One Particular Kitchen » tools

Cornstarch: your friend in the garden

Erin @ One Particular Kitchen — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:35:48 +0000

Just like last year, I planted a bunch o’ tomatoes in the garden in the back yard. Unlike last year, my tomatoes this year came under attack (ATTACK I say!) by bugs. First it was worms (tomato worms? Hornworms? I don’t know. Icky worms). Then came the stinkbugs. All my tomatoes were being eaten and rotting before they even started to ripen and I hadn’t gotten a single tomato for me to eat.

I wanted to evict the bugs, for sure, but I didn’t want to do it with a bunch of chemicals — sort of defeats a large part of the purpose of growing them in the back yard, you know?

Enter: cornstarch. Seriously! Now my garden looks like this:

I use a powdered sugar shaker full of cornstarch to cover the leaves, the tomatoes, and the ground around them. The plants look ridiculous, sure, but guess what? The tomatoes are MINE again!

I’m not sure exactly why this works, honestly — I don’t know if it kills off the bugs or if it just keeps them away; as long as I’m the only one eating the tomatoes, I’m good. It even deters Vinny the squirrel a bit which is an unexpected bonus. A quick wash in the kitchen sink removes all the cornstarch and I’m good to go. Tomato sandwiches for everyone!

Saving a cast iron skillet

Erin @ One Particular Kitchen — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:15:10 +0000

Remember when I wrote a cautionary tale about cast iron? Allow me to review:

Rust is not your friend.

I know. This is shocking news to you all.

I’m happy to report that this is the same pan today:

A bit of an improvement, yes?

The folks at Lodge told me that I should have this pan sandblasted. Being stubborn determined, however, I went at it with some sandpaper and did the best I could. It was not great, and the pan went back to live at the bottom of my pantry while I sulked about it thought of another plan.

Then last week we took a road trip to “Chagganooga” (so sayeth Kiddo) and I obviously could not resist swinging through South Pittsburg on the way back up to Nashville. At the Lodge factory store they had this little rust eraser thing sitting on the counter for a couple bucks — worth a shot, right?

Y’all. It’s a miracle! The rust just fell from the skillet and the pan without even that much elbow grease involved. A MIRACLE I TELL YOU. Here is the pan after the eraser; can you believe it’s the same pan??

So the next step was to re-season it in the oven, then put it to work. The perfect first job?

Bacon, of course.

This one will need a lot of use to start to start getting dark like my generations-old skillets, of course, but we’re certainly off to a better start now.

Garden update!

Mama — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:58:57 +0000

Remember this post?

This:

Turned into this:

Pretty awesome, huh? And this is after I pulled a few things, too — like the green beans, which were taken over by ants. Grr. But I did get a bunch of them blanched and frozen first.

In my little 8×4′ garden I grew:

Brandywine tomatoes x2
Early girl tomatoes
Roma tomatoes
Lettuce
Green beans
Cayenne peppers
Jalapeno peppers
Bell peppers
Strawberries
Basil
Cilantro
Onions
Carrots

Pretty impressive for such a little space, huh? And the majority of it was grown from seeds, so I spent very little on the actual plants, and ate ridiculously good food all summer long. I highly recommend the Square Foot Gardening book! This is good stuff. And easy. This was my first garden beyond tomatoes, so imagine what I could do if I actually knew what I was doing!

You see that I had to add chicken wire. We have a plentiful bunny population around here, and they were enjoying the fruits of my labor a bit too much. Unfortunately chicken wire is merely a ladder to this guy — I have named him Vinny:

Some of Vinny’s handiwork:

I thought this one was particularly lovely. I watched him carry my tomato up to the top of my 6′ fence. He munched a while, then left, leaving the tomato there. To taunt me. Apparently came back and got it later. I am currently accepting applications for squirrel hit men. Don’t tell Vinny.

I did get hit with some tomato blight this month, but it wasn’t awful. I had to pull one Brandywine and cut back the giant Roma, but nothing tragic.

How did everyone else do? What did you grow? What did you eat?

Homemade corn tortillas

Mama — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:05:24 +0000

I have a new toy! After doing a few batches of flour tortillas rolled out by hand, I realized that, um, I’m not very good at rolling out an actual circle. I bought this cast iron tortilla press from Amazon and I love it! I went with cast iron rather than lighter weight aluminum because the weight of the press does a lot of the work for me, and because I just have a thing for cast iron. It makes me happy.

I started by watching this clip — Alton Brown making tortillas. The step of lining the tortilla press with a ziploc bag is not one to be skipped! The negative reviews of the tortilla press on Amazon were folks complaining that the masa sticks to the press, but the dough should actually never come in direct contact with the press. Issue solved!

I used the recipe on the back of the Maseca bag The Cousin bought when she was here for salsapalooza — for four tortillas:

1/2 cup Maseca
1/3 cup water
pinch of salt

Really, could that be any easier? Mix the ingredients for about 2 minutes to form a soft dough, then divide into four equal portions.

After lightly pressing the tortillas (the first time I pressed too hard and ended up with paper-thin tortillas — not good!), I slapped them on a hot griddle for about 45 seconds on each side. Since these tortillas were destined for quesadillas I didn’t want to cook them all the way through, since they’d be meeting the heat again:

See how they’re just barely cooked? And already yummy?

Then I added last night’s leftover steak, sliced thin against the grain, with some tomatoes from the garden and some cheese. Sandwiched between two tortillas, this all went in the quesadilla maker (which gets a ridiculous amount of use in our house).

End result:

Love it! Crispy outsides, warm gooey/cheesy insides. Served with sliced tomatoes, this was fantastic. And quick. And easy! Definitely give this one a try.

How does your garden grow?

Mama — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:00:47 +0000

Wanna know how much The Yankee rocks? A LOT.

He built this:

And, because that line in Rocky Top about the dirt being too rocky by far is all true, we filled the raised bed with this:

Saturday morning we headed out to Home Depot with The Kiddo. We checked out all our options, lumber-wise: we didn’t want pressure treated lumber because we didn’t want the chemicals from it to make its way into our garden. Then cedar was suggested as an option: the Home Depot guy said, “Oh you could use cedar! It would do great. I mean, you’d have to build a new one every season, though.”

After a few seconds of blinking and telepathic communication, we did not pass go, but went directly to the Trex. This was more our style! More sturdy than anything else in the store, and safe to use around food.

“Oh yeah,” says Home Depot guy, “You could eat off it.”

Uh, okay.

All told, it cost $93 for the supplies to build this garden (not including the fill dirt), which is eight feet by four feet. Expensive? Sure, a little. But we have to do it only once. And we used screws to assemble it, so we could theoretically take it apart and reassemble it every year. But smart money is on me leaving it there.

So far The Kiddo and I have planted four tomato plants (because, really, what’s the point of a garden without the prospect of tomato sandwiches?), two pepper plants, some cilantro, some basil and some strawberries. I’d love to add onions and carrots and green beans. This nifty online planner shows how many of what you can plant in a square foot (thus my semi-obsessive square foot markers… made from The Kiddo’s yarn), then gives instructions for each plant you picked. How great is that?

So tell me! Do you garden? Do you have any advice, this being my first raised-bed garden? Any thoughts on how to keep away bunnies and other unwanted guests at the salad bar? Lay ‘em on me!

Guinness Cupcakes

Mama — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:08:18 +0000

You know this is going to be good, don’t you?

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen and LovesToEat.

You will need:

1 cup Guinness beer
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

Now:

Preheat oven to 350 F
Line 24 cupcake cups with liners
In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt 1 cup of butter and pour in 1 cup Guinness; bring to a simmer then whisk in cocoa powder till smooth. Set pan off the burner
Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to blend
Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl
Add slightly-cooled stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture a little bit at a time and beat just to combine
Add flour mixture and beat on slow speed for about one minute
Using rubber spatula, scrape down bowl and fold batter until completely combined
Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way
Bake until toothpick inserted into center of cupcake comes out clean — this took me about 20 minutes, but check after 15 just to be sure
Put cupcakes on a rack until completely cooled

Now is a good time to revisit my previously mentioned lesson: Know Your Bakeware. I cooked 12 of these in my silicone Kitchenaid muffin pan; it was a wedding present and has never failed me. I also cooked 12 of these in my heart shaped stand-alone silicone muffin cups from Wilton. Although these worked beautifully for the cherry limeade cupcakes, something went horribly wrong here. See?

Lovely, right? I honestly have no idea what happened here. I used a scoop, so they were all filled with the same amount of batter. Any ideas? The only thing I did differently this time was to put paper liners in the silicone cups. Anyway, the good news is that all but four of them were salvageable with a little cleanup and a good cover of icing.

Speaking of icing! I used Wilton’s buttercream icing.

You will need:

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract (I don’t use the Wilton-recommended clear, just the regular stuff)
4 cups sifted* powdered sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
2 tablespoons milk

*A note on sifting: I hate sifting. So I don’t do it. A few seconds whirring around in the food processor breaks up any clumps, aerates the sugar and doesn’t make me want to spork my eyeballs out the way a sifter does.

To mix it up:

In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer
Add vanilla and mix again
Gradually add sugar, about 1/4 cup at a time, beating well on medium speed — adding it gradually helps incorporate it really well and keep it from being at all grainy when you’re done
Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often (unless you have a cool Beater Blade. Which I don’t. Humph.)
When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

Now ice away to your heart’s content! I used disposable icing bags from Wilton, and a fantastic giant star tip I ordered on Etsy from Bake It Pretty. And it is giant. Here it is next to a 1-cup measuring cup:

So, the finished product:

I set aside a few of these (including the four Fail Cupcakes) for us to enjoy at home, and the rest I took to The Yankee at work today in my awesome carrier from Costco:

And that’s it! Go bake, people! Oh, unless you have a brilliant theory as to what caused Cupcake Fail, in which case please leave me a comment and then go bake.

Cast iron: a cautionary tale

Mama — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:52:16 +0000

Want to know what happens if you let your cast iron sit around, unused, with a lid fused to the skillet? Allow me to show you.

Please to remember: I have a love of cast iron. A serious, deep, and abiding love. And the pretty, shiny skillets to prove it:

See how pretty and shiny and glossy they are? Teflon has nothing on these. Nothing.

Now, please to observe:

This. Is. Not. Good.

The lid had sealed itself to the pan while in storage and had created some rust inside the lid and the pan. I’d heard tell of using the self-cleaning cycle on the oven to strip down cast iron, so thought I’d give it a shot. BAD IDEA. Now I have a LOT of rust. A. Lot. Fine-grade sandpaper is no match for this.

Next step: finding someone with a sandblaster. Seriously. See? Honestly, I’m giggling a bit at the mental image of moseying into a body shop wielding a cast iron skillet. Will I look like a woman scorned coming to seek revenge on someone? “No, don’t run! I just want to make bacon!”

Say hello to my little friend

Mama — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:36:25 +0000

I’d like you to meet my BFF in the spice cabinet: Miracle Blend.

Why do they call it that? Well, because it is indeed a miracle. For reals. It is the fastest, easiest way to transform anything with a single spice (that makes it sound a little bit like Superman). I use it on:

corn
pasta salad
croutons
salad
green beans
broccoli
cauliflower
chicken
steak
popcorn
potatoes

The list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Mine is in that cute little shaker because I buy it by the pound. It’s that good. I’ve actually been to their little place in Michigan (on a trip to see The Yankee’s family) and it’s ADORABLE. And they let The Kiddo eat a ridiculous amount of their crackers, which he actually liked (that’s another miracle).

So get some! Go now! The Yankee loves their Char Broil It for steaks, and I love the Lemon Pepper on chicken. But the Miracle Blend, people. Can’t live without it.

Pain de Mie

Mama — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:59:26 +0000

Do we all remember my Pain de Mie fail? Cute, right? Well this is what happens when you actually have a pain de mie pan:

Square bready goodness.

Following this recipe from King Arthur Flour (I know, you’re shocked), I let the bread rise to within about 1/2 inch of the top of the pan, then slid the lid on:

And it came out great! The Kiddo loves it (that’s huge) for cinnamon toast in the morning, and Sunbutter sandwiches for “wunch.” Try this:

1 cup (8 ounces) lukewarm milk
1 cup (8 ounces) lukewarm water
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) butter
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) sugar
1/3 cup (1 1/4 ounces) Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
1/3 cup (2 ounces) potato flour or 1 cup (2 1/4 ounces) potato flakes (not buds; flakes)
5 cups (21 ounces) King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat Flour*
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast

Mix all ingredients in order then knead — about eight minutes by stand mixer — until dough is smooth. Transfer to a lightly greased bowl or spray a little nonstick spray around the mixing bowl and let dough rise till nice and puffy, about 90 minutes. I set the sprayed mixing bowl with the dough in the oven (off) with a pan of water that’s been just brought to a boil; think sauna for your dough
Lightly grease a standard pain de mie pan pan, then shape the risen dough into a log; pat into the pan, flattening the top as well as you can. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise till the dough is about half an inch below the top of the pan (this will take about 45 minutes)
Spray the lid of the pan with nonstick spray and carefully slide it onto the pan — don’t deflate the dough! — and let the bread continue rising while your oven preheats to 350F (ideally about 15 more minutes)
Bake for 25 minutes, then remove the lid (carefully!) and bake for another 10 or 15 minutes until the middle of the loaf reads 190F
Cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy

I cut the loaf in two and froze half; the other half goes in our breadbox or the bread bag, where I slice as needed. Honestly, I’m not totally sold on a whole bread storage system. What do you do with homemade bread? Slice it all then freeze? Freeze a solid half loaf? Nom it all so fast there isn’t any to freeze? Or…?

My favorite new organizational tool

Mama — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:25:18 +0000

Curtain rods! How great is this?

I saw this in a magazine and it’s flipping brilliant. Two little tension curtain rods from Target for about $6 (for the pair) and I don’t have to fear an avalanche of cookie sheets when I open the cabinet. Score!

Your turn! What are your favorite tips for an organized kitchen? Organizing does not come naturally to me (zip it, Yankee — and I say that with love ), so I’m always on the lookout for ideas — especially cheap and easy ones like this. Lay ‘em on me!