover everything
10. Add all the spices except the salt, and stir well
11. Bring to a boil, and simmer, covered, until the pintos are nice and soft
12. Stir the beans, and mash a good number of them against the side of the pot as you do
13. Add salt to taste, and simmer until nice and thick
14. Serve over rice or macaroni!

I like the way the bacon compliments the meatiness of the pintos, and the sweetness that the ancho chili adds. The cinnamon definitely is a nice addition, but I need to fiddle with the seasonings a bit. I definitely need to up the heat, probably with more chilis de arbol, and maybe a couple other varieties of pepper...maybe pasillas. I might add a pinch of cocoa, too, to balance the sweetness of the peppers with the pungency of the cinnamon.

Well, that's all for now. Next time, snickerdoodles!

*Cough* *Taptaptap* Is this thing on?

Eheh...So, I've been officially delinquent. But! I'm back at school, and in the North Apartments! So I have a kitchen and am cooking almost all of my meals! That's super exciting.

Matchstick pointed out to me that it's been about nine months since my last post. And that's kind of a gestation-ish length of time, so what better time for Coquus Macer to be born anew! Dude, I'm totally serious about doing this. Seriously.

...or at any rate, I'm going to try hard! がんばりますよ!

So, over the summer, my super fantastic mom got me a nice bunch of new cookware. I've gotten to play around with most of it. One of the most exciting pieces she got for me is my very first cast-iron skillet. I named her Wynona. Wynona is fantastic, and her inaugural recipe was Southern cornbread.

This is a recipe that I've been fond of for some time now, ever since Matchstick bought me The Cornbread Gospels, by Crescent Dragonwagon. It's super-simple, fast, inexpensive, and delicious! Fresh out of the oven, the bread is soft, meaty, and coarsely textured, perfect buttered, or with jam, or as a side with chili. It does, however, go stale faster than you can say "crouton." But! This cornbread still kicks ass. Crumble a stale wedge into a glass and pour some icy-cold milk over it--I swear, you will never eat store-bought cereal again. The coarseness of the bread makes it like a delicious, slightly sweet sponge, and it just soaks up the milk. It's excellent as breakfast or as a snack, especially in the warmer months (this past week has been less than optimal, but Indian Summer will be here soon, gods willing).



Ronni's Appalachian Cornbread

¼ cup butter or bacon drippings (this is one of the few instances where I think butter is better for cornbread)
2 cups cornmeal
1 tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 egg
1½ cup buttermilk (I subbed in 1½ cup milk + ¾ tsp white vinegar)

1. Throw the butter into a 10-inch skillet and pop it in the oven. Set it to preheat to 450F (a similarly wide metal baking pan will work just as well, but you should wait until the oven is heated to put it in)
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together
3. Beat the egg into the buttermilk
4. When the oven heated, combine the wet and dry ingredients
5. Swish the melted butter around the bottom of the skillet to make sure it's coated, then beat the batter a couple times to make sure it's combined. Pour it into the skillet and slam it back into the oven to bake!
6. Bake 20-25 minutes, until the top's started to brown
7. Serve directly from the skillet

The butter, especially if you make this in a baking pan, will flow over the top of the batter, and leave a lovely, salty salty crust. The first time I attempted this with Wynona, I screwed up (forgot to beat the batter before pouring!), and I was short on meal for the redo, so I made up the difference with masa harina, and it seemed to do just fine. (Apart from the bit where I forgot the salt. Ich bin so doof!) I'm going to try doing a cornbread or lightbread recipe with masa harina subbed in for part of the meal/flour at some point, which could come out pretty cool.



So, I moved into North on the 7th, and it was super exciting. We have a huge pantry, and a stove that's not all full of crud (this was a super exciting story I should have posted about. I set the oven in Brown on fire last spring when I was trying to make biscuits. People had used it and made a huge mess...so huge that the heating element was kind of buried under carbonised crud...and I neglected to check the oven before I set it to preheat. When I opened it to put in the biscuits, a huge plume of smoke billowed out! I freaked out, but the RA on duty seemed not to care. I took care of it best I could, and ended up calling my dear friend Anya at, like, eleven at night to let me into her dorm so I could use the oven. When I said this was super exciting, I meat that I was sleep deprived and stressed, so you really just had to have been there :p). Also, a full sized fridge! I can have fresh veggies! Let's neglect the bit where a good portion of the fridge is filled with Busch Light. (My flatmates are jocks/bros, and have little interest in cooking. At least they're not drinking PBR!)

Anyway, the first thing I made in the kitchen was blackbean soup. I'd been trying to come up with exact measurements for a recipe that I made all last spring with Matchstick, but it really doesn't work that way...I just use relative measurements. So, a mess-o-beans became a rather nice blackbean soup.

Blackbean Soup

1 lb blackbeans, soaked or fast-soaked
1 "cheek" green cabbage (about a fifth?)
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
Butter (for a vegan version, use olive oil and add some minced celery and a bit of minced carrot)
Cumin seed (about ½ tsp)
2 guajillo chilis (remove the stems!)
Ground cumin (at least 1 tsp, closer to two)
Paprika (at least 1½ tsp)
Parsley (at least 1 Tbsp)
Cilantro (at least 1 tsp)
Ground black pepper
Salt to taste

1. Dice the onion, shred the cabbage, and peel the garlic. Smash the garlic with the flat of your knife
2. In the bottom of a larger pot, heat the butter. When it's melted, add the cumin seeds and saute a minute before adding the onion and garlic
3. Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent and beginning to caramelise
4. Add the cabbage, and saute it gently until it's wilted. The secret to cooking cabbage without a bad odor is to treat it gently
5. Once the cabbage is wilted, add the beans, and water to cover. Bring to a boil and add all the spices except the salt. Stir, cover, and turn down the heat to let it simmer
6. Simmer about an hour (I think), stirring occasionally. After at least an hour, add the salt (the delayed salting keeps the bean skins from becoming tough and impeding the cooking process)
7. Simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the beans are tender. Top up the water as necessary
8. When the beans are tender, stir the soup and mash beans against the side of the pot. With each stir, you should squish some beans
9. Simmer, uncovered, until the soup is nicely thickened, adjusting the seasonings and stirring occasionally

This soup is nice and mild, and (in my experience) easy on the stomach. It's not too hot, either. Once you've finished cooking it, you can serve it immediately (it's super good over rice or macaroni, topped with cheddar), or leave it in the fridge. I think it tastes better the day after, because the flavours have had a chance to blend. This is just a basic platform recipe, though. You can change pretty much every element, and add whatever tickles your fancy. I use cabbage because its flavour doesn't intrude on the flavour of the beans and spices, but if you're looking for a darker flavour, spinach, escarole, or beet greens might work well. (Cooking in the greens is also a sneaky way of getting veggies into every meal!)

Last night, I was in a bit of a mood, probably owing to my sore legs (I was so lazy over the summer! I'm not used to so much walking!) and the rainy weather, so I stayed in. Nothing seemed to be helping to lift my mood, but then I decided to take a leaf out of my dear friend Amalie's book, and bake something. Let me tell you, I made the most basic white bread in the book ("the book" being James Beard's Beard on Bread), but it made me feel so much better! The mixing and kneading was just so therapeutic! And the bread came out super nice, too. I have to hurry up and finish the storebought loaf I have so I can start on my new bread! It's waiting for me in the freezer, calling to my stomach~

Basic White Bread
4 cups flour
1 Tbsp yeast
1 Tbsp salt (you could probably go lighter, only 1-2 tsp. Beard is a bit heavy-handed with the salt)
2 tsp sugar

1. Dissolve the sugar in about ½ cup warm water, then mix in the yeast and leave to proof
2. Mix the flour and salt
3. When the yeast has bloomed, add it to the flour, along with enough warm water to make a soft (but not sticky) dough, about 4 cups
   
4. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead 3 minutes
5. Drizzle a little olive oil into the bottom of a bowl. Roll the dough in it to coat it, then cover the whole kit and caboodle with a clean cloth and let it rise at least 1 hour, until its volume's doubled
6. Punch down the dough, knead three minutes, then let it sit for 5 minutes
7. Repeat the oiling procedure in a loaf pan, and allow the dough to rise again in the loaf pan. You might want to preheat the oven now (400F), and leave the pan near the oven vent so it gets a little more warmth
8. Let the dough rise 40-75 minutes, until doubled
9. Let it bake at 400F for 40-50 minutes, until the top sounds hollow when tapped, the loaf can be easily slipped from the pan, and the bottom is also crisp and sounds hollow
10. Allow 2 hours for the fresh loaf to cool before slicing it

I had a slice before I put the loaf in the freezer, and it was super delicious. I'm excited to start eating it! Sometime, I may pick up some wholewheat flour and make wholewheat loaves with this recipe.

I made a stop by the Amherst farmers market today, and it was pretty neat. There were a lot of very nice (organic!) vegetables and fruits, and also a couple organic bakeries selling bread. The prices are a bit high, even for local agriculture, so I only picked up a couple things: a couple nice bell peppers, a pound of organic broccoli (I AM SO STOKED TO EAT THIS), and--I was sooooo excited when I saw them!--four green zebra tomatoes! Green zebras are lovely, lovely tomatoes, and often hard to find. They're usually sold by organic growers, or farmers growing heirloom tomatoes. They're kind of "dinosaur-egg-looking," to quote Gab of the Bent Spoon, with green flesh and yellow/golden streaks or spotting. They're a little larger than golfballs, and deliciously sweet. I already ate one...but the others are destined for cooking. Not sure in what yet :p

Speaking of vegetables, I'm going to slip in a little about dinner tonight. It was a bit of an experiment. I've heard a bit about eating beet greens like spinach, and Matt'n'Gab have mentioned how nice they are wilted with other greens, and since I happened to have a bunch of beets, I decided to "use the whole plant," as it were. I prepped a couple beets, and as they were simmering I took all the leaves, cut off the stems, and cleaned them like spinach, then cut them into wide, stubby strips. I sauteed some chopped onion and minced garlic in olive oil, then added the greens and cooked them until they were all nicely wilted and reduced (they lose less bulk than spinach). I plated the greens, replenished the oil in the pan, and made a batch of scrambled eggs to go along with the beets and greens. By the time the pan cooking was finished, the beets were done, and I dressed them with a little butter.

Here's a very "meta" shot of my lovely dinner--you can see my post in progress! And also, the copy of Joy that my mom gave me, and Chinese Regional Cooking, which my grandmother gave me. Yaye for two of my favourite cookbooks being in the shot!

The trio went really well together. The greens and beets complimented each other, and the greens went really well with the eggs. The beet greens were quite a lot like a slightly tougher spinach, although also with a darker, and slightly more bitter flavour. I would call the flavour "mature," because it's fully-rounded, and not at all frivolous. I'm a fan! Whenever I get beets, I'll be sure to keep the greens.

So, yaye cooking! Yaye for new post! Also, many apologies to Matchstick for not sending this to you to beta, but I'm eager to post after such a long silence. I promise I'll send my next post to you :)

Yaye!!!

Happy New Year to everyone!!! I'm very sorry I haven't been posting. School and life have just been insane, and I don't know where to start from with backlog :p Aaaanyway, hopefully I'll be back soon!!! A happy and healthy new year to everyone!!!