Not Inadequate

The Original No-Knead Bread Recipe is from Mark Bittman and published in The New York Times, who got it from Jim Lahey at The Sullivan Street Bakery. It has spread like wildfire among food bloggers over the past few years and now has as many variations as it has bakers. I found a starting place at Simply So Good and have been chasing this idea all over the internets since then. Hopefully I am not stepping on any toes by sharing my own iterations here. Which I will be doing. Because I am a bread-baking FIEND.

Basic Bread Recipe - a Not Inadequate Adaptation
1 1/2 cups AP White Flour
1 1/2 cups Freshly Ground Whole Wheat or Wheat Montana Bronze Chief Flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups cool water with 1 Tablespoon honey stirred in

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl (I use a 3 quart bowl and it’s perfect), and add the honey/water. Stir together until you have a very sticky and fairly unattractive dough that doesn’t resemble bread dough in any way. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside for 12-18 hours. I also like to cover the bowl with a kitchen towel, to keep it nice and warm.

See? Not that attractive.

When you are ready to bake, put your heavy, lidded, enameled cast-iron pot in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. While your pot is heating, turn your dough out onto a heavily floured counter or cotton dough towel or piece of parchment. Fold the dough a few times and shape it into a ball. Re-cover with the plastic wrap and let it sit until your pot is hot.

After your pot is nice and hot (they say 30 minutes, but Impatient Deb never waits that long), plop your dough into the hot pot (be careful. a 450 degree pot is no joke), put the lid back on, and bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the lid and continue cooking for another 15 minutes. Remove the gorgeous loaf from your pot with a spatula and cool on a cooling rack (or a scrunched up piece of tin foil if you’re fancy like we are here at Chez Not Inadequate). There is no need to grease your pot or anything, just plop it right in. It won’t stick. Promise.

Notes: Other recipes call for all white flour, but y’all know that’s not how I roll. They also call for 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of yeast. I use 1 teaspoon because I think it benefits the wheat flour. Plus I like the flavor of yeast. Is that weird? I also use 1/4 cup more water than is usually called for, but I don’t know if I need it because of the altitude here or because of the wheat flour. Actually, it’s probably because the climate here is so very dry. Whichever, start at 1 1/2 cups, then you can eyeball your dough and decide if you need to add extra water. I’ve never seen a recipe that calls for honey, but I like my bread to have a slight sweet taste, so that’s what that’s about. Increase or decrease the salt as you see fit.

The first batch I made sat for 24 hours before I was able to bake it. The next two batches sat for 18 hours. The fourth batch sat for 12 hours. All batches were delicious. This bread is very forgiving. I’ve read that it is possible for your dough to sit too long and “over-proof” but I have yet to experience it.

You will get a lovely, thick-crusted, chewy artisanal loaf that would sell for $5 in a bakery. Perfect for dipping into soup.

I love soup.

or

Adventures in Spinach

or

In Which I am a Glutton for Punishment

or

In Which I Wasted Four Dollars.

So yeah.

That happened.

OR!

(Spoiler Alert!)

In Which I Wasted $2.29.

So I keep reading all about Kale Chips. Frankly, they sound vile. I envision it’s similar to what a dried lawn clipping would taste like.

I don’t even like mixed green salads because it tastes like something that came out of a lawnmower.

That’s right. I’m an iceberg girl. Sophisticated!

The last time I thought about kale, I was a waitress, putting it on plates as a garnish. So what do I know? Kale is healthy. It’s a superfood. And after reading Zakary carry on about her “kale-ritos,” I figured it behooved me to at least try it.

See that? Behooved. I’m fancy, y’all.

ANYway.

I bought some organic (organic!) kale at the grocery store yesterday, and set about washing and drying and tearing it all up.

The whole time I was rolling my eyes at myself, because it was a lot of work for something that would most likely go to waste.

When I was getting it ready to go in the oven, Big  looked at the future kale chips doubtfully and said, “What kind of plant IS that anyway? It looks like a weed.”

I couldn’t really argue.

I sprinkled them with olive oil, salt, and taco seasoning, and cooked them at 350 for about 10 minutes, until they got sort of crispy.

The kids said they liked them, but I noticed that Big just ate the crunchy edges off and discarded the rest. Little kept saying, “this is my favorite part of dinner!” and “I LOVE KALE!” but only put them near her mouth and then back on the cookie sheet.

She did that with EVERY piece.

Mmmmm….. pre-moistened kale….

Jim had one or two and then apparently decided his time would be better served encouraging the kids.

I might try it with spinach. The kale was just so very fibrous.

Fibrous. That’s what it was. But at least it was unpleasant.

Here on the Oregon coast, it’s windy and rainy. This kind of weather puts me in the mood for soup, stew, and hot noodle-y casseroles.

You know, comfort food.

Today it’s beef stew.

Step One: Get kids settled with a mountain of Legos.

Step Two: Crank up iPod.

Realize for the eleventy-hundredth time that you really should download the clean versions of Holla Back Girl and Hey Mama.

Step Three: Assemble the ingredients.

Onion, Butter, Flour, Tomato Paste, Beef Stock, Stew Meat, and half a bottle of Shiraz leftover from the last time I made beef stew.

Step Four: Chop an onion -

if you have an Onion Paranoid Husband whose mother scarred him by putting giant chunks of onion in everything she ever made and he developed an annoying onion-related gag reflex that has been vexing you for the last 18 years, then do your usual mental eye-roll at your mother-in-law, get out that choppy thing and chop the crap out of the onions. Actually, if I was in my old kitchen, I would have put them through the Magic Bullet. Mmmm….onion puree.

- and saute them in a half a stick of butter in your knockoff Le Creuset dutch oven that you got at Sam’s Club for $40, but which makes you feel fancy nonetheless.

While the onions are sauteing, mix a couple or three tablespoons of flour, the tomato paste, and the wine in a bowl.

Admire your daughter’s Alien Disco.

Admire Squidman especially.

Take a picture of your silly family being Squid People:

(yes, that’s a crib sheet doing duty as a tablecloth. It’s effective and classy. I am, in fact, known far and wide for my fine linens)

Step Five: When the onions are soft, or when you are sick of waiting around for onions to soften, add the meat (about 2 pounds) to the pot, season liberally with salt and pepper, and pour in the wine/flour/tomato paste mixture.

I realize that you could go a lot of different ways with this. For one thing, you could brown the meat before you cook your onions, and if I had felt like hassling with it, I might have done that. But I didn’t. Also, you could put lots of other veggies in it – carrots, celery, potatoes, parsnips, turnips, etc. I might have done that on a different day, but today I am craving meat, so I didn’t. You can do whatever floats your boat, people. Cooking is an art, so there’s no need to get all imprisoned by things like recipes.

Down with the tyranny of exact measurements!

Add beef stock, a little water, and toss in a bay leaf. I used one of those 20-ounce boxes of beef stock and a cup or so of water, reserving the other box of stock to use if the broth gets too thick.

Step Six: Cover and cook in a 350 degree oven for 3 or 4 or 5 hours, or until the meat is falling apart tender. Uncover for the last hour or two so the broth can thicken.

Serve over buttered egg noodles or mashed potatoes.

The color in that picture looks off. Huh. Oh well. It’s yummy, that’s the main thing.

Happy cooking!

Leftovers freeze well, if you are so inclined.

This post is linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tuesdays at the Table, Real Food Wednesdays, What’s Cooking Wednesday, Foodie Fridays, Food on Fridays, and anywhere else I can think of. 

I usually make a large batch of Beer Batter Pizza Dough with my Bosch every few months or so, but there are occasionally times when I don’t have a stockpile of dough in the freezer, nor the inclination to make any. When that happens, I use this as my go to Quick Pizza Dough recipe.

Quick Pizza Dough
1 (1/4 ounce) packet yeast (1 packet = 2 1/4 teaspoons)
1 cup warm water
1 Tablespoon honey
1 Tablespoon oil
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
Vermont Cheese Powder (optional, but AMAZING)

First off, let’s talk about the yeast. I don’t buy my yeast by the envelope, and every time I made something that called for 1 packet, I had to go online and find a conversion (which I have graciously provided for you here. you’re welcome). It was annoying. One day while I was on the King Arthur Flour site, I broke down and bought this awesome little spoon, which measures out the equivalent of 1 packet. I heart the little spoon, it makes me happy every time I use it. As for the honey, a lot of recipes I’ve seen don’t call for any kind of sugar, but I like to give the yeast something to eat.

Next, the flour. I usually use freshly ground whole wheat flour for baking, but for pizza dough, I like to use half AP flour. I think it makes the crust crispier.

Mix the warm water and the honey together in a bowl and stir in the yeast. You can let that sit and bloom, but I am usually too impatient and if I see one or two bubbles that’s good enough. Add the oil, then the flour and salt, and stir until it forms a ball. You can take it out and knead it for a couple of minutes if you want, but I usually sort of knead it a few times against the bottom of the bowl until it looks purty. Cover with plastic wrap and set it aside for 15 minutes – or if you are like Impatient Deb, until you have all your toppings chopped.

This recipe makes two decent sized (medium-ish?) pizzas, depending on how thick you like your crust; and you can cook it on a baking stone, pizza pan, or whatever strikes your fancy. I cut the dough in half and press it into two quarter sheet pans (about 9 1/2″ x 13″).

After pressing the dough into the pans, I pour a little olive oil into my hand and pat it on the dough, then sprinkle Vermont Cheese Powder over it.

I spend a lot of time on the King Arthur Flour website. Don’t judge.

You can leave it off, or substitute regular old Parmesan-in-the-Green-Can. Par-bake (no toppings yet) for about 9 minutes at 400°.

Remove from the oven and top as desired. 

Bake for another 10-12 minutes until done.

Viola! You will be sitting down to delicious, homemade pizza in a little over a half-hour.

Which is perfect for me, because I never remember about dinner until about 5:30pm.

Happy Cooking!

Click here for a printable version of my Quick Pizza Dough.

I saw this over at Homeschool and Etc and just HAD to post it here. Try to avoid eating while watching.
 

See more here, and here. 

Oh yeah – and you can buy it on Amazon.

I have been trying to make decent green chile since I’ve been married. Green chile seems to be a food of the Southwest – when we lived in Seattle, no one had ever heard of it. We went out for Mexican food and were shocked that the waiter didn’t ask “Red or Green?”

Green Chile is delicious. And if you live in the Southwest, you should know how to make it. Even if you don’t live here, but love Mexican food, you should try it.

A few weekends ago, we were watching Mad Hungry, and she had a guest on that cooked an AMAZING looking pork shoulder braised in green chile. When I saw that pork shoulder was on sale that week, I decided to make it.

I was a little skeptical, since the green chile did not contain any, you know, green chiles, but it looked so good, I wanted to give it a try. Completely out of character for me, I followed the recipe exactly.

Mad Hungry’s Green Chile and Tomatillo Pork Stew

• 6 tomatillos, husked and quartered
• 3 jalapenos, split lengthwise, seeds and ribs removed
• 2 cups chicken stock, plus more if needed
• 3 tablespoons grape seed oil
• 1 pork shoulder, 3-5 lbs
• 3 medium white onions peeled and quartered
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 3 tablespoons cumin
• 1 tablespoon salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Combine tomatillos, jalapenos, and 1/4 cup of chicken stock in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook until the tomatillo begins to break down and get soft. Remove from heat. 

Heat a large, oven-safe Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add grape seed oil. Add pork to hot pan and brown well on all sides. Remove pork from pan and pour off most of the oil and fat. Reserve some fat in pan. 

Add tomatillo, jalapeno, onion, and garlic to food processor and puree until smooth. Lower heat under Dutch oven to medium heat and add puree to the reserved fat in pan. Add cumin and salt, and heat through. 

Add the rest of chicken stock into pot with puree and stir to combine. 

Nestle pork back into the pot of puree and stock. The pork should be covered about 3/4 of the way. Add more stock if needed.

Cover and put in preheated oven for about 3-4 hours, until pork is tender and falling apart. Turn the pork at least once halfway through the cook time. Using two forks, shred the pork a bit and mix it through the sauce to get the flavor incorporated into all the pork. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.

It was DELICIOUS. I took the pork shoulder out and shredded it on a cutting board, then put it back in the sauce and back in the oven for another hour or so. Personally, I like my pork and green chile served over mashed potatoes (which is weird), so that’s what I did.

It was rated You Can Stop Searching For A Recipe, This Is THE ONE by my husband. It’s not too spicy – even for me, and I’m a sissy – but the flavor is amazing. Obviously, I packed up the leftovers and stuck them in the freezer.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Get ready for some muy deliciousness.

On Saturday, we took the kids out for some cheapskate entertainment: we went to Sams Club and ate free samples. They were giving out cake! Mmmm…cake. It was the best sample day so far. They also handed out some frozen, microwavable taquitos. Naturally, being an expensive and completely processed food, my kids loved them. After a little inspection, I declared we could make these at home.

Chicken and Black Bean Taquitos

• Corn Tortillas
• Monteray Jack Cheese, grated
• Black Beans, rinsed and drained
• Leftover Chicken, shredded

Firstly, arrange the tortillas on a baking sheet and sprinkle with the cheese.

Bake at 450° until cheese is barely melted and the tortillas have softened. If you have a super! picky! eater! who will not eat anything resembling a bean, take this time to smash the beans a little with a fork. Maybe sprinkle in some salt, onion powder, and a dash of hot sauce while you’re at it.

Remove the tortillas from the oven, and smear some beans down the middle (or slightly to the side of the middle, if you want to get fancy). Layer some shredded chicken over the beans, and roll up the tortillas. Be careful, they are hot. Also, they will tear if you roll them too tight. Also, don’t fill them too full, or they will explode everywhere and you will be very sad indeed.

Brush a little vegetable oil over the tortillas and return to the oven for 15 – 20 minutes.

Watch your family devour them. Act shocked when you don’t get any complaints, and return to the kitchen to make even more for the freezer.

Freezer directions: Do everything as above, except bake for only about 7-10 minutes. Cool thoroughly on a baking rack and chuck into freezer baggies. To serve, bake from frozen at 450° for 20-25 minutes. They will be just as crispy as if you made them fresh. Delicious for a quick lunch or when you have not thought about dinner and it’s 6pm.

Obviously, you could fill these with whatever you choose – just cheese, just beans and cheese, beef and cheese….. the possibilities are endless. Unless you’re a vegan. Then I don’t know what happens.

* Upon reflection, I probably would not use foil to line the baking sheet. It stuck to the cheese and tore when I was trying to get them up. I think picking the foil out of the cheese was a bigger hassle than washing the baking sheet.

Happy cooking!

This post is linked to Food on Fridays, Tasty Tuesdays, Tempt my Tummy Tuesdays, and Tuesdays at the Table, What’s Cooking Wednesday, and Real Food Wednesdays. What can I say – I’m a ‘ho.

A guest poster! After I talked a little trash about Extreme Couponers, Nicole left a comment saying, “…I coupon and feel that I do pretty well – I average 60-70% savings…”

Sixty to Seventy percent savings? I emailed her to elaborate. She says her grocery budget is $60 a week. Sixty dollars! For a family of four! How that is even possible, I do not know. I shop the sales and buy in bulk, but (being completely, painfully, honest here) we spend more on groceries and Walmart-y stuff than we spend on our mortgage.

I know.

I’m horrified too. I just don’t know what to do about it. But I want to do better if I can. I am a little skeptical that a food nazi like myself can really lower my food bill with couponing. I have observed that the people on Extreme Couponing buy a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t consider food. I don’t need 600 liters of off-brand orange soda, or 350 frozen pizzas, or 17 boxes of candy bars. Don’t get me wrong - before kids, we slammed down our fair share of Totinos and big-ass sodas from the corner store. But I am at a different place in my life now, a place where I want to feed my family Real Food. Minimally processed, organic if possible, mostly made from scratch, real food. Cooking 3 scratch meals for 4 people every day is a big enough pain in my butt, I can’t devote 30 hours a week to clipping coupons on top of it. Furthermore, the stores around here don’t allow coupon stacking, which seems to be an integral part of the Extreme Couponers plan.

But! Nicole was not daunted and says even with all those requirements, I can make coupons work for us. I asked her if she’d like to do a guest post on the subject, and she agreed.

Soon we’ll all be RICH! Richer than our wildest dreams!

Maybe not. But Amazon’s not getting enough of my money and I feel bad about it. If I can shave my grocery budget, I can recify that.

So here is a little introduction from Nicole:

I started couponing just over 5 years ago, when I changed jobs from early childhood to teaching elementary education.  I had made more money in the private sector and I needed a way to increase my family’s income without adding a second job. I learned by trial and error, and over the years I’ve gotten pretty good. I have a family of four, my soul mate of almost 10 years and our two sons, Bug (5) and Dash (8). My budget for the week is $60, but I like to keep it around $35/$40 to leave me room for eating out (which comes out of the same budget).

Over the next few weeks I’ll talk to you about how to understand the couponing mindset, choosing the best store, the power of coupons and how to shop smart.  I’ll share what works and what doesn’t, and try to help each of you find what works best for you.  I won’t teach you how to spend hours poring over inserts or websites to do this (although if you have that kind of time, kudos to you).  I spend no more than 1½-2 hours total a week on my couponing (not counting shopping), never more than a half hour at a time, and always while I’m doing something else. 

If you have any questions along the way, be sure to post them in the comments and I’ll try to get them all answered.  This weekend is an awesome weekend for couponing.  Depending on your region, you could get up to 6 inserts in your Sunday newspaper.  This many inserts is normally reserved for the beginning of the year and I can’t tell you how excited I am about it (wow, that’s kinda sad, really).  So I’d like each of you to go out and get a paper or two (actually, if you really want to do the couponing up right, you need to get one paper for each person in your family always in even numbers – I’ll explain why in the first post but if one is all you can do, then by all means do one.)  With my family of 4, I normally buy 4 or 6 newspapers (this week will be a 6 paper week) to get the coupons I’ll need to support my family.

Hopefully by now you’re as excited about this as I am about this.  Feel free to ask questions in the comments and I’ll get them all answered.  Our first post will be up early next week and will be on getting into the coupon mindset, I’ll also talk about how to plan ahead and organize your coupons.

Thank you, Nicole! I, for one, am very excited about this. Even if I only save 30% off what I spend now, that will still be hundreds of dollars a month.

Now to remember to get a paper on Sunday….

I think I have finally stumbled across something that my tiny picky eaters will eat.

Breakfast Parfait -

The granola is so easy to make, and my hubby can assemble the parfait whilst I remain in bed, clinging to every last possible bit of sleep.

I adapted it somewhat from The Hillbilly Housewife’s recipe for Skillet Granola.

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons oil
• 4 cups rolled oats
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup ground flax

Toast the oats in the oil in a large skillet.

Melt the other ingredients (except the flax) in a small saucepan.

Add the flax to the oats and continue to toast for a minute, or until you say, “Holy Crap, I think the flax is burning!” This happens very fast, so I say that every time I make it. It always turns out okay – the flax develops a really nutty flavor. It’s delicious in this.

Pour the toasted oats onto a sheet tray. Pour the butter/sugar/honey sauce over the oats.

Stir. Cool.

Freeze for later.

Make another batch.

Serve with Greek yogurt, fruit, and a drizzle of honey.

I bought a bunch of fresh strawberries and blueberries, then cut the strawberries up and macerated everything with a bit of honey. I froze the berries in several quart sized freezer bags so we could make breakfasts easily.

Then my children decide they didn’t like the stupid blueberries. 

Even though they do, in fact, love blueberries – just not these ones.

You know, the ones that cost twelve dollars.

Fun Fact: After I took the pretty picture at the top, I had to pick out all the blueberries before I served it to my kids.

Dadgum kids.

Give this a try – it’s easy, it’s delicious, and it’s real food.