chicken – THE RED HOUSE PROJECT

Fall Upstate And A Craving For…Baking

Julie — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 18:14:23 +0000

Fall has definitely arrived at the Red House. The leaves are turning shades of crimson, yellow and orange. I think the sumac trees on the property are my favorite only because their colors are so intense and often the deep dark red stays that way sometimes through much of the winter.

I wish I could report that we’ve made progress in renovating the Red House but unfortunately at this stage in the game (meaning the complicated stuff), we’re very dependent on our contractor to finish our upstairs bathroom. This means while most of the plumbing has been installed, the insulation needs to be put in the walls before the sheetrock and then tile are applied. As you can see not much has changed in this room since the last time I photographed it!

Apparently since our contractor has a lot of outdoor jobs that he’s scrambling to get finished before the weather takes a turn for the worse, I do have to give him some slack. He has assured me that I’m #1 on the top of his list when he finishes with everyone else. Being me (frighteningly straightforward and to the point), I also reminded him that last winter he complained that he couldn’t get into the house without shoveling a path to the door because of all the snow. (I don’t have anyone who plows for us and don’t intend to incur that expense either!) I also suggested since he obviously didn’t want to spend half of his day shoveling when he could be inside working on a room, he may need to speed things up a bit.

I would also love to start working on the dining room. But since all the materials he needs to complete the bathroom are sitting in the dining room, this room, too, has to wait.

While the leaves are turning, the marigolds seems to be thriving in the garden, the weeds even more so and with all the asparagus ferns cropping up, I’m thinking I’ll have a very nice asparagus harvest in the spring indeed. I’ve decided however, after planting two seasons of garlic in the fall, I’m going to wait until the spring to do it this year and see how that turns out. Reason being: Lynn is busy trying to finish our master bedroom (that means even though he took off all the moulding around the room and put everything back up, there is still a lot of patching that needs to be done as well as taping, spackling and finally painting.

To pull him away from this to get out the tiller (I’m afraid of the tiller it kind of drags me across the field) to plant some garlic seemed dumb. So the garlic will wait until the spring to be planted along with whatever else we can manage to grow in hopes that the deer, rabbits, squirrels and even a local cat or two won’t devour everything we’ve planted.

What is particularly nice about living up here especially in the fall are all the farmer’s markets as well as field after field filled with pumpkins in lovely shades of orange.

Last year I was lucky enough to grow a couple of pumpkins. This year I had to buy one.

Since the weather is turning colder (it was barely 55 degrees when we arrived this Columbus Day weekend), I’m also thinking of food that will warm us. That would be soups (pea and lentil), stews (goulash and chicken paprikash in particular) and lots of carbs like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese! And while I do try to stay away from sweets as much as possible – I have been thinking of making cinnamon rolls (no, not the kind you bang out from those icky cardboard containers in the refrigerated section of the supermarket) but cinnamon rolls made from scratch.

For those readers who have children or other instances where your household size shrinks from 4 to 1 or 2, I can say that I’ve finally mastered cooking for just the two of us without a huge amount of leftovers. And if we do have have leftovers, it’s because I’m usually trying to make sure at least one of us has something to take to work for lunch the next day. The problem with this cooking for 2 instead of 4 (or more) thing though is that there are simply dishes (particularly desserts) that just don’t get made anymore. Why bake a batch of brownies or oatmeal raisin cookies if there aren’t any teenagers around to eat them all in a single sitting? Did I mention I’ve been craving cinnamon rolls?

In the meantime, I picked the last of the tomatoes (still green) from the Red House garden.

And admired not only the meadow but how pretty the marigolds still looked in the garden.

And since it was rather chilly, I also decided to make some Braciole stuffing the meat with slices of mozzarella and some smokey ham.

I managed to find a few (albeit slightly bruised) leaves of basil still growing in the garden and found a bag of potato gnocchi we buy at a little Italian deli near the Red House for under $3 a bag that was still in the freezer from the summer.

Did I mention even as I was cooking the gnocchi and Braciole I was craving cinnamon rolls?

On a completely different note. We have a neighborhood cat who shows up like clockwork between 5 and 5:30 on the weekends we are here. He or she slowly meanders to the back of the property seemingly looking around for maybe a tasty little mouse or some other morsel to eat. Now, this cat is really the slowest cat I’ve ever seen so it was particularly funny when I tried to take a picture of the cat and suddenly the cat took off at an amazingly fast pace.

I followed the cat as it walked the length of the property and found myself staring at the stainless steel rolling cart we’ve been using in the kitchen as a table/work counter since we still don’t have countertops for the kitchen cabinets. Wouldn’t that surface be just fine for rolling out dough?

Since I also don’t have any cookbooks up at the Red House (I know that’s old school but I still use them!), I dragged out my laptop and followed a recipe from the Pioneer Woman for Cinnamon Rolls 101 online.

And yes, I already did have all the ingredients on hand so this was a really easy recipe. I mixed everything together and tried to follow the instructions but the dough just seemed a little bit too wet so I added more flour than called for. The dough rose, I rolled it out, layered it with melted butter, sprinkled on some sugar and lots of cinnamon just like the picture online.

Except I wanted to add some apples to my cinnamon rolls so I did just that.

Really, doesn’t this just look yummy?

I rolled the dough into a log shape, cut the log into slices, and arranged them in a pie pan. The dough seemed a bit wetter than it probably should have been but I figured it would “correct” itself when baking.

I’ve always had a problem with every oven I’ve ever owned and this one is no different. I read a recipe and it suggests a cooking time of say 15-18 minutes and when I peek at what I’m baking, 9 times out of 10 I need double the amount of baking time indicated. Since I was convinced that the thermostat in this new oven wasn’t working properly, I actually went out and bought an oven thermometer. I’d like to say the oven was off, but actually the temperature was exactly what it was supposed to be.

So back to the cinnamon rolls. The recipe called for adding “maple flavoring” to make the frosting. Ha Ha Ha. Living in Upstate New York, I don’t need “maple flavoring,” I can use the real stuff. So I did, mixing maple syrup together with some powdered sugar and milk.

The rolls came out of the oven, I frosted them, and here’s what they looked like.

Yes, they looked delicious but when we ate them in the morning for breakfast (after sticking them back in the oven to warm up a bit), they were a tad too gooey inside! So even after following the recipe and adjusting the baking time and having for the first time ever a second thermometer inside my oven to make sure the temperature was correct – these rolls needed to be baked a bit longer. (We ate most of them anyway, no worries!) So like the cat that prowls our property looking for tasty tidbits, I got mine too this weekend.

Finally, knowing that winter is literally around the corner up here, it’s awesome to drive a mere 5 minutes from the Red House and see the leaves changing, some late summer flowers still blooming and the water in the creek flowing so beautifully. What we’ve learned up here the last 4.5 years is to enjoy every minute of it.

Who Needs An Oven?

Julie — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:04:38 +0000

My husband, Lynn, tells me I’m no Bobby Flay, but do I want to be? No, but I have to confess one of my few accomplishments this summer is that I have somewhat perfected cooking pretty decent meals on the grill and its side burner counterpart.

My Grill!

So when Mom and Dad came up to visit last weekend, I wanted to show them my “stuff.” I started by grilling some chicken thighs and brushing them with BBQ sauce.

BBQ Chicken Thighs

Then I picked some yellow squash from my garden and wrapped it in some tinfoil, but not before putting some butter and brown sugar on it. When I opened the package, the brown sugar had formed a nice little pond which would be oozing sweetness when we cut it up into chunks.

Home Grown Yellow Squash

The red potatoes however, were a bit of a challenge. Since I started dinner later than I wanted, (we decided to go for a spur-of-the-moment afternoon swim), I knew that simply plonking them down on the grill would take hours, if not days to cook. I decided to boil them a bit first, then give them a good dose of olive oil, salt and pepper, and some dried tarragon, too, and put them under a piece of tinfoil to cook, but keep them peeking out so every once in a while I could move them around a bit.

Half Boiled/Half Grilled Potatoes

On the side burner I put a skillet pan filled with peppers and onions but truthfully, at that point, it was cocktail hour and I forgot about them. Luckily, Lynn loves all things burnt, so he was more than happy with their outcome.

Peppers and Onions

I thought the meal came out nicely; we ate outside, even with all the mosquitoes biting our ankles and elbows and toes, and everyone seemed to enjoy just being at the Red House. And if you are wondering whether I still need an oven, the answer is if I am making bread pudding for dessert I do!

Using leftover hero rolls that I tore up and added some milk, cinnamon, sugar and an egg to, I popped the mixture into muffin tins, stuck it in the toaster oven, and plated the whole thing with fresh raspberries. I want to say it was yummy but actually it was kind of dense, which leads me to think, maybe I should have tried making a “grilled” bread pudding?

Next time.

Red House Bread Pudding

My Life in the Kitchen: From Blueberry Pancakes to Homemade Bagels

Julie — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 02:34:05 +0000

It started with a batch of blueberry pancakes that I made in August at the Red House. They weren’t the best pancakes I’ve ever made but they weren’t the worst either. Here’s the thing, I was trying to cook them in a pan on an electric stove rather than the electric grill I normally use. The one thing they did have going for them was the real maple syrup accompaniment that I bought at the supermarket in town. When I looked at the label on the plastic jug, I found out that the maple syrup came from a guy just up the street from me who taps his own trees. Figuring in the whole farm to table movement, unless I tapped my own trees, I don’t think we could get any more local than that.

BLUEBERRY PANCAKES

Once I got back to Long Island though, all I could think about was the food I wanted to make up at the Red House. To compensate, I’ve gone into a super duper baking and cooking mode. It helps that the holiday season is upon us and that the weather has suddenly gotten much colder. Consequently, I’ve been making lots of “comfort food” type meals with a few fish dishes thrown in for good measure.

Here’s some of the meals I’ve been making and hope to recreate up at the Red House…. some day.

October

Roast pork loin with some white carrots that I picked up at the local farmers market with cippolini onions and leeks. (Lynn likes roast pork so much he could eat this dish every night. My bigger problem is that no matter how big the roast pork, if I want any “leftovers,” I have to cut pieces off the pork and hide them prior to serving.)

PORK ROAST, CARROTS, ONIONS, LEEKS

Paella with clams, calamari, shrimp and chicken. I think it’s decent. (I try to persuade Lynn to at least eat all the fish knowing it’s not a good thing to “brown bag” for lunch next day, but he ignores me. Because he ignores me I tell him not to call me if he gets sick. If nothing else, after 31+ years with this guy, I’ve perfected the Bitch Factor.)

MY VERSION OF PAELLA

Roast chicken with peppers and eggplant and onions. (I’ve tried to get him to just cut the chicken in half and eat it like the Italians do “mezzo pollo” but he’s big on hacking the bird into pieces. It’s ultimately just as good.)

PEPPERS, ONIONS, EGGPLANT AND CHICKEN, TOO!

Another roast chicken this one from Jones Family Farms. The chicken was leaner and gamier (which I like) but also bloodier than I was used to so it seemed to take a tad longer to cook. It also looks a bit well, sexual in this photograph — maybe I overstuffed it with the parsley? (I think Lynn liked the chicken, but I’m sure he liked the potatoes that went with it better.)

A REAL CHICKEN

November

A Friday night dinner at home (our idea of date night) included fresh fettuccine with chanterelles and freshly grated parmesan cheese, salmon with an orange mustard glaze, and some baby spinach and pitty pat squash as a side dish. (Lynn likes my Friday night dinners when I’m up to making them because I usually do courses or something “fancier” knowing I don’t have to get up early to go to work. Tonight was no exception.)

FETTUCCINE WITH CHANTERELLES

SALMON ON A BED OF BABY SPINACH WITH PITTY PAT SQUASH

Goat? I had never actually made goat chops. It’s not normally a regular menu item in our house but we did buy one-quarter of a goat a while back from Jones Family Farms and we’ve been making our way through it. Luckily, I also made meatballs from some of the chopped goat meat we had too since I overcooked the chops a tad and they were a little tough. (Lynn loves any kind of chopped meat so much I’ve started calling him “hamburger boy.”)

GOAT CHOPS

GOAT MEATBALLS

Finally, towards the end of November, I came up with the following dinner menu:

Italian wedding ball soup

Slow-baked tomatoes stuffed with mozzarella

Pork “Schnitzel”

Tempura onion rings

The soup

I made the Italian wedding ball soup because a) it was cold outside and unless it’s really really cold, we don’t turn on the heat in our house, we just put on another sweater and I make soup; b) see my comment above about “hamburger boy.”

I must admit that we’ve been to Italy a few times and we’ve never seen this soup on a menu. Lynn, whose mother was born in Naples, Italy, never made this soup when he was growing up and since she’s no longer with us I can’t even ask her about it.

The tomatoes

Since I hate to throw vegetables out that are overripe, I try to find ways to use them. Tomatoes that are too soft to use in salads I often bake or broil in the oven. The tomato flavor is even more concentrated and stuffing the tomatoes with mozzarella is I recipe I found in Fran Warde’s Food for Friends.

BAKED TOMATOES WITH MOZZARELLA

The “Schnitzel”

Other than chicken cutlets (which when I fry up I always call chicken cutlets), everything else that gets fried in our house (namely pork or veal) gets the name “Schnitzel.” This was the pork version. (Lynn on the other hand likes to call everything that he fries “Milanese” and here’s why.)

Lynn and Costoletta alla Milanese

Lynn grew up with a mother, Bianca, who was born in Naples, Italy. A war bride (World War II!), she spent the first 13 years of her marriage moving from one Air Force base to another both stateside and in Japan. By the time Lynn was born, they had settled in upstate New York. She had six children to feed but when cooking would rely on classics that everyone liked – veal cutlets being one of her classics. Why Bianca would spring for the more expensive veal rather than chicken cutlets, especially when you had a family of eight to feed is beyond me but she did. Consequently, Lynn grew up eating veal cutlets as large as your plate and always with a slice of lemon to squirt over the fried meat. To this day, he can’t resist ordering a veal cutlet if he sees it on the menu.

PORK SCHNITZEL

The onions

Tempura onion rings. This was originally a shrimp tempura recipe but I’m not particularly keen on fried shrimp but I do like the occasional onion ring. This is a fool-proof recipe so I’ll include it.

Tempura batter

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup cornstarch

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoons curry powder

8 ounces cold seltzer (add more if batter is too thick)

salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients together.

TEMPURA ONION RINGS

Last but not least my bagel issue

I think it was the sign at the bagel store that may have put me over the edge. They wanted how much for one bagel? Ninety-five cents with nothing on it!? Growing up in Munich and being bagel-less for a good 10 years, we often craved bagels. My mother attempted to make lots of things overseas that we couldn’t get in Germany (biscuits, brownies, chocolate chip cookies) but bagels weren’t in her repertoire.

I decided to attempt to make bagels on my own and started looking for a recipe in some of my “old school” cookbooks (The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, The Joy of Cooking). I finally found a recipe in Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cookbook that looked pretty simple except for the fact that it required something called “malted milk powder.” Since “malted milk powder” was nowhere to be found, I simply omitted that ingredient.

For my first attempt, I think they came out quite nicely. And the fact that they were gone in a day thanks to big family eaters made me even happier.

BAGEL DOUGH

BOILING THE BAGELS

AFTER BAKING

THE FINISHED PRODUCT