kitchenmage

Cheddar Cheese and Onion Breadsticks Recipe

I am moving recipes over from A Year in Bread before it goes dark. First: Cheddar Cheese Onion Breadsticks Step away from the Olive Garden breadsticks and try them. You will never go back.

When I was a young'un, I moved from "Baja Oregon" to a very small coastal town in southwest Washington. A town where the locals joked, in some cases bragged, that, upon arriving, you should turn back your clock 20 years - to the '50s. (um, no) A town where, in the only 'ahead of their time' moment I witnessed there, they hated Calif…er, Baja Oregonians with a vengeance.

Well, mostly.

Some folks (read: young men, sadly, with an emphasis on the young in all its myriad dreadful meanings) were utterly fascinated by the strange creature in their midst and vacillated between semi-awe and hormonal stupidity with occasional forays into West WTF. The strange creature, being a child of the coolest artistic little beach towns in Baja Oregon, thought this was mildly amusing behavior...for about 15 minutes.

I arrived in late-spring and my first summer there was, to put it mildly, not my best year. Two things saved me that wet, foggy summer. The first was a job at the local pizzeria, where Gina, a wise-cracking New Jersey girl — everyone swore we were sisters — taught me to toss rounds of dough high in the air and, much harder, catch them again. She also let me play with the brick oven.

I loved Gina.

How-to: Add Pinterest Pin-It Button to Typepad Without Advanced Templates

 

Now the way I see things, there are two ways to be in the world: selfish or giving. All snark aside, I choose the latter. With Pinterest, for example, once I was enlightened about it I wanted to share the way of thePin. I wanted to share it here because then even more people could pin my biscuits. (Pin my biscuits! sounds a southern euphemism for...well...something else, doesn't it?)

I was surprised to learn that Typepad does not have a Pinterest widget. Yeah I know, right? That is just silly given the level of pinning going on right now. Being a geek, I put on my coding hat and figured out how to make a pin-it button for my web sites. being the generous sort I figured I'd share so you too can have Pin-it buttons now.

The instructions on this page work for all Typepad templates (and any other web page you want to throw the code into). If you have advanced templates, you can use these instructions for how to add the Pinterest Pin it Button with Pin Count to Individual Posts with Typepad Advanced Templates.

Going to the source, in this case, Pinterest's Goodies page, yielded some iffy scripts and a distinct lack of "simple" ways to get a freaking Pin it button onto each individual post. (Hard-coding each link and image is a joke, you guys. A freaking joke!)

You know what's not a joke? Look down there. (No not "down there"...jeebus people! The footer of this post.) That looks suspiciously like a Pin it button. Works a whole lot like one, too.

Have a Typepad blog and want one of your very own? It's a quick tweak if you are using Advanced Templates. If you don't code, though, you're pretty much screwed on this. Typepad even says so...

Hey, wait now...what about the post title? Where I promise you that you can have a Pin it button even without advanced templates?

Well, while I haven't yet figured out how to give you a Pin-it button in your post footer (like mine) without Advanced Templates, I can give you a Pin-it button in your Navigation Bar that works for individual posts. Would that work for you? Yeah, I thought so. I am really happy because any time a vendor shrugs their shoulders without getting creative, I wince. (@jaydeflix will be along any moment to tell me this isn't in the header/footer so technically Typepad said NOTHING about what I am doing. I would simply point out the lack of a Pin it button on Cook Local and move on with the installation instructions.) 

Join me on Facebook?

I may not make New Year's resolutions but my web sites do. This one is determined to get a Facebook page up and running this year. I made one for it but it is very lonely. Downright sad, in fact.

We can't have that—an idle Facebook page is the Devil's workshop or something—so I posted a question designed to inspire rowdy conversation, which will require you to like my page to discuss. Devious, huh?

Come on over and give me someone to talk to. Pretty please?

Join kitchenMage on Facebook.

A Christmas Miracle

...being the true story of a Christmas Miracle, for Megan and other foodies at the 'rents for the holidays, with apologies to everyone else...

Come on over and sit with me Megan. Let me tell you a story. Now this is a true story, though some folks doubt it. But I was there that Christmas Eve and it happened just like this...

Way back when your mama was just a wee thing, there was a great storm. You can find mention of it in the history books, things like this:

"On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1945, 20 hours of continuous snowfall blocked roads and required snowplow operators to work the holiday in southern Minnesota."

But they don't tell the true story. Not the whole story.

They don't tell you about The Thing that happened on a dark road, way out of town...

Picture it. A small town in southern Minnesota, Christmas Eve, 1945. It wasn't like now, where you can order everything under the sun with just a click of your mouse. No, in 1945 if you wanted something you had to go to a store, so near everyone in town was out that fateful day.

The war was finally over and the troops were starting to come home to their families. After the last few holidays which, as you can imagine, were not festive affairs, it seemed that the entire town was having a party...

Debunk of Day: Potato Fixes Too Salty Soup

Seems like some old wive's cook's tales just won't die. Like the one about adding a potato to overly salted soup to remove salt and make it palatable. It shows up more than once twice three times four times in the first twenty of Babble's current list of how to fix food failures leading me to think that maybe people aren't actually doing the things they are suggesting.

I mean on the surface, it seems like it should work: the potato sucks up a little water and dissolved salt...why wouldn't it selectively suck all the dissolved salt out of the liquid. (Oh wait, see that's absurd on the face of it...)

Rather than calling bullshit on a crowded twitter—because that just makes people unhappy—I set out to test the theory. I wasn't sure I had a tool better than simply tasting it to check the water but it turns out that my refractometer, which lets me measure the sugar content of fruit, also measures salinity. Who knew?

Not to ruin the suspense but no, potato in oversalted soup does not work.

FoodBUG: Thoughts on a Failed Recipe...

Isn't that a lovely loaf of sweet bread?

I was experimenting one night and swapped a single ingredient around in a quick bread recipe that I use regularly with great success. It wasn't even a big switch, damned near the equivalent of changing beer brands in beer bread, but it was apparently the exact wrong thing.

An overwhelming yeasty one-note 'aroma' gave way to a crumb that was somehow both gummy and dry and a profoundly bitter taste. There was no yeast and nearly a cup of sugar in one loaf, and the gummy/dry thing is just baffling. I literally took one bite and threw the rest away.

A blogger friend saw the photo and said, "You know, some people would just post the recipe...I mean it looks good." I got another note moments later saying "JUST KIDDING! Please don't tell anyone I said that." so I am not naming names.  glares at @redacted

This got me thinking about the less deliberate recipe failures that hit print and what heck is the bar for publishing recipes (and other things) anyway and what happens when the inevitable screwups happen. And they will...

A Thanksgiving Note to Parents

Thanksgiving preparation is in high gear across America this evening. Most of those people are also on twitter so my twitterstreams are full of people, many of whom are parents—mostly moms, but that's another rant—working to get the pies baked, clean house, cook some side dishes and do something with kale. (Seriously, every fourth tweet is "Sous-vided bacon-wrapped kale infused with baby, free-range...") I am getting hungry reading and knowing that there is turkey tomorrow isn't helping much at the moment.

But that's not why I am here. I want to talk to the parents...

I keep reading a variant of "Kids SUUUUCK! Can't get anything done. Crap! I'll wait until they go to bed."

What the hell, y'all?

You had children so they could participate in your family life, right? So let them.

When it comes to helping with party prep (and general household chores) I believe in No Child Left Behind, aka Being a Slavedriver. No wait, make that SLAVEDRIVER. It's a job title more parents should embrace from time to time. Your kids will thank you when they are all grown up and coping with the activities of daily living without undue vapors.

• Tweens and older are treated like almostAdults when it comes to work.They are fairly independent, getting some directions to get started but no hovering like I might with a smaller child.
• School-age kids are extremely helpful sous chefs. They can read recipes, gather and prep ingredients and do a lot of the actual cooking.Teach them to work with heat and blades safely and
• Kids love to stir things. If all your stirrables are simmering away, give the toddler a bowl with a fistful of rice and dried beans and ask them to stir that.
• Small kids can do a lot of stuff if you give them a nudge and a wee bit of direction. Get them to pick up toys and other clutter, collect dirty laundry, wash vegetables, shell beans, set the table, load/unload the dishwasher and a thousand other things.
• Taster. This one is a double hit because your child is busy and happily eating (mostly) healthy treats. Do it right and you don't have to make them dinner tonight. Triple win!
• If all else fails, give your monstrrr a stack of paper napkins and ask them to fold them in Thanksgiving shapes. Praise whatever they do.
• Babies are tougher but I decided their job is to be adorable and provide toes to be nibbled. If you have a better job for them, please share it in comments.

How are the kids in your house helping? Give other parents a hand by sharing your secrets in comments.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

 

Rosemary Fan Dinner Roll Recipe ~ v.Simpler

This is a slightly simpler, straight dough version of these Rosemary Fans. (Straight dough is mixed at one time, versus recipes using starters, etc.) If you have the time to do the original version, which requires an extra few hours for the starter to ripen. I encourage you to do so, the bread flavor is a bit richer, somehow more "grainy" in a good way. It's all those lovely enzymes and tasty bits...

Rosemary Fans

These rolls bloom in the oven into charming little fans, each with its own look. The bread dough is simple to make and shaping the rolls is quick, easy and (happily for small hands) not an exact science. You can substitute almost any other savory herb for rosemary, though fresh herbs really do work best for this.

Makes 12 large rolls

1 1/2 cups water (at body temperature)
1 tablespoon instant yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 cups flour (bread flour is better, but all-purpose will work)
1/8 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon rosemary fresh, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil (or melted butter)

1. Put the water, yeast, whole wheat flour, three cups of the bread flour and the olive oil in a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. (Use low speed on a stand mixer.) Sprinkle in the last cup of flour while mixing, stopping when the dough clears the bowl and stops absorbing flour. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 20 minutes.
2. Turn the dough out on a well-floured counter and sprinkle the salt on it. Knead the dough 5-10 minutes (stand mixer: 5-6 minutes on medium) until it is firm yet supple and smooth. (You may need to use a bit more flour on the counter.) Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour. (Use the rising amount, not time, to determine if dough is ready for next step.)
3. When the dough has doubled in size, turn it out on a lightly floured counter and flatten into a rectangle with your hands. Let the dough relax for a minute while you prepare a muffin tin by lightly coating each cup with olive oil.
4. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 12x18 rectangle. If the dough starts resisting and springing back, let it rest for a few minutes and then finish rolling. Brush the dough with olive oil or melted butter and sprinkle liberally with chopped rosemary.
5. Cut dough in half crosswise and lay one piece on top of the other. Cut that stack in half and stack the pieces to make one four-layer stack that's about 6x9 inches in size. Make three cuts crosswise and 4 lengthwise to give you 12 rolls about 1 ½ by 3 inches. It doesn't matters if the sides are uneven, it's what gives them their charm.
6. Place in oiled muffin tins, one stack per cup with a short edge facing up. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour. When the rolls have increased in size by about half that amount, turn on the oven to 425 to preheat.
7. Bake for 25 minutes, until golden brown. Cool in pans for 15 minutes and then gently turn them out onto a rack to finish cooling. Don't handle the rolls too roughly; they occasionally fall apart when warm.

Welcome, More magazine readers!

Welcome to kitchenMage!

I was chuffed when More asked me to contribute a recipe to their Best-loved Christmas Recipes article. The Rosemary Fan recipe they posted is a simpler version of these Rosemary Fans — which uses a starter and has step-by-step photos if you find them helpful.

If this is your first time at kitchenMage, let me show you a few things you might find interesting:

• My bio...since people insisted.
• the Venn diagram of kitchenMage.
• I wrote a cookbook.
• There was this day that PETA annoyed me: Dear PETA, women are animals too.

Here are a few other recipes you might enjoy:

• 8 Things You Can Do For Thanksgiving Dinner Right Now
• Simple, flaky biscuits (some of the most popular on the Interwebs)
• Pesto rolls
• How to cut an epi
• How-to Shape Christmas Tree Bread

I hang out on twitter. Follow me there and join the fun.

8 Things You Can Do For Thanksgiving Dinner Right Now

If you are like many Americans, you are probably buried in Thanksgiving recipes and wondering why you bother to look at new dishes since the family will boycott if you don't make every traditional bit of dinner. Personally, I am a child when it comes to sweet potatoes (with marshmallows please) but I have never understood that green bean thing. What is up with that?

This weekend is a good time to check on some critical, and often overlooked, things so you have a chance to fix any problems you find before Thursday. You should actually get the dishes out and do this exercise; of course you think it all fits, I want you to know. Make notes as you go so you don't find yourself trying to remember what you figured out.