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Foodstuffs
We've had a sack of potatoes hanging out on our counter for several weeks now, largely because Lauren's not a big fan of most potatoes (fried are the exception for her, while I've hardly ever met a potato I didn't like). What to do? Ah... but Lauren does like gnocchi. How hard could gnocchi be to make?
The answer is: not that hard at all! I just baked a few pounds of potatoes (I've heard steaming is also good, but not boiling), mashed them (I put them through the sieve we use for making applesauce), and then mix those potatoes with flour, salt, and a bit of nutmeg (another recipe I saw said sage). Then it was just a matter of making a test-gnoccho (?) to make sure the ratio of potato to flour was good. I put them on two cookie sheets, with half in the fridge and half in the freezer. I cooked up the former a few hours later and made some pesto to go with it, while I took the freezer gnocchi and put them in a freezer bag for another time. Gnocchi verdict: great!
Over the weekend, Lauren found apples on sale, so I played around with Apple Crisp recipes. The first version was pretty good, though a little salty because the recipe had salt and so did the butter, but that was easily corrected on the second go-round. Lauren wanted the crisp to be a little more moist, so I tossed the apple slices in sugar, which didn't make a thick sauce but did moisten them up quite a bit. Apple Crisp verdict: great!
Also over the weekend, I broke out our Yogotherm insulated yogurt incubator and made some yogurt. The yogurt we've made--from skim milk--has typically been rather runny, and we were thinking that skim milk might not be the way to go. Before giving up on it, though, I tried just using less milk with the yogurt I put in as a start culture. Bingo! Firmed right up. Step two in my diabolical plan: put it in the ice cream maker Kitchen Aid attachment! Here, I made a slight mistake because we were in a hurry Friday night for our fro yo. We should have run it through some cheese cloth, because even though it was the same firmness as store-bought, that wasn't enough to make good froyo. It was soup when we first ate it, and when we put it in the freezer it froze, but it was like frozen yogurt-ice. Froyo verdict: still tasty, but could have been better. Next time. Next time....
I made a sort of potato pancake--in the cookbook, it was called a "gratin." It used both potatoes and sweet potatoes (and cheese!) and was baked. It should have had dill, but I realized too late I had no dill in the house, so I used something else (thyme, maybe?), and that wasn't quite the right flavor. These were adequate the first time around, but hard to stomach as leftovers because they weren't that great. Along the same lines, I tried to make something groovy from our leftover chicken with some brown rice and a sort of chicken gravy cooked in a Dutch Oven with some cheese. Ultimately, not enough rice and too much chicken which shouldn't have been ground up (I was feeling too lazy to hack it apart). Verdict on both of these: mild failures, though edible.
We also had some tried and true dishes. I made the pizza dough I've talked about before, mixed in the food processor. It made one good pizza and one good little loaf of bread. I fixed one of Lauren's standard meals, the pepper pasta with cheese (parm) and spinach and white beans. Here we have a dish that Lauren does better than I do (granted, I was in a hurry and haven't made it before). Again, adequate, but we know it can be better.
And that's the week (or so) in food at the Sherck home!