Stir Fry Night!

So.

This is Matt. I have never posted on this blog (or any blog, for that matter) before, so bear with me on this one.

My wife has, as you have seen, been posting fun recipes and such, and so when I made a good stir fry for dinner tonight, she said "You should post this on the blog." Of course, I immediately tried to convince her (with much flattery) that she was a MUCH better writer, and that she should put it on the blog. However, I was convinced by the point that if I don't ever post, it won't be our blog. Fair enough. The only problem was that I wasn't using a recipe, and it is pretty simple anyway.

So to preface the "recipe," I feel I should say that stir fries fall into a very specific cooking category in my mind. The category goes by many names, including "mess-of-stuff" (thanks to Luke Hansen) and "leftover velcro" (thanks to Alton Brown), and includes any recipe which you can throw whatever you have in the fridge (within reason) into it, and it will still be good. That being said, on with the recipe!

1/2 Green bell pepper, chopped
1 carrot, julienned
1/3 rack of pork ribs, boneless, cut into pieces
2 eggs, scrambled
a bit of canola oil (technical terms!)
a bit more soy sauce (more technical terms!)
even a bit more teriyaki sauce (tired of this yet?)
1 tsp dried onion flakes
1 tsp dried grated ginger

So it started with a nice hot wok with the canola oil in it. To that, I added the main ingredients in order from longest cooking time to shortest. That order was pork, carrots, pepper (with onion flakes and ginger), eggs. I vigilantly stirred the whole mixture as it cooked to make sure it didn't burn (much), and then added soy sauce and teriyaki toward the end. After letting the flavors come together a bit, it was finished and removed from the heat. We served it over white rice.

So there it is! Hope you enjoyed!

Explosive Apple Cinnamon Bread

Most mornings during the work week we don't really have time to sit down and eat breakfast, so we wind up eating a slice or two of bread as we run out the door.  We go through one loaf of a breakfast bread in a little over a week, so every weekend or so I throw together another loaf.  For the past several weeks we've been enjoying banana bread with peanut butter, but this week we were out of bananas, so we decided to come up with something more creative.

I've found that you can have a lot of flexibility with ingredients in quick breads and muffins as long as you keep a balance between the basic categories (fats, sweetener, additions, etc).  This is really helpful, because I'm kind of known for running out of key ingredients and making weird substitutions.  My experiments usually turn out okay, but they work a lot better when I have a flexible recipe in the first place!  Here is my basic quick bread/muffin recipe:


2 - 2.5 c flour (today I used all purpose flour with flax)
0.5 c sweetener (today I used brown sugar)
2 tsp baking powder
1 c milk
0.25 c fat (today I used oil)
1 egg
up to 1.5 c additions (today I used chopped apples)
spices, optional (today I used 2 T cinnamon)

For muffins, bake at 400 F for 15-20 minutes.  For bread, bake at 400 F for about an hour.  Makes one loaf or 12 muffins.

We're not entirely sure why it wound up like this; it appears that the top crust formed quickly in the baking process, and later on when steam built up inside, it couldn't force its way through the top and wound up erupting out the side of the loaf.  I may try baking it at 350 F or 375 F next time, to see if that helps.

Autumn Dinner Party

Cooking for a group can be a lot of fun, and with adequate planning, it doesn't have to be stressful. It seems like we often think that cooking for people outside of our immediate family has to involve something big and fancy, and dinner hostesses often stick to a 'turkey dinner' sort of menu. Not that I have anything against turkey; I enjoy both cooking and eating it. Just because I'm having dinner guests, though, doesn't mean I feel a compulsion to pull out the cranberry sauce.

This Saturday evening, Matt and I enjoyed a casual evening with friends from the Catholic Student Association at our home. Matt wound up having to go in to work, so I spent the bulk of the day on my own in the kitchen. It was surprisingly relaxing; I knew what I was making and how long each thing cooked, so I started with the time we planned to eat dinner and worked backward, assigning each dish or dishes an appropriate time slot in the oven. For example:

10:00 squash halves in
11:00 squash halves out
12:10 beans on
1:30 squash bake in
2:30 squash bake out
[3:00 pick Matt up from work]
3:40 bread rising
4:00 crumble crust in
4:20 crumble crust out
4:55 pie in
[5:00 straighten house]
5:30 apples on to stew
5:40 pie out, bread in
5:55 squash bake in to warm up
6:00 bread out, apple crumble in to brown topping
6:10 squash bake out, apple crumble out, beans done
6:15 dinner

It was so nice to be standing in the kitchen 15 minutes before I was expecting people to walk in the door, knowing that everything was going to be finished at the same time and I didn't have to worry about hurrying anything!

It snowed this morning, so we may finally have to give up pretending that it is still autumn; yesterday evening was definitely not yet winter, though, and we made a wonderfully autumnal meal to celebrate: one of the girls brought a green salad, and I made calico beans, butternut squash bake, and purple potato bread, with pecan pie and apple crumble for dessert, and hot apple cider to drink!

Calico beans is a dish I grew up on, and one Matt has come to enjoy since moving to Alaska. For me, it is a favorite not only because of how it tastes, but also how easy it is to make: throw everything in a slow cooker for 6 hours, and dinner is ready!

Calico Beans

2 lb ground beef
1 lb bacon
0.5 onion, diced
1 can great northern beans, drained
1 can chopped green beans, drained
1 can pork and beans, drained
2 cans kidney beans, drained
0.75 c brown sugar
1 c ketchup
3 Tbsp vinegar, white or cider
2 tsp salt

Cook bacon. Remove to paper towels, drain grease from pan. Chop into pieces roughly an inch long. In same pan, brown ground beef and onion. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 5 to 6 hours. Serves 10.

Purple Potatoes!

Last week, members of the Catholic Student Association spent several evenings digging potatoes, and wound up with many more than they had room to
store. About 20 pounds of potatoes made their way to our apartment, where they spent several days spread across the entire living room floor to dry -- I finally found time to sort through them and box them up a few nights ago. Quite a few had been speared in the harvesting process, and it seemed best to cook them up right away so they didn't have a chance to go bad. I began by washing what I had been told were reds.

From under their heavy coats of dirt emerged delicate, smooth skins of the deepest, richest, glossiest shade of purple I have ever seen. The first few millimeters of flesh beneath the skim were creamy white, beyond which the majority of the interior of the potato was a soft, marbled lavender.

I was so excited... Think of the exciting food possibilities presented by purple potatoes! Purple mashed potatoes, purple potato bread, purple potato cinnamon rolls, My Little Pony-colored shepherd's pie... I guess that might be a little weird; what would you put in it? Sweet corn, Lima beans, and beets? Anyway, I quickly chopped them up and threw them in a pot to boil. We worried that they might lose some of their color as they cooked, but there was no need for concern; not only did the potatoes remain purple, but the water in which they cooked turned a bright blue-green!

The idea of purple potato bread sounded fun, but it was getting pretty late, so I mashed up the potatoes and put then in the refrigerator to work with the following day. When I got home from work Friday afternoon, I was amazed at how the color had changed; the mashed potatoes had gone from a nice lavender to a vibrant indigo! This bread was going to be exciting...

It did turn out a lovely shade of purple, somewhere between the original color of the potatoes and the neon mashed potatoes; unfortunately, the whole loaf disappeared at dinner last night before I remembered to take a picture! My refrigerator bread recipe worked well with the mashed potatoes, though, and it is so convenient to be able to make dough before you go to bed one night and have it ready to throw in the oven the next evening for dinner, so I wanted to share it.

(Purple) Potato Refrigerator Bread

2.25 tsp active yeast
1.5 c warm water (use reserved water from boiling the potatoes for extra flavor!)
0.5 c sugar
3.5 Tbsp brown sugar
1.5 tsp salt
0.67 c shortening
2 eggs
1.5 c mashed potatoes
7 to 7.5 c flour

In large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in rest of ingredients except flour. Mix in flour gradually until dough is easy to handle. Knead until smooth and elastic. Cover with wax paper, then a damp towel. Place in refrigerator at least overnight; dough will keep several days if necessary. About 2 hours before baking, shape dough into loaves, rolls, cinnamon rolls, etc. Cover and let rise until doubled, 1.5 to 2 hours. Bake at 375 for 30 to 35 minutes for loaves, 15 to 20 minutes for rolls. Makes two large loaves or two 13x9 pans of dinner rolls.

Lemon-basil salmon turnovers

For savory turnovers, I don't believe anything can beat a cream cheese pastry crust.  Rich, smooth, flaky but without any of the sweetness common to many pastry recipes, it pairs well with meats, fish and vegetables.  Adding herbs to the dough can provide a real complement to your filling as well!

Basic cream cheese pastry:
8 oz cream cheese
1 c butter
1.5 c flour

Mix together cream cheese and butter until well blended.  Mix in flour until fully incorporated.  Pat into ball; refrigerate while making filling.

For the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary yesterday, I made a lemon-basil salmon filling for our turnovers.  I'm not sure what kind of salmon I used; it was shared by one of my parents' friends.  Anything made with salmon is of course better when you use Alaskan red (sockeye) salmon, but you can probably come pretty close to what we had last night by using whatever salmon is available near you.  :-)

2 T butter
1/2 medium onion, chopped
8 T lemon juice, divided
3 T dried basil
1 to 1.5 c cooked salmon, flaked
1/2 c ricotta

Saute onion in butter with 2 T lemon juice; when onions become translucent, add basil and remaining 6 T lemon juice.  Cook off most of the liquid.  On lowest heat, add salmon.  Simmer 3-5 minutes.

Remove from heat and fold in ricotta.  Roll out dough to approx. 1/4" thickness and cut into 3" rounds.  Place moderate amount of filling on one side of each round; fold over and pinch edges to seal.  Prick tops with fork to allow steam to escape.  Bake at 350 F for 15 min or until edges begin turning golden brown.

If you'd prefer, you can put the unbaked turnovers in the freezer to use later; if baking frozen pastries, expect them to take an additional 5-10 minutes in the oven.

Our Lady of the Rosary and the Battle of Lepanto

"And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the cross.

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun...

...The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dirty room,

And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath newer face of doom,

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee, --

But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea..."

- G. K. Chesterton, Lepanto, 9-13, 80-85

These telling passages provide a glimpse into the state of much of Christendom in 1571, when Pope Pius V called for help against the encroaching Ottoman empire -- a Christendom whose people had largely lost touch with what it meant to be Christian, whose leaders all failed to answer the pope's call; all but Don John of Austria, the "last knight of Europe," as Chesterton calls him.  The illegitimate son of the Austrian empire was the only leader, out of all of Christian Europe, to come to the defense of the pope and of Christianity.

The Ottoman forces outnumbered the Christians, known as the Holy League, in ships, sailors, and soldiers.  The soldiers of the Holy League, as well as many Christians gathered in Rome, implored Our Lady's intercession by praying the rosary while the great naval battle took place off the coast of Lepanto, Greece.

Through Don John's willingness to answer the call when all other leaders turned a deaf ear to the pope, through the faith of many lay people and religious who piously prayed the rosary, and through the miraculous intercession of Our Lady, the Holy League won a decisive victory over the Ottomans, keeping the Mediterranean Sea open to Christian vessels, protecting Italy from invasion, preventing the Ottomans from advancing further into Europe, and freeing 10,000 Christian slaves.

Following the battle, Pope Pius V instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory in thanksgiving.  The name has since been changed to Our Lady of the Rosary, which is celebrated on October 7.

Chesterton's poem, Lepanto, is a wonderful five-minute read for today... I highly recommend it!

A feast for the feast day

In celebration of St. Faustina and Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, we had a very Polish/German dinner yesterday:  Polska kielbasa with roasted potatoes, carrots and onions.  I also made a chocolate peanut butter pie for dessert:

Roasted vegetables are one of my favorite fall and winter meals because they are so filling and hearty, but also because they are so quick to make!  It took me less than an hour, including all of the preparation:

1 medium onion, chopped into 1-2" pieces
3 carrots, chopped into 1" pieces
2 potatoes, chopped into 1" pieces
1 lb polska kielbasa, cut into 1" pieces
4 T olive oil
Rosemary
Sage
Marjoram
Black pepper

Preheat oven to 425 F.*  Put chopped vegetables into a large zip-top plastic bag.  Add olive oil and seasonings; seal bag and shake well, until all pieces of the vegetables are coated.  Pour vegetables out onto foil-lined baking sheet and add kielbasa.  Mix well.  Bake for 20 minutes.  Remove from oven and stir well; put back in oven to bake for another 20-25 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked through.


*Some newer models of smoke detector are set up to go off if they detect a certain level of heat, even without smoke.  The one in our apartment was definitely worried that I was trying to burn the building down simply by having the oven at 425 F...  Does yours have the same problem?  How do you get around it?

Feast of St. Faustina & Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos

Happy feast day!  (That is, yesterday...)

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938)
Helena Kowalska was born in a small Polish village, the third of ten children.  She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy shortly before her 20th birthday, receiving the habit the following year and taking the name Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament.  Throughout the 1930s, St. Faustina received many messages and visions from Christ, Who desired her to spread the message of His Divine Mercy.  She was canonized by Bl. John Paul II on April 30, 2000.  The Chaplet and Novena of Divine Mercy are the most widely-known of the revelations she received; the full text of her diary can be found here.

Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos (1819-1867)
Francis Xavier Seelos was born in Bavaria, where he began seminary studies in 1847.  He joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) a few months later, and emigrated to New York to finish his studies in their seminary.  He served German immigrants in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cumberland, and Anapolis, and was known as a remarkable confessor and spiritual director, marked by a "cheerful holiness."  In 1960 he was proposed as a candidate for bishop of Pittsburgh, but asked to be excused from consideration; he spent the next six years as an itinerant preacher, reaching out to the poor and uneducated.  He was assigned to a parish in New Orleans in 1866, but just a few months later contracted yellow fever as he tended to the ill among his flock, and died.  He was canonized by Bl. John Paul II on April 9, 2000.  Information about his cause for canonization can be found here.

October 5 is a very special day for our family:  I have had a devotion to the Divine Mercy and St. Faustina for many years, so her feast day is close to my heart.  Shortly after we were married, a priest friend gave us a first class relic of Bl. Seelos, asking us to learn more about him and ask his intercession for our marriage.  We were so happy to learn that he shares a feast day with St. Faustina, because it gives us twice as much to celebrate!  I invite you to learn more about this holy priest, and to pray for his cause for canonization.

The last burger of summer

(This post has been waiting to go up since Labor Day weekend, but it took me this long to get the picture off of Matt's phone!)

Matt's employer very kindly gave him the day off for Labor Day, but my boss decided that we were staying open, and I wound up having a very hectic day. The last thing I wanted to do when I got home was spend another hour in the kitchen, so we were looking for a quick and easy supper that evening.  What else would make more sense for a fast meal to make on Labor Day than burgers?  It was perfect... we even had ground beef thawed and waiting in the fridge.  The only thing missing was the bread.

We had a couple of frozen heels from old loaves of wheat bread, which would have worked fine, I suppose.  It just wasn't quite what we had in mind.  We discussed having burgers without buns, we wondered about baking fresh buns, we even contemplated pizza... then Matt pulled out the bag of corn tortillas.

While the Applebees chain is fairly common in cities across the United States (there's even one in Anchorage, AK), there isn't one anywhere near us.  Which is sad, because we really like their food!  But for those of you who have never experienced one of their quesadilla burgers, or who, like us, live in a city without an Applebees, we have a solution for you.

Matt's Quesadilla Burgers
1 lb ground beef
8 slices cheddar cheese
8 slices Monterrey jack cheese
8 corn tortillas
thick, chunky salsa*

Form ground beef into burgers; cook in skillet or on grill.
Meanwhile, lay out tortillas on large sheet pan.  Brush very lightly with olive oil.  Broil, checking often to make sure they don't burn.  When tortillas are slightly crisp, remove from oven.  Flip over and lay two slices of cheese on each tortilla.
When burgers are just about ready, put tortilla pan back under broiler just until cheese begins to melt.  Remove from oven; put burger and salsa between two tortillas.

We enjoyed ours with home-made potato crisps, made by peeling and thinly slicing two potatoes, brushing lightly with oil, and broiling.  If the pieces aren't uniform, the thinner ones will char while the thicker ones are still raw... it wasn't very fun, they didn't taste all that amazing and wonderful, and next time I would probably just take the same amount of time to whip up a quick potato salad.  The rest of the meal was wonderful, though!

*If your salsa has too much moisture in it, this is going to be a very messy meal!  We strained ours through paper towels, and just put the chunks of tomato and peppers on our burgers.

A Tale of Two Pastas

Since our wedding two months ago, Matt and I have learned a lot about our backgrounds through our different instincts when it comes to food.  Neither of us are picky eaters, so the main difference has been in the place different starches hold in our minds.  For Matt, who is half Sicilian and grew up eating a lot of Italian food, pasta is a basic element of most meals:  If we go too many days without eating pasta, he feels like he hasn't really eaten dinner.

For me, with my hodgepodge Scandinavian/German/Irish ancestry, that central place is shared by hearty breads and potatoes.  I like pasta, but I don't feel that I've put a whole meal on the table if the pasta isn't accompanied by breadsticks, garlic bread, or the like.

Nevertheless, pasta is admittedly easier than fresh bread, and decidedly faster than potatoes, so we've eaten quite a bit of pasta in recent weeks as I've been working full days and haven't had the energy to bake for the next day when we get home at night.  We try to vary the pasta dishes, though, and have come up with a couple of good, simple versions that I wanted to share.

This is our variation on a ham carbonara, which is probably far enough away from the original recipe that we should find something else to call it entirely.  I basically omitted the sauce, which is what technically makes it carbonara, simply tossing the ham, vegetables and pasta with a touch of olive oil.

1 box pasta (we used farfalle, but any short pasta would work)
5-6 slices cooked ham, chopped into pieces about 1" wide
10-15 olives, sliced
1 red bell pepper, sliced
olive oil
parsley
red pepper flakes
Parmesan cheese, grated

Cook pasta according to directions on box, making sure to use enough water (Matt says this is very important).  Drain and return to pot; add ham and vegetables, toss with olive oil.  Season with parsley and red pepper flakes.  Top with grated Parmesan cheese.

The ham carbonara is fast and easy to prepare, but looks impressive enough that I would feel comfortable making it if we were entertaining for dinner.  If you don't have the time to chop all of the little pieces, though, here is a pasta dish that comes together even more quickly:

Literally 20 minutes from walking in the door to sitting down for dinner, and so simple I don't even have a name for it.

Spaghetti
1 link sausage per person
1/2 c frozen broccoli per person
Parmesan cheese, grated

Cook spaghetti according to directions on box.  Add frozen broccoli to spaghetti pot a few minutes before pasta is done.  Slice sausages into 1/4" pieces.  Drain pasta and broccoli; add sausages.  Heat until sausages are warmed (about 5 minutes).  Top with grated Parmesan cheese.

As you can see, I did manage to serve this meal with bread: just a slice of Italian bread with a piece of mozzarella cheese on top, toasted under the broiler for a couple of minutes.

Friday Lasagna

Pasta is a frequent meal for us on days when we get home from work tired and hungry, and didn't manage to prepare anything for dinner before we left in the morning.  This particular day, though, I had planned ahead to make a fancier pasta dish than the typical spaghetti-and-marinara:  I had the box of lasagna set out next to the stove, the spinach thawed and squeezed dry, and a container of Matt's home-made tomato sauce thawing in the refrigerator.  All I had to do when we got home was throw everything in a pan, put it in the oven for an hour or so, and we would have dinner.

Except, nothing is that easy.  Our recipe called for one box of frozen chopped spinach, and I'd purchased the only size of box that our grocery store carries.  Apparently the person who wrote the original recipe shops at a store where they sell monster boxes of frozen chopped spinach: my little pile of spinach was nowhere near enough greenery for a 13x9 pan of lasagna.

Fortunately, we had just visited my parents the evening before, and been sent home with a small crown of fresh broccoli from their garden.  I chopped it up and threw it in a skillet with some garlic to soften up, adding the spinach for the last few minutes to let the flavors merge before adding the mixture to the rest of the lasagna.

 
It turned out pretty well, and we enjoyed leftovers for the next few lunches.  The broccoli added interest and texture to the lasagna, which otherwise would have been very uniform: cheese, lasagna noodles and spinach are all smooth, thin and stretchy.  I definitely plan on trying out vegetable lasagnas with other atypical veggies in the future!


Broccoli Spinach Lasagna
9 uncooked lasagna noodles
2 T olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 c spinach, chopped
1 c broccoli, chopped
3 - 3.5 c ricotta
2.5 c mozzarella
2 qt pasta sauce
2 T Parmesan, grated

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Heat oil in medium skillet.  Add garlic; saute 1 min.  Add spinach and broccoli; cook, stirring, 3 min.  Season with salt and pepper if desired.  Combine 1/2 c mozzarella with ricotta; mix well.  Lightly cover bottom of 13x9 pan with pasta sauce.  Layer 3 noodles, sauce, 1/2 of the ricotta mixture, 1/2 of the spinach mixture, 1/2 c mozzarella.  Repeat.  Top with remaining 3 noodles, remaining sauce, and 1 c mozzarella, making sure noodles are submerged in sauce.  Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until noodles are cooked.  Remove foil and grate Parmesan onto top.  May add more mozzarella if desired, or if all your original mozzarella stuck to the foil when you took it off.  Bake 15-20 min uncovered until cheese is browned and excess moisture cooks off.

Make-up day

I'm home by myself today with no cleaning to do (did it all yesterday), no dinner to make (we're visiting my parents tonight), no freelance writing to work on (finished my last assignment this morning), so it's finally time to catch up on all of the blog posts we've been meaning to put up over the past few weeks!*  Bear with me; there are probably going to be several today.



*Except for the photos of our trip to Gakona.  I'm sorry, Alice!  They will be up soon, I promise!  They're still on Matt's phone.

Preparing for winter

I was talking with a friend in New Jersey the other day who remarked that fall was just beginning there; the first few leaves changing color, the weather still uncomfortably warm and humid.  As she talked, I looked around and laughed:  I was sitting at a frost-covered picnic table, yellow leaves around my feet and a barren tree behind me, with the last Canadian geese honking good-bye as they sped south to avoid the approaching snow.  The temperatures hover around freezing well into the middle of the day now, and the weathermen have been calling for snow every other day the past two weeks; our autumn is nearly over.

Matt spent last weekend making sure that our car will be ready when the snow flies:

He took advantage of a sunny, if chilly, afternoon to re-attach the weather stripping across the top of the windshield.  We also brought home some windshield washer fluid rated to -60 F.  As far as we can tell, they don't even sell windshield fluid rated to such cold temperatures in most other states!