Eggs, Eggs, Everywhere Eggs!

Eggs, Eggs, Eggs! If your kids are anything like mine, they love coloring eggs, decorating eggs, hiding eggs and collecting eggs. But once all those pretty colored  eggs are nestled in the baskets, the kids aren't so enthusiastic about eating the hard-cooked variety.  Egg Salad, Macaroni, Potato and Tuna Salads only go so far in using up those eggs, and before long the question is whether the things are still safe for human consumption.

So here is an idea I've fallen back when the cartons of hard-cooked eggs threatened to crowd everything else from the refrigerator.

Chocolate Pudding Cake - The Lenten Version

Chocolate Pudding Cake doesn't sound like Lenten fare. What could be frugal and penitential about chocolate, pudding or cake, much less all three in one dessert? And why are we talking about dessert during Lent, anyway?

Well, traditionally, the six Sundays during Lent are excluded from the Fast, so we might enjoy dessert this Sunday on a technicality. But aside from that possible excuse, and totally ignoring all the sugar in the dish, I happened to find a recipe for Chocolate Pudding Cake that has no eggs, no dairy products and barely a smidgen of vegetable oil. If one had, say, given up all animal products for Lent without mentioning sugar or chocolate, one could quite innocently indulge in this dessert.

But alas and alack! Everyone knows the proof of the pudding lies in its taste, and luscious as the Chocolate Pudding Cake might sound and even appear, especially when darkly oozing fresh from the oven, the taste just isn't there. This Pudding Cake is like the packages of frozen diet desserts. Oh, if only the contents really tasted as good as the picture on the package looks! That is my experience with this cake.

So I've fiddled with the recipe, not a a lot, but a little. I swapped the 2 Tbs. vegetable oil for an equal amount of melted butter. Then where the original calls for hot water, I'm using hot milk. Cream would be better. Plus I've thrown in two squares of baking chocolate, melted into the butter. Now, this is chocolate. So much for the Lenten Fast. We'll serve this on Palm Sunday, when feasting has official blessings.

Recipe: Starr's Chocolate Pudding Cake

Note: Soy or Almond Milk may be used for dairy Milk.

1 cup flour
3/4 cup raw sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 oz (squares) semisweet or bitter chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cups hot scalded milk

Heat oven to 350°. Stir together flour, sugar, 3 tablespoons cocoa, baking powder and salt. Melt chocolate in microwave then combine with 1/2 c. milk, oil and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients, mix only to blend. Batter will be very thick and lumpy. Spread the batter evenly in a lightly sprayed 9-inch square baking pan.

Combine brown sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa; sprinkle over the batter. Slowly pour hot milk over the batter and brown sugar-cocoa mixture. Bake cake for 40 minutes. It will not "test done" and may look like a molten gooey mess. That's perfect.

Let cake stand for at least 5 minutes. Serve warm in dessert dishes, topped with ice cream or whipped cream.

Buffalo Tips and Caramelized Onions

When cooking with Buffalo - or more correctly, Bison - I usually pull out the Crock Pot or fire up the grill. But the other night I unwrapped what I thought were rib eye steaks and found a chunk of sirloin tip. It was about 6 hours too late to throw the thing into the Crock Pot, and without a scrap of fat, the meat would have turned to leather on the grill.

The quality that sometimes makes Buffalo tough is the same quality that makes it healthy: it has nearly no fat. It is best when quickly grilled or seared and served rare, or when slowly braised or stewed on very low heat. Here's how I managed the sirloin tip:

RECIPE: BUFFALO TIPS WITH CARAMELIZED ONIONS

1 1/2 lb. Buffalo sirloin, about 1" thick, cut into 1" cubes
1 or 2 large sweet onions (about 1 lb.) sliced 1/2" thick
flour for dredging
salt & freshly cracked pepper
olive oil
Worcestershire sauce

1 cup broth, milk, wine or combination.

noodles, rice or fresh bread

Dry meat cubes with paper towels.
Combine flour, salt and pepper in shallow bowl or pie plate. Dredge meat cubes to thoroughly coat. Shake off excess flour, reserve about 3 Tbs. flour for sauce.

Oil hot iron skillet, heat on medium until a drop of water sizzles. Add meat and let brown without stirring for about three minutes, repeat until well browned on all sides.  Remove to plate, drizzle with additional olive oil and sprinkle with Worcestershire sauce; keep warm.
Add a bit more olive oil to hot skillet. Add onions, reduce heat to medium low and cook onions, stirring only occasionally, until caramelized to taste. Remove to plate with meat and keep warm.

Add about 3 Tbs. olive oil to pan with reserved 3 Tbs. flour. Cook and stir until thoroughly combined with all drippings and brown bits in the skillet, about 1 minute.  Slowly add 1 cup liquid, whisking to smooth out lumps. When slightly thickened, return meat and onions to skillet, stir just to warm.

Serve over Buffalo Tips and Caramelized Onions over noodles, rice or sliced fresh bread.

Boiled Bread?

Ask someone if they enjoy boiled bread, and they might think you've lost your marbles. Which is a shame, since two of the most popular breads around, soft pretzels and bagels, are just that: boiled bread.

Although I posted the recipe for fat soft pretzels several weeks ago, I've continued baking them for friends. Like most things, the pretzels get better with practice. For movie night with neighbors, I topped the pretzels with grated Romano, garlic powder, oregano and basil for "Pizza Pretzels." Here's a secret: sprinkle the toppings over the pretzels as they come out of the water bath, before they bake.

Fresh from that success, I decided to try making bagels, which seemed more serious as well as challenging.

I'm pleased to report that bagels are just as much fun to make as pretzels, and perhaps even easier. This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Someone Else's Kitchen

I climbed up on the stool and searched the farthest reaches of the highest cabinets, with no success. Like an orthodox home cleansed for Passover, there was no more yeast to be found. Clinging to hope, I shook the contents of a faded packet over warm water and sugar, silently urging the the tiny organisms to find the life within. Five minutes passed. Nothing.

Reality: there would be no freshly baked Daily Bread for supper tonight. Okay. What's the back-up plan?

Biscuits? Not my strongest suit, but the kids would eat them. In a house full of kids, creativity yields to practicality, and I'm pretty sure these kids would eat biscuits. Could I make Mickey Mouse biscuits? That might be a winner, baked in an iron skillet with plenty of melted butter. Do we have butter?

I'm visiting a friend this week, and trying to make myself useful. She's at work and the boys are in school, so I'm practicing my long-held belief that every working mother needs a wife. That would be the imaginary June Cleaver, who loves to putter about the house in shirtwaist dress and pearl choker, putting lavender sachets in the linen closet, picking bugs by hand off the heirloom tomatoes in the organic backyard garden, and, above all, whipping up delicious all-natural meals daily while the Mom is advancing her career in the Real World. Home-baked bread is part of that dream.

Cooking in someone else's kitchen is a good exercise. Details one takes for granted suddenly become important. How much hand kneading will produce the same result as my stand mixer? Can I use her Lite margarine in place of butter and vegetable oil instead of olive oil? Where's a warm spot for the dough to rise? And by the way, none of this matters because the yeast is dead. Shift gears and find the baking powder.

Side dishes: carrots or green beans? I'm used to fresh, but here the veggies are frozen. Should they defrost before going into the casserole? How long does the oven take to heat? I thought I knew my way around a kitchen, but now the truth is clear: I know my way around MY kitchen. Ah, humility is a necessary but bitter cup.

Yesterday, the six-year old resisted tasting my chicken-rice-carrot casserole, begging for peanut butter, a hot dog, anything but the unfamiliar food on his plate. Ah, humility. Never risk your self-esteem cooking for small children. Finally he took a bite and muttered, "Actually, it's pretty good." My joy was boundless. So today I'm facing the challenge again. By the end of this visit, my humility should be well established.

So, back to the biscuits. Which cabinet might contain baking soda, salt and some sort of oil?

Wait. On the counter, abandoned half an hour ago, what's that? A cup of foaming creatures, life from death, hope springing eternal. The yeast is rising. Houston, we have lift off!