Cooking / Baking

Heavenly Hash Browns

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-08-07 17.28.05 smSunday is usually a day for cooking an elaborate dinner. But the kids and I were in the city all afternoon, and came home late. After scones for breakfast and leftovers for lunch, none of us really needed a big dinner anyway.

So we had breakfast, instead—fried eggs and hash browns.

They were the first really good hash browns I’d ever made. In the past, my hash browns have been a bit too gummy, a bit too soft.

But thanks to the Internet, I had many hash brown recipes at my fingertips today (yes, it’s been that long since I made them—I had only cook books before).

So, I tried a new method today, and hit it just right.

After grating my potatoes, I rinsed them well, and squeezed the excess water out of them. I tossed them with salt and pepper and fried them in a non-stick skillet with a generous quantity of clarified butter.

They were everything a hash brown should be—salty, crispy, and greasy.

Looks like hash browns are back on the menu!

When Life Gives You Grapefruits…

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-08-02 08.06.47Make cake, of course! I wrote a post last year about this grapefruit cake, and it’s worth another. Maybe it is the short winter days, but I’ve been thinking about grapefruit cake lately. So I was thrilled when the neighbour dropped of a box of grapefruits over the weekend.

His wife apparently doesn’t like them, so we luck out each year when the grapefruits ripen on his tree. We made grapefruit marmalade two years ago…and we’re still working our way through it. It’s good, but we just don’t eat that much of it.

But the cake…that doesn’t sit around. The grapefruit flavour goes so well with the nutty whole wheat flour in the recipe. And it absolutely rocks a cream cheese frosting.

And it has me thinking of other creative ways to use grapefruit. They’re sour and bitter, like limes, so could you make a pie like a key lime pie with them? What about pudding, like orange pudding? Or grapefruit cheesecake? Grapefruit curd? The possibilities are endless…Stay tuned.

Swiss Army Kitchen

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-08-01 12.36.13My husband and I try to maintain good kitchen utensils and appliances. Our kitchen is well-stocked with mixing bowls, spatulas, knives, and measuring cups. We have a cutting board for every occasion. We have a high-quality tool for every task in the kitchen.

Except one.

We don’t have a single decent can opener.

We used to have two—one each from our pre-marriage days. Neither one worked well, but we limped along with them for 23 years. Last Christmas I decided that, though we don’t use a can opener very often, we deserved a new one. Guess who got a can opener in his stocking?

I happily threw away the two old ones, only to fish one back out of the rubbish when we found that the new one was absolutely useless.

That quarter-century old opener has been growing progressively worse in the past months (I think it knows I threw it away, and it’s bitter about that). Now, instead of reaching for the kitchen drawer when I want to open a can, I’m going to my purse—the can opener on my Swiss Army knife is vastly superior to the one in the kitchen.

One of these days, I’ll try buying another.

Until then, the Swiss Army knife is my new best kitchen tool…

Frosting Experiments

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-07-27 18.47.26 smI should have known it would be disappointing.

Nothing can compare to a good cream cheese frosting.

That’s what these delicious pumpkin cupcakes needed, but I had no reason to leave the house yesterday, and couldn’t justify going out simply to get cream cheese.

Surely, I could use yogurt, right? I had yogurt in the house.

A quick search online uncovered a variety of yogurt frostings and glazes. Many were, frankly, disgusting-sounding attempts to make a fatty, sweet confection with no fat or sugar—soy yogurt sweetened with stevia was the worst. But my thought was to just mix yogurt and confectioner’s sugar to a spreadable consistency, with a little vanilla for flavour.

It certainly worked. Two cups of sugar, half a teaspoon of vanilla, and about 3 tablespoons of unsweetened yogurt made a reasonable frosting.

But it wasn’t cream cheese frosting—too sweet and not sour enough. Not enough fat, either. It was less like cream cheese frosting, and more like a sugar and lemon juice glaze. In fact, with more yogurt and less sugar, it would probably make an excellent thin glaze for sticky buns.

Next time I make pumpkin cupcakes, though, I’ll make sure I have cream cheese in the house first.

This Shouldn’t Work

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

2016-07-06 09.03.42 smOur family is vegetarian, but we don’t go in for veganism. We like our cheese, eggs and milk. A lot.

But sometimes, curiosity gets the better of us.

My husband made hummus the other day, and tried something really weird with the water he boiled the chick peas in.

He made meringues with it.

Yep. Meringues. Who’d have thought.

Turns out, the bean water (call it aquafaba if you want it to sound gourmet) foams up when beaten, just like egg whites do.

The meringues came out crisp, and melt in your mouth just like a meringue should.

There is a slight beany aftertaste to them, but I prefer it to the eggy aftertaste of egg-based meringues. In fact, I dislike meringues as a rule, because of the egg flavour, so these were a real bonus for me. And spread them with lemon curd or Nutella, and that bean flavour is covered up nicely.

Completely crazy, and absolutely wonderful!

If you want to try your own bean-water meringues, there are lots of recipes on line. My husband was inspired by this article and recipe in Slate.

Jelly Diagonals

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-07-02 17.16.26 smLove thumbprint cookies, but can’t be bothered filling a hundred little thumbprints with jam?

Try Jelly Diagonals! Not only are they quicker to make, they look like something special.

I use a recipe from Farm Journal’s Cookie book, but you could use any thumbprint cookie recipe.

Once you’ve made the dough, divide it into four pieces and roll each piece out into a log about 2 cm (¾ inch) in diameter. Lay the logs onto a baking sheet (two per sheet), and press a channel down the length of each log. I use a wooden spoon handle for this. The channel should be a scant centimetre (3/8 inch) deep.

Fill the channel with your favourite jam, and bake until brown on the edges.

Cut into diagonal slices while still warm. Cool on a rack.

Vegetarian Sloppy Joes

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

IMG_1389My family loves tofu meatballs, so any tofu I buy usually ends up in spaghetti with meatballs. But I enjoy tofu in many forms. Vegetarian sloppy joes comes in a close second to meatballs for me. This is a winter-friendly recipe, using canned tomatoes and dried herbs, but there’s no reason you couldn’t make it with fresh tomatoes and herbs in season.

300 g firm tofu, crumbled
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
8 button mushrooms, finely chopped
1 can chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground fennel
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp mild mustard
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste

Sauté the tofu in the oil until it begins to brown. Add the onions and paprikas and continue to sauté until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and mushrooms. When the mushrooms begin releasing their moisture, add the remainder of the ingredients. Cover and bring to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer for at least 30 minutes. You may need to uncover the pot during the last 10 minutes or so to allow some of the moisture to boil off.

Serve on Mum’s Fluffy Buns.

Pear Compote

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-06-14 18.46.11 smMy husband brought home a bag of pears yesterday. They were dead ripe, and there was no way we were going to be able to eat them all before they went bad.

I filled a casserole dish with peeled and cubed pear, added a few tablespoons of honey and a similar quantity of lemon juice, sprinkled it generously with cinnamon, and baked it for 45 minutes at 190°C (375°F).

The result was intense and lovely. We had it warm with whipped cream after dinner, but there’s plenty left over. I’m thinking it will be perfect on my granola in the morning…

The Care and Feeding of a Cookie Jar

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-06-12 11.06.35 smThe role of a cookie jar is to be full.

I didn’t fully understand this until I bought a cookie jar for my husband for Christmas. I didn’t realise the responsibility I was taking on with cookie jar ownership.

As with any pet, the cookie jar requires care and feeding. You can’t leave it sitting empty on the kitchen benchtop. It looks at you with those great big eyes, begging for some biscotti or a few macaroons. Maybe some chocolate chip cookies? You might be able to ignore it for a while, but that empty jar will sidle into your field of view, whimper a bit, and rattle its lid.

Next thing you know, there is butter, flour and sugar all over the kitchen. The air smells of cinnamon and cloves. Kids are hanging around waiting for a bowl to lick clean.

An hour later, you glance at the clock and realise it’s time to start cooking dinner, but you have no idea what you’re going to make. But the cookie jar is full, so everything is alright.

Corn Chips

/ Robinne Weiss / 4 Comments

2016-05-29 17.58.56Usually, when I want tortilla chips, I first make tortillas, then cut them into wedges, brush them with oil and bake them. It makes absolutely divine chips, but it’s rather labour intensive.

Last night my husband made a vat of chilli for dinner, and I gave in to my craving for chips. Instead of the usual tortilla chips, I made these simple corn chips. They take almost no time to mix up, and are quite good, though fragile. There wasn’t a single crumb left by the time the meal was over.

1 cup cornmeal

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

2 T dry milk powder

½ cup water

¼ cup vegetable oil

Combine the dry ingredients. Add the water and oil, and mix well.

Grease two large baking sheets. Divide the dough in two, and roll each half out quite thin (about 2mm) directly onto the sheet. The dough will be very oily, but you may need to dust your rolling pin with flour to keep it from sticking. Cut into triangles.

Bake on fan bake for 12-15 minutes at 175°C. Remove from the pan when they are browned, and cool completely on a wire rack.

If you’re a fan of flavoured chips, you might add paprika, smoked paprika, chilli powder, or finely grated parmesan cheese to these chips.

Don’t try to use these in nachos—because they are baked, they turn to mush when smothered in toppings.