Every time my family gets together and I bring something that tastes good, my mother (bless her heart!) will undoubtedly turn to me and say "who would have thought you'd be able to cook???" or something similarly uplifting. Praise never was her... gift. But the truth is, I've been surrounded by some REALLY good cooks for a long time, and it wasn't until I got married and had my own captive audience that I really got a chance to develop my... chops. (yuk yuk!)
But now I have a pretty good repertoire and what's more, I really like to cook. Tonight I overestimated the Fall-ness of this Fall, and baked a chicken for dinner. When I roast a chicken or turkey, I chop up mushrooms, onions and a clove of garlic and drop them in the pan under the bird. I usually put a few in the cavity too, just for fun. When the bird is done I can make gravy right in the pan (tonight it worked beautifully- oh so yummy- just added some cream and a few sprinkles of flour). I love the chunks of vegetable in the gravy.
I also made an apple pie today- a honey apple pie. It's an easy recipe, none of that tedious mixing of the apples with sugar. Just pile the slices in the crust, pour honey over the top and sprinkle with vanilla, cinammon and dot with butta. I don't know what the butter's for, but when someone tells me to add butter to something, I just do it, no questions asked. Here's the link to the recipe, and here's a pic of mine:
Can't you just see the deliciousness squiggling up in the air, out of those steam vents? YUM.
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3 comments:
I discovered I was a pretty decent cook when I started living by myself and could make what I liked experiment without being self-conscious. Turns out I am a lot better cook than I thought I was when I had my sister peering over my shoulder and saying, "You are going to add THAT?!".
Now I am more confident in my cooking and she is more tactful in her recommendations (or maybe I just got less sensitive, and all is well.
But isn't your gravy lumpy?! Go for it! A few lumps never bothered me either - I like gravy any way I can get it. Funny how our tastes are so different from that of the mother who introduced us to food.
BTW, the apple pie recipe in that red notebook cookbook doesn't call for mixing sugar and apples. I fill the crust up with apples, pour the sugar/cinnamon over the top, dot with butter (like you, don't know why) and cover it up. One of the keys to a good pie, an orchard owner told us, is a mixture of types of apples. My favorite is Cortland and Macs. In fact, we bough Cortlands yesterday with the intention of making a pie one of these evenings. Yum!
Nope, not lumpy... CHUNKY! :)
I forgot to link to the honey apple pie recipe but I'll fix that now...
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