Weekend Cooking: Banana Almond Chocolate Chip Muffins

The semester starts up on Monday, so I’m spending this weekend cooking, literally, trying to get ahead on some meals and lunch box items so we don’t have to resort to that dreaded budget- and diet-killer: take out! One thing that really works for us is having pre-portioned, home-made snacks ready to go. Muffins are a great solution: I cool them completely, wrap them individually in foil, and then put them in the freezer. In the morning, I throw them in the lunch bag, and they’re thawed by the time her lunch period arrives.

These muffins are sweet enough to feel like an indulgence, which makes my daughter happy –– and the whole grains make me happy.

Banana Almond Chocolate Chip Muffins 

2 very ripe bananas, mashed
3 tablespoons grapeseed oil
½ cup whole milk yogurt
½ cup 2% milk
¼ cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups white whole wheat flour
½ cup almond flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

 Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Whisk first 6 ingredients together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined – it’s okay if lumps from the banana remain. Mix dry ingredients (through salt) together in another bowl. Fold dry ingredients into banana mixture until moistened; fold in chocolate chips. Fill paper-lined muffin cups ¾ full (an ice cream scoop makes quick work of it). Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Yield: 18 muffins.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Cheese Shortbread

Here’s a simple, savory nibble. I made these for my book club’s annual tea, and they were a big hit. These are so much easier than gougéres, but hit that same cheesy note that goes perfectly with a glass of wine or Champagne. Even my 13-year-old fell in love with them, and asked me to put the last few in her lunch the next day.

Cheese Shortbread

(adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman)

8 T cold butter
2 c grated Cheddar or other semi-hard cheese
1 ½ c all-purpose flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ t salt
½ t cayenne pepper
1 t Hungarian paprika
1 T dried dill

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put all ingredients in a food processor. Pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal -- do not overprocess.

Form the dough into 1 inch balls (or you can wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate until ready to bake). Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake 10-12 minutes, until golden brown and puffy. Cool completely on a wire rack. Store in an air-tight container.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Cookbook Review: THE FOOD YOU CRAVE by Ellie Krieger

Getting back to school means getting back to routines and getting back to health. So one of the book recommendations I was most enthusiastic about trying this fall was a recommendation from our own Beth Fish: The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life by Ellie Krieger.

As the Weekend Cooking crew may remember, I have a love/hate relationship with Food Network personality cookbooks. But this particular book won a James Beard Award in the category of “Cookbook with a Healthy Focus.” Those two recommendations were enough to put the book on my library list.

Who is Ellie Krieger? Krieger is a registered dietician with a Master’s degree in Nutrition. She hosts the Food Network show Healthy Appetite. Krieger is a prominent member of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, and she was head nutritionist for the White House’s “Healthy Kids Fair.”

Take on Cooking: Traditional favorites reimagined into healthy meals.

The Delicious Parts:The book is beautifully designed, with lots of photos (although not for every recipe). The recipes are easy to understand and prep, without myriad ingredients that some healthy cookbooks employ to make up for a lack of fat, so I found they were fine for weeknights. Her strategy is to change the proportions of non-healthy ingredients in recipes, rather than use unpleasant or unsatisfying substitutes, which I appreciated. The book is jam-packed with nutritional information, which I found very helpful. For example, rather than just give total fat information for recipes, she breaks down both good (mono- and polyunsaturated fats, like the ones found in nuts and veggies) and bad (saturated) fats. She also includes daily numbers to shoot for in many nutrition categories.

My First Bites: I cooked four recipes from the book: Confetti Chili, Aromatic Noodles with Lime-Peanut Sauce, Buffalo Chicken Salad and Chicken Chop Suey. They all came together easily, and my family enjoyed them all. The Confetti Chili was spicy from the chipotle, smoky from the adobo sauce and cumin, and sweet from the corn. Made with canned beans (suggested by Krieger) and tons of veggies, it came together in about an hour. It could easily become our house chili. The only recipe my husband wasn’t too enthusiastic about was the Chop Suey. It was a bit bland, but since the original is kind of a bland, Americanized version of Chinese food, it would probably be a winner with people who are fans. And even at that, I got a great idea for turning dumpling skins into a healthier Asian crunchy topping than those canned fried noodles.

Not Quite To My Taste: When it comes to dinner, Krieger really focuses on meat dishes. Red meat factors heavily in the Main Course section, but we don’t tend to eat steaks and chops very often. Still, for meat lovers, finding healthier ways of cooking them would be a real plus. Oddly, I wasn’t blown away by the salad choices; many were more “go-withs” than meals on their own. Still, those negatives are based on my personal taste and lifestyle. I think Krieger really does a great job with the promise of the book.

Recommendation? Devour, Split, Send it Back to the Kitchen? Devour or split, definitely – but I’d lean toward devour if you’re looking for a solid, healthy lifestyle cookbook with a broad range of recipes. You certainly won’t be disappointed with this one.

One Great Recipe: Ellie Krieger’s Confetti Chili

1 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced (1 cup)
1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and diced (1 cup)
1 medium carrot, diced (½ cup)
2 t ground cumin
1 t ground coriander
1 lb. lean or extra lean (90% lean or higher) ground beef
One 28-oz can no-salt added crushed tomatoes, with their juices
2 c water
1 canned chipotle chili in adobo sauce, seeded and minced, plus 2 t of the sauce (I didn’t seed the chipotles, because we love heat)
½ t oregano
One 15.5 oz can black beans, preferably low-sodium, drained and rinsed
One 15.5 oz can kidney beans, preferably low-sodium, drained and rinsed
1 ½ c frozen corn kernels
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1) Heat the oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion, bell pepper, and carrot, cover, and cook, stirring, for occasionally, until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the cumin coriander and cook, stirring for 1 minute. And the ground beef; raise the heat to high and cook, breaking up the meat with a spoon, until the meat is no longer pink. Stir in the tomatoes, water, chipotle and adobo sauce, and oregano and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, partially covered, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes.

2) Stir in the beans and continue cooking, partially covered, 20 minutes longer, until the chili is nicely thickened. Stir in the corn and cook until heated through. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

FTC disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of this book for review. I borrowed it from the library.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Col’s Plum and Almond Bread

This must have been a banner year for plums. My daughter’s music teacher showed up with a bag. And there was a peck left in the break room with a “Please take some” sign. I love stone fruit, but I have to admit I don’t cook with plums very often. So I put the largesse to work in an infinitely malleable Mark Bittman recipe for Fruit and Nut Bread. And I have to admit the results were so good that I’d actually buy plums to make it again – so I thought I’d share.

Col’s Plum and Almond Bread

(adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
¾ cup sugar
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
4 Tbs. unsalted butter (plus more for the loaf pan)
1 ¼ cup skim milk
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
¼ tsp. almond extract
1 cup chopped plums
½ cup slivered almonds

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the dry ingredients in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until it’s completely worked into the flour. Place the flour mixture in a large mixing bowl. (Don’t continue in the food processor, or the bread will be tough.)

2) Whisk together the milk, egg and extracts. Fold into the dry ingredients, but don’t over mix. Next fold in the plums and any juice that have accumulated. And then fold in the nuts. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 55-60 minutes. It’s done when skewer poked into the center comes out clean.

3) Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire cooling rack. Try to keep the kids from slicing until it’s completely cool, but don’t count on it.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

FOOD FROM MANY GREEK KITCHENS by Tessa Kiros

One week on Cyprus was enough to hook me on Greek food forever. I absolutely loved the different combinations of sour yogurt and sweet vegetables, often accompanied by flaky pastry, that I found all over. The food was both fresh and comforting –worlds away from the heavy souvlakia sandwiches and moussaka that constituted Greek food in Astoria’s diners. But I’ve rarely cooked Greek inspired dinners at home, probably because I didn’t have a yia-yia to show me how. Which is why I took note when Couscous and Consciousness shared a recipe from Tessa Kiros’ Food From Many Greek Kitchens in a recent Weekend Cooking post, and ordered it from the library.

Who is Tessa Kiros? A European woman (mother from Finland, dad from Cyrus, born in London, now living in Italy) with an deep interest in the intersection of food and culture—which makes a lot of sense when you consider the intersection of fantastic cuisines she must have grown up with! She has written books addressing many aspects of her life – she is perhaps best known for her Nordic cookbook, Falling Cloudberries.

Take on Cooking: Traditional Greek home cooking, with an emphasis on regional specialties.

The Delicious Parts: This book is absolutely gorgeous – the sumptuous photos resemble a coffee table book about the Greek Islands. Kiros’ chapters don’t follow a traditional order – instead, they seem to reflect her thoughts on Greek food. The first four chapters explore Traditional Foods, Fasting Foods, Easter Foods and Shared Foods. The Greek Orthodox Church still observes a very strict fast during lent – no meat or eggs at all – so the Fasting Foods chapter was a natural source of vegetarian and vegan dishes.

My First Bites: I cooked four recipes from the book: Spanakopita (Spinach Pie), Tomatokeftedes (Fried Tomato Fritters), Spanakorizo (Spinach Rice) and Yiaourti (Yogurt on the Side). All of them were delicious. I actually used Kiros’ delicious Spanakopita filling in a simple phyllo pie, rather than make the individual rolls that she suggested, and everyone at the barbecue raved about it. My daughter inhaled the Spinach Rice – and it made a really delicious lunch later in the week, warmed up with the leftover Yiaourti.

Not Quite To My Taste: While I thought the flavors were fantastic, and the ingredients spot on, I did find myself modifying the cooking directions, adapting them to my modern kitchen. Some of the directions are complex — Kiros admits this herself – but as gorgeous as the book is, there are no illustrations of technique to help the reader through the difficult parts.

Recommendation? Devour, Split, Send it Back to the Kitchen? Devour or split, definitely – but I’d lean toward devour if you have a hole in your cookbook collection where a comprehensive guide to Greek cuisine belongs. I probably wouldn’t make many of the fussier, holiday-oriented recipes, but I can see making a great party out of the Mezedes (Shared Foods) section. I’d call it a great cookbook for a confident cook.

One Great Recipe: Tessa Kiros’ Spanakorizo

Spinach Rice

2 ½ pounds spinach, rinsed and drained (I used 12 oz baby spinach, and I thought the proportions were fine)

4 tablespoons olive oil

3 ½ ounces green onions, with some of the green, chopped

3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (I used 3 teaspoons dried)

1 cup medium grain rice

Salt

Juice of 1 lemon

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped

1) Coarsely chop the spinach leaves. Heat the olive oil in a very large pot and sauté the onions until pale gold and softened. Add the dill and sauté for 30 seconds or so then stir in the rice.

2) Now add the spinach. You might feel that it won’t all fit in the pot, but fit as much as you can. Add 2 cups of hot water and press down the spinach until it begins to wilt and it’s all in. Add a good amount of salt, turn the spinach over with a wooden spoon and put the lid on. Bring to a boil then turn through again. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes. If there is still water in the bottom of the pot toward the end of this time, take the lid off and turn up the heat to let it evaporate. Remove from the heat. Sprinkle with the lemon juice and add a few grinds of pepper. Turn through gently and taste for salt. Add the mint. Cover with a clean dish cloth, put the lid back on for 10 minutes to steam. Serve hot or even at room temperature.

FTC disclosure: I did not receive a free copy of this book for review. I borrowed it from the library.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Green Beans to Quell the Inevitable Tomato Revolt

Sooner or later I know I'm going to hear it. “Just don’t make anything with tomatoes, please!”

At this point of the year, tomatoes, which were only five weeks ago the tantalizing taste of summer, have become something I can never quite believe they will turn into to when I’m craving them in the dead of winter. They’re boring. We’ve eaten them with salt, grilled them, tossed them, roasted them, stuffed them, layered them with mozzarella and basil, ratatouilled them, even canned 16 quarts of them! Inevitably, there comes a juncture in every summer where the girls get tomatoed out. And I have to think of something totally different to jump start their tired summer palates.

This year my inspiration to beat the Too-Many-Tomato Blues came in the form of some green beans, a couple of hot peppers and a fantastic bag of paprika that one of my students’ moms brought me from Hungary not too long ago. My original plan involved yogurt* – and I still think that would be an excellent (and let’s face it, lighter) choice. But seeing as my husband used the yogurt to make the chicken tenderloins, mayo became Plan B in my Eastern European green bean effort. I knew I had a winner on my hands when I asked my younger daughter to take a taste, and she went back for 4 green beans while she was supposed to be setting the table. After his taste, my husband actually told me to take a picture and write it down for the blog, which was a pretty big surprise. So on his recommendation, I’m sharing my totally inauthentic Hungarian green bean recipe – and there is not a tomato in sight!

Col’s Green Beans with Paprika Mayo

1 large onion, sliced
2 Hungarian wax peppers, seeded and cut in long slices
1 quart container fresh green beans
1 T grapeseed oil
3 T light mayo
1 t dried dill
1-2 t Hungarian paprika (hot or sweet, according to taste)
1 t sugar
Juice of half lemon
1 t cider vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

1) Put the oil in a large, non-stick skillet on medium heat. Add the onions, peppers and green beans, stirring every few minutes to keep them from getting too dark on one side. After about 15-20 minutes, the onions will be dark, and the beans will be crisp tender.

2) While the beans are cooking, combine the rest of the ingredients together to make a thick sauce. When green beans are done, remove from heat for 1-2 minutes, then toss with paprika mayo, or simply serve the mayo on the side for dipping.

*If I had gone with the yogurt I probably wouldn't have needed all the acidity I did, so I'd taste before adding the lemon juice and vinegar.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking Book Review: Tamar Adler's AN EVERLASTING MEAL

If I told you that I might never make a recipe from a cookbook I’d read faithfully, you’d think it was a flop, wouldn’t you? So if I then told you that this has become one of my favorite books, inspiring and heartwarming, you might think I was a bit loony. But I can make both statements without reservation when discussing Tamar Adler’s outstanding meditation on cooking from the heart and pantry, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for people who love food: cooking it, sharing it, and just thinking about it.

Adler’s book shares the life lessons she has learned while working in the kitchen. The chapter entitled “How to Feel Powerful,” for example, explores the tactical use of strong ingredients like anchovies, capers, olives and cornichons that should always occupy your pantry. Another chapter, “How to Make Peace,” discusses turning a small amount of anything into a meal through the use of rice and polenta. It’s more philosophy than cookbook, really, and thought-provoking in its simplicity.

In the chapter entitled “How to Build a Ship,” Adler discusses how to regain your love of the kitchen when you’re overwhelmed or frustrated. Here’s some great advice:

Let smells in. Let the smell of hot tarmac in the summer remind you of a meal you ate the first time you landed in a hot place, when the ground smelled like it was melting. Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once, squeezing them with lemon as you walked on a boardwalk. Let it reach your deeper interest. When you smell the sea, and remember the basket of hot fried clams, and the sound of skee-balls knocking against each other, let it help you love what food can do, which is to tie this moment to that one. Then something about the wind off the sea will have sttled in your mind, and carried the fried clams and squeeze of lemon with it. p. 142

So why won’t I make a recipe from the book? Because Adler’s recipes are simply meant as a starting point for the readers own imagination, tastes and circumstances. I can’t help feeling that I’d fail Adler miserably by making up one of her recipes as written, as she’s inspired me to do so much more. But she definitely provides some wonderful templates in the book, including a recipe for Ribollita I intend to work from this week.

The cover notes indicate that Adler was an editor at Harper’s Magazine, as well as a cook at Prune and Chez Panisse. This book brings together both her talent with words and her love of food in a really beautiful way. I can’t think of a real cook who wouldn’t enjoy this book, and I’ve already picked it out as a great Christmas gift for at least two people, as I think it would be especially comforting to read in winter.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Col Cooks Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake

When I asked what I could bring to the Halloween Party, my friend Ann said she’d like a pumpkin cheesecake. This is a marbled version, perfect for cheesecake purists* who want to add a touch of the season to their favorite dessert.

Col's Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake

For the crust:
1 cup gingersnap crumbs
¼ cup walnuts, ground
¼ cup melted butter

Mix all together and press into the bottom of a 7-inch springform pan. Cover the outside of the pan with a large piece of aluminum foil (use the extra-wide kind, so you won’t have to worry about water seeping into the cake through the seams).

For the cheesecake filling:
1 ½ cups sour cream
½ cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
16 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons melted butter

Have the ingredients at room temperature. Blend the first four ingredients in a blender for one minute. Then add the cream cheese, a bit at a time. When all the cream cheese is incorporated, pour the melted butter through the top of the blender while running to incorporate. Pour all but ¾ cup into the springform pan.

For the pumpkin filling:
¾ cup cheesecake filling (above)
½ cup pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Whisk all the ingredients together in a large measuring cup. (It will be a bit thin, but that’s alright.) Now for the fun part – pour the filling onto the cheesecake in a decorative pattern.

Place the springform pan in a lasagna pan. With the pan on the oven rack, pour boiling water into the lasagna pan, until it comes about half way up the side of the cake pan. Bake in a 325 F oven for about 50 minutes. Then turn off the oven, place a wooden spoon between the door and the oven to prop it open, and let the cheesecake remain undisturbed for another hour. Then remove from the oven and let cool completely before you refrigerate (at least 3 hours before cutting).

*And by that I mean lovers of real, New York cheesecake, dense and not overly sweet -- the kind I grew up on!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Sweet Potato Pie Pancakes

When Saturday night’s dinner leaves you with a leftover sweet potato, plan on these pancakes for Sunday morning. In fact, if you don’t have sweet potatoes on the menu, it’s worth throwing one in the oven, just to make this breakfast treat!

Col's Sweet Potato Pie Pancakes*
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. ground ginger
¼ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
¼ tsp. cayenne pepper
1 large sweet potato, baked
2 cups coconut milk
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tblsp. agave nectar (brown sugar or honey would work fine)
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Sift dry ingredients, including spices, into a large bowl.
2. Place peeled sweet potato, milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla into a blender. Blend to puree sweet potato.
3. Pour sweet potato mixture into the dry ingredients. Whisk to combine, but don’t over mix.
4. Butter a griddle; pour ¼ cup of mixture onto griddle for each pancake. (The sweet potato has a tendency to burn, so I keep my griddle lower than with other pancakes – about 325 degrees F.) Flip the pancakes when the bubbles around the edges burst and remain open.
5. Serve with maple syrup or whipped cream. Walnuts would be a fine idea too!

*I know I owe you a pay-off shot, but the kids ate the pancakes so quickly I didn't get a shot of them on the plates!


Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Dead-of-Winter Vegan Fruit Muffins

This “no-animal-fat-until-5-PM” experiment I’ve been working on has been really interesting. According to Livestrong calculations, I’ve suddenly increased my fiber intake by 50% – and my cholesterol is about 20% of what it used to be. That’s probably because I’ve been actively seeking out vegan recipes. Eating vegan takes some time though – lots of veggies to chop, extra runs to the natural food store for ingredients I wouldn’t have had in the house before – and I’ve been looking for things I can make ahead.

Oh, and to complicate matters more, it’s winter – not exactly the time for local produce here in PA. Environmental concerns prick at my conscience when gorging on luscious fruit that had to travel farther than Christopher Columbus to reach me! So after reading a million recipes, I’ve come up with one my kids love, totally vegan, using frozen fruit – which is largely domestic, and just as healthy as fresh, according to Mark Bittman! You can be eating these in under an hour!

Col’s Dead-of-Winter Vegan Fruit Muffins
1 cup sliced frozen peaches
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
2 cups all-purpose flour (healthier with 1/2 whole wheat, but not as yummy)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp Kosher salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup canola oil
4 oz unsweetened applesauce
3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp pure almond extract
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Toss fruit with 2 tbsps flour. Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl. Mix together wet ingredient in a large measuring cup. Pour all at once into dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in fruit. Use ice cream scoop to put batter into 18 muffin cups. Top with almonds, if desired. Bake in a 350 degree oven until brown, 25-35 minutes.

Enjoy!


Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Weekend Cooking: Coconut Lentil Soup with Lemongrass

Here's a recipe I've been playing around with for awhile. The inspiration was in Anne Sheasby's wonderful The Ultimate Soup Bible. My family liked her original recipe, but we all agreed it didn't have enough "punch," somehow. Here is our version. The great thing about this recipe is that it goes from 0 to dinner in under an hour. In our house, it cooks while the homework is getting done!

Col’s Coconut Lentil Soup with Lemongrass

2 medium Yellow Onions, chopped
2 tbsp Canola Oil
1 Serrano Pepper or 2 Thai Chili Peppers, seeded and chopped
1 tbsp Ginger, freshly grated
3 Garlic Cloves, sliced
1 tsp Ground Cumin
1 tsp Ground Coriander Seed
1 tsp Paprika
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 cup Red Lentils*
14 oz can of Coconut Milk (regular, not light)
4 cups Vegetable Stock (homemade if possible; water will also work)
1 stick Lemongrass, bruised with a mallet (kids love this job)
3 tblsp Fresh Lime Juice (about 3 lime halves)
4 tblsp Scallions, chopped
1/4 cup Cilantro Leaves, chopped (if you hate cilantro, Thai basil would work)
Salt, to taste

Directions

Heat oil in dutch oven. Add onions, peppers, ginger and garlic to soften, not brown. Add dried spices to warm (1 minute), then add lentils. Add coconut milk, lemongrass and stock. Bring to a boil and cook about 45 minutes, until lentils totally break down. Remove lemongrass. Puree with a stick blender. Put back on heat, add lime juice, half scallions and half cilantro. Adjust seasonings. Salt to taste. Garnish individual bowls with remaining cilantro, scallions and lime slices.

*Red lentils are found in Indian and Middle Eastern groceries, and in well stocked supermarkets. You can't substitute brown lentils in this recipe, as they take far longer to cook.


Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

New Cookbook Romance: Vegan Fire and Spice

Last week I was thinking about cookbook marriage: the cookbook relationships that last, that stand the test of time, that aren’t so sexy but are oh-so-reliable. But this week I’m thinking about the beginning of the relationship: that first flush of cookbook romance.

You know how it is. A new cookbook enters your life. Maybe you sought it out after reading reviews. Maybe you asked for a recipe after a potluck, and received a glowing review. Maybe the cover art grabbed you as you browsed in your favorite bookstore. Suddenly, you’re hooked.

New cookbooks, like new romances, occupy your time. This week I received Robin Robertson’s Vegan Fire and Spice. This is a book I researched, for two reasons. First, although I’m an omnivore, our family is committed to shifting to a more plant-based diet – Mark Bittman calls this approach “flexitarianism.” Second, I’m at the age where the things I eat have health consequences. Many vegetarian cookbooks rely on cheese and dairy products to replace some of the richness of a meat-based diet – I wanted to learn a different approach.

Like a new romance, new cookbooks expand your horizons. Reading them stimulates new ideas, diversifying – and hopefully improving – your cooking style. Last night I accompanied my family’s favorite meatloaf with a vegan potato salad I wouldn’t have thought of putting together, thanks to Fire and Spice. Robertson’s Veracruz Potato salad includes capers, cilantro and Serrano peppers, and is coated in lime vinaigrette. Of course, new romances, cookbook and real, require compromise, and I played around with the vinaigrette portion of the recipe, knowing what my family likes. And the salad was, indeed, a huge success – I’m already looking forward to the leftovers in my lunchbox on Monday!

I have another meal from this cookbook on the menu tonight: Japanese Soba Noodles. It includes ingredients my family loves, and I’m always trying to expand the grain menu beyond rice and wheat. We’ll see how it goes. Right now, Vegan Fire and Spice looks like it has serious work horse potential. But I also know these things take time to figure out! If the book is showing some wear-and-tear in the next few months, I’ll know this is the beginning of a long-term relationship in the kitchen!


Thanks, as always, to Beth Fish Reads for hosting Weekend Cooking! It's open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

Weekend Cooking: Cookbooks I Couldn’t Live Without

I have a LOT of cookbooks, collected throughout the years, on a bookshelf in the dining room. Yesterday, one of my daughter’s friends asked a reasonable question: “Do you use all those?”

The answer was, not surprisingly, “No.”

Some cookbooks were gifts from friends who think of me and think “cookbook.” Some of the spines on those don’t appear to have been opened, although some others have a recipe or two that I go back to over and over again. Stephen Langlois’ Prairie: Cuisine from the Heartland is one of those, a gift from my Midwestern mother-in-law when I joined the family. The book opens automatically to Kansas City Strip Steaks with Herbed Maytag Blue Cheese Sauce. That one recipe secures its place on the shelf forever.

Other cookbooks were souvenirs of trips where the local cuisine had a dish that we wanted to be able to make at home. I bought Jan Robinson’s Ship to Shore after a trip to Barbados. I bought it for the Vanity Punch recipe – it’s a classic rum punch – but found the recipes from ships’ galleys fit my little Manhattan apartment so perfectly that it got a real workout for a while. Now it only comes off the shelf for cocktails and appetizers, though. Time has marched on.

So which are the work horse cookbooks of my current kitchen? Looking at the shelf, they’re easy to locate, battered and splattered and loved to dog-ears:

Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker’s Joy of Cooking. This is the present I give as a shower gift to young couples who are just starting out in the kitchen, because it has a basic recipe for virtually anything you bring home from the market.

Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. That book is out at least 2 or 3 nights a week. I love how every Bittman recipe is a starting point for endless variation on a theme. Having the book in the house helps me face the farmer’s market without fear, knowing that whatever beautiful veggie I bring home, I’ll have a recipe for it!

Anne Sheasby’s The Ultimate Soup Bible. This gorgeous Barnes & Noble title looks like a coffee table book, but has 400 soup recipes from around the world. It’s the kind of book you love having when your kid grabs “Malaysia” for the school’s international food fair. It even has a brilliant section of cold soups for summer. Sadly out of print now, if you find a copy, buy it!

Diane Seed’ Top 100 Pasta Sauces and Andrew Schloss with Ken Bookman’s While the Pasta Cooks share the pasta work horse chores. Seed’s book is a thin but comprehensive look at Italy’s regional pasta sauces – traditional and superb. Schloss’ book is the opposite – he often turns to non-traditional ingredients in his quick-fix dishes. It’s a great way to reduce your meat budget, while still getting the flavor, as in a pasta dish ½ pound of fish easily feeds a family of four.

Finally, Lorna Sass’ Pressure Perfect, recommended by a colleague when I invested in a pressure cooker, has become my go-to weeknight comfort food guide, for things like ribs, or stew or bean dishes. I cannot believe I lived without a pressure cooker for so long. Sass’ comprehensive guide to dried beans in the pressure cooker – which are so much tastier than canned – have earned it a place on my dining room bookshelf.

So how about you? What cookbooks can’t you live without? I’d love to hear about them!


Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

A Must-Have Cookie Map of My Life: Virtual Advent Tour 2010

To say that my mom is not a cook is a bit of an understatement. (I have a cousin who suggests that the EPA asks my mom to file an environmental impact statement before she enters her kitchen, but this is a scurrilous falsehood.) The truth is, my mother can cook, and the few things she makes well are really quite delicious -- she makes her own manicotti crepes, for goodness sake! The thing is, my mother usually doesn't choose to cook. Which is why the two bakers I knew best growing up on Long Island were Stella D'Oro and Entenmann's.

So how did cookie-baking come to mean "Christmas" to me? I can trace it precisely to a day while I was at Georgetown, when I grumpily mentioned to my roommate that it didn't feel like the holidays because I couldn't get Stella D'Oro Pfeffeneusses in Washington, DC. Her stunning response changed my Christmas perspective: "Why don't you just bake some, Col?"

Make Pfeffeneuses? She had to be kidding! But eager to avoid whatever paper was due next, I pulled out the only cookbook I owned, a battered, red and white checked copy of The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, and checked the Index. What do you know? Pfeffeneuses. Better yet, we had almost all the ingredients on hand. Paper avoidance could continue for another hour or so! I decided to give home made Pfeffeneuses a try. Needless to say, our ravenous student friends were happy to scarf the cookies down. And the rest, as they say, has become my own little family history.

Pfeffeneueses were my standard Christmas cookie for years -- it wasn't Christmas until I baked a batch. When I met Lee, I shared my Pfeffeneusse tradition. But he's really not a big fan of the cookie's "warm" spices. So when we got married, I added a plain butter cookie to the pre-Christmas baking. Two must-have cookies.

When our oldest daughter was a toddler, our two cookies seemed fine. But then she went to pre-school and experienced her first cookie exchange. The colors! The variety! The Spritz Christmas trees were the most amazing things she had ever seen. Wouldn't it be fun to try and make them ourselves? A cookie press was purchased, colored sugar as well. Three must-have cookies.

Our second daughter was a toddler when I learned about the Brown Bag Cookie company. An article in a gourmet magazine sent me to the Internet, where I was able to acquire some of Lucy's collectible Christmas molds. One of my fondest memories of my littlest girl is of watching her face when Santa's toy-laden sleigh came out of the oven in perfect cookie form. Four must-have cookies.

You get the idea. As a refugee from New York, I have added some things to the list that I could easily get there, but can't buy here -- rugelach and Linzer tarts taste like "home" to me. Family travels and friends have introduced other cookies to the mix. This year, as the girls made their cookie list, reviewing past creations and new possibilities, they arrived at a new cookie total: 11 must-have cookies! The favorites can't be discarded, but who wouldn't want to try the pink confection laced with crushed up candy canes found by one of the girls? So eleven cookies it is.

At this time of year, our house is filled with the sweet smells of cookie-baking more often than not. And each recipe makes me think of a particular time and place in my very lucky, very blessed life. I hope that my girls will have the chance to share this Christmas cookie tradition with their own daughters some day. But even if they don't come to share my cookie-baking passion, I hope that when they pass the Stella D'Oro Pfeffeneusses in the cookie aisle, they'll think of family, and all the fun we've had in the kitchen together. I can't pass the Entenmann's display without thinking of my own mom!

Wishing you the sweetest of holiday seasons, with many thanks to Marg and Kailana for hosting this wonderful Virtual Advent Tour! I have enjoyed reading so many of the posts from around the world!

Col

Col Cooks: Fig and Almond Bread

Reading The Map of Love made me realize I had no idea what Egyptian food was like. The book richly describes many aspects of life in a haremlek, but neglects to describe the food created in Egyptian kitchens in much detail. Maybe that’s because the author, Ahdaf Soueif, is herself Egyptian, and doesn’t think of the cuisine as exotic. But I kept thinking about being a new bride in a completely different culture, and I wondered what the aromas and flavors of an Egyptian home would be like, which resulted in a few hours of really fascinating Internet research (another thing I really like to do when I ought to be grading). The ingredients were wandering through my head when I realized I needed to make a dish for a party, and I came up with a quick bread that included the flavors of a traditional Egyptian dessert, fig and honey cakes.

Map of Love Fig and Almond Bread

2 c. flour
½ c. sugar
1 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
½ t. cinnamon
4 T. butter
½ c. apple juice
¼ c. honey
½ t. almond extract
1 egg
8 figs (cut into about 8 pieces each)
½ c. toasted slivered almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Mix dry ingredients in a food processor. Cut butter into the flour by pulsing, just until no chunks of butter can be seen. Place mixture in a mixing bowl.
3. Combine juice, honey, almond extract and egg. Stir into dry ingredients with a spatula, just until everything is moist. Fold in the figs and toasted almonds.
4. Pour batter into a 9 x 5 loaf pan. Bake for about an hour, turning the temperature down to 325 at 45 minutes (to keep the top from getting too dark), until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
5. Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes before removing from pan.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.