potato canned salmon dish

This is quite tasty!  The reviews on the post said it was bland, but I wonder if that depends upon the quality of the salmon - and what I have is great.  I did also have a heavy hand with the salt and pepper, and I don't know how it will be as leftovers.  But, it's very nice when from oven.

Ingredients

1 14.75-ounce can pink salmon (with bones), drained
2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup milk
4 ounces soft fresh goat cheese (such as Montrachet)
3 tablespoons (packed) freshly grated Parmesan cheese (I used sharp cheddar)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup chopped green onions (1 bunch)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°F. Oil pan (pie plate or oval baking dish).  Separate salmon into chunks, leaving bones intact (bones are very soft and will blend into potato mixture). Remove black pieces of skin; feed to dog. Set salmon aside.

Cook potatoes in large pot of boiling salted water until very tender, about 20 minutes. Drain. Transfer potatoes to large bowl. Mash.  Add milk and cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in eggs. Stir in salmon and green onions. Transfer mixture to prepared dish.

Bake casserole until golden and heated through, about 30-45 minutes.

dutch baby

For when there is a surplus of Meyers lemons to squeeze over the top!

From the NY Times, here.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• ½ cup flour
• ½ cup milk
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 4 tablespoons butter
• sweet lemons, syrup, preserves, confectioners' sugar or cinnamon sugar

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine eggs, flour, milk, sugar and nutmeg in a blender jar and blend until smooth. Batter may also be mixed by hand.
3. Place butter in a heavy 10-inch skillet or baking dish and place in the oven. As soon as the butter has melted (watch it so it does not burn) add the batter to the pan, return pan to the oven and bake for 20 minutes, until the pancake is puffed and golden. Lower oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake five minutes longer.
4. Remove pancake from oven, cut into wedges and serve at once topped with syrup, preserves, confectioners' sugar or cinnamon sugar.  (I like it best with a lemon squeezed over the top and sprinkled with powdered sugar.)

 

salmon-broccoli-brown rice casserole

Looking into my refrigerator, I see broccoli that needs to be used up.  I look at cupboards and see brown rice and canned salmon also needing to be used.  Plus, frozen onions.  So, some ideas from here.  I wanted to use sour cream instead of mayonnaise, but I am somehow out of sour cream.  I have no idea how that could be the situation in my refrigerator, and I keep staring in there as though it's tucked behind some sauerkraut or daikon.  It's not.  Aghast.  This time I used 1/2 mayo and 1/2 yogurt and it was fine.  I think it was a bit too rich so I've cut back the cheese to the recipe.  It is quite tasty though and will be used again.  

INGREDIENTS

1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon butter
3 cups chopped broccoli (fresh or frozen)
1-1/2 cups cooked brown rice
1 jar salmon, drained, skin removed (crush the bones - they're good calcium)
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 cup mayonnaise (or sour cream?  and/or yogurt?)
salt & pepper
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese (or less)

DIRECTIONS

In a large skillet, saute onion and then broccoli in butter until tender.

Remove from the heat; stir in rice and salmon. Combine egg and mayonnaise; stir into the salmon mixture.  Add salt and pepper.

Spoon half into a greased 2-qt. baking dish; sprinkle with 1/2 cup cheddar cheese. Top with the remaining salmon mixture. 

Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cheddar cheese. Bake 5 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

zucchini black bean rice skillet

Edit, modification:

 

- chop and sautee 1 onion, then add

- chopped garlic & 1 chopped zucchini, cook lightly

Drain 1 jar of black beans, add water to 1 cup liquid

- add to pan 1 can tomatoes & 1 small can chilies & can of beans, cook a bit, then add

- 1 cup liquid & 

- 1/2 c. rice

- 1/2 tsp oregano

Bring to boil, lower heat to simmer and cook about 15-20 minutes.

 

Check salt & pepper, serve with cheese

****

 

Always looking for more ways to eat beans and vegetables, I came upon this recipe, which I modified somewhat.  I don't know that I'd want to eat it every day, but it's a nice way to use things on hand.

Ingredients:
Rice (cook earlier; I used 1 cup brown rice dried in rice cooker and then used it all)
1 can/jar black beans (rinsed, drained)
1 can diced tomatoes (including fire roasted, with peppers, etc., with liquid)
1 small-ish zucchini
1/2 onion
1/2 pepper
1/4 tsp oregano
1/2 cup shredded cheese 

**
Heat oil.  Saute onion a few minutes, then add pepper and zucchini and cook until onions are translucent.

Add beans and tomatoes and oregano; head until boiling.  Add rice and stir to heat up.  Add cheese and eat. 

meatloaf

This is a pretty good meatloaf and calls for things I usually have around:

Ingredients

• 1 lb. 90% lean ground beef
• 1 cup dried bread crumbs (or 1 1/4 c. oats, or a combination)
• 1/2 cup diced yellow onion
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 large egg beaten
• 2 tbsp. ketchup
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce (or Bragg's aminos?)
• 1 tsp. dried parsley leaves
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

For the Topping:

• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 tbsp. packed light brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
• In a large bowl, add the beef, bread crumbs, onion, milk, egg, 2 tablespoons ketchup, worcestershire sauce, parsley, salt, garlic powder, and pepper. Use your hands to mush and mix these ingredients together until well combined.
• Add the meat mixture to a loaf pan. Pat the meat down into an even layer.
• In a small bowl, add 1/4 cup ketchup, the brown sugar, and vinegar. Stir to combine. Pour the sauce on top of the meatloaf and spread it into an even layer.
• Bake uncovered for 55 minutes.
• Let the meatloaf rest for 8-10 minutes before serving (or it may fall apart).

the sourdough I most often make

This is the recipe I most often use, modified somewhat from the original.  It makes 2 large loaves that are tasty indeed.  Note: I have updated the directions for warmer weather.  While the original directions were great for a 60 degree kitchen, my 80 degree kitchen was leading to overproofed loaves.  

 

Warm weather directions:

 

Have starter bubbling and ready to go (feed the night before).  In the morning mix together:

2 oz white flour (56 grams)

2 oz whole wheat flour (56 grams)

8 oz starter (230 grams)

118 g of water

 

Start checking after about an hour or two and start the autolyse mix.  Once it's doubled in size, add into the autolysed mixture:

Autolyse:

31 oz flour (mixture of white, whole wheat, rye, millet, oats, etc.) (880 grams)

1 T salt

679 g water

After mixing together, do 5 stretch and folds at 15-20 minutes apart.

Let double (start checking at about an hour).

Shape into two loaves.  Let double again.

Before doubling, start heating the oven to 450 degrees (with pans in oven)  Once heated, bake for 30 minutes with lid on, then remove lid and bake another 15 minutes.  

*I would quite like to figure out how to use a solar oven for this, but haven't gotten there yet.

 

Winter directions:

The night or two before starting, pull starter out of fridge and revive it by feeding it.  (I found that by usually keeping starter in fridge instead of regularly feeding on the counter, the sour taste is stronger, which I like.) I never measure these things - I do a high proportion feeding, meaning an eyeball of about as much flour as there is starter and then adding about that much water and stirring it up and leaving it at room temperature in a bowl with a plate on top.  Note that I use nonchlorinated water; now that I no longer have an artesian well or Berkey water filter, I need to leave a bowl or jar of water out or boil it for 15 minutes for the chlorine to evaporate.

At about noon or 1 pm on start day, make sure the starter is bubbling and smelling right.  Then,

STEP ONE
Mix together:
2 ounces of wheat flour
2 ounces of white flour
8 ounces of starter
118 grams of water (1/2 c)

STEP TWO - Autolyse
This can be done at the same time or a bit later, but I do find that a long autolyse really improves the quality of the bread.
Mix together:
31 ounces of flour (19 oz whole wheat, 12 oz. white ... or any other configuration of flours such as barley or rye or millet)
1 T salt
679 g water (2 3/4 c. + 2 T)

At about 6:30 pm, combine the two bowls (I use crab hands).  Then do a stretch and fold every 20-30 minutes, about five times total.

Leave the dough overnight, covered with a shower cap.  (New thing because I often am not free weekend mornings: I will try to refrigerate it overnight, pull it out first thing in the morning, give it a couple of hours, and then proceed.)

In the morning, separate into two bowls, first shaping and putting onto parchment paper (parchment paper is not mandatory, but I find it challenging to get the loaves into the preheated cast iron without burning myself if I don't use it).

Allow another 2-4 hours rising time.


Heat oven to 450 degrees, with pan (cast iron with lid is best) heating in oven.  Bake bread for 30 minutes covered then remove lid and bake another 15 minutes.

***
Right now I'm heating up the oven to bake loaves that were 8 oz. millet, 10 oz white, 13 oz. wheat, and the liquid for the autolyse was almost all whey from cheesemaking.  It's been rising very nicely and I may have even overproofed it.  My oven now is tiny so can only do one loaf at a time, and the temperature regulation is sketchy at best.  I was getting aggravated and then I realized that folks have been baking bread in fires for a very long time, and you can't adjust a fancy knob on a fire.  Bread is adaptable and I find it hard to go wrong, in part because I've been making it so long.  It took me a long time to start on sourdough, only been doing it a year and a half or so, but my decades of yeast bread baking are definitely helpful for intuitively understanding how bread acts and responds.  

 

***

I have a bunch of old yogurt to use up so I'm going to put it in and add more water.  Here's my first try:

 

679 grams of water x .035 (% of fat) x .13 (approximate % of milk solids) = 109 

I think that some of the milk solids may break down during autolyze, so I'd just add another 110 grams of water and 679 grams of yogurt and see how that goes.

 

BUT.  I don't want to waste all the flour if it doesn't work right.  So I think I'll just add 

300 grams of yogurt

425 grams of water + more water until texture is right

 

huckleberry buckle

From here. Quite tasty, especially with ice cream.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar (a bit less)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 1/2 cups huckleberries
• sugar (recipe called for 3/4; I used canned huckleberries with about 1/3 c in them and it was sweet enough)
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 1 tablespoon butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C.) Grease the bottom of a 9 inch square pan.
2. In a large bowl, cream 1/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup sugar. In a separate small bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir into butter mixture. Stir in milk; mixture will be thick and lumpy. Spread batter into the prepared pan.
3. In a large bowl, combine berries, 1/3-3/4 c sugar and 1/2 cup boiling water. Pour over the batter in the pan. Dot the top with remaining 1 tablespoon of butter.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes.