Soft Pretzel Bites

Perfect for a sports on TV party - finger food, not messy, yummy to the point of addiction, dunkable. They're also fun to make, and I think, easier to handle than regular soft pretzels - no fiddly shaping and distorted results.

Soft Pretzel Bites
1 1/2C warm water
1T sugar
1 1/2t kosher salt
2 1/4t active dry yeast
4 1/2C flour
4T melted butter
10C water
2/3C baking soda
1 egg yolk
1T water
coarse salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve sugar and kosher salt in the warm water. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let sit for 5 minutes. The yeast will get a little foamy.

Add flour and melted butter. Using dough hook, mix on low speed until combined. Increase to medium speed and knead for 5 minutes until dough is smooth and stretchy.

Remove bowl from mixer, cover in plastic wrap and set in a warm place until dough has doubled in bulk, about one hour.

Preheat oven to 450 F.  Bring the 10 cups water and baking soda to a rolling boil.

Double up parchment paper on cookie sheets and spray top parchment sheet with pan spray.

Divide dough into quarters. Roll each quarter into a log about 18" long. Cut in 15 pieces. Total  60 pretzel bites.

When the water is boiling, dunk each pretzel bite into the water for at least 30 seconds. I found I could do about 10 at a time. They puff up a bit, so you can tell which ones have been in longest. Remove from water with slotted spoon and place on greased parchment paper so the bites are not touching.

When a cookie sheet is full, brush all the bites with the egg yolk wash and sprinkle with coarse salt.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes until golden brown.

The bites peel off the parchment paper best if they're completely cool (but that's hard to wait for).

Serve with Dijon mustard for dunking.

Thai Coconut Curry Pork & Crisp Veggies

I've been fiddling with this recipe for a while and finally found a combination that's consistently good. I'm recording it here because I don't want to lose it.....

Of course, it's normal to serve Thai curry over rice, and especially yummy because the rice absorbs the delicious sauce. I like it over a simple slaw, though, too, because the tanginess of the slaw really complements the smooth spiciness of the coconut curry sauce. Your choice, but you might want to give the slaw a try. Also, since the cabbage isn't cooked, it doesn't get that slimy, slippery texture - just more crunch for the dish.

 Cut the veggies into pretty big chunks (at least 1") to help them stay crisp during cooking.

Thai Coconut Curry Pork & Crisp Veggies
For the slaw:
1/2 head cabbage, shredded
3 green onions, chopped
2T vegetable oil
2T lime juice
sprinkling of salt

Combine all ingredients, toss well and set aside while making the curry.

For the curry:
2T fresh basil chopped (I used the basil I chopped in the food processor with olive oil and froze in ice cube trays last summer)
2T red Thai curry paste
2T fish sauce
2T sesame oil
1/2 can light coconut milk (the other half can be frozen and used later)
1lb pork, cooked and drained of fat (this can be ground or shredded pork)
1/2 celery bunch, chopped into 1" long pieces
1 onion, cut into 1" chunks
2 red or yellow peppers, cut into 1" chunks
1/2C unsalted dry roasted peanuts

Mix the basil, curry paste, fish sauce, sesame oil and coconut milk together in large frying pan set on medium high.

Add the pork, celery and onions. Cook, stirring occasionally for 4 to 5 minutes.

Add the peppers and peanuts and turn off the heat. Stir to incorporate.

Serve the curry over a bed of slaw.

Pretzel Cookies

Salty and sweet. I increased the flour to fat ratio compared to standard chocolate chip cookie dough because I wanted these to stay mounded when baked instead of spreading and leaving pretzel islands in the center. And, I only used brown sugar (no white sugar) to keep the flavor carmel-ly and rich. Use your choice of chips - milk chocolate, peanut butter flavored, butterscotch. I used peanut butter chips, and these were soooo good.

Pretzel Cookies
1 1/4C butter or coconut oil
1 1/2C brown sugar
2 eggs
1t vanilla
3C flour
1t baking soda
1/2t salt
12oz candy chips (milk chocolate, peanut butter flavored, butterscotch, other?)
10oz crunched mini pretzels (not pulverized, leave them chunky)

Cream butter or coconut oil and brown sugar together.

Beat in eggs and vanilla.

Mix in flour, baking soda and salt.

Add candy chips and crunched pretzels. Mix thoroughly so all the pretzels are evenly incorporated.

These won't spread much, so scoop large (1 1/2" diameter) balls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F for 10 minutes.

Makes about 4 dozen.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

An old family favorite. So rich, so sweet, so fruity and so creamy. (And I think it's suitable for breakfast. Think of all the beta-carotene and vitamin C!)

Carrot Cake
Cake:
4 eggs
1C vegetable oil
1t vanilla
2C flour
1C sugar
2t baking powder
2t baking soda
2t cinnamon
1t salt
1/2C golden raisins
3C grated carrots
1/2C chopped pecans
1 large can crushed pineapple, do not drain!

Frosting:
8oz cream cheese
1/2C butter
1t vanilla
2C powdered sugar
1/4t salt

For the cake:
Beat the eggs, oil and vanilla together.

Stir in the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Mix in the raisins, carrots, pecans and pineapple (the entire contents of the can).

Pour batter into greased and floured round cake pans. Bake at 300 F for 45 - 60 minutes. Cake will brown and pull away from the edges. While the cake is baking, set out the cream cheese and butter to soften for the frosting.

It is helpful to freeze the cake rounds for a few hours after they have been removed from the pans to prepare them for frosting.

For the frosting:
Whip the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together. Mix in the powdered sugar and salt until the frosting is completely smooth.

Spread frosting over cake. This is enough to frost a double layer round cake, but since the cake is so rich, you might want to frost the rounds separately and serve as single-layer portions. Garnish with more chopped pecans if desired.

This cake freezes beautifully and thaws quickly. Freeze the frosted rounds for a few hours to make it easier to slice them. Then you can pull just the number of slices you need from the freezer when unexpected company stops by. Also makes great cupcakes.

In Case You Have Nothing Better to Do

Blueberry Cream Cheese Monkey Bread

Why is this known as monkey bread? I have no idea. But, clearly, monkeys have good taste. Another one of the dessert/breakfast dishes I gravitate toward, and a great way to deplete the blueberry stash in my freezer. Where I come from, this recipe is, technically, cheating - like bringing a bucket of KFC chicken to a potluck - because it relies on a premade ingredient. But it's also nice to have a few of these easy recipes on hand for when you unexpectedly need to produce dessert, or breakfast. We had it for Saturday brunch. I want to try it using a standard sweet yeast roll dough recipe now instead of the canned biscuits, and I'll let you know if that turns out any good (how can it not?).

This recipe originally came from Kraft. I fiddled with the ratios and added blueberries. It makes one sweet purple mass. The recipe can be made ahead and refrigerated overnight before baking.

Blueberry Cream Cheese Monkey Bread
1/2C chopped pecans
1/2C butter
1/3C maple-flavored pancake syrup
1/2C sugar
1t ground cinnamon
3 cans refrigerated buttermilk biscuits (10 biscuits per can)
12oz cream cheese
3C blueberries, fresh or thawed from frozen

Sprinkle pecans in the bottom of a greased bundt or tube pan.

Melt 2T butter. Stir in maple syrup and pour over pecans in pan. Sprinkle 1C of the blueberries over maple syrup and pecans.

Melt remaining butter in shallow bowl.

Mix sugar and cinnamon together in shallow bowl.

Cut the cream cheese in 30 equal cubes.

Pop the biscuit cans open. Press each biscuit out to about 3" diameter. Roll a cube of cream cheese in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Place the cream cheese cube in the center of the flattened biscuit and close the biscuit around it, sealing it into a ball. Dip the biscuit ball in the melted butter, then into the cinnamon sugar and place in the prepared pan. Repeat with 14 more biscuits.

Spread the remaining blueberries over the dough balls in the pan. Continue making cream-cheese filled dough balls with the rest of the biscuits.

Drizzle any remaining butter over the now filled pan. Sprinkle any remaining cinnamon sugar over, as well. At this point, the filled pan can be refrigerated overnight, if desired.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Bake for 40 minutes. Let sit for a few minutes, then invert onto a serving plate. Scrape any goodies stuck in the pan onto the plate as well and serve warm.

If there are any leftovers, they can be reheated for a few seconds in the microwave to original yummy gooeyness.

Rain = Doldrums

Here's the last installment of quotes from The Journals of Lewis and Clark.  Sadly, the first tourists to my neck of the woods did not have such a grand time since it rained almost constantly for the six months they were here.

At Fort Clatsop
Saturday January 4th 1806
[Lewis] ...nothing interesting occured today, or more so, than our wappetoe being all exhausted. 
(They were crammed in a tiny fort with little to do and little to eat, and continually damp if not soaked through. Hard to come up with stuff to write in the journal except what the Indians were willing to trade for what and who went out hunting and came back with very little to nothing.)

Sunday January 5th 1806
[Lewis] ...for as to species of meat I am not very particular, the flesh of the dog the horse the wolf, having from habit become equally formiliar with any other, and I have learned to think that if the chord be sufficiently strong, which binds the soul and boddy together, it does not so much matter about the materials which compose it.
(While they did eat dog quite a lot, trading for them from the Indians especially along the Columbia River, it is interesting to note that they did not eat Lewis's dog which started the journey with them and seems to have finished it in good health.)

Monday January 6th 1806
[Lewis] ...Charbono and his Indian woman were also of the party (to seek a whale reportedly washed up on shore); the Indian woman was very impo[r]tunate to be permitted to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either (she had never yet been to the Ocean).


Wednesday 8th January 1806
(They find the whale skeleton and that a local tribe has already carved it up and taken the useful parts.)
[Clark] ...The Kil a mox although they possessed large quantities of this blubber and oil were so prenurious that they disposed of it with great reluctiance and in small quantities only; insomuch that my utmost exertion aided by the party with the Small Stock of merchindize I had taken with me were not able to precure more blubber than about 300 lb. and a fiew gallons of oil;   Small as this stock is I prise it highly; and thank providence for directing the whale to us; and think him much more kind to us than he was to jonah, having Sent this Monster to be Swallowed by us in Sted of Swallowing of us as jonah's did.

In This Sublunary World

No recipe this week. I'm still working on cleaning out the overloaded freezer, and those ingredients have gone into old favorites or odd experiments that didn't prove worth replicating.

So, instead, I offer you more quotes from the surprisingly delightful The Journals of Lewis and Clark edited by Bernard DeVoto. (I just want to say that, in this case, who did the editing matters a great deal, and I appreciate Mr. DeVoto's work very much.) Lewis is the more philosophical of the two, and the better speller.

Wednesday July 24th 1805
[Lewis] ...our trio of pests still invade and obstruct us on all occasions, these are the Musquetoes eye knats and prickley pears, equal to any three curses that ever poor Egypt laiboured under, except the Mahometant yoke. the men complain of being much fortiegued. their labour is excessively great. I occasionly encourage them by assisting in the labour of navigating the canoes, and have learned to push a tolerable good pole in their fraize.

Friday August 2ed 1805
[Lewis] ...soon after passing the river this morning Sergt. Gass lost my tommahawk in the thick brush and we were unable to find it, I regret the loss of this usefull instrument,   however accedents will happen in the best of families, and I consoled myself with the recollection that it was not the only one we had with us.

Monday August 12th 1805
[Lewis] ...two miles below McNeal had exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this little rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty & heretofore deemed endless Missouri. after refreshing ourselves we proceeded on to the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.

Sunday August 18th 1805
[Lewis] This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the happiness of the human race or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.
(Interesting to remember here that his intended reader, eventually, was Thomas Jefferson.)

Berry Cobbler

I have so many berries in the freezer from previous years.  It's pretty amazing how much four blackberry vines, two raspberry clumps and about twenty strawberry mounds can produce. And since this week's weather is very spring-like, I'm feeling the pressure to clean out the freezer so I have room for this year's crop.

Berry Cobbler
Filling
6C berries, thawed and drained if frozen, with 1C juice reserved (I used a mix of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries)
juice from one lemon (zest first, see below)
1C sugar
3/8C flour

Batter
2 1/2C flour
1/4C sugar
3t baking powder
1t salt
1/2t nutmeg
zest of one lemon
10T cold butter
1C milk

For the filling:
Place the berries, reserved juice and lemon juice in 9 x 13 pan.

Stir  the flour and sugar together. Sprinkle this mixture over the berries and stir to incorporate. Spread berries evenly in pan.

For batter:
Stir together dry ingredients and lemon zest. With pastry cutter, cut butter into dry ingredients until butter is the size of small peas or smaller.

Stir in milk until dough is just sticky and all dry ingredients are incorporated.

Spoon batter on top of berries, evenly spacing the dollops.

Bake at 350 F for 45 minutes, until batter is cooked through and slightly golden on top.

Note: You could use many different kinds of fruit in this recipe, adjusting the amount of sugar added to the fruit as necessary. I'm wondering how pineapple would taste. And Bing cherries.

Cold Frame

Dad built this cold frame for me. I put air and soil thermometers in there to monitor how warm and cool it gets. While February is still officially winter, I think it's getting pretty close to time to plant some cold weather crops like lettuce, spinach, maybe radishes and onions. Like a salad box.

Lewis & Clark

I just started reading The Journals of Lewis and Clark and am already delighted by it. In the preface, the editor remarked on how they regarded difficulties with equanimity, or something to that effect. An exploration party from a time in history when frontiersman was a legitimate and respected occupation. When nearly all frontiersmen were good at their jobs because the incompetent and negligent ones didn't live very long. When the continent was thought to be a lot narrower east to west than it actually is, when the scope and southern length of the Rocky Mountain range was unimagined.

I also love their creative use of the English language, in spelling, grammar, lack of punctuation, etc. Proves that our understanding of language has evolved over time, too. These men documented, for the first time ever, new animals, new land formations, interactions with new people groups. For that, they earned the right to make up new spellings for words to explain what they saw and experienced.

A few excerpts from when they were just starting out:

June 7th Thursday 1804 --
a Short distance above the mouth of Creek, is Several Courious paintings and carving on the projecting rock of Limestone inlade with white red & blue flint, of a verry good quallity,    the Indians have taken of this flint great quantities. We landed at this Inscription and found it a Den of Rattle Snakes,    we had not landed 3 Minites before three verry large Snakes was observed in the Crevises of the rocks & killed.
[How much do you want to bet the inscription read "Beware! Rattlesnakes," but since it wasn't in English....]

12th of June. Tuesday 1804 --
...finding that old Mr. Durioun was of the party we questioned him untill it was too late to Go further, and Concluded to Camp for the night,    those people inform nothing of much information.
[I know people like that, too.]

June 17th Sunday 1804 --
...The Ticks & Musquiters are verry troublesome.

Mustard Baked Fish

This is like baking fish in its own tartar sauce. Simple, moist, with just the right amount of tanginess to enliven the fish, and very little prep time.

Mustard Baked Fish
2 white fish fillets (I used mahi-mahi.)
salt and pepper
1/2C sour cream
3T Dijon mustard
1T stoneground brown mustard
2 green onions, minced
2t drained capers

Lay the fish fillets in a greased glass baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Mix the remaining ingredients together and spread in a thick coat over the fish.

Bake at 425 F for 12+ minutes. The baking time will depend on the thickness of the fillets. After 12 minutes, check the thickest part every few minutes. The fish will flake easily with a fork when it is done.

Clafoutis

It's all about the fruit - you could use raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, sweet cherries, etc. Mmmmm. Again, good for breakfast or dessert, and not too sweet.

Raspberry Clafoutis 
1/4C milk
3 eggs
3T unsalted butter, melted
zest of one lemon
1/2C flour
3/8C sugar
1/4t salt
1 1/2C fruit in small bite-sized pieces, either fresh or thawed and drained from frozen

Mix all ingredients except the fruit in a blender. Pour into a greased 10" glass pie plate.

Arrange the fruit on top.

Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes or until set in the middle and just golden on the edges. The custard will pull away from the edges of the pan a little.

Cool and cut into wedges. 

There is very little sugar in this recipe, so a sprinkling of powdered sugar just before serving is nice.

Vegetable Ceviche Salad

My sister organized a South American-themed meal for Christmas Eve. The recipe she found for a crunchy vegetable salad was a real hit. I've fiddled with the quantities a bit from the original, mainly to make it less oniony and hot peppery. The simple dressing of lime juice is light and refreshing.

Vegetable Ceviche Salad
1/4 red onion, sliced very thinly
1 red pepper, chopped
15oz can of corn, drained
1 Anaheim pepper, chopped fine
4 oz mozzarella cheese, cut in 1/4" cubes
1 avocado, cut in 1/2" cubes
1/4C fresh cilantro, chopped
juice of one lime
salt and pepper to taste

Slice the red onion first and soak it in a bowl of salt water while you're chopping everything else (for at least 20 minutes). Drain before mixing with the other ingredients.

Toss all the vegetables, avocado and cheese together. Pour the lime juice over the vegetables and sprinkle salt and pepper to taste.

Let marinate in the fridge for at least 15 minutes, covered with plastic wrap (unless you want your fridge to smell like onions and peppers).