Black Bean & Butternut Chili

The chili recipe below was adapted from another blogger's recipe, which was adapted from a Cooking Light recipe.  I didn't want to change much, except for omitting the meat and making it in the slow cooker instead of on the stove.  I looked for instructions on how to adapt a recipe for the slow cooker and then modified the directions so that I could just toss it in the slow cooker.  It came out great - I think one of the reasons I really liked it was the red wine, which gave it a really unique flavor compared to other chili recipes I have made.   I stashed a bit of this in the freezer, but I'll probably make it again.  By the way - you can use any winter squash, and I'm sure different types of beans would work well too.  I'd like to try the original version with meat and red kidney beans sometime this winter.  (Note: do NOT cook dried red kidney beans in the slow cooker or you might die.)

Ingredients:

• A splash of olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic 
• 1 small chipotle pepper in adobo, finely minced
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ancho chile pepper 
• 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2/3 cup dry red wine
• 1 (28-ounce) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 (28-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained 
• 2 cups (1/2-inch) cubed peeled butternut squash or other winter squash 
• 1/2 cup water

Method: 

1. Add 2 teaspoons oil to pan. Add onion; sauté 8 minutes until the onions are a deep golden brown. Add tomato paste, garlic, chipotle and spices; sauté 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add wine; bring to a boil, scraping pan. Cook until wine has reduced a little, a few minutes. 

2. Add onion mixture to slow cooker.  Stir in tomatoes, beans, butternut squash, and water.  Cook on high for 4 hours.

Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

Last week I was craving sweets.  I thought about making the Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies, but I didn't feel like doing all that work.  Immediately I remembered Heidi posting a whole wheat cookie recipe that she baked in a skillet.  I looked up the recipe, saw that I had all the ingredients, and got to work.

I used (obviously) my Le Creuset cast iron skillet, which was not as deep as Heidi recommended.  I used less of the dough to compensate, but I'm not exactly sure how much, since I ate bits of it while I worked.  For future reference, though, my cookie did not puff up beyond the edges of the pan or even close, and I think I could have included most, if not all, of the dough when I baked it.  I used a few tablespoons less butter than the recipe called for and I did not notice any difference - it's always nice to shave off a few calories from any recipe.

This was a big hit with my coworkers, and Ken's coworkers loved them too.  My mom hid the leftovers to keep for herself.  Some of the comments that I got were that the whole wheat changed the texture in a good way, making it more dense and satisfying, and that the cookies were not too sweet like many cookies can be.

Rose Bakery's Brownie Cheesecake

Through March and April the featured cookbook for the 101 Cookbooks Library was Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery.  I had my eye on the Brownie Cheesecake from the beginning, but with all that chocolate, butter and sugar, it was definitely a special-occasion thing.  I decided to make it for my family's Easter celebration.

Things were going well at first.  Then as it was baking, I started to get concerned.  I added extra time and it still didn't seem done.  I looked at the recipe again and it said "don't worry if it seems undercooked."  So I took it out, let it cool, and brought it to the party.

When we cut into it, it was like pudding.  Totally raw brownie/cheesecake batter.  A bunch of people ate it anyway, since it tasted delicious.  I took the rest home (about half) and tried to bake it again the next morning.  I think I overcooked it a little, but it definitely baked, and it was pretty tasty.

So what I learned here is that it was delicious, but the baking time given in the recipe is utterly ridiculous.  I would start with at least 40 minutes on the clock, and add extra time until it looks set.  Had I trusted my instincts, it probably would have worked out better.

One last note: another member of the 101 Cookbooks Library (and a former employee of the actual Rose Bakery) recommended doubling the cheesecake part - I definitely want to try this next time.  Since the batter is so thick, I want to try plopping spoonfuls of the brownie batter around the pan, spaced out, so that I can let the cheesecake batter run in between.  Now that I've made the mistakes, it will be so much better next time.

Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't make cookies often.  Even when I want to, it's usually more of a project than I care to take on.  When I do make cookies, I make oatmeal cookies, and I use the recipe from Mark Bittman's book Food Matters, because they're not very sweet but they are very chewy and that's the way I like them.

As I've mentioned, Heidi's new book is coming out, and while I'm waiting so patiently for it, I've been working through some of the recipes in her previous book.  I got a bit of mesquite flour for Christmas with these cookies in mind, so I finally went ahead and made them.

These cookies are amazing.  Really, they are.  They are entirely whole wheat, they have chocolate in them, they have oats in them(!), and I am satisfied by only one or two of them.  Everyone who has tried them so far says they are delicious.

As I said, I don't make cookies very often, and I was easily satisfied by a small number of these, so I scooped most of the dough into balls in freezer bags and froze them to bake another time.  That way, it's easy to do 4 or 8 at a time.  I made them for just us a few times after dinner, for some friends who came for lunch, and to bring to a family gathering, and I still have a few left.  These are not something you want to eat every day, but with this freezer setup, you can eat them ANY day!

Mocha Java Smoothie

Hello!  It's been a while.  We went on vacation to Atlantis in the Bahamas, with a stop at Universal Studios, FL.  It was a lot of fun, but I'm really sick of restaurant food!  There were some amazing things I would love to recreate... notably, the coconut french toast I ate for breakfast every day, a "super high fibre" muesli, and Bobby Flay's blue and yellow corn muffins with flecks of red jalapeno from Mesa Grill.  But by the end of the trip, I was craving homemade food and dying to cook for myself.  So I'm glad to be back home in my own kitchen.  Things will be a bit busier now that school has started, but I've whipped up a few easy things so far; everything else has come from the freezer (for which I am very grateful).  For one lunch I made Greek Salad Pitas with Feta Spread and Turkey from Ellie Krieger's book So Easy.  I don't have a photo or anything, but they were tasty and easy and I'm fairly certain I'll make them again.

The focus of this post, however, is the Mocha Java Smoothie from the same book.  As you can see from the photo, it is creamy and delicious and was a fabulous breakfast.  As the recipe notes, it's your morning coffee AND a filling breakfast.  The banana gives it substance while remaining in the background flavor-wise.  The coffee and chocolate are more prominent, but next time I'd love to do a double shot instead.  Best of all, this is one of those recipes you can prep for the night before.  You can put all the ingredients in the blender, sans frozen banana and ice, and have breakfast in mere minutes.  I love to make smoothies and take them in a to-go cup - I have one with a lid where you can fit a straw perfectly through the drinking hole.  When I'm done I can toss the straw and close the cup, if need be.  My smoothies in the past always focused on the fruit, with little in the way of protein, but I'm really liking Ellie Krieger's smoothies with milk and yogurt.  This one is my favorite so far (and probably will be overall), but I look forward to making up a few of my own as well.

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

I came across the root beer float cupcakes right when I was thinking about what dessert to make for Ken's graduation party.  I initially planned on a cake (I just felt like making a cake, and a party is the only occasion when that is really appropriate) but these cupcakes sounded like something he would like.

I am so glad I did a test run of these.  They were lumpy and weird, did not really taste like root beer, and were just not right.  The recipe says the batter will be "slightly" lumpy but this goes beyond "slightly."  I decided that when I made them for the party I would whisk the flour mixture into the liquid mixture rather than the other way around.  This worked much, much better and obviously fit the definition of "slightly" lumpy.  So I was no longer concerned about the quality of my dessert and was able to bake them and do everything else I needed to do without stressing.

Before we went to the party, we dug little holes in the cupcakes.  The goal is to sit a tiny ball of ice cream in the hole, surround it with whipped cream, and top it with a cherry.  The original picture looks much nicer than mine, because I was not about to make my own whipped cream in 85 degree weather at a party, so I used whipped cream from a can, which made a ginormous mess.  It was also quite difficult to get people to eat these cupcakes when there was so much other food.  Those who did try them said they were delicious although I was told the root beer flavor was not really there.  (I thought the chocolate was overpowering to begin with, but when we looked up root beer ratings on google, the brand I used was frequently described as "watery" and "tasteless."  Oh well, how was I supposed to know?  I don't even like root beer.)  They were certainly fun to make, though, and since people enjoyed them I was happy.

Barley Brownies

I made brownies for a party the other day.  From a box.  I know, I know, way to go against my own principles.  (Even worse was how many I ate...)  When I was putting away my bag of Bob's Red Mill barley flour yesterday, I noticed a recipe on the package.  A brownie recipe.  With barley flour.  Whole grain brownies.  YUM.  (Note: they are still not healthy.)

They came out delicious.  Brownies from a box, although they are probably full of things that I don't even want to know about, have a certain chocolatey deliciousness to them.  These definitely performed as well as a boxed recipe.  I like the dark chocolate fudge brownie mixes, so I'd like to play around with adding a little more chocolate to this recipe - maybe some melted dark chocolate.