I Cook Badly

Easily Paleo-ified with some tweaks to the stir-fry sauce.

Ice Cube Apple Pie

Beef Stroganoff {One Pot Recipe}

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Insomnia Cooking from Hell: Lemon Rice

For every cup of uncooked white rice, you will need:

½ Tb butter

Green onions (as much as you want, really)

1 clove garlic

1 lemon (juice and zest)

½ teaspoon turmeric

Salt and pepper to taste

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth

1 cup milk

Dill to taste

tiny cuts on your hands for the lemon juice to get into

1 fry pan and either a pot or a rice cooker

Take the green onions and slice the white and pale green parts into thin circles. The leafier green parts can be left for later; they get added after the rice is cooked. Dice the garlic. Take the garlic, green onions and butter, and sauté in a fry pan. Add in the rice and stir on a medium heat. Take a grater and zest the lemon into the rice/green onions/garlic, then squeeze in the juice. This is the part where you realize that your hands are covered in microscopic cuts that you did not know you had, but which are now full of lemon juice and intensely painful.  Add in the salt, pepper, and turmeric. If you don’t have turmeric, you can substitute for cumin or curry powder, but the turmeric is best, and it gives it that nice yellow color. Stir thoroughly. 

Once it’s all fried up, dump the broth, milk and rice mixture into a pot or rice cooker and cook it. In the rice cooker, it takes a normal white rice cycle, and I’ve actually not tried this in a pot, but I’m sure it cooks up the same as normal white rice. While it cooked, I diced up the rest of the green onions and made my leftover lemons into lemonade, because that is what life wanted. 

It’ll take a bit to cook, and it should be stirred a few times to keep it from burning on the bottom. When it’s done, add in the rest of the green onions and a pinch of dill. I like this with garlic hummus, but that’s just me. 

And then you eat it. And then you realize you made way too much of this. Because that is how rice works. 

SOME LEMON

The dill softens it though, which is nice, and it will go super well with the onion chicken stir-fry I did. 

In conclusion

YIKES

LEMON

The Best Gooey Salted Caramel Brownies

AKA Yeast rolls for people that don’t have enough spoons to do it The Right Way. I wanted to share this because being able to have homemade bread has been great for me. I was inspired by @gallusrostromegalus and @thebibliosphere to share this with y’all, however mediocre it might really be. :P

1 tbsp active dry yeast (about a packet)

2 tsp salt

2 cups very warm water

¼ cup olive oil (or some other oil, I just like olive)

¼ cup molasses (honey or plain ol sugar is fine too, mostly you need it to feed the yeast)

A bunch of flour (I never measure)

Optional:

1 cup rolled oats

½ cup flaxseed meal

Mix the water, molasses and yeast first, so the yeast can wake up and start eating. Add the optionals if you want them, then the oil and salt. Once that’s mixed start adding flour a bit at a time. Keep kneading in flour until you get bread dough. Seriously there’s not really a measurement for the flour, and you’ll get bread regardless. Just mix with your spoon until the spoon isn’t working, then knead with your hands a bit until the dough sticks to itself more than to you. It’s okay to stop when kneading gets too difficult, you don’t need to cram a certain amount of flour in there. Bread dough is something you have to experience to know, but bread is also the most forgiving of baked goods so don’t worry about it too much. I do all the kneading in my mixing bowl so I don’t have to deal with cleaning the counter.

Once you’re done kneading make balls about half the size of your fist, and place them on a cookie sheet greased with butter or oil. (Spoonie tip: line the pan with foil and you won’t have to wash the pan afterward!) I usually get about a dozen rolls, though it varies depending on how much flour I was able to knead in that day. Let them rise in a warm spot for a while. I don’t really time this, I just leave them on top of the oven while it preheats, which takes about 10-15 minutes. The heat from the oven helps with rising and gives me a reminder (put them in when the oven beeps.) The oven should be preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the rolls make a hollow sound when tapped with a finger. (This is also something you’ll need to experience, but as long as they’re neither burned nor raw you’re good. Just keep an eye on them and take them out when the tops start to brown.)

The resulting bread is quite heavy and dense, however it has a strong yeasty flavor and takes much less time and effort to make than a traditional yeast bread. I have also made this with an egg added which does make the bread a bit more fluffy. I leave it out now though because I don’t like the taste of eggs, and I like dense bread anyway.

¼ cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon yellow mustard

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (optional)

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

SLOW COOKER CRANBERRY BALSAMIC MEATBALLS

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Easy Crock Pot Orange Chicken

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It is here!

These are PERFECT holiday cookies.

The name is probably Hideously Problematic ™ but at this point it is traditional and cannot be changed.

For the link-averse, here is the text:

Naamah's Ginger Spice Cookies Ginger Sluts

Ingredients:

¾ cup vegetable shortening

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1 large egg, beaten lightly

¼ cup unsulfured full-flavored dark molasses

2-5 tablespoons crystallized ginger, chopped at most to the size of mini chocolate chips (“optional” but without it they are not ginger sluts)

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon salt

granulated sugar (or turbinado/demerara sugar) for dipping the balls of dough

optional: black or cayenne pepper

optional: for raw-dough safe cookies, or vegan cookies, substitute ¼ cup pumpkin and 1 teaspoon of baking powder*

optional decoration: red and green sugar sprinkles

Preparation:

In a great big bowl, cream the shortening, brown sugar, molasses, and egg together until smooth. If you are adding pumpkin, do it now. 

If you are adding the crystallized ginger, add it now.

In a second bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt. Add any pepper or cayenne at this time. If you’re substituting pumpkin for egg, don’t forget your baking powder. When you measure the flour, use a tablespoon to add it to a measuring cup to be sure it has the proper loft, then level with a knife.

Add the flour mixture into the shortening mixture in several batches, stirring well. The finished cookie dough may be soft and may be stiff, depending on whether you used shortening in a stick (recommended, IMO) or shortening from a can (harder to stir). Either way, cover it and chill it for at least one hour.

Roll even tablespoons of the dough into balls and press one side of each ball into the turbinado or granulated sugar. Around Christmas I like to mix red and green sugar crystals with the dipping sugar, but these cookies look great with plain granulated sugar and best of all with coarse, caramel-colored turbinado or demerara sugar.

Arrange the balls well-spaced with the sugar sides up on greased baking sheets. They spread a lot! Bake them on the middle rack of a preheated 375°F oven for 10 or 12 minutes, or until the surface puffs up and then flattens way out. Keep an eye on them the first time you make them. Some oven configurations will produce a done cookie in only 8 minutes!

When ready they will be gingery-colored and cracked, like Mars. They’ll be a little poofy and soft but not gooey in the middle. Let them cool for a minute on the sheet (they will deflate a bit), then transfer to cooling racks with a metal spatula.

Take them out on the early side if you like chewy, soft cookies, on the late side if you want them a little crispier.

If you use strictly level tablespoons of dough, this recipe makes around 40 cookies. They will disappear much faster than you think. Don’t make them too big; as I said, they spread.

The raw dough is VERY good.

* I am not actually vegan, and so I have never actually made them this way; I can’t personally vouch for how well this works, as I’m going by alterations someone else made and then told me about.

Notes:

THESE CAN BE PRETTY HOT COOKIES. Depending on the quality of your crystallized ginger and your other spices, they can be too much for people who don’t like spicy food.  I’ve had two people tap out of the “hot” version I like.  Err on the lower end of any hot ingredients if you want to make something only gently spicy.  These are still wildly tasty without the crystallized ginger.

I adore richly-flavored spice cookies and if you do too, there are a few things I highly recommend adding to this recipe. Coarse turbinado/demerara/raw sugar for dipping adds a more rustic look and a little flavor. I use full-flavored dark molasses, and I never make these with anything other than dark brown sugar. This gives the cookies a great depth of flavor. Crystallized ginger is the perfect accent to these, as it candies up during baking and gives the baked cookies a wonderful texture and bursts of flavor. I suppose you could add too much candied ginger to these, but I have not managed to do this yet. I also like to give my flour mixture just a few twists of fresh-ground pepper or a pinch of cayenne about the size of the pad of my pinky finger. If you’re feeling frisky, try both.

Baked properly, these are the perfect medley of rich flavor and rewarding texture, and very fun to eat!

Take a couple pounds of beef and cube it. Put that shit in a crock pot.

Add 1 ½ cups water.

Add an onion soup packet.

And a glass of red wine.

Add like half an onion and season with pepper, salt, chipotle pepper, garlic, cinnamon, and cloves. I don’t measure I just dash some in and adjust to taste when I add the root vegetables.

nice.

I was at our local bakery recently and came across a loaf of bread quaintly branded as a “Peasant Loaf”. It was selling for over $6—the irony of this was not lost on me. 

In retaliation I have decided to post what I actually think of as a peasant loaf, but with the luxury of finely ground modern flour which is less likely to break your teeth because actual peasant loaf bread is like chewing rocks unless you’re soaking it in soup or stew. 

This is a very simple loaf, it requires no special tools and is a fairly forgiving dough for beginners to work with. Also it has the added bonus of looking like an expensive artisan loaf, but costs literal pennies to make once you invest in the basic ingredients.

So what do you need?

Ingredients:

Plain flour (or wholewheat if you prefer)

One sachet of active dry yeast.

Salt.

Water.

Tools:

Bowl

Mug

Prep and bake time total: 2 hours 45 minutes.

Yep, that’s it. You’ll notice that there’s no quantities listed up there, and that’s because you’ll be using the mug to measure everything. This helps to make sure your quantities are consistent, and means that so long as you have a mug and your ingredients, you can make bread. Heck you don’t even need a bowl, it just makes clean up easier.

Again I had Elusive Tumblr Dad help me take the photos so be warned this is going to be fairly image heavy under the cut :D

Step One: Gather your stuff.

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This is the easier recipe, taste damn near the same but less work, but it also makes like 48 biscuits:

8 cups Original Bisquick™ mix 

2 2/3 cups milk cups shredded Cheddar cheese (8 oz) 

1 cup butter or margarine, melted 

1 teaspoon garlic powder 

1 teaspoon parsley 

1 teaspoon old bay seasoning OR onion powder 

 Preheat to 450 

mix bisquick mix, cheese and milk until a soft dough forms.  don’t over stir, it mixes pretty quick grease a pan or put parchment paper down Put dough balls about 2 inches apart, and put in oven. MAKE SURE the oven is completely pre heated, if you put it in before hand the biscuits will come out nasty. Bake 8-10 minutes.  Melt the butter in the microwave completely. Add parsley, seasonings and stir. 

 Once biscuits are done, should be brown on the bottom, pull them out and let them sit for a moment before covering or dipping them in the butter. Dipping upside down means more coverage. 

NOW, here is the recipe I actually use:

This recipe makes 10-12 biscuits.

3 cups all purpose Flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt ¾ teaspoon cream of tartar ¾ cup butter or ½ cup butter ¼ shortening 1 and ¼ cup milk 

Preheat oven to 450.  Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and cream of tartar.  Using a blender/pastry blender, cut the butter into the mixture until it looks crumbly.  make a well/hole in the middle of the mixture and pour ALL the milk in at once.

Now, you’ll want to add the cheese, which for this recipe you’ll want to use ¾ to 1 cup sharp cheddar.  Use a fork to stir/fold the mixture just until the mixture is all moist. Do not over mix. Use a spoon or scoop, and scoop 12 onto a parchment paper or a greased pan surface. You’ll want to put them 1 ½ - 2 inches apart.

Bake for 10-14 minutes, until the bottoms are brown.

½ cup butter or margarine, melted ½ teaspoon garlic powder  ½ teaspoon parsley  1/3 teaspoon old bay seasoning OR onion powder