Cast Iron Seasoning

So, I own three pieces of cast-iron cook ware. The all came from Lodge as new. I was never that impressed with any of them. This weekend I tried to cook cornbread in my 2 quart dutch oven. It rusted while it was cooking and substantively reduced the quality of the cornbread. This got me to get around to doing what I'd been intending to do for ages. I stripped down the finish that was on it as much as I felt compelled to do. (So not 100% stripped.) Then I started re-seasoning the pan. My procedure was a little more accelerated than the suggested procedure from my reference for the process: A Science Based Technique for Seasoning Cast-iron

My stripping process was basically to use Bar Keepers Friend: Pots & Pans with a stainless steel scrubber. This pulled off a lot of gunk. I repeated my attempts a couple of times until I got tired of this. I also decided to get filtered flax oil rather than unfilteredfiguring random solids were not actually the best thing for trying to bake on a polymer finish. (The oil was still cold pressed and unrefined.)

After cleaning and drying the cast-iron my procedure for seasoning was:

1. Pour a small amount of the oil on the cook surface (no more than a quarter) rub it around with a towel until everything has a sheen of oil but nothing has visible buildup.
2. Place in oven, set the oven temperature as high as it can go. (In my case 550)
3. Then using a nifty birthday gift of an infrared thermometer occasionally check temperature of the cast-iron until it is 550 and you can no longer see any sheen of oil (looks matte black).
4. Turn oven off and crack the door.
5. Wait until cast iron is back down under 200 by checking with the thermometer

-- Goto step 1

With four coats I baked the same cornbread. This is a recipe that used to stick and be kinda hard to clean. This time I could rub off all of the remnants with my finger. Not even using my fingernail. I'm so excited to try this on my cast iron frying pan. Though not looking forward to stripping the frying pan.

Bread, Scones, and Games

Zoe and I hosted a board-game afternoon a couple weeks ago. We'd planned to make some baked goods as snacks for the event, and ended up going a bit overboard. We ended up with Oatmeal Scones, Mixed Berry Scones, and Orange-Cranberry Bread. All three recipes came from "Americas Test Kitchen." The bread was the first recipe at bat and was quick and easy.

While that was in the oven we started on the first batch of scones. At the time we were planning on holding off on one of the sets of scones so decided to go with mixed berry scones. The recipe had an interesting suggestion for cold dough which is the best way I've heard yet that doesn't involve a food processor. Freeze 2x the number of sticks of butter you need then shred it on the large holes of a box grater. You can put it back in the freezer until you need it. This does have the downside of leaving a bunch of odd half sticks of butter around. Rolling berries into dough seems like a good way to distribute them.

Shredded Butter

Rolling Berries

After putting together the first batch of scones, I looked at the time and decided we should press ahead and work on the second batch. We slightly over-toasted the oats and there was juggling in the oven as we swapped out bread, and scones, and oats, and scones, etc.

Finished Berry Scones

Finished Bread

Sliced Bread and Oatmeal Scones

After all of the baking people trickled in and out for gaming for the next 7 or 8 hours. There was an attempt at playing Power Grid, and a game of Ticket to Ride. At one point a game of speed Settlers cropped up. I there was also a game of Dominion and a couple rounds of Nertz.

Speed Settlers

Pan-seared Sea Scallops

Chris seems to have a penchant for yummy milk fat and found this awesome recipe on kiss my spatula for pan-seared sea scallops with a "risotto" of potatoes -- I usually think of risotto as rice-based, but that's what they were calling it. The meal was probably a bit more expensive than it needed to be because I bought about 6 scallops a person. However, we ate all of them! In addition to preparing the sauce with fresh fennel and thyme picked from Jess's windowsill, the potato risotto, and the sea scallops, we also prepared braised spinach with garlic to make a decorative bed (and an instrument to pick up the yummy cream sauce). This meal was probably the most decadent at-home meal I've ever had. Seriously, 5 stars.

Pan-seared sea scallops in a cream sauce on top of risotto

I would definitely include the spinach again. The amount of cream almost made me cry and we definitely had leftover sauce. I would cut down the cream by about half. Also, the absolute right amount of scallops. The more, the better. But yeah, a dish to make when you're feeling particularly thin.

Seven Layer Bars of Organization

So, after a pretty and outdoorsy holiday in Hawaii, which consisted of beaches...

...climbing...

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...and visiting awesome people like Rita and her new beau Paul...

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...Chris and I came back to the real world.

It kind of made us want to hide. Jess felt the same way.

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Once things cooled down, we decided to try out Chris's new present -- America's Test Kitchen. They have a tendency to test and re-test their recipes until they have things just right -- hence the name.

We found the seven layer bar, a classic, and completely embraced the ingredient list.

1 cup (5 ounces) chocolate-covered toffee bits 12 whole graham crackers 1 stick butter 8 ounces milk chocolate, chopped fine 1 cup rice krispies 1 cup (4 ounces) pecans 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup (4 ounces) sweetened shredded coconut, toasted 2 (14-ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk 1 tbsp vanilla extract

The authors originally got this recipe on the back of a can of condensed milk, then modified it. One of the modifications? Adding a second can of condensed milk for more chewiness and moistness. You would have thought the condensed milk advertisers would have thought of that one themselves.

The toffee bits were combined with butter and graham crackers to create the first layer. As a sidenote, food processors are a wonderful and necessary item, saving time on anything that needs to be reduced to crumbs. We put the first layer in the oven to get brown.

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Then pretty much all of the successive ingredients were put in, in order. We had to get very hippy "wheat" graham crackers, the coconut was unsweetened and raw, and the rice krispies were brown rice krispies -- what you get for shopping at Rainbow / living in San Francisco. They were done in half an hour and we climbed for two hours so we wouldn't be tempted to pre-emptively eat them before they were cool.

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Final product was decadent and thick, though difficult to separate from the tin foil, and in the future we might just cook without it. After having a few bites of the bars I immediately said to Chris we had to give them to people as soon as possible. Mmm, calories.

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All this was happening as a new guest arrived, Meredith -- my childhood friend who is looking at art schools out here, as well as some new shelves. The shelves were a necessary purchase for two people to live in Chris's room. They are real wood with a beautiful maple finish and were from a store recommended to Chris by his friend Alice. With our newfound energy from too much sugar, we cleaned the room to a level the house had never seen before.

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And look, you can see floor now. Apparently it's also wood.

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