Chicken and broccoli rice bowl

lunch, supper 3 Comments

This was such a quick and easy weeknight meal! And a light one too, which I love in the summer. Or spring. Whatever — it’s hot enough to be glow-inducing during the day already, so it sure feels like summer to me.

For this I made two cups of sushi rice in the rice maker:

And steamed two cups of broccoli, then sprinkled on some lemon juice:

And The Yankee grilled some teriyaki-marinated chicken:

Then we layered all that in bowls and added a bit of soy sauce. A la peanut butter sandwiches! Super easy fake-out take-out, minus the MSG headache.

What are your favorite summer meals when it feels too hot to eat?

Spring yogurt

breakfast, dessert, kids, snacks 9 Comments

Do you know the difference between winter yogurt and spring yogurt?

Spring yogurt is cuter.

The orginal how-to is here with all the details. But a quick run-down of the process, lest you be afraid:

  1. Heat a quart of milk to 180, add 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 dry milk, plus vanilla or maple syrup to flavor
  2. Let it cool to <120 (assuming you’re using pasteurized milk, you can technically just heat it to 120 and go from there, but I find it doesn’t thicken up quite as nicely that way)
  3. Add yogurt starter: 2 Tbsp. of yogurt containing live active cultures (ideally, 2 Tbsp. you saved from your last batch of yogurt; it freezes great in ice cube trays) and stir
  4. Pour into your very cutest containers and incubate at around 115 or so for four to six hours — I do this by lining a dutch oven with a heating pad set to low, then setting the jars in it and putting the lid on. If you want to make super-cute spring yogurt, add a couple drops of food coloring in each jar, stir to combine, then proceed with your incubation

That’s it! This is worlds better and cheaper than store-bought, and you can easily strain it to make it Greek-style if your little heart desires.

Lilly tea

drinks 10 Comments

Are you all enjoying your sweet tea?

Now you want to know how to add a little variety? How to turn this:

Into this?

This is so easy it’s almot not even fair to call it a recipe. But regardless:

  • One quart sweet tea
  • One quart orange juice
  • Lemons

That. Is. It. See how this is barely a recipe? But it is SO good. I found it in Essentially Lilly (although she didn’t use lemons, as I recall), and it’s awesome.

  1. Mix the tea and juice together, shaking the juice well first
  2. Serve over lemon slices and lots of ice
  3. You may or may not be entertained by adding a little vodka to the mix. Just throwing that out there.

Happy summer!

Super simple bagels

baking, breakfast 8 Comments

I’ve so long been intimidated by bagels. I mean bagels. A staple of NYers past and present. The extent of my NYC experience involves dragging a ridiculous number of kids through Grand Central Station and into Times Square, and having unheard of amounts of fun doing it. Toys R Us anyone?

But my college roomie was coming in town with her husband and her sister. I wanted to be able to serve them an awesome breakfast, but I also knew that we would certainly be up till all hours the night before and I probably wouldn’t feel like rolling out biscuits the next morning. Or doing anything much beyond stumbling toward the warm glow of the coffee pot. So the day they were to arrive, I made these — the world’s easiest bagels!

This recipe called for an overnight starter of:

  • 2 1/8 oz bread flour (I actually used AP flour for the starter and it was fine)
  • 2 oz. cool water
  • a pinch of yeast

Pretty easy so far, yes? Cover that and let it sit at room temperature overnight.

The next morning, mix your now-bubbly starter with:

  • 17 ounces bread flour
  • 10 ounces cool water
  • 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1. Now it’s time to knead. It takes a little more time and effort to develop the gluten in bread flour, so don’t be a hero; bust out the stand mixer or the bread machine for this one. It took me about eight minutes in the stand mixer to make it look nice and smooth (tip: spray the dough hook with non-stick spray to keep the dough from climbing up the hook).

2. Put your pretty dough in a greased/sprayed bowl, cover it with a tea towel and let it rise for one hour. After an hour, gently push the air out of the dough, and let it rise again for thirty minutes.

3. Now to split up the dough! Divide it into 12 roughly even pieces (I was not even a little scientific about this — I patted it into a disc, then cut it like a pie). Roll each piece into a little ball, then cover them all with plastic wrap and let them puff up a bit for thirty minutes.

4. Transfer the dough to a work surface, and divide it into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a smooth, round ball. Cover the balls with plastic wrap, and let them rest for 30 minutes. They’ll puff up very slightly.

5. Turn on your oven to 425, then heat a few inches of water in a wide pan till it’s boiling; add 1 Tbsp. brown sugar to the water.  I *ahem* heard the bagels will still taste very yummy even if you forget skip the sugar.

6. Line two cookie sheets with silicone sheets, or grease with butter. Parchment is not your friend for this: the wet bagels will stick to the parchment forever. Shape your bagels by poking your finger through the middle of a dough ball, then twirling two fingers in the middle (think the same motion as twiddling your thumbs) till the hole is about two inches across.

7. Time for a swim! Drop bagels, four at a time, into the boiling water bath. Cook for two minutes, then flip and cook for one minute on the second side. Fish them out with a chopstick through the hole and put them back on the lined cookie sheets. Repeat till all bagels are boiled.

8. Bake at 425 till the bagels are as browned as you like; for me this was about 20 minutes. Sneak one to eat warm from the oven, then cool the rest completely on a rack.

I served these with cream cheese, fresh butter and pear jam from the awesome feed mill in our county. So yummy!

Incidentally, this article (which is great) says that homemade bagels are dramatically cheaper than store-bought. And so much better tasting, it turns out!

Strawberries!

baking, breakfast, dessert, drinks Leave a comment

Ah, summer. Does it get prettier than this?

I picked these up over the weekend and just could not decide what to do with them. Strawberry scones? Strawberry shortcake? What about strawberry shortcake cookies?

Decisions, decisions.

In the end, I cut them up like this: And I ate them.

Every single one.

Just like that.

So now I clearly need to go buy more strawberries, and maybe actually make something with them this time.

What will you be doing with strawberries this summer?