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Gentle Readers of The Faudie here on Orble,
I'm pleased to announce The Faudie has a new home: www.notafoodie.com. You can continue to read all about my culinary misadventures there.
Now that I have my own domain, I will no longer be updating this blog here on Orble. Thank you to everyone who's come by to read about my mishaps and mayhem in my kitchen. As I mentioned above, you can still read about my mishaps and mayhem in my kitchen at my new home.
Please stop by and check out my news digs. No gifts are necessary as I will not be holding a formal housewarming party.
Love, luck and lollipops,
The Faudie
www.notafoodie.com
I've mentioned my zest for zucchini a few times now, I believe, Gentle Reader, and have even shared with you the questionable-looking but still quite yummy chocolate chip-zucchini cookies of my own making (er, merging of recipes). Since I had four zucchs left over after from my first brush with zucchini desserts and still aching to make some zucchini bread of some sort, I decided to make the most of my Tuesday late afternoon and make the most of my leftover zucchini by whipping up some zucchini-orange bread.
Pan de Vida
Sad to say, but this culinary misadventure was my first attempt at making any kind of bread from scratch. Yep, my bread-making adventures have been limited to loafs out of a Krusteaz box. But that's not terribly surprising, Gentle Reader, since we're not big breakfast/snack/dessert bread eaters here at Chez Boeckman-Walker. We love banana bread, but aside from the boy, we're not banana eaters, thus we never have mushy, icky bananas around from which to make banana bread. If I'm going to make some kind of breakfast/snack/dessert carb thing, it's going to be in the form of muffins. And Krusteaz fat-free muffin mixes are easy and taste pretty darn good.
The challenge with this recipe would be making it true: Yes, that would include whipping out the 'ol box grater (because my Microplane zester I'm supposed to get as a gimme for previewing the CI annual is on back order, darn it all) and zesting one of the two big oranges we bought last night when we took Joy to an HEB so she could get some boo-boo supplies for her step-son, who hurt his leg in a bizarre golf cart-tipping accident. In addition to one tablespoon of fresh orange zest, I needed one whole tablespoon of freshly squeezed orange juice. Naturally, I chose the larger of the two oranges since I had no idea how much juice and how much zest I'd get from a midsize orange.
Now I'd read in one of my issues of CI a quick kitchen tip that involves wrapping one's box grater/zester with some plastic wrap to better collect zest or not make it such a pain in the butt to scrape off the box grater/zester. Did I dig out the tip and follow it? Hell no. I didn't want to take the time to track down the issue, nor did I want to make my first use of the zesting side of the box grater so...fancy schmancy. No, I was determined my first go would be the old-fashioned way.
And the old-fashioned way is crappy and painful.
"Painful?" you ask, Gentle Reader?
Yes, painful. While attempting to salvage as much zest as I could, I scoured the skin off the pads off my right and left thumbs and index fingers. So when I went to squeeze half the zested orange, its juice slid right into my abraded fingertips. Ouch!
Ahh, the stupid things I do just to provide you, Gentle Reader, with quality culinary misadventures....
I Love My Food Processor, But...
...I wish its grater/shredder disc did a better job. Or perhaps not such a good job. My lovely Queasy Art three-cup food processor really is a time-saving device (it whipped out a cup of grated/shredded zucchini in, like, 3 seconds), but because the grater disc works so well, I wind up with really, really long strands of grated/shredded zucchini. That don't break up when you add them to batter or dough. And don't break up when you cook them. So you wind up with these icky-looking green strands in your desserts that look really, really unappetizing--but really aren't noticeable when you're chewing and swallowing.
Thus this late afternoon I wound up with bread dough that looked like this:
Just like my chocolate chip-zucchini cookies, my zucchini-orange bread dough looked like something that came out the business end of this wiener dog my older sister once had who loved to eat my uninflated balloons. (Ahh, but Noodle was a great dog.) Did I let that deter me? Hell no. But am I now on a quest to figure out how to grate/shred zucchini in my food processor without the long-stranded end product and still enjoy its time-saving goodness? You bet your ass!
If It's Nice, Do It Six Times
The original recipe calls to split the dough between two 8" x 4" loaf pans, but (A) I don't think I have two pans of that size and (B) I didn't want that big of a loaf, let alone two of 'em. So I dug out the half-dozen mini-loaf pans I'd bought three years ago or so to make a train cake for the boy's second birthday and put them to use (for something other than taking up space in my baking utensils drawer, although the topmost one does hold all my measuring spoons, so I guess the do serve a purpose in there).
Because I used such small pans, I was pretty sure the loaves wouldn't need the full 50 minutes of baking time called for in the recipe. And The Faudie was right! Woohoo! I set the timer for 25 minutes, figuring that after half the baking time, I could get a good idea of how much longer the loaves might need. Sure enough, 25 minutes was exactly how much time they needed.
After ten minutes of chillin' out in their pans, I dumped each loaf out and let them chill completely naked on the wire rack. Mmmm...six times the amount of loafy love!
Of course, the smell of freshly baked bread appeals to damn near everyone, and the residents (human, that is) of Chez Boeckman-Walker were helpless to resist its allure. Shortly after I dumped the loaves from the pans, I cut into one so we could all have a taste.
If only I could upload scratch-and-sniff pictures for you to enjoy, Gentle Reader! But, alas, you'll just have to make some for yourself. Here's the recipe, as it appears in the July 2008 issue of Cooking Light:
Zucchini-Orange Bread
3 C all-purpose flour (about 13 1/2 oz.)
1 t NaCl
1 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 C sugar
1/2 C egg substitute
1/3 C canola oil
1 T orange zest
1 T fresh OJ
2 C shredded zucchini
1/2 C coarsely chopped walnuts
1/2 C powdered sugar
2 T fresh OJ
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, NaCl, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk to mix well, then make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.
3. In a second bowl, combine the sugar, egg substitute, orange zest and OJ.
4. Pour the liquid mixture into the well in the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.
5. Fold in the zucchini and walnuts.
6. Divide the batter between two 8" x 4" loaf pans coated with cooking spray.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of each loaf comes out clean.
8. Cool the loaves 10 minutes in their pans on a wire rack, then remove them from their pans to continue cooling on the rack.
9. If desired, combine the powdered sugar and two tablespoons of OJ with a whisk to make a glaze to drizzle over the still-warm bread.
Serving size: 1 slice
Nutritional Info
Calories: 145
Fat: 5.1 g
Saturated fat: 0.4 g
Protein: 2.8 g
Carbs: 22.5 g
Fiber: 0.7 g
Na: 142 mg
The Faudie's Futzings
**In lieu of all-purpose flour, I used 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat and 1 1/2 cups of white whole wheat, as I so often do. Sure, the whole wheat flour gives the end product a nuttier flavor, but I like it and so does the husband. (The boy has yet to complain, but just as he has with cilantro, I'm sure he'll make his enmity known soon enough.)
**Because I used whole wheat flour, I had to increase the amount of baking powder by half (for 1 1/2 teaspoons) and used a wee bit more OJ since whole wheat flour tends to make things more dense and dry.
**Because my knife skills suck, my coarsely chopped walnuts were more like powdered and pulverized walnuts. Oh well. One of these days I swear I am going to sign up for one of the knife skills classes Central Market and Whole Foods offer.
**As I mentioned previously, I used much smaller loaf pans and halved the baking time with absolute success.
Final Verdict
The bread is quite tasty, don't get me wrong. However, it's missing something. Cinnamon, perhaps. Or nutmeg or clove or some such similar spice.
Or perhaps the whole wheat flour obliterated whatever sweetness the orange zest and OJ might have imparted--which is highly unlike, I know, Gentle Reader, since only fake orange flavor is sweet. And no, I didn't make the glaze. I was too busy eating supper to remember the glazing bit. Bad me.
While I had the food processor out, I went ahead and grated/shredded up the remaining three and a half zucchini, bagged 'em and set 'em up to freeze for later use. I might just start thawing one of those two-cup bags so I can whip up the zucchini bread recipe my dear friend the world's greatest Spin instructor made and shared with me (and got me started on this zucchini kick).
Remember when Sunday was allegedly a day of rest? Don't think that's ever been the case at Chez Boeckman-Walker. This Sunday was no exception.
Soup's On!
After more than a week of trying to find time to make it, I finally had the opportunity to make a red pepper soup from Cooking Light I found two or three weeks ago. While I was trying and failing to find time to make the soup, half the eight red bell peppers that I'd bought last week froze and then thawed, which is not a great thing for bell peppers. The nonperishable ingredients took up valuable counter real estate for several days; they greeted me accusingly every morning when I reached into the spice/drug cabinet for my morning meds. Don't laugh, Gentle Reader: Olive oil has a wicked, wicked stare that you don't want to encounter at 5:50 in the morning.
I started working up the recipe Saturday afternoon and encountered one problem: the recipe, like many others I have, failed to explain why I needed to take a certain step. In this situation, the recipe called to broil the halved bell peppers for 15 minutes or until they were blackened. No explanation was given for this step. Not being a fan of blackened anything, I let the peppers broil for the 15 minutes and only half a dozen of them got blackened.
This mistake would cost me.
Gentle Reader, have you ever peeled a tomato? How about a red bell pepper? How about a chile? "No," you say? Well, count your blessings because peeling red bell peppers sucks. As I learned (and so did the husband), the point of blackening the peppers in the broiler was to make peeling them a frickin' walk in the park. The skins of the blackened peppers puffed up and peeled off like they were wearing an exfoliating peel-away mask. The peppers that didn't get blackened? Well, you know how sometimes you get price tags or other product stickers that refuse to peel off no matter what you try? Yeah, peeling those unblackened peppers was a lot like that.
The experience of peeling those damned pepper halves was so frustrating that after they were peeled and chopped (with the husband's help), I wrapped up production and said I'd finish Sunday morning.
In the Bag
Another learning experience this recipe presented was making a steeping bag. I'm not a tea drinker (I've even stopped drinking the yogi tea YoYo serves after classes), so steeping bags and all that stuff is a novel experience pour moi. For the soup's steeping bag, I needed cheesecloth, which I figured I could procure at Wally World easily enough.
Heh. Procure it I could at Wally World. Easily enough? Hell no. I hunted for it for a good half-hour until tracking it down in the paint department (which was on my mental list of possibilities, after the kitchenware aisle and various places in the food section). Even the guy who is sort of in charge of the kitchenware aisle during the day figured it had to be in his area somewhere. Oh well, so much for common sense in where to place items!
I also had to procure fresh thyme stems. Probably not a big thing for foodies, but it was a big thing for The Faudie. I'm not a big fan of basil and those other garden herbs, such as basil, majoram, chervil, dill, etc. I think of them as the kind of flavors WASPs like, and I'm not one for WASP food. Yes, I realize my sweeping condemnation of a variety of garden herbs is ridiculous, but, hey, who cares. I like the spices I like. So there.
Anywho, once I had my goodies in my makeshift steeping bag, I realized I'd cut the cheesecloth too short to properly tie it, so I had to resort to some thread from the sewing basket. It didn't make for the prettiest steeping bag ever, but that's not the point of it. It just had to hold the spices.
And it did. But my steeping bag sure as hell didn't look very pretty coming out after its job was done.
Souptastic Sunday Morning
With the prep work wrapped Saturday evening, making the soup itself Sunday morning after breakfast was pretty easy. As you probably saw in the preceding photos, Gentle Reader, Clive the Dutchie got to come out and play, and he did a great job, as always. I also got to play with the blender, even daring to use it without the pitcher lid's center piece in place so that steam could escape. Okay, granted, the recipe's instructions told me to do this and told me to place a towel over the hole so I wouldn't make a mess--but still, doing it was pretty daring.
(Yes, I know. If that's my sense of daring, I must live the most boring existence ever. And I do.)
Roasted Red Pepper Soup
8 red bell peppers (about 2 3/4 lb.)
5 black peppercorns
3 thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
2 t olive oil
2 C diced onion (about 1 large)
1 T minced fresh garlic
4 C fat-free, low-Na chicken broth
3 T white wine vinegar
1/4 t hot pepper sauce
1/2 t NaCl
1/4 t ground black pepper
2 T chopped fresh chives
Prep the Peppers
1. Cut the bell peppers in half lengthwise; discard their seeds and membranes.
2. Place pepper halves, skin sides up, on a foil-lined baking sheet. Flatten with your hand.
3. Broil the peppers for 15 minutes or until blackened.
4. Place the peppers in a zip-top plastic bag and seal it. Let the peppers rest for 15 minutes.
5. Peel and chop the peppers.
Bag It
1. Place peppercorns, thyme and bay leaf on a double layer of cheesecloth.
2. Gather the edges of the cheesecloth together and tie them securely.
Soup Time
1. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat.
2. Add onion and garlic, and cook them, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until the onion is lightly browned.
3. Add the bell peppers, cheesecloth bag, broth, vinegar and hot pepper sauce to the pan.
4. Increase the heat to medium-high, and bring the soup to a boil. Then cover, reduce the heat and let simmer 20 minutes.
5. Remove the soup from the heat, then fish out and trash the cheesecloth bag.
6. Stir in the NaCl and black pepper.
7. Place half of the soup in a blender. Remove the center piece of the blender lid to allow steam to escape before securing the blender lid on the blender. Place a clean towel over the opening in the blender lid to prevent splatters. Blend the soup until smooth. Pour the pureed mixture into a large bowl, then repeat this step with the remaining soup.
8. Sprinkle the finished soup with the chives.
Serving size: 1 C of soup and 1 t of chives
Nutritional Info
Calories: 99
Fat: 2.4 g
Saturated fat: 0.4 g
Protein:> 3.7 g
Fiber: 1.4 g
Carbs: 16.7 g
Na: 465 mg
And now for what you've all been waiting for--The Faudie's Futzings!
**Screw freshly minced garlic. Get a jar of Spice World minced garlic. Save time.
**I didn't have white wine vinegar, and I didn't want to buy a bottle for a recipe I'd never tasted before. Yeah, I'm cheap. So I substituted red wine vinegar after checking out substitutes with The Cook's Thesaurus. I could have also used the rice wine vinegar I have but opted for the red wine vinegar.
**I didn't have hot pepper sauce either, and, since I'm cheap, I didn't want to buy it. So again, I check with a The Cook's Thesaurus and used 1/4 t of cayenne.
**Screw freshly ground black pepper. My cabinets are too full for a pepper mill. I whipped out 1/4 t of ground black pepper from a tin I've had since I got my first apartment back in August 1995.
**I was too lazy to chop up some greens from the green onions we have, so I used some leftover chopped cilantro instead. I thought it complemented the red bell pepper perfectly.
Bon appetit!
Double Your Pleasure
While making the soup this morning, I had planned to make up at least two more recipes--Ooey Gooey Peanut Butter Brownies and Zucchini-Orange Bread. And clean the house on top of that. And get ready to teach my nooner.
Yeah, sometimes my ambition is a wee bit out of wack.
Because I was already working up a new recipe, I opted to make up the brownies, which I've made twice before. However, this time I actually followed the recipe. Instead of using a Krusteaz fat-free brownie mix for the base, I used a devil's food cake mix, and for the first time, I didn't have problems with the brownie base not baking in the center.
No, the center sunk when I made the mistake of letting it cool too long, which happened because I'd failed to have the goo ready by the time the base was ready, which happened because I was busy with the soup.
Despite the sunken center, the brownies cooked in the time called for by the recipe, which is a first. Usually I have to bake them damn near double the time called for, in part because the Krusteaz brownies can be temperamental when made for a more cake-like consistency and also because our stove is frickin' ancient.
Am I making you hungry yet, Gentle Reader?
What about now?
They're damn good brownies, so go make some! Here's the recipe.
Ooey-Gooey Peanut Butter-Chocolate Brownies
3/4 C fat-free sweetened condensed milk, divided
1/4 C butter, melted and cooled
1/4 C skim milk
1 18.25-oz. package devil's food cake mix
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
Cooking spray
1 7-oz. jar marshmallow creme (about 1 3/4 C)
1/2 C peanut butter morsels
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, combine 1/4 C condensed milk, butter, milk, cake mix and egg white. The batter will be very stiff.
3. Coat the bottom of .
4. Using floured hands, press two-thirds of the batter into a 13" x 9" baking pan prepped with cooking spray. Pat the batter to even it out into a thin layer.
5. Bake the base for 10 minutes.
6. In a medium-size bowl, combine 1/2 C condensed milk and marshmallow creme, then stir in the morsels.
7. Spread the marshmallow goo evenly over the baked brownie layer.
8. Carefully drop the remaining batter by the spoonful atop the marshmallow goo.
9. Bake for 30 minutes.
10. Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.
Serving size: 1 brownie
Nutritional Info
Calories: 176
Fat: 5 g
Saturated fat: 2.1 g
Protein: 2.6 g
Fiber: 0.8 g
Carbs: 29.9 g
Cholesterol: 6 mg
Na: 212 mg
To honor the boy's last day of daycare on Thursday, I made him a cake--but not just any cake. I didn't do this little celebration in any half measures, thank you very much. I went full-tilt boogie on this baby. I reached down deep inside of me, got in touch with my inner Martha Stewart and saw what my inner shriveled up 'ol busybody could do.
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Pardon my French. It's been far too long since I attempted to do more than just jot down the common interjection.
Yes, beef made a return to Chez Boeckman-Walker Monday night, this time in the form of a curry. Well, I think it was supposed to be a curry. The recipe, from the Stonyfield Farm Yogurt Cookbook, is called Beef and Potato Curry, and the FSM knows it had enough turmeric in it to make it a curry. But it was a bit different from curries I've had
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Do you know what torture is, Gentle Reader? It's making chicken curry at the butt-crack of dawn and then having to smell that fabulous aroma every time you walk through or pass by your kitchen the rest of the day. That is gastronomic torture defined.
And I have only myself to blame. I had planned to make a curry recipe from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer--our first from this book--for supper Saturday night because, but by the time we wrapped up our misadventures at the outlet center, we were too pooped to party and wound up dining on Subway and leftover creamy chicken and rice casserole instead. Then I got up bright and early Sunday morning and made curry--because I'm a freak
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For some reason, Gentle Reader, Fridays have been quite madcap and harried of late at Chez Boeckman-Walker. I think part of the problem is that Friday means Grocery Run, and we accomplish that fun little jaunt to HEB after the boys get home from their respective places--which means we're picking up the weekly grocery haul right along with half of the 'hood--and then must get home and get supper ready because usually the boy is simply dying of hunger by that point.
This Friday was no exception. So harried was it that I got a call around 4:15 from the husband letting me know he was working late once again. He called again around 5 because, yes, he was still at work but would be finished soon (his exact words from his previous call) and still planned to pick up the boy. Know what traffic is like at that time on a Friday, I kindly offered to do the grocery run and get supper started so the boys could just come home. I have to tell you, Gentle Reader, I don't think I've heard as much relief in the husband's voice as I did when he accepted my offer
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Yes, Gentle Reader, feel free to nail my arse to the wall for being a total hypocrite. I can make all-American meals. And can there be any more All-American a meal than a casserole?
Okay, yes, casserole is of French origin, but slather that sucker with Campbell's cream of whatever, and that's akin to sticking an American flag in that dish and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" while serving it
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I think, Gentle Reader, that I've firmly established that I'm not a very sane person. Read through any post on this blog, and you'll find proof galore (Proof Galore, the third cousin twice removed of Pussy Galore) that I'm just not all together up there where it counts. And I'm okay with that. My friends and family, by and large, are too.
But if you need further proof or just want to be mildly entertained by bizarre ideas, I submit this post unto you.
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All last week I went about my business with an insane sense of urgency--gotta get this done so I can then get that done so that afterwards I can get this done because I really want to have time to do this before I find time at the end of the day to read the Wall Street Journal and catch up on comics while watching the Fox Comedy Hour and enjoy dessert on the couch with the husband. Despite my frantic, crazed pace, I rarely got the chance to do what I wanted.
But not this Monday. I still felt a bit frantic, but I did manage to get in my full time at the gym (including 7.25 miles on the treadmill, thank you very much), to get scanned and uploaded for the coders the monographs I'd edited over the weekend, to get 15 more monographs edited, scanned and uploaded, to make it to the FedEx store down the street to ship off the last of the original galleys I'd worked on, to pick up the steroid cream for my Olympic rash that finally came in at the pharmacy at HEB and, best of all, to spend some quality time in the kitchen. Not only was I damned determined to get supper on the table at 6 Monday evening (after far too many 7 PM meals, which then put the boy's bedtime routine in a rush and severely cut into the unwinding time the husband and I like to have before we hit the hay), but I was hoping to replenish the dwindling supply of dessert yummies in the deep freeze. Plus I have a some lovely red bell peppers and zucchini just waiting to be mangled by moi
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