Steak, Potatoes and Spinach with Blue Cheese

So... it's been a while.

Let me see if I can catch you all up in just a few sentences...
I'm two years older.
I've had a baby. She's adorable and getting cuter every day.
I've done a lot of decluttering and reorganizing to streamline my life.

I think that about sums it up.

Now, on to the reason for the post.

Isn't that gorgeous.  I made up some of it, and while I was cooking I said to my husband, "if this turns out well, I'm totally going to make a lazy wife post about it."  And it turned out amazing.

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Steaks with Red Wine butter - derived from Les Halles cookbook by Anthony Bourdain
The following measurements are not exact and should be tweaked to suit your own tastes.

1 small red onion (the original recipe calls for shallots)
1 cup red wine (I used Merlot, you can get inexpensive red wine but make sure its something you wouldn't mind drinking)
Salt
2 sticks of butter

Enough steak to feed your family
Salt & Pepper

To make the flavored butter:
Mince your onion, and put it in a pan, and a pinch or two of salt (depending on your tastes).  Add the wine and bring up to a simmer.  Stir occasionally until the wine has almost completely evaporated. Cool to room temperature. Soften the butter and blend the butter with the onion.  You can do this in a food processor, or a mixer, or by hand.  Just make sure it's fully incorporated and there's no large sections of plain butter.  Then get out some parchment paper or plastic wrap, and make a log out of the flavored butter and chill in the fridge.
You can also freeze the butter and use it at a later time - I have a bit in my freezer that I pull out any time I want some quick, easy, and delicious steak.

For the meat:
Salt and pepper one side of the steaks.  I like using top sirloin, but you can use whatever steak you like. Preheat your oven to 350.  Also, preheat an oven safe pan on the stove - I have a lovely cast iron skillet that works great.  Once the pan is hot, sear the seasoned side of the meat and season the other side with salt and pepper.  Sear all sides and then put the pan in the oven and cook until it's done to your liking.  My husband likes his steak well done, so I get everything else going before I turn the oven off and take the meat out to rest.  Once the meat is done, take it out of the oven and put a nice pat of butter on top and let the meat rest for 5 - 10 minutes so all the delicious juices get redistributed and the butter melts.  Mmmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Pan Fried Potatoes and Onions
I eat this for breakfast most days with a fried egg, but they're just as delicious for dinner.

3-4 medium sized Yukon Gold Potatoes (about 1 medium potato per person)
1 medium-large onion
1 Tbsp butter (you can use the wine butter in place of regular butter)
Dried Thyme (optional)
Salt

I use a 10" ceramic non-stick skillet for this recipe.  Preheat your pan on medium heat.  Chop your potatoes and onion into bite sized cubes (for breakfast, I like to slice them more thinly) Melt the butter in your preheated pan. Add the onion and potatoes, and sprinkle a pinch or two of salt and dried thyme.  Cover, stirring occasionally (or do that awesome chef-flick to flip everything) until the potatoes are soft.  Then remove the cover and still stirring occasionally, cook until it gets deliciously caramelized and browned - you may have to turn the heat down so it doesn't get blackened.

Creamed Spinach with Blue Cheese
I just made this up last night, so my recipe is very inexact.

1 bag frozen chopped spinach
1 tsp better than bullion chicken broth
1/2 tsp garlic powder (more or less depending on how much you like garlic)
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup blue cheese crumbles

In a sauce pan on low/med-low heat, add frozen spinach, chicken broth, garlic powder - put the cover on until the spinach has thawed.  Once thawed, add milk and stir occasionally while it simmers for about 15 min.  Add the blue cheese and stir to melt it in.


Then you serve it all up and feel like you're eating at a 5 star restaurant.  I'm so glad I added that blue cheese to the spinach... and I'm also glad that I made enough last night that I have left overs to eat for lunch today :)

Chicken Pot Pie

The other day I went ahead and bought a 25lbs bag of flour at Costco. I also bought some boneless skinless chicken thighs. I had been buying chicken breasts, but the thighs were so much less expensive... and then I cooked with them and discovered how much more flavor the thighs had, I'm very pleased that I bought them.

It's cold and damp where I am right now, and it felt about the right time for some good old fashioned comfort food.

I've never made Chicken Pot Pie before, and so I set out to make one. I started with the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, the plain paste recipe, to be specific.  Then I just sort of thought about what is normally in chicken pot pie and went from there.

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The Lazy Wife's Chicken Pot Pie

Pie Crust:

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup butter, cut in cubes

2 Tbsp vodka

2 Tbsp cold water

My crust ended up being a little thin, but very flaky and delicious, next time I'd probably double the pastry recipe, then again, I did end up making two pies. 

Put flour in a medium bowl and cut in the butter cubes.  Add vodka and water until you can form a smooth ball (sometimes it requires a little more vodka or water if your flour is dry).  Place the smooth ball in plastic wrap and chill for about 15min.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, roll out the chilled dough on a lightly floured surface, and place in pie pan.  Cover with wax paper and pie weights (I use beans).  Prebake for about 10 min with the weights, then remove them and bake another 5-10min until it just starts to get a light brown color.  Remove from oven and fill with chicken filling.

 

Pie filling:

1-2 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

8-10 cloves garlic, minced

3 boneless skinless chicken thighs, cubed

1/2 cup frozen corn

1/2 cup frozen peas

1/2 cup mixed vegetables (I like the "hodgepodge"  mix from Trader Joes)

1 carrot, chopped

1 can condensed potato soup

1 Tbsp Herbed Poultry (from my spice rack, I think it's Sage, Rosemary, Thyme and Marjoram)

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp butter

Salt & Pepper

In a medium pot, saute the onion and garlic in olive oil, on low heat, until soft.  Add herbs, salt and pepper (about 1 tsp of each), add chicken and continue cooking, turn up to medium heat, stirring occasionally.  When the chicken is cooked, add vegetables and soup (as well as 1 can of water).  Stir until all ingredients are combined.  Add flour and butter and stir until incorporated.  Cook down to thicken.

When the pie crusts are ready (prebaked/just starting to brown, you can use scraps of pie crust to put on top for a cute decoration, bake them with the crusts but on a separate baking sheet) add the chicken filling to the pie shells and bake at 350 for 20min until the crusts are brown and the filling is bubbling.

Take out of oven and serve.

***

Well, that's about it for the recipe.  It tastes pretty darn awesome (the Husband even went back for seconds, despite the pie containing peas).  Chicken breast would obviously work as well, but I really do think the thighs have better flavor.

Also, I'm working on a pair of socks now... but I'll post about those later, when I have pictures and such.  That's all for now!

Preparations of Duck throughout the years

A friend requested that I find any old recipes I had for duck, so let's talk about duck.

Wild ducks have been hunted for food, down, and feathers worldwide since prehistoric times.  In America during the 1800's, there became a thriving commercial waterfowl hunting industry because of the need for food and the vast supply of birds.  Currently, most ducks used for consumption are farm raised rather than wild.

Ducks have been farmed for thousands of years; most likely farming started in Southeast Asia. They are farmed for their meat, eggs, and down. A minority of ducks are also kept for foie gras production. Their eggs are blue-green to white depending on the breed.

Ducks are more expensive and less popular than chickens because they have less lean white meat and are more difficult to keep confined than chickens are. Duck appears less frequently in the mass market food industry and lower priced restaurants and stores because of it's higher price tag.  Duck is generally only popular in "haute cuisine." 

(citations: Wikipedia: Duck, Mallard, Domestic Duck)

I will now include the recipes I have found for Duck, plus a traditional meal plan and those other recipes as well.  At some point, I'm going to give some really awesome traditional dinner parties, so I can use all of these delicious sounding recipes, and post about them as well.

If you are at all interested in what cooking was like during and before the 1920's, you should check out  Seven Centuries of English Cooking: A Collection of Recipes by Maxime de la Falaise.  It's awesome, and has all kinds of interesting historical foods! 

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A Mallard, Smothered; from Seven Centuries of English Cooking, Gervase Markham, 1660:
A 3 pound Mallard or wild duck
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup stock
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup chopped mixed herbs
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup chopped dates
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
2 Tbsp wine vinegar or 1/2 cup gooseberries (or cranberries)
2 slices of toast, cut in sippets (A small piece of toast or bread soaked in gravy or other liquid or used as a garnish).

Dust the duck with flour and brown it in oil; brown the onions in the same oil. Braise the duck in the same pan and add the stock, wine and herbs. Simmer for about 1 hour; then add the currants and dates and simmer for another 30min or until the duck is tender.  Remove the bird and keep it warm.  Add the butter, sugar, cinnamon, wine vinegar or gooseberries, reduce the sauce and pour over the bird in a dish garnished with sippets.

***

Duck with Horseradish; from Seven Centuries of English Cooking, Charles Carter, 1732:
A 4-4 1/2 pound duck
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp butter
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup grated Horseradish.
Garnish:
Freshly grated Horseradish
1 sliced lemon

Dust the duck with flour and brown it in the butter on all sides. Add the chicken stock and grated horseradish and simmer gently until the duck is tender.  Remove the duck and carve it.  Arrange the pieces on a warm serving dish, then skim the fat from the surface of the sauce and pour the sauce over the bird. Arrange the fresh horseradish at each end of the dish and the sliced lemon around the edges.

***

To Stuff and roast a Turkey, or Fowl; from The First American Cookbook, 1796:
One pound soft wheat bread
3 ounces beef suet
3 eggs
a little sweet thyme
sweet marjoram
pepper and salt
and some add a gill (1/2 cup) wine

fill the bird therewith and sew up, hang down to a steady solid fire, basting frequently with salt and water, and roast until a steam emits from the breast, put one third of a pound of butter into the gravy, dust flour over the bird and baste with the gravy; serve up with boiled onions and cranberry-sauce, mangoes (a name sometimes given to the cantaloupe; and often attributed to any vegetable or fruit: melon, squash, green pepper, etc. that can be stuffed and pickled), pickles or celery.
2. Others omit the sweet herbs, and add parsley done with potatoes.
3. Boil and mash 3 pints potatoes, wet them with butter, add sweet herbs, pepper, salt, fill and roast as above.

 ***

To Stuff and Roast a Goslin; from The First American Cookbook, 1796:
Boil the inwards tender, chop them fine, put double quantity of grated bread, 4 ounces butter, pepper and salt, (sweet herbs if you like; sweet thyme, marjoram) 2 eggs moulded into the stuffing, parboil 4 onions and chop them into the stuffing, add wine, and roast the bird.  This is a good stuffing for every kind of Water Fowl, which requires onion sauce (or gravy cooked with onions).

***

This one is also a great guide to historical (and modern) cooking.  It has everything!

Roast Duck Dinner Menu; from The 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book:
Cream of Lima Bean Soup
Roast Duck
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Cauliflower au Gratin
Rice Croquettes with Currant Jelly
Grapes, Pears, Crackers, Cheese, and Cafe Noir.

Cream of Lima Bean Soup
1 cup dried lima beans
3 pints cold water
2 slices onion
4 slices carrot
1 cup cream or milk
4 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Soak the beans overnight; in the morning drain and add cold water; cook until soft, and rub through a sieve. Cut vegetables in small cubes, and cook five minutes in half the butter; remove vegetables, add flour, salt, and pepper, and stir into boiling soup.  Add cream, reheat, strain, and add remaining butter in small pieces.

Roast Duck
Dress and clean a wild duck and truss. Place on rack in dripping-pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover breast with two very thin slices fat salt pork. Bake twenty to thirty minutes in a very hot oven, basting every five minutes with fat in pan; cut string and remove string and skewers.
Serve with Orange or Olive Sauce. Currant jelly should accompany a duck course. Domestic ducks should always be well cooked, requiring little more than twice the time allowed for wild ducks.
Ducks are sometimes stuffed with apples, pared, cored, and cut in quarters, or three small onions may be put in the body of duck to improve flavor.  Neither apples nor onions are to be served.

Olive Sauce: Remove stones from 10 olives, leaving meat in one piece. Cover with boiling water and cook five minutes.  Drain olives, add 2 cups Brown Sauce*.

Orange Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1 1/3 cups Brown Stock*
1/2 tsp salt
Juice from 2 Oranges
2 Tbsp sherry wine
Rind of 1 orange cut in fancy shapes
dash of cayenne

Brown the butter, add flour, with salt and cayenne, and stir until well browned. Add stock gradually, and just before serving, orange juice, sherry, and pieces of rind.

*Brown Sauce: 2 Tbsp butter, 1/2 slice onion, 2 1/2 Tbsp flour, 1 cup Brown Stock, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper.  Cook onion in butter until slightly browned; remove onion and stir butter constantly until well browned; add flour mixed with seasonings, and brown the butter and flour then add stock gradually.

*Brown Stock: marrow bones, beef, poultry carcasses, carrots, turnips, leeks, celery, parsnips and onion. Simmered and skimmed for several hours producing a dark brown liquid.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes
To 2 cups boiled & riced or mashed sweet potatoes add three Tbsp butter, 1/2 tsp salt, and hot milk to moisten. Beat until light, and pile on a vegetable dish.

Cauliflower au Gratin
Place whole cooked cauliflower (or cut for easier serving) on a dish for serving, cover with buttered crumbs, and place on oven grate to brown crumbs; remove from oven and pour one cup Thin White Sauce around cauliflower.
Thin White Sauce:
2 Tbsp butter
1 cup scalded milk
1 1/2 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
dash of pepper
Melt butter in saucepan, add flour mixed with seasonings, stir until thoroughly blended. Gradually pour in milk, stirring until well mixed, then beating until smooth and glossy.

Rice Croquettes with Currant Jelly
1/2 cup rice
1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup scalded milk
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
1 Tbsp butter

Wash rice, add to water with salt, cover and steam until rice has absorbed all the water. Then add milk, stir lightly with a fork, cover and steam until rice is soft. Remove from heat, add egg yolks and butter; spread on shallow plate to cool. Shape into balls, roll in breadcrumbs, then shape in form of nests. Dip in egg, again in crumbs, deep fry until golden and drain. Put a cube of currant jelly in each croquette. Garnish with parsley.

***

Sounds good, doesn't it?  I may have to go out and get myself a duck to try at least one of these preparations. In the mean time, I think I'm going to have to try those Rice Croquettes, and probably the cauliflower au gratin.  I'll let you know how they turn out!

(If you have any questions, suggestions or recommendations for recipes... Please feel free to comment on any posts, or send me an email: thelazywife@gmail.com)

Apologies, Technical Difficulties, and More!

It's been a while.  Actually, quite a while since I last posted.  I am sorry, but I was at least upfront and honest that I am lazy.

In other news, I completely forgot to bring my camera home with me after a delightful trip to my parent's house (for their birthdays, which happen in the same week in October) and so am unable to put up those delightful pictures you're all used to.  Luckily, I have a few pictures on my computer that can be used until I get my camera back over Thanksgiving.

Also, I went on a cookbook hunt recently, and procured a few rather inexpensive books from Amazon.com.  As I'm sure most of you know, I love old things.  So in addition to the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, I also got The First American Cookbook: A facsimile of "American Cookery," 1796 by Amelia Simmons.  It's fascinating!  I was reading last night "To Dress a Turtle."  I didn't even know that American's ate turtle!  And I am also amazed by just how much housewives had to know about anatomy!  It is written in an older font, which means that some of those letters that look like "f" are actually "s"... but it's definitely worth the $3.50 I paid for it.

On to the Birthday Gifts!
I made some rather silly things for my parents this year.  For my Dad, since he has a new Droid phone, I made the adorable little icon into an adorable little stuffed critter.

You know you want one of your very own!

That's florescent green swimsuit fabric, a little bamboo fiber fill for the antenna, arms and legs, and those tiny polyester beads filled the body.  I was really careful at first and didn't spill hardly any of the beads (though they stick like crazy to everything) but near the end of filling this little guy, I managed to spray little white beads everywhere!  I'm still finding them, every once in a while, but a swiffer and vacuum combo seemed to get most of the pesky things.
The pattern I made up entirely.  It took some "advanced math" to figure out how to make the rounded shape, but I got some assistance here.  Though, I did kind of end up just cutting until the paper shape looked right to me... and I did a lot of reshaping/folding under/top stitching by hand after it was sewn together.  At first the white strip in the middle was too wide, so after filling as much as I could, I stitched him closed and then folded the whole white strip thinner and stitched all the way around by hand. It made him pleasantly plump, I think.

For Mom, I knitted a dozen flowers using this pattern.  They turned out great!  That's them but with just the flowers on the wood skewers I used for the stems.  I then knitted a bunch of stems (pun intended).  Hopefully, when I have the camera back, I can get a better picture.  They were super quick to put together, and I usually completed one or two while watching a couple episodes of whatever cartoon I was watching at the time.
I also made a "villain" to be the rival of the Android... but unfortunately, I didn't download the pictures of him to my computer before I left my camera at my parent's house.  Oh well, you'll all have to wait and see him later.

(Cites: Amazon.com,  XWiki: To Sew a Sphere, Andrew Craig Williams Blog)