Hump-Day Quickie: Spinach-Cheese Rice

A lot of our nearly-heatless recipes have been desserts because, well, it's nice to treat yourself when you're hiding indoors from the weather. Also, most of our low-heat suppers have been a simple matter of "put it in frying pan and cook until done." I've also made the occasional batch of haluski even though it involves two burners, and maaaaybe turned on the oven to serve frozen fish alongside it. (Shhhhhh....) But today, we're presenting a vegetable side that barely heats the kitchen.

Spinach Rice You don't need to precisely measure out anything except the rice and cooking water. ¾ cup rice 4 oz spinach (about a third of a 12-oz package, just eyeball it) ½ cup shredded cheese (use more or less depending on taste. Choose a kind of cheese that melts well.) Salt and seasonings to taste Squeeze the juice out of the spinach and add enough water to make 1½ cups. Add salt to taste and cook the rice in this, whether you use a rice cooker or a saucepan. When the rice is done, add the cheese and stir until melted and mixed. Then stir in the spinach and seasonings to taste.

Not to go all Agatha Thrash on everyone, but whenever I use frozen spinach in anything, I try to put find some room in the recipe for the juice I just squeezed out. (Or sometimes I don't bother draining it at all) The spinach juice takes a lot of flavor away with it when you drain or wring it out. It's hard to eat your spinach when you've reduced it to blank fiber wads. 

I guess I also halfheartedly worry about throwing out water-soluble vitamins, but mostly I don't want my vegetables to taste like nothing. For today's recipe, the spinach juice adds a lovely flavor to the rice in a way that you simply cannot get by cooking the rice first and seasoning it later.

You may wonder why we bother draining the spinach at all if we're going to put the juice back in later. Well, I tried skipping that and got a soppy mess of rice-and-spinach glop. It kind of looked like the savory baked rice before we baked it. It was edible and I reluctantly didn't throw it out, but I didn't do it twice. With that in mind, the easiest way to drain the spinach is to stack another bowl on top of it and then squeeze it over the rice cooker. 

This is the only annoying part of the whole recipe.

Today, we're also getting some of the beef stock out of the freezer from the most expensive meatball pie I have ever made. You know, since we can't buy beef at any price until further notice. I didn't bother completely thawing it- I just let it half-defrost enough to gently mash the ice into the rice cooker. I figured it would melt in its own good time if I didn't mind the wait.

When that the rice is done, it's time to improve it with cheese. I like to mix the cheese in before adding the spinach so that I can be sure the rice has enough retained heat to melt it. (And I do like to add a lot of cheese. We're eating our vegetables, not punishing ourselves.)

I ended up adding "just a bit" more.

At this point, I like to try a small spoonful and make sure it has enough salt in it. If it doesn't, I add it with our spinach which has been patiently waiting next to the rice cooker. The spinach does want to stay in little hard clumps, so you have to kind of spoon-jab it to break it up.

So there we have it: cheese and spinach rice! It doesn't heat the kitchen any more than a single rice cooker, it's mostly good for you (I think), and it's low-effort enough for when it's too hot to lovingly cook anything. It may not be the most exciting thing anyone's ever made, but it's pretty darn good.

Coffee Ice Cream: Wheeee!

Today, we're playing with our new toy!

Coffee Ice Cream 1⅓ cups (14-oz can*) sweetened condensed milk 2 cups half-and-half 1 cup water 1 tablespoon instant coffee 1 tablespoon vanilla Dissolve the coffee in the water (You can warm the water in the microwave if you need to, but my coffee dissolved in water right out of the tap.) Mix all ingredients, then put in an ice cream machine and freeze until done. Transfer to a storage container and put in the kitchen freezer until firm. For vanilla ice cream, omit the coffee. For chocolate ice cream, omit coffee and melt 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate in the condensed milk. You can microwave it, stopping in stirring every 20 seconds, until the chocolate is melted. Or, you can use a double boiler. *The original recipe calls for a 15-oz can, but it seems Borden did a bit of recreational shrinkflation and nipped one ounce away from the cans. This recipe didn't mind the loss, but you should still be bothered. Borden's Eagle Brand Magic Recipes, 1964

I make this ice cream recipe out of a Borden condensed milk handout more often than any other.  Everyone wants this one over and over again. On one hand, it's nice when everyone wants you to make something where the instructions are just "stir everything together." (If I never hear "I thought we'd do chicken marsala tonight" again...) On the other hand, it's almost insulting for the same reason.

Borden's Eagle Brand Magic Recipes, 1964

The instructions may look daunting because they're so long, but that's because the writers decided to write out every single detail of using an ice cream machine. They end with the direction to "Cover freezer with burlap, heavy paper or carpet until serving time." Did everyone have carpet scraps lying around the house back then?

Regardless of whether we're temporarily unseating the welcome mat for the sake of ripening ice cream, we're trying a variation that The Nostalgic Cook suggested the first time we posted this recipe: add a spoonful of instant coffee. 

Now, when I got my new ice cream machine, I didn't think anything of it still being in the box. I used to believe people who keep their kitchen gadgets in the original box were being stupid and snobby, like all the people my age who have shrines of still-in-box action figures. But now, I see why you'd do it. After all, you need to store your doodads in something, and each one came with a box that's just the right size. So when I saw this was still in the original packaging, I simply figured the previous owner always put it neatly away. Then the box exploded styrofoam inserts all over the countertop.

After unpacking and examining, I don't think someone bought it in the late 1990s and never touched it. The ice cream scoop was still in its box with the tissue paper.

Also, this thing is so old that neither the registration card nor the instructions have a website on them. 

How long has it been since you got a mail-in registration card with something like an ice cream maker?

Aesthetically, you can tell it comes from a more prosperous time. They printed things like "EXTRA VALUE!" in cheery-colored text on the box--- twice. 

In the 1990s, we still put colors on our packaging. These days, everything is black, white, and gray.

Getting to the recipe, I couldn't decide if I wanted vanilla or coffee ice cream. Then I remembered that our machine came with two of those ice-pack bowls.

I do like how instant coffee is just as good as brewing it yourself in recipes like this. Or maybe I have a tragically undereducated taste for coffee since I almost never drink the stuff.

I'm going to have to get the hang of figuring out when this machine is done. But for today, I decided it was ready when our ice cream stopped moving. 

It turns out that letting your ice cream keep churning for extra time doesn't make it come out firmer or better. It just means that more of it turns into solid ice on the side of the machine. 

This is what learning looks like.

This tasted like a cup of coffee made to A Book of Cookrye standards. In other words, it's like an iced coffee-- the kind with lots of syrup and whipped cream. I absolutely loved it. 

Lemon Sponge: or, Lemon fluff for hot weather

Halloween is approaching! Animatronic witches and zombies are appearing in various people's yards. A few people have already bedecked their houses with orange Christmas lights. However, no one is putting out ornamental porch pumpkins because it is still too hot out. Pumpkins may last half a year if you put them in the back of a closet, but they wouldn't survive a week in the Texas sun. Therefore, we are making more oven-free delights.

Lemon Sponge 1 (¼-oz) envelope unflavored gelatin ¼ cup cold water 1 cup boiling water ¾ cup sugar ¼ cup lemon juice (for me, it was 2 small lemons) 2 egg whites (save the yolks for the custard) ¼ cup whipping cream Custard (see below) Maraschino cherries for garnish Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water. Let stand for about 10 minutes. Then add the boiling water, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool in the refrigerator until almost completely set, stirring occasionally. (You can speed this up by putting the bowl of gelatin in a larger bowl of ice water and stirring for a few minutes.) With an electric mixer, beat the gelatin until frothy. Then, with fresh beaters (or just rinse the beaters real quick), beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Fold them into the gelatin. Lastly, whip and fold in the cream. Refrigerate overnight. Serve with custard on top, garnished with cherries. Custard: 2 egg yolks ½ cup milk 4 tsp sugar ½ tsp vanilla (or more if desired) Whisk together in the top of a double boiler, beating well. The sugar won't completely dissolve until it gets hot, so don't worry about the persistent grains at the bottom of the pot. Put over boiling water and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. After the sugar has dissolved, taste and see if you want to add more of it. Remove from heat, transfer to a small container, and cover with plastic wrap. Press the wrap onto the surface of the custard, making contact (this prevents a skin from forming). Let cool for a few minutes, then add the vanilla. Refrigerate. Note: If raw egg whites are a concern for you, use pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs. - Hannah O'Brien Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy) Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)- recipe credited to Hannah O'Brien

To make this recipe for a large number of people, use the following amounts: 4 (¼-oz) envelopes unflavored gelatin 6 egg whites (save the yolks for the custard) 1 cup whipping cream 1 cup boiling water 4 cups cold water 1 cup lemon juice 6 egg whites Maraschino cherries for garnish For the custard: 6 egg yolks 1½ cups milk ¼ cup sugar 1 tbsp vanilla

Apparently they really liked lemon sponge at my great-grandmother's house. She rewrote the ingredients in triple quantity under the heading "For large number to be served." And if they didn't like lemon sponge by the platterful, then it must have been one of her go-to recipes when she needed to come up with dessert for 20 with minimal effort. 

Based on various papers I've looked through, "H. O'Brien" was my great-grandmother's cousin. Come to think of it, I've never swapped a recipe with any of my cousins, so it's interesting to see my great-grandmother did at least once. 

We previously made a variation of today's recipe from the Dormeyer cookbook (which, like my great-grandmother, came from Chicago. Is this a local dish?). Today's version has a few extra steps, and I was curious if it'd be better or if you can't taste the extra fuss. Just like the first time, our lemon sponge begins with the foundation of so many things: gelatin!

I never really got involved with gelatin before I started going through this binder. My most ambitious  creation was canned peaches suspended in red Jello. Given my current progress, I may find myself attempting multiple layers if I don't have a sudden attack of sanity.

Just look at that crystalline loveliness in the mixing bowl!

After adding the lemon juice and boiling water, it looked like an innocent bowl of clear water and tasted like lemonade. A part of me I'm not quite comfortable with asked "why didn't I just use a box of lemon jello?" And indeed, given the path of American food history and the massive infusion of pre-canned and pre-packaged foods in the 1950s (all those canneries and factories didn't want to go out of business just because "our brave boys" had come home from fighting Hitler) this recipe may have later evolved to lemon Jello and Cool Whip.

We put the, um, fortified lemonade aside to chill while making the "soft boiled custard." Since we don't get any instructions, I cracked open my favorite cookbook of the moment, Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book. It's accidentally period-correct and location-appropriate, but I actually picked this book because I've liked every recipe I've made but one. To my surprise, Mrs. Mary Martensen does not provide a plain custard recipe, though I did find a custard sauce. I think a custard sauce is meant to be runnier than a custard?

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

Anyway, Mrs. Martensen doesn't use a lot of sugar in this recipe. I first thought I should change that, but then I realized we're pouring this onto a sweet dessert. Besides, I could always stick a tasting spoon into the double boiler and see if our sauce needed a little help.

The custard takes us to the only part of the recipe that heated the kitchen (assuming you boiled your gelatin water in the microwave): standing over a steaming double boiler for a few minutes. I have to admit that I doubted Mrs. Mary Martensen as the custard came to a close. Sure, it passed the finger-swipe test on a spoon, but it still seemed very thin and runny.

Setting aside our custard, it was time to beat our gelatin until frothy. I've never tried to make gelatin pretend to be whipped cream, but I kept an open mind. It turned into a foam, though it melted in the process. (Remember the room-temperature air that ruined our prune whip?) I re-refrigerated our gelatin and then beat it again to hopefully firm it up and make sure the bubbles wouldn't slowly break.

Now, we fold white into white!

Lastly, we add a surprisingly small amount of whipped cream. I couldn't help thinking over and over that this recipe is a lot of white mixed into white. Or if you prefer to get a bit sociological, it's a big fluffy cloud of showing off that you own an eggbeater and an icebox.

As I was double-checking the recipe, I noticed a helpful hint on the other side of the page:

Since I always like to make recipes exactly as written, I refrigerated our first custard and made another. This involved cracking out another two egg yolks, but I figured I would find a use for the whites soon enough. Besides, extra custard has never made a day worse.

After everything had spent the night in the refrigerator later, it was time to serve our hopefully delicious lemon sponge. It turned out I didn't fold in the cream quite as well as I thought. But I think I could get away with calling it visible strata instead of ineptitude.

So, as far as topping our sponge, Mrs. Mary Martensen's custard slid right off. I didn't mind with this recipe because that meant we had a lovely moat of custard at the bottom of the bowl. But it's nice to know in advance that I shouldn't use this recipe for any attempt at aesthetic drizzle.

Yes, I bought cherries just to put on top of this.

The other sauce, made to my great-grandmother's cousin's specifications, did a little better.

I liked this recipe a lot more than I expected to. It's light and airy, which makes it great in the summertime. (And since summer keeps getting longer and longer...) The custard gave it just enough substance without turning it into something rich and heavy. And the whole creation had just the right amount of lemony flavor to make it refreshing.

Pineapple Bavarian Cream: or, Self-Supporting whipped Cream

When all else fails, just eat the whipped cream.

Pineapple Bavarian Cream 1 (¼-oz) envelope unflavored gelatin (or 1 tablespoon) ¼ cup cold water 1 (8-oz) can crushed pineapple, undrained ¼ cup sugar 1½ tsp lemon juice 1½ cups cream If you don't have an ice maker, put a large bowl or pot of water in the refrigerator ahead of time and chill until very cold. Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water, let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the pineapple and sugar until the sugar dissolves. (You can do this in the microwave or on the stove.) Add the lemon juice to the pineapple. After the gelatin has soaked 5 minutes, microwave it until completely melted, about 15-20 seconds. Then add it to the pineapple. Whip the cream and set it aside. Transfer the pineapple mixture to a large bowl. Set it in a pot or large basin of ice water (or the water you refrigerated earlier). Stir until it begins to thicken. Then fold in the whipped cream. Pour into a gelatin mold (I don't know if you're supposed to use cooking spray but I did) and refrigerate overnight. Or if you don't have a gelatin mold, use whatever container is the right size. If it's not a shape you think would look good unmolded, you can easily serve this (as they say in many an old gelatin recipe) "attractively heaped in small bowls." Note: This is halved from the original recipe and still makes plenty. Handwritten notebook, probably 1930s-40s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

Our August electric bill came in a couple of weeks ago, and the air conditioning hit us as much as we expected. I don't want to imagine what the final price would have been if I hadn't avoided the oven. (I think I turned it on four times in the whole month.)

So, since the heat wave shows no sign of giving up, we are continuing our heatless recipes! (Or, mostly heatless. Sometimes you need to put a pot on the stove for a little bit.) This recipe comes from my great-grandmother's book. I've never made a Bavarian cream, pineapple or otherwise. I always thought they were a super-fussy and fiddly undertaking, which is why I didn't exactly rush to make this one. (Her intimidating cursive didn't make the recipe look any easier.) But today, I decided to make a Bavarian and find out what it is.

This recipe starts with unflavored gelatin, which I like to keep on hand anyway. Don't tell anyone with puristic opinions, but I often slip an envelope of it into my custard pies to make very sure they set enough to slice. 

Because I have learned at least a little bit about using gelatin, I popped this into the microwave after it had soaked for a while so it could melt. (I learned this from making the whiskey thing.) Because I looked away for about ten seconds, I cooked it too long and it came out steaming-hot. I've said this before, but hot gelatin smells like boiled rawhide. I can't believe the food industry successfully sold it as the foundation of ladylike desserts.  

Next, we get to our starring ingredient: canned pineapple. I've learned so many ways to use canned pineapple since I started using my great-grandmother's book. Before this, I only knew about pineapple upside-down cake and pineapple on pizza. (While we're briefly on the subject, I'm not particularly wild about the "traditional" "Hawaiian" pizza with pineapple and Canadian bacon. But I do like pineapple, pepperoni, and green bell peppers.)

For reasons only known to gelatin, this got sudsy as it thickened.

I was surprised at how quick this recipe was. For some reason, I thought a "Bavarian cream" was one of those recipes that involves far too much labor for far too little payoff. But after cooling off the pineapple until it was about as thick as a half-finished custard, we were nearly done.

Apparently they really liked pineapple Bavarian cream at my great-grandmother's house. I cut the recipe in half and it nearly filled the gelatin mold, which can contain up to a slightly heaping quart (about a liter for our metric friends) of magnificent salad. This is a lot of Bavarian cream.

I tried a spoonful before refrigerating. My hopes then dropped faster than the elevator descending from the top-floor observation deck at the Hancock Tower.^note Our magnificent Bavarian was nothing more than whipped cream with occasional interspersions of pineapple. Like, straight whipped cream. Since I had already made the thing, I refrigerated it anyway just to see if it would get any better.

To my surprise (and unlike the last time we used this thing), the mold let go of our gelatinized creation, which rose to a magnificent height. Keep in mind, this is half the recipe. Had I made it in the amounts my great-grandmother wrote down, we would have two of these.

My gelatin molding skills are not yet church-social ready.

I wasn't happy with my pineapple Bavarian cream. It is exactly what you put in the mold: whipped cream with just enough gelatin to keep it together. Aside from a small bit of canned pineapple, this is essentially the same as the secretly gelatin-fortified whipped cream that I put in the trifle last Easter. (The gelatin may unnerve you, but the whipped cream didn't deflate after a night in the fridge and three hours in the car.)

With our stabilized trifle in mind, I almost want to say that perhaps my great-grandmother meant we are supposed to put this in a dessert instead of making it be the dessert. However, she decisively ended the recipe with the words "mould and chill."

I almost want to say this dessert is perfect for the summer because it's light and airy. But it's also (almost) entirely made of heavy cream, which probably isn't appealing in hot weather regardless of how whipped or well-chilled it is. So while I was disappointed, this recipe mostly left me saying "I don't get it."

*Which, technically, my great-grandmother could have gone to see. They (barely) managed to finish the building during her lifetime, and it was only an el train ride away. ↪

Hump-Day Quickie: Potato Fudge-- or, You'd never believe it's microwaved!

Our heatless cooking continues!

Prince Edward Island Potato Fudge 300g chocolate chips ⅓ cup warm mashed potatoes (just the potatoes, no added milk/butter/etc) 2 tbsp melted butter 1 tsp vanilla ⅛ tsp salt Up to 4 cups powdered sugar (viz. icing sugar) Have a greased 8" pan ready. Melt the chocolate. You can use a double boiler, or melt it in a large bowl in the microwave- stopping and stirring every 20 seconds. Mix the mashed potatoes and butter. Then mix them into the chocolate, along with the vanilla and salt. Mix in about half of the powdered sugar. Gradually add more until the fudge is about the right consistency and sweetness. You may have to set down the spoon and mix with your hands. Press into the pan. Cut into squares, then chill until firm. -Canadian Potato Museum, Prince Edward Island

...all right, so strictly speaking a microwave isn't heatless. The food in there does in fact get hot. But a microwave doesn't produce enough heat for the air conditioning to notice. At any rate, today we are making potato fudge. 

Apparently our recipe comes from the Canadian Potato Museum on Prince Edward Island. Those of us in the "Land of the Free" may know Prince Edward Island (if we've heard of it at all) as the home of Anne of Green Gables, but apparently in Canada it's also known for potatoes. Which makes me deeply regret that I haven't gone there in any of my northerly travels.

Mid-Century Menu

Anyway, someone on the Mid-Century Menu group shared this with everyone. I was skeptical, but then they shared pictures of the fudge itself. 

Since this recipe is very easy to cut down to a quarter of its original amount, I decided to add something special to it: Star anise! As the kids apparently say these days, we're sleeping on star anise in fudge. I can only add it to very small fudge batches because most people complain, but I think everyone should try it. However, I didn't think our coffee grinder could successfully pulverize entire star anise pods, so I prised the seeds out of them. They look like egg-cases from some household pest, don't they?

Meanwhile in the microwave, our chocolate had not melted but turned into a hot clay. I actually know why this happened-- it's that spoonful of butter. All butter contains a small amount of water (or, if you want to sound cheffy, all butter contains a small amount of moisture content). If you add a tiny drop of water to melted chocolate, it seizes into hard clumps and no amount of heat will make it melt again. But if you add a lot of water instead of just an accidental smidge, your hot seized chocolate will immediately go runny again. (If only I knew this when I did that sachertorte!)

This brings us to the magical ingredient: potatoes! 

The spuds added enough water (or, in twenty-dollar terms, the spuds added enough moisture content) to unseize the chocolate and make it act melted again. Potatoes really can solve all our problems in life.

The last step was to add a lot of powdered sugar. I had to put aside the spoon and knead it like I was making meatloaf. At first we had a crumbly mess. I feared that I had wasted a lot of chocolate.

But after getting my hands in there and forcing everything to mix, we had, um, this.

At least it's holding itself together.

I know what we're all thinking, so let's watch the video.

I managed to press the fudge into our container, but I think quartering the recipe made this harder than it should have been. The fudge couldn't hold onto its small amount of retained heat long enough to shape it and make it look nice in the pan. But after we had gotten it as good as we ever would, I cut it into four very generous pieces. I don't like tiny rations of chocolate.

 

This wasn't the best fudge I ever made. But I think that's because I added all of the powdered sugar at once when the recipe says to add it "gradually." My single day of experience with this recipe tells me the word "gradually" in the recipe means to "stop according to taste" and not "mix in all of it." Since I realized that too late, my first-ever spud fudge was more or less like sliceable cake frosting.

However, I could tell this would be good if I didn't dump in an excess of sugar. And maybe I simply needed a lot of chocolate after paying for an entire car air conditioner's worth of parts-- even if I saved at least a thousand dollars by persuading some friends to, um, help install everything.

This time, I forestalled our seizing chocolate by melting it with nothing else. Doesn't this like a better start to fudge?

Next, I added the potato, butter, and vanilla to the melted chocolate together. This meant we added too much water (or, in order to preemptively one-up food pedants, we added too much moisture content) for the chocolate to seize. I know that our chocolate unseized and broke apart the first time, but it was nice to keep things just a bit easier. 

I also omitted about a third of the sugar, which I think made the fudge better. Really, I think you can leave out about half the sugar before you miss it.

A lot of "no-cook" recipes are sad imitations of their respective originals, but this was in fact fudge. It is a lot better than I thought it'd be. If I'm being honest, it's no Fantasy Fudge, but it's definitely good enough to give away. And I really love how easy it is to reduce to very small amounts. And of course, we didn't heat the kitchen at all!