Food In The Fort

I remember the last time I tried to make real fudge. It was a long, long time ago. It involved a candy thermometer, a jar of marshmallow fluff and a nasty burn on my right forearm. I can’t remember if it was good; I just remember that it hurt. Coming back from an experience like that ain’t easy, but when my mom was good enough to share this “fudge” recipe with me, I knew I had to put the past behind me and give it a go. You don’t need a candy thermometer, you don’t need fluff and (knock wood) I haven’t burnt myself making this yet.

Fake Fudge

Ingredients

• 2 king size Snickers bars
• 1 tub (container? jar?) of chocolate frosting
• 8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

Preparation

1. melt everything together over a low flame (some purists might insist on using a double-boiler, I say “why bother?”)
2. pour into a 8 x 8 pan and allow to harden

Sure, it isn’t exactly fudge, but it’s so good and so freakin’ easy! Thanks to Jo Baird via my mom for this gem.

Okay, after six to nine months of threatening, I finally managed to buy an oven thermometer. Guess what? My oven, which I had been figuring was about 25 degrees hotter than the little dial claims, is actually a bit more than 50 degrees hotter! So my failure to properly bake crescents, lemon bars, pound cakes and giant chocolate chip cookies can be explained – at least in part. I shall celebrate by attempting the Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate cake again tomorrow for Susan’s birthday. Huzzah!

Well, here I was ready to blame Krusteaz for all my problems in making lemon bars (or perhaps it’s “barz”), but it turns out that I just can’t make the dang things for love or money. Not for love, anyway. And I do love them, which is why I hit up my colleague and roommate (we share a classroom at school, not at home) for her awesome lemon squares recipe. She gave me the recipe, written out in her incredibly tidy handwriting, along with little pictures of lemons which she drew (she’s artistic!) and she even made us a batch. Thanks, Marjory!

(Funny story: my daughter Rachel ate almost all of said lemon squares on the way to the Panic! at the Disco concert and then became completely hyper. I’ve never heard a human talk so fast before.)

So I know that this recipe works, it just doesn’t work for me. When I made them, they turned out like lemon brownies – which isn’t really a BIG problem – lacking the stratification of the more traditional lemon square. I think that the problem was my failure to press the crust down firmly before baking it. So, press firmly and enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

I read slowly. I make changes in my life slowly. When the occasion arises and, happily, it’s not very often, I run VERY slowly. So I don’t know why it always take me by surprise that I cook slowly as well. It takes me forever to cut things up, I read the recipe over a million times, I search through the spices for an eternity and dinner is usually ready about an hour later than I originally thought. But maybe that’s okay; maybe food should be lingered over in the preparation as well as in the eating. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to launch into a slow food movement rant at this point.) Maybe I need to embrace my slow cookery because things have a tendency to go wrong when I don’t. Not tragically, just sadly.

A case in point is this wonderful Self-Saucing Chocolate Pudding Cake which comes from Jumbo Empanadas.

This was one of the first things that Leo and I ever made together, back in his apartment in Cherry Valley, NY. It was delightful. Despite the fact that we had to use his downstairs neighbor’s oven because his didn’t work. (He’s moved up in the world and now has a functional oven and some of the burners on his stove work as well.) The last time that I made this, however, I was in a rush and it fell far, far short of that original delight. Looking at the recipe now, I’m not sure how I could have screwed it up. It seems foolproof: a simple batter and an even simpler sauce; the toughest step is boiling the water. But screw it up I did. It was okay – I mean, it was still made of chocolate cake – but I know that I can do better if I take it slower and you, dear reader, can too. So relax, make sure that you have about twenty minutes for prep time and forty five minutes for baking, and then enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

This is really old, so forgive me, but I thought that it was kinda cool: our lumpy garlic mashed potatoes recipe got linked to by the WBlog. They did a post on Ross’ from Friends fondness for having his potatoes lumpy and linked to a couple of recipes, ours among them!

At this point I must confess that it is part of my vast ignorance of popular culture that I have never seen an episode of Friends. I have only watched bits of Seinfeld (although I like his wife’s cookbook), haven’t seen the X-files (although agent Scully and I both have an ouroboros tattoo) or the West Wing (sorry, no clever parenthetical for that one). But I have certainly heard of Friends and I even recognized that Ross was a character’s name. See? I’m not hopeless.

So this is sort of like knowing a relative of someone famous. Like the time that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sister babysat my daughter…

This is a wonderful recipe taken from Madhur Jaffrey’s brilliant cookbook. If you like Indian food and you don’t own this cookbook, stop everything and go buy it now! Ms. Jaffrey calls this “simple buttery rice with onion” (p. 149 of my ancient edition), but I have nicknamed it “1-2-3-4 rice” since it helps me remember how much of everything to use (although I have to cheat on the “1″ since there’s one onion and one tsp of salt).

You’re gonna love it!

1-2-3-4 Rice

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 3 cups of water
• 2 cups of rice
• 1 medium onion
• 1 tsp salt

Preparation

1. Melt the butter in a heavy pot over a medium flame.
2. When hot, put in the onion. Stir and saute it until it is almost translucent; do not let it brown in the slightest.
3. Put in the rice and the salt. Stir and saute gently for a minute.
4. Pour in the water and bring to a boil.
5. Cover tightly, turn heat to very, very low and let the rice cook for 25 minutes.

Serves 6

Recently, Leo and I have had two very good dinners which were easy to assemble (one was especially easy for me since Leo made it by himself!) yet not the usual heat-and-eat fare that we often resort to on week nights. These meals left us asking, “Why don’t we do this more often?” To which I respond, “Cuz we’re stupid.”

Anyway, dear reader, I’m sure that you’re not stupid and you’ll want to make this recipe and Leo’s hearty crockpot fish stew over and over again. We love this shrimp dish (from the Thai: Simple and Delicious Easy-to-Make Recipes book by Lesley Mackley) for its sweet and spicy sauce and because one out of two children at my house will eat it. You can put it over 1-2-3-4 Rice or just serve it with instant rice or bread. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like to be a hater, but I’ve got to say that after two attempts at this mix I’m giving up. My theory is that having to bake the crust part first somehow prevents it from joining together harmoniously with the lemony goo, but whatever the science behind it may be, I can’t make it work! I came out with a rock-hard crust and an almost sickeningly sweet lemon custard resting on top of it. And to make matters worse, the lemon stuff hadn’t sufficiently jelled (although I followed the instructions and took it out of the oven when it began to brown on top) – what a mess. My daughter also tried this mix with similarly unsatisfying results. I remember going to her dad’s house, seeing it on the stove and having to ask what it was. Not cool.

As I so often do in times of food crisis, I turned to Diana Rattray of About.com’s southern cooking section for her wisdom. It seems that baking the crust first is standard, although with her addition of two sticks of butter, I’m betting things come out a mite tastier. Here’s how Diana does it.

If you think I’m being too harsh on poor Krusteaz, here’s someone who has a more positive impression.

Have you had any luck with this mix? Am I (and people who share my genetic material) just not cut out for this? Do you have a better lemon bar recipe than either Diana Rattray or Krusteaz? Let us know! Until we’ve been shown the error of our ways, Krusteaz Lemon Bars mix gets a paltry two garlic bulbs (it’d be only one, but hey, at least they taste like lemon).

My dad put this frosting atop the “Surprise Carrot Cake” and it was the perfect complement. The original recipe below produces more icing than you’ll probably need unless you really like to spread it on thick (I do, when it comes to frosting, my dad, not so much). Dad also cut way down on the sugar (I have to agree that a pound of powdered sugar is pretty crazy). I’ve italicized his changes in parentheses after each ingredient.

Where Daddy dearest and I really disagree, though, is on the necessity of making frosting from scratch at all.  For my money, Betty Crocker and her friend Poppin’ Fresh do a splendid job for about $2.50 a canister and it beats the hell out of having four cups of confectioner’s sugar flying every which way. But I’m a lazy slacker who’s always looking for the quick ‘n’ easy way and Dad’s a true cook who actually sifts flour and performs other labor-intensive procedures.

In short, homemade’s better, but Betty’s fine in a time-crunch. I certainly enjoyed every bite of the carrot cake and cream cheese frosting and wished I had been there to lick the spoon! Read the rest of this entry »

 Okay, I’m not exactly sure what the surprise in this carrot cake is supposed to be. In my case, I guess I was just surprised that my dad had made a carrot cake… Surprised and very happy, to be sure. He has been going through kind of a cake phase: a flour-less, European-style chocolate cake, a very involved-sounding pound cake (The recipe for which will not be appearing on this girl’s blog. When he got to the second time you had to sift the dry ingredients, I knew it wasn’t for me!), and now this yummy carrot cake taken from the back of the Softasilk Cake Flour box. I’m not sure what’s up with the whole thing, but I’m not going to complain. Keep on bakin’, Daddy-o!

Here’s the low-down on the carrot cake which may or may not be surprising, but certainly is easy to assemble and very tasty to boot. You’ll want to top it with cream cheese frosting. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »