Recipe Reduction 157..156

I'm going to throw this in as a freebie.
Prepared Horseradish
The next recipe called for it, so I looked to see what it was. Turns out it's just fresh horseradish root ground up with a little water, then dressed with vinegar and salt. I had some horseradish I'd ground and frozen last fall, but I also had two 8" pieces of root I'd pulled up in the garden yesterday.  I was planning to toss it in the compost pile, but what the heck?

Into the house came those dirty little roots; scrubbed and peeled and grated up nicely, they made a lovely little pot of heat.  Supposedly the vinegar will "stabilize" the horseradish and not let its heat fade away in storage. If true, from now on I'm doing this every fall.

If you think I'm careless in my waste of garden produce, think again. We planted one little root of horseradish ten years ago; every year since, it's popped up in new and mysterious locations. Even in the hard-packed paths between the beds.

Winter Root Vegetables
from Taste of Home
I only cooked this recipe so I could make fun of it.
No, seriously--it said to chop up potatoes, brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots, and turnips, cook each separately, then mix them all together.  I'm not talking stir-fry here--I'm talking boiling a bunch of vegetables in water. What kind of idiot cook would do that?  Was I supposed to use five different saucepans or boil them in succession in a single pan?

Needless to say, I used one pan and threw them all in together.

But what interested me about the recipe was the topping--butter with horseradish, vinegar, and dill. It seemed like an interesting combination...it wasn't.  It would have worked better with mayonnaise instead of butter and served cold. This recipe is going straight to the "Do Not Try Again" folder.


Slow Rise Bread
by David Tanis

Almost, kind-of sort-of, worked!  And it tasted good.  It didn't puff up in the oven, but it wasn't flat as a pancake, either.  However, if I'd baked it the full hour they said to, it would have been a rock.  Luckily I smelled it from the other room and pulled it out early.

The normal steps of break making are: mix the yeast with water and a little flour, let set, add the rest of the flour and some salt, mix well, let rise, knead, make a loaf, put it in the baking pan, let rise again, bake.  This recipe followed the steps up through kneading, but then instead of making a loaf, you put it back in the bowl and let it rise. Once risen, you pour it into the baking pan, slash the top, and bake.  But the "pour it in" step deflates the bread!  And the "slash the top" even more so--at least with my dull knife.

So I'm wondering--if I made the same recipe, with the same overnight rise in the refrigerator (that gave it the good flavor), but did the normal steps at the end, would I have been able to sneak it into the oven and made a nice, puffy loaf out of it?

I say it's worth a try. I may weigh 200 pounds when this experiment is over, but worth it for the advancement of science.