I’ve been needing a new set of oven mitts for a while, and I wanted a set that would go with the Dia de los Muertos theme in our kitchen. Hooray for Alexander Henry fabric!
Discovered Insul-Bright lining, which is a batting containing a “metallized film”. The mitts make a crinkle sound when I put them on.
I put these ahead of all the other projects on my list because they only took an evening to complete, and with all the baking I have been doing lately they will really come in handy! Cutting out four of each material or lining took longer than the sewing did. I added a layer of cotton batting below the shiny lining for comfort. Very pleased with the results.
Whole chickens are less expensive per pound than cut chicken, and using as much of it as possible is a challenge I haven’t tackled before. I broiled it last night basted with olive oil and sprinkled with spices. However, since I misjudged the cooking time, it wasn’t finished by dinner. It went in the fridge overnight after I siphoned off the liquid chicken fat (also refrigerated) from the pan.
This morning I took the chicken apart, separating the skin into one pile and the meat into a bowl. The meat went back into the fridge to await its fate as chicken pot pie this evening. I will use the chicken fat as a binder in the crust for the pot pie. The skin went into a 350 degree oven on a cookie sheet for ten minutes until it got really crispy.
I have been stashing vegetable scraps (onion, celery, carrot, and cilantro leftovers from other recipes) in the freezer for the last month. The chicken carcass went into a big stock pot with the vegetable scraps, 8 cups of water, peppercorns, bay leaves, and a garlic clove. It has been simmering for four hours so far, and I hope my neighbors are salivating over the yummy smells. Once it has simmered for another hour, I will strain it, refrigerate it overnight, remove the excess fat, then freeze the chicken stock for future use.
I have made bacon-rosemary crackers before with bacon drippings, so making chicken crackers didn’t seem too far fetched. I used this Olive Oil Crackers recipe as a jumping off point because I was intrigued by using my pasta machine to roll out the dough. The last couple of times I made crackers it was difficult to roll the dough uniformly and extra thin, so using a pasta machine makes lots of sense.
I altered the olive oil cracker recipe mentioned above in the following ways:
Used chicken fat in place of the olive oil
Added a tablespoon of ground dried rosemary
Added a teaspoon of fresh ground pepper
Added 1/3 cup of finely chopped chicken skin “cracklings”
This recipe is also different from the last one I tried in that it uses half semolina flour instead of all regular flour. With the cracklings in the dough, 5 was the lowest setting the dough could get to on the pasta machine. I definitely recommend using a pasta machine to roll out cracker dough – very excellent aesthetic and texture results! The finished crackers, while an excellent vehicle for dip, don’t have a very distinctive taste on their own. I thought for sure that the chicken would lend a hearty flavor to the crackers, but that wasn’t the case. Next time I will use fresh herbs and more of them. Herb flavor is easily lost in the flour, so I need to double the amount of seasoning. Since the cracker flavor turned out so unimpressive, there is a very good chance that they will get ground up and used as coating for (you guessed it!) oven-fried chicken. Bacon fat definitely makes a tastier cracker than chicken fat.
Aaron and I took a class last month at Mr. Green Beans. It is a terrific “domestic arts” shop on Mississippi that focuses on coffee roasting, but also offers materials and classes on cheesemaking, soapmaking, preserving, and fermentation. After a really informative class where we were encouraged to ask lots of questions, we were sent out into the world with a pound of green beans and an instruction booklet that contained an overview of what we learned.
As my friends know, I’ve never been a huge fan of coffee from the large chain that shall not be named, although with enough cream and sugar nearly anything is drinkable. As our instructor pointed out, the one thing that can be said in their defense is that no matter where in the world you are, you know exactly what to expect from their coffee because they strive for consistency. Of course, the same thing goes for the world’s largest hamburger chain.
While coffee from some of the local roasters taste better because there is a shorter amount of time between the bean roasting and my coffee pot, as the companies grow in size and distribution they suffer from the same issue of striving for consistency in their well-loved varieties.
Aaron has been asking me to find a popcorn popper as recommended in the class so we can start roasting our own beans. I had been putting it off until I really noticed the drastic taste difference between a pound of locally roasted beans and a pound from a nationally distributed mid-quality roaster. That was all I needed to spur me into action, and I purchased a popcorn popper off of eBay. It arrived today! Since the beans should have some time between roasting and brewing, I made a batch this afternoon so we could have fresh beans in the morning.
Following the directions from the booklet, I made sure that everything I needed was on hand within easy reach, including a fire extinguisher (just in case). Since we do not have a lot of natural ventilation in our small kitchen and the hood above our stove does not vent outside, I brought in our window fan and set it to exhaust. This worked really well! I also opened some windows in other parts of the house. My home will smell like roasted coffee for several days (such a bummer, right?), but I did not set off any of our smoke alarms. The popper’s shipping box was the perfect size to catch the bean chaff during roasting. It just needed a couple of strategic cuts to make it fit flush against the machine. So far, so good!
I also set up a cooling station with a bucket, a metal mixing bowl, and a metal colander. After this picture was taken I added metal skewers under the colander to give it more stability.
Measured 1/3 cup of beans? Check. Put them in the roaster? Check. Camera ready? Check. I started the stop watch timer on my iPod, plugged in the popper, and I was in business! The roasting of the beans is measured by when they crack, and the first crack for this batch came in about 4:30. The total amount of roasting time was 9:30. I don’t have a thermometer to test the final bean temperature, but the ambient temperature was 44 degrees with 73% humidity.
The video is a quick glimpse taken towards the end of the roasting. Between setup and cool-down this process only took 20 minutes of my time. If our coffee in the morning is any good, it may be a while before we buy roasted beans again.
I am trying to purchase basic “building block” ingredients as often as possible, which drastically cuts down on our grocery bills. It decreases the amount of preservatives in our diet, and just flat out tastes better. It also encourages me to be more creative in the kitchen.
When I see items such as prepared hummus in the deli section, I remind myself that the ingredients are inexpensive, and the bulk of the cost is paying for the preparation of the item.
The tricky part is determining where to draw the line between “I can do this myself” (of course I can!) and “It is easier to purchase this.” I found a terrific recipe to make pita bread that I have successfully used several times, but overall I think it is easier to purchase it from the Mediterranean market in my neighborhood. For $1.29 I get a bag of yummy lightweight bread. The pita bread at the mainstream grocery stores is too dense for my taste and clocks in above $2.99 a bag.
More often than not I make pita chips from the bread. Just brush it with olive oil then sprinkle on sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. Bake at 350 degrees F for ten minutes or until golden brown. When it has cooled, break it into pieces and enjoy it with hummus. Many thanks to Lila for teaching me the basics of making hummus! I use a mini-prep Cuisinart to make mine.
Roasted Pepper Hummus
1 can garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas)
2 roasted red peppers (from a jar is okay too!)
2 garlic cloves
1 lemon, juiced
1 t cumin
3 Tb tahini
2 Tb olive oil
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper
Drain the can of garbanzo beans, and reserve the liquid for later. Add everything but the reserved liquid to the food processor. Blend until smooth. If needed, use the reserved liquid to thin the hummus. Taste and add additional amounts of the ingredients as needed.
Chill until ready to serve. I suggest preparing it at least several hours before serving in order to give the flavor time to “bloom”.
Doing something constructive with eight pounds of bananas turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. My friend picked them up as bargain bags at Limbo in SE Portland. As a side note, Limbo is awesome and definitely worth checking out. Besides their produce, they have a long hallway of bulk spices and teas at really reasonable prices. When produce is headed towards the end of its sell-by life span, it is bagged up and sold for a pittance. Check the table in front of the shop on your way in.
I was a bit overwhelmed when she first gave them to me along with a half dozen bell peppers and several bags of chopped celery, but it didn’t take long before I felt up for the challenge. Ripe bananas are really versatile.
The first thing I did was bring the dehydrator out of hibernation and start slicing bananas. I usually give bananas a quick dunk in lemon or pineapple juice before dehydration to cut down on discoloration, but since I didn’t have any on hand I improvised with a wash of lime juice, canola oil, and cinnamon. The canola oil is used to make it easier to pull the bananas off the trays, and the cinnamon was added because I add cinnamon to as many things as I can. The dehydrator was set to 135 degrees, and it will probably be at least another ten hours before they are ready.
The dehydrator has enough trays to handle all eight pounds of bananas, but I wanted to diversify a bit. I considered a lot of different desserts and breads, but ultimately decided on frozen banana treats. These are inspired by those cute but ridiculously expensive chocolate covered ice cream bites in the grocer’s freezer section.
PLEASE READ FIRST! The recipe below is what I used, but I was not satisfied with the consistency of the chocolate. I completely winged it on the chocolate sauce, and probably would have had better results if I had started with an established recipe and altered it. But hey, this is my DIY project journal, and as such I need to document what didn’t work very well in addition to my successes. Proceed at your own risk.
Frozen Banana Treats The King Would Have Loved
5 ripe bananas
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 t vanilla (Use the real stuff. The artificial stuff should be banned.)
2 Tb butter
2 Tb honey
1 Tb cinnamon
1/4 cup peanut butter
Dash of sea salt
Dash of cayenne pepper
Cover a cookie sheet with waxed paper. I usually put a splash of water on the cookie sheet before putting down the paper because it helps to keep the paper in place. In a double boiler, melt the butter. While waiting for the butter to melt, cut the bananas into 1/2″ slices and arrange them on the cookie sheet.
Add the remaining ingredients to the double boiler and stir until smooth and melty. Spoon the chocolate sauce onto the bananas. You may need to return the chocolate to the double boiler to re-warm it if it cools too quickly.
Put the tray of bananas in the freezer. Once frozen, pull them off the tray and put them in an airtight container. Return them to the freezer until ready to serve.
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I was hoping for chocolate sauce that would essentially cover each banana slice, and wound up with dabs of chocolate on each slice. The end result is very tasty, but not very aesthetically pleasing.
I’ve been needing a new set of oven mitts for a while, and I wanted a set that would go with the Dia de los Muertos theme in our kitchen. Hooray for Alexander Henry fabric!
Frozen Banana Treats The King Would Have Loved
