Cream of Artichoke Soup

It's artichoke season again!  Artie didn't get that big this year, but still put out some respectable buds.  It only took a bit of frozen artichoke hearts to supplement them for this recipe from the L.A. Times.

Which brings up a point with this recipe.  Russ Parsons created it with fresh artichokes in mind, but you don't have to torture yourself.  Hearts canned in water or frozen are acceptable alternatives 90% of the time, and especially when they're getting puréed anyway.

Other than that, this is a typical creamy vegetable soup.  You could substitute frozen peas instead of artichoke for an equally satisfying bowl, though a very different taste.  It's the type of soup that can be served chilled as well as hot, but you will need to season it a touch differently if it's served cold.

I was puzzled by the 8-10 servings in the original recipe, until I got down to the very end.  Half-cup servings?  That's formal dinner party-sized!  No one is having those now.  Soon, maybe.  I'm considering this as four servings that will be accompanied by either bread and salad or a meat protein.  The bit of fried cheese I added was to make it more of a complete vegetarian meal.

*4 large artichokes (approx 2 C chopped)
*1 C diced onion
3 Tb olive oil
1 carrot, peeled and diced
*4 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium potato (8 oz), peeled and diced
1 tsp kosher salt
*4 C unsalted chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 C heavy cream
2 egg yolks

1.  To prepare the artichokes, start with a bowl of lemon water.  Take each bud separately.  Cut off the stem, then start paring off the tough outer leaves until you get to the heart.  Cut off the top 2/3 of the inner leaves, cut in half, and scoop out the hairy choke.  Chop each heart into 1/2" pieces and place in the acidulated water.  Or spare yourself the drama and defrost a box or drain a can.  That way is also a lot cheaper.

2.  In a large soup pot, heat the oil over medium-high.  Add the onion and allow it to soften, about 4 minutes.  Add the carrot and cook another 5 minutes covered.  Then add the garlic, potato, salt, and drained artichoke pieces.  Stir together, cover, turn down heat to medium-low, and let them cook for 10 minutes.

3.  Add broth to the pot.  Bring to a low boil and cover again.  Simmer for half an hour, until the vegetables are completely softened.  Russ says in his recipe "until the vegetables are soft enough that you can smash them between your fingers".  I don't recommend doing that with boiling hot food, but you get the idea.  Press a piece of artichoke against the side of the pot with a spoon.  If it breaks up, you're good.

4.  In batches, purée the soup in the blender for 30 seconds and pour through a sieve to remove any large pieces.  I didn't peel my potato because it didn't say to in the original recipe, and most of what was left in the sieve was potato skin.  A lot of it also made it through and kept the soup from looking perfect.  I put the peeling step in this version of the recipe.

5.  Return purée to medium heat and bring back to a simmer.  In a small bowl, beat egg yolks with cream.  Add 1/2 C of the hot soup to the eggs and whisk briskly to temper them so they don't curdle.  Pour mixture into soup and stir constantly until it thickens, about 3 minutes.  Don't boil the soup or it will get cooked egg chunks.  Serve hot, with parmesan crisps or other fried cheese as a garnish if desired.

Difficulty rating :)

Chinese Almond Cookies

I need to stop going to the Gardena 99 Ranch.  Their bakery section sucks.  There were packaged almond cookies, but no fresh.  And no egg custard tarts, again.  Fine, off to the internet in search of an "authentic" recipe.

I actually found several good ones by immigrants or second-generation Chinese cooks.  I'm going with the one from Table for Two because I had all the ingredients and didn't need to find almond paste, which is in several versions.

The process for almond cookies isn't that different from regular sugar cookies.  Mix, chill, shape, bake.  The extra step of brushing with an egg wash is primarily an aesthetic thing.  You can skip it if you really, really want to, but that golden color and cracked texture won't happen.

I could tell from the recipe that these would be good, but I didn't realize that they were going to be exactly like the ones you get in a Chinese restaurant or bakery.  Crisp, a little messy when they crumble, and not overly sweet.  Just the right amount of almond flavor without hitting you over the head with it.  In a word, excellent.

*1-1/3 C almond flour
1 C unsalted butter, cut in cubes
1/8 tsp kosher salt
2 eggs
*1 tsp almond extract
1-3/4 C flour
1 C + 2 Tb sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
sliced almonds for garnish

1.  In mixer with the paddle, cream together almond flour, salt, and butter until smooth and fluffy.  Beat in one egg and almond extract.

2.  In a separate bowl, stir together flour, sugar, and baking soda.  Scrape down mixer and add flour to it.  Stir to combine, scrape down again, and stir until flour is incorporated.  It will look like a crumbly dough.

3.  Pour dough onto a piece of plastic wrap or wax paper.  Form into a disc and chill until firm, about 2 hours.

4.  Line baking sheets with parchment or Silpats.  Beat other egg to make an egg wash.  Preheat oven to 325º.

5.  Form dough into 1" balls and space 2" apart on the sheets.  The unbaked dough balls can be frozen for up to a month, but one beaten egg is just enough to coat all of them, so you might as well bake them and freeze the finished product instead.  Press each ball lightly into a disc.  Brush with the egg wash, then top with a slice of almond lightly pressed into the top.

6.  Bake 15-17 minutes, until lightly browned on the top but not burned on the bottom.  Let rest on the baking sheet 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.  Cooled cookies can be stored at room temperature for 2 weeks or frozen, because this makes a lot.

Makes 4 dozen

Difficulty rating :)

Melitzanopita

I was looking for a tiropita (cheese pie) with eggplant in it and found this, which is mostly vegetables with a little cheese.

This Greek casserole is a nightmare for anyone with a nightshade sensitivity.  Eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes.  The only thing missing is potato.  I went ahead and put in a green bell pepper because I do love them and it's been ages since I've been brave enough to have one.

I'm mostly following the recipe from Socratic Food.  I chose it because it uses puff pastry instead of filo, and I happened to have some of the former in the freezer.  The ingredients and directions probably make more sense if you're European, so I'm cleaning it up for an American audience.  The amounts are where it really gets hinky.  Two eggplants for my half batch made way more filling than I expected.  And I'm listing diced onion by volume rather than piece.  I'm trying to do that in most of my more recent recipes, to avoid variations in size or water content of onions.

Altogether, this recipe took over two hours.  That includes prepping the vegetables and letting it sit after the oven to cool a bit.  Not all of it is active work.  You can break it up by prepping the filling first (about an hour) and doing the assembly and baking later on.

2 medium eggplants
1 green or red bell pepper, small dice
1 C diced yellow onion
2 Roma tomatoes, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, diced (optional)
1/2 C chopped Italian (flat leaf) parsley
1/4 C olive oil, plus more for brushing
2 Tb lemon juice
1 puff pastry sheet
flour for rolling
1 egg, beaten
4 oz crumbled feta
1/4 C grated parmesan
salt and pepper

1.  To prepare the eggplant, remove cap.  Peel, then grate either on a box grater or with the grating disc of a food processor.  Place shreds in a colander and toss with 1 tsp kosher salt.  Drizzle with lemon juice.  Let sit for 30 minutes while you prep the rest of the filling.

2.  Heat olive oil on medium in a large skillet or soup pot.  Add onion and bell pepper and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.  Add tomatoes and jalapeño and cook until tomatoes break down, about 10 minutes.

3.  Rinse eggplant slices to remove some of the salt and squeeze out the water.  Add shreds and chopped parsley to the pot and continue to cook until eggplant breaks down and the volume of the filling is reduced by about half.  This will take about 15-20 minutes.  Taste and add salt and pepper, bearing in mind the salt content of the cheeses.  Set filling aside to cool a bit and get out the pastry sheet to defrost.

4.  After about half an hour, you should be able to unfold the pastry sheet.  Brush an 8"x8" casserole with olive oil.  Dust a work surface with flour and roll the sheet out approx 8"x16".  It will be a little wider than eight inches, but that's fine.  Cut piece in half if you wish.  What I ended up doing was cutting the middle 8" out of it and having two 4" pieces that I then cut in half.  All that did was mean I didn't have to cut them after they were placed on top.

5.  Preheat oven to 425º.  Lay one square of pastry on bottom of casserole.  It's perfectly fine if it rises a bit up the sides.  That's actually an asset.  The filling should be cool enough at this point not to instantly cook the egg or melt the cheeses.  Stir both into the eggplant mixture.  Pour filling on top of crust, spreading out evenly.  Lay other piece of pastry on top.  If it's in one piece, cut into portions, but don't cut all the way through the bottom crust.

6.  Brush top of the pastry with more olive oil.  Bake for about 30 minutes, until the crust is crispy and browned.  Allow to rest 20 minutes before cutting.  Like with a lasagna, this should be served after the filling has had a chance to set a bit.

Serves 4-6

Difficulty rating  :)

Wholegrain Mustard

It's canning season.  Since I've gotten the canner, I'm in it pretty deep.  Broke it in one day with rum-infused grapes (same recipe but adding 1/4 C light rum), strawberry-lavender jam, and kohlrabi relish.  I'm not going to try that many recipes in a day again.

I already have a batch of fig mustard in the pantry, but I decided to do a non-sweet one for everyday use.  I had trouble finding a reliable canning recipe for yellow mustard, but there are several out there using whole seeds.  Only problem, mustard seeds of any color are difficult to find in stores and cost way more than I planned to spend.  So I went online and found The Spice Way, a company based in Van Nuys, that mailed them in two days for $7 a half pound.  For nearly any spice, that is a perfectly reasonable cost.  They have a brick and mortar store in Studio City and several locations across the country.

Yes, a pound of mustard seeds is a lot.  It's going to take me a couple of years to use them all.  I use them primarily in mustard sauce, pickles, broths, and curries.  I picked up a new coffee/spice grinder that is way better than my old one, so I can now make my own mustard powder from the seeds.  The bags are mylar and seal very well, reducing the chance of the seeds going stale prematurely.

I'm following the recipe on Home Preserving, a trusted canning and preserving site.  She's located in Australia, but uses the conventional American measurements that are still the canning standard.  If you're not processing, you can go off-recipe with herbs and spices and refrigerate the finished product for up to a month.  For canning, only go with tested and trusted recipes.  The mistakes were thrown out for a reason.

This recipe is super basic.  Only five ingredients, counting the water.  Aside from the brown mustard seeds, everything is easy to find.  And if you want to scale it down to a refrigerated-only amount, reference the above link to the source.  It has various batch sizes.

1-1/2 C apple cider vinegar
1/2 C yellow mustard seeds
1/2 C brown mustard seeds
2/3 C filtered water
2 tsp kosher salt

1.  Place all ingredients in a non-reactive quart container.  A quart Mason jar is nice if you have it.  Shake or stir to distribute, then let sit 8 to 24 hours.  The seeds will absorb most, if not all, of the liquid.

2.  If canning, prepare jars, lids, and canner for a 3 cup yield.  This is hot-pack, so preheat the jars.

3.  Pour contents into a blender or food processor.  Process to desired texture, anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes.  I stopped to check it every two minutes, and decided that 4 was enough.  There were still many whole seeds, but enough saucy paste between them to make spreading easy.

4.  Pour mustard into a saucepan.  Heat over medium-high until it reaches a low boil, then reduce heat to medium-low or it will spit hot mustard at you.  Cook about 10 minutes.  You actually don't have to cook it further once it reaches the simmer, but mustard is extremely potent unless it is cooked.  8-10 minutes will give you spicy grainy mustard, 15 minutes will be much more mild.

5.  It's tempting, but DO NOT taste the mustard before filling the jars!  My eyes were watering from the "fumes".  Mustard mellows after it cools and spends a couple of weeks in the pantry or fridge.  Tasting it now would be like swallowing a tablespoon of wasabi.

6.  Fill jars to 1/2" headspace.  Mustard can siphon as the seeds soak up extra moisture during the water bath, so don't skimp on the headspace.  De-bubble with a tool or chopstick and add more mustard if necessary.  Wipe rims clean with vinegar, fit lids, and screw on bands.  Process 10 minutes for jelly or half-pint jars, 15 minutes for pints.  Allow to sit in the canner with the lid off for 5 minutes before removing.  As the jars cool, you might notice cracks in the product inside.  This is fine, and is a result of the attempted siphoning.

7.  Allow finished mustard to sit, either in jars or the fridge, for 2-4 weeks before using.  Unless you like really, really hot mustard.  Then try it after a few days.

Makes 3 cups

Difficulty rating  π

Shredded Chicken

 

The day I went shopping for meat for the tamales, there was shredded chicken in the deli.  It was $6/lb.  I get it; you're paying for them to do the dirty work.  But when you realize that they most likely use the previous day's unsold roasted chickens that sat under a heat lamp, it just seems a better idea to spend the time and effort to make your own.  So I bought a value pack of chicken breasts on last-day special for about $1.85/lb and cooked them up myself.

I ended up with about 8 cups of shredded chicken.  Yes, that's a lot, and way more than I needed for the tamales.  So I packed up the rest in pint containers and put them in the freezer.  Now I have pre-cooked chicken for casseroles, enchiladas, pasta, or a host of other recipes.  It will cut down on cooking time another day, for about two hours of mostly passive time on a day off.

As for what chicken you use, that's up to you.  I picked up skin-on, bone-in split chicken breasts because they were on sale.  Also, skin and bones bring flavor to the resulting broth.  Yes, you get chicken bone broth out of this!  It's doubly economical.

1.  Place raw chicken in a pot large enough to fit comfortably, but small enough that there won't be too much empty space.  Fill pot with water just to cover.  Chicken will float if you let it.

2.  Bring to a low boil, then immediately reduce heat to a simmer.  You don't want to kick up the weird chicken gunk that happens when you hard boil chicken.  Cover and allow to simmer for 90 minutes.  When you come back, it will look slightly smaller.  That's perfectly normal.

3.  Remove chicken from the water and allow to cool on a cutting board until just warm.  Meanwhile, you can strain the water through a fine-mesh sieve and save the stock.  It can be refrigerated for a week, or frozen for a few months.  Just be careful with the packaging and leave plenty of headspace during the freezing process.

4.  Carefully shred the chicken while still warm.  It's easier.  I say carefully because the inside is still hot.  Once shredded, the meat can be used immediately, stored in the fridge for about 5 days, or frozen for about three months in a sealed container.  If freezing, refrigerate first until chilled to reduce the likelihood of freezer burn.

Kimchi Fried Rice

This dish is kind of an inside joke on Quarantine Quitchen.  In Episode 5, Alton Brown had everything set up, then couldn't find the kimchi.  The next week, he confessed that he had absentmindedly left it on top of the fridge while going up the stairs behind it.  A true Iron Chef, he used sauerkraut and the red chili paste that goes into kimchi to doctor up something fairly close to the original idea.

And that's the glorious thing about fried rice.  It's a dumping ground for leftovers, including the rice.  Heat up some oil in the skillet, toss everything around, and finish with a generous drizzle of soy sauce.  Dinner is served.

I made way more kimchi this spring than expected, using a single Napa cabbage to clear out the crisper.  Still, 3 quarts of the stuff costs over $20 at the store, and I made it for $5 plus leftovers.  I'll find uses, and will probably add some vinegar to process can a couple of pints so they stop smelling up my fridge.  Yes, it kills the probiotic properties, but the process time on a pint jar shouldn't affect the texture much.

I had made several pounds of shredded chicken for the tamales and added the leftovers to this.  You could add any protein you feel like, including beans or tofu.  I put in scrambled egg, but you don't have to if you want to make a vegan version.  There is no real recipe for fried rice, when you get down to it.

3 C cooked rice (from 1 C dry; I used brown)
2 Tb olive oil
2 C kimchi, with juices
*2 C shredded chicken
1 egg, beaten
1 Tb grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 C other vegetables, optional (I added peas)
soy sauce to taste

1.  Heat oil in a large skillet over medium.  Add garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant.  Add kimchi and chicken and cook until warmed through.

2.  Make a well in the middle.  Add beaten egg and work until thoroughly scrambled.  Add rice and any other vegetables and stir to mix.  Add soy sauce to taste and serve once hot.

Difficulty rating  π

Freezing Sugar Snap Peas

Passover ended up being my pea vines' most prolific week.  Sure, the one week of the year I can't have legumes.  I could have picked more the week before, but the vines were so overgrown, I just couldn't see most of the pods.

The day after picking about a pound of pods filled to bursting, I went out with the clippers to remove all the dying vines and any shoots above the level of the cage.  I ended up with a huge pile of vines on the lawn, most of them filled with pods that had been buried in the morass.  Forgot to take a "before" photo, but you can see that the "after" still fills the tomato cages and has more than a few new blossoms on it.

I looked in multiple books, but I guess pickling peas isn't a thing.  To preserve an abundance, your choices are pressure canning (not recommended for sugar snap), dehydrating, or freezing.  I don't have a pressure canner or dehydrator.  That left freezing pods or making a lot of pea soup and freezing that.  The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a page on how to do it.

There isn't much to freezing peas.  You just have to clean, trim, and blanch them first.  It works best with immature pods, where you can barely see the seeds when you hold them up to the light.  The mature ones need to be shelled before blanching.

I made two piles, the easy ones that could go straight into the pot and the ones that needed to be shelled.  For the whole pods, the very tips and stems need to be cut off, and remove the strings if possible.  After that, they just go in boiling water for 90 seconds.  Cool, dry, and freeze in a baggie or other container.  These pods can be thrown straight into recipes like stir fry, right out of the freezer.

Shelling the plump pods took a little while, and more than a few got eaten before they could make it to the bowl.  After that, 2 minutes in the water took care of them.  This is why frozen peas from the market are wrinkly and not firm.  They are also blanched before freezing, to keep the moisture content from destroying the texture.  The pods became mulch.

Whether from the market or the garden, finding ways to preserve produce before it has to be thrown out should be a priority.  Not only does it save money, it saves planetary resources.  With just a little work, most produce can be frozen, dehydrated, or canned.  The HFP has many trusted resources toward that end that are worth investigating.

Kitchen Scrap Gardening

I bought a leek for a second batch of colcannon.  Over a dollar for a single leek.  Sure, it was organic, but that isn't much of an excuse.  Green onions have gotten expensive too, as have various other bits of produce that I would rather not try to grow from seed.

But seed isn't the only way to grow plants.  Sometimes a bit of root is plenty to grow an entire new plant *cough* mint *cough*.  And who hasn't tried to grow an avocado tree from a pit?  Garlic is always sprouting on me.

I watched a few videos and realized it's very simple to turn many ends of vegetables that are commonly thrown away into garden items that will produce for months.

I started with the "golden" leek.  When it was time to use it, I saved the bottom inch, including a very nice root system.  It went into a jelly jar with water and the jar went into the greenhouse window.  That's it.  One minute of work.  A week in the water, the leek had regrown and the roots were strong again.  Time to put it in the Pond.

Up next was celery and green onions, after a batch of tuna salad.  The green onions were the same process as the leek.  The celery was even easier.  Save the bottom two inches of the stalk, the part that cuts into a pretty rose pattern.  Stick it in damp soil butt-side down and give it a week or so to create a root system.  It won't sprout overnight like the onions.  You'll start to see the inner hearts grow in a couple of weeks.  Beats four months waiting for seedlings to get to that point!

Alliums (onions, garlic) and root vegetables like sprouting potatoes are the obvious items to regrow.  I'm not doing potatoes because I don't want Molly getting curious and nibbling on the leaves, which are toxic. She has a natural aversion to onions, so I'm not concerned about that.

You can also buy "living" lettuces and herbs at the market that still have roots attached.  They do cost more than regular versions, but an extra 50¢ might get you a head of lettuce that can live in a bowl of water for weeks and produce twice as many salads as an ordinary piece before bolting.  I've planted Living herbs before in window pots and managed to keep them alive for several months, far extending their shelf life.

This approach isn't only for people with a large garden.  Even an apartment balcony is large enough for half-gallon pots of regrown onions or gallons for potatoes.  Little herb pots can go in any window, inside or out.  So what if you forget to water them and they die; you were going to throw out that part anyway.  It's a fun little experiment that might save you money down the road.

Part XIII: Cooking for the Future

Since the cookbooks I'm referencing the most these days are about canning and preserving, I decided to change topics.

Food prices are going up.  This is largely due to the pandemic.  In the beginning, there were food shortages because of hoarding and because restaurants were shut down, disrupting the way food producers package and distribute goods.  Commercial foodservice has reopened gradually, so manufacturers have mostly been able to keep up.  However, the returning goods are now more expensive due to many factors, not the least of which is COVID protocols changing the way production lines operate.  There's also an aluminum shortage having to do with trade tariffs with China.  That mostly affects pet food and canned drinks, but there are a few other items that package with aluminum that have suffered.

What I'm getting at is that we should all avoid wasting what we have purchased, because it costs about 5% more than it did last year.  The most obvious way to do that is not to over-buy in the first place.  Still, it's hard to estimate exactly how much everyone in a family will eat over the course of a week or two.  One unexpected pizza night when you were going to make fish could cause $10 of seafood to be thrown out.  My solution to that is to cook it up anyway and freeze it, but we'll go into specific fixes as the unit progresses.

There are going to be a lot of canning recipes this summer because I got a new canning pot.  I water-bath can.  I do not pressure can, which is supposedly safe but I just don't have space for all of those jars.  It also takes a really long time.  Some water-bath recipes process for as little as 10 minutes.  I've been making all my own jams for years, and now want to get into pie fillings and other items you would want in a pint or quart jar.  The majority of water-bath recipes do not have to be processed.  You can make the recipes and refrigerate or freeze leftovers.  Pie filling made with Clearjel is an exception.  I'll let you know whenever the recipe is solely for canning, but that will be rare.

There will also be easy gardening tips in this section, things even those in an apartment can grow.  This is all about cutting grocery bills and not wasting money on food that will spoil if you don't do something with it.  That's kind of always been the focus of this blog, but I'll go more into how to preserve what might be about to go bad.

Chicken and Spinach Tamales

Chicken tamales tend to have either a ton of chili powder or green olives in them.  I didn't want either.  What I really wanted to put in them was charred poblano chilis, but I have only so many antihistamines in the house.  So I ended up using spinach for the green and panela for cheese.  Feta was considered, but that would make an odd combo, Mexican and Greek.

Yes, tamales are scary for a lot of people.  I made them on a day off, so it wasn't four hours straight in the kitchen.  I put on the chicken, went out shopping, then made the masa while it was cooling enough to shred.  Once all that was cleaned up, I made the filling and wrapped them.  Then there's 90 minutes waiting for them to cook.  This is not all active time.  The kitchen was clean and I was bored long before they were done.  And it's a small enough batch to fit in whatever large pot you use for pasta or soup.  So, while you can't make these in half an hour after work, they are not a big deal for a day-off dinner.

1/4 C shortening
1/4 C butter
*2 C masa harina (corn flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp kosher salt, divided
2 tsp cumin, divided
2 tsp chili powder, divided
2-1/2 C chicken broth or water, divided
2 Tb olive oil
*1 C red onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
*1-1/2 C frozen spinach
1-1/2 C shredded chicken
4 oz panela or other crumbly cheese
*20-24 corn husks

1.  If cooking the chicken from scratch, simmer 1 large chicken breast in water to cover for 90 minutes.  Drain (save the broth!), allow to cool until you can handle it, and shred the chicken with your fingers. That should give you at least as much chicken as you need for the recipe.

2.  In a large bowl or roasting pan, pour boiling water over the corn husks.  Allow to sit in the hot water for at least 1 hour, to soften.

3.  In the stand mixer, beat together shortening and butter with the paddle until smooth.  Separately, stir together masa harina, baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, and 1 tsp chili powder.  Stir in 2 C of broth until mixture is moistened.  Scrape down mixer, add masa paste, and beat until uniform.

4.  To make the filling, heat oil in a medium skillet.  Add onion, garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, and 1 tsp chili powder.  Once onion softens, add spinach and chicken.  You don't need to defrost the spinach first.  Add remaining half cup of broth.  Cook until heated through, then remove from heat.

5.  Now you're ready to assemble the tamales.  Lay out a husk on your work surface, pointy end down.  Smear 3 Tb of masa paste in the middle of the upper half of the husk.  Add a heaping tablespoon of chicken filling and about a teaspoon of crumbled cheese.  Fold in the sides to cover the filling, then fold up the pointy bottom.  If your tamales aren't staying shut, tear off a strip of husk and use it to tie the package shut.

6.  Arrange tamales in a steamer basket or colander and set in a large pot over a couple of inches of simmering water.  Cover and allow to steam 90 minutes, checking every half hour to make sure the pot hasn't boiled dry.  Tamales are done once the masa has set.  If it's still sticking to the husks, give them another 15 minutes.

7.  Serve hot, with salsa and/or sour cream if desired.

Makes 20-24

Difficulty rating :-0

Half-Baked Beans

 

First, don't Google "half baked beans" expecting a recipe.  It's an online publisher based in India.  Cute name though.

My new work schedule is destroying my cooking routine, not to mention this blog.  I don't want to spend one day a week cooking a whole week of meals, but I don't have two or three hours after work to go grocery shopping and cook a post.  I really miss morning shifts, not to mention my old 10-minute commute.

Case in point, how to make a pot of baked beans from scratch in under two hours.  I don't have a crock pot, and I don't want to leave the oven on all day while I'm at work.  I'm not thrilled with the idea of leaving an electric crock pot on unattended, either.  I know people do it, but Papa Smurf's career was investigating electrical and mechanical failures.  I make sure everything is off before going to bed or leaving the house, and don't even leave anything on a charger.

This recipe is in two steps.  You can simmer the beans the day before if you want, or even use canned if you aren't devoted to from-scratch.  Finishing them in the oven allows for the sauce to penetrate the beans, rather than only being an on-top sauce.  That's really what makes baked beans special.

2/3 C dry Navy or other white beans
2 Tb tomato paste
*1 Tb molasses
1/2 tsp garlic powder
*1/4 tsp ground cloves
salt to taste
water

1.  Soak beans 8 hours or overnight.  Drain.  Refill saucepan with water to cover by 1 inch and simmer beans for 1 hour, adding a touch of salt if desired.  Drain.

2.  Preheat oven to 275º.  In an oven-safe casserole, stir together par-cooked beans, tomato paste, molasses, garlic powder, cloves, and a bit of salt.  Add water to cover by 1 inch.  Cover casserole and bake 1 hour, stirring partway through and adding more water if dry.

3.  Serve hot, with salad and cornbread if desired.

Difficulty rating  π