taste and texture and the glory of garnish

A Cosmo-style cocktail for gin lovers

This is a somewhat large and strong drink. A little sweeter than my usual taste, but not cloying.

3 oz gin (I used Hendrick's. Tanqueray Ten or Miller's would be good. Not so sure about Sapphire, since I don't like that, but it does work with fruity mixes. Probably not Junipero, though that makes a swell martini.)

1 oz orange liqueur (I used, and usually have, Patron Citronge.)

1 oz cranberry juice cocktail (Try one sweetened with sugar, not corn syrup, so it's cleaner on the palate.)

1/4 oz fresh or bottled unsweetened lime juice (I use Nellie & Joe's when I don't have fresh limes.)

I shook this with ice and strained it into a cute little wine glass. Of course, a regular cocktail stem is fine. Or you could pour it into a short glass over ice and add just a splash of soda. Garnish with orange or lime wedge; last night I was too lazy, but that is not a good excuse at all.

Oh—I don't enjoy pointing this out, but you could use vodka. Only you'll want a citrus-infused one, to parallel the floral essence of the gin. And then it's just a plain ol' Cosmopolitan, which you probably already knew how to make, anyway...!

Slow-cooker lasagna, a pictorial + recipe

I make this differently in winter than summer. In summer, I usually make my own sauce, but in winter, it's semi-homemade or from jars. Also, I don't always use meat. I think lasagna is best without it. But when I do use meat, I use a little extra sauce.

Yesterday I decided to try it in the slow cooker. I  cooked it on high for a little less than 3 hours, then broiled the top in the oven. I am not sure the amount of time that would be best if you cook it on low, but if you have a timer, you can set it to turn on and then off 30 minutes before serving.

Here's how I did it yesterday in a 7 quart (about 7.5 liter) slow cooker, to serve 6 with leftovers:

Sauce:

1/2 large onion, medium dice

1 1/2 lbs mild Italian sausage, casing removed

Cooked the onion in a large pan with olive oil (I buy large bottles of extra-virgin at Costco and use it in just about everything,) then added sausage, broken up and stirred til almost done.

2 jars of Wegman's pasta sauce (they had it on sale for 89 cents recently so I bought lots. It has only nice ingredients in it,) stirred in. Plus most of another jar for assembly, which I would not use if I left out the sausage.

Cheese filling:

This part is mostly not negotiable. It is the martini recipe of lasagna filling; simple, classic, always correct.

4 cups mozzarella cheese, grated + another 2/3-1 cup

3 cups whole milk ricotta cheese

1/2 cup asiago cheese, grated (usually I use parmiggiano, and romano would be okay.)

2 eggs

2-3 tbs mixed Italian seasoning (adjust depending on the sauce you're using)

Also: 12 pieces lasagna pasta, uncooked. (unless using oven, then cook in boiling water for only about 5 minutes.) In a lasagna pan you need 16.

Put a little sauce in the bottom of the pan, add 3 pieces lasagna, broken to fit. Obviously you don't need to break them if you're using a standard lasagna pan (or two cake pans, with one less layer in each.) Layer sauce, then 1/3 cheese mixture over it, rinse, repeat twice. Add the final 3 pieces of lasagna, spoon over some sauce, and then enough mozzarella (and more of the other cheese if you like) to lightly cover the top.

If you bake it in the oven, you bake it at 350º covered for about 50 minutes, then remove the foil to brown it for another 15-20 minutes. Let it cool before serving.

For the slow cooker, I added a little extra sauce around the perimeter to make sure the noodle edges would be cooked. I could tell it was done and ready to be browned by how it looked all melded together, and stuck a knife through the middle to check the noodles. It went through easily at just under 3 hours, but I could tell it was not mushy. Then I put the crock in the oven and browned it on the low broiler setting for about 5 minutes.

If your slow cooker is smaller than 6 quarts, this recipe will be too large. I would suggest comparing this recipe to another casserole one you like to adjust quantities. If you make this recipe using 9x13 cake pans, you can freeze one for later. You can cook it for the first 45 minutes, let it cool for a few minutes, then seal it well to freeze, thaw and reheat later. Or you can freeze it uncooked, as well—it'll take a couple of hours to cook from frozen that way.

Leftovers for lunch? Are the best. Even though this picture really is not.

 

My boy made cookies

These are Chocolate Chip Treasure Cookies from Eagle Brand condensed milk. I have their Holiday Recipe book and use it for several treats. This particular recipe uses all the ingredients of Magic Cookie Bars, our favorite Christmas treat, but in drop cookie form. You can click on the picture with the book open to see the recipe. :-)

Pounding graham crackers into crumbs

Mixing up a mess

Batter and recipe

Cookies!

Cooking/baking catch up, updated

Addendum at end.

You may know that I've been ill; I've been very sedentary for a month, with pretty much just Thanksgiving day and a couple of shopping days to take me out of my bedroom or off the couch. I've done very little real cooking, though we've had a few nice slow cooker meals. I prepared the fruit for the fruit bread, but then didn't bake it.  When I do have energy, it's all consumed bringing the kitchen back to a measure of sanity after being mostly used by teenagers who mean well, but only so well.

Last night I got my refrigerator well-organized for the first time since the middle of November. With a family this large and a refrigerator that small, and no more stand-up freezer to boot, the weekly cleanout is super important, and organization is crucial. So it felt good to straighten everything out, inspiring me to have a nice Sunday cooking afternoon.

I'm making chicken broth, even though the kids froze both my chickens. I cook one each week, as you may know, but I buy them two at a time, cooking one within a few days and freezing the other. I figure to slowly heat the frozen chicken in a large pot of water, then bring it up to boiling temperature as soon as possible, so it will be safely ready to work with.

I'm putting a piece of chuck roast in the slow cooker with some potatoes and fresh green beans. And onions, of course!

Then I hope to make cookies. It's cookie season, hurrah. We always have magic cookie bars, lemon squares, and sugar cookies at this time of year, but if I'm feeling all right over the next week or so, I'll also make some Italian-American treats, as well.

As to the fruit and nuts, I have to see if it all got very fermented; it may be all right to bake with, but if it isn't, I'll have to take my lumps for not finishing what I started, I guess. I'm still coughing pretty often, especially when tired or cold or moving around much. So I can only feel so bad about having put that off.

I think the picture of the fruit mixture is on the other computer. So we forge on.

Regarding fruit cake:

In place of the fruit suggested in the recipe, I used

9 oz dried plums
9 oz dried apricots
6 oz dates
12 oz cherry craisins

I might have used dried pears instead of apricots or prunes, but I didn't see those at the nearby store and was already too ill for a real shopping trip.

The fruit and nuts were soaked in bourbon and amaretto for ages while I was sick, but then I ended up adding 3 tbs of Irish Mist to the batter, and that's what I'm going to brush the cake with, because it suits the flavors well and is also much less expensive! Altogether this cake cost over 25 dollars to make, but I am certain it could be done for less than 20. Which is still a lot for a cake, but that's sort of the point, isn't it? It's meant to be an expensive once-a-year endeavor. Means something that way.

I didn't get any cookies made, and was so exhausted by 7 pm, which is when Mom's Movie Night begins, but it was good to get some things done.

Have you ever made a fruitcake?

The reason to consider it is that we have a wide variety of dried fruits to use these days, instead of just sticky chewy shiny candied ones that once represented the only fruit available to cold climates in winter, along with raisins and currants. My cake will have no shiny green candied cherries or citron, or raisins or currants. Instead I'll use dried apricots, dates, cherries, and maybe cranberries. I gotta go see what's at the store in a little while.

I'm going to make this recipe tonight or in the morning, only I'm using amaretto instead of brandy. I plan to soak the fruit in amaretto and then drain it, using the reserve liquid for the batter. Then I'll brush it every few days with a mixture of bourbon and amaretto. Frankly, I just don't like brandy. Sue me.

There are non-alcoholic versions, of course, but the original reason for the brandy was a) it helps preserve the cake for a long time, especially important in pre-freezer days, and b) it's one of the many festive and valuable ingredients that originally made the cake a special holiday treat. If you want to be non-traditional and make it alcohol-free, I think you should find a new-fashioned dried fruit cake recipe and go for it. But you'd want to make it much closer to the day you plan to eat it.

Stay tuned; I will share a couple photos soon.

Still using up garden peppers: stuffed peppers mid-century-style

And there are still more to pick before I pull up the garden!

Anyway, they're all small now, but they are still good. Many vegetables are quite satisfactory to use before they reach "full size." Some are actually better that way.

So I found this recipe and tweaked it to suit my tastes and what I have here. The one thing I'd do differently is add more oregano, as the recipe called for. I don't know why I didn't go out and pick some; instead, I used an Italian seasoning blend. It was good, but wanted more oregano, as well.

I also doubled the amounts, which was way more than I needed, but I thought I'd cook the rest of it on the stovetop for lunch today.

Because I made part of it into meatloaf, I didn't add water to the pan. And I did the tomatoes differently; I used a cup of freshly chopped tomatoes and then added canned crushed tomatoes to make up my two cups. If you want it a lot firmer, I wouldn't advise that, but I like it to be kind of saucy.

Just a bit of the Sunday cooking

I wrote out this whole thing, including the recipe for the apple cake, but then had to force-restart my computer, and lost it all. But the apple cake recipe isn't just right yet; good crumb, yet just not quite moist enough. Anyway. I'll make another one next week and let you know. I might add some pumpkin to the batter.

Also, I roasted a chicken instead of making chicken stock. Wegmans had roasters for .79/lb, so it seemed the thing to do. I added artichoke hearts and crimini mushrooms to the pan. Maybe I'll make stock with the leftovers, but I still have another chicken for boiling in the refrigerator. :-)

 

Slow-Cooker Notes: Going to start collecting these regularly for an archive.

Cooked 3 lbs frozen pork loin with dry seasonings, 1/2 cup cider vinegar on high in slow cooker for 3 hours, added sliced onion & 2 large cans Bush's beans, cooked another hour, then took out pork, cut into 1 inch chunks, put back into now soupy beans. Left it on high to cook for another hour. Could turn down to low, but high is only 300º, should be fine for 5 hour total. Must remember to start earlier next time, in order to use dry beans + attending sauce ingredients.

living in my kitchen

I  thought since I'll be able to share more cooking photos now, I'd share some from where all the magic happens.  ;-)

Two things that I don't like: refrigerator; old, inefficient, poorly designed space, matches nothing else. The homeowners took their new fancy black one with them and left this in its place. And I don't like my messy tower of Things, but there's not quite enough cabinet space, though it could be worse.

The first two photos are my good quiet spaces, usually. I love my ugly worktable because someone down the block was throwing it away, and I had the boys go down one night and carry it home. No one sits there but me. I have another ad to hang next to the one that's there, so the wall will look better, but I need a matching frame.

Then the rest are how things look today. But things are a bit crowded right now; the roaster oven isn't usually out, as it takes up so much counter space. I moved the waffle iron to the mixing area and the slow cooker to the other side of the sink to make room for it, until we have the oven igniter repaired or replaced.

The shelf above the sink looks super for plants, but they tend to die there.

I like the location of the laundry, but as it is next to the cat bathroom, I find it less pleasant than I might. Also, that space is narrow, with the pantry on the other side of  it.

If  you like this sort of ageless traditional look, I'm sure it appears a nice job has been done. I cannot complain at all. It's just not my personal taste. And if I owned this house, I'd want to knock out the wall next to the worktable and open it up to the dining room.

Cooking/stock up/new tripod yay!

I feel like living in my kitchen this weekend. I replaced the PUR filter on the faucet with a better one, did a great stock-up grocery day yesterday, it's kinda cold out, the liquor cabinet is in good shape, there's ale in the refrigerator, AND I finally got a new tripod!

(Also plan to enjoy the fireplace later, and we've downloaded The Apartment from the PlayStation network, but that's maybe for the other blog.)

One downside? The ignitor in my oven has stopped working! It's either clogged or bad, so I have to call the PSE&G Worry-Free people and set up an appointment.

We got the Thanksgiving roaster oven out of the garage, and I'm going to see just what it's like to bake cookies in that. I'll do my lamb roast in it as well. And I have the new slow cooker for other things. It'll be okay.  I'm going to cook happily & share photos happily, and pretend I don't mind that I have to wear socks inside and shoes outside now.

First up, of course, this week's chicken stock.

When's the last time one of my kitchen pictures looked that decent, eh? It's an outmoded camera, in the digital camera world, but it's fine for now.

Don't peel the vegetables when you make stock, or chop off the ends. Also, leave in the neck. :-)