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.

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.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Even before Thanksgiving, I saw an article in the New York Times: A Radical Rethinking of Thanksgiving Leftovers, unsurprisingly written by Mark Bittman.  Good ideas, and I was excited about them, but I came across a few more that were a little more appealing to me, and ended up with a few of my own, too.  First we made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a spicy mustard (pictured above).  I made ham stock and turkey broth from the leftover bones.  I adapted a White Bean and Ham Stew recipe from Food & Wine magazine to use that ham stock.  My favorite so far has been the Turkey Soup with Lime and Chile from the New York Times, which turned out to be super simple and tasty, just what we needed after a stuffed weekend (the avocado and crispy tortilla strips helped with the transition from heavy to light).  I circled back to the original article and made some exceptional cranberry yogurt parfaits (pictured below).

Chewy Almond Butter Bars

I've been making the Chewy Almond Butter Bars from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals over and over and over.  They are so good.  In fact, I made it a bunch of times and never took a picture - that's the reason I haven't posted about it yet.  Oats, puffed kamut, sunflower seeds, almonds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, apricots, currants, and golden raisins, held together with a glue of almond butter and honey, with just a hint of vanilla and salt in the mix.  The recipe calls for additional sugar, but I've been leaving it out as the notes suggest to lighten it up.  I can't imagine it with more sweetness - it's perfect just the way it is.  I'm on the verge of not needing the recipe for this one anymore.  It's quickly become a favorite.  I'm looking forward to some variations - chocolate and peanut butter, a hazelnut version, an apricot/pistachio combo... the possibilities are endless.

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!

Greek Yogurt Ice Cream

When I first flipped through Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, this Greek Yogurt Ice Cream was one of the most appealing recipes to me.  I've had the barrel of my ice cream maker in my freezer for a while now, waiting to make some good ice cream, and so I gave this one a shot.  It contains Greek yogurt (I used 0% Fage), heavy cream, honey, lemon juice, and limoncello.  It came out pretty good, even though I used nonfat yogurt.  One thing I want to try next time is cutting down on the honey.  The flavor of the honey is great, but the sweetness was just too much.  As you can see in the photo, I topped it with some sliced strawberries.  Yum!

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.

Cherry Vanilla Smoothie

Today's breakfast was the Cherry Vanilla Smoothie from So Easy.  It tasted pretty good, but as-is, I feel like it's more of a dessert.  It tasted like cherry vanilla ice cream to me.

I'd make a ton of adjustments to the recipe.  First, it was too sweet, so I'd cut down on the honey.  Maybe take it out entirely if still using the vanilla yogurt.  Second, I think it's really strange that the vanilla is so prevalent here, but was completely lacking in the oatmeal - I think it could use a bit less vanilla here, maybe even none with vanilla yogurt.  Ken suggested just a drop of honey and plain yogurt, and he usually likes things sweeter than I do.  Finally, I think the serving size is too large.  Maybe you need a piece of almond butter toast or something to go with it, but I'd cut down the serving size.  For comparison, the serving size is equal to the mid-size cup at Jamba Juice - 2.5 cups or 20 ounces.  Way too much!

Nigella's Granola

I like to make granola bars to take as snacks when I'm out, but I don't have a perfect recipe yet.  In the meantime I got distracted by a recipe for loose granola.

You can substitute some things here to suit your tastes.  I personally LOVE the pecans, while Ken prefers the almonds - you could use different nuts instead.  Use more or less sunflower seeds or sesame seeds.  You can use another liquid sweetener other than maple syrup - the original recipe uses brown rice syrup, which I didn't have.  I thought about trying agave nectar, but I thought maple syrup would contribute more to the flavor.  And next time I might substitute some rolled grains for a bit of the oats.

Granola
Adapted from Orangette's adaptation of a recipe from Nigella Lawson.

Dry ingredients:
5 cups rolled oats
1 cup raw almonds
2 cups raw pecan halves
1 cup hulled raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. salt

Wet ingredients:
1 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/3 cup maple syrup
¼ cup honey

Rack in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat it to 300 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl, and the wet ingredients together in another.  Then, mix the two together very thoroughly and spread it evenly on two rimmed baking sheets.  Bake it for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown (I went for about 45 minutes).  When you take it out, if you DON'T want clumps, go ahead and mix it right away.  If you DO want clumps, just let it sit.  It should crisp up as it cools, but a lot of mine remained soft.

If you want to add dried fruit, you can mix some in after it cools.  This can be stored at room temperature if you're going to eat it soon.  Otherwise, to preserve the nuts, you can keep it in the refrigerator.

It was very, very delicious!  In the future, I might like it to be crunchier or clumpier.  I might try to spread it out more on three baking sheets instead of two next time.  I ate it with yogurt, as a cereal with milk, combined with Total with almonds cereal, and plain.  I thought it would make a great apple crisp topping, too.

Otsu

I haven't been cooking lately.  Sometimes I just am not in the mood - this time it's lasted for weeks.  I haven't even baked anything.  I'll plan to, and then when the time comes I just don't feel like doing it.  Now it's time to break out of the rut.

Recently I went with my sister's Girl Scout troop on a few field trips.  They are learning about local and sustainable foods, so we visited Griggstown Quail Farm, Cherry Grove Farm, Whole Earth Center, A Better World Cafe, and the Highland Park and Rutgers Gardens farm markets.  I frequently go to the Rutgers Gardens market, but the rest of these are places I've meant to visit and hadn't had time (motivation?) to go.  At Whole Earth Center I was reminded by the wide selection that I had been meaning to try soba noodles.  One of my favorite recipe sources, 101 Cookbooks, has several recipes using soba noodles, but I chose the one that is also in her cookbook, Super Natural Cooking.

This was an interesting recipe.  We followed it pretty closely, except that we ignored the step of rinsing the soba noodles to cool them down.  We thought it would be better warm.  Well, we were wrong.  It would definitely have been better at room temperature, especially since the hot noodles warmed up the cucumber (yuck).  We also put in the amount of cayenne pepper called for in the recipe, which turned out to be way too spicy for me.  The tofu also kind of fell apart - definitely not what was meant to happen.

I think I would try this again, but do it right, and with a LOT less spice.  Soba noodles are yummy - I am looking forward to experimenting with them more.

Thanksgiving 2009

I had fun cooking for Thanksgiving with my mom. It took days (literally) and was gobbled up in about 30 minutes (literally) but everything came out pretty great. Here is a little photo tour through our menu... unfortunately I didn't get pictures of everything, but I'll try to describe it all.

Appetizers

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts: I thought these would be gross - I hate water chestnuts. But between the bacon fat and the globs of honey, they softened up a lot and were really flavorful. There is no real recipe for this - just wrap water chestnuts with bacon, pop in a toothpick, and pile on the honey.





In addition to this, we also had brie with dried cranberries, walnuts, and thyme. I think some more stuff was out, but nothing too fancy.

Salad

Winter Green Salad with Sugared Walnuts, Crispy Pears and Pomegranate Vinaigrette: This is from Clean Food. The dressing was a huge success... it was made from pomegranate juice, a little balsamic vinegar, zesty honey mustard... delicious. I didn't use the sugared walnuts recipe from Clean Food because I had to make them for the stuffing anyway (see below), and that recipe was much easier. The tough part here was getting the pomegranate arils out of the fruit. Also check out my sweet Vera Bradley apron!

Main Course

Ham and Turkey: No pictures of the turkey, but here is the ham being slathered in brown sugar. There was some other stuff involved, but I don't know what. All I have to say is... yummm!







Sage, Walnut, and Dried Fig Stuffing: This is a 101 Cookbooks recipe, which I was so excited to make. As I mentioned earlier, I made the sugared walnuts (egg whites, sugar and salt) and used them also in the salad. I was so excited to have vegetarian stuffing with no meat in it! And although it was pretty dry (Mom even added extra liquid) it still tasted good. I would add more liquid next time though.




Wild Rice with Apples: This recipe is from Cooking Light - if not October 2009, another fall issue for this year. I was so excited to make this. It takes a long time though, and so I had to get dressed while I was waiting to bring it to a boil. I asked my mom to turn it down to a simmer after it boiled. A looong time later, I realized that she had turned it all the way up instead. Oops! There was no liquid left but it was completely uncooked. I managed to salvage it by adding a ton of extra liquid and cooking it much longer. Fortunately it turned out really good. It was a really interesting side dish and fit well with the holiday - the sauteed Pink Lady apples were so good.

We also had the typical sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

Desserts

Best-Ever Apple Pie: This is from a cookbook of my mom's - I forget the title, but it is actually quite interesting. I read it while I was supposed to be helping with the cooking. This woman traveled to farms all over the country to collect recipes. A lot of them are kind of disgusting (using ingredients like lard, etc.) but some are really cool. There are also sidebars about stuff like avocado farming, for example. Haley did most of this by herself - I helped a little though.

Tofu Pumpkin Pie with Gingersnap Crust: Another Clean Food recipe, but not as much of a hit. There was some flavor here that just wasn't really great, but it was OK. The gingersnap crust was very good though.







Mini Sweet Potato Tarts: Mom made these after she overcooked the sweet potato. I ended up taking over and scooping the stuff into all of the cups and putting on the sweet pecan mixture. I didn't try one of these (I don't like sweet potatoes, I will have to try them again someday) but they looked pretty good.

Baby Bran Muffins

I love baking. I have had my eye on the Baby Bran Muffins from 101 Cookbooks for months now. YUM. I bought yogurt today, the only ingredient in the recipe that I didn't already have, and went straight to it.

I used light brown Muscovado sugar instead of the natural cane sugar. I intended to use the full 1/2 cup of honey called for in the recipe, but I only had about 1/4 cup (oops). I topped it off with just under 1/4 cup of agave nectar. I had read in the comments that the muffins were under-sweetened, so I figured it would work out fine (and it did).

The batter was light and fluffy - it was really very interesting. I used my small scoop (Pampered Chef - get one) to put the batter into the mini-muffin tins, which resulted in mostly the perfect size baby muffins. The recipe says it will yield 2 dozen mini muffins, but I ended up with 4 dozen, and batter left over (I ran out of mini muffin tins).


The one, sad problem was that I believe I slightly over-baked them. They were still beautifully crusty on top and moist on the inside, but they stick right to the paper so you almost end up with a mini muffin top instead of a whole muffin. I baked them for 11 minutes. I left them in one minute longer after the toothpick test and I should have followed my instincts and taken them out instead. Next time I might also try them without the muffin papers. I like muffin papers, but not when they stick. I might also try making full-size muffins. The baby muffins were super cute and adorable, but I also ate about 7 straight out of the oven. A full-size one (as long as it doesn't stick to the paper) would be a little more satisfying, I hope.

Broccoli Crunch

For our cooking date, Haley picked out Broccoli Crunch as an entree. We had planned to add some shrimp to make it more of an entree, but we totally forgot about it and didn't even notice until we were having seconds. This recipe, although it was a bit of work, was absolutely delicious.

The crunchy shallots were one of my favorite parts. They got a little lost in the salad because of the red onions, but they were so fun to make and yummy little crisps. These can be made in advance, which I would recommend since I was constantly running back and forth to check them. I guess I am not the type of person who can handle more than one thing on the stove at a time.

One sad part was that I cooked the broccoli a little more than I wanted to. The salad is called "Broccoli Crunch" for a reason - everything is supposed to crunch. I cooked the broccoli in boiling water as per the directions, but left it for a few minutes rather than a few seconds. It wasn't mushy or bad, just not crunchy enough. The broccoli also was unfortunately not that great quality either. I would like to try again when I see some better broccoli at the market in the coming weeks.

We used Pink apples and Fuji apples (or so said the sign at the store). Both were delicious, but I particularly liked the Pink apples. We sliced them thinly, which was fine, but I would also cut the apples into bite-size pieces next time in keeping with the rest of the salad being crunchy bite-size pieces.

The almond butter dressing was amazing, and we used sliced almonds instead of walnuts to complement the dressing. It was so good, and I know it would lend itself to shrimp as well, even though we forgot them. They would be perfect in this bite-size salad. I think some tofu croutons (see How to Cook Everything Vegetarian) might be yummy as well. I also want to note that I left out the optional chives. I think the salad was oniony enough without them, and after the sad green bean experience yesterday, I didn't want to use them in case they were part of the problem.

One more note about leftovers... I might make this again on a weekend, keeping all the ingredients separate and combining them only for individual portions. I might cook the broccoli each time too, since my slightly overcooked broccoli didn't hold up too well in the leftovers. But it would be easy to throw together during the week with everything already prepared and ready to go. I found that it worked well to keep the thinly sliced apples in a tupperware with water and the juice of one lemon. They seem to be keeping really well.

This is definitely something I will be making again, especially as more apples come in season. According to this map on Epicurious, broccoli will be in season through October, so I will have plenty of chances to perfect this recipe. If I am lucky, broccoli will stick around for Thanksgiving so I can make this for the big meal... I am already plotting to cook lots, although I won't be able to have it at my house, so hopefully my mom will host and take care of the meat and things. But that is a topic for another time...

Honey Soy Dipping Sauce

I found veggie dumplings in the freezer section of the grocery store and I wanted to try to make a dipping sauce for them. I googled and found several recipes, but settled on Emeril's Honey Soy Dipping Sauce. It is one of the easier recipes I found and used mainly ingredients that I already had on hand.

All that really needs to be done is grating ginger and toasting sesame seeds, then measuring a few things and mixing it all up. I cooked the dumplings by steaming them, which I did per package directions for just under 15 minutes. You can make the sauce in this time and still have time to clean up, too.

This sauce was delicious. I may have slightly over toasted the sesame seeds, but they looked good! The sauce was just a little thick because of the ginger, and the sesame seeds added another dimension of texture. I dipped the dumplings in the sauce using chopsticks and everything was great. I almost doubled the recipe thinking I would run out of sauce, but this was plenty for 6 dumplings and I am positive will be enough for the other 6 in the package as well.

One day I will try making my own dumplings, but for now I find these frozen ones (Stop & Shop's Nature's Promise line) to be absolutely delicious. (I also love the Stop & Shop vegetarian spring rolls - just don't use the microwave instructions or they will be soggy and gross. Dip those in Thai sweet chili sauce, which you can find in the Asian section.)

Now that I am done with my internship, I will have a lot more time to cook and hopefully will be posting more! I am looking forward to making falafel, hummus and baking my own bread (maybe even pitas!).