Main Dishes – Page 5 – Food Follies

Awesome Waffles

Kristen got me a waffle iron two Christmas’s ago, and in all that time I’ve been looking for a really good basic waffle recipe.

The first ones I tried were the easy pancake mix variety, which tasted exactly like pancakes, not bad, but not waffles. Next, I tried the more complicated recipes that came with the waffle iron. One of them included lemon juice which I thought was an odd choice, but the waffles were pretty good. Still, it wasn’t the sort of recipe that makes you want to go through all the effort.

Finally, we found a recipe on Myra Fitch’s homepage. She said it was her favorite recipe which actually came with her waffle maker years ago. It was by far the best waffles we’ve tasted, they were light and flaky with that perfect waffle flavor.

Homemade Waffle Recipe

1 3/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
3 eggs
7 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups milk

Preheat the waffle iron. Sift the dry indredients into a medium sized bowl. Separate the eggs, putting the egg whites in smaller bowl. Beat the egg whites until they are stiff. (If you are using an electric mixer, you can beat the egg whites first, then beat the batter without having to wash the beaters. The reverse is not true. If you beat the batter first and you have to wash the beaters before beating the egg whites.) Add the egg yolks, oil and milk all at one time to the dry indredients. Beat until there are no lumps in the batter. Fold the egg whites into the other batter using a spatula or other flat utinsel. Put a full 1/2 cup of batter in your waffle iron to make a 9-inch round waffle. This recipe makes about eight 9 inch waffles.

If this recipe makes too many waffles for one setting, try freezing the waffles you do not eat. After the waffles have been cooked in the waffle iron, put them out on a cooling rack. When they are cool, place them in a plastic bag, taking out as much air from the bag as possible. Then freeze the bag of waffles. The next time you want a quick waffle, microwave one from the freezer for about 45 to 60 seconds. They are almost as good as fresh waffles.

Note from John: I realize the seperating and folding of the egg whites sounds like a lot of extra work, but it’s definitely worth the effort. This step has been in all the better waffle recipes I’ve tried and it seems to be one of the key differences between waffles that taste like waffles and waffles that taste like “square pancakes.”

Calzones

Kristen made Calzones the other night, not the sad combinations of salted meats and cheap cheeses that they call calzones here in California, but real New York food, stuffed to the breaking point with whole milk Ricotta and Mozzarella cheeses. They’re rich, creamy and insanely delicious, especiall with a sprinkle of Oregano in the filling to give it just a little spice.

And the recipe…

Calzones

The dough will make two large calzones.

1 package yeast
1 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP oil
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 cups flour
1 tub (small) whole milk ricotta cheese
12 or 16 oz. chunk of whole milk motzarella cheese

Dough:
1) Dissolve 1 pk yeast in 1 cup warm water.
2) Mix 1 TBSP sugar, 2 TBSP oil, 1 tsp salt, 2 3/4 c flour to yeast and water.
3) Mix together till smooth. Knead and cover with towel for 30 minutes.

Roll out dough approx. 10″ circle if you’re making them by hand. (Or large enough to cover the open surface of a calzone maker/mold.) Put appoximately 1 to 1 1/2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese in the center of the dough. Place 1/2 to 1 cup of grated whole milk mozzarella cheese on top of the ricotta cheese. Fold over and crimp shut.

Place on greased cookie sheet. Brush with melted butter (after 15 minutes of cooking). Cook for a total of 25 minutes at 375 degrees or until golden brown.

You can add many kinds of ingredients if you want to go beyond the basic, but delicious, cheese calzone. Pepperoni or cooked italian or pan sausage make a nice addition, for instance, as well as sauteed onions and peppers – if you add ingredients, reduce the amount of cheese in proportion so the calzones don’t get overstuffed and pop open during baking.

You can also use the dough recipe here to make an excellent pizza crust.

Garlic!

I decided to make some pasta sauce today, only to discover that our onions had turned into some sort of alien creature. After chasing the beast out of the house with a broom, I decided that I would make the sauce anyway using some extra garlic to fill the void.

I went a little overboard though, possibly because we picked up a jar of pre-chopped garlic last week, so I didn’t have to go through the work of chopping it myself. All I know was, this was one powerfully garlicky sauce. It cleared both mine and Kristen’s sinuses while eating it.

It was a good sauce though, and I think it will make an excellent pizza sauce. As soon as we go to town again (25 miles away) I’m going to get some mozzarella cheese so I can find out. In the meantime, all the vampire bats have fled the area, and the dogs keep turning away from me when I talk to them.

Busy Busy Busy

(I used the wisk image to the left because it made me think of being busy – LOL.) We’ve actually been doing some good cooking and eating lately, but we’ve been missing the step where we take a moment to sit down and write about it for some reason. For instance, I made another lasagna the other day, with homemade noodles, and it came out terrific. In fact, we’re still eating the leftovers, which are just as good as the original, of course. And we’ve been baking bread, and learning what effect ‘tired’ yeast has on it. And John made a delicious chicken concoction, which he keeps meaning to write up. See?

Also, we learned that our turtles (that we recently acquired from John’s brother who couldn’t keep them anymore) LOVE meat, despite the fact that a lot of turtle experts say that they become more vegetable oriented as they get older. (Maybe nine isn’t ‘old’ to them?) Even cuter… they will take the food from our hands, in a gentle but still ‘turtle darting their neck out’ sort of way. We’ve given them chicken, tuna (which made a mess in their water – maybe we’ll try a more chunk and less shredded kind next time), and hamburger.

Also, our black lab seems to like the raw pasta dough. She always lays under the table when I make it and then looks all hopeful if it appears I’ve got a bit left over – go figure.

Anyway, we’ll get back to posting more fully again soon, I’m sure. Thanks for checking in!

Chicken Stir Fry

We made a chicken stir fry the other night. Nothing really fancy, just chicken, onions, peppers, broccoli, carrots, and Nappa Cabbage. I marinated the chicken in a bottle of marinade I had gotten from the local Dollar store.

When it comes to stir fry, I like my vegetables to be fully cooked. I slice my carrots into thin strips and cut the broccoli down to crowns. I also peel the outside of the broccoli stems and include them as well. I start the broccoli, carrots, onions and peppers first, cooking them for about ten minutes before adding the meat. The cabbage gets added last, since that takes only a few minutes.

This procedure actually got me into trouble at the last place I worked. The management there insisted that the vegetables had to look bright and colorful, which essentially means raw. I also couldn’t add any soy sauce to the stir fry because it would darken the veggies as well. One of the cooks who had worked there for ten years had actually said to me: “If you make it look good, their imaginations will fill in the rest.”

Yeah well, I prefer the taste of my food to speak for itself.

Scallops Fettuccine Alfredo

For a slight change of pace tonight (we’re still hooked on homemade pasta) we decided to make Scallops Alfredo.

Alfredo sauce is one of the most simple sauces to make, but it requires good ingredients to work properly. Heavy cream, butter, fresh parmesan cheese and garlic are the basic ingredients, and if you substitute any of them for something cheaper, the sauce will suffer.

Tonight’s sauce seemed to come out too thin and salty at first. The Parmesan cheese I bought tasted very salty, but somehow between the addition of the scallops and the fettuccine, the sauce came out just right.

Meat Slabs

It was our own fault for forgetting to say that we wanted our half pound of deli turkey sliced really thin. But when we opened the bag later, although it was actually a half-pound, we counted SIX slices… er… slabs. First, I don’t know anyone who prefers thick slabs of deli meat, and I’m still not sure why that’s what seems to be standard unless you ask for it differently. Why wouldn’t extra-thin be standard? Is this a marketing thing or a true public preference thing? We got three sad sandwiches out of the slabs and vowed never again to forget our war cry of “Sliced as thin as possible!” Lesson learned, but bafflement retained.

Best… Lasagna… Ever…

John made the sauce, this time with fresh, mild, Italian sausage. I made the fresh lasagna noodles with my trusty pasta play-doh machine. Cows and companies made the ricotta and mozzarella cheeses. I think Pyrex made the glass pan… but I think I’m getting off track. It ended up being a seven layer lasagna that just seemed to melt in your mouth.

(We tried to take a photo of the layers, but that just wasn’t going to happen – too much cheese and sauce in the way for a good shot. ALAS!) There’s just something about fresh pasta that makes me want to NEVER go back to dried/boxed pasta. That’s probably not terribly practical, as one doesn’t always have the time, but it’s so worth it. It’s much more light and tender, I don’t feel overly stuffed, and best yet, I don’t feel like I have to take the entire night to digest it all.

Eventually, this food weblog will talk about something OTHER than fresh pasta, but it’s our latest ‘thing’ right now. You’ll see – you’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Enough to Outfit 126 Penguins

I didn’t know how hard it would be to make homemade farfalle when I first started, and I didn’t really have any ‘instructions’, but I soon found out they were ridiculously easy!

“farfalle = bow ties = bow-tie pasta = bows = butterfly pasta. Pronunciation: far-FALL-lay. This Italian pasta resembles bow ties or butterflies. It’s often served with chunky sauces or in pasta salads. A smaller version is called farfallini, while a larger version is called farfallone.” (from the Cook’s Thesaurus)

Basically, you cut the sheets of pasta (thickness setting of “6” on the pasta machine) into slightly rectangular pieces, about 1.25×1.5 inches, slightly fold it in the middle, lengthwise, then fold the lengthwise edges back the other way and then pinch it all in the middle to seal the shape. With 1.5 cups of flour and two eggs, we made about 126 of them.

We cooked them for 7 minutes – had to go a bit longer than the previous fettucine and ravioli, probably because of the thickness of the pinched area. Here’s a finished plate, all dolled up with grated motzarella cheese and chopped parsley:

Adventures in Ravioli

John mixed the filling for the ravioli: ricotta cheese, chopped parsley, fresh ground parmesan, garlic and onion powder, pepper, and salt. Here’s all the ‘stuff’…

… which includes the new pasta machine to the right, and a new 12-unit ravioli mold we got the other day – thank heaven for after-holiday, half-price sales!

We rolled out sheets of pasta, layed them on the mold, spooned in the filling, layed another sheet on top, and then rolled the rolling pin over it to cut the raviolis apart. Here’s the uncooked ravioli:

They cooked in about 5 minutes and only one of them broke apart in the water, ever so slightly. There are no photos of the finished ravioli because after they were done, we were too hungry to take the time to arrange them on a plate with sauce and make them look nice for a photograph. They came out fantastic though – creamy and light – much lighter than store-bought/frozen raviolis, and tasted great with the red sauce. Mmmmm…. fresh raviolis.