Quick Cheese Bread

This cheese bread is also from Cooks Illustrated, and while we're on the subject, I'll do a little plug for them here. It is a subscription service, but well worth the price of admission. They have very well-tested recipes, videos for particularly difficult processes, and excellent directions and pictures. At the beginning of each recipe they have a "Why this recipe works" comment with very helpful information.

That being said... my daughter would say I committed culinary travesty on this recipe this time because it calls for freshly grated parmesan cheese and I only had the dried powder type <gasp>. This happens sometimes when you're a cruiser and I will never publish any recipe here that can't be adapted well to what you might have on hand, so here we go (sorry Amber).

Ingredients:


3 ounces parmesan cheese shredded on large holes of box grater (about 1 cup)
3 C. all purpose flour (15 oz)
1 Tbl baking powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I used a 5 pepper fiery blend I had on        hand)
1 tsp table salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
4 ounces extra-sharp cheddar cheese cut into small cubes
   (or mild asiago crumbled into 1 C.)
1-1/4 C. whole milk (or 2% but NOT skim)
3 Tbl unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg beaten lightly
3/4 C. sour cream




Heat oven to 350°. Grease 9x5 loaf pan then sprinkle 1/2 cup of the parmesan in the bottom of your pan.

In a large bowl mix the flour, bakng powder, peppers, and salt with a whisk.

Add the cheese and toss it until it's evenly coated with the flour mixture.

In another bowl, mix the milk, butter, egg and sour cream.








Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture and blend it together quickly until all the dry ingredients are mixed in. Do not overmix as this will give you a pretty tough bread.

Spread it into the prepared pan and top it with the remaining parmesan. Bake it at 350° for 45-50 minutes. In my boat oven I need to cover the top loosely with foil the last 10 minutes or so because it rises high and starts to burn. I use an ice pick to test for doneness, but a word of caution - move the tester around a couple of times because if you happen to hit a cube of melted cheese it will look like the bread is not done when it might be.

Cool it on a rack in the pan for 5 minutes and then remove it to the rack to cool another 45 minutes. I know, it's not a quick bread in the sense that it's quick till you get to eat it, only quick to mix. If you can't resist the temptation and you cut it too soon, you'll miss the improved texture of the bread after it cools so try to wait if you can.

(I dare you).

Fish Cakes

This is an adapted recipe from Cooks Illustrated, a recipe site that my daughter virtually lives on, and continually passes me recipes from. The original recipe was for Maryland Crab Cakes, but since my husband developed a late-in-life allergy to shellfish, we adapted it to fish. It's a cruiser's delight because you never know what kind of fish or shellfish you're going to catch that day or have sitting in your freezer from previous days.

Ingredients:


2 pounds of lump crabmeat, lobster, or any other fish you might have. 
8 medium scallions, green part only, minced (about 1/2 cup) (see "never-ending green onion")
2 Tbl fresh parsley leaves, cilantro, dill or basil finely chopped
3 tsp Old Bay seasoning
4-8 Tbl dry bread crumbs
1/2 C. mayonnaise
2 large eggs
1/2 C. white or whole wheat flour
1/2 C. oil

Poach shellfish or fish until just cooked through. Drain and place in large bowl. 

Add scallions, cilantro, Old Bay, 4 tablespoons bread crumbs, mayonnaise, and eggs. Mix just until combined, leaving large chunks of fish. 

If the fish is moist and still won't bind, then add additional bread crumbs 1 tablespoon at a time until they will bind. 

Form into cakes and pat with flour till all sides are coated. 

Fry in oil until golden, turn, and fry other side until golden. 

Serve with either tarter sauce or Creamy Chipotle Chile Sauce, below.


Creamy Chipotle Chili Sauce
1/4 C. mayonnaise
1/4 C. sour cream
2 tsp canned chili in adobo sauce (minced)
1 small clove garlic, minced
2 tsp minced fresh cilantro leaves
1 tsp lime juice fresh from lime


Blend all ingredients together well and chill to blend flavors.

Best Banana Bread

In keeping with my trend toward very versatile recipes, this banana bread is a very flexible recipe that allows you to customize it to your family's particular tastes. It calls for all-purpose flour but I sometimes use all whole wheat or half whole wheat. It calls for walnuts but I've used walnuts or pecans and I've also replaced half or all of the nuts with flax seed and gotten excellent results. It also calls for margarine but I refuse to even have the stuff in my house, considering it not to even be "real food", so I use butter. It also calls for buttermilk which I almost never have in the fridge so I use 1/3 of the amount in plain yogurt or sour cream and mix it in a cup with milk to make buttermilk. You can use a higher ratio of yogurt to milk if you like a little more tartness.

Ingredients:

3/4C (1 1/2 sticks) margarine, softened to room temp.
1 1/2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 C mashed ripe bananas (~3)
1 t vanilla
1 3/4 C unsifted flour
1 t baking soda
3/4 t salt
1/2 C buttermilk (I use milk cause I never have buttermilk)
1 C chopped nuts (pecans, optional)

Preheat oven to 325 F

Grease bread pan. This recipe makes one 5x5 inch pan or two 4x7 1/2 inch pan or one 9x5 inch pan,or you can multiply the ingredients by 1.3 and do it in a 9x13 pan. I've had good luck baking it in a couple 13oz empty metal coffee cans. It makes a nice shape for wrapping up and giving as a gift. You will have to adjust your baking times accordingly.

The key to success with this recipe is to be sure that your bananas are ripe. They should be brown on the outside and squishy to the touch. When I have bananas that are ready in my fruit bowl but I don't have time to make the bread, I just throw the bananas in the freezer, skin and all, and when I have enough to do the recipe and the time to bake then I thaw them out. You can squish bananas in their skins if you do it carefully and then scrape them out. Saves on the mashing time. Also, on the boat where I don't have an electric mixer, I use a potato masher to mix this recipe. They work great for hand-mixed recipes like cookies and so forth that are thick.

After mashing your bananas in the bowl, add the softened butter. Mash it together and then add the rest of the liquid ingredients.

Add the dry ingredients to the bowl and stir quickly but completely. Over-mixing will produce a dense loaf that can be tough.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. As you can see here, I'm feeding a big group so I have used the 9x13 pan. It will bake for 45-50 minutes in my boat oven and since I know my oven is cooler than the indicated thermostat it will bake at 350° not 325°. You will need to experiment with your oven. Let the bread cool a bit before cutting. You can sprinkle powdered sugar on top if you're doing it in the cake pan. You can also frost it with whipped cream icing and use it like a cake. It keeps well, although there's rarely enough left to worry about it. You can also freeze it. It's great either warm or cold with cream cheese. Enjoy!

Sailing Day Quick Enchiladas

Today was Easter Sunday.  The day dawned blue sky and 10 kts of wind, just chilly enough to need a jacket and be able to drink coffee.  Our friend Kacey had invited us sailing and we had decided the night before to take our breakfast out on the lake, even if we had to motor out there and sit, bobbing, while we ate. We did not have to bob after all, but enjoyed a wonderful sail for a few hours.

When someone asks you to go sailing, you should go. Now. As a result, there is often not enough time left in the day to make homemade corn tortillas and enchilada sauce. Times like these call for a grab into the pantry for a few cans and 30 minutes later you have a good hot meal around which to reminisce about the season's maiden sail.

Ingredients:

Package of corn tortillas
1 pound of sharp cheddar
1 can refried beans, seasoned
1 large 29oz can enchilada sauce

Sour cream
Corn tortilla chips
Jasmine rice

Preaheat oven to 375°. Pour half of the can of enchilada sauce into a 9 x 13 pan. Set aside.

Grate cheddar. Place a good handful of grated cheddar on tortilla and roll up. Place seam side down into sauce in pan. Repeat with other tortillas until you have a line the length of the pan.

Mix half of the can of refried beans with a good handful of cheddar and stir well. Spread on tortilla and roll up. Repeat with three more tortillas and line up in two rows of two in remaining space in pan. This is the ratio of cheese to bean enchiladas that our family likes, but you can make as many of each as you care for.

Pour the remaining sauce on top, being sure to cover all the tortillas. Add remaining grated cheddar on top. Bake 375° for 30 minutes or until sauce bubbles up between enchiladas and cheese is bubbly. Serve with sour cream, chips, and rice. These reheat very well.

At this point I would normally have a really terrific picture of the finished product but, truthfully, I totally forgot because we were trying to get dinner in before we had to leave the boat to come back to the city. I'll try to remember next time!

Galley Flow

One of the things I've found to be most important in making your galley a workable place to produce nourishment for the crew is to be sure that the "flow" of the galley is natural.  What I mean by this is if you find that you are constantly reaching in the wrong place for something or if you have to move 20 things to get to something, then a change needs to be made so that the flow of your movements is more natural and, as a result, you become more productive and efficient, something that is extremely important in such a small space.

We spent this past winter working to improve the flow of my galley, adding little things here and there that have dramatically improved the experience for this particular galley chef.  A happy chef means a happy crew.

One of the things that was causing me some grief in my galley was the lack of proper lighting.  It was difficult to do dishes especially since there was no light over the sink.  I happen to be fortunate enough to have a really really deep sink in this boat, one big enough to do cookie sheets in, which is a real blessing.  But trying to do them in the dark meant re-doing them in the morning many times because of stuff I'd missed. We added an LED bar light over the sink so I can now see all the food stuck on the pans.  It made an unbelievable difference in the galley, making it seem nearly twice as big at night and offering some light to the salon as well.


Early in the winter we removed our totally useless nav seat and built a bench seat with an openable lid and storage inside with a cushion on top.  This provided the space I was missing for cookie sheets, pans, and a collapsible strainer, all of which used to reside inside the oven and had to be removed to the salon seat while I baked.

Over the last week we added a spice rack behind my refrigerator - a really big spice rack - which will empty my glasses rack and allow room for more glasses. It also puts my spices within easy reach instead of crammed at the back of a cabinet. It takes the place of 3 really hideously ugly placards that I hated having in my face all the time and which have since taken up residence on the front of the companionway stairs where they are a bit less obtrusive.

Sorry for the lousy picture - I never seem to get around to these posts till after dark...

A few months ago while perusing the ads for other Tartan 42s to see if they had any cool stuff in their pictures that we could adopt, we saw that we were missing a piece of counter that went over the stove and stored behind the stove when not in use.  A couple days' work, a few dollars of scrap corian countertop and some teak and we had that piece replaced, only better.  Now I have a place to knead bread and cut veggies without damaging our countertop.

Pulled over the stove

Stored behind the stove

There was the addition of the hinge for the fridge lid which you had to hold perilously while trying to get things from the bottom basket...


and fixing the small counter that comes up from the side of the sink so it sits level and doesn't let stuff slide on it.









And the last improvement that we did was to add an easily wiped off backsplash that would lighten up a dark corner behind the sink.

The total cost of these improvements was less than $200, and while they did cost a couple days' worth of work for each project, they will, in the end, save many more days of work in the galley, make spending time there more enjoyable, and also a good bit safer underway. So while you're working in your galley, use your imagination to see if you can dome up with some creative ways to improve the flow of your galley.  Your crew will thank you when you produce some freshly made loaves of bread and some coffee on a morning passage...even if it was them that had to do all the work on the projects!

Pizza Sandwiches

I'm not exactly sure how these got their name or who actually named them in our family, but these have been a staple of the family dinner menu for about as long as I can remember.  The page in the Red Star Yeast cookbook is well worn and stained from all the years of making them.  Their real name in the recipe book is "Little Filled Pies" and they have various fillings listed for them from sausage and cheese to date and walnut, but they've always had the pizza fillings in our house.  These keep well and reheat well and even eat cold well.

Ingredients:

3-1/4 to 3-3/4 C flour (bread flour if you have it)
2 pkg dry yeast or 4-1/2 tsp bulk dry yeast
2 TBL sugar
1 tsp salt
1 C. water
1/2 C. butter
1 beaten egg
1 TBL water

Mix 1-1/2 C flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl and stir well till combined.  Heat butter and water in a saucepan until warm (120° - you should still be able to stick a finger in it without burning yourself). The butter may not all melt if it's cold. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat with a wooden spoon for 3 minutes (aren't you glad you did all that winch grinding to build up those muscles???). Add enough remaining flour to make a soft dough that cleans off the sides of the bowl.  Knead by hand on a floured surface 5 minutes or till smooth and elastic.

Grease bowl and put dough in, then turn dough over to expose greased surface.  Cover with damp towel and let raise in warm place 30 minutes. 

While the dough is raising, prepare fillings.  We like chopped onion, chopped green or red pepper, cut up ham and pepperoni and shredded mozzarella but seriously you can put about anything in this dough that you like. 

It's a great place to use up leftover meat from last night's dinner. Shredded chicken with spinach and freshly made ricotta would work well also. After the dough rises, preheat your oven to 400° while you make the sandwiches.

Cut dough into 8 balls of equal size.
Roll each ball out into a circle and put 1/8 of each filling on the circle. 

Pull dough up from the sides and pinch together at the top, closing the seam.  Turn seam-side down on greased cookie sheet. Beat egg and 1-2 TBL water and brush sandwiches with egg wash.

Bake at 400° for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool 5-10 minutes before serving.  These are good cut in half with a little butter spread inside or dipped in marinara sauce. Wrap them in foil and they reheat well the next day.  Makes 8 large sandwiches.

Mexican Dip

This is one of our very favorite recipes.  It's incredibly easy, quite fast, and is a great way to get to know people because there's enough to share and it's fun to eat. It's also made, baked, and served all in the same pan so there's very few prep dishes.  Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients:

1/2 large onion, chopped
1 TBL olive oil
1 to 1-1/2# lean ground beef

small can of diced tomatoes and chilis or 1/2 C. salsa
1 can fat-free refried beans
1 envelope of taco seasoning or equivalent spices to taste
8 oz sharp cheddar, shredded
sour cream
tortilla chips - heavier ones that don't break easily

Directions:

Heat olive oil in cast iron skillet till shimmering.  Add chopped onion. Cook 1-2 minutes stirring constantly until just turning clear.

Add ground beef.  Cook until no longer pink.
Add tomatoes or salsa, beans and taco seasoning.  Stir till combined. Spread evenly in skillet.  Wipe top edge of skillet clean with paper towel. Sprinkle cheddar on top.

Bake at 375° for 20 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly. Spoon onto a plate with sour cream and dip chips. Serve with cold beer!