Omorka's Lair

I mentioned back in the spring that the marmalade thing had spread into trying out other forms of jam. This, um, this developed into a hobby for a while. And like all my hobbies, I got a little obsessive about it until I felt like I had it down. I currently have something like 80 jars of jam and/or marmalade in various flavors sitting on my dining room table, plus one jar of each flavor safely stored in the pantry. No regrets - I learned a lot making all that jam, all but one batch came out significantly better than store-bought, and I ended up with a number of flavors you can't buy in stores (I am particularly proud of the strawberry-fig and the peach-pecan-amaretto jams). But that's a lot of jam to either store or give away.

On the bright side, plain Greek yogurt with jam is a mighty tasty breakfast. So there's that.

This satsuma marmalade recipe works quite well. In fact, it works when tripled, although the time it takes to reach 220 degrees in my gigantic stockpot was closer to two and a quarter hours than 30-45 minutes.

In other news, I now have two jars of marmalade, and the dear friends who rented a house with a satsuma tree in the backyard now have twelve. They did not learn how to make and can marmalade, however, because they (a) weren't here last night for the part that involved two hours of chopping tangerines and lemons, picking out a billion seeds, and shredding tangerine and lemon peels; and (b) managed to miss the three hours of stirring a boiling stockpot of dismembered satsumas and lemons with sugar because their car broke down. Given that part of the purpose of this exercise was to teach J. how to make marmalade, this was not entirely a success.

Oh, and since they weren't here when I was jarring and then boiling-water processing the jars, I had to buy a flat of jam jars from Bullseye, and they now have an extra flat. They have strongly hinted that they now expect me to teach them how to make fig preserves when their fig tree sets fruit. Oy.

At least I got my two jars and the leftover satsumas out of it. I am vaguely contemplating making a second (much smaller) batch with the leftover satsumas and steeping some cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla bean in it during the soaking process. If I do, though, it'll be a few days, as I now have to do everything else I'd planned to do today tomorrow.

So I just made some awesome soup. (Yeah, I know. I'm currently on Australia time.) It's based on a recipe from Desperation Dinners, which I mentioned a few posts back, but I un-did a couple of the "convenience" steps. They called it "Presto Pesto Chicken Soup," which I guess will still do for a name, although mine is a little less presto - it took me about 40 minutes from sticking the chicken breasts in the microwave to sitting down with a bowl.

2 T olive oil (I didn't actually measure, I just added enough to coat the bottom of the pot)
1 medium yellow onion, chopped (for between 3/4 cup and 1 cup)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, fresh or partially thawed
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups chicken broth (or 2 cans)
1 can diced tomatoes
1/4 t dried basil (or one big pinch)
a scant 1/4 t dried oregano (or one very slightly smaller pinch)
salt & freshly ground black pepper
Worchestershire sauce
1/2 c half-and-half or light cream
1/3 c pesto
Grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a 4-quart or 5-quart pot and start chopping the onion, adding it to the hot oil as you chop. You are going to fry this onion up real good; you want it starting to turn golden, but not burning, so stir it as it fries. While it's doing that, slice the chicken breasts into bite-size pieces, about the right size to sit one at a time in a soup spoon. Add the chicken to the pot and stir it around into the onions; let it cook while you mince the garlic. Once the chicken has just barely turned white all over, with no visible pink, add the garlic; your onions should be all golden, with maybe a little bit of browning.

Add the chicken broth and the tomatoes and turn the heat up to high. Season with salt (how much will depend on how salty your broth is), fresh-ground black pepper, the basil and oregano, and a few good shakes of the Worchestershire sauce (between 1 t and 1 T, depending on how much you like Worchestershire sauce). Stir well and bring to a boil, then drop the heat to medium-low and go do something else for about 10 minutes.

When you come back, turn the heat off and let the soup stop simmering. Pour the half-and-half into the pot in a thin stream, stirring the whole time. Add the pesto and stir to combine. At this point, the soup will be a horrible greenish-pink color and you will wonder whether you have made a terrible mistake, but ladle yourself a bowl and sprinkle a good pinch of Parmesan over the top, because you have not. If you have some crusty bread, you might want to toast a couple of slices back during that ten-minute simmer. Enjoy; this'll serve two people by itself or four with bread and salad.

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Depends on the holiday we're talking about.

My traditional Yule meal, which I have not done yet and which I am hoping to make tomorrow, is roast pork and colcannon, both of which I adore - except that I don't add the onions to the colcannon, due to the effects insufficiently cooked onions have on my trick stomach.

I totally spaced on doing latkes for Hanukkah because I was in Grading Hell, for which I should probably apologize to the Spouse.

My family's Christmas tradition is roast beef, rather than ham or turkey, although occasionally there would be turkey from one end of the family and roast beef from the other. I will probably get a turkey breast to roast - we're not having enough people over on Christmas Day itself to justify a whole bird.

None of this is particularly out of the ordinary - all decent enough food, but nothing to shout about. The stuff I like about the winter holidays as a whole are the desserts, mostly the cookies. My mother's traditional ones were Danish wedding cookies, which I love, and cherry winks, which I like - but the recipe makes enough for a little league stadium's worth, and they go stale quickly, so I'm probably not making them this year. Our coven made a batch of a specific type of icebox sugar cookie for a ritual over ten years ago, and I've added them to my traditional repertoire for the season. I've been doing Mexican wedding cookies, which are more or less the Danish wedding cookies with chocolate, but again, those go stale awfully quickly - I might make a smaller batch this year. Mom added date nut balls late in my childhood, and I like them, but they're more like candy than cookies, they're an awful lot of work, and no one eats them other than me, so I'll probably skip them this year.

But my very favorite holiday cookie, I learned from my paternal grandmother, despite the fact that they're Scandinavian and she's as Irish as the year is old. I need to get my rosette iron out.

Side note: almost all of the listed cookies, with the exception of the cherry winks, use powdered sugar - so this is just about the only time of the year I buy it . . .

Your cheesecake recipe cracks if you drop it. When you take it out of the oven, set it down as gently as possible. This is not to say it won't crack if you don't drop it, just that it will definitely crack if you do.

It was only an inch drop. I thought it was going to be okay. Ah, well, it still tasted fine.

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Did City of Ember for Movie Night. Tim Robbins managed not to chew scenery. It was a cute adventure-fairy-tale sort of thing, although, like quantumduck, I was confused as to why the visual design of the film, especially but not limited to the clothing, kept suggesting that they were about six inches tall.

Free to good home:

One small Toastmaster toaster, suitable for storebought breads, small bagels, and freezer waffles. Slots are not large enough for bread-machine breads or artisan loaves. Has some surface scratches, but works just fine. claimed by northwall

One wooden knife block, sans knives but with a sharpening steel. Has slots for two small, one medium, and two large knives, plus a space for a pair of kitchen shears. claimed by binaryathena

One Toastmaster electric Belgian waffler; produces one large square waffle that can easily be divided into four small square waffles. Exterior shows some signs of wear; inside waffling surface is nonstick with minor cooking stains but no scratches. Works well. claimed by lasarina

One Breadman bread machine. The nonstick surface on the baking pan has scuffs and scratches that make removing the loaf somewhat difficult. The baking functions are still working fine, and the nonstick issues are irrelevant if you're using it to mix and knead before shaping and baking the loaf yourself. Makes 1.5 lb or 2 lb loaves. Some surface scratches/dents/stains, and the window you look through to measure the progress of the loaf is no longer transparent. claimed by lord_of_entropy

In all cases, these were replaced with a nicer/larger/more recent model, not discarded because they weren't useful. Being a sentimental softy, I don't want to throw these away, so right now they're just taking up space in my kitchen that would be better used by other kitchen gadgets. If you want 'em, let me know and you can come pick 'em up.

Yeah, with the rain and all, I decided to make something hearty for lunch. Peg Bracken has a lamb-and-lentil stew that she called "Liberal Pottage," the idea being "diverse elements all stewing together." I'm not fond of wet-cooking lamb, so I fussed with it until it was unrecognizable and in fact resembles my recipe for Hoppin' John more than the original. It's still a lentil stew, though.

( Radical Pottage )

So my new stand mixer finally came in. (I decided to splurge a bit out of my TAKS bonus; I was straining the motor on the old one a bit too often.) I wanted the "bayleaf" color, which I really would have called spruce, but they were out of stick, and I had to settle for boysenberry instead. I'll live. :-)

I also ordered a clearanced set of baking pans - another nonstick pie pan, 9x9 and 9x13 brownie pans, a muffin pan (since I seem to be doing them again), a cookie sheet (which I don't really need), and a loaf pan (ditto).

Any suggestions what I should break these in on?

Attempted to make waffles tonight. The recipe I used tasted fine, but the texture was off and the first one stuck to the waffle iron - I had to pry it off with a fork.

I think I will have to advance to the recipes that require the egg whites to be beaten seperately. I might try one of those this Thursday before Movie Night if I feel up to cooking, since I'm doing cookies for the dessert and they'll need to be made the day before and the dough refrigerated, if I'm using the recipe I think I am. (On the other hand, I may need protein on Thursday, depending on how the week goes.)