Mike's Cooking, Brewing and Recipes Page

Cooking

Tips

Measuring ingredients. I picked up a small scale at a farm stand's going-out-of-business sale. It's made parts of my cooking a lot easier: weighing is substantially quicker than volume measuring for various things, and is usually more accurate. The volume-to-weight conversions that I use most often (and yes, my scale does measure in both ounces and grams):
Ingredient Volume measure Weight equivalent
Flour (all-purpose, white) 1 c 4 oz
Flour (cake, white) 1 c 3 oz
Sugar (brown) 1 c 220 g
Sugar (white) 1 c 220 g

Brewing

Tips

Recipes

 Also see Rei's Random Recipes, some of which I helped invent.


Entrees


Mincemeat Pie

This is not the usual mincemeat pie you'd have for dessert. Notably, it includes beef, and contains no candied fruit or peel.

Ingredients for one pie:

Mix the raisins, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar, and brandy together in a bowl; set aside.

Cut the beef into small (15mm x 15mm x 5mm) pieces. Coarsely chop the onion; saute until it turns transparent. Add the beef; salt and pepper lightly. Brown the beef while preparing the apples.

Peel, core, and slice the apples. Add the apples and brown sugar mixture to the pan with the beef. Coat the apples and beef well with the brown sugar mixture. Set the filling to simmer; stir occasionally.

Preheat oven to 450 F. Fit one crust into a 9" pie pan. Once the oven is hot, fill the bottom crust and top with the other crust. Poke holes in the top crust with a fork.

Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes; reduce the heat to 350 F and bake for another 35 minutes. Shut off and open the oven, and let the pie cool in the oven for 10 minutes. Slice and eat. Serves 4.

Notes:

  • See below for my comments on apple peeling.
  • Most mincemeat recipes call for canning the filling and leaving it for at least two weeks before using it in a pie. I don't have a canning setup, nor do I particularly want one, so I've omitted this step. If you try canning the filling, let me know how it turns out.
  • If you use dark raisins instead of golden raisins, reduce the amount, as their flavor is stronger.
  • I've had mincemeat pie like this in a restaurant with walnut gravy on top. I have yet to find a recipe for walnut gravy, nor do I know where to begin in inventing one of my own. I'd welcome any pointers you might have.


    Salads


    Cucumber-Pecan Salad

    Ingredients: Cut the cucumbers into 5-8 mm slices. Quarter the tomatoes; cut into 5-8 mm slices. Finely dice the cayenne pepper. Coarsely chop the basil, parsely, and pecans. Add all ingredients to a salad bowl. Toss. Serves 2.

    Notes:

  • All measured numbers are estimated.
  • This was an experimental salad, mostly made on the "what's available now?" theory. It came out amazingly tasty.
  • Carrot tops make a fine substitute for fresh parsley.


    Desserts


    Apple Pie

    Ingredients for one pie: If you're dealing with a refrigerated commercial pie shell, take it out and let it thaw on the counter. Alternately, put it in the microwave briefly (the box will usually have instructions). Put the bottom crust in an ungreased pie pan. Set your oven to 450 F.

    Mix the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cornstarch together in a bowl. Set aside. Peel, cut, and core the apples; put the pieces in a bowl. Add the brown sugar mixture, stir to coat, making sure there are no large lumps of brown sugar.

    Pour the filling into the bottom pie shell, try to pack it as densely as reasonable without damaging the pie shell. Wet one finger and wipe it around the top of the bottom crust. Put the top crust on and pinch it down. Trim the excess. Poke holes in the top crust with a fork. Wet your hand and wipe it over the top crust, just enough to get the top damp so the sugar will stick. Sprinkle a good-sized silverware spoonful of white sugar on top. Put in the oven. After 10 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 350 F, bake for another 35 minutes. Let cool on a rack.

    Notes:

  • A mechanical apple peeler-corer-slicer is an amazingly handy device to peel, core, and slice the apples. Spike the apple on the end of the threaded rod, turn the crank, and you have a spiral-cut, peeled, cored apple. Clean up the bits of peel it missed, check the center for seeds, cut the apple into quarters, and you're done. Quick and easy.
  • I'll usually make a large number of pies at once. My largest mixing bowl is just big enough to easily stir one pie's worth of filling without slopping everywhere. I'll mix up one batch of filling, load the pie shell, put the pie in the oven, and immediately start the next pie. (Yes, I have lots of pie pans.)
  • This pie recipe inspired the Spiced Apple Pie in the game Asheron's Call.


    Non-pudding

    Ingredients: Pour the yogurt into a mixing bowl; add honey, stirring well, until the yogurt is slightly sweet. Pour the sweetened yogurt into shallow dessert bowls. Sprinkle nutmeg evenly over the top of the yogurt, until there is a substantial amount of nutmeg on top. Do not mix in. Grate chocolate on top of the yogurt, so that it mostly covers the nutmeg, but no more than double the amount of nutmeg. Again, do not mix in. Cover tightly, put in the refrigerator for at least an hour, preferably overnight, before serving.

    Note:

  • I've never tried this with cocoa powder; if you do, let me know how it comes out.


    Soft Drinks


    Home brewed ginger Beer

    Ingredients for one gallon: Clean any excess dirt off the ginger; slice 1-2 mm thick. Zest the lemons. Put the ginger slices and lemon zest into a blender with one quart of water. Set aside.

    Pour two quarts of water into a pot; add sugar and cream of tartar. Remove the white pith from the lemons (you need not get it all, but try to get most of it). Slice the peeled lemons 1-2 mm thick, add the slices to the pot. Cover and put the pot on high heat.

    Blend the ginger and lemon zest until the ginger is no more than small chunks, the largest 2mm on a side. Do not puree the ginger into pulp; if you do it will end up stuck in your teeth later.

    Once the pot boils, pour in the ginger mixture. Return to boil; let boil 15 minutes. Take the pot off the heat and cool to below 100 F.

    While waiting for the pot to cool, rinse and sanitize the one-gallon container. Pour the chilled quart of water into the gallon container. Proof the yeast according to package directions; use some of the warm liquid from the pot instead of sugar water if you like. Once the liquid in the pot is at or below 100 F, filter (a standard kitchen strainer will do) the contents of the pot into the container, add the yeast, top off with water to make up for what was lost in boiling, and fit the fermentation lock.

    Let the ginger beer ferment 4-24 hours to multiply the yeast. The time depends on how much sugar you want left and how active your yeast is. If you're using a brewing fermentation lock and getting more than one bubble per second, you have enough yeast. (Also note that you may never get one bubble per second!) Your ginger beer will be cloudy throughout the fermentation; that's normal.

    Rinse and sanitize the soda bottles. Remove the fermentation lock, fill the soda bottles from the gallon container. Don't filter the ginger beer; in addition to catching all the ginger, the filter will also get rid of a lot of yeast. The glop suspended in the bottle should settle in the refrigerator. Close the bottles tightly. Let stand for 2-12 hours to carbonate, until the bottles no longer give easily when squeezed. Put the bottles in the refrigerator. Drink within 4 weeks to avoid exploding bottles.

    Open bottles carefully; they are under a lot more pressure than any normal bottle of soda. You may want to bleed off some of the pressure occasionally, though note that this can cause the bottles to erupt unless you're quick to reseal the bottle. Bleeding off pressure will almost always bring the settled yeast off the bottom as the carbonation comes out of solution. The cure for this is multiple bleedings off, until there is little to no yeast dislodged from released carbonation.

    Notes:

  • Chilling one quart of water ahead of time makes the quart in your fermenter much colder, so it can help counter the remaining heat from the liquid in the pot. It also protects your fermenter from thermal shock if you pour too soon into a glass fermenter.
  • If you don't want carbonated ginger beer, this makes a fine ginger drink without carbonation. Leave out anything to do with the yeast. Instead, put the ginger beer into your storage containers straight from the pot. The advantage: no exploding bottles. The disadvantage: no carbonation.
  • I've never tried this with bread yeast; I have no idea how it will turn out. It should work; the purpose of the yeast is to provide carbonation, rather than alcohol. Whether the bread yeast will leave off-flavors is an open question.
  • Despite the presence of yeast fermenting sugar, this is a non-alcoholic drink. Refrigerating the ginger beer after such a short time arrests the yeast before it makes much alcohol. The yeast has, however, made enough carbon dioxide to carbonate the ginger beer. Important: the yeast will keep fermenting in the refrigerator, but a lot slower than it would at room temperature. Eventually the ginger beer will turn alcoholic; similarly, the pressure in the bottles will keep increasing until the sugar runs out or the bottles explode.
  • I'll try a longer boil with this recipe to see how the ginger flavor changes.
  • You might consider adding a bit of lime syrup to a glass of ginger beer, either carbonated or still.


    Lime rickeys

    Ingredients for one rickey: Wash the lime, cut in half. Juice each half into a pint glass. Drop one of the juiced halves into the glass, discard the other half. Pour in the lime syrup, stir. Drop in the ice cubes, fill to 12 oz with carbonated water. Stir briefly to mix, drink immediately.

    Notes:

  • I've made an alcoholic lime rickey by adding 1.5 oz (3 T) dry gin to the mix, and reducing the carbonated water.


    Lime syrup

    Ingredients for about 3 1/2 c: Wash and zest the limes. Juice the limes. Mix the zest with the lime juice, water, and sugar in a pot. Put the pot on high heat until it has boiled for five minutes. Pour the syrup through a strainer to remove the lime zest. Chill.

    Notes:

  • This recipe makes enough syrup for about 7 lime rickeys. The actual quantity depends on how much juice you get from each lime and how much water boils off.
  • You might consider adding a bit of lime syrup to a glass of home-brewed ginger beer, either carbonated or still.
  • This recipe scales well: mix the zest and juice of two limes for every cup of sugar and cup of water.
  • The leftover lime zest is candied! If you have any use for candied citrus peel, save the leftover zest. It also tastes fairly good eaten straight.