Recipes

Potstickers

In your kitchenaide Krusher 5000 mix:
2 tsp active dry yeast
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 T sugar
1 cup water

place in greased bowl and let rise till doubled.

While you're waiting for it to double, mix up the innards:

1 lb ground pork
2 scallions, chopped, or 1 leek
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 egg whites
1 celery stalk, minced
1/2 cup cabbage that you ran through the food processor (1/2 cup AFTER being processed)
2 or 3 big handfuls of baby spinach, put through the food processor (2 or 3 big handfuls BEFORE going in the processor)
some salt, pepper, and sesame oil to taste

Check dough. Nope, still not quite ready. Dig through your pots and pans. Darn. You finally threw away that bamboo steamer someone gave you as a wedding present but you didn't know what to use it for. Okay, no worries. Open three cans of dog food or something, peel off the labels and clean out the cans completely. Fill a LARGE pot with about three inches of water. Fill the cans with water and space them out in the pot. Find an oven-safe plate that will rest well on the cans and fit in the pot. Grease that plate well. Set the plate aside. I actually use the round Pampered Chef baking stone type thing with the edges. It's not one of the pizza stones and it's not a pie plate -- so whatever the other round baking stone thing with edges is called.

Let's assume the dough has finally doubled. Feed the kids some crackers or yogurt because you're still an hour from done.

Now divide the dough into about 24 pieces.

Roll out each piece into something that resembles a circle. Place a glob of innard in the center. About 2 Tablespoons, but mostly you just want to fill the circle enough so that it's worth eating, but not so much that it's hard to pinch the dough closed around it. Use what you know about potstickers to pinch it closed so it looks vaguely potstickery. Place each completed pot sticker on the greased plate. You'll have more than will fit. Put the others on other plate and cover them all losely with some wax paper or something. Let them all rest (rise) for about a half hour. After twenty minutes turn on the heat on the stove so the water starts boiling. Place the plate carefully in the pot (steam should come up and around the plate, but no boiling water should touch the plate). Set timer for twenty minutes.

Find frying pan. Put some oil in it. Heat it to medium-high heat around 3 minutes before the steamed dumplings are done.

Move steamed dumplings to pan. Place some more potstickers on the plate in the steamer. Set timer for twenty minutes again. Keep an eye on potstickers -- when they're brown on the bottom, they're done. The insides cooked completely during the steaming, so the frying pan is just to get that yummy crunchy bottom.

To make potsticker dipping sauce, pour a lot of soy sauce in a dip bowl. Pour about a teaspoon of sesame oil in the soy sauce. If you want it spicey, add a dash of hot sauce.

That's it. They'll look a little bloated coming out of the steamer and maybe while still frying, but they'll look like they ought to after having cooled enough to eat.

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Milk and Honey White Bread

makes two loaves

In a pot mix 2 1/2 cups milk with 6 T unsalted butter (or regular butter if that's all you have), 1/3 cup honey, and 1 1/2 tsp salt. Bring to a boil, remove from heat, let cool to room temperature. Mix in 1 rounded tablespoon of yeast. Add the liquid/yeast mixture to 5 cups of white bread flour in the Kitcheaide Bowl. Mix with a dough hook. Add 1 to 2 more cups of
white bread flour until it can be handled. Knead and add a smidge more flour as needed. The dough should be soft though -- only add more flour if it's totally sticking to your hands or the table. The kitchenaide did most of the keading. Don't bother doing too much here.

Place in a greased bowl and let rise till double.

Divide in half, roll out till very, very thin so you get all the air bubbles out. Roll up and placed in well-greased bread pan. Repeat for second loaf. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place till double (will take half the time as the first rise). Preheat oven to 375.

Bake for about 35 minutes. Test for doneness. If done, dump out immediately on cooling rack, let cool out on counter for at least five hours before wrapping. Or, let cool 20 minutes, stick bread in car and drive the three blocks to your friend's house. Eat the bread with her.

Makes great sandwhiches if allowed to cool on counter overnight (assuming you took it out of oven after, say, 8 pm at night). Makes great anything, really. It's too much work to use it for soup bowls, though.

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Not whole-wheat dog treats

You'll recall that Thor is allergic to wheat. So, no wheat here. They love these.

Thawed and frozen real fruit can be subbed for jam. I was being lazy and just grabbed fruit jam I'd made off the shelf.

4 cups organic barley flour
2 tbsp flaxseeds (the real seeds are pretty cheap)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup water
1/2 cup blueberry jam
1/2 cup peach butter
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp canola oil
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla.

Mix everything together, the roll out dough into 1/8-inch thickness. Cut into rectangles. Move rectangles onto nonstick or lightly greased cookie pans or baking stones. Cook at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Take out tray and let cool on the tray. (Ok, I only own one large baking stone and one cookie tray, so I mostly moved the cookies to a cooling rack so I could do the next batch. This worked fine.) When all the batches have been baked, turn heat down to 300 and bake ALL the cookies AGAIN for 30 minuts. When done, they shouldn't be burnt, but the should be very crunchy.

Let cool completely on cookie trays and then bag for up to 30 days.