Fig and Pistachio Corn Muffins

Om nom nom, figs are delicious, and also in season (according to the shelves of the grocery store; I have little to know farming knowledge, so you should absolutely question the source).  If you are a fellow MAhole, it appears they are on sale at Whole Foods Markets this week, 2 pints for $6, and you should definitely get two packs so you'll have one to snack on when you cook the other, right?  

I don't know where, why, or how this idea came into my head, but I couldn't stop wondering if fig would work in a corn muffin, so I decided to throw caution and $7 of figs to the wind.  My first attempt was pretty solid, though I skimped on added sugars because I wasn't quite sure what the figs would do to overall sweetness.  While eating one, I had a brain wave: would pistachio be a good addition?  Short answer: yes.  Long answer: also yes.  These came out fairly delicious, as well as pretty, if I do say so myself.  They are especially delicious when you put half a jar of almond butter on top, but that's an expensive and messy habit, so stick with a normal sized schmear of almond butter, fig jam, honey, butter, your own idea, or nothing!  

Fig and Pistachio Corn Muffins

My one piece of feedback, courtesy of the one and only PopTart is that they are a little dry (little does he know I ran 1 tbsp short of a cup on of cornmeal and subbed medium grind polenta, mwhahaha).  If you prefer them a little less crumbly, I'd test a 1:1 ratio of cornmeal and flour instead of the .75:1.25 listed here, and use a kefir with a fat percentage that is not nonfat.  Let me know if you do!  

We've dilly dallied long enough.  Here be the recipe for your relatively quick, easy, and healthy muffin delights!

Fig and Pistachio Cornbread Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

Fig and Pistachio Corn Muffins

Pad Thai Salad Dressing (aka Peanut Lime Dressing)

I will confess that this dish came around after a rather weird and intense craving for sprouts. All I can guess is that it was hot, I had been up since 4am for a flight, I wanted pad thai but I didn't want hot pad thai, I wanted peanuts, I had a lot of veggies to eat, and I wanted crunchy things.  Not fussy at all, right? It took trips to not one, not two, but THREE grocery stores (way to fail hard, Central Square), because one store was out of one thing, another store was out of the other, and you get the idea.  

The only recipe I've included here is for the dressing, mostly because I hope that I live in a world where people old enough to wield kitchen knives can make their own decisions about what to put into their own salads, even if we can agree on nothing else.  I chose to test using bean sprouts in lieu of noodles, but you can easily go big and use them instead, but I'd recommend chilled regardless.  I also threw some shredded radishes and carrots, tomatoes, red peppers, baked tofu (or should I say overbaked tofu...turns out letting it cleverly cool in the oven is not actually clever), baby spinach and kale, avocado, and love.  That last one is key, you guys.  I suspect this would also taste great with napa cabbage, and probably anything else you want to coat with this dressing, which is the real winner, aside from you when you make and eat this.  For reference, depending on your dressing amount preference, I'd say this makes enough for 4-6 dinner-sized salads; it stores well, but you may need to thin it with H2O!  Invite a friend over, pair this with your favorite summer beverage, mischief managed.

Pad Thai (Peanut Lime) Salad Dressing

Dressing for 4-6 dinner-sized salads

Pad Thai Salad Dressing (Peanut Lime Dressing)/Clean Plate Club

Coconut Cake

Clue Years Eve 2016

I’m going to humble brag here for a minute, so bear with. I have some truly wonderful amigos, amigos. For many years, some of us have spent New Years Eve together. It’s been a wonderful way to catch up, make ridiculous amounts of delicious food and drink, hang out, and make some great resolutions. What used to be my least favorite holiday became my favorite holiday and a great reunion of great people and kids. This year, we did something I recommend you all do at some point: a live action Clue game, in costume, with themed dishes. It was highly amusing, and highly delicious. I was assigned the role of Mrs. White and a dessert dish, and immediately realized this would be an excellent excuse to attempt to make the coconut cake that had been haunting me from the cover of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake on my bookshelf for months.

I should note that I am NOT what one would call a confident or excited cake baker. If you peruse my recipes, you could probably conclude that I’m more of one-pot artist; I like throwing things into one pot, pan or bowl, and then I like to eat them. No fuss, no frills, just tasty deliciousness asap. I can bake the cake and make the frosting...but putting those two together in any sort of attractive form? HA. That’s a cute idea. To say that I had a crisis of confidence would be apt, but said truly wonderful amigas (Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, and Mrs. Scarlet) are all much more confident cake bakers and walked me through the terrifying process of frosting a cake. They even introduced me to the concept of a crumb coat. IT WORKS. YOU GUYS. I’m a changed woman, to the point that I’m planning on making a double decker carrot cake this weekend for Easter. Because I can! Incidentally, if you’re looking for a cake you can easily decorate like a bunny for Easter, which coincidentally also tastes great, this is probably the cake for you, amigos. It serves a crowd, and tastes great the next morning. Breakfast of champions!

Mrs. White's Coconut Cake for Clue Years Eve

Hermits: Two Ways

Chances are if you live outside of the northeast corner of the United States, you may never have experienced the singular delight that is the hermit.  What's that you say?  A hermit?  You mean dudes who live in the woods alone? Oh no, all two of you dear readers.  Not only do I suspect those dudes may not be delightful, but I also frown on cannibalism.  I'm talking about the second definition of hermit in the Merriam Webster Dictionary, and the first definition of favorite cookie in my heart:

Merriam Webster

I double dog dare you to use beadsman in a sentence.  I mean, what's not to love about a spiced molasses cookie (unless you like neither spice nor molasses, in which case: look away, you're not about to like what's about to happen below).  

Hermits

I digress though, which is a shame because I could talk for days about how much I've loved hermits since childhood (New England grocery stores do a pretty good one, for the record) and how I decided that I needed to learn how to make my own, motivated in part by being trapped inside during the Big Snow from basically January to March of 2015.  There was much research that happened; I consulted the Internet via the Googles and Pinterest, my cookbook cache (Joy of Cooking, New Best Recipe) and cobbled together something that I determined on my first try would be my only try going forward...until just this weekend when I got it into my head that adding candied ginger in lieu of raisins would be either a terrible idea or a highly delicious idea.  

Spoiler alert: it's a highly delicious idea.  Because it is the time of year when we survive on a diet comprised primarily of sugar, tidings and yule, washed down with nog, and also giving, I give to you, all two readers, the best ever hermit recipe (but yeah...I'm a librarian who teaches your kids to think good, so consider the source bias, duh), times two! 

Mushroom Barley Soup

It's almost the season that shall not be named...but for now, we get to enjoy the best parts of fall: cool nights and mornings, excuses to wear sweaters and cute boots, eat warm or warming things, and drink wine.  This recipe allows all three of the last three things to happen simultaneously, weather and attire is up to you though!

Also - you can probably make this vegetarian, but may need to do some body building in the soup to replace it...maybe a Tbsp tomato paste or miso? Maybe both?

Mushroom Barley Soup

Mushroom Barley Soup

Adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook and The New Best Recipe

Serves 4-6

Mushroom Barley Soup

Pollo Viejo (Ropa Vieja w/Chicken)

Sometimes, I really like Cuban food.  Scratch the sometimes, and sub in the word always, come to think. It is salty, and savory, and oh-so-soul warming.  And I was in the mood to warm my soul via my belly, and decided to do a little experimenting.  Ropa vieja, you see, is usually made with beef.    I, however, was craving chicken and also olives, which are fairly common ingredients in a lot of Latin cooking (note: TexMex? Not authentic.  Sorry, team). Andsothen...you know what happened if you took middle school Spanish and/or live in the Americas, because this one is called Pollo Viejo.  

I made this recipe early in the summer, and am revisiting it now that there is a certain chill in the air and that I want to be hovering over a stove again!  It makes a lot.  A lot a lot.  Invite your entire village a lot. And as with most stewy bean or meat dishes, I think it tastes better on day two. I served it with some rice on the side, and will probably up the olives when I make it again.  The only thing missing was a mojito or glass of sangria, but I think you can fix that one to taste, right?  

Pollo Viejo (Ropa Vieja w/Chicken)

Adapted from: Quick and Dirty Kitchen

Serves a village raising a child (just one)

Pollo Vieja (Ropa Vieja w/chicken)

Ingredients

Warm Dijon and Balsamic Lentil Salad with Soft Eggs

It is the first day of fall.  Rejoice! Even though fall is probably my favoritest season, I'm usually a bit more put out by the end of summer, but I had an admittedly odd one and am very much looking forward to this fall and seasonal changes and getting back to running around outside to enjoy the crisp air!  Also, Thanksgiving.  But I'm getting ahead of myself with that.  September is a great time of year because there is still so much wonderful, fresh, delicious summery produce, but there is a little chill to the air that makes me want to eat warming foods again.  

I have a great recipe for a lentil farro salad I have yet to post, but that's a really summery meal, what with cukes and cherry tomatoes and basil and like...served chilled and all.  It's not what I want on a night when you can feel the changing seasons and suddenly find yourself thinking about warm cider donuts, crisp apples, knee high brown boots, and drapey sweaters instead of cranking up the AC for the first time in months. I had all the ingredients for my cold lentil farro dish, but just wasn't in the mood, and decided to switch it up and go for a warm one, with a little balsamic and a nice soft egg.  It uses a lot of fresh tomatoes, zucchini, some dijon, and a lot of patience not to sample it all before you serve it.  I think it's a good way to ease yourself from one season to the next!

Warm Dijon and Balsamic Lentil Salad with Soft Eggs

Serves 4-6

Warm Dijon and Balsamic Lentil Salad

Green Beans ala Carter

You be aware that President Jimmy Carter, he of the peanut farming and Iran hostage crisis, and a heck of a lot of good deeds done around the world (there's that small honor of a Nobel Peace prize or something), announced just a few days ago that he has cancer.  

Source: ushistory.org

I'm saddened to hear that and hope he has good people around him and that recovery is in the cards so he can keep doing said good deed around the world. Who can't get behind a guy who belongs to a gang of geriatrics called the Elders? Those punks push world peace, you guys!  

I made this green bean dish a few weeks ago for my Presidential themed potluck, where I also made Michelle Obama's Minty Spring Pea Salad. Green beans, it turns out, were noted in a few places as one of Carter's favorite foods. Factoring in the peanut farming was easy enough, and voila! Green beans ala Carter.

Green Beans ala Carter

Minty Spring Pea Salad

Friends, countrymen, Russian spambots, at New Years some lovely friends and I made a resolution to do a potluck once a month.  We've only left off June, and that's because it proved to be just too crazy, schedule-wise, but universe, note that we did talk about it!  I hosted the July potluck on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year, a polar opposite from way back in the never-ending winter that wasn't exactly polar at 90 degrees with 90% humidity.  After a thoroughly scientific poll of potluck resolution members, I settled on a Presidential theme for this potluck - ie. bring a dish that was a favorite of a president or inspired by a president.  

Presidential potluck: Green Beans ala Jimmy Carter, Washington's Cherry Pie,
Michelle Obama's Minty Spring Pea Salad, best American beer for the chef

Naturally, I chose Michelle Obama, the president of my heart.  I also chose Carter (green beans, peanuts) and Washington (cherry pie) but Ima share those later, hokay?  There was a plethora of pie, beer, and food, and we had a capitol time sweating together in my backyard and tiny living room (mwaha) and discussing our sources for US Presidential information (Drunk History is totally valid source).  Pro-tip: strong chance that while researching presidential food choices you will go down many rabbit holes and come to an hour to three later.  There are so many articles, books, posts, recipes, etc.  In short, it was highly tasty and fun. I'm only disappointed that nobody brought squirrel stew.  

Minty Pea Salad

Adapted from Michelle Obama’s Minty Spring Pea Salad

Serves 6-8

Minted Spring Pea 

Ingredients

4 cups fresh or frozen peas, defrosted

1 large shallot, sliced thin (some diced finely)

zest and juice of a lemon plus 1-2 tablespoons more

¼ c olive oil

¾ cup finely chopped mint

salt and pepper

Directions

1. Cook peas until just done, and put in an ice bath; leave to cool.
2. Puree ½ c peas with lemon juice and zest of one lemon and olive oil until smooth.
3. Toss peas, mint, shallot, onion, and leek in a bowl and pour puree over.
4. Season to taste with extra lemon juice and salt and pepper.  

Notes:

• The original recipe calls for a small leek and a small shallot.  I only had a large shallot, and I thought it turned out okay!  I suspect using a small white onion may yield similar results if you’re in a pinch.
• The original recipe also calls for only 2 ½ cups of peas. I had a crowd to feed, and that seemed a little bit like not enough to feed the predicted 6-8, so I initially upped the peas to 4 cups, and eventually added 1.5 cups more when it still didn’t look like a lot, which is not reflected in the recipe above.  I just upped the additional lemon at the end, and it was fine!  

Coconut Lime Brown Rice and Things

 For a while a few weeks ago, I was inexplicably craving brown rice - inexplicable because I’ve never really been a fan of rice, except when it is lovingly embracing or being embraced by pieces of raw fish, which I recognize me makes me a diagnosable weirdo, but also is a vote for sushi, so we're calling it a draw.  This lead to an impulse purchase of a big box of rice, which then led me to be like: “Riiiight.  Now I have a giant box of rice...what now.”  It was also hot, which leads me to want things like fruit and fresh veggies and cold salads.  I had also been attempting to get rid of a bag of dried unsweeted coconut for what felt like the entire gestation period of an elephant, and didn’t want to walk to the grocery store to get other stuff.  What resulted was a grab bag of “what’s in the house that I can use?”  Hence, I messed around, and came up with this delicious mess.  It’s a great quick meal and should keep for about 3 days in the fridge!  You could probably easily also eat it hot...but it’s summer.  Make this, put some super super dry rose in the freezer until it gets a little slush-y, and voila: summer dinner.

Coconut Lime Brown Rice & Things

Makes roughly 3-4 servings

Coconut Lime Brown Rice and Things

Recipe: Mulligatawny Soup

Mulligatawny Soup

This is the soup I tried to make unsuccessfully for years.  I don't know what went wrong or why I wouldn't just admit what I was craving when I wanted warming spices, vegetables, tender raisins, coconut hints, and lentils was just straight up mulligatawny, but I went off course a few times before sorting myself out enough to make a straight mulligatawny that was delicious, warming, full to bursting of flavor, and just plain self high-five worthy.  It was so tasty that when my coworker was out under the weather, I knew it was just the thing to bring in the dead of four feet of Boston winter to warm her up.  


But before I do tell you about the recipe, let me tell you a little story.  

All zero of you reading this may recall that I spent roughly five years working to realize a one year New Years resolution.  You know, that time I made 52 recipes in my Le Creuset.  Well, roughly three days after posting my reflections on the completion of said resolution, the.worst.thing.ever.happened.

My Le Creuset broke.

Key Lime Flan

Key Lime Flan ingredients

Guess what?  It's snowing again in Boston!  But you probably guessed that, as it's just so passe at this point.  As a region, we've given up on school, public transit, non-creaky backs, and sunshine.  It's working out for us about as well as you'd predict (though if you were the weatherman, you'd add a foot more snow to your prediction to get it right).  Anyways, I think it's high time you think of warm places, and simultaneously fatten up, because cold plus shoveling?  It's an appetite stimulant, that's for sure.  Ergo, I present you with a recipe from my mother that I have tweaked (and therefore RUINED).  

My momster grew up in Miami and made flan for grownup parties for years, as did her Mexican mother before her.  As a kid, it hugely grossed me out.  Too sweet, too putty colored, and too much but not enough jiggling and squish.   Recently, she made it again, and I found myself surprised that I enjoyed it.  Dead old person tastebuds or something? For an even more recent potuck, I decided to see if I could hybridize it with another Miami fav: key lime pie.  I love everything about key lime pie, except the crust.  Something about the repurposed graham and butter...meh, it just ain't my jam!  But the filling and flan are almost the same recipe, so I thought it was worth a try.  My mother's helpful feedback when I requested the recipe involved sending me six different recipes and telling me it wouldn't work, before sending me the real recipe, two weeks later, but still in the nick of time!  It also included the guidance that spilling hot caramel on oneself was inadvisable. Her recipe didn't provide ounce measurements for the cans, so I've got with the most standard seeming size.    What resulted had great flavor - but my flan flipping technique leave a bit of room for improvement...
Enjoy!

Key Lime Flan

Adapted from my mother’s recipe for regular flan (who said “That’ll never work!”)

Key Lime Flan

Ingredients

1 can evaporated milk (14 oz)

1 can condensed milk (12 oz)

½ cup key lime juice

4 eggs

¾ cup sugar (granulated or turbinado)

zest of 1-2 limes

hot water

Graham crackers, whole or crushed as a garnish

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.  
2. In a saucepan over low, caramelize sugar.  Quickly zest in half to a whole lime, and carefully pour into your mold.  Let cool entirely.  
3. Whisk remaining ingredients, including more zest, into a large bowl very well (3-4 minutes).  Pour into the mold over the caramel.
4. Place the mold into a larger dish, and pour in a bath of hot water, leaving plenty of room (roughly an inch) below the lip of your mold.  
5. Carefully place the container into the oven and cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the flan sets.
6. Carefully remove from the water bath and let rest at least two hours on a wire rack.  Chill and serve - this means summon your courage, run a sharp knife around the edges of the flan, and flip with great confidence onto a serving platter.  You may need to get a little violent…

Flan, taking a bath in the oven

Key Lime Flan

Notes:
- This made considerably more than I thought.  Make sure your dish is big enough, but it does taste good served scooped with a spoon.
-  Ditto to this in terms of making sure there is a bit of room remaining in the dish - it'll be a million times less likely to splash, get splashed into, and get out of the water bath.
- Not sure if greasing the pan would make a difference in terms of getting this out cleaning...but at least use a sharp knife instead of a regular dinner one!  

Stracotto with Porcini: Recipe 1!

Stracotto with Porcini over
creamy polenta

With not too much further ado (after all, you’ve waited five years for this, all my zero long-time readers), here is the last recipe!  For context, I ate this at an Italian wine tasting at a slice of heaven, Dave’s Fresh Pasta.  My good friend and I liked it so much (despite already eating five plates of food…), that I wrote them to request the recipe a few days later.  They replied and told me they’d just used Giada’s recipe, and sent me the link.  

This recipe is easy, smells great while cooking, and could feed the entire army of...Vatican City?  According to the Internet, it’s a country, so I’m stickin’ with it!  Clearly this called for a crowd, so I sent out a call for meat eaters, and Hannah, Emily, Zoe and Peter turned up hungry.  I fed them this over some creamy polenta (ie. milk instead of water and some parmesan and spices stirred in) and made sure they left feeling disgustingly full and a little tipsy after serving them the Smitten Kitchen’s delicious recipe for Red Wine Chocolate Cake (I'll share that recipe later, but here is the link).

Good friends = good eating times

Despite me having a celebratory Old Fashioned that caused me to forget to add salt and pepper at the end, they all claimed to really like it (but don’t forget to season it; it does enhance the flavor, duh). And, despite five hungry grown adults (although Emily and I might only count as one standing on each others shoulders), I had at least five servings left over.  I can attest to this, like chili, deepening in flavor over time, especially when you say, add some more wine when you reheat it…All in all, it was a great dinner, with great company, and a delicious way to cap of my 52 Le Creuset Project!  I’ll have some thoughts on that for you tomorrow, along with my top 10 list from the project.  

Stracotto with Porcini

Serves 8-10

Recipe adapted from Giada/Food Network

Stracotto with Porcini and Polenta

Ingredients

1 5lb boneless chuck roast

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic, crushed or minced

1.5 cups red wine

1.5 cups beef broth (low sodium)

½ oz dried porcini mushrooms (rehydrated and rinsed)

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, destemmed and chopped

6-8 sprigs of fresh thyme, destemmed

salt & pepper

Sweet Potato Brownies (bonus recipe)

I feel compelled to share a culinary experiment that became a quickly disappearing gastronomic success, both because it really surprised me that it worked structurally and that it actually was tasty.  I came across a Pinterest pin for this recipe for Sweet Potato Brownies, and was instantly all "What the cornbread stuffing?! How in the Charles Dickens does that even work? You must be outside your mind if you think brownies not made with any flours taste like brownies, Internet."

Naturally, I had to try.  Naturally, I tweaked it a bit.  Naturally, I added a little spice.  Unnaturally, it worked.  It really, seriously worked.  It did not survive the weekend, let alone for much longer than it took to take this truly crappy picture.  Luckily, they're made with sweet potatoes, so I only felt 15% bad about having some for breakfast, and 10% of that was just feeling guilty because I felt like I should feel guilty for having a brownie for breakfast. The best way to describe this is as a warming, soft, slightly gooey, sweet way denser souffle-like marvel without being cloyingly sweet delicious delight.  It's probably not for those weirdos who like cakey brownies or the corner, but it is for those of use who fight to get the gushiest, gooiest piece, smack dab in the middle.  The best part?  I suspect you can totally tweak the flavor profile by using different nut butters and stir-ins, as I've noted where I should.  In the notes.

Good luck trying to share these, brownie aficionados.

Sweet Potato Brownies

Serves one: you (or a few friends if you can bear to share)

Sweet Potato Brownies 

Red Wine and Thyme Tomato Jam (Recipe 3)

Red Wine and Thyme Tomato Jam

Yes, I know how long it has been since I last posted anything substantive. Yes. And yet, I refuse to feel bad, because a) summer, b) I've been enjoying actually reading books to read them instead of reading them to review them, and c) I've excitingly taken a new job as a library director and, duh, had to learn to do my job. For all other quibbles, I refer you to point the first, otherwise known as a. It was summer, it has been hot, and who really wants to hover over a pot, even a pretty one like my bluetiful Le Creuset?

That said, it has been end of summery, which to me always means the best tomatoes of the year, in quantities you can barely fathom. In fact, when one of my girlfriends went a-honeymooning after her marvelous wedding, she bequeathed me her bountiful, juicy, delicious weekly share of tomatoes from her farmshare. Most survived to see the pot; several were devoured directly on the spot. I've been a fan of tomato jam since I first travelled to the Carolina's and tried it at Asheville's now defunct Tomato Jam cafe. The South is onto something, Northern friends. Tomato jam is where it's at!

Red Wine & Thyme Tomato Jam

(adapted from The Boston Globe Magazine)

Makes roughly 28 oz.

3 lb ripe tomatoes, cores removed and chopped

¾ c + 1tbsp turbinado sugar

5 Tbsp red wine vinegar

3 medium shallots, minced

1.5 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme

1 cup red wine

¼ tsp salt

1 Tbsp olive oil

1) In a food processor, pulse tomatoes, ¾ c sugar and vinegar until it is finely chopped.

2) In a large Le Crueset/Dutch oven, or huge and deep pan, warm olive oil over medium high and saute shallots, thyme and salt for roughly three minutes until they are soft.  

3) Add the 1 Tbsp sugar to the pot and saute another minute or two over medium until incorporated.

4) Add the wine and bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally to prevent burning/sticking to the bottom of the pot and cook down until most of the liquid has evaporated and a rougher liquidy glaze starts forming, roughly 5-7 minutes.

5) Add the tomato mixture, stir, bring to a simmer, and cook for about an hour until the volume of liquid has reduced dramatically and mostly cooked off.  

6)  Serve, or cool and save!

Notes:

- A lot of the adaptation of this recipe was born of necessity; ie.  I had a LOT of tomatoes, turbinado sugar, and a huge bunch of thyme...so upped the other ingredients too.  The gist of the idea comes from the Globe’s recipe, though I found their suggested cooktime woefully off, and consulted the Down Home Kitchen cookbook for a much more accurate cooktime 1-1 ½ hours!

- I worked in batches because my food processor is too tiny to accomodate the masses of tomatoes I used.  Just pour into a large bowl and stir when you’re done with all!

- Other versions of this include spices like ginger, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, lemon, etc.  I decided to stick with the basics here, but may experiment with those later!

- I chopped everything very finely, and ran it through a food processor.  If you prefer a much rougher version of this, don’t do that!

- If you can can, can.  If you, like me, are not so proficient, this should keep for about two weeks in the fridge or you can freeze it.  

- This obviously goes well with biscuits.  But some of us don’t readily have access to good biscuits (#notfromthesouth)...so I’ve tried it on toast, English muffins, as a spread in sandwiches, and on chicken so far.  All good!