Hear ye, hear ye! It is time for that bittersweet denouement, the grand finale of 63 rounds in the kitchen with the recipes of Ree Drummond’s inaugural recipe collection, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. As her seventh cookbook just released last week (ahem…pay attention, folks who need Christmas gift-ideas!) this is a great time to come full circle. I have now completed the Alpha; I can’t wait to start on the Omega! But first, let’s discuss how the end went down…
Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows all about my general disdain for the painful (sometimes literally) task of Dutch oven frying. It spits, it splatters, it pops, and it covers every surface within a hundred meters in a greasy, sticky residue. The floor in front of my stove becomes a hazardous waste danger zone as the hardwood gradually becomes slick with hot oil droplets. You’d find better footing on a freshly dressed bowling lane. Recipe # 61: Onion Strings was no exception, but I will firmly give it a pass. They were AMAZING.
I have made French fries. I have made chicken wings. I have (attempted) to make donuts. I have made crab wontons. Everything, and I mean everything, pales in comparison to how great this incredibly simple dish tasted and how quickly it disappeared. Its simplicity gave me a false sense of “meh” when I read the ingredient list: buttermilk, onion, flour, salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper. And of course a freaking gallon of canola oil. It really sounds kind of dull, right? But prepare to be amazed folks; if you mix these ingredients together and deep fry to golden brown, you will have a hit on your hands! The buttermilk and seasoned flour coating was exactly right to balance the sweetness of the thinly sliced onions, and sprinkling salt on just after they emerge from the fryer is clutch. In those few seconds while the oil is still hot and before the last bit soaks into the strings, the flavor magically pulls into the onion and the result is HEAVENLY. It is worth noting that these take only minutes to cook (as in, 1-2). The problem is that you can eat an awful lot of fresh onion strings in that 1-2 minutes, so you have to keep your production equal to how many you skim off the top before your family gets any!
Burgundy Mushrooms. So many pre-conceived ideas. All of them wrong.
I’ll start with the wine. I don’t like red wine, never have, never will. In Ree’s own words from her description of the dish, “If you’re not a fan of wine, steer clear of these – they use a whole liter!” See?? Even she was warning me off. But then again, she doesn’t know my commitment to the process, so I forged ahead, undaunted. We happen to have a ton of red wine, since my new husband (formerly known as “The Other Half”, now known as… “The Other Half With a Ring”) adores the stuff, but we had no Burgundy in the house. I still managed to pick the perfect red to make these mushrooms; it was the one that was already open! No, I have no idea what kind was. Dry? Maybe. Full-bodied? Sure, why not. Earthy with subtle leather overtones? Whatever you say, red wine people! There was enough left in the bottle to make this recipe, that’s all I needed to know. To tell you how little faith I had in the yum-factor of these mushrooms, I decided to only buy half as much as the instructions called for. I also eschewed white button mushrooms for the meatier and far superior (in my opinion) baby bella mushrooms. I wanted to do as little work as possible with these, so I bought the pre-sliced container. Game changer! The rest of the steps were as simple as 1. Unwrap stick of butter 2. Dump on red wine 3. Add spices and bouillon cubes 4. Stick a lid on and walk away to do other projects. I admit step 4 caught me off guard; thank goodness I happened to make this dish early in the day! Since I don’t learn, and yet again forgot to read the recipe all the way through, I failed to note that it needed to simmer for SIX HOURS. Did I say six? Make that NINE. At six hours all you do is remove the lid, then let it cook and reduce for an additional three hours. All the while, I was left wondering how it could possibly take more time to prepare a veggie side dish than it would to cook a 30-pound turkey, but also how something like fungi soaked in a beverage I hate could smell so DIVINE! And boy, did it ever! Back when I was younger and more naive, say, about 8:00 AM on the day I cooked Burgundy Mushrooms, I had thought I wouldn’t really want to eat the aforementioned item as a stand-alone veggie. In my misguided haste, I decided to make French onion soup and add the mushrooms to the broth to make it heartier. Don’t get me wrong; it was a great use for these mushrooms, and the soup was improved by their presence. But I have to admit that I would have been thrilled to eat these atop a steak, or just alongside any meal. Red wine bath and all!
And here we are, friends! The final act of this play, the very last recipe. Fittingly, it was a dessert, the perfect sweet ending to my 10-month project. Granted, it was a dessert that I don’t find very inspiring, which is also why it managed to wait until last. Recipe #63: Angel Sugar Cookies, just sounded so blah, as do all sugar cookies. That’s not to say a sugar cookie with a good frosting can’t be delicious, but frosting was not even a suggested variation here. Sigh… What happened next was probably karma for going into the kitchen with a lousy attitude. Serves me right! I tried to whip these up during a break in my work day, just combining the dry ingredients with the oil, butter, and eggs and throwing the mixture into the fridge to set up until the evening when I planned to bring the cookies to a party. Silly, silly girl… When I pulled the chilled bowl out of the refrigerator a few hours later I noticed it didn’t look like much “setting” had occurred, and the batter (I couldn’t justify calling it a dough) more closely resembled lemon curd than a cookie base. I got my handy-dandy scooper out and proceeded to try to drop “dough” balls onto the cookie sheet. I looked at the picture in the cookbook. I looked at what I was producing. I read the recipe for a third time. Yes, this is where it gets very embarrassing! I READ IT THREE TIMES!!! Ree’s dough balls were so much different than mine, but I convinced myself it was because the butter I had used at room temperature (as directed) was just overly warm, owing to the fact that it had been unseasonably hot in the house, and it went from “softened” to “half melted” right on the counter top. But wait, it gets worse. I’m in the habit of singing, dancing, conversing with any of my four cats – or yelling at them to get off the counter – and yes, talking to myself while making a recipe. I actually said out loud to myself, “This is stupid; there’s nothing to bind it together! I can’t believe there isn’t any flour in this dang recipe! I can’t even see how this will work.” Oh, I assure you… it did NOT work! I was feeling skittish about the prospects of success, so I decided to bake them on the lower end of the cook time, and came back to check them before the timer went off when a funny smell filled the house. And smoke. Lots and lots of smoke. Of which I had no warning.
**PSA** Make sure when the stupid smoke detectors go off with that ungodly chirping at 3 AM, that you remember to put batteries back in the next day!
I sprinted to the oven and got the pan out in time to prevent actual flames, but it was an epic disaster nonetheless. As you can see from the picture above, my cookies were golden brown and…liquid. I felt like a beloved pet had bitten my hand; why would Ree do this to me?? I trusted her! Then, alas, I saw what I had missed on three previous read-throughs. Namely, FOUR CUPS of flour (plus two tablespoons!) Seriously?! I even knew it should be there, yet I managed to gloss over that key step multiple times. But, experience is the best teacher, and bad experiences are even better than most for that purpose. I decided that I wasn’t going to let that calamity be my last recipe from this book. I dumped two cups of flour into what remained of the batter, crossing my fingers for a cookie miracle. And my wish was granted! We may have only gotten just shy of a dozen Angel Sugar Cookies in the end, but the hubby said they were fantastic, and I even voluntarily ate a whole one. Okay, it was two. Ree, you are forgiven. Even though it was my mistake. All is right with the world again!
Have Book, Will Cook 