Salted Yeast Rolls

These rolls are very easy to make and have many uses. After you make them the first time you will not want to buy pre-made dinner rolls again. This recipe makes a minimal mess and uses minimal cookware, but it does make use of a particular easy technique; that is, stretching the dough around from the top of the dough ball to the bottom. This is important to get a very smooth, shiny top to the rolls. If you don't do this, no big deal, the rolls will taste the same.

In a large resealable bag (e.g., Ziploc) put 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 package rapid rise yeast, 1 Tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp salt. Put 2 Tbsp butting in 1 cup hot tap water and stir until melted. Add to the bag, seal it up, and squeeze the bag with your hands until everything is mixed together. Add another 1 1/2 cups flour to the bag. Seal and repeat the squeezing until well mixed. If the dough sticks to the bag, add a little more flour and knead again until it falls away from the sides. Open the bag and let it sit for 20 minutes in a warm place to rise.

Punch the dough down and remove it from the bag. Place on a floured board and cut the dough into equal sized pieces, 8 or 12 depending on how large a roll you want. Shape each piece into a ball, hold it with both hands, and then using your thumbs, stretch the top of the dough around to the sides in both directions. Turn the ball 1/4 turn and repeat so that the top of the dough is stretched all the way around. Place the ball on a baking sheet on parchment, so that the bottoms are down and the newly stretched tops are up. Paint each top with a little beaten egg or egg white and sprinkle with your highest quality salt. Allow the dough balls to sit in a warm place for about a half hour or longer, until they have noticeably increased in size.

Bake on the parchment at 375 F for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are nicely browned.

Potato Salad

This is a classic summer salad, perfect for cookouts. It has complex flavors and a great mixture of textures as well. It can be eaten warm, as soon as it is prepared, or allowed to chill.

1 lb small potatoes, such as new potatoes or fingerlings, red or gold, skin on
3-4 eggs, hard boiled, shelled, medum dice
3 stalks celery, medium chopped
1/2 cucumber,small dice
1/2 bell pepper or several small sweet peppers, small dice
4 rashers of thick cut bacon, cooked until crispy, drained
1/2 large sweet onion, small dice
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tsp celery seed
2 Tbsp whole grain mustard
salt and pepper
paprika

Boil potatoes, with skin on, in salted water until done. Remove from water, quarter them and place in a large bowl. Add all other ingredients. Add salt and pepper as needed. Sprinkle paprika on top if you wish. Mix well and serve warm or chill.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Making biscuits from scratch is much easier than most cooks realize. This recipe has been in my family for generations and is modified here to update it; for instance, the original used vegetable shortening but I prefer butter. Also, I rarely buy buttermilk because I don't have much use for it, so I usually use whole milk curdled with a little vinegar.

1 cup buttermilk OR 1 Tbsp vinegar, brought up to one cup with milk, allowed to sit for 5 minutes
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter

Mix together the four dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add butter and cut into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter or other utensil. Add liquid and mix well until a dough forms. Turn out onto a floured board and knead 10-15 times, then flatten the dough to about 1/2 inch thick using a rolling pin. Cut into round biscuits using an inverted wine glass or a ring mold. Place each biscuit onto a greased cookie sheet and brush each top with a little milk. Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes or until tops are a bit browned.
The Southern thing to do is to eat these with butter and honey. My grandfather used to mix the two together to make a delicious butter-honey paste and put that on his biscuits. I usually make these for breakfast, but I remember having them often with honey as a dessert when I was little.

Huevos Rancheros

This is a simple breakfast that can be put together very quickly if the ranchero sauce is made in advance. The sauce itself is also called "salsa roja" or "red sauce" in New Mexico. It is versatile and is excellent for making red enchiladas. The sauce is so good that I often find myself eating toasted, rolled-up flour tortillas dipped in this sauce alone. The key here is to build a flavor base with the roasted spices. The choice of spices can be left up to what you can get locally; in the Northeastern US we can't get some of the spices that are more common in the Southwest, like epazote and Mexican oregano.

Sauce

~6 New Mexico dried chile pods, stems removed
1 Tbsp coriander seed
1 Tbsp cumin seed
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp black peppercorn
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp salt

Place chile pods in a bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover. Let sit, submerged, for 30 minutes. At the same time, roast the coriander in a dry pan over high heat until it browns slightly and begins to smoke. Transfer to a spice grinder. Add cumin to pan and roast until it also browns and beings to smoke. Transfer to grinder. Repeat with oregano. Repeat with peppercorns. Add a cinnamon stick to the grinder (or use ground cinnamon) and salt. Grind well. Dice up a large onion and saute in a large skillet with a little oil. Add ground spices and saute until onion is soft. Transfer to food processor or blender. Add the chile pods without liquid and puree. Slowly add liquid and puree well. Transfer to a saucepan. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer. Simmer the sauce, uncovered, for about an hour or until sauce has thickened somewhat. Keep warm or transfer to container and preserve in refrigerator or freezer.

Huevos Rancheros

Corn tortillas, small
Fresh eggs
1 Tbsp vinegar
Grated cheese (or crumbled Mexican cheese)
Diced avocado

Toast corn tortillas directly on the burner on each side until browned slightly. Bring a skillet of water to simmer and add vinegar. Poach eggs for three minutes each in the water. Remove with slotted spoon, drain for a few seconds, and place two eggs on top of two tortillas. Top with sauce, cheese, and avocado.

Waffles

We are lucky to have a couple of old-style waffle makers from Norway ("Jøtul Nr. 6"), the kind that go directly on the burners and flip over with the aid of a ball joint. This recipe is very easy and requires so special ingredients. It's important to make a test waffle at the beginning if you are new to it, because getting the right temperature and amount of batter takes some experience. Also, pre-heat an oven on low to keep waffles warm while you make more, and serve with real maple syrup.

1 cup flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
4 Tbsp (half stick) melted unsalted (sweet) butter

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix milk and eggs together separately and add the wet to the dry. Whisk everything together well but only enough to moisten the dry mixture--this will still be a bit lumpy. Whisk in the melted butter until everything is combined.
Heat the waffle iron and apply a thin coating of oil or cooking spray to the surface. Add about 1/2 cup of batter to the center of the iron and spread it out slightly. Too much batter and you will make a mess; too little and you will not get good edges on your waffles. Close the iron and cook on both sides until deep golden brown. Remove waffle and place in oven to keep warm while more are made.

Sauerbraten (Pressure Cooker)

Sauerbraten is a classic German pot roast dish, originally made with horse (!) but now usually with a low cut of beef such as chuck. Normally this is a roast that must braise in a Dutch oven for several hours, but in this case I used a pressure cooker, a programmable pressure cooker that was an unexpected present from my brother in law. This is a fabulous one-pot meal that can be made very quickly and has deeply infused flavors from the pressure cooking. The choice of stock is up to you; any flavorful stock will do. The meat has a perfectly wonderful sour-tangy character from the vinegar and the pickling spices, balanced out with the brown sugar.

3-4 lbs chuck roast
1 large onion, med dice
4 stalks celery, med dice
4 carrots, med dice
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup red wine (such as Zinfandel)
1/2 cup beef or other flavorful stock
2 bay leaves
1 Tbsp juniper berries
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 Tbsp pickling spice
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar
handful of pitted prunes or large raisins
1 lb white fingerling potatoes
Butter and flour to finish sauce
fresh parsley leaves, chopped

Use the "saute" setting on the pressure cooker and brown the roast on all sides in a little oil. Remove and set aside. Add the onion, carrot, and celery mirepoix and saute until it softens. Add garlic and stir well. Add liquids and spices and sugar and salt. Add meat back into the pot, sprinkle prunes on top and add the fingerling potatoes. Cook at 15 lbs pressure for one hour. Remove meat and set aside. Remove potatoes and set aside. Strain liquid and set solids aside. Add liquid back to pot and add butter and flour in small quantities, whisking between each addition. whisk until sauce begins to thicken. Slice sauerbraten and arrange on serving platter. Surround with potatoes. Cover with the mirepoix-prune mixture. Sprinkle fresh parsley on top. Serve with a pot of the thickened sauce.

Yogurt!

If you like eating yogurt, you should certainly try making your own. You can make delicious and varied styles of yogurt for the cost of milk, and it can be used in many meals and recipes, either as a stand-alone (as for breakfast or dessert) or as a beautiful replacement for sour cream on tacos or in scones, for instance. Yogurt-making is rewarding and  not very difficult, but you need one thing that many people don't have readily available: the ability to incubate something at body temperature (99 F or 37 C) for 16 hours or so. I happen to have an oven with a pilot light in it, and it happens to stay very close to 99 F when it is turned off and I'm not using the range. Even if you have an electric oven or an electric ignition gas oven, you may be able to make it work. Some ovens have a "proof" setting but this is variable; it is generally around 100 F but can be 85-115 depending on the model. Too cold, and your yogurt culture won't thrive; too hot, and it will die. If your oven has a light, you can keep the light on and this will provide a very gentle heating. Test your oven by placing a glass of water in the oven in a particular location and let it sit overnight. Test the temperature the next morning. If it is more than 5 degrees off of 99, try something different. Place the glass closer to the light, or further away, or move the rack up or down. Once you find the perfect conditions in your oven, congratulations! You're ready.
This recipe calls for one quart of milk. You can not double the recipe unless you extend the incubation time or you have access to an automatic stirrer. This is biology at work! Yogurt develops as the culture thrives, the Lactobacillus sp. bacteria (yes they are bacteria), and the sixteen hours of incubation here is for one quart of milk. Doubling the milk will not necessarily double the incubation time, but if the culture is not continuously stirred the bacteria will not have enough time to convert all the milk to yogurt, and you will waste milk. You can tell if milk was wasted by looking at the "whey" in the bottom of the straining container. If it is relatively clear, you have strained out water and have not lost much milk protein. If it is milky, well, that's milk. By the way, you can use any milk for this, whether cow's, sheep's, or goat's, but I use cow's milk (as fresh as I can find, organic if possible) as it is the easiest to find and the least expensive. Also, this recipe calls for a 16 hour incubation and 12 hour straining time. I find that it's most convenient for me to start the whole process around 2 pm, incubating by 3 pm, straining by 7 am the next day, and finishing by 7 pm. The 12 hour straining produces yogurt that is very thick, like ice cream though it is not frozen. One of my favorite preparations is simply to drizzle a little honey on top. For something special, this can be combined with some fresh berries and freshly toasted seeds (such as sunflower, poppy, and sesame) on top. On to the recipe:

1 quart (1 L) milk
2 Tbsp yogurt culture (you can use any yogurt that you like and which contains live culture; after one batch of yogurt you can keep yours going forever. I like the culture in the Greek yogurt Fage)
Cheese cloth; at least one yard (1 m), double-thickness

Mix 2 Tbsp milk with your yogurt culture. Set aside. Place remaining milk in a saucepan and bring to boil, stirring occasionally in order to prevent burning. Once milk boils, remove from heat and allow to cool down until it reaches a temperature of 99 F (37 C). Monitor the milk temperature carefully, this is science. When the milk is at the correct temperature, make a hole in the skin that has formed on top and pour in your yogurt-milk mixture. Place the pan in the oven-incubator so that it stays at 99 F for 16 hours.
After the incubation, the milk should have a pleasant aroma, not like spoiled milk. Place a large strainer or pasta colander over a medium pot. Lay on cheesecloth until you have three layers and the colander is covered. Carefully pour in the warm milk mixture, scraping the saucepan clean. Place the colander and pot in a refrigerator; refrigerate for 12 hours for thick yogurt that is the consistency of ice cream. Strain for fewer hours for thinner yogurt.