Author Archives: Chris

Irish Soda Bread

 
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A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a package of King Arthur Irish Style Wholemeal Flour that had found its way to the back of one of our baking cupboards. It was a little past its expiration date, but I hate to throw stuff out that is still mostly usable, so I decided to follow the Irish Brown Bread recipe on the bag (since I had originally purchased it to bake and share with an Irish friend of mine, who baked and ate his half of the flour order long before that expiration date). Continue reading

Cuisinart Dough Blade

 
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We’ve had a Cuisinart food processor for years, and I’ve been using the standard blade for making pie dough for quite awhile with fairly decent results (I usually make an all-butter, 50% whole wheat dough, so it just can’t compete for texture with lard/shortening all-white-flour crusts). For some reason, we never really paid much attention to the “Dough” button on the device, and had all but forgotten about the dull “dough blade” that came with the food processor.

I wanted to bake a couple of pies last week for a party, so I decided to give it a try. Never again. The dough didn’t mix properly, and I ended up with large patches of too-moist mixed with large patches of completely dry dough. It was bad enough that I reverted to the standard blade for my second batch, despite some small hope that things might improve after setting up in the fridge for a few hours. As you can see from the bowl on the left in the photo, it didn’t help — the dough fell apart into too-wet and too-dry chunks as soon as I tried to break off a chunk to roll out. Because I needed both batches of dough for two covered pies, I ended up “rescuing” the bad batch by adding a little water and re-processing it in the food processor, mixing it into the good batch. Needless to say the additional processing resulted in crusts were not the best I’ve made (still pretty tasty, though), and I will be hiding the dough blade somewhere so I can’t find it and make the same mistake again. Continue reading

Joe’s Chipotle-Garlic Sauce

 
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Though I love hot and spicy food, I was never much of a fan of chipotle peppers until I tasted this sauce that my friend Joe whipped up one evening while Tiger and I were over at his place for dinner. It’s a gorgeous dark red sauce, and I don’t think my photo does it justice (in either of its incarnations).

Joe never actually uses a recipe when he makes this, so I took some time tonight to measure things out while I made my own version.

4 oz garlic, minced (2-3 heads)
1/2 cup olive oil Continue reading