Category Archives: breakfast

Biscuits.

Posted on February 13, 2010 by parsnipsaplenty| 5 Comments

You can tell a foodie by how she packs for an extended trip abroad. When I moved to Bulgaria, I took black beans and quinoa, and I left a list of foods that my friends and family should feel free to send any time they had an urge to put a care package together. Sage! I said. Ranch dressing mix! Molasses! Marcy scours the Asian grocery before a trip to Europe. Nolan brings a jar of mole. When Krista went to Mexico, she made room in her suitcase for a 5-pound bag of White Lily flour. This is how I knew we’d be friends.

I have spent much of my brief life looking for good biscuits. Usually, I paid for them. (I think there’s a support group for that.) Outside the American south, amazing biscuits are hard to come by – most folks don’t understand that the point is to use just enough flour to hold all the fat together. What ends up happening without this rule is a lump of baked dough that tastes like toothpaste without the minty freshness, thanks to all the baking soda that gets thrown in.

I could always make decent biscuits, but I needed a gobstopper of a recipe to support the technique I understood. A few weeks ago, I found it. It’s in the Gourmet cookbook, and everyone who’s eaten these that I’ve made for them has said little more than “oh. Woah” before they vacuum them up off the plate. Then they look at me in adoration, a buttery gleam in their eyes, and say, “…could you, uh, make those again?”

You’d think that I would make enough of a recipe that people wouldn’t need to ask for a second batch. But when a stick of butter makes only four biscuits… Well, you’ve got to pace yourself.

When I made them this morning, I took a bite, held it for a second, and literally felt it melting in my mouth. I didn’t know that was possible with anything that wasn’t chocolate ganache. I see no other biscuit recipe but this one from now on.

Biscuits
adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook
makes 4 giant biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 stick butter, chilled and cut in tablespoons
3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk (I like to use 1/4 cup almond milk and 1/2 cup yogurt)

Preheat to 425F. In a large bowl stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add butter and cut in with forks or a pastry cutter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk and stir just to combine.

Turn out onto a well-floured surface and knead 5-6 times, until the dough starts to come together. Pat into a small circle, about an inch and a half thick. Using a 2″ ring mold, punch straight down into the dough, no twisting. Reform dough and cut out three more biscuits. Bake 10-15 minutes, until golden brown and delicious. (You’ll hear them sizzle on the pan. It’ll be great.) Eat with apple butter and sweet tea.

→ 5 Comments

Posted in baked, breakfast, pantry-dependent, quickbreads, snacks

Sweet Potato and Pear Hand Pies

Posted on October 21, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 4 Comments

Every few days since I wrote the last entry, I would say to myself, “I really should update the blog.” I’ve been cooking, and taking pictures, but when it comes to writing things down, I’ve just gotten lazy. Let’s blame it on… shorter days, less sunlight, hibernation-with-book tendencies, busyness at work, misaligned planets, rain on Tuesdays? Finally today, Nico said to me, “You know, you’ve been making Thai tea ice cream for ages.”

I made these a couple of weeks ago. On the phone with my dad one Saturday morning, I said, “What should I cook today?” and he relied, “Sweet potatoes and wine.” Very doable. I felt like some weekend baking, and I wanted something that I could eat casually but didn’t mind taking some time to work on. Stumbling across this recipe on Real Food Rehab, I cooed and headed straight into the kitchen.

This is a great pie crust recipe, using an egg to help it stand up to the little bit of mauling necessary to make the half-moon shapes. I’d never made little pastry pockets like this before, and as I pressed the ends of these together with a fork, I kept looking at them and going, “….aw.” When I ate them, though, cuteness turned into lustiness. Rich sweet potatoes spiked with wine and laced with 7-spice powder: how can you go wrong?

Lebanese 7-spice powder (in some cases it’s Syrian) is the ace up my spice rack’s sleeve. If you can find this in a Middle Eastern grocery, you’re in like Flynn. If you can’t, don’t despair – use a combination of allspice and black pepper. I made the filling vegan by using soy creamer and Earth Balance, but I’d be hard-pressed to let go of that egg in the crust.

Sweet Potato and Pear Hand Pies
crust recipe from Kate Neumann, as printed by Dana Joy Altman
makes about 16

crust
3 2/3 cups all purpose flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
10.5 ounces (about 2.5 sticks) unsalted butter, very cold and cubed
2 eggs, cold & gently beaten
1/4 cup ice water

filling
1 medium-sized sweet potato, 1″ dice
sweet white wine
1 medium-sized pear, peeled and cut into 1/2″ dice
1 teaspoon Lebanese 7-spice powder
2 tablespoons cream
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup apple butter
1/4 cup brown sugar

Combine flour, sugar, salt and butter in a large mixing bowl. Using your hands or a pastry cutter, work the fat in until it’s broken down into pea-sized pieces. Add one of the eggs and mix with a wooden spoon. Then, pour ice water in tablespoon increments until dough looks “shaggy”, feels a bit wet, and holds together only if you smush a bit in your hands. Knead the dough together by hand, no more than a minute, and form into a round disc, cover with plastic wrap and let chill in fridge for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make filling: Bring salted water to a boil in a 2-quart saucepan and add diced sweet potato, along with maybe half a cup of wine. Cook until sweet potato is very soft, then drain. Put sweet potato in a large mixing bowl along with remaining filling ingredients. Mash until… well, until it’s mashed. Add another glug of white wine and stir that in.

On a well-floured counter or pastry board, roll dough out to 3/16″ thickness and cut out 4″ rounds. (You can use the outline of the rim of a bowl and trace it out with a knife.) Place each cut round on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and a light dusting of flour. The scraps can be combined and rolled out again. Place a heaping tablespoon of filling in the center of each disc.

Whisk the egg. Brush a half circle of egg around the edge of exposed pastry to act as “glue.” Fold the circle in half and press down the edges with a fork to seal. Chill for at least one hour, and preheat the oven to 375F.

Before baking, brush surface of the crust with egg, cut three slits as vents and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in autumn, baked, breakfast, fruity, middle eastern, pies, snacks

Thai Tea Ice Cream

Posted on September 15, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 8 Comments

All summer long, I’ve been thinking of ice cream. And sherbet, and sorbet. And all the wonderful things I could do if only I were to drop fifty bucks on a kitchen appliance instead of on a fancy dinner. (It’s really hard for me to not spend money on a fancy dinner, especially in Portland.) With every new frozen dessert recipe and idea I saw, I would say it louder: “I’m totally getting an ice cream maker next week.”

Before I knew it, September arrived, and the vapidity of my promises reared its head. I couldn’t let the summer close without that icy churn sitting on my countertop, and so, on Labor Day weekend, I made good. After an agonizing week’s wait, I greeted the UPS man on Friday with a cheer, and I immediately dissected the delivery. I’d already made a couple of bases to go in the bucket as soon as it froze – for grapefruit-fennel sorbet and Thai tea ice cream. I’d had the latter at Staccato Gelato earlier this year and quickly lost the ability to recall my life without it. Since the flavors at Staccato change all the time, I hadn’t had it since, and as soon as I entered my shipping details I knew that this was going to be in the first round.

Thai tea is a cantaloupe-colored drink, rich with sweetened condensed milk. I first heard mention of it from Aunt Carole, whom I always considered the family foodie, when I was a teenager. Her ability to get Thai food in Chicago, however, was much greater than mine in North Carolina. I finally tasted some in college and immediately understood what all the fuss was about. I don’t know what’s in it, and I’m not sure I want to know – I sacrifice some things for the sake of mystery. Its taste is almost rustic, but there’s enough exotic bliss to keep you going, and on a hot day it’s one of the few dairy-laden beverages that cool me off.

I found this recipe from Mac & Cheese, a Philadelphia vegetarian blog. Since most of my extended family is in Philly, and I went to high school there, I’m all about supporting the Delaware Valley foodies. (Tell Grandmom I said hi.) I adore this not only because it tastes great but because it’s got 3 ingredients. Can’t get much more simple than that.

thai tea ice cream

Thai Tea Ice Cream
from Taylor at Mac & Cheese
makes about a quart

1/3 cup loose leaf Thai tea
2 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup half and half

Steep tea in water 20 minutes, then strain and let cool to room temperature. Mix 1 1/2 cups brewed tea with sweetened condensed milk and half and half. Freeze mixture in your ice cream maker, according to manufacturer’s directions.

→ 8 Comments

Posted in autumn, breakfast, desserts, pantry-dependent, summer, under 5 ingredients

Review: Screen Door (brunch)

Posted on June 20, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 4 Comments

We displaced Southerners are picky when it comes to restaurants claiming to serve down home food. We have grown to expect tasteless grits, chewy biscuits, and unsweetened iced tea when we leave the red clay states, and we groan at the very mention of “nouvelle Southern” in association with a dining establishment. I have found only two good biscuits since I’ve been in Oregon, and I had high hopes for Screen Door, at 24th and Burnside. Run by a couple from Louisiana, with a kitchen headed up by a chef who has worked at two solidly rockstar Portland restaurants, they focus on Southern food made as much as possible with local organic ingredients. This is a good start.

The space is made to look as though it is effortlessly, breezily decorated, but designer elements creep in. Artfully arranged Mason jars full of pickles and preserves, a tidy paint job, slightly scruffy chairs that all match. It’s comfortable, though, while avoiding pitfalls of being gimmicky (our tea didn’t come served in those Mason jars, thank god) and the two bottles of hot sauce on each table remind us that we are in the territory of Louisianans. My two friends and I poured over the menu, unable to decide on only one dish per person. So we gave in.

Zeke ordered the strawberry blintzes. He called them watery; I called them not-overly-rich. The cheese was lightly sweetened, the texture of the crepe gave in to everything else on the plate, and the strawberries were held gently in a simple syrup.

Sarah got the veggie hash – potatoes, peppers, asparagus, onions, Parmesan. She loved the asparagus and I thought the Parmesan pulled everything together very well. In the end, though, we agreed that a hash is a hash, and she wished she’d gotten the grits.

I did get the grits. These were the highlight of brunch. I’ve heard way too many people say, “Ugh. Grits,” and every time I hear such malice towards cornmeal I want to carry around a little container of good grits, made with sufficient salt, butter, and cheese or brown sugar, not only to prove these people wrong but to show them that there’s a reason we Southerners have formed a minor religion surrounding corn mush. If you learn anything from this blog, let it be this: grits are more than cornmeal and water. Those at Screen Door understand this – what arrived was a plate of silky, cheddar-laced buttery grits, topped with grilled tomatoes, spinach, fantastic caramelized onions, and Provolone. And it was two meals in a plate – I just ate the rest of it for dinner.

Their yeasted waffle is better than good, but it’s not mind-blowing – the yeast is a little overpowering, but the texture is fantastic, rich enough to make butter unnecessary and maple syrup a nice complement. It’s garnished simply with powdered sugar and an orange slice that is a pleasant finisher.

The biscuits. Man. I wanted them to be so much better, especially after grits and sweet tea that pass my stringent tests, but they were a little dry at the beginning, gummy in the mouth, and they had a baking powder aftertaste. What does win, though, is the veggie gravy. I know, it looks unappetizing to say the least, but it is wonderfully dense with black pepper and mushrooms, TVP providing an unnecessary but not unwelcome texture.

This was my second visit to Screen Door – Zeke and Sarah’s first – and I know I’ll be back, as will many Portlanders. It’s been at least a 20-minute wait each time, which is not uncommon for Portland breakfast spots, but I include this in my list of Portland breakfast spots that are worth the wait. It’s a big step above “dependable” and while I’ll always miss places like Sunny Point and Tupelo Honey in Asheville, this is still very worthy Southern food.

Screen Door
2337 E Burnside
(503)542-0880
dinner during the week, breakfast Sat-Sun 9-2:30

→ 4 Comments

Posted in breakfast, major food porn, no recipes, review

Fiddlehead Quiche

Posted on May 13, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 3 Comments

I have decided that in order to appreciate spring, you’ve got to live someplace with a real winter. I remember reading food magazines in Marches and Aprils years ago and wondering if the only vegetarian recipes they’d ever offer in springtime would be baby vegetable sautés. Tiny carrots, radishes, new potatoes – get over it! Spring foods tasted pale, to me. I wanted to jump right into heady peaches and bursting-ripe tomatoes, dripping with that sweet anise tang of billowing basil leaves. The area I grew up in got its fair share of snow dumps in the colder months, but I didn’t truly understand total winter hibernation until I spent it in Bulgaria.

As soon as it got warm enough to leave the house without seven layers on, I spent as much time outside as possible. And I started foraging. Wild garlic, nettles, lemon balm, dandelions – spring gave way to a whole new taste, for me. Instead of underdeveloped flavors, I now associate spring with bright yet pungent, earthy greens. (And they go so well with new potatoes!) I’ll never regret the onset of summer fruit season, but a little part of me now sighs when I see the asparagus at the market start to get thicker, the green garlic reedier. Ah well, next spring will come with just as much relief.

Today I met up with a friend that I came to know when I visited Portland years ago. We ran into each other in January or so but haven’t seen much of each other, and our schedules finally collided today, to allow us a few minutes’ wander over to the farmers’ market for lunch. We got some dead-ripe strawberries, $3.50 a pint, and I squealed with delight when I saw… fiddleheads! A recently yuppified foraging treat, $12 a pound but I didn’t care, because I knew that their season is so short and I’ve been wanting to try them for so long. I snapped up a handful of them, along with a recipe for quiche that the vendors had printed out from the Interwebs.

I’ve been easing up on the dairy, lately, and it was a bit of a deep breath to use so much of it for one recipe, but… quiche. And fiddleheads! A couple of adjustments from the original recipe – I used half and half instead of milk (if I’m going to use that much dairy, I’m not going to screw around about it), I threw in the last couple of tablespoons of parmesan I had lying around, and although I used the cheddar that the recipe calls for, I suggest substituting half of that with something a little milder, such as Gruyère. Havarti? Yum. I also threw in some chives. Because a quiche needs chives.

This is also the first blog picture I’m posting with my new camera! I’m leaving it totally unedited, because it’s pretty darn good just the way it is. Also, it’s a wet spring day in Oregon and I’m going to go sit by the fire and eat some eggy fiddlehead pie. Spring has arrived in Portland, and it’s rainy, but golly gee whiz, look at those ferns.

015

Fiddlehead Quiche
adapted from a recipe from recipeland.com
serves 6-8

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sliced leeks
1 cup chopped fiddleheads
pinch salt
4 large eggs
1 cup half and half
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
1 cup mild cheddar cheese (see notes above)
1 tablespoon chives
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 9″ pie crust, par-baked

Preheat to 350F. Heat olive oil in a pan over medium high heat and add leeks, fiddleheads, and a pinch of salt. Cook until softened and fragrant, 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk together eggs and half and half. Add salt, cheeses, chives, and parsley. Remove fiddlehead mixture from the heat and add to egg mixture. Give it a stir and pour the whole shebang into the pie crust. Bake 40 minutes or until barely set in the center. Let rest at least 15 minutes before cutting and serving.

→ 3 Comments

Posted in baked, breakfast, mains, pies, spring, wild

Lemon-Rose Pancakes with Cardamom Syrup

Posted on April 18, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 6 Comments

I’m so glad my friend Zeke has started taking French lessons on the weekends, because the language school is a few blocks from my house, and it gives him an excuse to come over on Saturday mornings. Zeke is wonderful at encouraging me to dig in the back of my pantry for the right thing to throw in a basic recipe, these pancakes being a great example. I suggested zesting a lemon into the batter, and, as I was wondering what I should pull out of the spice cabinet to complement it, he said, “Do you have any rosewater?”

Well, of course I have rosewater.

Almond extract, cardamom, and rose petals later, we had some lovely pancakes. The basic recipe I use is from Stephanie Giacoletto, a fellow Bulgaria volunteer. Believe it or not, give the batter a few more whisks than you might think is acceptable for pancakes.

lemon-rose-pancakes-2-2

Lemon-Rose Pancakes with Cardamom Syrup

syrup
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
zest of 1/2 lemon
3 cardamom pods, crushed
splash of lemon juice
splash of rosewater

pancakes
2 eggs
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
zest of 1/2 lemon
crumbled petals of 5-6 dried rosebuds
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
oil or butter, for cooking

Make syrup: in a saucepan over medium high heat, combine water, sugar, lemon zest, and cardamom. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced by half. Remove from heat, add lemon juice and rosewater, and set aside.

Make pancakes: In a small mixing bowl combine eggs, milk, oil, vanilla, almond extract, lemon zest, and rose petals. Set aside. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add wet to dry and stir to mix.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium high heat. When pan is hot enough that a drop of water sizzles in the oil, pour in about 1/4 cup of batter. Flip when the edges just start to look dry and bubbles pop to form little holes (instead of melting back into the batter, which means that it’s still too wet). Repeat with remaining batter, putting as many pancakes in the pan as you can without crowding; add more oil to the pan as needed.

Strain syrup to remove cardamom seeds and pour over pancakes. Powdered sugar, too? Yes.

→ 6 Comments

Posted in breakfast, middle eastern, pantry-dependent

Risotto Cakes

Posted on April 9, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 1 Comment

I left the country for the first time when I was 16, on a three-week school trip to Paris. I haven’t much looked back. Five continents visited, three foreign countries lived in, four languages studied, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ll never feel well-rounded or satisfactorily traveled.

The more I cook, the more I pay attention to food in the places I’ve been. It’s been Italy that keeps coming back to me, though, for recipeless cooking – I spent four months there and learned a ton about throwing stuff in a pan, more by osmosis than by any study of cuisine. My favorite trick, by far, is the risotto cake.

I learned this in Venice. I spent a few days there near the beginning of my time in Italy, and when I was trying to decide how I should finish up the two empty weeks I had before getting on my flight back to the U.S., Venice kept pulling me back. I know the arguments against it – it’s an open sewer filled with rotting buildings, topped off by pickpockets and souvenir stalls. I was wary of all of these things before I went, and dubious at any chance of a positive experience as my train from Verona rolled through the marsh in February drizzle. We left the land, though, and barbershop poles poking up through the water tugged at the corners of my mouth. I stepped off the train and out of the station and there I was, on the Grand Canal, and I immediately loved Venice. I have never left. I stayed with a friend of a friend who fed me simple, perfect food, and when she made risotto cakes, my 20-year-old’s pride hid my enthusiastic surprise at the ingenious idea. I won’t give you a recipe, because she didn’t give me one either.

risotto-cakes-2-2

Take some leftover risotto. Add an egg. Mix it up, make into patties (about 3-4 tablespoons’ worth), fry in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. The only trick is to wait long enough before flipping them – if you do it too soon, they’ll fall apart. Wait until you see a healthy brown crust forming on the bottom, then turn them.

This is a great post-dinner-party brunch. At least, that’s how I made it this week.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in breakfast, snacks, spring, under 5 ingredients

Tagged leftovers

Spiced Fried Apples with Apricot Butter

Posted on March 27, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| Leave a comment

I travel light.

After doing the requisite college European backpacking trip with a giant black pack that necessitated very few stops for laundry but a grumble every time I tried to lift it, I came home and stuffed the cumbersome luggage into the bowels of my parents’ basement, never to be seen again. Now I’ve got an oversized daypck that I use for everything from weekend trips to month-long round-the-world jaunts. (Yes, I did that once. Not recommended.) It’s always been important for me to be able to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice, because you never know when you’ll get a last-minute deal on tickets to Greece or an acquaintance whose parents’ friends’ cousins have a summer house on the Red Sea coast that they won’t use next weekend. Underwear, three shirts, toothbrush, go.

Since moving to Portland, I have discovered that I may travel light but I don’t necessarily live light. I find myself nesting. Acquiring things. This is a struggle for me, because while I realize that I am still aware enough to avoid buying non-useful things, every blanket, set of candles, pack of clothes hangers that I get roots me further in this apartment, this city, this country. The bookshelf I bought when I moved here is slowly being filled – thanks to living within walking distance of Powell’s – and my space is starting to look more and more inhabited.

In cultivating a relationship to Things, and finding a balance between materialism and simplicity, I spend time thinking about how I came to acquire them. If you’re going to own something, I feel you should remember the handing-over, have a story – a word, at the very least – to mark the moment they passed into your space. I was looking through my food photos this morning, saw this one, and thought about what went into it.

005

I made this for breakfast the day that my friend Ravi and I drove out to the coast – to Seaside, full of charming tackiness and home to the worst sandwich I’ve ever eaten, and to Astoria, a town I’d love to live in if I had a car and a tolerance for months on end of gray skies.

Of the objects in the picture, the cloth came from Istanbul. Everywhere I travel I buy scarves and earrings – they pack easily (travel light!) and are beautiful but useful. (I have a very firm no-knickknack policy, especially when it comes to souvenirs.) I’m up to about 35 scarves at this point, so I always have a backdrop for food styling!

The scarf in this photo was bought at the spice bazaar in Sultanahmet, sold for tourists but stunning nonetheless, ocean blues and strands of silver. A few minutes after I bought it, my friends and I turned a corner and found an entire street full of scarf shops – and one of them turned to another and said, “Uh oh, we’re about to lose Lauren.” I restrained myself and left the alley with only… 7 scarves. Maybe 8.

The plate is from Ikea, in a shopping trip I took thanks to some extra money in my paycheck. The food – the most important part – is from the first farmers’ market of the season! Signaling the end of a weary gray winter, I woke up on Saturday and walked the seven blocks from my house, canvas bag in hand, to a comfortably crowded, energetic collection of foodies and farmers where I picked up sunchokes, parsnips, apples, eggs, and a beautiful loaf of flour-dusted whole wheat bread. What better way to start the farmers’ market season than with a little fry-up in a cast iron pan?

Spiced Friend Apples with Apricot Butter
serves 2

2 tablespoons butter or Earth Balance
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3 winesap apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
2 heaping tablespoons apricot butter (or any fruit butter of your choosing)
2 slices good bread
maple syrup

In a pan over medium-high heat, melt butter. Add cinnamon and cloves and cook, stirring, for about 15 seconds. Add apples, stir until coated with butter, and cover. Let cook for 3-4 minutes or until easily split with a fork. Uncover and brown for 1 minute. Stir in apricot butter, empty mixture into a bowl, and set aside.

Put more butter in the pan if necessary and fry bread on both sides until browned, 2-3 minutes per side. Serve apples over bread and top with maple syrup.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in autumn, breakfast, fruity, vegan

Cranberry-Orange Cornbread with Five-Spice Glaze

Posted on November 10, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 7 Comments

A few months ago, I mentioned my love for Crescent Dragonwagon, a self-professed “closet vegetarian” for years who finally outed herself in her wonderful cookbooks. She’s done a lot to influence the way I think about food, and has much to do with my refusal to see vegetarianism as a limitation.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that she had commented on the entry! She had her publishers send me a promo copy of her newest book, The Cornbread Gospels, and while I think it is indeed possible to beat a single food item into the ground, I trust Crescent to make anything well. I finally cracked it open last week, to make her Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange Loaf. The bread itself was definitely above average, cakey and moist and everything it should be in Crescent’s magical kitchen, but I was astonished to see that the recipe called for orange zest without making use of the orange juice that would be left over!

Well, I said to myself, we’ll just fix that.

So I made this glaze and holy cannoli, it’s amazing. I understand that part of the point of having a food blog is to toot one’s own horn, and I try not to do that too much, but, really, I am a GENIUS. I had my doubts when this stuff first started heating up on the stove – the five-spice powder + Cointreau was a bit overpowering – but once it started to thicken, any sharpness mellowed and I considered buying a funnel so that I could just pour it directly down my throat. That method, however, would neglect the cornbread itself, with which this goes brilliantly. I’ll mention that all of the measurements for the glaze should end with “or so”, since I added a bit of this and a sprinkle of that. All raves aside, I can say no more other than that you really need to drop whatever you’re doing and make this. You know, now.

Cranberry-Orange Cornbread with Five-Spice Glaze
adapted, and in some cases, directly copied, from a recipe by Crescent Dragonwagon

vegetable oil cooking spray
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1/3 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (I used half milk and half yogurt)
finely grated zest of 1 orange – save the juice!
1 cup cranberries, washed, picked over, and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup rolled oats

Preheat the oven to 350F. Coat an 8″x8″ pan with oil. Sift together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt into a large bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, oil, buttermilk, and orange zest. In a third bowl combine cranberries, pecans, and oatmeal. Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour mixture over them, and toss well.

Quickly combine flour mixture and egg mixture, using as few strokes as possible. Gently stir in the cranberry mixture. The batter should be stiff. Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake 45-55 minutes. Check two-thirds of the way through the baking period; if the loaves are browning excessively, tent them loosely with foil.

Let the baked bread cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then run a thin knife around the edge of the pan and turn the loaf out. Drizzle with glaze: in a saucepan, combine…

1/2 cup powdered raw sugar (I used Mexican sugar)
juice from the orange you zested
a splash of Cointreau
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

Bring to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until reduced to a thick glaze. (This will go fast – watch it!) Pour it on, baby.

→ 7 Comments

Posted in autumn, baked, breakfast, desserts, fruity, pantry-dependent, quickbreads, snacks, wintery

blueberry muffins with extra lovins

Posted on September 8, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 5 Comments

Hello dear Parsnippians! I bet you thought I disappeared, didn’t you? Ha! Fooled you. I am indeed still up and at ‘em – only now I’m in Portland, OR. Not Bulgaria, not Asheville, not in the stressville that was my life the week before I hauled it cross country to land in this strange utopia. But now I’ve got a job, an apartment, a (fancy) cell phone. So I’m set. I’ve got a couple of weeks before I start working, so I’ve been spending time getting to know the area. I drove out to Multnomah Falls last Tuesday – that’s where the top and bottom pictures are from.

Right now I’m crashing with a friend who’s got a giant, beautiful house within walking distance of the nearest Whole Foods – I only wish she were home more often so I could show my gratitude to her by cooking her more dinners! This morning I baked up some nice blueberry muffins and threw in some ginger and citrus peels. If I don’t scarf them down plain, I might take the time to spread some ginger pear butter on them – I made that a few days ago. You’ll get the recipe for that, too. Why not?

If you wanted to, you could veganize this by making the usual substitutions – but here’s an idea: use pear butter instead of the egg. Yes? Yes.

Blueberry Ginger Orange Muffins
makes 12

1 cup half-and-half
1/3 cup melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
grated zest of 1 orange
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
60 or so blueberries

Preheat to 400F and grease 12 muffin tins. In a small bowl combine half-and-half, melted butter, egg, and sugar. In a large bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. (If you use kosher salt, put that in with the liquids instead, to give it more chance to dissolve.) Combine the two and mix until it just barely comes together. Add ginger and zests and give it another couple of stirs.

Fill muffin tins half full with batter. Go through and put about 5 blueberries on each muffin. (This will keep you from getting purple streaky muffins, which would happen if you had mixed the blueberries in the bowl. This is especially needed with frozen blueberries.) Top with remaining batter. Bake ‘em for 20 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let sit for 2 minutes, then remove from pan.

Ginger Pear Butter
makes 1 cup

3 pears, peeled, cored, and roughly chopped
1/2″ fresh ginger, finely grated
juice and grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup water

Throw all that in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat until water comes to a boil. Turn the heat down to low, mash the pears up, and cook, stirring frequently, until it reaches a thick, spreadable consistency.

What you’re essentially doing here is cooking most of the water out of the pears, so you don’t need any grand cooking skills to do this – just patience. This is a low-n-slow dish.