Tag: adjustable pan

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Arroz con pollo

Cook’s Complicated, er, Country, or America’s Test Kitchen or some one of those Christopher Kimball-related shows had a complicated recipe for Rice with Chicken. And you can watch the video here.

I made the recipe exactly as instructed (Karen please take note). But the roasting time of 20 minutes was 20 minutes too short. After 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven and 20 minutes of resting. It was perfect. And it was. Just exquisite. I would soooo make this again. And now that I know what I am doing I can do it without the anxiety. Just kidding. There’s always anxiety.



Gratuitous salad shot

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Arroz con pollo recipe

Six chicken thighs, salted and peppered on both sides 

and then browned on both sides in a dutch oven.

While that is happening, 7-9 mins per side,

process a cup of cilantro

1/2 cup onion

1 cup green pepper

5 garlic cloves

1TB cumin

to a paste

Remove chicken from pan, pour of most of the fat (or not)

add 1/2 cup of chopped onion to the pot and

1TB Sazon

this is a Mexican seasoning mix. 

I used Culantro [yes, culantro is a thing, it’s not cilantro]

 and Achiote flavor (as they did in the show, Karen)

Then add 2 cups medium grain rice and sauté with onions and Sazon

Add 2.5 cups chicken stock

1 tsp salt

Bring to simmer, add the cilantro paste 

1/2 cup sliced green olives and 2 TB capers (rinsed if salted capers)

Remove the skin from the thighs and nestle them 

into the dutch oven cover and bake at 350 for 20-40 mins

Rest 15 minutes add 1/2 cup peas, fluff rice.

Good luck….buena suerte


It’s delicious but Jesus what a rigmarole.

Notes: Thats a holy hella lot of rice. 

I think 1.5 cups of rice and 2 cups of stock would be plenty.

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Adjustable pan

Ashish sent me a pan from Europe, maybe it’s Belgian, I don’t know. But it opens to huge dimensions like 12 by 18. There is a z-shaped center piece that also adjusts. I’m not sure if I like it more than my old  adjustable pan there are certain advantages to both. I don’t know how people live without them. My mother, for instance, has never in her 83 years had one. 

And she seems fine without it. 

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Adjustable pans

I use this adjustable cake pan as much as any thing in my kitchen. I cannot remember where I got it or even when I got it. but it is really handy. It’s a square pan with a small lip all around it. The sides have slots and slide into each other. The inner pieces determine the dimensions of whatever you’re baking.

The best for me is the 4 small, square cake layers which I use to make 2 cakes but I have made 2 long layers and that becomes a long layer cake. That looks nice and is unusual but I don’t really have a cake plate that works for it.

In general, I like square cakes. They make nicer pieces than round cakes. Though I made key lime pie which Loralyn refuses to call pie because it is not round. She calls them bars. In my mind “bars” reek of northern Wisconsin and “aina hey.”

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Chocolate Malt Cake

I made this cake last weekend. It is a box cake. I mean out of a box, although it is box shaped as well. I get 2 smaller cakes out of one box. The baked cake layers refrigerate very well and it’s very handy when you have frequent dinners and parties.

This one is a devil’s food cake to which I added an extra egg, a quarter cup of yogurt (plain, full fat), vanilla, malt powder and a pinch of salt. After I poured it into the pan I put “malt crumb” a recipe from the Milk Cookbook, onto the top of each layer.

For the frosting I used one part butter to one part cream cheese, about a quarter cup of cream into which I put about 3 tablespoons of malt. Gotta use Ovaltine actually, nothing else dissolves as well. And then I melted about 4 oz of chocolate, bittersweet I think. Anything will work, pinch of salt and a drop of vanilla. And whipped it all up.

 I used an adjustable pan (more on this remarkable contribution to the culinary world later) to make 4 smaller layers and use only 2 of them to make one cake. They’re littler cakes but people eat less these days it seems and I hate having leftover cake. I will eat it.