Category Archives: wintery

Pumpkin Mushroom Lasagna

Posted on January 31, 2010 by parsnipsaplenty| 2 Comments

Usually, I am responsible about not overscheduling myself. I know that I need plenty of time each week to do Nothing in Particular, by myself, on my own time. These past few weeks, though, have been full of activity, and while I love, absolutely love, spending time with so many friends, I’m near the point where I just want to sit and stare at the wall for an hour. All of this nonstop busyness will stop on Wednesday, though, when I plan on drawing a bath and turning my phone off.

What does this have to do with food? Well, I’m making this lasagna for a potluck today. And there will still be enough for me to have for dinner on Wednesday. Half an hour of cooking (and an hour in the oven) is going to set me up with wonderful leftovers for the next few days. This is by far my favorite nontraditional lasagna, easily adored with the matchup of sweet squash and hearty mushrooms, set off by the tang of ricotta salata. The next time you’re thinking about making a wintery baked dish that will last you for three days, I excitedly recommend this wonderful Moosewood recipe.

Pumpkin Mushroom Lasagna
very closely based on a recipe from the Moosewood Collective
makes a 9″x13″ pan

2 yellow onions, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lb sliced cremini or other mushrooms
1/4 cup chopped fresh sage leaves
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup sherry, vegetable stock, or a combination
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 15-ounce cans pumpkin
3 cups ricotta
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
3/4 pound uncooked lasagna noodles
1 1/2 cups crumbled ricotta salata
1/2 cup grated romano or parmesan

In a large pot, saute onions in oil for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and saute another 5 minutes, until mushrooms are somewhat wilted. Add sage, salt, and sherry or stock and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes. Set aside.

In a large bowl stir together eggs, pumpkin, ricotta, pepper, and nutmeg. Set aside.

Preheat to 375F and lightly oil a 9″x13″ baking dish.

Dip out about 1/2 cup liquid from the sauteed mushrooms and pour into the prepared baking dish. Cover bottom with a layer of lasagna noodles arranged close together. Evenly spread on half of the pumpkin mixture. Spoon on about a third of the mushrooms and sprinkle with a third of the ricotta salata. Add a second layer of noodles followed by the remaining pumpkin mixture, another third of the sauteed mushrooms, and another third of the ricotta salata. Finish with a layer of noodles thoroughly moistened by the last third of the sauteed mushrooms. Evenly sprinkle on the last third of the ricotta salata and top with the grated romano.

Cover and bake 50 minutes. Uncover and bake for an additional 10 minutes, until lasagna is bubbly, noodles are tender, and the top is browned. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving.

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Posted in autumn, baked, mains, one-dish meals, pasta, wintery

Seitan Pot Pie

Posted on January 17, 2010 by parsnipsaplenty| 4 Comments

I was back east last week. (“Back east”, to people on the left coast, means anything past the Rockies.) It was the longest time I’ve been out of Portland since I moved here, a year and a half ago. I went to visit the old homestead, in Asheville NC, and to remind myself that the America outside Portland is a very different America than the one I have grown into, here.

Did you know, for example, that people actually use their cars every day? And that styrofoam is still being manufactured? I had forgotten this. Fortunately, I slipped into a sweet-tea-induced haze of tranquility that kept me from being too snobby, and a drive through the mountains the day before I got back on the plane helped remind me of many fond memories I had growing up there. It was also wonderful to see so many family friends who blissfully call Asheville home.

I was homesick for Portland all week, though. I got back late last night, and when I woke up this morning, I walked down the street to my favorite breakfast spot, where I think I’m becoming a regular, and had my usual oatmeal, biscuit, and crossword puzzle. Then I strolled over to the co-op and got some veggies to make a pot pie. A red bell pepper and some maitake mushrooms were on the use-it-up-today shelf, so I threw those in the basket (never turn down a half-priced maitake, is my motto) with a bit of broccoli, an onion, some unfancy mushrooms, and a pack’o'seitan. A little fridge rummaging later, I had a wonderful dinner on its way.

Pot pie looks a little complicated to make, but that’s because this is an ideal way to use up little bits of leftovers. The veggies I used went really well together, but you don’t need to follow this recipe to the letter. What I do recommend heartily, though, is a splash of pear liqueur in the gravy. I had a bottle of some, made by Clear Creek Distillery, on the counter, and when I took a look at all the winter veggies I was pouring into this thing, tipping a few drops in was inevitable. White wine, sherry, or an apple brandy would be welcome, too. Or you could leave it without alcohol, and you’d do just fine. I’m going to categorize this as vegan, too, because it’s very easily made so – just use Earth Balance for the butter.

I started thinking about pot pie on the plane yesterday, as I was mentally waxing poetic about everything Portlandy I would be shortly returning to. I wanted some homey comfort food. Because this is home.

Seitan Pot Pie
serves 6-8

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
8 tablespoons cold butter, cut in pieces
1/4 cup cold water

2 fist-sized potatoes, scrubbed or peeled, diced
1/2 medium-sized carrot, scrubbed or peeled, diced (about 1 cup)
1 cup peeled and diced winter squash

2 tablespoons butter
1 smallish white onion, diced (about 1 cup)
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
leaves from 1 sprig rosemary
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups warm vegetable broth
2 tablespoons pear liqueur (optional)

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 small head broccoli, roughly chopped
1 8-oz package seitan, drained and rinsed, diced

Make crust: in a bowl, combine flour and salt and cut in butter with a pastry cutter (or rub it in with your fingertips) until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add water and mix until dough just comes together. Form into a disc, wrap, and put in the fridge while you make the filling. (If you’ve prepped the filling ingredients ahead of time, put it in for at least an hour.)

Preheat to 375F.

Cook veg: bring a few cups of water or vegetable broth to a boil. Add potatoes, carrot, and squash and let simmer until a little soft but not quite cooked through. Drain and set aside.

Make gravy: While the potatoes are simmering, melt butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Add onion, salt, pepper, and rosemary and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are softened and browned, 10 minutes. (If they’re going too fast, turn the heat down. You want a nice caramelization.) Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook another 3-4 minutes. Sprinkle in flour, stirring constantly, and cook 1-2 minutes. Add vegetable broth, stir, and let it come to a boil. Add pear liqueur, if using, and simmer 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning. It’s okay to add enough salt that it tastes on the salty side, because you’ll be adding more vegetables later that will take that salt.

Combine drained potato mixture, mushroom gravy, bell pepper, broccoli, and seitan in a 4-quart baking dish. Stir so that gravy coats everything. Remove pastry dough from fridge, roll out, and lay on top of filling, pinching the edges against the edge of the baking dish so gravy doesn’t spill over the sides. Cut a couple of slits in the top to let steam escape so that the whole thing doesn’t blow up in your oven. Put it in the oven so it will cook and be delicious. This will take about 45 minutes. Take it out and let it sit for about 10 minutes so it won’t be too runny when you first cut into it. Eat it so you’ll be happy.

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Posted in baked, mains, one-dish meals, pies, vegan, wintery

Chocolate Cherry Upside Down Cake

Posted on February 5, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 2 Comments

What do you do when skies are gray and the days aren’t yet long enough?

You open the freezer to find the sour cherries you picked and put away last summer! And then you make a cake.

I made this last February, when a bunch of other volunteers crammed into my little apartment for a weekend of winter food lovin’. Then we rolled back the Turkish rug and initiated a hoe-down. Bonus: it’s vegan. But don’t say that too loudly.

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Chocolate Cherry Upside Down Cake
adapted from a recipe from allrecipes.com

2 cups frozen pitted sour cherries, thawed and drained
3 tablespoons butter or Earth Balance
3 tablespoons sugar

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. In an 8″ metal cake pan, combine cherries, butter, and sugar and put over medium-high heat, stirring until butter and sugar have melted. Set aside.

In a large bowl sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl combine water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Pour wet into dry and mix until just barely combined. Pour over cherry mixture in cake pan. Bake 30-35 minutes and let cool for 10 minutes in pan before turning out.

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Posted in baked, desserts, fruity, pantry-dependent, vegan, wintery

Kale-Potato Soup with Balsamic-Roasted Garlic

Posted on January 15, 2009 by parsnipsaplenty| 6 Comments

I grew up in a wonderful progressive community in southern Appalachia, where vegetarianism was never a confusing concept. I don’t remember ever learning about tofu – it was something people ate, and the bean curd patty was never a revelation for me. Any sense of “you mean you don’t eat meat/dairy/wheat/Doritos – what can I feed you?” never really stuck around for very long, because, although I attended a lot of tabbouleh-intensive potlucks, someone always had a new recipe for something intriguingly healthy. Many of my parents’ friends would say, “Oh yeah, I was a vegetarian… in college.”

So on the first day of college, I went to the cafeteria, grabbed a tray, looked at the chicken fingers on the hot bar, and said, “Well, I’m in college, so I might as well be a vegetarian.”

It was not so simple, of course. I was never a huge fan of meat, but I still weaned myself off of it slowly. I’ve done enough traveling, though, to know that most of the world is vegetarian only for reasons of economics. I’m very aware that for me to say that I choose not to eat meat is an ability that comes only with a great deal of privilege, so when someone goes out of their way to go to the butcher for my visit, I’m going to eat what they serve me and be grateful for every bite. People ask me why I’m vegetarian, and I say, “really, every reason.” It’s better for my cholesterol, my wallet, my environment, my friendly neighborhood cows. I’m one of those pissy ranting liberals who goes on about American overconsumption, and I’m thankful daily that I don’t live in a place that expects me to drive my large belching car to a strip-mall supermarket so I can stock up on my weekly supply of Jimmy Dean.

Sometimes I think I should take things to the next level and go vegan. This thought usually lasts until the spoonful of yogurt in my hand makes it to my mouth. I’ve never asked a vegan, “So… what do you eat, anyway?” but I have always been secretly impressed by cooks who can give vegan food that rich-and-creamy mouthfeel that we all crave from time to time. It’s a very particular aesthetic of mastication*, to me, a way of looking at food that is hearty, satisfying, and – most importantly – not just full of weirdo substitutes. (For example, Coconut Bliss is good. Tofurkey is frightening.)

Enter rice milk. You can make soup with it! Who knew? I got a lovely bunch of kale in my produce box last week, and I had a ton of tiny potatoes that were all about to get sprouty, and I really wanted to make a good soup with them. I was thinking about making a nice wintery, creamy soup, but I get bites of super rich food at work all day, so when I come home, I do not want to go into a dairy coma. I also do not want my cream soup to taste like soy. So rice milk it is! This is the vegan potage I’ve been craving – deeply-flavored, savory, but not a cream bomb. My friend ET and I had this for lunch today with a nice carrot salad, bread, and a little plate of Bulgarian sheep’s-milk cheese. (Oops, that’s not vegan.)

kale-potato-soup-2

Kale-Potato Soup with Balsamic-Roasted Garlic
serves 4-6

2 heads garlic
salt and pepper
olive oil
good balsamic vinegar. The thick stuff.

1 small yellow onion, diced
1 stalk celery, finely diced
1/2 teaspoon chopped dried rosemary
1 bunch kale, center stems removed, roughly chopped
1 1/2 pounds potatoes, skins on, roughly chopped
1 quart + 1 cup vegetable broth
2 cups rice milk

Roast garlic: preheat oven to 375F. Chop off the top of each head of garlic, exposing the cloves. Put the heads down on a piece of aluminum foil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Wrap them up in the foil to make a little packet, and put in the oven for 30 minutes or until the garlic is soft and drop-dead-gorgeous brown.

Meanwhile, make soup: In a pot over medium heat, cook onions, celery, rosemary, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil until softened, about 5 minutes. Add kale, potatoes, and vegetable broth, cover, and turn the heat up to high. When soup comes to a boil, turn heat to medium low and simmer, uncovered, until potatoes are soft and kale is cooked, about 30 minutes.

By this point, the garlic should be done. When it’s cool enough to handle, squeeze out the cloves into the soup. Give it a stir, and get out your blender. Use a slotted spoon to put the veggies in the blender – a little broth is OK, but don’t overdo it. Puree it in batches, adding enough rice milk to get it to a cream-soup consistency. Discard vegetable broth (or save it to make another soup!) and put your pureed mixture in the pot; heat until warm and serve.

Note The red garnish in the picture is just some red pepper puree. Empty a jar of roasted red peppers into the blender, add a little rosemary and a drizzle of olive oil. Buzz. Done.

*Yes, I just said, “aesthetic of mastication.”

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Posted in mains, soup, vegan, wintery

Spaghetti Squash with Sarsaparilla and Sage

Posted on December 27, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 4 Comments

When I first started cooking with any intention, I wasted a tremendous amount of money. One day, years ago, I was home from college for the summer and a few friends came to visit for the weekend, and we decided to make a curry for dinner. The recipe we picked was, of course, one with thirty ingredients, most of which were spices. My parents tossed me their debit card and we went to the store.

We spent eighty-four dollars. To make one pot of curry. And you know why? Because we bought a jar of every spice on that list. All of which were, of course, organic. And at least five bucks a pop. I have learned since that the most wonderful thing about health food stores is the bulk section, specifically the bulk herbs and spices. Heed this!: Never buy a jar of spices, because you can buy them by the teaspoon (or tablespoon, or whatever) at your local co-op for fifty cents, which saves you tons of money – and, since you’re not buying a whole jarful at a time, you don’t have to worry about it going stale. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes we make when stocking our pantry: spices, especially pre-ground spices, lose their potency quickly, and when you leave a jar of curry powder in the cabinet for a year before you finally get around to making that great vindaloo recipe you’ve been hanging on to, I can promise you it will hardly taste like anything except the twenty chilies you had to put in.

So there’s tip number one for the day. Tip number two, which I try to emphasize often in this blog: substitute whenever and wherever you can. When I was first getting the hang of cooking for myself, I made sure to follow new recipes to the letter the first time I made them, and then allowed myself to adapt them as needed. I think this is important for a beginning cook, but now that I’ve got a better sense of things, I do it less often, and have become more of a recipe-as-guide person, as opposed to a recipe-as-law. I love reading a recipe that has notes for variation, because it means that whoever developed it played around with it a lot before releasing it to the wind, and it also gives more of a springboard for ideas of different directions that I can take with it.

This second tip is the main reason I’ve never made spaghetti squash – well, at least not until this afternoon. It feels like such a… unitasker. If I’m going to make something with winter squash, I grab one arbitrarily from the pile at the grocery store. (Or farmers’ market. Of course.) Spaghetti squash seemed almost gimmicky to me – it’s squash, and it can be made into ribbons? Who cares?

I picked one up last week. I caved.

Okay, okay, the pastasquash is fun. I admit it. You can wrap it around your fork, suck a piece down like a noodle, and pile it up into a lovely orange tower of angel hair. But it’s squash, which everyone in their right mind loves, and so it goes terrifically with simple, earthy flavors. I’m using only two – sarsaparilla and sage. One trendy, one classic, both delicious.

You know how you make broth with a bundle of aromatic herbs? I followed the same idea here. When I split the squash down the middle to bake, I put sarsaparilla in the pan, underneath the cavity of the squash. This helped the flavor really permeate, without that annoying texture of, well, wood. No one likes eating bits of wood.

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Spaghetti Squash with Sarsaparilla and Sage
serves 2-3

1 spaghetti squash
olive oil
2 teaspoons sarsaparilla
2 dried sage leaves, crushed
salt to taste

Preheat to 350. Halve spaghetti squash lengthwise, and scrape out seeds and goop. Put 1/4″ of water in the bottom of a pan large enough to hold both squash halves, and put a teaspoon of sarsaparilla in the place of where you’ll put each half. Drizzle a bit of olive oil in there, too, then put each squash half over the little piles of sarsaparilla. Cover tightly with aluminum foil or a good lid, then put in the oven and bake until soft, 30-45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.

Take a look at which way the strands are going. You meat-eaters will know that it’s best to cut meat to make the fibers as short as possible – the opposite is true here. With a fork, gently loosen the strands of squash – with the grain, not against it. Pile onto a plate and top with sage and some good salt.

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Posted in autumn, baked, sides, under 5 ingredients, vegan, wintery

Snow Day Stir-Fried Greens

Posted on December 19, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 4 Comments

When I arrived here in Portland at the end of the summer, the long-time transplants warned me about winter.  Not so much the weather, but the reaction to it.

“This city shuts down under an inch of snow,” warned native midwesterners, suppressing groans.

I understood – both the fact of the matter, and the annoyance with it.  Asheville does the same thing, since it’s full of tiny mountain roads that turn to ice faster than a moonshine hangover, but as soon as a flake of snow hits the air, everyone runs over to the supermarket to stock up on milk, water, and toilet paper, since they’re expecting a return of the Blizzard of ’93.  (You still see t-shirts at the Goodwill announcing “I survived the Blizzard of ’93!”)  I had a handful of days off from school when my northeastern-born parents looked out the window, said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and took me out for breakfast.

Portland got a couple of inches of snow on Sunday, which all melted on Tuesday, and I’ve barely been able to get anything done.  Except go to work, that is – no snow days for me, since I live 20 blocks away.  Heaven forbid I try to make any doctor or massage appointments, though – I’ve been getting answering machines all week.

Today, though, is the start of a 3-day weekend for me, and I was excited to wake up to giant snowflakes falling outside my window.  This, I thought, is a day for tea and some good greens.

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Deborah Madison taught me about bok choy.  Her recipe for stir-fried bok choy with peanuts, from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, is the one that I apply to just about everything I feel like coating in soy sauce.  Having grown up in the south, I can’t help but feel that every green thicker than spinach should be cooked to within an inch of its life, and I think that this new business of stir-frying collard greens is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  Bok choy, however, does really well in this application, and is very well-rounded by peanuts, cooked in a rich-tasting roasted peanut oil, with a bit of heat at the end from ginger and red pepper flakes.  This time, I used some baked tofu instead of peanuts, but I’ll post the original recipe and let you find your own variations.  It’s an excellent introduction to throwing some veggies in a pan.

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Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Roasted Peanuts
serves 2-4
recipe by Deborah Madison

3 tablespooons raw peanuts
2 teaspoons roasted peanut oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt
1 1/2 pounds bok choy
2 tablespoons peanut oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons minced ginger
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch stirred with 3 tablespoons water or vegetable stock

Fry peanuts in 2 teaspoons roasted peanut oil until they’re golden. Chop with red pepper flakes and a few pinches salt and set aside.

Slice off bok choy stems and cut them into 1″ pieces. Leave the leaves whole. Set a wok over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil and roll it around the wok. When hot, add garlic and ginger and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add bok choy and a few pinches salt and stir-fry until wilted and glossy. Add soy sauce and cornstarch mixture and stir-fry 1-2 minutes more until leaves are shiny and glazed. Add crushed peanuts, toss, and serve.

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Posted in mains, stir fry, vegan, wintery

Smoked Paprika and Rutabaga Bisque

Posted on December 7, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 5 Comments

This weekend, my goals have been:

1. Above all, do as little as possible.
2.  Spend many happy minutes looking at Mt St Helens and Mt Adams from my window, as it’s often too cloudy to see them.
3.  Listen to NPR in live form, not podcast.
4.  Make the rutabaga bisque whose recipe has been sitting in my inbox for weeks.
5.  Change out of my bathrobe only when absolutely necessary.

I’d like to report that I have done all of these with great aplomb.

This bisque is perfect.  Just perfect.  I don’t like anything that tastes like a radish, and rutabaga falls in that category, but smoked paprika takes that bitter sourness and turns it into something pristine and hearty all at once.  The original recipe called for celery, as so many soup recipes do, but I can’t stand celery, plus I didn’t have any, so I left it out.  If you want to keep it in, it’s 2 stalks, diced.  But if you ask me, Enemy Extraordinaire of Celery, it doesn’t need it.

I could go on about this soup, but that would take too much time away from your marching to the kitchen to make it.  And I’ve really got to get back to working on goal #1.

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Smoked Paprika and Rutabaga Bisque
adapted from a recipe by Kate Ramos for chow.com
serves 6-8

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 1/2 pounds rutabaga, peeled and cubed (about 4 1/4 cups)
4 cups (1 quart) low-sodium vegetable broth
2 cups half-and-half
2 1/2 teaspoons good quality smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ground black or white pepper

Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Once butter foams, add onion, and season generously with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is tender but not browned, about 5 minutes.

Add rutabaga and broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer until rutabaga is tender when pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes. Add half-and-half, paprika, and pepper and stir to combine. Allow soup to cool slightly, then purée in a blender until smooth. (You will have to do this in batches.) Taste and season with more salt and pepper as needed.

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Posted in autumn, soup, wintery

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.

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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.

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

Gingerbomb Cake

Posted on March 15, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 1 Comment

I’ve been spending some time lately working on a community cookbook – a compilation of Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian recipes from friends and colleagues.  Last year I overhauled the previous cookbook that had circulated among us for awhile, and this year I’m just tidying things up a bit.  Another American friend, who will stay here for a year longer than I, has been helping shape it up, and she came over last weekend for a joint editing session.  It goes without saying that we cooked - some nice pizza on Friday, some fancy sandwiches on Saturday – but the star of the weekend would be the recipe for a triple-ginger bread that she toted along from allrecipes, that we of course tweaked.  Fresh grated ginger, dried ginger, and crystallized ginger form the trifecta of rhizome love that is this sweet, sticky, densely-flavored cake.

My favorite gingerbread recipe is the one from Baking with Julia that includes cocoa powder, coffee, and tons of ground black pepper.  This is a bit too much for many, and I can accept that, but I can’t make any gingerbread now without adding just a pinch of black pepper – it adds a layer of heat that plays perfectly off that of the ginger.

Bulgaria friends and colleagues: this recipe will not be going in the cookbook, since you can’t easily get crystallized ginger or molasses here.  But next week I will be posting something from the freshly-updated reference.  I’m still not sure which recipe I’ll use, though, so if there’s anything you’d like photographed and talked about, kazhi.

Gingerbomb Cake

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon table salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup apple juice
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger

Preheat to 350F (175C). Butter and flour a 10″ springform pan. In a large bowl sift together flours, cinnamon, cloves, powdered ginger, black pepper, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl combine eggs, sugar, oil, molasses, apple juice, and fresh ginger. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. Fold in crystallized ginger. Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for an hour or until a thin knife inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge of the cake before releasing the sides of the pan. Serve warm.

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Posted in baked, desserts, wintery

pumpkin-rosemary mishmash

Posted on February 6, 2008 by parsnipsaplenty| 2 Comments

When I first arrived in Bulgaria, I was a closet vegetarian living with a host family.  I didn’t want my diet to interfere with others’ hospitality, but I was still a little worried about the reports I’d heard that Bulgarians were really into their lamb brains.  So in the interest of diplomacy, I told my host family that I had been vegetarian until recently so if there was any food of theirs that I refused, it wasn’t because it wasn’t well-prepared, it was because I was still getting used to the idea of eating meat.  This worked most of the time – every once in awhile I would come home to a freshly killed lamb hanging from the clothesline and it would be understood that on those days I wouldn’t really hang out in the kitchen.  One day I did venture down, however, to find my host mother and sister boiling offal and cutting up intestines.  I took a deep breath (and whiff – I’ll never forget that smell) and sat down with them to spend a little QT.  The next day was meatball soup for lunch.  I caught sight of a snip of intestine.  Then I saw the half of a boiled brain on the table.  Then I went to the sandwich shop down the street and got myself some grilled cheese.  (For the record, I say if you’re going to eat meat, head-to-tail is the way to go. I can’t, so I don’t.)

 After that I was much more tentative.  I ate as little ground meat as I could without being rude, but my host mother still noticed, and one day, she said something to the effect of, “For heaven’s sake, what do you eat?”

 ”Mishmash,” I replied.

 Mishmash is an egg-based dish, but it doesn’t taste eggy.  It’s loaded up with sirene, a Bulgarian white cheese similar to feta, and folks around here will throw in greens in spring, red peppers and tomatoes in summer, and just about whatever vegetables are lying around the house the rest of the time.  My host mother would often make it for me on the nights that dinner involved meatballs, and I am forever grateful.  Since I’m no longer living with a host family, I can have a meatball-free kitchen, and I can make mishmash as often as I want. 

 As many different ways as I’ve had mishmash served to me, it’s never been with pumpkin, and recently, after seeing some leftover cubes of this favorite winter veg in the fridge the day after a dinner party, I decided to throw it in the pan.  Rosemary adds some earthy greenness that goes well with the sweetness of the pumpkin and the salty tang of the cheese.

Pumpkin Rosemary Mishmash
serves 2

2 tablespoons olive or sunflower oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups crumbled sirene or feta*
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves
1 – 1 1/12 cups lightly mashed cooked pumpkin
pinch chili powder, optional
hunks of bread

Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over high heat.  In a bowl combine eggs and cirene and mix well.  Add garlic and rosemary and cook until fragrant – but don’t let the garlic brown.  Add egg mixture, pumpkin, and chili powder and cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes, or until much of the liquid has cooked out.  This is a bit like telling you how long to cook your scrambled eggs – you’ll know when they’re done to your liking.  Divide onto 2 plates.  To eat, pile big bites onto bread and dig in.  This would be great with some caramelized onions on top, too.

*If you’re using feta, I’d recommend rinsing and draining it first, to make it a little less salty.

make your own sirene (note: I haven’t tested this recipe)
buy your own sirene (anywhere from 2 to 47 pounds of it!)

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Posted in neo-bulgo, wintery