Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I have been thinking for some time that I really want to make some rice pudding, just haven't gotten around to it. Then Rupert took sick, and I thought that maybe he might like it. So I made a batch.

It was interesting. I put it in his food bowl, and he wasn't interested. I scooped up two fingers worth, held it under his nose, and he lapped it up! THEN he went after what was in the bowl. That the difference was, I have no clue.

The rice pudding is now a regular part of his meals. And Charlie is also getting it, not that he needs the add'l calories. ;-) And on occasion Russet and I get some. Usually right after I finish making it.

Anyway, when I was searching for a recipe, I looked at several and discounted them for one reason or another. This one I settled on initially, and it's pretty darn good. I recommend it, as does Rupert.


Creamy Rice Pudding

Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 40 mins
Total Time: 50 mins
Servings: 4

Ingredients
1 ½ cups cold water (2 cups? See how your first batch does)
¾ cup uncooked white rice
2 cups milk, divided
⅓ cup white sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 large egg, beaten
⅔ cup golden raisins (optional)
1 tablespoon butter
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
1. After gathering all ingredients, pour water into a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir in rice. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until rice is tender and liquid has been absorbed, about 20 minutes. You may need to adjust heat to prevent boil-over.
2. Add 1 ½ cups milk, sugar, and salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until thick and creamy, about 15 minutes.
3. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup milk, beaten egg, and raisins; cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla until combined.
4. Let cool, but serve warm. 


Wayne Tip: microwave water for step 2 for two minutes before pouring it in the saucepan, it'll come to a boil much faster. You can assemble all the other ingredients while it's heating or while the rice is cooking.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/24059/creamy-rice-pudding/?print

Be careful doubling the recipe if you need to - I would definitely not double it on your first try! I don't think you want 2x the water for cooking the rice, it's too much. Maybe 1.9x or perhaps a little less. And it takes much longer to cook! This recipe takes about an hour to make, and you have to pay attention and do a lot of stirring as cooked rice likes to bubble up/foam and likes to spill over and mess up your cook top if you were to leave it unattended, not to mention the need to stir to keep the rice from sticking to the bottom of your pan. It might take a few attempts before you get your rice cooked past the al dente stage and make it really, really good. It still tastes okay with the rice a little chewy, but much better if it isn't chewy.


Rupert is doing fairly well. He had two x-rays taken last week Wednesday. I finally got a copy of the radiology report yesterday, and it confirmed cancer, with a bit more information. This morning I FINALLY! talked to someone who knew how the x-ray machine's software worked and was able to email me the DICOM files so we could look at them ourselves. While I couldn't duplicate the view last Wednesday that the doctor showed me that showed several spots that appeared to be cancer, the files were useful today when we saw our veterinarian up here on top of the mountain.

The vet said that it is extremely rare for a dog to have lung cancer, and that what appeared on the x-rays is probably metastasis from somewhere else. We're going to extend his steroid regimen and he'll be finishing up the antibiotics early next week. He's happy to go on walks at night and for rides in the car, so we think he has some time in him left. We're, well, I won't say eager, but kind of looking forward to seeing what the radiologist says about the second x-ray, which will be taken Tuesday afternoon along with add'l blood work.

So until things get significantly worse, or there's an abrupt change in his condition, Rupert is still with us.

And we're very happy for that.

Thank you all for your kindness with my last post, I just didn't have the wherewithal to respond to most of the messages. But know they were appreciated.

I have been wanting a good ice cream machine for some time, and last week I did it: bought a Cuisinart beast of a thing. $300, but it has a compressor, which means you don't have to freeze the bowl overnight! You can, more or less, make ice cream continuously or at a whim! (if you have cream on-hand) You want to give the machine a 10 minute rest to cool down between batches, but you can churn (pun intended) a batch every hour or so! And considering that your mix needs to refrigerate for two hours and then be re-whisked before mixing, you'll be plenty busy with staging if you want to make a bunch of batches.

Tonight I took the basic base, which is: whole milk, heavy cream, sugar, a pinch of salt, and vanilla (no cooking required), and made one major substitution: Jack Daniel's Vanilla Eggnog for the milk! Let me tell you, that base was SOOO GOOD! The original plan was to add a salty chocolate caramel swirl to it at the end, but I had run out of heavy cream after making the base - well, almost entirely out: maybe a tbsp left. While the base was chilling, I ran out to the local gas station and dollar store, but all they had was half and half, which doesn't have nearly the butter fat content required.

Scrap the salty chocolate caramel.

Russet had crawled out of the bedroom at this point from her late afternoon/early evening nap, and we discussed the idea of add-ins. I had decided on just a plain melted chocolate, which with Ghirardelli chocolate, is fine. She also wanted cookies, so I broke up five cookies into small pieces and threw them in the freezer to minimize the temperature differential (as recommended).


And now, a brief commercial. If you're at all interested in making your own ice cream, you MUST buy the Ben & Jerry's recipe book! It's available as a hard copy at a vast array of stores, you can also get an ebook version for a quite reasonable $10 from the publisher. LOTS of recipes, and it's a very entertaining read talking about the formation of B&J's and lots of fun stories. BUY THIS BOOK!

Available from https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ben-cohen/ben-jerrys-homemade-ice-cream-dessert-book/9780894803123/

Back to our normal blog post, still in progress.


The Cuisinart manual says to add mix-ins at 5 minutes before the batch is done. In this case, I went with the default 60 minute recommended timer. At about 10 minutes till, I took the warm pan of water up to a boil to melt the chocolate, and pulled the cookie pieces out of the freezer, where they'd been chilling for about an hour. It was now down to seven minutes remaining. Literally as I started adding the cookie pieces to the mix, I could hear the machine start bogging down!

I was afraid that the cookie pieces, though few had been added, were causing a binding problem. But what had happened is the mix had reached a tipping point and had undergone a sudden state change into a much harder mix! B&J recommend adding things in at about 10 minutes before the end, and that's going to be my next time mark for mix-ins.

Adding the now-melted chocolate was unthinkable, the machine was barely turning at what seemed to be about 1 RPM.

I pulled the container out of the machine, got the mix off of the dasher (paddle) into a large bowl, and started mixing in the chocolate. Which of course was much hotter than the ice cream and started melting it a bit. Still, we got two bowls for Russet and I, though mine was delayed as I got the rest of the ice cream into storage containers and into the freezer.

And the verdict?

Tres bueno!

The cookies are store-bought "cowboy cookies" made in the store's bakery, fresh as of the 18th when I bought them. Sort of a chocolate chip cookie with nuts, they're not bad but not extraordinary. The eggnog base tastes absolutely wonderful and was a great substitution, I need to pick up a couple more cartons of it before it disappears right before or after Xmas. I wonder if freezing commercial eggnog is viable....

Future plans. I've never had cookie dough ice cream. I suggested to Russet making Earl Grey cookie dough ice cream, pasteurizing the eggs for the cookie dough before I make that. She suggested just straight Earl Grey ice cream. So a couple of options there. I'm definitely going to be making peanut butter batch(es). I don't know if I have her recipe, but my mom made a seriously great PB ice cream, and I don't know if I can make it as good, but it's a great childhood memory that I aim to make a good effort towards. Of course, a seriously good chocolate. I'm also planning a blueberry ice cream and basically playing with various flavors of fruit. The machine can make gelatos, yogurts, and sorbets, so lots of experimental space to explore!

Concerns: obviously, weight gain. One advantage of the machine is it only makes a quart and a half, a nice amount for two people. And I'm not going to make more than two or three batches a month, I don't think it'll be a big problem. It'll give us time to plan what we want to try for the upcoming batch.

Lessons Learned: stock more cream! The organic heavy cream lasts a long time, but I only had one container on-hand. Which was enough for one batch of base. If I intend to do the salted chocolate caramel, I need more. Live and learn. Also, we now know that the five minute mark may be way too late to add mix-ins. Now, it's possible that the nog-for-milk substitution changed the freezing characteristics of this base, I don't know. Future batches may be fine adding stuff at the five minute mark. It's something we'll learn more about as we continue making more.

One thing that was a nice, fortuitous discovery, was that our tall Ziploc round storage containers are the exact size needed to hold a full batch of base! Absolutely perfect fit! Screw on the top, place in fridge, done. Since you do need to re-whip the base after the two hour chill, I just rinsed the mixing bowl and beater and re-used them, then they went into the dishwasher.

Lots of fun, not a difficult cleanup, and very yummy!

I will say there's one slight problem. I did refer to the maker as a beast? That's because it's BIG. It weighs 23 pounds! And it's going to take a fair bit of storage space when I move it in the morning! I didn't know it was quite as big as it is when I bought it, it was a fair shock when I unboxed it last night. Oh, also, because it has a compressor, you have to treat it like a refrigerator: if it's ever turned upside down or on its side, it has to be placed upright for 24 hours before use to let the coolant resettle. And Cuisinart products, at least this one, has a three year warranty and at least for my food processer, they were very good and quite fast at repairing it when the base motor seized up. I'm expecting to get a lot of use out of this puppy!

EGG NOG IS BACK IN THE GROCERY STORE!

Specifically, Southern Comfort (non-alcoholic) egg nog! Which means.... EGG NOG COOKIES! And Burmese coconut cake with Trader Joe's Egg Nog icing! There were other, vastly inferior, brands previously available. The Season doesn't officially begin until the Southern Comfort Nog is available.

Sadly, they were out of the vanilla flavored. But any SC nog is better than none.

And if you want to increase the octane rating, go right ahead!

(I know the cookie and cake recipe is linked through the recipe tag, I don't remember if I posted the TJ icing recipe)

Happy happy joy joy!

I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, and finally did it. I was doing some shopping after work Friday, and they had a cold case next to the avocados that had pre-made Angus beef burgers on sale, so on a whim I picked up a box of six for $8. Naturally this required picking up some onions, tomatoes, buns, etc. I didn't bother getting a head of lettuce because I knew we'd use so little that the rest would rot and be tossed.

Saturday night I did the pickling: very easy recipe, the ingredients are quite simple and add very little salt. I sliced one onion 3mm thick on a ceramic mandolin WITHOUT contributing blood to the process! Anyway, the burgers with the onions were quite good.

Trust me - with a ceramic mandolin, adding blood to the process is frequently a mandatory part! Yes, I have cut-resistant gloves, I've thought about buying some oyster-shucking gloves, but haven't researched it enough. Most of what I've read about are pitifully cheap examples that turn in to melted piles of rust in a month.

Last night we did guacamole burgers with some Penzey’s no-salt seasoning, also tasted great. I’ve been adding a slice of ched and covering the pan with a glass lid to help it melt and it does a wonderful job helping with the melt. And it has the added benefit of producing melted cheddar fond afterwards!

Definitely going to keep with the quick pickling, going to try it with a sweet maui next, I might try adding a tbs of sugar to the brine next time.

https://cookieandkate.com/quick-pickled-onions-recipe/

The recipe came from lydy last month, and I've been wanting to add a new cookie to my proverbial recipe box, so I made them Tuesday night, partly as a reward for my wife being a good doobie with the skunked dog rescue. And they are good. They're more than a bit different because they're flourless - basically it's a meringue cookie with chocolate and nuts. Slightly finicky to make, but VERY yummy!

I do need to work on portioning, I didn't know how they would rise or spread. I think I need to replace and use my medium scoop and that should work well. One batch of the recipe made all twelve of these cookies, so a smaller scoop will make more.

The recipe with comments from me is under the cut.
( Read more... )

Even if I did reward myself.

Last night at 2am I made a chocolate mousse pie. This morning, almost directly after I got up, I made a Krusteaz' orange/cranberry muffin mix, adding half a cup of chocolate chips (a half and half mix of semi-sweet and bittersweet) and a quarter cup of finely diced walnuts. Because of the add'l ingredients, instead of getting a dozen muffins I got a baker's dozen plus one. My wife was taking the dogs out for a run just as they were coming out of the oven, so I grabbed one, threw it in a ziploc sandwich bag, and ran it out to the car for her.

They were quite awesome. And a total cost of under $5 for 14 muffins! (excluding cost of eggs and oil and....)

After she got back, we drained and flushed the hot water heater. It'd been making popping sounds while heating, and was barely 18 months old. The procedure isn't difficult, took maybe half an hour or so, I did have to buy a 10' garden hose which set me back all of $8 at Home Despot, but now we have it and won't have to buy it again as we're planning on flushing it annually starting summer of '20.

Having completed that, I sliced up the chocolate mousse pie. Normally I cut it into 16ths, but I went ahead and saved two pieces as 8ths as I thought I/we earned it.

Man, I/we do love my chocolate mousse pie! The little bit of chili powder really sets off the chocolate, which is also a 50/50 mix of bitter and semi- Ghirardelli, plus cutting it down from three egg whites to two to stiffen it up a bit makes it absolute killer. And I added a pretty healthy amount of Mexican vanilla extract. And the recipe comes together pretty quick: with practice you can do it in about 30-45 minutes, but then it needs to set in the fridge for a good 3-4 hours, so it's a good one to make the night before. It's also good for parties to make in parfait glasses, I've done that once or twice with crumbled chocolate Oreo cookie crust in the bottom, which makes it a lot of fun.

So naturally all of the recipes will reference Penzeys spices, herbs, and blends. Since the recipes are submitted by anybody, no guarantee that they've been tested except by the submitter. I'm planning on making the Guy Like It Barbecue Beef Saturday, nice and simple slow-cooker recipe.

I'm considering placing another order from them. I've been wanting to make my own enchiladas, but I've been having problems finding a good red enchilada sauce recipe. Time and again they're using canned sauces, and I don't wanna do that! The Penzeys site had an enchilada lasagna recipe, my mom would call it an enchilada casserole, and it had making your own sauce using annatto seeds cooked in oil, giving you a red oil as a base for the sauce. I consider my odds of finding annatto seeds here to be very slim, but I'll be going to Las Cruces Monday and they have two health food stores in addition to a Sprouts, so odds are better there. And there's always the Brazilian river place.

https://www.penzeys.com/shop/recipes/

Cornbread Dressing with Pancetta, Apples, and Mushrooms

VERY good recipe, the full recipe makes an absolutely huge amount of dressing, so I always make a half recipe. Make sure you get or make three different types of bread: this year I made Guinness bread from a Krusteaz mix.

This is also an extended make: you either need to leave the bread out a day or two to dry, or plan on baking it for an hour or so to dry it out.

( Read more... )

When it came to making the Brussels Sprouts, the recipe calls for pomegranate molasses, which wasn't available to me. But I could get a jar of pure pom juice, which I was able to cook down into a molasses. Here's the recipe:
( Read more... )


The butter for the Brussels Sprouts is fantastic and you can use it for a number of dishes. It took a lot longer for me to roast the sprouts, and I also found it best to cut all of them in half along the axis of the sprouts.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pomegranates and Vanilla-Pecan Butter
( Read more... )


I'm not posting my eggnog cookie recipes as I've already posted them here, but I did make a change to the non-chocolate recipe. For MY stove, I'm changing the temperature to 330f and the bake time to 20 minutes. They were coming out decidedly under-done.

I should've posted this a week or so ago when I first made this! It's pretty good, my wife decided last night that I should try a mint sugar frosting for it. I think that's a definite possibility.

You can probably easily do without the espresso powder, but I wouldn't eliminate the water. Removing the sour cream? I'm not sure about that. Maybe substitute add'l butter in its place to keep ratios the same? I did have some problems with making it at 9,000' in that I ran out of water and had to add more and double the baking time, but it worked fine up here overall. It's an excellent way to make a cake in the summer without using your oven, of course, here in the northern hemisphere we're not exactly in the summer right now.

Stovetop Chocolate Cake

142 grams (1 cup) all-purpose flour
29 grams (⅓ cup) cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
198 grams (1 cup packed) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1/2 cup sour cream
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) salted butter, melted
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions
1. Cut an 18-inch length of foil and gently scrunch together to form a snake about 1 inch thick. Shape into a circle and set on the bottom of a large Dutch oven. Add enough water to reach three-quarters up the coil. Coat the bottom and sides of a 9-inch round cake pan with cooking spray, line with kitchen parchment, then coat the parchment. Place the prepared pan on top of the coil. 


2. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking soda into a medium bowl, then whisk in the salt. In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until slightly lightened, about 30 seconds. Whisk in the water, espresso powder, sour cream, butter and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and whisk gently until just combined.


3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Cover and heat on high until the water boils. Reduce heat to low and steam, covered, until the cake is just firm to the touch at the center, about 23 minutes.


4. Turn off the heat and remove the lid. Let the cake sit in the Dutch oven until the pan is cool enough to handle. Transfer the pan to a wire rack, then run a paring knife around the edges. Let the cake cool completely, then invert onto a plate and remove the parchment. Invert again onto another plate.


Tip: Don’t open the Dutch oven too often while steaming, but do ensure that the water is at a very gentle simmer. You should see steam emerging from the pot. If the heat is too high, the water will boil away before the cake is cooked.


From Milk Street: https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/stovetop-chocolate-cake

I steamed it on my stovetop in a dutch oven.

I came across the recipe a few months ago and today picked up the two ingredients that I was missing: sour cream and instant cappuccino. I had a bit of a problem baking it - after the prescribed bake time, it wasn't remotely done. I think the entire problem was altitude related as we live at 9,000'. I put more water in the Le Cruset, gave it another 25 minutes, and it tasted fine.

Here's the pic:



9" cake pan, my Le Cruset is a 5.5 quart. You pull off an 18" length of aluminum foil, roll it loosely in to a 1" thick roll, then bend it in to a ring. This is what the cake pan will sit on. You fill the pan with water up to about 3/4ths up the ring, turn the burner up to high until the water is boiling then down to a simmer so it's steaming. Cook for 23 minutes or so, cake should be done.

Here's what the coil looks like, though it would be centered. I'd pulled it out and drained it, so it's floating in this shot.


As usual, click to embiggen either image.

Fairly straight-forward recipe: flour, eggs, butter, brown sugar, baking soda, vanilla, cocoa powder: the unusual ingredients are the cappuccino powder and sour cream. The texture is a bit different, a little more spongy than cakey, I'm not sure how much of that is the steaming process vs my increased baking time due to altitude.

I might try an 8" cake pan next time, there was very little clearance between the side of the cake pan and the side of the pot. I used a pair of forks to lift the cake pan out and my wife grabbed it from there.

It's a Milk Street recipe, and I'll post it if people are interested. Good recipe for making in hot weather as you're using your stove top, not your oven. Recommended to top it with whipped cream. We tried it while it was still warm, quite yummy. I was surprised how dark it turned out as the flour/cocoa powder color wasn't that dark, but it's been a long time since I made a chocolate cake without melting chocolate for it.