Category: Recipes

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make some truly fab bread pudding

"....... resistance is futile!" CLICK on the picture for the recipe

I’ve resisted for as long as I could… actually months! The problem is that real bread pudding is one of my all time favorite desserts! When I first started the evolution of my own recipe, I studied all of the recipes from hundred plus year old cookbooks, restaurants and internet chefs and home chefs. The problem is that in virtually every case… there were unacceptable short cuts.

From the use of butter, eggs,  heavy cream, brandy, rum and rye whiskey to the various breads and cakes all topped with an exquisite sauce and various nuts… it is a wonderful holiday treat! Fortunately, I believe everyday is a holiday! 😉  If you really want to make something nice… it takes time, care, quality ingredients and a variety that makes it interesting. BREAD PUDDING

So I have my fruit ( dried blueberries, sultanas and 3 scraped vanilla beans) all soaking in their favorite alcoholic mixture… until I need them…. in a week or so.

One bite is way too much… and a million is not enough!

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Crumpets or English Muffins are delicious with butter and jam

crumpets
Crumpets or what we call English Muffins is an easy and fun treat to make! CLICK on the picture for my recipe

Frankly, I don’t know anyone who makes crumpets or English muffins from scratch… and I do know a lot of folks who cook! Naturally, I thought with so many English folks raving about their own crumpets that there must be something special going on….. and my investigation said there was!

Wikipedia says the following:

“Crumpets may have been an Anglo-Saxon invention.In early times, they were hard pancakes cooked on a griddle, rather than the soft and spongy crumpets of the Victorian era which were made with yeast. The crumpet-makers of the Midlands and London developed the characteristic holes, by adding extra baking powder to the yeast dough. The term itself may refer to a crumpled or curled-up cake, or have Celtic origins relating to the Breton krampoez meaning a “thin, flat cake” and the Welsh crempog or crempot , a type of pancake. However, since many English words share a heritage with other languages, it may be cognate with the similar German word krumm (from Middle High German krump, krum) which means “bent”.“

In any event, it is a wonderful snack , toasted in the toaster and then smothered with butter and jam! For me it is perfect with a cup of coffee!   CLICK here for our recipe

Roger

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a better pumpkin pie

there is nothing like a real pumpkin pie... make the pumpkin from scratch is even better!

Actually, I wanted to place a picture of the pie I most recently made with this recipe, but with a delicious Butternut Squash… but alas … it disappeared all 12″ round of it! I think what made the Butternut squash pie so wonderful was not the precooking in a pressure cooker, but it was pureeing the mixture infused with a collection of spices and then setting it for a month to blend in the freezer… delicious! Of course the heavy cream substitute for the condensed milk is a superb improvement! (Why was refrigeration invented if people still use condensed milk?)

Here’s the recipe

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invite a wabbit for dinner


The culinary tastes of my little family are fairly broad and I indulge them as best I can. So when Karla wanted to go hunt rabbit, I told her there was an easier way… a slight detour to the Arroyo Grande Meat store. Rabbit meat is a bit pricey here and I am not quite used to that… but it is California, and I am sure the rabbit is listed under some sort of protection.  😉

In any event, Karla wanted rabbit and not presented in the the usual stew, skewer or filet cuts. After a bit of looking I found a stuffed rabbit ( the stuffing resembled more than any other a simple turkey bread stuffing) on which an interesting glaze was added in the last 20 minutes or so. I say an ‘interesting glaze’ — because in the way of hunters — it is full of ‘shortcuts’ based on whatever is at hand. In this case, the glaze was a mixture of steak sauce and orange marmalade.

Karla was kind enough to share a bite and it was very tasty!

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Thanksgiving – day 2

making something nice
the nices thing about a great feast... is the leftovers!!!!

Some foods seasoned with spices or various herbs seem to only get better and better as they begin to blend over time into your ‘left over’ culinary masterpieces. This is always true of many soups but turkey meat just seems to absorb more flavors over time. The next time I make a ‘turducken’ or the equivalent, I am thinking it may be fun to ‘pre-cure’ the bird, debone it, season it and freeze it for an indeterminate amount of time!

I hope you are enjoying Day 2… unless it is already all gone!

Roger

 a few of our family’s basic recipes