Brining the bird - an artful combination of spices and herbs!

This morning Jonathan, my youngest, is in command of the kitchen creating a combination of roasted herbs and spices to use in brining the turkeys. Yes, that is right, plural, turkeys.

Rosemary and bay are picked from the garden, the rest is in the spice cabinet. First he dry toasted the spices separately in a skillet on top of the stove. In the picture below beginning from the top left corner going clockwise are: whole cloves, black and szechwan peppercorns, whole fennel seed and star anise, mustard seeds, fresh bay and rosemary (not toasted) and coriander. Then he ground them using a mortar and pestle. He ground dry sage leaves with the toasted seeds in the mortar and pestle to release the oils in the sage.

In a large stock pot bring 3 gallons of water to a boil and then turn the heat off and add one box (3 lbs.) of Kosher salt and 1 pound of sugar.

Add the spices and herbs, including the bay leaves and rosemary, stir and add 1/2 bag of ice to cool the brine and a bottle of dry white wine. Then add the brine to the turkeys who are waiting patiently in the cooler, top it off with ice and cover to brine from Tuesday morning till Wednesday night. Add ice as needed.

We have been brining turkeys for years and are convinced it makes a difference in the taste of the birds. The turkeys will be stuffed and cooked on the grill on Thursday. They will be roasted and smoked and will be golden brown and succulent beyond belief!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Play with your food! Chicken Pot Pie!

Roast chicken was on the menu this week and of course there were leftovers. Aside from making chicken noodle soup with the leftover carcass, for stock, and the meat, my next favorite leftover from a chicken is to make a chicken pot pie.

Saute some onion, carrot and celery in a little olive oil and butter, till tender, seasoning with salt and pepper while these are cooking. If your stock isn't low sodium, go easy on the salt. Add some flour and cook about 3 minutes to get rid of the flour taste. Then add stock and make a thick sauce. Add some frozen peas that were defrosted quickly under tap water and the cooked chicken and you have the inside of the pie.

Playing with food consisted of decorating the crust. I purchased decorative leaf pastry cutters to make Rose Levy's Designer Apple Pie and decided to decorate the crust with leaves. I used the large leaves around the outside and the medium and small ones in the middle. This was so much fun. Just 'glue' the leaves on with an egg wash after brushing the whole top crust with egg wash.

After baking, the crust is golden and delicious, and the pie isn't bad either!

Who says a chicken pie can't be as pretty as an apple pie!

More experiments with bread, this time brioche!

Ever since I started reading Rose Levy Beranbaum's book The Pie and Pastry Bible, I have wanted to try making brioche bread. It doesn't require any unusual ingredients, just the usual, yeast, water, eggs, flour and salt. The result is a buttery, flaky, light roll that is usually served for breakfast.

None of the individual steps in the recipe are difficult or time consuming, but the process begins on one day and you finish it the next. There is quite a bit of time for the dough to rise in between the steps. The directions for recipes in The Pie and Pastry Bible are very well written and easy to follow.

Other authors have slightly different recipes for brioche. Some require more flour and egg yolks and less overall time for the entire process. This recipe is the only one I have tried so far. Once I found that I could make the dough I bought the fluted pans that give the brioche its characteristic shape. You can also make it in a loaf pan and slice it like a loaf of bread.

On the second day, the dough emerges from the fridge. It is ready to knead a little and shape it. You can divide it into 16 pieces, place it in well buttered pans, and let it rise for the last time.

This dough has just been shaped and put into a well buttered pan,

After rising it almost fills the pan.

Brushing each pastry with a mixture of egg yolk and cream gives them a golden brown color!

They were ready at noon and made a great mid-day snack with honey or jam!

Light, soft, pale yellow, flaky pastry--oh my goodness! By the end of the day, there was only one left!

Go to Rose's blog for recipes for brioche.

Sourdough bread and starter

We love sourdough bread and after seeing an article in the Greensboro News and Record I decided to try making sourdough bread again.

SourDough bread and starter

Michael Hastings, Food Editor for the Winston-Salem Journal, has a Recipe Swap. You can reach him at mhastings@wsjournal.com. One of his readers, Dolores L. Barauskas submitted this recipe.

The recipe in the link above makes two loaves. They are great right out of the oven (do let them cool a bit for better slicing) and also toasted.

The starter is easy to maintain in the fridge and the recipe is simple. It has to rise two separate times for two hours each, but the results are worth it.

When I put it in the oven I sprayed a little water on the sides and bottom of the oven to create steam. This help make a nice crust for the bread.

Best part---the house smells great as it finishes baking!

Yummy!

Curry Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken noodle soup may sound like fare for those with a fever, nourishing perhaps, but not exciting flavor. Forget that. This recipe begins with a whole fryer, although you could use a rotisserie chicken from the grocery. There are two reasons why I prefer to begin with an uncooked chicken: first the price and second and more important, the wonderful flavor you get from the pan drippings after roasting the chicken.

Wash and pat dry the chicken and season with salt and pepper.

Then stuff the inside of the chicken with one lemon cut in half. Squeeze the juice from each half into the cavity of the bird then put the lemon halves in too. Cut one head of garlic (that's one head, not one clove) and put both halves into the bird. Last cut a medium sized onion into quarters and insert. Hopefully you will have room for all of the onion. Then tie the legs together with kitchen twine. Drizzle olive oil over the bird and season the outside with salt and pepper.

Place the stuffed chicken uncovered into  a roasting pan that is just a little larger than the chicken in a 400 degree preheated oven. The pan should have sides to catch all of the drippings that will emerge from the chicken.

Roast for an hour to an hour and a half depending on the size of the chicken, or until a meat thermometer reads 180 degrees when inserted near the thigh.

When the chicken is done, remove it and place it on a plate to cool so that you can remove the meat.

Pour the drippings from the pan into a cup. When they have cooled in the fridge you can remove the layer of fat and discard it. What is left can be used.

Take the pan with its browned bits and place it back on a burner on medium heat. Add white wine or some chicken stock to deglaze the pan. While heating the wine/stock scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Once the pan has been scrapped clean you will have a brown liquid that can be reduced in volume by simmering for a few minutes. Then pour this into another small container and allow it to cool. Again remove the layer of fat that will rise and congeal at the top. This dark brown gelatin is packed with flavor and will be great for soups or gravy!

Remove the cooled chicken meat from the bones and set aside.

The cooked chicken will be added to the soup.

Now we make the chicken stock.
Discard the lemons and put the carcass and the remaining garlic and onions into a big stock pot with the following:

• another head of garlic cut in half
• 2 stalks of celery cut into quarters
• 3 carrots cut into quarters
• 10 whole black peppercorns
• a bunch of parsley tied with kitchen twine
• one onion cut into quarters, you don't even have to peel it

Now fill the stock pot with water to within 2 inches of the top and put it on the stove. Bring the contents to a boil and then turn down to simmer. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half, 4 - 6 hours.

After the liquid has reduced by half and cooled, strain the liquid through a colander and discard the vegetables, they have given up all of their flavor by this point.

Then strain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to get the finished stock.

Cool in the fridge and remove the fat that will rise to the top. This will yield about 3 quarts of stock.

Now you have delicious chicken and stock for the soup. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but the resulting flavor is well worth it. You could roast the chicken and make the stock one day and finish the soup the next day.

To make the soup prepare the following vegetables:

• 3 carrots medium dice
• 1 onion medium dice
• 2 stalks of celery medium dice

Saute the vegetables in 1 Tablespoon of butter and 1 Tablespoons of olive oil.

Season the vegetables with 1 teaspoon of salt (I use Kosher salt) and 1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper. Since this is curry chicken noodle soup, add 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of curry powder ( I used Madras Curry Powder) to the vegetables as they are cooking.

When the vegetables are tender, add the chicken stock (6 cups) and some of that dark brown liquid (concentrated flavor, fat removed) that you saved from the reduced drippings when the chicken was roasted. Add the chicken that you have shredded into the size you like for the soup. I like shredding instead of chopping the large pieces of chicken. Let this simmer in a large pot for an hour. 

Add the noodles, I used Mrs. Miller's Old Fashioned Medium Egg Noodles, and stir into the soup. Adjust seasoning, adding salt if needed. Adding the noodles will take up some of the salt flavor. I serve it with slices of the curry wheat bread. See the post from September 24, 2013 for this recipe.

This will definitely warm you up on a cold evening!

Inspiration for this recipe comes from Ina Garten's recipes for roasted chicken. See her recipes on Foodnetwork.com

Focaccia - this time it isn't a big cracker!

The summer I tried making focaccia. It didn't get golden brown like the recipe said it would so I left it in the oven longer, too long in fact. It turned into a giant cracker, and not a brown one.

I asked Josh at Loaf Bakery what I should do to make the focaccia brown in the oven and he said I needed to create steam as the focaccia is beginning to cook. You can use a spray bottle and spray the preheated oven on the sides and bottom, but I just splashed a few tablespoons of water and that seemed to work fine. This time the focaccia browned in the 20 minute cooking time.

The recipe is from Sarabeth Levine's cookbook Sarabeth's Bakery. You can find the cookbook, seen in this picture, on her blog, Sarabeth. The green bottle of olive oil is from Midtown Olive Press. The recipe called for a fruity olive oil and I used their Blood Orange olive oil. The recipe calls for putting olive oil on the half sheet pan before adding the dough and again on top after the dough has puffed up and you create the dimples with your finger. It really gave the focaccia a great flavor.

Midtown Olive Press also has a delicious Honey Ginger White Balsamic vinegar that pairs well with the Blood Orange olive oil for a salad dressing. I just drizzle a little of each over the salad and season with a little salt and pepper. Salad dressing doesn't get any easier than that.  I love to go taste the different vinegars and olive oils at Midtown, located in Friendly Center in Greensboro, NC. I also like that they let you bring your washed bottle back and reuse it. 

While the focaccia was baking I made a trip out to the garden to see what was left that I could put into a salad. 

Good thing I took the basket! Earlier I had pulled up some tiny carrots, but now they are much bigger, short, but fat! There were also peppers, spring onions and grape tomatoes. I sliced the carrots and onions very thin, cut the tomatoes in half and diced the peppers. This combined with some purple leaf lettuce from the farmer's market made a great salad. Don't forget the dressing that was described above. 

So much good food and good recipes to try!

Two yummy recipes--a pork loin roast and sweet potato soup!

There are two recipes in this post, the first uses Lipton Onion Soup Mix (the dry package). I have always used it to season a beef roast, but this time it is for a pork loin roast. It is also a crock pot recipe, so it is very easy.

First I remove the netting that they put around the pork loin roast. I don't know what part of it they think will escape, but it works fine to remove it.

Season the roast with salt and pepper. I sliced 3 cloves of garlic very thin and inserted them into slits in the pork roast all around.
Pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a hot cast iron skillet.
Sear the roast all around.
Once each side has been browned, remove the roast. Turn down the heat to medium.
Add the following and cook until the vegetables begin to get a little bit brown:

• one large carrot chopped
• one onion chopped
• two stalks of celery chopped

Season the vegetables while cooking in the skillet with salt and pepper.

When the vegetables have a little bit of color, add 1/2 cup of white wine to deglaze the pan. The wine will bubble up and you can scrape up all of the tasty bits on the bottom of the skillet. Use chicken stock if you don't want to use wine. Let the wine or stock reduce by half.

Place the pork loin roast into the crock pot.

Sprinkle the contents of the Lipton Onion Soup packet on top of the roast (only need one packet, there are two in the box).

Pour the vegetable mixture on top of the roast and add 2 cups of chicken stock.

Cover and cook on high until the meat is tender, about 4-5 hours.

Once the roast is tender, remove it to a plate and cover with foil.

Strain the liquid in the crock pot and discard the vegetables which have cooked and flavored the liquid.

Put 2 Tablespoons of butter into a clean skillet and when melted, add 2 Tablespoons of flour to make a roux. Cook the flour for 3 to 4 minutes to remove the flour taste.

Add the strained liquid from the crock pot and whisk to form gravy.

Serve the gravy with the roast-----yummy!

OK, second recipe, Roasted Garlic Sweet Potato Soup!

On the way home from the mountains this weekend, we stopped at a restaurant and I wanted to try the sweet potato soup that they had on the menu. Apparently everyone else did too, because they were out of it. When I got home I searched for a sweet potato soup recipe and found lots, this one is "roasted" sweet potato soup, and it is really good. I made a few changes, listed below.

Roasted Garlic and Sweet Potato Soup

I put the sweet potatoes on a large sheet pan so that they are in one layer and seasoned them with salt and pepper and drizzled a little olive oil and maple syrup over the cubes of potatoes. Mix with clean hands before putting this into the preheated oven. I also roasted the head of garlic as mentioned in the recipe above.

Instead of roasting the onions, I cut them into a large dice, seasoned them with salt and pepper, 1 teaspoon of dry thyme, a pinch of red pepper flakes and sauteed them in 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.

After the sweet potatoes and garlic roasted I added them and the onion mixture to a large dutch oven with the chicken stock. I let all of that simmer on top of the stove covered for 1 hour. Then I processed the soup in the food processor until smooth. Add chicken stock if the soup is too thick. 

The soup has a savory flavor due to the thyme, onions and garlic even though it is made with sweet potatoes. 

Sorry, no pictures this time, I'll do better!