Orange-glazed scones

 

They're talking about a roughly 70-point temperature swing by this weekend. Bring on those low 40s. In the meantime, something best served warm:

Orange scones with maple-orange glaze

Adapted from “Magnolia Table” by Joanna Gaines

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup sugar

Zest of 1 orange, divided

¾ cup sour cream

1 egg

1 ½ cup butter, cut into cubes and frozen

3 tablespoons melted butter

1¾ cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon maple syrup

3 tablespoons orange juice

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Sprinkle a large board lightly with some flour.

Mix flour, baking powder, soda and salt and set aside. Muddle half the orange zest into the sugar; a pestle is great for this if you have it, otherwise use a wooden spoon. Mix into flour mixture.

Combine sour cream and egg. Set aside.

Using a pastry blender, cut butter into flour until it reaches the coarse crumb stage. Mix in sour cream and egg and stir to form a dough. Divide in half (a pastry scraper works well here).

Transfer 1 half to prepared floured board. With lightly floured hands, form into a ball and then flatten to a round about ¾ inch thick. Cut into six wedges and place on parchment-lined sheet, placing a couple of inches apart because these babies really spread in the oven.

Repeat with remaining half and transfer to sheet, or to a wax-paper lined freezer storage box and freeze until ready to bake.

Bake for 13 to 15 minutes until golden. Cool on sheet on wire rack. (If you're freezing half the scones to bake later, just bake from frozen for about 17 minutes.)

Meanwhile, mix 3 tablespoons melted butter, remaining orange zest, powdered sugar, vanilla and maple syrup. Whisk in orange juice 1 tablespoon at a time until smooth and of desired spreading consistency. Drizzle over warm scones and serve. (If you’re not eating them all at once, store the scones unfrosted and then frost after baking.)

Rating: The best thing about these scones is the frosting. I'm not a huge fan of frosted scones, but the frosting is nice. It helps along the scones themselves, which don't have my idea of a scone-like texture. With that much butter in them, they spread quite a bit and don't have a super lot of lift. The batch I made straight from the freezer spread slightly less, but again, they still don't have that scone crumb. But as I say, nice frosting, so they go down just fine. It was nice to have something to pull out of the freezer on a cold Sunday morning. Before it got really cold, like now.

Follow-up: Turns out I'm not alone in my complaint about the butter content in one of the recipes in this book. (Although really, I can't believe I'm even saying that.)

Braised chicken with marinated artichoke hearts and olives

 

I come from the land of potlucks, so when I saw a new release entitled "Potluck," naturally I wanted to check it out. Turns out there are different definitions of potluck out there.

Braised chicken thighs with marinated artichoke hearts

Adapted from “Potluck,” from the Food & Wine test kitchen

Ingredients

8 chicken thighs, skin-on, bone-in

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 (7.5-ounce) jars marinated artichoke hearts, including ¼ cup brine from the jars

1 cup Castelvetrano olives

1 head of garlic, separated but not peeled

1 lemon, thinly sliced

6 thyme sprigs

1 cup chicken broth

½ cup dry sherry

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet and sear thighs, skin-side down. You’ll probably want to do this in batches to get each piece browned and crisp. Transfer skin side up to a large baking dish. 

Scatter olives, garlic cloves, thyme springs and lemon slices among the chicken pieces.

Drain fat from the skillet. Heat broth, sherry, artichoke heart brine and fish sauce to boiling. Add 1 teaspoon salt and pour mixture over chicken. 

Cover baking dish with foil and bake for 1 hour. Uncover, raise heat to 400 and roast for another 15 minutes to recrisp the skin. (Note: if I was to make this again, I would pour off most of the liquid into a skillet after the hour of baking and reduce it on the stovetop over high heat while the chicken browns in the oven. That would make an actual sauce and give the chicken a better shot at browning.)

Rating: I think this dish is one extra step (outlined above) away from being quite good. As it is, it's fine enough, but the chicken would have a much better shot at being truly crispy if it wasn't swimming in excess liquid, and that tasty liquid would be much more useful as a concentrated sauce. So I'm willing to give it another shot.

But. (A pause, for Rant Mode On.) The idea that this is a potluck dish is quite an odd one. Unless you modify it, there's way too much liquid to transport well, and it's a non-starter unless you're talking about an evening supper club type scenario where your friends don't live too far away and don't spend too much time gabbing/appetizer noshing/cocktail swilling before dinner. I've got an insulated carrier with a sleeve for a hot pack insert, but I can't imagine crispy skin is going to stay crispy under tin foil in the carrier for too long. And that much liquid will have inevitably sloshed inside the carrier making a hot mess that doesn't meet presentation standards and will be annoying to clean.

That doesn't mean it isn't a reasonable low-effort dinner party dish, since you can get it started well before guests arrive. The subtitle of the book is "Food and Drinks to Share with Friends and Family," and so long as the family comes to your house, it would work just fine. 

Aside from two short generalized paragraphs in the back of the book that don't really offer much wisdom, you're on your own for transport guidance.(In fairness to the book's editors, they probably aren't thinking of how to transport a dish when it's say, 9 below F. You know, just to pick a random number like today.)

Some of the recipes look like they'd work just fine as potluck fodder, like the appetizers and salads. And many of the main dishes are reasonable candidates for the church basement potluck scenario that applies to a dwindling number of people. Just don't expect many main dish options that address the standard potluck we are confronted with in the Midwest, the dreaded workplace potluck, where the criteria involve a dish that can be transported awkwardly via public transit, crammed it into an overcrowded office frig and then presented artistically over the noon hour with no oven available for reheating. So as long as you adjust your expectations of what this book offers, it has some reasonably tasty looking recipes that would work well at home. And maybe we just need to get invited to a different kind of potluck where these dishes could work. (Rant Mode Off.)

Mac and really good cheese with chicken and rosemary

 

 OK, so it's really just chicken noodle casserole, or in Minnesota parlance, hotdish. But it's made with really tasty cheese and rosemary, and the garlic that all casseroles of my childhood sadly lacked. And no cans were harmed in making the sauce that binds it all together.

Baked macaroni and cheese with roast chicken, smoked mozzarella and rosemary

Adapted from “A Bird in the Oven and Then Some” by Mindy Fox. This book is far more than just being about how to roast chicken, and a great source of recipes for what to do with already cooked chicken you have on hand. Plus lots of likely looking side dishes I have yet to try.

Ingredients

½ pound penne pasta

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1½ cups grated smoked mozzarella

1½ cups shredded cooked chicken

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

2½ cups whole milk

2 garlic cloves
1½ teaspoons salt, plus a pinch more

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a 3-quart gratin or baking dish. (The original recipe called for a 1½ quart dish. I have no clue how on earth that could possibly work.)

Cook pasta in boiling salted water until just barely al dente, keeping in mind that it will get further cooking in the oven. Drain and transfer to a large bowl.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion and a pinch of sea salt. Cook until softened and light golden, stirring as needed. Add to pasta in the bowl.

Add mozzarella, chicken, rosemary and ⅔ cup of Parmesan and stir to combine.

Heat milk to a simmer. In a medium-size heavy saucepan, heat butter over medium low heat until melted. Stir in flour and cook for 2-3 minutes, whisking constantly, until mixture has turned golden. Slowly whisk in milk, adding in a steady stream. Add garlic and salt and simmer until sauce thickens, stirring very frequently. Add several grinds of black pepper and stir mixture into bowl with other ingredients.

Pour into prepared baking dish, smoothing top so random ends of pasta aren’t sticking up to get too crispy. Top with remaining Parmesan cheese and more grinds of pepper. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until golden and bubbly. Let stand a few minutes before serving. I'd say this serves 6 adults without being at all skimpy.

Rating: My threshold for baked pasta dishes is pretty high, because let's face it, they usually involve two more steps and two more pans to wash than just making an unbaked pasta dish with the same ingredients. Usually their only advantage is they can be made ahead and baked later. This one is pretty tasty, with good cheese and the booster shot of rosemary flavor, and the Parmesan cheese on top gets crunchy, and crunchy Parmesan cheese is just good stuff. So I'd say this was pretty close to worth all the extra hoopla, and certainly worthwhile if one needs to make a casserole to say, make a small dent in the packets of cooked chicken lurking in one's freezer.

White chocolate cherry orange scones

I had white chocolate and dried cherries leftover from a Christmas cookie I tried this year, so I decided to put them to use for breakfast.

White chocolate cherry orange scones

Adapted from the chocolate chip orange scones in “SimplyScones” by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright

Ingredients

1 tablespoon orange liqueur such as Triple Sec

½ cup chopped dried cherries

2 cups flour

⅓ cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter, cold and cut into chunks

Zest of 1 orange

2 eggs

3 tablespoons orange juice

½ teaspoon vanilla

¼ cup white chocolate chips

Method

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Toss dried cherries with orange liqueur in a small bowl. Set aside.

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl. Cut in butter using a pastry blender until you’ve reached the coarse crumb stage. Toss in orange zest and distribute evenly.

Mix eggs, orange juice and vanilla. Stir into flour-butter mixture to incorporate. Stir in reserved cherries, including any liquid, and chocolate chips. Knead lightly in the bowl to bring the mixture together. Pat into a circle about a ½-inch thick on the prepared baking sheet. With a sharp knife or pastry scraper, cut into 8 wedges, but don’t separate them.

Bake for 17 to 23 minutes at 4:25 until golden and a cake tester comes out clean. Separate the wedges and serve warm with butter.

Rating: A perfectly fine scone, and the white chocolate chips are barely noticeable, which is preferable in my opinion to those large lumps of white chocolate that show up in coffeehouse scones.