Yesterday found Biggles wandering aimlessly throughout the local mega mart attempting to come up with something, anything for dinner. We’ve had ground beef for the previous 2 days, why not another? This time topped with mashed potatoes?

Yup, 3rd day in a row for ground beef.  I couldn’t believe it myself, but I just couldn’t come up with a better solution. In the past months I’ve run myself even stupider with chicken thighs and pork steaks. Covering a meat & gravy slurry with mashed taters seemed to be my only salvation.

Holy gravy Batman! I have no idea why this dish came out so light, tasty and perfect in every way, but it did.  And brother or sister? I wanted to make sure I put down the basics here so when the hankering comes up again, I can whip this out. My ability to remember even the largest of details has long since bid a farewell.

Ground Meat – 1 pound
Onion – White and small dice
Garlic – Mooshy and as much or as little as one wants
Thyme – Heaping teaspoon full
Mushrooms – Minimum of 16 oz slice – variatize them
Beef Broff – 1 & 1/3 cuppa
Tomato Paste – Heaping Tablespoon full
Salt & Pepper – To taste ya foo
Flour – 1/4 cuppa
Veggies – I used frozed mixed
Mashed Potatoes – Enough for 6 hungry people, give or take

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F with rack in center position.

Brown everything in large, wide fry pan. You’ll need the surface area to make browning easier.

The few key points I need to remember are to start the mashed potatoes first, get them boiling before you start on the filling.  Then brown the meat, onion, mushrooms together or separately depending on your fussiness level. Then toss in the frozen veggies to warm them. Add the flour and heat for no more than 3 to 4 minutes, just get everything coated.  Add the tomato paste, stir in. Then add the broth, simmer for 15 minutes give or take.  This will set the flour and reduce the liquid just a tad. Set aside until potatoes are tender and ready to be mashed. Use only real butter and milk/cream with as much butter fat as you have on hand or are willing to purchase. We used manufacturing cream with a fat content of maybe 38 to 40%. Install filling to appropriate baking device, smoove taters over the top with love.  Coat with butter or baking spray and install to oven for 30 minutes until golden brown.  Yank, let sit for 10.

Hooboy!  At first bite I couldn’t believe it turned out this good, so delectable! Yes, I impressed myself. I can hardly wait to make this again, with a few additions of course. Not sure what those changes might be though, it’ll come to me.  Probably while meandering through the store attempting yet again to come up with something for dinner.

xo, Biggles

ps – Chilebrown, please do not scroll downwards.  It’s a dessert and it was bucktoothed evil good. A homemade apple cake with Uncle Ralph’s tree ripened Granny Smiths, home made apple syrupy with bits and once again, whipped manufacturing cream.

Whatever it was, left a long lasting impression on me. Even today I can remember the euphoric experience in nearly detail. I searched for it over the coming day, weeks and months. But never could I find it, not even a glimmer. At some point I was told that it was a food service product, only available to restaurants, bakeries and wherever else I clearly wasn’t.

A few weeks ago I was grabbing my ubiquitous gallon of 2% at Smart & Final, a commercial type grocery store that is “open to the public”. I looked up and to the right, there she was. A half gallon of Manufacturing Cream. I wanted, no needed this magical, loaded with butter fat, container of love.

So far, everyone here at Meathenge Labs finds that whipped cream made from this stuff totally eclipses anything it’s put over.  Not only that, it’s stable as gosh.  A day later, on the counter or in the fridge, it doesn’t separate or go south. I suppose being 40% plus on butter fat probably has something to do with it, eh?

Go now, find this wonderful elixir of the gods. Make your holidays, make your Christmas extra special and make some whipped cream from Manufacturing Cream.

xo, Biggles

Starting more than a few months ago, and even up until last night, I’ve been failing at cooking potatoes. What I mean by this is that both baking them and boiling them to mash isn’t working like it used to.  400 degrees for an hour on 1 medium potato is rendering me a mostly uncooked potato.  A large rapidly boiling pot of whole medium potatoes for 45 minutes is rendering me uncooked potatoes.  Sure, poke them with a fork and it glides in and out without resistance. But when it comes time to open the suckers up, when it comes time to mash them?  Hard as a rock.  So far, 9 out of 10 times is a tear jerking failure.

For the first dozen times, I thought that maybe I was just off my game. Maybe I set the the timer wrong, maybe the oven was off, maybe I’m just getting too old to boil a potato. I’ve even gone so far to try russets from different stores, ones in bags, tubers hand picked from the bin. Nothing rendered me success in the arena of baking or boiling potatoes.

It wasn’t until last night that I remembered a recent episode of Top Chef, can’t remember which one exactly.  A chef went home because her gratin wasn’t cooked.  She served raw potatoes. And at her level, this should never have happened.  Even if she had chosen to cook them on the day of and not the day before. Making a gratin is Cooking 101 for anyone. How could this be? I’m not the only one cooking and serving raw potatoes!

I am now solidly convinced that there is a potato conspiracy going on here in these United States. From large to small, from bulk to a la carte, we have a problem. It’s not going away, in fact it could be spreading across our great nation.  Is it international? I don’t know yet, but I can tell you for sure, I’m now doing research in this field. This needs to be unearthed, we need to locate the root of the problem and halt this Great Potato Conspiracy of 2011 at any and all costs!

xo, Biggles

xo, Biggles

In any case, decided to make the lemon filling while the poppy seeds did their deed.  And guess what?  I got to separate my first egg !!!  That’s right, it’s taken Biggles 47 years to separate a yolk from the white.  Pretty scary, eh?

So far, all is well.

xo, Biggles

xo, Biggles

Welp, yesterday my friend Jeffrey Davila and I were chatting via email about his recipe for some savory scones.  He was kind enough, later on the in the day, to forward over the recipe. I smiled as he noted Organic this and Fresh that, OH Jeffrey.  Well, one of the notations on his recipe was to use Baking Powder with no Aluminum. Aroo?

At the time I was thinking about the packaging, some reaction with an aluminum container.  Well, after a 2 second search on google, I received my answer. We gots our baking powder with no Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, and we have our Double Acting Baking powder that has it.  Mmmmmkay.

As near as I can tell, the Double Acting Baking powder rises in the mixing bowl, then again in the oven. Sounds fine, but as it turns out, if you really want to dial in a noticeable taste in your baked goods you must use the NO aluminum baking powder. And, no mosey action on getting your batter in to the oven.  Move along little doggy!

I’m on my way to learning the ins and outs here.  Good thing this here can of baking powder didn’t cost me 52 million dollars. I can just toss the sucker and buy Rumford or similar.

xo, Biggles

By the closing of this last work week our family related plans all feel short. A major cooking holiday and all we have to do is hang around in our jammies and bake treats?  Count me in!

Earlier this morning found Tami Numnums and myself in the kitchen.  I purchased the ingredients a week ago and it’s taken me this long to get in to the kitchen and knock these suckers out. Cutting in butter or lard to a flour mixture correctly has always eluded me. I’ve had enough of that and it’s time that Biggles learn how to bake, and bake well enough to at least be edible.

The recipe came from The Joy of Cooking, added 1 cup of frozen blackberries.  Not fricken bad for a first try, came out pretty well.  However, 1 tablespoon of sugar was not nearly enough.  I need to try this again and double it, see what that does.  If I can get a little more sweetness in there, they’ll be perfect and ready to go in to daily if not weekly production.  Easier to make than cookies!

xo, Biggles

Me.  I spent an evening, then the the morning after making my lists.  I wanted to make his Creole Seasoning too, wanted it oh so special. I got the veggies all neatly diced, got the meats all browned and set aside.  Heated up the cast iron French oven and made a badass roux, all dark and smoky. Dumped in the veggies for the 4 minute sweating, stirred and scraped. Then fell stupid quiet, jaw on ground.  The realization hit me, while looking at the nearly full pot of veggies only, “It’s not all going to fit”.

Dumbass.  Duh, 4 quarts of liquid, huge amounts of veggies and 4+ pounds of meat going in to a 5 quart pot? Dumbass.  I was all ready to put everything together and get it in to the oven!  Nope. And you know what?  I had no other oven-ready pot to put it in. Dumbass.

Then I remembered I have several shelves of cookware in the garage, a-way out in the back, that might contain something I could use.  I dragged in my camp dutch oven, the one with the 3 legs. It didn’t sit so well on the stove, all cattywompus.  But it was good enough to get everything up to temperature, then get it in to the oven, on the pizza stone. Good thing for the stone, eh? Without that I would have had another problem with those legs sitting all funky.

Instead of 1 hour, I did 1.5 hours at 375.  And even after my goof, dinner came out wonderful and on time. Remember, simply reading a recipe is completely different than actually paying attention to what you require to get the job done.  Dumbass.

xo, Biggles