dinners

Retro Recipes, part 3

Nibbles

Continuing our impromptu quest through old cookbooks, this (past) week I started with some recipes/menus from

Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus
Specially Prepared for the General Electric Refrigerator
by
Miss Alice Bradley
Principal of Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery,
Cooking Editor of Woman’s Home Companion,
Author of: Cooking for Profit, Candy Cook Book, For Luncheon and Supper Guests

that sold for a whopping $2 back in 1927 (I found it in a friend’s used bookstore 8 or so years ago). The recipes in this book are,  you guessed it, mostly of things that require refrigeration or freezing, but there are also a whole slew of menus that Miss Bradley just expects you to already have a reference for or have in another cookbook in your home. Not like you could just Google it back in ’27, though I can’t tell you how glad I am that we have that capability as I was really curious what in the world an “English Monkey with Crackers” (one of her After-Theater Lunches) might be. Turns out it’s the same thing as Welsh Rarebit, which she lists on a Family Supper Menu a few pages prior, so maybe Miss Bradley was just trying to keep things interesting.

Frozen Lobster Salad with Garlic Cheese Biscuits

Frozen Lobster Salad with Garlic Cheese Biscuits

At any rate, Monday I made her Frozen Lobster Salad and paired it with Garlic Cheese Rolls. Far from the usual seafood salad we’d make with just mayo and veggies, this one used a bit of white sauce, gelatin, and whipped heavy cream in, in addition to mayonnaise. While it seems like an awful lot to do just for a seafood salad, and it’s only seasoned with salt and nutmeg, it was very tasty and, thanks to the gelatin, held up exceptionally well for leftovers. I’d probably add some diced celery or bell pepper to this to add some color and crunch, if I made it again.

The biscuits were just the basic recipe from the box of gluten-free Bisquick (Bisquick was invented in 1930, apparently, so it’s not a complete anachronism to pair with the 1927 salad) with some garlic oil and a healthy dose of shredded Cheddar added.

Hamburg Steak, Mashed Potatoes, and Creamed Cabbage

Hamburg Steak, Mashed Potatoes, and Creamed Cabbage

On Tuesday I used one of her dinner menus and just, as homemakers of her day would have, used the recipes or knowledge I had on hand. The Hamburg Steak was simply seasoned ground beef (salt, pepper, garlic oil, paprika, Worcestershire sauce) formed into rectangular patties and cooked on the stove. I made a gravy with beef base, a little red wine, and a cornstarch slurry after the first sides browned. The mashed potatoes were fairly basic mashed potatoes with butter and milk, and the creamed cabbage was boiled cabbage combined with a white sauce.

Now, Todd and I are cabbage fans, but most of the year we eat it as coleslaw unless it’s New Year’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day, you know? We were both pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed the creamed cabbage, to the point that I could have eaten just that and been perfectly content for the night. It’s worth noting that, in making the very simple white sauce, I did add some chicken soup base for flavor, and I think that helped a lot. Creamed cabbage could well end up on our table again, though, thanks to this culinary trip through history.

Chocolate Cake for Dinner, because we're grown-ups

Chocolate Cake for Dinner, because we’re grown-ups

We already talked about Wednesday night, the night we had cake for dinner, and I still do not regret that decision one little bit. It was smart of me to put it mid-week, when the urge to cook is often weaker anyway, and it also helped that we were “ahead” on lunches so that we weren’t needing to get take out for lunch the next day, that sort of thing.

Pork and Veggies, with extra Veggies, over Rice

Pork and Veggies, with extra Veggies, over Rice

Thursday we returned to the present with one of our freezer meals: Pork and Veggies over rice. Instead of crocking it, I just put it on the stove to simmer while the rice cooked and that was plenty of time on the stove. While it’s not technically a stir fry, it’s similar enough that I thought some Yum-Yum sauce might go well on it (and I was right).

On Friday we took advantage of some gift cards we had and went to Longhorn for dinner and have delicious calamari in a sweet chili sauce along with our steaks and potatoes.

My Brunswick Stew is staring at me...

My Brunswick Stew is staring at me…

Finally, on Saturday, I decided to go back to the River Road Recipes cookbook, because I hadn’t made anything from the poultry chapter, and I made Brunswick Stew.

I’ve never actually been a fan of Brunswick Stew, but Todd likes it and I thought it might be better if I made it to determine why I didn’t like it or, hopefully, that I’d like it better if it was homemade. After 2 hours and a bit it was done and I was so hot and tired from doing laundry that a thick chicken stew didn’t seem all that appealing, but I ended up enjoying it and Todd had two helpings (so I must have done something right!).

Sunday was going to be breakfast for dinner, but we both had been grazing throughout the afternoon and just didn’t feel like an official meal. Since we had leftovers in the fridge we declared it a fend for yourself night, so there’s nothing really to show.

I now have a decision to make, and that’s where to go for next week’s menu. Do I a) grab the reproduction of a Civil War-era cookbook I picked up at the St Augustine Fort a few years back or do I b) raid the 1973ish Betty Crocker recipe card collection sitting on my shelf. I mean, both are potential gold mines–what would you be more interested in seeing, hmm?

S’Waffled Toast and More!

Nibbles

Gooooooood morning! What’s so good about it? Um…. it’s here and we’re here to see it! (And that’s far better than the alternative!)

Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Counter Top, Episode 3)

I have no specific reason for being so chipper today, but I am, so I’m just going to roll with it. Join me?

Meals at home for 4/4-4/10

Meals at home for 4/4-4/10

Looking back on the past week’s menu, I think it was one of my more enjoyable weeks, food-wise. There’s always room for improvement, but I feel like it was well-balanced (both in time spent preparing the food as well as the variety of dishes). Here’s how it broke down:

Monday: Chicken & Chickpea Chopped Salad
This recipe from Ambitious Kitchen was a good start to the week. Quick and easy to prepare and it tasted so good! The winning flavor combo was the goat cheese + barbecue sauce. It pretty much made the salad. I can see us making this again.

Tuesday: Night out with friends!
First Tuesday’s mean a meet-up and we were once again at Northside Pies. I was in the mood for appetizers but messed up my order and was “that girl” who orders one gluten-free item and one gluten-full one. D’oh! I meant to order the Caprese Salad to go with my cheese bread on a gluten-free base, but there was some sort of short circuit between my brain and my mouth and I ordered the Feta Bruschetta instead. Oh, well! The good thing about the whole Low-FODMAP thing is that the effects are cumulative, and by reducing the amount of wheat (and therefore fructans) by having the one gluten-free item I could indulge in the accidental order and enjoy it as long as I didn’t eat the whole thing myself. (I shared some, ate some, and took the rest home for later.) I neglected to get a picture, though–oops!

Wednesday: Braised Tilapia with Artichoke Hearts + Steamed Kale
This recipe came from an old Menu Mailer subscription (but is available in this post on Saving Dinner). It’s a good, simple, but not boring fish dinner recipe and the only real change I made was to sub green onions for yellow and my arrowroot slurry for the wheat flour she suggests to thicken the pan drippings into a sauce. Forgo the lumps and use a slurry, it’ll make meal prep so much simpler.

Thursday: Chicken & Sweet Potato Stew + Brown Rice
Ah, freezer meals, they make our lives so much easier. This one needs something, but I’m not 100% sure what just yet. The recipe is from Stock Piling Moms, though mine looks a lot more tomatoey than hers does. I think a can of coconut milk might have been a good addition instead of the cup of broth added just before crocking. Or maybe just a bit more seasonings overall as once it was combined with the rice it lost some of it oomph. Not bad, just needs a little tweaking.

Friday: S’Waffled Toast + Sausage
Todd was a little late getting home so I had time to ponder what I was going to do with the French toast for dinner. Not that French toast on its own is anything but delicious, but I felt like playing a bit. Waffled French toast is nothing new around the ‘net, and a quick search turns up stuffed versions, too, so this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering invention on my part. But I do like my name for it (stuffed and waffled French toast is a bit of a mouthfull, you know? pun intended). My version of this recipe is at the bottom of this post.

Saturday: Sushi Bowls + Spring Rolls
I could eat sushi almost any or every night of the week and be blissfully happy. My wallet might not agree, nor do I always have time to make it at home. But sushi bowls are another thing entirely. Sometimes I’ll use it as a side dish but often it can stand on its own with no problem–it just depends on what you add to it! This version had the usual sweet potato, green onions, avocado, and nori plus little green peas, carrots, and sliced fried egg. And if you want to make your own Yummy sauce (aka Yum Yum Sauce, aka Japanese Steakhouse White Sauce, etc.) here’s a recipe from AllRecipes.

Sunday: (Crock) Pot Roast + Carrots + Mashed Potatoes
Sometimes you just want a good, old-fashioned Sunday dinner and this was one of those times. My best pot roast is always one done in the slow-cooker, and this one was simply seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic olive oil, and Worcestershire sauce. I propped it up on a bed of whole carrots (peeled but otherwise intact) and only added the barest amount of water to the crock pot so I wouldn’t come home to stew. There was still plently of pan juices to turn into gravy, and because the carrots were cooking in it more than the roast it was almost like a carrot jus and made for a slightly sweet gravy.

S'Waffled Toast

S’Waffled Toast

S’Waffled Toast

For the Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, mashed
2 Tbsp sugar

For the Toast:
3 eggs
2 cups milk
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla (or more, to taste)
10 slices bread

Preheat your waffle iron to the crispy settling and spray it with non-stick spray. (Most irons advise against this but I always ignore that–this is a messy recipe and this will make it much easier to clean up later.)

Combine the filling ingredients and adjust the sweetness to taste. If you don’t have fresh or frozen berries, I’d bet that you could stir preserves into the cream cheese and omit the sugar and be just fine.

Mix together in a medium-sized bowl the eggs, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Spread the filling mixture generously on one side of a piece of bread and place a second slice on top. Depending on the size and configuration of your waffle iron and the shape of your bread, you may want to cut the sandwiches in half.

Dunk the sandwiched bread into the liquid, covering on all sides.

Place onto the waffle iron and close the lid securely. My waffle iron always needs two rounds of cooking to get anything done, these s’waffled toasts were no exception. Your mileage may vary depending on your waffle iron, use your best judgement.

Carefully remove the finished toasts from the waffle iron, serve with powdered sugar or syrup, as is the custom, and enjoy!

Have a tasty week!

 

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry + View From the Countertop #2 (video)

Nibbles

Once again I filmed this past week’s meal prep and, since I had a request after the last one, added narration to the video instead of music (maybe next time I’ll do both, depending on time).

(Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Countertop #2)

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

With the Luau the weekend before and so many delicious leftovers in the fridge, it’s probably no surprise that half of this week was made up from those.

Monday: Pulled Pork Sliders + Potato Salad
See the Luau post to get the links for the potato salad. I chopped up some of the leftover pork and mixed it with the tart bbq sauce from Fallin’s for our sliders. Easy and perfect for a Monday night supper.

Tuesday: Hawaiian Chicken Legs + Sweet Leilani Luau Salad
As I mention in the video, I’d planned to make chicken salad with the leftover legs, adding pineapple and macadamia nuts into my usual chicken salad recipe. But bad news at work had me seriously considering ice cream for supper, so I feel somewhat proud of myself for eating real food. (And let’s not kid ourselves, I had a good helping of ice cream afterwards.)

Wednesday: Beef Stir Fry + Brown Rice
Freezer meals to the rescue. Yes, we could have still been eating leftovers but I figured we needed a change of pace so pulled out one of the recent freezer meal additions. It’s a pretty simple kit: vegetables, beef, and sauce (a few tablespoons of sauce is added to the packet of beef as a marinade). I added half a head of cabbage we had in the crisper and it was a good thing I did. I’ll be adding that to the notes on my freezer meal spreadsheet–the meal would have been a little light without it!

Thursday: Luau Leftovers
They pick up our trash on Friday mornings so it was a good idea to eat, freeze, or toss anything left from the party at this point. Plus, the work news from Tuesday was/is the type to hang out all week, so a night with no cooking duties was appreciated.

Friday: Shrimp & Eggplant Curry with Cellophane Noodles
A kitchen experiment that totally worked, we enjoyed it so much that I’ve transcribed it from memory/video so you can try it, too. This is a Thai-style curry so it’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and totally delicious. The basic cubes are the little freezer cubes of chopped basil I’ve found at Trader Joe’s. They’re nice to keep on hand for recipes like this when you can’t always count on having fresh basil in the crisper. The lemongrass paste is another quick tip, found in the produce section by the fresh herbs, we also buy cilantro and ginger in paste form from time to time.

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry

serves 4

2 T olive oil
1 T garlic olive oil
1 large eggplant, peeled and diced
1 bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 package cellophane noodles plus water to cover
2 T Thai red curry paste
2 T grated ginger
1 T lemongrass paste
2 basil cubes (or 2 t dried basil)
1 can coconut milk
12 oz medium shrimp

Pour hot water over rice noodles in a bowl large enough to hold the bricks of noodles and an inch of water above. Let the noodles soak while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Heat olive oils in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat.

Add bell pepper and eggplant to pan and saute until peppers start to soften slightly and eggplant edges start to brown.

Stir in curry paste, ginger, lemongrass, and basil, then stir in coconut milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer until vegetables are fully cooked.

Add shrimp, simmer and stir for about a minute, then turn off the burner and let the heat of the coconut milk mixture to finish cooking to shrimp (this helps prevent over cooking the seafood). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Drain the cellophane noodles (I find a pasta scoop works best for this, as the noodles are so small as to slip through most colanders with ease) and mix them into the shrimp and vegetables, stirring to distribute the sauce throughout.

Enjoy!

I think I’ve stumbled upon the perfect combination in eggplant and coconut milk. Usually you’d salt and press the eggplant to draw out any bitterness but, I admit, I was lazy this time and skipped that step. But the slight sweetness of the coconut milk seems to have counteracted any bitterness in the eggplant because it was the second best eggplant I’ve ever had and Todd really enjoyed it as well! (The best being this sweet eggplant dish that Bahn Thai sometimes has on their lunch buffet, it’s absolutely amazing; they leave the skin on and it’s still the best eggplant ever.)

Saturday: Corned Beef Hash + Eggs
Lazy Saturday, I slept in, it rained all day, Todd napped in the afternoon. Yeah, we did nothing much of importance and it was just fine, so a late supper of breakfast seemed like a good idea to both of us.

Sunday: Zuppa Toscana
It rained almost all of Easter Sunday as well, and since we’d all just gotten together for Todd’s birthday last weekend we’d decided to forgo a family Easter event. I grabbed the pouch of Zuppa Toscana from 12tomatoes was a good answer to an unplanned Sunday supper. Rainy weather is perfect soup weather and this one was pretty tasty. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Olive Garden I really can’t say whether it’s a convincing copycat recipe or not, but we definitely enjoyed it. Maybe next time I’ll actually plan ahead and make some fresh bread sticks to go with it.

And that work news I keep mentioning, it does deserve an explanation, but this isn’t the right post for it. I’ll try to organize my thoughts about it for the next one.

A Week of Meals + a Three Cheese Artichoke Dip Bonus!

Nibbles

Okay, folks, it’s February. The exhilaration of the new year has worn off a bit, now it’s time to stop thinking about meal and menu planning and actually do it. You with me?

Here’s some help!

On The Plate 1/25-1/31

On The Plate 1/25-1/31

Monday: Garlic-Parmesan Pork Chops with Brown Rice and Green Beans
I had a chance to try out some of those freezer meals I put away a few weeks back and this was one of them. I believe it was inspired by this recipe at Plain Chicken, but my version does NOT include cream of chicken soup or prepared garlic bread seasoning. Instead I used coconut milk for the cream soup plus the applicable seasoning, garlic oil, and Parmesan cheese along with a splash of apple cider vinegar. I don’t know how the original tasted, but ours was very good and, yes, the convenience of just throwing the prepared everything into a baking dish and setting up the rice cooker did make dinner that night even easier to prepare.

Tuesday: Chicken Thighs and Polenta with Italian Sausage and Tomato Gravy
In Italy they call it polenta, down here we just call them grits (they’re not the same, but they’re close cousins, and if you cook grits low and slow they don’t turn out gritty at all); they make a nice side dish option for a little something different. I added some garlic olive oil, Italian herbs, and chives to add color and flavor and used a little less liquid than I normally would for regular grits. The Italian Sausage and Tomato gravy is another one that I came across while hunting up freezer meals (found here, but I skipped the cream cheese), but I only had half the sausage it called for to top pasta, but it was enough to top the chicken and grits polenta. This one will likely happen again.

Wednesday: Cheese-Stuffed BBQ Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, and Spinach
Our first freezer meal meatloaf and I’m sold on it. And what goes better with meatloaf of any stripe than mashed potatoes? Total comfort food meal along with the spinach. I’m glad I made two of these meatloaves (from The Virtuous Wife) when I was prepping the freezer meals because we get to have this again with very little effort.

Thursday: Overnight Creamy Chicken Mac & Cheese with Glazed Carrots
I found this recipe from Flavor the Moments while browsing Pinterest and it sounded novel enough to give it a whirl. It made for a perfectly fine supper but, if you already have a favorite from-scratch mac and cheese, you don’t necessarily need to click the link. The gimmick, here, is that you make your white sauce and mix it and the dry pasta together and let sit overnight, “cooking” the pasta in the process. Unlike the overnight oats trend, this doesn’t seem to save time or dishes since you still have to mix everything together and bake it for an hour. I could just as easily boiled the pasta while making the sauce and, then, the finished casserole probably would have only needed half the time in the oven. Like I said, it was fine, but I’ll stick to my own recipe if I want any sort of mac & cheese in the future.

Mayuri Indian Restaurant, Tallahassee, FL

Mayuri Indian Restaurant, Tallahassee, FL

Friday: Mayuri Indian Restaurant
Sadly, some friends are moving to Reno in a few weeks, and we all met up at a local Indian restaurant to wish them off. I ordered the Kal Dosa (rice pancakes) with Chicken Curry and Todd chose the Goat Vindaloo and Garlic Naan. I also had a cup of their chai and it was very tasty–not the sweeter version that I drink frequently at home, but very good nonetheless.

Saturday: Quinoa Bowls with Turmeric-Tahini Dressing
Again, browsing Pinterest brought up a post from Keepin It Kind about macro bowls. I may have been intrigued by the Turmeric-Tahini dressing most of all, since we have a jar of tahini that needs using up and I can only do some much hummus. My eventual bowl (quinoa, chick peas, kale, sweet potatoes, red cabbage, nori, avocado, and cucumbers) might not technically count as a macro bowl (no fermented veggies–Todd’s not a fan), but it was very filling and made for a good meatless meal. At least I thought so. Todd wasn’t as impressed with it. Oh, well, you win some you lose some.

Sunday: Beef Stew and Rice
Another freezer meal, but you don’t need a recipe for this one. Just throw everything you usually put into your stew into a freezer bag for later. Toss it in a slow cooker with a cup of red wine or beer and 2 cups of water and let it cook all day until everything’s nice and tender. Serve over rice

A secondary lesson from our freezer meal adventure is that Ziploc freezer bags are not what they used to be! It’s gotten to the point that I’ve designated a particular bowl to be the defrost bowl, and anything with the remote possibility of leaking needs to be in it when defrosting in the fridge to reduce spills and cross-contamination. They’ve always been the gold standard for freezer bags but the boxes we picked up from Sams are consistently leaking upon defrost. It’s quite unfortunate and more than a little frustrating.

On a happier note, I had reason (reason, craving, take your pick) to whip up some artichoke dip for a snacking lunch on Sunday. Artichoke dip is, at heart, a simple recipe and I saw one recently from Positively Stacey that used green chilies in the mix. Of course, I was out of green chilies and we were nearly out of Parmesan cheese (the horror), but that’s not a reason to give up, just an opportunity to improvise.

So I present to you, my Three-Cheese Artichoke Dip, just in time for weekend noshing (or a certain football event that I hear is coming up).

IMG_20160131_135531280

Three Cheese Artichoke Dip

1 can (14 oz) Artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 Tbsp Recaito
1 Tbsp Garlic Olive Oil
pinch each of salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350° F.

Mix all ingredients together and place into a small casserole dish. Bake 30 minutes or until the edges are all golden bubbly.

Serve with tortillas, pitas, or crackers.

Recaito is a cilantro and bell pepper blend that Todd keeps on hand for when he cooks out of his favorite Puerto Rican cookbook. It doens’t have the heat of diced green chilies, but it does have a lot of flavor. We grazed on this Sunday afternoon in place of lunch while we worked more on the bathroom and other household chores.

Have a tasty week, my friends! Anyone have any good dinner plans for next week’s Chinese New Year?

A Weekly Menu, Purple Rice, and the Secret to Lump-Free Gravy

Nibbles

Last week might not have gone exactly as planned (two nights of take-out, oops!) but for a first week back after vacation, it went as well as it could have!

OTP 11-16-11-22

Monday: Chicken & Egg Breakfast Pie with Caesar Salad
We hadn’t had quiche in a while and this recipe from Jody Wagstaff sounded like a good one to try. I had a pie crust cooling its heels in the freezer and picked up some fried chicken (what I thought would be the last of our vacation indulgences) at the grocery store for lunch and used the rest in the pie. Not being big edamame fans, I used green peas instead and used some herbed cream cheese we had in the fridge. The cruise reminded me just how much I missed a good Caesar salad, so I grabbed a salad kit and added some tomatoes and bacon to it.

Tuesday: Taco Salads
A perfect use for leftovers, we still had a ton of tortilla chips and cheddar cheese from the Halloween party, so I whipped up these taco salads to with seasoned ground beef, my sweet potato refried bean substitute, and some homemade guacamole. I could almost eat this every night, except that sushi holds that honor.

Wednesday: Chinese Buffet
There’s just something about my annual check-up that makes me want to do absolutely nothing afterwards. So dinner plans got scrapped for a nap and then a trip to the local Chinese buffet when Todd finally made it home from work. I regret nothing!

Thursday: Garlic Shrimp & Orzo with Roasted Acorn Squash
This was supposed to be Garlic Shrimp and Quinoa from As Easy As Apple Pie but something icky happened inside the quinoa bag (it just didn’t look right) and I pulled a last-minute switch to avoid another take-out night. It all turned out okay but I might give this one another shot when I’ve restocked.

Friday: Slow-Cooker Lasagna Soup
Tomato-based soups are often hit-or-miss with me, but this one from Culinary Hill sounded worth the try and we really liked it. I think I used too mild of a sausage, though, because it was a little on the tame side, not quite lasagna-y enough. But it was a good soup for a chilly night, and Todd asked for seconds, so there ya go!

Saturday: Sonic 
We’d spend the day running errands and I was already a little tired when I went into the kitchen. But when the kitchen light wouldn’t come on (it’s temperamental when it’s cold) and one of the pots I needed was still soaking in the sink, I took it as a sign to not cook. Todd had been craving Sonic so we went and picked up supper and caught up on more television we missed while on the cruise.

Sunday: Pork Chops with Roasted Butternut Squash, Purple Rice, and Greens Salad
But we finished the week strong! The pork chops were roasted alongside the butternut squash and then topped with a Peach Barbecue Sauce we picked up on Saturday. I based the side dish on the Roasted Sweet Potato, Wild Rice, and Arugula Salad from Pinch of Yum with lots of substitutions. It sounded like a perfect use for the purple rice (see below), and we had the butternut squash in the freezer. My arugula went bad between buying it on Monday and serving it on Sunday, so I used the green leaf lettuce Todd picked up earlier in the day and I’ll be headed to the store after work tonight to replace it. Dinner can always be saved, except on the nights I don’t want it to be 😉

Purple Rice?

After leaving the ship last weekend we headed over to Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney) so I could get a mini-Disney fix while we were in the area. One of the new (at least I think it’s new) shops is the Tea and Spice Exchange, where I picked up a couple of teas (bringing the total count of chais in this house to 5, I may have a bit of a problem…) and a bag of Thai Purple Sticky Rice. It was just so different, I had to give it a try.

No-Buy November wasn't such a great idea, with a vacation in the middle!

No-Buy November wasn’t such a great idea, with a vacation in the middle!

The label says it’s often used in desserts, but I didn’t notice a lot of inherent sweetness. It’s definitely purple and stays purple after being cooked (could possible stain, so beware), but has a nutty flavor that makes it a good substitute for wild rice, like in the recipe above. I have about half a cup left after last night’s dinner, so I’ll have to dry something sweet with it to really see how it shines.

And, finally, with Thanksgiving on the horizon for those of us in the US, I’d like to offer a tip to avoid a persistent, annoying problem around the holidays: lumpy gravy. This trick also works on any hot liquid that needs thickening, be it a soup, stew, sauce, or the ubiquitous gravy.

Introducing: The Slurry

Sounds kinda icky on the surface, but a slurry is simply a mixture of starch and cold water. The cold water is the key. Chances are you’ve followed a recipe in the past that included “thicken with cornstarch” or something to that effect. Only, when you add cornstarch (or any other starch) to a hot liquid, the starch clumps up and refuses to play nice. Why? Because starches, when wet, gelatinize. Or, in other words, they absorb water and swell up, which is how their thickening power works. The application of heat accelerates, or in some cases, activates this reaction, which is how you get lumps in your gravy. So if you first dissolve he starch in a bit of cold water you can safely add it to your hot soup or gravy without causing clumps!

Our go-to slurry solution.

Our go-to slurry solution.

We keep a small mustard jar in the drainboard for whenever a slurry is required. Add a little water, the required starch, screw on the lid and shake it up. That’s all there is to it!

A word about starch selection.

Cornstarch is probably the most common starch called for in thickening situations. It’s readily available in most pantries and pretty cheap. It also takes about 5 minutes of cooking, on average, to both thicken the liquid in question and lose that raw starch taste. Other starches that can be used include potato starch, tapioca starch, and arrowroot. You might need to look in the organic or special diets section of your grocery store to find them, but they all work quite well if you or someone you’re feeding is allergic to corn. Another benefit to using arrowroot, and this is something I learned when I was getting into wheat-free cooking a few years back, is that arrowroot thickens quicker than cornstarch (and can do so without heat), does not cloud your soup or gravy, and is the most easily digested starch out there.

So go forth and eat well, and save yourself some lumpy gravy!