So, in the week preceding the move to a different state (where there are hopefully more jobs, especially given the fact that something like 400 people were rendered jobless in this area because of tropical storm Irene), I've been lamenting my food situation. For the last time, I hope.
Having been without power for a few days, I got a chance to do a lot of stove-top cooking. There were some seriously messed up fajitas (I went crazy with the rooster sauce), some aaaawesome applesauce (best eaten warm), and this:
Carolyn and I had been talking about making a chicken soup for a long time, but couldn't agree whether to have noodles or not, and whether or not potatoes should be included. Ultimately we decided to use penne (which, as it turns out, are the perfect noodles for soup), and no potatoes. The potatoes were lamentably mushy. As experimental as this was, I feel that it turned out wonderfully.
Power Outage Chicken Soup
Serves ~8 (we managed to get three meals each out of this, but they were big bowls)
2 chicken breasts, thawed (in the brief time that you DO have power) and cut into small pieces
2 onions, diced
4 stalks celery, halved and diced
4 carrots, sliced into disks
1 box chicken broth (its SUPPOSED to smell like dragon farts, I've been told)
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups dry penne
oregano
basil
black pepper
butter
Directions:
1. Stomp around angrily wondering what the hell to eat.
2. Decide you're going to make chicken soup. With noodles. And utter kickassness (shut up, it's a word). Dice veggies and chicken!
3. Melt butter in the bottom of a sauce pan, adding chicken bits and stirring occasionally to cook about 3/4 of the way through.
4. Add onions and allow it to sweat for a few minutes before adding broth and water.
5. Add carrots and celery and herbify as desired. (I opted for 2 parts basil, 1 part oregano, and 1/3 part black pepper.)
6. As carrots soften slightly (I don't mean mushy here. I just mean not raw), add noodles.
7. Stir occasionally until noodles are fully cooked and remove from heat immediately.
As odd as this may seem (and I'm sure others have noticed this too), this soup is waaaay more awesome when it's been refrigerated for a few hours. It's sweet, and subtle, and mild. It isn't at all pretentious or overly bold (like beef stew, which I feel should ALWAYS punch you in the face like an angry Irishman), it's just right for a quiet day when the whole world seems like its about to drown. And don't worry about having extra broth, the noodles will drink it up and then you'll worry about having too little liquid.
Okay, so. Power comes back on after that, doing the infamous on and off thing, just as I become confident that it will stay on. Eventually it does actually stay on, so we opt to bake (because we made mom buy butter... because we wanted to bake).
This recipe is from an old Pillsbury cookbook that belong to my grandmother. As much as I hate Pillsbury's products CURRENTLY, I adore this cookbook, and it gets a lot of action in general baking in this house. I'm pretty sure my mom has made these cookies before, but we hadn't had them since, and I wanted cookies.
They're pretty damn glorious, by the way.
By this point, things seemed fine at home, and I had no idea what the rest of the state looked like aside from rumors from mom, and videos she showed us on her iPhone (via Facebook). So cookies felt like a big victory dance. Yeah. Victory didn't last long.
Pillsbury Drop Butter Cookies (pg. 157)
Makes 45-48 cookies
1 cup sugar or firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened (Ignore them when they say margarine.)
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla (I did almost double this, and it was AWESOME)
1 egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
Directions: (verbatim)
Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine first 5 ingredients; blend well. Stir in remaining ingredients; blend well. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls, 1 inch apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375°F for 9 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately remove from cookie sheet.
Okay, so there are just a few problems with this. Firstly, these are delicate cookies, and there is a very fine line between perfect and overdone. My recommendation is to cook these cookies for about 10 minutes on a rack placed in the center of the oven. Also, don't worry too much about the size of the drops you put on the cookie sheet (or in my case, parchment paper), they don't spread out much. If you make them too big they won't cook nicely.
Anyway, here is what I got:
Light, fluffy, golden brown bundles of buttery joy. My little sister described them as "sugar cookies, just better." I disagree, as they are distinctly buttery (though I'd say not buttery enough to be called a butter cookie. Shortbread is buttery enough to be called a butter cookie.) with lovely hints of vanilla.
This recipe has a lot of potential for modification. For instance, I adore rosemary shortbread cookies, but I'm not fond of hard cookies. I do like my cookies to be fluffy and slightly moist. As this cookie does have a lot in common with shortbread, I am inclined to say that it would welcome the addition of rosemary, lavender, or any other herb you chose to pair with it.
These cookies didn't even survive 12 hours in this house. Carolyn and I went crazy and ate 2/3 of the batch (and that's a conservative estimate), leaving the rest for mom and dad.
No comments:
Post a Comment