I should perhaps back up a bit.  I guess I haven’t mentioned that my parents (more specifically my dad) has jumped in to the hobby of sourdough bread making.  Yes, a man who at one time couldn’t find the milk in the fridge without the help of his teenage daughter, is making bread from scratch, from cultures he maintains with loving care.  I love the unexpected changes the years can bring.

Its truly amazing I haven’t started doing this culturing thing years ago.  I mean, if there’s one type of cooking that translates from the lab to the kitchen – its culturing microbes!  I have personally maintained cell cultures in the lab for 8+ years.  It has become second nature in my working hours, so I really hope that my mad culturing skills will come home with me after working hours!

OK, enough with the back story, lets get down to some bread making.  I pulled out my sourdough culture, which had been sitting undisturbed in the fridge for the past 2 weeks.  I poured off 2 cups of it for use in this recipe.  With the rest of it, I added water (about 2.5 cups) and flour to bring the culture back to its previous texture.  In case you’re wondering, the texture is roughly that of thick pancake batter.  I transferred the refreshed culture back into my cleaned storage container and put it back into the fridge.  I unfortunately didn’t have a lot of culture left after I removed the 2 cups for the recipe, but I’m hoping the remaining yeast will repopulate the culture.

Refreshing the Culture

To the 2 cups of liquid culture (that’s how it is referred to by the cookbook), I added 1 cup flour and 1/4 cup water.  I whisked those ingredients together and let them proof for 12 hours.  This is your overnight step.

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Did I mention that this bread takes about 25 hours to make?  Oh yea, it takes about 25 hours to make.

After 12 hours, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Dr. Domestic headed into the kitchen to stir in another 1 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of water.  Sound familiar?  This second mixture proofs for 8 more hours.

Second Proofed Culture

And in case you’re wondering, proofing is optimally done at about 70-72F.  This stuff IS specific.  More science than cooking, really.

8 hours later, I mixed in all of the goodies.  The goodies include: Milk (3/4 cup), cinnamon (a LOT of cinnamon – 1/4 cup), raisins (1 cup), finely chopped walnuts (1 cup), sugar (2 T) and salt (1 1/2 tsp).  I combined the goodies with the proofed culture in my KitchenAid Mixer and mixed it up.  I then added 2 cups of flour (in two stages) and mixed on Med-High for about 6 minutes with the dough hook.

This is not the most pleasant stage of the bread-making process.  Your mixer will NOT like this.  It will get hot, and tired, and eventually try to commit suicide by throwing itself off of your counter-top.  Really.  You must stand there and keep it on your counter because that much dough (4+ pounds of it) knocking around your mixer will cause it to walk all over the place.

At some point, my nice floury, smooth bread dough ball turned into a gluey mass.  I don’t know when or why this happened.  But I took this as a hint to start the hand-kneading.  I turned it out onto a counter-top and kneaded in another 1 1/4 cup flour.

Forgive me for lack of good pictures at this step.  I was in a huge hurry and covered head-to-toe in flour.  It was a bit stressful.

And after 8-10 minutes of hand-kneading, when you’re good and sweaty, you’re done.  The dough is then split in two, because this recipe makes TWO LOAVES.  And do yourself a favor and actually weigh the dough so its truly evenly divided.

Roll each piece out separately into rectangles, about the width of your bread loaf pans and 1/2 inch thick.  Spread over one half of a mixture of 2 Tbsp cinnamon and 1/2 cup sugar.  The other half is of course for the other loaf.  Roll up the dough and place it in a loaf pan.

Bread Loaves Before Final Rise

The loaves now proof from anywhere from 2-3 hours in a warm room to longer (5-6 hrs) in a cooler room.  I opted for the longer rise because I went and made social plans for tonight without thinking through the ramifications for my bread loaves.  I called my mom in a panic to make sure I could let them rise longer than 3 hours and she told me it’d be fine.  Yes, I still need motherly reassurances!

Loaves after Final Rise

When we got home tonight, the loaves (which had been in our cold basement) were still a bit flat, so I did the “bouncing” technique for inducing a final rise.  Basically, instead of pre-heating the oven, you put the loaves in a cold oven, then heat it.  This extra heating time apparently helps give the loaves a bit of…well…bounce.  It did seem to help tonight, at least a little.

The loaves were cooked at 375F for 25 minutes, then covered with foil.  They then continued to bake at 375F until they reached an internal temperature of 203F.  Yes. 203F EXACTLY.

Baked Bread

Too bad I somehow can’t transmit the smell of freshly baked cinnamon bread over the internet.  Really too bad.

I turned the loaves out onto a cooling rack, where they sat overnight under a tea-towel.  One unanticipated problem I experienced was that some of the cinnamon sugar kind of melted out and burned to the side of the loaf.  Woops.  Maybe I’ll just use less cinnamon sugar next time.

And as for the final taste and texture?  Taste – good. Texture – a bit dense, not surprising with the sub-optimal conditions I used!

Boy was this one exhausting!

I’m not posting the recipe for this one quite yet because to be completely honest, I was working off of a copy my dad made out of their cookbook, and I didn’t have both pages of the recipe.  Umm, this could explain a few things…  If/When I redo this one, I promise to do a better job and I will post the actual recipe.  You can gather the gist of it from this post.

The weather was beautiful, 70 and sunny this past weekend, plus, we were trying at all costs to not leave the house in order to avoid the college town graduation weekend mayhem.  It was the perfect time to pull the grill out from its Winter slumber.  And this time, I was determined to learn to use this myself.  No longer will our grill be the strict domain of those possessing Y chromosomes.  Its just another cooktop, thus, it is my domain!  I think Greg was a bit relieved.  He felt quite a lot of pressure being the man-who-must-control-the-flames even though he really doesn’t feel comfortable at all cooking.

And while outside we get to enjoy our deck and all of our lovely herbs.

We started off grilling season with an absolutely classic Summer meal.  Rib-eye steaks, fresh corn on the cob, and fresh from the Farmer’s Market asparagus.  The steak and asparagus was done on the grill, the corn I did inside.  I know, I know…you can grill corn and its yummy, but I just didn’t want to deal with 3 things on the grill that all cook at different temperatures.  Can you blame me?

We preheated the grill to a ripping hot 450 degrees, then Greg scrubbed down the grates with a steel brush.  That’s how you clean a grill, and it was gleaming and ready for the food.

I put the steaks (seasoned only with a LOT of salt and pepper) on the hot open flames while I put the asparagus (tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper) over hot flames, but atop a finer grilling grate that we bought for cooking vegetables.

While the steak and asparagus were cooking (I allowed the 3 minutes on the first side), I started the corn boiling.  I used the following method for the corn:  Cook in boiling, salted water for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and allow the corn to sit in the hot water with the lid ON for 5 more minutes.  And let me just say, the corn was perfectly cooked.  Too bad I can’t say that about the rest of the meal.

Turns out I had the heat set way too high, the steaks got a bit overdone, but not ruined.  Some of the asparagus was a bit, um, charred.  I only had to discard a few pieces.  However, even though the asparagus was more than done on the outside, some of the thicker pieces were underdone on the inside.  Oh well, live and learn, right?

I’d say for my first go around, the meal turned out well, and it really was quite delicious.  Now all we need is a set of deck furniture so we can actually enjoy our grilled food where it was meant to be enjoyed.  Outside, under the warm sunshine.  Happy Summer Grilling!!

More specifically, these are the only oatmeal raisin cookies that I actually really like.  The only ones I will spend my time making at home.  Dare I say, the only ones I’d make instead of chocolate chip cookies???  OK, I think that last statement might have taken the sentiment too far.  I don’t know that anything can displace chocolate chip cookies as my all time favorites.  But these are an excellent alternative if for some strange reason you’re not in a chocolaty mood.

The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen and I encourage you all to go there for the recipe and Deb’s beautiful photos of them.  And while you’re there, you can lose yourself for about the next 5 hours looking at the most delicious looking food ever.  But I digress.  I follow her recipe exactly (something notable for me) and would suggest you do the same.  Not that I’m threatening your knee-caps or anything if you decide to add chocolate chips or anything else, but just try them exactly how she wrote the recipe.  You won’t be sorry!

Today, perhaps as a thank-you for making some of his favorite cookies, Greg bestowed upon me the use of his fancy SLR Canon Rebel XT (with a 50mm lens).  All of the photos taken thus far for this blog (including the photo at the top of this post) have been with my beloved Canon Powershot A590.  I will not abandon my Powershot, especially for the macro shots, well, until I spend $500 bucks for a good SLR macro lens…But today I tried my hand using the Rebel.  Enjoy the photos, I’m off to enjoy another cookie.

Can you tell I was playing with depth of field here?

This meal has been on the docket for quite a while, but I got kind of out of the cooking mood earlier this week.  I’m kind of glad it waited until tonight because it turned out to be the perfect night for a warm, comforting meal.  I’m not sure if you heard, but Kansas got about 37 inches of rain tonight.  OK, I exaggerate, but we got almost 5, and that’s a LOT.  This kind of downpour requires creamy, starchy, comforty food.

It also gave me the perfect opportunity to test out the new rice cooking method I’ve been excited about trying.  I’ve admitted before that I absolutely stink at making rice.  STINK.  I just can’t get it right.  So when I read this post about preparing rice in the oven, I thought, Perfect!  A fool-proof method!  Well, just leave it to this fool to screw it up.  To much liquid I’m presuming.  But luckily, the casserole preparation saved my somewhat wet rice.  And no-one will ever know…

I would classify this dish as relatively simple, but it does have a lot of ingredients so it takes a bit of preparation.  Once you get the rice in the oven, shred some cheese, steam some broccoli, saute a cut-up chicken breast with an onion, smoosh some crackers and…you got all that??  I know, it sounds ridiculous, but its not too terrible, I promise.

OK, so like I said, shred some cheese and smoosh some crackers (or make your husband do it with his giant paws).

And get the broccoli going.  I chop it up into large chunks, then once its steamed, chop it into little chunks.  And just because I’m always saying we don’t eat enough green stuff…look at this green stuff!

And cut the chicken into bite sized chunks.  I just used one chicken breast because its apparently from the largest chicken in the world.  I mean seriously, this thing was at least a D-cup.

And last but not least, the sauce to hold it all together.  Sure I could have probably made a proper white sauce, but its Friday night and haven’t I done enough prep work for this casserole already?  Greg snapped a photo of me in all of my shameful glory.  Opening a can of condensed soup.  Well, you know what? It makes the casserole taste good, so who cares darn it!

So once everything is prepped, just dump it all together, stir it up, and top it with the crushed crackers (or breadcrumbs).  I just combined it all in the dutch oven I used to cook the rice.

Bake for 20 minutes, then serve it up!  A big steaming bowl of this casserole, a good TV show and a thunderstorm.  Could you ask for a better Friday night?  OK, could you ask for a better Friday night if you’re totally old and lame like me?

Prep Ranking: #2 – Weeknight Fare
Tastiness Grade: 8/10, a little bland, but totally yummy and comforting!

Recipe after the jump.  Enjoy on a rainy night with your favorite show!

Chicken, Broccoli and Rice Casserole (serves 4-6)

Oven Rice, adapted from The Wednesday Chef

1.5 cups Rice (I used some plain-old Uncle Ben’s medium grained white rice, but the original recipe calls for long-grained rice)
2 Tbsp Olive Oil or Butter (or a combination of both)
~2-2 1/4 cups Chicken Stock (or water)
1/2 tsp salt – if you use Chicken Stock, omit the salt

In a heavy, oven safe pot (with a tight fitting lid), heat the oil/butter over medium heat and then add the rice.  Stir the rice and cook over medium-high heat until slightly translucent and “nutty” smelling.  Add the water/chicken stock and heat until boiling.  Stir once, then put the lid on and transfer the pot to an oven, preheated to 350F.  Cook for 13 minutes.  Remove the pot from the oven, but do not remove the lid.  Let sit on the counter for 5 minutes.  Then, remove the lid and fluff with a fork.

While the rice is cooking…prepare the rest of the ingredients:

1 large or 2 medium Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, cut into bite-sized chunks
1 medium Onion, diced
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 large crown Broccoli, cut into large chunks
1/2 cup shredded Cheese, I used a combo of Cheddar and Monteray Jack
1 can condensed Cream of Chicken Soup
about 1/3 of a sleeve (~8-10) buttery crackers, crushed in a zip-top bag

In a skillet, saute the chicken and onion in the olive oil.  Salt and pepper lightly.  Do NOT add too much salt, remember that the cheese, condensed soup and cracker crumbs all contain salt too!  It isn’t crucial to cook the chicken all the way through as it will bake in the oven later.

Separately, steam the broccoli.  Once its just fork tender, chop it into small chunks.

Once the rice is done and fluffed, add the sauteed chicken and onion, the steamed broccoli, the shredded cheese, and the condensed soup.  Stir together to thoroughly mix all the ingredients.  Smooth out the top, then sprinkle the crushed cracker crumbs over the top.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350F.

]]> http://doctordomestic.com/2009/05/15/chicken-broccoli-and-rice-casserolemmmm-comforty/feed/ 0 http://doctordomestic.com/2009/05/12/buffalo-turkey-burgers/ http://doctordomestic.com/2009/05/12/buffalo-turkey-burgers/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 00:22:48 +0000 Becky http://doctordomestic.com/?p=585

To be completely honest, this is take #2 of Buffalo Turkey Burgers.  The first attempt was not very tasty and I didn’t really think it worthy of publishing. They weren’t a catastrophy, just nothing to write home about.  Turns out, the less work I actually do, the better!

My first attempt at these was ruined by my home-made “buffalo wing sauce”.  I’ve heard over and over – buffalo wing sauce is just hot sauce and butter.  Hot sauce and butter…simple, no?  Well, it didn’t work so well in practice.  I tried my favorite Cholula in equal parts with butter.  It didn’t taste…bad…but it just wasn’t right.  And somehow, even with all that spiciness, it imparted nearly no flavor to the burgers.  So although they didn’t taste bad, they just weren’t very good.

I promised myself I’d pick up some real buffalo wing-sauce next time we went to our favorite local (OK, nation-wide) hot-wing restaurant.  Can you guess where its from?  I’ll never tell.  And to my delight, it isn’t actually full of sugar or high-fructose-corn-syrup as I’d feared.  Just sodium, to be expected.

The burgers are very simple, I didn’t fancy them up with a lot of ingredients.  I used grated onion to get strong onion flavor without crispy chunks of onion in the burger.  The other main flavoring, as it traditionally accompanies buffalo wings, is blue cheese.  Gosh we love blue cheese around here!

Once the burgers are done, just top them with as much wing sauce as your mouth can handle.  This can of course be done with a grilled chicken breast to make an at-home version of these “spicy chicken sandwiches” like the ones my husband frequently pays about $7 for at restaurants.

And because I’ve been feeling SOOOO guilty about the lack of anything green on our plates, I made a side of roasted asparagus.  Is it bad that I’m already sick of steamed asparagus this year?  I love roasted asparagus.  Simply roast it at 450F for about 15 minutes with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Just turn them once about half-way through cooking.

And the verdict on Buffalo Turkey Burgers take #2?  Delicious.  Definitely a keeper!

Prep Ranking: #2 – Weeknight Fare
Tastiness Grade: 9/10

Buffalo Turkey Burgers (4 burgers)

1 lb ground turkey
1/4 cup blue cheese crumbles (I prefer Gorganzola, its easy to find)
1/2 onion, grated
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
olive oil for cooking
Buffalo Chicken Wing Sauce, your favorite brand, as much as you’d like!

Combine the turkey, blue cheese crumbles, onion, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl.  Mix thouroughly and form into 4 patties.  Try to get the cheese to the interior of the burger as much as possible so it doesn’t melt out or burn.  Saute over medium heat in a drizzle of olive oil.  It will take 6-8 minutes per side.

Once burgers are cooked, place on a hearty bun and drizzle with as much buffalo wing sauce as you’d like.  Top with lettuce and/or an onion slice.

I came upon this recipe from “Pithy and Cleaver” in my handy Google Reader and decided immediately I had to try it.  I just looked so simple and good!  And who can’t use another recipe for chicken?

This weekend at the farmer’s market I happened to stop by a booth that was selling fresh, natural chicken.  Normally I wouldn’t buy chicken like this strictly because of the price.  We just don’t have the budget to splurge on local, organic meat.  Although I’ve read enough books to make me quite leery of mass produced meat, but if that’s what you can afford, that’s what you can afford.  So I splurged and got the chicken.  And for 4 nice chicken thighs it was a bit over $7.  If you put that in the context of how much we’d spend going out to eat, pretty much anywhere, even fast food, we’d spend more than that for a meal for 2.  So all in all, not a bad buy.

The recipe itself is quite light, so you shouldn’t feel bad about using chicken with the skin still on.  The sauce consists of citrus juice, zest, honey and some spices.

The recipe only calls for the zest of the orange, not the lime.  But I didn’t notice that until after I’d made the sauce.  Oh well, it certainly didn’t hurt anything!  Simply coat the chicken with the sauce in an oven-safe baking dish.  Bake 35-45 minutes at 425F, until the meat is done.  Unfortunately I think I overcooked mine.  Its way to easy to overcook chicken!

I really can’t cook meat without my probe thermometer anymore.  Be sure to take your chicken’s temperature before you dig in.  Cook to ~165-170F.  You may read that you should cook chicken to 180F.  That’s applicable if you’d also like to be able to use your chicken to floss your teeth with after dinner.

I just served it up with a side of mashed potatoes.  I asked Greg if he wanted some steamed broccoli on the side.  Why do I even ask that?  Do I enjoy seeing that look of disgust on my husband’s face?  I just get to feeling so guilty about the lack of green veggies on our plates.  I may just start photo-shopping in a serving of broccoli here and there to give the appearance that we’re not such terrible people.

Click the above link for the recipe.

Prep Ranking: #2 – Weeknight Fare
Tastiness Grade: 7.5/10 – great flavor, a bit over done and not a lot of meat on the chicken thighs!

Just trim the ends and leaves from the rhubarb and wash it gently.  Then chop it up like you would celery, into about 1/2 inch slices.

Just add water, about 1 cup for 2 lbs of chopped rhubarb.  Bring the rhubarb and water to a boil, then stir in the sugar.  You can’t be shy with the sugar here because rhubarb alone is very tart.  For this amount of rhubarb, use 1.5-3 cups of sugar (depending on how sweet you like it).  Start on the low end of the sugar, then taste as you go and sweeten to your liking.  Also, don’t forget to add a pinch of salt, it brings out all of the flavors.

Simmer it over medium-low heat until it has reduced and thickened to the desired consistency.  I like it still a bit runny, about the consistency of applesauce.  And remember, it’ll thicken more when it cools.

Distribute to sturdy storage containers and store in either the fridge or freezer.  It keeps well frozen for several months.

So go ahead and try some rhubarb this year!  I think its truly delicious!

A more concise recipe:

Rhubarb Sauce

2 lb Rhubarb (can be made with much more, just adjust water and sugar accordingly)
1/5-3 cups granulated Sugar, depending on taste and tartness of the rhubarb
1 cup water
1/4 tsp salt

Trim and slice the rhubarb into 1/2 inch half-moon slices.  Place sliced rhubarb and water in a stainless steel or non-stick sauce-pan.  Bring to a low boil over medium heat.  Add the salt and sugar.  With the sugar, start with 1.5 cups, stir in and allow the sugar to melt.  Continue to cook over medium-low so that it is simmering and the excess water is steaming off.  Cook until it is at a thicker consistency, about the thickness of applesauce, this could take up to 30 minutes or so.  Taste throughout the cooking process, allowing it to cool for a minute before tasting (this will allow for more accurate tasting, as well as saving your mouth from severe burns).

Once the sauce is at the desired thickness and sweetness, remove from heat and transfer to storage containers.  Sauce may be stored in the fridge or freezer.

First up, a recipe with such an irresistible title that I couldn’t not make them: Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chunk Muffins.  Mmm, just saying that makes my mouth water.  Peanut Butter…Chocolate Chunk…Muffins.

What I like about these muffins is that they’re not pretending to be anything they’re not.  They don’t have fruit or fiber or shredded vegetables in them.  They are un-frosted cupcakes, and we all know it.  I found the recipe at a wonderful blog 17 and Baking.  And she apparently found the recipe at Baking Bites.  Do you see?  These muffins have spread like a virus.

And now, because you can look at either of the above link for the recipe, here are my photos and the beautiful, tasty end products.

Like any classic muffin, you first separate the wet and dry ingredients, then mix them all together into a nice, thick batter.

Now does this ever happen to you? Muffin recipes always say they’re going to make 12 and then they have more than enough for 13?  I think its because I’m not eating enough of the raw batter.

And then, after 20 long minutes, they’re done.  And gorgeous.  Do you like my industrious use of Halloween cupcake wrappers?

You know what I actually like best about these muffins (besides the peanut butter! and chocolate chips!) is that they aren’t too sweet.  In all seriousness, they really aren’t like cupcakes.  Their flavor is subtle, yet delicious.

My second baking undertaking from the internets is this No-Knead Dutch Oven White Bread from Baking Bites.  I was interested in trying this recipe because I own what I have been told is a perfect dutch oven for bread making.  My sister-in-law and her husband gave us our beautiful green Le Creuset dutch oven as a wedding present last year.  They told us that they frequently use it to make bread.  I filed that little fact away in my brain until I came upon an appropriate recipe.

Unbaked Bread Stages

I followed the recipe on Baking Bites very faithfully, messing with bread is way to adventurous for me.  However, I did have to make a small substitution.  I only had Active Dry Yeast on hand and not the Instant Dry Yeast called for in the recipe.  I searched the all-knowing internets for the answer to my dilemma.  The answer is to substitute 1.25X Active Dry Yeast for the amount of Instant Dry Yeast called for in a recipe.

For this recipe, 3/4 tsp Instant Dry Yeast is indicated.  Multiplying 0.75 X 1.25 = 0.935.  So I used a scant 1 tsp Active Dry Yeast.

I’m so glad that PhD has come in so handy for my cooking.

In the above photo, the stages are (from upper left clockwise around): (1) mixed dough brushed with oil (2) dough after 14 hour rise (3) dough after butter is stirred in (4) dough after final rise, before baking.

After the final rise, pour the dough into a piping hot dutch oven, as the recipe indicates.  The heat of the pan keeps it from sticking.  No sticking is a wonderful thing.

Baked Bread

Well HELLO GORGEOUS!!  And the smell?  Beyond.  Fabulous recipe and quite easy to boot!

Today started out innocently enough.  I had bought a few pounds of strawberries  with the idea of making strawberry jam.  I’ve tried my hand a few times at canning with mixed success.  So I decided to use the VERY FIRST recipe in my Ball “Complete Book of Home Preserving”.  Its the first recipe in the chapter called “getting started”.  As in, if you can’t get this down, please put down your canning pot and step away from the kitchen.  Well, I was feeling pretty good about myself.  I’m no beginner, I’ve done this whole canning thing at least 4 times.  And I have all of these strawberries…so I’ll double the recipe   No problem.  My husband goes through lots of strawberry jam, so I thought it was a fabulous idea.  Less work, more jam…right?

I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.  Tragically wrong.

First things first.  When canning, cleanliness is probably the most important thing.  I always wash my new (or previously used) canning jars, lids and rings in hot soapy water before use.  Get this done first thing and just set the jars aside to dry on a clean drying towel.  Don’t take the time to dry them because you’ll just be putting them in the canning pot to heat before use anyway.

Cleaning the Gear

Here’s the ultra simple (single) recipe from the Ball Home Preserving book:

7 cups granulated sugar
8 cups whole strawberries (5 cups crushed)
4 Tbsp lemon juice
1 package (1.75 oz) regular powdered fruit pectin

Next, I started preparing the strawberries. Wash under running water, remove leaves, stems and hulls, and them chop them and half and put them in a pie dish.  Crush with a potato masher, then transfer the mashed strawberries to a liquid measuring cup.  Measure out 5 cups into a LARGE stainless steel pan.  And on this point, I am more serious than I have ever been.  You want to only fill the pot about half way max, including the volume of the sugar which you have yet to add.  Don’t push it, or you’ll be sorry.

Once you have all of the strawberries in the pot, add the lemon juice (its OK to use bottled) and the package of powdered pectin.  Now a note on the pectin.  I’ve never used it before, so the experience was new to me.  I ended up having major issues with something burning to the bottom of the pan.  I’m thinking that the pectin was to blame for this.  It formed a solid black layer on the bottom of the pan that my poor husband later spent about 45 minutes cleaning with S.O.S. pads.  I don’t know if the use of liquid pectin would solve this issue.  I’d be happy to hear suggestions/tips on this issue.

Bring this mixture to a boil, then add the sugar.  You knew that jam was sugary right?  Like, mostly sugar.

Sugar Added

And here’s where it all went down hill.  The directions were deceptively simple.  “Stir in the sugar and bring the mixture to a boil.  Boil for 1 minute, then remove from the heat and skim the foam off the top.”  Straight forward, no problem.

Well, what the directions don’t mention is that once the sugar is integrated and the mixture starts to boil, the volume expands immensely and QUICKLY.  It all happened before I knew it. Here’s a play by play of the 30 seconds that ruined our morning.  My poor husband (who is plagued by the moment with terrible allergies) was relaxing on the couch watching TV.

Me: Greg? I think I need some…OH GOD!

Greg: What, what’s happening??

Me: OH MY GOD…OH MY GOD!!! GET IN HERE, NOW! (its rare that I need to use caps lock and bold all at once)

Greg scampers into the kitchen as I am lifting the pot with about 20 pounds of boiling over, molten jam from the stove to the sink.  The boiling jam of course runs all over my hands during the transfer and slops a good portion of it onto our floor, rug and cabinets.  I apologize profusely for not having more photos of this disaster, but as you can imagine, taking photos was not really on the forefront of my mind at this point.  Here’s the floor between the stove and sink.

At this point, I took about 4 seconds to evaluate the damage and come up with a new plan of action.  I shoved my poor husband (in shock at this point) aside and grabbed my next largest sauce pan (and another little sauce pan to use as a ladle) from the cabinet.  I transferred a sensible volume of the boiling jam from the boiled over pot to the new pot and put it back on the stove.  I may have destroyed our kitchen and a $200 pot, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste the jam too. And here is the aforementioned black crap stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Poor Greg was literally sweating by the time he finished cleaning this pot to a gleaming shine.

I proceeded to boil the jam and can it as if the rest of our kitchen wasn’t on fire.  Once the first small batch was done, I poured the second batch into the sauce pan, boiled that and canned it too.  So in the end, I got 8 pints of preserved strawberry jam

Strawberry Jam

The strawberry solids appear to have settled to the top, so when they are first opened to use, a good stir should fix that problem.  The jam did set though, whatever pectin didn’t burn to the bottom of our pan seems to have done its job.

Greg is pretty much done with my canning hobby at this point.  But I’m not.  Every time I can something, I learn something, so I can only assume it will get easier at some point!

Lessons learned today:

• Do not double canning recipes, especially jams, unless you have a sauce pan the size of a kiddie pool.
• Once sugar is added to something, boiling it causes the volume to increase by leaps and bounds.
• Powdered pectin very well may burn to the bottom of your pan. I need to read up on how to fix this issue.

And here is my disclaimer on canning: If you want to preserve food, please get yourself a good cookbook dedicated to canning, I really like the Ball book mentioned above, and follow the directions carefully.  Obviously preserving food can be frought with issues and you must pay attention to cleanliness, acidity of the food, altitude and many other issues.  Read up on it!

Herb and Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breast

I came upon the recipe that inspired this in my latest “Cooking Light” magazine issue. Indeed it may not be quite the “lightest” dinner ever.  Chicken – good, herbs – good, goat cheese – eh…But you know what?  Goat cheese is certainly better than stuffing it with cheddar or fontina (which I have done and loved), so if you want a stuffed chicken breast, this probably is still on the “light” side.  And hey, speaking of “light side”, I did have a light side dish.  What’s healthier than steamed asparagus?

I started this dish by digging out my seldom used and under appreciated Cuisinart mini-prep.  It has become the ugly step-child of the kitchen ever since its big brother entered the picture.  Nonetheless, it works extremely well for small applications like this.  Here, I have combined a few fresh basil leaves, some thyme, black pepper, and about 2 oz plain goat cheese.

Blitz it up with a tiny bit of olive oil to make it slightly more pliable.

Herbed Goat Cheese

Then move on to prepping the chicken.  I used boneless skinless chicken breasts which I then butterflied and pounded out.

Pounded Chicken

A small cast-iron skillet is the perfect meat-pounder if you don’t own a “real” meat pounder.  Its flat, heavy, and has a large surface area.  Just don’t forget the plastic wrap!

Cast-Iron Meat Pounder

Once the chicken is evenly flattened, spread the goat cheese mixture on in an even, thin layer.  Cover only 1/2 or 1/3 of the chicken so that you can fold it over to cover the cheese.

Folded over Chicken

Try to make sure that not too much cheese is going to melt out, although so melting is inevitable.  Luckily, the cheese doesn’t burn if it melts out, just gets oozy.

And after all that fussiness, I needed a super simple side-dish!  Have I ever mentioned how much I love my Farberware Steamer Pot?  I do, I love it.

Steamed Asparagus

And that’s all folks.  It turned out to be too much food, the chicken was very filling!

Perfect Springtime Dinner

Prep Ranking: #2 – Weeknight Fare
Tastiness Grade: 6/10 – the flavor was delicious, however, the chicken was a bit tough by the time it was cooked.

Simple recipe after the break.

Herb Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts* (enough for 2-4, depending on appetite!)

2 large or 4 small boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 oz plain goat cheese
5-6 large basil leaves (or several smaller ones)
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves
1-2 tsp olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
salt
olive oil for sauteing (about 1 Tbsp)

In a small food processor, combine the basil, thyme*, goat cheese and 1-2 tsp olive oil.  Blend into a smooth paste-like mixture.  Set aside. (Alternatively, if you don’t have a food processor, chop the herbs finely, then just stir them into the cheese and olive oil until it is smooth.)

To prepare the chicken breasts, trim them to remove any excess fat.  Butterfly them – cut parallel to the cutting board, but do not cut into 2 pieces.  Once they are butterflied, cover with a sheet of plastic-wrap.  Pound until they are ~1/2 thick and evenly thick all the way through.

Spread the herb and goat cheese mixture over one half or one third of the chicken breast, in a way so you can fold over the other half to enclose the cheese.

Put the folded chicken breasts into a non-stick saute pan with olive oil pre-heated over medium heat.  Cook until browned on each side and cooked through.  You may want to use a lid to cover the pan to heat the chicken through before the outside burns.

*Whatever herbs you like can be added or substituted.  Fresh oregano, rosemary, parsely, or even cilantro would be great as well.