Recipe: Beef Barley Soup

So I went grocery shopping a few days ago. Which was a bit of a feat, as the landlady didn’t bother to mention to me that they were going to redo the concrete on the side path to my house (they had ripped it up a couple weeks ago, just before Chusok, because of a blockage in one of the drains to the house–I think the hole they made there was another random hole and not where they actually found the blockage. This seems to be common around here…when there was a flood in my house a couple years back, they started ripping holes in each room of my house even though they really didn’t know which pipe had burst. Now THAT was fun. Remind me to tell you about it sometime.) So anyway, when I went out to go to the market, I found the path out of my house blocked. I suppose I could have found a way to scale the concrete wall behind my house, but I didn’t really feel like climbing something almost as high as my head in a skirt. So I removed the blocking pole and walked across it anyway, after making sure that it was at least dry enough to walk on. (She “happened” to call while I was at the market to tell me not to walk on the concrete. I say “happened” because I’m sure she was just being her old nosy self and actually saw me leave the house. By the way this was at about 8:30 at night, so I doubt it was just a coincidence. Which means she never really intended to inform me at all. Do I sound ungracious towards my landlady? There’s a whole big story behind that too. Remind me to tell you sometime, if you’re not one of the people to whom I have already vented my spleen, most of my liver, and possibly one of my kidneys about it.) Apparently, there IS another way to get out to the street from behind the building, but it requires squeezing through a 6″ opening beside my boiler room. I always thought that was walled off. Now I know. Can’t fit through it anyway.

So ANYWAY, I went grocery shopping. I kinda like grocery shopping. (Except for this weird thing that happens every time. As soon as I make the decision to go, it immediately starts raining. Very strange.) I especially like it when nice people chat with me a little while I’m at a counter or at the till. (That’s one of the things I miss about being a native speaker in Canada–the pleasant small talk with strangers.) And for some reason, I’ve been buying a bit more beef than usual, so I’ve had to ask for things at the butcher counter the past couple of times. The first time, the older butcher started off chatting with me (of course, finding out my age and my marital status as soon as possible–but I like the way he did so. Instead of blasting me with the question, point blank, he asked me what “sir’s” job was, after I mentioned that I had been in Korea for nine years.) Which sir, I asked? Oh, you mean my husband? Oh, I’m not married. He seemed surprised that I have stayed in Korea for nine years of my own volition, not because of my husband’s job. Soon after this, the young butcher came out, and the older informed him quite enthusiastically that I was not married and sort of got him to take over the rest of my order. So butcher the younger proceeded to chat me up while he was mincing my beef. Quite fun.

So this time, even though they had the stewing beef I needed prepackaged in the refrigerator case, there was no ground beef out, so I had to go up to the butcher’s counter again. And, well, who do I see but butcher the younger, again, at my service. He didn’t chat so much while he was cutting up the beef I needed but as he handed it over, he spent quite a while telling me how important it was for me to believe that they have the freshest beef, even though you see that this beef I have cut off, here, has a different colour on the outside than on the inside…that’s just because it’s later in the day, but we really do have good quality beef here, and you must trust our quality, and it’s really good beef, and that slight discoloration is really nothing to worry about, and you absolutely must believe in us. Smiling charmingly the whole way through. Of course, I’m laughing and agreeing with him enthusiastically the whole time. Hmm, I think I’m flirting with the butcher, or he’s flirting with me, or something. Expect more recipes featuring beef for the next little while.

Oh, and as I was leaving the store? It started raining. Hands full and no umbrella. Next time that happens, I’m going back in and borrowing an umbrella from butcher boy.

Beef and Barley Soup
Adapted very liberally from Extending the Table, because I didn’t have peas (used green peppers instead) and I realized I still had some squash to use up.

1/2 lb. cubed stewing beef
1 lg. onion, diced
6 c. beef broth
3-4 stalks celery, diced
1 green pepper, diced
2 lg. carrots, diced
1/2 medium butternut squash, cubed
1/3 c. pearl barley
2 T. vinegar
2 T. Worcestershire sauce
1 t. basil
Salt and pepper to taste

In bottom of soup pot, brown beef with onions and celery. Add broth to the pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until beef is tender. Add green pepper, carrots, squash, barley, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and basil and simmer until barley, squash and carrots are all cooked. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add more water if needed, especially if reheating the next day, as barley may absorb a lot of the liquid.

Serve with warm, buttered slices of homemade bread.

And just to give you an idea of what I’ll be posting soon, this (below) is what I was up to this morning. I’m going to try to actually post recipes AS I make things (though that has always been the plan, of course) because I was looking through the over 800 food photos I have and I realized that even though I could probably locate the recipe that I started from, I now have no ripping clue how I actually made them. Dang.

Anyway, brownies. And pasta.

Recipe: This morning’s bread

Why do I always end up baking at 3 o’clock in the morning?

I didn’t make my knitting meeting this weekend, and it looks like my wacky sleep schedule will be interfering with the second of the lectures on Korean culture this evening…but at least I cooked.

I tried out a new sandwich loaf recipe, and it looks like I did things right this time: I didn’t end up with two bread-shaped doorstops. I think it was a combination of using less flour, not being too timid with the temperature of the water for the yeast, waiting until the yeast was good and foamy before mixing in the flour, and preheating the oven.

The original recipe comes from the wonderful world of King Arthur flour, but i tweaked a few things, so this is how I did it:

Basic White Bread

2 c. warm water
2 tablespoons golden sugar
1 (scant) T. dry yeast
1/2 cup whole milk powder
2 T. vegetable oil
5 c. (or more) bread flour
2 1/2 t. salt

Make sure the 2 cups of water is about the temperature that you would love for a bath–you know, bearable when you stick your finger in to test it, but you start really feeling the heat after a few seconds. Basically, as hot as you can handle. Pour the warm water into your mixing bowl, along with the sugar, and stir to dissolve. Then, sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water very gradually (this seems to help it dissolve faster, rather than all lump together.) Wait for the yeast to completely dissolve, then add the milk powder.

At this point, have a friend call you unexpectedly and interrupt you for about 15 minutes. When you come back, you’ll see that your mix is nice and foamy. Add 2 cups of flour and mix well. Add a further two cups of flour and mix. Sprinkle most of the remaining flour on the kneading surface and scrape the dough out onto the surface.

Knead the dough for two to three minutes, until it seems to be coming together, using more flour if you need to, but not too much (the dough will let you know when it’s had enough flour). Let it sit for a little while so you can wash and grease the bowl you were using, then knead for a couple minutes more. Place in greased bowl, turn over, and set in a warm place, covered with a damp towel, to rise until doubled (an hour or so).

Punch the dough down, and on a floured surface, knead it to remove any air pockets. Divide into two (even! why is that so hard?) pieces, shape into loaves, and place in two non-stick loaf pans. Slit the surface lengthwise, at least a centimeter and a half deep, and let rise, covered, until almost doubled (probably less than an hour).

Preheat the oven to 350 F and bake for 35 minutes.

As soon as possible, cut off two thick slices, toast them lightly, slather them with butter, and scoop some nectarine butter on top. Coz that’s what I did.

Recipe: Chocolate and Peanutbutter Squares

Seriously, who needs Reese’s? Which is a great discovery, because peanut butter and chocolate is not a popular combination here in Korea, so if I want any peanut butter cups, I have to haul them back from Canada in bulk in my suitcase. The less i can depend on bringing stuff from Canada, the better, so I was really happy that these turned out to be just as good, if not better than the store-bought stuff, and with ingredients (mostly) available at my local grocery store! Yay!

Adapted from recipe here

Chocolate Peanutbutter Squares

Base:
3/4 c. digestive cookie crumbs (crush up and whirl in blender)
3/4 c. light brown sugar
3/4 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. flour
1/2 c. butter, melted
3/4 c. peanut butter

Top:
180 g. dark chocolate bars, broken in small pieces
3 T. butter

Combine cookie crumbs and brown sugar in bowl, sift powdered sugar and flour in, and mix well. Add melted butter and mix well. Add peanut butter and mix well again. Press into two 8″x8″ baking pans lined with wax paper. Heat chocolate and butter in pyrex measuring cup in microwave for one minute or so, or until half melted. Take out of microwave and stir until smooth. Pour evenly over both trays, and use the back of a spoon to spread carefully until smooth on top. Chill until set, then pull out of trays and cut into 1″ squares. Makes 128 squares, though many of them “go missing” before you can actually store them in a container in the fridge to keep.

Orange Carrot Cake with Orange Yogurt Cream Cheese Icing

I took a look through a few carrot cake recipes that looked good:
Eggs on Sunday’s Solid Gold Carrot Cake
CD Kitchen’s Orange Carrot Cake
A Merrier World’s Carrot Cake
Epicurious’ Carrot-Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Baking Bites’ One Bowl Carrot Cake

…and decided that Baking Bites’ carrot cake looked closest to what I wanted. Of course, I doubled it and modified a bit to use up what we had on hand…carrots that didn’t make it into last Sunday’s roast, two oranges left over from Jaret’s booth partner at the Outdoor Adventure Show, and some mandarin oranges that needed to be eaten soon.

Orange Carrot Cake with Orange Yogurt Cream Cheese Icing

2 c. brown sugar, packed
1/2 c. butter, melted and cooled
4 large eggs
1 t. vanilla
4 T. vegetable oil
Juice of two oranges
Zest of one orange
3 c. all-purpose flour
2 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. salt
3-4 large carrots, grated

Stir together butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well, then add oil, orange juice, and zest and mix. Sift half of the flour into the bowl and mix together. Add the soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt to the remaining flour in the measuring cup and whisk together well with a fork, then sift this into the bowl, mixing quickly. Fold in the shredded carrots. Pour into your choice of non-stick baking pans (loaf, square, round, or muffin). Bake in a 325 to 350 degree oven (depends on your oven) until golden and knife inserted in middle of the cake comes out clean. Serve with icing.

Don’t bother with icing recipes that call for a gazillion cups of icing sugar; they are sickeningly sweet and all you really need to do is soften up your cream cheese a bit and sweeten it. The flavours come out SO much more nicely that way. Trust me. It’s yummy.

Orange Yogurt Cream Cheese Icing

1 regular package of cream cheese (8 ounces, I believe)
2 T. butter
1/2 c. sugar (icing or regular)
1/4 c. yogurt
Juice from one or two mandarin oranges

Whip all ingredients together with hand mixer until smooth and all sugar is dissolved. Adjust amounts to your own taste and to the desired consistency.

Recipe: George (Mint Nanaimo Bars)

This is a longtime family favourite. I always thought it was named after my Grandpa George, and had never heard of Nanaimo bars until well into my teens. Turns out, it was from one of the Best of Bridge cookbooks that mom has had forever, and they aren’t even mint in the recipe–I guess someone made that change so that they would be more “Christmassy”.

Bottom layer:
1/2 c. butter
1/4 c. brown sugar
3 T. cocoa powder
1 egg, beaten
2 c. graham cracker crumbs (will have to find a substitute in Korea…maybe digestive cookie crumbs?)
1 c. shredded coconut
1/2 c. chopped walnuts/pecans

Middle layer:
1/4 c. butter
2 c. icing sugar
2 T. Bird’s custard powder (not available in Korea afaik…maybe equivalent amount of cornstarch and a little bit of vanilla)
1/4 c. cream/milk
a few drops of green food colouring
1 t. peppermint extract (or more, you want it really minty…add bit by bit and taste)

Top layer:
3 chocolate squares (1 square=1 ounce=28 grams)
1/4 c. butter

Combine ingredients for first layer and press firmly into a 9″ square baking pan. Chill for half an hour.

Combine all the ingredients for the middle layer in order, using an electric blender, so that there won’t be any lumps, until smooth and fluffy. Spread carefully on top of bottom layer using an icing knife if you have one (I do, I stole it from mom hehe). Do not make the mistake (as I once did) of chilling this layer, or the melted chocolate will harden up as soon as you pour it and you will have one big lump of chocolate in the middle, not a nice thin layer. In order to make it easier to spread the top layer, just make sure the middle layer is nice and thick.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a pyrex measuring cup in the microwave (one minute will do–the chocolate should not be melted completely, but will continue to melt once you take it out of the microwave and stir for a bit). Pour carefully and evenly over middle layer and tilt pan to spread. Chill until set. To cut into squares, warm to room temperature first and cut carefully into small squares.

I like thinner squares, so I would be a little generous with the ingredients to make a tiny bit more, then make it in a 9″ x 13″ pan. In order to have enough chocolate for the top, though, I would add one or two more chocolate squares and a tablespoon more butter to the top layer.

Leftover Roast Beef Dinner Soup

Inspired by this recipe, but made with the leftovers from Mom’s awesome traditional Sunday night roast dinner. Best. Soup. Ever. Srsly.

2 T. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 or 3 stalks celery, diced
1 green or red pepper, chopped
1 c, mushrooms, sliced or chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 c. chopped leftover roast beef or steak
4 c. water
1 beef bouillon cube
1 can stewed, diced tomatoes
2 or 3 roast potatoes, diced
1 c. roast carrots, diced
2 or 3 roast onions, chopped
1 c. mashed turnip
1 or 2 roast sweet potatoes, diced
2/3 c. orzo
1/2 T dried oregano
1/2 T dried basil
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in pot, add onions and red pepper and saute until slightly softened. Add garlic and saute, then add mushrooms and cook. Add beef and saute a few minutes. Add tomatoes and cook for a couple minutes. Add water and bouillon, then rest of vegetables, orzo, oregano, basil pepper, and salt. Bring to a boil, reduce and simmer at least 20 minutes, until orzo is cooked. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.

Basic Pancakes

To get pancakes that look a bit more like the ones above, use less baking powder and more liquid. Mom likes ‘em that way, a bit more dense and crepe-y. Me, I like them as below:

Basic Pancake Recipe
adapted from Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cook Book

1 1/4 c. flour
2 T. sugar
4 t. baking powder (!!–I’m going to have to make these again just to double-check that)
3/4 t. salt
2 eggs
1 1/3 c. milk (1 c. for thicker batter)
3 T. oil (I think we forgot to add this, but the pancakes were great. Will double-check)

Mix flour, sugar, soda and salt in large measuring cup (easier to pour batter later). In small bowl, beat eggs, stir in milk and oil and pour into flour mixture. Stir just until flour is moistened.

Heat skillet on medium-high until a droplet of water sizzles. Brush with oil and fry until golden on both sides.

Serve with butter and maple syrup. Have some bacon with it too! And some fruit (for your health ).

Greetings from Canada!

So I got here in mid-December…I suppose that’s news to a lot of people But don’t take it personally that I haven’t gotten in touch, I just needed some time to myself. Since I got here, I’ve been:

1. De-pressurizing and de-stressing
2. Hiding from the entire world (think Thoreau’s Walden, not the hunchback of Notre Dame)
3. Having Christmas

4. Trying not to think (and mostly succeeding) about the fact that I have no job, no income, almost no home, and no apparent job prospects…whoops! better be careful, I almost thought about it…
5. Knitting

6. Augmenting my yarn stash

7. Baking and cooking

8. Reorganizing my online experience
9. Looking at the snow

10. Preparing to enter Phase 2 of my four-phase plan to Get A Life, which is getting in touch with people and joining the human race again Talk to you soon!

how to make a crustless quiche

I used onions, mushrooms, green peppers, broccoli and potatoes (cooked, and layered on the very bottom), and sliced fresh tomatoes sprinkled with some strong flavoured cheese, and some parmesan on top, seasoned with nutmeg and basil…

1. Dice/chop, saute, and season with salt and pepper approximately 2 cups of meats and veggies together. Some ideas include:
Onions
Green peppers
Mushrooms
Broccoli
Zucchini
Eggplant
Spinach
Corn
Peas
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Carrots
Squash/pumpkin
Bacon
Ground beef
Tuna
Ham

2. Spread in deep dish pie pan or casserole dish. Sprinkle cheese on top. Cheddar and parmesan are good, so are emmental, gruyere, gouda, havarti, asiago, romano…

3. With a whisk, make the custard: 4 eggs per 1 1/2 cup of liquid (milk and/or cream). Include seasonings such as salt and pepper, a couple of herbs or seasonings (basil, dill, sage, thyme, a pinch of nutmeg, dried mustard powder). Whisk well and pour gently over filling.

4. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, cooking until sides are done and center is still slightly soft.

homemade bacon mushroom pizza

1. pizza crust, 2. bacon and mushroom topping, 3. pizza fresh from the oven, 4. homemade pizza for dinner!

Bacon Mushroom Pizza

Dough:
1 c. warm water
1 T. yeast
1 T. sugar
1 1/2 t. salt
2 T. oil
3 1/4 c. flour

Topping:
A few tablespoons of tomato sauce (I used storebought spaghetti sauce this time, but a homemade pomodoro would be good)
Sliced mushrooms
4-6 slices of bacon, chopped and cooked
Chopped green onion
Chopped green pepper
Shredded mozzarella cheese

Combine yeast and water in large bowl. When dissolved add sugar, salt, oil and 1 1/4 c. of the flour. Mix until smooth and add the remaining flour, or enough to make a stiff dough. Knead until elastic, about 5 minutes. Place dough in greased bowl and turn over once. Cover and let rise about 45 minutes, until double. Form two balls, wrap one up and put it in the freezer for later. Grease a pizza pan or cookie sheet and pat and stretch the dough so that it fits the bottom of the pan. Let rise ten minutes, then spread with tomato sauce, bacon, mushrooms, green peppers, green onions, and then cheese. Bake in 400 degree oven until crust is golden brown. Time will depend on oven–maybe 15 to 20 minutes?