Suddenly the weather here has become rather chilly. Several weeks of 80°+ weather has turned into a week of rain with temperatures just over 60°. This is what I get for complaining about the heat! Actually, the brisk temperature is welcome after so many hot days, and is a nice reminder that autumn is on its way. Plus, it’s no longer torture to set the oven a-going, so I spent this morning baking something to eat for breakfast during the next week or so.

Since I am usually pretty busy, and also not much of a morning person, I tend to not be interested in breakfasts that require much effort, unless it’s a weekend or holiday. Muffins, bagels, or quick breads that can be made in advance and frozen are best, as I like things that be popped in the toaster oven and warmed up while the coffee is brewing. That way I can stumble around half-awake and not worry about causing any kitchen calamities.

Also, eating at home is more economical and also usually healthier. To be honest, I can’t stand most café muffins because they are too sweet for me to eat at breakfast. Streusel toppings, glaze, chocolate chips…these are fine for a snack, but first thing in the morning? My teeth ache just thinking about it. As a result, the muffins I made today are not heavily sweetened. Don’t be alarmed, though - a modest amount of sugar and the natural sugars in over-ripe bananas do keep them sweet, just not excessively so. Cardamom is the key spice used here, and I am pretty sure bananas and cardamom were separated at birth, or maybe long-lost lovers, since pairing them up produces such an amazing result. The flax seeds are optional, but are a nice way to sneak in some omega-3.

Banana Breakfast Muffins
1 cup all purpose-flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 egg
1 cup (3 medium) very ripe bananas
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cardamom seeds
1/2 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons golden flax seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease muffin tins or line with papers.
Sift the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl. Stir in flaxseed, if using. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas lightly with a fork, then mix them with the egg, melted butter, sugar, yogurt, vanilla, and cardamom. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture in 2 or 3 batches and stir until just combined. Fold in pecans. Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto racks to cool completely.

The end of summer tomato crops are still going strong, but lately I’ve been feeling a bit too lazy to come up with clever ideas of what to do with them. There are still many tasty varieties that I can’t pass up at the farmer’s market or the gardens of friends, but that quickly leaves me with more tomato than I can handle. For example, when one finds oneself with a bag of 40 or so teeny ones that are in danger of decline, tomato salad become the dish of the day. I know - yet another tomato salad recipe, right? Don’t yawn, though…this one is special. Well, it’s the one I like best, anyway.
Continue reading “North African Tomato Salad”…

This is a copycat recipe, which I initially saw on Bakingsheet, who found it on the Cooking Light website. The original recipe is by Alice Medrich, who is quite renowned for her chocolate expertise. Since I am a huge fan of Alice, and of course anything chocolate, I just had to try these. Nic at Bakingsheet deleted a tablespoon of butter from Alice’s recipe, but I replaced it since 5 tablespoons is already quite low for a cookie recipe. Her idea of placing dried cherries in the cookies is brilliant, and I also chopped up some Callebaut and added that to the mix in lieu of chocolate chips. They are supposed to be low-fat cookies, but no one would ever guess this - they are intensely chocolatey (even more so with the chopped chocolate), slightly chewy, and don’t dry out as quickly as many low-fat desserts do. Kept in a tightly closed plastic container, they lasted me three days, and may have even survived longer had I been able to stop eating them!

Since you can get the recipes above, I’ll just post a quick picture of the result.

Last night I went to see a performance of The Crucible, which by the way was terrific and if you’re in Pittsburgh, do check it out - this is the last week. The play is being performed in a park, so I wanted to bring a little treat to snack on during intermission. Of course, I never consider desserts to be sinful, so bringing something sweet was only natural. No goody-two-shoes Puritanical treat would do, either; rather more fitting would be something that might look plain but is a bit more interesting once you sink your teeth in.

It also follows that I am helpless to fight the baking urge, despite the temperature in my apartment climbing gleefully past the 90° mark. Besides, stovetop treats such as candy would probably not set up in the humidity, and utensil foods (e.g. rice pudding) would be too awkward to eat. So you see, it was quite logical to make cookies. Cornmeal seemed like the right choice, as always feels summery to me. However, most cornmeal cookies I’ve had are plain and crisp, while I prefer a chewier cookie…so the goal was to make something that would both have a pleasant texture and also be welcoming to some other flavours as supporting cast members. A bit of fiddling with an existing recipe produced an excellent result - the chew is just right and the apricot-ginger combination is lovely with tea. It’s probably best to use finely ground cornmeal for this recipe, as coarse or stone-ground will leave tiny nuggets of corniness in the cookies, which is charmingly rustic but perhaps not desirable for a tea cookie. Be mindful to remove the cookies from the oven when they are just lightly golden.

Continue reading “Portable Treats”…

Drink up, my pretty…

When most people think of green drinks, Absinthe comes to mind.
Continue reading “The Other Green Fairy”…

It’s the height of cherry season, and conversations around Gastronomicon HQ are riding an excited buzz about the local Bings, Raniers, and Sours that are soon to show up at the local farmer’s markets. Cherry fever seems to have gripped the rest of the nation, too. For instance, I just discovered an online store that sells Washington State cherries for about 5 times more than what my local supermarket charges. Of course, these cherries are hand-picked, allowed to ripen on the tree, and quintuple-checked against discolouration, softness, size, Scientology affiliation, and all other potential cherry misdeeds. Of course, there is no way I could afford to buy these beauties, so they sit on their website and taunt me with their scarlet words: plump, juicy, tart, ripe…whew. Enough to make a girl want to go to confession for lusting after them.
Continue reading “Chim Chim Cherry”…

I threw these muffins together today because I had a bunch of dried cherries that I wanted to use. They’re essentially a plain muffin recipe with a single modification (I substituted honey for half of the sugar) and the addition of dried fruit, but they turned out well and a friend asked for the recipe. So, here goes…
Continue reading “Name Like a Pornstar”…

We’re in the midst of blueberry season, and grocers everywhere are offering cheap pints of berries. What we get here in PA supermarkets are mostly Jersey-grown berries. While these may not taste as perfect out-of-hand as wild Maine blueberries, they still fare quite nicely whether plain or in desserts. In my opinion, baking them is one of the best ways to bring out their best qualities. A blueberry buckle, which is more or less a coffee cake that happens to contain more berries than batter, is an excellent way to make those supermarket berries shine. The quantity of fruit makes it supremely moist, and a crunchy streusel topping adds texture. With a swirl of lemon curd sauce for a bit of tang, this downhome treat is transformed into a sublime summer dessert (or breakfast). Not to mention it’s very easy to make. The following recipe is adapted from one in Cook’s Illustrated magazine.
Continue reading “Blueberry Buckle”…

The scones in Ireland disappointed me. There, I said it. They were dry and tasteless and barely buttery. There was a bakery in Doolin where I was once (so I’d hoped) lucky to get a batch fresh from the oven. To my chagrin, they were not only bland but the texture was more like a biscuit/muffin hybrid. Fishguard, Wales was not much better, although at least they were smart enough to cover the dry little lump with cream and jam. Could this be the way scones are meant to be? For a cluster of islands who are so keen on tea and pastry, I can’t help but suspect it was just bad luck on my part and negligence on theirs. But perhaps my idea of a scone is just too foreign…indeed, my first experiences of the classic teatime delight were not at the hands of a sprightly Welsh or Irish baker, but a regular old American lass.
Continue reading “Sconey Island”…

Last night, I whipped up an experimental marinade for a barbecue which I attended today. It went over so well that I had to buy more lamb for the barbecue that I will be attending tomorrow.

I used blade-cut lamb shoulder chops, but really, any lamb will do. (I love lamb, and will eat it any way I can.) There’s not much of a recipe to this, because I kind of made it up as I went along, but here is a rough approximation of the very simple marinade.
Continue reading “Grilled Marinated Lamb Chops”…