Scott's Amazing Orange Chicken

I really love to cook, and since I've been home for a few months on maternity leave, I've had a tendency to dominate the kitchen. It keeps me busy and away from unsavory behaviors. So it's not that my husband CAN'T cook, it's that I rarely let him.
But every once in a while he gets really excited about making something for me, and inevitably it turns out awesome.
Last night, he decided very adamantly that he would make Orange Chicken. It was his first attempt, but it came out better than anything I've ever ordered from a Chinese restaurant. 

Behold Scott's Awesome Orange Chicken!

The chicken was crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, the sauce was tangy and salty and sweet in just the right amounts. It was so delicious, it shut Intolerable Steve up for a full 10 minutes, rendering him nearly tolerable in the process. And my husband was so very pleased with himself, he's allowed me to post his recipe.

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts , chopped into bite sized pieces
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons salt 
• 2 teaspoons of pepper 
• oil (for frying)
• 1/2 cup corn starch
• 1/4 cup potato flour 
  
  Beat egg with 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper. Dredge chicken in egg mixture.  Combine flours with remaining salt and pepper. Coat chicken pieces with flour mixture.
  Set aside.
  
  
  In a sauce pan, combine: 
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of GF soy sauce 
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of water
• 5 tablespoons of sugar 
• 5 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• zest and juice from 2 large oranges
  
  Bring the sauce to a rolling boil, then reduce heat. Simmer uncovered while you fry the chicken.
  Shallow-fry the chicken in a deep skillet with about 2 inches of peanut oil in it. Oil should completely cover chicken pieces. Turn as necessary until all of chicken is golden brown. Remove from oil and drain on paper towels.
  Remove sauce from heat.
  Let chicken and Sauce rest for about 5 minutes. Sauce should be the consistency of pancake syrup.
  Put chicken in a seal-able container. (Scott used a large Tupperware bowl.) Pour all of sauce over chicken. Seal container, and shake until all chicken is evenly coated.
  Serve over rice with broccoli. Garnish with sliced ginger and orange.
  
  
  
  
  
  Voila! The sexiest chicken You've ever had.  Seriously.

Butter Rum Cake

It's starting to get cold again, and what's more, around here, there's been nothing but rain, rain, rain.

So when I invited guests over for dinner last night, I wanted to give them a dessert that would be all homey and warm and comforting, with some fall flavors.

And then, I noticed the bottle of Kraken Rum that Simone had left us after a long, soggy, holiday weekend of drinking and debauchery. Perfect!

I used it to make this cake, and it came out spectacularly. Rich and buttery, not too sweet, perfect with coffee.

Rum Cake an Pineapple. Yum!

You will need for the cake:

2 cups sugar

1 cup of softened butter

5 eggs

4 teaspoons of dark spiced rum

1 cup of white rice flour

1 cup of brown rice flour

2/3 cup of potato starch

1/3 cup of tapioca flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons xanthan gum

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 cup milk

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease 12-cup Bundt® or 10-inch angel food cake (tube) pan; sprinkle with white rice flour. Set aside.
Sift together rice flours, tapioca flour, potato starch, baking powder, xanthan gum, and salt. Set aside.

Cream butter and rum in a large bowl. Beat in sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Sift in dry ingredients slowly, beating on medium speed and alternating with milk until all is well combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes.

While the cake is cooling, prepare the butter sauce:

Heat but DO NOT BOIL:
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Water
1/2 Cup Butter
3 tablespoons of dark spiced rum

when butter is melted and sauce is hot, remove from heat.
Prick cake with a long-tined fork. Pour warm sauce over cake.  Cool cake completely before removing from pan.

(The sauce makes a lot of sauce, and when I was pouring it over the cake, I could only do about half of it in one go. So you can wait for the cake to absorb the liquid and do another round, or you can cool the cake, turn it out, and pour the remainder on the top, so it's rummy all through. As you like.)

Oh yeah, and even though the cake is warm and autumnal, serving it up with some juicy pineapple is never a bad idea.

Enjoy!

Accidental Doughnuts

Bob Ross always says, "We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents."
Today I had the happiest accident probably ever. I was attempting to make GF funnel cake, because we're bored, it's summer, and Scott and Simone said I probably couldn't do it.
And they were right. But it's ok!

I DID find a very easy recipe right away, with a quick google search, however, I didn't have all the right ingredients or ratios, so I kinda had to wing it. And the result? Light, sweet, puffy doughnuts. Crispy on the outside, cakey and melt-in-your-mouth on the inside, and crazy easy to make!

Here's how I modified the recipe above:

Dry Ingredients

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups gluten-free flour (Bob's Red Mills All Purpose Gluten Free Flour)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon gluten free baking powder
• 1 teaspoon gluten-free xanthan gum (Bob's Red Mills)

(If you are NOT gluten sensitive, use 2 cups of all purpose flour and omit the xanthan gum.)

Wet Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup cream of coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

You will also need a few cups of cooking oil. Peanut Oil is best, but if you have an allergy, I recommend corn or coconut oil. 

Place 2-3 inches of oil in a deep frying pan or wide, shallow pot.  Slowly heat up to medium heat.

While your oil is warming, combine all the dry ingredients and set aside.

Next, combine all the wet ingredients and whisk or beat until the eggs get slightly frothy.

Now sift the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, beating or whisking constantly.  Batter will be thick and sticky.

When your batter is thoroughly combined, test your oil with a small drop of batter. The drop should solidify and float to the top of the oil.

When the oil is hot enough, drop rounded tablespoons of batter into the oil. Cook for a few minutes until edged turn golden, then turn doughnuts and cook until golden all around. 

Remove from the oil and place on a wire rack. While the doughnuts are still hot, dust the tops with cinnamon and sugar.

This is the base recipe for a very versatile doughnut. I just dusted mine with the cinnamon-sugar, and we ate them like that. Scott thinks they would be even better with some cream-cheese icing to dip them in. I think they would also be scrumptious with an orange or lemon glaze, or you could sexy them up and dip the top half in chocolate, or fancy them up with some spun caramel.

You could also play around with piping them into some different shapes.  I played around with shapes a bit, but Scott and Intolerable Steve determined that they like them best in a rough-ball shape, like hush-puppies. They also preferred them slightly under-done and still a wee bit gooey in the center. But that's a personal thing.

But they were super easy and fun to make, and only took about 20 minutes, so if you want an easy and impressive breakfast... Yeah buddy.

Papoose Calzone

Today, my husband invited a friend over to hang out and watch football. Football, as it often does, corresponded with dinner time, and I thought I'd be a good hostess and actually cook. I haven't been doing much of that since our daughter was born. Scott and I were mostly living on leftovers of things people made for us, take-out sushi, and cereal. And I couldn't, in good conscience, feed a guest cereal. Maybe if the guest was Intolerable Steve. But it wasn't.
So I was looking around, trying to think what to make, and I was looking at my daughter all wrapped up in her blanket, and I thought she looked really cute, like a papoose.
And that made me think about things wrapped up like papooses. And that made me think about foods wrapped up like papooses. And a calzone looks a lot like a papoose, sort of. And I had some mozzarella and pepperoni in the fridge. So I was like, "Right on, Papoose," to Ivy, and then I made this:

Calzone Dough

In a large mixing bowl, combine:

3/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup potato flour
1 cup garbanzo bean flour 
3/4 cup cornstarch  
3/4 cup potato starch  
1/2 cup tapioca flour  
1/2 cup sorghum flour  
2 1/2 tablespoons xanthan gum  
2 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar  
1/2 teaspoon salt  

It's a lot of different flours, which is what makes this recipe such a bitch. But it turns out SOOOO good. Trust me.


Ok, now in a bread machine, put 2 cups of warm water and 1 tbsp of olive oil.
On top of that, add the flour mixture. On top of that, add 1 package active dry yeast. 

Set the bread machine to "dough" setting, and press go. 
You might need to watch it and push the dough down a few times as it mixes.

(If you do not have a bread machine, I'm pretty sure you can combine everything in a mixing bowl and just mix it by hand, or if you have one of those fancy mixers with hooks. Which I don't, so I don't know for sure. Because I do have a bread machine. If you don't, try it some other way and let me know how that goes.)

After the first kneading cycle, take the dough out and combine it into a ball. (I suggest flouring your hands and a bowl for this step. The dough is very sticky initially.) 

Next, roll out the dough on a floured surface until it is about as thick as your pinky.

Spread the rolled-out dough with a very thin, even layer of softened unsalted butter.  Roll the dough up jelly-roll style, fold into thirds, and then pat back into a ball shape, but do not knead it! You want to maintain the thin layers of butter throughout the pastry.  

Put the ball back into the bread machine with the lid closed to rise.  
Bread machines are different, so be familiar with your machine's settings. 
Mine raises dough for an hour and then has a final knead cycle, so I left my dough-ball in the machine to rise for about 45 minutes and pulled it out before the last knead cycle. 

Divide the raised dough in half and shape into 2 balls. Set one aside. 

Roll out first ball on a floured surface to a large circle about as thick as your pinky. 
This is your calzone shell. Fill it with yummy stuff!

I happened to have, in my fridge, courtesy of Bean, some pepperoni, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella cheese. So I just chopped that stuff up and tossed it with a teeny bit of olive oil and black pepper. It was very delicious.

Lay the filling on one half of the calzone dough, leaving a half-inch edge. Then, fold over the top and roll up the edge, pinch-pressing to seal it. 

Bake in an oven pre-heated to 500 degrees on an olive-oiled baking sheet (or baking stone) for 25 minutes, or until the top is golden. 

Let rest for a few minutes before serving, so you don't burn everybody with molten cheese. 

I served mine with a quick marinara sauce I made from 8 oz of crushed tomato, half a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of onion powder, a teaspoon of butter, a pinch of parsley, a pinch of red pepper and salt, black pepper, and Parmesan cheese to taste. 


It went over hugely well, both with Husband and Guest, and I felt it was well worth the pain-in-the-assery it took to make it.


I think this will be the dough we use from now on for pizza as well. I'd like to try a deep-dish style with it, maybe throw some goat cheese and sun-dried tomato on there... mmm.... goat cheese....

This is what Ivy looks like in her blanket, all papoosed-up.

it is best to be dubious of rock stars, and other mysterious happenings‏

I'm having an off week. I managed to delete myself from this very blog, for instance, and I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW. What's the opposite of a technological genius? That's me. Situations like this are exactly why I have not yet completed my *teleportation device. (*This is not related to my time travel device, as I have put those plans on indefinite hold based on some really terrible time traveling nightmares/possible future real life circumstances.)

And just now, I microwaved my dinner FOUR TIMES and kept forgetting to eat it. (Actually, it's sitting beside me right now. I never ate it. Now I am doubting the nutritional value of 4x microwaved food. Should I even bother?)

Other than this questionable microwaved heap of chili relleno, I have not been cooking much. So this post isn't going to have a recipe. I'm telling you now, in case you have other things to do.

Moving on with the general mystery!

This week, I applied to this job at an organic grocery store, and I got a reply from Jim Morrison. I looked up his number through reverse phone lookup and it said he was located in Santa Monica even though this job was in Raleigh. Now, I know what you are thinking. A "Jim Morrison" and a long distance phone number?! That is a red flag for spam! But what I thought was - JIM MORRISON'S GHOST IS CONTACTING ME FOR A LEGIT JOB! I left a message on his voicemail, which, by the by, featured a speaking voice which could definitely translate to Jim Morrison's singing voice.

Then today, I received received several text messages from a mysterious cell number that I did not recognize. Because I forget stuff, and people, and details, ALL THE TIME. I reverse-phone-number looked it up in the white pages, but all the white pages told me was that it was local, which doesn't help, because probably I've forgotten a lot of things/people locally as well as internationally.

Mysterious Text: Are you OK? haven't heard from you in a while, hope you are doing well :)
(My Internal Dialogue: "Crap, what have I done to make people think I'm not okay? and... oh man, this person is SO NICE, they hope I am doing well. with a smiley face! what kind of person am I to not remember whose number this is?!")

My Actual Reply: All is well... Who is this? I don't have this number saved, which is prolly why you haven't heard from me.

Mysterious Texter: It is your favorite friend in North Carolina you poo poo head!
(My Internal Dialogue: "Clearly this IS my friend because only my most Favorite friends would call me a poo poo head!" Then I felt worse about forgetting.)

My Actual Reply: That is probably true based on the fact that you just called me a poohead.

Mysterious Texter: Its Vicki Lynne you douche that says alot you weinie

(This is where I got really confused. Because I know a VickY who is very particular about the spelling of her name, but this "Vickie" didn't even mention bourbon once, and VickY always does cause she's a classy classy lady. And I know a Lynn who changed her name to Lynae. But I don't know a Vickie Lynn. I don't think. Even though she appears to be my favorite. So instead I decided to change the subject.)

Me: I love refreshing insults in the morning! Mm.

Vicki Lynne: WTF I am offended you didn't know it was me!

Me: It IS a shame how I don't have a photographic memory. I am disappointed in that ALL the time.
............................................................
I didn't hear from Vicki Lynne again, which is sad since she is my favorite person in North Carolina.

And Jim Morrison never called me back.

..............
**update: Jim Morrison emailed me back.
**And Vickie Lynne texted again. But I ignored her. She seems difficult.

Bread Update! At Last!

So... Long time no post. Welllll, we're busy, and also lazy. But mostly busy. Because before you can post a recipe, you have to invent it, and then test it out, and then tweak it a bunch until it is right. So we've been doing a lot of testing. Remember my bread quest? I've made some head-way on that.

We decided to start out with some pre-packaged mixes, and see how far we got with those. The first one we tried was Pamela's Bread Mix, on the recommendation of a friend.

And It came out pretty good. It had a nice, fluffy texture like a hearty wheat or wholegrain bread. My husband, who is not GF, really liked this bread a bunch, but I found the flavor a little bit too yeasty. It was good, especially for deli sandwiches, but for more delicately flavored things like PB&J or French Toast, or even buttered breakfast toast, it had a pleasant, but not always desirable aftertaste of beer, and the older the bread got the stronger the yeast taste.
I'll still use this mix though, any time I want a heartier bread, especially in the winter to have with soups and stuff.
But I'm not on a quest for good bread. I'm on a quest for THE BEST BREAD! So we moved on to Gluten Free Pantry's French Bread and Pizza Mix.

Gluten Free Pantry is a product made by Glutino, a company I have mixed feelings about. In my area, they've pretty much cornered the market on GF products. And a lot of them are decent, and some of them are very good. But there are also a lot of products that are sub-par substitutions for traditional glutinous foods, where the finished product doesn't taste like what it is supposed to be substituting, nor does it necessarily taste very good, but a lot of time and resources went into making it and somewhere along the the line, someone decided, "Well, it's as good as we're going to get it," and left it at that, and then slapped a $7.00 price tag on a yucky substitution food that normally costs $2.50 and is much more delicious. All that to say, I was skeptical of Gluten Free Pantry. But for the sake of science, we got the Sandwich Bread Mix, and the French Bread and Pizza Mix, cause I was jonesing hard for a half-way decent pizza. The Sandwich Bread Mix was about what I expected. Not much of a flavor, the texture was ok, but didn't hold up after the first day. But the French Bread mix turned out to be something we could work with.
To be successful with this bread though, you need to do a few things. 1) do NOT expect French Bread, or anything remotely like it. But if you want a light, fluffy sandwich bread, or a really good pizza dough,  you can achieve it.
2) The box comes with instructions, and we followed those at first, and then we started playing around to see if we could make it better, and guess what!? We did. So after about 10 different trials and combinations, I'm going to tell you how to get the best bread.

Combine:
1cup of luke-warm water
3/4 cup warm milk
1/3 cup melted butter

Combine:
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 eggs plus one egg white
(all beaten together)

Pour both liquid mixtures into bread machine. Empty entire bag of French bread mix on top of the liquids. Empty enclosed package of yeast on top of mix.
Set bread machine to French Bread, Light settings, then press start and let it do it's thing.

This bread is truly yummy. Nice, buttery flavor, fluffy texture, slices well, toasts nicely, keeps for a couple of days. My biggest problem with this bread is it is a pain in the ass to make. Even with the bread machine. With all the warming and melting and egg separation, the prep time is around 30 minutes, and then it is another 4.5 hours to bake.

Still, That's a fine lookin' sandwich, no? 

You want to know what is on that sandwich, don't you. You see bacon, and you're like, "Ohh damn, what deliciousness is that!?" Alright, I tell you. It's my breakfast special.

You will need:
3 strips of thick cut maple cured bacon
1 large egg
2 thick slices of NY extra sharp cheddar cheese
2 normal (grocery store bread) sized slices of the delicious bread you just made
a little bit of butter
a little bit of salt and pepper
some hot sauce.

Heat a griddle to 375 degrees. Use one side to fry up your bacon.
Put the bacon on some paper towels
Crack your egg right into the bacon-greased griddle, salt n peppa it up.
Flip your egg. If you think yoke is gross, cook it all the way, but if you want the best sandwich ever, cook your egg over-easy so it is still a little yokey. Be careful not to break the yoke.
While your egg is cooking, melt a little butter on the clean side of your griddle, and put both slices of bread face-down in the butter.
On one piece of bread, melt your slices of cheese. (Said 2 slices because I need 2 side by side to cover my bread, but I guess it depends on how big your cheese comes. You basically just want on side of the bread totally covered by cheese.
When your egg is cooked to your liking and your cheese is melty, put the egg on top of the cheese bread, with the yoke side up.
Now put your bacon on top of your egg, and hot-sauce it to your satisfaction, and then put the top piece of bread on and serve.
Right before you eat it, smush your sandwich down to break the egg. This bread will totally hold up to smushing AND yoking, as you can see by the three bites already taken in the above picture. Sandwich intact? Oh yes!

Add a cup of coffee (I take mine with honey and cream) and you have yourself a pretty perfect breakfast.

So, my next goal is to make bread that is just as good as this bread, but does not require a box, OR 5 hours. It is a steep challenge, but I think I am up to it.

In the meantime, now that I DO have a good sandwich bread, I'll try and get Noelle to post some of her more bangin' sandwich creations. It will help if you bribe her with empty promises.

No really, it will.

Shameless Plug For My Own Profit

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See how I did that, and made a little rhyme for you? That's poetry for Love.

You can also buy in in trade paperback here, if you're oldschool.