Recipe – Page 8 – Hobbits In Rivendell

Odd Foods

April 2, 2008

5:03 pm

So, here we are, seeing the sun rise steadily earlier every day, and seeing the produce turn from root vegetables to actual fruit (albeit miniature!). Foodwise, we’ve finally figured out some semblance of a balance with our box scheme, so that we’re not absolutely ~~suffering~~ suffocating beneath the onslaught of swedes (rutabagas), parsnips, and turnips. It’s been difficult for us to make this change, as we’d thought that we could go with ‘all UK vegetables’ and be local as well as organic … but we soon found that we were just wasting produce, as it slowly mouldered (or consumed immense amounts of refrigerator space).

The most interesting bit of cooking lately has been that we’ve made mustard! It’s surprisingly easy, and pretty much just involves … well, chucking equal amounts of brown & yellow mustard seeds into the mix & doing the following:

Some yellow mustard seeds

Some brown mustard seeds

Some onion powder

Some garlic powder

Some molasses

Some chili pepper flakes

Some vinegar

Some water

Place about 1/4 of each type of mustard seed into water & let sit until they’re … well, kinda chewy (about 1/2 an hour is good).

Meanwhile, grind the rest of everything until it’s thoroughly powdered.

Add enough vinegar to the powdered stuff to get it hydrated to a thick paste.

Drain and grind the hydrated ones briefly (until most seeds have been broken, but not to a paste or anything). You can use a mortar & pestle if you’d like, but we used our spice grinder (because it’s cool & comes apart to be cleaned).

Mix everything together & chuck in the fridge for a couple of days.

Yes, everything in that recipe says ‘some’. That’s just the way it was done, and the way things are around here. Play it by ear – it’s the only way to actually enjoy the process! We’re eating it mixed up into ‘chicken’ salad (meat substitute) & on all manner of other things – and I must say that it’s a heck of a lot better than anything else!

A Tinge of Tangerine

by David T. Macknet

February 17, 2008

5:23 pm

12 Comments on A Tinge of Tangerine

Baking, Recipe

Thank God for citrus flavors to punctuate a long, bland, starchy winter diet. A welcome break from root veggies are bright tasting tangerines, limes, lemons and Valencia oranges. We’ve been enjoying the delicate less acidic sweetness of blood oranges from Italy as well. Yum.

Citrus are the fruit of choice to perk up our salads, or use in sections or dressings for fresh lettuces or greens, as well as in our beverages (citrus peels in coffee gives, for instance, a lovely aroma) and now, we’re using the rest of our tangerines — the zest — in a quick dessert.

Quick Tangerine Sugar Cookies

zest of two tangerines, finely chopped

2 c. All-purpose flour

1 c. granulated sugar

1/4 c. olive oil

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. salt

4 tbsp. water or orange juice as needed

Combine your ingredients to create a dough that is pliable; stiff enough to roll but not stiff enough to stand on its own, more a thick paste the consistency of gnocchi. On a cutting board, roll the dough into long tubes, using icing sugar to prevent too much sticking. Cut into lines into segments and roll the segments into balls.

Bake for 20 minutes on a sheet of parchment or silicone mat at about 350°F (175°C). Remove immediately from the parchment and place on a baking rack to cool and firm. Some people might choose to finish these with a citrus juice and powdered sugar icing, but it’s certainly not necessary – they pack a citrus-y punch all on their own. It’s the perfect quick cookie to make when friends drop in for tea and you have no flax seeds or eggs or milk on hand!

This quick and easy sugar cookie recipe will work beautifully with lemons as well, so if our Californian friends are being overburdened by their lemon trees, now is the perfect time to take advantage of this!

Speaking of ‘taking advantage,’ this was a fully experimental recipe we just cooked up because we were out of just about everything and the stores were closed. It turned out well, but we’re not done trying things. Next time we bake them, we’ll add almond flour, to give another layer of flavor and aroma to contrast with the slightly bitter peel, and maybe use a bit more juice to brighten it the citrus twist overall. Imagine these fragrant cookies cut out into shapes, studded with candied peel, or half-dipped in bittersweet orange chocolate…! Mmm.We can’t get enough of the tangerine flavor, but what do you do with your sugar cookies? Scent them with rose water? Garnish them with candied violets? Sugar cookies are a blank canvas and too many times, people make the mistake of leaving them plain, but they don’t have to be only blandly sweet. Use them as a palette to enjoy the scents and flavors of the coming spring. Cheers!

Sourdough Pizza

by David T. Macknet

February 9, 2008

4:25 pm

6 Comments on Sourdough Pizza

Baking, Recipe

We’ve finally broken down & gotten a sourdough starter going. I couldn’t resist it when a former coworker forwarded the following directions to me:

Mix 3 1/2 Tbsp whole wheat flour with 1/4 cup unsweetened pineapple juice. Cover and set aside for 48 hours at room temperature. Stir vigorously 2-3x/day. (“Unsweetened” in this case simply means no extra sugar added).
Add to the above 2 Tbsp whole wheat flour and 2 Tbsp pineapple juice. Cover and set aside for a day or two. Stir vigorously 2-3x/day. You should see some activity of fermentation within 48 hours. If you don’t, you may want to toss this and start over.
Add to the above 5 1/4 Tbsp whole wheat flour and 3 Tbsp purified water. Cover and set aside for 24 hours.
Add 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 or less purified water. You should have a very healthy sourdough starter by now.

We actually got a full-blown, crazily active starter within about three days!

We’ve named her ‘Sadie,’ and this pizza is her first try at giving us some true bread. We could’ve done something more … well, bread-like. But we were in the mood for a savory, whole-wheat pizza dough, so this pizza, with its fresh mushrooms, sweet red bell peppers, onions, Quorn sausage and cheese it is (or was, rather, there’s only the tiniest bit left to go with our salads for dinner). The crust is lightly sour and chewy and very tasty. As soon as Sadie grows up a little more, we’ll try out a crisp-and-chewy sourdough boule. Stay tuned!

Cauliflower / Broccoli Soup

by David T. Macknet

February 4, 2008

4:37 pm

10 Comments on Cauliflower / Broccoli Soup

Food, Recipe

This soup can be made just as well with either cauliflower or with broccoli. We’ve been getting a large head of each every Friday for several weeks now, as we’re subscribed to a “box scheme” whereby we get fresh seasonal fruits & vegetables. Well, the UK being what it is, we’re getting lots of root veggies & lots of things like cauliflower & broccoli. Seeing as it’s also been cold, we decided to figure out a nice soup for these.

Essentially, what I’m giving you is an ingredient list, and you can adjust it to your own tastes. Along with that, though, will come a bit of general advice for making this soup, and that’s to use far less water than you think you need, and far more spices. Broccoli & cauliflower are bland, and can take it, particularly if you’re getting large heads! That said, here’s what you do:
1) Throw 5 or 6 large whole cloves of garlic in a cold pan with a spritz of olive oil.
2) Turn on the heat to medium-low.
3) Chop an onion, add it to the pan with the garlic, and cover.
4) Trim florets from the main stalk & set aside.
5) If using cauliflower, feel free to discard the main stalk or chop it.
6) If using broccoli, peel off the outer skin (I do this by just getting my fingers under it and pulling). Chop the remaining stalk, discarding the woody skin.
7) When your onions have softened somewhat, add your broccoli / cauliflower.
8) Add just enough water to cover about half of the contents and cover – too little water is better than too much!
9) Grind up some spices (saffron maybe, but definitely a pinch of sage, a dozen cumin seeds, some white pepper maybe, a teaspoon of yellow mustard seeds, rosemary if you have it) and throw them in.
10) When mixture has softened (about 20 minutes or so), remove it from the heat.
11) Blend with your immersion blender until smooth.
12) Strain (optional – primarily to remove any sage twigs)
13) Add a brick of silken tofu (soft, firm, whatever so long as it’s silken) and blend until smooth again.
14) If doing broccoli, we added a teaspoon of red balsamic vinegar & blended that, too, along with some bouillon & a pinch of salt. Obviously, skip the red vinegar with the cauliflower, as pink soup would be kinda odd.
15) Ladle into bowls & serve, maybe with cheese, maybe with cheese toast.

What we’ve found with this is that 1) you can’t have enough garlic, 2) you can easily have too much water, 3) you don’t want to put it back onto the heat after adding the tofu, as it will tend to separate somewhat. Other than that, this is dead easy to make, and wonderfully soothing on a cold day!

This post is going up particularly for the No Croutons Required event, and also because Lori asked me for the recipe.

Mango Soufflé / Custard

by David T. Macknet

January 20, 2008

8:47 pm

12 Comments on Mango Soufflé / Custard

Baking, Food, Recipe

This one could be said to be a bit on the exotic side, drawing, as it does, from any number of cultures, but actually the recipe just came out of thinking, “what would go well with this?” We had two mangoes, you see, which had been sitting around, glaring at us … and, well, they “needed eating up.”*

Mango Soufflé / Custard

2 mangoes

1 block silken tofu

3 Tbsp coconut cream

1 Vanilla bean

Cardamom

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

1 Lemon zest

1 Lemon juice

2 Tbsp Rose water

3 Tbsp tapioca starch

1/4 cup sugar (to taste)

Blend everything except sugar and tapioca starch.

Taste it. Add sugar if it needs it; omit if it doesn’t.

Blend tapioca starch into mixture.

Pour into ramekins.

Bake at 350°F / 175°C for 25 minutes or until center is just set.

The entertaining thing about “until center is just set” with this particular dish is that … well, it’s not gonna set, probably until you pull it from the oven and let it sit for a while. What it’s going to do, unless you had the sense to put these in a water bath, is to turn bubbly around the edges & form a skin on top. Now, for us, this isn’t a problem. For you? Well, solve it by starting out with a water bath, or finish it by maybe putting on a sprinkling of sugar & caramelizing it with a torch.

Flavorwise, the reason to hold the sugar & the tapioca starch is to see how sweet it’s going to be. We didn’t want to overwhelm the flavor by making it too sweet, so by holding the sugar & starch, you can taste it & get a good idea of the sweetness of your fruit. If you put the starch in sooner, then you’re going to have a sample with a rather chalky taste … which isn’t terribly bad, but isn’t as easy to determine flavor as it could be.

This is also a very forgiving dish because of one thing: it doesn’t use eggs. You can’t overcoagulate the proteins in this because … well, they’re pre-coagulated in the form of silken tofu. The binder here is the tapioca starch, which holds up to heat very well. So, if you feel like it, cook it as long as you want, or as little as you want – it’ll only gel so far, and that all depends on the amount of starch you added. If you want it to be firmer, then you’ll have to do up another batch. If you experiment with using cornstarch (or corn flour as it’s called here), let us know how it turned out.

* Full quote: “She’d announce at lunch, ‘We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up.’ Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he’d been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favor.” Terry Pratchett, Thud, p 287

Swede Fries

by David T. Macknet

January 20, 2008

11:53 am

6 Comments on Swede Fries

Food, Recipe

This isn’t much in the way of a recipe, but more along the lines of a procedure. This would be “what to do” when you end up with something called a swede, otherwise known as a rutabaga, in your house. For some odd reason, these seem to be popular here in the land of root vegetables. We can’t determine why, as they take forever to prepare, and are an absolute hazard to try to cook.

We’ve been told to mash them – with parsnips and potatoes, of course – but … well, we’ve found that the flavor of parsnips is all-pervasive, as is the flavor of the swede. So, we thought we’d see if we could improve them by turning them into ‘chips’ or ‘French fries.’ Thus begins the saga.

First off, peel the thing. Then, when you’ve gotten it peeled down to where it looks kinda greenish: peel it again. The idea is to remove the whole outer skin, not just the bit which contacted the soil. You’ll know when you’ve gotten through, because you’ll start to see that distinctive orangish hue that says ‘swede.’ Now – here’s the tricky part. Get out your 5-pound rubber kitchen mallet. Wait – what? You don’t have a sledge hammer just for your kitchen? Well, get one. We’ll wait.

Take your largest chef’s knife (or, you know, a cleaver if you have one handy), and place it along the swede. Now – carefully – whack it with the sledge hammer. You’ll have to really pound it – not as much as you would, say, with a Kabocha squash, which is why we bought the sledge in the first place, but fairly hard. Once you’ve cleaved the thing in half, you can revert to normal methods, if you have to – but you could keep using the sledge to drive the knife through the tough flesh.

Slice the thing into something about the width of your little finger, then slice again to give yourself something resembling the shape you’d like to eat as a crisp / fry. Now – boil the things in water for 1 to 2 hours. Yep – boil them. Don’t boil them until they’re limp, but until they don’t have much snap left to them. After that, douse them in cold water to stop the cooking process, and dry them. You’re now ready to portion them out to be frozen and/or seasoned & baked.

We now have about 3/4 of the swede in the freezer, all prepped and ready to spring on anybody who comes to visit. Because, really, the swede just isn’t an easy-prep vegetable!

All is Quiet on New Year’s Day…

by David T. Macknet

January 1, 2008

12:56 pm

3 Comments on All is Quiet on New Year’s Day…

Recipe

Psst. Are you awake?

Glasgow is not open for business. Unlike New Year’s Day in California, today is a bank holiday in Scotland, a stay – in – and – shut – the – blinds day of quiet. At 9:30 we counted four cars on the bridge getting onto the freeway. Four. And here we thought this was a city that never slept.

Since our revels ended earlier (we felt overdosed on indulgence a bit sooner than others this year), we’re in an inventive frame of mind. A brick of Blue Dragon tofu whipped in a small food processor in the process of making a healthy soup sparked the idea for a lower fat version of pots de creme… (More dessert ideas already!? DANGER, DANGER thighs and gut!) But while we’re still on the straight and narrow — it’s ONLY the first day of the year, after all, a bit soon to throw the penitent eating schedule out of the window just yet (we’ll wait ’til February!), we’ll subdue our urges with this tasty Asian “Chicken” Salad. There’s nothing like a vinaigrette of ginger and chilies to wake up the taste buds, and combined with sobe noddles, shredded red cabbage and carrots, this is a tasty and very filling meal, and it only has a few calories. A few chopped peanuts give it a more Thai character, and add more protein.

We *would have* added bean sprouts, but we can only get them from the Farm, which has them infrequently. Area supermarkets only have canned bean sprouts. Those of you in California, you may now get up from the floor. I know — it’s horrifying, but we will survive. After all, bean sprouts are only sprouted… beans. A jar, a wet paper towel and some mung beans, and we’ll be fine.

But still: CANNED bean sprouts. In salted water no less. Wonder what they’re used for?

West Coast bloggers are taking advantage of post-holiday sales and stocking up on the goodies of the season: squashes and sweet potatoes and cranberries. We, sadly, aren’t able to do that; imported items are available for a limited time, then disappear. So, though we squirreled away a pound of cranberries in November, they’re all gone now, with the last of our sauce eaten. Boo!

There is hope — dried cranberries abound in the market, and we’ve found that a tasty sauce is still available using those. The recipe below does not include sugar, since if you use dried fruit may not need to add more, as very few stores carry unsweetened dried cranberries. Some people add from a quarter cup to a full cup of light brown sugar, but you’ll have to fiddle with this to your own taste; we prefer a more citrus, puckery-sweet cranberry sauce, and usually add no additional sweetening at all.

This recipe is based on one from Gourmet magazine, and has been fiddled with, by using ideas from another recipe in Epicurean, as well as our own ideas — we’re sure you’ll fiddle with it yourselves, too. It reportedly goes well on chicken or Quorn fillets; friends report that it’s tasty on pork or quail as well.

Dried Cranberry Orange Relish

1 tablespoon cornstarch (or corn flour, for those in the UK)

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup cranberry juice (try to get pure cranberry juice, or at least a juice sweetened cranberry juice blend)

1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 cup dried cranberries

A pinch of salt

Optional: a cinnamon stick, to be discarded before serving

Optional: 1 orange, rind chopped finely, and roughly chopped, de-seeded sections

Optional: 1/8 teaspoon dried tarragon, crumbled

Optional: 2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley leaves, plus sprigs for garnish

In a small saucepan whisk together the juices and the cornstarch and add the wine and the rind, whisking until the mixture is smooth. Add the vinegar, the cranberries, the orange sections, the cinnamon and salt to taste and simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. The sweetened sauce can be served cool, and will gel slightly.

Note: For a more savory sauce, replace the orange juice with stock, and stir in the tarragon about ten minutes in to the simmering process. Add the minced parsley and simmer the sauce for 1 minute more before removing from heat. Serve the sauce warm, garnished with the parsley sprigs.

The addition of ginger to this sauce will also wake up your tastebuds and maybe settle your stomach as well! Happy culinary adventures this year! Best of all flavors, textures and tastes to you, fellow gardeners, knitters, cooks, Daring Bakers and food bloggers!

Christmas Teacakes

by David T. Macknet

December 19, 2007

1:02 pm

2 Comments on Christmas Teacakes

Baking, Food, Recipe

OK, really quickly, here’re two recipes. The first is standard ginger teacakes, the second is a parsnip version of those same teacakes. Yes – parsnip cookies. When you live in the UK, and you’ve subscribed to an organic vegetable cooperative, you end up with these things … in bulk! What the heck do you do with parsnips?! Particularly if you’ve only ever seen them once before! Well, cookies, of course!

Ginger Teacakes

Flour

2 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground Cinnamon

1 Tbsp ground Ginger

1/4 tsp ground Cloves

1 small “arm” Star Anise (optional)

1 Cup brown sugar

1/2 cup apple sauce

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup molasses

1/2 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

1/4 cup flax seeds, ground (linseeds)

Granulated sugar, for rolling

Combine everything except for the flour (well, and also leave out the granulated sugar that’s for rolling, of course).

Gradually work in enough flour to make a very stiff dough. We used strong, wholemeal flour, but you could wimp out and use something light-colored.

Form into 1 inch balls, roll in sugar, and place upon parchment paper, with about 1.5 inches in between each cookie.

Bake at 300F / 150C for around 12 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before removing from parchment.

So, that’s the Gingerbread version. They turned out wonderfully, all light & fluffy inside. We used whole, dessicated ginger for our powder (you can find them at SFHerb.com, item # 87 or 687). This kind of ginger is much better than just plain old ginger powder, as it’s much hotter & more potent. We made two batches, one with the Star Anise & one without (because some of us don’t like the flavor it takes over the flavor of the cookies, and pretty soon it’s like you didn’t have any other spices in there). One note: be sure to use a mildly flavored honey, as somehow the flavor comes through (yes – experience speaking, here – we tried to use up some really strong honey, and can taste it in the end product).

Parsnip Teacakes

4 cups steamed parsnips (without the bitter core)

Guts of 1 Vanilla Bean

1/4 of a nutmeg nut, microplaned

3 Tbsp coriander seeds, ground & sifted

Zest of 1 lemon

3/4 cup flax Seed, ground (linseeds)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup xylitol (can substitute granulated sugar)

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup agave nectar (can substitute honey or corn syrup)

1/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp baking powder

5 cups flour

Mix everything except the flour and baking powder.

Let stand for 15 minutes, to allow the flax seeds to hydrate.

Mix in baking powder.

Mix in most of your flour, reserving some in case you don’t need it.

Once you’ve got a really arm-breakingly stiff dough, let rest for 5 minutes or so, to let the flour hydrate & let the dough relax.

Form into 1 inch balls, roll in sugar, and place upon parchment paper, with about 1.5 inches in between each cookie.

Bake at 300F / 150C for around 12 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before removing from parchment.

These could’ve been a bread, maybe, except that they’re way too tender for that. We concluded that they might have wanted to be muffins, really, because they are so incredibly tender. We’ll have to see what happens when they finish settling, but we’re certain that they won’t turn out to be “snaps” by any means, since they have the different sugars in them to keep them tender, and the honey to pull moisture from the air (fun stuff, food science).

They could have taken way more spices than we added, because the flavor of parsnips really overwhelms anything we threw at them. They could have used maybe the zest of 4 lemons instead of just 1, and, strangely enough, they smell & taste like they really would pair well with coconut – so the next try at these will probably involve the use of coconut milk powder (again, found at SFHerb.com, item 251).

The parsnip teacakes are heading off to our neighbors and our local health-care professionals (the ladies at the pharmacy and the doctor & nurse at our local surgery). There’s really no way we can leave these sitting about in our house, lest we eat them all up (as happened to the first batch of ginger teacakes).

Now, what could we make out of these silly swedes…?

Stollen

by David T. Macknet

December 18, 2007

11:27 am

2 Comments on Stollen

Baking, Recipe

With many thanks to the inspiration of Claudia’s recipe and Karen’s recipe, I present to you our own unique take on stollen. We didn’t ice it this year, nor cover it with powdered sugar, but it’s certainly stollen.

I’ll present the recipe, as it is … but I’ll trust that you already know how to make bread, because you’ll need to use your own judgment about quantities of flour. Also, keep in mind that this is supposed to be a bit on the bitter side, in a way: in other words, it doesn’t contain dried blueberries (as I’d initially wanted).

Stollen

4 cups warm water

1.5 Tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup candied citron

1/2 cup glaceed cherries

1/2 cup raisins or dried currants

1/2 cup dried apricots, diced

1 cup almond meal (blanched & ground almonds)

1/2 cup oat bran (optional, I suppose)

Strong, wholemeal wheat flour

Proof your yeast, along with the sugar.

In a large bowl, mix in all the rest of the ingredients except the flour.

Mix in enough flour to give yourself a good, kneadable dough.

Knead until your dough has the appropriate texture – it will be somewhat grainy, and won’t form “windowpanes” because of the almond meal, but it will still be somewhat smooth & elastic.

Shape into 4 small loaves, place into loaf pans, and let rise until more than doubled in size.

Bake.

Of course, you’re free to apply icing, or powdered sugar, or whatever … for us, we’ve just been eating it without any of the extras. We’re going to try to track down our neighbors again, to gift them with a loaf … but, well, you know how it is: living in a “convenience” flat means that you never can tell when your neighbors are home. We’ll see – they may have to wait for the next batch.

Spicy Stir-fry Sauce

by David T. Macknet

November 29, 2007

12:04 pm

1 Comment on Spicy Stir-fry Sauce

Food, Recipe

Just a quick post, because I realized that we’ve been using up our fabulous new sauce, and hadn’t shared it with anybody!

Spicy Stir-fry Sauce

1/2 Cup Pepper (capsicum) Flakes

1 inch Cinnamon (Cassia) stick

6 Allspice Berries, cracked

1 Cup Sweet Sherry

1/4 Cup Vodka

1 Cup Water

2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar

3 Tbsp Sugar

Add your pepper flakes, sherry, vodka, and spices to a nonreactive pot.

Bring to a boil & reduce until almost all of the liquid is gone.

Add water, return to a boil, and remove from heat.

Let sit overnight.

Strain (really squeeze out the liquid) into a jar; discard pepper flakes & spices.

Add sugar & balsamic.

Shake or stir periodically, until the sugar is dissolved.

Refrigerate.

The alcohol is important here, as it will help to pull the essential oils from the peppers & spices. Don’t let it reduce too much – the whole idea is for this to be a thin sauce, without any salt, so that you can include it towards the very end of a stir-fry without effecting anything but the heat component (hence the lack of salt). We’ve been using this sauce for several days now, in our morning tofu/vegetable stir-fry, and it’s fabulous! It gives an almost coconut essence to things, and you can really taste the cinnamon & allspice, without anything being too overwhelming. We’re about half-done with it, though, so we’re going to vary the treatment next time – but we’ll have to see; this is such a delightful sauce, I don’t really know that I want to change anything about it. That’s such a rare thing for me – actually wanting to follow a recipe – that it should tell you something about this sauce: it’s awesome.

Do let us know if you make it, and how you like it!

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