Broiled Grapefruit, p 226

Last night Erika came for dinner. Eager to impress her with a treat from the Joy of Cooking, I looked in my refrigerator, and consulted the cookbook, to figure out if there was anything within reach. Well, of course there was!

Broiled Grapefruit! "This old-fashioned grapefruit recipe can be served as a first course, for dessert, or for breakfast." I decided to serve it as dessert.


Remarkably simple—the recipe instructs cutting the grapefruit, sprinkling a Tbs. of sugar on top of each half, and then broiling until browned. Garnish. And you're done. Serve immediately.

The priciest detail was the garnish of "four small raspberries or strawberries." I decided to go for it—it seemed desirable to have the contrasting pretty colors—so I bought one of those million dollar half-pints of raspberries. [Please see Verdict section for berry commentary.]


Verdict: We loved it! Warm grapefruit is not a taste that you get too often. It turns out: it’s pretty good! Sweet, without losing the pleasant bitterness of grapefruit.

However, we agreed that the raspberries really didn’t add anything. In fact, they were a disappointment… because when you see raspberries, you get excited for them, since they’re a treat, but, in between bites of hot grapefruit, they just tasted like nothingwater. Possibly the four tiny strawberries would stand up better…but I suspect not.
We agreed that in the future, the berries should be skipped—the grapefruit looks nice enough, and tastes good enough, on its own.

We think that the original garnish for broiled grapefruit might have been a Maraschino Cherry.
Broiled grapefruit seems like a very 1940s/1950s thing to me…and a glowing red cherry on top, even at breakfast, seems to fit that to a T… While Erika and I both were glad without the glowing cherry, we imagine that it, unlike its distant fresh-berry relatives, could actually hold its own alongside the hot grapefruit.
And if this is true, and the garnish originally was a Maraschino Cherry, I wonder if this is a 75th Anniversary edition edit, a concession to modern snootypants tastes. We’ve all become so refined.


Tips: If you have to leave your grapefruit after it been sugared, but before it’s been broiled, you’re probably better off starting over. Putting it in the refrigerator for a few hours, seemed to leech the sugar into the fruit. It still tasted great—but my guess is that if all the sugar remains on top for the broiling, it will turn into a thin crunchy shell.
I did add a tiny bit more sugar to freshen it up… but couldn’t stomach adding too much more, since I’d already seen a Tbs. go onto each half. Alas, no crunchy shell. Next time.

^{[note: ET reserves the right to demand the removal of the photo documentation herein...]}

After a trying couple of days, I was glad to return to my apartment Friday night, turn to page 56, and fix myself a Gin and Tonic.

Note: the recipe calls for 1 ½ oz. gin... I prefer 2.

Dinner for Five ...

After much conversation, from how many mouths to feed, to what type of peppers to use, we figured it out. Prep Time - 15 minutes (as long as they're not too busy) Skill Level - Minimal (Can you use a phone) Cost of Ingredients (Even less than the skill) Cost of Product (Incredibly Expensive ... how can they charge for four toppings when they are all half toppings? They charge double for double cheese don't they?)

In any case once, all decisions have been made (516)922-7964. Enjoy

Scotch Shortbread, p 775

Last night, at 11pm, I decided to make shortbread.
because I was watching Veronica Mars, and had several more hours in front of me, and had already had three cups of tea, and had no dessert.
mmmmm. butter and sugar. that's basically it.
and it is good.


Note: recipe says 300° for 45-50 minutes. more like 25-30 minutes.

Pizza Dough, p 607

Super easy.

The full recipe makes enough dough for 2 pizzas.
I divided it in half after it had risen, and put half in a big zip-loc bag, in the refrigerator.

I skimmed "About Pizza, Calzone, and Stromboli" on page 190, and learned that "topping a pizza is a matter of taste." And that "Indians top pizza with pickled ginger, minced mutton, and paneer."
"Mutton" makes me laugh.

Moreover, "the 'Double Dutch' is a favorite in the Netherlands: double cheese, double onions, and double beef." !! I have some friends who are in love with the Netherlands and who might move there--maybe I will make them a Double Dutch pizza! Maybe when I visit them there I'll order "A Double Dutch, please! Hold the Double Beef!" but in netherland-speak it would be "unt duppel dootch, pluks! nuk duppel bouf!" Maybe from now on I'm going to say double everything.

Anyway, I vaguely followed the instructions for Pizza with Tomato Sauce and Mozzarella on page 191.

Except I added spinach and peppers.

I turned the dough into a circle, and so on--and covered it with a bit of olive oil (to keep the crust from getting soggy. ...this is probably a really helpful hint, courtesy the J.O.C.)...and then covered it with all the raw spinach I had in the refrigerator. and then sauce. and then cheese. and then I had some frozen multicolored peppers (which I love--I think it's brilliant to have these frozen)...and put those on the cheese. and then put a tiny bit of cheese on top of that, so that it would look more interesting than a solid blanket of peppers.
lalala.

Verdict: It was pretty good! And made me really happy!--Really made my night!

My pizza dough/crust was not like a pizza shop though--and it never is. ...It's still terrific--but it's a little thicker and more like good bread...not thin and crunchy--like, three-eighths of an inch thick really good dense bread underlying the pizza, instead of superthin, not-really bread, but really crust. I suspect that pizza places use a ton of oil--and that has something to do with the crust being the way it is after baking...because while I loved the crust I made, it didn't taste like a professional pizza crust except in the few spots where the dough had literally been sitting in a tiny puddle of olive oil. Make of that what you will.

Remember dinners when we were little?

A few weeks ago, I was tired of my nightly dinner being a combination of washed spinach and scallions and soup and crackers and cheese and salty salty lovely chips or whatever I tend to do nightly...a piecemeal dinner--which has its advantages...like it can be stretched out as long as a five course meal, which is sort of nice when it's a two-hour tv night and you want to have dinner while watching television. ...but which also has the disadvantage of not feeling really meal-like, even though it's plenty. I usually dont miss that. But a few weeks ago I felt like, man, I should make a real dinner.... I thought about when I was in school, and the dinners that we'd have, and how completle they were, how they all required preparation...which is kind of impressive (because my parents never made it look like their nights were consumed with meal-preparation) .

So, I tried thinking of a real dinner.... one that wouldn't require too much special equipment though, because I don't have much equipment...and one that doesn't require too many picky ingredients, because I didn't want to spend too much money. Basic childhood-fare...but acceptable for grownup-dinner.

What would a real dinner be? If I could have any dinner, what would it be?
Strangely, my mind landed on stuffed shells.
That seemed perfect! and real!
First I emailed my mom to ask her to email me the recipe she used...
She emailed back to say she didn't have one.
liar.
Thank goodness I remembered I had a cookbook sitting right here in my cabinet, with every recipe imaginable!


The recipe is actually two recipes!
page 339 Baked Manicotti or Jumbo Shells [note: I hate both of those names.][manicotti is a gross word.]["stuffed shells" isn't much better, but I've grown accustomed to it.]
points you to
page 337 Cheese Filling


Notes:

1. I made half of each recipe. and it was perfect. and still was enough for three dinners.
2. It seems at first like having to do two recipes for one dinner would be a pain--but it's not...It's remarkably seamless and smooth. ...You cook the shells, and mix the cheese filling, and put the filling in the shells and put the shells in the pan, and put pan in the oven. the end.
3. the cheese part is fun and fast to make! I hate thinking about ricotta cheese--but I don't mind it, if I'm not thinking about it. ...mixing it in with things makes it hard not to think about--but acutally, it's kind of fun to work with. Do not let a fear or contempt for Ricotta cheese put you off this meal.
4. the shells--you hardly have to cook them--this is fun too! The trick is that you want them cooked enough that they're a little bit bigger and quite a bit pliable.
5. stuffing shells was the most fun, and laying them all in the pan. like little babies. little babies that you're about to bake.
6. the most expensive/picky ingredient: parsley...only because you use about a pinch of it, and then it will wilt in your refrigerator. but it's worth it. because it makes it pretty. and a little less blood-bathy looking
7. I added two fistfuls of frozen spinach to the cheese filling--to supercharge it! (and again, to make it less bloody looking)...P+C, you will, understandably, want to skip this, because you hate green I think.
8. the book says to cover with foil. I didn't. Because I like the top brown and crunchy in parts.

Guess what! Stuffed shells are remarkably simple! I love them.

I've made this once more since then.

I highly recommend this for P+C!--this strikes me as a very P+C thing to make.

About Oats, p 353

I first used my Joy of Cooking soon after Christmas. At some point, in early January, I was making a batch of granola, and I didn't have my recipe cards with me. I knew what I'd put in, and roughly how long/what temperature, but it had been a while and I wanted to check my memory against some general guidelines.

So I went to page 353.
I skimmed over the basic Granola, Three-Grain Apple Cinnamon Granola, and Muesli recipes.
My head-recipe is closest to the basic granola... which stands to reason.

I didn't pre-toast the oats. That's silly when you're toasting it all in a bit.
I use butter, not vegetable oil, and none of the seeds and wheat germ that the recipe suggests.
I like my granola to have a good mix of oats, walnuts, almonds, and coconut-shreds--with honey and cinnamon. Also, the Joy of Cooking suggests the option of powdered millk--and this is the secret keystone of my granola, so I was glad to see a recipe that is smart enough to include it. When I was in the habit of making granola frequently, Terry and I found that without powdered milk, the granola was just like toasted, sweet-ish, cereal...but with the powdered milk mixed in, it becomes pleasantly clumpy with little granola bits. Plus, even though powdered milk seems a bit space-age 1950s and gross, there's something reassuring about knowing that you super-charged your cereal with milk!

I followed the 300°/ stirring frequently instruction.
The recipe says to go for about 45 minutes. I let it bake for about an hour, stirring every 10-15 minutes...and after aobut 45 minutes I lowered the temperature a bit to keep it from overbaking.

well done!

Backdating Regret

Man, I really wish I'd had this up and active before the first of April... so that I could have done a post about my success with Hasenpfeffer, page 525.

The 75th anniversary edition has minimized the wild game pages...at least my memory suspects this...because I have definite memories of sitting for long stretches of time at the kitchen table during parent-parties, looking at sketches of squirrel and wildthings, with ego-id delight.

After a brief nod to the array of North American small game still plentiful: "rabbit, squirrel, opossum, porcupine, raccoon, woodchuck, beaver, armadillo, muskrat," the book laments the vanishing of rural life, and the fading of recipe need in this department. Small Game recipes in this edition are limited to rabbit. ...I bet because that's the only small game that's still acceptable at a fancy party (and even then, it's the party of a mean host)...and really just to keep ithe book's name as the secret-most-creepiest-cookbook out there. The Joy of Cooking does take a moment to reassure that most small game can be cooked according to methods for chicken.

[really?...because these quills are posing a difficulty...]