Solar Cooking Archive Discussion Forums

SharonID · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 74 Location: northern Idaho

The cottage cheese dill rolls were awesome! They tripled in bulk, completely filling the double pan set-up (in lieu of a lid—I found these great round 9"x2" dark non-stick medium-heavy steel pans and bought two so I could use them face-to-face). If I had it to do over, I'd just flip them over after an hour or so, because the top got nicely browned but the bottom was on the pale side. I did flip it after I checked, but a little sooner would have been better. I used a binder clip to hold the two pans together, which was probably a good idea as full as it got. (Makes note to get more that size, as two would have been better, if I'd had two the right size). The rolls are so moist and light and delicious (even with added oat bran and substituting part whole wheat flour) that they verge on sinful. I'll try to transcribe the recipe soon so it can go in our recipes section, as they really were wonderful and worked very well in terms of browning, etc. (partly because there is an egg in the dough).

The soup was great too, a multi-stage process. The rising sun greeted my ROB all set up with a quart cooking jar full of bones, drippings, and bits from a roast chicken we'd had the night before with some herbs, sea salt, garlic, and veggie trimmings, etc., in water and wine, while a barley/wheat/lentils/adzuki beans sprout mix went into my one-gallon black pot along with a can of tomatoes, a can of whole kernel corn and some water I used to rinse out the two cans. That went into my Easy Lid. I left both cookers pointed slightly south of east shortly before dawn when I went to bed (I keep odd, crazed night-owl writer hours).

When I got up, around noon, I ran out and reoriented the cookers. The box was around 250F and shot up to 275F quite rapidly after being reoriented. The stock in the ROB was at a slow simmer. By 1:30, I had the rolls ready to go in and the carrot, leek, parsnip, chard stems, and red bell pepper ready to add to the soup along with the chicken stock, which I'd strained and de-fatted. The sprout mix in the soup pot was bubbling nicely when I stirred in the veggies and stock. I moved the pot to the front corner so the rolls could have the back spot (they won't quite fit side-by-side). I checked back after about an hour and a half... the rolls were nicely browned on top but pale below, so I flipped them over and put them back for another twenty minutes.

Then I pulled them out, stirred the chopped chard leaves, diced leftover roast chicken, and some thawed frozen baby peas into the soup and put it back in the back of the box. We eat late this time of year, pushing in the gardens until dark, so when the sun got low and the temperature in the box started to head down towards 200F, I hay-boxed it with foil, a towel, and an old comforter and closed the cooker, and that kept it hot enough to serve without reheating when the sun went down.

The whole thing was delicious. I made the roll dough in my food processor, so I can't quite say I didn't use any grid-power, but that was all I used. It was hot enough today that it was lovely not to have to run the stove to have fresh rolls and a delicious warm soup. We added some grapes to the menu for something fresh on the side with the rolls, and it was a wonderful light but sustaining summer supper.

Regards,
SharonID
_________________
Idaho Regional Representative, International Women's Writing Guild
Visit the Guild at: http://www.iwwg.org/