Fried Dough #3: Fry Bread

Apparently all of the discussion of Fried Dough over the past few weeks got at least on reader to think about making Fry Bread. And, when he mentioned it, I was reminded that we had some Fry Bread Mix in the pantry.

(Oddly enough, we had two boxes. I don't remember buying two. So, please be aware that Fry Bread Mix might multiply if left in the pantry for too long.)

That's the entire recipe and ingredient list, right there.

Since we already had a pan of oil on the stove, frying up some bread and making a version of "Indian tacos" seemed like a good idea. (Does anyone else think it feels odd to say "Indian tacos"? But "Native American tacos" seems kind of like it's going to far the other way. Thoughts?)

So I got some hamburger out, as well as a can of refried beans (because they just sounded good), and along with the bread, we (Christopher typically makes our taco meat - very spicy, with a really great texture) set out to make dinner.

Umm... At this point, this blog post could get a bit boring. You see, here is the whole story of mixing the ingredients:

Since two of us were working on these, you get action shots!

I guess I could have taken a photo of the bowl with a lid on it in the porch where it chilled for a bit. (Because this is the part of the country where - in a normal winter - you use your porch as an auxiliary fridge or freezer, depending on the weather.)

It did "smooth out" a bit, during the chill. I wouldn't say it "rose" but it did relax a bit before we rolled it out.

This is a little more than half of the dough, rolled out to about 3/8 of an inch thick.

It rolled pretty easily, though it did give Christopher a little resistance, which might have been less bad with a longer rest/chill.

Christopher is much more technical in the kitchen than I am, so since he was helping out with this batch of frying we dug out the deep fry thermometer, heated up the oil, and started in.

Action shot! Do you see those tongs?

Remember how the oil looked really "dirty" when we were frying the donuts? Well... When you're working with something that loses flour into the oil, that starts to settle on the bottom. You can see it beginning to collect in this picture.

We fried up four of each and let them drain, so that we could serve them with the taco meat and beans.

Our colors varied, based on the temp.

Do you see the color of the meat at the bottom of the picture? It's filled with cayenne and chili powder and white pepper and garlic and salt... basically, a recipe for goodness.

Of course, if you're paying attention, you know that we had six pieces of dough. What did we do with the other two? We sprinkled them in cinnamon and sugar, of course!

The one issue we had was that these puffed up a little too much. A few of them worked really well for kind of tearing off the corner and stuffing them with filling, but not all of them. So we were left with this fried bread that wouldn't really fold, but also wouldn't work as a bun.

Luckily, we had about half of the dough leftover. So, a couple of days later, we tried the next batch.

This time, we made six individual balls of dough and then flattened each by hand. We were able to get them a little thinner this way, and that gave a nice outcome.

Can you tell that I had strained out the oil in between batches? I also tossed about a half cup that had turned the color of motor oil and was kind of clinging to the bottom of the pan.

Slightly thinner, still delicious.

We had leftover tacos with the leftover bread, and it was good, since the "leftover" bread had still been fried right on the spot. I had a couple of the last (already fried) pieces a couple of days later, and although the flavor was still good, the dough had gotten tough.

So... We've now had beignets, faux-nuts, and fry bread. Which, of course, means that next week we'll be back to beignets - this time with yeast!

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See what happens when people suggest things for me to make? How fun and interactive is that? :-)

If you have any kitchen questions, recipes you want someone else to try, or foods that you think really ought to get their moments in the sun, let me know!

Editing: A Love Letter to Your Manuscript

For the past month or so (there was a short break in the middle), I've been editing a memoir. (It's part of what inspired me to discuss genres a couple of weeks ago in my post "Writing 101: Details - and Facts - Matter.")

It's an interesting blend of fact and sort-of fact, as most memoirs are, detailing some family history, some personal history, and a bit of American cultural history, as well.

A (relatively) quick side discussion to point out the first adjective in that last sentence: "interesting."

If you're writing a memoir, you have to pay attention to what your intended readers will find interesting. For instance, if you only plan to give the book to your kids, family stories will probably be fairly interesting to them. But if you plan to try to market your book to a wider audience you're going to have to find something that you can write about that truly will interest that audience.

Hollywood tell-all biographies sell well because people are (often) interested in celebrities. That audience may - or may not - also read biographies of sports stars, or of people who overcame great odds to fulfill greater destinies.

If you want to have big sales, you need to be able to explain to a wide audience what makes your personal story bigger than just a family story - even if it is simply that your attention to detail sheds light on a very specific aspect of life.

This memoir, however, had been written out "conversationally" - for lack of any better way to describe it. The author's voice was practically audible as I read through the pages, and it quickly became obvious that her stories had been put to paper as if she were telling them to friends over coffee. They bounced around in time. They connected via the tiniest of threads. They blended personal memories and hearsay as you would when chatting in a coffee klatch. 

It was - to put it bluntly - kind of painful. One moment, we were in the middle of World War II, the next it was 1956, and that was followed by a jaunt into the 1920s focused on another relative. The details were all there, but they hadn't been given much care. 

Luckily, she decided to bring it to an editor for some TLC. And I spent the past couple of weeks (after meeting with her and getting her okay to do so) untangling the manuscript so that I could weave it back together, trying to create a sunburst quilt out of a patchwork blanket.

This is what developmental editors do. We take what's on the page, do our best to fall in love with its hidden quirky brilliance, and then nurture it so that it can live up to that potential. (For a whole post on potential, you can jump back to last September.)

And, while we're at it, we make sure that the language still sounds like you - because there's nothing worse than a personal memoir that sounds like it was written by someone else. (Because, well, that would probably make it a biography - as we discussed a few weeks ago.)

So... If you truly love your work - whether it's memoir, fiction, non-fiction, or something in between genres - prove it to yourself (and your text) by keeping the Valentine's box of chocolates for yourself and hiring an editor. 

I promise you, your manuscript, and your readers will all be happier in the long run.

Fried Dough #2: "Faux-nuts"

Okay, I'll admit - I've been trying to figure out a good name for these all week. "Fauxnuts" seemed the most descriptive, so we're going with that.*

OH - Before we get all fauxnutty, a few comments from last week's Beignets post:

• I've discovered that there are those who feel that beignets should always be made using a raised yeast dough. (Though the Cajun cookbook that gave us last week's recipe - and at least one online recipe from Emeril Lagasse - both used baking powder.) So we'll be revisiting this later in the month (after I replenish our yeast supply, since the jar we had expired in 2010).
• I obviously didn't use enough powdered sugar. 

One thing that wasn't discussed at all was whether or not altitude might have played a factor in how much they puffed up here, as opposed to in Idaho. (So if anyone has info on that, please still let us know.)

Now on to today's much easier fried pastry: the fried donut-shaped canned biscuit Fauxnut.

Yep. You read that right. We're frying canned biscuit dough for a quick donut fix this week.

Somewhere back in the deep recesses of my brain, I remembered doing this when I was a kid - though I'm fairly certain my mom wouldn't have let us make them, so I'm not sure where/when it happened.

The hardest part of this recipe is probably the choosing of your canned biscuit flavor. I mean... Pillsbury, alone, has 9 different varieties of refrigerated (canned) biscuits. And there are a ton of other brands on the market. You can even go gluten free if you want. I opted for "Original," just because it seemed like it would probably have a nice, middle-of-the-road flavor (and I wasn't sure how the other flavors would be as donuts/fauxnuts).

Standard "here are all the ingredients" shot.

Seriously. Is there anything better than popping open a tube of refrigerated dough - whether biscuits or some other food? It's like culinary Pop Goes the Weasel!

With all of the ingredients (okay, except for toppings - we'll discuss those later) taken care of, it was on to shaping them.

Even though these were "Grands" (aka "bigger"), they were a little small when we took our smallest round cutter to them. (We don't actually have a donut cutter, because... well... I can't honestly remember the last time we've needed one.)

Nope. I didn't add flour to the cutting board. Didn't need to.

As I went along, I flattened out some of the disks, so that the hole-to-ring ratio seemed a little less skewed. 

On the far left, you see the first one I cut, without flattening out the disk.

Next step: Into our familiar pan of oil, which had waited all week on the stove for us.

Okay. A bit of a confession: Between the beignets and the fauxnuts, we'd used the oil one other time - which I'm planning to tell you about, but since I promised the donuts would be here this weekend I'll have to explain the "dirty" oil later on.

Frying these up - once again without using a thermometer - took almost no time. They required a quick flip about halfway through so that they would be nicely browned on both sides. (This also helps to make sure that the interior is cooked through.)

I did have a bit of a debate with myself about whether flattening them was such a smart idea (although it did help with the hole punching). If you look at the picture, below, you'll see that the ones on the left are pretty flat, while the one on the "upper right" is more... well... donut shaped. 

At this point, I was letting them dry for a moment on paper towel before deciding on what to use for a coating. Don't worry, you'll see the results, below.

 Of course, you can't make fauxnuts without also frying up the fauxnut holes.

Wow, the oil looks really gross in this picture.

Ohmigod. Don't you just want to reach in and grab one and pop it in your mouth? (And then go to the emergency room because you just put your fingers into 350-degree oil and then put that same oil into your mouth... So - no - don't do that. use a good slotted spatula or a kitchen spider.)

There was some debate as we went along regarding what toppings should be on the fauxnuts and the fauxnut holes. We're fairly traditional around here, so we tossed the first of the fauxnuts in sugar. With the fauxnut holes, we put together some cinnamon sugar and tossed them around in a covered bowl.

Now these you could reach in, grab, and pop in your mouth!

And, because I was thinking of you, I actually plated them all before devouring them.

This was almost foiled by Christopher, who was having to endure the smell of fried goodness from the other room. Luckily, because these only took me about 10 minutes from start to finish - basically I turned on the oil to heat, and by the time it was ready I had already shaped the fauxnuts, after which it went even faster - by the time he was ready to raid the kitchen, I was already walking out to the living room with the goods.

If you look closely, you'll notice that the two fauxnuts on the right have been glazed. How did I do that so quickly? I put about a quarter cup of ready-made frosting (yes, Pillsbury - in a tub - it was leftover in the fridge) into a small pan on the stove and melted it down. Once the fauxnuts had cooled a bit, I drizzled it over.

Are these fauxnuts the best breakfast pastry in the world? Umm... no. There's something innately "biscuit-y" about biscuit dough that even frying it and coating it in sugar can't hide.

But, if you're in a hurry and want a donut fix without all the fuss and mess - and you have a pan with about an inch of oil in it - they're definitely a good substitute, which you can keep in the fridge as a backup.

(And, if you really like them, you could start a group called Fauxnuts fo-ever!)

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Tune in next week when we explain how the oil got so dirty - and, later this month, don't forget that we'll be talking beignets one more time!



*Who knew that there were already a baker's dozen (multiple bakers' baker's dozens, in fact) items referred to as "fauxnuts" on line? Because they seem to be made with everything from apples to puff pastry sheets - and a whole lot of options in between - I'm choosing to keep the name and simply add this to the list in the same way that a million different recipes all share the name "cookie."

Writing 101: Spellcheck Doublecheck (aka "No Job Is too Small to Need a Proofreader")

I know we've talked about the "frenemy" status of Spellcheck before, but I came across something this week that made me realize how important having a proofreader (who actually knows grammar, spelling, and punctuation) can be.

I'm going to start by giving the benefit of the doubt to the people who created the ad we'll look at in a bit.

They may have never heard of the rule that two related words, when modifying the same word (and where the first does not end in -ly) should probably be hyphenated. (Wow, that seems convoluted, doesn't it?) Here are some examples:

• Cart Stopping Deals vs. Cart-stopping Deals (I've been seeing this at Target, though I don't have a photo for you). The first one would, if read literally, imply that a Cart is Stopping the Deals. The second would say that the Deals are "Cart-stopping."

• Over Hyped Holiday Shopping vs. Over-Hyped Holiday Shopping. The first, if read with a tone of annoyance, could mean that you are Over all of the Hyped Holiday Shopping. The second implies that the Holiday Shopping has been Overly Hyped. (I feel this way every year as we come up to Valentine's Day.) 

The point in these is that there is a definite difference between the meanings if the words are read individually, versus being used as compound modifiers. The problem - for Spellcheck, at least - is that either phrase in each set could be considered to be correct, depending on the writer's intent.

The second benefit of the doubt that we have to consider is that English is a weird language, and there are variations between British English and American English that make things even more confusing.

True story: my mom is Canadian, and spent her "grammar school" years in Canada. This means that she spells some words differently than my dad does. And, somewhere along the way, I picked up some of those British-Canadian spelling habits. A couple of examples:

• Traveling (American) vs. Travelling (British)
• Busing (American) vs. Bussing (British)
• Jewelry (American) vs. Jewellery (British)

For the most part, these are pretty simple to understand by readers on either side of the borders, and they look mostly right to all of us. But some words don't look right - and there's good reason why. For instance, you probably wouldn't want to say that the Easter Bunny was coming "hoping" down the bunny trail. And you wouldn't say that a grumpy teenager had been "mopping" in his room all day.

I'd like to think that this Easter Bunny is hopeful.

And now, a bit of personal context before we finally get to the point of this post:

In one of my past jobs, I worked with an incredible marketing team. They were some of the most creative people I've ever met, and we had a phenomenal graphic designer who would take vague ideas and produce the most incredible mailers. We had been working together on a piece that was only going to have one word (three times) on the front of it. That word was: "Surprise."

When the postcard came to me to be proofed - having already been seen by three other people - the copy on the front said: "Suprise, Suprise, Suprise!"

One word. Three times. And if it had gone out that way it would have made us look surprisingly ridiculous.

Technology sidenote: Not all layout programs actually even have Spellcheck. So we can't always - just usually - blame spellcheck for the things that we send out that are wrong.

So there I was, earlier this week, scrolling through my social media feeds and I came across the following ad: 

Of course, my first instinct was "they need a hyphen" - because "show-stoping" is a compound adjective. (And, well, it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine.)

And then I looked again and thought "What the heck is 'stoping'?"**

I'm usually a live-and-let-live person when it comes to social media. I don't correct people when they typo their status updates. Life is too short. But... well... I may have sent a quick note to the nice folks at Living Social suggesting that they might want to check their image text in future.

After all, they may have figured they were in the clear since there were only 9 words on the ad, but 11% (or 22%, depending on how you count the hyphenation) were wrong, which - finally - makes my point that no job is ever too small that it can't benefit from a proofreader. 

**In case you're wondering, "stoping" is a real word - which puts you at even more of a disadvantage if you rely only on Spellcheck. It has both mining and geological meanings - the former having to do with a large, open space left behind during excavation of ores; the latter having to do with the same type of "space creation" caused while magma moves toward the surface. 

Fried Dough, Attempt #1: Beignets

Welcome to "I've got oil on the stove so we might as well fry something" month!

Today's post comes as the result of a question about beignets, and brings with it some questions of its own. (If you have any insights into beignets, please read through all of this and respond with your suggestions.)

Let me start by saying that it has been a very long time since I have been to New Orleans. And I truly don't remember whether we actually had beignets at that time. So, in my head, I have always had a strange mash-up of New Orleans beignets and South American sopaipillas in my head when I think of them. (They're both fried dough, though the sopaipillas I seem to remember are supposed to be hollow so you can pour things like honey into them.)

I don't have any idea what the interior of a beignet is supposed to be like. Is it supposed to be open and full of air? Is it supposed to be like a doughnut - kind of full of dough, but also fluffy?

Not a clue. 

So I kind of started this challenge the way the second round of each episode of The Great British (or American) Baking Show goes: recipe in hand, with some vague idea of what I should end up with.

But I get ahead of myself. Let me go back and start with the query that got me going. My friend CindyfromIdaho (because I've moved a few times as an adult, I tend to name people with metropolitan-area reference points - I have a large number of friends with "fromBaltimore" as part of their names - and Christopher eventually starts referring to them that way, too) sent me the follow recipe and questions:

Let's take a moment, here, and appreciate that these two images are screen captures from my phone. This is a huge (if slightly pathetic) technological step forward for me.

So... reading through the recipe and commentary, I figured I'd start with the recipe pretty much "as-is" and see what happened. And here we go:

The corn oil was for frying. I almost always have some of that on hand, since we have a number of friends with food allergies, and the only oil that I'm consistently sure won't kill anyone (so far, at least) is 100% corn oil.

We got our dry ingredients... We got our wet ingredients... We should be good to go. Right? 

So far, this was seeming pretty normal.

That's... kinda... liquid.

Here's where things started to go a tad off the rails for me.

Even so, giving the recipe the benefit of the doubt, I flopped it out onto a floured board and tried to work with it.

The things I do for (kitchen) science...

Note: For once I was smart and took off my wedding ring before digging in. I'm not sure that I'd ever have gotten it clean.

Honestly. I tried to work it around - you can see how the flour got moved around when I was trying to knead it.

I do not have a photo of my phone after those last two pictures were taken. Believe me when I say that the case had gluey-doughy fingerprints on it - and that it took some cleaning (both of me and the phone) before it would again recognize my thumbprint.

I had entirely planned to work with the recipe as it was, but I didn't want to just drop dough globs into the oil, so I had to think of a back-up plan. I added flour. About a half cup, to be relatively precise. This resulted in a manageable dough that was kind of half a step off from what you look for when you're making biscuits.

No more glop in the bottom of the bowl.

I didn't lose my fingers in it while I was kneading it.

The next challenge from CindyfromIdaho was that she said she can never get 24 beignets out of the dough. So I decided to get picky about this step and got out a tape measure (forgetting that we have a ruler - specifically for food use, because it can easily be washed - right below where I was working).

Sorry for the bad lighting. You'll have to trust me that it was as close to 1/3 inch as I could get it.

Cutting this into 2"x3" rectangles was a bit of a challenge due to the shape, but I tried.

Okay. Yeah. There's no way in the world that would have come out to 24. I got 15 - and that's counting the little triangular ones.

I feel I should mention, here, that we don't often deep-fry food in our house. A few days earlier, I made some cream cheese wontons for Christopher's birthday, and decided to keep the oil in the pan. This is why there is already "stuff" in the oil in the following photo. 

If you're going to reuse frying oil, I'd recommend straining it out and putting it back into the bottle (if you can). Until the oil goes bad (you can tell by the smell - or if it goes cloudy) you can probably reuse it. (Though I'm sure someone with better kitchen science know-how would say I'm wrong.)

One HUGE caveat: You know how you can buy infused oils? Those are made by heating oil and putting something (such as herbs or spices) into it. This means that anything you fry will also leave some flavor behind. In other words: if you don't want your beignets to taste like cod, you're going to want different oil for making your fish and chips.

I should probably use a deep-frying thermometer, but instead I go with the "if the top is beginning to ripple, it's probably about right" theory.

If you've done much frying, you know that most things sink to the bottom when you first put them in the oil, and then they rise as the air inside expands. (This is also what causes the light, airy interiors.)

You probably also know the theory that says that the first ones you fry almost never turn out as well as the next ones. So let's look at the next set of pictures, instead of dwelling on these.

I know there's a lot of pictures of things being fried, here. The reason I'm including all of them is because I think it's cool to see how the flat pieces of dough expanded as they cooked. They went from 1/3-inch thick to more like 2-inches thick from start to finish, as they browned away. 

As I pulled each batch out of the pan (remembering to not crowd the pan, because it can lower the temperature too much), I did set them aside to cool and "drip dry" on paper towel, then eventually got around to plating them to eat.

I dusted them with powdered sugar, and then realized that since one of CindyfromIdaho's questions was about the amount of rise they'd gotten, I should crack one open.

This is when I realized that I have no idea what they're supposed to be like inside.

Does anyone know if this is too doughy? 

I'm not going to lie. Christopher and I kind of went to town on them. Totally for the sake of science, though, I swear. We came to the conclusion that the dough was a little tough, and not really sweet enough for our taste.

I'm guessing that the toughness was because of two things: a) I probably should have started by adding less flour and working my way up, because the extra flour may have been the problem; b) I may have over-kneaded them and worked up too much gluten (remember my comment about biscuits? I have a lot more experience with those...)

Oh, and to deal with the "not quite sweet enough" factor, I may have tossed the next batch into a bowl with more powdered sugar and shaken them up.

So, how do we feel about this at the end of the post? And how can we help CindyfromIdaho?

• The recipe is obviously flawed. The ingredient ratio is just off. Period. And the idea of getting the number of beignets they claim to get - at the size they say - is pretty much impossible. 
• The toughness was probably my fault. 
• I'm unsure about the rise - I think they turned out okay for me, but CindyfromIdaho says they don't seem to rise enough for her. Here's a question for anyone: I'm at about 800 ft above sea level, while she is at about 4,000 ft above sea level - and the recipe was probably written by people living about 10 ft above sea level. Could that be the problem - or at least part of it?

What do you think? Toss me your thoughts, and we'll try to crowd source some beignet answers.

And - next week - we'll be re-heating the oil for a much simpler way to fry up some morning goodness.


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Do you have a recipe that you're unsure of? Is it not performing how you think it should? Do you want me to try it? Send it my way!