Taking Stock

When the weather 'round these parts starts getting cooler, we make soup and stew and chili and all kinds of comfort foods.

One of the primary components of soup is a good stock.

These days, you can buy decent stock in aseptic cartons at the grocery store, but if you're properly motivated, you can make it yourself.

Me, I've been fairly motivated, but I didn't have the appropriate equipment to try Alton Brown's recipe, although I've had the requisite chicken carcasses, vegetables, and herbs in the house at various points this year. 

My mother, generous soul that she is, offered me the loan of her stockpot so I could actually clear the carcasses out of my freezer and turn them into stock.

Shopping List

• fresh parsley
• fresh thyme

I already had the 4lbs of chicken carcasses, leek, onion, carrots, and celery ribs prepped in the freezer and I always have bay leaves and peppercorns in the pantry.

Recipe Review

Ease of Preparation

This is very easy, but you do absolutely need the correct size stockpot. AB calls for a 12qt pot for stock-making, which is the size I borrowed from Mom. (My largest stockpot is 5qt.)

Collecting the carcasses is also time-consuming, but the munchkin had taken quite well to roast chicken for dinner over the last year, so I had plenty.

My sister could certainly do this if she put her mind to it.

Specialty equipment required?

Yes. 

In addition to the stockpot, you need a strainer - to remove the solids from your stock - and a smaller stockpot or large bowl to hold the stock you make. (Wouldn't want your 12 hours' work to literally go down the drain, would you?)

It's also suggested that a vegetable steamer be used to help keep the vegetables and chicken parts submerged, though I don't know if this is completely necessary. It is quite helpful, though.

Rating?

Well, this is kind of sticky. 

It's not an every day or even an every week rotation type of recipe, but that's mostly because I haven't got chicken parts every day. I've got several quarts of stock in my freezer, which should get me through the winter without having to buy box stock (yay!) but haven't had occasion to make soup yet.

I did use some of it in a slow-cooker pulled pork recipe (16oz frozen stock, 1-2 thinly sliced onions, 2lbs bone-in pork shoulder, 1c apple cider; cook on LOW for 8-10hrs, drain, pull, mix with favorite BBQ sauce & serve) and it turned out nicely, so that portion of this batch was a win.

We'll see how it goes as the season progresses. 

Recipe Review: Good Eats Chocolate Pudding

I don't know about you, but I really like chocolate.

So do the munchkin and husband.

The munchkin has been asking for chocolate pudding every time we're in the dairy aisle at Wegmans. While it's great to have it as a treat every once in a while, I'm not too keen on spending money on things I can make at home.

And, thanks to the Good Eats episode "Puddin' Head Blues," I've already got a couple of pudding recipes in my back pocket.

Including one for chocolate pudding.

Recipe Review

Shopping List

• Instant, nonfat, powdered milk
• heavy cream
• whole milk

Everything else was in my pantry.

Ease of preparation

The mix bit was quite easy, though I did neglect to add the powdered milk. (Oops!)

This is a stovetop-cooked pudding, so I'm rating the recipe as "medium" overall.

Even so, my sister could do this if someone watched her kids.

Specialty Equipment Required?

Yes. AB gives the dry ingredient measures in ounces, which means he'd rather you added them by weight and not by volume. 

I have a kitchen scale; I bought it for $15 several years ago. It's great for things like this.

He also calls for the cooked pudding to be run through a strainer to remove any stray lumps from the starch's gelatinization. This is a worthwhile, though messy, step!

Regular rotation-worthy?

Rather a big hit, I thought, so, yes.

RECIPE WIN. 

Happy Pi(e) Day!

To those of us who (a) are mathematically inclined and (b) write our dates in MM/DD/YY format, today, March 14th, is "Pi Day."

For double the geek-cred, it's also Princeton's celebration of Albert Einstein's birthday. 

At any rate, in case you didn't know, pi (or π, if you prefer) is an irrational number that represents the ratio between the diameter of a circle and its circumference. Expressed as a fraction, it's ²²⁄₇  which is 3.1415926 ... in decimal. Short-handed, it's 3.14.

So, this unofficial celebration of geekery leads to a lot of people making (and eating) pies and a lot more making (bad) puns.

I'm less inclined to do the math and more inclined to make bad puns.

And make pie.

Since we celebrated the munchkin's birthday today with her cousins from my side of the family, it seemed a great way to dish up some quiche ... er, refrigerator pie.

By request, I've also got some blueberry pie in the works.

Shopping List

• frozen pie crusts (4)
• refrigerated pie crusts (2)
• asparagus
• leeks
• bacon
• ham
• spinach
• Gruyere-Cheddar Melange cheese
• half-and-half
• lemons (yes, I realize the recipe called for orange, but I wanted lemon)
• frozen blueberries
• tapioca flour

Recipe Review - Good Eats Refrigerator Pie 

Ease of Preparation

Couldn't be easier, though I did make things a wee bit more complicated for myself by making all the fillings on the same day as I assembled each quiche.

AB calls this recipe (and a few like it) "refrigerator Velcro," meaning it can be a great way to use up random leftovers in the fridge.

I opted to make 3 - bacon-leek-Gruyere; spinach-ham-cheddar; and asparagus-smoked salmon. 

Assembly couldn't be simpler - follow the package instructions for your frozen pie crust to put them into the pan, evenly distribute your fillings of choice, being careful not to overfill, mix up the royale (custard), pour, and bake.

My 5-year-old helped me make the royale. She could probably help fill each pie shell if I'd let her!

My sister could totally do this. 

Specialty Equipment Required?

Nope.

I bought disposable pie tins to make cleanup and leftover distribution easier, but there's really no need to do that. Most people will be fine with their own pans.

Did my husband and daughter enjoy it? 

My husband tried the bacon-leek-Gruyere and didn't hate it, but I was also providing other food to make things work out - 7 adults with varying palates plus 5 children with varying degrees of pickiness means I also provided fruit and mini pastries.

My daughter wouldn't try it, but it's only because it's eggs, cheese, and whatever in an unfamiliar presentation.

Regular rotation-worthy?

Yes.

I'll keep this in my back pocket to make again for brunch.

RECIPE WIN.

Recipe Review - Good Eats Frozen Blueberry Pie

Ease of Preparation

It's rated "intermediate" at Food Network for a couple of reasons, mostly because it involves a lot of patience (you assemble the filling & then freeze it) and more than a little work (weaving a lattice from a pie crust, a step which I skipped in order to carve a π into the top crust. 

But, I think my sister would be fine with the steps.

Specialty Equipment Required?

Yes - you'll need something to mash half your blueberries with (I used a potato masher) and you'll need a 9" pie tin that can be put in the freezer. 

Did my husband and daughter enjoy it? 

I'll answer that question after dinner! The pie is currently cooling in the kitchen. 

Regular rotation-worthy?

Yes, but seasonal - while the thawed berries seemed to work out OK, I think it would be better with fresh.

And I'm waiting for June/July to pick some Jersey Fresh blueberries!!

WIN

Bonus Recipe - Rice Pudding

Now, I know what you're going to say, because I, like you, also despised rice pudding as either too sweet or having a weird texture - who wants to chew "pudding" ?

So, after catching a repeat of the GE episode "Puddin' Head Blues" on TV the other day, AB's recipe for Indian Rice Pudding started to call to me.

How fortunate (while the recipe was calling) for us to order takeout Chinese? 

Quite.

Having the main ingredient (1 cup of cooked-and-cooled long-grain or Basmati rice) in the fridge, albeit a bit older than I probably ought to have used, meant I needed to create a shopping list - it calls for whole milk, heavy cream, and coconut milk, none of which I had on-hand, as well as pistachios, golden raisins, and cardamom.

So, here's the compacted version of a week's worth of posts:

Shopping List

• whole milk (I bought a half-gallon, because my daughter and I will drink it, but a small "single serve" bottle from your local convenience store would be fine)
• heavy cream 
• canned coconut milk (I used "light" from TJ)
• ground cardamom
• UNSALTED pistachios
• golden raisins

Recipe Review

The recipe worked as expected (near perfectly - I'm fortunate to never have had an AB recipe fail) though it is a little involved. Anything where you're bringing milk to a boil is going to be involved, in my opinion, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Mr. Brown's meticulous step-by-step instructions really break everything down so I'd expect that my sister could follow them, but she likely wouldn't - she's kind of a picky eater.

I've never cooked with cardamom before, though I've eaten dishes that feature it, and I think it might be my new favorite spice. It smells kind of lemony, with a hint of pepper, and tastes like real vanilla with a hint of nutmeg. 

My husband enjoyed the flavor, but the texture from the rice, which had been in the fridge for 5 days, was a bit off-putting - it was still a bit "crunchy" and it shouldn't have been.

My daughter, on the other hand, wouldn't even try it. Whatever; she's 4.

Conclusion

Despite the kid turning up her nose at it, I'm still going to add this to the regular rotation, with the caveat that it needs to be made within one day of having takeout.

It's also not too complicated to do on a weeknight if everything's already in the house. Now that I've got the spice, nuts, and raisins, I'll only have to get the milk & cream next time.

RECIPE WIN.

Glossary of Liz-Terms (Part 1)

Why should you need a quicklist of terms I use? If you're going to follow this blog, you'll need to know how I short-hand a few people, ingredients, grocery stores, or random things.

Chances are good, I'll need more than one of these over the course of the blog, so this is "Part 1."

• AB - Alton Brown, whose show Good Eats is part of the reason I'm half the cook I am today. 
• AP - all-purpose, as in "all-purpose flour" 
• FN - Food Network
• Giada-chicken parm - Giada DiLaurentiis's recipe for chicken parmesan, which is a weeknight staple in our house (even if I cheat and use jarred sauce; sorry Giada)
• GE - Good Eats
• Mr. Brown see AB
• Weggies - Wegmans (a Rochester, NY-based local chain of supermarkets; if you think it's insane to rave about a grocery store, you've never been to Wegmans)

Still with me? Good.