Honey Whole Wheat Cornbread

As the weather gets warmer, it's time to start emptying the freezer.  There's an awful lot of chili in there, so in keeping with this month's Melissa Clark theme, I made Honey Whole Wheat Cornbread to encourage chili-eating in the household.

Some of Melissa Clark's recipes could be considered healthy, but this isn't one of them.  You are instructed to mix a whole stick of melted unsalted butter into your cornbread batter (I scaled it back to 6 tablespoons and I believe I could have done away with it a bit more).  She also calls for sour cream, which I substituted yogurt for, cutting down on the calorie count.  I love that this recipe is baked in a cast iron skillet, after melting and swirling the butter around in it - the cornbread pulls away from the sides of the skillet as it cooks and doesn't stick at all.

The book also contains a handful of salad recipes, which I intend to try over the next few weeks.  After a nice dinner at Frog & Peach, where I had a perfectly cooked piece of salmon atop a bed of mixed citrus and thinly sliced fennel with herbs, I am looking forward to trying an orange/fennel salad from Cook This Now - hopefully I will be writing about that in the coming days.

Cornmeal Pancakes with Warm Cherry Sauce

The featured cookbook right now is Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, which I bought a few months ago.  I haven't made too much from this book, but I flagged a few to try over the next few weeks while it's being featured.

Today I decided on the Cornmeal Pancakes with Warm Cherry Sauce.  Why?  I wanted breakfast, and I had a bag of cherries in the fridge that were hanging on by a thread and I didn't want them to go to waste.  Plus I love things with cornmeal.  I had a great cornbread french toast once at the place we sometimes go to brunch on the weekends - I'll have to remember to recreate that sometime.  So I decided to make the cornmeal pancakes.

They really came out great.  I enjoyed them as well as the warm cherry sauce.  I halved each cherry to remove the pit (with all my kitchen gadgets, I surprisingly do not own a cherry pitter) and cooked them with honey, orange zest, and cloves to make a delicious sauce, thickened with a bit of cornstarch.  I multiplied the recipe by 1.5 because I had 3 cups of cherries instead of 2 to use.  I have about 2 cups left that we'll have to find another use for (cherry yogurt maybe?) but I'm not too worried about that.

I didn't have any buttermilk, so I used yogurt thinned out a bit in its place.  I think it worked out just fine - I didn't notice any significant difference, but I would also like to try it as written.  I would also love to try the cornmeal pancakes with blueberries.  In fact, I could see making a similar kind of sauce with blueberries... maybe with some cinnamon instead of cloves and lemon instead of orange zest... yum!

Oatmeal Muffins

I was eating muesli every day for a while, so for a few months, I was buying the 32 oz containers of yogurt.  I bought one a few weeks ago and never got around to opening it - I guess that's around when I started eating omelets for breakfast.  So I need to use up this yogurt over the next few days, and I went searching for some easy recipes.  I decided to adapt Heidi's Oatmeal Muffins.  Instead of the all-purpose flour, I used 100 g Multigrain Flour Mix (from Good to the Grain).  Besides that, I used 100 g unsalted butter instead of 200 g, plus 1/2 cup (one individual package) of unsweetened applesauce.  I sprinkled a bit of cinnamon sugar on top because I didn't feel like making the crumble.  It came out pretty good - definitely moist - but very dense.  If you like eating oatmeal, though, you'll probably like it.  I'm interested to find out how the original version tastes, but it was fun to kind of wing it and use up some of the miscellaneous ingredients I have lying around.  It could easily be adapted many different ways so I will probably use this recipe as a base again in the future.

Ricotta Pancakes

I've been neglecting the current featured cookbook on the 101 Cookbooks Library -  Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery.  In addition to my regular everyday busy schedule, I've been making things from the NY Times Recipes for Health and from Super Natural Cooking, and now Super Natural Every Day.  But I bought some fresh ricotta last weekend specifically for this recipe, and I fully intended to try it!

I made two adaptations to the recipe.  First, I added one tablespoon of sugar because I wanted just a bit of sweetness to it.  Also, I ran out of all-purpose flour, which I didn't mind because I didn't want to use all AP flour anyway, but I substituted 25 grams (out of 150) with whole wheat pastry flour.  I think it would work fine to increase the amount, but I ran out of AP at 125 grams, so that's why I chose that amount.  I love that the measurements are in grams - it was way faster and less messy to measure with my scale.

I'd love to try sprinkling in some blueberries - they go well with ricotta and I think they would be great to sweeten up this pancake.  I'd also like to try a savory application, with some chopped fresh herbs and sauteed mushrooms/vegetables.  That could make a nice brunch or dinner, or maybe even a savory breakfast (though that's usually not my thing).

Bran Muffins with Molasses and Apricots

You'll notice if you look at the linked recipe for these muffins that they are called Molasses Bran Muffins.  Well, the name sounded very familiar to me, so I looked back and saw that I had already made Molasses Bran Muffins from Good to the Grain.  These are different, so I decided they needed a different name as well.

These bran muffins are soft and nice and flavorful.  I like biting into the sweet dried apricots.  Next time I might try to break up the flax seeds to get more of the nutrition out of them.  I think it may also be interesting if I make these, or an adaptation of these, with the pomegranate molasses I got at the market around the corner.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal-Cranberry Muffins

I bought buttermilk recently to make the Granola Muffins and the Buckwheat Amaranth Muffins.  Those two combined used a total of two cups, so I had two cups left to finish in order to avoid wasting any of the buttermilk.  I searched the blogs I read for recipes and found these Whole Wheat Oatmeal-Cranberry Muffins.  I like oats in anything so I decided to make them.

These are fantastic muffins.  They are extremely moist and tasty.  I substituted oil for the 2 tablespoons of applesauce because I didn't have any, but I'd like to try it that way next time to make them healthier.  I was hesitant about the dried cranberries, since they are kinda boring, but I went with them anyway and I think they work really well here.  I'd like to try some frozen cranberries, or orange zest instead of the cinnamon.  I think this could be a great base for a lot of other flavor combinations and different fresh, frozen or dried fruits.

Buckwheat and Amaranth Muffins

Not too long ago I posted about Steel Cut Oatmeal and Blueberry Muffins that I made after I saw the extremely exciting MUFFIN feature in the Recipes for Health section of the NY Times.  These Buckwheat and Amaranth Muffins are another recipe from that series that I had been just dying to try.  You can't see them in the picture, but these muffins have big blackberry-bombs in them.  In fact, 3 or 4 of the muffins had a big chunk fall out the bottom because the blackberry was a bit too close to the edge.  Next time I'll put a small scoop of batter in each cup before I even mix in the blackberries.  And yes, there will be a next time, because these were delicious.

Breakfast Grains: Part 1

Ken and I like steel-cut oats or other hot breakfast cereals as a filling morning meal.  I sometimes get bored of them, so I make some similar options for variety.  I thought I'd make notes about some here.  Look for a follow-up post containing more ideas, mostly grains besides oats made into less traditional breakfast cereals.


Quaker Old-Fashioned Rolled Oats I like some plain oatmeal sometimes.  I make it with half water, half soymilk to make it creamy and vanilla-y.  Sometimes I like to jazz it up and make a fancy oatmeal, like Apple Pie Oatmeal or Banana Bread Oatmeal.  I've also been using it to make a ton of granola.

Nature's Promise Organic Steel Cut Oats (Stop & Shop's organic brand) This is the cereal that started it all (the advance cooking of breakfasts, and this post).  The oat groats (funny name, isn't it?) are cut fairly small so it doesn't take all that long to cook, maybe half an hour, but I still make it the night before.  One batch makes 4 servings, which are fairly small servings but quite filling, although I then have to find something for the 5th weekday.  This is a classic breakfast, so not many fun surprises, but it is very versatile.  You could top it with a variety of things, but I particularly like it with the hazelnut topping from the hazelnut muffins.

Bob's Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal This reminded me of cream of wheat, but with oats.  It's basically ground-up steel cut oats.  Definitely whisk it in or it will clump up and the middles of the clumps won't cook.  I made this with half 1% milk, half water.  As with the above, you could top it with quite a few things, but I liked it plain just as well.

Bob's Red Mill 5-Grain Rolled Cereal I decided to make this for myself one day, and since it makes two servings, I figured I'd give Ken the other half for the next day's breakfast.  Not thinking about that last part, I made it with half water and half soymilk.  Once I remembered the other half was for him I decided not to tell him and instead to see how he thought it was.  He LOVED it and I'm just never going to tell him it's made with soymilk.  (I want to try this trick with some other cereals too.)  At first I didn't want to tell him, but I let it slip after a while and he liked it so much that he was fine with it.  This one is used the most in my kitchen (after regular rolled oats), and as a plus, the rolled grains are great in granola, granola bars or oatmeal cookies instead of just plain rolled oats.

Bob's Red Mill 10-Grain Hot Cereal I first bought this cracked grain cereal for the Banana Cereal Muffins in Good to the Grain (it's the cereal, of course) but I've also had it as a breakfast cereal.  I mixed in a dollop of honey, that's it.  Very tasty.

"Grandma's Grain" This is a recipe I've been meaning to try for a while, and I'm glad I finally got to it.  I followed the directions, using red rice (from the last-ingredient options).  I found it was just a bit too salty, though I can understand why the salt was added in the first place.  This recipe made 9 cups, which is just a little too much breakfast for us, as I don't like to eat the same thing every day.  I suppose it could be frozen, but I didn't try it.  I'm not sure it would be too good to eat as breakfast when it came out, but might be a neat mix-in for pancakes or something.

Steel Cut Oatmeal and Blueberry Muffins

I have been really into the NY Times Recipes for Health lately.  Recently, the week's recipes were whole-grain muffins.  The main article was posted, along with the first recipe, the day before the rest - and I was so excited to see those recipes, I kept checking back until they appeared!  I happened to have some extra cooked steel-cut oats in the fridge, so I started with the Steel Cut Oatmeal and Blueberry Muffins.

I used frozen blueberries and didn't bother tossing them with flour as suggested.  I think next time I will try it, though, as the berries smeared the batter with purple streaks.  The muffins weren't very sweet.  I like them this way, and I think with fresh Jersey blueberries in the summer, they will be perfect.  Ken wanted more sugar in them, though.  I think they would be a nice side to an omelet or similar savory breakfast.  Next time I will also try to eliminate the 1 cup of all purpose flour that is included in the batter, although they did rise beautifully and form nice domed tops, but it's worth a shot.  This is a great recipe for when you cook steel-cut oats for the whole week but get sick of them by Friday - the leftovers can just be stirred into the muffin batter!

Zucchini Bread

It is obvious by now that I am trying to cook my way through Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain.  There are some things in there that don't appeal to me all that much right now, but since I haven't set a time limit on working my way through the book, I'm sure I'll eventually try them.  Every recipe I've made has been delicious (even the aesthetic failures).

I've got zucchini in my fridge.  It's not that I don't like zucchini... but it's not my favorite, and it never has been.  When we get zucchini in our CSA, I usually just leave it all with my mom - she and my sister love it.  But somehow it's snuck into my home via my Nonna and her garden.  She asked me if I wanted zucchini, and I, unable to refuse fresh local produce of any kind, said sure, I can take one, I'll make zucchini bread.  She came back with this beastly monster - over a pound, maybe a pound and a half - so I made two batches of zucchini bread, and still haven't finished that one zucchini.

The zucchini bread from Good to the Grain is not your average zucchini bread.  It uses mint and basil, infused into butter, and rye flour instead of your typical wheat.  Most of my test subjects loved it - my mom and sister complained about the rye and said they wanted "normal" zucchini bread.  (Make it yourself!)  That did get me thinking, though, about possible variations - more about that later.

I truly love this bread.  I think it's amazing.  I wouldn't think of using rye flour in zucchini bread - but that's why I bought this book.  I'm almost hesitant to even change the recipe - the whole book, organized by flour, already provides the best matches of flours to other ingredients.  My first batch of this bread was a little minty - I measured more loosely in my second batch and it was just right.  The headnotes suggest having a slice with a cup of mint tea, which sounds absolutely perfect to me.  It's great to just have it around for a snack.  I expect a loaf (or half a loaf) might freeze nicely as well, if tightly wrapped.

There is so much I want to do with this recipe.  Leave it the same, but add walnuts.  Sub some white whole wheat in for part or all of the all purpose flour (being cautious about the assertive taste wheat flour can bring to a recipe).  An all whole wheat version.  Bits of different flour.  Multigrain flour mix instead of rye.  The same basic structure, but with banana and walnuts instead of zucchini and herbs.  There are so many possibilities...

Wild Rice Medley with Braised Chicken in Balsamic-Fig Sauce

It's time to get back to cooking real meals.  There have been times when I could plan an ambitious week-long menu stuffed with recipes to try.  I never got to all of them.  Now, I can barely think of something for tonight's dinner, let alone lunch and dinner for any other day this week.  I've taken to making brief shopping trips almost every day to pick up just what I need.

This one was planned.  In an effort to get back to making dinners, I have been flipping through some of my books.  In the same book where I found my project, teff waffles, I found this lovely recipe for a wild rice medley with chicken and a delicious-sounding sauce.  I planned to make it on a day when I had a lot of time (Friday), because a quick glance at the cooking times showed me that it was going to take a while (which it did - I was working on this for about 1.5 hours).

It was worth the work.  I put a lot of time and effort into this and was rewarded with something delicious.  I have never braised anything and it came out fine.  We had a nice dinner out on the balcony :)

Multigrain Waffles

I just made the most delicious waffles.

I literally just made them.  I just finished the final waffle.  I ate two as I cooked.  Ken had the first two since he was rushing out the door and he said he wants to eat them every day.

I'm sure I have mentioned my excitement when there is a new blog post on 101 Cookbooks.  This one totally had me right from the picture (and title).  I decided last night that I would make it this morning for breakfast.

In addition to being delicious, it was easy.  (Giving yourself or your family a real home-cooked breakfast shouldn't be hard.)  Just mix the wet & dry ingredients separately, then add the wet to the dry and voila, waffle batter.

I have two favorite things about this recipe.  One is the buttermilk-soaked poppy seeds.  Heidi suggests that if you forget this step, you can just toss them in when you start to make the wet mix, but I think it was an important part of the recipe.  Soaking the poppy seeds prevented them from offering a distracting crunch and getting stuck in your teeth.  My second favorite thing is the combination of flours.  The recipe calls for barley, oat and rye flours, all whole grain flours, but they don't have that heaviness that whole wheat has.  I like to experiment with whole grain flours, but this recipe has given me more confidence to try some of these flours, especially the barley flour, in other recipes.

The recipe made quite a few waffles.  For my dinky little waffle maker, it made 15.  (I would like to see if I can find a more advanced yet affordable waffle maker to replace it, but for now it will do.)  Between the two of us we only ate 4, as normal people should, so the rest will be moving to their new temporary home in my freezer.  This way we can enjoy delicious waffles on any day of the week.