Oh Snap! Popovers

Have you ever been gifted something and didn’t know what to do with it? This was true for me with this popover pan.

We moved our belongings out of the house into the garage this past November when we had ALL of our hardwood floors refinished before Christmas. I was in a tossing and keeping mode I was in I stared at this popover pan – Stay? or Go!

Well it must be used before any decision can be made, right? I have never eaten a popover before. I must try it out.

I read two recipes: the one on the popover pan box and Alton Brown’s Good Eats 3 cookbook. The ingredients were simple eggs, milk, flour, salt and butter and toss in the the blender. I love simple, so how hard could it be?

I was also curious to see how this whole pop-up event was going to transpire in the oven so I sat and watch the event through the oven window.

POP OVER recipe (from Progressive International)

Preheat over and Pan 450 degrees F (makes 5-6 popovers)

Ingredients: 1 C milk, 1 C flour, 3 eggs, 2 tsp oil, 1/2 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients in blender and blend on high until bubbles form. Fill the preheated popover tins (BNSP-100) 1/2 to 3/4 full depending on how large you want your rolls to be. Bake 20 minutes at 425 degrees F, reduce heat, bake an additional 20 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Patty’s Popover points:

1.The key to popovers is heating the pan. If you don’t preheat the pan you will have doughy denseness and no pop. Also brush the sides with butter or oil so the side of the roll does not stick to the pan.

The batter will get crispy first on the outside next to the tubes in the pan and rise first. Then the batter in the center will rise later and provide the pop and leave the hole (see next point).

2.Yes there is a hole in the center. These rolls are good for putting an egg in for breakfast or a chicken salad for lunch. What they are best used and known for is a hearty beef meal with gravy and mashed potatoes. Mmmmmmm. Me, I like butter and jelly.

3.The difference between the recipe above and AB Good Eats 3 version is amount of flour and eggs he used; and he used butter. No offense AB, but I liked the side of the box recipe better, save the oil. The amount was just right for filling all six tubes. I like even numbers.

4. As you can see below, the tubes were not evenly filled so the popovers on the bottom of the picture did not rise as high as the ones at the top of the picture. Best to use a measuring cup – probably 1/2 cup – so as to not have different sized rolls.

5. It is plain to see that popovers are puffy and pretty cool. I was a little amazed. My husband liked them. I don’t think he had ever had one before. Most references say that they are easier to make than dinner rolls for a nice meal planned. The eggs give them substance compared to a dinner roll.

I made popovers six times in a span of two weeks. I sat on the floor watching them rise at 10:00 pm at night and I made the mistake of not preheating the pan once. Big mistake. There was no pop in the over. Tee hee.

6. Some recipes I researched used a regular muffin pan to make popovers. They are just not as tall as these. Should I keep the pan? or toss it? I can’t decide, yet.

When you have a few ingredients, then technique is the key. It’s all in the preparation to make your popover the star.

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Sneak zucchini onto your neighbors porch

Today is my birthday and a National Holiday:  Sneak zucchini onto your neighbor’s porch day!

I have my share of zucchini in the garden and with vacation coming, my neighbors may be the recipient of some of these squash babies.

If you gifted with a few zucchini – here are some new recipes I have tried this season.

Chocolate Zucchini cake

Crust-less Summer Zucchini Pie

Zucchini Fritters

Quinoa-Rice salad with cherries and feta adapted from the Weight Watchers July/August 2016 edition.

Patty’s Points

1. The all recipes! website is a great resource to look for recipes for the home cook. AND always read the reviews by the readers to see the pitfalls and triumphs of the recipe.

2. Here are a few cookbooks to sample:

The Inspired by Zucchini Cookbook

Chocolate & Zucchini: Le Livre

The Classic Zucchini Cookbook

3.The Chocolate Zucchini Cake is a winner! It is a great cake to make and store in the freezer and pull out for a potluck or picnic. Chocolate Cheese Frosting is an awesome addition to this cake. Super!

4.Zucchini can be used to substitute for pickles in relishes – made sweet or dill – and canned. I tried a recipe through the Ball Canning Cookbook summer and they were awesome as hot dog condiments.

5. Invest in a food processor with a shredder. Place the zucchini in a colander/strainer to get the water content out before cooking with it.

Get on with it now. It’s Zucchini Day!

Irish Pub Party

Everyone claims to be Irish on St Patrick’s Day but I actually am an Irish descendent. My mother let everyone she knew of her heritage and she was quite proud.  Char gave me this great cookbook awhile back and it was time to crack it open. We tried many of the dishes inside and a few others to make up our early St. Patrick’s Day party.

The menu was Guinness Beef Stew, Corned Beef and Cabbage, Potatoes and Carrots, Brown Soda Bread, Irish Soda Bread, Molasses Bread, Traditional Colcannon, Colcannon with Kale, Buttered Kale with chives & lemon, Buttered Vegetables, Apple Cake, Chocolate Stout Cake, Homemade Irish Cream, Irish Coffee, Smithwick beer, Jameson’s whiskey, Kerry butter and Irish cheese.

Since time was of the essence most items were made in advance before the cooking club members gathered. The group project was a soda bread throw down. Before we started working we had to loosen up and make Irish Cream.  Remember when I made it last Christmas? Same recipe. It was a treat to see everyone marvel at how much whiskey and cream went into it!

Now that we were relaxed, we dove into the soda bread. Traditional soda bread has four ingredients. That’s it. The other  had nine.

Irish Soda Bread from The Complete Irish Pub Cookbook  Parragon Books 2012

• 1 lb  (450 g) plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 400 ml (14 oz) buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place parchment paper atop or prepare an oiled baking sheet.

Sift the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.  Make a well in the centre and pour in most of the buttermilk . Mix well with hands. The dough should be soft but not too wet. Reserve then add, if necessary the remaining buttermilk.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead lightly. Shape into an 8 inch (20 cm) round. Place the loaf atop the making tray. With a serrated knife cut a cross into the top. Bake for 25-30 mintes under golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm.

Brown on the left, Traditional on the right.

Brown Soda Bread from Cook’s Country February/March 2013

• 2 C flour
  
• 1 1/2 C whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 C toasted wheat germ
• 3 TBSP sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 3/4 C buttermilk
• 3 TBSP melted butter

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, wheat germ, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together in large bowl. Combine buttermilk and 2 tablespoons melted butter in 2-cup liquid measuring cup.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir with rubber spatula until dough just comes together. Turn out dough onto lightly floured counter and knead until cohesive mass forms, about 8 turns. Pat dough into 7-inch round and transfer to prepared sheet. Using sharp serrated knife, make ¼-inch-deep cross about 5 inches long on top of loaf. Bake until skewer inserted in center comes out clean and loaf registers 195 degrees, 45 to 50 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through baking.

Remove bread from oven. Brush with remaining 1 tablespoon melted butter. Transfer loaf to wire rack and let cool for at least 1 hour.

Traditional on the left, Brown on the right

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Patty’s Points:

1. General consensus of the party guests were that both breads were good, just different. The brown bread was very hearty. The traditional was lighter. Both were great slathered in butter! I favored the traditional myself.

2. The day before, a couple of members were at another potluck and tasted other soda bread versions. Some with currents or raisins and some with caraway. Soda bread is how your family made it special and traditional for you.

3.  I used bread flour. I think it helps the texture of any bread you make at home.

4. I had never made soda bread before this challenge. Hard to believe? It could have been because my mother’s father was Irish and the traditional foods didn’t get passed down through him. She loved Bailey’s Irish Cream though 🙂

5. This was an European cookbook, so many of the ingredients are in metric. It is always good to have a scale for dry ingredients. I’m a nurse so the liquids are easy for me to convert.

How joyful that spring is nearly here. On St Patrick’s Day we Think Green. But as my mother used to say Think Irish!

Gabe the Pie Man

The Fearless Cooking Club met last weekend to celebrate National Pie Day January 23rd. We invited self-taught baker, Gabriel Mills, who demonstrated his expertise at pie and pizza pie making.

Gabe was born in Baker, Oregon (really) and he and his sister were raised by three sets of people. His mother was bi-polar where home was chaotic. Then raised by a nice elderly couple where the woman taught he and his sister how to cook and bake. There was an atmosphere of no fear and she was a kind teacher. Then they were sent to live with a not-so-nice aunt and uncle. It was never okay to ask for a toy as a gift, but to ask for a practical gift like a rolling-pin or kitchen tool was fine. At age 13 years he began his quest to unseat his aunt as the family Pie Queen. He became the family Pie King when the relatives gathered for Thanksgiving and they gobbled up his pie and left hers still in the plate. So began his baking career.

Gabe brought us all a pound of butter he buys wholesale, $2.00 apiece. That’s a lotta butta!

85 grams flour (2 cups)

1/4 teaspoon salt (use a pinch for a sweet pie)

1 Tablespoon sugar

155 grams unsalted butter (cold) or (2/3 cup)

113 grams cold water or (8 Tablespoons )

Add the cold butter cut into small cubes and cold water to the dry ingredients on the pastry sheet and work them together using two dough scrapers with the goal of keeping it cold. Work the dough by stacking formed pieces together on top of each other making thin folds.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put in freezer for at least twenty minutes before using it in a recipe or for up to four days in the refrigerator. It may be placed in the freezer almost indefinitely.

Each crust weighs 120 grams for a 9-inch pie pan. Pre-heat the oven to 370 degrees and place in the middle of the oven. Follow the directions for the filling of your pie recipe.

Gabe’s Go-To-Tips:

1. Measure everything with a scale. Flour is sensitive to humidity and lack-there-of (especially in the Mile High City where it is pretty dry). You get a more accurate end-product if you do.

2. Gabe likes the Pie and Pastry Bible  cookbook by Rose Berenbaum as his baking reference. He said that some of the recipes are quite lengthy to prepare, but the result is worth it.

3. Gabe uses a non-slip pastry sheet for rolling out the pie dough. As you can see in the picture, Joy brought her vintage Tupperware pastry sheet. I had one just like it oh-so-many years ago but it got cut up and damaged. You can still find them at Tupperware or you can find a vintage one on EBay. A marble slab is the ideal board for keeping the pie ingredients cold.

4. Gabe likes aluminum pans as he gets a consistent end-product result. He brushes the crust with egg white and sprinkles it with sugar.

5. Gabe likes Gold Medal flour, but King Arthur flour is his prime choice as it is organic. He usually buys it if it is on sale as it is a little more expensive.

6. If you use your hands working the dough, it warms the dough. The pie dough is very forgiving because it eventually ends up in the refrigerator or freezer before using in a recipe. If need be, the dough can be placed there for a time to get the temperature right and then return to the work board to get it back to a good consistency.

Patty’s Points:

1. I looked up James Farm butter and could only find that it is distributed out of New York. What little I could find on the internet was that in the Julie and Julia movie, Julie Powell leaves a pound of James Farm butter at the Julia Child kitchen replica at the Smithsonian. Butter made in the old USA. There is also a band called James Farm. They got more hits on the internet than butter searches.

2. The pie pictured above was baked by Gabe prior to the baking party. It is an Appletini Pie with gin and vermouth added in. He likes to use Honey Crisp with Granny Smith apples together. He also likes the Pink Lady variety which adds a pink color to the pie. He doesn’t add a lot of sugar to the fresh fruit, instead choosing to let the fresh fruit shine in the recipe.

3. The pie crust was flaky and light, the apples were so fresh, without being heavy. He does NOT use Crisco. He has used lard on occasion but butter is best.

As Gabe was telling his story of how he started baking as a child I had memories of other pie makers and the stories behind them.Art of the Pie , a blog written by Kate McDermott is one. I met Kate this past summer at the BlogHer Food 2012 conference in Seattle when she personally shared her story about her kind neighbor. And of course there is the movie Waitress. The lead actress played by Keri Russell, baked and created unusual pies with titles reflective of her unhappy marriage, unexpected pregnancy and affair with her doctor.

The pie story continues on the next post as we made pizza pie dough and lotsa pizza.

Related articles

• January 23 is National Pie Day (wqad.com)
• National Pie Day (thefearlesscookingclub.com)