Orange Yeast Bread

What we see while drinking our morning coffee

Well, it took more than a few moments to change kitchens during our recent move from New Mexico's High Plains to its spectacular city in the Chihuahuan Desert, Las Cruces. However, the kitchen is finally unpacked, and every once in a while we are able to tear ourselves away from the magificent views we see out of every window to do a little cooking.

This recipe has been under development for a while and I think that it is ready to share with you. It makes a deliciously fragrant toast to have with your morning coffee.

1 heaping tbl. yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water, to which you have added a tiny pinch of sugar

1 whole orange (seeds removed), ground up, juice, rind and all

1 cup warm water (may be part additional orange juice)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1/2 tsp. ground cardamom, optional

6 to 8 cups of flour, or however much it takes to make a nice bread dough

I do the whole process using the Kitchenaid mixer, grinding up the orange first, then mixing the cup of warm water, the yeast mixture, the orange, sugar, salt, oil, eggs, and optional cardamom together and beating well.

Add 3 cups of flour and beat at medium speed for several minutes. Change to the dough hook and add flour, a cup at a time, until you have a nice dough that leaves the sides of the bowl. Continue mixing it for a few minutes to get it really well kneaded.

Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead by hand until no longer sticky. Let rise, covered, in a greased bowl in a warm place until the dough is doubled. Until we get a better heater installed in this little adobe house, we've been setting the bowl of dough on the raised hearth of the kiva fireplace, which keeps it nice and warm.

Bread dough rising

Turn out dough onto a floured surface again, punch down, knead a few times, and divide into thirds. Shape each third into a loaf, put each into a greased bread pan, cover, and let rise again until almost doubled.

Bake at 375〫for 45 minutes. Cool on racks, slice, and freeze (if you wish). Delicious as toast, or in sandwiches. We would have loved it with sliced turkey and leftover cranberry sauce. Well, that was the plan, anyway, but the Thanksgiving leftovers got eaten up too soon!

A Few Moments to Change Kitchens, Please...

It's time for our family to load up the moving van and move to our "new" adobe home, which you can see more of over on my other blog, The Zees Go West. I'll be back in a week or so, hopefully with some recipes perfect for serving in that lovely desert climate we'll be calling home.

Panettone

Special Italian dessert bread for holidays. This version comes from Auntie Bucksnort.

3 tbl. yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup warm water

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup soft butter

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. lemon peel

1/2 tsp. salt

3 cups flour

1/3 cup candied citron

1/2 cup raisins (mix dark and light if you wish)

2 tbl. melted butter to brush on crust

Soften yeast in 1/4 cup warm water with a little sugar. Mix the remaining ingredients (except for 2 tbl. butter), adding more flour as necessary to make a soft dough. Knead until smooth, let rise in a greased bowl until doubled.

Form into a round loaf and let rise on a greased cookie sheet until doubled. Bake at 400〫for 10 minutes, then brush with melted butter. Continue baking at 350〫for 30 to 40 minutes until done.

Cool on rack.

Chicken Breasts Supreme

6 chicken breasts

For marinade, mix together:

2 cups sour cream

1/4 cup lemon juice

2 tsp. worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp. celery salt

4 cloves chopped garlic

1/2 tsp. pepper

Salt to taste

1 tsp. paprika

Crushed cornflakes

1/4 cup butter

Cover breasts with marinade and chill overnight. Dip in crushed cornflakes.

Bake in a buttered shallow pan for 45 minutes at 350〫

Turn pieces over and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Chicken Tandoori

From Bucksnort's ancient recipe box.

2 chicken legs

2 chicken breasts

Mix together:

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/2 tsp. whole cumin

juice of one lemon

turmeric

cinnamon

fresh or dry cilantro

salt

pepper

coconut

1 cup plain yogurt

Pour yogurt mixture over chicken in a greased casserole. Bake covered at 400〫for 45 minutes or until done. Serve with rice.

Poppy Seed Cake

From Bucksnort's ancient recipe box.

1 yellow cake mix

1 pkg. instant french vanilla pudding

4 eggs

1/2 cup oil (you may use butter-flavored oil, if you wish)

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup sherry

1/2 cup poppy seeds

Mix all well, beat until smooth. Bake in a greased angel food pan for one hour at 350〫

Wine Cake

From my mother's recipes.

1 yellow cake mix

3/4 cup cream sherry

3/4 cup oil

4 eggs

Mix together, beat well. Bake in an ungreased angel food cake pan at 325〫for 50 minutes.

Let cool for 10 minutes, loosen sides with a spatula, then invert the pan to remove the cake.

Basic Cheesecake

This recipe was in an old wooden recipe box on a card in my mother's handwriting. She got the recipe "from the kitchen of" Maxine Partridge, a name I remember vaguely from my childhood. Thank you, Maxine!

Crust:

16 graham crackers, rolled and finely crushed

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup melted butter

Mix, press into a pie pan, and bake at 350〫for 10 minutes. Cool.

Fill cooled crust with:

9 oz. Philadelphia cream cheese

1/2 pint sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

Mix together and beat until smooth. Pour into cooled crust and bake at 325〫for 20 minutes. Cool on rack for 5 minutes.

Top with:

1/2 pint sour cream

3 tbl. sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

Mix together, beat until smooth, spread on top of cheesecake. Bake at 350〫for 5 minutes. Cool, then chill before serving.

Marie's Taco Soup

Everything that Marie has ever brought to our knitting group's potlucks is always delicious, and she is very generous about sharing her recipes with us.

1 pound of ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can Ro-tel tomatoes with chiles

1 can regular pinto beans

1 can pinto beans with jalapeños

1 can yellow corn

1 can hominy, drained

1 cup salsa

Brown the beef and onion. Add the contents of all the cans, undrained (except for the hominy, which is drained). Add the salsa. Mix well and simmer for a bit to combine the flavors. Taste for seasonings; add salt, pepper, and chile powder, if you wish.

Note: I added some water to the mixture by rinsing out the emptied cans into the soup pot. If you want it soupier, add more.

Serve with cornbread.

Marie said to tell you that this soup freezes well.

Panko Chicken

Beez has never been a fan of chicken, but he will eat this dish with something approaching vague enthusiasm. It's really delicious and is similar to Chicken Dijon.

2 boneless chicken breasts, washed & patted dry

1/4 c. butter, melted
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c. Dijon mustard

1/2 c. panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
3 tbsp. Parmesan cheese, shredded
1 tbsp. parsley flakes, or some minced fresh parsley

Mix melted butter, garlic and mustard. Set aside.

Mix panko crumbs, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. Set aside.

Slice the chicken in 1/4" thick pieces. Coat the pieces in mustard sauce on both sides, then roll the pieces in the crumb mixture to coat.

Put the chicken pieces on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 475 degrees for 15 minutes, turning pieces over halfway through.

This is my own variation of a recipe from Cooks.com.

Chile con Queso

This must be the only possible use for Velveeta cheese (sorry, cheese "product"). You will notice that the recipe calls for just half of the contents of the smallest available box. DO NOT worry about your leftover Velveeta. It is indestructible and will easily last until next year when you want to make Queso (as it is commonly called) again. Just wrap up that cheese product well and shove it back into the nether regions of your refrigerator.

I might go on a bit about this strange fake foodstuff, but it really does make a delicious Queso.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. Velveeta "cheese," cut into cubes

Enough milk to make a smooth dip

6 chopped green chiles (your choice of heat); roasted, peeled, and seeded before chopping

1 medium-sized fresh tomato, chopped

1 tsp. minced onion (you can use just a few shakes of minced dry onion, if you wish)

1/8 tsp. garlic powder

Optional: A couple of tbls. of salsa or El Rancho de los Garcia's Green Chile Sauce (if you can find it. You might have to move to New Mexico for this sauce, which is made in Portales).

Directions:

Melt the Velveeta in a 1 quart bowl in the microwave for about a minute. Stir well, add a little milk, and microwave for 30 seconds to one minute more, until smooth.

Add the chiles, tomato, onion, and garlic powder. Stir well. Stir in the salsa or chile sauce, if you are using it.

Microwave again, just until warmed through.

Serve as a dip with tortilla chips, or pieces of tortillas, or chunks of warm fresh bread. Focaccia (Italian flat bread) is delicious here, and adds even more of an international flavor.

Grocery Shopping in New Mexico

Piloncillo

We lived in Las Cruces for a year in the late 1990s. When we first shopped at the local grocery stores after moving there from New Hampshire, we were pretty amazed at the differences we found. We liked those differences, mind you, because we could really tell that we had moved, not only to a different part of the country, but a different part of the world. We definitely had a whole new culture to learn about.

Here are some of the products--some familiar, some very unfamiliar--we found in our local grocery store:

Large, strange-looking unwrapped cones of brown stuff in the produce section that we eventually learned was a kind of Mexican brown sugar called piloncillo.

Really large containers--buckets, actually--of old-fashioned lard, used in refried beans, tamales, and more. They say that the flavor it gives is wonderful and not found in any substitute.

Big slabs of tripe, used to make menudo, a traditional fiery soup that is thought to be the best hangover remedy.

Each grocery store had its own tortilleria, where fresh flour and corn tortillas were made. We were always able to buy fresh, warm tortillas.

Canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. We had a recipe calling for these and embarrassed ourselves by asking the clerk for "chip-O-tel" chiles. He probably thought we were from Texas. The actual pronunciation is chee-POHT-lay.

Big bags of bulk dried red chiles, in more varieties than we had ever seen

Strings of dried red chiles (ristras)

Large containers of frozen green chiles

And Velveeta. We were amazed to find Velveeta cheese boxes stacked in the aisles by the pallet-load. I had grown up thinking that Velveeta was something found in the refrigerated aisle, but the boxes didn't sit around long enough in these stores to spoil, if that is even possible with such a fake food product.

Why so much Velveeta? More about that tomorrow.

Roadhouse Hippie Salad

This recipe comes from Harry's Roadhouse Cookbook.

On a warm August day, Beez and Auntie Bucksnort and I all went for a drive up around the Santa Fe area. We stopped for lunch at Harry's Roadhouse, a place that I had heard about again and again. We found a smallish-looking building with a a lovely view to the south and a huge, packed parking lot. However, there didn't seem to be much of a line, so we signed up and prepared for a wait.

To our surprise and delight, our names were called in under ten minutes. We were guided through the building, then into an added-on wing that had been invisible from the front of the place (and which explained where all the people were being seated), and then out to the most beautiful patio I've ever seen.

The patio was set into a hillside, so that it was actually a series of small terraces connected by the stone paths that wandered through natural-looking beds of colorful and fragrant flowers. There were several fountains, soft music in the background, and the whole was shaded by a number of very large trees.

If you have ever been in Santa Fe in the summer, you know how much you appreciate shade trees. You are at such an altitude (7000 ft.) that the air is probably thinner than what you are used to and the sun really beats down, so every scrap of shade is valuable. We were seated at a round table under one of the trees and the waitress immediately brought us huge glasses of ice water with lemon slices, and made sure to keep them coming.

Our meal was wonderful and the setting was fantastic. We vowed to go back and I bought the cookbook later as a gift for Bucksnort's birthday. Any time we are missing Santa Fe, we just page through and remember that fine afternoon.

Approaching Santa Fe

The Salad:

1 ear corn

2 medium beets

2 cups summer green beans

1 avocado

2 tomatoes

2 small heads or one large head Bibb lettuce

1 cup cooked garbanzo beans

1 Vidalia (or sweet) onion made into Vidalia Onion Rings

Dried porcini mushroom powder*

Roast the corn (Remove outer husk. Turn back inner husks; remove silks. Replace inner husks. Place on grill. Turn often. Roast 12 to 15 minutes) and remove the kernels.

Boil the beets, then peel and cut into wedges.

Blanch green beans in boiling water and cut into 1-inch pieces.

Cut tomatoes into wedges and dice avocados last.

Place the lettuce on a salad plate and top with corn, garbanzos, avocados, tomatoes, beets, and green beans. Drizzle with either Green Goddess or Sesame Dressing. Sprinkle with mushroom powder.

*Grind the mushrooms with a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder that has been reserved for spices.

For a nice review of breakfast at Harry's, be sure to go to Eating the Road.

Green Goddess Dressing

This recipe comes from Harry's Roadhouse Cookbook.

3 tbl. lemon juice

1/2 tbl. chopped garlic

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 tbl. fresh tarragon

2 tbl. fresh basil

1/4 cup chopped green onions

1/2 cup chopped spinach

1 tbl. fresh chopped mint

1 tbl. lemon balm

1/2 tbl. salt

1 tsp. pepper

Combine all ingredients and puree in a blender. Serve on the salad of your choice.