Recipes

[Jenett]

I consider myself a fairly decent seat-of-the-pants style cook, but pot-lucks always throw me a for a loop.  Most of my best dishes require a stove, a grill, or need to be refrigerated, none of which are usually available at dish-to-pass events. 

Homemade bread. Even the recipe I consider simple and my base minimum gets people going "ooooh, more." Interesting cheese or a not-quite-mainstram jam/jelly with it works well and stops me feeling quite so weird about just bringing bread. Descriptive recipe with tangents and "here's why I do it this weird way" over at http://gleewood.org/threshold/2008/07/29/on-bread/. (With some further notes on spices in the next post after that one for the curious). Foccaccia is another good option, and looks a lot fancier without actually being a lot harder to make.

My summer project was figuring out how to make pita bread, which I've more or less got the knack of - I use the base recipe at The Fresh Loaf's website, and go from there, but let the dough rest a little longer when divided (about 20 minutes) and after being rolled (about 20 minutes), where 20 minutes = enough time to go do something meaningful on the computer, not just putter around aimlessly, but not so long I get totally engrossed in something. Skimming Google Reader, responding to a not-involved email or three. Pita bread and homemade hummus or other spreads go over well too. (And people go "You made this? Cool!" Or if they're my friends, there's a lengthy discussion of optimal puffing strategies, while the bread disappears.)

What else. Bread salad (lots of good Italian recipes for that.) Pasta salad. In the winter, I'd bring cold chicken wild rice stew, but we're not quite at that season yet. (Soup recipe. Cooked off a little too much liquid. Liked it better. It's my one really really really good cooking thing besides bread. It'll do fine in a cooler until you serve it: it doesn't need a fridge.)

[tylik]

Jenett, thank you! I think I needed to be reminded of focacia right about now. (And bread salad. One of my absolute favorite summer things, except since I moved up here even with once a week baking we usually don't have stale bread for bread salad.)

Often when I'm going to potlucks one of the things I try to do is work around food sensitivities. (Especially since I'm mostly vegan - I really am philosophically omnivorous, it's kind of complicated.) So I'll often make vegan dolmas, with a lemon-roast garlic-olive oil sauce for dipping. Or a vegan yum woon sen. (Or lentil quinoa larb, for that matter.)

[sleary]

Mmmm. Focaccia. That's up next on my list of things to try.

I made these cheesecake brownies the other day. After cleaning out the pan, my co-workers informed me that I am never, under any circumstances, to bring those to work again.

We have three Weight Watchers on staff, you see.

[dancing crow]

Following a pointer on AskMefi looking for ways to add jasmine flavouring to things, I found Silver Cloud Estates (http://www.silvercloudestates.com/) with an astonishing array of extracts, spices and flavourings. I can now make my own coconut flavoured anything (mostly just sniffing it at the moment, although it makes a fine cake) as well as jasmine scenting some cookies (one experiment) cake (second experiment) and fruit salad.

For those not enamoured of either of those flavours, there are an array of others.

[ribby]

I made Chaz's rosemary shortbread just now, for my holiday cookie boxes.  I just pulled it out of the oven, and thanks to a granite slab, one pan was cool enough to test after a couple of minutes.
 
  O.M.G.--well, no, that doesn't quite cover it.  Wow, oh wow, oh WOW WOW WOW!  Yep, that does it.  I'm thinking maybe I should make another batch, because if I don't, there won't be any left to send.  They're sweet, savory, buttery, rosemary-y amazingness, and my kitchen does indeed smell like OMG.  And they're dead easy--pretty much, throw everything into a stand mixer and you have dough in a few minutes.

*loves the Platypus like whoa*

~Kris

[Elizabeth Bear]

*loves the Platypus like whoa*

I'll tell him you said so. *g*

This reminds me, I need to get some rosemary....

[sleary]

Oh my. Those are good cookies. I had a lemon left over from dinner, so I sprinkled a few cookies with lemon juice as they cooled. Mmm, tangy goodness.

[Cal]

...yesterday I made a half-batch of Chaz's hermit cookies, only using golden syrup instead of molasses.

As stupid bodyfuel goes, they are, shall we say, very much worth the effort!

[kakiphony]

I know that chocolate chip cookies bake better when the dough has been allowed to rest for 24-36 hours.  Do oatmeal cookies also improve with such a rest period?  I've got my chocolate chip dough chilling, but I'm also making oatmeal scotchies and am not sure if I should make that dough today too, or wait and make it and bake it both one Tuesday night.  My recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups flour and 3 cups oatmeal.

[Strangeways]

According to the only lecture my Grandmother ever gave me, all cookies need at least 2 -3 hours of chilling before you even think of baking them.

...I've been afraid to cross her on it, so I have no idea what oatmeal cookies taste like otherwise. Mine are always nommy, though.

[kakiphony]

Since I had everything out and the mixer was already dirty I did go ahead and mix up the scotchies last night.  I'll bake them tomorrow, so they will have rested for 48 hours.  We'll see how they turn out!  (It's a pretty fool-proof recipe, so if the dough isn't too dried out from the rest they should be just fine.)

[nebula]

...yesterday I made a half-batch of Chaz's hermit cookies, only using golden syrup instead of molasses.

As stupid bodyfuel goes, they are, shall we say, very much worth the effort!

We made them with half treacle, half golden syrup.

Chaz was not joking about them being sticky. I had to stop the kids from helping once we started trying to shape them for baking - otherwise I'd be chiselling cookie dough off every surface. I gave up trying to roll them out and just squidged them onto baking sheets. They came out fine.

[Cal]

We made them with half treacle, half golden syrup.

H'm. I didn't even think of trying treacle, which is available in supermarkets here (unline molasses).  But golden syrup worked out beautifully, so no harm done!

Chaz was not joking about them being sticky.

Oh, boy, was he ever not joking.  The amount of flour you need on every surface the dough comes in contact with rather beggars belief!

I gave up trying to roll them out and just squidged them onto baking sheets. They came out fine.

I got them to roll out using a small rolling pin absolutely coated in flour, and then used a metal cookie cutter with a fluted edge, also coated in flour, to cut them out.  It worked pretty well - I made a full batch this week, to take to my sister's for Christmas lunch, and got 29 biscuits out of it...

I have a feeling they will go down quite well!

[sleary]

Oh. My. I have a new favorite cookie recipe: chewy chocolate-cherry cookies. They are chocolate like whoa, with chocolate chips and dried cherries. They are amazing.

[jennythe_reader]

Oh. My. I have a new favorite cookie recipe: chewy chocolate-cherry cookies. They are chocolate like whoa, with chocolate chips and dried cherries. They are amazing.

Those sound really good.  I'll have to give them a try.