Spokane Food Blog

This cake may sound a bit odd when you read they ingredients but, it really is a perfect fun Spring recipe.  A friend recently tried this Floridan/Ohioan Family’s 1950s recipe for her son’s birthday.  It was a hit and quick to make. You might want to give it a try for your Bloomsday BBQ this weekend.

STRAWBERRY POP CAKE RECIPE
-From TL’s Grandma Keener 1950

• One package yellow cake mix
• 2 packages strawberry Jell-O
• 8-9 ounces of strawberry pop
• 1 large package (5.1 oz) instant vanilla pudding mix
• 1 cup milk
• 1 container (12 oz) Cool Whip

CAKE:

Make one yellow cake mix according to directions in 13×9 pan. Cool at least 15 minutes. Poke cake all over with meat fork.

Mix strawberry Jell-O with 1 1/2 cup boiling water. Add 8-9 oz strawberry pop. Pour over cake. Cool over night.

FROSTING:

Mix instant vanilla pudding mix with 1 cup milk. Fold in Cool Whip. Cover cake and keep refrigerated.

Will serve 16- 20 people.

Did you know that the author of my favorite Spokane blog, This One Time in Spokane, also runs one of the largest pickle guides on the Internet? I kid you not. Run over to How to Pickle — “Pickle Anything!” — to learn more.

I will admit I never was into pickles until I tasted a home-canned one last year. And my god. How good was that‽ (The answer: very good!) So I will admit I was a bit excited to see “Bread and Butter Pickles” recipes, or not to mention the exotic sounding “Pear Pickles.”

And with everything from pickle links to pickle articles… Well, there’s no denying this: How to Pickle is now a Spokane institution. If I were you, I’d be SpoCOOL and go check it out right now.

Hamid’s friends were nice enough to let me spend a Friday afternoon learning how to make naan at their bread bakery in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Naan, the Afghan way, simply cannot be compared to other styles I have tasted. The bread I helped make looked a bit different from the professionals but it did taste great. Even though the outside temperature was about 30 degrees, the shop was easily 80 degrees inside.  The ventilation was minimal, and after a few minutes inhaling smoke in that hot box , it definitely hurts your lungs.  This job would be very difficult in the summer, when the air quality in Kabul is at its worst and the hot, dry, days blow dust everywhere.

1. First mix the dough from flour, yeast, and water (this shop uses an old bathtub to mix the dough).
2. Next form balls from the raised dough and pat them into circles about the size of a dinner plate.
3. Then throw the dough down the loft to the next station.
4. Trace your fingers through the circles to form lines all the way across.
5. Take a hair comb and poke holes along the lines made by your fingers.
6. Toss it to the next station where the bread will be stretched on a stuffed sack.
7. Slap the bread onto the wall of the tandoor oven.
8. Let it sit about five minutes and take it out with a sharp rod.
9. Then toss the finished piece into the window for people to walk up and order.

A friend of mine in Maryland built a scaled down version of the “commercial” tandoor oven in her backyard. I would love to make one of these ovens and serve fresh naan, just have to check the building codes.

Here’s a short video from the bakery — beware, motion sickness may occur.

It’s time for spring cleaning even if the snow keeps falling.  I found a stack of fliers in my office from the 2008 AG Sustainability Fair. For all of you do-it-your-self-ers out there,  here is one “recipe for disaster” you could consider trying:  Make your own biodiesel from your waste vegetable oil.  If you do not get around to that, check out the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service website. I bet you will click that link before you cook some biodiesel.

Recipe provided by ATTRA, National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service Website.

Making a Small Batch (of Biodiesel) Using Waste Vegetable Oil

Materials

One bottle of isopropyl alcohol. (In the U.S., Iso-HEET® Premium Fuel System Dryer & Antifreeze, 12 fl. oz., in the red bottle, is available at auto parts stores and is about 100% isopropyl alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol is also available at pharmacies.

One bottle of phenol red from the hot tub store.

One liter of 0.1% sodium hydroxide in distilled water—which is another way of saying 1 gram sodium hydroxide (lye) dissolved in 1 liter of distilled water.

Since you might not have particularly accurate scales, one way of achieving this is to measure out 10 grams of lye and dissolve it into 1 liter of distilled water. Now take 100 milliliters of this water and mix it with 900 milliliters distilled water. You now have pretty close to the 1 gram of lye in 1 liter of distilled water. You can also go to your local pharmacist or high school science department and ask them to do the measuring for you.

Equipment

One one-cup jelly jar.

Two glass 1 milliliter eyedroppers with graduations marked on the side. Note that you will use one for oil, one for the lye-water mixture. Always use the same eyedropper for the same chemical; do not mix them up.

The procedure

1. Pour 10 milliliters of room-temperature isopropyl alcohol into the one-cup jelly jar.
2. Add 2 or 3 drops of phenol red to the alcohol.
3. Using one of the eyedroppers, slowly, drop by drop, add the 0.1% lye solution until the alcohol just starts to turn red. Stir the alcohol while dropping in the 0.1% lye solution.
4. Using the other eyedropper, add exactly 1 milliliter of the oil to be titrated.
5. Now, filling the eyedropper with exactly 1 milliliter of 0.1% lye solution, start dripping this solution into the medicine measure while stirring.
6. Keep track of how many milliliters of 0.1% lye solution are needed for the liquid to turn and stay red.

The number of milliliters of 0.1% lye solution needed is equal to the number of extra grams of pure sodium hydroxide catalyst needed to produce the proper reactions to make biodiesel. For example, if it takes 3 milliliters of 0.1% lye solution to turn the oil and isopropyl alcohol solution to a base, you will need to add 3 grams of sodium hydroxide to the 3.5 grams for new oil, or 6.5 grams total per liter of waste oil.

As you probably already knew, this wonder of a web site received some well deserved media attention last week. Hey, we deserve it, we’re awesome!

Now my quesadilla recipe in the article wasn’t quite my recipe as such. I could go on a tirade here about about the Spokesman soiling my good name, but seeing that, A) making quesadillas hardly requires a culinary degree, and B) my “recipe” pretty much was “just taste your way through it,” I probably would have less than a good case. But! For your benefit, here is the original world famous Washington Quesadilla “recipe.”

• Tortillas (two for one quesadilla in this case, unless you want to use the fold-over method.)
• Ground lamb sausage. (I got mine from the Moscow Co-op.) Or any other type of sausage. Links would work fine too.
• Salsa — the De Leon tomatillo recipe in the article would work well
• Grated Cougar Gold sharp cheddar.
• A Honeycrisp apple. Thinly sliced.
• (Whatever else you’d like in there — I imagine some corn and black beans would work just fine, even as a substitute for the meat.)

Cook the sausage about half-way in the pan, then add salsa to taste. Let the meat simmer until it has absorbed the salsa flavors. At the very end, put the cheese in with the meat and mix it all together. Put the meat/cheese mixture on the tortilla, and top with the apple slices. Top it with the second tortilla, and cook it on medium/high on a Griddler (or George Foreman or broil it or whatever) until it’s done. Serve with salsa, sour-cream, and apple slices.

Then again, nobody really needs a recipe for a simple quesadilla, do they?

My boyfriend is continually guilty of what I call BWI. Baking while intoxicated. I realize this might be a familiar or unusual phenomenon to you, but in my household (consisting of just me, my boyfriend and my cat) it’s a familiar occurrence. Needless to say, the cat is rarely guilty.

For what appears to be no particular reason, my boyfriend’s favorite BWI treat is muffins. His latest culinary adventure included a standard blueberry muffin mix, cinnamon, powdered sugar, bananas and craisins.

Now I’ll admit, I wasn’t an innocent bystander; and I didn’t exactly discourage his enthusiasm for smothering those poor little muffins. Rather, this time around I was a cheerleader. Aimlessly searching through our cupboards, we couldn’t wait to see what we could add next. Luckily, the ingredients ran at last dry with the craisins.

Now muffin assembly is easy. Flop in bowl and stir. The actual baking part is where it gets tricky. I told my boyfriend time and time again (as intoxicated people are hard of hearing) about the knife test. According to my mother and bakers the world over, if you poke a knife into the muffin and it comes out clean, as in no batter or crumbs on the knife, the muffins are ready.

Unfortunately my chaperon’s eye grew weary, and I left him to finish the muffins alone. And finish them he did. Every single muffin… of about 14. Overall the muffins didn’t turn out half bad, a little gooey in the center but all in all it was an impressive accomplishment given his state. I truly don’t mind BWI-ing, with supervision so long as the recipes don’t get too intense. The day he tries to make cheesecake, is the day we’re over.

Slimy vegetables make me feel like a failure. I know I sound like a stupid cow, but seriously. Every time I see a goopy onion, wrinkled carrot or black potato in my fridge, it’s like a slap in the face. It makes me ashamed to say I’m a vegetarian, much less claim that I cook my own food. I just… never seem to eat all my vegetables before they go bad.

This, my friends, makes me angry. First, rotten vegetables stink. Whether they’re inside your fridge, garbage, or compost, the slightest whiff is bound to cause fainting, dry-heaving, vomiting or all of the above. Secondly, I hate to be wasteful. I already feel guilty for living in America, living in a fuel-based economy and participating in capitalism. The last thing I need is a rotten eggplant on my conscious.

Finally, I hate to waste money. I’m lucky I can afford to buy expensive organic produce (I cut corners elsewhere), so why do I essentially throw my money away? I mean, it’s not like the economy or job market will help me out once I’ve thrown out all my spoiled food. So what you ask, or don’t ask, is the cultrate? Two things.

I don’t finish my vegetables because a: processed food like salsa and tortilla chips lurk about my cupboards and b: hiding food in the so-called “vegetable door” of my fridge makes me forget that I have it. Case solved. I’ll burn my cupboards and tear apart my fridge. If only the president-elects’ stimulus proposal for the economy could work this easily.

“Editor”’s note: This is the first update from new contributor, Jordy. That’s right. We’re like a collective.

I thank God, Allah, or whoever you might worship that Thanksgiving Day is done and over with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t dislike the perfectly fabricated tale about the first colonists and the Native Americans. And I am thankful for what’s come and gone from my life over the years. What I really don’t like about Thanksgiving, what really get under my skin, is the inevitable conversation I share with all of my acquaintances.

Person A: “So you’re a vegetarian right?”

Jordy: “Yeah that’s right.”

Person A: “So uh…(awkward pause, slight chuckle) what did you eat?”

Jordy: “Dead gerbils. You?”

OK, so I might have fabricated the last part of that theoretical conversation; but the fact of the matter is, just because I don’t eat meat, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy food, eating or the holidays in general. Not all, if any, vegetarians are calorie, fat, and cholesterol hating monsters. I love Thanksgiving dinner. I eat mashed potatoes, stuffing (outside the turkey), cranberries and pie smothered in gravy (vegetable stock), just like everyone else. Mine and my family’s holiday was not ruined or any less because of my lack of meat consumption. So stop smugly asking me what I ate Person A, and any other theoretical conservationist that might come my way. I will proudly step off my soap box now.

Cider Glazed Vegetables

• 900g mixture of carrots, sweet potato, broccoli, cauliflower, green onions
• 1250ml cider or apple juice
• 100g brown sugar
• 50g margarine (vegan or butter)
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• ½ tsp ground allspice
• 75g cranberries to taste

Lightly steam the vegetables until part cooked. Combine the cider, sugar, margarine, nutmeg and spices in a non-stick saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring frequently. Add steamed vegetables and simmer for 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

What to do? You have more Thanksgiving leftovers than you know what to do with, and holiday visits from family and “friends” you only see once a year has De Leon-blocked you for days. Solution: make a leftover turkey torta. Granted, this might not be what one would call authentic, but it’s a quick, easy, and tasty snack, and a bit different from your standard leftover fare.

• Bread of your choosing (I used leftover French)
• Leftover turkey
• Italian parsley
• Refried beans
• Sour cream
• Munster cheese
• Salsa verde (or any other type)

This is as simple as it gets: Set a pan over low-medium heat, and toss some thinly sliced turkey in it (amount depending on how many sandwiches, etc.) with a bit of salsa. Toss it around until it starts heating up, and the mixture take on a chunky consistency. Meanwhile, warm up the beans.

Smear beans on bread (which you can toast beforehand or heat in the pan after assembly), and layer the parsley, turkey mixture, and cheese on top of it. Spread some sour cream on a second slice, and bump the two pieces of bread together. Voila. Instant American/Mexican/French/Italian/whatever style leftover sandwich!

Of course, all the ingredients can be substituted, seeing that this is all, y’know… Leftovers.

Ask an Italian if spanakopita is Italian or Greek, and you might be treated to a long anecdote about the Roman empire and why the dish is, in fact, Italian. The rest of us will probably just agree that spanakopita, like its name, is Greek. Regardless, we recently made some slight modifications to an ancient family recipe, which, Greek or Italian, was pretty awesome.

Cue less than stellar picture and recipe below.

I swear to god the filo was golden. Anyway! Give it a shot, it is good:

• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup butter
• 5 packages (10 ounces each) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
• 1/2 cup feta
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1 teaspoon marjoram, minced
• 1 teaspoon dill, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 package filo, thawed

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Saute onion and garlic in butter just until tender. Combine all ingredients, except 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese and filo. Turn mixture into greased 2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle top with reserved cheese. Top with 6 sheets filo. Spread olive oil or butter between each sheet. Bake 60 minutes.

Makes 12 servings.