Puttering in the Kitchen

[Kathy B]

Long day at work yesterday, so today I am relaxing in the kitchen (and on-line! ). I have some of hAndyman's Multigrain and Seed Bread raising on the stove...almost time to shape it! I also used some of my frozen cranberries and gave Bob's cranberry chutney a whirl. It is cooling on the counter now. Might make some pumpkin muffins later.

Cooking whatever I feel like always has a calming effect (not exactly the same as cooking for others).

Anyone else done any puttering lately? Whaddya make?

[heavy hedonist]

Originally Posted by Kathy B

Cooking whatever I feel like always has a calming effect (not exactly the same as cooking for others).

perfectly put. that's how i feel watching Nigella Lawson's
old shows, too.

i had some unexpected puttering time this morning-- and now there is sauce bubbling in the crockpot. fulll of wine and herbs and onions. mmm.

[Canice]

I deliver a vegetarian casserole the first Thursday of every month so last night I made an old CL from back when Deborah Madison wrote the vegetarian column. Not one of the more healthful ones I've provided, but it's the cauliflower and pasta shells in cheddar sauce with green onions.

Also made a batch of applesauce, and with almost two hours of simmering, boy did my place smell good!

[shoezoo]

It's my day off so I've been doing what I love best-puttering around my house and kitchen-cleaning , laundry, cooking whatever I want on my own schedule.
Today I'm marinating chicken for dinner in a new marinade of chipolte peppers in adobo, lime, onion and mayo.
I also made a Gateau aux Pommes from Tartlette's blog, Oatmeal Choc. Chunk Cookies from Dana Treat Blog and I've got the Master Whole Wheat Bread rising on the counter from Healty Bread in 5 min. a day.
So you can see I've had a great day too.
Hope your puttering day was as good as mine.

[cookieee]

Originally Posted by shoezoo

It's my day off so I've been doing what I love best-puttering around my house and kitchen-cleaning , laundry, cooking whatever I want on my own schedule.
Today I'm marinating chicken for dinner in a new marinade of chipolte peppers in adobo, lime, onion and mayo.
I also made a Gateau aux Pommes from Tartlette's blog, Oatmeal Choc. Chunk Cookies from Dana Treat Blog and I've got the Master Whole Wheat Bread rising on the counter from Healty Bread in 5 min. a day.
So you can see I've had a great day too.
Hope your puttering day was as good as mine.

shoezoo, would love to have your recipe for the marinade if there is one. I also marinated chicken today. Some bone in thighs in a Green Curry Marinade I got off the A Taste of Thai website. Cooking now. DH is a little disappointed. The recipe called for 2 TB of the Green Curry Paste I could only bring myself to put in 1 tsp.

[sneezles]

Yesterday I cooked for others but it was a dish I wanted to make so it was more fun for me. I made the Butternut Squash and Cheddar Bread Pudding from November's BA. Absolutely delicious and got rave reviews from those I served it to!

[shoezoo]

I got the chicken marinade or wet rub as they call it off the Splendid Table Website. Here it is:

Pete's Favorite Summer Barbecue Wet Rub

Good for seasoning: Chicken pieces, duck breast;pork tenderloin;whole fish, thick fish steaks.
Makes 2 to 3 cups

One 7 ounce can chipolte chilies in adobo
1 white onion chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
1 lime , juiced
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2 to 3 cups may

In a blender, mix the chipoltes, and adobo sauce, onion, cilantro, and lime juice. Add the salt. Transfer to a lg. nonreactive bowl. Mix in 2 c. of may. Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more mayo if it's too hot. Coat food and marinate for 2 to 4 hours in the fridge, turning occasionally. The rub will keep, tightly covered in the frindge for 2 day.

[dreamer101]

Can you putter around in my kitchen and do some baking? Now that I have my Keurig I've been drowning in coffee but now I need some baked goods to go with my coffee!

I did some shopping today. Bread flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, cranberries and currants. I was thinking of making either scones or biscotti plus some sort of bread in my bread machine.

[cookieee]

Originally Posted by shoezoo

I got the chicken marinade or wet rub as they call it off the Splendid Table Website. Here it is:

Pete's Favorite Summer Barbecue Wet Rub

Good for seasoning: Chicken pieces, duck breast;pork tenderloin;whole fish, thick fish steaks.
Makes 2 to 3 cups

One 7 ounce can chipolte chilies in adobo
1 white onion chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
1 lime , juiced
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2 to 3 cups may

In a blender, mix the chipoltes, and adobo sauce, onion, cilantro, and lime juice. Add the salt. Transfer to a lg. nonreactive bowl. Mix in 2 c. of may. Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more mayo if it's too hot. Coat food and marinate for 2 to 4 hours in the fridge, turning occasionally. The rub will keep, tightly covered in the frindge for 2 day.

Looks good, thanks

[mkc]

I often tell people that cooking is my therapy.

Recent putterings found me baking southern buttermilk biscuits "just because". My weekly pizza dough is doing its cold rise thing for a couple of days in the fridge. This one is a combination of several doughs I've used before, but I'm always striving for pizza nirvana and it's our Friday "thing". And tonight I have chickpeas soaking for the hummus recipe Canice linked to the other day.

Someone once asked DH what his favorite thing was that I made. He said he didn't know, because I never make anything twice (not quite true, but close). While eating dinner tonight I was already thinking about recipes for Saturday and Sunday.... and what pizza dough to try for next Friday.

I'm such a food geek :-)

Michelle

[SusanMac]

Sneezles - that sounds phenomenal! Thx for posting. We have 100% success with BA in our house.

I love autumn & winter for puttering in the kitchen.

I just got a copy of "Rustic fruit desserts : crumbles, buckles, cobblers, pandowdies, and more" by Schreiber, Cory from the library (a recommendation from BA) http://www.amazon.com/Rustic-Fruit-D.../dp/1580089763, so I'm looking forward to some apple cobbler this weekend.

[sparrowgrass]

I have been working on dumplings--the stuffed, Asian kind, with a dipping sauce. I have tried beef, shrimp and chicken.

I do need a helper in the kitchen--it would be much easier with an extra set of hands or two. Anybody wanna come over?

[Canice]

I *love* playing prep cook! Be right over!

[shoezoo]

The chicken we grilled last night with the wet rub was fabulous. Lots of flavor and very moist. I'll definitely use it again and will try it on pork or chicken thighs next time.

[susan_foster]

I am dying to get back to my kitchen. Since I changed jobs I have been ending up getting home later and therefore have no time to cook during the week. In addition I've been working on a project that has me flying back and forth to California every few weeks. It's nice to have a change of scenery but I am sick of not being able to cook. (Or take a bath, but that's a different issue). Plus I'm trying to maintain my weight, which always seems harder when traveling.

Project is over, and as I type this Saturday night I am on a plane back to Boston. I'm already planning for the week, making cream of tomato soup tomorrow night to go with a tossed salad and cheese & crackers for dinner. Baking will be sweater weather cookies to share with the office.

Later in the week I might try to sneak in something either Indian or Thai. Or maybe use up some of the cheese I got a couple weeks ago in Madison, WI by making stuffed potatoes. Hmm.

And of course, I am also in the mood for:
sourdough english muffins
whole wheat bread
homemade pizza
roasted parsnips and/or winter squash
using up the cranberries in my freezer (muffins? that carrot/apple gratin I just found on Joe's blog?)

And that's just off the top of my head.

[Canice]

I've had a bit of a puttering evening myself!
Thursday night I cooked chickpeas and then lost all energy for/interest in making hummus, so I tackled that first. It's not difficult, but as I posted on my hummus thread, this particular recipe is a bit of a process. But SO good!
Meanwhile I roasted a little sugar pie pumpkin to mash for dinner Monday w/a pork chop and roasted Brussels sprouts.
Then popped a tarragon-Dijon chicken in the oven to roast.
Then the seeds from the pumpkin.
Shortly, I'll go out and toast pita to go with the hummus. That'll probably do it for today!

[heavy hedonist]

Originally Posted by SusanMac

Sneezles - that sounds phenomenal! Thx for posting. We have 100% success with BA in our house.

I love autumn & winter for puttering in the kitchen.

this goes for me also, thanks sneezles!

[sneezles]

Today I made some pumpkin muffins where I substituted chopped chocolate for the raisins. The original makes 24 huge (as in over the top) muffins but I made 46 regular sized ones...less quilt while eating! Perfect for the rainy afternoon with a cup of hot tea!

[Canice]

More puttering! (But of course that's always my Sunday evening.)

First I used some of Saturday night's roast chicken for Michael Symon's insane rigatoni with chevre-rosemary cream sauce and chicken. Waddled back to the stove and made a not-good lentil soup (I'm blaming the fat and carbs; clogged a major thoroughfare to my brain). Then took the rest of the chicken and made a really tasty -if I may say- chicken salad: moist shreds of chicken, diced celery, toasted pecans, dried cranberries, and minced tarragon and chives. If I hadn't already consumed my fat allotment through the first quarter of 2010, I'd make a sandwich of it on toasted sourdough with brie.

I see that in the past two nights of cooking I've used five different fresh herbs. Wish I had a nice herb garden!!

[mkc]

My weekend puttering:

Made turkey stock from the carcass of a test-run bird cooked earlier in the week (the leftover meat had already gone into enchiladas suizas). To go with the enchiladas (which were dinner) I cooked up some Rancho Gordo midnight black beans a la Homesick Texan. (good, but a bit too much lime juice. I'll cut down next time).

Not too much yesterday, just getting a 5-day cold rise pizza dough put together. Oh, and making risotto alla milanese for dinner because we needed comfort food after all the weekend noise (had our roof replaced due to hailstorm damage suffered last spring).

Michelle

[Kathy B]

More puttering today, although just because I felt like it, not because I needed to recover from work!

Made a batch of CL Cranberry-Orange Muffins to use up more of my cranberries. They smell wonderful.

I also made some Chocolate Chip Cookies that Kayaksoup posted at some point. A little different in that they called for 2 tsp of cornstarch.

They are very good (I had to eat 3 to be sure, though).

They did spread quite a bit. I know cookies with butter spread, but thought I'd follow the recipe. Next time I will use some Earth Balance shortening and see if that helps.

Enough puttering, now I need to buckle down and figure out what we are having for dinner!

[bbenedict]

Originally Posted by Canice

Meanwhile I roasted a little sugar pie pumpkin to mash for dinner

I just picked up some pie pumpkins and was going to roast them. How do you roast yours and at what temp?

Bonnie

[susan_foster]

Bumping back to admit - it's a rainy Saturday, I'm recovering from a cold I can't shake, and am still in pajamas. BUT - I motivated myself to wipe the cat fur off the kitchen table (no, they aren't allowed on there of course, but I don't think they have the message yet), and roll out a batch of sourdough english muffins.

This is the second time I've made the recipe - and halfway through I remembered I halved the recipe the first time I made it. Oops - now I have close to two dozen english muffins - just for me. Definitely freezing some - may bring some to cousin when visiting next weekend.

Tomorrow is full-on putter mode. Cookies, hummus, lentils w/carrots & peas are all on the menu for tomorrow.

Later in the week I will try to fit in stewed pears and whole wheat muffins.