Claire's Dad's Muffins

Yet another weekend has passed us by, and yet another Monday morning finds me reluctant to leave the warm confines of my nighttime oasis to begin another week of work.  Good thing that I had a personal day I had to use in the next 3 weeks, because playing hooky never feels better than on a Monday in the wintertime.

But staying home from work also means that my drawer full of oatmeal packets and honey nut cheerios, what I keep stashed in my desk for at-work breakfasts, are far from my belly.  Good thing I spent the weekend cooking - making samosas for a dinner party, testing Christmas cookie recipes, whipping up a batch of dough for weekday pizza/calzone making, and baking a batch of fruity oatmeal muffins as a small thank-you for the hostess with the mostess.  And, since they were her dad's recipe, it was one homemade gift I knew would be well received!

I do have to shout out C's generosity (not to mention the AMAZING peppery arugula pasta with shrimp and scallops and chopped greek salad upon which we feasted on Saturday!) for sharing this special recipe with me.  It's her dad's muffin recipe, special in itself for the many memories they are sure to contain, but even more special for its location in a family heirloom recipe book.  If I have my facts right, C's sister assembled many of their family's traditional recipes into one custom cookbook so that everybody would always remember how to make the meaningful dishes that fed their family's bellies and souls.

Do me a favor and ignore the dirty stove.  We cleaned after this photo was taken...

So very lucky am I indeed that this recipe was shared with me.  As I'm not a baker, I loved the casual an almost improvisational tone of the recipe. It's also healthy, loaded with whole oats, fruit and yogurt, with hardly any oil or egg in the batter. The resulting muffins are deliciously moist, subtly spiced, and naturally sweet.  Toasted and topped with a smidgen of butter, one of these muffins warmed up this very cold winter day and made Monday seem not so bad after all.

Early Thanksgiving Bonus Recipe - Banana-Cranberry Muffins with Streusel

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, my dear friends. I am only cooking small contributions to the big meal this year, having shuffled off hosting duty to my wonderful parents-in-law AND gotten my own parents to come down, too.  Two families' worth of food traditions?  This Thanksgiving will be, as Swarles Barkley says, LEGENDARY.

So I am whipping up a few family specialties - my grandma's exquisite buttery dinner rolls, a brie in puff pastry with almonds and apricots (for the before time...to keep the cooks' energies up!).  Maybe my grandpa's orange-cranberry relish.  These little post-a-roos will come after the holiday bloat, after the meal is digested, when you're looking at a fridge full of leftovers and wondering, "what now?"

This little recipe concoction calls for dried cranberries to be mixed right into the batter - a fine way to enjoy them.  But, in the spirit of Thanksgiving leftovers, why don't you try it with leftover fresh cranberries (made the same way, just increase the amount to a cup) or with leftover cranberry sauce.  The latter would probably be good either mixed in (thought it will muddy the color) or, better yet, left out of the batter -- then spooned in to the center of each full muffin cup, like a surprise filling!  Or 'marbled' onto the top, before the streusel goes on. Oh, there are just so may options...just like a Thanksgiving table!

What sets these muffins apart from regular banana breads is the citrus zest.  In fact, the first time I made them, I replaced the cinnamon/clove/nutmeg with a pumpkin pie spice mix that had lemon essence/extract in it.  If you're looking to amp up the citrus notes, feel free to add lemon zest too. Hey, you could even try replacing the water with orange juice, although I wonder if that would muddle flavors too much.  The banana is present but not overwhelming; the cranberries are tart but still sweet; and the citrus is almost an aroma in the palate – a hint, but a strong one. Like my hint for you to make me some of these. 

Challah, light

It looks prettier when not viewed through a camera phone.  I left my camera in my work bag.  DAMN.

Cooking Light is an interesting magazine.  I grew up reading my mom's subscription, and its recipes were identifiable for the many "shortcuts" they used to achieve full-ish flavor from light and fat free ingredients.  Yogurt instead of sour cream; milk/buttermilk instead of cream; applesauce subbed for oil in baked goods; and all of those fat-free and low-fat bastardized versions of the real thing.

But those things give me the heebie jeebies.  What, pray tell, are you eating when you eat fat-free butter?  What homogenized chemicals must be processed indefinitely to produce something like that? Certainly, not all reduced fat items are bad, and some I actually like just as much as the regular version (neuftachel cheese, 2% greek yogurt), but still...fat-free cream cheese?  What are you actually eating?

A kitchen scale makes baking so much easier.

Recently, though, Cooking Light has somewhat changed its ethos away from "fake-out" cooking towards a more moderate approach.  Instead of turkey bacon, their recipes will now use regular bacon - just sparingly, and in consideration of what's in teh rest of the meal too.  Likewise, trans-fat filled margarine now cedes its place in the ingredient list to real butter, just again with a thought to what else you're eating and what else is going in the dish.  Cooking Light is a great source - and inspiration - when trying to eat healthier without feeling like you only eat salads.  Plus, their recipes are generally good.  Yeah, some taste like health food, but most are easy, and they work.  This is important.

Love the action shot of my gorgeous KitchenAid....

Their Thanksgiving 2010 issue features a great cache of lightened-up and updated holiday recipes, including one for a Fontina and Chive Challah bread.  Challah is, I'm told, a traditional Jewish bread enriched with butter and eggs, somewhat like Brioche. It is usually braided into a loaf and brushed with egg wash to help the top bake up with a deep golden brown crust.  I know it  from deli counters and countless grilled cheeses - something about the eggy, buttery bread with its crusty top layer just welcomes toasting, sandwiching, and endless extra bites.

I had planned to make soup for dinner that night, but needed something to go alongside, hopefully something to dip into the brothy bottoms of the soup bowl.  Although I lacked fontina, I decided to give this challah a go, albeit a plain version, halving the recipe as well to prevent the inevitable eating of two loaves of bread before they go stale.

Sorry about the camera phone shot...

The recipe called for a few eggs, a few yolks, and very specific amounts of two kinds of flour.  But, since it required three separate rises, and I wanted to make it in one day, I woke up early to start mixing the dough.  As a result, my math (and reading) skills weren't quite up to par at that daybreaking hour, so I sorta "winged" the amounts.  I'm pretty sure I used too many eggs, and not enough flour, so the recipe below is definitely not the same in its exactness as the original.  Cooking Light claims each slice (counting 12 per loaf) has but 160 calories and 4 grams of fat, which compared to brioche (have you ever READ the ingredient list?) is light indeed.  And without the cheese, this version is even better.  So all that butter I slathered all over the top of my slices is totally negated, right?  Right.....

Cheddar Bay Biscuits

If something is glistening with butter, it might not be healthy, but it's probably good. 

You know what I'm talking about.  Cheddar Bay Biscuits, Red Lobster's most famous offering. Say what you will about this seafood chain, I'll go there anytime you ask me if only to feast on these buttery, cheesy, garlicky bread bombs.  They're famously good...and NOTORIOUSLY bad for you. 

Now, I don't claim that this version I made the other night was healthy, mind you.  A biscuit is a biscuit--that means butter and white flour, and these even include cheese.  But I dare say there a lot less bad than the kind in the restaurant, and you definitely won't end up eating a plate full of deep fried fish along with the biscuits if you make them at home (well, I suppose that's not quite true. I've never deep fried anything and I never plan to.  I can find plenty of deep fried temptation outside my house and don't need to find it inside, too. But you might be deep frying your shoes right now, for all I know.)

Something is clearly wrong with me today.  Is it the fact that, defying my very sloth-like, anti-AM nature, I got out of bed at 5:30 this morning to go to the GYM?  And then I took the dog to the park?  And then I made both breakfast and lunch before leaving for work? Usually I can barely dress myself in the 15-minute post-wake up, pre-run-to-catch-the-bus morning haze.  I am not myself ("How am I not myself?" -- name that movie) today, clearly.  


So, meandering my way back to a point, BISCUITS.  They is good.  

I should have used a bigger sheet, but that would have meant washing one, and I'm lazy.

These biscuits might just make up for my mental shortcomings.  I love drop biscuits (my go-to biscuit recipe is a roll n cut variety) because they're just so easy to whip up on a moment's notice, when you are panicking that "OMG my dinner doesn't have STARCH in it?  How can I eat without potatoes or white flour!?"  Hey, I was raised in the Midwest.  I need my carbs. 


Crisp and flavorful, they aren't as flaky as those RL (for some that acronym might mean Ralph Lauren; in my food-centric world, it's of course Red Lobster) versions made with probably triple the amount of butter, but that just means I can eat three times as many before the guilt sets in.  

The plight of the humble lentil

Starting with the mise, as soup ain't the most photogenic of foods...

Try as hard as I might, I have a hard time spreading my enthusiasm for legumes around.  I just love beans--baked, in soups, instead of meat, added to salads, mashed up...any way, really as long as the way ends in my belly.  Plus, they're so good for you--a great source of lean protein, lots of vitamins...probably.  And versatile!  You can do anything with a bean!

Lest you think my legume enthusiasm is overwhelming my sanity, I know that beans aren't the most exciting of all the food groups. They can be mushy, mealy and bland.  Even baked beans, a pretty much universally appreciated bean dish, can be overly sweet, soupy, and just plain bad.  Refried beans can be meaty, salty, rich and deeply flavored on the good end, but sticky, greasy, and downright disgusting when they're bad.  I guess bean preparations are as varied as the bean itself...

Garlic and the debris--kale stems, carrot tops, onion skins. 

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time sticking to my healthy guns when the weekend rolls around.  During the week, it's easy to say no to a second helping, hold the cheese/dressing/mayo, and reach for fruit instead of salty chips.  But once the weekend rolls around, all bets are off, and the only thing that can satisfy me is deep-fried or cheese covered.  Why does this happen?  Some strange atmospheric phenomenon I don't know about...?

This weekend was really no exception.  Cupcakes were baked for a birthday, sliders and cheese sauce were made on a whim, and a pizza was ordered far later than necessary.  So when Sunday night rolled around, the guilt trip was already building from the weekend's fat fest, and I knew something a little more healthful was in order.  Cue the beans--Lentil Soup, to be precise!

Judge not a soup by its darkly lit photo, but by the taste of the bowl. Mmmm. 

I did start with a recipe (torn from my Food Network Magazine, a gift from my lovely Aunt L!!!) for Spicy Lentil Soup with Greek Yogurt...but after looking in my fridge and finding not enough lentils in the cupboard, I knew I'd have to forge ahead on my own and revise as I went.  No problem.

The original recipe called for basically dumping everything in a pot and boiling away, but knowing the potential blandness of the bean (and A's aversion to a can of Lentil Soup that's been purposefully ignored in the cupboard for months) to build more flavor right off the bat. Especially since the soup called just for water, not stock, in creating the broth--another potential flavor-sucker.  Instead, I started by rendering some bacon in a large pot (yes, I realize it's strange to start a supposedly healthy recipe with bacon fat....).  Just a couple sliced.  I then added all my veggies to soften, then threw in the spices of garlic, ginger, curry.  Mmmm, smelling good already.  After they became fragrant, in went the lentils and water, which after simmering for 30 minutes melded into a deeply flavored---and veggie-filled--bowl of dinner.

Since I simply cannot eat a meal without a starch, I pulled out the last of the artisan bread batch and heated a skillet for naan, a perfect dipper for soup.  You roll out thin circles, butter a cast-iron skillet, and steam-fry them (covered) for a few minutes per side.  They get puffy, tender, and, yes, just a bit buttery, but the texture is where it's at for me--doughy in a good way, soft and pliant.  Naan, where would I be without you.

Pretend I had remembered to take a "cooked" photo and that this is ready to eat...

Recipe for soup after the jump.  Naan....

Adventures with Artisan Bread

Nope, it's not pretty...

For Christmas last year my parents got me this awesome book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. (Link to book on Amazon.com) It's basic theory is that you don't have to spend hours kneading dough, building bread ovens, and worrying about yeast rising to make bread.  Instead, the book walks you through a process of making a big batch of dough--no kneading required--which gets an initial rise on a countertop and then sits in your fridge for 2 weeks awaiting many possibilities.  You then can just pull out portions of this master dough to make bread as needed for the next few weeks.  It's versatile, applicable to anything from pizza dough to naan to cinnamon rolls, and much more.  And it's incredibly easy, especially for those who might be intimidated by working with yeast or dough.

What I really love about this book, much like the "No Knead Bread" recipe that enamored the blogosphere a year or so back or the original intent of the BreadMaker, is that it attempts to demystify the bread-making process for regular people like moi.  It brings the bread to the people, and for that I love it.  I've cooked my way through a good portion of the recipes, although I have a long way to go--hence the new "breadmaking" label on this post.  I'm going to expand my bread horizons beyond the 5 or so standbys that I can't quite move past without some encouragement.

Almost ready for the oven

Which is not to say that it's perfect.  I don't generally like the dough for pizza dough--it's wet and hard to work with--hence the rolling pin in the photo above.  This dough will tear if you try to hand-stretch it, probably due to low gluten from the lack-of-kneading.  Plus, the older it is the more "sour" the flavor is (like sourdough bread, a flavor I love--just not in pizza crust).  Plus, a really old batch of dough loses a lot of rise--you'll be fine making a flatbread from a 2-week-old batch, but a baguette probably is going to be on the flat and dense side.

That said, it's a lot easier than my favorite pizza doughs, which all require at least an hour rise (and needs an overnight cold rise...but it's worth it).  Since I had a batch of dough in the fridge that I started on Monday (specifically to make na'an with when I get to my Spicy Lentil Soup recipe--the naan will change you life.  For reals), I decided to forgo the better doughs and just grab a hunk from the bowl in the fridge.  I did have the better part of a log of fresh mozzerella that was languishing uneaten, along with some sad, old ears of corn, so it was thrifty--those would have gone to waste without pizza!  Or something like that.

This is just a simple, easy non-recipe--BBQ Veggie Pizza. Instead of just chicken and red onions, I wanted to get a little more creative.  Home-grown (father-in-law) corn, black beans, and poblano peppers seemed about right--so much so that I left off the chicken entirely. Stretch out the dough, top with BBQ sauce (one that doesn't have high-fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient, like many do, if possible), then cheese, then veg, then a bit more cheese.  Bake it on a pizza stone at about 450, let it cool a bit and then devour.  Like we did, mostly standing up in the kitchen and trying not to get sauce on our faces.