Rock Cod and Heart of Palm Salad

Who doesn't think of hearts of palm when they think of Alaskan rock cod??

Obviously everyone but me. Actually, I just had a bunch of things left over, in the cupboard, whatever, and sort of threw together a meal. Simple and fast and healthy and tasty. Well, relatively healthy. Butter's wholesome, right?

This is my favorite way to cook cod/rockfish/snapper (probably because it's really the only way I know how. hmm). I always make a dry rub of some sort, put it on the fish, and then cook it slowly in a pan with some butter or olive oil. Squeeze a bittie lemon at the end, and voila! Pretty easy.

Dry spice rubs are incredibly easy to make, and if you have a dozen or so herbs and spices in your possession you can do just fine. Improvise. I often like to use smoked paprika as a base, but I don't always have some. Dried thyme (not powdered) is one of my favorite components... I usually have about 3 or 4 herbs/spices, and then nearly match their volume with sea salt, and some black pepper. You can use cumin-oregano-chipotle, or thyme-coriander-mustard-pinch o' allspice, or oregano-thyme-smoked paprika-red pepper flake, or really whatever you think would go well together. "Sweet" spices like allspice should generally be used in very small quantities, hot spices like cayenne or chipotle in moderate quantities, and dried herbs like oregano and thyme in large quantities. If you want it to be super duper tasty, use fresh thyme in place of dried. It just occurred to me that I have a pot of fresh thyme sitting out on the deck, and that some of it is still perfectly usable, and I used dried. Oh poo. Such is life... More for a later date, then.

As for the salad, it really had no inspiration. I made an Italiany-type "vinaigrette," and I'm not sure if I can call it that because it contains no vinegar, only lemon juice. What's that? My linguistic ignorance is showing?

Oh yeah, I made the vinaigrette for the hearts of palm that I wanted to eat, because hello, hearts of palm... vinaigrette... duh. And then I had this arame seaweed that I rehydrated and put in there because it was interesting and nutritionally valuable, and leftover cooked emmer farro, and some celery for crunch. It would have been nice over a leaf of romaine, or with some chopped up parsley in it, but I didn't have any romaine, or parsley. I got kalamata olives out with the intention of using them too, but as the salad came together, I realized I didn't really want them there. Maybe I'll try them in a bit of it tomorrow for leftovers.

Oh. And I thought I would mention this, because it's not necessarily an obvious point. For salad dressings, any Italian sauces, or un-sauteed garnish of food requiring olive oil, extra virgin olive oil is typically used. The difference between extra virgin and regular olive oil is that the former is the most unrefined form of olive oil available. Virgin olive oil has not been chemically treated during production, and extra virgin olive oil is "extra" because it is selected specifically for flavor. Smell a sample of regular olive oil and one of extra virgin olive oil and you will detect a difference, and it's not subtle. The taste of a good extra virgin olive oil is really worth a few extra $$ per bottle, and it really is crucial in a raw application such as a dressing. If you still really don't care about the flavor, just go with vegetable oil, because it tastes more or less the same as regular olive oil, at a much lower price. FYI, the reason olive oil is chemically treated is to significantly lengthen its shelf life, preventing early rancidity (to which extra virgin is prone if stored a long time) and increase its smoke point (the temperature at which heated oil begins to smoke and create carcinogenic free radicals).


HEART OF PALM SALAD

2 tbsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic, pressed
big ol' pinch of dried oregano (not powdered)
big ol' pinch of thyme (not powdered if dried, and minced if fresh)
giant ol' pinch of salt
a few generous grindings of black pepper
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 14-15 oz can hearts of palm, drained and cut into 3/4-inch pieces
3 tbsp dried arame seaweed, rehydrated in a bowl of water for 15 minutes and chopped a bit
1 rib celery, cut into 1/8-inch slices
1 cup cooked brown rice, emmer farro, or spelt or wheat or rye berries

1. In a medium serving bowl, whisk up the lemon juice, garlic, dried thyme and oregano, salt, and pepper. If you don't have a garlic press, you can finely mince the garlic, but get it as tiny as possible and smash it a little before or after chopping it. Garlic flavor is in the garlic juice! If you have a fresh lemon you can squeeze for the juice, then fabulous. But as I usually need more juice than is economically feasible to get from a bunch of lemons... I do go for the bottled stuff. If you do that, make sure it's fresh (not old), and not from concentrate. I like the Lakewood brand, which uses Florida lemons. It seems to have the best flavor.

2. While whisking, slowly drizzle in the olive oil and keep whisking until it's all mixed up. It's fine if it separates a little. It should be pale and slightly opaque.



3. Dump all the other ingredients in the bowl with the dressing. Mix it up. Mmmm.

ROCK COD

1 rock cod, true cod, rockfish, or snapper fillet, about 1/3 - 1/2 pound
pinch o' dried or fresh thyme (not powdered)
pinch o' dried oregano (not powdered)
pinch o' mustard powder
pinch o' paprika
big huge pinch o' sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp buttah
lemon wedge

1. So you have your fish fillet. Rinse it a bit, in case it's fishy, which it isn't, because you bought it the same day it was packed. But rinse it just to be safe, and pat it dry on a paper-towel-lined plate. Run your fingers along the fillet lengthwise, both directions, both sides, to feel for bones. If you feel some (they are like little hard nubbins), take some kitchen tweezers/pliers/heck-even-shears and pull them out (pull in the same direction as the bone). Nobody likes finding bones in their fish.

2. Get your dry rub all ready. Put the thyme, oregano, mustard, paprika, salt, and pepper all together in a wee bowl and mix it up until it looks pretty much... mixed. That was pretty easy.

3. Sprinkle the dry rub all over the fish, on both sides, and pat it in. You can even rub it in, because, after all, you didn't make a rub so you could sprinkle.



4. Heat up your butter in a stainless skillet, 10 inches is fine, over medium-low heat. You can probably do this earlier, like before you make the rub, but you don't want to risk the butter burning before you're ready for it. Don't be tempted to turn up the heat too much, because the fish will not be happy. This is a slow fish.



5. When the butter starts to brown, lay your fillet down in the pan. Don't worry if the skinny bit comes up the side a little, the fillet shrinks some and it's in there long enough to cook through. When you put the fish in, the pan should hush you a little. Not a lot, as in "SHHHHHH! This is a library!" but instead like, "shhhhh... go to sleep..." Take its advice and turn the heat down to low-ish.



6. When the fish just begins to flake and has the palest of browns on the underside (a 3 minutes, maybe), turn it over. Don't be sad if your fillet turns into several fillets at this point. Nobody really cares that much.





7. You will know when the fish is done. It starts to fall apart. If you poke it, it feels tender and kind of soft. Looking at a cross-section of a flake, it's completely opaque.



8. Take the pan off the heat and tent some foil over it, and let the fish rest for 5 minutes or so. I used this time to make my heart of palm salad, but my fish was only kind of warm when I ate it. Which was fine with me, but maybe you like getting your tongue burnt. I don't judge.

9. Put it on a plate with the yummy juice that released into the pan, the browned butter solids and whatever else is in the pan. Squeeze some lemon onto it. The leftover buttery fish juice is great if you have some french bread to dip into it, or if you're a plate-licker.





The best part is, because you didn't smoke up the house by cooking butter over high heat, nothing burnt onto your stainless pan and it's super-easy to clean.

PROS: each dish delicious in its own right. Relatively healthful, with lots of fun textures. Easy cleanup.
CONS: the dishes didn't work together as I'd hoped. The lemon on both of them competed with each other and made me wish I'd had the two on separate occasions.

Lobster

I'm going to be horribly cliche here. I went to Maine, so I cooked some lobstahs. Maybe it's not cliche. Maybe there's a good reason for it.

In any case, for a lobster rookie, cooking them is not a difficult task. Alarming, maybe... but difficult? Hardly! As long as you have the right equipment.

First of all, you have to go to your family's cottage in Maine and drag out the old lobster pot. It's huge. About four times the size of a regular stockpot. Lobsters don't like to go in pots and will try to sabotage your efforts, but if the pot is large enough they really don't have much of a choice. If your family doesn't have a cottage in Maine, sucks to be you. you can probably still cook a lobster if you can find the right pot (make sure it has a lid).



Your next step, obviously, is to get ahold of some lobsters. One lobster per lobster-eater is the way to go. Unless you have two very small dogs who plan on eating lobster as well, in which case they can split one. To get lobsters, go to Simpson's Seafood off Route 1 just south of Wiscasset. It's the home of Superfresh. If you can't get there, they ship.



After you get your lobsters, what's left to do but roll up your sleeves and get down to business?





LOBSTER

1-5 hard-shell lobsters
~1 tbsp good sea salt
2 oz (half a stick) butter
4-6 slices fresh, crusty bread
1-2 lemons in wedges

1. Put a few inches of water in the bottom of your lobster pot. 2-3 inches should do it. Put it over high heat and cover the pot so it heats faster. We want this sucker hot.

2. Put the butter on a low simmer in a little pan. Instead of clarifying it, brown it. Over the course of lobster-cooking, you should be able to easily achieve this goal. But don't let it get black, or it will taste kind of like burnt butter. Or a lot like burnt butter. It will take a long time to brown if you keep it on low heat, which you should do. The butter is browned when... well, when you see that it's starting to brown. Not that hard.

3. When your pot of water comes to a boil, add the salt and stir it to dissolve. You don't want undissolved salt sitting on the bottom of your pan, as it will corrode aluminum and damage stainless steel.





4. As soon as the pot comes to a rolling, hardy boil, it's ready for lobsters.



Take them out of whatever they're in (you can leave the rubber bands on their claws) and drop them right in headfirst. Quickly. The shock of going from cold to boiling hot kills them instantly. Cover the pot immediately.



5. Leave the lobsters in their bath for 20 minutes. You may hear a high-pitched whine at some point. No, the lobsters aren't screaming in pain. They are dead, and steam is whistling from out their carapace. Kind of like a kettle.



6. While the lobsters are steaming, slice up your bread and wedge up your lemons. You'll be glad you did.



7. After your time is up, turn off the heat to the lobster pot and fish them out with tongs. Place them directly in a cold-water bath or colander with running cold water. This stops the cooking process and allows you to handle them.



8. You might want to put the cooked lobsters on a rimmed baking sheet or pan. When you rip them apart to eat them, they release a lot of delicious lobster broth. But as good as it is, you probably don't want it all over your table or shirt.





9. Eat up. You might need some tools. Something to crack the tougher parts (like the claws), and something to pick out the more delicate parts (like the legs). These help:



You can eat just about anything on a lobster. If I were you, I probably wouldn't eat the shell. Or the "vein" (intestine) running down through the tail. The green goopy stuff is the tomalley (liver), and it's delicious. Suck the juice from the legs. And anything else that gushes out when you rip something off.

Due to the distraction of the author during feeding time, she is unable to bring you pictures documenting the best ways to eat a lobster.

I will tell you, though, dip the lobster meat into the browned butter and squeeze a little lemon on it. Also dip the bread in the browned butter. You're in for a treat. But all you'll have to show for it is a bunch of mangled lobster carapace pieces. C'est la vie.

PROS: easy. cheap ($4-$5 a pound). deeeeeelicious.
CONS: it stares at you before and after you cook it (but it doesn't judge.) Also, lobsters are detritivores, which means they eat whatever's lying around. And you are what you eat...


PS: I got a new Canon 50D. I loves it.

Biscuit Cassoulet

I've got to hand it to Isa and Terry. They sure know what they're doing. Go check out their book (well, one of them) right now.

One of these days I'll really start making my own recipes. Sure, I do that now, but only about once a month and I never blog about them. Maybe they're so delicious I just don't want people to know.

For now, though, I'll stick with this cassoulet. It's the second time I've made it - which is saying something, since I rarely make the same thing twice (unless it's my special lasagna, or cookies or something). It reminds me a lot of the pot-roasty, beef-stewy type home-cookin' that I used to love so much. Only, you know, without that pesky meat.

Just about everything in this dish you can find at the farmer's market in midwinter. The leeks, potatoes, carrots, and garlic are all from vendors at the University District Farmer's Market in Seattle. The flour for the biscuits was obtained from a vendor at the market until I dumped it on the floor and had to borrow my mom's AP flour (these things happen. I've learned to frown really hard for two minutes and then forget about them). The vegetable broth is homemade from veggie scraps I save during my cooking (I'll blog about that sometime).

I missed the onions by a month or two, so I had to get them from the store (poo), and the beans I could have gotten from one of the many dried bean vendors at the market but I forgot about it, and thus the bulk aisle once again comes to my aid. Frozen peas could have easily been obtained fresh in summer and then frozen at home, but I'm silly and don't think to do things like that most of the time. Buttermilk too, they sell at the market, but I'm never there early enough (it sells out fast) so it also came from the store. But the point is that I could have gotten it straight from the farmer. I think the only things you can't find at the market here are salt, pepper, cornstarch, leavening agents, and sustainable palm oil (non-hydrogenated shortening).

That said, if you're not trying to eat locally, all these things can also be found in the grocery store. It's just not nearly as fun to get them.

Oh, and this recipe can be vegan - but I used buttermilk for the biscuits instead of soy milk/vinegar because I had buttermilk in my refrigerator. But I didn't have any soy milk. So there you have it.


BISCUIT CASSOULET
adapted slightly from the "Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits" from Veganomicon by Isa Moscowitz and Terry Romero

CASSOULET
1 lb (3 smallish) purple potatoes, cut into cubes - about 3 cups (any small waxy potatoes will do, but these are so colorful)
2 tbsp cooking oil, olive or otherwise
1 lb carrots, peeled cut into pieces smaller than the potato cubes
1-2 cups chopped onion (I used yellow, but red would have been spectacular)
2 cups thinly sliced leeks (make sure you wash them really well, mud gets into places on a leek you've never even heard of)
3 cups vegetable stock
3 tbsp cornstarch or arrowroot powder
2-3 cloves garlic, pressed
1-2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 tsp salt (or as needed)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 cup frozen peas
1 cup cooked navy beans, rinsed

BISCUITS
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup shortening (go natural, not carcinogenic)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1. Put potatoes in a small pot of boiling salt water. Cook for 10-15 minutes until just done. Don't make them too soft, because they'll cook more later and you don't want them to fall apart. Or maybe you do, what do I know? Drain them once they're cooked and set them aside. They can sit at room temperature for awhile.

2. Heat a large (12 inch), ovenproof saute pan or cast-iron skillet over medium heat (no higher, because your leeks will get mushy and your onions will burn). By ovenproof, I mean no nonstick coating, no plastic handle, no rubber anywhere, just all-metal. Add the oil, carrots, onion, and leeks.



Let these saute for awhile until the onions turn translucent and there's a little browning action. This should take about 10 minutes.

3. While that's cooking up, whisk the cornstarch into your vegetable stock. It's important that the vegetable stock is cool or cold when you do this, because cornstarch will clump up and be awful if you whisk it into something hot. You'd have little weird unidentifiable lumps in your stew, and nobody would ever eat at your house again. On another note, I used half cornstarch, half tapioca starch because I ran out of cornstarch. I don't recommend this. It won't thicken properly.

4. When the carrot mixture has achieved proper sauteedness, add the garlic, thyme, salt and pepper to the pan and stir it up to coat the rest of the vegetables. Only let that cook about a minute - you should smell the garlic but it shouldn't be anywhere near brown.



5. Heat the oven to 425°F. Add the cooked potatoes and the peas and dump in the stock (give the stock a quick whisk right before you dump it in). Mix it all up to be uniform.



Turn the heat up to medium high and bring to a simmer. Turn it back down and simmer for 7 minutes. Turn it off afterward and carefully stir in the beans.

6. In the meantime, whip up some biscuits. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Using a pastry cutter or fork, cut in the shortening (toss it around and mash it a bit) until it is full of little lumps. You don't want it creamy-smooth, and you don't want large fatty bits either. Slowly pour in the buttermilk while you continue to mix it up with a fork or pastry cutter until everything is moistened and it's a little lumpy. Knead it up a few times with your hands to give it a little workout, and then you're ready to roll.

7. Ball up bits of dough (I made eight biscuits, but you could do 10 or 12) and drop them in the skillet over the cassoulet, spaced evenly apart.



8. Put the whole thing in the oven and keep it there for 15 minutes. The biscuits should be getting nice and golden. Take it out very carefully using doubled up potholders on the handle (don't forget that the handle will be hot). You might need two hands to do this without disaster, especially if you're using cast iron. Serve this puppy right away - make sure there's a biscuit in every bowl. Tada! Dinner.

PROS: easy to get ingredients, tasty, comforting, colorful, hot and full of goodness
CONS: well... it's not low-glycemic. full of lovely calories!

Caribbean Crab Soufflé

There are a few times each year that I like to prepare lengthy, course-filled meals with expensive ingredients. New Years Eve is one such occasion. I was blessed this holiday to enjoy Dungeness crab, succulent mushrooms, ratta"stew"ie (more on that later), and green salad. Food during these long course-by-course meals is slow, and more filling.

Dungeness crab (or any crab, for that matter) is not cheap. But at least, here in the Pacific Northwest, it's local and in season right now - and it makes the SeafoodWATCH's "Best choices" list. But how to make a meal to feature crab? Everyone makes crab cakes... something different would be nice. My grandma made KILLER crab salad with celeriac for Christmas. I can't find any recipe resembling it anywhere, so what to do? I need a crab dish to sweep in the new year.

It just so happens that I'm the lucky recipient of five (count 'em - 5!) different new cookbooks from Christmas. Flipping through them (well, flipping through two, as three were vegetarian), the recipe that caught my eye (haha, caught... you know, like in a crab trap) was crab soufflé. Caribbean crab soufflé.

And I love anything with excessive amounts of beaten egg white!

Not to mention this yearning in the back of my mind to return to the warm, sandy, quiet beaches of the coastal Caribbean city of Cahuita, Costa Rica. (It's not really a city... more like a small town. But "town" starts with a t, not a c.) Although, I don't know how much soufflé anyone actually makes there. I guess it's the seasoning that counts.

It was surprisingly simple to make, once all the crab was out of the shell, and as soufflés go, it was pretty sturdy. Serve it on an ocean blue plate and it makes you want to dive in the gentle, salty swell of the sea. And cast your crab traps.


CARIBBEAN CRAB SOUFFLÉ
from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, tweaked slightly and scaled down by 1/2

1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp minced celery leaves
1 clove of garlic, pressed
1/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp dried thyme leaves
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp milk
2 egg yolks
4 oz fresh crabmeat, cartilage removed
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. Prepare your mise en place. If you buy a whole crab (cheaper and fresher), you will not know how much it weighs, so be prepared to a) give it your best guess, or b) have a scale on hand. Pick it carefully out of the shell, from the legs and the body cavity. It's so good. Make sure to get all the shell bits out. You may also want to mix up the spices (curry powder, thyme, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper) ahead of time so you can just chuck them all in at once.

2. Prepare a 4-cup soufflé dish (those round white ceramic things with the ripply sides) by generously buttering the inside. Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

3. Toast your coconut! Lucky us, we had some shredded coconut leftover from making rundown in August (fresh shredded coconut freezes beautifully). You can toast it in an 8-inch pan for a few minutes, until it's lightly browned and all dried out. Ours took a little while, since it was never dried. Put it aside when it's done.

4. Heat up another small pan over low heat and melt the butter in it. Cook the celery leaves with the garlic and spices. Stirring a bit, cook for a few minutes. The garlic shouldn't brown, but it should smell really awesome.



5. Add the flour and stir it to coat the contents of the pan. Cook no more than a minute before adding milk and increasing the heat to medium.



Stir constantly! If you don't, it might scorch on the bottom, resulting in blackened, bad-tasting food. When the milk begins to simmer, take it off the heat. It should be thick and smooth. If not, keep stirring on the heat until it is. (Of note: if you are using rice milk, it will never get thick or smooth. just don't do it. soy should probably work, though.)



6. When it cools a little, whisk in each egg yolk, one at a time. If you do it when the mixture is too hot, the yolks will cook instantly and get all clumpy. That texture is undesirable for many a reason, not least of which is that it's gross (but mainly because the yolks will no longer provide the thickening richness that they would if they were properly mixed in). Mix in the crab and coconut at this point.

7. In a nice metal bowl (for reasons that a food chemist would understand), beat the egg whites with the lemon juice to soft peaks. The "soft peak" stage of egg whites is achieved when you lift the beater or whisk out of the bowl of beaten whites, to leave a floppy point, like a santa hat. Finish it off carefully by hand to stiff peaks - but don't let it get dry. When in doubt, underwhip a little. The "stiff peak" stage looks more like a witch's hat, and goes very quickly to dry oblivion, which is pretty useless and unrecoverable.



8. Put about a quarter of the beaten egg whites into the crab mixture and gently fold with a rubber spatula to "lighten" the custardy crab. Put the lightened crab mix in with the rest of the egg whites, and very gently fold with a rubber spatula in a forward circular motion. Cut down the center of the whites with the spatula and pull it back up toward you again on the bottom of the bowl, folding over the top again and cutting down the middle. Rotate the bowl as you do this until it's mostly incorporated but a wee bit streaky. The more you fold, the more you deflate the air bubbles in the egg whites, so don't get OCD about mixing it completely.



9. Scoop all this into your buttered soufflé dish and stick it straight into the hot oven.



Bake for roughly 25 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and it's all puffy. Serve it right away, before it deflates! It should still be moist inside, but cooked.

PROS: great flavor, hard to mess up, nice and spicy
CONS: would like more crab flavor


I'd make this again, surely. I'd like to try it with some kind of fish, too.

Black Bean Brownie Cake

Beans. Oh, the versatility.

If my two-month educational foray into the jungles of Costa Rica taught me nothing else, at least I walked away with this recipe. Thank you, Robin. Thank you, Rancho Mastatal. I already miss birthdays, all of us gathered around the community table... enjoying a hunk o' chocolate goodness.

It's chocolate cake, but it's... healthy. It's mostly eggs and beans, with a little coffee and some other stuff (like chocolate). You know, breakfast food. *shifty eyes*


BLACK BEAN BROWNIE CAKE
courtesy of Rancho Mastatal

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
6 oz bittersweet chocolate (75% cocoa content is good)
4 oz (1 stick) butter
1 tbsp finely ground coffee
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp powdered chili
2 cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2-1 cup cacao nibs

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 9x13" cake pan. Then make a sugar syrup. I do this because in Costa Rica, the sugar we had was liquid (it was called "tapa dulce"). Basically, it was unrefined sugar that had not been evaporated. To simulate that... just mix the brown sugar, regular sugar, and water and simmer over medium-low heat for a couple of minutes. That should do it.

2. Chop up the chocolate and butter, and melt in the top of a double boiler. Add coffee, salt, and chili, mixing until smooth and melty. You can also use oil with fine results. I like butter because... it's so wholesome.



3. Make sure your beans are well-rinsed and drained, particularly if they come from a can. *gasp* I know you wouldn't do that, though. Black beans are great, but I've also used red beans with equally great results. You could probably use almost any kind of bean, really... Stick them in the food processor with the eggs and vanilla, and whir away. Within a minute or two, it should get nice and frothy and the beans should be totally obliterated. You might see skin specs. But that's it. Transfer to a large bowl.



4. Combine melted chocolate/butter with the sugar syrup, and pour a little into the bean mixture. Fold to incorporate and temper the eggs, if the chocolate and sugar is still hot. Gradually add the rest, folding the batter until mostly combined (a few light and dark streaks are fine.



5. Fold in the cacao nibs until evenly distributed. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean and it begins to recede from the sides of the pan. Cool in pan to room temperature. Enjoy as brownies with powdered sugar, or crumbled over ice cream, or however you want.





PROS: rich, moist, chocolatey, full of protein, flourless
CONS: a bit strong for some people, incredibly crumbly

And there you have it... my first update in a month. Hopefully I'll do the next one sooner rather than later.

Dutch Potato Soup

I'm back! I'm here, home, and I survived Costa Rica.

Boy, do I have some interesting food to post about. I never knew rice and beans could be served so many times in a single day. Week, even. I think I consumed an average of 15 meals featuring rice and beans per week. Maybe more. And fried plantains? Oh boy. We United Statesians don't know what we're missing.

But I'm not here to talk about rice and beans. Not today. I just want to present to you, my delicious (albeit a little plain looking) soup. And tell you that I'm becoming more of a locavore! If there's one thing I learned abroad, it's that food doesn't have to come to you from 1000 miles away. So I've been haunting the farmer's markets, running around Puget Consumer's Co-Op with my little pad of recycled paper and a pen, jotting down prices and names of local producers.

So when my dad and his wife presented me with the Cafe Flora Cookbook, I was delighted - a cookbook from one of Seattle's own vegetarian restaurants. YAY! Seattle food. Local food.

I know, I know. Bear with me. I go on these kicks sometimes. You know, gluten-free, vegetarian, organic... local...

So I found an awesome-looking potato soup recipe in this book that used relatively few ingredients, was pretty cheap to make, and I substituted some things for what I could find that was available this time of year, and used what I already had on hand. It turned out quite yummy. Especially since I (sorta) made my own vegetable stock. Except it was a little too salty. But that's not the point.


DUTCH POTATO SOUP
from Cafe Flora Cookbook, at least mostly, and tailored to what I had available

2 tbsp olive oil
1 bunch (about 3 small) fresh bulb onions with the green part still there, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 head fresh garlic, minced with greens removed
1 1/4 lb russet potatoes, sliced but not peeled
4 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and ground
3/4 cup lager
1 cup heavy cream
6 oz smoked gouda, grated
salt
black pepper

1. Heat up your oil in the bottom of a stockpot over medium heat. Add the onions and salt. I used both the green and white parts from the little onions I had, and it worked out fine. It hurt my eyes less, too. The recipe calls for a medium yellow onion, but... I like my way. Saute this for about 10 minutes, until the onions turn translucent, and stir it frequently to keep them from browning. Or, if you're me, forget to stir them and have half of them browned and the other half crunchy and undercooked. It's really a matter of taste.

2. Add the garlic, all chopped up. It should smell really good right now. The garlic I found was fresh - not the kind with the dry papery outside. It was all usable, the skin and everything, it was firm and evenly hydrated. I couldn't have separated the cloves if I'd wanted to. Cook this for another minute.



3. Dump in the sliced potatoes and stock. You'll be lucky if your stock is as good as mine. Mine was pretty awesome. I made it with kale and carrots and the tops and hearts of celery and carrots and onion and garlic skins and fresh thyme and dried oregano and salt and pepper and a little paprika and tomato paste. But that's beside the point. You can just use one of those aseptic packages of Pacific vegetable broth. It's delicious. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, then cover and cook for 10 minutes, until the potatoes are soft. You should be feeling pretty good about yourself. At least I was.



4. Meanwhile, ready your food processor/blender and a separate container for the soup. When the potatoes have cooked, remove from the heat and let cool off for about 10 minutes with the lid off. When it is less hot, puree it in batches in your appliance of choice. Just don't fill it more than halfway, or it will start to leak. That's not really what we want. While it's blending, grate yourself some cheese.



5. Return the pureed soup to the heat, add the caraway seeds and beer, and bring back to a boil. Slowly stir in your heavy cream. And oh gee. I had some good heavy cream. Courtesy of Golden Glen Creamery... it was so rich and white and non-homogenized, and came in this adorable little glass bottle. It made me grin. Stir your concoction constantly until it comes to a simmer again.



6. Add cheese, a little at a time as you stir, until it melts completely. Season to taste. ¡Buen Provecho!





PROS: flavorful, rich, filling and warm
CONS: a tad bit fattening, plain-looking

So there we have it. Maybe my next post will have something to do with gallo pinto. Or a restaurant review. You'll just have to wait it out.

Equinox Eggs

Another vernal equinox has come and gone, and the days are now longer than the nights. Here in the north, anyway. Mum and I dyed eggs... and this year, we did some experimenting with natural colors. Last year we used those little bottles of natural dye like "black currant juice contentrate" and "blueberry concentrate" and such. It merely stained our hands and kept our brown eggs brown, so... this year we did something different.

We got some tips out of The Joy of Cooking. We started with a pot of 3 cups red onion skins in a 3 cup mixture of canned red beet juice and water with 2 tbsp vinegar, brought to a boil and turned down to simmer for half an hour. We hoped this would make red.



We did the same with red cabbage in 3 cups of water plus 2 tbsp vinegar, to make blue:



...and spinach, etc. to make green:



...and we hard-boiled a dozen eggs according to the Cook's Illustrated method of covering them with an inch of water, bringing them to a boil, removing from the heat and covering the pan and letting them sit for 10 minutes, then putting them right into ice water to chill. It doesn't overboil them, which is nice.

The cabbage made a lovely deep purply blue color...



...and the onion skins/beet juice made a brick red liquid...



...and the spinach...



...made pond-water yellow. We strained the liquid into large mugs to dye the eggs in. We got about two cups of liquid for each... fits about two eggs comfortably. So we dropped in the eggs and let them sit in there for about 45 minutes... or something like that, anyway, and they came out looking gawgeous. We tied rubber bands around some of them to make pretty stripes. We'll definitely do this again in the future. Maybe not the spinach, though, since the eggs only got their natural spots accentuated. The blue eggs came out really cool, though. I love dying brown eggs.

Chocolate Raspberry Creme Cake

Just this last week, I completed a quarter-long internship at the zoo (go Nocturnal House!), where I already volunteer. Not only did the internship end, but I'll be leaving the country shortly and won't be volunteering for the next three months either (possibly longer if I am taken on as a zoo employee upon my return). So in thanks, I made a cake. That way, maybe they'll forget that I didn't accomplish that much in three months. "Oh yeah, she was a great intern! She brought us cake and everything!"

It's good cake, too. It's probably one of my new favorites. It has everything - rich chocolate ganache, sweet and smooth pastry cream, a burst of raspberry, on a spongey vessel of light chocolate cake. (Oh, but it's full of gluten. :-( Probably would be pretty simple to convert, though...) Next time I'll make sure to grab more than one piece.


CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY CREME CAKE
bits and pieces from Baking Illustrated by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine, adapted here and there

Pastry Cream Filling
5 tbsp plus 1 tsp sugar
pinch salt
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
2 large egg yolks
2 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla

Chocolate Sponge Cake
6 tbsp plain cake flour (I used some combination of all-purpose and potato starch, not being one to keep over-processed, chemically bleached powdered grains in my cupboard)
3 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
3 tbsp Dutch cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp milk
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
5 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar

Chocolate Ganache
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup light agave nectar (corn syrup works, but I don't have this)
8 oz semisweet chocolate, all chopped up
1/2 tsp vanilla

Raspberry Filling and Garnish
1 1/4 cups raspberry preserves or jam (get some with not much sugar added, but never artificially sweetened - you want it to taste like raspberries, not Splenda)
12-16 fresh or frozen raspberries

1. Make the pastry cream: dissolve 1/4 cup of the sugar, and the salt, in the half-and-half over medium heat until simmering, stirring occasionally.

2. While your mixture is heating on the stove, whisk up the egg yolks in a separate bowl. Add the sugar and vigorously beat with your whisk until it gets creamy smooth. Add cornstarch, and keep whisking until the yolks look thick and pale.

3. Slowly drizzle the half-and-half, after it comes to a simmer, into the yolks. Make sure to whisk constantly during this process to avoid cooking and curdling the yolks. This is called tempering. Pour it all back in the saucepan and return to the heat.

4. Whisk the mixture constantly until it starts to bubble a little and it gets really thick, which shouldn't take long. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla.

5. Pour the hot pastry cream through a sieve into a medium bowl. Cover the surface directly with waxed paper to prevent a skin from forming and stick in the fridge until thoroughly chilled. This will take at least 3 hours, but it keeps fine overnight.

6. Make your cake: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare 2 9-inch round cake pans by greasing the sides and covering the bottom with parchment paper.

7. Sift flours, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together into a medium bowl, mix well, and make sure there are no little lumps of cocoa sitting about in the flour. Squash them if there are. Set aside.

8. Heat milk and butter over low heat until the butter melts. Remove from heat, add the vanilla, and cover to keep warm.

9. Separate three of the eggs. Place the whites in a large metal bowl, and the yolks plus the whole eggs in another large bowl. Beat the whites until foamy and broken up, and gradually add half the sugar as you continue to beat the whites. Beat to soft peaks - you know you've reached this state when you take the beaters out of the egg whites and the peaks look moist and droop over. If you beat it too much, you will have trouble folding your batter and your cake will deflate. You will be sorry.

10. Beat your yolks and whole eggs with the rest of the sugar for about 5 minutes. They should be very thick and pale, kinda like the yolks in the pastry cream. Only thicker, and paler. Pour these in with the whites.

11. Sprinkle the flour over the egg mixtures and fold from the middle down and up about a dozen times around the bowl. Make an indentation and add the milk and butter. Keep folding, very gently and carefully, until everything is more or less evenly mixed. The goal is to get the most homogenous mixture with the least amount of mixing - the more you fold, the more air bubbles you pop and the flatter and denser your cake will be. But you don't want big pockets of egg white or flour in there, either. So just be careful.



12. Pour equal amounts of batter into each cake pan and bake for about 16-22 minutes, depending on the color of your pans (longer for light pans, and less for dark). Judge doneness based on the toothpick test (stick a toothpick in the middle, if it has no crumbs on it, it's done) or by poking the middle of the cake, which should readily spring back. It should also look like it's just starting to pull away from the sides of the pan.

13. When you remove the cakes from the oven, run a knife around the perimeter of the pan. Invert onto a plate, remove the parchment, and re-invert onto a cooling rack. Do the same with the other cake, and cool to room temperature. Don't ever try to frost or fill a warm cake.



14. Make the ganache: Heat the cream and agave over medium heat in a saucepan until simmering. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Cover and let sit for about 8 minutes, at which point the chocolate should have melted (if not, stir it over medium heat until it does).

15. Add vanilla and stir until smooth. Cool until slightly warmer than room temperature.

16. Make that cake: While the glaze is cooling, put one layer of the cake on a cardboard round or other decorating surface. To avoid making a mess, you can tuck strips of waxed paper underneath the cake around all sides for easy cleanup. Spread about 1 cup of the jam evenly over this layer, filling in the pits and potholes on the cake surface. No one will ever know...



17. Place dollops of the pastry cream around the cake layer over the jam and spread it until it makes an even, thick coating. You should use all of it. Carefully put the second cake layer in place, making sure it's centered and not lopsided.

18. Spread around the remaining jam on the top of the cake, all the way up to the edges. Run a spatula around the sides of the cake to clean up any leaking pastry cream or raspberry preserves. Consume this.



19. Pour on the glaze, making sure it completely covers the top and sides. It will cool much more rapidly once it's on the cake. Make pretty swirly designs with the back of a spoon. Before it cools completely, press in raspberries in some attractive pattern on top of the cake.



20. Refrigerate the cake until the glaze sets and it's ready to serve. Keep refrigerated, as the pastry cream will spoil otherwise and the cake will fall apart in warm conditions. Eat, eat! It's so good.








PROS: great balance of flavors, textures, nice and attractive
CONS: time consuming, batter can be tempermental to fold together evenly

Finally!

An update! Apologies for not updating sooner. I haven't stopped eating, though. In lieu of a recipe, I'll just offer pictures of some of the things I've been enjoying in the past month.

First, though, some updates on what I've been up to:
> moved
> back on wheat, as of this month. I can't tell you how nice it is to eat a donut. or flatbread. O wow. Gluten. And no adverse effects so far, though I haven't eaten much of it yet.
> heading to Costa Rica at the end of the month, and I won't be back until June
> grueling winter quarter of writing, working, and being exhausted

As much as I know you all want to hear about my daily adventures, I know you'd probably rather look at tasty-looking food. So here you go:



Cremini mushrooms stuffed with creamed spinach, walnuts, herbs and an assortment of other wonderful things

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Individual spinach souffle

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Tuna melt on Whole Foods' gluten-free Prairie Bread with roasted red pepper tomato soup

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Linzer Torte Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

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Delicious grilled veggies: zucchini, mushrooms, bell pepper, fennel, onion, and a purple carrot

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Pacific Northwest clams and mussels on a bed of spaghetti, dressed with fire roasted tomatoes and olive oil

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Cheesecake! With raspberries, blueberries, orange and lemon zest in a buttery almond crust.

I'm way too tired to post anything else right now. It will have to do, at least for now. But I'll be back! With something new. And with any luck, tasty. Although you never know just what might come out of my kitchen next :-S

Learning Experience #3: Chocolate Crinkles

I've done it again. Except this time, instead of cyclooctane rings of overspread cookies a milimeter high, I had the opposite problem. The cookies didn't really budge...

I blame two things: too much flour, and too much xanthan gum.

The failed. spreading cookies that I've made in the past contained very little xanthan gum, and acted as though they didn't have enough flour (very thin and brittle, more sugary than soft). So I compensated. Overly so, evidently... now I have cakey, gauzey cookies with nearly no spread whatsoever. At least they taste good.

I did make one batch of drop cookies that came out PERFECTLY... some chocolate chip cookies a couple of months ago. They spread like charms, stopped at just the right spot, were soft and chewy and melty and tasted exactly like a chocolate chip cookie should taste. I didn't blog about it because I forgot to take pictures.

Maybe that's the key, here...

Anyway, these aren't all that bad. I will make them again with the aforementioned changes to see what might happen.


CHOCOLATE CRINKLES
from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick Goudreau, adapted slightly

3 tsp egg replacer powder (I used my own blend of soy flour, potato starch, baking powder, and xanthan gum)
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup hemp milk (or whatever - I can't have soy milk and rice milk is too thin)
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine or other trans-fat-free nondairy butter
3 1/2 oz dark chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour blend 1:2:3:3 tapioca:potato starch:sorghum:brown rice (I kind of... packed it in... don't do this)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

1. Whisk together egg replacer powder and water for about a minute, until thick and creamy. I'm guessing Ener-G powder gets thick and creamy, mine doesn't really. I'm so homemade it makes me ill. Toss in the sugar, vanilla, and hemp milk and beat another minute or so.

2. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter and chocolate completely. Remove immediately from stove and stir into the milk mixture.

3. In a large bowl, whisk flours with salt and baking powder. Add the wet ingredients and mix slowly until all is combined. You'll get kind of a loose batter at this point because everything is still melted, but it will start to firm up soon. Plop in the center of a large rectangle of waxed paper and wrap up. Refrigerate one hour to overnight.



4. When dough is chilled, preheat the oven to 325°F. Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper.



5. Sift confectioners' sugar into a small-medium bowl. Divide dough into 36 round, 1-inch balls. Round each one in your hands and toss it in the powdered sugar to coat, jiggling off the excess.



6. Line prepared dough balls on cookie sheets 2 inches apart. Bake for 18 minutes or until... you know, they're done. They won't look much different. Only a little cracked. Let cool on pans for 2 minutes, then remove to cool on racks.





PROS: chocolatey, crunchy exterior and chewy, soft interior, attractive
CONS: unspread, the *littlest* bit gummy

Two-Bean Enchiladas

My favorite part about cooking as a poor student is making wonderful, family-size dishes and freezing them in individual portions to eat later. It saves time. It saves money. It's homemade. I only really cook about once a week. I'd cook more if I had the time, and the money for ingredients, but right now I don't. So I eat a lot of beans. And rice.

Ahem. I wanted to make enchiladas. I don't know why, I just did. So I poked around and came up with a recipe that I thought would be good. I made it tonight. It made me want to ride a horse on the beach. Or whatever they do in Mexico.
Probably not that.


TWO-BEAN ENCHILADAS

Cooking oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 fresh jalapeños, seeded and chopped (do your mucous membranes a favor and wear gloves while handling the peppers)
3-4 cloves garlic, pressed
3 tbsp powdered ancho chili
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp oregano (crumbled, not ground)
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
28 oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes (get Muir Glen... they are GOOD)
1 1/2 cups cooked black beans, drained
1 cup cooked Anasazi or pinto beans, drained
1 cup fresh (or thawed frozen) corn kernels
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese, packed
Salt to taste
12 corn tortillas
2/3 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/3 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When shimmering, add onions and jalapeños, and cook until onions begin to brown. This should take 3-4 minutes.

2. Add garlic, spices, sugar and salt, and continue to cook until fragrant, stirring constantly for about 1 minute. Don't burn it.



3. Stir in diced tomatoes and simmer about 3 minutes. Remove from heat. Cool to room temperature or a little above.



4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400°F. In a food processor or blender, process the mixture until smooth but chunky. Kind of like a fat baby. Transfer 1 cup sauce to a medium bowl, and toss with the beans, corn, cilantro, and 1 cup Jack cheese. Season bean mixture with salt and reserve the rest of the sauce.



5. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Drizzle about 2 tbsp oil into a pie pan or similar sized dish and briefly coat both sides of each tortilla. Use more oil if you need to. Spread them out on the baking sheet, overlapping as little as possible. Cover with another layer of foil and bake in the oven for 4 minutes or until pliable and soft.



6. Spread 3/4 cup sauce in the bottom of a 13x9-inch baking dish. Spoon 1/3 cup bean mixture into the center of a tortilla, roll up, and place in baking dish seam-side down. Repeat with remaining tortillas, lining them side-by-side. You may have to smoosh them up against one another, but don't worry. They're social. If you end up with a little extra filling, just stick it in that 13th tortilla that sometimes finds its way into the the 12-pack, and eat it. Right now.



7. Pour remaining sauce over enchiladas, spreading it to coat the tortillas completely. If you miss a spot, it will get all hard and impossibly chewy, which is a bummer. Combine cheddar and remaining Jack cheese, and sprinkle over the top of the enchiladas (either to cover, or down the center in a line).

8. Cover baking dish with foil, leaving one corner loose for steam escape. Bake in the lower half of the oven for 25 minutes or until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbling.



9. Garnish with cilantro and serve piping hot with sour cream, guacamole, and lime wedges. Because I'm cheap and poor, I had neither avocados to make guacamole, or limes. But believe me when I say it would have been killer.

PROS: warm and gooey, proteiny, filling and low cholesterol
CONS: are you kidding me?!

This dish could easily be made vegan by omitting the cheese and dressing it with some sort of vegan cream sauce. And avocados. Please, don't skimp on the avocados.

Buckwheat Bran Muffins

These muffins are like those sensuous big women with the low, smoky voices and a wink for you if you're lucky.

I have really developed a taste for buckwheat! I have buckwheat hot cereal for breakfast on my coffee days, I keep experimenting with buckwheat pancakes and waffles, and I've been making these muffins... they're quite tasty, really.

Originally I was going for a maple-flavored muffin, so I used maple syrup for sweetener. The maple didn't really stand out in the finished muffin, but I liked it anyway. I didn't want to bother adding something like maple extract that not many people have just lying around or are likely to ever use again. But I kept the maple syrup, because it adds a certain sultry va-va-voom. I also wanted a breakfast-type muffin (you know, fiber and protein and all that), hence the rice bran and buckwheat flour and brown rice flour, nuts and kasha and the like. Voila... it worked out.

These muffins, like most muffins, are pretty versatile. By that, I mean you can add things if you want. Nuts and chopped fruit (diced apple or pear might be good), seeds and such... go for it. Let me know how it is.


BUCKWHEAT BRAN MUFFINS

2/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/3 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup potato starch
2 tbsp tapioca starch
2 tbsp soy flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
3/4 tsp salt
Grated zest from 1 medium orange
6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup maple syrup, room temperature
2 large eggs
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
1 cup rice bran
3/4 cup kasha
3/4 cup sliced almonds, crushed lightly

1. Preheat oven to 375°F and prepare sixteen muffin cups by lining or greasing. In a medium bowl, sift together flours, starches, xanthan gum, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add zest and whisk to combine. Set aside.

2. Beat eggs until frothy in a large bowl. Drizzle in melted butter, mixing well to emulsify. Add maple syrup and vanilla and stir to combine.

3. In a smaller bowl or liquid measure, whisk the buttermilk and sour cream together until no longer lumpy. Add to the bowl with the maple syrup and mix well.

4. Add flour mixture, folding gently until barely mixed but still lumpy. Fold in rice bran, kasha, and almonds until no streaks of flour remain and ingredients are moistened, but do not overmix.



5. Fill cups 3/4 full with batter, and smooth the tops with a spatula as best you can. Taste some.



6. Bake on the lower-middle rack for 23-25 minutes, or until they turn deliciously brown around the edges and just begin to pull away from the sides of the pan (if you're using liners, just use the toothpick method). Cool in pan 5 minutes, then remove to eat warm or cool or whatever. Toast them later, whatever.





PROS: warm and husky, exotically spiced yet delicate earthy flavor, delicious crunchy bits, not overly sweet
CONS: a little dense (is that a con?), flavor is mild

Pasta e Fagioli

You know, I get a certain satisfaction out of trying something new. Food-wise, anyway. For the longest time I couldn't really stand to eat pasta without some kind of tomatoes or tomato sauce... but I'm expanding my horizons. Slowly. I still can't eat it with just plain olive oil. Too... pasty.

But I like pasta, and I like beans, so I thought I'd try this one out. Apparently it's an Italian classic... but not being Italian, or a foodie, I wouldn't know. Hits the spot on an icy January evening, though.

I got this recipe from the Joy of Cooking - 75th Anniversary Edition, but I made a few modifications to suit my diet. This is the version I made.


PASTA E FAGIOLI

1/2 lb dry cannellini beans
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
(2 tbsp minced parsley - didn't have this, but it would have been awfully pretty)
3 garlic cloves, pressed
2 cups vegetable broth or stock, or more as needed
1 cup gluten-free quinoa-corn elbow macaroni
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese, or more as needed

1. Rinse beans and pick over for shriveled or broken beans and little pebbles. My dad always used to bite into really hard things in his food at dinnertime and then frown and try to figure out what it was. I wonder if they were pebbles.

2. Cover with an inch of water and let soak for up to 8 hours. It's supposed to improve digestibility for those with bean-sensitive guts. My gut is quite accustomed to beans and it makes no difference, so I just soaked them for three hours to see what would happen. They just got wrinkly.



3. Discard soaking water and cover again with an inch of water. Bring to a full boil, then reduce heat to medium-low or low, partially cover, and let simmer for an hour and a half. Test them after about 70 minutes for doneness (ie: you can mash them easily and they're not crunchy). Drain and let cool.



4. Heat oil in a stockpot over medium or medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add onion, carrot, celery, and parsley (if you're using it). I wish I had parsley :-(

5. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until onion is golden-brown. Well. My onion never turned golden brown, even after 15 minutes. So when it started to get soft I just proceeded. Sigh.



6. Add garlic and cook for one more minute. Stir and add beans, mashing lightly and stirring to incorporate. It should look all soft and mashy. Yum.



7. After about a minute, pour in the broth and increase heat to high. Bring just to a simmer, then turn heat to medium-low. Partially cover, and let cook for five minutes.

8. Add macaroni and salt to taste, and stir lightly to incorporate. Simmer for an additional 15 minutes, or until the macaroni is al dente (cooked through, but gives some resistance to the teeth). Add about a cup more broth, or however much you need to get the consistency you want.

9. Lighly stir in black pepper and cheese, and serve with a little more cheese on top. Oh, it would look so much prettier with parsley. But you know what? It tasted good anyway.



PROS: Warm, chunky, thick, healthy, filling
CONS: very yellow... and a little bland

I apologize for not updating very often. I have a very busy schedule. I'm going to try to get in at least one blog per week though, at least for the quarter. I've penciled it in :-)

Of course, I am not sure if anybody is reading this because nobody comments. Fortunately, my plight is an easy one for you to remedy. So go ahead... make my day.

Spotlight: Mighty-O Donuts

OK, so I work here.



But that doesn't stop me from admiring our beautiful selection of trans-fat-free, organic morsels of deliciousness. Probably because, you know. I make them.

Come in on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday morning and I'll be happy to serve you up a donut and some coffee! We serve organic Stumptown coffee in both espresso and drip, we offer rice, soy, or cow milk and soy whipped cream.



Mighty-O specializes in cake donuts - from your basic glazed or plain donut to the "Don King" (glazed chocolate cake with coconut) or "Nutty French Toast" (spice cake with maple glaze and chopped peanuts). On most days, if you come in early, you can get a maple bar or raised donut. If you're lucky, we'll have jelly-filled or creme-filled...



They're vegan, but don't let that keep you from trying one.You can buy them at Whole Foods, PCC, Tully's, or a few other cafes and coffeehouses in the Seattle area. But the best place to find them is right in our store, first thing in the morning. They're made fresh every day!



So come visit us by Greenlake, at 56th and Keystone. Like, 5 minutes from the zoo. 2 minutes from the lake. Inches from bliss...

You can park on the street, or in the little garage behind the store. We're kittycornered from Meridian Market and across the street from Zoka, and right next to Tangletown.

Buckwheat-Corn Pancakes, part II

I've been working on this recipe for the past few months and I'm pretty happy with it so far. Better than the first version, certainly. The only catch is that I don't ever seem to have buttermilk on hand when I'm making it, so I've been using various combination of sour cream, milk, and/or lemon juice instead. I think buttermilk would be better. But I don't know until someone tries it and tells me.

These substantial, down-on-the-farm pancakes develop a sweet, crispy exterior while maintaining a moist and fluffy interior. The molasses adds a layer of earthy sweetness that is well-balanced by the more delicate flavor of honey.


BUCKWHEAT-CORN PANCAKES (part II)

2/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup corn flour
2 tbsp cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg, separated
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp full-flavored molasses (not blackstrap)
1/2 cup blueberries, fresh corn kernels, or other topping/filling of your choice

1. Whisk or sift together the dry ingredients (flours, leavening and salt) in a large bowl. It's helpful to sift if you have clumpy baking powder, because then, you know... it gets distributed and all. Just a thought.

2. Whisk egg white with buttermilk in a 2-cup liquid measure and bring to room temperature by partially submerging in a bowl of warm water and stirring periodically. If you have cold ingredients, it will coagulate the melted butter, which sucks a lot. You don't want clumps of butter here. It's not a pie crust, you know.

3. Reserve yolk in a small bowl while melting butter in a small saucepan or double boiler. Add honey as butter is nearly melted. Slowly drizzle melted butter and honey over the yolk, whisking constantly to avoid cooking the yolk. Stir in the molasses.

4. Add yolk mixture to buttermilk and whisk to combine well. Pour into large bowl with dry ingredients, and whisk until most of the flour is moistened but it's still a little lumpy. If you over-mix it, the bubbles created by the baking soda and powder will collapse and die like the fragile little creatures they are. Then you'll get really flat, dense pancakes. So be gentle.

5. Let batter rest for a few minutes while you preheat a heavy skillet over medium heat. I love cast iron for pancakes, it creates an unbeatable crust. Stainless doesn't really cut it, and I never recommend cooking in a nonstick pan, but that's just me. Use what you have.

6. Test the heat of your skillet by adding a pat of butter. If it foams but does not readily brown, the skillet is the proper temperature. If it browns quickly, it's too hot. If it slowly melts, it's not hot enough. Adjust! When it's just right, ladle or scrape some batter (it will be nice and thiiiick) onto the hot, buttered skillet. Spread it out some, or you'll get a lump rather than a pancake. Sprinkle your blueberries or corn on top. Whatever you want, really.



7. After the edges start to set and large bubbles appear in the middle of the batter, it's ready for flipping. This is fun. Flip it now. But try not to mess it up. Because half-cooked pancakes are very sensitive to this sort of activity and are prone to folding up on themselves, adhering to the sloped sides of your skillet (rather than the more desirable flat surface), or missing the pan altogether. This is not good.

8. Cook until bottom is crispy and brown, and then set aside on a rack to cool or keep warm in a 200°F oven while you cook the other pancakes. Add butter to the skillet before cooking each pancake, or they'll stick and won't get as crusty and beautiful. Don't stack them until they're ready to eat, or they'll get all soggy. Ew. Serve with butter, maple syrup, extra blueberries, or whatever you have that you think goes well with buckwheat pancakes.





PROS: sooo fluffy and delicious. Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Hearty yet light.
CONS: batter is so thick it can be difficult to work with. I don't really care, though.

PS: I got a new camera for Christmas! Woohoo! This is my first blog using my new Sony Cybershot DSC-W80. YAY!

Christmas Quiche

What's a vegetarian to do for Christmas dinner when her family is eating ham and turkey? Well, bring something even better. Better and more colorful.

OK, so this quiche probably wouldn't win any awards. I've never made quiche before and although it's not difficult, I wasn't really sure what I was going for. So I blindly groped my way around a recipe that I concocted (inspired by Mollie Katzen and Cook's Illustrated) encrusted in a recipe from Gluten-Free Girl. I got something tasty. Tasty enough to try again... some day. It certainly was pretty, anyway.


CHRISTMAS QUICHE

1 single-crust recipe from Gluten-Free Girl (but replace cinnamon with half as much dry mustard powder)
olive oil
2 cups sliced red onion
4 cloves roasted garlic, mashed
1/2 tsp salt
2 sprigs fresh thume
3 leaves fresh sage
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup thinly sliced green pepper
1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese
2 cups chopped Christmasy-looking red-green chard, separated stems and leaves
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Add oil and onion, and saute about 4 minutes or until the onions start to sweat.

2. Toss salt, herbs, and mustard into pan with onions. Cover the pan and turn the heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring every 3 minutes or so. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

3. Place your pie crust on a baking tray or cookie sheet. Uncover pan on stove and add vinegar, bell pepper, and chard stems. Return heat to medium and cool another 4 minutes.

4. Add chard leaves, stir and cook one more minute and remove from heat.

5. Sprinkle goat cheese onto crust. Top with sauteed vegetables.



6. Whisk eggs and milk in a 4-cup liquid measure and season with black pepper. Pour into crust with vegetables and cheese.



7. Bake in lower section of oven for 45-50 minutes, or until custard is set. Cool 10 minutes or to room tempurature, slice, and serve!



PROS: colorful, tasty, relatively healthy
CONS: crust underbaked, custard not firm enough

What I would change about this recipe: Definitely prebake the pie shell. It's a thick shell and although it's very tasty, a good 1/6th of an inch was uncooked. Also use whole milk instead of lowfat. It would probably make a difference in how much the custard sets. Add one more egg, perhaps....

Carrot Cake

Every time someone has a birthday, I jump at the chance to bake a cake. I love cake. I love baking cake. I think it's because I love licking the mixing bowl afterward...

...but that's another story. My dad's birthday was yesterday, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to make another cake. I made it gluten-free, just because I felt confident enough with my experience to turn it out well. I secretly bought enough ingredients for two cakes in the instance that the gluten-free version was a flop.

But oh. Oh. This was no flop! Whoever says gluten-free baking is inferior obviously hasn't eaten this.

And again, I must credit Cook's Illustrated for the recipe on which my version is based. I know that when I need to bake something for the first time, I will always check to see if they have a recipe for it first. That way, if my adaptation doesn't turn out... I know that it's my fault and not the base recipe's. Oh, what a blessing America's Test Kitchen is. But I've changed this recipe enough to be considered different from the original. Well, duh.


CARROT CAKE

3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sorghum flour
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup soy flour
2 tbsp tapioca starch
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 lb fresh carrots, peeled
1 cup golden (Sultana) raisins
1 can crushed pineapple, drained very well
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (I used sunflower)

12 oz neufchatel or cream cheese
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, slightly softened but still cool
1 tbsp sour cream
3/4 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup sliced almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two 9"x2" round cake pans, and line with parchment paper or waxed paper. Grease the parchment as well.

2. Whisk the dry ingredients - flours, starches, xanthan gum, baking powder and soda, spices, and salt - thoroughly in a medium bowl.

3. Using your food processor, shred the carrots (make sure you shred them, not pulverize them). If you're ambitious and/or don't have a food processor - and I used to do this - you can grate them by hand. If you do this, you can probably do most of the rest of the steps in a mixing bowl rather than a food processor.

4. Add the shredded carrots and raisins to the dry ingredients, and wipe out your food processor. Add sugars and eggs to the food processor, and process with the metal blade until frothy and well-mixed.

5. Keep the processor running, and slowly drizzle the oil through the feed tube. Process until well-emulsified and light in color.

6. Transfer wet ingredients to a large bowl and stir in the crushed (drained) pineapple. Fold in the dry ingredients, along with carrots and raisins, until all flour is mixed in. But don't mix it longer than you have to. You'll kill the leavining.

7. Pour batter into your prepared cake pans and stick on a middle oven rack. Bake for 40 minutes or until cake starts to pull away from edges of pan and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. And it's golden brown. Or poke the top of the cake with your finger. If it springs back, it's done.



8. Cool on wire racks, in the pans, to room temperature before frosting. And let me tell you - you don't want to frost this cake warm. Disaster will ensue.



9. Clean out your food processor. This is a good time to lick the bowl, if you're into that sort of thing. I know I am. But for the sake of whomever's going to be eating your cake, please wash it after you lick it. And then dump in the cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla. Process until well-mixed. If it starts sticking to the sides, then you know what to do. Get out that rubber spatula.

10. Add powdered sugar and process some more until it's nice and smooth. Scrape it all out, put it in a bowl, and stick it in the fridge to chill for oh, 20 minutes or so.

11. Take your cakes out of their pans when they're cool, and put them on the wire racks directly. Face up, of course. When you're ready to decorate, transfer one cake round to whatever it is you like to decorate on. I used a cardboard round sitting on top of an inverted cake pan - it spins easily, and is slightly elevated.



12. Take your frosting out of the fridge, and if you want to reserve some for piping later (letters, little carrots, whatever), save 2 tbsp to 1/4 cup and set aside. Plop some frosting - 1/2 cup, maybe - on the cake and spread to the edges (a large offset spatula works wonders here). Carefully set the second cake on top, and repeat the process. Use the remaining frosting to frost the sides. Try not to get crumbs in the icing, because that looks kinda tacky.

13. Press handfuls of sliced almonds into the sides - you can tilt the cake for this - until the sides are covered all the way around. Put a few in the center of the cake, on the top. It looks cute. And if you want to pipe decorations, color your reserved frosting however you want (I use natural coloring with annatto for the orange letters). And pipe away. For a makeshift pastry bag, you can use either a plastic bag with the corner cut out, or waxed paper folded in a cone. That's what I did. And sit back and admire your cake. Then eat it. Because, let's face it, carrot cake is awesome.


PROS: moist, perfectly balanced spice, great ratio of cake:frosting, delicious but not too nutritious
CONS: frosting is a little wet, and sweetness of cake is difficult to detect through sweetness of frosting (but trust me. it's minor.)

Maybe I should stop posting all my recipes and just right a durn tootin cookbook. I hear that's what all the cool kids are doing these days...

Thanksgiving Stuffed Squash

Happy holidays, everyone.

And down in history goes my first Thanksgiving: at least, my first Thanksgiving making a significant contribution to the dinner table.

It was my year at my dad's this time. Aside from the small ham for the omnivores, the whole feast was vegetarian... and boy, it was good! At least, I think so. But hey, I'm a big fan of food. Especially when I can eat it.

Gracing our table (besides the ham) was many a good food. The appetizers consisted of cheese, my Grandma's deviled eggs, an olive/pickle/pepper tray, and Barb's stuffed mushrooms and cheese-pecan sandwich bites... I could make a meal of those alone. Easily. And when we sat down, we were greeted by the smells and sights of stuffed acorn squash, potatoes au gratin, harvest shepherd's pie with mashed yams, fresh green salad, and Grandma's legendary cranberry chutney that is, in my opinion, the highlight of every Thanksgiving. For dessert, pumpkin cheesecake and mince pie. Who could want a single thing more?

I debated which dish to blog about - I made the squash, shepherd's pie, and mince pie - and I finally settled on the squash. I'm particularly proud of it because I came up with the recipe. OK, no big deal, but I'm proud anyway. Probably because I was afraid it would taste bad. Or bland. Or just stupid. And it didn't :)

The shepherd's pie was very tasty. I got the recipe from the Whole Foods Cookbook - you can also find the recipe on the Whole Foods website. Instead of ground beef, it gets its protein and texture from crumbled tempeh. I chose "garden vegetable" tempeh instead of plain tempeh because... well, it can't hurt. It's a vegetable dish. This was my first experience with tempeh (at least, that I can remember) and wow. I found a new tofu substitute. I'm impressed! And it's gluten-free, to boot. Instead of mashed potatoes on top, this dish has these delicious orange yams and sliced almonds... oh boy. It tasted like yumm. The yams were seasoned by a mixture of butter, orange juice and zest, and brown rice syrup simmered into a viscous liquid. It gave it character. It tasted like Thanksgiving.

And mince pie? The recipe is from my book Baking Illustrated by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine. The first mincemeat mixture I simmered up was scorched black. 6 organic apples, 2 cups of apple cider, a stick of organic butter, a cup each of organic raisins and currants, an organic lemon and organic orange, a selection of organic spices and some amount I don't remember of organic dark brown sugar - all ruined. *facepalm*

But it was OK - mum came to the rescue, new ingredients were bought, apples were re-peeled and diced, and mincemeat was back on the stove in no time. This time, I stood there for three hours, stirring it every five minutes. As a result, the mincemeat was a little... well, resembling of apple butter, but it sure tasted good. And it wasn't scorched. Stick it in a gluten-free crust with a lattice top (don't even go there... no easy task, that), and voila. Easy as pie.

From this experience, I learned (as I have learned in the past) that the settings on an electric stove are not the same as those on a gas stove, and Cook's Illustrated writes for a gas stove. But I have electric. *sigh* Such is the life of a over-ambitious hungry person.

And my squash - oh, how proud I am. I wanted a gluten-free stuffing, so I thought hey! Rice. Wild rice is native to the states... perfect. And what goes with rice?

Beans!

Which brought me to this "Three Sisters" idea I keep running across that combines beans, squash, and corn. And I seized ahold of that like a jack russell terrier sizes a rope toy with a labrador at the other end, and hell if I was gonna let go...

Ahem.

To make a long story short, I chose Anasazi beans because of their relative close proximity to the Great Lakes area (home of wild rice) - within trading distance, anyway. And acorn squash, because it's so darn cute and easy to stuff. Sage to season, because it grows wild here in the US. And frozen corn, because... well, fresh isn't in season anymore, and canned has added salt. Ha.




ACORN SQUASH WITH WILD RICE STUFFING
1/2 cup dry Anasazi beans, picked over
1 tsp salt
2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup wild rice
4 medium acorn squash
2 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup frozen (or fresh) corn kernels, thawed
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp finely minced fresh sage leaves
6 cloves (or one medium head) roasted garlic, mashed
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tsp dry yellow mustard powder
2 tsp salt


1. To soak the beans, add beans to a heavy pot and cover with water by two inches. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil five minutes and remove from heat. Cover and let stand for one hour.

2. Drain the soaking liquid from the beans. Cover again with water by two inches. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Cover, with lid slightly ajar, and simmer gently for 35-40 minutes. When you can squish a bean with your fingers, add salt and continue to simmer until desired tenderness (about 10 minutes more). Remove from heat, drain, and smell them. Kinda smokey... kinda salty... kinda like bacon. Except better, because nobody had to die. And beanier.

3. Bring vegetable stock to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add rice. Return to a boil and turn heat down to low. Cover and simmer 40-45 minutes, or until rice is fully cooked (it may pop a little, but it should be a little toothsome and nutty still). Transfer to a separate bowl and fluff with a fork. Reserve.

4. Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut each acorn squash in half, from the stem down. Remove seeds and discard (or reserve to toast later, if you want). Prick cavities with a fork, and rub each cut side with butter to coat.

5. Place squash halves cut-side up in a large baking dish with 1 inch water. Roast for about 35 minutes, or until just fork-tender.

6. Remove squash from oven and rest until cool enough to handle.

7. Sauté onions in butter over medium heat 2-3 minutes. Add corn, drained beans, and sage, cooking an additional minute or two. Remove from heat.

8. Scoop flesh from the squash halves, leaving a 1/2-inch shell. Mix flesh with roasted garlic and season with salt and pepper. Gently fold into rice, bean, and corn mixture, carefully not smashing the beans.

9. Rub mustard powder and remaining salt into squash shells. Stuff with stuffing and return to oven in the same baking dish. Bake an additional 25 minutes or until squash is tender and stuffing is heated through.


PROS: very Thanksgivingy, hearty yet vegetarian, nutritious and delicous
CONS: could use some tweaking as far as ratios go, and cooking times, but I lurrved it anyway


So there we have it.

Holiday Cut-Out Cookies

Just getting caught up here... I've made so much stuff and hardly had time to post. Seems a little bit ironic.

Anyway, these cookies turned out pretty well, given my previous experiences with gluten-free cookies. I used a recipe, too, from Land O'Lakes. But I made a few changes. Since I don't pre-mix a gluten-free flour blend, I just use specific amounts of each kind of flour.

These are cookies you should probably eat within a few days, because they will dry out quickly after that and are prone to crumbling into little pieces... but hey. They're delicious. If you like soft, sweet, frosted cut-out cookies, that is... and I know I do.


HOLIDAY CUT-OUT COOKIES
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups white rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup tapioca starch
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp salt


1. Combine flours, xanthan gum, and salt in a medium bowl or on a piece of waxed paper and set aside.

2. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl at medium speed, scraping often (I ran out of butter so I used half butter, half non-hydrogenated shortening) until light and fluffy and beautiful. Add egg yolks and vanilla, and continue beating until well-mixed, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.

3. Reduce speed to low and add flour mix, beating until incorporated. Divide dough in half, flatten into 4-inch disks, wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously rice-flour a work surface (if you don't have enough, the cookies will stick). Roll out one disk of dough to 1/4-inch thickness. Using 2 1/2-inch cookie cutters of your choice, cut out pieces of dough and transfer them to an ungreased cookie sheet (add sprinkles now if you want). Place them at least 1 inch apart. This is where I goofed, and the cookies I put too close together started kissing in the oven. Sigh.

5. Bake 8-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned (this took me 16-17 minutes in an accurate oven). Let rest 2 minutes on cookie sheets, then transfer with a metal spatula onto cooling racks. Cool completely before frosting.

6. I'd tell you what the frosting is made of... but I didn't write it down. Heavy cream, shortening, and powdered sugar... for the pumpkins I added some pumpkin puree, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, and for the chocolate I added melted bittersweet chocolate... But the ratios? Heck if I know. Anyway, pick a nice frosting recipe that you like (butter really is better for this, but I ran out). Frost those cookies. Decorate away. Buy one of those tubs of frosting if you really want to sacrifice all your hard work only to use canned frosting. They're your cookies... No pressure :)

PROS: so soft... and they actually hold their shape in the oven! As long as they're rolled thin enough, anyway. GREAT with frosting. If you hand them out, you'll have no trouble finishing off a batch in a couple of days.
CONS: A bit crumbly... and difficult to brown. The shape kinda gets a little muddled, but you can still tell what it is, especially if you use something like a pumpkin or a Christmas tree. Not so good for little details, though.




I made pumpkins (with pumpkin frosting), ghosts (with vanilla frosting), bats, and cats (with chocolate frosting). Sense a theme here? :)

I'll probably make a few changes next time. Like use Cook's Illustrated's "reverse creaming" method they recommend for holiday cut-out cookies. Definitely use all butter instead of half-shortening. Use a real recipe for frosting... like the vanilla and chocolate buttercream recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Put them further apart on the baking sheet.

I'm so silly...

Apple Pie

Wow, was this a hit. Deeeelicious. :D Not really my recipes, though... I used the Cook's Illustrated recipe for the filling (making one slight modification for gluten-freedom), and scaled up (and slightly modified) a recipe from Gluten-Free Girl for the crust. It turned out well. Really well. Aromatic and appley, and the crust resembled a wheat crust in all ways. YAY!


APPLE PIE
For the crust (mostly courtesy of Gluten-Free Girl):
1 cup plus 2 tbsp white rice flour
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp potato starch
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup sweet rice flour
3 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
8 tbsp butter, chilled
4 tbsp non-hydrogenated shortening, chilled
1 large egg
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 - 1/3 cup ice water (or enough to make the dough just stick together)

For the pie filling (mostly courtesy Cook's Illustrated):
1 1/2 lb Granny Smith apples (about 3)
2 lbs ripe McIntosh apples (about 4)
1 tbsp juice and 1 tsp zest from 1 lemon
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp sweet rice flour
1/4 tsp freshly grated (or ground) nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 tbsp sugar

Crust:
1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Cut butter and shortening into dry ingredients using a fork, pastry cutter, or food processor. Crumble together until butter is the size of large peas (or lima beans, even).

2. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add egg and vinegar, and incorporate gently. If using a fork, stir from the center outward.

3. Slowly add ice water, 2 tbsp at a time, into the crust mixture, stirring or processing until it begins to stick together. As soon as it forms a cohesive dough, stop adding water.

4. Divide the dough in two. Compress each into 4-inch disks and refrigerate in parchment paper overnight.

Pie Filling:
1. Take one half of your dough out of the fridge and set on the counter. Let it rest for twenty minutes while you prepare the pie. Place a rimmed baking sheet on the bottom rack in your oven, and preheat it to 500°F.

2. Peel and core your apples. Quarter them and cut each quarter into 1/4-inch slices (if they are too thick or thin, they will cook unevenly). Toss apples in a large bowl with the lemon juice and zest. If you have a microplane grater, use it. It makes zest like magic.

3. Take your second disk of dough out to rest for 20 minutes. Roll out your first disk to a 12-inch circle between two sheets of parchment. You may have to keep flipping it over, because the bottom side tends to get a little wrinkled. Carefully peel off the top layer (make sure there are no wrinkles, as this will make it difficult to get off cleanly). Center an upside-down 9" glass pie plate over the dough, and quickly invert. Use the parchment to help you press the dough into the corner of the pan, and peel off the parchment. Do any quick patchwork you need to before moving on.

4. In a medium bowl, combine sugar, flour, spices, and salt. Toss with the apples. Dump it all (including the juices) into the pie pan - don't be alarmed, it will make a HUGE heap - and arrange so that the pile is as compact and rounded as possible.

5. Roll out the second piece of dough to a 12-inch circle between parchment - same as before. Peel off the top and ever so carefully invert it on the giant mound of apples. Tuck the overhang from the top dough underneath the overhang from the bottom dough so that it sticks out a bit from the rim, and flute the edges however you like. If you don't know how, then google it. Not too hard!

6. Cut 4 slits in the top of the pie - if the dough is super soft, freeze it for a few minutes (no longer than 10, though, or the glass plate may break when it enters the oven). Brush the beaten egg white all over the top crust and sprinkle with sugar.

7. Place the pie on the baking sheet in the oven. Lower the temperature to 425°F and bake for 25 minutes (or until the crust is a nice golden color. Rotate it 180°, turn the temperature down once more to 375°F, and continue baking for another 30-35 minutes. The juices should be really bubbly and the crust a deep golden brown. Put pie on a cooling rack and cool to room temperature. If you CAN'T WAIT, just eat a piece. But it will be hot and it will fall apart. But sometimes that's not so bad.

PROS: Very fragrant, sweet and tart and spiced at the same time. The texture is wonderful - the Macs fall apart when they cook, and the Grannies stay al dente - the perfect combination. Go CI! It tastes of autumn and good times. Crust bakes up just like a standard wheat crust.
CONS: Crust is difficult to handle when rolling and transferring. Not *quite* as flaky as some (though nobody will complain), but with some tweaking I'm sure it could be.

Banana Bread

I never expected this to be successful. After my cookie experiences, I was on the verge of being convinced that baking without gluten would never yield a product as tasty as one with. Boy, did this prove me wrong! I love banana bread. You should too.

So I did some research on different flours - Gluten Free, Not Gluten-Freaky has a great rundown of different flour properties and ratios and things. Very helpful. So I just fiddled with my normal banana bread recipe - one used by Cook's Illustrated - and voila! Tender, moist, melt-in-your-mouth (which, OK, is weird for something that doesn't typically melt at all) banana bread. Here goes...

(don't be weirded out by the lengthy ingredient list... you could probably use just butter and the traditional 3-flour blend instead of 5)


BANANA BREAD
1 1/4 cups walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup soy flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 large extra-ripe, spotty bananas, mashed well
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup shortening, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350. Liberally grease and flour (with rice flour) the inside of a 9"x5" loaf pan (or similar - it's actually pretty flexible). Cover the bottom with parchment paper.

2. Toast the walnuts on a baking sheet in the oven for 5-10 minutes or until you start to smell them. They should smell good. Not burnt.

3. Whisk together the rice flour through salt in a large bowl, then add walnuts and mix to evenly distribute.

4. Mix together the bananas through vanilla in another bowl, stirring with a wooden spoon. This is fun. Oh, trust me. And it works way better when all your ingredients are at room temperature, so there is nothing to clump the butter and shortening. Because you don't want little pieces of butter and shortening wandering around, do you?

5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together to incorporate. It should look a little chunky. This is normal. This is good.

6. Transfer batter ASAP to your loaf pan. Stick it on the lower-middle shelf in the oven and bake for 55 minutes - or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean - and it looks ready.

7. Remove bread from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring it to a cooling rack. Serve whenever you want to eat it - it is divine when warm and a wonderful breakfast. I didn't try toasting it, but I'm sure it would be great. And oh yeah. It's great with honey.






PROS: melt-in-your-mouth, soft, banana-y, sweet but in a good way
CONS: are you kidding me? There's nothing wrong with it...


So there you go. I've only made it once, so I'm sure some improvements/simplifications can be made to the recipe, so feel free to try it out with your own variations... no recipe is final, you know?

Learning Experience #2: Snickerdoodles

Apparently gluten-free cookies are no easy accomplishment. Not for me, anyway.

OK, so they turned out a little better than the last ones. Definitely tastier. But woah. Flat much? Very breakable, hardly workable dough, and they just plain look sad. But they are killer on ice cream...

I'm still wondering how I managed to fit them in the cookie jar.

Because when I tried to take them out, the cookies were about an inch wider than the opening. Creepy.

Let's get down to business, though, shall we? How exactly did I concoct such a... concoction?

Well, I wish I could tell you - but I wrote over my test recipe (darn) with a second version that I have yet to try. Instead, I'll walk you through the basic procedure.

You start by creaming your fat and sugar together. It should look beautiful and white and fluffy (full of air, you know). Add your wet ingredients like eggs and vanilla and such, beat it, and add your flours and chemical leavening and salt and stuff.

So it should be all stiff and cookie-doughish, right? But it wasn't. It was sticky and soft, like butter that's been out of the refrigerator way too long.

So I froze it for like, 10 minutes. I took it out and rolled it into little balls, tossed them in sugar-spice mixture that I'd made earlier, and set them on parchment paper on my cookie sheet. About 2 inches apart. Should be pleeennnty of space. This, my friends, is where everything goes wrong, so wrong.

Suffice to say that 2 inches was not enough room. These guys like to really expand. And by expand, I mean out. Not up. What I got ended up looking like crispy cyclooctane rings all strung together with their little shared carbons and their lack of personal space.



One thing I can say is that they look a lot better on screen than in person. Not that I didn't see them fit to eat, obviously. They're long since digested, actually...

For the record, I make pretty delicious "normal" snickerdoodles. I'm not just doodle-deficient or anything. But there's more to wheatlessness than meets the eye. I obviously haven't conquered the gluten-free cookie yet. But I will.

You just wait.

Buckwheat and Corn Pancakes

This was a fun one.

I haven't experimented much (read: at all) with buckwheat before, but it's right up my alley. And yes, buckwheat is gluten-free - it's not wheat at all. It's not even a grass. It's a knotweed with wickedly awesome seeds.

It tastes very earthy, mild yet powerful. The pancakes were dense and filling, but not uncomfortably so. Just buckwheaty and beautiful.

I think next time I'd like to add more corn, though - the flavors really go well together, and with the ratios I tried, the buckwheat flavor all but ate up the corn flavor. I might also add more leavening (baking soda, maybe, with buttermilk instead of milk) to see if it helps the pancakes rise at all.

BUCKWHEAT AND CORN PANCAKES
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup corn flour
2 tbsp cornmeal
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 large egg
1 tbsp vegetable oil or melted butter
2 tbsp honey (molasses is good too; just not blackstrap)
1 cup mixed fresh sweet corn and blueberries (or whatever you wanna stick in there)
butter for the pan
topping of your choice!

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a medium-large mixing bowl. Play with the ratios some (of the flours, anyway), if you like. Even a failed pancake is a good pancake (well, in most cases).

2. Warm your ingredients to room temperature. Put the egg in some warm water (not hot - it will cook), sit a measuring glass of milk in some warm water and stir it, whatever. Honey and molasses are hard to mix into cold things.

3. In small bowl (I like to use a 2-cup liquid measure to save dishes), measure out the milk and the egg, and beat until the egg is nicely broken up and no longer globby. Nobody likes a globby egg; you get big white patches in your pancakes that way.

4. Add the oil to the dry mix and whisk together until it looks good and well-coated, then pour the egg-milk in. Drizzle in the honey and whisk the batter until it looks well-incorporated. Don't overmix it though, or the baking powder will be rendered useless.

5. Let the batter rest while you heat up your skillet. I love a heavy cast-iron pan for pancakes - it gives them a nice, brown exterior. Heat to medium heat and drop in a pat of butter and spread it around to coat. It's good and ready when it bubbles and foams right away but doesn't burn and smoke.

6. Ladle, spoon, or pour some amount of batter (whatever looks good to you) on the skillet. Immediately sprinkle a small handful of corn/blueberries over the top. They'll sink right in.

7. When the edges of the pancake are set and the middle has bubbles, flip it. Do the other side until it's done. It's up to you when it's done - it takes about 2 minutes, depending on the size of your pancakes. I like 'em big.

8. Transfer to a cooling rack or the oven to keep warm, but don't stack them or they'll steam each other. Then they'll be all floppy and moist. Not crispy and wonderful.

9. Serve with butter, maple syrup, or blueberry jam... Yummmmmy!




PROS: homey, hearty, filling, healthy, tasty, great combination
CONS: not very sweet, buckwheat can be is an acquired taste, not enough corn, a little dense

This is based on the recipe from Bob's Red Mill - Down Home Buckwheat Pancakes - with several additions/substitutions. I would make these again. Maybe with some changes, but it's definitely going down in the book.

Bananas, Almonds, and Hot Fudge

Bananas are fun. You can whirl them in the blender for a smoothie. You can eat them like a monkey. You can chop them for fruit salad. My latest favorite? Fryyyyy them :D

So, OK, fried banana. I thought it would make a good dessert because... you know, bananas are healthy. *grin* Oh, but you know what would be good with it? Hot fudge. Oooh! And toasted almonds! Man, I was so excited when I thought of all this and realized the ingredients were on hand. Stoked. So I got everything together, Robert fried up the bananas (he being the master of anything that's heated in a pan with fat), and put them all together. It needed a mint leaf. Which we didn't have.

So I used a basil leaf. Shh, don't tell anyone. Basil actually tastes good with chocolate... *shifty eyes*

BANANAS, ALMONDS, AND HOT FUDGE
1-2 tbsp butter
2 large bananas, ripe but not TOO ripe, peeled
4oz dark chocolate
3 tbsp milk or cream (we used lowfat lactose-free, since that's what was on hand)
2 tbsp butter
2-3 tbsp sugar
pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
mint sprig(s) for garnish

1. Heat butter in a 10" skillet over medium-low heat. Slice bananas in half lengthwise.

2. When butter begins to foam, add bananas to pan, cut side down.

3. Meanwhile, place chocolate, milk, butter, sugar, and salt in a glass bowl or top half of a double boiler. Place over a pan containing about an inch of gently simmering water.

4. When bananas are lightly golden brown on one side, gently (and quickly) flip them over to brown the second side.

5. Stir chocolate with a spatula until it melts and mixture looks homogenous. Dip your finger in it and taste it. Add whatever you think you need (sugar, milk, butter). Repeat once with all 9 other digits. Add vanilla at the very end and stir to incorporate, then take off the heat.

6. Remove banana halves from pan when browned to your liking and put on a serving plate. Drizzle some fudge sauce over the top, sprinkle on your toasted almonds, drizzle some more fudge sauce over them, and garnish with mint. Oh, boy.

PROS: Hard to go wrong with this one, unless you over-toast your almonds or something... versatile, you can make your chocolate how you like it, and put as much or as little on as possible. Bananas are healthy!

CONS: uh... not good if you don't like chocolate. Or bananas. Or nuts.

Pan-Seared Sea Scallops

I am not a true vegetarian. I don't eat beef, chicken, pork, turkey, lamb, goat, duck, rabbit, lizards, or most other vertebrates. But I do eat seafood (so that would make me... a piscetarian?). And I love me some mollusks.

Friday night, we cooked. Delicious scallops, salad, and dessert was had - more about the latter two in future posts - and all was devoured devilishly. Good times. Of course, a large (nearly full) bottle of extra-virgin olive oil was shattered all over the floor... but lucky for us, we'd already made salad dressing. *wipes brow* Anyway, onto the main course.

Sweet, succulent scallops are excellent served as an appetizer or as the main feature of a meal. High heat and a short cooking time ensure they will form a golden, flavorful exterior and remain tender inside (I sound like a cookbook in a good way, right?).

PAN-SEARED SEA SCALLOPS
12 large sea scallops
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tbsp capers
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
Freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Heat a 10"-12" heavy skillet over medium-high heat.

2. Pat scallops dry on paper towels. Coat well with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.

3. When pan is hot, add scallops as quickly as possible. Do not move scallops once they've been placed in the pan. Sear two minutes or until golden brown on bottom.

4. Turn scallops with spatula. Again, do not move scallops once they've been turned. Cook approximately two more minutes. To test for doneness, press the top of a scallop with your finger: when you begin to feel resistance, remove from heat immediately and transfer scallops to a serving dish.

5. Deglaze the pan by adding butter, lemon juice, capers, and parsley. Stir to mix and remove stuck-on bits (the fond) from pan. Spoon over scallops and serve hot, seasoning to taste with pepper.







Did I mention that we ate them all up?



PROS: exquisite, versatile dish, flavors compliment each other well
CONS: very easy to overcook scallops; scallops tend to stick to the pan, scallops are expensive

Autumn Apple Smoothie

Ohhh, this one's a keeper. To boot, it has nuttin' but fruits and veggies. No sugar, no powder, no milk... just the orchard in a glass. This is one silky smooth way to drink to your health.

You can make it totally raw by using unpasturized or fresh apple juice and freshly squeezed lemon.

AUTUMN APPLE SMOOTHIE
1/2 ripe avocado, skinned and pitted
1 McIntosh apple, cored
1-2 cups (depending on your desired consistency) 100% apple juice, not from concentrate with no additives
1-2 tsp lemon juice
1 ripe, spotty banana, peeled

1. Toss the avocado half in the blender. Chunk up the apple and add that too. Give it a whir with a little bit of liquid.

2. Add banana in pieces and blend until smooth and consistent with no chunks. Add more apple juice and blend as desired. Drink up, my friend!




PROS: silky smooth, nutritious, delicious, green, vegan, back-to-the-basics yumminess
CONS: can't completely obliterate apple skin bits. but they don't really get in the way...

Black Bean Chili and Cornbread

I had a hankerin'. From the moment my mind slogged out of the murky recesses of my well-earned slumber on Saturday morning, I was in the mood for chili. Chili and cornbread.

I had to work in the evening and certainly wouldn't have time to slave over a stove and oven. Normally, this would pose a problem, as my cravings are not easily subdued. But fortune smiled down on me on this particularly Septembery day. Robert cooked.

What he created was a delicious vegetarian chili with no tomatoes, kidney beans, or anything else I really associate with chili from my childhood. It's light and healthful, yet hearty and flavorful enough to fill your stomach and please the palate.

BLACK BEAN CHILI
cooking oil
1 cup diced onion, 1/2-inch dice
1 cup diced carrot, 1/2-inch dice
1/2 cup diced celery, 1/2-inch dice
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp ground ancho chili
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp dried crumbled Mexican oregano (or 1 tsp ground)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 cans black beans with juice
1/2 cup water, as needed

1. In a stockpot or large saucepan, sweat onions, carrots, and celery in a little cooking oil.

2. When soft, add garlic and seasonings. Cook, stirring constantly, over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes.

3. Add beans, along with their juice. Pour just enough water over chili to barely cover. Simmer gently, covered, for 30 minutes.

4. Serve hot with cornbread. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

PROS: healthy, hearty, vegetarian, tasty
CONS: simplistic, needs seasoning


This here is gonna be a two-recipe post! I just can't help myself. Chili and cornbread were made for each other.



The beauty about this cornbread is that it's gluten-free and tastes like corn. Not falsely fluffy and wheaty, but dense and mildly sweet and just plain corntastic. It makes a golden crunchy, crusty addition to a meal. It can be made sweet or savory by adding blueberries or jalapeño peppers to the batter.

CORNBREAD
1 cup medium-grind cornmeal
1/2 cup coarse-grind cornmeal
1/2 cup corn flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/3 cup vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 400º. Warm 2 9"x5" cast-iron loaf pans, a 12" cast-iron skillet, or 12-cup cast-iron muffin pan in oven for 10-15 minutes.

2. As your bakeware warms, combine dry ingredients thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.

3. Add oil, blending well. Whisk egg together with milk, and fold into other ingredients until barely incorporated. Let sit for 5 minutes.

4. Butter preheated pan liberally. Pan is hot enough if butter sizzles and browns lightly. Immediately scrape batter into pan (or pans) and return to oven.

5. Reduce oven temperature to 375º and bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown and edges begin to pull away from pan.

6. Cool in pans 5 minutes, then remove to wire cooling rack and serve warm or at room-temperature.



PROS: corntastic, versatile, gluten-free
CONS: ...

Learning Experience #1: Carrot Raisin Drop Cookies

I consider myself a pretty good baker. Nearly all of my concoctions are edible - most are downright scrumptious - but alas, I am new to gluten-free baking. I don't know if it's my technique, or the recipe, that is off, but one thing's for sure: these cookies will probably end up as a pulverized ice cream topping. If they're lucky.

Maybe my expectations were unrealistic? Maybe gluten free cookies are supposed to look like dog vomit.

Anyway, I chose this recipe because I love carrots and sweet things, and I love raisins, and I love (nearly) anything that has pumpkin pie spice as an ingredient. OK, they don't taste that bad. But um, yeah.

CARROT RAISIN DROP COOKIES*
1 cup gluten-free flour mix (2 parts white rice flour, 2/3 part potato starch, 1/3 part tapioca starch)
1/2 cup soy flour
1 (rounded) tsp baking soda
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I used 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 3/4 tsp ginger, 3/8 tsp nutmeg, and 1/8 tsp cloves)
1 cup rice polish (or crushed gluten-free cereal: I used Arrowhead Mills Rice Flakes)
1/2 cup butter
3 large eggs
1 cup corn syrup
2 cups grated carrots
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1. In a bowl, mix together flours, baking soda, spice, and rice polish.

2. In another bowl, beat butter, eggs, and Karo with an electric mixer until blended. Mix in the carrots. Add the flour mixture. Stir until mixed, then beat until blended. Stir in raisins and nuts.

3. Spoon dough in tablespoon-sized mounds 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Bake in preheated 350° oven until cookies feel firm when touched, 12 to 14 minutes. Remove from pans and cool.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

*Source: The Gluten-Free Gourmet: Living Well Without Wheat by Bette Hagman

I don't get it. I tried chilling the "batter" (yes, it made batter, not dough) in the freezer before baking, but it didn't make a difference at all. I don't know the chemistry of gluten-free baking or anything, but it seems to me that the recipe would have been better using sugar or brown sugar or a combination of both (at least then it may be drier!), and maybe some vanilla (and salt... hello?!) to bring the flavor up a notch. I don't know how acidic the corn syrup is, and if that's the only thing that the baking soda is reacting with to provide lift (which in this instance, let's face it, rivaled the lift of a crepe)... but I may have added baking powder as well. Ah well. Another day, another learning experience... will have to try this again sometime. Not soon.

At least the batter tasted good.

Acorn Squash with Corn and Pinto Beans

This will give you your daily dose of fiber. Mmm, mmm.

Tonight I decided on something warm and filling, yet not fatty or "heavy." Kind of particular, I know. So voila!


ACORN SQUASH WITH CORN AND PINTO BEANS
1 small-medium acorn squash
pinch sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp maple syrup, honey, or agave nectar
dribble cooking oil
1/2 cup (or so) cooked pinto beans
1/4 cup (or so) sweet corn
1-2 tbsp salsa
1-2 tbsp sour cream (optional)
1/4 avocado, sliced or diced (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut squash in half along verticle axis (from stem to butt). It helps if you have a wide-bladed knife. I didn't, so I ended up with one piece being twice the size of the other. I like to think it looks homemade.

2. Scoop out seeds on either half. You can either discard them, or.... well, I thought it would be a good idea to try and dry them out. You know, in case I get hungry later and can use some seeds or something. Maybe I'll puree them and put them in a smoothie. Maybe I'll plant them in the garden. The possibilities are endless.

3. Sprinkle each squash half (or whatever) with salt and pepper to taste. Needs more salt than pepper, probably... Divide butter and maple syrup proportionally between the two, placing in the cavity that once contained seeds. Bake in a shallow baking dish containing 1/2" water for 1 hour. This would be a good time to take a shower, catch up on your e-mail, or brush your cat.

4. Remove dish with squash from the oven and set it aside to cool down for a few minutes. In a smallish skillet, warm up beans and corn with a little oil (just a little - nobody likes greasy beans). I suppose if you wanted, you could use a nonstick skillet. I don't like cooking with plastic, but whatever works for you. When they are warm enough to your liking, remove the pan from the heat and add salsa and stir. This a) cleans the pan, and b) warms up the salsa that is undoubtedly cold from being refrigerated, without cooking it down.

5. Serve with a bit o' sour cream and/or avocado (which I didn't have on hand, boo-hoo). You could also add melty cheese (such as monterey jack or pepperjack), chiles (in case you got stuck with mild salsa), a sprig of cilantro, or whatever you like. You could also use a different kind of winter squash, or black beans instead of pinto. It's your food! Enjoy it well. Serve with a fresh vegetable or something.

PROS: healthy, simple, tasty with proper seasoning.
CONS: a little bland unless seasoned just so, not the most picturesque!