A Kitchen Day (with recipes!)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I had a lot of things to do in the kitchen yesterday morning. Our dinner last night was prepared ahead, and so there was that. But I wanted to make another batch of biscotti too. I've been shying away from Christmas baking because I'm still on a quest to lose some weight. I don't know about you, but I find it impossible to resist Christmas candy. Still, I told myself I could bake a batch of gingerbread biscotti last month. Since I was able to resist it and keep my consumption to one cookie per day, I decided it was safe to bake another batch. Yesterday's effort yielded these Cranberry, Orange, and White Chocolate Biscotti.

This made the house smell so good. The recipe includes two tablespoons of orange zest, and the orange fragrance was really nice. Several years back, I got on a biscotti mission. I was trying to make biscotti the way the Italians make it...without butter...which keeps the biscotti staying crunchy and firm for dipping in coffee. During that time, I experimented with this recipe to remove the butter and replace it with egg yolks. Here's what I came up with:

Cranberry, Orange, and White Chocolate Biscotti

Recipe by Barbara Stanbro

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon table salt

1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped

2 tablespoons minced zest from 1 orange

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

White chocolate for melting

Small amount of cream for thinning, if necessary

Non-stick cooking spray (with flour, if available)

Directions:

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or spray it with nonstick cooking spray.  Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.  Stir in cranberries.  Set aside.

In a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the sugar, eggs, and yolks at medium-high speed to a light lemon color; mix in the vanilla extract and the orange zest.  Turn speed to medium-low and add the flour and cranberry mixture to the egg mixture slowly until fully incorporated.  Dough will appear dry and crumbly, but should draw together into a ball.

Split dough into 2 sections on the baking sheet about 4 inches apart.  Lightly oil hands and bench scraper with non-stick cooking spray.  Form dough into 2-inch wide, 3/4-inch thick, and about 8-inch long planks, using the bench scraper to even out sides and ends.  Lightly pat tops with your hands until smooth.  Bake until light golden brown and starting to crack on top, about 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time.  Remove the baking sheet from the oven and place it on a wire rack.

Lower oven temperature to 325 degrees.  When cool enough to handle (a few minutes), use a wide metal spatula to transfer the loaves to a cutting board.  With a knife, cut each loaf diagonally into 3/8-inch thick slices.  Lay the slices slightly apart on the baking sheet, cut-side up, and return them to the oven.  Bake, turning over each cookie halfway through baking, until crisp and golden brown on both sides, about 15 minutes.  Remove baking sheet from oven and place on a rack.  Cool biscotti completely on baking sheet.  

Melt white chocolate in the microwave or on a double boiler.  Chocolate should be the consistency of maple syrup.  If it is too thick for drizzling, add heavy cream sparingly (about 1 tablespoon at a time) until it reaches the desired consistency.  (Do not add too much cream.)  When biscotti is completely cool, dip one end of the biscotti in the melted chocolate or drizzle over entire cookie.  Cool until chocolate hardens (in the refrigerator).  Keep in an airtight container for up to a month.

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There's a trick to cutting the biscotti for its second round of baking without breaking it that most recipes get wrong. This method works like a charm, and it works for any biscotti recipe you choose. Here's how you do it:

First, chop any nuts or other added solid particles (crystallized ginger, in this case) fairly finely.  The large hunks are difficult to cut through and cause the cookies to break. Second, when taking the logs out of the oven to cool before slicing them, cover them with a dishtowel so that they cool more slowly.  The sudden change in temperature makes them brittle and the dishtowel will help with this. Third, cut them with a large butcher knife rather than a serrated blade, and do not saw.  Rather, lean into it with your body weight and cut straight through.

Okay, and while that was baking, I was in the process of making coleslaw for a dinner side dish, and I was trying this new recipe for Slow Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos. I've linked to the original recipe there, but you probably need to be a subscriber to the NYTimes to view it. I'll give you my adaptation in a minute. Since I'm not a "food stylist," mine wasn't particularly photogenic, but here's the image I swiped from the online source.

This is my favorite kind of slow cooker recipe because it didn't require any prep work ahead of time. You just dump everything in the slow cooker, turn it on, and then relax and do your slow-stitching for the rest of the afternoon. And it was tasty. I'll be making this again. 

I changed the original recipe just a little by reducing the number of recommended chipotle chiles. Those puppies are hot, and the original recipe suggested up to four chiles to this dish that serves four. We like a little spice, but we'd also like not to have our heads knocked off with fire. So...one is plenty. Also, ignore their "tip" about making pickled onions. There's a much easier way to do it from our friends at Bon Appetit, and you can find out how at this link right here. As for the tacos...here's how I did it:

Slow Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos

adapted from the NYTimes

serves 4

Ingredients:

1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs

3 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 chipotle chile from a can of chipotles in adobo, finely chopped, plus 2 tablespoons adobo sauce

1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained

Juice of 1 lime

Warmed tortillas, for serving

Pickled onion (see separate recipe for Quick Pickled Onions)

Sliced or cubed avocado, for serving

Directions:

Combine the chicken, honey, onion and garlic powders, cumin, salt and chipotle chiles and adobo sauce in a 5- to 8-quart slow cooker. Stir well. Cook for at least 3 hours and up to 5 hours on low. If it’s more convenient, you can let the slow cooker switch to warm after 5 hours. The dish will hold on warm for about another 3 hours before the chicken starts to become quite dry.

Using two forks, coarsely shred the chicken in the sauce. Stir in the black beans and lime juice. Cover and let the beans warm through, about 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt or lime juice if necessary. Serve in tortillas with pickled onion and avocado.

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Okay, so there's your dinner and dessert all in one. My biscotti finished up just in time for me to enjoy it with my afternoon cup of espresso. Mike brought in the mail, and I found this little cutie from my dear friend, Gail. Isn't he cute in his mask? Even with just fluff for brains, he knows it's smart to mask up right now. I'll bet he's even been vaccinated.

Thank you, Gail. He's watching over the living room for the remainder of the season.

By then, I'd done all I needed to in the kitchen. It was late in the day, but I had time to pack up two more projects to take along when we head south. Now here's something: I was cutting borders for the Posies quilt when I noticed this:

Have you ever seen that before? It's where the bolts of cloth ran out in the manufacturing process, and somehow, they're machine stitched end to end. It's almost impossible to see this since the dying went on as you would expect, but clearly, I couldn't use that section in a quilt. Here's how it looks from the wrong side.

Also, I noticed when I downloaded this image that there's writing on either side of the seam line. It doesn't go through to the right side of the fabric. If I'd noticed this when I purchased it, I would have asked them to cut a different section. Oh well. I have enough fabric to accomplish my purpose, but I started cutting from this end when I cut my borders. Also, I cut some white sashings and another narrow border, and that was all I needed to package up the Posies to take along. I'm looking forward to sewing this into a finished quilt top.

The last project I had on my list was to cut the border for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. The blocks are butted up against one another and sewn together. There's a running stitch around the edge of each one, and those will be just outside the seam line when it's sewn together.

And that completes my list of projects to take along. Except...(you knew I'd do one more, didn't you?) I'm going to take along fabrics to make this little mini. The free tutorial is right here.

I like this one because it only requires two colors, and so it will be compact enough to keep in a small container. Also, I'm very tempted to pack up what I'll need for this little mini. Wouldn't this be cute hanging in a kitchen?

It's another that doesn't require a lot of fabric, and so it would make a good take-along project too. Here's a link to the free tutorial.

Okay, so I'll pack up the things I need for those projects today, and that will be plenty of sewing to keep me busy this winter. Sadie was quite a chatterbox while I was cutting and packing. She's an excellent confurrsationalist.

Smitty was working hard upstairs at his purrimary job of keeping Mike's lap warm. It's a hard job. You can see that cat is nearly worn out from working so hard all afternoon.

Today is another kitchen day. I'm finally getting after those plums I picked back in September, and I'll turn them into Spicy Plum Barbecue Sauce. After that, I really am going to get at the quilting for the Tiny Tuesday quilt. It's the one last thing I'd like to finish before we take off. And I'll say this: that quilt hasn't moved a muscle since I laid it out on my sewing chair several days ago.

You'd think with everything going on in the kitchen, it would get up and quilt itself, but no. I guess if anyone's going to do it, it will have to be me. I have some ideas about this now, and so I'm hoping to get started on it today.