Cooking — Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara

Cooking and Eating at Home

May 21, 2013 · by JudyL

Sunday evening as I was making our menu plan, thoughts were running through my head as to reasons folks eat out more than they eat at home and I wanted to “discuss” this with you all. There are no right or wrong answers. It’s all a personal choice as to how much or how little you eat out. I hope that no one ever feels bad because they eat out more or less than someone else.

This is a little poll I prepared but please keep reading after responding to the poll.

There will be a couple other cooking related polls this week . . simply because I’m interested in your responses.

You already know that I cook a lot and we eat most of our meals at home. There aren’t any restaurants around town that we like . . we find the prices to be high at the places we like and always leave feeling like we get better food at home for less money and since I love to cook, I don’t feel like eating out is a treat for me unless it’s something outstanding and we just don’t get outstanding around here. Most any time we eat out, it’s because we’re in town and got delayed doing things and just aren’t going to be home in time for me to cook. If I know ahead of time that we’re going to town, I’ll do the cooking ahead – stick a chicken in the smoker or make something ahead of time that we can simply heat and eat. As far as cooking being time consuming, I figure that by the time I get dressed, we drive to town, get waited on and get or food, eat and drive back home, I could’ve cooked and cleaned up and never left home!

Anyway, I’m interested in your responses to my cooking questions this week. Thanks!

· Filed Under: Cooking · 34 Comments

The Crawfish Near Fiasco

May 19, 2013 · by JudyL

Vince and I love crawfish. Vince had never had crawfish til we met . . which seems like just yesterday but it was almost 20 years ago. He was determined, which was good for him, that he was going to learn to eat the way we ate in southwest Louisiana and, bless his heart, he will eat just about anything I eat. He’s learned to eat boiled crawfish, raw oysters, frog legs, fried chicken gizzards, boudin . . I’m not sure there’s anything he doesn’t like. I don’t think he will eat hog’s head cheese, which I love.

Yesterday we had to make our Saturday trip to town and he wanted to run by Kroger. It’s very frustrating for me to go to the grocery store without a list but I hadn’t made a menu because . . my kitchen is torn up but you already know that and you don’t want to hear me ranting about it, do you? I squawked about having to go to Kroger but being the good wife that I am . . I went in with him.

As we walked into Kroger, there was a sign on the door that said “Ask anyone in the meat department about our live crawfish!” Vince and I both looked at each other and said “REALLY?” and headed back to the meat department. Yes, they had live crawfish. You could buy a whole bag (almost 40 pounds) for one price, or for a bit more per pound, you could get however many you want. Vince said “We’ll take a whole bag!” I’m thinking . . I hope he’s planning on calling some friends over to help eat 40 pounds of crawfish.

The guy in the meat department seemed a bit concerned about our decision. He was telling Vince that you need to purge them . . and Vince was standing there acting like he knew exactly what to do.

I went to gather up some crawfish boil (spices for those who aren’t familiar), and lemons. I had plenty of potatoes and onions at home.

We left Kroger with our 40 pound bag of crawfish and we got in the car and the fiasco began!

Vince: What do we do now?
Me: What are you talking about?
Vince: How do we cook them?
Me: We get out the turkey fryer gizmo and the big pot with the basket in it and we boil them!
Vince: I don’t think I know where any of that stuff is.

Oh, my goodness. Can we please just take these crawfish back and tell them we’ve changed our mind?

I actually knew where the big pot with the basket was because I use the basket when I make hot tamales. Neither of us could remember the last time we saw the turkey frying gizmo so we figured it would be hopeless to try to find it.

We went to Tractor Supply to get a turkey frying gizmo (which is really just the stand for the pot and the hookup that goes to the propane bottle). Nope, they didn’t have one.

We went to Home Depot. Nope, they didn’t have one.

We went to Wal-Mart. They didn’t have exactly what we wanted but they had something that would work.

We got home and I grabbed the cooler, which was still in front of the freezer from our trip to Sam’s in Abilene on Wednesday.

Vince: What do we do now?
Me: What part are you asking me about?
Vince: I’ve never boiled crawfish before.

Oh, my goodness! I didn’t even think of that but he had never boiled crawfish because he didn’t grow up in an area where they served crawfish and we had always gotten them at a restaurant.

Crawfish

Everything we did, he kept saying “Are you sure?” Are you sure we’re doing this right? Trust me! :) We rinsed them, we purged them. We added the spices and onions and lemons and butter to the water. We cooked the potatoes, we added the crawfish. We brought the water to boil, turned the fire off, let the crawfish sit in the water for 10 or 12 minutes. They were perfect!

We boiled them in 4 or 5 smaller batches so they would be hot while we were eating them . . since it was just the two of us.

Fresh Boiled Crawfish

He couldn’t have done better his first time boiling them. They were great! And, I was very impressed with the live crawfish from Kroger — very few dead ones, good sized and the shells weren’t too tough.

We both ate crawfish til I thought we were going to burst at the seams. Then we sat there on the porch til after dark, peeling the ones we couldn’t eat and ended up with three pounds of peeled tails for the freezer.

Crawfish & Peas

I guess I could have taken a picture of the crawfish without the peas in the picture but after we finished peeling the crawfish, I finished shelling the peas and put up 6 packs of peas (for a total of 14 packs in the freezer), along with the three packs of crawfish tails. Crawfish etouffee is going to be on my menu . . if ever I get my kitchen back together.

Vince is all proud of himself because his first boiled crawfish turned out so good. I am quite proud of him too but not enough to let him go back to Kroger today and buy another 40 pound bag of them . . which is what he wants to do!

· Filed Under: Cooking · 18 Comments

Saving and Sharing Sourdough

May 15, 2013 · by JudyL

Getting a sourdough starter can be difficult. Dried starters can be ordered from various places, such as Northwest Sourdough, King Arthur or Sourdo. These have to be activated and brought back to life. Ideally, a friend would give you an active starter. Once you get an active starter that you really like, and they all have different flavors, if you’re anything like me, you worry a bit about something happening to it. I know that I can stick mine in the fridge for several weeks and leave it alone and then with a bit of TLC, get it back to the state where I use it every day or so.

I keep a jar in the fridge and usually toss it after a few weeks and put fresh in there. That’s just my backup starter. The one I am mostly working from sits on the counter and gets fed every day or every other day. Some instructions will tell you that a starter sitting out has to be fed twice a day. So far, I have not and mine is fine.

Another thing I do that makes me feel pretty secure, is that I keep some of my starter, dried, and in the freezer. Here’s how to go about drying some of your starter.

Simply smear a bit of it on plastic. It can be plastic wrap or something that’s plastic and easy to manipulate so that the dried starter can be peeled off. I use my King Arthur pastry sheet.

Smeared Sourdough

If smeared thinly, within a few hours, it’s completely dry and will pop off on it’s own.

Dried Starter

At this point, it resembles a thin potato chip. I place them in a zipper bag.

Dried Starter

Using my hands, I crush the dried starter.

Crushed Starter

It can be crushed as fine or as coarse as you’d like. Next time I get the Food Saver out, I’ll place this zipper bag into a vacuum seal bag and seal it. In the meantime (and after it’s vacuum sealed), it will be stored in the freezer. It will keep at least a couple of years in the freezer but at least once a year, I go through this process again and make sure I have a good sample in the freezer. Hopefully, I will never have to use this but it’s simply my backup, to be used if I lose my starter.

We also want to be sure we label these bags. I’d hate for someone to go digging through my freezer and find some unknown white powder in a zipper bag! :(

There is information on this page for activating a dried starter, as well as how to care for a sick starter.

· Filed Under: Cooking · 2 Comments

Improved Pizza

May 13, 2013 · by JudyL

For quite some time, I’ve thought my pizza was better than any pizza we could get locally. When I saw Peter Reinhart’s Perfect Pizza at Home class on Craftsy for free, I figured . . hey, maybe I can improve my already great pizza. I’ve been a Peter Reinhart fan for years. As with the previous Craftsy classes I’ve taken, I’m amazed at the quality and at how much I learned.

Pizza was planned for lunch today. I could hardly wait . . all weekend I kept thinking about the new pizza ideas but had other things planned for the weekend so the pizza had to wait til today. I wanted to make the Sicilian dough, since that is the one most different from the dough recipe I traditionally use. It’s a very wet dough . . very hydrated as the experts say. This one is baked in a pan and not on a stone so that’s different from what I traditionally do also. I made half the crust recipe and that was just right for this pan.

Last night I mixed up the dough and let it stay in the fridge overnight.

Pizza Dough

I wanted the pizza ready for 11:00 a.m. so about 8:30 this morning, I took it out of the fridge and let it warm up a bit. Then it was spread out onto the parchment paper. You can see that the dough is very wet and just waiting to bubble up and rise. I love watching bread dough do its thing.

Par-baked Crust

Normally, I don’t par-bake the crust but since this crust was so wet and sticky, and since Mr. Reinhart par-baked his, I did also. What I really wanted to do was tear off a big hung of this and slather it with butter and eat it . . forget the pizza! But, I didn’t.

Ready to Bake

Last night, I also made the sauce, using Mr. Reinhart’s recipe. For my normal sauce recipe, I cook the sauce down to almost tomato paste texture but this recipe was much more liquid with tomato chunks and was quite good and easier than my recipe.