Here a Chick, There a Chick

Here a chick

There a chick

Everywhere a chick – chick!

Thirty of them just arrived by U.S. mail.   The postal clerk called us for the pickup.  When we arrived at the counter, onlookers at the post office gathered ‘round while we opened the carton to inspect our order.   

Wow, the baby chicks are NOISY!

Yep, our order of baby chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery came in just fine.  We’ll keep them in a brooder pen under a heat-lamp at 95 degrees, gradually lowering the temperature as they grow up and feather out.  

 

In a few weeks the little pullets will be thriving in an outdoor pen and getting into a pecking order with the older birds.  The young females won’t be laying any eggs until they are at least 6 months old, but after that they can lay up to one egg per hen per day.  Since our older flock of chickens (5-years-and-older) are tapering off in egg production, it’s time to refresh the flock!

We enjoy having a nice supply of these beauties for baking and we always like to find good egg recipes.

One family favorite recipe is an oven pancake called a “Dutch Baby”.  We started out making this breakfast specialty with 4 eggs in a small baking dish when it was just the two of us.  25 years later, our recipe has gradually expanded to a dozen eggs baked in a turkey-sized roasting pan! 

It’s an easy recipe too.  The egg, milk and flour batter mixes up quickly in a blender. It is poured with perfect timing into a sizzling hot buttered pan, and I can go get showered and dressed while it bakes to enormous golden brown and puffy perfection.  Basically it’s a gigantic popover and we love eating it dusted with freshly-ground nutmeg and drizzled with real maple syrup.

 

DUTCH BABY (serves 5-6)

8 eggs (preferably at room temperature)

2 cups milk

2 cups flour

2 or 3 Tbsp. butter

about 1/3 cup maple syrup

ground nutmeg to taste

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees with an empty Pyrex glass or metal 9x13 baking dish or 10x12 half pan placed on the top rack.  (Note:  Do not use ceramic, due to the risk of cracking the pan with thermal shock when the batter is poured in.)  In an electric blender,  beat the eggs and milk together.  Add flour and whirl only a minute or two, just until batter is smooth.  (You can use an electric mixer or a bowl and hand whisk, but the blender works best!)

When oven and pan are fully preheated, put on a pair of oven mitts and have your batter ready and close at hand.  Carefully add butter to hot pan and as soon as the butter is melted but not browned, quickly swirl the pan to distribute the butter, then pour in the batter.  Bake about 35 minutes until the “Baby” is puffed up in the middle, golden brown and crawling out of the pan.  

Remove from the oven onto hot-pads or a tabletop trivet.  Drizzle the maple syrup on top and sprinkle with nutmeg.  Cut into squares and serve immediately.

The Right Side of the Menu

We celebrated our 27^th wedding anniversary last month with a lovely dinner out, reminiscing about many other anniversaries over these last years.  It is a benchmark of progress in building our life together to reflect about how those celebratory dinners have changed over the years.  When we were first married during college, the $20 anniversary dinners were bought with weeks of frugality and budgeted savings.  In later years, the dinners turned into a relatively affordable splurge.  One of our favorite dining traditions for a number of years was to go to certain restaurant and order the featured seasonal “Copper River Salmon” with an appetizer of shrimp, and no-holds-barred all the way through the key lime pie dessert and an anniversary toast.  

We remember a quote we heard back in our early years, from some newly-famous rock star (1980’s early MTV-era) who said “The best part about finally being successful is when you can go out to a restaurant to eat and not even have to look at the right side of the menu.”  The sentiment rang true for us and we have counted our blessings every year we’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy an anniversary dining extravaganza.

Our favorite seafood restaurant closed shortly before we moved away from that coastal area.  Nevertheless, we found a fabulous way to prepare salmon at home and now enjoy it as a special treat.  This wonderful recipe for “Citrus Salmon” is a modified version of a recipe provided by my brother’s family in Seattle.  Baked or grilled, this recipe yields a delicious lemon-garlic-caper sauce which is spectacular spooned over steamed asparagus and new potatoes --  a wonderful celebration dinner menu. 

Citrus Salmon 
(Oven-Poached or Grilled)

2-3 pound fresh salmon fillet

In a small saucepan, combine the following ingredients, bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes:

Juice of 1 large lemon

Zest of ½ lemon peel

3 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. olive oil

3 garlic cloves, pressed

1 tsp. dried basil

1 tsp. dried dill

1 Tbsp. prepared Dijon mustard

2 Tbsp. pickled capers

1 green onion, finely chopped

Place 2 large sheets of aluminum foil, doubled up, on a large rimmed baking sheet. Place the salmon filet skin side down on the foil and fold edges of foil upward.  Pour sauce over the fish and double-fold the foil edges together to seal the top and ends well.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes (depends on the thickness of the fish…look for foil to puff up and hear a good bubbling sound.)   You can also grill the fish for 10-15 minutes with the barbecue covered (leaving the foil open a little bit and without using the baking sheet.)

Salmon before baking

Salmon after baking

 Enjoy!

Pig Powder

Many years ago we graduated from a small-town college and moved to a city where we discovered a demand for our “hometown specialty” of barbecue done over red oak wood and served with special-recipe beans and grill-toasted sourdough garlic bread.  Alongside our professional careers, we started up a seasonal business doing “Santa Maria Style” on-location barbecues for company picnics and other large group events.  After catering many events over many long summers, baby #1 arrived and effectively put an end to our ability to work “twenty-hour-weekends”.

Our catering business had a cute logo with the design of a pig, which spawned quite a collection of pig paraphernalia.  Thus, our special barbecue spice rub became known as “Pig Powder”.  Today, we still make a big batch every few months and use it to season almost everything from eggs & potatoes to soups & vegetables.   The very best use of it, however, is on custom-raised meat barbecued over oak wood on an open grill...beef just doesn’t get any better!

Try our PIG POWDER on your upcoming Father's Day hamburgers or tri-tip!

Pig Powder

2/3 cup “Lawry’s” seasoned salt

½ cup garlic salt

¼ cup black pepper (regular grind)
¼ cup garlic powder (granulated)

Combine ingredients with a whisk and store in a tightly-covered shaker container.  Makes about 2 cups.

πr2 -- “Pie-are-square”

πr²                   “Pie-are-square”

A late freeze this spring means we won’t have any peaches to harvest from our orchard at the end of this summer.  All the little blooming buds look like they were burnt off with a blow-torch.  Every year it seems to happen that the early spring warmth coaxes some blossoms out in March and a subsequent freeze seals their fate.  Each year it is a different variety of fruit that gets wiped out, depending on the timing of who's flowering when the frost hits.  Some years, no cherries … other years, no apples.  This year we'll get no apricots, no plums, nor peaches for fresh fruit pies   ...  boo-hoo!

Luckily we have a few gallon-sized plastic bags of various fruit tucked away in a freezer. Some lovely cut peaches from last year just got turned into a nice pie!

Pie R Squared

The way we do it:    Each gallon zipper bag actually holds about 8 cups of fruit.  Thaw a bag overnight in the fridge until soft enough to break apart, but still icy.  Gently mix in a cup of sugar, a quarter cup of tapioca flour, and a teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg (if appropriate for the fruit being used.)

 

Make this rectangular double-crust pie in a rimmed baking sheet “bun pan” which is 13” x 18” and fill with about 2 quarts of pie filling (home-canned filling works great…more on that in a future blog-post!)  Cut the pie into 6-by-4 portions to make 24 servings.

Pie for a Crowd 

5 cups all purpose flour

1 cup cold butter, cut into chunks

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

4 egg yolks

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

½ cup cold water

¼ cup cream

approx. ½ cup raw “turbinado” large-crystal sugar
and 2 quarts pie filling (more or less)

Cut butter into the flour in a large bowl.  Mix in the salt and baking powder and mix with pastry blender until coarse crumbs are formed.  In a separate small bowl, mix the egg yolks, lemon juice and water.  Stir the liquid into the flour mixture using a large fork.  Add enough additional water one tablespoon at a time until the flour just forms a rough ball.  For a tender crust, do not knead or over-mix dough. Cover dough ball and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.  

Divide dough into approximate halves.  Take the slightly larger half and roll out to a rectangle of about 15”x20” (2” larger than your pan dimensions).  Place dough into rimmed baking sheet pan, stretching and patching to fit if necessary, being sure dough goes up sides to top edge.  Fill with fruit filling.  Roll out second crust and place on top.  Pinch edges of crust together as much as possible.  Brush top with cream  and generously sprinkle with raw sugar.  Cut slits for vents in the top crust.

Bake at 425’ for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 350’ and bake an additional hour or so, until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly.  Cool and cut into pie-are-squares for serving.

Appendectomy Anyone??

Well, we've had quite a week here and are very glad that Chris decided to visit the emergency room when he did.  Turns out his severe stomach ache, which was less than 12 hours in the making, was actually an emerging case of appendicitis caught in ample time for the doctor to remove the offending infection rather than have it rupture the way it did for his brother, Vincent, back in 2008.  Blessing upon blessing, Chris is doing really well now and feeling great enough to bake us up a batch of his very own "Christopher Cookies."

This favorite family cookie recipe was adopted by Chris in March, 2003, when he took over regular baking duties and assumed all the accolades for this fabulous coconut oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  The recipe originates from my family heritage, but Chris has customized it with the addition of white chocolate chips.  Delicious, rich... and please use only real butter for that truly decadent toffee flavor!

CHRISTOPHER's COOKIES

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 cup (packed) brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup quick-cooking oatmeal
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large mixer bowl, beat butter, sugars and vanilla until creamy.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  In a separate small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.  Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until smooth.  Stir in oats, chips and coconut.  Drop by rounded tablespoon (or use level small portion scoop) onto ungreased baking sheets.  (Do not crowd them;  no more than 13 per sheet.)  Bake in preheated 350' oven for 14-15 minutes or until just lightly golden brown. (You want to slightly under-bake them so they will remain chewy.)  Cool on baking sheet for 2 minutes;  remove to wire racks to cool completely. Makes 4-1/2 dozen. (About enough for one day in our family...thank you, Chris!)