Apple Crisp

After a week of eating nothing but turkey, stuffing, squash, mashed potatoes, and pecan pie I'm back to having to cook, which I'm actually glad about since there's only so much eating-related repetition a girl can handle. I think I also wanted to give the kitchen a break since the untimely death of my food processor deserved a moratorium of sorts; yes, I actually was depressed about it all week, especially since I'd lost my voice and couldn't call Kitchenaid's technical support department without rasping and coughing uncontrollably. I decided to give the bowl a last washing in the dishwasher and put it back on the motor unit until I could get a new bowl (the food processor sits on the countertop, since it's by far my favorite appliance and all), and this morning when I put it on again, the locking mechanism in the handle happily snapped back into what resembled the right place. I gingerly pressed the "pulse" button and off it went whirring happily.

Yes, time to start cooking again. Thank you, food gods. Other gods: yes, I love inanimate objects more than most of my fellow human beings.

A previous entry details my, uhm, issues with shopping at Costco, and in a wild, child-shoving, cart-ramming pre-Thanksgiving Costco bonanza, I "somehow" acquired a whopping 20 lbs of potatoes (of which I have 15 left), a dozen "transitional" Granny Smith apples (of which I have six left), a brick of cream cheese, and a huge tub of sour cream. These things have defined shelf lives, and while I don't like to waste, I also am a cheap bastard fascinated with being able to buy 3 lbs of cream cheese for under $5.

Today's use objective was the apples. I used four for my Thanksgiving stuffing, and then I tried to use them as work breakfast food but after two attempts with their unbelievably tough, waxy skin (which resulted in some awesomely bloody gums, which probably signals a need to go to the dentist, but let's not talk about that), I decided they'd be better served as baking apples. A look through my trusty Joy of Cooking while on the shitter this morning (I'm more than ten posts into this blog now and now feel exposed enough to give you such wonderfully revealing facts about my meal-planning methods) gave me a recipe for Apple Crisp, which looked easy enough and would use up all of my remaining apples.

Apple crisp is a pretty straightforward endeavor according to Joy - it involves peeling and chopping up about 2.5 lbs of apples, putting some cinnamony pastry dough on top of it (happily made in the food processor), then throwing the whole thing in the oven. I thought the dough would flatten out a little but it ends up as little crumby things; I took it out after the recommended 50 min of baking (my apple juices were bubbling), let it cool down a little, and found out my apples had been reduced to applesauce. Oops.

It's still pretty tasty.

Holy Whipped Cream, Batman (er, Fatman?)

I didn't buy the Redi-Whip to accompany my parkin. I don't think Whole Foods even had any pressurized whipped cream, but I didn't get around to looking, because the organic heavy cream was on sale, and goddammit, I am a cheap bastard and buy things that are on sale (wait till you see what I'm getting from Amazon tomorrow). I bought two pints.

The instructions for whipped cream didn't seem hard. Put the bowl and the whisk in the freezer, make sure the cream is chilled, and once you take the bowl out stick it in a bowl of ice water and add some sugar and vanilla. Whisk until soft peaks form. Can do.

Not trusting the generic ("Chef's Essentials") 10-parts-in-1 hand mixer/food processor/immersion blender thing I found on sale for $20 (yes, cheap bastard) four years ago that I haven't used since moving to Arizona three years ago, I decided some manual labor was in order. I was chatting with Stephen about it and he said making whipped cream by hand was possible but just involved some considerable "stamina and endurance". I'm tough! I just climbed an 18,143-ft mountain. Stamina and endurance! What's some wrist-flicking?

I got the whisk and bowl out of the freezer and plopped my bowl into the ice-water bowl. Half-teaspoon of vanilla, two tablespoons of powdered sugar, a cup of cream, and whisk away! And away. And away. Zanotti goes and takes a shower. He comes out ten minutes later and I'm still fucking whisking. I asked him if my cream would deflate if I stopped, because my wrist is killing me and I'm not dextrous enough to whisk with my left hand. He says it won't, so I go look for the 10-in-1 thing in the cabinet. I find it, but it's in some weird configuration, so I go back to hand whisking and get it to some foamy state (how it gets after it bubbles) but it doesn't seem to be progressing much beyond that. I'm mortified at this point that it's too warm, get more ice to put in the water, and contemplate how happy Jake and Ralph-dog are going to be to get a batch of fucked-up whipped cream to eat.

Zanotti, being Zanotti, goes and looks at my hand mixer contraption and somehow gets the balloon whisk attachment on. We plug it in and it actually spins when I push the button. I gleefully stick it in the semi-whipped cream, and find that the button is just a pulse button - I have to keep pressing it to make the thing keep going. I see there's another button on the bottom, and I get excited there's a perma-mode, so I press it.

The goddamn whisk falls into the whipped cream.

The top part is untainted so I put it back in, and somehow not realizing what I just did, I do it again and Zanotti makes fun of me at this point so I realize I am doing something pretty stupid, and go back to holding down the medium-speed button, which cramps my hand, but after a few minutes the whipped cream is holding up enough so that the whole bowl turns by itself because it is floating in the other bowl (ghetto mixer! I have to try that with actual batter sometime), and I get enough willpower to keep holding the damn button down because it's resembling something like whipped cream. I keep at it a little longer and it magically becomes actual whipped cream, which I promptly slather on my cake and eat. It's good. I put the rest in a container in the fridge for tomorrow. I still have leftover cake, but I might just eat it out of the bowl. Ssssh.

Parkin: A Day Late and A Dollop of Whipped Cream Short

It is currently 10pm and it is 82 degrees in my unheated apartment, fine cake-baking weather if I do say so myself. I'm too much of a cheap bastard to turn on the air conditioning, and it's a matter of principle anyway - it's November! Only in Arizona would you need the bloody air conditioning in November. Poor Ralph-dog.

Anyway, I made Guy Fawkes Day cake, aka parkin, today. I meant to make it yesterday for no other reason than it's in my beloved Joy of Cookingand it's a mostly brainless, easy recipe of the "mix the wet stuff into the dry stuff" variety - might as well make it on the day it's supposed to be made, but I went out with Z and some pals and our dinner became a very extended dinner waiting for people. No cake-baking for the Donger.

Nevertheless, I'd been itching to try out the new cake panI got last week, as I used the loaf panfor some corn bread with sexy results, so easy-peasy British holiday cake for everyone! I got a Cuisinart pie pan too, but I realized I can't make pie crust because I don't, uh, have a rolling pin. Yeah. Anyway, the parkin cooked perfectly in the recommended 35-min time slot, and after cooling it for 10 min it happily slid right out of the pan with nicely crusted sides. Cake pan gets an A!

Apparently you're supposed to put whipped cream on it, but I don't have any, so I just ate it, because I was hungry (as usual). It's got a nice moist texture (the weird white dots in the picture are rolled oats) with a solid crust on top to hold it together, but since it's not a very sweet cake (only one tablespoon of sugar in the whole thing), the whipped cream would definitely help. I know what I'm buying at the store tomorrow! I don't know if I'm brave enough to make my own whipped cream yet. I also have fond memories of eating whipped cream right out of many spray bottles as a child. Endless entertainment, except for my mother, who got to clean up all the whipped cream that somehow missed my mouth.

Leftover updates: the ratatouille from two days ago tasted better today. I put some fresh grated parm on it and it was a good side to my giant hunk of beef jerky. I hate buying beef jerky because I can't stop eating it, and then my jaw and teeth get sore, and... yeah. I know. Important problems.