Ottolenghi Granola

Well, it's been a while!  I had a terrible cold for the entire month of February up to this point and I am now ready to get back to my life.  I don't have many posts to catch up on, because I didn't do any cooking while I was sick - it's been a takeout-heavy month.

I made this granola, from the Ottolenghi cookbook, before I got sick.  I don't typically like to put dried fruit in my granola, but I wanted to follow the directions as closely as possible and so I decided to give it a try.  It's actually grown on me quite well - I've been eating it with plain yogurt.  The one thing I don't love about it is that it sticks together in the jar, but on the plus side, it's a little clumpy.

This granola is quite different from my usual one - in addition to the dried fruit, there are sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, which make it even more colorful, and many different nuts (cashews, brazil nuts, almonds).

This recipe called for maple syrup - a lot of it - and I had only about a tablespoon left, so I added in agave nectar instead.  I also don't have dried blueberries, so I used extra cranberries instead.  The recipe called for 3 Tbsp water to be added to the wet ingredients, which I did, but probably wouldn't do it again - it was a little too watery and I had a bit of extra liquid left over.

Rose Bakery's Honey Granola

I'm trying to participate more in the "featured cookbook" thing on 101 Cookbooks Library.  The featured book through the end of April is Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery.  Many of the recipes are too heavy for everyday cooking - I don't need to make a whole pan of brownies unless there's a special occasion - but I do love breakfast, so I've been focusing mostly on those recipes.

Up until a few weeks ago, I had been making granola regularly, so I settled on the Honey Granola.  I haven't posted it until now because I didn't take a picture when I made it.  I wasn't crazy about it at first, but it grew on me.  At first I thought I overbaked it, despite the fact that I left it in for the minimum amount of time, but from a discussion on 101 Cookbooks library I realized that's the way it's supposed to be!  I was disappointed, but I noticed myself taking bites throughout the day, and then I realized I actually do like it.  I haven't been eating granola lately, but I'm looking forward to giving this recipe another try in the future.

Harissa Ravioli

The Harissa Ravioli is this week's second Super Natural Every Day recipe.  It's somewhat similar to the Harissa Spaghettini recipe I posted last month - they both have a spicy, lemony harissa oil dressing.  This one, however, uses ravioli as the pasta (we used a spinach/ricotta stuffed ravioli) and broccoli florets.  We added feta to the Harissa Spaghettini, and this recipe actually calls for it.

We liked this a lot.  We are really digging the stuffed pasta dishes.  Here, I could have swapped out some of the broccoli - maybe for some of the leftover asparagus from the Tortellini Salad.  I used half of the harissa called for, and it was plenty spicy - this stuff is pretty strong.  I omitted the black olives out of laziness (and Ken hates them) and we decided on toasted slivered almonds for the crunchy aspect, but I'd like to try the pepitas next time.  The recipe says it serves 4, but we used slightly less ravioli and polished it off between the two of us.  I see some more stuffed pasta dishes in our future!

Granola Muffins

I have been making granola almost every weekend.  It started when one of my friends from school was doing South Beach and said she had trouble thinking of things to eat for breakfast that were whole grain.  I suggested granola and she said she would buy some.  BUY some?!  Um, no.  You can make that yourself in like 5 seconds and it is a hundred times better.  She has no interest in doing that, though, so I said I would make her some.  And then I just kept making it every week.

Recently I had a little too much granola.  I saw these Granola Muffins in the NY Times Recipes for Health section and I really wanted to make them.  I used the Honey Granola I made from the Rose Bakery cookbook (I'll post about that soon).  I used dried cranberries here.  I think they taste great, and what a fantastic way to use up extra granola!  I put a bunch in the freezer, so we will get to enjoy them for a while.

Roast Banana-Pumpkin Breakfast Bread

I've been making a list of possible edible gifts for Christmas, and I came across a recipe for Roast Banana-Pumpkin Breakfast Bread.  The picture looked amazing.  At first I thought it had pumpkin in it, but it turns out to be only pumpkin SEEDS.  (I'm considering a variation for the future already!)  I figured I'd try making it in mini-loaves to see if it might be a nice Christmas gift for some of my family members.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of cake flour, so I made some adjustments.  I wanted at least half whole grains here, so I used half all-purpose flour and half white whole wheat flour.  A substitute for cake flour, which I found online, is to add two tablespoons of cornstarch to the bottom of the measuring cup, and fill the remainder of the one-cup measure with flour, so I did this for both cups.  Since I was baking mini-loaves, I baked them for 40 minutes.

I started making this around 8AM, so just the smell of the rum-soaked raisins nearly knocked me over.  I was nervous about how they'd turn out in the bread.  One of the four mini-loaves fell apart, so of course I had to eat the piece that broke off.  At first, I thought my concerns were warranted and I thought to myself that I would use less raisins next time or cook a bit of the alcohol out of the rum.  But as I took a few more bites, I decided that wouldn't be necessary.  This is DELICIOUS.  I love banana bread as it is, but I think roasting the bananas gave an extra dimension to the flavor, plus the plentiful add-ins made it more interesting.  My cake flour substitution seems to have worked, and I may try all white whole wheat flour next time.