Sweet and Sour Chicken

Today's recipe is an easy one that Judson made completely on his own a few days ago while I was making bread, but it's out of control delicious. We don't use a lot of marinades or sauces in this house, but I don't know why. Every time I take the extra step of marinating something, it becomes my new favourite meal until I forget about it again, but I think this chicken recipe is here to stay.

The marinade recipe, as listed here, makes a ton. Enough that you can marinate your chicken in half of it and save the other half to reduce and pour over the finished chicken. Also, you'll probably want to make enough chicken to have leftovers-- we had this for dinner one night and then topped a hot bowl of ramen with the chopped up leftovers and a runny egg the next day for lunch. I also suspect it would be delicious served along a side a great big veggie stir-fry, or served with a crispy egg on top of a heap of fried rice, which is probably what we'll do next time.

It's super flavourful, really easy, and pretty cheap since you probably already have at least some of the ingredients around. Also, the salt in the soy sauce acts like a brine for the chicken, so it's hands down the most tender chicken I've ever tasted. I recommend using chicken tenderloins if you can get them-- you'll want all that extra surface area to soak up the sauce!

This, however, is a short post because I have a giant Powerpoint presentation I have to go work on because I'm not allowing myself to cook anything until I finish it, and I really want a slice of cake. And also the internet has not been my friend today, so I'm taking a break for the day.

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. This is just too amazing to pass up. Make it for dinner tonight and you'll love it, but you'll probably be even more grateful when lunchtime tomorrow rolls around and you make a salad/ramen/something else awesome out of it.

The Recipe:

Sweet and Sour Chicken

The ingredients:

½ c soy sauce
½ c white wine vinegar
½ c honey
2 tbsp dry sherry or vermouth
1 c low-sodium chicken broth, or vegetable broth
½ c orange juice (or “juice from canned peaches”)
¼ tsp ground ginger
2 cloves minced garlic
4 chicken breasts or equivalent in tenderloins

THE DIRECTIONS:

Combine all ingredients except chicken in a mixing bowl.
Place chicken in a zippy bag and pour in half of the marinade, reserving other half for later.
Refrigerate and allow to marinate for at least 1 hour or up to all day.
When ready to cook, preheat oven to 375F/190C.
Roast chicken until cooked all the way through and juices run clear when pricked, approximately 15 minutes.
While chicken roasts, pour the remaining marinade into a pot and simmer until reduced to a thick, sauce-like consistency of about 1/3 its original volume. This will take approximately 10-15 minutes, but keep stirring it frequently throughout.
Plate the chicken and pour the reduction over it immediately before serving.

Crunchy, Fluffy Bread

St. Patrick's Day must have been a big deal for Eleanor. We've already discussed how incredibly superstitious she was, so I guess things like shamrocks and pot-o-gold-rainbows were probably something she had a great affinity for, at least judging by her jewelry collection. My mom and I still have much of Eleanor's jewelry (though not all of it-- she dripped with jewels, so I think a lot has been lost to the years), and every time I look at it I am in awe again of the amount of four leaf clovers and related lucky charms in her collection. Since I posted a bad luck recipe for Friday the 13th, I knew I needed a good luck recipe today to balance it out, or Eleanor would not be happy.

...But I tried and tried to find a St. Patrick's Day recipe in the box, I really did. Something Irish, or with corned beef in it. Maybe some cookies spiked with Jameson, or even something dyed green in honour of the holiday, but alas, I came up empty. I suspect this is because Eleanor's bestie, my Aunt Margie Green, was the most Irish person I've ever met (and I've been to Dublin). Don't believe me? Read that name again: Margaret Elizabeth Green? Yeah. I told you. Margie probably had Irish food on lock, so there was no reason for Eleanor to worry about it.

The RBP Kitchen recently acquired a scale (finally) and it has improved the quality of my life by 17% and the quality of my cooking by 43%.

Anyway, I finally settled on soda bread to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but I couldn't even find a recipe for that, so instead we're making a regular bread recipe that comes from my Aunt June, as Eleanor noted on the recipe card. If you're reading this Stateside, pretend it's a recipe for Irish Soda Bread that's just low on the soda. If you're reading this from here in the UK, you can ignore all of the above since St. Patrick's Day is practically non-existent here.

This recipe is amazing. It's easy enough (though not three-ingredient easy), and the results are spectacular. As written on the recipe card, it makes three loaves, but I knew we'd never be able to go through all that, so I cut the recipe in half and got one normal sandwich-sized loaf and one wee loaf perfect for toasting with butter and honey for breakfast. It does take a bit of time to make homemade bread-- this recipe has to rise twice (once in a cool place and once in a warm place), and then it cooks for an hour, so you definitely have to plan ahead. But the results are so worth it. Crunchy, toasty crust with a soft, fluffy but still moist and dense interior that practically begs to be doused in melted butter. So far we've had this as toast with breakfast, but we've also made pimento cheese sandwiches out of it, and it holds up well either way. The texture is just so much better than store bread, and if you've never made a real loaf of bread, I'd encourage you to give this one a chance. If I can handle it in my drafty Scottish kitchen, I bet you can, too.

Notes: As mentioned, I cut this recipe in half, but since there are three eggs in it, that required halving one of them. To halve an egg, crack it onto a kitchen scale, check the weight, scramble it lightly to make sure you remove an even amount of white and yolk, and then scoop out half of the weight. If you don't have a kitchen scale, I've eyeballed this and never had a huge problem with it. Alternately, you can make the whole recipe and share with friends. Trust me, no one who eats wheat has ever complained about a gift of homemade bread.

Also, the oven in our flat is a convection oven, so our bread cooked in half the time listed on the recipe card. I've listed both times below, but your best bet is to set a timer conservatively and keep a close eye on it. Loaves are done when they are a deep brown and sound hollow when tapped firmly.

The Verdict: 

4 spoons out of five. The texture and flavour of this bread is perfect, and it's fluffy enough that you can easily make sandwiches out of it. I'm only knocking off a spoon because it was definitely best the first two days, but that's not enough time to eat three loaves of bread.

The Recipe:

Crunchy, Fluffy Bread

The Ingredients:

1 ½ c milk
½ c shortening or Stork
¼ c sugar
2 tbsp salt
1 ½ c cool water
6 ¾ tsp yeast (3 pkgs)
3 eggs
9 cups flour

THE DIRECTIONS:

Scald the milk: bring it just to a simmer so small bubbles are forming and popping around the edge of the pot.
In a large bowl, mix together scalded milk, shortening or Stork, sugar, and salt.
Add the water to cool the mixture to lukewarm.
Stir in the yeast.
Mix in eggs.
Add flour, one cup at a time. Mixture will turn from runny liquid to stiff dough, just keep stirring until all floury bits are incorporated.
Place dough in a large greased bowl and cover with a towel.
Let rise in a cool place for 2 hours.
Grease three 9-inch or two 10-inch loaf pans.
Divide dough into thirds and shape into loaves.
Place in prepared pans and cover.
Let rise in a warm place (85F/29C) until double in bulk, approximately one hour.
Preheat oven to 375F/190C and bake loaves for 30 mins in a convection oven, or up to one hour in a standard oven.
Loaves are done when they are deep brown and make a hollow thumping sound when tapped.

Yields two or three sandwich-sized loaves, depending on the size of the pans.

"Beware the Ides of Cheesecake," or, Creamy Dreamy Cheesecake

In the second monthly installment of The Cheesecake Series, today we have a plain cheesecake dated Christmas 1978, with a note at the top that reads “hope you enjoy it!” It's written on sparkly Christmas stationery and signed “From Marge,” so I am assuming it came folded inside a holiday card. I love that idea-- long distance friends sending each other recipes when they can't visit each other in person. So old-school and cute.

Also, as an avid Golden Girls fan, I love that Eleanor and her friends were trading recipes for cheesecake long before the Golden Girls made cheesecake the dessert for women of a certain age to eat with their friends. (I especially love this because for a long time as a child I believed that the character of Dorothy Zbornak on the show was based on Eleanor, and that Sophia Petrillo was based on my Aunt Margie.)

I don't know how Eleanor felt about this particular cheesecake-- the recipe itself is in remarkably good condition, so it might not be one she made very often. I'm starting to feel like if you can find a cheesecake recipe that works for you, it's probably a better idea to stick with it than keep experimenting, but neither of the recipes I've tried so far have been particularly stellar, so I'm gonna keep trying. This cheesecake was definitely easier than the last-- no fancy ingredients (I'm looking at you, ricotta), and no weird steps like whipping egg whites into a meringue before folding them in gently. The crust, of course, was supposed to be made with graham crackers, but since I have no access to those and didn't want to make my own, I used digestive biscuits. This made the crust a little lighter in colour and a little thinner than I expected, but it was still delicious.

However. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but both times I've made cheesecakes from the box, they've risen like crazy while in the oven, then fallen, slumped, and browned on the top. This one was still good-- Judson took half of it to work and his colleagues gave it a resounding thumbs up, so I know it's not just me who thinks it was good. It's denser than the last one, but manages not to be overpoweringly heavy. It's incredibly creamy and has a really faint lemon flavour that's offsets all that creaminess really well. If I could find pie filling in this country, I'd serve it with cherries on top, but alas. Maybe next month.

The Verdict:

3 spoons out of five. It's good, it really is. But if yours looks like mine, you probably wouldn't want to serve it to the Queen of England when she drops by for afternoon tea. (Also note: pictured here I served it with Nutella, but if you're interested in authenticity, you'd better have it plain)

The recipe:

Creamy Dreamy Cheesecake

The Ingredients:

16 oz cottage cheese
16 oz cream cheese
16 oz sour cream
4 oz butter (1 stick, if you're stateside), plus extra for greasing the pan
4 eggs
1 ½ c sugar
3 tbsp flour
3 tbsp cornstarch
½ tsp lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 c graham cracker or digestive biscuit crumbs

THE DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 325F/162C.
Blend all ingredients except crumbs “until smooth like sour cream.”
(If yours is like mine, you might still see some tiny lumps from the cottage cheese, but as long as there are only a few, you're good.)
Heavily grease the bottom and sides of a springform pan, then sprinkle the crumbs in and shake to distribute evenly.
Pour the cheese mixture smoothly and quickly on top of the loose crumbs to avoid shifting the crumbs around too much.
Bake for one hour, then turn off oven and without opening the door, leave the cheesecake in for additional two hours.
Place cheesecake on counter (not refrigerator) to cool completely (this will take several hours), then refrigerate until serving, up to overnight if needed.