Macaroon Tart

The Macaroon Tart from Super Natural Every Day is a simple sweet treat that will please anyone who loves coconut.  A buttery tart base packed with coconut flakes is topped with a layer of blackberries and snowy macaroon tufts that turn a delicious golden brown when baked.  Chopped pistachios provide a beautiful color contrast to the purple blackberries.

I made this for my grandma's birthday and then again for Mother's Day, and it was a huge hit both times.  The first time, I lazily opted not to halve the blackberries, instead scattering them over the tart.  This was a mistake because they should have been in a layer covering the entire tart base, to ensure that every bite contained some blackberry goodness.  I fixed this the second time around and I feel that it was worth the extra step.  Even with the tedious task of halving tons of tiny berries, this is still quite a quick dessert.  A few extra notes: the pistachios don't shine here in terms of flavor, but are visually crucial to the dish, and in place of a tart pan I used a medium bar pan (stoneware).  I may try coconut oil in place of the butter next time - it seems like an appropriate substitution.

Curried Coconut Tomato Soup

It's been a while... a looong while!  (Good thing I keep this blog for myself, no followers to disappoint!)  Since my last post, I finished my internship, went to Italy, was sick for a couple days, then started a new job.  It's been a rough couple of weeks.  As I am starting to settle in to my new life, I'm cooking more and I'm ready to start posting again.  I've been keeping up with the 101 Cookbooks library, so I have my notes from there which I'll share with their corresponding photos over the next few weeks or so.  Soon our CSA will start up again and I'll be trying to keep up with that too!  There has been some local produce offered at Whole Foods for the last week or two, and since it is conveniently located like 30 seconds from my new job (yay!) I have been stopping in there quite a bit and am ready to really get back in the kitchen.

When I got back from Italy, I was very sick of a few things - namely, pasta and meat.  Wanting to finish out the month strong with the featured author on the 101 Cookbooks Library, I whipped out my home-canned tomatoes from last fall and my copy of Cook This Now and before long, we had this delicious Curried Coconut Tomato Soup - the perfect comfort food to welcome me home, with an exotic twist to remind me of all the places I have yet to see.

Fortunately for me, I had all the ingredients I needed to make this soup, and I was pleasantly surprised at how fast it came together.  Saute some onion in coconut oil (the recipe calls for butter, but I wanted to add coconut at every level of the dish), then it's just tomatoes (home-canned) and some spices.  I opted for a red curry powder, which I thought gave it an interesting flavor.  The soup was good both with and without coconut milk added in, but chopped cilantro and toasted coconut chips were a must.  Some leftover cooked brown rice made it a more substantial meal.  It came together quickly enough for a weeknight and since all the ingredients are usually in my pantry, I will probably be making this again.

A pictureless summary

While I'm waiting for my official photographer to send me our Thanksgiving photos, I thought I'd share some notes on recipes that I haven't gotten around to posting about.  I've got a few posts started for recipes that I never photographed - since the main point of my blog is to post about the food I make and to avoid making the same mistakes twice, I'm going to share them quickly all at once, instead of dedicating a separate post to each.  Tune in later this weekend for our Thanksgiving post and for some Italy pictures!


Coconut Granola Bars
The coconut granola bars, from NY Times Recipes for Health, were a tasty treat on our vacation.  We snacked on them at the airport and on the plane, crumbled some into yogurt at the continental breakfast, and left a few for Deanna's roommates too.  They were super easy and very crunchy.  If you like those Nature Valley crunchy oats and honey granola bars, you'll like these, and you'll be eating a home-cooked, less-processed (and therefore BETTER) version of them.

Napa Cabbage Salad with Peanuts and Cilantro

I found the recipe for this salad in Deborah Madison's book, Local Flavors.   I made a number of changes to this based on what I had on hand. (It was good, but I thought it would be even better as written.) I didn't have any lettuce, so I used entirely cabbage, and a bit more than called for, a change I think was great! I omitted the scallions because I didn't have any, so I added in a shallot with the dressing. I made the dressing in the blender, and I also added the cilantro to the dressing instead of the salad. I skipped the basil and mint because I didn't have any. Next time I would add extra carrots too!

Fire-Roasted Tomato Stew with Eggplant, Bulgur, and Chickpeas
This one comes from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals.  It's been a while since I made it (eggplant season), but it was good.  I stuck a bit in the freezer for lunches.  The chickpeas are an optional addition, but I think it's always better to toss in some vegetable-based protein when you have the opportunity.  I used bulgur instead of farro, because it's cheaper and I wasn't sure how this would turn out, and also because I thought it would go better with the other flavors.  I was a fan of the golden raisins - if I remember correctly the recipe called for regular dark raisins, but I prefer the golden ones, and I thought they gave the stew an interesting dimension of flavor.

Slow-Cooker Black Bean Mushroom Chili
I made this chili recipe in the slow cooker I got for my birthday.  My old slow cooker is very temperamental and the temperatures seem to be off (thanks to the internet, I've found that this is a very common complaint with that particular brand and model).  My new one lets you set the time by the half hour, and you can jump straight to warm if that's what you want.  This chili recipe uses dried beans, which cooked very well in the 8 hours in the slow cooker.  One complaint is the fresh tomatillos I used - I don't think we scrubbed them well enough and their sticky coating lent a slightly bitter taste to the chili.  The mushrooms gave it a nice meaty element and the spices were a little unusual and interesting.  I would try this one again, maybe with the tomatillos I canned several weeks ago in place of fresh ones.

Coconut Oatmeal

I made up this Coconut Oatmeal to use up 1/2 can of coconut milk left over from the curry I made the other day.  (Serves 2-4.)

1 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup vanilla soymilk (sweetened)
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups minus 3 Tbsp oatmeal*
3 Tbsp wheat germ
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1. Heat the coconut milk and soymilk in a medium saucepan over medium heat until the edges start to rise up and hiss.
2. Add the pinch of salt, then stir in the oatmeal and wheat germ.
3. Toast the shredded coconut, keeping an eye on it.
4. When the oatmeal is cooked to the consistency you like, turn off the heat.  Mix in most of the toasted shredded coconut, reserving a bunch to sprinkle on top.
5. Put the oatmeal into bowls and top with the rest of the toasted shredded coconut.  Enjoy!

*Rather than removing 3 Tbsp of oats, I just put 3 Tbsp of wheat germ into the measuring cup before I fill it with oats.

Indian Spiced Cucumber Salad

I made this cucumber salad to use up some of the cucumbers in the fridge.  It consists of diced cucumbers, lemon juice, two diced serrano chiles, peanuts and large-flake coconut, cumin and mustard seeds, and a handful of cilantro thrown in at the end.  As I was making it I couldn't help but doubt myself.  I really had no idea what it would taste like and it was not a combination of things I would have ever thought to try.  I didn't think it could possibly taste good.  But it did.  We ate it with some store-bought whole wheat naan bread.  It would be a great side salad to surprise people with at a picnic.

I'm not ready to do my CSA post for this week yet so I figured I would post this instead and work on that tomorrow.  Cheers!

Spiced Coconut Spinach

It's time to start eating more vegetables.  Spinach is in season - so is asparagus - so you can start with this Spiced Coconut Spinach recipe.  You can find the recipe on 101 Cookbooks.  It really is as delicious as it sounds.  We only had half the amount of spinach called for, so we nearly doubled the asparagus.  I didn't chop the spinach (truthfully, I was only taking quick glances at the recipe as I went, so I didn't even know that was a step), I omitted the shallot (used 2 cloves of garlic instead) because they were literally rotting in the basket at the store, and everything worked out just fine.  In fact, I just bought some more spinach and asparagus - we're going to make this again and again.

Orange, Coconut and Currant "Grain-ola"

I've been meaning to make granola lately.  I wanted to make some to give as a holiday gift, but finals and my infinite illness cancelled those plans.  Since I'm going on vacation next week and need to bring some snacks, I decided to do a test run of a new (to me) granola recipe from Super Natural Cooking.

The recipe gives you a few options, so for this (half) batch I went with walnuts and currants.  It came out very tasty.  I've eaten some plain and also with plain yogurt.  I look forward to trying other variations as well, particularly what's suggested in the recipe (I didn't have some of the suggested ingredients).  I like that the recipe uses coconut oil because I have a lot of that and it's set to expire next month.  It seems like it would travel well, too.  I thought it was a little strange roasting dried fruit, but it worked out fine.  You can do that or add it in after.  A perfect granola recipe requires many tries to find, so I'll be experimenting in the near future.

Coconut Cookies

Every year, my mom has a cookie exchange, and I make several dozen cookies to trade with a group of people.  Last year I made Carrot Oatmeal Cookies full of coconut.  This year, after much deliberation and a somewhat last-minute decision, I settled on the Coconut Cookies from Good to the Grain.

Let me tell you - I do not want to see another cookie recipe for quite some time after this ordeal.  My head is spinning.  This recipe has you do things in such a strange way.  If you know a bit about the ingredients you're working with, it will probably make sense to you (as it did to me after an a-ha moment) but it makes for quite a difficult experience.  You basically cream sugar and eggs together, add the dry ingredients, add room-temperature butter (here's where it starts to get difficult - I could hear my poor little mixer begging me to stop torturing it), THEN you add coconut milk.  In the recipe's defense, I was making double batches, but go over to your mixer, fill it 2/3 of the way with dough, then add 2 1/2 cups of liquid, and see where it goes.  Not into the dough, that's for sure.  I won't be surprised to find spots of coconut milk in some unusual places.  That being said, I can understand why this is done this way.  Coconut flour is very absorbent and it sucks in liquid fairly gradually.  I'm sure the internet could explain it to you better.

Naturally, when you are making eight batches of an unusual cookie recipe (in my case, four double batches), something is bound to go wrong.  With the unusual order of adding ingredients, I completely forgot the butter for my second batch.  I went all the way through to the coconut milk before I realized it.  The only thing I didn't waste was two cups of shredded coconut.  So I tried to put the butter in anyway.  Eventually I accepted that it was not salvageable and now I've got several dollars sitting in the bottom of my garbage can.  Wonderful.

I was up very late making dough.  It was my plan to scoop the balls of dough, roll them in coconut, and put them in the fridge that way to bake this afternoon, but when I rolled one out, it just kind of melted everywhere, so I decided to just put the dough straight in the fridge and turn it into cookies today instead.  This worked out well because the dough was firm to start with and got softer as I worked through the container, but not quite as soft as it had been when it was first made.  I made one cookie sheet with a 3 tablespoon scoop, as the directions told me to, but I panicked and switched to a 2 tablespoon scoop so that I wouldn't be short on the number of cookies.  Unsurprisingly, this also shortened the baking time (an even 16 minutes worked perfectly) so this process took a very long but surprisingly quick 3 hours.

I was skeptical about the expensive ingredients and the amount of work I was doing for these ridiculous cookies.  But when that first batch came out of the oven (the bigger ones, obviously they couldn't be used for the exchange and therefore absolutely had to be eaten immediately) they were pillowy soft inside, with a crisp coconut-flaked outside.

I now had five dinner plates and three cooling racks covered in stacks of coconut cookies.  My plan for wrapping them up was to use a fold-over plastic sandwich bag (got those by accident and need to use them up) placed inside a paper bag with the top folded down, holepunched, and tied with a ribbon.  I ended up putting them in fold-over plastic sandwich bags and put those inside paper bags.  11 cookies in each.  I folded them over and tied a ribbon vertically and called it a day.  (I don't even own a holepuncher!)  By that point it was time to leave so I was really cutting it close!  But I made it, with all my cookies.  And people seemed to like them.  :)

Coconut Macaroon Pancakes

I don't get much natural light in here - all our windows are on one side of the building and it's a side that never faces the sun - but I think I've managed to get good shots overall.  I think this lead photo may be my best shot so far.

I was looking for a recipe that would use the remainder of the coconut milk that I had opened for the roasted banana bread, but I wasn't able to find anything that would use ALL of it.  So, I adjusted a recipe for Coconut Macaroon Pancakes to use the amount I had left.  I used 1/2 cup or 4 ounces of coconut milk for the banana bread, so I had 10 ounces of coconut milk left.  I used a ratio to change the amounts in the recipe to be appropriate for the amount of liquid I had.  I had to round in some places but tried to stay as close as possible to the original ratios without adding any insanely precise measurements.

Coconut Macaroon Pancakes
10 ounces of coconut milk
1.5 Tbsp agave nectar (or honey)
2 Tbsp plus 2 tsp whole wheat pastry flour (I expect you could use any type of flour)
2 cups unsweetened dried shredded coconut
1/4 tsp fine grain sea salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs whisked in a medium bowl
2 Tbsp plus 2 tsp natural cane sugar or brown sugar (I omitted this the first time around)

Follow the instructions here.

I attempted to do a banana-muscovado variation here which I encourage you to try if you make these.  I put a small pat of butter in my pan along with a small spoonful of muscovado sugar.  As the butter melted I mixed them together.  Then I put banana coins down in the bottom of the pan and spooned the pancake batter over top.  This would have been successful if I stuck with a pancake small enough to flip, but I tried to make a bigger one, and now I'm eating caramelized-banana-coconut-macaroon-pancake-crumble.