September 08, 2004

Oven fries & pear-and-pecan bread

The potatoes were starting to sprout a little, so I figured it was time to use them. The Joy Of Cooking was my guide, as usual. I've made oven fries before, years ago, and they turned out pretty poorly. Those recipes didn't call for soaking the cut potatoes in cold water before cooking them, however, which might be why these turned out to be great. (That and I let them cook a bit longer than the recipe suggested -- I like my fries crispy, and without any raw potato taste.

"Did you make the ketchup", asked Jake. "If I had made ketchup", I said, "you'd have known." I do want to get around to that one of these weekends before tomato season is totally up.

Afterwards I made a pear-and-pecan bread, also from Joy of Cooking's recipe. It's still cooking. An hour and fifteen minutes seems like a long time, but we'll see.

I had to let the oven cool down from 450 to 350 for the bread, and the oven doesn't let you know when it has cooled down -- the "preheat" doesn't work like that. I thought about letting it cool down much further and then heating it back up, but then I remembered that I had just bought an oven thermometer! How convenient!

Now I just need to get around to fixing the light bulb in the oven...

UPDATE: Well, the pear bread failed to come out of the pan in one piece. This is the first time this has happened to me with a quick bread. Blehhhh. It'll still taste good, though, I suspect...

Posted by chris at September 8, 2004 02:16 AM