Recipe notes: Drop Meatballs

16 December 2019

Recipe from Cook's Country, February 2018

For meatballs, I have been using a recipe from way back in 2002, season 2 of the America's Test Kitchen TV show. The recipe  produces good results in just over an hour. The main problems are meatballs that tend to fall apart and a lot of dirty frying oil to discard. I had never heard of "drop meatballs" until I recently saw an episode of Cook's Country on TV which foregoes browning the meatballs and just drops them into the sauce to cook. It seemed worth trying.

First step was making the meatballs. A panade was made in a large bowl from crushed saltine crackers and milk. To this, beef (2 pounds 85% ground beef), grated Parmesan cheese garlic powder, oregano, salt, and pepper were added and mixed by hand. The meat mixture was portioned with a #16 scoop creating 18 meatballs. These were placed in the refrigerator while the sauce was made. Ten peeled and smashed garlic cloves were cooked in olive oil in a Dutch oven. Red pepper flakes were added (I used ¼ tsp, half what is specified in the recipe) and cooked followed by two 28-ounce cans of crushed tomatoes and salt. The meatballs were added to the sauce (the pot was quite crowded!) and the sauce brought to a simmer. The Dutch oven was covered and placed in a 400° oven for 40 minutes and then removed and cooled for 20 minutes. Finally, chopped fresh basil was stirred in. Total preparation time was two hours.

The meatballs and spaghetti were both good, nothing fancy but good. The sauce was a little watery. The meatballs were not as good as those that had been fried, but then they don't fall apart and there is no dirty oil to discard. The rest time after removing the sauce and meatballs from the oven was put to good use to cook the pasta and make a green salad.  With one meatball per serving this will provide us 9 meals! We expect to freeze some and we may have to supplement the sauce before the meatballs are all gone. 

Recipe Notes: Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup

10 December 2019

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated All Time Best Soups, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 46; also available online from Cook's Country, April 2014.

It is soup season in California, time to make some old favorites and also to try new recipes from the soup cookbook that I have been working through over the last Winter or two. Flipping through the pages of the book I can easily skip some recipes for various reasons, the use of odd ingredients or too much spice, for example. The recipe for Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup though, looked good and had none of these disqualifiers. But to see if is a winner it must pass the real tests that only happen in the kitchen and at the dinner table.

I made two modifications to the published recipe. Lacking dry sherry I substituted merlot. And I skipped the garnish of fresh chives, I couldn't justify buying a bunch of chives just for a garnish. The skin was removed from a bone-in chicken breast and the meat was seasoned with salt and pepper. The skin was cooked with a little bit of water in a Dutch oven over low heat to render the fat. The heat was then increased to medium to brown the skin. Butter and leek slices (white and light green parts only) were added to the Dutch oven and cooked until softened. Flour was stirred into the mixture and cooked. Then wine was added and cooked until it evaporated. Chicken broth, Yukon Gold potato pieces, fresh thyme sprigs, a bay leaf, and the chicken were added to the Dutch oven and simmered until the internal temperature of the chicken was 160°. Because the chicken breast was so thick it took longer to cook than predicted by the recipe and isome of it ended up well over 160° and some a little under. The chicken was removed to a plate and allowed to cool while the soup simmered, about 20 more minutes. Fat and  foam were skimmed from the surface of the soup and the chicken was shredded, discarding the bones. The chicken skin, thyme sprigs, and bay leaf were discarded. The shredded chicken and cream were stirred into the soup which was seasoned with salt and pepper and served. Total time was 2 hours 10 minutes, much of it hands off.

This soup passed the test and is worth making again! There was nothing too challenging in the preparation and the soup tastes great. It is not the best looking soup with a muddy-looking broth, but the combination of tender chicken pieces, the savory broth featuring leeks and cream, and the tender vegetables will provide several satisfying and delicious meals for the two of us.

Recipe Notes: Flourless Chocolate Cake

4 November 2019

Recipe from The Perfect Cake, America's Test Kitchen, 2018, p. 190; also available online from Cook's Country, April 2016.

I have made a Test Kitchen recipe for flourless chocolate cake several times. The recipe has just a few ingredients and we enjoyed it both times I made it. So I figured a newer recipe could provide a better result, the Test Kitchen having learned some lessons since it published the first recipe and improved on it. The best way to find out is to make the cake.

The ingredient list in this recipe is longer than the 3 or 4 ingredients in the older recipe, but it is still a fairly easy cake to make. Chocolate and butter were melted together in the microwave oven and set aside to cool. In a large bowl the other ingredients were whisked together: eggs, sugar, water, cornstarch, vanilla, espresso powder, and salt. The cooled chocolate mixture was whisked into the ingredients in the large bowl. The batter was strained into a 9" springform pan and baked at 275° for about 45 minutes. After cooling on the counter it was stored in the refrigerator and eaten the next day. Total time from start to fridge was 2 hours 25 minutes, mostly hands off.

I had high hopes for this cake but ended up being disappointed by it. The coffee flavor was too strong for my tastes. This was not surprising as I often find I like chocolate baked good better with less espresso powder than in the recipe. But I also found it lacked both sweetness and chocolate flavor. Judging from my brief comments on the older recipe, we liked it better. No regrets, though, you need to try new things sometimes to find it if they are better than the old things. This time they were not.

Recipe Notes: Southern-style Skillet Cornbread

3 November 2019

Recipe from Bread Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 44.

I have tried various cornbread recipes, both northern and southern styles and one that lies between these two. I haven't developed a real favorite so I am up for trying new recipes. This one is from the Bread Illustrated cookbook and while similar in some ways to other recipes I have used I wanted to give it a chance to become the favorite.

The recipe used a 10-inch cast iron skillet, which I do not have. I do have a 10-inch, oven-safe skillet that should work. At least I thought it would. First, the cornmeal was toasted in the skillet on the stove top. I used Bob's Red Mill medium grind cornmeal. The cornmeal was removed and whisked together with sour cream and milk. The skillet was wiped clean. vegetable oil was added, and it was placed in a pre-heated 450° oven. When the oil was shimmering, the pan was carefully removed from the oven and butter was added. After the butter melted most of the oil/butter mixture was whisked into the cornmeal mixture. The remaining ingredients—sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt—were whisked into the cornmeal mixture and finally eggs were whisked in. The batter was poured into the skillet which and returned to the hot oven to bake. The recipe says it should be done in 12 to 15 minutes, I baked mine for 24 minutes before removing it! Total time to prepare was just 70 minutes.

Even with the long baking time the cornbread was not done. The bottom part of the loaf was done but the top was still more like a corn custard than bread. The cornbread tasted okay but I don't think I was  really able to give it a fair tasting because of the baking issue. I am sure the problem was my skillet. A 10-inch cast iron skillet has straight sides so the bottom and top are both close to 10 inches in diameter. My skillet was 10 inches across at the top but only 7½ inches at the bottom due to the sloping sides. This the batter was much deeper than it would be in a cast iron skillet and thus took much longer to bake. Given that I don't have an appropriate skillet I probably won't be trying this recipe again. I do have a recipe I like for southern-style cornbread that uses a 12-inch cast iron skillet, perhaps it will become my go-to recipe.