A Pioneer Style (Attempt at) Cooking

Do you ever read a blog post detailing a dish being prepared and think, “wow, that person’s a really good cook”?

Ever wish, “Man, if only there was a blogger who is a terrible cook, and shares photos and stories of that side of the kitchen”?

Then it’s your lucky day, as it’s once more time for an (attempt at) cooking post.

Once upon a time, in a land called Virginia, I met a woman.

A pioneer kind of woman.

As a condition of meeting her, I was forced to buy a cookbook.  Not that I didn’t want her cookbook (it’s a lovely cookbook) – but it was new.  I don’t buy new books.  It’s one of my innately cheap instincts.  But having bought the cookbook, I must now cook.

My Tuesday night get-together with friends seemed the perfect opportunity to bust out my new recipes.  So I sent my friends an email.   To get the true flavor of my missive, I’ve decided to paste it below.

Hey – so guess what? Not only are we cooking, I’ve actually gotten off my behind and organized our dishes. I know, I never believed it was possible either.

We’re having twice baked potatoes and pasta – and yeah, I know those two things don’t go together, but whatever.  (I can feel your excitement)

Ingredients Needed (And thoughtfully divided amongst everyone, except Meredith, b/c let’s face it, she’s not coming) are:

Skye: sharp cheddar cheese (at least 2 cups worth) – can be grated, 1 small onion

Jeff: Bacon (have no fear vegetarians, it’s optional)

Allison: Sour Cream, Heavy Cream (yeah, you’re the cream girl)

Anna: Lawry’s Salt, penne pasta (1 pound)

Lindsey: 8 baking potatoes, flat leaf parsley & 6 basil leaves

If you have any issues w/the menu, don’t hesitate to say something. Only do it before I leave work or you’re stuck with it.

Love to all,
Megan

I can feel you all basking in the warm glow of my friendship.

Know what sucks about having everybody bring ingredients?

It seriously limits what you can get done before anyone arrives.

Thankfully, I always have garlic to chop.

There is no reason to ever be without garlic.  Unless there’s recently been a vampire uprising and you haven’t re-stocked. That’d be a different scenario.

Thankfully Lindsey and Allison arrive with potatoes.

You’re suppose to bake the potatoes in the oven, but we prefer our potatoes cooked faster and with a higher chance of cancer.

5 seconds before this photo was taken I looked over at Lindsey, who was struggling to chop the onion, and blithly pushed her aside, claiming I’d take care of it.

Needless to say, I did a far worse job.  If you’re reading this Lindsey, I’m sorry for judging your onion cutting ability – I knew not what it took.

For the potato stuffing I threw 2 sticks of butter, 1 cup sour cream, and 1/2 cup milk into a bowl.

This is also the step where salt and pepper is added, but I forgot, and didn’t notice my oversight until looking at the recipe while writing this post.

Sorry guys.

Of the 5 ingredients in this photo, I will only remember to use 3 of them.

True story.

Having neglected to let butter soften before trying to mix it, I then struggle to mush it all together.

While I was focused on that, Lily the grater (with a little help from Skye) procures some cheddar cheese.

You can tell Skye brought the cheese, as she only eats white cheddar.

It tastes the same, if you close your eyes.

Still struggling to mix the butter, we bust out the big guns – the masher.

For the pasta we need 14.5 ounces of tomato sauce.  If you can’t tell, the can in my pantry was significantly larger.

I’ll spare you the time and fervor spent debating how to separate out 14.5 ounces.

But the discussion got quite heated.

We did let the potatoes have some time in the oven, just to taunt them with what might have been.

Then the potatoes were taken back out of the oven, cut in half and gutted.

It’s a tough life as a potato.

Just throw the potato guts into the bowl with the butter mixture.

Now measure out 1 cup heavy cream for the pasta.

If you’re confused between the two dishes and what ingredients go where, it’s nothing compared to how I freaked out, constantly running three feet, halting, frantically flipping through the cookbook and forgetting ingredients left and right.

My friends were thrilled to be a part of it.

Emptying the potatoes takes roughly 1.3 hours.  Or maybe that’s just me.

I feel this photo accurately captures Allison’s feelings toward my cooking ability.

It’s okay Allison, I feel your pain.

Once you’ve stripped the potatoes of their innards, lay them out on a baking sheet.

Yes, there are still more potatoes to gut.

You’ll have that thought a lot.

Make sure you are continually mixing the potato into the butter mixture.

And by you, I mean a coerced friend.

Whew, finally.

Now take a nap.

Back? Great, let’s keep going.

My favorite part of any recipe – the addition of cheese.

More, more cheese I say!

More, more!

Thank you.

Remember the garlic and onion?

Throw ‘em in a pot with some butter and olive oil.

Now take the butter/potato mixture and fill up the empty potato shells.

Try very hard to have them not fall over.

When this proves difficult, pass the task off to a friend.

Now add the tomato sauce to the pot, mixing it with the onion and garlic.

Finally, it’s heavy cream’s moment, his one time to shine.

Join your new family cream, you’ll all be very happy together.

For a short while.

Then you’ll be eaten.

There, that looks done.

But what’s missing?

Why, more cheese of course!

Throw some green leaves in (whatever is handy, really) and the pasta sauce is done.

Well, once you add the noodles.

You did cook noodles, right?  ‘Cause there’s really no point to pasta sauce without pasta.

Wait, you expected me to show you that step?

Well, that was clearly an incorrect assumption on your part.

Smoke billowing out of the oven is a common, if distressing sign.

Just open up a window, it’ll be okay.

You look over at the smoke detector, but see it’s still deactivated from the last cooking fire.

Whew, that’s a relief.

Apparently the potatoes were overfilled, so melted onto the pan and dripped onto the bottom of the oven, causing the smoke.

Just poor the excess liquid in the sink.

Pretend this step isn’t disgusting.

Jeff finally arrives with the bacon.

Oh Jeff, you’re far too late.

Bacon will have to wait for another day.

In case you’re interested, this recipe is Twice-Baked Potatoes, from page 152 of The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

The instructions in the book are clear-cut, beautifully represented in photographs, and contain zero stupid mistakes.

 

The pasta recipe is Penne Alla Betsy from page 188.  It originally included shrimp, but we had to forgo shellfish in deference to vegetarians in our midst.

 

Now that I think about it I forgot to reset the smoke detector,

Megan

 

EDIT: Allison just kindly pointed out that at some point we added wine to the pasta sauce. It was roughly a cup of whatever white wine was handy.  Somehow I both neglected photographing the wine, and then forget the existence of the wine. For both, I apologise. Wine, please forgive me.

EDIT, TAKE 2: Just realized I forgot to tell you what I thought of the food – the twice baked potatoes were amazing, and the pasta was great, though I added salt (possibly making up for a forgotten ingredient).

A Pioneer Style (Attempt at) Cooking

Tagged as: In my dreams I'm Julia Child but in real life I'm Roseanne Barr, The blogosphere is awesome and scary