Lancashire Hotpot

Autumn is upon us here in the cool, gray Pacific Northwest. The nights have grown cold (even a little frosty!) and the fall leaves are turning. It's the perfect time of year for hearty, warming meals. I have yet to make my first soup of the season, but recently I had another hankering for some piping hot, savory Britfood. To that end, I ventured into the kitchen to try my hand at Lancashire Hotpot.

Lancashire Hotpot is a one-pot dish, in the same family as casseroles or pot-a-feu. It's simple to prepare and ignore, as it cooks slowly at low to medium heat: you can assemble the ingredients, pop it in the oven, and leave it alone while you go do something else for awhile. The general ingredients are ground lamb, sliced potatoes, broth, root veggies, butter and seasonings. A traditional hotpot is made with lamb only, but I made mine with ground beef, and it turned out great. You can mix beef and lamb, as well as mixing up the various root vegetables depending on what you like or what's in season; you can also substitute flat beer or ale for part of the broth.

INGREDIENTS
About 1/2 lb. of ground lamb, beef, or a mix
2 or 3 carrots, sliced into 1-inch chunks or 1/4-inch medallions
1 medium white or yellow onion, in 1/2-inch dice
2 to 3 medium-sized firm potatoes cut into thin slices (stay away from baking potatoes; they fall apart too easily)
About 1/2 pound root veggies, cut into 1-inch chunks (try yams, parsnips, or turnips)
Broth (beef, or a mixture of chicken and beef)
Butter
Thyme
Salt & pepper

We used carrots, parsnips, turnips & red potatoes

INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350F.

Cook the ground meat in a little bit of butter or oil on the stovetop over medium heat until mostly cooked but not browned. Drain off most of the fat, then add onion and cook until translucent but not browned. Add carrots and root veggies. Season with thyme, salt and pepper to taste.

You can also cook the veggies first if you like.

 Cook until the meat is starting to brown.

Meat & veggies

 Transfer the lot to a casserole dish with a lid. Use a spoon to flatten out the top. Pour in the liquid until it almost covers the meat/veggie mixture. Put a layer of sliced potatoes on top of the mixture. Dot with butter, sprinkle salt & pepper to taste, then add another layer of sliced potatoes. Dot with butter again, put the lid on, and pop into the oven. (I recommend setting the casserole dish on a cookie sheet with a fairly deep lip, as the pot can bubble over and leak out while it's cooking if the lid isn't terrifically tight.)

Potatoes on top. Note level of liquid.

Cook for about an hour to an hour and a half, then take the lid off and cook for another 15 to 30 minutes to brown the top layer of potatoes.

Piping hot!

Serve with crusty bread, a winter salad, steamed winter veggies (like broccoli, mustard greens, or Brussels sprouts), and a good stout, dark ale or porter. Perfect for a chilly fall night.

Avocado Ice Cream

Important ingredients

This past weekend we packed up for another informal weekend at the family beach house, this time to celebrate Dear Spouse's (DS's) birthday. As usual, much food was brought down, recipes shared, and a good time was had by all.

Dear Spouse loves to tinker in the kitchen as much as Lexi and myself do, and this weekend he wanted to try his hand at making avocado ice cream. DS and I first sampled this treat several years ago on a vacation to Morro Bay. Our trip just happened to coincide with their annual Avocado & Margarita Festival, so we popped on down to the waterfront to check it out. Many of the local restaurants had booths open where we could nibble on nummies created using avocados as a prominent ingredient: that year we tasted shrimp and avocado cocktail, several kinds of sushi, and a delightful ceviche. But far and away our favorite was the avocado ice cream, made by the talented chefs at Windows on the Water. DS was so enamored of the creamy, honey-laden goodness that he nicked a margarita cup and went back to exchange enough booth tickets to fill it with ice cream. He's been wanting to try the recipe himself ever since.

So this past week found DS contacting our friends to find an ice cream maker or two. As luck would have it, one of our friends loaned us an ice cream bowl and paddle attachment for my trusty dusty antique KitchenAid mixer, and another managed to dig up an old-fashioned bucket-style electric ice cream maker from the early 1980's. As luck would also have it, avocados happened to go on sale this week. So we stocked up, DS did some recipe research, and we headed off to the beach house, avocados and ice cream makers in hand.

Here's what DS came up with.

INGREDIENTS (will make approximately 1 gallon of ice cream)
8 ripe avocados
1 qt whipping cream
1 qt 1% milk
1 c brown sugar
1 c granulated sugar
1 T vanilla extract (use genuine if you can get it)
Juice from 1/2 of a lime
Ice
Rock salt

INSTRUCTIONS
Peel, pit, and blend the avocados in a blender or food processor. Get them as finely blended as you can, removing any strings and pulverizing large chunks (though leaving small chunks is a nice textural touch). Transfer mashed avocados into a bowl and add cream and milk; stir together. Add sugar, vanilla, and lime juice and stir until all ingredients are well blended.

Transfer mixture to the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions. The above recipe made about a gallon of ice cream in a bucket-style electric ice cream maker.

Phase One: Soft Serve

With this particular model of ice cream maker, DS turned the paddle on and let it mix until the paddle slowed and/or the motor stopped. At that point, the ice cream was supposed to have reached a soft serve consistency. In this case, however, DS ran into an issue: the outer layer of ice cream, smack up against the cold metal container, froze more quickly than the center, so the paddle stopped sooner than it was supposed to.

Taking a risk, DS took the next step: he removed the metal container, put a lid on it, and stuck it in the freezer, banking on the probability that the ice cream was already well-blended and would stiffen up if it was left to chill for awhile. His gamble paid off.

Phase Two: Hard Serve

When he removed the metal bucket from the freezer, the ice cream had stiffened up nicely. It ended up being somewhere partway between soft- and hard serve in consistency, smooth and creamy, with a pale greenish color to it and little bits of avocado throughout.

Phase Three: PROFIT!!

The final result was in-smegging-credible. Avocado is high in oil, so it emulsified readily, producing an evenly-textured ice cream broken by soft little chunks here and there. The amount of sugar was just enough to put an edge on the natural sweetness of the avocados, but not overwhelm it. The flavor of the avocados dominated the mixture, but was subtle and mellow in a way that only avocados can be.

We all ate three bowls of the stuff the first time around. The second time DS added cinnamon. Next time he's thinking of trying it with honey.

2,000 Cookies

Geeky Cookies
Left: Rice Krispies of Infinite Improbability. Right: Combustible Lemons.
An entire list of all Cookie Brigade recipes can be found on this site here.

The summer of 2011 was the Summer of the Cookie. In the spring, I had decided to join the Cookie Brigade, and bake cookies for charity at PAX Prime 2011. I gave up most of my summer to bake cookies. Yard projects started in April are still sitting there, overgrown with weeds and spiderwebs; my friends knew to come over only if they wanted to get elbow-deep in cookies; I gave or brought cookies to every event I attended for months. We made trip after trip to the restaurant supply store, purchasing 25 pound boxes of chocolate chips and 5 gallon buckets full of peanut butter.

Because I decided to set myself a goal to bake 2,000 cookies.

I don't know what I was thinking. For those of you who need that number quantified, that's a square metric asston of cookies.

Here are some interesting stats to put it all in perspective:
-40 pounds of chocolate chips
-5 gallons of peanut butter
-30 pounds of flour
-240 eggs
-25 pounds of butter
-14 hours of baking time
-8 large rubbermaid tubs of finished, wrapped cookies
-3 people took 4 hours to label all the cookies

In the end, it was completely worth it. The Brigade collected a record breaking $14,000 in donations over a 3-day weekend, thanks in part to my donation which made up 1/3 of the total. I spent the weekend hawking cookies to geeks in lines, hauling around tubs and bags of cookies, ignoring my boyfriend for hours and hours while I worked the crowds (thanks, Sweetie!). My feet ached, I was tired, and I missed the convention. But it was great. One of the best times I've had in years; I highly recommend volunteering for something like this because there's almost nothing you can do that's quite as rewarding.

I'd like to give a special shout out to my friends, who comprised the Infinite Improbability Baking Team. When my job got crazy busy in August, right in the middle of baking, they swooped in for the last couple of days and helped pull it all together at the last minute. Sara, DamantaMaith, AzBat5, Hottie Scottie, Deb, Emimonster, Menolly07 and Stephanie all came through to help to bake off the last of the dough, ice, decorate, wrap and pack.

Special thank yous to JobiWanKenobi - who funded much of the venture, and the Greenwood Market - who graciously stored tubs upon tubs of cookies in their freezer(Thanks Patty!).

I decided that I wanted to make big, sturdy, delicious cookies that could stand up to the expectations of a coffeehouse culture. To that end, I decided to split the effort into fourths: 3/4 easy drop cookies, and 1/4 specialty, themed and gamer cookies.

Final Results:
48 Dz Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
42 Dz Chocolate Chip Cookies
20 Dz Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies (Gluten Free)
12 Dz Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Gluten Free)

20 Dz Star Wars Sugar Cookies
20 Dz Rice Krispie Treats with Toppings
7.5 Dz Combustible Lemons - A spicy/tart lemon sugar cookie with cayenne
3 Dz Coconut Lime Sugar Cookies
2 Dz Bacon Wrapped Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 Dz Bacon Wrapped Nutter Butter Stuffed Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 Dz Splicer Mask Sugar Cookies

I started making dough in June. This is 16 batches of double chocolate chip dough.

Using a #20 (2.5 oz) scoop, the dough was scooped and frozen, then vacuum sealed 2 dozen at a time, in 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bags. When it came time to bake, the dough was sheeted, thawed and baked off.


We had a terrific time with some of the more unusual cookies.