So, I made jam the other day. It went about as well as you'd expect with my first time making jam, in a small quantity, from a British recipe, intended for a larger quantity. There's also some other slight food follies in amongst one shining moment. So, the jam. It was for a cake. As I stated in this post, we're using up the food we have in the house. There's not a of flour at the moment, but we have a few boxes of cake mix. So, I thought of doing the white cake mix and adding a dash of almond extract to the mix, and instead of just buttercream frosting (we have a container of that) in between the layers, I could use a bit of jam. So why not make jam? It was my first time ever making jam, and I had to do maths to figure out grams to cups and them cut that by 75% so I could make just enough instead of enough to actually can. We had a bag of frozen mixed berries, so I pulled out the four strawberries and ended up with 2 cups of raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. I put in 1/4 cup of sugar and just added about 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice. It tasted like jam and wasn't too overly sweet or anything. I realize that my maths could be way, way off. I'm not good at maths and I don't know why I even try with it. I also could have adjusted the boiling time, which I didn't do, so it boiled for the full seven minutes listed in the recipe. I almost ended up with a fruit rollup, y'all! So, I added a tad bit of lemon juice and mixed that up. When the jam was cooled, I added some buttercream and mixed that up. I had intended to layer like this: cake, thin layer of buttercream, jam, thin layer of buttercream, cake, thin layer of buttercream on sides and top. I couldn't do the layering in between like I'd wanted, as that center layer was barely spreadable even with the buttercream addition. I'm also not a huge fan of frosting or icing. I like it to be an accent instead of "Oh my god... there's nothing but frosting in my mouth!" as tends to happen with most cakes. So, this was mostly cake and jam. I really do need to work on my presentation, and to learn how to naked frost a cake (which is not me frosting a cake in the nude, but those fancy cakes that have just a dappling of frosting on the sides and top). This is similar to a crumb coat, which is where you do a slight smattering of frosting on the sides and top to seal in the cake crumbs before a finishing second layer of frosting. It's very similar, but not exactly the same and are both things I need to learn to do. So, it's not pretty, but you know what? The flavours were there. It was a really good cake. The jam was slightly tart with the slight sweetness of buttercream in a thin layer and the moist almond cake. This meal right here? An absolute triumph! It was so, so good. Herb Lemon Pork Chops, Roasted Okra, & Lemon Basil Rice. Yes, there are green beans there, but that's nothing new. I just untinned a can, added some water and bacon grease, boiled them and added salt and pepper. They were delicious, as bacon grease makes just about everything delicious, but they were not a new recipe by any stretch, which this blog focuses on things actually made. I wouldn't have discussed that cake, except that I'd made jam specifically for it. If I had canned those beans myself, that'd be a different story. So, I did things a little differently for these recipes, but not by much. The pork chops were these big, bone-in one's with lots of fat. I cut all that away and shoved that in a ziplock bag and into the freezer for a soup later in the year. I used all the herbs listed, but we only have real rosemary, as in it's this giant bush taking up our front yard, and I did not grind that because it's tedious (I suppose I could have used my food processor, but I generally use a mortal and pestle for that; besides either way I'd have had to dry it out for a few days before grinding), so the rosemary was fresh. The parsley was not and it didn't matter as I just included it in the marinade. The lemon juice was not fresh, as we have a container of that in the fridge. I followed the rest of the directions to the letter; the tin foil that was oiled, the broiling times, ect. These pork chops were not over done or dry and were extremely flavourful and delicious. Really easy to whip up and make. I will be using this recipe again for sure! I'm big on roasting vegetables. All my life they were always boiled to death and there weren't a lot of them I would eat. The Sister roasted some sliced cabbage a few years ago and I've been hooked ever since. So, while I have roasted potatoes, cabbage, brussels sprouts, carrots, squash, and broccoli, I hadn't yet tackled okra. Mainly this is because whether dad is growing it or buying it from farmers on the side of the road, he'll bring it home and immediately either pickle or boil it. This time however, I commandeered a small lot that he'd grown in the garden and was able to roast it. I figured it would be delicious, and I wasn't wrong, but you might be worried if you've ever worked with okra before. As in, you know how slimy and sticky it is when cut up. However, once it's finished roasting, this is no longer an issue. There were two recipes I looked at, and each were exactly the same except in cutting method. The one I chose, cut the tops off of the okra and then cut up the entire pod in 1/2 inch circles. The other only cut the tops off and roasted the pods whole. You can follow this same recipe for either cutting measure. Where I varied, since it's my preferred method, was that I didn't drizzle the oil on the okra on the baking sheet. I put it in a bowl, drizzled oil, added salt (I rarely pepper these things), and then transferred it to the baking sheet. Either method is fine. I did altar this rice recipe slightly. We do have either basmati or jasmine rice (I don't remember at the moment, but it's one of those), but I saved that and used just the long grain we have tons of. I also have an aversion to chicken and rice. I won't each chicken and rice casserole (because it was served a lot when I was a kid and bad memories always happened during those dinners), so I won't have bits of chicken in rice (unless it's homemade soup, because there are no emotions over a non-solid food), and I won't add chicken broth to rice. Ever. So, there was no chicken broth in this rice. Obviously, you can follow this recipe completely and add that, but it'll taste different than what I had. The normal way for making rice, for us - as per my paternal grandfather, is 2 cups of water boiling, then add 1 cup of rice, cover and simmer boil for 20 minutes. And there's different ways this could go. Obviously if you're having rice and gravy, you just spoon this rice out and put gravy on top. But if you're making my grandfathers' hot buttered rice, I've had to edit that. He'd just add margarine. I don't use margarine, so I had to figure out the right ratio to make it taste the same. Small pat of butter and a little salt. Boom, tastes just like good memories and grandpa and my childhood. (Incidentally if you add some fresh chopped of parsley to this cooked rice with butter and salt it is really, really good too.) So, I did half this way and half the recipe way. Instead of 2 cups of water, I used 1 1/2 cups and then 1/2 cup of lemon juice; and I added the butter and then brought it to a boil (so not adding the butter after it's cooked like I normally do). Fluffed it like it said after it was done, then added the chopped up, fresh basil on top of the rice after I had put it on the plates. I'd never thought of adding lemon to rice, but wanted more than just rice and this was really good and paired well with the pork. I was a little worried that this entire meal would be too much on the lemony side, but it wasn't. I will rarely, if ever, show unappetizing things on this blog, but I just had to with this one. This is my dad's giblet gravy, which he whips up every Thanksgiving. There's a photo of it, because I defrosted some turkey, dressing, and his gravy so we could have Thanksgiving in August.
Thanksgiving in August was a bust by the way. The leftovers were vacuum sealed and only from two years ago. The turkey was super turkey flavour and very off-putting, even for my dad who adores turkey. He didn't even enjoy his gravy which he also adores. The only leftover that was good? The cornbread dressing, which incidentally had lost its seal at some point. It was delicious. I'm good with making my paternal grandmothers' cornbread dressing. You want it a little soupy (with chicken stock) going in the oven, because you want it moist and not overly dry when it comes out of the oven. You can't add a whole lot or it'll be too soggy once cooked. So, when reheating this I knew that liquid would be needed, but I wanted to make sure. Some lady suggested chicken broth and then dollops of butter on top. Cover with foil for 30 minutes, then remove the foil so it would cook the butter in and make the top browned and crunchy. It was delicious! Our dressing filled a 8" inch square baking dish. I used 1 cube of chicken bouillon with hot water which equals 1 cup of chicken broth/stock. I just used the entire cups worth. I mixed it all up so I could have the dressing look like when we first bake it. I wanted this to be an easy meal, so I did do a lot of real cooking. I haven't mastered gravy yet, so I just used two packets of turkey gravy and added some dried sage and apple juice with the water. It was OK. I wouldn't do it again. It turned out too sweet and odd tasting and was very watery. I also made instant mashed potatoes (I honestly don't even know why we have a box of these, but might as well use 'em right?) and finished off the Bisquick we had to make some drop biscuits. I made biscuits with that mix a few months back. Dad hates drop biscuits so was all, "Pat them out, but don't handle them too much." I figured that I had handled them too much, as we had bricks. This time though I followed the drop biscuit recipe, didn't over mix, and we still ended up with bricks... and bricks that had a wangy aftertaste. So, while I could have made a mistake and it's very likely, I'm also pretty certain that mix was old. We'd purchased it at Sam's, and I'm thinking that you can't keep Bisquick around like you could when I was a kid. We'd have a normal size box from the grocery store for like 8 years before it was used up and it never went off. But now we'll just buy a tiny box... if we decide to even purchase it again. It's sad when the Potato Buds are the best tasting bit of your dinner, right? Well, the dressing was good, but really, the Potato Buds? Anyways, I plan on doing a post about our Thanksgiving dishes in November, even including the foods I don't like (like the gravy pictured above), because all of the recipes have been a part of my family Thanksgivings as well as from mom and dad's childhoods... and possibly slighty farther back than that. But this gravy, man. It's my maternal grandmothers recipe and dad has always made it since I can remember. It's basically a basic gravy (I do know with gravy's that for a basic butter/oil with flour, the colour depends on how long you let the flour cook before adding your other liquids; it also alters the taste depending on how much or little the flour has cooked.) that is light in colour, then there is yellow food colouring to get it the right shade of gross, turkey innards (boiled and sliced) and hard boiled eggs that have been sliced. The Sister says that if you just get the gravy without any innards or eggs that it's a good tasting gravy. I can't stomach it. No literally, I can't. If something smells disgusting to me, I can even bring it to my mouth to try it. So, boiled eggs and boiled meats make me gag, along with liver, innards, and overly fishy smelly things; canned tuna, steamed muscles, certain fishes that have been baked, etc. Though I'll add the recipe in that future post, you've been warned. The pre-boiling of the eggs and the innards will make your house reek and smell like a butcher shop on a hot day and not the lovely autumny smells of apples or sage or pie crust or warm bread or anything else lovely and pleasant. Not to mention that it looks like something the dog got sick on (doesn't matter if it's fresh or being reheated from frozen).
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